Jonah 2 | When You Finally Hit Bottom

Sunday Morning | January 11, 2026 | John C. Majors | Louisville, KY

In Jonah 2, Pastor John reminds us that when we finally hit bottom, God often meets us there with mercy. Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish is shaped like a psalm, echoing Israel’s worship language and showing that even in desperation he turns to Scripture to cry out to God. The prayer reaches a decisive turning point when Jonah descends “all the way down” in utter helplessness and then experiences God bringing him back up, illustrating that true dependence on God often comes only when our own resources are exhausted. Yet Jonah’s prayer also reveals a problem—its heavy focus on “I” exposes lingering self-centeredness and a heart not fully aligned with God’s compassion, especially when contrasted with the sailors’ response. Still, Jonah arrives at the right conclusion: “Salvation belongs to the Lord,” pointing beyond himself to God’s sovereign grace and ultimately to Jesus, the greater “sign of Jonah,” who brings salvation through death and resurrection for all who cry out to Him.

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Transcript

0:02

Amen. Thank you. Isaac. Nice sweatshirt, by the way. I just wanted to point out it looks great. Good choice. This is our theme for the year, walk by Faith. You've seen it in the wall coming in, and we have t shirts and sweatshirts. Hopefully you ordered one. We've got a few extra, but we really want to emphasize the importance going into a new year of walking by faith. That's what we're called to do as Christians. We don't always know exactly how things are going to turn out. We're trusting that Christ is going before us. Help us to walk by faith. We depend on him through our life. We walk by faith, not by sight. And that's a key theme for us this year. And of course, it goes well with the whole theme of the book of Jonah and many of the ideas we're seeing in there. That's what we're studying to open the year in the month of January. We’ll be in Jonah chapter two today. I think that's page 726 in a church Bible. If you have a church Bible, you can be turning there. If not, we've got those out in the lobby. You can grab one any time. Those are free for you. We want you turning in God's Word, following along as we read in God's Word together. We want to develop that habit, that familiarity with your copy of the scriptures, that you're in it, reading it, studying it. That's where God will speak to you this year is through His Word. As I was preparing the message this week, I was reminded of the story of a friend of mine who someone had asked him to sit their house, watch the dogs while they were out of town. And so he was there. He got up one morning to let the dogs out, and he went out the back door just in his jammies still, just his boxers and a t shirt, lets the dogs out. And as he's standing there enjoying the crisp morning air, the sunlight beaming down upon his body, he hears the door shut and lock behind him. And he thinks this will be interesting to see how this turns out. What am I going to do? Go to the neighbor? I'm in a strange neighborhood. I don't know anyone here. Just knock on the door and say, hey, I know I'm just in my underwear, but can I use your phone? You know, how is that going to turn out? He was in a moment, and he realized right then, I need to be rescued. I need someone else to show up and rescue me from my situation because he didn't have a phone on him. He didn't know what he was going to do. And I'm sure we've all found ourselves in situations where we needed to be rescued. We needed someone to show up and rescue us. And of course, we saw that last week with Jonah, but we were wondering as we studied it, did he want to be rescued or not? Some of us have been there. I don't really want to be rescued. I like that I'm running as far from God as I can. Please don't try to stop me. Thank you very much. But God showed up and rescued Jonah. And this week we're going to look at how does he react to that, how does he respond to that? And we're going to learn some principles for that. On how we respond when we need to be rescued, whether we want to or not. In fact, I think the key idea here is that Jonah has hit bottom. And how will you respond? How do you respond when you're at the bottom? So we're going to be in Jonah chapter two if you want to turn there, and i’m going to read this entire chapter. And then we'll talk about four lessons. I think there's four lessons in this that we can pull from it. In Jonah chapter two,

We'll start actually in 1: 3:23

17. Some of your Bibles may even have a footnote that says in the Hebrew Bible, which is what the Old Testament was written in, in the language of Hebrew, Hebrew language, that actually is chapter two, verse one,

chapter two starts at 1: 3:36

17 and goes down through what would have been verse 11 in their Bible. And there's a reason why; we'll point this out as we go.

