The Presence of God

Well, good morning, church. You could turn in your Bibles to Jonah. Chapter two. We're going to continue our look at the book of Jonah through the minor prophets. You know, Beth warned me against starting this sermon with a big fish joke. But I know she means whale. Yeah.

That's hard to swallow, I know. It's good to be here. It's good to be with y'all, and it's good to be looking at Jonah. You know, Jonah is kind of easy to poke fun at because, you know, honestly, as a prophet, he's a bit of a joke. He's a goofy guy.

He makes goofy mistakes. He's scared. He's not the hero that you would expect. And I think for these reasons, I really relate to the guy, you know? If you were here last week, we began the book of Jonah, and I made the point that Jonah is more than just a nice bedtime story about a big fish.

You know, Jonah, at its core, is a book about God. More specifically, it's a book about the attributes of God, His Omnipotence, His Omnipresence, His justice, His mercy, His love. These are the attributes of God. And the thing is, Jonah knew that. He knew the attributes of God, at least up here intellectually.

And yet, the funny thing about Jonah is that even though he knows these things, he lives his life and he makes these decisions like God is just like any other lowercase G God that's out there. And so I think there's a real challenge for us in the book of Jonah, for this church in particular.

I mean, this church, we love theology, and we should, right? You know, take it from a guy who taught a class called Theology Thursday. Like, theology is good. We need it. We should embrace it. But the question that I think all of us, myself included, need to examine is: do we live like this theology is true?

Let's take the attributes of God. For an example, last week we talked about the power of God. God is all-powerful. Do you believe that? Great. It's true. He is. But do you live like it? Do you run away when God asks you to do something that seems impossible?

Do you fall to pieces? When something that seems more powerful comes into your life? You see what A.W. Tozer meant when he says that what we think about God is the most important thing about us. We have to get God right before we can get anything else right.

We learned last week that God is greater than the great things in Jonah's life, he's greater than the great things in your life. Chapter 2 is similar. God is revealing himself to Jonah. But this time, I believe he is teaching Jonah about another one of his attributes, namely his presence.

God is all-present. He's everywhere. Did you know that? Do you believe that? Do you live like that's true? This is another one that Jonah had to learn the hard way. It's not until he's cast into the depths of the sea that he realizes that his view about God's presence was very, very wrong.

And I think this prayer that we read in chapter two is him being thankful that he was so wrong. So this morning, I have a one-point sermon, all right? So you better remember it. I want to drill this into your brains this morning. This one point is this: God is a God.

Of the down places. I'll explain what I mean by the down places in a second, but let me say it again. God is a God of the down places. This is what Jonah realizes in the belly of the fish, and this is what provokes worship. If that is true, if God is really a God of the down places, then that makes God different from every other God of every other religion, and it changes everything about how we relate to Him and how we relate to each other.

So let's read. Jonah chapter 2. Here it is. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice.

For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All your breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, I have been expelled from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death.

The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountain. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But you have brought up. My life from the pit, O Lord, my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you and to your holy temple.

Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord. And then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. God is a God of the down places.

Now, in order to explain that, I need to explain what I mean by the down places. And to do that, we need to back up to chapter 1. Let me just read this. If you're there, you can read along. Chapter 1, verse 1: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa. He found a ship which was going to Tarshus. He paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord. Man, I love those prepositions, right?

There's two things worth pointing out in just these first few verses of the book of Jonah. And the first of these things, Is honestly something that I have gotten wrong many times, and that's this: from where is Jonah fleeing? Yeah? Does the answer seem obvious? It should be.

It's there in the text, it's there twice. And yet, I think I have heard and even taught that Jonah is fleeing from Nineveh, right? Because Nineveh, you know, Nineveh is in the east. Tarshus, we think, is probably in Spain. They're opposite directions, and so Jonah is going the absolute wrong direction, which is true.

But is it because Jonah is scared of the Ninevites? Because Jonah is trying to get away from Nineveh? I don't think that's the case. I think that the text is plain. Jonah is fleeing from the presence of the Lord. You want to get away from God. So you might be sitting there thinking, Jonah, you fool, what are you thinking?

You know, don't you know you can't flee from the presence of God? Well, remember when I said that it's possible to know something without living in that reality? So this was Jonah's big plan, right? You know, I want to get away from the presence of God. So if you were Jonah, where would you go if you wanted to flee from God?

Now, this is the second thing that I want to point out, and it's a little bit technical, so bear with me. We know from 2 Kings 14 that Jonah lived in the time of Jeroboam II, which means that this was the days of Solomon's Temple, right? Solomon's Temple, this grand, beautiful building in Jerusalem.

