The Jonah Complex: Week Two

Preamble

Good morning, everyone!

Introduce self

Broad River Church is one church in your location.‌

Can we take a moment to thank God for all of those that are here,

and gathered across town at our Silvermine campus right now,

and for the crowds that will be joining us here, online, and in Silvermine at 11:00 AM?

Come on, let’s give God praise!

Tickets are on sale now for this summer’s Student Retreat!

Taking place August 10th through the 14th,

in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania,

with an Early-Bird Discount available until July 11.

Every year this is a life-changing event,

and we are so excited for what God is going to do this year.

So if you are in middle school or high school,

or if you are the parent of a student,

and you would like more info:

Just write Student Retreat on your connect card and we will get you all the info you need.

Today is Baptism Sunday, y’all!

I am always thankful to be in God’s house,

but Baptism Sunday is whole other level!

Baptism Sunday is:

when we join in a thousands-year old tradition of people making a public declaration of their faith in Jesus.

If you’ve made a decision to follow Jesus, baptism is your next step.

You can be baptized today.

If you haven’t been baptized since you became a believer, today is your day!

We have the clothes, the towels, the flip-flops—

so even if you didn’t come planning on being baptized today—

we’re ready to help you take that next step.

Introduction

Today is week two of a series called The Jonah Complex.

If you missed last week,

I want to give you a quick recap of what we learned,

because it will set us up for where we are going today.

You can catch the whole message on your Podcast app of choice.

We’re learning about a prophet named Jonah—this messenger of God—who gets called by God to go preach to a city called Nineveh.

But he runs.

Instead of traveling 460 miles northeast to Ninevah,

He goes 70 miles southwest to Joppa,

and then charters a boat to take him another 2,500 west to Tarshish.

If you’re anything like me, you’re fuzzy on your ancient Near East geography.

So let me help y’all out by putting this in Modern, USA terms.

The places I’m going to mention are roughly the same distances and the same directions.

Let’s pretend that Jonah lives in Norwalk and gets called to Bar Harbor, Maine.

But instead he heads to the Newark airport and charters a plane to San Diego.

That’s what Jonah did, friends.

Jonah is perhaps the most transparent character in the whole Old Testament.

We can see right through him.

And I think, most of us, don’t like what we see.

Jonah has a holier-than-thou attitude.

He doesn’t want the folks in Nineveh—the capital of Assyria—to be saved.

Assyria is Israel’s great enemy and they are downright wicked.

They’re awful.

They make furniture out of human skin.

They construct pyramids out of human skulls.

Jonah thinks the Ninevites are beyond redemption.

Jonah is a bigot.

He wants to keep God to himself,

and to the Israelites,

While he looks down his nose at the Assyrians.

Jonah is an awful person.

There’s that word again: awful.

Awful city.

Awful prophet.

Jonah didn’t like the awful things the Assyrians had done.

We don’t like the awful things we see in Jonah.

But no one is beyond redemption.

God’s grace is for everyone.

It’s for me, it’s for you.

It’s for awful cities and awful prophets.

And that’s why God, in his love, steps in with a Divine Interruption.

He sends a storm to Jonah’s ship.

God pursues Jonah’s heart and corrects his course.

To save the ship, Jonah has the crew throw him overboard.

And that’s where we pick up with Jonah in Chapter One, Verse 17.

Let’s pray.

Prayer

We’re starting with Jonah 1:17 today.

And we’re going to walk through 11 verses together.

You can follow along in your Bible,

on your device,

or on page 774 in the Bibles that we’ve provided.

Jonah 1:17

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.

Leave that up there.

If you grew up hearing this story in Sunday School,

I’m afraid that you likely have an image of a cute, cartoon whale,

gently cradling Jonah,

and depositing him back in the middle of God’s will.

But no, this is real life.

Jonah just got thrown off a boat and into the middle of the Mediterranean sea.

He just sacrificed himself to save the crew of the ship.

His life is flashing before his eyes.

He’s as good as dead.

But something miraculous happens.

Did this really happen?

I’m going to say yes, because all scripture is breathed out by God and every word of God proves true.

But we need to address this great fish, mostly for the scientists and the skeptics in the room.

How could this have happened?

There are two possibilities:

God cooked up a creature for this very moment.

That would be miraculous.

Alternatively, God could have sent a sperm whale in Jonah’s direction.

They have an esophagus big enough to get a human down,

and a stomach large enough to contain one.

So there you have your still miraculous, but perhaps easier-to-swallow explanation.

And I assure you that pun was intended.

