Well, Dwight Schrute says that our world needs a spiritual revolution.
Dwight Schrute, of course, if you have seen the classic TV show The Office, is that nerdy,
quirky character at the paper company, Dunder Mifflin, who has all kinds of quirks and crazy
things that he does and that happened to him.
And Dwight Schrute is played by the actor Rainn Wilson.
And Rainn Wilson recently came out with a book this year called Soul Boom, Why We Need
a Spiritual Revolution.
And I read it recently, and in the intro, he describes his own spiritual journey from adolescence
into adulthood.
Growing up in Seattle in the 1960s and 70s, he says that his childhood was filled with
two things, art and spirituality.
His mom was an actress in experimental theater.
His dad was a painter of abstract art and an author of science fiction novels.
They were the classic hippie family in the 1960s and 70s.
His parents were also members of the Baha'i Faith.
The Baha'i Faith is a religion that incorporates practices and insights from all the different
world religions.
And so they would have these gatherings at their home in Seattle with Buddhists and Sikhs and
Muslims and Mormons and Christians.
And they would pray and meditate and study holy texts from all sorts of faith and spiritual
traditions.
And so Rainn Wilson says that he grew up with lots of influences of spirituality on his life.
But despite growing up with lots of spirituality in his life, he, as he became older, he walked
away from all of it.
He walked away from it for a time until later in his life as an adult, in his late 20s and
30s, when he says that he hit the bottom of his life.
He experienced a lot of pain and hardship and difficult things.
He experienced struggles with mental health and depression.
He experienced addictions to drugs and alcohol.
And it was being in that place in his life at the bottom that started his own spiritual
journey.
And it's part of what led him to write a number of books, including his most recent book,
Soul Boom.
And this is what he says in his book as he thinks about our culture.
He says,
Culture, rather than being political or economic or legislative, is primarily spiritual as well.
And perhaps the key to healing the world's chaos and pain lies on a spiritual path.
Perhaps there are spiritual tools and religious concepts out there that can help us on a societal
level as well in our own spiritual transformation.
And this insight from Dwight Schrute, also known as Rainn Wilson, lines up very well with our study of Jonah.
The world needs a spiritual revolution, and we need to experience spiritual transformation.
We are in a series where we're looking at the book of Jonah.
And last week, we looked at Jonah chapter 1, where we saw that God calls Jonah, a prophet in northern
Israel, to go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.
But what we see is that for a variety of reasons, Jonah runs from God in direct disobedience to him
in the complete opposite direction, and he finds himself headed west on a ship to Tarshish across the
Mediterranean Sea.
And as he's in the middle of the sea, God sends a storm into his life.
And it's in the middle of the storm that Jonah learned something about God and has an encounter
with his mercy and his grace.
At the beginning of chapter 1, we see Jonah running from God.
And at the end of chapter 2, which we just read, we see Jonah singing about God's love
and about his mercy.
And somewhere in the middle, somewhere between him running and him singing, something happened
in Jonah's heart.
He had some sort of experience with God that transformed him.
And so what happened in the belly of the fish?
And how did it happen?
And how can we experience the same thing?
How can we experience a spiritual transformation in our own lives?
And so that's what we're going to be looking at this morning.
We're going to be looking at Jonah's transformation and our transformation.
But before we do, raise your hand if you are in elementary school.
Who here is in elementary school?
Awesome.
You should have received some papers and some colored pencils on the way in.
If you haven't, they're there for you in the back.
And so hopefully you have those, and you've got a few different things that you can do.
You can color some stuff in and draw some things.
And if you'd like to draw a picture, if you'd like to draw a picture on one of the pages,
I want to give you a picture to draw.
And I would encourage you to draw a picture of a large fish or a whale and draw a picture
of Jonah inside the whale.
But don't just draw Jonah.
Draw him praying a prayer to God.
So if you want to draw a picture, that's a picture to draw.
And if you do draw it, I want to see it after the service, okay?
So come show it to me.
All right.
So we're going to look at two things.
