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We’re on a new series together, studying the life of Jonah, and we find as we study the life of Jonah together, is that there’s a lot of similarities between who Jonah is and how we even compare to him in our own personal walks with God together. We’re in chapter two. If you want to follow along in the Bible, in front of you, in the seat in front of you, it’s page 657. If you brought a Bible with you. I have no idea what page to tell you. Um, but Jonah is in the Old Testament. It’s one of the minor prophets. It’s towards the end of the Old Testament. It’s only one page long, so you breeze past it pretty quickly. The life of Jonah is important for us to capture as a body of believers, because in many ways, I see we as Christians can oftentimes behave in a way similar to the life of Jonah. We know in our own lives God has a plan and desire for each of us, and that plan and desire is to know him and to grow in him, and the details of that will all be played out as we surrender ourselves to all that God has for our lives. I’m reminded when I read the book of Jonah of a popular slogan that exists in America today is come, come up with by McDonald’s. Have it your way. I love that going into a restaurant.
That’s exactly how I want it. Mcdonald’s. It’s like you read my mind. But having our own way isn’t the way it should always play out in our lives. What we should Christians come to understand is that what’s important for us to recognize is that it’s about God’s way and in so following after God with with our lives, it becomes to our benefit because it tells us in Scripture that God is living water, and from him flows rivers of living water. And if we simply trust in him, the fruit of the spirit tells us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, long suffering is ours through the Spirit of God. If we would just surrender to his will for our lives. See, it’s for God’s glory that we surrender, but it becomes to our benefit in knowing him and in knowing him, we receive and find the very purpose for which God has created us. But we recognize that’s easier said than done, even in the life of Jonah. As we’re going to see in the chapter ahead of us, see, Jonah is a book that battles between two concepts in Scripture and that being sin and grace. Where is God when we sin? How does God receive us as people when we turn our backs to him? Is it the wrath of God that we experience, or is it his grace? Jonah was a man that continued to reflect a sinful nature. In fact, when you get to the end of the book, it’s very unsettling because from the beginning to end, Jonah’s heart never really, truly changes for any amount of time towards God.
I believe Jonah wrote the book of Jonah, and for us, it gives us insight as people that if we don’t recognize the grace of God in our own lives, we really miss the picture for what God wants to create in our hearts and our minds, not just through us, but through the lives of people around us. And then knowing that God called Jonah to the city of Nineveh, and God wanted wrath on the city of Nineveh because they had continued to disrupt the life of the Israelites. The Assyrians were mean people who lived in Nineveh. But what God wanted to bring was his grace. And when God called Jonah to Nineveh, he called him to the capital city of this region, a city that would have been made up of over 500,000 people. Because God knows if you can change the core, the heart, the culture of where a city and a and a nation is defined, you can change the people. We learned together that Nineveh was in Iraq. If God were to call you today to Iraq, would you go if you study the history of Iraq around the time of Jonah and you study the history of Iraq today, you’ll find that they’ve had thousands of years and there’s really been no change.
Instead, Jonah decided, you know what, God, I’m going to go to Tarshish, which is Spain. Sounds good to me. God, you’ve called me to this place. What I’m interested in is second best. And what God wanted to bring to Jonah in his life was his best. Jonah could never get over the past. Jonah couldn’t look at a nation who had offended his people so much and seek to love them because he was stuck in the past. What God wanted Jonah to plan for was a glorious future. When we study in history in the time of Jonah, around the time that Jonah was called to go prophesy in the city of Nineveh, just around 40 years later, the Israelites were taken into captivity by the very people. Jonah was called to go minister to, and if their hearts had just changed towards God. What kind of blessings that would have been for the nation of Israel? How would that have played out if none of proclaimed? Jonah proclaimed the gospel to these people, and and the gospel was received. But it wasn’t just received. They continued to follow after it all their days as Assyrians. Jonah couldn’t look to the future because he was stuck in the past. That tells us that Jonah jumps up on a boat and he sets sail for Tarshish, a journey that would have likely taken around a year for Jonah to get to Spain from the area that he was in in Israel.