But let’s not distract ourselves with the great fish.

What we need to understand about Jonah is how he represents God’s people.

If you read through the Old Testament you’re going to see—time and time again—

these prophets,

these messengers of God,

and they’re all saying the same thing:

God gave you a land to live in.

You have rebelled.

You stopped loving God.

You’re worshipping idols now.

So God is going to send a foreign king to destroy you.

And you’re going to be sent into exile.

But God will redeem and restore you.

That’s what the prophets say,

but this time the story is about the prophet.

Jonah did the same thing.

Let’s repaint the scene:

Jonah has rebelled.

He’s running from God.

Down to Joppa.

Down into the ship.

Down to sleep.

And a very short time later it all catches up with him.

His sin, his selfishness, it all catches up with him.

Down into a storm.

Down into the water.

Down into the belly of the whale.

And if it was a sperm whale, he’s now down at the bottom of the ocean floor, where science tells us they like to hang out.

He can’t go any lower than this.

This isn’t the cartoon from Sunday School.

It’s dark.

It’s wet.

It’s almost 100 degrees inside.

This is the Uber ride from hell!

This is a season of hardship for Jonah.

Of suffering.

Of pain.

Of confusion.

And this is a mess of his own making.

So what do you do when you’re in there?

How do you process through it?

Jonah 2:1

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,

Jonah prays.

This is important for everyone here.

I think this will help you even if:

you’re not sure about Jesus,

or the Bible,

or being eaten by whales.

And by the way, if that’s you:

I am so glad you are here.

This is a place you can belong even before you believe!

But this is big for everyone.

I think everybody prays sometimes.

It just sounds different for some folks .

In fact, there’s a Pew Research study that shows that:

21% of people who self-identify as agnostic or atheist,

still pray at least once a month.

So let’s check this prayer out.

Jonah is here because of his own decisions;

a mess of his own making.

But sometimes we end up in places like this,

and we didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Just tragedy and things beyond our control.

But still, it’s dark.

What do you do?

Check out this prayer,

and while we do think about your own story.

Jonah 2:2

Jonah 2:2 (ESV)

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.

Leave that up there.

Sheol is what the ancient Israelites called the underworld.

They saw it as a physical place that could only be reached through death.

Many English translations of the Bible render this word as:

“Death”

or “Grave.”

So what Jonah is saying is,

“...out of the belly of death—the belly of the grave—I cried, and you heard me.”

Jonah cries out.

He raises his voice.

He shouts.

He yells out.

Have you been there?

Has there ever been a time when the only thing you could do was cry out for help?

I remember a time, about 20 years ago...

It was sometime after nine o’clock at night.

I had just gotten off of work.

I’m driving home.

I’m on I-75 heading north.

And it’s raining.

Not one of these wimpy Northeastern rains.

A real Florida thunderstorm.

So picture it:

We’ve got heavy rain

Loud thunder

Flashes of lightning

I’m driving my ‘88 Toyota Camry with my fake spinner hubcaps.

I go to move from the slow lane to the middle lane.

My car hydroplanes.

It spins 180 degrees.

And there, maybe 50 yards behind me,

now in front of me,

is a semi-truck.

And I cried out,

“Help me, Jesus!”

I cried out.

Jonah cries out, and notice what he says about God:

You answered me.

You heard my voice.

When you’re feeling trapped,

or confused,

or overwhelmed,

and things are falling apart,

In those moments, you might think that God isn’t listening.

When, like Jonah,

you’ve rebelled,

and you’re in a tight spot of your own making,

It’s easy to think that you’ve:

blown it so badly,

and grieved God so deeply,

that he won’t listen to anything you’re saying.

Why pray?

If I were God, I wouldn’t listen to me either!

But Jonah comes to the opposite conclusion.

Are you seeing this?

I can’t go any lower,

but you’re right here with me, Lord.

Jonah concludes that at the darkest moment, God is closest.

Why?

Let’s read on.

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.

Check this out.

This experience is making Jonah more aware of God’s presence.

Whose waves are crashing over him?

Your waves and billows pass over me.

Who is this “your” Jonah is talking about?

Do you remember who threw him into the water?

The sailors on the ship said,

“Peace out, boy scout,”

and lobbed Jonah into the sea!

But who does he say cast him into the deep?

God.

Jonah sees all that’s going on and he sees God’s hand in it.

But hang on there a second there, Jonah!

Who rebelled against God?

You did.

Who chartered the boat to Tarshish?

You did.

Who told the sailors to throw you into the sea and save themselves?

You did.

How is any of this on God?

