David Jeremiah - Hitting Rock Bottom (02/15/2026)
David Jeremiah preached on Jonah hitting rock bottom, showing how God prepared a great fish not to destroy him but to rescue him from drowning, turn him back toward Nineveh, soften his hard heart, and recommission him for service. He stressed that God's loving discipline proves He cares too much to let His children keep running, always aiming for restoration and a fresh start. Like Jonah, we can find God's mercy even at our lowest point.
A Modern Whale Encounter and Biblical Skepticism
We're studying the book of Jonah, and today I want to talk with you about "Hitting Rock Bottom."
On a February morning in 2025 off the coast of Chilean Patagonia, a kayaker named Adrian was out for what looked like an ordinary paddle. He came home with a story he will carry with him for the rest of his life. Patagonia is a land of green mountains, cold blue water, and humpback whales that pass through each year. Those whales can reach 50 feet long and they feed on tiny krill and are known to be gentle.
That morning Adrian paddled while his father filmed from another kayak, and then the surface beneath him began to swell. The kayak lifted and it vanished. His father shouted his name, but there was no answer, only an empty circle of water where his son had been.
Adrian later said, "I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I realized I was inside the whale's mouth. I felt a slimy texture on my face and all I could see was dark blue and white. Then as suddenly as it had swallowed him, the whale opened its mouth and released him." Adrian popped back up coughing and shaking, but alive. "I thought I was going to die," he said, "but God gave me a second chance."
Why People Struggle to Believe Jonah's Story
There is probably no story in the Bible that has produced more jeering and mockery than the story of Jonah and the great fish. Some people say it's the Achilles' heel of the Bible. Most people stumble over one issue: they just cannot imagine how a fish could swallow a man and keep him alive for three days and three nights and then release him.
The idea is not as impossible as some assume. Writers like Grace Kellogg have noted that whale sharks and great baleen whales have mouths large enough to take in a human being. These creatures have no teeth and they feed by filtering food from the water. A whale caught near Cape Cod in the 1930s was nearly 100 feet long with a mouth reportedly large enough to hold a small boat.
Now, let's look at our text. Here's what Jonah says. Please note that the text does not argue or try to explain or apologize for what happened to Jonah. It simply says this is what God did. The Lord Jesus clearly believed this story. He didn't think it was a myth or somebody made it up. He linked His own resurrection to it. He said, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
The Real Issue: Believing in a God of Miracles
The real issue is not what kind of fish it was. The real issue is whether we believe in a God of miracles. And let me tell you something you may be surprised аbout: if you believe Genesis 1:1, you will be okay. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Anyone who believes in God as Creator should not struggle with this story.
Ladies and gentlemen, if God made the universe, if He created the heavens and the earth, He could surely prepare a great fish. And if none existed, He could make one for His purpose. The Bible simply says, "The Lord prepared a great fish." Did you know that the word "whale" is not found in the text? We do not know what species this fish was. It doesn't tell us because the point is not the kind of fish, but that the Lord prepared it.
If you are an inductive Bible student, you will probably already know the fact that in the book of Jonah, the Lord prepared four things. If you read through the book, He prepared a fish to rescue Jonah. Then He prepared a vine to show Jonah a glimpse of comfort. Then He prepared a worm to take the comfort away and expose his selfishness. And then He prepared an east wind so Jonah would understand the compassion that God had for a lost city.
God's Pursuit of His Disobedient Servant
This story of Jonah is about God pursuing His disobedient servant. What He did with Jonah, He still does with us. He corrects and disciplines us because He loves us. He loves us too much to let us keep running away from Him.
So let's consider the purpose behind the great fish that He prepared for Jonah.
Purpose number one: to rescue Jonah from drowning. Jonah probably thought that being thrown overboard was the worst thing that could happen to him. Remember, they discovered among the sailors that he was the one responsible for the storm, so in order to get rid of the storm, they decided they had to get rid of Jonah, and they threw him overboard.
If you read Jonah's prayer in the second chapter, he refers to the thoughts that he had as he was floating down through the sea. So I'm going to jump over to Jonah chapter 2 and just read what Jonah said about his experience: "You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. The waters surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever."
