This is an excerpt from a sermon I preached at Fairview Baptist Church. You can watch the whole thing here.
A few years ago, the headline of USA Today featured an article titled “Is Sin Dead?”, where the author explored the question “has the notion of sin been lost in modern culture?” When it comes to sin we tend to think, “I am not as sinful as most people”. “I have high moral expectations of myself and others, but I know we are all human so I’m looking for an average score.” We find a comfort zone of morality, a kind of therapeutic middle ground where we think we are doing well.
But the reality is sin is bad news. There is no middle ground. But there is good news. If you can solve your problems or sins yourself, what difference does it make that Christ was crucified? We need to see our sin with honesty, but as Christians, we cannot let our distress over sin to lead us to despair. In our distress, God delivers us.
In Jonah 2, God delivers Jonah from his distress. In the text, we read that:
“…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.”
Even as the darkness of the water surrounded him, when the bars of death were closing on him, Jonah knew that His God would deliver him. Jonah knows that God is a God who hears and delivers those who call to him.
As Christians we know that there is no pit too deep where God cannot reach. There is no sin too horrific that God cannot forgive. There is no rebellion that takes you so far that God cannot bring you home. There is no distance too far that He cannot hear you cry out in the prayer of repentance.
What we learn from this narrative is, the time for repentance is now. We don’t wait to come to God when we have our lives cleaned up. We come to God because we see that we cannot clean ourselves up. Repentance requires us to acknowledge our complete inability, in contrast to God’s complete ability.
Like God did with Jonah, Jesus came to save real people with real problems and real issues. In Christ, God has delivered you. The sins he carried to the cross were your sins and mine. Jesus sank into the deep dark depths of death on your behalf. When you cry out to God he will deliver you from your cold solitary darkness, and you will find yourself on the warm shores of his mercy and grace.
The good news of the gospel is that on the cross he heard our cry for distress. On the cross he paid the price for that sin. In the resurrection, he conquered that sin. God has answered you in Christ.
Matt Capps 