Trusting God When You're Desperate (Jonah 2)

In this encouraging message from Jonah 2, Pastor Chris Teien explores what it means to find hope in the most desperate moments of life. Just as Jonah cried out to God from the belly of a great fish, we too can experience God’s presence and deliverance in our darkest times. Discover how prayer, trust in God's sovereignty, and gratitude can transform your perspective when everything seems hopeless. Join us as we learn valuable lessons from Jonah's journey and see how God’s grace can rescue us, even when we feel swallowed by our circumstances. Listen now to be encouraged and inspired to cry out to God, trust His plan, and thank Him in advance for the deliverance that is on the way!

Rockwell Church     Oct  27, 2024     Pastor Chris Teien
Finding Hope in Desperation  Jonah 1:17-2:10 

#1 Jonah’s & Jesus’ EXPERIENCE (Jonah 1:17, Matt 12:40) 

#2 Cry Out to God in Your DISTRESS (Jonah 2:1-2) 

#3  Recognize God’s SOVEREIGNTY in Your Life (Jonah 2:3-6) 

#4  Thank God for His DELIVERANCE (Jonah 2:7-10) 

“When gratitude becomes your default setting, life changes.” – Max Lucado, pastor and author. 


#FindingHope #Jonah2 #RockwellChurch218 #HopeInDesperation #GodsDeliverance #rockwellchurch218

Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day. For darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being. You met me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. If one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I'm still with you.