Jonah's Terror and God's Lifeguard
Jonah sank to the bottom of the ocean. He may have come back up. Perhaps he drifted back up for a moment, as a drowning man sometimes does, but his experience was one of absolute, total terror. He knew his life was about to end. But God had a lifeguard waiting for him. And He sent His lifeguard to pick him up.
God could have allowed Jonah to drown. When people disobey us, we sometimes grow so weary and angry we wish the worst would happen to them. We wouldn't care if they drowned—just get them out of our life, we think. But God did not deal with Jonah out of anger. He dealt with him out of love. He allowed Jonah to feel the power of the ocean and the terrible fear, yet at the same time He sent a great fish to rescue him from drowning.
So the first thing that happened was God sent a fish to rescue Jonah from drowning. But then He sent that fish also to return Jonah to Nineveh. God prepared that great fish not just to save Jonah from drowning, but to take him where he did not want to go—back toward Nineveh.
God's Humorous Way of Redirecting Jonah
I think there's a little humor in this. God said, "Go to Nineveh." Jonah said, "No," and boarded a ship headed the opposite direction, as far away as he could go. And God said, "Oh, no, you don't." The storm hits. Jonah goes overboard. God sends a fish to pick him up. And the fish turns him around and takes him back where he started.
Jonah had paid a lot of money to run from God. But God arranged his return, and it was free. By the end of chapter 2, God speaks to the fish, and Jonah gets dropped off right on dry land. Jonah 2:10 says, "So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land."
Now, the Bible doesn't tell us exactly where Jonah was dropped off. Most likely, it was somewhere along the Mediterranean coast. But it was still a long way to Nineveh. In other words, Jonah had to walk the rest of the way originally assigned to him. That great fish was not just God's rescue plan. That great fish was God's return plan.
Reaching Jonah's Hard Heart
And God saved Jonah from drowning and sent him right back to Nineveh. So He sent the fish to rescue Jonah from drowning, to return Jonah to Nineveh, and number three, to reach Jonah's heart.
The Bible says in Jonah 1:17, "And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Now, Jonah's real problem was not geography. Jonah's problem was his heart. He hated the Ninevites. He lacked compassion for them, and he was out of fellowship with God. God told him to go preach the gospel to the Ninevites, and Jonah said, "I'm not going to do it," because he was afraid God would save them, and he didn't want them to be saved.
Jonah was a prodigal. Like the son in Luke 15, he tried to outrun his Father and discovered that rebellion always takes us lower than we planned. He avoided the pig pen, but he experienced something even worse before he came back to God.
William Backus has written a book called The Paranoid Prophet. It's a very interesting book—an imagination of Jonah speaking to a therapist about his ordeal. If you ever get that book, you'll find it fun to read. At one point, Jonah says to the therapist, "I turned just in time to see it coming. A sea creature the size of a ship was racing toward me, its mouth open. Screaming in terror, I was swallowed whole. The darkness was total. The noise around me was like a huge machine. I knew nothing but terror."
The Belly of the Fish as God's Classroom
It really was like that. It was awful. It was terrible. But God was getting Jonah's attention. The belly of that fish became God's classroom where Jonah finally had no voice to hear but the Lord's.
I wonder if you've ever been in a place like that—a place where God finally had your full attention. God sometimes puts His children in places of seclusion so they can see what is really going on in their hearts. His purpose in discipline is never destruction but always restoration. The Lord desires to bring His children back to Himself even when they have run far away.
Notice just how far Jonah's heart was from God at this point. In chapter 1, the pagan sailors prayed while Jonah was sleeping. And they begged Jonah to call on his God, but there is no record in the text that Jonah ever prayed until he was in the water. God shut every other door, and finally Jonah had nowhere to go but to pray.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever heard anybody say, "Well, I've tried everything else. I guess all I can do is pray"? Sometimes we take what should be the first alternative and we make it the last. We try everything under the sun except the one thing for which we are perfectly prepared.
Why We Often Pray Only as a Last Resort
The Bible says in Jonah 2:1 that Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly. Finally, Jonah prays—after God had shut every other door, after he had no other opportunities, no other alternatives. All through chapter 1, the pagans are praying and the prophet is not praying.
