Introduction
A long time ago in a country far, far away, there lived a prophet, God sent him a message of destruction. The country was corrupt, responsible for murder and cruelty. The prophet said, “Wait a minute God, if I go preaching against them they’ll kill me I don’t want to go.”
There was another prophet. Again God sent him a message of destruction. The country was an abomination to God. The prophet said, “Please don’t send me with that message, give them another chance, I’m sure they will do better in the future.”
Acceptable answers, nice answers, Biblical answers but Jonah didn’t use either of them. He said “No way, they’ll repent and you’ll forgive them. I want them to burn.”
It’s all too easy to sit back, look at Jonah, and condemn him. Of course, God wants to save all and we want that as well. Yet, it’s all too easy for us to fall into Jonah’s trap.
Jonah’s call
Jonah 1:1 tells us that Jonah was a man under the call of God.
Illustration: My Call
Just into NYI – district rally – God called me to be a pastor.
Didn’t always remember this many times I wanted to go my own way. Wanted to go into science.
While I could have done this and God would have used me their. He had called me to be a pastor and I needed to be reminded of that.
Yet, he resisted. We don’t know what form Jonah’s call took, whether it was an audible voice like Samuel heard or a dream or a vision. What we do know is that God spoke to Jonah and told him to go and preach against Nineveh, and Jonah refused.
The city of Nineveh was an evil city. The people who lived there were called the Assyrians, Big Empire of the Day. To give you an idea here is a map of the Middle East. This is Assyria at its largest extent which was maybe around 50 years or so after this story takes place . The Assyrians were known for the torture of captured people and a cruelty that was unsurpassed in the surrounding nations. Israel which was small and insignificant as you can see, had received some of this treatment so it was no surprise that Jonah, an Israelite didn’t like the Assyrians. If there was one people who seemed to be opposed to whatever God wanted it was the Assyrians. If there was one people who against the people of God it was the Assyrians. To quote the Muppet’s Christmas Carol, The ‘worst of the worst, the most hated and cursed’. Yet, God called Jonah to the Assyrians.
It might not seem to bad when we consider that God sent Jonah with a message of destruction. We might think yes, I get to preach who they are all going to die. But Jonah knew God, in fact Bullock says that “he knew God too well for his own comfort”. God didn’t need to send Jonah to preach a warning unless he hoped that the people would repent. Jonah saw that God wanted to forgive his enemies, and Jonah didn’t want that to happen. So he refused.
In fact Jonah didn’t just turn God down, he ran away . Jonah came from Gath-hepher a town in Israel, near the site where Nazareth would be. God sent him to Nineveh which was a prominent city of the Assyrian Empire to the north-east on the River Tigris. Jonah ran away to Joppa to the south west to catch a boat to Tarshish in Spain.
Jonah had a call from God and he deliberately chose to disobey it. It always amazes me what excuses we can bring up for ignoring God’s call on our lives. Jonah might have said, well the sailors got converted through me running away. However, it is absolutely obvious that he was still disobeying God and he should not have run away. Yet, we often try to use the same excuse ourselves sometimes. But God is using me here, why do I have to elsewhere. God may still use us in our present location but if he has called us to go somewhere else then staying is wrong whether God is able to use us here or not. What I’m trying to say is that just because God is using us doesn’t mean we are in the situation that he wants. In the case of Jonah he was in direct opposition to God yet God was able to do some work in that situation. A few sailors were introduced to God, when Jonah travelled away from God, while a whole city turned to God when he obeyed.
Maybe you use other excuses that some people God called have used. Gideon was scared. Moses wasn’t sure he could handle it. We can come up with any number of excuses. But when God calls we can’t be happy while we run away.
I have known people who tried to avoid the call of God on their lives. They don’t end up living quiet lives in the church. They leave and are driven away. Only some come back.
There is terrific irony in this story, the very grace and saving power that Jonah thanks God in chapter 2, (context) is the thing that makes him run away from God in chapter 1 and complain to God in chapter 3. Why is the miracle here? People concentrate on the miracle, telling modern stories of people who were swallowed by whales and survived. Yet they miss the point of the miracle. God supernaturally intervenes to save us, to show us grace. When nothing else was possible, God steps in. It was great for God to save him after he deliberately opposed God, but the Assyrians they deserved to die because they opposed God. In many ways, Jonah’s crime was worse than the Assyrians. He had the Torah he knew that God demanded obedience, God spoke directly to him. The Assyrians didn’t have that, they only had conscience to guide them. Yet God was willing to forgive both. This whole idea of God’s grace and forgiveness is vital to anything else we discuss today (isn’t it funny who I can get away with saying, we discuss, when I am standing up here speaking and you’re down their listening, hopefully). God stands ready and willing to forgive others when they sin in ignorance because they don’t know the truth because we haven’t told them, and he also stands ready to forgive us for not telling them even though he made it clear that we were supposed to do so.
