The Song for Rock Bottom

Introduction

Rock bottom is a term used to describe the life of someone who has made horrible decisions and now their life is the perceived worst that it has ever been.

Rock bottom in a spiritual sense is the moment where the sins of a believer and the consequences of said sin intersect. They are the moment where you realize the damage you have wrought on yourself and others because of your sin.

In Christ, we can sing at Rock Bottom, because we have a great rescuer.

A funny thing happens as Jonah prays: Jonah starts the prayer describing his circumstances, but the more he prays, the more his prayer becomes about the Lord. Jonah moves from his circumstances to what he KNOWS about God.

You may be at the end of your rope. You may be living in mistakes and hurting and running from the Lord. Let’s trade that for what we know to be true about God this morning.

You know, God is not as scared of your rock bottom as you are. At the bottom, we lose our illusions of who we are, and we allow God to work in ways that we wouldn’t have otherwise allowed Him.

God sees Jonah. God hears Jonah. God has not forgotten or forsaken Jonah. God will redeem Jonah. God is using this moment for Jonah’s good. God will use this moment for the good of others through Jonah’s life.

Read Jonah 2

Jonah 2 ESV

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 your waves and your billows passed over me. 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 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. 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!” And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

Explanation

Jonah 2:1 “Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,”

There is nowhere that the Lord cannot hear you and will not hear you. There is no where you could be this morning that the Lord can’t meet you. You haven’t run out of chances. You haven’t sinned to grossly or terribly.

When you say so, you say less about your own capacity for sin and more about your lack of belief in his power to save sinners.

I read a story recently of a megachurch pastor who, being weighed down in the weight of the ministry, resigned, left his family, and moved to Nova Scotia where he worked as a logger. He was living in a metal trailer with a small heater to heat it. In the middle of the night one night, the heater went out - and the temperature was -20. This pastor God so mad that he kicked the heater, threw it out the window, and instantly started to curse God, “saying “I hate you.”

He laid down on the ground in the fetal position, and he couldn’t move or speak or even cry.

However, he heard crying and gasping. He knew instantly that the Lord had brought to his mind the agony of Christ on the cross.

I was too exhausted to cry. As I laid there, I heard crying, and heaving breaths, but they were not coming from me. Instead, in the bright darkness of faith, I heard Christ crying, and heaving away on the Cross. And then I knew, the blood was for me: for the Kevin who was the abandoner, the reckless wanderer, the blasphemer of heaven. And then the words rose up all around me: ‘Kevin, I am with you, and I am for you, and you will get through this. I promise you.’

The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms … You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. // Dane Ortlund

Jonah 2:2–3 “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 your waves and your billows passed over me.”

God HEARD Jonah.

Psalm 130:1–2“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!”

In the book of Genesis, due to a lot of sin, Hagar becomes pregnant with Abraham’s son, Ishmael. She was scared and crying out to the Lord, and God answered by sending an angel to comfort her and share of God’s promise to bless her little boy. Her response is to call God, El Roi, “the God who sees.”

Only a few pages further, we see that Hagar is cast out, and she and her little boy are going to starve of thirst in the desert.

God heart the cry of the boy. He sees and he hears.

God isn’t Facebook scrolling while talking to you. He isn’t watching TV and halfway nodding at you. No, the eyes of the God of the universe are trained on you this very moment desiring nothing but your good.

God is far more interested and involved in your good than you are.

He hasn’t missed a thing.

Jonah 2:4–6 “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 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.”

Jonah’s situations begin to change His mind. Sometimes, when the word, prayer, and continual communion does not change your heart, God uses other means.

Jonah has no misconception. The sailors did not do this to Jonah. The Lord did this to Jonah.

Jonah is the supreme example of the fact that sometimes God does something temporarily to you so that He can do something eternally in you.

Jonah’s rock bottom ultimately brought His obedience.

It is better to sing to the Lord from a fish than to run from the presence of the Lord with all the riches in the world.

Jonah isn’t in Sheol at this moment. He is in the belly of a fish. But Jonah realizes in this moment something that many of us never really think about: Jonah, without the power of God, is completely, irreversibly, irretrievably dead. Jonah, outside of divine intervention is completely dead.

What by many will be viewed as a punishment of Jonah is actually Jonah’s salvation.

The most unpleasant, or even agonizing, three days of Jonah’s life are actually Jonah’s salvation.

Do you know what happens to organic matter that spends three days in the digestive juices of a fish? There is no doubt that Jonah’s flesh was partly eaten off.

And yet, this situation brings Jonah the laser-focus clarity concerning his situation that we read in the next few verses. In fact, it is the most spiritual maturity and clarity that we get from Jonah in the whole book.

Jonah 2:7–8 “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.”

We have great clarity at rock bottom. We understand our sin for what it is, and God for who He is.

We will talk more next two weeks about the parallels of Jonah to the story of the prodigal sons. In chapters one and two, Jonah looks like the brother who ran from his father. In chapters three and four, we see the older brother in Jonah - refusing to go into the party and mad at the father for the salvation of the outcast.

In this text, we see the sudden realization of the goodness of God. The prodigal son was eating pig slop, and he realized that his father treated his servants better than he was being treated.

He realized that what he was eating was pig slop.

He knew that life was better with his father.

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.”

Jonah says one of the sweetest phrases in the Scriptures, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

Praise Jesus that salvation belongs to Him and not to us. Because, we would find a way to screw it up.

Jonah is singing, God if I could have lost my salvation, I would have - but you are a bigger and better God than I imagined.

Jonah repents and returns his heart to the Lord. Problem solved? Well, except that the worse of Jonah’s character bubbles up in the next few pages. If the book of Jonah ends with chapter three, we have a Hallmark movie. But we have that frustrating fourth chapter - where Jonah is a brat.

And the Lord in his grace - saved Him anyway.

Don’t you see. It’s all mercy. There is nothing else. And there will never be anything else.

APPLICATION:

We are hearing Jonah’s words from the most miserable moments of his life. He is literally living in the stomach acid of a large fish. But, every moment of this fish is a mercy of God towards Jonah.

God saved Jonah with the fish.

God met with Jonah in the fish.

God didn’t leave Jonah in the fish.

It is very hard for someone who has not hit rock bottom to fully grasp the grace of God.

I am not saying that you have to be addicted to drugs or caught in an affair or gambled away your mortgage to experience God in a powerful way.

However, until you hit the rock bottom of your rebellion against God, the grossness of your sin, and your absolute inability to do anything about it, Jesus’s love for you will seem paltry and small.

Tim Keller // “The usual place to learn the greatest secrets of God’s grace is at the bottom.”

Invitation

I know someOne else who everyone though was dead for three days. Three days of death before Jesus rose from the grave.

Luke 11:32 “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”