Jonah
The Reluctant Missionary
(Jonah 1)
Jonah All at Sea (Jonah 2)
Revival in
Nineveh (Jonah 3)
Jonah’s
Painful Lesson (Jonah 4)
A WHALE OF A TIME (Caring Groups Study Guide to Jonah 1-4)
The Reluctant
Missionary: Jonah 1
This is the story with two main characters: Jonah and the
Lord. There is more mention of Jonah than the Lord but all the way through it
is vital to ask yourself this question:
what is God doing while this is going on, because, as always with the
Bible, God is the main character.
Sometime ago I heard someone giving a talk about Jacob. He
said, that to use an expression from his school days, Jacob was a bit of a twerp. Jonah also was a twerp, or, if
you prefer a more modern expression: a
plonker. He was a right
plonker of a prophet .
But lest we feel too superior I must warn you that we shall
see a lot of ourselves in Jonah. I like the writer who said ‘I understand Jonah because I am
Jonah.’
So why was poor old Jonah, the Son of Amittai, and the
prophet of the one true God, such a plonker? Because he thought he could run
away from God.
It all started when God decided to do something about
Nineveh. It was a heathen city, it was the capital of an evil empire, of a
nation that had fought ruthlessly against God’s chosen people, Israel. It was a
place full of wickedness and God decided to do something about it :
The word of the LORD came to Jonah
son of Amittai:
2
"Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its
wickedness has come up before me."
Jonah 1.1-2
‘You go there Jonah and preach
against their wickedness it has come up before me, it has come to my attention,
now I am going to do something about it’ said God
Not an entirely unreasonable request. Jonah after all was a prophet and his job was to be a spokesman for God but Jonah was having
none of it. Why did he not want to go ? We find out a little bit later but not
to go he was determined to do. So, he decided to do a runner:
3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went
down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the
fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.
(verse 3)
Now there is something utterly ridiculous about the idea that
you can run away from God but we do it all the time ! It’s not just Jonah who
is plonker, we are ourselves. Of course you can’t hide from God, of
course you can’t run away from him but that doesn’t stop us from trying.
Perhaps you know today that you are on the run from God in
some area of your life. He is calling you to go somewhere you don’t won’t to
go. Or perhaps he is calling you to do something you don’t want to do. Or
perhaps there are things wrong in your life, that you think somehow you can run
away from and hide from God.
So often we attempt a cover up. So often we are like the
child who covers his eyes and believes that what frightens him has gone away
simply because he can’t see it anymore.
In that is you, if you are doing a Jonah, in trying to run
away from God
why not make a decision here and now, to stop running now.
Don’t be a plonker don’t be a Jonah. You can’t run from God
and why should you want to? He is kind and forgiving and merciful. If you’ve
got something wrong in your life, he can put it right. And if he is calling you
to something, how ever hard that may be, he can equip you for it. You can be
confident that his purposes for you are good - so do not be afraid.
But, with Jonah on board ship,
bound for Spain, things started to happen when
the Lord started to act. God sent a terrible storm, so terrible that the
sailors cried out for help, and had to resort to throwing cargo overboard in
order to try to save the ship, but none of this troubled Jonah who was fast
asleep in the ship’s hold !
I wonder if this indicates just how dull his conscience had become? Not only
had he disobeyed God, not only had he
run away from God, but he was completely untroubled by what he had done.
He certainly didn’t lose any sleep over it.
That is a great danger when we disobey God in a big way. Our
consciences can become terribly dulled.
We fail to realise the seriousness of what we are doing in God’s eyes
because we have stopped looking at things through God’s eyes. It is
something we need to beware of .
In fact so soundly did he sleep that he was oblivious to the
terrible peril that the ship had sailed into. The pagan sailors couldn’t
understand Jonah’s lack of concern and when they drew lots they became
convinced that it was Jonah’s fault that there were in such terrible danger. To
his credit, he admits it that it is
9 He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God
of heaven, who made the sea and the land." 10 This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?"
(They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them
so.)
verse
9-10
‘There’s only one answer’ says
Jonah, ‘throw me overboard’
12 "Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied,
"and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm
has come upon you."
verse
12
Do you notice something odd here? Jonah freely confesses that
he believes in the Lord. Jonah freely admits that he is at fault. Jonah freely
accepts God’s punishment on his sin but the one thing he doesn’t do is repent
Why does he not turn back to the Lord and why does he not ask
for God’s forgiveness? Why does he not stop running away from God and like prodigal son run into the arms of God?
He is he just too
stubborn, too disobedient. Has he
lost sight of just how kind or forgiving God is? Has he just fallen into a kind
of ‘whatever will be will be’ fatalism?
Whatever the reason: Jonah won’t change his ways and is quite
prepared to suffer the consequences of an early watery grave. How foolish, how
tragic !
But, God has the last word in Jonah’s life, as he always has
in the life of a believer. This is not going to be the end of Jonah. God is not
going to let him go. Jonah has not been faithful to God but the Lord is
faithful to Jonah and sends a fish to rescue him
17 But the LORD
provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three
days and three nights.
verse
17
‘At the Lord’s command’ or in an old translation ‘the Lord
appointed a fish.’ God took the initiative: God came to the rescue. God’s
purposes for Jonah aswell, as for Nineveh would not be thwarted by human sin.
Three verses to conclude
Romans 11.29: For God does not change his mind about whom
he chooses and blesses
John 15.16: Jesus
said You did not choose me; I chose you
Psalm 139.7-9: Where could I go to
escape from you ? Where could I get away from your presence ? If I went up to
heaven. you would be there; if I lay down in the world of the dead, you would
be there. If I flew away beyond the east or lived in the farthest place in the
west, you would be there to lead me, you would be there to help me
Jonah All At Sea: Jonah 2
God
must have really loved Jonah. ‘Come off it,’ you say ‘if he really loved him,
why did he allow those hooligans to throw him overboard into that raging sea?’
