Spring City Fellowship
260426Sunday
Sunday April 26, 2026 10:15AM Service

      • Psalm 150:3NIV2011

  • Fairest Lord Jesus (Schönster Herr Jesu)
  • A Thousand Hallelujahs
  • Name Above All Names
  • What A Beautiful Name
  • The Lamb The Lion The King
  • You Are My All In All
  • I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous)
  • Oh I Want To Know You More

      • 1 Corinthians 3:9NIV2011

  • Song
  • Our theme for 2026 is “Embrace Transformation”
    Transformation is the inward change that we experience when we become more like Jesus.
    Jonah is a case study in what happens when someone does not embrace transformation.
    Transformation happens: you can resist it or you can embrace it.
    We want to be people who embrace transformation.
    So this series is called Jonah: Escaping the Belly of the Fish.
    The belly of the fish is that place that God brings us to both to preserve us and to persuade us to turn around.
    Maybe you have been in a place like that?
    What does it take to get out?
    That only happens when you have learned your lesson?
    Let’s see what lessons we can learn that might help us to “escape the belly of the whale.”
    Last week’s lessons were:
    You can’t escape who you are.
    You can’t run from God.
    Sometimes God asks us to do hard things.
    Let’s see what lessons we can learn this week!
    We are going to do our scripture reading all together at the beginning.
    To keep the story in tact, we will be repeating a few verses from last week.
    So lets stand together for the reading of today’s passage.
    Jonah 1:7–17 ESV
    7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. 11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. 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.
    This week Jonah’s story goes from bad to worse. Last week Jonah concluded that God was sending him on a suicide mission and decides to try to make a run for it.
    This week, no exaggeration, Jonah goes “overboard” in his attempt to do things his own way.
    Jonah is not only tossed back and forth in his own mind.
    His choices are impacting other people and putting them in danger.
    Jonah finally gives up - and not in a good way.
    It’s a good thing that God was still there when Jonah hit the bottom.

    God brings us down to lift us up.

    Commentators who are reading the book of Jonah in the original Hebrew note that several times Jonah is described as going down.
    In verse 3 he goes down to Joppa.
    And then, having paid the fare, he goes down into the ship.
    Then in verse 5 he is further down in the bottom of the ship (the part usually reserved for cargo).
    And if that isn’t enough, the Hebrew word for falling into a deep sleep sounds like the word which is used to descend.
    Many translations note this by saying that he “fell asleep.”
    It creates this picture of Jonah falling farther and farther down as he is fleeing the presence of God.
    Just how low will God let Jonah go?
    That is the question that the reader must certainly be asking.
    Just when you think you have sunk as low as it gets - you go a little lower.
    There was another person in the Bible - King Nebuchadnezzar - who had a similar experience of descending into madness.
    Daniel 5:20–21 ESV
    20 But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was brought down from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. 21 He was driven from among the children of mankind, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will.
    Can you relate?
    Are you surprised at just how far down God lets us go before He lifts us up again?

    God allows suffering for a reason.

    James 1:2–4 ESV
    2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
    Nobody wants to hear this, especially when you are going through a hard time.
    People sometimes say this to comfort someone who is going through a personal trial - but it’s not comforting - at least not at first.
    Christian Songwriter Jason Gray has a song called “Remind me You’re Here” Some of the lyrics go like this:
    None of my pain has ever caught You by surprise Still it's hard to trust You when I'm lost in the wondering why But I'll trade every question just to lay down and rest in Your heart And I'll reach for Your hand, though You led me here into the dark
    And then he has this line which has often caught my attention:
    If it's random or providence neither are a comfort to me Are You cruel if You planned it or weak if You allowed it to be? Half of me is still believin', the other is half is angry and confused Oh, but all of me is desperate and longing to be held by You
    Can you relate to those lyrics?
    It is important to settle our theology of suffering before we go through trials, because in the moment, nothing makes sense.
    Yes, God allows suffering.
    Why? We don’t always know - we may never know.
    But what I do know is that God is good.
    And for that reason, I don’t believe He causes suffering.
    But He will use it for His glory and for our good.
    In the case of Jonah, he had no one to blame but himself.
    God was clearly leading him in a different direction.
    And Jonah was on his own - doing his own thing.
    He knew where he went wrong, but there was no going back.
    It say they even tried rowing back to shore - but conditions would not allow it.
    The scripture states in verse 4 that God sent the storm - he hurled the winds at Jonah.
    I’m sure it felt like that - but its a little more complicated.
    God created the world good and orderly.
    And it functions best when we do things his way.
    When we go against God, we can’t expect things to go well.
    Sometimes our pain and suffering is shouting at us that something is wrong.
    Something is definitely off - and it may or may not be our fault.
    But it doesn’t hurt to check with God to see if that may be part of it.

