South Woods Baptist Church

Life is full of lessons. Some of these lessons can be found in the personal experiences of life, while more can be discovered at the expense of others. All of us have lessons in life which we can pass along to one another. But few lessons can be more profound than the lesson of repentance which Jonah learned in the belly of the fish.

Repentance is one of those things we really prefer not discussing. It makes us uncomfortable because it suggests that something must be wrong in our behavior or attitude. Even more so, it suggests that some sort of change must occur in our lives if we are to make forward progress.

We have many views on repentance among Christians. One view is that repentance is no longer necessary. To even bring it up smacks of the legalism of the Old Testament era. Another view would put repentance as a panacea for your problems in life; almost a magic potent which guarantees success in life. Both of these views fail to express the teaching of Scripture.

Our spiritual forefathers called repentance "an evangelical grace." In relationship to our salvation, this meant that repentance, along with faith, were both gifts of God's grace to the believer and both are the believer's necessary response to the gospel of Christ. Neither of these graces were meant to end at conversion. Both are to continue throughout the Christian's life. We are to "walk by faith" as well as "put to death the deeds of the body,"" lay aside falsehood,"" steal no longer," etc.  All of this involves repentance as part of your daily life as a believer.

While repentance becomes part of our lifestyle, we also may face those times in which a deeper, more profound repentance is necessary due to problems with sin. We find our spiritual graces crippled, our assurance clouded, and the stench of sin arising from our lives. So our great need is for repentance and restoration in our walk with the Lord. For this reason in particular, we can turn to the book of Jonah with great profit.

The silver lining to the story of Jonah must be that God restores his child to continued fellowship and usefulness. Not that Jonah deserved such restoration! If anything, he should have been lunch for the great fish! But before we are overly hard on Jonah, we must admit that there are times in our own lives when we deserve to be mixed with seaweed in the fish's belly. Yet God shows His faithfulness in restoring his child in repentance and renewed obedience.

How is repentance important in our lives as Christians? Let us consider the lessons God taught Jonah which are passed along for our example.

I.  Why repentance is necessary

The basic reason for continued repentance in our walk with the Lord is due to being in relationship with Him. All of us are involved in relationships. In each one, we face those times in which we are at odds with another person. How we respond will determine the quality and longevity of the relationship.

For instance, in marriage, when you have two different people living with each other year after year, you are bound to face times of friction and difficulty. Words will be spoken and attitudes conveyed which wound the relationship. Turning from those things which wound are essential for maintaining peace in the relationship. This is repentance at its most practical level. It is both an acknowledgment of some wrong and a turning away from it for the sake of the relationship.        

Just as repentance is essential in marriage and our other relationships, it is vital to our spiritual lives.

1. Nature of redemptive relationship

When we see the first verse of our text in light of the context, it helps us to grasp the importance of the relationship Jonah had with the Lord. "Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish." The sailors had called upon their gods; gods made of sticks and stones which could not hear nor answer. Jonah had not called upon God in the midst of the storm on the sea, but now, in the belly of the fish, Jonah's relationship with the Lord becomes pre-eminent. He prayed to "the Lord his God," in contrast to the gods of man's imagination.

I spoke with a young lady in France last week who said, 'My religion is a personal thing.' Yes, while this is true, I believe what she meant is 'I really don't want to talk with you about God.' Instead, I think we should say, "My religion is personal in that it is a relationship; one that has been brought about through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. But it is not personal in that I must keep it hidden as though it is a dark secret of my life."

Jonah had portrayed his religion as hidden. While everyone else had laid bare the reality of their religion when the storm buffeted them, Jonah kept silent. When your religion is "personal" in that sense, it typically means that something is not right with your relationship to God. This silence was not contemplation; it was condemnation.

Our backslidden prophet realized that he could not stay cold in relationship to God. The Lord was "his God." Personal? Yes. Private? Not when this God has publicly redeemed you from your sin at the cross, with Jesus Christ having "made a public display of "the powers of darkness ruling over you, "having triumphed over them through" His cross (Col.. 1:15). In addition, He  brought you into a living relationship with Himself and all the other redeemed.   

Since you are in relationship to the Lord, there are responsibilities on your part for the ongoing development of this relationship. You can depend upon the Lord to be continually at work in your life (Philip. 1:6). He has adopted you into His family (Gal. 4:7). He has made you to be a kingdom of priests unto Himself (Rev. 1:5-6). The New Testament epistles continually speak of the responsibilities and demands upon our lives due to the redemptive work of Christ.

I believe it is fair to say that Jonah thought he could get away with neglecting his relationship to the Lord. His whole prophecy declares that he could not! More so, those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ are called to the daily delights of living in relationship to God through Christ.