Jonah tells us, flees the presence of God only as Jonah, leaving the city of Nineveh where he could minister. But he’s more importantly fleeing the presence of God. And it’s important for us to recognize when God calls us to a specific place to minister by denying ministering for God on behalf of God to a particular people. We’re not just fleeing from those people. What we’re fleeing from in our lives is the presence of God. But in Jonah’s sin, God is gracious. Jonah finds a way for God to. Or God finds a way for Jonah to turn back to him. And it tells us the very end of chapter one in verse 17, if we saw it together, it says, and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. This morning, as we look at this passage of Scripture, what I want us to recognize as we look at the verses ahead is that this well was a miraculous well of mercy. Rather than giving to Jonah what Jonah deserved for being disobedient to God, God withheld that mercy and brought forth mercy. And as you read in chapter two, what you find is that all the account of chapter two is really Jonah just sinking to the bottom of the ocean as he’s cast overboard from a ship for being disobedient to God by the sailors who were on board? When he hits, when he hits the water, he begins to sink.
It tells us to the bottom of the sea. In this whale comes up and saves his life. In chapter two is a praise to God for what God has done through this whale or through this fish. Maybe this morning, before I even begin to refer to it as a well, maybe we should just ask ourselves, how do we even know that it’s a well? I mean, can a man really survive being in a well? The first reason I think it’s a well is because VeggieTales says so, right? If you’ve ever seen it. I mean, their theology is to a T on those cartoons. Is it possible for a well to even swallow a person? I brought pictures. A whale shark, not even the the biggest whale that’s out there. But apparently the person that. What just happened? We lost that. Did we? Wow. There it was. It was so scary the screen couldn’t take it anymore. All right, we’ll continue on. Can a whale swallow a person? Don’t worry. The individual in that picture was not harmed. I should say they did not ever read the book of Jonah. Apparently, because we know it is possible for a whale to swallow a person. Um, but can a whale swallow a person? And can a man survive? If you do any search on the internet, you’ll you can discover that Jonah is not the only one that’s ever recorded in Scripture who has been swallowed by a whale.
In 1891, a British Admiralty testified to a man named James Bradley. He was a sailor on a whalers ship. In 1891, they were hunting a whale in the Falkland Islands just off the South Atlantic, and as the whalers ships are referred to in Scripture, uh, or excuse me, in history, they would bring a boat up to a to a whale, recognize where the whale was, chase the whale to the well worn out. Then they would offload these smaller boats to go out and they had to harpoon the well by hand. And James Brantley was on one of those wells or on one of those ships chasing the whale. And they got on the smaller boat and he went forth to spear the well. He was on the boat that speared the well. And then when the whale was speared, the it tells us that that this well dove deep into the water. And they all became very scared about about what was to take place, because they knew how well hunting went and when a well would dive that that meant that it was turning around to retaliate against the people who were attacking it. The well dove deep into the to the sea. It turned around and and drove straight back up to the top of the water, hitting the boat and knocking all the sailors out.
The other boats went around to the whale, continued to spear it and catch it, and collect all the sailors as they were floating in the water. But as they gathered the men onto their boats, they recognized that two men were still absent, lost at sea later that day, in the the heat of the day, it became necessary for them to begin to take the meat. Off this well so it would preserve and not rot from the heat of the sun. They went on into the evening, peeling away at this fish, and by lantern they continued to cut out, until eventually they got to the whale’s stomach and hoisted it on board. And they noticed, as the whale’s stomach stood on board, that it began to twitch. They quickly cut it open and out popped James Brantley. He could breathe. It tells us in his own account, but the hot, fetid odor soon rendered him unconscious, and the last thing he remembers was kicking as hard as he could at the soft, yielding stomach. Finally, he lapsed into unconsciousness until he again came to his senses almost a month later. As a result of his day inside the whale’s stomach, Brantley lost all of his hair on his body and experienced some blindness for the rest of his life. His skin was bleached to unnatural whiteness that gave the appearance of being bloodless.
