Word of Salvation – Vol. 15 No.27 - July 1969

He That Liveth And Was Dead

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on Jonah 1:17-3:2a

SCRIPTURE READINGS: N.T.: Matthew 12:38-41
                                                O.T.: Jonah 1:17-3:2a

PSALTER HYMNAL: 233:1,2,3; 94:1,2 (after Law); 428:1,2; 461
                                    228:1,2,3,7 (after Sermon); 228:10 (after benediction)

Brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ our Lord,

There is a story about some soldiers who had been to the front in North Africa.  Where thousands died every day in blazing heat, where one of the most terrifying episodes of World War II was fought out in the scorching deserts of Libya.  The title of that story is very fitting, it seems: it is called: "To hell and back".

They're not the only ones who have experienced a thing like that: to be in a way, dead already, and then yet to be called back to life.  We of course know that this is not hell yet.  We know, too, the One of Whom it is really true, that He went, for us and for our Salvation.... to hell and back.  He, who was dead, but now lives!

This, Jonah was called to show, in that sign of what Jesus would do.  Jonah was to die, in a way.  He was to go – not exactly to hell, but at least to where he, dead in trespasses and sins, would cry to God and be heard.  So that he could say again: "I was dead, but GOD brought me back to life again".  And this, surely, is something which God has laid on the lips of His Children many times after that.  "To hell and – O wonder! – back to life!"  He that liveth- and was dead!  Oh the wonder that I may live before the face of my God!

We will see:

            1.  the terrifying miracle,
            2.  the unusual prayer-chamber,
            3.  the blessed memory,
            4. the return from death,
            5. saved.... to serve!

* * * * * *

Jonah was at the end of his way.  Thrown overboard, unfit for service, good only for the waste-paper-basket, the garbage tin.  A decent fellow, so to say, all these years, and yet:.... a useless life.  Salt become tasteless.  Yes, that's what WE would say.  The sailors undoubtedly said the same, as they saw him disappear under the water.

But God said.... NO, NOT FINISHED YET.  NOW I am going to make my new beginning.  And there, under that water, in that endless ocean, there was, exactly at that time, and that moment, the big monster swallowing Jonah.  Modern theologians smile a bit about this.  To them it is one of the improbable stories of the Bible.  A man in a fish for days..... and then out again, alive!  But look, people: even if it is NOT true that a monster shark swallowed a sailor in 1758 and, shot with a cannon, spat him out alive again, even if it would NOT be a proven fact, that the big cachalot or pot-fish, living in the Mediterranean sea, can easily swallow even a shark of 15 ft.  long Even if a thing like this never happened, and after this time also never was to happen again .... who are we to say what God CANNOT do?  Who are we, to deny the power of God even to CREATE a special fish for this very purpose.

The Bible says that the Lord PREPARED a great fish.... which here also means: saw to it that it was there and I can say to you, that the Lord PREPARED THAT FISH just as today He still prepares for His children great things and small, good things and, if necessary bitter, to make them patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and to give them that deep and firm trust in Him that nothing can happen against God's will, but that all things must serve for good.  Let's call it unusual what the Lord did here.  Too right!  But much later the Lord Jesus, in Matthew 12, was to say to the Pharisees who came and said "do a sign to show who you are; do something unusual.....!”

            "To you no sign shall be given than that of Jonah,
             who was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish...!"

And this was to be the sign of something MUCH, MUCH MORE UNUSUAL, namely: that the Son of Man was to be dead, in the heart of the earth AND RISE AGAIN!  How can we expect people to reject the fish that swallowed Jonah..... and then turn around and believe that Jesus died and rose again!

And without that miracle of Jesus rising again, you and I have no hope, then we are still in our sins, Paul says in 1Cor.15, the chapter on the Resurrection, then we are the most miserable of all creatures.  But No: here is the Word of a God Who can work and HAS WORKED and DOES work and SHALL work... M I R A C L E S and through these miracles there is salvation.  His right hand is still powerful, and he asks us to BELIEVE.  I repeat it, if our mind refuses to accept God's ruling in this REAL fish then the devil will only use that mind to refuse the Christ, Son of God AND Son of man, born of a virgin, crucified on a Cross, Risen on the third day, ascended into heaven, and coming again in glory.

And without that faith in that living Word of God, we have no life, no message, no joy.  Then the bitterness of a film star who commits suicide because there is nothing to believe in beyond a beautiful body getting old and ugly, is your and my bitterness.  Then we've got nothing to tell.

But now, Christ IS risen, and God IS a God who does "wondrous things, and His Word abideth forever!  The miracle happened, but what a terrifying miracle it was for Jonah!  Instead of drowning, he was swallowed by a monster.  Would not drowning be better?  This is something that happens in our blackest nightmares and even worse!  Certainly he was to LIVE in there.  The Lord who allows us, sinful little creatures, to make oxygen in bottles to take with us to outer space, certainly could have seen to some Oxygen himself for his little boy Jonah.  But we can be pretty sure that it wasn't all that comfortable.  And Jonah could not know where it all would end....!

For the context makes it clear that the prayer of our text was really made up in its present form AFTER Jonah got out of the fish.  Therefore he speaks too strongly of salvation, of rescue.  But one thing is sure; there in that fish he at last did what thus far he had left to heathen sailors: He prayed.

