Running Ourselves Ragged - Jonah 1:17-2:10

Introduction

Two and a half years ago, God surprised us by hitting our house with a hurricane, and his name is Josiah. My girls would always say, “Snuggle me, daddy. Watch a movie with me, daddy. Build a fairy house with me, daddy.” Josiah says, “I tackle you, daddy.” And, that pretty much sums it up. Josiah has two speeds, asleep and running. And, if you’ve ever parented a toddler, you know that running leads to crashing, and crashing leads to crying. So, in the early days, you hold out hope that you can teach them differently. You try to slow them down, protect them, and keep them from crashing. And, that never works. Eventually, you just lay a thick blanket over the hearth, and let them crash.

It seems like the only way that children learn not to run is by crashing and hurting themselves. God’s children prove to be the same. God tell us how we can flourish, have peace, and live joyfully. He tries to prevent us from crashing. But, we run anyway, don’t we? It’s like it’s the only way we can learn.

God’s Word

Last week, we saw the prophet, Jonah, on the run. God told him to go north to Nineveh, but he went south to Tarshish instead. And, this morning, we see the toddling prophet crash into the hearth. And, since we’re so prone to run, it’s good for us to see what happens. We see What to Expect When We Run (Headline):

God “exhausts” the “runner.”

Jonah 2:1-2 “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.”

Have you ever looked around your life and wondered, “How in the world did I end up here?” As a result of a decision or series of decisions that you’ve made, your own life is almost unrecognizable to you. You’re drowning in debt and your job is miserable and your relationships are a mess, and it just looks like there’s no way out. You’re in a pit, and you’re left with nothing to do but to reflect upon your decisions. That’s where we see Jonah in chapter 2. If the Psalm of verses 2-9 is to make sense, you have to recognize that it’s the reflections of a man in an unassailable pit — namely, the pit of the stomach of a fish. God has let his child fall so that he might learn. That’s why...

The deepest “pits” are the greatest “schools.”

He’s in the “belly of the fish”, but he’s recognizing that’s even better than what he thought would happen. He ought to be in “the belly of sheol.” That is, he ought to be sunken, dead, and forgotten. But, he’s still breathing, though not as strongly as before. And, because he’s still breathing, there’s something for him to learn. It’s a difficult realization that you’re in a pit that you dug for yourself. But, when you find yourself there, the question becomes what are you going to do with it? R.T. Kendall says: “The belly of the fish is not a happy place to live, but it is a good place to learn.” In the pit, you get the kind of education that you can’t pay a million dollars to attain but that you wouldn’t pay fifty cents to learn again.

In the pit, you come to the end of yourself. Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son who takes his fathers inheritance and squanders it. He never thinks of his fathers kindness again until he’s craving for the pig slop. And, for the first time, he doesn’t just think of his father’s kindness. He appreciates it. He loves it. He longs for it. He realizes how good his dad was all along. You know, Josiah looks for a hand to hold now when he’s going down the steps into the carport. We tried to teach him that the concrete isn’t much fun to hit, but he had to learn that the hard way. Often, we have to hit the concrete before we’ll look up to the Lord, don’t we? We have to go to the school in the whale’s stomach.

That’s why the Lord disciplines us. He disciplines us because...

The hardest “discipline” precedes the greatest “mercy.”

Jonah 2:3 “For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.”

Many of you may bring baggage to the table when it comes to discipline. You had a parent that was mean and abusive. That’s not what I mean by “hardest.” In fact, the hardest discipline comes from a parent who loves you, doesn’t want you to hurt, but has to wound you today to save you tomorrow. That’s what we see here. I say that Jonah dug this pit himself, but it’s too much to say that it was Jonah alone that brought him to the belly of the fish. Jonah certainly didn’t see it that way. This wasn’t just the work of Jonah; it was also the discipline of God. Jonah says, “YOU cast me into the deep…all YOUR waves and YOUR billows passed over me.” He knew that the 20 foot swells weren’t just the natural effect of his cause. They were the divine discipline of the God he fled. God was wearing him down. God was letting him see how puny and weak and frail he really was.