Chris T 2:39

And we uh ended by singing the song Oceans. And now we've started the continuing series on Jonah with uh Psalm 139 and the lady in the darkness of the deep in scuba equipment with air. And um Jonah, when he falls into the water, he doesn't have any of that. He doesn't have any of that at all. And so when we look at Jonah, we remember the big fish story, but really I think more it speaks to our heart condition, it speaks to our attitude toward lost people, it speaks to our faith in God and wanting to be used by him to reach lost people who would perish without hearing about Jesus. And so, as I mentioned last week, Jonah did not want to go, he literally uh went as far away as he could. I used the illustration last week that God said, Hey Jonah, I want you to go to Chicago and tell those people about me so they could repent and be saved. Jonah's like, Nope, not gonna happen. I hate those people, those people are evil and wicked. So he uh went to Alaska, so he went to Fairbanks or Anchorage, Alaska instead. But God, God caught him, God got his attention. Um actually he went on a ship, as you know, and so then a big storm came up, and the sailors found out that it was Jonah's fault. So Jonas said, throw me overboard, and then it will stop the storm. So he was willing to give his life, sacrifice his life, because he knew that he was responsible for the sailors that were gonna die in the storm if it kept up. So they threw him overboard, and that's where we where we left off. So um, as we think about the time in which we live and the opportunities that we have last week, uh last Sunday, we didn't have Sunday school, we had a prayer meeting, prayer gathering. We prayed about the election, and so if you're interested, I had made a prayer guide. So it was supposed to be an hour prayer time, but you literally could pray through this quickly in under an hour, or you could use it as a guide and you could pray for hours with it. But on the table back there is a uh election season prayer guide. Otherwise, if you go to my own website, christyon.com, you can download it, but to be praying about the election because that's coming up. And so uh our culture seems to be running away from God, and it seems like a lot of us would just prefer to just walk away and do our own thing and hide out among our church friends and say, Well, if you're gonna do that, you do that, we're we're gonna do our own thing, and so that's not being salt, that's not being light. Another way to come into this and think about the story of Jonah is about your life personally. So, have you ever found yourself in a lot of trouble? So maybe uh it was because you made a big mistake, or maybe it's because you found yourself in the middle of someone else's bad choices, but you just didn't know how you were gonna make it through. You didn't know um how are you were gonna pay the bill, how were how are you gonna get through uh the sickness, how you were going to um overcome the layoff or um all of those difficulties that come into our lives. And I appreciate some of you that have lived your lives and come with testimonies as to how God was faithful, how God was faithful to get you through during the hardship, during the strike. Um, there's not very many people left that can tell you about how God got them through the depression, but I have heard stories about how God did amazing things to provide food and resources and things to carry families through really hard times. As they cried out to God and as God answered their prayers. Sometimes we try to fix everything on our own first. Uh instead of praying first, we come to the conclusion that, well, there's nothing left we can do but pray. And so it should be the other way around. We should pray first and then try to figure out what to do. But Jonah had got himself into a mess. Jonah heard from God and did the wrong thing. Um sometimes I feel like maybe the Holy Spirit prompts me, or you know, I don't think I'm I'm smart enough to keep myself out of all trouble. But every now and then, you know, it's like, oh, you should say something, or you should do something, or you should check something. So not too long ago, I was changing the transmission filter in my wife's car, and so I always want to make sure she has the safest car ever so that she doesn't break down on the side of the road. I mean, I carry stuff with me to fix my stuff when it breaks down on the side of the road, but I don't want her to break down at all. So I was replacing the transmission fluid and the filter and everything, and I was putting it back up and I looked at the spring. There was this little spring on the top, this little metal spring, and I was looking at it, and I'm like, that doesn't really look right. I guess that's the way it is. But anyway, so I put the stuff back together and I was putting the bolts on, and it just really loud. It was like, you got you should check that, you should check that, you should check that. So I took the screws back off, and then I started to look at YouTube videos to see if I could see uh, you know, other places where the spring was. And then I realized that the spring wasn't attached correctly. Um, I didn't do anything to it, I don't really know, you know. I think when I took the thing off, I think it kind of came down, but anyway, so then I got it fixed right, and I verified that it was right and I put everything back together and I know that it was good, and there was no roadside trouble, no failed transmission or whatever. But um I was listening to that inner voice. Sometimes the inner voice uh sometimes is temptation and it's not God. Uh, whatever the inner voice tells you to do will be something in agreement with scripture or good or whatever, but if anyway, I listened and then I double-checked and I verified and then I took action, and then it turned out to be okay. Jonah was a prophet of God. This book doesn't talk about Jonah's prophecies, but Jonah had heard from God. Jonah knew God's voice. Jonah knew exactly what God wanted him to do was to go to the wicked city of Nineveh and tell them to repent and to turn to him so that they could be spared, so that they could be restored, so that they could continue on. And so they did for a period of time, but as time went on, eventually God had to judge them. But nonetheless, Jonah had this experience, and sometimes that experience is something that we can relate to. Sometimes that experience is something that even parallels Jesus' experience as a type. Matter of fact, Jesus actually called out Jonah's story, and I'll show you that in just a second. But if we're in Jonah, chapter one, uh last week I ended with, after Jonah got thrown overboard. Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. There's nothing in this to say that this isn't true. And being that Jesus referenced it, I think it's true. I have no reason to doubt that it's true, unless I think that my faith is uh above what the scriptures teach and say and what Jesus says. So I'm gonna go with this is a true story. So even if it is a parable, a parable, it still teaches stuff, but this fish that God provided is something interesting to think about. What kind of sea creature could this be? So the Hebrew doesn't really help because it just translates to fish or sea creature, so it doesn't really tell. So if you look around and you know read some Bible commentaries and stuff, they'll say, well, maybe it was a sperm whale. Uh they're among the largest whales, capable of reaching over 60 feet in length, and their throats are large enough to swallow large prey like a giant squid. So when I remember the children's books about Jonah, I had seen a picture of Jonah in the belly of a whale, and he's made himself a little bench and he's got his little fire going, and it's like he's camping out inside the fish. And it looks real nice and all, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it worked out. So I saw another children's toy book that made it look like Jonah could see through the eyes of the fish, like he was on a submarine seeing what's going on. I don't think it was like that either. So I guessed that if you're in a sperm whale's digestive system uh with the multiple chambers, uh, it could be that one of those chambers had enough air to keep him alive. But uh the digestive juice and the heat and all of that, it's not a very pleasant place to be. Another person or another resource pointed out it could be a great white shark when while large, great white sharks generally have a throat too small to swallow a human. However, ancient or exceptionally large sharks, such as the megalodon, is that how you say that? Never watched the movie. There's a lot of shark movies, especially during shark week, right? Uh, could potentially have had the size to swallow a man whole, but if you were swallowed whole, um, it would be pretty hard to be in the midst of that. And not only, if you were in like the shark's stomach with the digestive juices, you know, all the all the churning and everything a fish would do, you'd be you'd get like car sick fish sick, you know, all the motion sickness and everything. And then um, can you imagine the smell? How terrible that would smell? And then even worse, um, so he's in the water, he's been snatched up by something. I don't think he knew what it was. So, unless you know, God's spirit told him. Uh, but you know, so he literally thought he was in Hades. He really thought he had gone to the place of the dead, and this was the experience. Um be a terrible thing. But God didn't actually use this fish necessarily to punish him as much as he used it to save him. So to save him from drowning, and to even help him to have transportation to get to the place where he was supposed to go. Some say it could be a whale shark. The largest fish in the ocean can grow up to 40 feet long, and although it has a wide mouth, it feeds filtering on by filtering on plankton and small fish, making it less likely to swallow a human. Its throat is relatively narrow for swallowing large objects. So, and then probably the best answer is an unknown, because we don't know what's in the ocean. Uh, one scientist was saying that we know more about what's in space than we know what's in the depths of the ocean. But it could have been a specially created creature for the task. God could have caused an existing creature to grow really big and be able to take care of that. So Jonah's in the midst of some creature, and it's dark and isolated. So he doesn't know what's going on. He's fearful, uh, probably can't breathe very well. The pressure and the heat inside a large marine creature, Jonah likely would have experienced immense heat as digestive systems are often warm around 104 degrees. The crushing pressure from the water at certain depths may have compounded this. There's a lack of oxygen. While there could be air pockets, uh still it would be difficult to breathe in the midst of that. The physical discomfort of being in there, the psychological anguish of not knowing what he's going through, not knowing what God's going to do with him, realizing that this is because he disobeyed God, all of these difficult things, that he is in this, he's in this situation. He knows it's because of his own bad choices, he knows that he deserves this. He's fallen into the hands of the Almighty God, and he doesn't know what's going to come next. So Jesus, as I mentioned before, said, 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. And Jesus did not, by the way, reveal what kind of fish it was either. So, as a type, a type is like a parallel between an Old Testament character, a New Testament character, um, between uh things in the Bible. Sometimes we find different types of Jesus, and this is one that's easy to see the parallel. So Jesus was in the grave three days and three nights. Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days and three nights. So Jonah was sent by God to go talk to, to deliver a message of repentance to the Nineveh, a wicked city, and his mission was to bring people back to God and to save them from destruction. So Jesus was sent by God to offer salvation, to teach us how to live, to sacrifice his life for us so that we could be brought back to God through repentance and faith, offering salvation instead of the ultimate destruction of sin and hell. So Jonah made a sacrifice for others in the storm. He was willing to sacrifice his life to save the sailors. And so he asked them to throw him overboard. And so he was willing to die for the life of the sailors. Jesus was willing to die. He gave himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He willingly went to the cross to die on the cross so that he could give humanity an opportunity to be saved from their sins. So Jonah's message to Nineveh was a warning of God's judgment, but it ultimately led to mercy when the people repented. However, Jonah was not happy about that, and he struggled with God's mercy, feeling that the wicked Ninevehit didn't deserve forgiveness. So Jesus' message is also about repentance and avoiding judgment, but his mission was entirely one of grace and mercy. So he came not to just warn of judgment, but to offer himself as the way of escape. And Jesus' mercy extends to all. So Jesus came and he taught us how to live. He lived a perfect life so that he would qualify to be the perfect sacrifice for our sin, and then he died on the cross and then rose again, showing that he had the keys to eternal life. And so he was quite pleased with it. So he was pleased in the mission that he completed. So he knew that he was going to endure suffering at the hands of the sinful