We're going to look at Jonah's transformation, and we're going to look at our transformation.
Jonah's transformation starts with a storm.
And that's what we looked at last week, that Jonah's story shows us something really important,
that storms in our life are not always the result of sin and disobedience, but sometimes
they are.
In a fallen world, lots of people who love and trust and obey and worship God suffer greatly.
And it has nothing to do because of their sin or disobedience, but because they live, we
live in a fallen and broken world.
But if we are in a place in our lives where we are running from him, if we are living a
life in direct disobedience to him and to his word, sometimes the most loving and gracious
thing that God can do in our lives is to send a storm into our lives, to wake us up and
to help us to see our sin and to help us to see our need for him and his mercy.
And this is what happens to Jonah.
God sends a storm into his life, and as we looked at last week, he realizes the storm out
in the middle of the sea is because of him.
And so he decides to save the lives of the sailors, that he's going to plunge himself into
the heart of the sea so the storm can stop.
And Jonah is headed his way down into the bottom of the sea when God rescues him through a large
marine creature.
We don't know if it was a whale or some other really big fish, but he's rescued by a large
fish.
And he prays this prayer in Jonah chapter 2 in the belly of the fish.
Chapter 2, verse 3,
For you cast me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas.
In the flood surrounded me all your waves and your billows passed over me.
The waters closed in over me to take my life.
The deep surrounded me.
The weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.
The way that people imagined in the ancient world, the way that people imagined Sheol or the land of the dead is they imagined it as a place that when you entered it, that the bars of the gates locked behind you.
And so therefore, the land of the dead was not a place that you could escape from or return from.
And Jonah says, that's where I was going.
That was where I was headed.
The bars of the gates were about to lock behind me.
And similar to Rainn Wilson's story, Jonah is at the lowest point in his life.
He's at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.
Seaweed is wrapped around his body.
He knows he's about to die physically, and he also knows spiritually it's the farthest from God he's ever been.
He's experiencing the natural consequences of his sin and disobedience, separation from God.
And in that place of great need, Jonah turns to the Lord in prayer.
In verse 7, he says,
When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you in your holy temple.
At the literal, spiritual, and physical bottom of his life, Jonah cries out to God.
And this is a turning point, not only in this story, but in Jonah's life.
Because in this moment, Jonah realizes that not only is he in need of rescue,
but that he can't rely on anyone or anything else.
He can't rely on wealth or status or success, not in being a good religious or moral person.
He can't rely on his race or nationality or culture.
That even he, a prophet from Israel, God's prophet, is in need of divine mercy.
And it's this realization that brings about spiritual renewal in Jonah's heart.
And we see that renewal happen throughout this prayer in Jonah chapter 2,
but we see it specifically in verses 8 and 9.
In verse 8, Jonah prays,
Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
What's an idol?
Well, there's a lot that we could say.
In the ancient world, an idol was often a literal statue that people would bow down
and worship the God who was represented in the statue.
But we can also think about an idol as whatever is at the center of our lives,
whatever we put at the center of our lives as a functional savior,
as a functional savior.
A functional savior that gives us meaning, that gives us purpose, that gives us identity,
that gives us significance.
And it's also a functional savior that we turn to whenever we realize we're in need of rescue,
whenever we realize that we are in need of outside help.
It's whatever we turn to whenever we're trying to find comfort,
whenever we're trying to find relief, whenever we're trying to find escape,
wherever we're trying to find a way out.
That's what an idol is.
It's a functional savior.
And Jonah realizes that at the bottom of the sea, he realizes something about idols.
He says he realizes that his functional savior, his functional saviors,
can promise him a lot of things, but they rarely ever deliver.
Idols promise, but they can't deliver.
We might look to money or a career or success or even a marriage
to give us a sense of ultimate purpose and meaning.
We might look to things like food or alcohol
to help us find a sense of relief or comfort or escape.
But when you realize that you are at the rock bottom in your life,
when there is seaweed wrapped around your head,
you realize those things can't actually rescue you.
