Mission Impossible
Jonah 1:1-16
Preached by L. Going at WACC 2/13/2000
One of the great values of the Old Testament is that contains object lessons for us on matters of faith. There are two New Testament texts that make this point.
NKJ Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
I have not done the research but it seems to me that a larger portion of Old Testament narratives relate accounts of believers’ failures to obey God than accounts of obedience. Those Bible accounts of men and women, who obeyed, stand out because they are so rare and infrequent. Nevertheless, the records of failures of faith are there for our benefit. We learn from them what we are not to do. Take the matter of obeying God. When we know that God commands us to do something and we don’t do it. Or when he places an opportunity before us to serve Him and we are reluctant to obey, we would do well to read the Old Testament accounts of a Samson, Saul or Jonah and ask God to give us a sober and willing heart to obey. Our reluctance to obey God can be rooted in a variety of causes. Yet each cause is related to a matter of our hearts.
Simply as literature, these Old Testament accounts of human failure can be classified as literary tragedies. Branson L. Woodard. Writes:
“Whereas Samson's tragic flaw was his lack of self-control (Judges 14–16}) and Saul's, a rashness or proneness to extremes that eroded his ability to lead (1 Samuel), Jonah's was contempt fed by pride. He wanted the Ninevites to perish because, as Gentiles, they stood outside the camp of God's covenant blessing. Such insensitivity must have been intense to motivate a believer to turn away from Yahweh's call.”
I. Jonah’s receives his call from Yahweh
Jonah is a lesson for us in the tragic effects that hatred and pride can produce. Yet against the backdrop of human failure to obey we find the gracious and faithful purposes of God shining forth. So from this prophetic narrative we first learn about God and from Jonah we learn what our response to the character and purposes of God should not be. Therein we also learn what our response to the revelation of God’s character (revealed particularly in this book) should be. The book of Jonah is more than a story or a narrative. It reports events for the purpose of instruction.
Who was Jonah? He was an 8th century BC Hebrew prophet. He was a Gallilean, whose prophetic ministry took place in the reign of Jeroboam II king of Israel. The only other reference to Jonah is found in 2 Kings 14:”He (Jeroboam II) restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.” Gath-hepher means winepress of the well. It was a town of Lower Galilee, about 5 miles from Nazareth. This was the birthplace of Jonah.
This is all we know of Jonah. There is no way of knowing whether the events described in 2 Kings 14:25 preceded those in the book that bears Jonah’s name or the other way around. What is known is that at this time in Israel’s history the greatest enemy was the Assyrians. Nineveh was a major city of the Assyrian Empire. This ancient nation was not as much a threat to Israel at the time of Jonah but the animosity between the two nations remained great. So when the Word of the Lord came to Jonah to go and preach against Nineveh, Jonah knew that such a ministry would be also an opportunity for them to repent and escape the Lord’s wrath. It was for this reason, when the Lord said to him arise and go to that great city Nineveh that he arose and fled in the opposite direction to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, to Tarshish which was in Spain, near Gibraltar.
His disobedience to the Lord’s call was not that he just stayed put, dug in his heals and did nothing, but that he picked up stakes and ran from the face or presence of the Lord, or at least he tried to do so. He did not want any part in what the Lord wanted. Now in one sense Jonah knew that the God he worshipped, whom he later declares to be the creator of sea and the land, was omnipresent. So why did he flee, from the face of the Lord? Maybe, he knew that there were other prophets that Yahweh could use. He could not stop the Lord from doing what He willed, but he sure was going to try not to be apart of it, whatsoever.
Jonah was not a coward. He was not afraid of what the Lord might do to him as much as he was afraid of what the Lord might not do to the people of Nineveh: He was afraid that the Lord might not judge them. They were Israel’s enemies and Jonah did not want to see them aided by the Lord. The pronouncement of judgment was really a warning and would allow them time to repent and then the Lord would refrain from judging them.
They were deserving of judgment as a nation and people. The Assyrians were especially noted for their violence against other nations. This was a wicked nation. Yet what Jonah failed to realize or did not want to see is that Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was far from holy and righteous. God was their God but for the most part they were not living in obedience to Him or His covenant. God’s compassion for his own was not due to anything special in them but was exclusively due to God’s own character. Any good they knew or experienced was due to God’s rich compassion and mercy to them. If God wanted to give opportunity to Nineveh to repent and find Him, then he was sovereign and could do this.
Jonah knew that God was sovereign and had no problem if God used his sovereignty to judge and punish Jonah’s enemies. What Jonah did not like, what indeed made him un-cooperative was the thought that God would use his sovereignty to withhold judgment from his enemies.
We must have an attitude that is 180 degrees the opposite of Jonah’s. We should long for God to do more for the nations and our neighbors than simply to withhold judgment. We should desire that he bless them with saving faith.
It is God’s mercy that he does not allow disobedience to remain. He pursues Jonah. In so doing, Jonah, reluctantly and by default, fulfills the purpose God wants him to fulfill on behalf of Nineveh in the lives of these Gentile sailors.
II. We learn of God’s sovereignty from what happens to Jonah and the Gentile sailors
Yahweh hurled the storm at the ship. It was so violent that the ship was in danger of breaking in pieces. They lived in a religious age. They were syncretists and polytheists. They each begin to pray for the help of their gods.
Note the contrast between the furious action of the Gentile crew and the Jewish Prophet Jonah, who is in the deepest hole of the ship fast asleep. The captain finds him and his very words to him “rise and cry” are the very words the Lord spoke to Jonah in 1:2 “Arise and cry out against Nineveh.” Jonah must have thought he was having a nightmare. But he awoke to discover that the reality of the situation was worse than any dream.
