As you know, years ago when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had a business on the side cleaning Aquariums. I did ok, I was a young man struggling along with my business and one day I was at my aquarium wholesaler and I ran into a man who was in the same business, except he knew what he was doing. Well we hit it off and went out to lunch and he gave me all kinds of great advice about running an aquarium maintenance business. Of all the advice he gave me the most surprising was this: “The aquarium business is NOT about the fish”.
I said, “What are you talking about, the aquarium business is all about the fish, what else is there?”
So he asked, “When you go into a bar to clean their aquarium, doesn’t the bar tender take you aside and talk to you about what is going on in his life?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And when you go into a dentist’s office doesn’t the receptionist talk to you about her problems?”
“Well, Yes.”
“Every place you go to clean an aquarium, isn’t there someone who takes you aside and tells you about their problems and asks for your advice?”
“oh, yes they do…”
“That’s because, it is not about the fish. It is about sitting down and spending time with people. It is about spending five minutes cleaning the aquarium, and twenty five minutes listening to someone’s problems and talking about their suffering. It’s not about the fish. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will be successful.
Brothers and sisters we need to walk away with two things this morning; First,
The book of Jonah is not about the fish. Yes it is about the fish…but it is not about the fish – it is about you and me, about our spiritual blindness, our spiritual arrogance, our fear of things unknown, and the grace of God available to us, even after we have acted like jerks.
Second, the job you work at, the school you attend, whatever it is you do during the week – that’s not what it is about. The office you are in, the job site you are assigned to, working hard all day to get the job done…as a Christian, that is not what it is all about. It is about relationships, it is about the people’s lives around you, it is about advancing the kingdom of God right where God has placed you.
You are placed where you are in life by God – it is no accident that you rented or purchased the house you are in. It is not by your genius and great skill that you have obtained the position you have at work or volunteered for, or the board you are now serving on….it is by the hand of God. Now, you are there to get the job done, and to get it done well, but all of that in the kingdom of God, is secondary. Your primary function at work, in the neighborhood, at school is to serve those around you in the name of Jesus Christ, and to do whatever God calls on you to do for them. You are the preacher at work through how you live your life; you are the open Bible they see everyday; you may be the only shot they have at seeing the power of Jesus Christ in action. You are Jonah called to your Nineveh.
How many here work with people who are not Christians?
How many here have neighbors who are not Christians?
How many here shop at a supermarket, that only Christians shop at?
Have you ever wondered why that is? I mean, why don’t all the Christians in Anchorage live in the same neighborhood, go the same schools, shop at the same store or even all work together at the same place? Certainly God could make that happen, couldn’t he – but he does not. God spreads us out across this city, across this great state, sprinkles us here and there and says, get to work building my kingdom, living so well that those who He places us next to will stop us and say, “you know, I just have to say there is something about you that is so great, I was wondering, what is it?” “Well, let me tell you about Jesus.”
Because it is not about the fish.
Jonah. I just love this book. It is as we will see in the next few weeks, it is so powerful in its content, it has so much to teach us. It is going to be great.
So Jonah, he receives a message from God – Go to Nineveh – and he gets on a boat and heads the opposite way. Why in the world would he do such a thing? Actually, it is quite complicated, it is not anywhere near as simple as it first appears when we read these few verses. The first thing we need to know it that Jonah is no dummy, he is not just running away from God, there is much more to it. There are a number of issues that influence Jonah’s decision to disobey God, well look at those in a few minutes. For us there are a number of issues that can complicate our lives and then we make poor spiritual decisions, and we turn away from God. We lose focus. We do the opposite of what God calls us to do, even those of us who have proved faithful in the past. Remember: past faithfulness does not guarantee future faithfulness. This is our life; this is the life of Jonah.
Who was Jonah? 2Kings 14:24-25 tells us that he was a prophet who was alive during king Jeroboam’s reign and that he was from the town of Gath-hepher, which is near Nazareth. The name Jonah means dove. He was a very popular prophet, and was known as a very faithful and righteous man.