Although he was healthy. James Brantley never again made another trip to sea. Well, well. So good for him. And settled down to the shore. Life as a cobbler in his native city of Colchester, England. He died 18 years after his remarkable survival. Survival and terrifying adventure. On his tombstone in the in the Churchyard at Colchester, is a brief account of his experience at sea, and a footnote which, says James Brantley, a modern day Jonah. Is it possible? It is one of the reasons that scholars would determine that this fish, this great fish, as it says in Scripture, was a whale is because in order for a human being to survive any amount of time within the stomach of this animal, it would have to be a mammal. It would have to breathe oxygen. And the whale is one of the largest animals in the ocean that we know of that comes to the surface to to intake oxygen in order to provide for its own life. What I recognize is we read scriptures, not just the life of Jonah, as that God has a creative way to get all of our attentions. Matter of fact, his creativity is matchless. God created a world for us to display his glory. It’s not as if God had to hang every star in the universe, but he did. God created. In Scripture we find talking donkeys and worldwide floods and rainbows and dinosaurs and people who look like giants.
And last week, our kids even learned about three men who went into a furnace and survived. God is a creative God who uses creative things to get our attention. God prophesied that he would come to this earth, and in so prophesying, he came. And just as the Bible says, he died and he rose again. God gave you his word. And it’s not written simply as a list of commandments, but God used his creativity to display to us the way he desires for us to have a relationship with him. And poetry and songs and prophecy and narratives and stories. God’s name is proclaimed in a creative way to his people. If we want to talk real creativity, God created a church and each of us are unique. Some might use the word weird, but when we examine ourselves as people, we see absolutely God is a creative God. And each of us unique in the creation that he’s designed. And sometimes God is creative and even creating a well. And it’s worth examining in our lives to see the fingerprints of God as he has chased us down in pursuit of a relationship with us in our lives. Because the point of Jonah, as we see within the story is that if we focus on the well and whether or not a man could survive in a well, or whether there was even a well that swallowed them. Maybe it was just a big fish.
We miss the point of the story. The point of the story is about God’s grace as he pursues us as people, despite how we turn our backs on him. In fact, what we recognize in the story of Jonah is that God is really saving Jonah from Jonah, and God coming to this earth and dying for your sins is saving you from you. God loves you to the extent that he demonstrated it beyond any imagination. Any person could wrap their their thought around. It tells us in John 15, rarely will a man lay down his life for another, especially for a sinner. But God, reigning King of kings, comes to this earth and lays his life down for you. And in the book of Jonah, we see God’s grace continued to be poured out on man. You think of the horrific sin that Jonah is guilty of? I mean, what did he do? He didn’t really do anything. It’s not like he walked out into this world and just lived a life of debauchery and outright sin and denial against God. He just ignored God’s calling on his life. The complacency of following after God. What kind of sin is that? You think about an America today, the seriousness of our relationship with the Lord and our own personal lives. Jonah just did nothing. That’s what Jonah did. God, I’m not going to Nineveh. Let’s go to Spain. I can enjoy Spain and kind of enjoy you.
Okay? And our lives as Americans, I think we oftentimes find ourselves guilty of such pleasures in our relationship with God. God, that sounds discomforting to think about. I’ll choose this because it seems so glorious, and I think it would bring me pleasure. And you find me over here and you make me happy in this circumstance. But what God desired was for Jonah to live out the plan that God had created for Jonah. And in so doing, to save Jonah from Jonah. It wasn’t a horrific sin that Jonah was living in. It’s just simply a denial of God’s will for his life. Jonah knew God. Jonah was a prophet who followed after God. Yet simply, Jonah just denied God in an area of his life. I could imagine Jonah would have been content just to stay in Israel. God, I’m just going to stay here and just minister where you called me to as a prophet. Everything’s been going well. People really appreciate me and who I am and everything that I’ve done. I’ve worked with the King we’ve seen in Second Kings chapter 14. Jeroboam. Everything’s going my way. Why move me? I’m good here. But God had a different plan for Jonah and Jonah. We see in the book of Jonah that God’s gracious plan is played out through the life of a well, God’s mercy is brought out on Jonah. Jonah denies God.
