Sermon: "Time to Yield"

4th in the "Jonah" series.
Delivered May 2, 2010 by Rev. Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Jonah 1:17-2:10

Click to download & listen to the sermon MP3

"Driver's Manual" series study guide: booklet or ordered page layouts

When I was a kid, I learned about George Washington. I hope all of you did at some point or another while you were growing up. One of the stories I heard about was about George Washington as a child chopping down the cherry tree. And when his parents caught him doing it, you know, or after he had done it, and they saw the tree was gone, he said, "I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree." Great story.

When I got older, I learned more things about George Washington. I learned about him as a General, that he was quite an accomplished person there. Somebody we really needed at that time. Learned about him as a person. Learned about him as a President. And perhaps one of the most important things I learned about him is that he deliberately personally made the decision not to run for a third term.

And that was perhaps one of the most important things that he did because he laid the foundation of our country being a place where leaders are replaced without any kind of danger, without violence. There is an orderly succession of leadership. Very important step that he took. Our country could have been very different had he acted differently. But if my...

When I learned all these things about George Washington, one of the things I also learned when I was a little older is that that great story about him chopping down the cherry tree was a lie. "I cannot tell a lie," so the lie tells us. Probably didn't do me any harm. You know, it's good to hear a story when you're a kid about telling the truth. I know I needed that encouragement. But if I still had as an adult the same idea about George Washington I did when I was eight years old, that would be a problem.

Well in high school, I decided that Jonah was just a crazy story. In fact, the whole Bible was just a crazy thing. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But what I was reacting to was a children's idea of the Bible and a children's idea of Jonah. My idea of Jonah was kind of like a children's book picture. Do we have that picture here? That was my idea of Jonah, you know? This is what I was reacting to.

Now, if as an adult this is the only picture I have of Jonah that's a problem. So we're going to go into Jonah right now, and we're going to take a look at grown-up's Jonah. Chapter 2. And I'm going to read it. And when I read it, I want you to hear not the children's story, but a story for someone who has made a big mistake, and there have been big consequences to that mistake. A story about someone who desperately needs grace, unmerited deliverance. So let's take a look. Jonah, chapter 2. I'm going to begin on the seventeenth verse of chapter 1. It's on page 844 of the Bibles that you'll find in front of you.

"Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: 'In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.'"

"'I said, "I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple." The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.'"

"'Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit God's love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, "Salvation comes from the Lord."' And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land."

Let's pray: God, we thank you for this word now, and we pray that you'll open our eyes to what we need from you. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

Chapter 2 in the book of Jonah, grown-up version, is a prayer. It's a psalm. It's made out of the same kind of words, same kind of sentences, as the book of Psalms. It's the same sort of structure. It could be easily taken out of the book of Jonah, put smack in the middle of the book of Psalms, and it would fit just right. And in this prayer, we find Jonah (if you use your imagination with me for a moment) in the dark. He finds that he can still breathe.

What's happened? And as he realizes that he is not dead, that a moment ago, the seaweed was wrapped around his neck, and now he can take a breath, he thinks back on what just happened. And this prayer, whether it's been re-written a dozen times to make it more like a psalm or not, this prayer looks back on what just happened. So let's see what just happened to Jonah.

There are two threads that intertwine in this psalm. The first thread is that Jonah's disobedience brought serious consequences. That's one thread. He is dying because of choices he made. That's the first thread. The second thread you'll find in the psalm deals with grace. He realizes he has been delivered. He is not completely free yet. He is in the dark. He doesn't know what's going to happen next, but he is alive, and there is hope. And he knows he doesn't deserve it. Those two threads.

So let's take a look at that first one - Jonah's disobedience. In other words, Jonah not yielding to God had serious consequences. Verse 2 (the first verses of the psalm), "In my distress I called to the Lord." The distress is the consequence. Verse 3 makes that even clearer. "You [talking to the Lord] hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas." This distress that he has experienced is directly in Jonah's mind a result of God taking action against Jonah's own disobedience. "You, God, hurled me in the deep."

