The Call Jonah 1:1-3
1. I have read several commentaries and over the years and I’ve also heard many people speak about Jonah. He’s been described as everything from a reluctant prophet to a rebellious one. One writer went so far as to suggest Jonah was one of the first foreign missionaries to be sent on a cross-cultural campaign. My opinion is that he was simply a man like the rest of us who was willing to serve God but he would only go so far. He would do the will of God as long as God’s will fit in with his plans, his goals and even his cultural agenda. There was a lot of things Jonah was willing to do for God but leaving Israel to preach to Assyrians wasn’t one of them.
And to a degree there is a level on which we can all relate to Jonah, even though most of us wouldn’t like to admit it, even to ourselves. The trouble Jonah faced can be summed up like this. He was more committed to his own comfort than he was to the will of God. And God wanted to stretch him in the area of his obedience.
2. I want to give you a bit of background on him. He was mentioned just one other time in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings 14:25 we are told that he prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II. If you know anything about jewish history you will remember that it was said of Jeroboam II that he was considered to be as evil as his grandfather Jeroboam the son of Nabat who was the standard as far as evil kings were concerned.
In 2 Kings 14:23-25 we read this, "In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, for forty one years. And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah: he departed not from any of the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the sea of the plain, according to the word of Jehovah the God of Israel, which he had spoken through his servant Jonah the prophet, the son of Amittai, who was of Gath Hepher." This Jeroboam was the grandson of Jeroboam the son of Nabat and the Jonah who prophesied in his court is the same Jonah who is the subject of this book.
This passage tells us two things about Jonah. The first is that he had a history of prophesying. In other words, his mission to Nineveh wasn’t the first time that God had spoken to him or the first time that He had spoken through him. He had been preaching in Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II and these were very difficult times in which to be a prophet.
The passage in 2 Kings tells us that Jeroboam II continued in the sins of his grandfather Jeroboam the son of Nabat. There were three things Jeroboam the son of Nabat had done which his grandson continued to do. All three of these things resulted in the people of Israel turning away from God. First, he changed the place of worship. He took the sacrifices from Jerusalem to Dan even though God had specifically told them to worship in Jerusalem. Then second, he changed the priesthood. The priesthood was no longer in the hands of the levites as God had commanded. The king actually turned the priesthood into a franchise system. Anyone who was willing to pay a price could be a priest. And then third, he even changed the times of the feasts in order to stop the people from worshipping they way they had been taught. The idea behind all these changes was to get the people to stop thinking about God and the past they way they had been taught. He was consolidating political and social power by changing all the structures they were familiar with. Intentionally or not he was drawing the people away from God. This is what the king was doing who was on the throne when Jonah was prophesying to the nation. And the one thing we always have to consider when we think of the times in which prophets such as Jonah preached is that the kings had absolute power. If they didn’t like the message they would just kill the messenger. So don’t think of Jonah as being cowardly. I don’t think fear was his problem. He preached in the court of a despotic king.
The second thing I see from the passage in the book of Kings is that he was from Gath-Hepher. This was about three miles north of Nazareth in lower Galilee. In other words Jonah was a Galilean. This tells us that the Pharisees were wrong in John 7:52 when they said, "Search and look for no prophet has come out of Galilee." A prophet had come out of Galilee because the Bible says Jonah came from there.
So it may have been in the midst of what could have been a difficult place of ministry that God had called him to do something he was unwilling to do. Or maybe since Jonah’s prophecy had been fulfilled he might have actually been enjoying a certain degree of social respectability and he wanted to stay and savour the feeling of success. In any case I want us to begin by looking at the call or commission of God before we see Jonah’s response.