The second thing to think about this morning as we look at the life of Jonah, it comes in verse nine and ten of your Bible. Of chapter two. It’s God’s gracious. God is gracious in a storm of discipline. God’s mercy is seen to us, and that God doesn’t bring to us what we deserve. God’s grace is seen to us in that God gives to us a gift that we didn’t earn. And God’s mercy and grace are both played out in the life of Jonah in the course of the storm that rages around him as he’s he’s lost at sea. And as God brings this well into his life to save him, we have to turn in my Bible to Jonah real quick since we lost our projector. Sometimes the demon of the electronics comes out the storm and the whale is an act of God’s grace. It’s hard to imagine the stomach acid of a whale that eats away from your hair and tears off the pigment of your body, being an act of God’s grace. But for Jonah, it was. The reality is, is that sometimes God allows us to endure difficult circumstances as an act of his grace. So the moment we sin in this world, God is completely just to wipe us off the face of the earth because he is that holy. He is that perfect. But God continues to allow us to persist and exist, because the Bible tells us in second Peter three nine that God is not willing, that any should perish, that all come to repentance, all look to him for direction.
In this world, God’s act towards Jonah was gracious. Look in the life of Adam and Eve very early on in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned against God. God brought the curse forth into the Garden of Eden. But this this curse wasn’t just a curse of sin. It was a it was a curse of God’s grace on behalf of God to the people who would populate earth. Every day that we walk out into this world and we see sin, we see disease, we see death. It’s a reminder to us that we need to depend on something greater than us to supply our needs. I think of the people who have been suffering through all the tornadoes that have swept across our country. In those moments of despair, we need something greater to depend on in the moment of pressure that we face in Adam and Eve, as they the sweat of the brow, the the pain and child labor, the tension between their their marriage relationship that came through the curse. God reminds them in all of this curse that we need to trust in him, that the difficulties that we face are really an act of his grace. To remind us as people, that we are not God in our lives, and it relies upon us to depend on him to supply our needs.
This is God’s gracious storm of discipline, and some of us picture our relationship with God should go as this God, if you really love me, you wouldn’t allow these bad things to happen with me or God. If you really love me, you wouldn’t allow me to go through a difficult experience. But maybe, just maybe, in your life, God is bringing forth a difficult circumstance before you that you may may turn and depend on him through it. It doesn’t work in every circumstance, but God can certainly bring those bad things for his glory. And he promises to those who love him that he does. And it’s not in our lives that we have nowhere until we have nowhere else to turn, that we recognize that God is all that we need. I wish that wasn’t a lesson that we had to learn repeatedly in our lives. I wish we could just say, okay, today I’m going to follow after God and I’m never going to sin again, but I’m just going to enjoy that relationship with it forever. But the fact of the matter is, it really isn’t until circumstances get difficult that we truly, in our lives, try to depend on God for everything that we need and those glorious moments, we just say, you know what, God? I’m am I right? Jonah said to God. God, you know what? Israel seems good.
