Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro*

We are beginning 2011 in the belly of a fish.

Jonah, God’s prophet, ran away when God told him to preach to his enemies.

This is the equivalent of a Jew during WWII going to Berlin to talk to Hitler to tell him that God loved him.

It would be unheard of!

So Jonah ran.

God said to go east and he went west, to Tarshish, which was the furthest west known to man in Jonah’s day.

But Jonah started to realize that no matter where he ran to, God was already there, pursuing him.

We can run from God, but we cannot outrun God.

So God sends a storm as an intervention and not a punishment, to get to Jonah, who was sleeping in the darkest corner of the bottom of the ship.

God tries to speak through the captain to wake him up, which we saw was not just a physical wake-up call for Jonah, but a spiritual one as well.

God then tries to get to Jonah by speaking through the sailors.

Jonah still does not repent or own up to who he is and what he’s had done.

Finally Jonah says, “I would rather die than obey God.”

As a result, the sailors are forced to hurl Jonah overboard and the storm finally stops.

You know, when you run from God, you can end up in the strangest of places!

And in our story, everything has happened so fast.

That is also God’s mercy in Jonah’s life.

For some of us, one small choice to run from God in one area at age 20 and sometimes it takes 40 years before we realize how far we have drifted and how deep we have plunged.

That is a scarier and harder place to be.

The consequences could be frightening, but no matter what, we will see that God still meets us in the darkest of places.

Jonah’s been running and God finally slows him down.

Not that Jonah was outrunning God as we saw last time, but God needed to get Jonah’s attention.

God didn’t need Jonah, but Jonah needed God and God is relentless in His pursuit to get Jonah’s attention.

One of the things that I always feel, especially in the holiday season, is that everything is calling for my attention to which I surrender to, except God’s attention.

Imagine if it was your birthday party, but no one came to tell you happy birthday, acknowledged you or give you a gift, but gave gifts to each other at the party?

I feel like that happens every Christmas.

I know God is always calling me to slow me down to turn to Him; to give Him my attention.

But sometimes you lose yourself in all of it and do not know how to get back to what’s important.

What do you do when you have made a mess of life and don’t know where or how to get yourself to get back to where God wants you to be?

Unfortunately the pattern in life is always the same.

We make bad choices and as a result, we eventually get broken down.

You can only go for so long with the gas light on.

And once we sputter and stop, after the breakdown, then we cry out to God.

And from that breakdown, if we let Him, God then in His mercy causes a breakthrough.

Now one of the things I have learned over the years is not to despair over these breakdowns, but to rejoice in the fact that our breakdowns are times of opportunity to know the depth of our need and sin, but to also know and experience the depth of His love and grace as well (which we will discuss later).

Obviously I am not preaching the sin more to experience grace more (Rom.

6:1) doctrine, but I am saying that God does not waste anything and we can always learn and grow more and more, even with our failures.

And sometimes we may receive a better grasp of truths we have known for so long during those times.

And that is what has happened to Jonah.

Jonah knew some things in his head and preached it to others, but now Jonah’s made a mess of himself and has no where to look, except upward.

Yet God will meet Jonah where he was and take him into another level with him.

It is this process I want to look at today, that is, from breakdowns to breakthroughs.

How does God meet us and take us from the messes we have often made to the places He wants us to be?

Well, first of all:

*I.

Our breakdowns help us to lay down (Jon.

1:17)*

Look at Jon. 1:17.

We left Jonah with his choice to die.

And again we have a “And the Lord…” phrase.

Again, I really don’t know how many times there is an “And the Lord” interjection in the story of our lives.

All of us would not be here if that never happened!

The Lord is always intervening in our lives.

We never want to ask God to leave us alone.

That would truly be punishment!

Here we see that God “appointed” a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

We get some clues in Jonah 2 that Jonah, after being thrown overboard, had sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean, got tangled up in seaweed when God sent His rescue vessel to swallow Jonah up.

Again this is intervention, not punishment.

There is no indication that the sailors saw this fish and so they must have assumed that Jonah was dead.

Notice the word “appointed” in Jon.

4:6-8.

In this story, the fish, the plant, the worm and the wind are all appointed by God and they obey, almost rebuking God’s prophet who’s good at disobeying.

This verb is used with the meaning “special assignment” or “ordain.”[1]

God calls this large fish to serve Him at the appointed time and the appointed place.

God is sovereign over every detail of every large fish of life that swallows us up.

I don’t want to get into what kind of fish; whether it was a sperm whale or a whale shark or how even Jonah survived within it.

God made it all, so He can do the miraculous and create an animal to swallow a man alive and keep its gastric juices from digesting him!

I’m sure we have all eaten bad fish, but what do you call a fish eats a bad prophet?

I wonder if the fish got sick?

It might have since the text says in Jon.

2:10 that he “vomited” Jonah up! Anyway, Jonah’s choices end up in a place where he is powerless and helpless.

And that is the best place to be with the Lord!

R. T. Kendall says it well: “The belly of the fish is not a happy place to live, but it is a good place to learn.”[2]

It’s a good place to learn because there is not a lot to do inside of a fish and nowhere to run.

But it is certainly not a resort.

Bob Deffinbaugh notes, “As Jonah regained consciousness, imagine the horror of his first sensations: the feel of the stomach lining of the fish pressing about him; irritation of the acidic stomach juices of the fish beginning to bleach his skin; the foul smell of the place; the passing-through of the normal diet of the fish; the darkness of this place.”[3]

Why a fish you think?

Rosemary Nixon in her excellent commentary postulates the possibility of God sending a bird to sweep down and transport Jonah to dry land.

Or a heavenly chariot like Elijah had to rescue him.

Nixon believes the fish is the best vehicle to use here as she observes, “The Lord does not usually protect us from the consequences of our own choices and actions.

In his faithfulness and graciousness towards us, Yahweh comes with us into the consequences of our choices in order to save us there.

Jonah had chosen the sea as his escape route; it is there that the Lord awaits him.”[4]

God does not take us out of our messes, but meets us in them.

And after we have made a mess of the situation and we take our hands off, while we finally break down, we can then lay down.

This is the lowest place Jonah can go.

It is the place of death.

But it is precisely the place where God meets him.

We are told the duration of his stay: three days and three nights.

The point of this information is to let us know that being devoid of food and water, he was near death.

We are not sure if he prays the prayer in Jonah 2 /after /the three days as we should not press the “then” in Jon.

2:1 too much since the Hebrew could also mean “and.”

So we are not sure if he was angry and rebellious for three days or if he was repenting and we just have a little snapshot of his prayer?

Nevertheless, the point is that Jonah’s breakdown enabled him to stop running, as he was forced to lay down.

Our times of breakdown are so good for us.

Breakdowns cause us to lay down before the Lord.

By lay down, I mean to have serious reflection about our walk and life.

For example, I have always joked with you that I always thought I was a nice and peaceful guy until I got married.

And now that I have kids, I have seen even deeper how much anger I have.

And I can despair at this breakdown, which I have done at times, or I can lay down before the Lord and tell him: “Any control of anger I have, any peace in my heart comes from you.

I don’t have it on my own.”

Most of us think we are pretty good with some quirks or bad habits.