Jonah’s Breakthrough

Jonah chapter two. Last week we saw Jonah’s sin and idolatry that led him to hear God’s call to preach against the Ninevites, but instead he set sail a thousand miles in the opposite direction to Tarshish. Jonah was a prophet which basically entails one job: Say what God tells you to say. But, Jonah said no. He knew that God was compassionate and forgiving and Jonah would rather die than see God’s grace go to the Ninevites. A storm came onto the sea, the pagan sailors realized what was going on, and they threw Jonah overboard where he was then swallowed by a great fish.

I don’t know what it was like in the belly of the fish. As I said last week, I’m not going to try and explain how this could happen scientifically because it’s a miracle and the nature of a miracle is that you can’t explain it scientifically. I do, though, wonder what it was like in there. I imagine it was a tight space. Not like Pinocchio walking around inside the whale holding a lantern. But that’s not the important part.  

The important part is that before he went into the fish, Jonah was unwilling to do what God wanted him to. After this prayer, he was willing. Jonah is a completely different person after three days in the belly of the fish. His desires changed, his actions changed, his fears changed. So, what happened? Jonah had a breakthrough. A breakthrough that changed how he saw God, how he saw himself, and how he saw the world. And a breakthrough that is offered to each of us as well.

Now, there is a lot of debate on whether this breakthrough is his own salvation or deep transformation in a very dark time of life. Honestly, I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. And I think the beauty of this passage is that it speaks to both struggling Christians and those in dark times and to those who do not know Christ. And that means that this breakthrough has something for each of us today. So, what was his breakthrough? Jonah saw 1) The depth of his need, 2) the reach of God’s mercy, and 3) The evidence of God’s mercy.  

1. The depth of his need

It’s easy to read this chapter and misunderstand the depth of Jonah’s need. He was thrown into the ocean where waves were crashing over his head. That’s bad. Weeds were wrapped around his head. That sounds terrifying. And he began to sink down into the ocean. It’s hard to think of a more dire predicament. But, Jonah realized he had a deeper need even than that. And so do all of us.

In verse four Jonah says, “I am driven away from your sight.” So, it wasn’t just that Jonah had been cast into the sea, there is something even bigger happening. Whether Jonah is a struggling believer or not a believer at all, he’s clear that his main problem has something to do with God. Sinking into the abyss of the sea really takes on a double meaning. Yes, it’s literally true, but it’s also figuratively true. Jonah is experiencing waves of discipline at best and judgement at worst.

It’s easy to see our circumstances as our greatest problem, but God often uses our circumstances to show us that we have an even bigger problem. In the recovery world you hear the phrase ‘rock bottom’ a lot. In the most difficult addiction cases, someone just isn’t going to turn their life around until they hit their rock bottom. Sometimes someone thinks they have hit rock bottom, but then because of their own self-destructive decisions, they hit a new rock bottom. I’ve seen a lot of rock bottoms, but I have never seen one worse than Jonah. In the ocean in the belly of a fish.

My hope for my family and for all of you is that we don’t have to have this kind of rock bottom before we realize our greatest need: our sin. Remember the repetition we saw in chapter one with the word ‘down.’ Down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the sea, and now down into the roots of the mountains. Up and down are used in the Old Testament to mean good and bad. Up to heaven and God, down into sheol, hell, and judgement. It is Jonah’s sin that is bringing him down. And all of our sin will take us to the same place. Down into self-destructive decisions, down into isolation, and down into coping mechanisms that only reinforce our self-destructive decisions and isolation. It’s this downward spiral that, if left unchecked, will lead us all down into the abyss of God’s eternal wrath. Apart from God, there is only decent.

You see, sin isn’t the bad decisions we make, it’s why we make bad decisions. It’s the desire to be in control of our own lives rather than submit control of our lives to God. Jonah is just now realizing the depths of his need and it is a need that every one of us shares as well. This is why the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 3, n“None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” -Rom 3:10-12 The first step toward the breakthrough that Jonah has experienced is just seeing this and admitting it. We haven’t even lived up to our own standards, much less the perfect standard of God, and because he is a just God, that cannot be overlooked.

The first step is to admit that you don’t deserve it. We don’t deserve God’s love and that is of our own doing. And I’m more or less quoting my old pastor, JD Shaw, here, but how many of us are miserable because we constantly think, “I deserve better.”? How many marriages are torn apart because one spouse looks at the other and says, “I deserve better than you.”? How many businesses are torn apart because the partners or the supervisors or the employees look at one another and say, “I deserve better than this.”? How many politicians and preachers who often start out trying to do the right thing by serving their constituents or congregations over time begin to feel entitled because they’ve had a bit of success and they start to look around at the people they are supposed to serve and think, “I deserve more than what you’re capable of giving me.” Which is the path to becoming a narcissistic monster. And we don’t just do that with other people, we do it with God as well.