1: 3:47

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. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, 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 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, all the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought up my life from the pit. Oh Lord my God. When my life was fading 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. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed. I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. So Jonah has been rescued by God. He's been swallowed by the fish. And his response, whether he wanted to be rescued or not, is encouraging, should be encouraging to us. His response is to pray. This whole chapter is one long prayer. And here's the first thing to note about this prayer is that this prayer is really Jonah prays a psalm. You could say it's the first point in your outline. Jonah prays a Psalm. And I say that because many of the commentators, many people who have studied this passage, also call it a psalm. And if we were to just pull it out of the book of Jonah, if you were to just read it, not knowing it was from Jonah, have it read to you. Have this verse one through verse nine. Read aloud as I just did. You would say, you know, that feels like a psalm, that sounds like a psalm. It's written a lot like a psalm, like a hymn, like when I read through the Book of Psalms, it feels very similar to it. And there's a reason why that is, because it is largely a collection of quotes from various passages in the Book of Psalms Jonah, when he's at the end of himself.

And by the way we look, we saw in 1: 6:35

17, it took three days and three nights for him to get there. Sometimes it takes a little bit for us to realize, no, I really am in a desperate situation. I thought I had it all together, but I don't. Jonah turns to prayer and he turns to the Psalms. And of course, he didn't have a scroll in his pocket that he could pull out with his head lamp and read in the belly of the fish. This was God's word that would have been hidden in his heart already. These are psalms that he would have prayed and over and over again. And what I'm encouraged by is that when he was in his lowest moment, God's Word is what came to mind. I'm going to pray the Psalms, and I've listed in your notes a number of different references. You can see in each of the verses where he quotes from various psalms, and in verse two or verse two he says, I called out to the Lord out of my distress. That's in Psalm 120. It's also in 18. It's in chapter three. It shows up all over the place, and you can go down almost verse by verse, and if you have a Bible was with cross-references, you'll see the Psalms cross-referenced over and over again. Some of them are exact quotes, some of them are allusions to themes and ideas. But I think what's encouraging is that Jonah knows the only place I have to turn in this moment is to God's Word. That's a powerful lesson for us when you've hit the bottom, when you feel like there's nowhere else to go, even though, you know, I probably should have turned here a long time ago, man, turn to God's Word, turn to him, cry out to him. So that's the first lesson to learn here from Jonah's prayer. But now look what happens next. Because Jonah, as he's praying this prayer, even though it is a collection of Psalms, it has a bit of a flow to it. It has a little bit of a a story to it. In fact, the thing to notice here, second point in your outline is that there's a key turning point in this psalm. There's a place here where the story has a key hinge, a key turning point. So it starts out with him talking about the bad situation situation he's in. In verse three, you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. Verse four, I'm driven away from your sight. Verse five. The waters closed in over me to take my life. You can almost feel. You might even feel a little constrained as you read this. There's the weeds wrapped about my head. You can. You can sense the desperation that the end is very near. And then this is the low point of the story. In verse six, at the roots of the mountains, I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. And we see that phrase that we saw over and over again

