You heard the Psalm that is our text. It sounds like the song of a righteous man. It sounds like the exuberant cry of man who realized he was a sinner, and has finally come clean. It's not.

But it is one thing. It is the confession of a man about a merciful God, and that is by far what we need.

Let's review all we know about Jonah. He was given a call to preach to the Ninevites, the citizens of the capital city of Babylon, a place he would rather not be, and a people he does not want to know salvation. He was a prophet, a pastor, perhaps like preachers we know today who have become famous by preaching on television or making public statements about our national condition.

The situation Jonah would find himself preaching about would be Babylon. Babylon was the threat of the day. Today would be the atheists who use evolution to destroy Christianity. The elite of Hollywood who would destroy our culture and create a culture of death. They are the court system and the legal system that pushes us deeper into that culture of death with abortions easier to obtain and research that cheapens life.

These are all truly evil, but they are also easy targets. And so was Babylon. We don't have any of Jonah's sermons before he gets the call, but it seems pretty safe to say he probably preached against those evil, wicked Babylonians who were threatening to hurt God's people. Sprinkled among all the statements that God would rescue his people, would be nasty things about the Babylonians. People like that. Nobody liked the Babylonians, because they were threatening the Israelite way of life. They were Gentiles, and beyond God's mercy, as far as Jonah and the Israelites were concerned.

It seems he may have even been kind of popular, because he was wealthy, being able to charter a ship and a whole crew to Tarshish. Yes, does this sound at all impossible? I can't back this up with anything other than the fact that Jonah had told the king that he should extend the borders of Israel, despite the threat of Babylon. Of course, that would probably only get those Babylonians a little more irritated. But Jonah was confident in God's care and protection of the nation of Israel. He must have been was one of those prophets who preached, "Peace, peace," just to keep the people calm.

Meanwhile, the Lord is talking about using the nation from the North-guess who that is-to wake up the people of Israel to see they had wandered a long way from the Lord. Yes, while Jonah is preaching about God taking care of the Israelites, the Lord is speaking through other prophets and telling them, "Repent, or judgment is going to come down on you in the form of a nation called Babylon."

So, here is Jonah with a righteous hatred toward this country, and probably hatred toward the prophets who were actually speaking His Word.

Not a likely candidate to be a missionary to Nineveh, the capital of the country he hated. Is he? But the Lord doesn't follow our way of thinking. He calls none other than Jonah to go preach repentance to them, that they might be saved! Now we can see why Jonah didn't want to go.

His righteous hatred extended to other Gentiles as well. He boards a ship, with the crew he has hired, and the Lord chases him down with a storm. Jonah doesn't care about these guys. He knows the Lord is chasing him, but he is willing to go down with the ship and take all these guys with him!

Not a very nice picture of this guy is it? I'm afraid it doesn't get much better. Even with the Psalm we have for our text, Jonah's image does not really improve. If the writer of this book had been Jonah's manager, and Jonah had hired him to improve his image, that manager would be searching the want ads now.

But remember we are in Lent. Lent isn't a time for us to reflect on ourselves and say what wonderful Christians we are. Instead, it is a time for us to reflect on what failures we are, and how merciful the Lord is to us in Christ. Enter Jonah.

Jonah is a lot like us. He won't admit what he is doing. He is running from God. He has been called to do something he does not want to do. The Lord will not let him go. He keeps after Him. The Lord wants to open Jonah up to all He has, but Jonah keeps shutting him out.

Isn't that the way we are? We want God's mercy, but we want it on our terms. His mercy is greater than we could imagine or deserve, but we think we can imagine it, and we are willing to have it as we would have it. If we find ourselves being called to do something we don't want to do-and don't think it is always going to be telling another person about Jesus-we may find we are like Jonah. Whatever it could be, depends on your life. Each one of us holds on and harbors particular things we think we couldn't live without. We protect this sin or we make excuses to not do what we know we should. Whereas if we were to let go and confess them, it would show that they had been keeping us from knowing God's mercy in its fullest. And Jonah is our model-of what not to do.

This Psalm looks like a different Jonah, but apparently it isn't. But even as a bad model, he can be a good model. Look at this Psalm, this prayer. It is filled with phrases and images we can find in the Psalms, and yet there is not a single Psalm that you could say, "This is the one."

Yet, his prayer isn't like what we would think a prayer should be in this situation. If I were sinking into the ocean, and a fish swallowed me, I highly doubt my prayer would sound like this. Instead, it would be more like, "O Lord, what are you doing to me? Get me out of this fish!" In spite of the way I preach--that is the length of my sermons--I would think it would be a short prayer.