He goes on in verses 5 and 6 to describe what it was. "The waters threatening me." The deep surrounding him. Seaweed wrapped around his head. Sinking down. This is a consequence of a decision he made. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach a message of judgment to Nineveh. But Jonah didn't want to do that because he knew that if he preached that message, there was a chance (a small chance) that they'd repent, and that they'd actually receive forgiveness from God for a time at least. And he didn't want even that to happen.

And so Jonah decides to move away from the call of God, to not yield to the will of God, and go his own way. And think of the consequences of that decision. Nearly everybody on the boat... . Everybody on the boat nearly loses their lives. Come that close. People lose their livelihood. All kinds of people had put cargo on that boat. People had made investments, owed money, and it's all now lost. The captain might not ever be able to get another boat under his command because of what happens. Who knows?

All of this happens because of Jonah. It had real consequences, and Jonah himself nearly dies. And now he is in the distress that's the consequences of his own sin. Have you ever been in that kind of distress? I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands on this one. It might be a little too embarrassing. But have you ever been in that place where you are suffering? You realize that you might lose something very precious to you, and it's your fault. Grown-up Jonah is a message for people like that.

It's not only the cost we pay ourselves; it's the cost we forced upon other people's lives because of decisions we've made. When we do things that are wrong, when we don't yield to God, when we do things that are morally wrong, there is a cost. The world is built that way. You know the kind of world we want is we do what we want, and then if we get caught (perish the thought), we say, "I'm sorry." And then it's all over. Everything goes back to the way it was. That's the kind we want. Yeah, Joe. All right. Yeah.

It's kind of what I want. But you know, is Tiger Woods experiencing that kind of world right now? Because the world is not like that. Think about what's happening right now in the Gulf. Even though we can't necessarily say it's a moral issue, but humanity in its pride made certain decisions through governments, through business, and right now the estuaries of Louisiana are in danger. And we're perhaps facing one of the biggest ecological disasters the world has ever seen. The reason for that is we haven't capped it yet.

So what we see on the surface of the water is not the end of the story. It's not the end of the story until the oil stops coming out. Where will it lead? We don't know. But our decisions have consequences, and those consequences are not just our own. They impact the lives of other people. They impact our world.

So, disobedience brings consequences. I think it was John Wesley who said, "We can choose what to do, but we cannot choose the consequences of our choices. That is in God's hands." That's the first point. Now the second thread is that Jonah experiences grace undeserved. Absolutely undeserved grace. We see it begin in verse 4. In verse 4 it says, "I said, 'I have been banished from your sight." Now think about this. "I have been banished from your sight." This is what Jonah has been trying to do the whole first part of the book. He has been trying to get away from the presence of God.

Now he is drowning. He is dying. This is the consequence of not being in the presence of God. This is the consequence of not yielding. He says, "Whoa. I forgot. Excuse me!" He realizes how grave that whole direction of his life was. And so what he does at that moment digs deep into his spiritual tradition as a Jew. It says that in verse 4, "Yet I will look again toward your holy temple." He is going back to some words that come all the way from the time that Solomon dedicated the very first temple to the Lord. When Solomon dedicated that temple, he said this talking about the people of Israel in the future.

"When they sin against you -for there is none who do not sin - and you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to his own land, far away or near; and if they have a change of heart... and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul... and pray to you toward the land you gave their fathers, toward the city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your name, then [verse 49] from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause. And forgive your people, who have sinned against you."

Jonah is digging back into that tradition saying, "God, you have promised that if your people, no matter how bad they mess up, no matter how bad the judgment is on their lives, if they turn back to you, please forgive. God, please forgive." He yields to God. Verse 7 recounts the same thing. "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple."

