Jonah, Prayer and Deliverance
Jonah 2:1-9 · Bob Eckel · Nov 19, 2023
Jonah, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261933192462

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, we're in chapter two, when we close chapters in Jonah, so we're going to be taking this on by the end of the year, moving on to Philippians, the beginning of next year. So I'll remind you at the end of the lesson, no lesson next week. So we just have service on Thanksgiving. All right, let's see, as usual, what we learned from last week's lesson. This is Jonah 1, 1 through 9. And the first, it was learned by the Mariners that Jonah had fled from the presence of the Lord. I mean, that's very important here.

I mean, you know, in a sense, how can we relate that to our own lives? I mean, the world kind of learns from our shortcomings at times, too, doesn't it? And, you know, how do we address that as Christians? We all fall short sometimes in the eyes of the unbeliever. Well, we ask for forgiveness and move on. I mean, we sincerely ask for their forgiveness when we offend the world or fall short. from their expectations.

And here Jonah's kind of downstairs sleeping. So Jonah said that they should throw him into the sea and the tempest would cease. So that was Jonah's suggestion once they found out that he had fled from the Lord and the Lord's destination for him. So as the winds continued, the Mariners prayed to the Lord that they would not perish to save Jonah's life. I mean, go ahead and let you God take Jonah.

We should live because we're innocent people under these circumstances. So these winds are because of you and your ultimate waking Jonah up in terms of what he's done to go against your wills and your mission. So we need to be saved here. We shouldn't be, you know, ultimately killed because of Jonah's lack of faith.

And so they picked up Jonah and they did throw him into the sea. And as expected, I guess, by somebody, the Lord preserved the sea for his cause. So that's chapter one. So today's title is Jonah Prayer and Deliverance. I think we should maybe have it Jonah's Prayer and Deliverance. But anyway, that's the way it's stated. And let's move ahead.

So ultimately, then finally, before we get to there, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the body or the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, which is very, that's, if you will, the prophetic nature of this minor prophet that he will tell us.

Now, you know, it's funny when you look at the debates of what kind of fish this was. You know, you see people defend this as a shark. I mean, it makes the most sense to think this is a whale. But I guess we don't know for sure what kind of fish it was.

But anyway, we have to trust this is true. It's in the Word of God. Many people brought up concerns about this in terms of the validity of this scripture. But nevertheless, we covered that last week in terms of some of the skeptics about this particular verse. All right, so let's look at today's lesson. Ben Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the fish's belly. He said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and all your waves cast over me. And then I said, I've been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again toward your Holy Temple. The water surrounded me, even to my soul, and the deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head, and I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought up my life from the pit.

O Lord, my God, when my soul fain within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you, your Holy Temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving, and I will pay what I have vowed." We'll come back to that. Salvation is of the Lord. Okay, a lot of text here. We're going to, as usual, divide that verse by verse. So I'm combining here our initial comments on 1 and 2.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God and from the fish's belly, and he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. Quotations, by the way, are not always closed here because the quotation occurs in the verses that follow the words I'm saying. What do you make of I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction? He was being afflicted. It's obvious he didn't get chewed up. He was just swallowed. Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Right. Yeah.

Well, there's the nature of this program and how we typically reach out to God today. One of the focuses of the teaching of this body here is that we're positioned above and our life stems from our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ in heavenly places. But yet, much of our prayer is self-centered, is it not, when we're in trials and tribulations. And of course we're called to that, ultimately, by the Lord to grow in grace through these trials and tribulations. In fact, Peter called it a privilege. death, trials and tribulations of life. So, what do we make of this?

Welcome to the usual earthly experience, right? Well, we don't cry out to God when we're having a great time. No, we don't. We have no need. It's the trials and tribulations that call us to His presence. We cry out to God in our need. very self-centered, but yet it's not inappropriate. We're going to return to some support for that. So what might be different for us today? What might be different from our prayer today than that of Jonah's 700 BC or approximately? Aren't we thankful? I mean, don't we praise the Lord or Jesus Christ that we, you know, a salvation that the world doesn't know about.

Most of the world, they're always in the pit. There is no way out. Did Jonah realize when he set up this prayer and cried out to the Lord, it says because of my affliction, he must have known that he was responsible for the affliction and trial that he was going through, right?

Yeah. What else might be different today? We're not usually in the belly of a fish. I hadn't thought of that very well. I can't deny that. No doubt that he was too. I wouldn't have believed it then. We have the Holy Spirit that intercedes for us. Okay. All right. And Wes, do you think Jonah was involved temporarily by the Holy Spirit here to call out to the Lord? Maybe, maybe not.

