Jesus Can, So I Surrender

Well, welcome everybody back to week two of our Sinners Anonymous Support Group.

I'm Zach, and I get to lead this group.

We're really grateful that you're here today.

If you missed last week, we jumped into a six-week sermon series on the book of Jonah, but doing it with kind of a unique lens, working through Alcohol Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, specifically the 12 steps made popular in the big book.

And so last week we made the case for why these 12 steps are not just for people whose lives are on fire or even just for addicts, but really these are 12 biblical principles and steps that we need as sinners.

And we also opened up the book of Jonah and read through chapter one.

So the message for last week is available if you haven't seen it.

Please do.

But let's see if we can catch you up real quick on what happened last week.

And let's see if audience participation across all of our campuses can uh can help us get there, right?

So let's see, let's see how well you remember last week.

God called the prophet to go to Nineveh.

So God said go and Jonah said.

Nice.

You didn't even need a word to prompt you there.

God said, go east and Jonah went.

God said go to Nineveh and Jonah went to Tarshish.

Tarshish.

That was good.

That was good.

We're starting to fail a little bit though.

So let me uh let me get us back on track.

That was all really good.

Jonah did try to go to Tarshish.

She got on a boat and a storm came, and that storm became so violent that eventually Jonah had to tell the sailors and everybody else, the reason this storm is here, this is all my fault.

This is all my fault.

And so the sailors had to do something they didn't want to do.

They threw Jonah overboard into the water where we left him last week.

He was drowning and devoured by a great fish.

We ended last week in step one of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Except for this series, we're simply replacing one word alcohol with the word sin.

And so let's read step one together.

Says it this way We admitted we were powerless over sin, that our lives had become unmanageable.

If you're to boil step one down into two words, it's simply these two words.

I can't.

I'm powerless.

I can't control or manage my way through this.

I am personally inadequate.

And this is where Jonah left.

This is my fault.

This is my fault.

The truth we said is that the admission price into freedom begins with an admission of our sin.

If you want to be healed, if you want to be made well, if you want to recover, it begins with admitting I can't do this on my own.

I think where we're gonna land today as we jump into steps two and three and read through Jonah chapter two, probably is very synonymous with the words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote in Romans chapter seven about what was going on in his mind.

That yes, God had saved him and he wanted to follow Jesus, but he he would phrase it like this.

He's like, There's things that I want to do that I don't do, and there's things that I don't do that I keep on doing.

And he kind of goes back and forth, kind of sounds like he's a babbling lunatic, and at the end of it, he says this what a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death.

Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So, church, we need more than just step one.

Right?

Because if all we did is step one, I can't, that's good you acknowledge that, but now what?

It's good to know when you're at rock bottom, but now what?

That's where steps two and three are going to give us some help today.

So let's read these together, starting again at step one.

By the way, in recovery communities, they do a lot of reading out loud.

It's how they remember what they're going through.

And so let's read these together.

Number one, we admitted we were powerless over sin, that our lives had become unmanageable.

Number two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And number three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

A simple way to remember these three steps today.

Again, step one, I can't.

Step two, Jesus can.

Step three, so I surrender.

We're going from admission to belief to surrender.

And it's a fun journey to get there, especially in Jonah's story.

Again, this is where we ended with him.

Now the Lord provided a great, let me try that again.

Now the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Three days and three nights in this fish.

Sometimes God's rescue doesn't look like God's rescue to begin with, doesn't it?

Like sometimes, though, when you're at rock bottom, don't your prayers kind of change?

Your prayers when you're at rock bottom, like are God, I don't really care how you get me out of this, just do what you gotta do to get me out of this.

Whatever it looks like.

And sometimes God brings some interesting rescue.

Right?

That fish, like we when we typically think about God's provision, we don't typically like we talk about the good types of provision.

Like God provided an open door and I just walked through it, or God provided some funds to help us in a really challenging time.

We don't typically come up and share testimonies of how God provided a storm that just totally destroyed our lives.

But sometimes when you're at rock bottom, again, you're gonna take God's provision however it comes.

And sometimes God's provision doesn't look like provision because it comes in packaging that you didn't expect.

The fish didn't look like provision.

It's smelly, it's dark, it's disgusting, and yet, knowing Jonah's story, it is his rescue.

Sometimes when we're stuck in sin, we're asking God, I don't care how you get me out of it, just get me out of it.

But sometimes, if we're honest, we still want him to get us out in the most comfortable way.

But sometimes provision looks like somebody confronting you.