It had the Ark of the Covenant, had the Holy of Holies, all these things. So it would have made total sense in Jonah's mind that God's presence would be there too on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And it wasn't just Jonah who thought this way. You know, this was a common way of thinking that comes out in the Hebrew language.

Now, we Americans, when we talk about directions, we think in cardinal directions. You know, we go up to Dallas because Dallas is north, and we go down to Houston because Houston is south. But the Jews didn't think this way. Jerusalem was always up. It didn't matter where you were coming from.

Jerusalem was up. And just as an example, Matthew 28:18, Jesus told his disciples that we are going up to Jerusalem even though he is coming down south from Galilee, right? Was Jesus directionally challenged? No, I don't think so. It's just how the Hebrew mind thinks. It's the way they use language.

Jerusalem is always up because that's where the temple is. So that is where God is. Is. So let's get inside Jonah's mind for a minute. You know, here's a guy who wants to flee from the presence of the Lord. So if God and his temple are up, where do you think Jonah is going to go?

Down. You notice this in chapter 1 as you read through it. You know, first, Jonah goes down to Joppa. Then he goes down into a boat where he goes down below deck, where he goes down overboard into the sea, where he goes down into the belly of the fish.

He's going down, down, down. You know, this was Jonah's plan. He meant to do this. His whole escape plan revolved around this assumption about the presence of God, that God doesn't concern himself with the down places. Maybe if I can just get down far enough, maybe God won't see me from way up there.

We see Jonah's true theology coming out here. You know, he may have said that God is all-present. He may have been able to quote Psalm 139, but somewhere deep inside, he really thought, he really thought that he could get away from God in the down places. Let's compare our theology for a second.

You know, I don't think Jonah's theology is that far off from how many Christians think about God today. You know, we understand that God is with us in church. We feel God when we're at summer camp. We can sense God in our quiet times, but these are the up places.

And you're right, God is there. He's a God of the up places. But then the workday starts. Monday morning comes a calling. The school year begins. Life gets hard, and where does that feeling go? And do we believe that God is with us in the down places too, the secular places, the unholy places?

Or do we crawl back up to the up places almost like it's the place that matters more than the presence of God? I think we're a lot more like Jonah than we want to admit. Jonah went down, down, down because surely God is up, up, up. And so God casts him even further down than Jonah bargained for.

And to Jonah's horror and delight, God was there too. I know that's a lot of background, but I think it's important as we move into Jonah's prayer that we understand his original mindset to know just how revolutionary this new mindset is. And this is what provokes Jonah to worship.

This is why he is praising God from the belly of a fish, is because this has changed his entire worldview. This idea that God Is there in the down places with him? He is so utterly shocked. I feel like he just breaks out into praise. Yeah. So let's review.

Let's review a few of the down places that Jonah mentions in his prayer. Now they show up in the first three verses, but these places are woven all throughout the prayer. Because there's three of them. Let's talk about the first one. The first down place that Jonah encounters is the belly of the fish.

You know, we see that in verse 1. Now, I won't dwell here. A lot of research has been done to show that it is possible for a human to survive in the belly of a fish. It is possible, but very, very, very uncomfortable. Yeah? You know, it's better to think of that sort of environment more like a cocoon than a cavern.

You know, Jonah would have been in complete darkness. He would have been unable to move, barely able to breathe. You know, scientists think that the temperature would have been between 104, 108 degrees. This isn't even taking into account everything else that is in the stomach with him, you know, stomach acid, you know, other dead fish, other things.

So you want to talk about a down place. You know, this was a place of literal and Metaphorical darkness. It was a place of inability. Can't eat. Can't sleep. You ever been in a place of inability? Hmm? You know, I've spent some time in hospitals, and boy, if there was ever a place of inability, it'd be a hospital, right?

You know, I've met people who one day, you know, they're active, they're healthy, and the next day they're in a hospital bed. They can't move, they can't feed themselves, they can't go to the bathroom. I mean, talk about inability, talk about humiliation, right? That's a down place. You know, these hospital patients are utterly dependent on people coming to them.

They cannot get up and make it to do the things they need to do. And Jonah learns this very lesson in the belly of the fish. There is nothing that Jonah can do from this position to get to God's holy temple. God has to come to him. But wait a second.

Gods don't come to humans. Gods live in temples. Gods require sacrifices. It's up to people to get God's attention, not the other way around. That's what Jonah used to think. Why on earth would God come to Jonah? You see, this is the first lesson that Jonah learns about God's omnipresence.