    His grace is enough.

    2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV
    9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
    In this case, Paul checks in with God to see if there is something wrong with him.
    He’s got this “thorn in the flesh”
    The Bible doesn’t tell us what it is, but it is a persistent problem.
    I guess it’s good we don’t know -because we can just fill in the blank.
    Put your own problem in there - but God doesn’t take it away.
    Now hear what God said to Paul “My grace is sufficient for you.”
    God says, “I got this...”
    “It’s ok that you’re not ok”
    And then He goes on to say, “the fact that you are not perfect doesn’t limit my ability to work through you.”
    We are going to see that Jonah is a perfect example of this.
    What Jonah is going through is his own fault.
    He tried to run away from God.
    But God hasn’t left him.
    His grace is still there - even when you think it shouldn’t be.
    Does anyone have a testimony like that?
    I wish we didn’t have to go so low until God lifts us up again.
    But only God knows what it takes for us to fully turn around.
    What we need to know is that He is still there.

    God uses our mistakes for His glory.

    Have you noticed that the Bible is filled with the stories of imperfect people.
    We tend to read the Bible as if everyone in the Bible were these amazing heroes of the faith who did everything right and God blessed them for it.
    That may be how they are portrayed in a children’s Sunday School curriculum - but that’s not how it is in the Bible.
    Consider Peter, who denied Jesus three times. It seemed like a colossal failure, but after the resurrection, Jesus restored him. Peter became a foundational leader of the early church. God took Peter's mistake and turned it into a powerful testimony of redemption, showing us that no mistake is wasted when God is there.
    Oh no! Not Peter! He’s one of the good guys!
    Peter starts out as an impulsive, hot-headed fisherman who blurts out what everyone is thinking, but what no one in their right mind will actually say.
    Jesus turns him into the first preacher that the church of Jesus Christ ever had.
    Peter’s mouth - the very thing that got him into trouble - was the very thing God wanted to use.
    I could go through the Bible and give lots of examples, but back to our friend Jonah.
    Jonah is supposed to be a prophet - someone who speaks for God.
    But instead he is running from God.
    You would think that means God can’t use Jonah - and you would be wrong!
    God is going to use Jonah for His glory- but it is going to be a bit messy.
    Let’s first see the impact of Jonah’s wrong choices and then we will see how God turns it around.

    Our mistakes hurt others.

    When we make wrong choices, sometimes we justify it by saying, “I’m only hurting myself.”
    That is hardly ever true - our lives are so intertwined with that of others - there is rarely ever a choice that we make that doesn’t have a ripple effect.
    Jonah wasn’t alone in the boat.
    In the time of Jonah, Tyre and Sidon, just north of Joppa, were the titans of the shipping industry.
    Phoenician ships sailed around the Mediterranean Sea in a counter clockwise direction according to the prevailing winds.
    They were typically seventy-five feet long and twenty five feet wide and could cover 50-100 miles a day with favorable winds.
    A ship like this would have had a crew of about twenty sailors, and not many passengers, but mostly cargo.
    This was not a leisure cruise - sailing was for adventurers - not for the faint of heart.
    Storms are a fact of life on the open seas and the reason why ships generally tried to follow a shoreline wherever possible.
    If things get to rough, you try to find a harbor, a bay or a protected inlet and wait it out.
    But if the wind is blowing hard in the wrong direction - your best chance of survival is to lighten your ship by throwing the heaviest cargo overboard to get you hull up out of the water and hopefully your freeboard is higher than the waves.
    These guys tried everything and nothing was working.
    And being superstitious pagan sailors - they were beginning to ask who did what to make the gods so angry.
    Has anyone every looked at the story of Jonah from the perspective of these sailors?
    They were suffering for Jonah’s disobedience and they had no clue what was going on.
    They didn’t even believe in God, not the One True God, but even their pagan beliefs taught them enough to know that something was off.
    And then when Jonah confessed, they tried extra hard to save him!
    They only threw him overboard because he insisted.
    The writer of the story is making sure that the reader knows that these guys are not complicit in any way with Jonah’s sin.
    Sometimes people in the world are more merciful and kind than people in the church!
    But look at what happened when they did...
    The wind and the waves responded.
    And so did they...
    They immediately offered vows and sacrifice to a God they didn’t even know.
    Essentially, even though they didn’t know anything, they did what Jonah didn’t do.
    Sometimes our wrong choices hurt others and likewise we are also hurt by the choices of others.
    But the appropriate response, whatever the reason, is to turn to God the best we know how.