At our core, we think we deserve so much more than we do because we make ourselves the center of our universe. We put ourselves in the place of God. That’s sin. And do you know what keeps us from seeing and admitting this? Pride. There is a well documented story about The Duchess of Devonshire, a British aristocrat in the 1700’s who was actually an ancestor of Princess Diana. She was idolized by London’s high society, she threw extravagant parties, gambled away a ton of money, and used her beauty to get what she wanted.

Whenever moral or religious conversations would come up, she would change the topic as quickly as possible. In her preserved letters, you can see how irritated she was with ‘preachy company’ who ‘wish to make life all sermon and no song.” And she especially disliked ministers who would have the gall to suggest that her greatest problem was her own sin. She responded by saying, “I would sooner confess to boredom than to sin.” Which is saying something because her life was anything, but boring. But, later in life, she hit her own rock bottom and in 1802, about four years before she died, she wrote, “How we hated to hear of sin when we lived only for pleasure; yet sin, I now know, was all our company.” She finally admitted.

As a Christian, we should constantly be reminded of our inherent inability to deserve God’s love and do you know what that is called? Humility. A person humbled by the knowledge of their sin is more ready to receive God’s presence. Jonah knew he couldn’t swim his way out of this. He couldn’t save himself from the sea and he couldn’t save himself from his sin. God’s presence begins when self-preservation dies. That is what the Duchess realized, that is what Jonah realized, and that is what all of us must realize as well.

That’s the first step. Seeing the depth of our need. Then, we need to see the reach of God’s mercy.

1. The Reach of God’s Mercy

Things are bleak for Jonah and then this really important word shows up in verse six: Yet. Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. Why is this word so important? Because it shows that it wasn’t Jonah that rose himself up from the depth, but God who went down. This isn’t a story about Jonah pulling himself up by the bootstraps in a terrible situation. It actually isn’t even a story about Jonah. It’s a story about the grace of God. Many people think that grace is withheld by God until we repent. What they don’t realize is that it is God’s grace that creates repentance. It’s God's grace that allows us to repent for the first time and the one million times we will need to repent after that. God’s grace comes down to Jonah at the bottom of the sea. In the last verse of chapter one we see that it was God who ‘appoints’ the fish. God’s grace is already swimming beneath Jonah before he ever prayed this prayer.

I don’t know why this concept is so controversial in some circles because the Bible is so clear. It isn’t just illustrated here in Jonah, it’s all over the Bible. Here are just a few. John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” Romans 9:16 “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide…” Ephesians 2:8–9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Acts 13:48 “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”

So why does this matter? Some say this is a secondary doctrine or an academic exercise that has no bearing on the Christian life. I would argue that it has everything to do with the Christian life. Here are two words I want you to remember about God’s grace: undeserving and unobligated.

Think about a parent of a disobedient, ungrateful teenage child. I wouldn’t know what this is like because my teenagers are always obedient and always grateful:) But, in this hypothetical scenario, what do the parents do? They still do everything they can for the child. Is the child deserving of this? No. But the parents are still obligated. Sure, they love their child, but they still have a moral and legal obligation. So, we see undeserving, but not unobligated.

Now, imagine you have an awesome teacher. There are many awesome teachers in this church. And the kids all decide they want to buy you a nice gift. In that scenario, the students are not obligated, but the teacher is deserving.

But, what if you have a coworker who is just terrible. They gossip and slander. They don’t work as hard as you do, they cut corners to get ahead, and take credit for your work. But, then that coworker gets sick. So you decide to pick up their work so they can still get paid, you don’t take any credit for it, you bring the coworker meals at home, and you chip in some extra money for their medical expenses. That is both undeserved and unobligated.

It’s so hard for people (believers and unbelievers alike) to grasp God’s grace because we tend to only help when it is at least either deserved or obligated. And we bring that tendency to God. Some people feel like God is obligated because they don’t see the depth of their need. Others think they are too far gone. They have made so many bad decisions that they think they are so undeserving that God would never show them mercy. People tend to either have too low a view of their need or too low of a view of God’s love and commitment to them and that keeps them from the breakthrough of salvation. We need to see that we are the terrible coworker and God is loving us even though He is not obligated and we are not deserving.