men that he created, but yet he was pleased to do it. So Jesus' work provides eternal salvation. Jonah's work would only provide temporary forgiveness. But anyway, so you can see that there's a parallel there between Jesus and between Jonah. And so again, I think it's a real story, and I think it's something that we should really think about. I think we should think about what happens when we say no to God. I think it's important that we do what we know we're supposed to do so that God is honored. So Pastor Appreciation Day is really nice, and I appreciate all of you, and I appreciate Pastor's Appreciation Day. So I don't want to be self-serving or whatever. It was awkward yesterday when I grabbed the slide for pastor appreciation and put it on there. Um, but when I first started in ministry in 1996, I started as a youth and family pastor in Iowa. And so the first time someone looked at me and said and called me pastor, I looked behind me to see if John, the senior pastor, was behind me. And so John actually saw that and he pulled me aside. He's like, Hey, you're the pastor, you're a pastor in this church now. You need to let people call you pastor. They're trying to honor God by honoring the people that they put in their lives to serve in their church. So let them honor God by calling you pastor and whatever else. Don't let pride or uh humility or whatever you want to call it get in your way. Just let that be. So I did, and I appreciate your appreciation. So, and I know that often when we do things, our motive is to honor God by what we do with our time, by what we do with our resources, by what we do with what we have. So, um, when we give, when we give, it is a reflection of what's in our heart. So we give because God loves a cheerful giver, and we give um as a sacrifice because we could use that money to spend on something else. Everybody needs something else. But when we give, it's an act of worship and we trust God with our finances, and we trust that when we're faithful to do what's right with our finances, that God can provide. So sometimes when uh a Christian person finds themselves in financial distress uh and you find that they haven't been faithful to give anything back to God, it almost seems like God is doing something with their finances to uh wake them up and to show them that um all things come from his hand. And if you're going to be faithful with the provision that I give you to give back, uh to build the kingdom that Matthew 6 33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you. That when you do that, that uh God will provide, and sometimes when you don't, that God allows difficult things to happen with your finances or or your life. And so we have to do what's right, and we need to stop running from God. So there's great disappointment when we choose not to follow God's plan and God's will. So I don't really don't know if in 28 years of ministry how effective I've been. Only God knows that. So I do know that there are some people in ministry that I got to I mean, I didn't make them, uh I didn't uh do everything in their life, but you know, I do know there are some conversations had and some encouragement and uh opportunities given with pastor interns and stuff. Or if I hadn't answered God's call, would anybody's life be different? If you hadn't answered God's call to share your faith or help send that kid to camp or uh provide financial resources for that church or whatever else, would anybody's life be different? I mean, God could still work out his plan. I mean he doesn't need your money, he doesn't need your work, but but he sees it as an act of worship, he sees it as an act of obedience, he sees it as um something honorable and reward worthy. So sometimes sometimes our troubles are caused by ourselves, sometimes our troubles um are just things that happen, but either way, we should cry out to God in our distress. We should cry out to God in our distress. When you don't know what to do, cry out to God. When you don't know how you're going to get what you need, pray for it and cry out to God. When you don't know what exactly Exactly what you're supposed to do in the midst of your difficulty, pray and cry out to God. So I've been here for three three years now, three years of you know telling my stories, and so you gotta tell me more of your stories so that I can tell them. So otherwise I might repeat mine. But um years ago, when we needed a house to live in and we didn't have a great place to live, uh we had a condo that was a great investment, supposedly, but it wasn't. But we were able to find someone to take over our payments. I wish they'd bring back those assumable mortgages, that was good. But anyway, so missionaries in Indonesia were praying for someone to rent their house, and we were praying for a house to rent, and so Julia met someone at the grocery store from the big church we went to, and anyway, maybe you heard the story before, but God provided this house for us to live in near my work as an answer to prayer for the missionaries that were in Indonesia and an answer to prayer for us because the apartment we were living in uh at the time wasn't great. Some people from a different country moved next door and didn't think it was a problem for their kid to run down the hallway back and forth at two in the morning. And so um our house wasn't just our home, it was Julie stayed at home with the kids. I mean, she was there all the time, not just like she was there, you know, for part of the time. But so we're praying and praying for a house, and the missionaries were praying and praying for somebody good to rent their house. And the problem was that there were renters that were in there, and so we needed to help them find another place. So we came up with a great idea that they would assume our lease and get out of the house so that we could get into the house. And so they're okay, we'll do that. And some months later, I got a call from the rental agency that said, Hey, you owe us for back rent. And I'm like, What? Like, you're the people that were there quit paying. I'm like, oh, when did they stop paying? And they told me, I'm like, oh, well, actually, my lease expired the month before. They're like, oh. So anyway, um, but we couldn't find a home on our own. We needed a place to live, uh, we needed someone to sublet. We didn't have money to pay their rent, and God provided and all of those things. So the missionaries got someone to rent their house. Uh God provided, but it was only after we cried out to God and after we tried every knocking on every door and testing every resource to see that we couldn't provide on our own, but God could. And we cried out to God and he heard us and he answered our prayer. He answered our prayer. We need to pray more about the things that are causing trouble in our life, like