When you're drowning, it doesn't matter how much money is in your bank account
or what your resume says.
Idols, like money and success and comfort, are great motivators.
They can get you to work hard and do lots of things,
but they're terrible saviors.
They're terrible saviors.
Verse 8, Jonah prays, those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
Now, this word, steadfast love, is a big word in the Old Testament.
It's the Hebrew word, hesed.
And this Hebrew word, hesed, is this rich, multifaceted word
that we see all over the Old Testament.
It can refer to a number of things.
It can refer to acts of kindness towards someone who's in need.
It can refer to the spousal love between a husband and a wife.
And both of these things refer to God's covenant love,
his covenant loyalty to his people and his faithfulness
to love his people and to keep the promises that he has made to them.
This is God's steadfast love, his hesed.
Perhaps one of the best descriptions of God's steadfast love
comes from the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones.
And in the Jesus Storybook Bible,
she describes God's steadfast love
as his never stopping,
never giving up,
unbreaking,
always and forever love.
It's God's never stopping,
never giving up,
unbreaking,
always and forever love.
It's the kind of love that we all long for
because it's the kind of love that we were made for.
And it's at the bottom of the sea
that Jonah's spiritual sight becomes crystal clear.
He realizes it's not just that all of my idols
and functional saviors can't rescue me from the bottom of life.
It's also that they can't fulfill the deepest longings of my heart.
The deepest longings of my heart
for the steadfast love of the Lord,
his never stopping,
his never giving up,
his unbreaking,
his always and forever love.
And Jonah ends his prayer in verse 9
with a shout of praise.
And he says,
salvation belongs to the Lord.
Salvation belongs to the Lord.
And this prayer is Jonah's journey of repentance.
Repentance.
Repentance involves turning from our sin,
our disobedience,
but also turning from our functional saviors
that we look to to fill our hearts,
to fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts.
And so repentance involves
turning from our functional saviors
and turning to putting all of our hope
and all of our trust
in the steadfast love of the Lord.
And this is what produces
spiritual transformation in Jonah's life.
It's repentance.
It's not new insights
about what he can do to find salvation.
But it's the realization
that salvation has come and found him.
That salvation has come and found him.
And this is the central message
of the whole Bible.
That salvation belongs to the Lord.
That though we have all run from God
in direct disobedience to him
and are eternally separated from him,
that in Jesus Christ,
God has come running after us
in steadfast love
and done everything necessary
to reconcile us back to him.
Salvation is not 50% things that we do
and 50% things that God does.
It's 100% all from him.
Salvation belongs to the Lord.
That's the gospel.
It's the central message of the Bible.
It's the heart of our faith.
And this is what Jonah realizes
in the belly of the fish.
And so he, after three days and three nights,
he comes out onto dry land.
And you have to imagine
that those first few breaths
of fresh air that he breathed
were incredibly sweet.
After being three days and three nights
in the belly of a large fish,
he comes out onto dry land
with a mind that's renewed
with fresh insight about God.
He comes out with a heart
that is renewed through repentance
and worship towards God.
And his will is renewed
in love and obedience towards God.
And this transformation in Jonah's life
is the journey of spiritual transformation
through death and resurrection.
Through death and resurrection,
the storm takes Jonah down
to the place of spiritual and literal death.
And at the bottom,
he comes to the end of himself.
He acknowledges his need.
He cries out to the Lord in repentance.
And the Lord rescues him
and the Lord renews him.
Down in death and up in resurrection.
Down in death, up in resurrection.
And that's the key
to Jonah's spiritual transformation.
And that is the key
to our spiritual transformation.
So that's what we're gonna look at.
Secondly, is our transformation.
How do we experience the kind of renewal
and the kind of transformation
that Jonah experienced in his life?
How can we experience God's grace
in a way that causes us
to pray and to sing Jonah 2 prayers?
Well, we experience it
by experiencing death and resurrection
in our lives.
Author Paul Miller wrote a great book on this
called The J Curve.
And if you can imagine the shape of a J,
the shape of a J goes down and goes up.