I think from the Old Testament that ultimately the prophets were going to have a fairly direct communication with the Lord often. They could look ahead, or we look behind to what the Lord did, and that they looked up for the future. I'm not sure I understood that. They had something they were looking forward to, a promise. Oh, okay. Salvation. We have it. Okay, so kind of the Hebrews 11 people live by faith, all right.

Well, I think what you said earlier, too, is he knows he's responsible for this company because he tried to hide and went the wrong direction purposely to try to... He didn't want to go where the Lord told him to go. All right, let me extend that thought here a little bit. Did the cross and tribulations come our way because of our own shortcomings and our ongoing you students is the chance again not entirely right they come for our growth all right but it's also part of the world system I mean as long as we're here we're this is this is Satan's domain so there's going to be all kind of things that come our way there are three things going against our new nature and spirit by the life of Satan in nature. So, we have three things going against that.

All right. And he answered me. And in what way? I think this is kind of interesting because he answered me as a phrase that does not get additional consideration. How would God be answering Jonah under the circumstances he found himself? Maybe he gave him a calmness and a comfort that so he knew that he heard him.

Okay, so we see a different direction for Jono versus Apollo, but it shows kind of the same level of comfort in the belly, cutting away all of it. I mean, maybe a piece, a piece that, you know, Okay, you heard me. We're going forward here. I don't know how we're going to go forward, but...

But it's also possible he might have actually heard it. I mean, we know that the Lord has come unto people. I think he was delusional and he came back to the Word. And God spoke to him the second time. Delusional. That's, I just see that as how Jonah turned from the Lord his word.

I like how the church is today. We're going to go that far. All right. Well, we don't know how the Lord answered, but there was a direction that was changed. And so theoretically, when he turned to the Lord and said, look, I'm guilty of violating your mission for the church at, you know, Darsus Ultimae, this is what occurred, he had peace and things were changed going forward.

But we don't have any details. How should we interpret out of the valley of Sheol, I cried? What's Sheol? Place of the dead? Yeah. All right. So if you look at kind of the Hebrew here, the Old Testament designation is for the abode of the dead. So Roger hit that one on the head.

But ultimately, this could be a place of no return. It could be the absence of God. Punishment of the wicked could be exiled in extreme degradation or ultimately death. So whatever, I think the way we interpret death in the New Testament is separation. And that clearly is how it's interpreted here.

He was swimming with the fishes. Well, I think he thought he was going to die. For sure he thought this was the end. Well, and you know, that's where there is, if you look at different commentators, some have taken different tracks on this. I don't know, you looked at J.B.R. McGee, by chance? He took an interesting track on this. He thinks that Jonah actually died and the Lord brought him back. Most people don't interpret it that way. Well, it's interesting, and I was interested that J.B.R. McGee thought that.

He didn't actually give, I haven't read his whole thing, but that was his That was his thesis, that he actually died. This prayer was obviously before he died, but he talks about how he brought his life back from the pit, down in verse 6. I would think Jonah realized that here he is in the belly of a fish and he's still alive. He was able to call out to the Lord and that's why he feels that the Lord has answered his prayer because he was still able to, you know, it didn't smell very good, but he was still there.

Well, the big metaphor from what Roger said, if McGee's position is correct, this is a Lazarus kind of circumstance, right? He's not resurrected, he's restored. I'm going to share with you what Constable McCauley would have to say about this. And Roger knows I love Jay Berman, but I didn't. You should, you know it's too bad.

Okay, so Kant said death is literally the belly of Sheol. The place of departed souls that the Hebrews conceived was under the earth's surface. And Jonah thought that he had gone to join the dead. Okay, so I mean, He obviously thought he was going to die. I mean that's what he thought. Whether he did die, the question is did he really die or not die.

That's another question. Think about personalizing that. We all know we're going to come back to this. For me to live is Christ and die is gain. But yet, how we're getting there, that's something we all kind of ponder on, right? And we have our ways of getting there.

And I remember my late wife, Sharon, I mean, she died of hepatic encephalopathy. To translate that, her liver was so full of breast cancer that her ammonia levels were not adequately sustained. They were very elevated because of liver disease. And so she died three days in a coma.