What Jonah is realizing is:

that no matter how he got where he is,

and who was responsible for it,

God is not surprised.

God’s not biting his fingernails and fretting,

“Oh no, Jonah really loused this one up. How’s this going to work out for him?”

Write this down today, friends:

Even though God might not be the author of the circumstances, He’s still going to work things out for his purposes and for our best.

Romans 8:28 (NLT)

28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

God is going to redeem the situation that Jonah is in.

He’s not disoriented or discouraged by Jonah’s mess.

He’s not disoriented or discouraged by our mess.

He is present with Jonah in his mess.

He is present with you and me in ours.

Almost drowned, swallowed by a fish.

But you can still see God’s fingerprints all over it.

This doesn’t mean that God is responsible for Jonah’s decisions.

But now that Jonah has made those decisions,

God is present with Him.

I think a lot of us assume that when we invite God into our lives, we get a smooth ride to our chosen destination.

Throw in some comfort,

and security,

and safety along the way,

and we’re all good, God.

But the scriptures—the actual scriptures—stories like this one:

and stories like Job,

and stories like Joseph,

and stories like Abraham and Issac,

challenge this notion.

They show us that God’s greatest priority isn’t to make us comfortable.

God’s greatest priority is for people to know Him.

And once they know Him:

He wants to mold and shape their character

so they can understand the truth of who they are as creatures of their creator.

We’re really bad at captaining our own ship.

When our fate is in our own hands, things don’t often go well.

We always make the ship go in the direction of what we think is best for us right now,

many times at the expense of others,

and often at the expense of ourselves.

Sometimes God has to deal with us in ways that bring us to the end of ourselves.

And we might not like it at all.

Sometimes we even hate him for it.

But what’s amazing is that we find out that it could be the best thing that ever happened to us.

We discover the truth of how broken and selfish we are,

and we realize that we’ve been taking our life for granted,

and just thinking that we can live our life any way we want.

We get to the kind of place that Jonah is in,

and realize that the only reason we exist is because someone else made us.

We learn that we’re not the captain of our own ship,

and come to a place of dependance and humility.

The journey to get there—to the end of ourselves—is unique for each of us.

Last week, someone at our Silvermine campus said to me:

“Mike, I’m in my mid-70s. I spent my whole life ignoring God. Why now did he choose for me to know him when I’m close to dying?”

I can’t answer that.

But the Bible is clear that there is no sin, no place, no person that is outside God’s reach.

It doesn’t what you’ve done,

who you are,

or how old you are.

He wants to know you.

And he’ll use your journey to shape you in a deep way.

Sometimes that means getting tossed overboard and being eaten by a whale.

Jonah is processing through that.

Verse 3 he cries out.

Verse 4, he sees his need.

Jonah 2:4

Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’

Jonah thought he knew what he wanted.

“I didn’t want to preach to Nineveh. So I said, check ya later, Lord! And I ran. I booked smooth passage to Tarshish.”

But then he sees where that has landed him.

He can’t go any lower.

And watch this, as he realizes:

“I thought God gave me what I wanted. But it was horrible. I thought I was banished.”

Jonah’s priorities are shifting here.

The idea of going to Tarshish,

and living a life autonomous from God,

running from his calling,

now seem like a really bad idea.

Do you see how Jonah turns around?

That’s what the word repent means by the way.

Jonah repents.

He turns around to look at God’s presence.

Did you catch that?

He says, “I shall again look upon your holy temple.”

He was so set on his plans,

but then he sees where the running is taking him.

He realizes that the one he is running way from is the one trying to give him life in the first place

Jonah realizes that it was the God of Mercy that’s been chasing him all this time.

Someone needs to hear that today!

The God of Mercy has been chasing after you your whole life!

Someone else needs to hear this:

There are people in your life that think they have no need for God.

They’re doing just fine captioning their own ship.

For now.

They don’t want anything to do with Jesus.

You can’t convince them.

But when their ship goes down, you can be the presence of Jesus in their life.

You can be his hands and feet.

God hasn’t given up on them.

Neither should you.

And in their moment of need, you may be exactly who He uses to demonstrate his love.

Jonah has realized that he needs God.

Let’s read on.

Jonah 2:5-6a

The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head

at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; .

Well this is sounding downright bleak again.

I mean, he’s got a turban made out of seaweed now, so that’s kinda cool.

But otherwise this feels pretty hopeless, right?

But then there’s this shift here at the end of verse 6.

Check it:

Jonah 2:6b

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

Sometimes, the worst experience of your life and the best experience of your life can coalesce.