Sometimes in the addiction world, it looks like loved ones coming and having an intervention with you, and enough people telling you, we care about you too much, we love you too much to see you continue to destroy yourselves.

Sometimes God's provision looks like you getting caught in the act.

That was true for me.

I've shared some of this, but maybe not the details of this.

But I remember there was about an eight-month period in my life where I had just graduated college.

Alice and I had been married at that point about four months.

And so we moved to St.

Louis and we would start seminary.

I would start seminary eight months later.

So I had an eight-month gap and I lost my way.

I remember at college, I loved playing poker with my buddies.

And all of a sudden, we were in a place and nobody was playing poker, and it was in the early days of online poker where you could play in the US.

And I remember playing and I really loved it.

It was competitive.

I started winning a little bit and winning a little bit, and so I started playing more.

But all of a sudden, that thing that I was doing at the beginning, winning, started turning into losing.

And because I'm so competitive, I'm like, well, I gotta get all this back, and to get it back, I gotta bet more.

And when you're betting more, you're probably playing with better players.

And we've seen enough documentaries to know those websites were probably pretty rigged too.

And all of a sudden, uh, me just trying to manage my way out and I was making deals with God of God, I want to get out of this, but but first let me get back to even, and then I'll stop.

And that's not what happened.

Instead, after losing$10,000 total, I was caught.

I wish I could tell you that like I had enough guilt that I fessed up to my new wife at that time, Allison, and said, I've been doing this behind your back, and I'm sorry, I need your forgiveness, but that's not how it happened.

I was confronted and I was angry that I was caught because it caused me embarrassment, deep guilt, and shame.

I felt really horrible for my new wife that I had let down, that I had just made vows to.

I felt like I'm about ready to study to be a pastor, and I am so far from the man that God has called me to become.

Getting caught, I view now as a form of God's grace.

It didn't come in the packaging I wanted.

Again, I was telling God, just let me get back to even, I'll get out.

If I got back to even, guess what would have happened?

I wouldn't have got out.

And who knows where I would be today, who knows how many more thousands upon thousands of dollars I would have wasted, or what horror, horrible situation I would have gotten into, who knows if I would have been admitted into seminary, who knows what would have happened.

I don't know.

And that's exactly my point is God used the thing that I didn't want to be the thing that I most needed, and his rescue came in a way that was hard.

And that's the fish.

The fish smells terrible, it looks like death.

And yet, it was the beginning of a new life for Jonah.

Now, we're gonna get into the fish and what happens inside the fish today, but before we get into the fish, I need to address something because this is where people tend to really get hung up on the story of Jonah, right?

How is it really possible?

The fish swallowed a guy.

Really?

Is that scientifically explained?

Uh can you do that and he survived for three days?

A lot of people get hung up on this.

Some people are like, Pastor, this story sounds really fishy to me.

This is this story is just really hard for me to swallow, Pastor.

What you just expect me to take this hook, line, and sinker?

This is a whale of a tail.

And I had to add the fourth one so that you knew that wasn't Chat GPT.

Chad does three, I gave you four fish puns.

Isn't that good?

Anybody?

Yeah.

I I gotta move on from the puns, though, because if I don't, this sermon and me will flounder.

So let me move on.

And to just point out the reality that people struggle with this story.

Some believe Jonah is allegory, some think it's a parable, some think it's a religious story designed to teach a lesson.

I love how Martin Luther phrased it.

Here's what he said This story of the prophet Jonah is so great that it's almost unbelievable.

Yes, it even sounds like a lie and more full of nonsense than any poet's fable.

If it were not in the Bible, I'd consider it a silly lie.

Because if one thinks about it, Jonah was three days in the huge belly of the whale where he could have been digested in three hours and changed into the flesh and blood of the whale.

And in comparison with this miracle, the wonder at the Red Sea was nothing.

I like that people acknowledge this seems ridiculous.

Because when somebody outside of our faith says that, I don't think you need to jump to, well, let me talk you through the science of it.

But let me tell you why I believe Jonah actually happened.

Because I believe in Jesus.

And you know what?

Jesus believed in Jonah.

In fact, when they asked Jesus one time in Matthew 12 for a sign of who he was, here are his words.

He said, For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

So why do I believe in Jonah?

Because Jesus believes in Jonah.

And Jesus actually foreshadows his life to go back to Jonah to tell them that I may not look like the packaging you thought I would be coming in.

But just as Jonah spent three days and three nights and was spat out of a whale or a really large fish, so I too will go down into the heart of the earth and will erupt out of the grave three days and three nights later.

Anyone grateful for that?

Amen.

