The Preacher Who Sorrowed When Sinners Were Saved
Aim: To show through Jonah the compassion of God for all men, Jew & Gentile, young & old.
Text: Jonah 3:5-4:1
Introduction: This morning we are encounter to a man whom most people are familiar with. Even the unsaved can largely recount the story of Jonah and the whale. Jonah is a strange book for a prophet, in that it contains no prophecy, unless you count his prediction that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days – which it wasn’t. So Jonah is really more of a history book, than a prophecy book. Yet here this book is situated in the heart the prophetic writings. Now lest we think that Jonah’s only prophecy related to Nineveh, we had better clear something up. Jonah was a prophet in Israel, who lived during the reign of king Jeroboam II. You may remember that name, because we referred to it two books back when we spoke of Amos. So Amos and Jonah ministered around the same time, as indeed did Hosea.
Now the thing about Jonah is that people only know him for the events recorded in this book. That is we always associate him with disobedience, and of course for being swallowed by the whale. But what most people do not realise is that Jonah made other prophecies, and one of this prophecies and itrs fulfilment is recorded for us in 2Kings 14:25 where we read, “He (Jeroboam II) restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.”
Unlike all the other prophets Jonah was sent to a Gentile nation, to the Assyrians and the city of Nineveh. Of course, we saw last Sunday that Obadiah prophesied judgment on Edom, but he did this from the relative safety of Judah. Jonah on the other hand had to predict judgment on Nineveh, and this he was to do, not from afar, but on her streets, within earshot and reach of her people. So we say the Jonah is God’s foreign missionary of the Old Testament. He is proof in fact, that though God chose Israel, He was not indifferent to the need of the Gentiles and desired to show His compassion upon them.
So what do we discover about this O.T. missionary.
I. He was Sent – 1:1-3
A, Let’s understand that when Jonah was called to go to Nineveh he was already a practicing prophet.
1. He wasn’t called out of the blue.
2. As we have seen he was already ministering in Israel and had successfully prophesied the expansion of her borders.
3. So, he wasn’t a novice when he was called. He was someone of experience whose message was taken seriously within the boundaries of Israel.
B. So Jonah received a call, a commission from God detailing his next task.
1. He was to go to Nineveh, which is described here as “that great city”, it was one of the chief cities of Assyria, and Assyria was the rising power of the ancient world at the time.
2. In fact, Nineveh, much like Stoke wasn’t just one city, but was, if you like a conurbation of several towns, or four component cities.
3. And a 100 ft high wall, that covered a distance of sixty miles around, surrounded these cities, hence it was said to be a ‘three day journey’ around it.
4. These walls were so broad they could drive chariots three abreast upon them, and they were fortified with some 1500 towers, each 200 feet in height.
5. Quite a spectacle, I’m sure you would agree.
6. Within these walls lived up to 1 million people, and the area included not just the urban but also gardens, orchards and even pastures, hence Jonah speaks about the cattle in Nineveh.
C. But when Jonah got this call to go Nineveh, he immediately rebelled.
1. You see, this was the last place he wanted to go to, and the last people he wanted to be spared.
2. Now there are all kinds of reasons suggested as to why Jonah didn’t want to go, and to be honest I think Jonah is maligned by many of these.
a. He was a coward.
a. You see Nineveh was a pretty fearsome place, and the Assyrians an extremely cruel people. History records how they would, upon vanquishing a peiople all but slaughter them before taking their leaders and torturing them. One monument from the time shows onlookers gloating as a man has his tongue physically torn out of his mouth. History records how they would take men, stake them out and flay them alive, hanging their skins over city walls as a warning to others. Or how they would drive a pole through the lower part of a man’s chest before erecting it, leaving their victim helplessly writhing aloft, much to the delight of spectators – see Nahum 3:1-4; 2:12 & 3:19
b. We could not really blame Jonah for not wanting to go, we would understand if he was afraid of entering such a place, and declaring judgment upon such men, but a lack of courage was not Jonah’s problem.
c. How do we know? Well as you read down this chapter we find him on a boat in a storm, and ge offers himself to be thrown overboard into the stormy sea – an action which most certainly should have resulted in drowning – surely a man who would give himself to such an end in order to save others could be no coward.
b. He was prejudiced.
a. It is suggested that as a Jew he hated Gentiles. But wait a minute. He was on a ship being sailed by Gentiles, heading to Tarshish, which is in the South-eastern corner of Spain, inhabited by Gentiles – hardly the thing to do or the place to go if you loathed Gentiles.
b. What is more, he surrendered himself up to save the Gentile mariners from perishing. No, it is a terrible slur to suggest that this prophet of God hated Gentiles.
c. He was proud
a. That by delivering a message to the Ninevites that their city would be destroyed, with the possibility that it might not be destroyed, should they repent, would hurt his reputation, damage his credibility.
b. Again we consider his actions on the ship – an acknowledgment that he was the cause of their trouble, the fact that he willingly surrendered in that confession not only his reputation, but all his life, really sets aside any notion that his personal prestige came before any ministry in Nineveh.
