Jonah 3:1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
I’d be willing to bet a nickel (maybe even a dime) that if ten people were asked what they know about the Jonah story, most of them would say, "the whale." (Of course, the Bible never says that Jonah was swallowed by a whale - all the Bible says is "a great fish" - but everyone calls it a whale, anyway).
Everyone remembers the whale, but in point of fact, the whale is the least important part of this story. There are forty-eight verses in the Book of Jonah and only three of them mention the whale. You see, here is one of the best-known yet least understood episodes in all the Bible. If this sermon does nothing else, I want to convey to you what the story of Jonah is really about.
The background of this story is that it was written after the Jews had suffered their exile in Babylon. Fifty years earlier, the Jews had been crushed in war and carried off as slaves. It was a searing experience, an experience not unlike that of the Africans who were kidnapped from their land and carried off in chains to this country.
Both groups could easily understand the sorrow and desperate longing for home which appear in the Psalm 137th, a psalm written about this same exile:
Ps 137:1-6
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget [its skill].
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy. (NIV)
The experience of exile had left the Jews bitter and hateful towards all foreigners. The old vision of Israel being called by God as "a light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6) was dead. All they wanted was for God to destroy their enemies. They had their righteous warriors (just as we have them today) - their xenophobic super-patriots and nationalistic priests who preached a religion of "Israel First."
Jonah represents Israel in this story. Like the rest of Israel, Jonah despises outsiders. He stands for all the hostility and prejudice Jews felt towards people of other races.
It is particularly important that God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, one of the world’s greatest cities. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire and believe me - there was no love lost in the ancient world for the Assyrian Empire. They ruled their subjects with terror and brutality. Take all the fear and loathing Americans feel for our most hated national enemies and multiply it ten times. That’s how people felt about the Assyrians.
Still, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people there that their mighty city was doomed: "go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah experienced the call of God, that moment of crisis when God enters a person’s life and turns it upside down. It’s a crisis because faithful people have always found that God’s call upsets their prior attitudes and their best-laid plans.
The apostle Paul wanted to be a Jewish scholar and leader, but he was called to leave Israel and preach to the Gentiles. St. Francis Xavier wanted to spend his life in a monastery, but he was called to be a missionary in the Indies, never to return to Europe again. Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted to be an unassuming pastor and seminary professor, but he was called to a social struggle that finally cost him his life.
As for Jonah, he definitely didn’t want to go to Nineveh! It wasn’t that he was afraid to go; we see later in the story just how courageous Jonah was. Instead, Jonah didn’t want to go because he didn’t want Nineveh to escape destruction by repenting. Jonah knew that God "is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (4:2). He knew God was looking for a way to spare the Assyrians and all Jonah wanted was for Nineveh to go up in flames.
So, Jonah does what many of us do when God’s call to us is inconvenient - he runs the other way! God calls us to forgive someone who has wronged us and we run the other way by wanting to continue the grudge. God calls us to stand in the minority for a righteous cause and we run away from God’s call because it’s easier to go along with the crowd. God calls us to get involved in a situation and make a real sacrifice for the good of someone else and we run the other way because we want to live for ourselves instead.
In Jonah’s case, he buys passage on a ship heading away from Nineveh, towards southern Spain. But of course, God doesn’t take "no" for an answer - not from Jonah and not from us, either. When God is really tugging on your sleeve and pulling at your conscience, you can run but you cannot hide. So, God goes after Jonah; He sends a terrible storm that threatens to sink the ship.
The ship is owned and operated by foreigners and the crew is frantically trying to figure out which one of their gods is displeased. But then Jonah does an extraordinary thing. He knows that there is but one true God, and that he, Jonah, is the man God is angry at. So, Jonah offers his life in order to save the lives of these foreigners. "Throw me into the sea," he says, "because I am the cause of this storm. The God of heaven and earth called me to Nineveh, and I ran the other way."
Jonah can do this because he has gotten to know these hated foreigners up close and personally. No longer are they mere abstractions, like "menacing blacks" or "redneck whites," "fanatical Moslems" or "godless communists." Now Jonah knows the foreigners on this ship as people. Now he knows that they have names and families; they have hopes and fears like anyone else.
So do our own enemies today have names and families, hopes and fears just as we do. If we got to know them a little better as people, we might become a little more human ourselves. In every age and in every nation, mistrust of people is fed and perpetuated by distance between people.