The J starts here and it goes up.
And the J curve is a picture
of how the New Testament talks
about how our relationship with Jesus
not only rescues us,
but transforms us.
And we see this all over the New Testament.
But we see it in places like Philippians 3.10.
So in Philippians 3.10, Paul says,
I want to know Christ.
What does it mean to know Christ?
To know the power of his resurrection
and participation in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death,
and so somehow attaining
the resurrection from the dead.
Did you see the J curve?
He says, I want to know Christ.
And knowing Christ takes me down in suffering,
down in death,
and up through resurrection.
That's the J curve.
Paul's logic is,
if Jesus rescued me
through his death and resurrection,
then that is also how Jesus changes me,
by his spirit.
Through his death and resurrection,
as I participate by the Holy Spirit,
by grace through faith,
in his death and resurrection in the present.
That's the Christian life.
Another way to say it
is that the same grace that rescues us
is also the grace that transforms us.
The same grace that rescues us
is also the grace that transforms us.
So what does this,
what does that practically look like in our lives?
Well, I think there's a thousand different ways
in our lives
to experience spiritual transformation
through death and resurrection,
to follow the J curve in our lives.
There's a million opportunities
every week to experience that.
But we're gonna look,
I just wanna look at one.
And I wanna look at one example
that we're all familiar with.
Conflict.
And you're like,
can we use a different example?
Can we use,
I don't wanna talk about conflict right now,
because I'm in the middle of one.
No, we're gonna talk about it,
because here's,
if you can figure out
how to apply the grace of the gospel
in the middle of conflict,
I think you can learn to apply it
in virtually every aspect of your life.
Because conflict is such a difficult thing.
A situation,
a conversation happens at work,
or at home,
or at church,
or on social media,
God forbid.
There's disagreements.
We're at odds with someone.
Emotions are rising.
There's tension.
There's anxiety.
Maybe even there's anger.
What's happening?
I'll tell you what's happening.
Death.
Death is happening.
And for many of us,
including myself,
conflict feels like death,
doesn't it?
Especially for those
who are conflict avoiders.
And I'm a conflict avoider.
Conflict feels like death.
Why is that?
Because it's a storm.
And the storm of conflict
is taking you down to the bottom.
It's taking you down
to the bottom of the J-curve.
And it's at the bottom of the J-curve
that many of us freak out.
We freak out because it doesn't feel good,
because it feels like death.
But we shouldn't freak out.
We shouldn't freak out
because it's at the bottom
of the J-curve.
It's in the middle of death
that we are transformed
and where we experience God's grace.
Because at the bottom,
we have a choice to make.
Does salvation belong to me?
Does salvation exist
in one of my functional saviors?
Or does salvation belong to the Lord?
And here is where the rubber meets the road
in the Christian life.
Even though many of us
would say salvation belongs to the Lord.
Even though many of us would say,
Jesus Christ has saved me from my sins.
We've trusted Him
for eternal salvation.
Even though many of us would say
salvation belongs to the Lord,
there are still parts of our hearts,
there are still blind spots
where the reality of grace
has yet to sink in.
At the bottom of the J-curve,
we're all tempted to say,
salvation belongs to me.
And to turn to strategies,
turn to functional saviors in our life.
And in my own life,
when it comes to conflict,
some of the functional saviors
that I have been tempted to turn to
are the idols of power and control.
If I can just control the outcome,
if I can be in charge,
if I can win the argument,
then the tension will end
and then I'll have escape.
And the idols,
the functional saviors of power and control,
seem to offer a way out.
They seem to offer a way of salvation.
But turning to our functional saviors
of power and control
can lead us to do lots of crazy things.
They can lead us to defensiveness
and criticism of the other person.
They can lead us to lie
and distort the truth.
They can even lead us to manipulate
or even dominate other people.
And all of these things
can become embedded patterns
in our lives
that end up being the way,
the default way
that we relate to other people.
Now, if you approach conflict like this
in your life,
it may benefit you at first.