Jonah did. So Jonah could have said, you know, God has God has judged me, God has canceled me, God has fired me, um, my life is over. But Jonah had faith still, and from inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. Let's read that. He said, In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me. From deep from deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. So he he maybe he thought he was dead. He was definitely in the deep, but he cried out to God. He prayed. Um Oswald Chambers, who writes the great devotional My Umost for us Highest, says, We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties. So when was the last time you cried out to God? When was the last time he answered a prayer in a miraculous way? When is the last time you shared with somebody the amazing answers to prayer in your life? It is a wonderful thing when you have those difficulties turned to uh answers to prayer because it's a God sighting. It shows that the God of the universe, who made everything around you, cares about you so much, he reached down from heaven to help you in your time of need, to help you get through that difficulty, to help you to find that job, to help you to get that resource, to help you through that sickness and sometimes healing and all of those things as we recognize God's sovereignty in our life, as we recognize that God is ultimately in control. And Jonah continues. He says, You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. He said, I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. Just real quick. Did you notice this? That um, so actually the sailors threw him overboard. And so then there was the current of the ocean and everything. But Jonah the prophet, who at times was tight with God, though disobedient, knew that it wasn't really the sailors that were in control, that God moved through those sailors to throw Jonah overboard, and that God had his hand in all of this, and it was God that was doing these things. And Jonah says, I've been banished from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. He is, even though he thinks he is done, he is dead, or um he doesn't know what's going on really, uh, he still is trusting and crying out and praying. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head, to the roots of the mountains I sank down, to the earth beneath the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. God preserved Jonah. God did not let Jonah die. Jonah didn't know what was going on, but when he looked back, he was able to know and able to see. And that happens to us so many times. So many times we're in the midst of the difficulty and we're in the midst of not knowing what we're gonna do. Uh we cry out to God and we wait and we wait. And it's like, I don't know. I hope, I hope that he answers, I hope that he comes through. I'm still gonna worship him and trust him even if he doesn't. But it's all those experiences in the past where God has answered prayer, where God has shown up, where God has encouraged, that you look back to and say, You're right now, I don't know how I'm gonna go, how this is gonna work out, but I know that God was faithful here, God was faithful here, God's been faithful to me here, God answered prayer here, and all I can assume is that somehow God is gonna help me now. And then we thank him for his deliverance. We thank him for the things that he's done. There's so many times where I prayed, Oh, God, if you get me out of this, I promise that I will, you know, and I I've got this prayer. Sometimes I've gone, I've been real diligent with prayer lists sometimes, other times not. But uh, you know, you write down this prayer, it never seems like it's gonna get answered. I'll never get out of this lease, I'll never, I'll never uh be able to leave this uh dead-end job. And so you write it down and you write a date and you pray about it, and then a while later, weeks later, a month later, years later, you look back, you're like, Man, I can't believe I was so concerned about that. God answered that prayer and took care of that. That's not an issue anymore. And so we thank God for his deliverance. Jonah says, 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 turn away from 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 on to dry land. So, do you see we're almost out of time here? So, um, but do you see that Jonah did not thank God after he was released from the fish? He was thanking God beforehand, he was thanking God in advance. Do you thank God in advance as you're waiting for God to answer your prayer? Do you thank God that He hears you, that He knows what you're going through, and He can help you? Max Lucato says, when gratitude becomes your default setting, life changes. And so when we are thankful in advance, then often God works. But the problem is, is when we don't realize that it was God, or we forget to thank God, or you know, it's been such a long period of time that we prayed that prayer that when it's finally answered, we forget, you know, or to be grateful and to worship the Lord, or that God had his hands in it. So don't do that. But anyway, so after Jonah uh was thankful, after Jonah re-established his commitment, so he's saying, God, if you get me out of this, I will go declare your salvation to those people that I hate. I will fulfill my vows that I made to you if you get me out of this. And God did. And that's where we're gonna continue next week because it's more significant than just the fact that stinky Jonah is on the shore. So the Ninevehit actually are going to think that he's like a fish god, and that's one reason why they listened to him, and that's really interesting in the story of Jonah that I will share next week. But the worship team can come forward. But I just really want to encourage you that in your struggles and the difficulties and your fears and all of these things that you pray, that you cry out to God, maybe you write it down, maybe share it with others, and they can pray for you too. But just to trust and thank him in advance and watch for God to answer. Sometimes God will God will fix your situation right there and then. Sometimes he'll wait a while. Um, sometimes the ultimate solution is not fixing your problem here on this earth, but to take you up to be with him for all eternity as you die in this life and go to be with Jesus. But Lord, I thank you for your word. I pray if anybody that is here that doesn't know you as our Lord and Savior, that they would cry out to you, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner in need of salvation. Please forgive me of my sin. Come into my life and save me. I want to follow you in Jesus' name. Amen. Um, and for us, help us to be committed more than Jonah was to reach lost people around us and to live out your will and your way. In Jesus' name, amen.