Salvation Is of the Lord

We all have a number of assumptions about the prophet Jonah. The first assumption is that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. It simply says that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. What else do we have wrong about Jonah?

Stay with us. Redoing Your Mind is next. Jonah's story is well known, but there are plenty of misconceptions about it. Was he really swallowed by a large sea creature? After all, he couldn't possibly have survived in its belly for three days. Or could he?

Today, Dr. R.C. Sproul separates fact from fiction when it comes to this Old Testament prophet. I remember an experience I had when I was a seminary student that shocked me, and perhaps I'm still not over it, and that's why I remember it. But when I was a senior in seminary, I was required to write a term paper for a Hebrew exegesis class I was taking. And so, I did my paper on the literary genre of the book of Jonah. And I made the argument that the book of Jonah was basically written in the literary form of historical narrative with the exception, of course, of chapter 2, which is the record of Jonah's famous prayer, which is written in a poetic meter. But the rest of the book is written in a normal historical narrative style. And I took that position in light of the debate historically over how the book of Jonah is to be interpreted.

Some scholars have seen Jonah simply as a myth or a legend or a parable or an extended poem. And I was taking the position that it was substantively historical narrative. And my professor called me in to see him after he had read my term paper, and he was all excited. And he wanted me to submit my term paper for publication in some scholarly journal that specialized in this kind of research. And I was flattered, but I was also amazed because the reason the professor was so excited about my paper was that the thesis of it was so radically novel. He thought that this was such a startling position position and that he had never considered the possibility that there could be any historical narrative element to the book of Jonah.

And I said to him, sir, I said, if I published this article, I'd be sued for plagiarism, not because I copied it verbatim from some other source. But don't you realize that the position that I'm taking here is the classic Christian position on this book, and he had never heard of it. This was an exceedingly liberal seminary, and my professor was about ready to retire.

He was in his mid-sixties. He had gone to a liberal college, a liberal seminary, a liberal graduate school, and in his whole life he had never exposed himself to any conservative scholarship. And it stunned me because at that time it was the pastime of liberal scholars to make fun of conservative scholars and call them obscurantists, that is, people who refused to look at various ideas other than their own. And I said at the time it was impossible for a conservative to get a PhD in theology in those days without being widely exposed to higher critical theories because they were so dominant in the academic world.

Yet it was possible for a person to go all the way through his education and teach for 30 years in a liberal environment and never expose themselves to anything of a conservative nature. And that's why it shocked me to such a degree and stuck out in my mind. But it is an important question for us because the book of Jonah tells the story of a historical event that borders at least on the miraculous, and it captures the attention of people when they say, oh you don't believe these fairy tales of a man being swallowed by a whale like Monstro in Pinocchio and actually surviving for three days and then being vomited up safely on the dry land as we read in the book of Jonah. And I remember my professor even in that day showing us articles that were ridiculing the book of Jonah because of investigations that had been done on the largest kinds of whales existing in the world today and arguing that if a man were inside the belly of that whale for three days that the juices that are secreted in the stomach cavity of that fish would kill the person.

And all those kinds of debates were being carried out, although it was interesting in the 60s there was a news report out of Japan of a person who was swallowed by a whale. We don't know how long he was inside the whale, but he actually survived the experience. But then I also remember our professor saying that the book cannot be taken as historic information seriously because of some of the details that are found in Jonah's description of his adventure, particularly in chapter 2. If we look at chapter 2 of Jonah, we read in verse 2, 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 your waves passed over me and then I said I've been cast out of your sight yet while I look again toward your holy temple the water surrounded me even to my soul the deep closed around me and weeds were wrapped around my head.

And our professor triumphantly then declared this has to be a myth because we know that the waves of the ocean do not flow back and forth inside the belly of whales, and the crowning point is that whales bellies do not contain seaweed. And so he said here you have this picture of this Jonah inside this whale's belly sitting there in the chambers of the belly of the whale composing this lengthy prayer and describing his dangerous situation of all this water passing over him and having his head snarled with the seaweed. Well, I pointed out at that time that the assumption that so many people make when they read this text, and incidentally it's the assumption that Melville makes is one of the errors in Melville's sermon that I read in our last session. The assumption is that the whale is an instrument of threat to the life and to the well-being of Jonah, and sometimes we even think that the whale is sent as divine punishment on Jonah for having disobeyed the command of God to go to Nineveh to preach to that people. And the further assumption is that Jonah in his prayer of desperation is crying out to God to save him from his captivity in the belly of the whale. Well, there are some assumptions here that simply are not sound.