It may offer some rewards
and benefits at first.
But eventually,
if this becomes the default pattern
in your life,
it'll bring chaos.
It'll cause breakdown
in your relationships.
It will lead you to burn bridges.
It'll lead you to be hard and cynical.
It'll lead you away
from relationships of love.
Why?
Because the idols of power
and control
can promise,
but they can't deliver.
They can promise,
but they can't deliver.
They're functional saviors.
They're terrible saviors.
They can't actually rescue you.
So what's the alternative?
The alternative
is to say,
salvation doesn't belong to me,
but salvation belongs to the Lord.
The alternative is repentance.
Repentance involves
turning from our functional saviors
and believing
at the bottom of the J-curve
that salvation belongs to the Lord.
Even though part of us
wants to win.
Even though part of us
wants to have control.
What do we do?
We look at Jesus
and we see
that the one
who has
all authority
and power
in heaven and on earth
laid all of it
down.
We see in places
like Philippians 2
that though
he was God,
he did not consider
equality with God
something to be grasped.
But he emptied himself.
He emptied himself
of power and authority.
He became a servant
and he experienced
utter powerlessness
through death on the cross.
And it was through that death,
it was through that humility,
it was through that powerlessness
that salvation
came into the world
and into you and me.
And Philippians 2 says
that God exalted him
to the right hand
of the Father.
That in the name of Jesus
every tongue shall confess
that Jesus is Lord
to the glory of God
the Father
and that in Jesus Christ
and in his
exalted resurrection
we ourselves
share
in his power
and glory
and authority
over sin
and death
and evil.
That's the gospel.
And so because
therefore
salvation belongs
to the Lord
and because we share
in Christ's authority
and power
we can afford
to give earthly power away.
We can afford
when we're in the middle
of conflict
to give control
away
because in Jesus
we have access
to all of the power
that we could ever
long for.
And so repentance
means
turning away
from seeking salvation
in ourself
and turning towards
seeing salvation
in the Lord.
And we can
give power away,
we can
approach the other person
with humility,
we can be open
to receiving feedback,
even criticism
and critique,
we can approach
the situation
not trying to control
or manipulate
the other person,
but by seeking
the good
of the other person,
by putting
the other person's good
in front of our own,
by seeking to love,
by seeking to reflect
and even experience
ourselves
the steadfast love
of the Lord.
And if we do that,
we can,
maybe not instantaneously,
but through a process,
we can,
by the power
of the Spirit,
experience
a real-time resurrection.
We can experience growth,
we can experience change,
we can even experience
a deeper,
closer relationship
with that other person.
But it's at that bottom,
it's at the bottom
of the J-curve
that we learn
to pray
Jonah 2 prayers.
When a storm
comes into our life
and we cry out
and we acknowledge
our rescue
and we wrestle
through our own temptations
and we wrestle
through our own tendencies
to pursue functional saviors.
But in prayer,
we seek salvation
not in them,
but we seek salvation
in the Lord
because salvation
belongs to Him.
And in Jesus,
we already have access
to everything
that we long for
and need.
And we trust Him
by the power
of His Spirit
to bring about
a real-time transformation,
a real-time resurrection
in our lives
and in our relationships.
And I think it's important
to clarify,
this is not a technique,
this is not a recipe,
this is not a formula,
but this is
a sovereign work
of God's Spirit
in us.
But it's through prayer
and it's through
spiritual disciplines
that we open up ourselves
to that sovereign work
of God's Spirit
in us,
to change us
and transform us
through death
and resurrection.
The same grace
that rescues us
is also the grace
that transforms us.
And somebody
who experienced that
was a man named
John Newton
who is famous
for writing the hymn
that many of us know
called Amazing Grace
who, like Jonah,
had an encounter
with God's grace
while on a ship
in a storm at sea.
And this version
of John Newton's story
comes from the website
of Geneva College.
Following in his father's footsteps,
John Newton
began his career
by joining
the British Royal Navy.
And as a Navy sailor,
Newton became known
for his arrogance
and his immorality
and his insubordinate
behavior
as a sailor.