    But God is bigger than our mistakes .

    When I read this story, I keep asking myself, did Jonah have to die?
    Well he didn’t die, but he believed that he would.
    He got on that boat to get out of a suicide mission and ended up forfeiting his life anyway.
    Maybe that was the point - he had to give up his insistence on self-preservation.
    He saw what his choices were doing to others around him and suddenly realized that it would be more noble to sacrifice himself than to take everyone down with him.
    Jonah finally did an unselfish thing - even if wasn’t exactly the right thing.
    Sometimes our lives are like that - a series of bad decisions puts us in a place where there are seemingly no good choices left to make.
    Like the person who is facing bankruptcy, incarceration or divorce.
    You’re in a place that you never thought you would be in.
    And you feel like you don’t have any good options left.
    You may feel like you no longer have choices - you’re simply being told what to do.
    Where is God at a time like that?
    You may feel like it’s too late - that was a question to ask a few wrong decisions ago!
    You’re going to be shocked when you see where God shows up in this story.
    The truth is, He has been there all along.
    He’s in the captain, who doesn’t know God - but knows enough to ask the guy below desk why he’s hiding.
    He’s in the crew - also, not the kind of people you would expect to be trying to save the life of a guy they don’t even know - but that’s exactly what they are doing.
    It reminds me of what the Apostle Paul wrote about Gentiles who somehow to do the right thing out of an innate conscious though they are religiously ignorant.
    Romans 2:14–16 NLT
    14 Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. 15 They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right. 16 And this is the message I proclaim—that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life.
    This is the great irony of the story - Jonah, the great prophet of God - does everything wrong.
    And Gentile sailors - filthy ignorant pagan idol-worshippers - somehow do something right!
    God just loves to blow our mind with how He turns things around!
    Genesis 50:20 CSB
    20 You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.
    God turns bad things into good things.
    That doesn’t mean we mess up on purpose!
    But it means that when we mess up, God will still use it for His purpose.
    And God purpose, is, was, and always has been to save as many people as possible.
    We mess up because we are scared - but God will even use that and turn it around.

    God uses the thing we fear for our salvation.

    There is one part of the story of Jonah that we often miss because we don’t understand the story in its context.
    I said earlier that there were not many passengers on ships - sailing was not for the faint of heart.
    Most people would rather walk hundreds of miles than take their chances on the open seas.
    The reason was one that might seem silly to us- even superstitious.
    The seas, in ancient times, were believed to be this vast unknown chaotic place - full of monsters and such.
    Even in animistic cultures in the world today - bodies of water are believed to be a place for demons to hide.
    This was true in the ancient world - even more so - because much of the ocean was yet unexplored.
    There were mythological sea creatures, some resembling dragons.
    There was all kinds of speculation as to what was out there, so much so, that the average person would be terribly afraid of water and would never venture into anything over their heads.

    Get in over your head.