The first assumption that is made may be sound and may not. The first assumption is that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The Bible does not say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. It simply says that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish.

Now obviously we jump to the conclusion easily that if he was swallowed by a fish, it would have to be a great fish in order to accommodate the size of a human being in its stomach. And the biggest fish that we're aware of is the whale, and so it's easy to draw the inference that Jonah was swallowed by a whale even though the Bible doesn't say that. Now the other salient point there is it may have been a whale. We don't know for sure, but it says that God prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. So this could have been a whale that God in His providence directed to this place at that time to swallow Jonah, or it could have been a special act of creation. He could have created a unique fish for that opportunity.

We don't know. All we know is that the Scriptures say that God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. The second assumption that is made that should not be made is the assumption that the whale is an instrument of destruction.

Well, if you look at the text, you don't even have to be that careful. Just a cursory reading of the text should reveal that in this book, the whale is the instrument of redemption. The whale is not sent to punish Jonah or to destroy Jonah. The whale is sent to rescue Jonah. The threat to Jonah's life is not the whale.

It's the sea. Jonah is thrown into the sea, and he is about to perish in the sea until he is rescued by the whale. The whale scoops him up and then delivers him to the dry ground, affecting Jonah's salvation. But the most significant false assumption about this text is that when Jonah is praying for deliverance, the assumption is that he is praying for deliverance from the belly of the whale, because after all, the word belly is used here, where in verse 17 of chapter 1 we read, "'Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.'" There's the word belly, and so we have a reference to Jonah's being in the belly of the great fish. But in chapter 2, when we have the record of Jonah's prayer, we read in verse 1, "'Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly.'" There's the second reference to the 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.'"

Now we have the third reference to belly, and since the first two references to belly clearly refer to the belly of the whale, it is natural to assume that the third reference to belly would also refer to the belly of the whale. It's not what Jonah says or the belly of the great fish. Rather, he says, "'He cried out of the belly of Sheol.'" Now one place where we know Jonah is not is in Sheol, because Sheol is the place of the dead where, in Old Testament categories, people went after they died to that shadowy place of darkness beyond the grave.

Jonah is alive, and he is on this planet, and he is not in Sheol. And yet in the prayer he says he cried out of the belly of Sheol. So obviously he is using the phrase belly of Sheol in a figurative sense.

And remember everything up until this verse is written in historical narrative prose. Now the prayer that he writes is composed in poetic meter, and he uses the phrase belly of Sheol in a poetic manner. Now the question is if it's a figurative use of the term belly here. That distinguishes it, at least from a literary perspective, from the first two uses, which are clearly historical narrative that clearly refer to the location within the great fish's stomach. But do you see how easy it would be to just slide into the third reference to belly and assume he's crying for deliverance from the belly of the whale?

No. The whole content of his cry for deliverance is a prayer that he is praying to be rescued from the sea. And the sea is Jonah's belly of hell or belly of Sheol that is about to engulf him and destroy him.

That's the point we have to see, or the prayer won't make any sense at all. Now beloved, waves do go to and fro in the sea, and there is seaweed in the sea. That's why it's called seaweed because it belongs in the sea. Now let's look at this prayer and assume for a moment with me, if you will, that when he says, out of the belly of Sheol I cried. Assume that the belly of Sheol refers to the sea and not to the stomach of the great fish. And you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep.

Now there's no doubt that to which the deep refers. It doesn't refer to the belly of the fish. It refers to the water, into the heart of the seas. And I'm saying to you that there's a parallelism here, and we have two organs of the human body that are used in a poetic sense and in a figurative sense in close conjunction here in this prayer. The belly of Sheol, the heart of the sea. Belly and heart refer to the same place just as Sheol and the sea do in this poetic parallelism. And the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me.

