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.