Ability doesn't matter. Your ability to get to God doesn't matter. And Jonah realizes, maybe, for the first time in his life, that he physically can't get to the up places. He can't get to the temple. But to his utter astonishment, he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to.

Because God is with him in the down places. And he hears you too, right where you are. If that's a hospital bed, if that's a prison cell, if that's the stomach of a fish, God is a God of the down places. The second down place that Jonah mentions appears in verse 2.

This is the depths of Sheol. So let's talk about Sheol for a little bit. It's a very interesting word study. And we don't have time to go very deep, but suffice it to say that when you hear the word Sheol, think death. It's a word that's associated with death in the Hebrew mind.

Sometimes it can refer to physical death. This is the case in Genesis 42 when Jacob is talking to his sons about his gray head going down to Sheol. He's talking about his physical death. However, sometimes Scripture refers to Sheol as more of a state of deadness, right? It's not always physical.

In other words, somebody who Is in the depths of Sheol might be physically alive, but they are spiritually or emotionally dead on the inside. We saw this in Psalm 116, the passage that we read this morning. The psalmist says, The snares of death encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me, I suffered distress and anguish.

Now, this is a man who is so distraught that he's walking around as if he is dead. Another example is in the book of Proverbs, where the father warns his son to beware of the forbidden woman. Why? Because her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.

He's saying, There is no life worth living down that road. Stay away. Stay away. You may notice from these examples, and I could draw some more examples, Sheol is almost always associated with a direction. What direction do you think that is? Down. Down to Sheol. This is the reason Jonah calls it the depths of Sheol.

Sheol is a place of despair. It's a place of gloom and sorrow. And if there was ever a place you would expect for God not to be, it would be Sheol. It would be Sheol. And yet, as Jonah discovers, God is there too. If we read a little bit forward in Jonah's prayer, I think we get clued into Jonah's emotional state.

You know, just look at the verbs that Jonah uses to describe what's happening to him: distressed, cast out, expelled, engulfed, passed over, encompassed, fainting away. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that Jonah was a little bit dead on the inside, despairing of life. And today we might use words like depression, you know, suicidal ideation.

You know, this was Jonah's condition. This is how he felt. The man with no hope, with no hope. And friends, that's what it means to be in the depths of Sheol, to despair of life itself. And I want to pause here and say that I know in a church like this that some of you are in the depths of Sheol.

I know because I've been there too. You know, even as I read through that list of verbs, I bet some of you are checking them off in your head, like, yep, that's me. Engulfed, yep, passed over, yep, encompassed, yep. I feel all of those things. And I know, too, what it's like to come to church and put a smile on your face or feel dead to the world inside.

I also know what it feels like for a preacher to stand behind a pulpit and say, you shouldn't be feeling this way. But look closely. Is that what God says to Jonah? If you're in the depths of Sheol this morning, then let me just say to you plainly, three little words.

God hears you. God hears you. How do I know that? Because Jonah cried out to God from the depths of Sheol, and God heard his voice. Because God is a God of the down places, which, by the way, includes the dark corners of your mind, the pieces of you that you hide that nobody else sees.

God is there. It includes your depression. It includes your despair. You are not alone in those down places. You might say, but John, I don't feel God's presence. I don't feel like he's there. Do you think Jonah felt God's presence when the waters were engulfing him, when the weeds were wrapping around his head?

I don't think so. But this is what it means to have an all-present God. It doesn't matter how you feel. God is still there. And praise God that his presence doesn't fluctuate based on how we feel at a given moment. And if you're there, If you have that sorrow, then maybe that's where you can start.

Start by saying, God, I don't feel you. I'm just going to be honest, God, I don't feel your presence. But thank you that you're here anyway. Thank you that you hear me, even though I can't hear you right now. So if that's where you are, my advice to you is not to stop feeling this way.

Start praying this way. Tell God how you feel. He can handle it. Just please don't wait until you're out of the depths of Shiol before you come to God because God hears you from the down places. All right. Here's the third one: the third down place where Jonah encounters the Lord.

And this is the heart of the sea. You know, we see that in verse 3. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The current engulfed me, and all your breakers and billows passed over me. We don't need to allegorize this one, right? You know, Jonah is literally in the sea.

And he says it wasn't the sailors that cast him into the sea. He's talking to the Lord, you, you cast me into the sea, right? It does us good to remember why Jonah is in the sea to begin with. You know, the sea is God's judgment, right? This is the divine punishment for Jonah's.