last week: 9:26

I went down. You remember we saw that progression started last week, where Jonah was on his way down. First he went down to Joppa and he got a ship, and he went down into the belly of the ship. And then, of course, the sailors threw him down into the water. And then from there he goes down into the whale, into the belly of the whale, which takes him down further into the water. And as he's already said, down into the belly of Sheol, he knows the end is coming further and further down, further and further away from the Lord. But here's the key turning point. He's been on the downward progression. But here in verse six it turns. Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. So he's been on this downward progression downward, downward, downward. And here we get the turning point. But you brought me up. And I love that. Jonah is quick to acknowledge you're the one who did this. You rescued me. It reminds me of Ephesians chapter two. It's one of my favorite passage to talk with people about when it comes to talking about Christ working in your life, because the whole first three verses are about how dead you are spiritually. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. You were going your own way. You were chasing after all the ways of this world. You were following the prince of the power of the air. You loved darkness. But then verse four starts with this, this one word, two words, but God, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love for us. And he does three things there. He raises us. Jonah raised. He lifted me up. Seated us with him in the heavenly places. He made us alive. And if you're dead, there's nothing you can do to raise yourself. There's nothing you can do to make yourself alive. We need God to show up. And so Jonah recognizes there's a key turning point here. I was dead, I had no hope. But I trusted that he would show up and move in my life. And there's something so powerful about that where I think if you're at the bottom, you've got to get to the point where you realize there's nothing else I can do. In fact, I put a quote in your notes about this. Tim Keller really drew this out. I thought it was so good. He says it this way. He says it's only when you reach the very bottom, when everything else falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God. You never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. You must lose your life to find your life. I think a powerful parallel to this is in the story of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15. Because life was great when he had plenty of money and friends who loved him for his money, and when it all ran out, when the good times ran out, when he had no food, no friends, no money, no one was there. He had the worst job you could possibly imagine. He had fallen so far. It was at that point that he woke up. What are you doing? What am I doing? I've got a father who loves me. I could go back to him any time. What am I doing? But he had to get all the way down. I was talking to a gentleman recently. They don't go here to church. But he said we realized pretty recently that we have been enabling a child for years. And we got to let him go. We got to let him go all the way down, if that's how it has to be. And we don't like that, we're not happy about that. This is the hardest thing we've ever done, but we've not been helping them. We've been enabling them. And until they hit bottom, you know, you can't want someone to change more than they want it for themselves. It doesn't matter how much you want it if if they don't want it. Now, of course, come alongside them, be there, support them. But there's times when helping hurts. And you know how it is, until you get to the point, as Keller said, you've never realized that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. For those who have struggled with addiction, you understand this. There's this. There's this idol or this lie about addiction that you can get to the place where you can manage it. No, I can, I'll be all right, I can, I can handle it. I'm strong enough. That's the, man, the enemy loves that lie. Because we all want to think we're strong. I don't want to admit I'm weak. And he loves to keep you right there. Keep you right there where you think you can manage it, but you know. But talk to anyone who's been there. I've talked to a guy. He said, you know, I can't. I can't have just one. It's either 0 or 30 drinks, right? There's no there's no in between. And to tell myself, I could you'd be all right. You can just have one. You can't manage sin is the issue. What... I'm talking about addiction. Not everybody has struggled with that. But everybody has struggled with sin. And you can't just manage sin. You got to kill it. You got to put it to death. You can't just tinker with it and toy with it and hope that it won't affect you. You gotta get all the way down to the bottom, to the place where you go. There's only one way up, and there's only one who can bring me up. And that's where Jonah is. That's the turning point. And that's the powerful lesson for us. It's a hard place to be, but it's a good place to be. So Jonah highlights this turning point in the story. But there's a big problem with this prayer. Okay? In fact, that's something for us to take note of. Third point in your outline, there's a problem with Jonah's prayer. And the big problem with his prayer, it's very Jonah centered, even though he's quoting Psalms, even though he knows how to use big, fancy words in his prayer. There's a big problem here. It would get just a hint of it all throughout, and we see it first in verse seven. Look at verse seven right after he's praising God for raising him up from the pit. Look where he turns. He says, when my life was fading away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Now