Spain seems great. Uh, let’s not do that kind of a thing. But God is gracious to us and recognizing in our own lives what we think might be good isn’t best. And God brings his gracious form of discipline in the life of Jonah, and even allows it to exist in our own lives that we as people might learn to better depend on him. This is an act of punishment on God’s behalf. It’s an act of discipline. God isn’t desiring just to blow up on Jonah. You know, in our lives, when God brings his wrath or anger and discipline in our lives, we compare it to us in our in our fallen human nature. When God brings his discipline in our lives, it’s not like a parent who blows their lid on a child. See, God understands every sin that we’re going to commit before we ever committed. It tells us in Hebrews chapter ten, verses 12 to 14 when Jesus died for you. He was able to die for your past, present, and future sins. God knows everything you’re ever going to do against him before you ever do it. And so God recognizes in the life of Jonah, one day Jonah is going to flee from my presence. And God said, I’m not going to blow up in anger. But what I’m going to bring into his life is discipline for a change, because all good discipline is done for a godly change.
It’s not done for punishment, but it’s done for a change of heart. It’s a reflection time for us as parents to recognize the way that God is working in the life of Jonah. When it comes to the error of our children and the mistakes that they make in their own personal lives, we’re we’re too old now to to endure any sort of punishment from our parents. But with your young children, why do you discipline just to release your anger, to make them recognize how angry or upset you feel against them for doing something that you didn’t like? Or do you discipline for a change? The Bible tells us in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse six, God disciplines those he loves. Meaning God loves you and cares for you so much that when we walk away from his plan for our lives out of his love, he disciplines you for a change. God’s not okay with you leaving his relationship with him, because he knows for your best interest that he created you for that relationship. Your purpose in this world exists through that relationship and because of his love for you, God. God doesn’t walk away from that circumstance, as any good parent shouldn’t do with their child. When when their child is is living a life of sin. But the parent comes in the life of the child and intercedes in a disciplinary way to produce the child the results of a godly individual because it’s for their best interest.
It’s to protect their wellbeing and in the moment of a storm, in the moment of a well, sometimes it’s difficult for us to recognize. Maybe I’m enduring this situation because I was disobedient. And Jonah turns in chapter two from chapter one to a time of praise and recognizing that God had brought forth this great joy in his life by bringing a whale to rescue him out of the depths of the ocean, to then again restore him and his relationship to God. God’s discipline was for Jonah’s good. It was an act of grace. We think of in a personal life, even the idea of surgery, some of the things that we go through as human beings. If you just thought about the idea of surgery with without the results going under on a table and laying under a knife to get your body reconstructed for some, for some reason that it’s it’s come apart. We endure pain in a situation that way we may produce a better result in us. But in that moment, if you think about surgery, it becomes a fearful thing sometimes, right? I mean, people even will put off such an opportunity to make yourself better in the long run because you don’t want to endure the the temporary pain. But Jonah began to recognize in chapter two that this temporary pain was to bring forth in my life such a godly result that it would protect me in the long run.
And it says this in verse nine, excuse me, read in verse eight, those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I, I sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving that that which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord. Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up on the dry land. You think about the most beautiful puke in all of the Bible. It’s disgusting. I have a hard time when I’m sick to be thankful in that situation. Never found a good reason to praise God for it. But Jonah here is so happy to be covered in this filth and to come out and recognize God’s plan for his life. See, God has a plan for your life and he won’t give up, no matter how difficult the situation seems. It tells us if you read in the NIV translation, that the vain idols pull us away from God, but what we pursue is the love of God as we see his faithfulness played out to us. Oh, there it is. Thanks. Mark says in the NIV version, those who cling to the worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. In Jonah’s life, what God was recognizing that that although Jonah thought the idols were good for him, although he thought it would bring his best interest to his life, what Jonah was turning away from was the love of God.
Being persistent in before him as he experienced that relationship with God. God recognized Jonah’s need and saved Jonah from Jonah. And so as you turn to chapter two and verse one, as you see in the very top of of this passage of scripture, Jonah cries out to God in a psalm of prayer. Jonah writes a poem before God. I just want to say that Jonah. Jonah didn’t write this poem while he was in God’s belly. Okay, we’re not going to be swallowed by God. You saw the account of James Brantley when he was in the stomach of the fish. It smelled so bad as he was trying to punch his way out of there that he just passed out and was unconscious. I don’t think Jonah wrote this poem from from the well of this this, uh, the belly of this whale. I mean, could you imagine yourself caught in such a circumstance that you say to yourself, you know what, I feel like I’m going to write a poem. Let’s wax eloquently about this situation. But this is simply a reflection of Jonah as he looks back on his moment of of how God intervened into his life and provided for him and as as natural within Scripture. Oftentimes you’ll find poetry written to express those feelings that someone endured as they reflected upon God. And Hebrew poetry is written different than poetry that we experience in America today.