D. Jonah had his reasons for not wanting to go – and he states them quite clearly in 4:2.
1. Jonah knew, as a contemporary of Amos and Hosea, that Israel was going to be invaded by the Assyrians – although he never said that, at least not in writing, he surely knew it.
a. “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7
b. Jonah was one of those prophets – he understood God’s will for Israel, he knew her future.
2. Not only that, he knew God, he knew God to be “a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.”
3. He put those two bits of knowledge together, and he came to a realisation – if Nineveh was destroyed, Israel would be saved, but Nineveh was saved, then Israel would be taken captive.
4. Preferring the salvation of Israel, to the salvation of Nineveh, Jonah resigned the ministry boarded a boat at Joppa, and went in the opposite direction to God’s command toward Tarshish.
a. A number of years ago our family holidayed in Tarshish, in the little Spanish town of Mojacar, I don’t know what it looked like in Jonah’s day, but let me tell you were it is situated – right on the edge of the greatest desert in Europe – the Tabernas desert, and let say this, anytime you run away from God, and away from God’s will for your life you are always heading for the wilderness!
b. Not only that, but you might notice as Jonah is running away from God there is an awful lot of going down:
(i) “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” (1:3)
(ii) “But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship” (1:5)
(iii) “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains.” (2:6)
(iv) Down, down, down till he could go no deeper – that’s what happens to us when we run away from God.
II. He was Swallowed – 1:4-17
A. Now this story is one that is always open to ridicule – there are many who want to decry it, who say it could not have happened, that is make believe.
1. But those who believe the Bible accept its Word.
2. Illus: Bro. Pambakian – “Brother are you a fundamentalist? Do you believe that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish?”
a. It was an interesting test of orthodoxy – and a fair one.
B. Was it a whale or was it a great fish.
1. The O.T. says, “great fish”
2. Jesus said “whale” (Matt 12:40) – actually the Greek says lit., “sea monster or sea dog (a type of shark)”, and some suggest it was neither a whale nor a fish, but a creature specially prepared for Jonah – 1:17a.
3. Does it matter? Not really.
4. Of course some will say a whale is a mammal and not a fish – this is the categorisation of modern biology, and has no bearing upon the Scriptural narrative.
5. What is more interesting is that both “great fish” (sharks) and sperm “whales” have been found having the remains of entire humans within them, and in one well documented case the man question survived to tell the tale.
6. So it is no great leap of faith to say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale or a fish.
C. What is interesting is why a whale swallowed Jonah?
1. Many of us have the notion that this was God’s punishment – but that is not it at all.
2. Had the whale NOT swallowed Jonah, he would most certainly have drowned – the truth is that by preparing the whale God was preserving him, not punishing him.
a. In one of the cases I was referring to a few moments ago, the survivor of such an event, a man by the name of James Bartley, who was swallowed by a whale of the coast of the Falklands in 1891, whilst part of a whaling ship’s crew, told how as he fell into the water the sea was foaming about him, with the thrashing of whale’s tale, then he was drawn along into darkness, finding himself in a great chasm, where the heat was intense. In the darkness he reached out for a way of escape, only to discover slimy walls all around him, then with the awful truth rushing into his mind, he fell unconscious, until the next day he was later discovered by his shipmates as they dissected the great animal.
b. I am sure this was Jonah’s experience also with the exception of the fainting – BTW, it takes a strong heart to stay conscious in the belly of whale for three full days! Jonah – a coward indeed!
c. But I can well imagine him feeling well and truly chastened by God as the awful truth dawned on his soul. Sometimes there is a fine line between the experience of punishment and preservation.
3. Not only was it a punishment, it was a picture.
a. As Jonah prayed from within the whale he said an interesting thing – see 2:2
(i) “Hell” = sheol = the grave.