Sin. And that punishment is well deserved. After all, it was Jonah who abandoned God. He abandoned God's mission. He ran from the presence of the Lord. So justly speaking, right? An eye for an eye, what did Jonah deserve? To be abandoned by God, right? That would have been a just punishment.

But God is not like us, you know? And there in the heart of the sea, Jonah learns a third implication of God's all-present nature is that it doesn't matter what you deserve, right? It doesn't matter your ability, it doesn't matter your feelings, it also doesn't matter your worthiness.

These things don't change the fact that God is with us in the down places. Now, water is often used in Scripture as a means of divine judgment. It represents a just penalty for sin. You know, that's the waters of baptism, you know. That symbolizes for believers today. But still, wherever there's water in Scripture, the presence of God is there too.

We see this over and over again. When God sends a flood to punish the earth, God provides an ark for Noah and his family. When God leads the Israelites to the Red Sea, God provides a way through the Red Sea. When God sends Jonah a great storm, He sends Jonah a great fish.

God may cast you into the deep, but he will never, never, never abandon you there. His character won't allow it. Because God's presence doesn't change based on our worthiness. If it did, then God would have abandoned Israel a long time ago. You know, we wouldn't get past the book of Exodus, right?

Be done. 2 Timothy 2:13, one of my absolute favorite scriptures. When we are faithless, God is still faithful because he cannot deny himself. I love that. You know, God is faithful because that's who he is. End of story. You know, in contrast to that, you know, Jonah brings up vain idols in verse 8.

You know, this isn't the word that's normally used for idols, as in carved images. This is the word that's used for vanities. Same word in Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities. You know, these are things that by nature are fleeting. They're vapors in the wind. And so I think what Jonah is contrasting here is that if these vanities by nature are fleeting, then when we go to them for worship, we're just asking to be abandoned by them.

But God's nature is not like that. God is faithful. He's a faithful God. He won't abandon you, even when you deserve it. So, next time, next time that you run to a down place because you feel that you are too sinful or too ashamed or too scared to be in the presence of God, just remember that God is in those places too.

He's just as present in the bars as he is in the churches. It's what it means to have a God of the down places. So, let's do a brief recap. Jonah realizes with great surprise that there in the belly of the fish, God is with him. God is a God of the down places.

I told you, you'll get sick of me saying this, right? I want it in your brains. God is a God of the down places. And through this realization, Jonah learns that God's presence never changes no matter what we do, no matter how we feel, no matter what we deserve.

God's presence is constant. So, where does that leave us? Still in the belly of a fish, right? So, why is Jonah praising God? He's still in the fish. You think that this whole prayer would come after the fish spits Jonah out. But no, Jonah isn't excited about his circumstance.

He's excited about the presence of God. So excited, in fact, that he breaks into a song of praise. Now, why? Why is Jonah so excited that God is a God of the down places? Well, here's why. Because if God is there, then salvation is there too. Let me say that again.

If God is there, then salvation is there too. And this is the grand finale of Jonah's prayer. He declares: salvation is from the Lord. And think about who's saying that. This is the guy who just a chapter ago was running away from the Lord. He was saying by his actions, salvation is somewhere else, salvation is apart from God.

But God was there. God was there, like I said, to his utter terror and delight. God found him in the down places. And I don't think there was ever a guy who was so happy to be wrong about something. You know? Aren't you glad that God doesn't fit into our nice, neat theological categories?

If Jonah was right about God, he never would have been saved. A God that you can run from, a God who is far off, that God can't save. But a God who is in the down places, that's a God who can save. And Jonah is so excited about this that he can't contain himself.

God has heard my voice. God sees me. God has raised me up from the pit. That means I have a chance. That means that he sees me. That means that he knows what I'm going through. And this is the moment that Jonah becomes a worshiper. You know, not the kind of worshiper that takes a pilgrimage once a year to the holy temple.

No, the kind of worshiper that rejoices in the presence of the Lord from the belly of a fish. Friends, this is the kind of worship that God desires from you and me. God wants you to worship Him from your down places, not just from the up places. Sure, it's good to come here and come to church and worship with one another.

That's good. But this building is not the place where God dwells. God will be with you tomorrow when you start the work week. He'll be with you when your three-year-old throws up all over the backseat of the car. God is with you. Will you be a worshiper in those places too?

That's what it means to live in the reality of an all-present God. And I think that has some application, some real-world application to our lives. So let me just move into a story that I think highlights some application. Now, a lot of you know, we just had a daughter, and we named her Corey after Corey Tinboom.