Poetry in America, you make your first line rhyme with your second line rhyme or your second line and and then you got it. You’re good. Right? That’s a great poem. Every good rapper has to write a great poem. Hebrew poetry is a little different. It’s written in what we call parallelism, meaning the. The writer would compose his first line and his second line. He would either reiterate the idea of the first line, or he would directly oppose the idea of the first line parallelism. Jonah began to write his poem discussing all that God had done into his life. Jonah tells us in the scriptures we find that Jonah was thankful for what God had done. In verse one it says, Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of his fish. And he said, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. And you heard my voice. It’s important to recognize in the prayer of Jonah that God hears us, even in times of trouble. Then, even when we do things that are contrary to the nature of God, even when we sin against God, even when you don’t feel worthy enough to come before God, God still wants to hear from you. Because in those situations of disobedience directly against God, the relationship with God is is marred through that sin.
And we’ve got to recognize, recognize and reconcile the tension that exists because of sin in that relationship. And what God continues to desire before us is that relationship. And so when we come to him, we can come with just empty hands. God desires to heal, to hear from you and to heal you in that sin says in verse three, for you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. And the and your. All your breakers and billows passed over me, we see, as Jonah being thrown overboard is now beginning to sink into the ocean. It says so, I said, I have been expelled from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again to your holy temple. When we’re in trouble, I should recognize in verse four what we desire is to be near God. Jonah reflects on the place that he knew that God’s presence was continually available in the temple. Bible tells us in Scripture that when Jesus died on the cross, the veil was torn and the Spirit of God left the presence of the temple. And it tells us in first Corinthians 619 that it now indwells the followers of Jesus. We can call on the presence of God at any moment in our lives. And what Jonah desired in this passage of Scripture we see in verse four is he’s going to this trouble is just to be near God.
It’s not until we realize we have nowhere else to turn, that we then turn to God in our own lives. It tells us, as Jonah turns to God, he recognizes in verse one and two, the reason he turns is because God cried out to him from. He cried out to God, excuse me from the depths of Sheol. She was a Hebrew word that literally referred to the idea of hell. And Jonah is saying to God, God, I’ve decided to go my own way in this world. And what it brought forth is literally my own hell on earth. This is not what I hoped for. I found myself caught and victim to this. And God, what I want more than anything in these moments in verse four, is just to find your presence in the midst of my adversity. What I desire, God, is to be near you. God’s storm is gracious because in those moments, God wants to hear us while we’re in trouble. And it says in verse five, water compassed me to the point of death, and the great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended for the roots from the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But you have brought me up, up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. And this would be in verse six, where the well came in to rescue him. It’s a reminder to us as we’re sinking in trouble in our lives.
God can rescue when we have nowhere else to turn. God can rescue when you’re looking for a place to hope in something. God is the source of all hope because he can rescue. If God can pull someone from the bottom of a sea with weeds wrapped around his head, God can pull you from any adversity that you face in your life if you trust in him. There’s no safer place to be in this world than the center of God’s will, whether it be Iraq or whether it be Lehi, Utah, or wherever you plan on living, it’s the safest place to be. And it says in verse eight, those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord. Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up on the dry land in verse eight. As Jonah’s repenting before God, he finally recognizes in those last moments what it was that pulled him away from God. And really, if we’re honest with ourselves, Jonah’s situation might be different. But the. But the title we put on it pulls all of us away from God, and that’s simply idolatry. We look to something in this world for pleasure than what God can bring, and we begin to look towards it for the direction and pursuit of our lives, rather than trusting in God.
