A Severe Mercy

Introduction

I don’t know about the rest of you, but there have been moments in my life where I thought, “Well, this is it. I’m done for. There is no way I can get out of this one.”

Now, those are stories for a later time, but know that there have been a few of those moments for me. Moments where I thought there was no escape and that my life was going to end.

Many of us have struggled with that, or even struggled with moments where we thought “great, my life is over.”

For adults it could be times when we can’t pay an important bill, or we lose a job. For teenagers it can be when your dad embarrasses you in front of your friends, or you do something embarrassing in front of the girl or boy you like.

Now, Jonah isn’t so much worried about that here, but he did just experience a pretty devastating event.

Last week we worked through Jonah 1 and saw how Jonah’s life as a prophet was all about what was said and not what was done. We even discovered that the pagan sailors were quicker to trust God than Jonah was!

After turning away from God, running from God’s call, going deeper and deeper into despair, the consequences of Jonah’s sins catch up to him. The sailors throw him overboard, and as the water began sucking him down deeper and deeper he’s eaten by a fish. This was Jonah’s “oh no” moment.

But, it’s right in this “oh no” moment, this time of being at the lowest of the low that Jonah meets God.

Working Through Jonah 2

Now, before we work through Jonah 2, it’s important to understand a few things.

First, there are two schools of thought regarding the book of Jonah. Both of these schools of thought are backed by various Evangelical scholars.

Some scholars believe that Jonah is a historical narrative. That means that this all happened literally to a historical figure named Jonah.

The other school of thought says that the author of Jonah expects us to see this story as a parable, taking a real historical figure and placing them in a parable setting.

Now, I’m not here to tell you which school of thought is right or wrong, that’s for you to decide. But, I am here to tell you that understanding the context of Scripture is incredibly important for understanding and truly knowing God’s Word.

If we forsake context we could take any passage of Scripture and make it support and forbid whatever we would like. When we do that we are not only doing a disservice to God, but we are negligently wielding the Sword of Truth, God’s Word, and harming people.

For those of you who shoot firearms, would you take someone to a range who has never been before, who has never shot a gun, hand them your pistol and say “have at it” without any proper instruction? Of course not! We must wield God’s Word carefully and with understanding.

So, what sort of book is this? Well, Jonah was a prophet, so this is a prophecy. But, what’s the point of a prophecy?

Well, every prophecy functions in a similar fashion. The prophets, and their prophecies, accuse the people of Israel of their sins and faithlessness and they warn that if the people of Israel does not turn back to God that they will suffer consequences. But, the prophets always have a showing of God’s commitment to His promises to His people. No matter the situation, God is there with mercy.

Now, in Jonah 2 we find Jonah at the very most bottom. He’s gotten here in the belly of the fish because of his own decisions. But, sometimes we end up at the bottom due to the decisions and actions fo other people. How do we act when this happens to us, whether due to our own decisions or the decisions of others?

As we read through Jonah 2 and see what he did, examine your lives. Think about your current situation, your life, and your relationship with God. Let’s dive into the belly.

Jonah 2 NRSV

1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 3 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. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’ 5 The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head 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. 7 As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!” 10 Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

Now that we have read through Jonah’s prayer let’s look at a few things.

Jonah is in the belly of this fish and he decides to cry out to God. He says that while he cried out to God, God heard his voice.

The hardship that Jonah is facing causes him to cry out to God. Yet, despite the hardship, Jonah recognizes that God is listening. That’s something that we often struggle with, isn’t it. We deal with chaos and anguish and we tend to think, “God, why have you forsaken me?” We feel abandoned, lost… but Jonah draws to the opposite conclusion. In fact, it’s in this moment where Jonah can go no lower that he encounters God the most so far.

Now, in v.3 we read a few interesting things. Things that may make us feel a bit uncomfortable after we talk about it. In v.3 we read

Jonah 2:3 NRSV

3 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.

In v.15 of Jonah 1, who throws Jonah into the sea? Well, according to Jonah, it’s God who cast him into the deep.

This makes us feel uncomfortable because we think God is this fairy god parent who makes our lives nice and comfortable and happy, yet Jonah, God’s own prophet, shows that God doesn’t do that.

Yes, it’s Jonah’s fault that he’s in this situation. And, sometimes it’s because of other people that we are in situations like Jonah, and yes, sometimes it is God who brings us into hardship.

But, what we experience in Jonah is God’s severe mercy. A mercy that comes despite what we did or what others did to us. God may have put Jonah in this hardship, but he isn’t alone. God is with him.

This is such a hard message for us to hear sometimes because we have this idea that we invited God into our lives to give us a smooth passage to Heaven with comfort and safety along the way. But, stories like this, like Abrahama and Isaac, they counter this idea. If your whole idea is that God’s greatest priority is to make you safe, comfortable, happy, then you truly don’t understand God.

