Worship At Rockbottom (Jonah 1:17-2:10)

Well, if you missed uh the opening announcements, I do want to highlight that next week we're gonna have a an informal congregational meeting.

I don't think it's technically a congregational meeting according to our constitution, but an informal meeting where we can all kind of rehearse and go over uh the email I sent this past week.

And so if you haven't read that yet, I would encourage you to read that.

And if you haven't yet subscribe to our emails, you don't know what we're talking about, go ahead and do that this week and we can send that to you as well.

Well, as we get started, I don't know, some of you may have noticed that I have a bumper sticker on the back of my car, on my back windshield, and it's it's a finger pointing up, and it says, I need a miracle.

And I wonder if you've ever wondered what that's all about.

And I have it on my car for two reasons.

The first of which is it was free.

Now I don't just put free things on my car, but I did put this free thing on my car.

And the second reason is because it's sort of an inside joke, to no surprise to many of you in this room, to something of a musical scene.

So over the last 30 years, the two bands that I've listened to far and away the most have been Fish and the Grateful Dead.

Those have been my main stays over these last 30 years, over a number of seasons.

And in those scenes, there's a similar sort of crowd base.

Uh, there is something called receiving a miracle.

Being miracled, even, it's a verb.

I need a miracle.

And to be miracled is to go to a concert, the grounds, and where there's a sort of hippie flea market, lots of people there who might not actually make it inside.

To go to a sold-out concert without a ticket and to receive a free ticket at the gates.

And if you receive a free ticket to a sold-out show at the gates, you have received a miracle.

You've been miracled.

And so I love this because that's the scene.

So you see people walking around with a finger up in the air.

But the other reason I love it as a Christian is because this sort of, isn't it a picture of what we all feel like on some level when we find ourselves at the end of our resources, not being able to accomplish what we need for ourselves and finding help from the outside in.

You know me by now, I'm always looking for points of contact to communicate a deeper truth.

And as we continue our store, our series in Jonah, we have come to the miracle passage.

The miracle in this story where Jonah is out of his resources, he is in trouble, and he receives help from outside.

And what we find is that the miracle that Jonah receives is a reflection of the miracle that all of us need and have available to us in Jesus Christ.

Let me read this passage and ask for God to help us.

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, and then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me.

Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me.

All of your breakers and your waves passed over me, and then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.

The waters closed in over me to take my life, the deep surrounded me.

Weeds were wrapped about my head, to the roots of the mountains I went down, to the land whose bars closed up 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 into your holy temple.

Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but with the voice of thanksgiving will I sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

The word of the Lord.

Let's pray and ask for God's help.

Father, we ask you again to help us as we approach your word.

We ask that you would dig out for us ears to hear, that you would give us eyes to see.

And what we long to see is the risen Christ.

His life, his death, his resurrection on our behalf, even in this passage of Jonah.

And we pray this in his name.

Amen.

So the outline this morning is threefold, and I want to look at Jonah's miracle, and then I want to look at Jonah's faith, and then Jonah's repentance.

So Jonah's miracle, Jonah's faith, Jonah's repentance.

Okay, so what about his miracle?

I mean, I don't think it's going out on a limb too much to say that of all the characters we find in Scripture, this is one of the clearest pictures of rock bottom that you can find, right?

I mean, he's up there on a short list of characters in the Bible who find themselves at rock bottom.

Jonah's up there on the list.

And like so many rock bottom stories, this one in particular is a reflection of, well, Jonah, you've sort of made your bed.

And here is where you find yourself.

This rock bottom is of your own doing.

And we've seen this because if you've been with us over the last couple of weeks, Jonah is a reluctant prophet.

That the only other time he's mentioned in Scripture is in 2 Kings, and there he's known for leading the king to expand Israel's borders.

He's a national security kind of guy, and God has called him to go and preach mercy to his enemies, to the very ones who will destroy those borders in 30 or 40 years.

He's a reluctant prophet.

He hears this very clear call, and he gets up and intentionally goes in the exact opposite direction.

And last week we saw that God had chased him down in a storm on a boat.

And Jonah convinced that he is going to die.

And maybe, I mean, this is a selfish guy.

He doesn't come across very positively throughout this book, but it looks like last week he at least considered the sailors on this boat.

I'm going to die either way.

Save yourselves.

Throw me into the ocean.

One of the things that is a theme in the book of Jonah is that Jonah continues to make his way down, down, down.

I mean, that language is even used.

When when you we start off in chapter one, he goes down to Joppa.

And then when he gets in the boat, he goes down into the center of the ship.