2. Relationship offended

Our text presupposes an offense on Jonah's part in his relationship with the Lord. God had commanded him to go and preach in Nineveh. "But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord" (1:1-2). This sets in motion the whole series of events culminating in Jonah being tossed overboard and swallowed by the great fish. The prayer Jonah offers comes as a result of his offense in his relationship to the Lord.

Jonah belonged to the Lord and as such, had the joyful responsibility of obedience to the Lord. He chose to do otherwise. Such a choice is sin. We can try to cover this up or give it another name, but the fact is, Jonah sinned against the Lord. The more he covered and excused his sin, the harder his heart became. Finally, it seems that Jonah is practically defiant. He imagines that he has his own rights and that he can flee from the Lord if he "jolly well pleases." His relationship to the Lord was still there. This is evident by God's gracious hand of discipline in Jonah's life. But it was affected by his persistence in sin.        

Do you find yourself right where Jonah was? You know the word of the Lord. You understand that you are to walk in obedience to Him. Yet there is a certain stubbornness in your heart in which you have become defiant by your sin. Perhaps it is not what we would categorize as grotesque sin or even bold sin. It may simply be neglect in your spiritual life; or a refusal to bend your will to the Word of God; or an arrogant spirit which refuses to acknowledge your constant need for the Lord. Whatever the case, sin is an offense to the Lord. As such it requires repentance.

3. Relationship acknowledged

Jonah was not praying as an "outsider" to the faith. He knew the Lord. He had enjoyed sweet communion with the Lord in previous days. It was the reality that his relationship to the Lord continued that brought him ultimately to repentance. Again, I believe this is where we see the emphasis "that Jonah prayed to the Lord his God," (italics added). Then in the prayer we find the tenderness of relationship throughout its content. "I called...to the Lord, and He answered me....Thou didst hear my voice....I will look again toward Thy holy temple....Thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God....I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple." All of these phrases serve to remind us that Jonah was not praying because he had no relationship to the Lord but for the very reason that this relationship existed. He had grown cold, backslidden, weakened, yet the Lord remained his God.

The burning ember of spiritual life remains, even when covered by the cold ashes of sin. I have always found a certain pleasure in beginning a fire in a fireplace from the few small, glowing embers that remain from an overnight fire. Ashes cover them. Though there is some warmth, there appears to be little chance of a flame arising. Yet, with patient blowing upon the coals, they again flame into a burning fire.

The fire of God's Spirit cannot be extinguished. No one can snatch you from His hand. Yet by reason of our sin, we can find ourselves cold and covered with doubt, anxiety, and fear. The eternal breath of God blows again upon our lives, so that we turn from our sin and know once again the brilliant flames of divine passion. Is this your need today?

II. What leads to repentance

God had never left Jonah. Jonah was the one on the run. Yet the steady persistence of the Lord pursued the cold-hearted prophet until he was brought to repentance from his damaging sin. What did the Lord bring about in Jonah's life to bring him to repentance? I believe we can see some of the very same principles at work in our own lives when we have fallen prey to besetting sins and have grown cold spiritually.

1. Desperation of soul

There is a dramatic change from chapter one to chapter two. In the first chapter, Jonah sleeps through the violence of the storm, keeps silent when asked to pray, and volunteers little about his God. Now we see the desperation of his soul in the second chapter. In a typical Hebrew style of poetry, we find him repeating the same thought twice over in the second verse. "I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth (belly) of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice." Here was no casual praying. Instead, we find a man in desperation.        

What happens at such a time? Perhaps the first thing is that the believer begins to wonder if he is a believer at all. Andrew Fuller pointed out, "Sin must needs cloud our evidences for heaven, and render our state doubtful" [Works of Andrew Fuller, vol. I, 457]. Though he had preached to others, had he done so in vain? Note the language. In "distress" he calls out to the Lord. With a sense that he is in the depths of the netherworld, the place of the dead, he cries in desperation to the Lord. Then the elation comes: "He answered me....Thou didst hear my voice." The reality of his relationship to the Lord came back to him. The coldness of doubt that had darkened his view was removed, as he knew the Lord heard his cry.

We find similar language throughout the Bible, particularly in the Psalms. "Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!" (Ps. 4:1). "Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning. Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God, for to Thee do I pray" (Ps. 5:1-2). "Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am pining away; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are dismayed. and my soul is greatly dismayed; But Thou, O Lord--how long?" (Ps. 6:2-3). "How long, O Lord? Wilt Thou forget me forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?" (Ps. 13:1).

It is the cry of desperation which recognizes that apart from the Lord we have no life; apart from the Lord's work, we have no deliverance. The purpose in times of desperation is to drive us to the Lord in prayer.