Why did Jonah have that terrifying near death experience, which the poor man
describes so well: verse 3 and 5:
3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very
heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and
breakers swept over me.
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep
surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.
It is,
after all, a funny way to treat your friends.
But
no, I say: God really did love him: in a very powerful way.
Why
do I say that? Because God persisted
with him.
He
didn’t give Jonah the sack, he did not make him redundant, he did not have him
suspended from his position as prophet pending an official inquiry, he didn’t
have him quietly retired on medical grounds. He didn’t let him go and he didn’t
give up on him.
We
live in a world where commitment is cheap, where it is easy to give up and
relationship break up is all too common, the temptation is that if you hit a
problem, you leave, you move out, you find someone else. That’s us, but the
LORD never leaves or forsakes the people he loves
So
when Jonah did a runner from God, God did not do a runner from Jonah.
‘Jonah,
I’ve got a job for you’ said the Lord ‘go to those Ninevites, they’re a wicked
lot, they desperately need to hear from me’ but Jonah, as we heard last week,
thought to himself ‘You must be joking!
Go there, to that den of sin?
I’ll be eaten alive. Not on your
life.’ So he decided to do a runner: he made up his mind to flee from the Lord,
he got a ship bound for a distant port and set off
And
what a ridiculous sight he was! How stupid! How pathetic! How downright comical. To think he could run away from God! But
how like you or me! We’re no different, if we are honest. At times we attempt
to run away from God or hide from him even though we know such a thing is
impossible
But
God really loved Jonah, so when Jonah ended up, through his own silly fault,
sinking deep into the sea, with his life ebbing away, God did not say: serves you right: I’ve told you so. That’ll
teach you to try to get away from me. Instead, God provided a FISH and saved Jonah’s life
Not
only that but he gave Jonah the benefit of a three-day retreat - a time of
quiet to pray and reflect, deep in the belly of that fish. That’s when Jonah
starts to come to his senses. He talks to his Lord.
All
of us come to our senses when we stop running from our problems and start
talking to the Lord about them
THREE
THINGS JONAH SAYS TO GOD
Verse
4: I said, 'I have been banished
from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.'
Although
it was pagan sailors who threw Jonah overboard, Jonah recognises that God let
it happen. God was able to work out his purposes for Jonah, using this wicked
act.
Verses
2, 6
2 He said: "In my distress I called to
the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the
pit, O LORD my God.
Jonah
recognised that it was God and God alone who had saved him. In his lowest
point, quite literally, the Lord had not left him but had rescued him. At our
lowest point, when we stop trying to save ourselves, when we have no one to
turn to but God, we call out to him and he hears.
Many
people today know Jonah’s experience as he describes it in verse 2:
2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
Verses
8-9: "Those who cling to
worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. 9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will
sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the
LORD."
So
Jonah, the reluctant missionary, the man who disobeyed God and ran away, comes
back to his Lord, singing a song of thanksgiving, praising God for what he has done and vowing to put things right
in his life
As we
shall see later, Jonah still has a lot to learn - as we have. He is still far
from perfect, like you or me but one thing he knows right through to the bottom
of his heart is: SALVATION COMES FROM THE LORD (verse 9)
And
that brings us to
1.
GOD REALLY LOVES JONAH
We
know God really loves Jonah because he rescues him, because he gives him
another chance, because he doesn’t put him on the scrap heap, because he
doesn’t just let him die and say serves
you right
But,
we also know God really loves him because God allows this terrifying near death experience of sinking deep into
the sea to happen to him
Hebrews
12.5b-6:
"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."
We
know as parents that we discipline our kids because we love them. It’s because
we love them that we try to stop them doing things that will harm them and are
bad for them. It’s because we love them that we sometimes punish them and in
the same way God disciplines his children
because he loves them. He corrects us
and changes us and moulds us and brings
us to repentance, brings us back to himself, through his discipline
And
didn’t Jonah need it! What a wayward difficult character he was! He was a
prophet who refused to prophesy, a missionary who refused his mission, a man of
God on the run from God
If
anyone needed to do a U-turn in his life it was Jonah, but he was a pretty
stubborn person to get through to. CS Lewis said that suffering was a megaphone
through which God speaks to us. Of course not all suffering is used in this way
but Jonah needed a pretty powerful message before he would stop and listen. God
had to get out his megaphone and really turn up the volume before he could get
Jonah’s attention.
When
God allowed that terrifying experience of being thrown overboard to happen to
Jonah he did so because he loved Jonah and he wanted to bring Jonah back into
fellowship with himself
Jonah’s
time in the FISH was like the prodigal son’s time in the far country tending
the pigs. It was a time to come to his senses: a time to return to God
What about your life? Do you need to return to God in some
way?
And
God’s strategy worked: the experience changed Jonah:
2.GOD REALLY CHANGES JONAH
By
the end of time in the fish, Jonah was a changed man, no longer fleeing from
God, but full of heartfelt thanks towards God:
Jonah
is back in his right mind as a believer, trusting God, praising God, aware of
God’s love for him once more.
What
about us? Are we, ourselves, open to being changed by God? Are we open to being
disciplined and moulded more into the people he wants us to be?
As we
shall see later, Jonah has a lot to learn. He is still far from perfect but he
has been rescued: not just from the waters of the Med: but from his own
foolishness and disobedience, he knows once more that the Lord is Lord and that
the Lord really loves him, he is now ready to be used powerfully in God’s
service.