Martin Luther calls this “merciful wrath.” It’s a type of fatherly discipline. It’s the picture of a father wounding his son in the short term to protect his son from greater threats in the long term. Dads have to use discipline to prepare their sons for mercy. Mercy apart from discipline produces entitlement. That is, it doesn’t teach; it enables. But, merciful wrath is different. It’s a discipline that teaches us what will kill us and who will heal us. It teaches us what to run from and where to run to. That is, God’s discipline flows out of his protection.

But, you see, God lets us run ourselves ragged. He lets us find the bottom of the pit. He lets us taste the pain of our running. Because when we’ve run ourselves ragged. We’re ready to receive mercy. His discipline is a pre-runner of his mercy. You see....

God “hears” the “ragged.”

Jonah 2:7 “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”

It must’ve been traumatic for Jonah to relive his terrifying fall to the bottom of the sea. He remembers the water taking his life. He remembers the floods of judgement rising over him like they did in Noah’s day. He remembers having his head wrapped in the weeds of the sea bottom so that it felt like the bars of death were shutting around him. Then, on the verge of death, near the point of unconsciousness, he remembers. How could it take him so long to remember? Falls jog our memories, don’t they? They remind us of how catastrophic our decisions are. They remind us of how weak we are. And, for the child of God, they remind us of the source of our hope.

So, he calls out. He calls out to the very one he had forsaken. With his memory jogged, he seeks comfort in the very One he had originally fled. He reminds me of Josiah. Josiah runs, and he wants me to leave him alone. Then, he crashes, and he wants me to step in. That’s Jonah. That’s us. But, you know, every time Josiah screams. Every time, he cries. No matter where he is in the house. I hear him. He doesn’t have to come to me. I go to him. That’s our heavenly Father.

There’s no “limit” to God’s “hearing.”

Jonah 2:2 “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.”

Jonah says, “My prayer came to you!” “He answered me.” “You heard my voice.” Even though Jonah was in the furthest room in the house, even though he was in the very “belly of sheol”. Even though he was in a pit of his own digging, God heard him and answered him. God hears us even though we don’t listen to him. How good is He? There is nowhere you can run that God can’t hear you. There’s nothing that you can do that can cause him to close his ears to your prayers.

Here’s the question: How long will it take you to remember? Jonah had fought the waves and tried to rescue himself until he was “fainting away.” Then, after all the trauma and exhaustion and near death, he remembered. It’s easy to read stories like this, and think “Then, what’s the big deal if I run? God will just receive me back.” Don’t you hear the trauma of Jonah’s running? The sooner you turn the shallower your scar. The sooner you turn the less painful the trauma. How long will it take you to realize that you’re wearing yourself out? How long will He have to keep you in the pit for you to remember his mercy?

Because, if you’ll just call out to him, you’ll find that...

There’s no “boundary” to God’s “mercy.”

Jonah 2:6 “at the roots of the mountains. 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.”

It can be difficult to have compassion on a child that doesn’t listen, can’t it? I wish it weren’t like that, but my first impulse is: “I told you so” not “Let me care for you.” But, that’s not how God responds to Jonah, and that’s not how He responds to us. Verse six is beautiful. Jonah says, “I went down” to the pit. YET, God “brought up my life.” Do you hear it? It’s the echoes of resurrection, isn’t it? The bars of death were locking him in. There was no escape. But, the Lord turns what ought to be a tomb for eternal death into a womb of new birth.

Jonah was in the deep of the sea, and God’s mercy found him there. Jonah was in the belly of the fish, and God’s mercy found him there. Oh, surely he’s teaching Jonah that Nineveh was outside the boundaries of Israel, but God’s mercy would find them there. Imagine how the exiled Israelites would read this and lived in Assyria. God’s mercy could make it all the way into enemy territory. If you’re in a secret relationship, God’s mercy will find you there. If you’re battling an overwhelming addiction, God’s mercy will find you there. If you’re in the deepest depression, God’s mercy will find you there. It doesn’t matter how deep in enemy territory you are. There’s no boundary to his mercy. How long will it take you to realize it?