We can be just as hard-hearted as Jonah if we are honest. We often try every option first, and only when everything fails do we finally pray. One of my friends is the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City. His name is Jim Cymbala, and he has written about some of these things. Here is one thing he said about prayer to which I finally raised my hand in agreement: "Prayer cannot be taught by principles and seminars. Prayer has to be born out of felt need. If I say I ought to pray, I will soon quit. The flesh is too strong. I have to be driven to pray."
Jonah didn't pray because he had learned that prayer was a good thing. He prayed because he didn't have any other option. He was driven to pray. Sometimes we just have to be in a mess before we really pray.
God's Discipline Leads to Restoration
Jonah did not want to talk to God, even in the storm and the terror of that ship. He still would not pray. Even though the storm was raging around him and the sailors were praying, Jonah wouldn't pray. But when the Lord put him in a place with no distractions and no escape, his stubborn heart finally cried out to God.
I don't know if you have noticed that in your own life—I have, and I have seen that story repeated over and over as a pastor. Some of us are just doggone hard-headed, and God has to work a little harder to get our attention.
You see, Jonah was under God's tutelage, learning what it meant to get things right. God never does this in a vacuum. He has a purpose in mind. Here are three passages from Psalm 119: "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are right and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me."
God disciplines His servants to reach their hearts. It is the only way some people will open up to Him.
Recommissioning Jonah for Service
So the fish came to rescue Jonah, to return Jonah to Nineveh, to reach Jonah's heart, and to recommission Jonah for service. Here's the thing I like the most—this is one of the great thoughts of this whole story. God's purpose in all of this was to bring Jonah back to the place where he could be used again.
Think about everything that happened: the boat ride, the whale ride. They were not random events. The whole purpose was to get Jonah back to where he had been at the beginning of the story. Where was he at the beginning? Remember Jonah 1: "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.'"
Everything between those first two verses and where we are now was God's effort to return Jonah to the place of obedience. What a detour this was. All of that pain and fear could have been avoided with one simple yes to God. But instead of walking straight to Nineveh, he chose a long and costly road. And disobedience always adds chapters to your story—chapters you wish had never had to be written.
Why Obedience Is Always Better Than Resistance
I want to say something to you kind of on a personal basis, if I can. If you're fighting with God and you are in a contest with Him, you can't win. You cannot win. Why don't you just do what He tells you to do the first time and spare yourself all those extra chapters? That really is a good idea. Just do what He says.
If God says to go to Nineveh, go to Nineveh. You may not understand it and it may not be something you're excited about, but obedience is always better than resistance. When God speaks, the safest place in the world is in the center of His will. Because if you refuse—listen to me—you're going on a boat ride, and you are not going to like it.
God loves you too much to let you run forever. And He will do whatever it takes to bring you back to the place where He can use you again. And His goal in all of it is not punishment, but restoration and recommissioning. Remember what the New Testament says about the stubborn love of God? "He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."
The Promise of God's Loving Discipline
These are the purposes of God's correction. But I want to finish up this discussion today with a few moments on the promise of God's correction. We saw the purpose of it. What is the promise of it?
This touches everyone because none of us are exempt from these principles. I don't care who you are, how long you've been a Christian, how close you may be walking to the Lord at this moment—you have been through some experiences. And maybe you've been through a train wreck or a shipwreck.
Why do we run into walls and crash? Many times it's our own self-will because we have chosen to do our own thing and not what God tells us to do. Not every storm is for that reason—please don't judge everybody who's in a storm that they're out of fellowship with God. It may be true, it may not be true. But when it is true, God is not trying to destroy us. He's trying to restore us.
Discipline Proves God's Love for Us
Why does God discipline us when we are running away from Him? First of all, to prove His love for us. Hebrews 12:6 says, "For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives."
By every human standard, Jonah was rebellious and running in the opposite direction from God. The easy thing would have been to let the sea swallow him up and be finished with the whole story. But God rescued Jonah out of that mess because in His heart there was an incredible love for that prophet.
The reason God goes to such lengths with us is because He loves us. The very proof of His love is His discipline in our lives. Now, I understand this doesn't sound logical. We tried this line on our kids when they were growing up—most of them did not believe it very much. We would say, "If I did not love you so much, I wouldn't do this." And they would look at us with that expression and say, "Yeah, right." Or we would say the classic line, "This hurts me more than it hurts you." I never believed that when I was young, and I'm not sure it was always true.
