JONAH: The Art of Being Broken

Anna Johnson
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

Bad Decisions

How many decisions do you think an average person makes in a day? Ten thousand? Good guess. Anyone else? What’s that? A hundred thousand? Yeah, that’s—you know what? It’s in between that. Absolutely. Actually, there is some studies and research that say that we make 22,000 decisions a day. Some have it even as high as 36,000 decisions in a day. Our brain is always making decisions. Some would categorize some of them as snap judgments, right, decisions, and others we think and pray over, take our time with. But the reality is we are faced with decision each day. What are we going to do?

Well, Jonah made a series of bad decisions, which landed him into quite the predicament, in the drink and then the belly of a whale—I mean, big fish—for three days and three nights. But this story is not about the big fish, as Steven reminded us last week. It’s not about the big fish, which that is what we widely think of when we think of the story of Jonah. And it’s not about what Jonah does for God. But it is about what God does for Jonah and for each one of us.

I entitled the sermon this morning, “Jonah and the Art of Being Broken.” And I was really struggling with the title, and then I saw this as I was reading an article on the Gospel Coalition website. And I loved that because Jonah finds himself in a place where he literally cannot do anything to save himself. He is in desperate need of a savior. He cannot get himself out of this mess.

God Had Appointed

So go ahead and open up your Bibles to Jonah. We’re actually gonna start at the last verse of chapter 1, which is verse 17, and we’re gonna work our way through chapter 2 of the book of Jonah.

Also, this is for notes, but it’s not. It’s a fan! So fan yourselves with it! Free pass on notetaking this morning, right? You guys just get to fan yourselves with these. Dual purpose, beautiful pieces of paper.

All right. So starting off in verse 17.

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.

I like to study different versions because I think it kind of fleshes out the scripture. So the NIV says, “But the Lord provided.” The NLT says, “Now the Lord arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah.” God knew he had prearranged for this fish to grow and be ready when it was needed. I find that amazing and very cool.

God and his commanding of this great fish to swallow Jonah and keep him for a while had come after Jonah had made a series of bad choices. Jonah was a prophet. He was a prophet, and yet he had disregarded God’s clear directions and instructions to go to Nineveh. He didn’t pray, or notably repent, reconcile with God, when the sailors had been crying out to their gods in chapter one. They’re saying to him, “Pray to your God, and we’re gonna pray to our gods,” and it just—Jonah didn’t.

And this happened, God’s commanding of this fish happened after Jonah had chosen to be thrown in the depths to die over turning back to God and trying to make it right, and in effect making those men murderers. And they were like, asking God, “Please don’t hold this against us.” Like, “We don’t… we’re…” you know, as they’re about to throw him in.

Jonah, to put it plainly, is not the hero of this story. He is the anti-hero. But again, this story is not about Jonah and what Jonah does for God. It is about what God does for Jonah. God could have let Jonah die. God could have easily called someone else to go to Nineveh. But God was merciful to Jonah, just as he is merciful to each one of us.

Jonah’s Situation

As we continue on in the scripture, we see Jonah praying from the inside of the great fish. And I kind of think that we often picture Jonah like this, right? He’s safe, clean, dry, praying. Some of the children’s pictures too have Jonah like at the top of the water, and then a fish like ready to like just get him right there. But what we learn is that this is not really what happened, right? Really, Jonah is in probably a cramped stomach, sloshing around with whatever else that big great fish decided to eat that day.

Now I was kind of chuckling to myself because I’m from a little town in Michigan called Gladstone. We are on Little Bay de Noc, and the slogan is, “A year-round playground,” which means that there’s fishing year-round in Michigan, right? Josh knows. Yeah, go UP. And so also, ironically, my tiny little claim to fame is that my grandpa, Carl, and his brother Lloyd, and two friends started a fishing lure company. One of my very first jobs was assembling fishing lures—or as we call it, hooking fishing lures. And so, it’s quite ironic that I have almost a complete aversion to all things fish. I do not like fish. I do not want to touch them. I do not want to smell them. I certainly don’t want to put the worm even on the hook, to do that. I mean that. So it’s so—I was just laughing. I was like, this is funny that this is the moment I’m speaking on today. I will say, as I’m getting braver, I’ve welcomed salmon into my diet, so there’s hope for those of us who are anti-fishites out there.