We learn from Jonah that...

God “rescues” the “rebel.”

The goal of parenting isn’t to just help your children; it’s to transform them. We don’t just go to them, dust them off, and say, “Figure it out from here.” We work to reach their hearts, don’t we? We want to them to become wiser, better people. So, when I say that God rescues the rebel, I’m certainly pointing to God’s saving grace. But, I’m also pointing to his transforming grace. He doesn’t just seek to save Jonah (or us). He seeks to change us from a rebel into something new. The pit, the belly of the fish, the lowest moments of your life are for the purpose of cultivating in you the new person God has saved you to be. That is, God has both re-created you, and He’s re-creating you, and often it’s the pit that He uses to train us.

In the pit...

“Grudges” become “gratitude.”

Jonah 2:8-9 “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!””

Jonah ended up in the belly of this fish because he loved his grudge against Nineveh more than he loved God. He preferred his prejudice to his mission. But, in the belly of that fish, his introspection takes him in another direction. No longer is he consumed with his hatred for Nineveh — though he has a long way to go as we’ll see soon enough. There’s a transformation of his inner person, his spirit, his attitude. That’s the difference between verse 8 and 9. Before he had forsaken the Lord for “vain idols.” Literally, “empty nothings.” For nothing, he had abandoned God’s “steadfast (hesed) love,” God’s proven kindness.

And, that’s what we do, isn’t it? We abandon God for “empty nothings”, moth food as Jesus calls it. We love video games and promiscuity more than him. We prefer an extra hour of our show to 15 minutes with him. Empty nothings. But, though Jonah had forsaken God, God had not forsaken Jonah. Instead, God is determined to save him! Oh salvation has nothing to do with Jonah, and everything to do with God! So, in retrospect he’s thankful that God didn’t quit on him when he quit on God.

Oh God has every reason to quit on us, doesn’t He? And, we have no reason to quit on him, do we? But, we quit, and He keeps loving. Will you let gratitude touch your bitter heart this morning? Will you let gratitude penetrate your prejudices? Will you let gratitude soften the wall that you’ve put up between you and everyone that you are so annoyed by? Stop rebelling, and start rejoicing!

It’s not just in Jonah’s spirit the change happens, but also in his willingness. I think that’s what’s meant in verse 9 when he vows to “pay.” He’s recommitting to the Lord. He’ll go now where the Lord would have him to go before. So, we see that...

“Judgement” becomes “mercy.”

Jonah 2:9-10 “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will 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.”

A fish is a strange way to save someone, isn’t it? And, what’s strange is that the fish is both an instrument of judgement and a means to salvation. Jonah isn’t taken by God from the sea to a beach. He’s taken from the sea to the fish. It’s a salvation, and it’s a judgement. Jonah had to learn that salvation was God’s to give in whatever way He pleases. Even in Nineveh. Like the fish, Jonah was a strange way to save them, wasn’t he? Jonah had judged them unfit for mercy, and yet, Jonah — an instrument of judgement— would be used by God as a means of their salvation. Salvation for Nineveh wasn’t Jonah’s decision; it was God’s decision to be carried out God’s way.

That is, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” In fact, do you know what the Hebrew word for “salvation” is here? “Yeshuah.” You know, the root word for the name Jesus. And, that’s where this story will find its fulfillment. A fish is a strange way to save someone. A prejudiced prophet is too. But, neither of them are nearly as strange as a cross. You see, a cross, like that fish and Jonah too, is an instrument of judgement that becomes a means of salvation. It’s at the cross where judgement becomes mercy. The question is: How long before you will accept it? How long before you will remember? How long will you have to stay in the pit?