Prayer from the Depths
Jonah 2:1–9
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish. Jonah 2:1
Jonah’s prayer has four characteristics of all true prayer. The first is honesty. He acknowledged his trouble and that it was God who had caused it. Then there is penance, which means “confession,” “self-abasement,” or “mortification showing sorrow for and repentance of sin.” The third characteristic of Jonah’s prayer was thanksgiving. Jonah was thankful that God had turned him from rebellion and had caused him to call on the name of the Lord once again.
One final characteristic of Jonah’s prayer is the most significant of all. Jonah is now ready to take his place alongside the ungodly. Earlier he had said, “I am a Jew, and I do not want to preach to the heathen” (see 1:9). Now he was willing to take a place beside them as one who needed God’s mercy.
We find this in a parallel between verse 9 of this chapter and verse 16 of chapter 1. Verse 9 says, “I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay.” The earlier verse says, speaking of the sailors, “Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.” The heathen sailors learned to approach God as he must be approached— through the blood of an innocent victim sacrificed for sin and through a personal commitment expressed in a vow. Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, also approached through the sacrifice (promising to do in the future what he could not do in the fish) and made a vow.
It is hard to miss the point. Jonah, despite his earlier protestations, came to God, not as a Jew who deserved special privileges or concessions, but as a sinful human being who was one with all other sinful human beings and who needed God’s grace.
It is thus with us all. If you come to God claiming privileges, boasting of your own special achievements and therefore expecting God to accept you or acknowledge you on the basis of your own merit, you have no hope of salvation. On the other hand, if you come to God, admitting that you deserve nothing from him but his just wrath and condemnation, if you place your faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who willingly became your sacrifice, and if you promise to serve him and be his faithful disciple till your life’s end, then he saves you and brings you into a deep experience of the grace of God.
No one has ever truly repented till he or she has acknowledged that there is nothing in any person that can possibly commend him or her to God. And no one has ever been saved who has not come to God on the basis of the sacrifice that he alone has provided.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.