We forget that it is only be grace that we can stand before God. We deserve the judgement that we would so easily hand out to others. It is by grace we are saved. And that same grace extends to others as well. Jonah understood this, he just didn’t like it. We are called not only to know this truth but to like it, to make God’s attitude ours. There is simply no place in the Christian for viewing people as beyond the grace of God. All are called to salvation, and Christ calls us to all.
Terry Prachett quote. Context: Samuel Vimes is the commander of Ankh-Morpok city watch. Lots of assassinations and scheming going on. He tries to think who could be responsible. He keeps looking around and thinking who could the conspirators. Typical X-File dark room, where men discuss in hushed tones while smoking.
And then he realized why he was thinking like this. It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
All too often, we have this view of who is responsible for evil. We like to build up a group of people that are responsible. It was ‘them’. But the truth is we are ‘them’. We cannot bundle up evil and attribute it to the bad guys. We are responsible as well. And if we are as responsible as ‘them’, then they deserve grace as much as we do. There is no them and us. There is only us. We can’t turn round and describe one group of people as more evil and therefore less deserving of grace than us. It doesn’t matter what they have done in the past, it doesn’t matter how they dress or what they believe. It does matter that God died for them and loves them as much as he loves us. He wants them to be part of his family as much as he wants us. And he wants us to reach them.
Our Call
What is God calling you to?
Start with the last verse of Jonah 4:11 “But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness … Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”
There are people out there dying because they do not God’s good news that he loves them and they can be saved. God is calling people to reach them.
Let’s take Jonah 4:11 and update it to Wales. “But Wales has more than 1,000,000 people living in spiritual darkness … Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great country?” Often here people can end up thinking they are Christian because of the football team they support. What else makes people in your area think they have a right relationship to God. You are in a better position to answer that than me. But if it is anything other than a turning to him in repentance in dependence on the grace of God then they need to hear the gospel.
God is calling some people to be evangelists to these people. He is calling some to be pastors. He is also calling us all to take him to the people round about us.
What about beyond our own country. Jonah 4:11 can also be set in the context of the world. “But the world has more than 4 billion people living in spiritual darkness … Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great planet?” Just across the North Sea and the English Channel are some of the most Pagan and Secular societies in the world. You don’t have to travel to the 10/40 window to find some of the most unreached people in the world, you can travel to France, to Belgium and other southern European countries. I don’t may be God is calling some of you here to go there. They certainly need people to go.
I don’t know what call God has placed upon your life. God knows that. He may have told you, that may still lie in the future. But when he does place the call on your life you have a choice to make. You can either run from the call or obey God. Jesus tells us that we need to pray for God to send people to these people. But pray with the attitude, here I am send me. It’s still God’s choice, he sends but we can ask to be sent. Not to pray they really need someone send someone else.
Jonah teaches us that if we want to refuse the call of God, but we cannot run away from God. We will not find fulfilment until we agree to follow his will, willingly. Jonah reluctantly gave in and it brought him no joy. If we want to find fulfilment in life it means willingly submitting to the will of God.
I was sometimes submissive to God’s will reluctantly. I know what God wants me to do, I rather be a scientist, but if being a pastor is God’s will I guess I better do it. Rather like Jonah in fact. But God wants more. When I realised that God’s will is the best for my life. I’m not losing out by become a pastor instead of scientist. I’m gaining.
Jonah understood God to be a loving God who would forgive all. Do we really understand God’s love. Are we prepared to change to allow God to bring in the people he wants to save, or do we like Jonah get angry about those whom God chooses to save, about who he calls us to or who he brings through our door. We may not think we are but who does someone feel when they walk through the front door of our church.
We need to think like God. This can only happen as we get to know God and grow more like him. The final updating of Jonah 4:11 should speak to us all. “But the world has more than 4 billion people living in spiritual darkness … Shouldn’t YOU feel sorry for such a great planet?” The key is to make God’s view our view. Our Goal or aim is to be like God. What God is like that is what we aspire to be like. Unlike Jonah who disliked God’s mercy and grace, we need to love it in God, and seek to make it a part of our life as well. God’s vision becomes our vision.
Conclusions
God is placing his call on his people. His call to all of us is to care for those around us. To care that there are millions and billions going to a lost eternity. He calls us to reach those around us that we can.
More specifically God is calling people to particular areas. He needs people to be pastors and evangelists. He needs people to be missionaries to go where the people have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ.
Don’t resist the calling of God, or give in half-heartedly God wants you to agree with him and serve him willingly and whole-heartedly.