But when we talk about the fatherhood of God and the way He deals with His children, this is really true. God proves His love when He goes to extreme measures to recover us from our own foolishness.
How God's Discipline Works Like Ripples
I remember the story about a little boy who had a toy boat floating on a pond. The boat drifted away from the shore and the boy couldn't reach it. A man was passing by, saw what was happening, and began to throw stones into the water on the far side of the boat. The boy was very upset and said, "What are you doing to my boat?"
And then something very interesting happened. The stones created ripples that slowly pushed the boat back toward the boy. The water was disturbed and no longer smooth, but the disturbance achieved the desired result. That is exactly how God's discipline works. If we allow it, it will drive us toward Him. If we don't allow it, it will drive us away from Him.
But when we drift away from Him on the sea of sin or on the pond of unrighteousness, He throws the disturbing stones of loving discipline to push us back toward Himself. Some of you have been in stormy weather recently. The waves have been rough and the stones have been heavy. I want to remind you that this is not a sign God has abandoned you. It is proof that He loves you. If He did not love you, He would simply let you go. But you mean too much to Him to do that.
Discipline Shows Us a Realistic Picture
Why do we experience discipline? To prove His love for us, and secondly, to present a realistic picture of us. Hebrews says, "Exhort one another daily, while it is called 'Today,' lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Hebrews 3 warns us that sin lies to us. Sin does not tell us the truth. And the more we listen, the harder our hearts become.
That is what happened to Jonah, and it can happen to us. We can invent the most creative explanations for why we are not doing what we know we ought to do. Some of those stories deserve an award. There ought to be a ribbon handed out every year for the best excuse given in the face of clear Scripture.
I've heard a bunch of them and they're overwhelming. I'm not talking about gray areas where the Bible is hard to understand. I'm talking about the plainly revealed Word of God—the simple and clear "Thus says the Lord." I have watched people stand in direct opposition to it and then tell you how their disobedience is somehow part of God's plan. When you listen to it, you can hardly believe what you're hearing.
The mind is capable of making up its own story to support attitudes which are not favorable toward the Lord. Here's something I've noticed over the years: many people do not face the truth about their lives until the pain of disobedience finally catches up with them. In one way or another, that has been true of all of us.
Discipline Produces Greater Maturity
We tell ourselves it is not that bad. We convince ourselves everything will work out. We whisper that it is really all right. And then, without warning, reality shows up. And in the middle of that hard experience, our eyes finally begin to open. Sometimes God allows that moment so we can see what has been true all along. His discipline is meant to strip away our excuses, wake us up, and bring us back to what is real and what is right.
So He sends the storms and the big fish—to prove His love for us, to present a realistic picture of us, and to produce a greater maturity in us. God's correction produces a greater maturity in us. It grows us up. That's one of the clearest teachings in the New Testament.
Without discipline, we simply don't grow in the Lord. The Bible is very honest. Hebrews 12:10 says that God disciplines us "for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness." And James says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." And the word "complete" means finished, fully developed.
God doesn't want half-formed believers. He is shaping us—men and women who resemble His Son—and discipline is part of that shaping process. When you go through tough times, God is making you stronger and better, more capable of dealing with the issues of life.
God's Discipline Offers a New Start
And then—this is the part I like the best—He does all of this in our lives, He allows this pain that we feel, to provide a new start for us. And this is the thought I want you to remember if you don't remember anything else: God's discipline provides a new start for us. It allows us to begin again.
Some of you feel overwhelmed by what has happened in your life, and you've stumbled and failed, and you're embarrassed by it, and you think God must surely be finished with you. But I want to tell you something with all my heart: He is not.
God has gone to great lengths to recover you so He can restore you to usefulness and joy. And this is the story of the whole Bible. Noah stepped off the ark into a brand-new world. Jacob was given a new name and a new future after wrestling with the Lord. Ruth found a new family and a new purpose when she was taken to Bethlehem. David was restored with a clean heart after his biggest failure.
The prodigal son was welcomed home with a robe and a feast instead of rejection. Peter was recommissioned on the shore after denying the Savior three times. Paul was transformed from a persecutor into a preacher of grace. And Jonah was sent back to finish the work God had given him.