And now it's very clear to see that he goes down into the ocean.

The trajectory of Jonah's life is one of just running headlong, and everywhere he goes, it bleeds him further and further down.

Jonah needs a miracle.

And I wonder if there have been seasons where you have felt like you went down, down, down.

You know, I've told, I think I've mentioned this even since this church plant started, but you know, I came from a family that went to church with some regularity when I was very young, like four or five.

But by the time I was in lay elementary school, middle school for sure, we very occasionally went, and to hear of Jesus' name, it really kind of was like a crack of the whip.

You're in trouble, remember Jesus wants you to obey, he's the sheriff.

And yet, even though I didn't really, you know, maybe it's because I didn't really know Grace, and I wasn't particularly close to my family, yet when I was in early college, my folks split up, and even though we didn't have a very healthy family dynamic, that really sent me spiraling.

You you to find out that your folks are splitting kind of feels like finding out that gravity, a law of nature, is no longer in force.

It's disorienting.

And so I was, you know, how do I cope with this?

Well, I made some decisions that led me down, down, down.

Already partier, partied harder.

I got a 0.33 one quarter, you've heard me say this, and I felt like such a loser.

And I don't know if you've ever felt like this, where you just feel like, huh, can it get worse?

I mean, you sit at a party, look, what do you think a girl's gonna, how is she gonna look at you when you say, Where do I go to school?

Oh, I've been academically suspended.

I have no real plan in life.

Who are you?

Okay, yeah, I'm gonna go talk to somebody else now.

Right?

We all have had our moments where we have just felt like, ah, I feel like I'm I'm just going on a downward trajectory.

I needed a miracle.

And some of you have felt like you needed a miracle.

Have you ever felt like the concert of life is going on for so many people, and it feels like it's sold out, and you can only listen in on the outskirts of the gates.

Have you ever felt that way?

I think we've all felt that way.

And I think the sad thing is sometimes we think we're the only ones that feel that way.

I needed a miracle.

Jonah needed a miracle, and that's when we read the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

And again, one of the things that you see throughout this book, the author of Jonah, who's probably Jonah, assumes the sovereignty of God.

I mean, when this storm comes, where does it come from?

Well, God hurled the storm.

When this fish comes on the scene, where did it come from?

Well, God appointed this fish.

We even see, and then he tells them to vomit him up.

God is utterly in control.

Okay, well, timeout.

What about this Jonah and the belly of a fish business?

I mean, half of us are so used to this story that we haven't really considered it, and the other half of us are like, I mean, if it were polite, I might just get up and walk out.

This is absurd.

And, you know, because you'd be like, well, the science is clear, this is incompatible with life.

Right?

You can't live in the belly of a fish.

What's going on?

I think the point is that it's not compatible with life.

A fish swallows a man, and Jonah says, Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried.

Out of the place of the dead, I cried.

This is a death and resurrection story.

And it's the reason that Jesus uses it so many times to point to his own death and resurrection story.

And there have been a number of faithful commentators who have said this is probably a moral myth, but I don't think so because Jesus doesn't seem to think so.

I mean, Jesus says, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

And as we confess every week, we believe in the resurrection of the dead.

That is no moral myth for the Christian.

We believe in a world where God acts supernaturally in ways that is incompatible seemingly with the natural laws of this world.

Resurrection is a miracle.

Nobody thinks this happens naturally, and I don't think we're supposed to think that surviving in the belly of a fish is natural either.

This is a death and resurrection story.

And, you know, the Bible, there are miracles, a number of them in the Bible, but we're not supposed to think that every day, like one miracle happened after another, it was just always miracles raining down from heaven.

There were hundreds of years at a time when life felt just as ordinary as it does for us.

And yet, one of the miracles that seems to fly under the radar all the time is that when anybody in the Bible comes to a place where they have faith in the God who made heaven and earth, that faith springs out of a miracle itself.

What the Bible calls being born again or regeneration, Jesus uses that language in John 3.

You must be born again.

If your heart is dead, it must live.

And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Ezekiel 36 tells us that we all have hearts of stone naturally, and we need a heart of flesh.

We believe as Christians in supernatural things that come from God, and our hope depends upon it.

Which leads to our second point.

Jonah's faith.

Jesus says that Jonah's story points powerfully to his own.

And seeing this helps us not only understand Jonah's faith, it helps us to understand our own.

Because Jonah's saying, I was as good as dead.

Did he die?

Maybe.

He was as good as dead.

And Jesus says, just as Jonah was as good as dead, I will die.

Just as Jonah came back, I will come back.

But the difference between Jesus and Jonah is just as important as the similarities between them.