That’s what’s happening here for Jonah.

Jonah is realizing that the only thing he has going for him is that God is committed to him.

“God, you’re the only thing I have going for me because you are committed to redeeming my life from something that I can’t see my way out of.”

It’s a moment of discovering that you’re just a frail human who has a creator that is merciful, and faithful, and full of grace toward you.

Jonah has turned a corner.

Jonah 2:7-9

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 I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Do you feel the gratitude that is emerging here in the darkness?

Jonah’s at the brink of death and all of a sudden he has this very positive experience.

He remembers the Lord.

When he was on the way to Tarshish, he was ignoring all the good things that God had done for him.

But now he’s remembering all the amazing ways God has shown him favor, and mercy, and grace.

Don’t miss this, ya’ll.

Jonah is throwin’ down and having church!

Does anyone remember where he is at this point?

Still inside the dag-blame whale!

He hasn’t left.

He’s still in the belly, having this turn to gratefulness.

Jonah had no idea what will happen next,

But he knows that salvation belongs to the Lord!

We have a tendency to look at what’s happening in our life

and allow those details to tell us what God thinks about us.

But what Jonah is seeing, what I want you to see,

and if there’s only one thing you remember from today’s message, it’s this:

Write this down:

My circumstances are not a reliable indicator of God’s commitment to me.

Someone here today needs to get this at the deepest level.

When you discover the truth of who you are:

That the only thing that you have going for you is God’s merciful faithfulness toward you.

That he’ll redeem you even out of the very mess that you made.

Or the mess that someone else made.

When you realize that your life doesn’t belong to you in the first place.

Everything changes.

Child of God, hear this today.

When Jonah repented, what did he do?

He turned back to the hotspot of God’s presence at that time: the temple.

He said, “I shall again look upon your holy temple.”

As Christ followers, where is the hotspot of God’s presence?

Where am I turning back to when I remember who God is to me?

Jesus.

As Christians, there is only one place that we look to determine how God feels about us:

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus!

Here’s what you have going for you:

The life that Jesus lived for you.

The death that he died for you,

and your sin,

your selfishness.

The resurrection of Jesus that offers you new life.

That’s what you’ve got going for you.

That’s it.

And that’s all you need!

When you get to this place in your life,

Like Jonah has here,

Then it doesn’t matter what happens in your life.

You say, “I know who I belong to!”

I know where my identity is grounded!

No matter what happens, my life is right there in his hands!

Remember the story of Paul and Silas in Acts 16?

Dudes are chained up in prison and could be executed at a moment’s notice.

What are they doing?

Singing praises to God.

Are they insane?

No, they’ve never been thinking more clearly.

Same as Jonah.

He’s in a place of worship now.

Jonah 2:10

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

If you had money on hearing “vomit” in church today, you win!

The great fish suddenly feels the urge to regurge,

and Jonah is deposited on the beach.

Three days. Three nights.

Not sure where he was going.

But knowing that God was with him.

The whale was moving.

God was moving.

Where was it going?

It was swimming from somewhere out in the middle of the Mediterranean,

off the coast of Spain,

back to the place where God had wanted Jonah all along.

Jonah didn’t have a clue that anything was happening until suddenly he was on the beaches of Assyria.

The same is true for you.

If you call out to the Lord and say, “Lord, I need You,”

you’ll find that eventually you’ll be right where you were supposed to be.

Nothing can separate you from Him and His purpose.

Dismiss to Baptisms

I’m going to close in prayer, but before I do:

If you haven’t been baptized since you became a believer,

and you’d like to today,

Our team will meet you at the door and get you ready.

Closing Prayer

Father, I pray that a renewed understanding of your:

unconditional love,

never-ending mercy,

and unfathomable grace,

would penetrate every heart and mind here today.

Help us to turn to you;

to count on you.

In Jesus’ name.

Salvation Invitation

‌Some of you here today might say,

“Mike, today I’m ready to follow Jesus,”

or “I used to follow Jesus, but I’ve been doing life my own way for a while now and I want to come back to God today.”

If that’s you, today, with every head bowed and every eye closed, I want to invite you to raise your hand so I know with whom I’m praying.

Salvation Prayer

If you raised your hand, I want to invite you to repeat this simple prayer with me.

Broad River Church, no one prays alone here.

Join with us:

‌

Lord Jesus,

Thank you for coming for me.

Thank you for rescuing me.

Thank you for dying for me.

Thanks you for your resurrection.

And the new life I have in you.

Now I give you my heart.

Forgive me of my sins.

I want to follow you.

All of my days.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.