And by the way, we are used to a God that believes, that asks us, that that gives us the faith to believe in some pretty remarkable things that science can't quite explain.

We believe that the creator of the universe stepped down in the form of Jesus into his created world.

We believe that that Jesus came into a virgin woman named Mary and was conceived miraculously.

We believe that Jesus came into this world and lived a sinless and a perfect life, was crucified, died, and was buried, and did go three days into the heart of the earth.

And on the third day he rose up from the grave, victorious on his own power.

And so I'm just saying, if we're gonna believe in a God that can do those things, it's not too much to believe that God can handle and create a really big fish to swallow a man for three days.

Jonah is inside of this fish for three days and three nights, which is a lot of time to be with your own thoughts.

Blaise Pascal, I like his phrase, he was a 1600 French philosopher, and he said that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

And this was pre-iPhone, Netflix, Spotify, UVersion Bible app.

Jonah is in the belly of the whale for three three days and three nights with nobody else to blame, nothing to do, nobody to impress.

And somewhere along the way, maybe the whole time, I don't know, but he started praying.

And that's where chapter two goes.

From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.

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.

Jonah has already discovered step one.

He is powerless.

But now he is inviting us into step two when he says, In my distress, I called to who?

I called to the Lord.

Jonah realizes I cannot rescue myself, but I can call on somebody that can.

And I want you to notice before we talk about that one that can, I want you to notice something about the timing here that you need to see over and over and over in the book of Jonah that is true over and over and in our story that you just have to get.

Is that before Jonah prayed, God provided the fish.

That God provides first.

Some of you thought that you were here today and that it was an accident.

And I'm telling you, it's not an accident.

That God provided a way for you to get here today to hear a message from his word.

God provides first.

He doesn't come to Jonah after Jonah prays this really great prayer and says, Well, check the box.

You just prayed a really passionate prayer.

And so now let me command the fish to get you.

No, he provided the fish before he prayed a thing.

And that's really beautiful because that's the heart of Christianity.

It's not the fact that you've got to get yourself fully cleaned up.

It's not the fact that you've got to get your theology straight.

And it's not the fact that you've got to get on the path that is straight and narrow before God comes to you.

God comes to you first and provides for you before you ever did a thing.

So Jonah's praying inside this fish.

He continues.

He says, 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.

He continues, the engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me.

Seaweed was wrapped around my head.

To the roots of the mountains I sank down.

The earth beneath barred me in forever.

And I had you read words like the depths and the deep and beneath and down, because that's what happens when you run away from God.

That's what happens when sin is in your life.

You go down.

Now it may not feel like it.

We said last week that in the moment sin is gonna feel easy, and likely it's even gonna feel really good.

But over time, that sin leads to devastating places, and it's always down.

Jonah is mentioning how far down his sin has brought him.

But then he says, You, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.

Jonah went down, but God brought him up.

He's done that already, and this is what Jonah is asking him to do again.

And this is the beauty of the story of Jonah that is also our gospel, is that we have a God that no matter how far down we go, he does something incredible.

When we go down, God comes down to get us.

We've got a God that is used to coming down, that is used to providing rescue.

Right?

We talk about this God.

I love the way that Philippians 2 imagines God, who it says didn't consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

But rather, what did he do?

It's the the the Philippians 2 says, but rather he made himself nothing.

He stepped down off of the throne, made himself nothing.

He not only made himself nothing, but he became a human.

And then it says he became a servant, and a servant obedient to death, obedient to even death on the humiliation of death of a cross.

This is the God that will go down as far as he needs to go down.

And we know that even after he died on the cross, he went down into the depths of hell for three days, not to say, hey guys, look how far down I am, but to say, hey, if you're this far down, I can reach you and I can bring you up.

And that is good news for us, because no matter how far down our sin has got us, our God will meet us down there and has even been lower than that, and He wants to raise you up.

And this is where I think Christians can say something really beautiful about step two.

Step two, let's say it again together.

Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Now that language has helped millions upon millions upon millions of people.

And I understand uh why they need to kind of start it broadly because they're bringing people from all of different backgrounds into these meetings.

A power greater than yourselves.

But this is where we have an advantage because we know who that capital P power is.

Jonah says, in my distress, I called to the Lord.

We know that our power has a name, and that power, that name is who?

It is Jesus Christ.

That we're not surrendering ourselves to some unknown force out in the world.

We're not crossing our fingers, just kind of saying empty things, hoping it lands somewhere up there with some power that's powerful enough.

No, we know that we have a power and his name is Jesus.

