Amazing Grace
The Book of Jonah • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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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.
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.
THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD
THANKS BE TO GOD
INTRODUCTION
2016 was one of the hardest years of my life. It was a year that I was forced to see how wrapped up in myself I had become. I was growing in success in my career, but I was diminishing in all other areas of my life. As a husband, as a father, and as a human being. I was falling into dark places, and I had real trouble even noticing it.
But God, being rich in mercy, threw a great storm in my life that year.
In his sovereignty, he gave my wife the strength to divorce me, and ask me to move out of the house.
He gave my children curious minds, which came at me with hard questions that I did not have answers to.
And he sent some messengers, in the form of Arlington police officers who arrested me and then shared with me the gospel of Jesus.
This all happened by March of that year.
The rest of the year found me struggling with my identity as a result of that great storm.
I thought I knew who I was, but found out in a terribly painful way, that God was calling me to something more. In his grace, he took me to the bottom of myself that year. And as a result, He changed me from a proud persecutor to a humble child that needed to quit speaking my opinions, and start listening to his truth.
That was nine years ago. But it seems like a lifetime. Because God gave me a new life.
Scripture says in
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
That happened to me. I became a new creation. He moved me from lost to found. Blasphemer to worshipper. Proud to humble. Persecutor to Pastor. It was all in his sovereignty. It was all through his grace.
“Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”
It’s all grace. His grace is sufficient.
Anything that makes us turn our face from self and toward him is grace.
That’s what my great storm of 2016 was for me. Amazing grace.
TRANSITION
Looking at the story of Jonah, we are able to see God’s grace, his goodness and wisdom, through trials, not in spite of them.
The fish eating Jonah is a perfect example of this. None of us would want to be eaten by a fish. What a terrible and frightening experience. Sure Jonah was still alive after being thrown overboard, but he had no idea for how long.
And like we saw from my story of rebellion, often times, the more drastically we disobey God, the more radical our treatment needs to be.
Since God called Jonah he has been descending downward. Down to Joppa. Down into a ship. Down into the depths of the ship. And now finally down into the depths of the sea. But it was not until Jonah went all the way down, and was completely stripped of his self sufficiency, that deliverance was finally possible.
We see this same thing in stories throughout Scripture. Only when people reach the bottom of their own resources, when everything is falling apart around them, are they finally open to completely depend on God.
You never really realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
Jonah had to lose his life in order to find it. He had to descend all the way down before he could ascend.
The way up was first of all, down.
This is what is known as the J curve (Demonstrate).
TRANSITION
And it is not just being at the bottom that begins to change Jonah. There have been lots of people at the bottom, that never looked up, so they stayed there. But it is turning his face to God through prayer while he was at the bottom.
And at the very end of Jonah’s prayer he uses the Hebrew word Chesed (hay-said) which means “steadfast love” or “grace.”
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
He is not even realizing that this is what he has been doing. Forsaking his hope for the grace of God, by elevating the idols of comfort and nationality. He has been unable to witness God’s grace, because he was paying regard to vain idols.
We would be wise to ask what is grace?
Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It says that we are more sinful and flawed than we can ever admit or imagine, and that without God’s grace, we are condemned in our sin and deserving of death.
I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to look at myself as not that bad, which is why I often find God’s judgment and wrath offensive. I have family who is far from the Lord, and I struggle with the idea of them being condemned because they didn’t trust God.
But this is because I have been discipled by our western culture as much or more so than I have been discipled by the Word of God.
For example,
Our society tells us that if we feel bad about ourselves, then it is a self-esteem problem. We are putting too much shame and condemnation on our shoulders, so we need to shed it all by living our life in a way that makes us feel “fulfilled.” This is literally the plot of every Disney movie ever.
“It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I'm free
Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don't care what they're going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway”
Elsa is teaching us to live our life in a way that makes us fill fulfilled, no matter what others think.
We also live in an age of moral relativism, which simply means that what is morally right and wrong in a society is relative to our own personal beliefs. This is where we get the phrases like, “live your own truth,” and “you do you,” and “just do what makes you happy.”
The idea that we need the grace of God because we are desperate sinners is wildly offensive to our culture.
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.
Jonah however sees himself being thrown into the sea as a divine judgment from God. He realizes that he deserves this punishment for his disobedience.
You see,
without admitting that we are sinners, we can never receive God’s grace.
And not only do we need to confess our sin, but we need to understand that we are completely incapable of doing anything about our sin.
Again, our culture pushes against this. When something goes wrong, my first thought is “I can fix this.” Or I can “figure this out and get this done.” And in God’s mercy in grace, he has taught me time and again, that no you can’t. It is only by grace that you realize your need for me.
Jonah 2:5-6
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 realized that only God could save him from this bottomless pit that was barring him in. The same is true for us, we are all “barred” from God, unless he extends grace, unmerited favor, and we admit that we cannot save ourselves and need that grace.
“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed?”
Once we are able to confess our sin, and realize that we can do nothing about it, only then can we see how costly the salvation is that God provides. How precious his grace is.
Many of us have sung “Amazing Grace,” without deeply considering what this grace actually is.
The price that God himself had to pay to secure this grace for us, was that he might become human, and live a perfect life, in order to die a horrific death for his enemies.
Tim Keller says,
“God’s grace becomes wondrous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe and remind ourselves that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself.”
TRANSITION
Some people live their lives with too high a view of themselves.
God’s grace is not stunning because they feel like they don’t need it.
But His Grace allows us to be lost in wonder, love, and praise at the lengths and depths to which he has gone for us.
This explains why we usually don’t see the need for grace in the high points of our lives, but we experience the need for grace tremendously while we are at the bottom.
No human heart will hear you tell them that they are sinful. They will have to be shown, often through tough experiences. We will only believe in costly grace, when it is the only hope.
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 is when Jonah recognizes that he is at the roots of the mountains. That the bars have been closed upon him forever, that he is lost, condemned, and unable to unlock the doors of his prison, that God saves him.
He ends his prayer with the shout that “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
This is a summary of the entire Bible.
If someone is saved it is wholly God’s doing. It is not God saving you partly and you saving you partly.
God is sovereign. God saves us.
We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel.
That while we were still enemies of God, He died for us.
When Jonah proclaims that “Salvation Comes from Yahweh, the fish spits him on dry land.
Moving on quickly to chapter 3.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
It is hear in chapter three that we see the word of the Lord come to Jonah again, and this time Jonah responds. Jonah has come to terms that there is absolutely no getting away from the call of Yahweh. We would be wise to understand the same thing.
With that, he walks into the middle of the city, and claims that in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown. Jonah didn’t say that it might be, he said it will be.
That is something that we should be mindful of when we preach the gospel to people. I know I often try to soften the blow of the message. “Hey y’all, Jesus loves you, and you are invited to love him too, if you feel like it and it isn’t too inconvenient.” And most of the time their hearts receive it like, “Jesus loves me? Yeah I love me too.”
We do not need to change the gospel message, it is the power of salvation for all who believe. Speak that truth boldly.
The gospel is good news, because we are spiritually dead without it.
And with Jonah’s firm declaration of the word of God, the people believed and repented.
And not just a few of them repented, but the entirety of the Ninevite people believed and repented. Not only did the people repent, but the word says their animals repented and fasted as well.
They did all this in response to a five word sermon.
Jonah finally does what he is called to do and his ministry is an overwhelming success.
He experiences the grace of God. He turns his face to the father, and becomes a fearless preacher, as a result.
What a perfect ending.
But, as much as we think it should, the book of Jonah does not end in chapter 3.
LET’S PRAY.