In verse eight, Jonah says and recognizes before God, God, these are vain idols. And God, forsaking their faithfulness, I have turned from you. The Bible tells us, if you to read the Ten Commandments, they start in Exodus chapter 20 and verse two. It tells us in the very first, very first commandment listed in Scripture do not have any other gods before me. Essentially, don’t create any idols, because idolatry is where we begin to lose our relationship with everything that God should mean to us. And really, when you study the the Ten Commandments, you see that the first four relate to your relationship with God, the last six relate to your relationship with man, but all of it play into the idea of idolatry. We follow after sin when we make an idol of things God never intended us to do. We take the good things that God has created in this world, and we make them great things. We elevate them above God, things God intended for our joy, things God intended for our pleasure, things God intended for us to experience through him and for him and by him. And instead of worshiping him through those items, we make them our idols. The Ten Commandments tell us, don’t have any graven images before God. Tell us to honor God’s name, and number three tells us to remember the Sabbath.
If we we choose to forget the Sabbath, a day to gather, to worship to God, we we will make an idol out of work or out of pleasure, forsaking the goodness of God who created both work and pleasure for us. Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet. We neither lie nor covet because we we want to be truth seeking in our lives. We understand that truth brings the best for us as human beings, as we understand it rightfully. We don’t covet because we understand even as we see the life of Jonah, who who went off into Spain coveting the things that were better than what God he thought God would provide. We simply trust in God to provide for our needs, yet we can create idols. Tells us in Colossians chapter three and verse five, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. It is all idolatry. It tells us in Colossians three five. Anything that pulls you away from your relationship with God. Anything in our lives that we lift up beyond who God is and we praise the item, not the maker of the item becomes for us an idol. And all of them stand in danger of pulling us away from God’s will for our lives. When we resort to idolatry, we forsake something God intended for good and we make it our focus.
We find something pleasurable to us, beyond and apart from who God is in our lives. And recognizing idolatry. The purpose is not to restrict us, but the purpose is to free us. Jonah is thrown into the belly of the whale and into sea because he’s he’s made an idol, and God brought him through this difficult circumstance. God brought him through this storm so that Jonah could take a moment and just pause before Almighty God, trusting in him to recognize that this idol is leading to his destruction. What God desired was to set him free. We all create idols in our own lives. Even the idea of religion can become an idol to people thinking before God that we earn his merit or favor. Trusting in things that we do rather than the one who provides the way for us. In Jeremiah chapter two and verse 11, it says, this has a nation ever changed its gods, yet they are not gods at all. But my people have exchanged their glorious God for the worthless idols. Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the Lord. My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug out for themselves their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold any water. I like the honesty of the Bible when it says to us that sin is fun for a season.
Meaning if there’s something that’s bringing you pleasure in this world apart from God for a little while, it will satisfy you. But in the long run, what you’ll find out is that in the long term, can never satisfy the way that God was designed to satisfy you in your life. And it tells us in Jeremiah that these play out in our lives as broken cisterns that hold no water. But God for us is that living water as we trust in him. And so it becomes important to ask ourselves repeatedly, are there any idols in our lives that we need to forsake for the sake of God and His position in our life? In order to recognize an idol, we could ask ourselves, what could you lose or gain that would cause you to say, I can’t live anymore without this? I can’t live anymore unless I have this. What is it you put before God? What is it in your relationship with God that makes you walk in guilt, or keeps you from following after him in your own life? And it tells us if you want to be caught in the idea of an idol, just continue to follow after that. But if you want to be set free from the belly of the whale that has you encompassed the realm of Sheol, confess it before God. Repents. It tells us in verse ten, and the and the well has a holy puke.