So I have to tell you the idea of being stuck inside the belly of a fish for three days and three nights sounds decidedly horrible. Ugh, actually gross. Can you imagine being plunged into the darkness, into the uncertainty?

Jonah’s Prayer

And at some point amid this crazy situation, Jonah moves to prayer. We see his prayer in verses 2 through 9:

“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.”

He cries out to God as the realization hits him that, despite his incredibly disobedient decisions and rebellion against God, God was merciful. And in the following verses, it’s as if Jonah is reliving what he had just experienced, and he is creating a beautiful psalm-like prayer as he thinks it all through. Actually if you dig a little deeper—which I’m not gonna go there, because it’s hot, and I was told to keep it brief this morning—there’re so many correlations between his prayer and the psalms. And so if you want to dig into that later on your own, it’s fascinating. He knew God’s Word. He knew it ‘cause he was praying very similar wording in his prayer to psalms.

So I want you to read with me the next little section of verses 3 through the first part of 6, and I’m gonna ask you to do something unusual. I’m gonna ask you to close your eyes and just process through these words as I read it.

“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.”

We’ll pause there. Do you get the sense he’s crying out to God? But in that moment there’s a sense of all hope was lost, right? His life seemed over. Have you been there? Have you been in the moment where you felt like, “Man I really screwed up. My life is over. I made bad choices, decisions,” and you’re just feeling the weight of it all. Have you thrown your hands up in the air out of complete and utter desperation? “I’m done! I cannot come back from this.” Unfortunately, that’s where our brains take us often in these moments. If you have not been there at some point you most likely will be there.

And maybe you’re sitting here this morning going, “I’m there right now.” There is such good news for you and for all of us today, because if you found yourselves at the crossroads of “my life is over,” that is where God can and will do his greatest work in you, because it is there that you throw up your hands, and you accept his incredible mercy—the mercy he extends to each one of us over and over again, because you have surrendered yourself to him.

Maybe you’re sitting here today, or you’re listening online, and you realize, “Man, I’m Jonah! I’ve willfully disobeyed something that God has called me to do. I’ve heard God’s direction. I’ve heard him say, ‘Go,’ and yet I have gone the other way.” Maybe you too have made poor choices without consulting or thinking of God and his will.

Anna’s Testimony

I confess I spent many years in my 20s thinking my will and God’s need not intersect. I had known God and given my life to Christ, but I did not live with him daily. And looking back, I had compartmentalized him. I worshiped and praised God on Sunday mornings, and then I mentally left him at the door when I left church that day to go and do whatever else I wanted those six and a half days. Don’t worry, I wasn’t naughty or anything, but I was not living with God! It’s kind of funny to think about how silly and Anna-centric my thoughts were.

You can’t leave God behind, by the way. He is omniscient, which means he is everywhere. He is everywhere. He knows our thoughts and our minds. He’s with us always. He was patiently waiting for me, his mercy extending even to my blindness and my immaturity, just as he’d done for Jonah.

And where did the decision to leave God out of my daily life lead me? Eventually, after doing it all on my own, my own strength, into a depression. I would describe that time of my life as feeling like I was in a deep, dark pit—my very own version of the great fish’s stomach, perhaps. Did I like being broken to that degree? No. Who does? Not a good place. Looking back though, I can see how God was graciously bringing me to a point of realization that I cannot do life and all the things that life entails in my own strength. I can see that now. Would I change anything about this part of my story? Sure. But yet, no, because God was gracious; his mercy was there waiting for me.

His Power Made Perfect in Our Weakness

We live a comfortable life here, adversity seemingly surfacy and easy to figure out. It leads us into the incorrect thought that we don’t need to do life with God each day or model Jesus in our every moments. And somehow that lulls us into this idea that we will be okay. But I was reminded this week of a passage from 2 Corinthians. Paul is in fact talking, or writing, about his personal struggle. He had a thorn in his side, and he was asking God to take it from him. And God’s response to Paul in that moment is this:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9–10 [ed. note: this is verse 9 only]

And actually verse 11 [ed. note: verse 10] is good too. He goes on. Paul writes:

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God’s grace is sufficient for each one of us, and his power is made perfect in our weakness. We struggle with weakness. We struggle with this idea of being broken, right? But is okay to acknowledge that we need God, we need a savior. The heart posture of humility is so full of fruit if we allow it.