2.  But what a strange prayer-chamber that was!  Yes, Jonah had discovered it: he could not run away from God.  He was not only near God in the temple in Jerusalem, but God's almighty and everywhere-present power could find him everywhere.

That taught him the lesson which the Lord Jesus much later was to teach to the woman at the well: that the Father can be prayed to everywhere, for He IS everywhere.  What a joy to know that!  At the wheel of my car I can talk to God.  When my mates at work scoff at me about religion, I can ask: "Lord help me now,” and he is right there!  I need not wait till Sunday and in church to get strengthened in fellowship with God again, even though there I get God's special blessing, just as Jonah in his prayer also speaks of his longing for God's holy Temple.  But every room can become a prayer-chamber: even the death-chamber of a concentration camp, the cell of a prison, the hard and bitter wood.... of a cross.  It is in strange places and in strange ways that God can get His children to cry to Him!  But we never will have rest till our souls have thus found rest in Him!  But listen now WHAT Jonah prays, and watch, how great a blessing is...

3.  the blessing of a good memory.  For most of this prayer of Jonah is words of Scripture, and more particularly of the Psalms.  Jonah is at the end of his rope.  What must he say to the Lord, his God?  Yet that is no problem: words of Scripture, once learned, come to his mind: words of the psalms speaking of confession of sin, of making oneself small before God.  Words, too, that speak of God's judgement: like those from Psalm 42: "All Thy billows and all Thy waves passed over me."  The humble confession that he deemed himself "rejected from before the Lord's eyes" (Ps.3).  Here Jonah is again like the Lord Jesus, who on His Cross even, quoted Scripture in that bitterest of cries to God: "Why hast Thou forsaken Me"?  Here, then, is the great blessing of training in the Word: it teaches us to pray.  Here is the great blessing – we not only read, but learn what scripture says, by heart.  As Ps.119 says

            "Thy Word have I HID IN MY HEART
             that I may not sin against thee"

Yes, and that in the day of trouble when we know not what to say, the Lord Himself that way can give us the words, the words of prayer from the belly of the fish.

Oh, to humble yourself before God is hard.  It is not like you and me, to confess that we lie in the midst of death.  But the words of the Lord can teach us to pray, to beseech Him to forgive and to save, and to give us the JOY of God's salvation.

Herein, too, we may follow Jonah AND Our blessed Lord Himself!  Whenever your own words fall short... use HIS.  But, in order to be able to do that: KNOW His words and make your children know.  In concentration camps and prisons, in sick beds and on wreckages at sea, it has been proved as it is proved here in the belly of the fish what a blessing such a BIBLE MEMORY is.  And any day of your life, when you lie on your bed by night or are alone at your work, it is with THESE WORDS that the Lord will help you to lift up your soul to Him, and how could you live with Him, deeply and really, without OFTEN doing that?

For then, too, the scripture words will come to your mind which speak of salvation: SALVATION IS OF THE LORD!  (Ps.3).

4.  Then, you will know what it is to come from death BACK TO LIFE!

I think that Jonah really came back to life already IN the fish.  That there he found the peace with God which passes all understanding.  For does the Lord ever leave unanswered the prayer for forgiveness, and the confession of sin?  The fish gets a command from God..... and Jonah lies on the beach!  Most probably the beach of Palestine.  Back again in the glorious light of the sun!  With the songs of the birds in his ears, and the lovely warm earth under his body!  Out of death.... back to life!

As it would once happen to Him Who is greater than Jonah: OUT OF DEATH, BACK TO LIFE FOREVERMORE.  And as it may be said of you and me with the mysterious words of Romans 6 and Colossians 3: "we then... have died with Christ, but our life is hidden with Him in God; we have risen again, we shall no more die." And have you already experienced yourself, what a child of God may say through the mercies of THAT Saviour?  That you may sing jubilantly with Psalm 118
            "I SHALL NOT DIE, BUT LIVE, LIVE, LIVE!
             AND DECLARE THE WORKS OF THE LORD!"

Or what Psalm 116 says:
            "I love the Lord, because He hath heard my voice....
            "the sorrows of death were all around me
            "the pains of hell got hold of me,
            "But then I called on the Name of the Lord,
            "O Lord, help, help deliver my soul!
            "Gracious is the Lord'.  He did!
            "Oh, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the "living!

But there, in that beauty, in the sweetness of being alive again, the story does not finish, but there it really BEGINS.  For then there is the last truth of our text:

5.  Saved..... to serve!  For then, again, the voice of the Lord comes to His servant, His child, and He says, as if nothing had happened: "GO!"  And there in one master-stroke, is the way of salvation.  Also the way of your salvation and mine.  Saved... to serve!

The adulterous woman of John 8 heard it, to her enormous astonishment: that she was NOT to die, but to live.  Not the bitter-hard stones to batter her, but the Word of the Judge of heaven and earth:
            "I condemn thee not, either!"

But, in the sunlight of this gloriously-new life, there stands out the clear command: go, and sin no more.

As with the sunlight that has shone upon every child of God today, never to set any more, there stands out the clear command: Go, and be ye witnesses unto me!

Teach all nations, till I come again!

Amen.