Hitting Rock Bottom Can Be a Turning Point
You see, the fish was not the end of Jonah's story. It was God's way of helping him start over. He didn't put Jonah in that fish to ruin him. He put him there to rescue him and turn him around. And the same Lord who made a way for that stubborn prophet makes a way for us.
Whatever you are facing today, I hope you will learn that God is teaching you and say, "Lord, whatever You want, I got it. I got the message. I realize You're trying to get through to me and I want to listen." Because I remember when I had cancer years ago, I used to pray, "Lord, help me to understand what You're doing because I don't want any refresher courses." And that's the way we should pray when we go through difficulty.
Johnny Cash was an incredible singer, but he was also a tormented man. He lived between two worlds—bright stages and cheering crowds on one side, pills, arrests, and brokenness on the other. By 1967, nearly ten years of addiction had emptied him out. He felt finished and beyond repair.
One night he went to Nickajack Cave in Tennessee, later saying he planned to crawl inside the cave and die. In that black silence he began to pray, telling God he had no strength left. In his autobiography he wrote, "In the darkness, I felt the presence of God." He believed a faint breath of air guided him back toward the entrance and back toward life. That became his turning point. He rebuilt his life with June Carter, sang with new honesty, and began walking with a humble faith, though he admitted the struggle was never completely over.
Real-Life Examples of God's Restoration
Chuck Colson learned the same lesson. He was once one of the most powerful men in America, serving in the White House under President Nixon. Then Watergate exploded and everything collapsed. He was convicted and sent to federal prison. Overnight he went from a corner office to inmate number 22-326.
Prison took away his power, but prison gave him a new perspective. On a metal bunk in a noisy cell block he read the Bible every day and prayed with a small group of inmates. Colson later said, "For the first time in my life, I could hear God speaking without the noise of power and position."
After his release he founded Prison Fellowship, and we benefit from that because Angel Tree is part of that ministry which came from his experience, bringing hope to prisoners and their families around the world. Looking back, Colson said, "I thank God for Watergate." That would be like Jonah saying, "I thank God for the whale."
The stories of Cash and Colson sound a lot like Jonah's story. They bottomed out, but the bottom wasn't the end because God has a way of meeting us there and giving us a new beginning.
When we come to the end of ourselves, when we've tried all of our own stuff and we know it doesn't work and we just keep getting further and further away from Him, finally one day we wake up and say, "Okay, God, whatever it is You want, I'm here. I will do it."
I hope that maybe someone here today is like that. I hope maybe you came to church today wondering, "What in the world is God doing in my life?" And perhaps through the life of Jonah, through the life of Johnny Cash and Chuck Colson, you see that God is never done with us. If we're His, He loves us and He will pursue us and He will take us from the bottom and take us back to where we belong—if we will just be honest enough to ask Him.
Will you do that today? Will you make that prayer in your heart?
Prayer
Let's bow together, shall we?
Father, we know that You love us because You gave Your Son for us. We celebrate that in communion today. Your love for us is overwhelming. But Your love doesn't stop at the cross. It continues in our lives as we walk with You and as sometimes we stumble and fall and get away from You. You keep loving us and keep showing us Your love through ways that are difficult, but they're so important. "For whom the Lord loves He chastens," says the Scripture.
Maybe there's someone here today who has felt the sting of God's discipline and realizes they need to come back to You. Help them to pray in their heart and ask God to forgive them for their waywardness and tell Him they're ready to come back and be obedient to Him and to serve Him.
And maybe there's someone here today, Lord, who's never put their trust in You at all. They came to church, but they don't know Jesus Christ in a personal way. Would You help them to respond to the opportunity they have today to put their faith and trust in You?
That is my prayer. That is the prayer of all God's people in this room, that You will do Your work in our hearts. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Maybe there's someone here today who has felt the sting of God's discipline and realizes they need to come back to You. Help them to pray in their heart and ask God to forgive them for their waywardness and tell Him they're ready to come back and be obedient to Him and to serve Him.
And maybe there's someone here today, Lord, who's never put their trust in You at all. They came to church, but they don't know Jesus Christ in a personal way. Would You help them to respond to the opportunity they have today to put their faith and trust in You?
That is my prayer. That is the prayer of all God's people in this room, that You will do Your work in our hearts. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.