God’s priority with you, with me, with Jonah, with His people is to call them to Himself and mold and shape their character so that they come to know the truth of who they are as creatures made in the image of the Creator. To discover that they are in fact NOT God. That’s God’s priority, not our happiness.

But, in v.4, Jonah seems to realize that he put himself there. He got what he asked for. He wanted to get as far away from Tarshish as possible, and here he is. Yet, despite this, Jonah turns back to the God who he was running from. Jonah’s life was in chaos, was in ruins. He was so close to death, and that’s when he turned to God.

There are people in our lives who feel that they don’t need God. They live their lives how they want, being the captains of their own ships. But, we will all realize one day that getting what we wanted when we wanted and how we wanted will not give us life. In fact, there are people in this world who cannot be convinced of their need for Jesus, and there isn’t a thing we can do to make them think otherwise. All we can do is be there and present when their ship does in fact go down.

In verses 5-6 we are given these amazing images. Waters close over Jonah, he’s surrounded by nothing but the deep vastness of the sea. Weeds from below grab onto his head and pull him to the roots of the mountain. This doesn’t sound very inviting, does it? Jonah, at this moment, realizes that the only thing he has going for him is that God has not given up on him. That’s why he says, “you brought up my life from the Pit.”

I think it’s safe to say that if any of us were in this situation today we would feel lost, abandoned, maybe even forgotten about by God. There are so many moments in life where we sink deeper and deeper into the vastness, feeling like we are further away from the presence of God. Yet, Jonah does something pretty amazing here in v.7. He remembers God.

He’s still in the belly of the fish, still sitting in the disgusting digestive juices of this giant fish, yet he remembers God. He turns to God’s presence in the midst of this certain time of death. Jonah discovers that it’s his own fault that he’s there, and discovers that his life doesn’t belong to him, but to God.

He comes to the conclusion that his circumstance is not an indicator of how God feels about him, but a moment where he sees that no matter what happened in his life, his life was actually in God’s hands.

In v.8-10 we see Jonah admitting that he set his eyes on idols more than God, that despite this God still remembered him. And we find Jonah expressing pure and ecstatic praise here, all while still in his hardship. And, in that moment, he’s delivered.

How many of us today are living lives like Jonah? How many of us have heard a call from God and chosen to run? How many of us have tried to be the captains of our own ships and seen the destructive chaos of the storm? How many of us, at this very moment, feel as though God has completely abandoned us and left us to sink to the bottom of our chaotic messes?

Like many of you, and many others, I initially ran away from my call. I felt God call me into pastoral ministry when I was about 16 years old. I was so excited about it, but I let the world convince me that it was a bad idea. I heard rebuttals from people saying “you’ll never make enough money to support a family” or even “why waste your time when God isn’t real.”

I listened to those voices, and the doubts in my head, and I, like Jonah, ran from God. I found myself entering a place of spiritual slumber throughout college. I decided that I was going to become a doctor and I began the Pre-Med field of study. Only a few semesters into it I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that.

I was sad, lonely, depressed, failing classes, drinking too much, finding myself in awful situations. Yet, I was the one interning for a church. I was the one leading Bible studies and refusing to work on Sundays at Sheetz so I could observe the Sabbath. I was like Jonah. All talk, but no walk.

It was in the moments of deep devastation that I finally began to awaken from my spiritual slumber and notice the severe mercy of God. A severe mercy that I did not deserve.

What I deserved, and what we all deserved, was the consequences of our sins. We are told that the wages of sin is what? Death! That’s what we all deserved.

Yet, despite that, Christ took on the cross for us. Despite what we deserved, despite our spiritual slumber, Christ shouted out “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Every single day we experience the severe mercy of God, but especially so on the day in which our Lord hung from the cross.

This prayer of Jonah that we’ve read over today shows us that no matter where we are in life, no matter the circumstance, or trial, or hardship, God is always dealign with us with a severe mercy through it all. It calls for us to trust that God has the best for us in mind, despite how else it may appear or feel.

Now, I don’t know where you are all today as far as your hardships go. I don’t know what you are suffering with, what you are enduring, or what trials you face when you walk out of these doors today, but I will always be here to listen to you, to cry with you, to pray with you, but most importantly to remind you of God’s severe love and mercy.

If you find yourself this morning being in a spiritual slumber, or dealing with a difficult hardship, needing God’s severe mercy, I offer myself to you as a pastor who is eager to pray with you. Let’s make sure, from this point forward, that this church is full of people who are not spiritual asleep anymore, but is a church filled with disciples who recognize and thank God for His severe mercy!

Amen