And later in his life,
reflecting on his early days
as a young man,
Newton would say
about himself,
I sinned with a high hand
and I made it my study
to tempt
and seduce
others.
And this became
a pattern
in his life
and he would eventually
try to escape
his military duty.
He would eventually
try to escape
his post
as a sailor,
but he was eventually
caught by Navy officers
and he was caught
for being a deserter
and he was arrested
and flogged
and put in irons
and he was chained
to the deck
of a Navy ship.
But chained
to the deck
of a Navy ship,
Newton convinced
his commanding officers
to let him go
by assigning him
to be a captain
of a slave ship.
And he would spend years
sailing up and down
the African coast
searching for slaves
to capture
and eventually to sell
for profit.
And on one journey,
one of these journeys,
Newton and his crew
encountered a storm
that swept some
of his men overboard
and left others
with the likelihood
of drowning.
And at first,
Newton was convinced
that he was too great
of a sinner,
that he had sinned
too greatly for God
to rescue him
and save him.
And yet,
as the storm
kept raging,
he thought he was
going to die.
And he finally
gave in to believing
what he had heard
in the Bible
as a young child,
that God saves sinners,
even sinners like him.
And with both hands
fastened onto the wheel
of the boat,
Newton cried out to God
saying,
Lord, have mercy on us.
And after 11 hours
of steering the ship
and bailing water,
the crew found safety
when the storm
finally died down.
And it was in this moment
that Newton's heart
was changed,
that he was converted
by God's grace.
And it was a moment
that he would later
refer back to,
it was a moment
that would later
inspire him to write
the famous hymn
that we all know.
And while Newton's views
on slavery
didn't change overnight,
eventually he became
convinced that to be
saved by God's grace
meant to be against
the slave trade.
Newton was eventually
ordained as an Anglican
pastor and he began
to lead his own church
and he started writing
and publishing essays
and books
against the slave trade.
And one of the people
who read his works
was a young member
of Parliament
named William Wilberforce
who led the legal fight
against slavery in England.
And years later
as Parliament
was debating this issue,
one of the people
who stood on the floor
of Parliament
to testify about
the horrors
and the evils of slavery
was John Newton
who testified about it
firsthand.
God changed him
from a man
who was the captain
of a slave ship
to a man
who was actively
working towards
abolishing slavery.
And as he got older
Newton began
to lose his memory
and although his thoughts
were limited
Newton said he could
always remember
two things.
That I am a great sinner
and that Christ
is a great savior.
The same grace
that rescued John Newton
and converted him
was also the grace
that transformed him.
It was the grace found
not on the mountaintop.
It was grace found
at the bottom.
Dwight Schrute says
our world needs
a spiritual revolution.
Do you want to experience
spiritual transformation
in your life?
Do you want to experience
greater depths
of God's grace?
The place where you can
experience it
is at the bottom
in death
and resurrection.
And the good news
for us
is though sometimes
it does take
hitting rock bottom
for us to experience that.
We don't all have to wait
to hit rock bottom.
We don't all have to wait
to face a storm
like Jonah did.
We don't all have to wait
to face a storm
like John Newton did
in order to experience
the depths of God's grace.
Why?
Because there's all sorts
of mini storms
that come into our life
on a daily basis.
Like conflict.
Like failure.
Like criticism.
Like anger.
Like suffering.
That can take us
down into death
and up in resurrection.
Because it's there
where we see
that salvation
belongs
to the Lord.
The one who died
and the one who was raised
for us.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father
thank you for
the grace
that transformed
Jonah
at the bottom
of the ocean.
Thank you for the grace
that transformed
John Newton.
Thank you that the grace
that rescues us
is also the grace
that transforms us.
Lord, I pray that you would
help us
in the middle
of the storms
in our life
to follow you
on the path
to death
and repentance
and resurrection.
Would you do
that sovereign
work of your spirit
in us?
Would you teach us
to pray
at the bottom?
In the name
of the Father
and the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.