Perhaps we do just the opposite. We find ourselves in desperation, so we crawl into our own shell and hide, hoping the desperation will go away. Or we busy ourselves with all sorts of good, religious activity in hope that activity will erase the desperation. Fortunately for Jonah, he had no place to hide nor any activity to cover the desperation of his soul. Everything was laid bare before his own eyes. He saw his own sin against God. He realized that his only recourse was to repent before God and plead for renewing mercies upon his life.

Have you find yourself in a similar place? Cry out to God until you can say with Jonah, "He answered me....Thou didst hear my voice."

2. Affliction through discipline

I believe we all must admit that Jonah would not have had such a sense of desperation nor such a heart-wrenching cry to God apart from the hand of divine discipline. We saw in a previous study that God as Father can be seen in the way He disciplines His own children. Jonah faced just such discipline. The hand of the Lord was heavy upon him. The Lord pulled back the bow of His discipline and let fly the arrow of divine choice to strike down the proud heart of Jonah.

Though the sailors tossed Jonah overboard, they were only secondary as far as Jonah was concerned. The primary cause of what took place was the sovereign work of God in discipline. "For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me."  As far as Jonah was concerned, it was God's hand that cast him into the violent sea. The waves, too, belonged to the Lord.

This was no nice time of relaxation in an unusual submarine! The violence of the storm pushed Jonah to the bottom of the sea. He felt the depth of the Mediterranean swallowing him up (v. 5). He was held prisoner by the sea (v. 6). The fears of death overwhelmed him, when suddenly, the great fish gulped up the stubborn prophet. Three days in the compact, slimy dungeon of darkness afflicted Jonah as nothing else had. It was 'God's breakers and billows' washing over him. His assessment: "So I said, I have been expelled from Thy sight." Jonah thought for a while, 'Its over! God has removed me from His presence. My hopes are gone. I will never know the joy of the Lord again.'

Sinclair Ferguson has captured the essence of what is happening in God's discipline upon our lives.

Few principles are more important in the Christian life than the practical recognition of the sovereign God, and his gracious determination to draw us near to himself, whatever the cost may be. When his purposes involve afflictions and suffering of any kind, the knowledge that he is sovereignly overruling is the only thing that can preserve us from a craven fear or a sense of despair and bring us a measure of joyful and willing acceptance of our situation. Only when we recognize that Gods aim is to make us like Christ (cf. Romans 8:29), and that he works all the events of our lives together for this purpose, will we begin to rejoice in the good that is produced out of tribulation [Man Overboard! 55].

Have you tried to stiffen your neck in the face of divine afflictions in your life? God's discipline can come in an infinite number of shapes, sizes, and looks. Yet there is no mistaking His hand when it exposes our own sinfulness, our disobedience, our unbelief, and the solitary refuge we find in Him. His discipline, when properly accepted, leads the believer to repentance. He searches our hearts, exposes our sin, and then gives grace to turn from our sin that we might know the joy of the broken bones being healed (cf. Ps. 51).

3. Preservation by God

Above all else, the thing which brought Jonah to repentance was that he saw the Lord in his afflictions and in his preservation. During his rebellion, Jonah could only see himself and what he considered were his rights. The very idea that God would impose upon his life to preach to the Ninevites was absurd and offensive to Jonah. This would disrupt everything
in his life. God had no cause to make such an unreasonable demand of him! As he lived with such a view of himself and God, he forged ahead in rebelling against the Lord. But now, with the coldness of death upon him, with the prison of a fish's belly engulfing him, his sight caught a glimpse of the Lord. "While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple." With all the running from God, Jonah had turned his eyes away from the glory of God. Because of this, he could excuse his sin. He could find room for more rebellion. But when he saw the Lord, just like an Isaiah, his whole attitude toward sin changed (Isa. 6:1-6).

The colonial-era pastor, Jonathan Edwards, made this observation. "A man cannot truly know the evil of sin against God except it be by a discovery of his glory and excellence; and then he will be sensible how great an evil it is to sin against him" [The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. II, 833]. This is precisely what happened to Jonah. For he first remembers the Lord, then immediately his prayer goes to the temple, the place of atonement for his sin. A small vision of God's excellence and glory exposes the darkness of the heart and the need for divine cleansing.        

When our spiritual lives begin to chill, when our discipline before the Lord grows weak, when the attitude of our heart turns inward in self-centeredness, when the flame of divine love dims, our great need is to see the excellence and glory of God. We do so through the reading of Scripture, through hearing the Word proclaimed, and through God-centered worship. When our view of the Lord becomes faint, it has a direct bearing on the increase of sin and rebellion in our own lives. That is why Hebrews 12 exhorts us to be fixed in our mind's eyes upon Jesus Christ, so that we might lay aside our sin and persevere in the faith. It is the discovery of His excellence and glory that exposes our hearts and keeps us clinging only to the cross of Jesus Christ.

Are there some believers who feel this desperation of soul, who are being afflicted by divine discipline? See the Lord in all of His excellence and glory! That is the pathway to repentance and refreshing before Him.

