"Maybe we've been living with our eye's half open, maybe we're bent and broken.
We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves?"
Such bent and broken people we are!
We go around living like we are so wonderful, like we have it made, like we deserve goodness, like we are worthy...
but the reality is that we are NOT wonderful, we do not have it made, we DO NOT deserve goodness and we ARE NOT worthy of anything good!
We are sinful people, deserving eternal separation from God.
Period, end of story!
Well, actually that is just the beginning of the story.
I was faced with the harsh reality of who we really are by way of the all too familiar story of a man who didn't want to do what God told him and got swallowed by a fish.
For the past four weeks we have been going through the book of Jonah.
Stop right there, now let's think about what we know about Jonah.
Every kid in Sunday School has heard of the great miracle story of Jonah. He was swallowed by a great fish and then spit back up on land! We might not know anything else but we would probably all claim to "know" the story of Jonah.
Even kids who haven't been in church to hear the story are familiar with the whale in Pinocchio.
Well, it seems that the childhood story of Jonah was far from complete. Somewhere between the stretch of the imagination and the pictures of a man being swallowed by a great fished I missed the WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY!
Jonah is just a huge mirror reflecting the majority of Christians today.
This story is so full of depth and conviction it is incredible! How is it that I have missed this for so long?
Let me go back to the beginning of the book and try to summarize just what all it can show us.
Jonah was told, very clearly by God, to go to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh was a bad city, full of wicked people who hated Israelites (which Jonah happened to be). So not the idea vacation spot or ministry destination.
But God called Jonah there regardless!
The loving God of grace and mercy wanted the people to know who He was and repent!
So did Jonah obey the Lord and step out in faith, believing that even though that sounded like the WORST idea ever, God would provide?
If he'd done that then we wouldn't get the picture we all know so well of that great fish...
No, Jonah decided to make his own plans.
He decided to say, "Ha, sorry God, I've got a better idea," and hopped on the first boat out of Joppa headed in the opposite direction.
He was going to Tarshish.
Now Tarshish we understand was a wonderful place, far off, exotic, exciting, glamorous, beautiful, and oh so comfortable!
Hmm... Nineveh or Tarshish...
Jonah sails out with a bunch of mariners thinking he had it made, leaving the awful thought of Nineveh behind, dreaming (literally- he was asleep in the boat) of the luxurious life ahead in Tarshish.
Pause
So at this point of the story, does any of this sound familiar? Is the reflection in the mirror looking familiar yet? Well, keep looking...
Not far out a storm hits... not just any storm... a beast of a storm!
In this storm, we are reminded that God is in complete control.
This storm, as in all storms of life, require a response...
1.) Fear
2.) Taking control- "We can do it"
3.) Careless indifference; passivity; denial and flight
4.) Faith in God
We see Jonah as the passive one, sleeping in the bottom of the boat. The mariners respond with fear.
Then we see an interesting thing happen. In the midst of the responses of fear and denial, there is a hurling of cargo into the sea. They were getting rid of all the unimportant junk that was weighing them down.
If you've seen the new movie Up, this is a great example of what was happening and that we often think that our stuff is so important to us, that it is going to get us through, like it will lead us to a happier better place, but really they just weigh us down!
So the mariners are seeing what is important, that being their lives alone!
They wake Jonah up, tyring to figure out who he was and why this horrible lot was upon them.
Get this, Jonah's response is, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."
Wait, hold up! Did he just say he feared the Lord?!? Really Jonah? Do you really fear the Lord?
It seems to me like you have become comfortable in your sin and don't really care about the Lord. Interesting...
So the men were even more afraid now and were like, "Dude, what were you thinking?"
They try to figure out what to do because they know that their boat is not going to withstand the storm much longer.
Jonah tells them to throw him overboard. Wow, that is the first time we see him stand up and own up to the responsibility. He knows that it is because of him that this storm is upon them and he knows that if he gets off the boat it will stop. His understanding of who the Lord finally comes out.
They didn't immediately throw him over, surprisingly. They tried to continue on but it was no use. They began to cry out to God, which is a big change from the beginning when they were all crying out to their own gods.
So Jonah gets hurled into the sea and a miraculous thing happens... "the sea ceased from its raging."
Then we see how the Lord uses Jonah's sin to bring about salvation. The mariners feared God exceedingly, realizing that He was the one true God. Salvation belongs to the Lord!
At this point in the story, we might be thinking, wow Jonah, you really deserve whatever bad thing happens to you because you did not obey.
Well, as you may recall, this is the point when God appoints a big fish to come swallow him up. But despite how much we want to think that part of the story is punishment, it is actually not at all!
God has remained in control and at this point rescues Jonah from death!
Oh how merciful and gracious God is!!
The grace that He gives Jonah may not be comfortable... 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a big fish, but it is undeniably God's grace.
Pause
Are you still looking into the mirror that has been placed in front of you to analyze your own situation? Is the picture clear yet?
We go through uncomfortable grace sometimes!
God closes us in so that all we think about is Him. It is in the confinement, the limitation, the uncomfortable grace that we get a right view of God.
One of the biggest things about this one verse of the story is that it reminds us how quickly we forget the message behind God's methods.
I started off saying how all I could really remember about this story was Jonah being swallowed and spit back out on dry land!
Yea, I got the method of how God worked but I completely missed the message behind it!
This is convicting! The method has no meaning whatsoever without the message!
Back to Jonah...
He was just swallowed, and now, ah now we get to where I started this blog by saying we are bent and broken people!
I get that idea from Jonah. Thank you Jonah for showing me the reality of what I am like sometimes.
In Jonah 2:1-9 we get his prayer from in the fish.
Now you would think that this would be the point were Jonah admits he was wrong for disobeying, repents of his sin, asks for forgiveness and praises the Lord for saving him from death!
But is that what he does? Ha, not hardly!
Jonah shows us what it means to have synthetic spirituality.
He says some words and makes it sound sort of nice, sprinkling a little of the Psalms in there, but the heart of his prayer is downright wicked!
It is lacking humility, repentance, acknowledgement of who God is!!
He even plays the shift the blame game, pointing out others sins to make himself and his own sin seem better.
Wow!
This is the point where I was completely blown away at the story, even more than I had already been.
Just think about it!
Jonah, a prophet of God, oblivious to his own sin, trying to gloss over the situation by praying empty words that seem spiritual.
He does not like the uncomfortable grace God has him in and he wants out!
That mirror I've been looking into has become way too clear!
How often do I act like Jonah?
How often do I sprinkle a little Jesus on things to make them look better, when my heart is no where near right?
1 Sam. 15:22 points out that it is better to obey than to sacrifice
Micah 6:5-6 also reminds us of what the Lord desires for our hearts to be like.
We are so mistaken to think that we, YOU and I, broken, messed up people, have anything to offer God!
But God is for His own glory and He pours his love on us in mercy and grace so that we can glorify Him and make much of Him!
Wow, this whole story up to this point has rocked my world!
There is so much truth that I have missed and overlooked in this one man's life. I need to learn from Jonah! I need to hear the message of how gracious our God is over how cool His methods of working are.
Bent and broken people we are, in the midst of a lost and dying world...
but we have HOPE! We have JOY from a Savior who, despite our sin and our selfishness, took the punishment for us, willingly, lovingly, undeservedly!
That is a message that we should NEVER forget! It is not about the method of a cross... it is about the act of a God who is so much bigger than ourselves and who loves us infinitely more than we could ever reciprocate, and we grow more and more in debt to grace every day, but that is exactly how He wants us to be!
Grace, grace, God's grace!!!
So yes, we were meant to live for so much more... for God and not ourselves!
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