And she wanted to get out of here as peaceful as she could, and she did. But we all kind of think about how, what's that path going to be? I guess we don't worry about that, but we think about it a little bit. We all have our ways. And Miles kind of died here to sleep, Miles Stanford. Anyway, we'll leave that for us to think about and pray about.

But anyway, McCulloch says an important feature of Jonah's prayer is its use of the psalms. This is really kind of interesting. The Word of God was very much in the forefront of Jonah's mind, notice that, as he prayed from the belly of the fish. His allusions to the psalms are shown in this following chart. So we're not going to go and look into these psalms. Just in verse 2, These are all aspects of verse 2 that are quoted directly in the Psalms. And we're going to come back to a few of these in the later part of this section of Scripture.

But isn't this amazing? So if John is really articulating these areas, It's kind of like, if you will, the believer that's kind of gone astray a little bit, that has all this Bible memorized and is able to throw that out during times of trials and tribulations. Well, I was thinking about that verse. I've hid your word in my heart. I mean, obviously, here he is, and he didn't have his time to get the scroll out and take a look. He had to be... He took them to glasses.

I'm glad Carolyn's in the Trust, we have a comic romance coming up. Think about it, we all have verses that come back pretty easily at certain times. I think that's why Jonah kind of reverted to what he knew. The Lord sent him on a mission for a reason, right? Jonah was a man of God in those days, but yet he departed. It's that, you know, fleshly will ultimately correct it.

We all suffer from that somehow. So here, I just pulled an individual verse from the Psalms. This is, this is my comfort in affliction for your word has given me life. Isn't that true for us today? I mean, isn't God's word the source of all truth? And if we, you know, pick and choose what we want to use, that's a criticism I have of Christianity. People pick and choose verses and see that there are uncertain chances.

All right. But it's certainly not wrong, is it, to pray when we're afflicted? And I'm going to just share a few verses with you. Luke 22, 41 and 42, and he was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and prayed, dying, Father, if it's your will, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. In that sense, the Lord, during times of trial and tribulations before the cross, turned to him in prayer.

That is an example of affliction. In Acts 16, 24 and 25, having received such a charge, He put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners weren't listening to them. Of course, we know the circumstances that followed that prayer of Paul and Silas.

Now James, everyone among you, is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing songs. And we don't do the second thing very much, but I think we all do pray one word. So anyway, there are probably many other verses that could be shared. So yeah, Carolyn.

I'm just wondering, and I don't, this is just a thought, you know, when he was talking about, you know, I'm afraid to go on and you heard me and I think in, One of the differences I think for us is that whatever happens we know He hears us. And I wonder if people back then, you know, I think a lot of people when they just pray when they're in trouble and they have no idea whether He hears them or not. But I think we have that assurance that He hears us. We don't know what he's going to do about it, but we know that he hears us.

That's good. We're a part of the family of God, are we not? In the Old Testament, things were a little bit different, but we certainly have plenty of examples about prayers to the Lord being heard and answered. So John is a good example of that. Is Acts 16, was that at Philippi?

Probably. I think that's when Paul was at Philippi, but through that, the Philippian jailer was saying. Yeah, I think that's right. I didn't put that in context where it was, but the jail experience, I think, is what clearly Paul's referring to. All right, let's go ahead.

And the third verse, it says, For you cast me into the deep, into the hardened seas, and the floods surrounded me. All of your billions of all your villas and your ways cast over me. So, you know, I just, Put this little picture in because I pulled it off Google.

You know, the idea that, you know, the floods were around him. Of course, if he's in the sea, you'd expect that. And ultimately, the waves were passing over him. So it makes you sense that maybe he's near the surface, right? I mean, in fact, he's experienced waves. But, Margaret, do waves have effect deep down? Well, but you have to get to the deep. You've got to go through the surface. And so, the blood surrounded him. The billows and waves passed over. And then, who knows if he could swim or not. But, you know, obviously, he looked down, but the fish swooped him up. He didn't have his life decorated on probably. No, he had no fins.

Well, Bob, I've heard, actually, McGee went down this path a little bit. How long did this prayer take? Was this an hour prayer? One second prayer? I mean, you know, and you have to kind of, you know, what was this? was it took three days for the sprayer?

What do you think, Roger? I don't know. It depends upon whether... I don't know. No, if you could swim. I mean, I would say it had to be a pretty fast spray. That's what I would think, too. He's going down. I know. He's going down. Okay, Bob? Yes. Hey, this is Andrew.