This humanization of the enemy encourages Jonah to offer his life for theirs, but the ship’s crew doesn’t accept his offer; instead, they row harder, trying to escape the storm. Surely, the people of ancient Israel noticed this when they first heard the story of Jonah: a crew of foreigners is risking their lives for a Jew. One of the nice, subtle touches in this story is that the villains - the foreigners - have virtues.
But after exhausting themselves trying to save Jonah, they finally do throw him into the sea.
That’s where the "whale" comes in and from the belly of the great fish, Jonah says one of the Bible’s most moving prayers. If you have ever walked through the valley of the shadow yourself, if you have ever suffered the deepest anguish of feeling alone and helpless and cut off from God, you can shed your tears with Jonah as he prays:
In my distress I called to the Lord and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ (Jonah 2:2- 4)
After three days in the belly of hell, Jonah is given up to dry land, and God says to him, "Hey, Jonah! I told you once before to go to Nineveh. Why don’t we take it from the top and try again? Go to Nineveh and tell them what I told you to say."
Well, by now, Jonah is sufficiently impressed with God’s persistence and Jonah goes to Nineveh to perform this service for the foreigners. He tells them that their great and powerful city will be destroyed in forty days because of their wickedness.
Most kings - most premiers, Prime ministers and presidents, including our own - would not believe their Jonah’s, if indeed, they pay any attention to their Jonahs at all. Most leaders are national cheerleaders to a God whom they believe is surely "on our side." They are too proud to publicly acknowledge that under their leadership, God has doomed their nation.
Of course, the average citizen won’t listen to their Jonahs either! In our own country, for example, see what happens when a preacher or a political candidate dares to suggest that America may have some fundamental moral flaws ... that God may not be on our side but is instead on the side of justice, righteousness and peace. See what happens when a candidate dares suggest that God is tired of our prayers and praises and wants our repentance instead. Why, that would be heresy! The candidate would be destroyed in the press and in the polls. He or she would be judged too "pessimistic" or unpatriotic to be a national leader.
But long ago, the mighty king of Nineveh listened to Jonah and this foreign, heathen, pagan enemy king repented. He ordered all the people to repent as well, from the richest noble to the poorest slave. They were not to eat or drink; they were to pray to God and change their evil ways.
Because of their change of heart, God spared Nineveh (which is what He wanted to do anyway), but Jonah got upset. After all, a prophet’s job is to foretell God’s actions and when the prophecy doesn’t come true, it makes the prophet look bad. Besides, these were foreigners who pleased God with their repentance! That was a bitter pill for Jonah - for Israel - to swallow.
So, that is the story of Jonah, a whale of a tale that has almost nothing to do with a whale. In fact, there are really a lot of messages in this little story, a lot of questions to be asked. Think back with me now and see which ones speak to you.
The story is about tolerance and understanding. It says that God is the God of all people. God loves Nineveh as much as Jerusalem, Moscow as much as Middle America. So, who are the people (or even the individuals) you despise and distrust? Can you see that they are as important to God as you are? Can we all be like Jonah, getting to know them better as people?
This story is about saying "yes" to God’s call. Where is the Nineveh God has called you to enter - the situation God calls you to which you would rather stay away from? Have we not run away from our own great cities and where do we think we can hide from the persistent call of the Lord God Almighty?
The story is about spiritual humility. Jonah learned it, Jesus called it blessed (Matthew 5:3), and we would please God with more spiritual humility today. When we wish for God to do one thing while knowing in our hearts that it is God’s will to do another, can we grow past our anger and rebellion ... can we, like Jonah, submit to God and say, "Thy will, not my will, be done"?
Finally, the story says something important about the nature of God. After making us see how we fail to answer God’s call and in fact run away, the story says that God is a merciful God. He gave Jonah a second chance and all He wanted to do was spare the great city of Nineveh from the consequences of its evil ways.
As it was in the beginning, so is it now with God’s own children today. God will let us flee and fail. God will let us be like Jonah - once, twice, even seven times seventy times - and then God will call us back again. God knows how hard it is for us to put ourselves aside and do His will.
But Jonah did it and so can we. Jonah grew to do it and so can we. By God’s patient love, we can enter our Ninevehs today, not with fear and loathing, but with faith and steadfast courage. By God’s patient love, we can go to our Ninevehs and emerge as more than conquerors through Him who loved us, even in the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Jonah teaches us:
1. It is impossible to run from God. You cannot do it!
2. God can use anybody.
3. Disobedience produces miserable consequences.
4. God always brings you back to the place of you last act of disobedience.
