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Based on Jonah 1:1-3
Jonah is one of the most famous books of the Old Testament. It is known of by masses of people who never read any of the Bible. Strange as it may seem it was the first book of the Bible to be translated into Chinese. The trouble with all the widespread knowledge about Jonah is that it is all trivial and centered on the non-essential. The great issues of Revelation are neglected and ignored. To most people the book has no connection with foreign missions and God's universal love. To most people it is just about a whale and whether or not such a creature can swallow a man.
It has been proven beyond a doubt that a whale can swallow a man, but this is a hollow victory if it leaves us thinking that God devoted one whole book of the Bible to reveal the swallowing capacity of a whale. There is a whale of a lot more to this book than that. No book in the Old Testament is so clear as to its missionary message. It is the clearest revelation of God's concern for the Gentiles, and that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The power of God's Word is nowhere seen to be so effective, and the value of repentance is nowhere seen to be so effective in pleasing God. Eislen says Jonah "..is the most Christian of all Old Testament books."
It is not a prophecy, but an autobiography. The only prophecy in the book is the warning that judgment is coming, and it was not fulfilled in the 40 days predicted because the people repented. It is among the prophets because Jonah was a prophet, and their task was as much to forth-tell as to fore-tell. We want to look at Jonah's commission to be a foreign missionary, and his cowardly attempt to evade his duty. First we look at-
I. HIS DUTY DECLARED.
It was the word of the Lord that came to Jonah, and this made his duty obvious. There was no uncertainty as to the source of his orders to justify any hesitation or disobedience. His duty was clear and simple-"arise and go." With this commission Jonah becomes the Paul of the Old Testament. He was the Apostle to the Gentiles. The other
prophets were sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but Jonah was to leave his people and go to the Gentiles. It was this distinction that discouraged him from doing his duty.
"Go to Nineveh." We can hardly find an equivalent in our day to help us imagine the shock of such a commission. It was contrary to the whole system of prejudice in the Jewish mind. The Gentiles were not chosen people, and they deserve only the judgment of God. When the heathen were destroyed it was considered a blessing to Israel. The goal of Israel was to have all nations subject to her, but God did not always share the view of His people. The Jews had God given evidence to know that He had a plan for the Gentiles as well, but they did not want that evidence to get in the way of their theology.
That was Jonah's problem as well, and God refused to abide by Jonah's theology. Nothing is so aggravating to a theologian as having God demonstrate His ability to act contrary to His system. Men like to get God defined and confined so they know exactly what He is going to do, but God refuses to submit to the theology of men and remain in the box where they want to confine Him. Paul in Rom. 10 makes it clear that Israel knew God had a plan for Gentiles. In verse 19 he asks, "But I say, did not Israel know? First Moses said, I will provoke you to jealously by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you." Then in verse 20 he writes, "But Isaiah is very bold, and says, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asks not after me."
Why was Isaiah so bold to say that? It was because it was heresy to the theologians of the day. It was heresy to Jonah, and he wanted no part of foreign missions. God is the God of the Jews, and we are going to keep it that way. Keep the heathen out of this, and especially the Assyrians of Nineveh. God made it clear to Abraham that his plan was to bless all nations through his seed, but the Jews were continually fighting to keep God exclusive.
In spite of his prejudice, however, God gave him orders to go and cry against Nineveh. Those are interesting orders for they reveal God's attitude. Sometimes the most effective approach is negative. Jonah was to go there and be against their wickedness, and to warn of the wrath to come. As far as the record goes there was nothing positive he had to say. There was no Gospel. All was negative and pointed to judgment.
If Jonah would have been told to go and deliver a lecture on contemporary ethics and moral values at the University of Nineveh he probably would have gone gladly. He knew that all men can stand a polite sophisticated recommendation that they cease to live for the devil. If you can just dress up condemnation of sin with politeness and qualifications, the devil himself will praise your eloquence. It is like the man who did not want to step on toes and so he preach, "Repent-as it were, and be converted-so to speak, or you'll be damned-to some extent." Jonah feared the power of negative thinking and preaching because he was afraid it might work.