there's just a hint here, but it's just enough to realize Jonah's pretty proud of himself right now. Yeah, you rescued me, but, but I remembered you. You know, even even though I was running from you, I still remembered you. I still prayed, I still had a part in this. I was doing okay for myself. That's just a hint of it. But. But we get more here. In fact, I think there's three key problems in this prayer. The first is that he seems pretty proud of himself. If you I put in your notes here that if you look at the across this entire prayer, he talks about himself. He uses a first person pronoun I, me, mine- some version of that 26 times, but he uses you, he, God pronouns about half that, 15 times. He's talking about himself twice as much as he's talking about God. In the midst of this prayer. Aren't those great conversations? Have you had friends like that? Yeah, I had a buddy like this. Any time you said anything about yourself, his immediate response was, oh yeah, I know all about that. I've done that. In fact, I've done that better. Can't you just let me enjoy this moment? I did it can't. Does it have to be about you every time? And of course, as I saw that, I thought, well, how often do I do that? How often do I immediately go, oh yeah, well, let me tell you about me. One friend of mine used to say, hey, that's enough about me. Why don't you now talk about me? You know, in the midst of our conversation, what would you like to say about me? Well, it was in jest. I sort of. We both recognize that that's our that's our natural tendency. Would you please talk about me? Can we? Let's focus on me. Jonah's pretty proud of himself. We've been there. Okay, that's a problem with his prayer. Not only is he proud of himself, a second problem with this prayer is he's also looking down on others. Look at verse eight and nine. Here's what he says, and we can't be sure exactly who he's talking about. More than likely, he's probably talking about the sailors who were just praying to other gods right before they threw him in. He might be talking about Nineveh, where God has called him to go, one or the other, or both. Look at what he says in verse eight. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Jonah is taking time to look down on those. And by the way, he's not wrong. It is true that others should not pray to idols, but he's also doing it in a way here that puts himself above them. And here's the irony of it. And this is the trouble with the whole book of Jonah. Over and over again, everyone else other than Jonah does the right thing. Here he is looking down on the sailors. Now, the if it was the sailors, if he's looking down on them for praying to vain idols, everything he promised here, they already did. But this feels a little bit like a jailhouse conversion. As soon as I get out of here, Lord, I promise I'll never. I'll never run from you again, I promise. Oh, you can count on me. Just get me out of here. Everything will be great. You've heard that. You've said it. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen it and you go. He doesn't mean that at all. You've seen it happen. You know, when it's sincere or not. The people he's looking down. Look back in verse 14. The people he's looking down at, they've already done this. They called out to the Lord. This is in chapter one. They called out to the Lord the sailors, oh Lord, let us not perish, for this man's life lay not on us innocent blood for you, oh Lord, have done as it pleased you. They're already praising the Lord. They're already praying to him. They're already honoring him. They picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly. And the thing he promised to do. Sacrifice. Make a vow. They've already done. And there's no record as we go through the rest of the book of Jonah, there's no record that Jonah ever did the thing he promised to do. He may have. Pretty proud of himself. Quick to look down on others. Multiple problems with this prayer. The last big problem with this prayer that I think stands out to me, but it's hidden a little bit in the context, is he also seems to see himself as a victim. And this to understand this, you have to go back and look and you'll have to do this on your own. I'll just point that out with one of these, you'll have to go back and look at some of the psalms he quotes from Psalm. Each of the many of the Psalms that were written have a context. If you want to flip over to Psalm three, I don't I don't have the page number for that. Psalms is about in the middle of the Bible. If you have a church Bible biggest kind of longest, most chapters in the Bible should be able to land upon it. Many of the Psalms have a little introduction to them that tell you the the context, the reason why they were written. This happened, therefore they wrote this psalm. Psalm three is a good example. And chapter two, verse two, the first verse of his prayer is very close to the first or to verse four of chapter three. But look, just look at the introduction of chapter three of Psalms. It's a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. And the context of many of these are situations where the person writing the psalm, the person praying, is under persecution from an enemy. There's someone who's righteous, who's fleeing, who's under persecution from an enemy. David was fleeing from his son Absalom, who was trying to take over the kingdom. David was being persecuted, pursued. What this tells us is Jonah kind of saw himself this way. I'm going to quote from all these Psalms that remind me I'm the one right now who is righteous. I was doing the right thing. I sacrifice myself, and of course, look, I recognize I'm reading into what Jonah would have been thinking here. We don't. This isn't all spelled out for us in scripture. But it seems that by quoting