Jonah 2

Answer: 1. When they are in the greatest extremity. When Jonah was in the belly of hell, then (Jonah 2:5): You have brought up my life from corruption. When there is but a hair's breadth between the godly and death, then God ushers in deliverance.

Every creature in its kind, obeys God's laws. First, animate creatures obey him; God spoke to the fish, and it set Jonah ashore (Jonah 2:10). Second, inanimate creatures: the wind and the sea obey him (Mark 4:41).

1. God hereby quickens grace; perhaps grace lay dormant (Song of Solomon 5:2), it was as fire in the embers, and God withdraws comfort to invigorate and exercise grace. Faith is a star that sometimes shines brightest in the dark night of desertion (Jonah 2:4). 2. When God hides…

1. Repentance causes a change in the mind. Whereas before a man did think well of sin, and say in defense of it, as Jonah, "I did well to be angry" (Jonah 2:9) — so, "I did well to swear, and break the Sabbath." When once a man becomes a penitent, his judgment is changed; he now…

Yet so, as for anything they can see of him, God is departed clean from them; answers them neither by prayer, nor by word, nor by conference; they cannot get one good look from him. Such was Jonah's case: 'I am cast out of your sight' (Jonah 2:4) — that is, he could not get a si…

Let Satan plead his own cause; do not you do it for him. Hereby also you forsake your own mercies (as it is said of Jonah 2:8), give up your own right, and are so far befooled as to plead against your own title, your own interest in the best things you can have interest in — God…

If you have empaneled a jury and grand inquest to search, and their first verdict condemns you, yet do as wise judges often do — send them back to consider it again; they may find it the next time. Jonah looked once toward the temple and found no comfort (Jonah 2:4), for he said…

So the church — Lamentations 3:44: 'You cover yourself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.' Jonah 2:4: 'Then I said, I am cast out of your sight.' And may you not be mistaken in this matter as well as they?

And this guards against both the failings before mentioned, to wit, against anxiety on the one hand, [reconstructed: and] presumption on the other; against anxiety and fainting, when as there is not only a proposing of our desire, but a waiting for, and expectation of a hearing…

The scourged apostles rejoice (Acts 5:41). Drowned Jonah looks to the holy temple (Jonah 2:4). 2. Christ's affections were rational; reason starts up before fear: reason and affection did not outrun one another.

What does he in this doleful plight? Why he will look towards God's holy Temple, Alas poor Jonah knew not now which way the Temple stood, he had but a short prospect in that dark and narrow prison; yes, faith can set Jonah upon one of the mountains of Israel, that from there he…

Children that are quarrelling or falling out, when the father or mother comes, all is hush and silent. 3. It comforts and revives us in the midst of our faintings and discouragements because of the evils of the present world (Jonah 2:7): When my soul fainted within me, I remembe…

(Luke 18:1) He spoke a parable to them, to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. And (Jonah 2:7) "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in to you, into your holy temple." Keep up the suit; it will come to a hearing one day…

Hope belongs to love; and the affections of pursuit and love make absence tedious, when afflicted in the interim; but faith and dependence upon God should keep us waiting, and patience should enable us to tarry his leisure. (Jonah 2:4) I said I am cast out of your sight, yet I w…

It's that praise which the saints give as the proper due of the Lord (Psalm 103): Praise the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases. And Jonah leaves this cure upon record after he was landed by the [illegible] (Jonah 2:6), Yet have you brought…

Comfort is fair to look on, but grace has the fruitful womb; now, the only way to exercise grace, and make it more vigorous and lively, is sometimes to walk in darkness and have no light (Isaiah 50:10). Faith is a star that shines brightest in the night of desertion; I said I am…

Disobedience is a sin against nature; every creature in its kind obeys God. Animate creatures obey him; God spoke to the fish to set Jonah ashore, and it did it presently (Jonah 2:10). What are the birds' thankful hymns (as Ambrose calls them) but tributes of obedience?

And such as in this regard say, I thank God, I was plagued and pained, but now nothing ails me, I have peace, I am rich, I have need of nothing (Revelation 3:17), I am all whole, must be in a dangerous case. Indeed the complaining of want of justification and of the righteousnes…

2. If sense of sin be taken for the unbelieving feeling of, and judging myself cast out of his sight and condemned, whereas yet I am in Christ, and it is God who justifies me, who is he shall condemn (Romans 8:33-34). We shall agree with Antinomians, this is indeed the hasty sen…

(2.) It is easier to believe general truths, than to believe particular truths, in which ourselves and our own actings are interested — so spiritual and wily a snare is unbelief, that when we think we are unbelievingly fearing our own treachery, we are indeed charging treachery…

Proof 14. The fourteenth proof urges that those who, when the Gospel and its spiritual light come to them, refuse to believe and are drawn away by other things, are said to love darkness rather than light (John 3:19), to follow lying vanities and forsake their own mercies (Jonah…

David who was modeled after God's heart, how melodiously did he warble out God's praises? therefore was called the sweet singer of Israel, 1 Samuel 23. 1. Take a Christian at the worst, yet he is thankful: The Prophet Jonah, who was homo, a man of a waspish spirit; the sea did n…

The soul in desertion, is within an inch of despair; in affliction the world is against a man, in temptation Satan is against a man, in desertion God is against a man. Alstead calls desertion an agony of conscience; this made the Prophet Jonah call the whale's belly the belly of…

Oh, sir, said she, I am faint; there is scarce life left in me. But he answered, that one once said, "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple." (Jonah 2:7). Fear not, but stand upon your feet, and tell me why you are…

No, Job, you are the friend of God: see how his faith comes above the water (verse 25): I know that my friend by blood, or my Redeemer lives, etc. 3. She waits on in hope, and took not the first nor second answer: hope is long-breathed, and at midnight [reconstructed: prophesies…

5. God can speak to Mother-nothing, as if Nothing had ears and reason and could hear (Romans 4:17): He calls things that are not, as though they were — He did but nod upon Nothing, and out of Nothing there appeared before him the great Host of heaven and earth, and all things in…

The reasons for crying are: 1. Want cannot blush; the pinching necessity of the saints is not tied to the law of modesty: hunger cannot be ashamed (Psalm 55:2). I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise, says David, and Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:14): Like a crane, or a swallow, so did…