John says the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

God wanted us to know him so badly that he came down here for us.

And this is what makes Christianity so remarkable, so unlike the other higher powers that others may call on.

And I want to be respectful when I say this because there are sincere and genuine people trying to find hope and help and healing and God in their own ways, but all the other religions of the world make very different claims about who the higher power is and how we relate to that higher power.

In Buddhism, for example, the central question isn't how do you connect to a personal creator, the path is toward you becoming enlightened.

Through the things that you do, through your own awakening, through disassociating yourself with being attached to this world and by making it through suffering, then you can experience that higher power.

In Hindu traditions, there's multiple paths toward reality, but it's mainly through devotion and knowledge and right action and disciplines and doing the right works.

In Islam, Islam means literally submission, and so it's about submitting your life to Allah, especially following the revelation in the Quran, and how well you submit to it depends on if you experience and how you experience your higher power.

And those are enormous differences from our tradition and Christianity.

That makes this incredible claim that it's not about what you do.

It's not about even how well you follow the steps after you admit you're a sinner, but it's about what God has already done.

And what did God do?

God came looking for you.

The heart of Christianity is not humanity trying to reach higher and higher and higher that we might one day be able to grasp the foot of our God, our higher power.

The heart of Christianity is that God at our lowest came down to get you.

Amen.

It's not about what you do, it's about what God has already done.

Jonah continues and says, When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

And Jonah in his book is an absolute fool in every respect.

Maybe the one redeeming quality of Jonah is found in this prayer that he's praying right now.

Because in this prayer, what is Jonah doing?

He's alone with his own thoughts.

He doesn't have a UVersion Bible app, no pastor talking to him in his ear, telling him what to say or how to say it.

Jonah, if you read through these verses that we just read, are actually quoting Psalms.

Jonah knows his scripture.

And I like to think about that, that when when you are at rock bottom, or maybe when life squeezes you, what comes out of you?

Do you know God's word well enough that you can speak it back to your soul and to God?

What comes out of you when you are at rock bottom, when you are at your worst, when your world falls apart?

Jonah cries out, and you can cry out from wherever you are.

You can cry out from the hospital, you can cry out from rehab, you can cry out from your broken marriage, you can cry out from your illness, you can cry out from the mess that you've created.

Because there is nowhere too low that God can't hear you, and nowhere so dark that his light can't find you.

Jonah continues those who cling to worthless idols, turn away from God's love for them.

But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good.

I will say, salvation comes from the Lord.

Now, what Jonah is doing as he kind of closes up his prayer is he's doing something that you and I do a lot of times.

It's like typically when we're at rock bottom or we know where we shouldn't be, we'll we'll say things like God, I don't care how you get me out of this, just get me out of this.

And then we make a vow.

And God, if you get me out of this, then we make a promise to God, then I will insert whatever you want.

I'll stop doing this, I'll start doing this, I'll attend church every Sunday, I'll read the Bible every day the rest of my life.

We'll say whatever we need to say to get out of this situation, and we make a vow to God, and you're gonna see in Jonah's story, and you probably know in your story too, that you're not gonna be faithful, and Jonah's not gonna be faithful in the vows that he's making to the Lord.

We're only in chapter two, and Jonah's sounding really good by the end of chapter two, but we've got two more chapters where he's gonna look worse than you thought.

He's not gonna make, I'll make good on what I promised.

No, you won't.

It's gonna be a disaster.

And that's okay.

It's okay because our relationship with God is not, I'm not knocking the one-time moments that we can have.

I think they're really powerful.

I think it's really powerful to have an encounter with God.

It's really powerful to go into a recovery or even on day one of admitting your sin and say, This is where I'm at, and I never want to do this again.

I think your desire is right, I think your intent is right, I think your heart is where it ought to be.

But you know enough about yourself, and I know enough about you, you know enough about me to know that we're gonna continue to make mistakes.

It's true in recovery, it's true in discipleship, and it's why they often share the phrase in recovery circles one day at a time.

One day at a time.

One day at a time.

Progress, not perfection.

But Jonah says one thing that gets everything right.

Salvation comes from the Lord.

Salvation comes from the Lord.

Not from you.

And how well you walk out of this place and how well you keep up the vows and promises that you made.

Salvation comes from the Lord.

The final verse of chapter two says, And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

One of the best endings of a chapter in the Bible.

We've had repentance, redemption, and a little regurgitation to close it out.

It's amazing and it's kind of ironic that in the book of Jonah, how much everything and everybody except Jonah follows God.

You've got the fish obeying.