The captain is astonished that Jonah was able to sleep. It may have been sheer exhaustion on his part. Yet there he was in the midst of the storm and fast asleep. They cast lots to discover who on board may have been the cause of such a violent storm. The lot fell to Jonah. Then they pepper him with questions. Jonah tells them his whole story and they are amazed. “What have you done?” “How could you have done such a thing?” Jonah had jeopardized all these innocent men. He is now both the guilty party and the expert. “What must we do to make the seas calm down for us?”
“Throw me over.” This was not to be an act of sacrifice but punishment. They are unwilling to do this. They try harder to row the ship to shore but to no avail. They then turn to Yahweh and pray that he would not hold the guilty of innocent blood. Yet Jonah was not innocent. He did not volunteer to jump overboard. He did not freely do a half gainer off the bow of the ship!
Again not intentionally but by sheer default Jonah brings these sailors into contact with the Living and true God. Did they go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and make vows? We do not know. They did not know that Jonah was rescued. Yet they knew that the Lord Yahweh had sent the storm as a means of pursuing his prophet and that when they threw him in the sea, the learned that Jonah’s creed was true: "The Lord is the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the land." They saw this in the facts that God sent the storm and that He ferreted out Jonah. God used the reluctant prophet to bring blessing to the lives of these sailors. God can use crooked sticks. Yet he delights in using straight ones.
III. What are the lessons here for us?
Even saints can and do disobey the Lord. All disobedience entails running away from the face of the Lord. That is the nature of disobedience. The Lord in mercy does not allow his own to run for long. He disciplines and corrects.
Your obedience to the Lord, will always either directly or indirectly brings blessing to the lives of others, and your disobedience will also always directly or indirectly have an impact on others. When this happens, it is the Lord’s grace alone that can remedy the consequences.
We try to escape from Him. It is ludicrous. Like Jonah we try to find some deep hole to crawl into and fall asleep. If not literally, then we try to sleep by tuning out or turning off. The problem is that our deep place may in fact become our own personal Sheol, a trap. Jonah wanted to go as deep and far from the Lord as he could. Well in the next chapter we will learn that the Lord allowed him to go even deeper than he expected or really wanted and there God dealt with him. Be careful of seeking to escape from obeying God. He may just let you go far enough to really regret it!
IV. It would be a good response to this text to ask yourself several questions.
Is there something particular that the Lord is calling you to do that you are unwilling to do? It may be that you have had a burden for a ministry or for a neighbor and you have done nothing with it. Or it may be a particular injunction from Scripture that you wrestle to obey.
Where is your ship to Tarshish? What kind of conveyance have you been using to run away from the face of the Lord? It may not be a literal ship it may be the ship of a busy life, “I just don’t have the time to do this right now, I am too busy.” Or it may be the ship escapism. You just fill your mind with life’s little pleasures and dull the urgency of any sense of obedience.
What kind of storm have you been experiencing? We modern Christians don’t see any cause and effect relationship between or circumstances and our decisions. I realize that this is the most subjective aspect of my application of this text. Nevertheless, we at least would be wise to use the various storms that come into our lives as opportunities to search our hearts and to seek God. Not all storms are the result of God’s chastisement for our disobedience but some are and it is the wise and mature Christian who seeks to read Providence in light of Scripture. They way of the transgressor is hard! Proverbs 13:15
What kind of impact does (or is) my disobedience to God’s command and call have on other people? Who is being put out, neglected, used, stressed or hurt? As much as we like to buy into the popular notion that matters of personal behavior hurts only me; this is not the case. We are inextricably linked to one another. My disobedience to God in whatever form it takes will either directly or indirectly impact others.
The last application point is not in the form of a question but a statement. It is a good thing that in spite of our moments or seasons of disobedience, the Lord is both Sovereign and Gracious! If you are His then He will not allow your disobedience to continue without his intervention. He longs to be gracious and as our Savior, he continues to save us from ourselves and in the process sheds his grace to others even through our mistakes and sin.
Finally, Jonah is not only an example to us of what we are not to do. Jonah is an inverted type of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 12:41 The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
The Lord does use this reluctant prophet as an agent of grace to sinful rebels. While Jonah was reluctant, God was relentless! If God’s grace is effective in and through the life and words of such a wayward prophet, how much more effective is His grace in and through the life and words of His willing Son? The Lord sent His Son into the world to save the world from sin. He like Jonah was sent to God’s enemies. Yet he goes freely and shares in His father’s gracious compassion toward the lost. Jonah’s message was one of judgment. The Ninevites were left to draw out any implications that God might withhold judgment if they repented and trusted in Him. The message of the greater Jonah is that God will forgive, pardon, justify and give eternal life to all that receive Him. You can be 100 % confident that if you believe the Gospel message, God will keep his promise. The faithful and willing work of the greater Jonah is the warrant to believe that God will indeed reconcile you to Himself.
Yet the work of grace accomplished by this greater Jonah, ups the ante too. At this very moment you have encounter more clarity and light concerning the pardoning, welcoming grace of God than these Ninevites could have dreamed. What is your response to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? All of us are under the sword of God’s pending judgment apart from the safety of Christ’s work and person. But for you who reject or ignore Him and the salvation he offers, what hope do you have? To reject God’s law leads to judgment but to reject God’s offer of life in Christ is to cut yourself off from any hope. How terrible it will be for you. Flee to Jesus. He is not a reluctant prophet. He will give you the truth with a heart that longs for your restoration with God. Those who come to Jesus are not save by default but by design. God’s grace is purposefully directed from the wounds of the risen Jesus, so there is omnipotent encouragement for you to flee from sin and self to the true and living God.