from these Psalms, he's putting himself in a little bit of a victim place. And this is so deadly. Don't let yourself play the victim. Don't let yourself be in the place where you look at all your circumstances. And by the way, I'm not denying that you've had some hard circumstances. All of us have. Hard things happen to people, but don't play the victim in the midst of them. Jonah here should have been quick. We don't see him repenting of his sin. He should have been quick. The first thing he should have said was, God, I'm so sorry I ran from you. Will you forgive me? Own your sin. Yes. Tough situation. Yes. The sailors threw him in the water. He asked for it. Yes. He's in a bad place. Own your stuff. Own your sin. Don't play the victim. Don't let your kids play the victim. Don't enable them to do that. Help them see. Look, here's what we can do. Let's confess our sin. Let's cry out to the Lord and depend on him. So Jonah, the lesson for us in seeing his problem with this prayer is for us to be quick to confess and repent, and to pray rightly, and to lean on God. Now, the last thing to point out about his prayer, and this is the comforting part for me, because Jonah gets a lot of things wrong in this book. But where he lands is in the right place. Look back at verse nine in Jonah. He says, I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. And look at how he ends. Salvation belongs to the Lord. But he still gets. And this is point, for in your outline he still gets to the right conclusion. Jonah's theology isn't perfect. He hasn't even fully confessed. We're not sure if he's fully repentant or not from running from the Lord. We can't be 100% sure. But he ends up in the right place. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And look, the comforting part of this is my heart's not perfect. I don't pray perfectly. My thought life isn't perfect, but I can still cry out salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to him. And it doesn't depend on how perfect my views are and how perfect my heart is. It depends on him, and I'm so grateful for that. That he is great. And I'm thankful that we see that in Jonah. He still ends up there in the midst of all his faults. And when you're at bottom, that's where you got to cry out, God, show up. Would you move in my life? Would you make a difference? I've messed it up. Be quick to own that. Yeah, other bad stuff happened. I sure didn't help. But I know salvation is in you. Has some powerful, powerful thoughts for us here. And I think two things for us to take away is that in the midst of a hard part, hard moment, turn to prayer. Turn to prayer. If you don't know what else to do, turn to prayer. Also, when you turn to prayer, turn to God's Word for prayer. Jonah, turn to the Psalms. Turn to the Psalms. Turn to prayer. Turn to others who know God's words. Ask them, what part of God's Word should I be turning to? How should I be praying? Pray the eternal truth of His Word. One thing I think that's important to highlight here, and I listed it in your notes and the reason why in Hebrew chapter one, verse 17, is the first verse of this section is that the the whole prayer is bookended by the whale, by the fish, by the animal. The book starts with a fish. The chapter starts with the fish. The chapter ends with the fish. You know, Jonah is known as. The whole book is known as Jonah in the whale, but he barely shows up in the book. But one thing that is highlighted here, and the main point of the reason why he shows up at the beginning of the chapter and shows up at the end, is because even the fish will do what Jonah would not. Verse ten says it very clear. And the Lord spoke to the fish. The Lord spoke to Jonah too-- verse one of chapter one the word of the Lord came to Jonah. Lord spoke to Jonah. And what did Jonah do? He ran, and the Lord spoke to a fish, and it immediately vomited Jonah up on the land. And some of the language here gives the implication that both the fish and the Lord were kind of sick of his prayer at this point. We're done with this guy. Let's get him out of here. Thank you Lord. Even the fish, it was more obedient. Be like the fish. Quick to obey the word of the Lord. Listening, eager. We're going to look at this. I've listed in your notes the sign of Jonah. We're going to look at that next week. I think it ties in a little better into next week's passage. But all of this is telling us the point of all of this. Move towards the Lord in prayer. Come to him in prayer. Come to the end of yourself. My friend, who was on that porch wondering what would happen. He realized, I don't have many good options here. And so here's what he did. He gave up. He set down. Somebody is going to come for me eventually. He heard the phone ringing in the house all day long. Somebody's going to come. They're looking for me. Somebody loves me. They're going to come for me. There's nothing I can do. Of course, maybe there were other things he could do. But you've been in that place where all you can do is just trust in the Lord. And that's what we see in Jonah's prayer. And that's my prayer for us today. Let's pray. God, thank you for your word. I thank you so much that you even tell us how to pray. And as Isaac read this morning, our father in heaven, holy is your name, and we pray that your kingdom would come. Help us to be a part of seeing your kingdom come in our lives and in the lives of others. Our prayer is that your will would be done, not my will, which is what I often want. But my prayer is that your will be done. Would you forgive us? Help us to forgive others. Keep us from temptation. We often invite temptation. Would you protect us from evil today? Help us to walk in the knowledge and the power of your kingdom. Help us to be quick to repent. Thank you that we can gather today. We love you. Amen.