But his prayer is not like that at all. It is a beautiful prayer. It shows a man who knew the Psalter. These words were the words he used. God's words had become his words. God's thoughts were his thoughts.

It says something to us about our praying. Don't just say the first thing that comes to your mind when you pray. Before you speak to God, know the way He thinks. Know what He has done. Speak it back to him. Tie your own concerns into what you know about Him. You are coming to a King, a gracious and merciful, but a king all the same. Don't treat him as though he were a peer. Speak to Him as though you know something about Him.

It's not for His good, though, but ours. He doesn't need to know what He has done, but we do. We need to know why we come to Him. Why we think He will do what is best for us. We need to keep the cross front and center during our reading of His Word, and even in our prayers, so we see He is truly gracious. If He did not spare His own Son, then how is He going to act toward us for whose sake He offered up His Son? There, that's the starting point. When you pray, keep coming back to that.

Jonah didn't have that, yet. He speaks of God's grace which we know in Christ when he refers to the temple. This is the place where God's grace is to be found, but he didn't have nearly the advantage as we do.

He prays twice in our reading. The first is one whose words we don't have. Maybe it wasn't too eloquent. Maybe it was simply, "Lord, I'm drowning, and although I thought I wanted to die, I really don't. Please rescue me."

The second one, he had a little more time. I can't say it may not be distressing, sitting in a fish's belly can't be too fun, with half eaten little fish and who knows what else sloshing around him, but it wasn't quite as desperate. After all, Jonah realized the Lord sent the fish to rescue him. This fish was his salvation. And so he prays that way.

I was going down to death. The bars were closing me in. If we imagine death as being like a maximum security prison from which no one ever escaped, you can imagine what he means when he talks about the bars closing upon him. But notice what he says, "Weeds were wrapped around my head."

I used to think that Jonah was thrown off the ship and the fish gobbled him up hardly before he hit the water. Sort of a like dog being thrown a dogbiscuit. Whommp! But no, Jonah was drowning, and the Lord sends a fish to rescue him.

A couple times he talks about dying and then being rescued. I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall look upon your holy temple." "I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God." "When my life was fainting away; I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you in your holy temple."

Three different times he talks about dying and then being rescued. He experiences death and even hell, and then life again. All of this happens as he lives in a fish's gullet for three days and three nights. The reference that this is Jesus is so obvious. Yes, this is happening to Jonah, but this is Jesus even more. "I am driven from your sight." Listen to Jesus, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." Jesus said, "And now one greater than Jonah is in your midst." Jonah was giving us Jesus.

This is a wonderful prayer, filled with references to life and death. The life and death we experience, every time we worship. We die as we confess our sins. We confess that our God is truthful when He says we are poor, miserable sinners. We die when we confess we can do nothing to save ourselves. We die when we throw ourselves at His feet, and cry, "Lord, have mercy." But then you are brought to life again, when you hear your pastors speak the words of Absolution. You are brought to life again when your pastor applies the Gospel to your life, and gives you the Living Word. You are brought to life again, when the Lord puts into your mouths His body and His blood. Life and death, the daily remembrance of your baptism.

Indeed, Jonah is giving us all of this. But Jonah is still not a model saint. No, he is still much like us. He preaches and the pagan sailors come to faith. He confesses the death and resurrection of Christ. He will preach and the Ninevites will come to faith. And yet, his prayer is still one, with close examination, will show it centers on himself. His faith is a foxhole faith, a convenient one. He still has not confessed his sin. He still has not come clean. And yet, the Lord still shows mercy to Him.

What hope that is for us! The Lord shows mercy to us. We will never come completely clean, that is we will continue to keep sinning. We may even continue to hold Him off not letting him touch certain parts of our life, holding him off so He can't work His healing touch, but He will still show mercy to us because He has sent His Son for us.

We're not quite done with Jonah yet. He had a great prayer. It's only with close examination that we see Jonah still isn't what we think he should be. But it's toward the end when he tries to distance himself from the pagans he is supposed to preach to, that he goes over the top. "Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love." Yes, this is true. But Jonah is one to talk. He preaches to the pagan sailors and they come to faith in the Lord. He preaches to the Ninevites and they come to faith in the Lord. Yet, he himself clings to a worthless idol-himself.

"But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay." This is too much for the fish. The hypocrisy in Jonah has reached stomach churningly high levels. Levels so high, the fish can't handle it anymore. The fish that had delivered Jonah is now delivered from Jonah as the Lord commands the fish to vomit him out. Good riddance. Not Jonah to the fish, but the fish to Jonah. Good riddance.

Yes, Jonah is no saint. But then neither are we, but our God who was gracious to Jonah is gracious also to us in Christ, and this is the message we carry with us everyday and make the primary thought of our prayers.

AMEN