I was thinking about this and I think that Jonah knew that he was I think that fish, that whale, descended a long way. If you do that, the pressure becomes great. if you go down deep. And I think he knew that that was happening and he mentions he's down at the base of the mountains and things like that, the moorings of the mountains. Yeah, he talked about that in the next verse. I think he knows that he went down and he's kind of miserable because of the pressure of the water, you know, the water pressure. Don't you think verse 3 really reflects more surface kind of activity though? is from the stomach of the other. This is all reconditioned. It started out at the surface, right? Yeah, right.

But the prayer was... The pillows went over him then, and he thought he was going to drown, but then he got swallowed up. Yeah, the verses don't define temple sequence. I mean, it could be, you know, not a perfect chronological description there. All right. Is it possible that What's recorded here is what he cried out over and over again throughout the three days. Yeah, that's right. Be reasonable. I was in the hospital and I had a 5% chance of living and I prayed every day for three months. Thank you. A long answer here. Having been through a recent event, I know what you're talking about, Bob. Thanks.

Okay, so the point I'm giving here is the whole issue of the chronology. These events must have preceded Jonah's presence in the belly of the fish. It must have been on the surface, I suspect, for him to be experiencing that. But again, that's just my speculation about the timing of all this. And how did this all happen? Well, it was no mere chance of God who sent the waves His way. So this kind of reflects how the Lord was intervening on behalf of ultimately what would happen to Jonah.

And you know, I think the following song of David to the chief musician could very much relate to this. And that song goes, deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me. and cut out, and out of the deep waters, let not the flood water overflow me, nor let the deep swallow me up, or let the deep swallow me up, but let not the pit shut its mouth on me. So, anyway, that psalm kind of does relate as many others in verse 2 to what John was experiencing.

Alright, verse 4 then, I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your Holy Temple. Okay, so reflecting now what his mission really was, right? And of course the Holy Temple may have not been where he was sent, but ultimately he's reflecting on that that was present in Jerusalem, which is still in the Jewish history. Was this really God removing Jonah from his sight? or just a consequence of generous disobedience. Yeah, I think that's rather an interesting point, because that's what he was after when he went to Tarsus in the first place, was to get out of God's sight.

So God said, OK, you've run out of my sight. Now you're really out of my sight. I don't know. Maybe that's what he felt. So there's a lesson there that you learned, isn't there? But was he really out of God's sight? No, he wasn't. But I think that's what he felt. experience. And that's where I put this verse. Colossians 3, 1-3. I'm not sure. I need two pair of glasses. That's my problem. You need bifocals. Yeah. No. I ate bifocals once. I'll never do that again. Okay.

If then you were raised with Christ, see those things which are above. Where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. or you die and your life is hidden Christ in God. So again, positional truth has a lot to say about God never departing from us. There's plenty of other scripture that we can turn to for that.

Feinberg says he felt he was cast out from the special regard from the special regard and care which God exercises over his son, now he realized how dire a thing it is to be apart from the presence of the glory. So that's an interpretation of his being separated. Of course, the consequences here were substantial.

What does Jonah mean by, yet I will look again towards your holy temple? I think that's just another way of saying that he expects to live. It's sort of like, if you save me, I will go back and do what you wanted me to do in the beginning. Maybe it means that I'm going to stop looking at myself and start looking, change my focus to what you want.

Well, what did the Holy Temple mean to the Jew? Is not this where Israel's faith, forgiveness, and strength was provided? That's where they met God. And just a quote from 2 Chronicles, let's see if I can open this up and read it more easily. And when they return to you, this is from 2 Chronicles chapter 6 verse 38, when they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity where they have been carried captive and pray towards the land which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen and towards the temple of which I have built for your name." I mean, you know, there's multiple verses in Kings and Chronicles that reflect the Temple in its important place in the Jewish history, the history of Israel. So I think he's reflecting on that foundation of the Israeli nation and its faith. We need to keep in mind that in the Jewish mindset, the Temple was the presence of the Lord.

That's where they found him, right? Yeah, and so he was, the Lord had heard him in that first phrase, right? And answered him. And apparently this is part of what he sensed, that he would go back to the temple. But ultimately he does, right? Yeah, isn't that something? Isn't this what repentance is? He looked again towards the Holy Temple. He did a 180-degree turn, repented, and turned towards God. You know, the interesting thing about, let me read the next verse, I think we answered that one pretty well.

Jonah 2.5 says, the water surrounded me, even in my soul, the deep closed around me and weeds were wrapped around my head. I'm asking you to think about this. Do you think that this in some way reflects on how Jonah thought he might die? Sure.