We will never practice that here. But if there’s ever been one, it was then. And turning to God, Jonah once again is able to embrace, be embraced by his love. We as people today recognize that in turning to God, we’re able to be embraced by his love. Because as Jesus went to the cross for our sins, it tells us in Hebrews ten that he died for all sin, both past, present, and future. There’s nothing in this world that you have done or will do or continue to do that will surprise God in any means. Jesus has already died for it all, and that should bring us great joy in walking with him and and knowing because Jesus has died for that all. When we when we turn to him, when we confess things to him, God accepts us. And in his grace brings us back to that relationship that we should enjoy being created for such a purpose. We’re to conclude this morning, or give us four reminders that are listed in your note of the conclusion of this of this chapter. This book is about a journey on Jonah’s sin. To remind us to depend on God’s grace rather than our idols. You think of a man such as Jonah composing this book. How would you want to be written about in the Bible? Me? I would like to be the one who killed a giant and walked on water and everything.
Great. I would not want to be the guy whose life was just written in Scripture as complete disobedience from who God is, and yet it’s a reminder to us of Jonah’s journey of sin to remind us to depend on God’s grace for our lives rather than our idols. And we’re not talking about immaculate off the wall or horrendous sins against God. We’re not talking about the Adolf Hitlers of the world. We’re talking about believers who just simply choose not to do what God tells them to do. Complacency is what we’re talking about. Complacency brought Jonah out of a ship into the depths of the sea. God has a plan for you. He doesn’t want to hide you from it, and his plan will bring you closer to him. It tells us in chapter one and verse three that Jonah departed from the presence of of God and leaving his plan for his life in chapter two, verse eight. That God’s love is is lavish to us, no matter how difficult that plan may seem. What a horrific thing to think about going to Iraq. That seems like a difficult place to live. And when I look at the life of Jonah in ministering for the Lord, I can’t blame him for not wanting to go. But the safest place we could seek in our own lives is just to simply trust in God, no matter how difficult the circumstance may seem.
I’m not a fool to think for some people to say they’re going to follow after Jesus, or bring lots of repercussion in the lives of their family and friends in making such a bold statement before them. There could be tension that exists there, and even family members could alienate them for taking such a stand. The Bible encourages us, rather than trust and fear. Rather than look at the circumstance that seems so overwhelming to us in our lives just to trust in God because his grace can see us through. When we get trapped in the worship of an idol, it’s like hell on earth because we’re away from the presence of God and His love for us. Could you imagine such a prayer in your life that right now you can think maybe of a particular sin that keeps you from just fellowshipping with God the way that you desire and you just simply ask to God, God, help me to be humble. I don’t know what that would bring to your life. I hope it’s not a fish. You live in a desert, so you got that going your way. But God help me to be humble. God, help me to recognize you for who you are in your life. And I would say to you as believers this morning, don’t pray that prayer till you’re ready to find out what happens. Who knows what God’s going to bring? But whatever God brings to your life, it’s his gracious plan to bring you into closer fellowship with him.
And less bad things happen to us because of sin and our idols. And bad things don’t happen to us always because we directly sinned. But bad things do happen to us because of sin. You see physical elements that plague the life of people. People born with different defects or illnesses. Um, horrible things that happen in crime in this world. It’s a reminder to us of the sin that were plagued under. It’s a reminder to us to look to our own situation and realize we as people, are helpless, and we need to just trust in God in those circumstances. But bad things happen to us because of sin. But God, in the midst of those storms is seeking our goodness and our trust as we depend on him. And I hope for us this morning that Jonah become a reminder for us to take a stand in any difficulty we ever face in our lives. That in the midst of realizing, maybe in our own lives, that we’re in a difficult storm, that the best thing that we can do in those moments is just trust in him. Don’t worry about the size of Nineveh. Don’t worry about the pressure that they’ve brought upon your people. Plan for a glorious future that God wants to bring through you and in you as you trust in him, because his love and grace is far, far outweighs any idol that you experience in this world. Let’s close in a word of prayer.