Jonah goes down, down, down because of his own rebellion, because he's running from God.

And Jesus goes down, down, down because he's obeying God.

Jonah goes down, down, down because he does not want to preach mercy to his enemies.

And Jesus goes down, down, down to give mercy to his enemies.

It's one of the reasons that we saw in our New Testament passage, Jesus says something then something greater than Jonah is here.

You know, Jonah, he poetically describes what this going down was like.

In verse 2, he says, I was in distress and in Sheol.

In verse 3, he says, You cast me into the deep.

In verse 4, you cast me away from your sight.

In verse 5, the waters closed in over me to take my life.

And indeed, in verse 7, my life was fainting away.

He knows that this situation has come upon him because of his own disobedience.

That all of this has come to him because of his unfaithfulness.

And yet, what does he do?

He cries out to a God who is faithful.

He cries out to a God who is not like him.

He cries out to a God who will show us how faithful he is by following the same trajectory of Jonah to bring Jonah and the rest of us back.

And from this posture of crying out to a faithful and merciful and gracious God, he describes a God who in verse 2 he answers and he hears.

In verse 6, he brings Jonah's life out of the pit.

In verse 8, he is a God of steadfast love.

In the Bible, the faith of the Bible, it acknowledges two things simultaneously, and you have to have them together.

We acknowledge the seriousness of our sinfulness, the seriousness of our rebellion, but the profundity of the gracious faithfulness of God.

That where sin abounds, grace more than abounds.

And Paul puts it famously in Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death, the paycheck of death, what you have earned from sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And how does Jonah see this free gift in this passage?

In verse 4, he says, I'm driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.

In verse 7, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord.

My prayer came to you into your holy temple.

And it might be that Jonah understands the temple for what it truly is more pointedly right here.

I look to the place where forgiveness is found.

I look to the place where atonement for sin takes place.

I look to the place where I have hope in spite of where I have found myself and where I have led myself.

I look to sacrifice.

And Jesus, who calls himself the greater Jonah, he follows this Jonah paradigm not because he's guilty, but because he's the true substitute.

I mean, in this same passage where he says something greater than Jonah is here, something greater than Solomon is here, he also says something greater than the temple is here.

I mean, Jesus is saying, I'm greater than the sacrificial system, I'm greater than the kings of Israel, I'm greater than the prophets of Israel, I am that last and final prophet, priest, and king.

All Old Testament roads lead straight to me.

That's why I say, just as Jonah, so must I.

Jonah was guilty, but I'm following to save the guilty.

And if we would be marked by this same kind of faith, it means trusting in the substitutionary death of Jesus for sinners.

It means understanding that our sin is real and it is bad and it is worse than we want to admit, and that Jesus has taken care of it by enduring the punishment that sin deserves on the cross, and then, like Jonah, is raised on the third day.

Faith acknowledges two things simultaneously our sinfulness and the grace of God in the life and the death and resurrection of Jesus, which leads to the third point, Jonah's repentance.

Because faith always leads to repentance.

As the thunder echoes.

Look at verses 8 and 9.

Jonah says, Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you.

Vain idols loom large in Jonah.

He doesn't want to go to Nineveh because they have vain idols.

He sees vain idols and hears of them on the ship, these sailors.

He doesn't hear of their conversion.

He doesn't hear that they're going to sacrifice the Lord.

They've already thrown him in.

He can see in others.

This is Jonah's great problem.

He can spot the idolatry in others so quickly.

That's why he doesn't want to move towards others.

But perhaps, as self-righteous as Jonah is, he can see something of them in himself.

Perhaps Jonah can see I'm just like them.

That vain idols, they lead you away from hope, that they always lead to death.

And where have I found myself?

I found myself in death.

He's trusted in himself to get away from Nineveh, to get away from the call of God.

He's trusting in himself to find where he thinks life will really be found.

And he is wrong.

And he knows he's wrong.

And he realizes that in and of myself, this trajectory leads away from the steadfast love of God.

And so he calls out in faith and he says, That love is there for me.

That forgiveness is there for me, but it means throwing away vain idols.

He cries out, because salvation belongs to the Lord.

And what we find in Scripture is that faith and repentance are inseparable.

They're two sides of the same coin.

Though our faith and our repentance, they waffle at times.

And that's one of the good news.

Thankfully, he wrestles with his own repentance.

Okay, good.

I feel better about wrestling with my own repentance, but faith always leads to repentance.

Crying out for mercy always leads to repentance.

And you and I, like Jonah, we know what it is to seek meaning and purpose and fulfillment and fill in the blank in the things of this world instead of in the giver of these good gifts.