You know, a lot of you know about Corey Tinboom. She was a Christian woman who lived in Holland during the Nazi occupation. She and her family were arrested for sheltering Jews, and ultimately, her and her sister were sent to a concentration camp. And if there's any place that's a downed place, it would be a concentration camp, a godless place, that would be a concentration camp.

And there, in that concentration camp, Corey's sister, her name was Betsy, she died. She died because of the harsh conditions. And Corey writes about her sister's death in her book, The Hiding Place. And as Betsy is dying on a stretcher, she looks up to Corey and whispers, We must tell the people what we have learned here.

We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corey, because we have been here. But do you want to know how God's presence changes a person? I think there's an internal change and there's an external change.

Let me start with the internal change. The internal change is the peace and assurance that Betsy could feel on that stretcher. It's the peace that comes from knowing that there is no pit so deep that he is not deeper still. You see, every other religion is about getting to God.

God is on this mountaintop and everyone is just trying to find the right trail. There's no assurance in that. No, Christianity flips that on his head. We worship a God who came off the mountain. He came down. He's a God of the mountaintops, yes, but he's also a God of the pits, of the valleys.

He showed up. That's Emmanuel. That's God with us. And if we have a God who would do that, Who would send his son to the very depths of Sheol to pluck you out of it? Then, what is there left to separate you from the love of God? Romans 8 answers that question: Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Nothing in all creation can separate you from God's presence. Not death, not life, not angels, not demons, not whales, not oceans, not concentration camps. Nothing. There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. You know, this is the gospel that changes a person from the inside out.

God did not remain in heaven to leave it to us to figure out how to get to Him. No, He came down, He came for you. This is the gospel that changed Betsy and it changed Jonah. Yeah? All of a sudden, Jonah is talking about vows and sacrifices not as a means of getting to God, but as a natural response to God's love and God's presence.

That's the internal change. But what's the external change? Well, we can't be omnipresent like God, but we can be present. Another way to think about this is. Is in terms of stewardship. You know, God has given you a physical presence. How are you going to use it? How are you going to use the presence that God has given you?

I can think of three ways. All right? First, you can show up. Literally, physically, when your brother or sister is in a down place, you can be there with them. This is the ministry of presence. Beth and I have been on the receiving end of this recently. You know, a lot of you have shown up since Corey was born.

You've been making the drive all the way to temple. And I can't begin to tell you the refreshment that that has been to our soul. Because that reminds us of the God we worship. It reminds us that we have a God who's a God of the down places.

When you show up for your brothers and sisters in those down places, we can do that. We can do that. Second, you can be present. And this is different from just showing up because I think we all know that we can show up and be mentally checked out, right?

The Bible tells us to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice. So don't be rejoicing when your brother is weeping. Right? Be in tune to what's going on, which means, young people, leave your phone in the car, right? Be quick to listen. Be slow to speak.

And this takes practice. This is harder than it seems. But as you practice, you become more like Christ. So show up, be present. And the last thing that we can do, in light of the presence of God, is we can tell our story. This was Betsy's final charge to Corey.

Tell them what we have learned here. They will listen to us because we have been here. Do you ever wonder why God puts us through down places? Think of all the people that have been impacted by Corey Tinboom and by her story. I'm one of them. But why do we listen to her?

Is it because of her eloquent theological arguments? No. Because she's been there. Because she's been to the pit and she's seen the presence of God. She's going to tell everyone she meets about it. Think about all the down places that God has put you through. Think about the times that you've cried out to him.

And he's been there. You know, there are people in this church. That needs to hear those stories. There's people in Bryan College Station that need to hear those stories because they're in those down places right now. And they need to know that God is there too. And perhaps you're the one to tell them.

And maybe, just maybe, for the first time, they will look up from that down place and they will see that God is there with them. And we'll see that God is a God who saves salvation is from the Lord. God might be calling you. They will listen to you because you've been there.

It brings us to the end of our passage this morning. You know, as we continue, and we'll take a break and come back to Jonah later on, but we'll continue to see these attributes of God unfolding. And I hope, I hope, and I pray that you see that these are real.

That the fact that we say that God is everywhere, that God is omnipresent, that that's not just talk, empty words. No. I pray that that leaves with you, it goes home with you, that it impacts your week, it impacts your year because God is worthy of that. But let's pray.

Lord, we thank you again, just that you are in the down places and forgive me for all the times that I say that, that my actions tell a different story, times I run to vain idols, the times that I forget that you're with me. God, I pray that you give me the strength to tell of your good deeds to the people I meet.

Lord, that I wouldn't be like Jonah running away. Give us all strength, Lord, to go and to live your word. In Jesus' name, amen.