I really loved this quote by Irene Sun. She writes this:

We teach our children many things. We teach them to be strong, brave, and swift, yet patient, kind, and gentle. Rarely do we teach them how to be broken. Yet brokenness before the Lord is the fount of these very blessings. Courage and meekness flows most generously from a broken and contrite heart.

Matthew 5:4, Jesus is talking and giving the Beatitudes, and it says:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

We also see that verse and we think about loss, right? Loss of loved ones, hard losses. But really also another way that that is speaking to is understanding, mourning, understanding the gravity of our sin and our need for Jesus.

John 12:24 says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it does, it bears much fruit.

It’s okay to have, to mourn, and to realize we need Jesus and need God. It is there where God works his greatest work in us and we can bear much fruit for the kingdom.

God’s Discipline

Jonah wasn’t thinking of God’s great rescue plan, as Steven talked about last week. He didn’t care about loving the people in Nineveh, who needed to be called to a new life, to repentance. And he found himself on the receiving end of God’s merciful discipline in the most unexpected way. Proverbs 3:11–12 says,

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline
    or be weary of his reproof,
for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
    as a father the son in whom he delights.

We do not like the feeling of discipline. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of discipline. However, if we are following and accepting Christ as our savior, and we are willfully disobeying God and not doing what he is calling us to, whatever that might be—it’s, you know, what God has called you individually to—if we have decided it is too much, we can’t do it, and we go the other way, just like Jonah, we might end up on the receiving end of discipline from God. And you know what? Because God has given us his Word, we should not be surprised. But I do think there is value in realizing that God is doing it because he loves us. Because we need to be called back into his fold. He loves us.

And instead of pushing back on God’s discipline for our lives or however that looks maybe in your own instance, we need to be teachable and humble, realizing that what God is calling us to and being obedient to what God is calling us to is the biggest, most important calling in our lives.

I have been so thankful that God has brought me to a place where I would not want to walk outside of his will and walk outside of the things he’s calling me to. He is so gracious. He is so kind. And he wants good things for you, for each one of us who have put our trust in Jesus.

Jonah’s Recommitment

At the end of chapter 2, Jonah recommits to God out of the realization that God mercifully had rescued him. And he makes kind of an unusual statement. I’ll start in verse 6, the second half. When he realizes it he writes:

“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.”

Now it’s kind of like, “Why’d he throw that ‘vain idol’ statement in there?” You know? But in the Israelite culture, those little idols were really in contention for the heart of God’s chosen people. But you know what? We have lots of our own versions of idols. And so the words that he writes to “those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” We need to make sure our eyes are on God and not misplaced in other things.

And he recommits himself in verse 9:

“But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

He recognizes God’s loving discipline and God’s mercy and recognized that it is only God who saves. Salvation comes from the Lord. Rescue comes from God and his incredible love for us.

Seek God in Brokenness

So this morning, I want to encourage each one of us to listen to what God is calling us to and see that he loves us so much that he will not leave us in that dark place. God’s compassion relentlessly, beautifully extends to each one of us. He will lift us up because of his great mercy and love for each one of us.

Even before the creation of the world, we were on God’s horizon. God’s Word tells us that he set his love on us and he formed his plans to rescue us. When Jesus came into the world, he came to save real people with real names, with real faces. Might I add, “real problems.” Real willful problems, sometimes.

We don’t like the idea of being broken. We don’t like the idea of needing a savior sometimes. Some of us have committed our lives to Christ and yet find ourselves in the same spot as Jonah. But I want to encourage you today that God can repair and restore. Not just “can,” but wants to. Something that has been broken, that has jagged edges maybe—maybe we haven’t gotten to our destination yet, and actually we won’t for our whole lives. This is a lifelong learning situation here. God desires to restore you. And you may look different afterwards, but I promise God’s desire is for your good.

When we recognize that we are broken and we allow God to create in us a new heart, we can shine brighter through our brokenness. And God wants that for each one of us.

This morning, let’s just take a moment to ask for God’s forgiveness for choosing our way over his way. And if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, do it today, because God loves you so much. He loves you so much, and his desire is for you to be with him. And his great mercy extends even to all the hard and dark places.