What would be the options for his ultimate demise here in the deep? I only see one option, drowning. Well, but he could be eaten by the whale, right? I mean, couldn't he be digested by the whale? Assuming this fish is a whale, but he may be the wrong assumption. Sure, I think it does reflect that he might drown, that I think many commentators suggest that that's what he was thinking of.

Cosmo, Jared sensed his helplessness as he continued his downward plunge into the deep. He seemed to be in best grip rather than God's seaweeds bound his head as the water encased his body. So I think that this kind of reflects that drowning might be a likely expectation, but we don't know that for sure.

Again, the Psalms can be quoted here. I'm going to read that here. Let's see if I get the right one. Here we go. To the chief musician, another psalm to the chief musician, said to the lilies, a psalm of David, Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the deep mire where there is no standing, and I've come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I mean, it relates to the verse 5 that we just covered here in the text. All right. Okay, I'm combining 6 and 7. Jonah said, I went down to the moorings of the mountains, and Andrew mentioned that.

The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul faded within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Again, the holy temple is being mentioned again. And you know, it's interesting, in the ultimate of having no strength and being hopeless, I mean, where do we all turn, right?

And I think, you know, the differences for us is that, you know, there's a tremendous difference for us today because, one, I quoted earlier, for me to live is Christ and die is gain. Either way, you win. So it's a whole different perspective. The whole issue of what happens after death in the Jewish belief, I think, was a little less clear than clearly the position and condition that we've experienced today. Thoughts about that? I agree. Okay. Let's compare this verse with what Paul had written in the church of Delamire, to what John and I have been thinking. So I'm going to turn to Isaiah here. And then Isaiah 38 says, Indeed, it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness, but you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.

For Sheol cannot thank you. Death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your truth. What do we make of that in terms of what the view of the Israelite was in terms of Sheol? They didn't have much concept of what actually would happen in Sheol. We know now that she always divided up into two sections, you know, paradise and the area of punishment. But they only saw it as one place where everybody was just sleeping or not resting. So do you think the verses in Isaiah here reflected all what Jonah's experiencing and if so, how? So, you know, the prophet Isaiah said that you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption.

So, Isaiah must have been in a circumstance not identical to Jonah, but circumstantially fairly similar. Yeah, Bob, it's amazing how parallel these from Isaiah, and then it matches what David says, and it matches what Jonah says, so it's It's kind of amazing the similarity, even though they're different guys, divided by times, so they all went through the same experience. That's pretty interesting. So, Isaac's head says for Sheol, I cannot thank you, and death cannot praise you. So, the idea of this separation was something that Jonah clearly was experiencing, was about as Isaiah was.

So in a sense, again, the separation that we have today is a very different one. We're separated from our earthly existence, but not the relationship we have with God. So the trials and tribulations of the Old Testament all made people realize that their sin was really separating them, but yet not in the profound and convincing way that we have today. Those who go down that cannot hope for your truth. I mean, So when you're seeing yourself in the pit as an Israelite, ultimately that was clearly in the absence of God's presence to the individual who was experiencing it.

All right, the last part of this verse is, When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Interesting, the temple shows up again here. So, Alan has a quote here, I pulled this out of the concept book. As in Jonah 1-6, prayer is presented as the key to the salvation of the one who would otherwise have perished. So, ultimately the trial brought about prayer which was effective in ultimately taking away this separation that the Israelite was perceiving. Thoughts? Alright. Alright, the last two verses. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is a reward. Why do you think Jonah mentions worthless trials here? What idols do you think he's referring to? Isn't it those who don't look to the Lord have no hope? I mean, they have nothing. Is he looking at himself in that regard, do you think?

Isn't he saying that those who Because He's going to sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. And He's going to sacrifice to you, to Him. But those who regard worthless idols, so those who worship these worthless idols, they forsake their own mercy. But the mercy is there, they're themselves forsaking. Right, they're forsaking the mercy that could come if they worshipped the Lord. What could have been an idol that John would relate to here? circumstances he found himself in.

Maybe all the other gods of the sailors, for one thing. What? Maybe all the other gods that the sailors had, you know, they were afraid of their other gods. Yeah, we covered that a little bit. Apparently they were God-fearing because they turned to God, but yet ultimately, who was their God? Well, why did he go to, ultimately, to Neva? forsaking God.