    Proverbs 9:10 ESV
    10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
    Jonah told the crew to throw him overboard...
    On one hand it seems noble as he was putting them in danger and, if so, that should solve the problem.
    On the other hand he is being a coward because, not only is he running from God, but he is running away from life and reality.
    I don’t know if Jonah was afraid of water, but it’s unlikely that he could swim.
    He probably thought death was inevitable and just wanted to get it over with.
    Suffice to say that from the time he left the boat it wasn’t long until he was in over his head.
    From everything that has been said, said the image is of Jonah sinking even lower than before.
    As Jonah is descending into the unknown
    And at the same time the sailors on the boat are said to be fearing the Lord - greatly!
    Proverbs 14:27 ESV
    27 The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.
    I think we are supposed to see the contrast between the great fear that Jonah is experiencing and the great fear of God that the crew is exhibiting.
    I once went to a Christian Counselor - not because I wanted to, but because it was an assignment for a ministry training program that I was in. They wanted each of us to experience what it is like to see a counselor. So I had to come up with a problem to discuss. I decided to go generic - I wanted to talk about fear - like sometimes I’m afraid when I think I shouldn’t be.
    To my surprise, we didn’t talk that much about fear. We talked about control. How do i feel when I’m not in control? What is it like when I’m in over my head? Is worry and fear perhaps a way of anticipating what might go wrong before it happens? If I can anticipate it, that gives me at least some sense of control - because I saw it coming. The problem though is the amount of energy I spend anticipating events that never come.
    Toward the end of my sessions and since I was a Bible School student, my counselor asked be to do a concordance study on fear in the Bible (this was before computers and search engines.) I listed every scripture in the bible that contained the word fear and I made notes on each one. Then I looked at my list and observed that my notes fell into two general categories. There were those verses that talked about the fear of the Lord and there were verses that talked about people being afraid of various things. In our last session my counselor asked what conclusion I had drawn. I said, “I can either fear God, or I can fear everything else!”
    Are you in over your head? - Are there things in your life that are beyond your control?
    It is an illusion to think that you can make anything better by worrying about it.
    There is only One who is in control - and even He doesn’t feel the need to control as often as we think He should.
    Fear is an appropriate response to things that are bigger than us.
    But you have a choice - you can either fear God or everything else!

    Go ahead, go overboard!

    Deuteronomy 10:12 ESV
    12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
    So Jonah gets swallowed by a great sea creature.
    The irony is that this is the very thing that most people would be afraid of - and yet the Lord used it for Jonah’s salvation.
    Does that ever happen? - That what ends up happening is the absolute worst thing you can think of...
    And somehow the worst thing that can happen ends up being the best thing that can happen.
    Or at least it becomes the best thing that can happen under the circumstances.
    When you face your fear and you see how God works despite everything you thought, it makes you bold in serving the Lord.
    You have this new found confidence that no matter what happens, God can use it.
    God will turn it around somehow and use it for His glory.
    Sure, I might have to suffer - but hey, that life - I’m used to it.
    I used to suffer the consequences of my own bad choices and I made other people suffer.
    If I have to suffer for others to come to know Christ - that’s actually fair - considering what Christ has done for me.
    I know that sounds extreme to some people.
    It makes sense that people want to protect themselves.
    It makes sense that people just want to live a comfortable life in peace.
    I know that when I talk about suffering - voluntarily - people are going to think I have gone overboard.
    It’s like I've gone crazy - like I have no fear.
    Yes, exactly - I’ve gone overboard and Christ has rescued me!

    Questions for reflection:

    Have you ever felt like Jonah, going from bad to worse? Have you ever been surprised that God would let you get so low? Have you ever thought about why God allows suffering? Have you also experienced God’s grace in suffering?
    Have you noticed that God uses imperfect people? Will you admit to being one of them? How does God redeem our wrong choices, especially when those choices hurt other people? Aren't you glad that you don’t need to know the answer to that question!
    Have you ever seen God turn around a bad situation? Have you ever been afraid only to find that your fear of the situation was greater than your fear of God? What would happen if you chose to fear God over everything else?

      • Jonah 1:7–17ESV

      • Daniel 5:20–21ESV

      • James 1:2–4ESV

      • 2 Corinthians 12:9ESV

      • Romans 2:14–16ESV

      • Genesis 50:20ESV

      • Proverbs 9:10ESV

      • Proverbs 14:27ESV

      • Deuteronomy 10:12ESV

  • God You Are (feat. Josh Baldwin)
Spring City Fellowship
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