So yes Jonah was very much a real person. He was a contemporary of the prophets Amos, Habakkuk and Obadiah. Jesus refers to him in Matt. 12:39 “He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Here Jesus speaks of him, not as a fictional character, but as a real historical person, which of course he was. You may have heard in the past that Jonah was not a real historical human being, but that’s nonsense, he was as real as you and I are.
Let me stop here and say that there has been all kinds of speculation about the book of Jonah; is it a parable, a legend, a comedy, an allegory? And you can pick up any number of books that will speculate at length about these things. But understand, they are all speculation, and speculation they will remain. There is no conclusive evidence for any of these theories, which is what they are – theories, and the textual evidence they offer, I think, is weak at best.
And the fish we find later in this story….we’ll get to the fish in another sermon in this series. But let me say this up front: No matter how you look at it, Jonah being swallowed by a fish and surviving is a miracle. I mean, how can that happen? Who gets swallowed by a fish and three days later is alive and well. Why, it is almost as absurd as someone being dead for three days in a tomb and rising from the dead….So a question you may want to ponder as we go through the book of Jonah is this: Why is the miracle of a man being swallowed by a fish so difficult for me to believe, when I have no problem believing in the miracle of the resurrection of the dead?
So, the evidence does show that Jonah was an actual living person, acting as a prophet in the state of Israel and referenced by Jesus Christ as a reality. And even more, the city of Nineveh is a very real place – U.S. troops pass by it on patrol every day in the country of Iraq.
City of Nineveh was located on the left bank Tigris River right outside the Kurdish modern city of Mosul. It was founded by Nimrod, the great grandson of Noah, shortly after the tower of Babel (Gen 10:8-10). It was the capitol of Assyria. We read at the end of the book that there were 120,000 in the city who don’t know their left from their right, that just refers to the number of young children in the city. The population is estimated at 600,000 to one million, that’s two to three times the size of Anchorage. It is called a great city because of the large population base, not because it was such a wonderful place. Though it did have botanical gardens, a zoo and perhaps the oldest aqueduct system in history. With streets that were 20 miles long it had a circumference of some 60 miles and was adorned by more than 1,200 towers. The walls were so wide chariots three abreast were ridden on them. The Ninehvites main god was Ishtar, a goddess of love and war, but they also worshipped Nabu, Asshur, and Adad.
The city was destroyed in 612 B.C. by the Meads from the north and the Babylonians to the south. As they lay siege to the city great rains fell and the Tigris river overflowed its banks and eroded a large hole in the100 foot high walls of Nineveh. All this happened, in detail, as predicted by the prophet Nahum. Jonah is sent to the city of Nineveh about 100 years before its final destruction.
The destruction was so complete, that 200 years later, Xenophon’s Ten Thousand marched over the mounds that had been Nineveh, and never suspected that this was the city that once had ruled half the known world. So for years many said that the city of Nineveh was a myth, just like the book of Jonah…until its excavation in 1845 – 1854 by British archeologist A. H. Layard.
The Assyrians populated Nineveh and were known as a fierce and brutal people. Upon defeating an enemy army they would execute survivors and pile up their heads in pyramids. Upon the conquest of a city they would either impale all the people on stakes, or kill most of the men, abuse the women, and take them and the children as slaves. They would even wear the skulls of enemies around necks. In fact the Assyrians invented crucifixion. The list goes of brutalities goes on, but you get the picture. The Assyrians were so feared that the entire population of a town was known to commit mass suicide rather than be taken captive by the Assyrians.
These are the people Jonah is sent to preach to, and as verse 2 says, preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Wickedness has come up – means God hears the cries of those oppressed by their sin. He has heard enough and he will now act.
So, why does Jonah do the opposite of what God asks and attempt to sail to the ends of the earth? Tarshish is on the coast of Spain, it is not known exactly where, but it in the world of the day, it was at the edge of the known world.
It is very possible that Jonah, as a younger person, had personally seen some of the atrocities of the Assyria against the Israelis, perhaps even against his neighbors or his own family. Some may have even been taken away as slaves. Most certainly he heard vivid accounts of the Assyrians. I think there is no doubt that Jonah had a fear of the Assyrians.