Visualize that. Is this a man inside a fish, or is this a man thrashing about for his life in the midst of the ocean? It's clearly referring to his plight, of which he is about to drown.

And 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. The deep closed around me. Again, he's crying about his predicament in the water.

Weeds were wrapping around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains and the earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. How does God bring up his life from the pit?

By means of the great fish. It is the great fish that God sends that saves Jonah from certain death in a watery grave in the vast pit of the ocean. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. And those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.

I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. And so the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry ground." So first of all, the prayer is a prayer for deliverance from the sea. The end of the prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving because Jonah is rescued from the sea and from the certain death that threatened him by this instrument of redemption that God presented to him.

By this instrument of redemption that God prepared in his providence to send to rescue his disobedient servant from the sea. And so he says, with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay what I have vowed. Now he is not only thankful, but in his gratitude he is repentant. And he is resolved now to do the bidding of God. He is resolved now to obey the mission on which God has sent him. He's going to pay his vow. And he says that on the basis of one of the most important, succinct statements about redemption in all of Scripture, salvation is of the Lord.

Other nations perhaps would have responded differently. I can just see pagans in that day if they encountered what Jonah encountered coming out on the dry land and then making an idol in the form of a whale or of a great fish and saying, salvation is of the God of the fish. Salvation is of Dagon, the Philistine God, whose image was a fish and who was regarded as the fish God. But Jonah understands that the fish is not his ultimate deliverer. The fish is simply the means by which God himself intervenes to rescue Jonah. And Jonah makes the declaration that every Christian should make every day, salvation is of the Lord. Jonah did not save himself. Jonah was utterly powerless to save himself.

Jonah's doom was sure and certain. The only possible way he could be rescued was by divine intervention, by divine initiative, by God reaching down and doing for Jonah what Jonah could not do for himself. This is a masterful lesson in our utter dependence upon the sovereign grace of God to save us, body and soul, and soul from clear and certain destruction. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah couldn't save himself from the ocean waters, but God could and did.

The same is true for you and me when it comes to our sin. That's a powerful lesson on salvation from Dr. R.C. Sproul. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday and a portion of Dr. R.C. Sproul's series on the reluctant prophet Jonah. Stay with us.

R.C. will be back with some final thoughts in just a moment. As we heard today, many of the things we thought were true about Jonah aren't necessarily so, but with his keen biblical insight, Dr. Sproul helps us separate fact from fiction. He also addresses several key questions like, why did Jonah disobey God's call to preach to the Ninevites? Why was Jonah angry when they repented? And what lesson did God teach Jonah in response?

And what does all of this have to say to us today? Dr. Sproul answers those questions in this series on Jonah, and we'd like to send it to you for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. Call us today with your gift and receive the MP3 CD. Our phone number is 800-435-4343.

You can also make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. We have many other resources to help you grow in your faith, and one of the most popular is RefNet. It's an online 24-hour radio station that's committed to the historic Christian faith. Dr. Sproul is prominently featured on RefNet, along with other trusted pastors and teachers, including John MacArthur and Alistair Begg, along with our Ligonier teaching fellows.

So check it out at refnet.fm. We've seen in the past that when God brings redemption, the end of His plan is our salvation, and He uses means to that end. Now, it would be a mistake for us to confuse the means with the ends, and it would also be a mistake for us to confuse the means of salvation with the ultimate source of salvation. For example, the New Testament makes it clear that we are saved by faith. Faith is not the end of the Christian life.

It is the means to the end of our salvation. But also, faith is not the grounds or the source of our salvation, but rather it is the Lord God who gives us the faith that is the ultimate basis for our redemption. If we confuse the source and the means, we'll walk around with expanded chests, bragging to others and boasting within ourselves of what we have done to bring about our own salvation, forgetting that even the faith that we exercise is the gift of God. It is a benefit received at His hand and by His grace and by His mercy. And so every Christian who is a believer should look to God as the author and the finisher of their salvation and say without hesitation, my salvation is of the Lord. The Lord. There is so much to thank the Lord for in our salvation, isn't there? That's something we learned today from the prophet Jonah, and there's more to come tomorrow as Dr. Sproul examines the final chapter of this Old Testament book. I hope you'll join us for the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind.