Two Messages from Jonah 2 [Pt. 3&4]

Jonah's Prayer

Even in his rebellion, Jonah can teach us all quite a lot about good prayer. Chapter 2 is a chapter that deals with his repentance. Though he is still not happy about his calling, it is here that he realizes the goodness and faithfulness of God in his own life. His knowledge of Scripture and God’s character are the deep mine from which he is able to dig out his comfort and confidence in the greatest tribulation he will ever face. As those who also face tribulation, we can learn a lot from his prayer. Jonah’s prayer is pretty extraordinary. As I read, study and pray about it and its application to me, a Christian some 2,700 years after the fact, removed by thousands of miles, and living in a culture unimaginable to that prophet I am utterly amazed at its impact.

The common theme of suffering (whether it is as a result of my own sin or that of someone else) and trusting God when the visible signs of His love are not present, make this a most powerful,  time, distance and culture transcending lesson in prayer. Though Jonah was in sin and was suffering for it, it is very evident that he knew the Lord and His Word.

Jonah 2:2-9 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.  3  For You cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the floods surrounded me; All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.  4  Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ 5  The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; The deep closed around me; Weeds were wrapped around my head.  6  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.  7  “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; And my prayer went up to You, Into Your holy temple.

In his absolute distress, Jonah looked to the symbols of God’s covenant faithfulness for his relief. There was no where else to go. He was at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea inside the belly of a fish. All hope was lost. There is not a more desperate situation that we can be in, especially since this was the result of his own sin. What would you be thinking at that point? “I have blown it for the last time!” Yet 2 Timothy 2:13 tells us,  “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” Jonah was in a covenant relationship with the Lord though he was seriously struggling in the are of obedience. The visible tokens of God’s love seemed forever gone. But there was one place left to look, the Temple. To the Jewish mind this was the symbol of His covenant faithfulness. The thing that represented the presence of the Lord to him. Jonah went back to God’s faithfulness when his own faithfulness had failed. Likewise as Christians we can go back to the Cross and remember His great love and faithfulness when the visible signs of His love are not apparent. In suffering, when we fall into sin, whenever we are struggling God remains faithful and strong.

The second lesson we learn from Jonah’s prayer is that he relies heavily on the Psalms for the substance of his prayer. His knowledge of God’s character is based on them. Nine times he quotes from them as he offers up his desperate prayer in the time of his distress. An in depth knowledge of Scripture needs to inform our prayers as well. A “good prayer” begins with a knowledge of God’s Word then takes present circumstances and applies to them its precepts and promises.

How would you like to be able to pray more, pray knowing better that you are praying the will of God, and increase your knowledge of God’s Word? I am tempted to say you can have all of this for three easy payments of just $9.95, but that is not how it works. But what if you began to take God’s Word, especially the Psalms, and open it up and begin there when you pray. Start with the Word of God and pray from it as the Lord leads while you read. It won’t happen in three installments, but over time it will inform your prayers, give you more fuel for them and increase your knowledge and ability to remember God’s Word.

Jonah certainly was able to do this, probably as a result of singing those Psalms in corporate and private worship. I encourage you to do the same.  The Psalms were not only the hymn book of ancient Israel,  but also of the protestant church until the mid 1700′s. The Anglo-Genevan Book of Praise is an English Psalter (Psalm Book) from the 16th century that gives good paraphrases to simple tunes that might help you get them into your heart and mind.

Jonah’s prayer can teach us a lot and improve our prayer lives if we are willing to take the lesson from him. I encourage you to listen to both messages from Jonah 2 by clicking on the links below and see what it does for your prayer life as you apply these timeless principles.

Reality Sinks In – Jonah 1:17-2:10

A Lesson In Prayer – Jonah 2:2-9

In Christ!

Kevin

How Long Shall I Bear With You?

“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you?” – Jesus.

Have you ever been fed up with someone? Jesus expresses anguish over the state of belief in His disciples and the culture at large in His own time. The problem with jumping right in and saying, “Oh yeah, I know all about those people who don’t trust God like they should.” is that we are those people too! This event is given to us in all three of the synoptic Gospels and it comes on the heals of Jesus’ descent from the Mount of Transfiguration. Much like Moses as he came down from Mt. Sinai to find the people in rebellion, Jesus comes down to those nasty old Scribes disputing with His disciples who have failed to cast a demon out of a boy and heal him. Jesus is immediately met by the boys father;

Luke 9:38-40 Suddenly a man from the multitude cried out, saying, “Teacher, I implore You, look on my son, for he is my only child.  39  And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out; it convulses him so that he foams at the mouth; and it departs from him with great difficulty, bruising him.  40  So I implored Your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”

All of these people have God’s Word that tells them what the Messiah will be like. All of them have a knowledge of Jesus and His ministry; healing, teaching, helping the poor and the sick. Likewise all of them have something that keeps them from fully embracing who He is and what He has come to do.

The Scribes: They “sit in Moses’ seat” and are the ultimate authority in the land. They make their living and gain their reputation by interpreting the Mosaic Law. They use their status and position to defraud people out of their property for personal gain (See Matthew 23). Jesus opposes them at every turn and calls their sin, sin. Their Flesh kept them from believing in Jesus.

The Disciples: They know the “Word of God” in more ways than one. They understand that it teaches about the Messiah and that He comes to heal and set the captives free. They have sat under Jesus’ teaching for two years and have also been commissioned by Him to preach the Gospel and to heal and cast out demons (Mark 3:13-15) But now they encounter a difficult situation and cannot manage to do the job. Instead they end up in an argument with the Scribes (Mark 9:14) The problems of life, i.e. the World, kept them from the faith they needed to get the job done.

The father of the boy: Again he has a knowledge of both the Bible and of Jesus though certainly not as intimate of a knowledge as the Scribes or the Disciples. In His situation the devil has plagued his family and afflicted his only son and when the disciples failed to remedy the situation he too is losing his faith. He says to Jesus; “But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” (Mark 9:22)  And so the devil has brought his faith to the crisis point.

We are all like one or more of these people or groups of people, we are faithless and perverse at times. We allow our situation to obscure our faith just as each of these did. Whether we are worried about what the world thinks of us, confronted by a difficult situation or afflicted by the devil we let our faith get twisted, which is what “perverse” means here in the text, and fail to trust God appropriately. That said I am pretty sure it is safe to say that Jesus could say the same thing about you and me.

The Good News is the answer to the rhetorical question that Jesus posed in our text, “How long shall I be with you and bear with you?”

John 13:1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

Jesus stuck it out to the very end even though He was disappointed at times. Even though He felt frustrated, He finished the job and didn’t leave the disciples or the rest of the world to deal with the situation alone. This should humble us and encourage us to strengthen those who are weak in the Faith that we know. We should all be praying with the father of the boy, Mark 9:24 “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’”

Jesus has promised those who believe that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Our faith is insufficient, our bodies are weak, our wills are disposed to the honor of men rather than the honor that comes from God.  Yet if we have believed we must remember that His strength is made perfect in our weakness and continue on even when we cannot endure in our own strength, for when we are weak, then we are strong.

I encourage you to listen to the audio of this message by clicking on the link below.

How Long – Luke 9:41

In Christ!

Kevin