Well, let’s list some possible reasons Jonah fled:
Fear. He was afraid for his life. Maybe he figured this would be the last thing he would do.
Hatred. The Assyrians had harmed so many of his fellow citizens that he wanted nothing to do with them.
Reputation. He was a popular prophet. Most prophetic warnings were spoken on native soil, people would think that it would be kind of weird for him to go to Nineveh – and help the enemy, so to speak. If he made this move, he would be a fairly lonely man.
All these reasons given might be apart of why Jonah sets sail, but what put him over the edge was his patriotism. There was talk of the very real possibility of Assyria destroying the nation in the future. If, Jonah ignores God and goes to Tarshish, the nation of Assyria may collapse and the threat to Israel would be gone; but if Jonah goes to Nineveh and preaches repentance, and the Ninevites repent, the nation of Assyria would stand, and eventually destroy Israel and her people.
So if Jonah goes to Nineveh he assures the destruction of Israel and if he goes to Tarshish Nineveh parishes and Israel is saved.
So what choice does Jonah really have? How can he betray his country?
But what Jonah fears the most, is what eventually will save the people of Israel, for the Babylonians will conquer the Assyrians and eventually conquer Israel, exiling its people to Babylon. As it were, the people of Israel were slowly, but surely being assimilated into the surrounding culture. They were losing their identity, specifically by worshiping the gods of other nations. The exile to Babylon brings the Hebrews together as a community and as a religion, and they are saved.
So by saving the people of Nineveh, the people of Israel are saved. But Jonah does not know this – like us, he cannot possibly see the larger picture, and God doesn’t give it to him, does he? You know, God has placed you exactly where he wants you and on a daily basis you can only see the small picture – go to work, work hard, go home, pay bills, watch some Leno, go to sleep….do it all over again. And all those people we deal with day in and day out fade into the daily routine and our primary purpose, the building of the kingdom of God becomes our secondary purpose, or maybe even receives no attention at all.
So we read about Jonah, we laugh and say, “what a fool” no one can escape the presence of God, no one can refuse to do the task God has assigned to them, and what we don’t realize is – we do the same thing. God called Jonah to Nineveh, and believe me God has called you to exactly where you are in life right now, and daily you may be sailing away from opportunity after opportunity at the Nineveh you drive to five days a week. Perhaps that may be why there isn’t smooth sailing in your life?
Verse 3 - But Jonah ran away from the LORD - literally in the Hebrew is - Escape the face of Yahweh. Does this mean that Jonah was attempting to flee God’s sphere of power? All the pagan cultures in the ancient middle east believed that gods had a sphere of power, usually defined by the borders of a country. They believed these gods had territory and that they were effective within their defined territory. Now the Hebrews did not believe this, they believed God was powerful everywhere – but you have to wonder – had the pagan assimilation reached the faith of Jonah? Did he think, “maybe the pagans are right, and if I go far enough away, God will no longer be effective over me”. Maybe, but whatever the reason he was quite desperate, for though we cannot see this in the English translations, in the Hebrew Jonah pays so much fare to go to Tarshish, he pretty much pays for the boat. It would take about one years wages for such a journey. So even if Jonah realizes he cannot get away from the Spirit of God, it is all a matter of location, location, location. If Jonah is in Tarshish, he’s not in Nineveh and whatever may come his way – none of those he knows will be hurt….
Verse 4 - Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
Jonah is very wrong. We’ll look at that next week.
Let me end with this:
When we give our life over to Jesus Christ, God calls us to himself and he places us where he wants us to be – not for our convenience and wonderful life, but to serve Him. Like Jonah God calls us to do what is difficult, live a Christian life in front of others openly. And let’s be frank, there are a lot of people out there who don’t want anything to do with Christianity, for whatever reason, and if we live like Christians in front of them, life might become difficult. But like Jonah, we do not see the larger picture – perhaps that difficult person in your life, if saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, might someday be a great blessing on your family.