Verse 8 talks about the fact that if we insist upon going our own way or after one of our idols we can forfeit this grace. But verse 9 says, "But as for me, Jonah, I've learned my lesson." And verse 9 contains the lesson, the lesson of the book of Jonah. It's the lesson of the Old Testament. It's the lesson of the whole Bible. "Salvation comes from the Lord." Jonah receives the same grace he was afraid God would send to Nineveh. There was no distinction. The Jewish prophet and the horrendous Gentile idolatrous people received the same grace.

Sounds like a New Testament message, doesn't it? Romans, chapter 3, verses 21 to 24 say this.

"But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

How does Jonah escape banishment from God? How does he escape death? He escapes by total undeserved grace. Grace didn't eliminate all the consequences of his sin. There are still scared men on the boat. There are still lost wages. There are still lost livelihoods. And right now Jonah might have teeth marks on him, and he might be being bleached by the, you know, acids in the stomach of the whale or fish. Who knows? But the big issue, banishment from God and death, has been averted by grace.

Grace saves Jonah even from himself. The grace we see in the book of Jonah is grace big enough to save you from yourself. Amazing, gigantic, life-saving grace. It's not grace to people who deserve it. Jonah didn't deserve it. Nineveh didn't deserve it. It's not even grace to people who can show afterwards that they deserved it. Don't you carry that idea around sometimes? You know, "I wasn't deserving of grace before, but if I'm really good, I can prove to God that I was really a good choice." As we're going to find out in the book of Jonah, Jonah wasn't even a very good choice. He barely comes around. Isn't it true that sometimes we barely come around? But the grace is still real.

What distress are you in? It might be that you're in the distress of actually drowning and afraid that this moment you might lose it all. You might be in the distress of knowing that you could have lost it all, and you lost a lot, but there was still grace. But you don't know what the future will bring. You don't know how it's all going to play out. You don't know how it's all going to heal. There is still grace no matter where we are.

The message of the grown-up version of Jonah is that there is still hope no matter where you are. There is still hope. It might not be what it could have been. There might still be a cost that hurts to the very core of our hearts. But there is a wholeness. There is a forgiveness. There is the reality of the presence of a God who loves you in all of that brokenness. That's true. We see it here hundreds of years before Jesus. We see it all through the Bible. This is the message. It's not an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. This is the message. Salvation. Deliverance. Forgiveness. Grace comes from God undeserved for people like us.

Three groups in this story received grace. The men in the boat are delivered because Jonah is sacrificed. Jonah is delivered despite the fact that he is the cause of it all. And ultimately even Nineveh is delivered, a people that you can't imagine or reason why God would choose to forgive them. There is no difference in this story between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And all are justified freely by God's grace through the redemption that comes through Christ Jesus.

Salvation comes from the Lord. That's what this table is all about - being freely delivered, rescued by God's grace through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. Because you know, Jonah didn't die because Jesus died. Nineveh didn't have to be judged when it was because Jesus died. We can escape because Jesus died. Jesus even pointed to Jonah as being an image of what happens to him.

In Matthew 12, he says:

"A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Jesus took the death that Jonah deserved. Jonah was a fore-picture of Jesus. Grace flows from this table not to deserving people, not to people who have it all together. If you have it all together, you don't need this table. It's not even to good Christians because I don't think there are any good enough in the room.

It's a table of grace for you as you really are. Not as you appear to be to other people, but as you really are. God, knowing you as you really are, says, "Come." Knowing you as you really are! What all the ways you turn back, all the ways you say no, all the ways you forget the important things, all the ways you hurt other people, Jesus says to you, "Come, this is for you. My death is for you." It's for anybody who will yield, anybody who will turn their face toward Jesus. The message of Jonah, the message of the Church, the message of this table... salvation comes from the Lord.

Let's pray: God, we hold this before you. We've set this table in your name as a sacrament, as a reminder, as an experience of the deliverance you've given us in Jesus Christ. He died for us that we might live. And so, God, now speak to us in this moment whatever way we need it. For we ask it all in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2010, Rev. Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org