You and I know what it is to set our hope on good gifts, but to make too much of them.

To think, if I just get this relationship, then things are going to be better for me.

Or if I just become a mother, then I'm going to have the thing that makes me feel whole.

Or if I just get that title at work or that corner office, then I'll finally have the respect that I want.

Or maybe you retreat and you say, the relief that I need, it comes from that television show I can binge, or that food, or that drink, or that lust.

Or maybe you think, no, no, no, if I could just get my fingers around things at home and at work, if I could just exert enough control, then things would feel okay.

And we we do this over and over again.

We look to something other than our Maker to fill us with what we want to be filled with on the inside.

And Jonah reminds us, it always leaves us empty.

That when you put your head on your pillow, boom.

When you put when you put your head on your pillow, you know that something is off.

We were made to cry out for mercy to the one who loves sinners.

Who loves sinners.

I wonder if you remember that scene at the end of Pixar's Up.

You know, Carl and Ellie.

I love that movie.

The beginning makes me cry.

The ending, right?

And you know this sort of setup.

Carl's wife has died, Ellie has died, and he he wants to leave, and he has thousands and thousands of balloons, and he makes his way down to South America, and then he's got this wilderness explorer, sort of stowaway on his house, and he's like, oh great.

He lands, right?

The helium is losing some steam in his balloons, he's lost some balloons, and he's stuck, and now this stowaway is in trouble.

He's got to help Kev, he's got to help Russell.

And he finds this adventure book that Ellie had left him.

And it's also a very moving sort of scene.

They wanted to take all these adventures together, and then she says, she sort of says, My adventure was my 60-year marriage to you.

And he flips through these pictures, and it's as though he has been given new eyes to see that he has been hanging on to all of her possessions as though they could give him what he was really deeply longing for.

And he realizes her things are not going to give me what I really need.

And right now, what I need to do is go and save this boy.

And he unloads all of her possessions from this house, and the house lifts, and he's able to go again.

Such is the calling of the Christian life to look at the things that we are holding on to and say, these are not going to give me the life that I think they're going to give me.

They're promising life, but they will not give me the life that I want.

The author of Hebrews puts it this way: let us lay aside every weight and sin which so clings which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

Jonah reminds us that the God who delivers also frees us to follow him.

And here's what's really important, because if you just fixate on the first part of the essential of faith, sin.

If you just fixate on that and then think, okay, repentance from sin is just getting rid of that, but we forget the grace of Jesus, then we're just going to try to white knuckle a better sort of couple of weeks that isn't possible.

The point isn't you try harder to deal with the sin in your life.

That will not work.

And you know it won't work.

Jonah says he's motivated by thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving.

He's already been delivered.

He no longer has to pay attention to his old idols because he's already been delivered.

And our shorter catechism, it says it this way: it defines repentance.

I love this.

Repentance unto life is a saving grace in which a sinner, out of a true sense of their sin, yes, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of new obedience.

That true repentance isn't just hating sin, and it isn't just turning from sin, it's experiencing the mercy and the grace of God, and then out of gratitude, living accordingly.

True repentance is always born out of gratitude.

And if there is sin in your life that you sort of know, like right now you might even be thinking about it, I need to repent of this sin.

That's a good realization to have.

But the fuel for that is born out of basking in the mercy and the grace of God.

That sitting with the idea that God already knows how bad it is, and his heart moves towards you.

That God gives grace to sinners and not to the righteous.

That the only righteous there ever are are those who have borrowing and sharing the righteousness of Christ.

He shares it freely.

If you're going to repent, you have to see that God has already loved you.

And that his love for you cannot grow.

If it's more patience with others that you long for, you have to see that God's patience with you is infinite in Christ.

And like I said, we'll see in the weeks to come, Jonah's repentance is far from perfect.

God's going to get in his grill.

He's going to shake him up and say, Have you forgotten my mercy?

My mercy matters.

My mercy must drive you, and we too will forget from time to time.

Which is all the more reason to consider that Jesus willingly follows the path of Jonah for us.

Jesus willingly goes to the cross so that he might atone for our sin.

So that the weight of our sin is lifted by free grace, and we get to respond out of gratitude.

We get to respond to this good news by living it out in all of life.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the good news of Jesus that Jonah knew.

And we thank you for the good news of Jesus that we need.

And we ask that you would do a supernatural work in us, that you would grant us faith if we don't already have it.

But certainly all of us need you to strengthen our faith.

And so we thank you that you've given us your word, and we thank you that you've given us your table.

And we pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.