Banished

Jonah 2:2-6 (NIV)

2 He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

3 You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

4 I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’

5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.

6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

Good Friday and the Belly of the Darkness

Today is Good Friday.

The day the sky went dark at noon. The day the earth shook and the curtain in the temple tore from top to bottom. The day the Son of God breathed His last on a cross outside Jerusalem and was laid in a borrowed tomb.

To everyone watching it must have felt like the end. Like darkness had finally won. Like the story was over before it was supposed to be.

Jonah knew something about that kind of darkness.

He was not in the belly of a fish by accident. He had run from God, been thrown into a raging sea, and sunk to what felt like the bottom of everything. Seaweed wrapped around his head. The roots of the mountains beneath him. The earth barred shut above him like a locked door with no key.

As far down as a person can go. That is where Jonah found himself.

And that is where Jesus went on our behalf on Good Friday.

Hurled Into the Depths

Jonah does not soften what happened to him.

You hurled me into the depths. Into the very heart of the seas.

He is honest that God allowed this. That the waves and the breakers that swept over him were not random. There was a hand behind it — the same hand that had been trying to get Jonah’s attention for a long time before it came to this.

Jesus on the cross was not a plan that went wrong. It was not a tragedy God scrambled to prevent. The Father allowed the Son to be hurled into the deepest darkness humanity had ever produced — betrayal, false accusation, torture, abandonment, death — because that was the only way through.

The depths were always part of the plan.

Not because God is cruel. But because the rescue required someone willing to go all the way down. To the roots of the mountains. To the place that felt barred shut forever. Someone had to go there so that the way back up could be opened for everyone else.

Jesus went there for us. That is Good Friday.

Banished From Your Sight

This is the line that breaks my heart when I read it in the context of Good Friday.

I have been banished from your sight.

Jonah felt separated from God in the belly of the fish. Cut off. Alone in the dark with no way back to the surface.

On the cross Jesus cried out something that echoes this so deeply it cannot be coincidence.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

The Son of God — who had existed in perfect unbroken unity with the Father from before time began — experienced in that moment what it feels like to be truly separated from God. To be in the place where His presence cannot be felt. To be banished from His sight.

He went there so that we would never have to.

Every sin that separates us from God. Every moment of wandering and running and hiding. Every place we have ended up that felt like the bottom of the ocean with no way back to the surface — Jesus took all of that on Himself on the cross. He became the banished one so that we could be brought back into the Father’s presence forever.

That is what Good Friday is really about.

Yet I Will Look Again

Right in the middle of the darkest verse in this passage Jonah says something extraordinary.

I have been banished from your sight — yet I will look again toward your holy temple.

Yet. That word changes everything.

Even from the bottom of the sea. Even with seaweed wrapped around his head and the earth barred shut above him. Even in the place that felt like forever — Jonah chose to look toward God. Not because the circumstances gave him any reason to. Not because he could see any way out. But because something in him refused to let the darkness have the final word.

That is faith in its rawest form. Not the confident declaration made from comfortable circumstances. The stubborn yet whispered from the deepest dark place.

Jesus on the cross — in the agony, in the abandonment, in the moment of being forsaken — still said into your hands I commit my spirit. Even there. Even then. Yet.

That yet is available to us today too. Whatever darkness you are sitting in on this Good Friday. However deep the water. However barred shut the way out feels.

Yet I will look again toward your holy temple.

Brought Up From the Pit

The whole passage builds to six words that carry the entire gospel.

But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.

Jonah went down as far as down goes. And God brought him back up.

Jesus went into the tomb on Good Friday. And on Sunday — He came back up.

That is the pattern of God. Down into the depths and then up from the pit. Death and then resurrection. The barred door and then the stone rolled away. The darkness that felt like forever and then the morning that changed everything.

Good Friday is real. The darkness is real. The suffering is real. We do not skip past it or minimise it. We sit with it because it cost something enormous.

But we sit with it knowing that Sunday is coming.

The same God who brought Jonah’s life up from the pit. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead. That God has not changed. And the pit — whatever yours looks like today — does not have the final word.

He brings life up from the pit. That is who He is.

Walk On

Today is Good Friday.

Sit with the darkness for a moment. Let it be real. Let the cross mean what it cost.

And then hold onto this — He was banished from His Father’s sight so that you would never have to be. He went to the roots of the mountains so that the way back up would be open for you forever.

The pit is not the end. It never has been. It never will be.

Sunday is coming. 🤍

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