Introduction:

1. I know people who have served God and for some reason or other have backslid and turned their back on God.
2. All of these people are living a miserable life.
3. When you run from God your life is going to go downward.
4. I know a preacher's daughter who grew up serving the Lord and then she ran from God for about 20 years. In those years she had her children and lived a terrible life boozing and such. After 20 years she heard Billy Graham on the TV and she came back to the Lord. Today she is praying for her children to come to the Lord.
5. There is always hope for the backslider, but it is best if one never backslides.
6. The book of Jonah has a message of hope that should inspire every sinner, every backslider to come to God.

Proposition: There is hope of salvation for every backslider.
How?
In Jonah we find three steps for hope of salvation for every backslider.

I. REMEMBER TO PRAY: verses 1-2

A. Pray in your Situation - verse 1

1. The greatest hope for the backslider is to pray. You can always call out to God. It is interesting that when the pagans asked Jonah to pray to his God, that he didn't.
2. However now he prays from the stomach of the fish.
3. When you end up down in the pig pen, many times that is when you come to yourself and remember to pray.
4. He was half-drowned before he was swallowed. If he was still conscious, sheer dread would have caused him to faint--notice that there is no mention of the fish in his prayer. He can hardly have known what caused the change from wet darkness to an even greater dry darkness. When he did regain consciousness, it would have taken some time to realize that the all-enveloping darkness was not that of Sheol but of a mysterious safety. (EBC)
5. Jonah 2:7 "While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD; And my prayer came to Thee, Into Thy holy temple.
6. D.L. Moody used to share the following story: Dr. Andrew Bonar told me how, in the Highlands of Scotland, a sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get into places that they couldn't get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it, and they will jump down ten or twelve feet, and then they can't jump back again and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass. The shepherd will wait until they are so faint that they cannot stand, and then they will put a rope around him, and he will go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death.
"Why don't they go down there when the sheep first gets there? I asked.
"Ah!" he said, "they are so very foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed if they did."
Moody concludes his story by saying: "And this is the way with men; they won't go back to God till they have no friends and have lost everything."

B. Pray in your Despair - verse 2

1. Can you imagine what it was like in the stomach of the great fish. I know the darkness of being in a coal mine when you turn your headlight out. I think the belly of the fish in the depths of the sea would be the same kind of darkness.
2. This terrifying experience described in v. 3 brought Jonah to the realization of his plight and elicited the confession in v. 4.
3. "Nevertheless, I will look again," is not a statement of salvation but of Jonah's determination to pray in spite of his banishment.
4. When we determine to pray we are on the road to return and our communication lines have been open with our Father.
5. There is nothing worst than not having communication with your children, and I believe God feels the same way as parent feels on this issue.
6. When we are talking to our Father, we won't be running from Him.
7. Billy Graham (1918- ) said: "If your sorrow is because of certain consequences that have come on your family because of your sin, this is remorse, not true repentance. If, on the other hand, you are grieved because you also sinned against God and his holy laws, then you are on the right road." -Edythe Draper, Draper's Book of Quotations for the Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992). Entries 9578-9580.
8. The first step the backslider or sinner has to take is to Remember To Pray, and secondly:

II. RESPOND TO PUNISHMENT: verse 3-6

A. Jonah Knew God Was In Control - verse 3-6

1. Nothing happens to the child of God by chance. Even to the disobedient prophet, God is working in his life.
2. Jonah believed he was coming to his end. In verse 4 he says "I have been expelled from Thy sight."
3. Jesus tells us more information about Jonah's experience: Mat 12:39-40 - But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
4. The punishment administered to Jonah may have been extreme in our eyes, but it was tempered with the grace and the mercy of God.
5. I believe whenever we go down the path of sin, we are running from God and He will intervene somehow to get our attention.
6. An earthly father who loves his children, will not stand by idly while his child is going into some path of harm.
7. So our heavenly Father will have intervention, and maybe even confrontation.
8. God will deal with us when we run from Him.

B. In Your Punishment Look to God - verse 4

1. Jonah thought he was expelled from the sight of God. Another false thought, prompted by his punishment, however even with this thought plaguing his mind he determined to look to God.
2. This is the making of true repentance and coming back to God.
3. You have everything to gain and nothing to loose coming back to the Lord.
4. One pastor writes of a man he had in his congregation, a Christian worker, a man used of God, but who unfortunately at an evil hour slipped badly. Oh, let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. This man fell and he was serving a 7 year sentence in jail. Through his encounter with a godly pastor this man was led to know the recovering power of the precious blood of Christ. On the fly leaf of his Bible he wrote: "The soul that comes to Jesus through failure, shame, or pain, by His wondrous love and mercy may soar as high again." A sense of need and the spirit of repentance is a vessel into which God wills to pour Himself in recovering grace.
5. The first step the backslider or sinner has to take is to Remember To Pray, and secondly, Respond to Punishment, and thirdly:

III. RETURN TO PRIORITIES: verse 6b-10

A. Salvation is God's Gift - Verse 9

1. Jonah desired to bring a thank offering and pay his vows because of God's mercies already shown. Though Jonah did not tell us what he had vowed, the context leaves little doubt that it was complete obedience. This is also mirrored in the closing cry of confidence: "Salvation comes from the LORD," which in Jonah's mouth was equivalent to a recognition of God's absolute sovereignty. (EBC)
2. Jonah was determined to return to his priorities of obeying God and doing what He wanted him to do.
3. Every backslider must come to the place of returning to his priorities in following God.
4. Verse 9 is Jonah's vow to return to his task of obeying the Master. That which I have vowed I will pay.
5. God will bring the wayward to a place where they will repent and Return to Priorities.

B. Deliverance is from the Lord - verse 10

1. God delivered Jonah from his hopeless situation, in a supernatural way.
2. Unlike the prophet, the fish responded promptly, as soon as it knew God's will.
3. Our Father is able to perform many wonders to bring the backslider back to the fold.
4. Remember the Prodigal Son.
5. Sometimes you have to go down into the depths of the sea of despair to come to the place where you return to your priorities.

Conclusion:

1. Therefore there is hope for every backslider. Three Steps:

a) Remember To Pray
b) Respond To Punishment
c) Return To Priorities

2. Everybody longs for freedom. But for many people its pursuit leads to bondage. The greatly loved Bible teacher Henrietta Mears knew the secret of true freedom, and she wanted her students to know it too. With young people in mind, she said, "A bird is free in the air. Place a bird in the water and he has lost his liberty. A fish is free in the water, but leave him on the sand and he perishes. He is out of his realm. So, young people, the Christian is free when he does the will of God and is obedient to God's command. This is as natural a realm for God's child as the water is for the fish, or the air for the bird."
3. The Message of Jonah chapter 2 is walk in obedience to the Lord and you won't have to face His punishment and chastisement.
4. If you backslide, God will take you back.