(ii) For three days and three nights the prophet was unseen, communing with no one but God, cut off from the land of the living, until the third day when the whale beached and deposited him on the shore.
b. See Matthew 12:38-40
(i) Jonah’s experience was a symbol of the gospel, a pointer to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
c. Read on at Matthew 12:41
III. He was Successful – Jonah 3:1-10
A. Isn’t that amazing? Imagine revival in a city such as Nineveh, among people such as the Assyrians!
1. How could it be?
B. Well, history tells us that Nineveh and the Assyrians were ripe for such a message as that which Jonah brought.
1. Nationally, there had been something of a downturn in the Assyrian’s fortunes.
2. It was a time of disappointments, and there was a sense of panic and fear among the people.
3. They had suffered a series of weak kings, and as a consequence had lost large tracts of their empire, not least of all to Israel, just as Jonah had prophesied in the days of Jeroboam II.
4. Then a great plague afflicted their land, and many people lost their lives in an epidemic of disease.
5. And finally there had been in June of 763 B.C. a total eclipse of the sun in the land, an omen many felt of worse to come.
6. Then arrives Jonah preaching, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
a. God’s timing is always right.
C. Nevertheless there were other preachers in that city and indigenous religions, why would they believe Jonah before all others.
1. Look up Luke 11:29-30.
2. How was Jonah a “sign” to the Ninevites? Was he not a stranger to them?
3. Frankly, I doubt they ever had a “stranger” preacher!
a. Let’s go back to James Bartley, our surviving seaman, swallowed by a whale.
b. History records that in the relatively short time he la unconscious in the belly of the whale, the gastric juices of the animal both burned off his body hair and bleached his face, neck and hands a deathly whiteness, even the texture skin changed so that it appeared like parchment.
c. Bear in mind Jonah was in the whale’s belly at least three times as long.
4. Then think back to that first chapter and those mariners n their way to Tarshish, facing a storm, casting all their cargo over board to lighten the ship, until at last they take this strange traveller, their only paying passenger and cast him overboard too.
a. Then a great fish breaks through the surf and swallows their traveller, and the sea goes deadly calm.
b. What do you think those men did then? With no cargo and no passenger and therefore no pay, they in all likelihood returned to port, to Joppa.
c. And guess what history reveals? It reveals that Joppa was part of the trade route with Assyria, and that many Assyrians, and I am sure Ninevites, did business there.
d. So when this empty ship returned to port minus her cargo, and with some strangely disturbed sailors disembarking, what do you think happened?
e. Old seadogs like to tell stories, don’t they? No doubt they recounted the whole thing, and word began to spread of a man swallowed by a whale.
f. No doubt it was a story well reported in the Nineveh Sentinel.
5. Then it happened. He appeared out of nowhere. Not a hair on his head, skin like paper, white as a corpse he came preaching.
a. This one who was “dead and buried” had come back again!
b. He was alive, and crying, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
c. No wonder they believed. By the score, from the prince to the pauper they repented and were saved.
e. Scarcely did any prophet in all the Word of God have such resounding results as Jonah, but…
IV. He was Sore – Jonah 4:1-2
A. Most preachers are happy to see one saved, but here is a man who witnessed up to a million people repenting and turning to the Lord and he is angry.
B. Why was he upset? Because their salvation meant Israel’s condemnation.
1. Interestingly, not only in the days of the prophets, but also in days to come, “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”
B. You see what Jonah teaches us, and what the prophet needed to realise, was that though God chose Israel apart from all other nations, He did so with an eye on all mankind.
1. His purpose was to save the Gentile as much as the Jew.
Conclusion: So the much maligned and misunderstood prophet Jonah has done us a great favour. First of all he has served, negatively as an example of what happens when we try to escape from the will of God for our lives. It’s a downward path, heading for the wilderness. But then he shows us how even in disobedience God in his grace preserves us, though His preservation may feel more like a punishment.
And finally his prophecy reveals how God loves us – see 4:11. How His compassion extends toward all men, Gentiles as well as Jews, the wicked as well as those who live comparatively good lives, little children as well as men and women, and even to dumb animals.
I wonder this morning are you on the run from God? Maybe God has been dealing with your heart about something, and you are resistant, even rebellious. You should know you can never out run God, you should know that no matter how far you go, you cannot flee from His presence, you should know that real life satisfaction is found only in doing His will.
Maybe you are here this morning and you are not a Christian. I want you to know that God loves you. No matter who you, no matter what you have done His compassion extends toward you also, and if, like the people of Nineveh, you would turn from your sin and ask Him He is willing to save3 and forgive you.
