SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/22/2015
9:04 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Repentance
PT-3
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jonah 2:4-7
Message of the
verses: We are looking at the third
sub-point under the main point of Repentance from the second chapter of the
book of Jonah. Jonah is praying to the
Lord in the second chapter of his book and he is repenting of his sin to the
Lord.
He Trusted God’s Promises (Jonah 2:4-7): “4 “So I said, ’I have been expelled from
Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ 5 “Water
encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were
wrapped around my head. 6 “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth
with its bars was around me forever, But You have brought up my life from the
pit, O LORD my God. 7 “While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, And my
prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple.”
I suppose that it is fair to say that since Jonah began
to run from the Lord because he did not want to do what the Lord told him to do
that the direction that he was heading was down, and once he was thrown into
the sea that direction of going down continued, this literally. We can see from the story of Jonah that he
went down to Joppa and then he went down into the hold of the ship, and now he
is going down to the bottom of the mountains as described in verse six, and
then when the great fish swallowed him, he went down into the belly of the
fish. Dr. Wiersbe points out “When you
turn your back on God, the only direction you can go is down.”
The same thing that saved Jonah will save anyone who
calls on the name of the Lord and that is putting your faith in God for
salvation and Jonah needed to be saved from drowning in the sea.
Now a fairly long while ago we were studying the book of
1 Kings and in that book Solomon gave a prayer of dedication of the temple of
God and a part of that prayer was that when a Jewish person is away from the
temple that he should pray towards that temple and we read in our text from
Jonah chapter two that Jonah said that he was “looking toward God’s holy
temple.” Jonah must have known the OT
Scriptures very well. Let’s look at the
passage from 1 Kings 8:38-40 “38 Whatever
prayer or supplication is made by any man or by all Your people Israel, each
knowing the affliction of his own heart, and spreading his hands toward this
house; 39 then hear in heaven Your
dwelling place, and forgive and act and render to each according to all his
ways, whose heart You know, for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of
men, 40 that they may fear You all the
days that they live in the land which You have given to our fathers.”
Dr. Wiersbe concludes:
“Jonah claimed that promise. By
faith, he looked toward God’s temple (the only way to look was up!) and asked
God to deliver him and God kept His promise and answered his call. ‘I remembered [the] Lord’ (Jonah 2:7) means, ‘I
acted on the basis of His commitment to me.’
Johan knew God’s covenant promises and he claimed them.”
11/22/2015 9:23 PM
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