Jonah could have obeyed if his message had been different, but he was told to cry out against the people. He could have preached a social gospel gladly, for had he done so he knew the result would be judgment. He also knew that if he preached judgment the result might be a moral transformation of the society. Men must turn to God before they can be godly men. They must be saved before they can live saved lives. They must be changed in character before they can be pleasing to God. Jonah was fearful that his message might produce these very changes. But here were his orders, and they were as clear as a bell.
II. HIS DUTY DESERTED.
In verse 3 we see Jonah rose up to flee. He didn't waste any time making a response. He obeyed God's first word to the letter. He arose, and technically he did the second also, for he went. But the problem was that he went the wrong way, and he headed, not to Nineveh, but to Tarshish. He missed the boat by catching a boat going the wrong way. If he had gone the right way it would have been by land, but he headed for the sea in the opposite direction. He dodged his duty and it was a downward spiral. He went down to Joppa, and down into the ship, and then down into the sea and down into the whale. Fleeing from God is a downward road all the way.
The first thing we can learn about his rebellious desertion of his obvious duty is that rebellion does not always indicate that what is rebelled against is evil. Sin began as rebellion against God, and we see it again in Jonah. Evil rebels against good as well as vice versa. The secularist tends to think that if the majority of people rebel against a standard of morality it must be that the standard is wrong. They fail to consider the reality that man often rebels against God's standards, which are ideal. They are not subject to majority vote.
Even God's own servants can rebel against His will, and it is usually, as I said, because God refuses to share their provincialism, and He insists on contradicting their theology. Jonah knew God loved all people, but he didn't like it, and he was going to do all he could to keep God exclusive, and limit His blessings to Jews only. This is not just a guess, for you can read his own confession in 4:1-3. It is not right, but there are many of God's people who are prejudice against all other peoples.
The miracle of being preserved for 3 days in a whale cannot compare with the miracle of God using such a prejudice man like Jonah so successfully. He was a deliberate, determined, disobedient deserter of duty, and yet he was an instrument of God for the salvation of many. That is the real wonder, and not the whale experience.
Jonah is running from revealed responsibility. He is dodging divine duty as he flees to Tarshish. What a picture of the sin of believers. What he was doing was as amoral as anything could be. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He wasn't a stow-away, for we see that he paid his fare. Jonah's sin was like so much of the sin of believers. He was doing what was right at the wrong time. The only reason it was sin for Jonah to be where he was had to do with the reality that God's will for him was that he be somewhere else. We so often think we can't sin if we don't do anything wrong, but this is not so. Even good activities are wrong if they are known substitutes for God's appointed duties. A trip to Tarshish after going to Nineveh could have been a blessed vacation in God's will, but not when it was a dodging of His will.
Duty is not always desirable. He who thinks that obeying God is always pleasant clearly reveals how seldom he obeys. God's ways are often in conflict with our own desires for ease and softness. Someone said, "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty." Doing that which is dutiful is not always beautiful. Sometimes you will need to grit your teeth to do the will of God, and then cry out for mercy because you are so far from being like Him. It was miserable for Jonah to be in the center of God's will. He was happier in a state of disobedience, and it is often the case that the backslider enjoys the relief of not being in the will of God.
You may wonder why God uses man at all. He is so weak and often unwilling, but as the book of Jonah makes clear, God has no other plan. "How shall they hear without a preacher?" They won't, and that is why the story of the whale. God must by His providence and miracle get Jonah to Nineveh, for He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Jonah deserted the most important duty a man can ever have. It is the duty of bearing witness to the lost of God's provision for salvation. Jonah could only write this book about his desertion because he finally learned his lesson. The purpose of the book for us is to warn us against taking the same foolish path he took. May God help us to respond to God's commission with the attitude of the poet who wrote,
Take the task He gives you gladly.
Let His work your pleasure be.
Answer quickly when He calls,
Here am I, send me, send me.
Here are some of the lessons we can learn from this book of Jonah:
1. God is willing to save anyone who will repent.
2. God's love is universal.
3. Miracles are no problem for those who spell their God with a capital G.
4. It is better to obey disagreeable orders than to try and escape them. 5. God can bring good out of evil and disobedience.
6. God does not give up on achieving his purpose.
7. God's people do not always like what they believe about God.
8. God's people can be very un-Godlike in their attitudes.
9. Missions is a universal duty of all believers.
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