In Ephesians 1:7, Paul says, qIn him we have rredemption sthrough his blood, tthe forgiveness of our trespasses,uaccording to the riches of his grace, - Eph 1:7 The riches of His grace. Just think about that. I have a pastor friend named Brian Lowe and I’m stealing his great illustration. Imagine that Elon Musk came here today. Elon is worth about $400 billion. Billion with a B. And he says to you, “I want to write you a check. How much?” Would you answer according to what you think you deserve? Would you answer according to what you think you need? Or would you answer according to his riches? I’d say, “Show off your riches here and write a big check. I know you got it. Change my life completely.”

God wrote a check of mercy to us, not according to His obligation or our merit, but according to His riches. Our need is great, but his grace is greater still. He is under no obligation to save us, but He does because He loves us. And we don’t deserve His love. He just loves us. And He loves us so much that Jesus came to show off the riches of His grace by living the life we never could…a life deserving of God’s love…He took on the wrath we deserve…and He gives us his righteousness so God the Father could look at us as if we are every bit as deserving as Jesus.

So, if we have enough morality, enough wisdom, enough spirituality, enough religious value to come to our senses and see the depth of our need, then that means it’s not 100% God’s grace. We may see that it’s not 100% us, but we have just enough to either be deserving of His mercy or for God to be obligated. Remember, again, Paul said, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” - Romans 9:16.

So back to the question. Why does this matter? If you are here and you are not a Christian, it matters because you are both undeserving and not too far gone. Tim Keller used to often say, “You are far worse than you think you are and you are more loved than you could ever imagine.” And if you are able to see it, it is because God has allowed you to. And if He has allowed you to, it is because He has set His love on you…and you can respond to that love today whether it’s the first time or the ten thousandth. When people ask me, “But how do I know if I can be saved?”I always say the answer is simple: Do you want to be? No one can genuinely ask that question and say yes to it without God’s grace reaching them first.

You can see Jonah’s eyes opening in verse eighth 8  hThose who pay regard to vain idols iforsake their hope of steadfast love. - Jonah 2:8 Do you remember Jonah’s main hangup? He had made his nation, Israel, an idol. He wanted to follow God as long as God gave him what he desired most. But now you can hear Jonah giving up that idol for something far greater: God’s steadfast love. Jonah hadn’t done anything to earn God’s grace, he just received it.

Other people will ask me, “Ok, I want God’s grace, but how can I know that I will find it?” Look again at verses four and seven. 4  cThen I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; dyet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ 7  When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, gand my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. - Jonah 2:4,7 Why is Jonah talking so much about the temple? Because the temple is God’s chosen meeting place with man. It’s not like the bottle a genie lives in. God is everywhere. We have already seen that Jonah cannot run away from God’s presence. But God has chosen a specific place to make His presence known.

In Jonah’s day, that place was the temple in Jerusalem. If you wanted to know your sins were forgiven, you went to the temple in Jerusalem. That’s where you made sacrifices for your sins. So, when Jonah said, “My prayer came to you, into your holy temple.” he’s expressing faith in God’s mercy. Jonah has fled from God’s presence, but he now longs for it. The temple is a symbol of Jonah going to God for grace.

And if Jonah can find mercy at the bottom of the sea in the belly of a fish in the Old Covenant, anyone can. The whole temple system in the Old Covenant is pointing toward a new temple: Jesus. He is the fullest manifestation of God’s presence dwelling with man. Jonah may be going down, down, down, but Jesus went down further. From heaven to the hell of God’s wrath on the cross to make the only necessary and acceptable sacrifice for us. And anyone who goes to Jesus and says, “I am a sinner. I want to be in control. I worship things other than you. You are under no obligation and I am not deserving, but would you still forgive me? Would you still save me from my sins and myself?” 100% of the time, God will do that. And when this happens, there will be evidence.

1. The Evidence of God’s Mercy

This point will have to be short, but look at verse ten. 10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. - Jonah 2:10 Kind of gross. Not like walking off a ship in a nice summery cover up. It feels undignified…and it is. It’s humbling. And that is the evidence of God’s mercy in our lives. A supernatural, Holy Spirit humility because we have seen the depth of our sin and the reaches of God’s grace. There’s no record of Jonah complaining that he was vomited onto the shore. Jonah is not just thankful to be alive, but thankful to be saved. And that is exactly what we hear Jonah saying in verse nine. 9  jBut I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. kSalvation belongs to the LORD!”- Jonah 2:9

This is a totally different Jonah! A Jonah who wants God more than anything else. And the fish vomiting Jonah onto the shore is a sort of recommissioning. The saved man has become the sent man. I have seen so many people receive God’s mercy, but their lives are as messy as being vomited onto the land, but it doesn’t matter. The breakthrough has happened. They are just happy to have God. And we, like Jonah, when we are saved are recommissioned. We are saved to be sent. But, we will look at that in the next chapter.

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