III. What happens in repentance

The mercies of the Lord are great toward His erring children! We need only walk through the pages of God's Word to discover this over and over again. The Lord graciously brings His erring sons to repentance before Him. This repentance means "a radical change" which occurs in your whole attitude and is demonstrated in your lifestyle [John Murray, Collected Writings, vol. I, 60]. Dabney calls repentance a "change of mind after conduct" [Systematic Theology, 651]. In other words, it is a change that occurs in the way we think about God and ourselves so that it results in an altered conduct to the glory of God.

As we look at what happens to Jonah, I believe we can see the evidence of repentance having taken place in his life. This change of mind produced a radical change from the way he had been thinking and living.

1. Look to the Lord

The first thing the repentant believer does is look to the Lord: he prays. "Then Jonah prayed to the Lord....I called out...to the Lord....my prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple." Jonah does not give us a litany of what he had sacrificed for the Lord, nor what he had missed out on because he decided that he would follow the Lord. He does not dwell upon the bad things he encountered. Instead, we find him looking Godward. In contract, Jonah had been sleeping the sleep of spiritual coldness. He refused to pray when called upon by the sailors in his ship. Now, with a repentant heart, Jonah prays. Analyze Jonah's prayer and you find it filled with a new vision of the Lord.

Prayer looks away from the world and puts the whole focus of life upon the Lord. It removes us from the center of our lives. As with Jonah, when we pray with a repentant heart, we find ourselves offering confession of our sin, i.e., agreeing with God's assessment of it. We find ourselves acknowledging the Lord rightly, rather than imagining some caricature of Him. We see Him as our Father, as the Sovereign who ordains the circumstances of our lives, as our Deliverer who brings our lives up from
the pit of destruction, as our Salvation. Repentance always leads the believer to prayer, expressing his dependence upon the Lord and renewed passion for obedience.

2. Return to obedience

The repentant believer returns to obedience. That is why he needed to repent in the first place. He had gotten off the track of obedience. His disobedience led to a coldness in his walk with the Lord. Now he returns. "But I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay." Jonah retraced the steps of his spiritual decline. He remembered the time he had vowed to obey the Lord. He remembered the delight of walking as an obedient child. Then he balked. He refused to obey and ended up a rebel. As the light of repentance dawned upon him, he returns to that precious ground of obedience. At the point in which he got off track spiritually, he returns to follow after the Lord.

There is nothing quite as simple as this for seeing a correction in our spiritual lives. We have those who would concoct great formulas and achievements for us to return spiritually. I think the implication of this text is very clear. See where you have erred and return to obey the Lord. Jonah does not propose making great fanfare of his renewed heart. He just says, 'Lord, what I said I would do, I will do.'

The repentant heart has a desire to undo the sin which has undone him. His desire is to go back to the path of obedience. Certainly there are times when we may have difficulty retracing our steps and obeying. We might have to make changes to our way of thinking and living. We might have to address some attitudes in our lives. We might have to re-arrange our priorities. But genuine repentance is a renewed heart to obey the Lord and undo the sin and disobedience.

Do you know that kind of heart? Repentance is not simply expressing our sorrow over sin. It is a change in our actions; a return to the ways of obedience.

3. Guard against sins reoccurrence  

We are weak vessels and have the propensity for getting right back into sin. So in repentance, we not only look to the Lord and return to obedience, but seek to guard our lives from the same sin recurring in our lives. Notice how Jonah expresses this. He is not out for a quick-fix on his spiritual life, only to run right back into sin. "Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving." 'I'm not going to be like the idolaters. I'm not going to be unfaithful to Thee. I have plans ahead to offer sacrifices to You, my Lord, with great thanksgiving.' Jonah establishes some signposts to help him deal with his own weakness of sin. First, he would remember the vanity of idolaters. He would think upon how futile such a life is and that by God's mercies, he has life in the Lord. Second, he will make the practice of continuing to offer sacrifices unto the Lord. In those holy moments, he will be reminded of the greatness of God's grace shown to him and the way the Lord works in his life. He will be continually reminded that the Lord 'brought up my life from the pit.'  

Repentance brings the believer to a renewed hatred of his sin. As a result, he realizes that unless he guards his life, even with his new hatred for sin, he can still fall into it due to the weakness of his flesh. Such guarding may mean some lifestyle changes. It may be accountability in particular areas of weakness. It may involve study of God's Word in certain areas that shed greater light on sin and the work of sanctification. It may be the regular reminder in prayer of one's own weakness and the need for dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

Are there believers among us who need to come to the Lord in repentance? There is no hesitation on His part to receive in renewing love, those who will respond with a humbled heart and changed mind. May the Lord enable us to repent of those things which have caused our hearts to grow cold. May the Lord burn His fire within us.