DAY FORTY-NINE:
The Story of Jonah
We look at another popular story today. It's a fascinating story with lots to teach us, so let's dig in!
We learn something of the times in which Jonah lived and prophesied from the next verse, 2 Kings 14:26-27, "For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash." What was going on that they were in such trouble? The Assyrian Empire was beginning forays into Israel. They took some territory, but Jeroboam got it back, as Jonah prophesied. This was not because Jeroboam was a godly man- he clearly wasn't. It was because God felt His people's pain and rescued them. But the day would come when God would no longer uphold Israel. The Assyrians would conquer the northern kingdom in 722 BC and carry half of the population into exile while bringing in exiles from other lands. The northern ten tribes of Israel were lost (they didn't totally disappear, nor, as the Mormons teach, come to America. We read of a few faithful people from the north coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with Hezekiah).
God's call came to Jonah: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me." This was the last place Jonah wanted to go! Nineveh, near the modern city of Mosul in Iraq, was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Jonah had no doubt seen the signs of their brutality. The Assyrians routinely killed every man in a city they conquered and displayed their severed heads in a pile outside the city gate. What would these people do to him if he came to them with a message from Israel's God? And besides, they deserve whatever judgment God will bring on them.
So Jonah went the opposite direction. He went to Joppa and booked passage on a ship headed for Tarshish, which is modern-day Spain. Jonah wanted to get "...away from the presence of the Lord." (v. 3). But God wasn't going to let Jonah get away so easily. He sent a great storm which threatened to sink the ship. The sailors prayed to their gods and started throwing the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. They found Jonah down in the hold, fast asleep. They woke him up and told him to pray to his god. They cast lots (a practice akin to flipping a coin or drawing straws) to see if one of them was to blame for the storm. The lot fell to Jonah. He admitted that he was a Hebrew, a follower of Israel's God. Jonah told them that the only way the storm would let up was if they threw him overboard. They didn't want to do that, so they tried everything they could think of to keep their ship afloat an upright. But the storm kept worsening, and finally they tossed Jonah into the sea. Immediately the storm lifted! But what of Jonah?
We read in 1:17, "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 raises a lot of questions. First, was it a fish or a whale, as we routinely assume? Even the picture above shows a whale's tail as it heads back to deep water. The text says it was a "great fish." It also says that the Lord "appointed" this fish. It could have been a fish He created specially for the occasion. There are also some natural explanations. A sperm whale could have accommodated Jonah. It has multiple stomachs like a cow and if he rested in the first stomach he would have been safe from the whale's stomach acids and would have received air when the whale surfaced. Others theorize that a great white shark swallowed Jonah. I think it's best not to speculate too much. Remember Ohio's state motto: "With God all things are possible."
Jonah spent three days and three nights in the dark, smelly stomach of a fish (or whale). It was worse than being buried alive! It gave Jonah some time to think. Chapter 2 records his beautiful prayer to the Lord. Verse 10 concludes, "And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land." I wonder what he looked like (and smelled like!) as he stood on the beach. I heard a Christian comedian talk about a Ninevite out doing some surf fishing when Jonah, bleached white from the fish's stomach acids, said "Repent!" The fisherman couldn't refuse! In any event Jonah headed for Nineveh to carry out the Lord's instructions.
God's message for Jonah to proclaim was just one sentence: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" The city was so big that it took Jonah three days to go through all of its neighborhoods. Over and over and over again, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Most prophets saw little results from their preaching. Jonah, however, was the most successful prophet in the Old Testament! "And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast andput on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them." The King of Assyria led the nation, exchanging his rich robes for sackcloth and ashes. The Lord took note of Nineveh's repentance and did not destroy the city. Nineveh went on for another 150 years or so, until the Babylonians conquered Assyria in 609 BC.
You would think that Jonah would be delighted, right? Wrong! Here's how he reacted: "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly,and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." The word displeased comes from a root that means to quiver or shake. Jonah was so angry that he was shaking! His prayer is amazing and appalling. "I ran because I knew You'd do something like this. You should nuke the Assyrians but instead You've forgiven them! Just let me die now!" Jonah should have been down in Nineveh, teaching the people the things of God. Instead he was sitting on a hillside and sulking. God asked him a simple question: "Do you do well to be angry?" Jonah didn't answer.
God showed mercy to Nineveh, and He also showed mercy to His wayward prophet. It is blasted hot in that part of the world! Summer daytime highs in Iraq regularly reach and even exceed 120 degrees. Jonah was sitting out in the sun, having a pity party. God caused a plant to grow up to give him some shade. Jonah was very happy for the shade and for the cooling effects of the plant's respiration. But then the next morning God sent a worm to attack the vine, and it began to wither and die. Along with that He sent a scirocco, a hot wind out of the east that sucks the moisture out of everything and blows sand everywhere. Jonah was absolutely miserable! He prayed again that the Lord would let him die. God asked the same question: "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" Jonah replied yes- so much so that I wish I were dead! Then God replied, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" Bam! Jonah fell right into God's trap! You care about a plant more than you care about 120,000 souls?!?!?
The story of Jonah hits us right between the eyes as it speaks to our modern situation. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh. He didn't want them to receive God's mercy. He wanted to see them incinerated for what they had done to Israel. It's likely that his home town of Gath-Hepher was occupied by the Assyrians before Jeroboam drove them out. Maybe Jonah lost family members to the cruelty of the enemy. He didn't want to see them repent and receive mercy, so he ran the opposite direction. This stands in sharp contrast to the words of our Savior, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:43-44) Jesus demonstrated this love when He said from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for the know not what they do." (Luke 23:34) Paul taught us in 1 Timothy 2:1-4, "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." ALL people. Not just the people like us, who look like us and who think like us. Do we love the people of Sebring and the surrounding area enough to try to reach them for Christ? Or will we stay in our comfortable enclave? I don't see our problem, though, as hatred so much as complacency. The late Francis Schaeffer wrote, "As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence. Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city…Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and increasing prosperity - a life made up of things, things, and more things - a success judged by an ever higher level of material abundance." We love our comfort more than we love lost and hurting people, and that's a terrible indictment. If the people of Nineveh could repent, so can we!
This is a pretty heavy way to end our study, so let's lighten things up with this, a clip from the Veggie Tales version of Jonah. If you haven't seen it, the entire movie is available for free on YouTube.
Jonah's response reminds me of the older brother in the Prodigal Son parable.
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