Yeah, I mean in a sense, so he's saying, I think he's identifying with the fact that his idol was something other than God's will for his life. I mean that could be anything. I just think about today how many things could be distracting us from our heavenly relationship. So now he's opened up to the idea that whatever idol that was, I think was comfort, joy, and peace, and he really didn't feel like he was capable of doing or willing to do, he's now going to sacrifice and the idols may have been anything that he would have put in place of his relationship with the God.

What mercy do they have anyway? Do idols have any mercy? What's mercy? Not getting what you deserve. Yeah, that's good. And what's grace? Mercy is ultimately just punishment for falling away in sin. But grace, of course, is an extended circumstance that's based entirely on the cross. It's far different than mercy.

So, reading again from the Psalms, again, so often the Psalms are quoted here. Psalm 31, 6, I have hated those who regard you as idols. How's that for a direct quotation? But I trust in the Lord. Yeah, that's the end of that Psalm. I've hated those who regard you as idols, but I trust in the Lord. All right. In closing then, let's see. But I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving. This reminds us of how we believers today should pray, right? And something we covered in our study of Philippians a few months ago.

So be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Okay, so with the voice of thanksgiving, he's now responding. You know, being anxious for nothing has conditions connected to it. We buy everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

God will request we know him to God. So, you know, turning to the Lord in terms of our own prayer lives and relationships of being thankful is critically, I think, important in terms of how we view our prayer and whether it's ultimately biblical or correct. I will pay what I had vowed. What was Jonas' vow? Worship the Lord at the temple? I'm sorry? To worship the Lord at the temple?

Okay, well, what maybe more, more here. I mean, he's not going to be going to the temple as far as we know, right? So, but, well, I think circumstantially it was his way of saying he would be, he would be going to fulfill the mission that God had given him. I think that's the value he's probably related to. other thoughts about that? I think you're right, Bob. Yeah, that makes the most sense, I think. Roy, thank you.

And, you know, again, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it for this wickedness has come up before me. So, you know, that's what God had asked him to do. And I think He expected, well he knew that ultimately John was not going to hang in there with this opportunity or mission. But ultimately, I think that's likely his vow that he's returning to at this point of this section of Scripture.

Salvation is the Lord. I mean, what more can be said here than that? True of the Old Testament, true of the New Testament, true throughout Scripture. The salvations of the Lord, what's it based on? Grace. For us, it's grace. But what do you make of the Old Testament and salvations of the Lord? It was grace then, too.

Well, it was, but it's faith, is it not? So, remember, I think, Faith is exemplified through the entire Word of God. We're given multiple examples of Old Testament men of faith, women of faith. So how do we define faith? I think faith is simply, as Scofield says, believing what God has revealed. And so if we look throughout the Old Testament, the growing Examples of faith that we see highlighted in Hebrews 11 ultimately are people who believe what God revealed for the time that God revealed those truths.

So salvation to the Lord, not anything more could be said in judgment. He is responding by faith, is he not? I guess you could say that the Lord didn't compel him to go, he just made him willing. Say that again. The Lord didn't compel him to go. He just made him willing to go. And he was not, right? He became willing. He changed his mind. He became willing. He became willing.

Well, doesn't God do the same thing today? Sure, exactly. We may times are unwilling. But God controls the circumstances to make us willing. Right. Does he control the circumstances or he uses the circumstances? I think he does control the circumstances. He made things necessary for Jonah. He certainly knows the circumstances that are coming our way.

He's using them to bring us now to the nature of God. He's using the circumstances to conform our wills to God's will. Yeah, I mean, His purpose for us as believers is maybe less true for the Old Testament, but it's to conform us to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And to transform our lives into that life with Him. I'm thinking he uses the circumstances to conform us and to transform us in that process. Right. Okay, let's end with Constable.

Jonah's desperate condition had brought him to his senses. He would return to the source of loyal love and express his worship of Yahweh with a sacrifice. His sacrifice would have to be thanksgiving. the sense of despair of being able to offer an animal or vegetable offering. He can't return to that. He has no ability to do that.

But that's kind of, I think, his reference to the Holy Temple in terms of where those sacrifices actually took place on behalf of the entire believing nation of Israel. All right, so Jonah's prayer teaches us some things. We certainly have trials and tribulations that come our way and the response we have in prayer is appropriate and expected. But we certainly live in new testament truth, which is a lot different than what Jonah was experiencing. All right, let's close in prayer. Jonah, will you close us in prayer, please? Father, we thank you for the way you manipulate our lives to conform us to your will. We thank you for this time of study and we hope that we can remember these things as we live our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.