Last week you had the wind and the sea and the storm, and even the sailors that started atheist, that ended Jesus believers.

Everybody, and you'll see in chapters three and four, even Jonah's enemies are gonna obey God, and yet Jonah is the one that keeps running, and that's okay.

Because discipleship, getting past your sin, recovery, it's not a one-time destination you get to.

It's a journey you walk forever.

And the beautiful news is that as you walk it, God is here.

Step one is I can't.

You can't.

We can't manage or control or grid our way through our sin.

Step two is Jesus can.

And let me just say that Jesus's can is greater than your can't.

Jesus can.

And so step three, let's say these words together, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

I can't.

Jesus can.

So I surrender.

Now, in Lutheran circles, we get a little squirmish with that word decision.

Because rightly so, we want to make sure that you know there isn't a decision you can make that's gonna save you.

Because God provides first.

And even in how you come to faith, that's not because you were really smart and you decided this is best.

You know why it is?

Because God gave you the gift of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's the same reason at the end of the day that you believe in the book of Jonah.

Because God gave you the Holy Spirit, who gave you the faith to believe.

And he gave you that before you made a decision, before you turned.

1 Corinthians 12, verse 3 says, Nobody can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:3

And so we get a little squirmished because we don't want you to think it's anything you've done that'll get you salvation.

Jonah even said salvation comes from the Lord.

But after we've received this gift, we are in a constant relationship where we make decisions and we we do our best to follow after God.

And in that, what what step three is getting at is there's there's a place for surrender.

Like I want, not not because I need to to get salvation, but because I'm so grateful for what you've done.

I I want to give my will, my life, especially my sin, my addiction, the worst parts of me.

I I surrender my life to you.

That's step three.

I want to follow Jesus.

I want to make good on the vows that I made to him.

I want to.

And that's so good because sometimes in Christianity we stop it at salvation.

And what we're gonna see in the story of Jonah that's true for the story of you, which gives you so much hope that your life has meaning and purpose, is that God doesn't simply rescue you from something, He rescues you for something.

You've got a job to do, a responsibility ahead of you.

You've got a reason that you live, your days, your years are important.

What you do matters.

And, well, even though I really want to, what we're gonna see in the story of Jonah is sometimes God calls us back to the very thing that caused us to run away in the first place.

Because the thing God is gonna ask Jonah to do in chapter 3 is the exact same assignment that he ran from in the first time.

So I'm not saying it's easy to surrender because God's gonna still challenge you to do really hard things for his name.

But the opportunity is there for you to not just believe so that you have salvation which comes from the Lord, but for you to see that now that I'm saved, I want to make decisions that honor God.

I want to make choices that follow Jesus, that help others see that God can meet them too, even at their lowest place.

I'd like to ask all of you, all campuses, to stand.

Last week we started, remember the posture?

Let's get in that again with hands to our side.

Roll those shoulder blades back a little bit and come back two to three inches with those hands.

Utterly powerless.

I can't.

We started by saying, hi, my name is, and we put our name in.

Hi, my name is, and I am a sinner.

I'd like to say that all campuses together on the count of three.

One, two, three.

Hi, my name is Zach, and I am a sinner.

I can't control and manage my way out of the situation, the sin, the addiction choices that I've made.

But today, I want you to take those same two hands, and I want you to raise them up and point with fingers in the air.

It's not guns, that's just pointing to Jesus.

I can't, but Jesus can, so I surrender.

Come on, I can't, but Jesus can, so I surrender.

I can't, but Jesus can, so I surrender.

And so, God, we thank you that you have shown up yet again here today.

God, whether we are at rock bottom, close to there, or maybe we're on a mountaintop today, I thank you that your spirit meets us here today.

I ask, Lord Jesus, that we would loosen our grip on whatever it is that we want to try to control and manage and power our way through.

I pray that the truth of uh I we can't, we are personally inadequate, comes through again today, but even more than I can't, uh God, I pray that people would know that you can.

And so you are our higher power.

We believe in you, Jesus, and we thank you that you've come as far low as you need to come, that we didn't need to clean up our act before you came down to get us.

God, if there's anybody that's really, really low today, may your Holy Spirit work in a mighty way right now and ensure that person through the power of the Holy Spirit that your can is bigger than their can't, that you've got grace for them.

And Jesus, we thank you that you not only have grace that assures us of salvation, but Lord, you've got purpose for our lives.

And so we surrender.

God, we make vows to you that we're gonna follow after you.

We're gonna do our best, all for the glory of Jesus Christ.

And all God's people at all of our campuses together say, Amen.