I The commission.
a) The scriptures simply tells us that God spoke to him. Someone said, "When we speak to God its called prayer but when God speaks to us its called schizophrenia." The scripture clearly says, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah." This wasn’t a dream, a vision, a feeling or a burden. God Himself personally spoke to the prophet with some specific instructions about what he was supposed to do and where he was supposed to do it. And judging from his response its obvious that he understood the message.
b) Here’s his job description God said, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me." There are several things to consider here.
i First he was told to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and God referred to it as a great city. It was great because it had a great population. Considering God’s comment in chapter 4 where He says there were 120,000 who didn’t know their right hand from their left; which was a way of referring to young children some have suggested that a conservative estimate of the population would give put Nineveh at about 600,000 people. Even though its just one city the population was more than a quarter of the whole nation of Israel.
It was also considered great from the standpoint that it was a military strong-hold. Nineveh was surrounded by walls that were a hundred feet high and thick enough that three chariots could ride side by side on top of them.
It was great in terms of their reputation for being a wicked city. They had a reputation for being the cruellest people alive. Some of the things they did to torture their enemies could only be described as the product of evil minds.
Nineveh was also the centre of paganism and all the vile trappings that went with it. They had temples that revolved around a cult of fertility worship complete with temple prostitutes.
ii They were also a great city in that they were considered to be great sinners in the sight of God. In verse 2 God says "their wickedness has come up before Me." This was only said about one other group in the Bible and that was people of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. These were cities whose perversion was so bad that God had not just taken notice of them but He completely destroyed them.
One might wonder how a group of people who were part of a prosperous and what was considered to be an intellectual society could be so steeped in what could only be described as sin. I see this as the natural progression of human nature. Our theology is what we believe about God and our theology determines our philosophy which is how we see life. Then our philosophy dictates our morality or how we behave. It all comes down to this. What we believe about God will ultimately determine how we live.
If we think God is watching our every move and will call us some day to account for our behaviour then we will live with a sense of moral accountability. If on the other hand we believe there is no God then not only will we feel free to do anything we want to do but we will even resist anyone who attempts in any way to place any kind of restriction on our behaviour.
The people of Nineveh worshipped pagan deities. The people were wicked, cruel and immoral because their gods were wicked, cruel and immoral. And the God of heaven was about to tell them that this wasn’t right and that they had better change their behaviour to suit Him.
So this is the people to whom God is sending Jonah. They were wicked, they were cruel and they were perverted. When I first read this chapter I thought why didn’t he want to go there and preach a message of judgement. Obviously, considering who they were and their cultural background one would expect them to reject the message. Jonah would preach, he would leave and then God would wipe them out. End of story. God’s will would be done and Jonah would be happy. And that would be true if all we were considering was the people to whom he was preaching. But we have to listen to exactly what God told him to do.
c) It says, "Cry against them." He was sent to warn them what would happen if they didn’t repent. He wasn’t supposed to just proclaim a message of judgement. After all, if was God’s intention to just kill everyone why would he send a prophet to warn them. And so to warn them of impending judgement if they didn’t repent was an act of mercy on God’s part. And Jonah wanted nothing to do with showing mercy to the unmerciful Assyrians.
Do you know what Jonah’s problem was here. It was a misconception of the love of God brought on by his own perverted sense of self-importance. It was a selfish perspective on the love of God and part of it had to do with his national pride. In his mind God chose the jews so it was alright to look down on the Arabs. Not only that but the Arabs had done things to the jews and to others that he considered to be unforgivable. And he wasn’t going to tell them about how they could be forgiven by God. After all, there was always the danger no matter how remote that God might just forgive these people and the next thing you know heavens full of Arabs.
Its easy to think like Jonah, not in the sense that we despise others and don’t want to see them in heaven but in the sense that most of us have a self-centred view of life. Since the day we were born many have heard the message, "God loves you and has a special plan for your life." And its true but the focus is always on me. There are times when we spend so much effort trying to remind ourselves of how much God loves us that we forget that He told us how to measure our understanding of His love. He said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another." The love we have received from Him is measured by the love that we show others.
If I expect others to appreciate me because I have value in the sight of God then I need to begin to see that others have the same value and therefore need to be valued and appreciated by me. Not only does God loves me and have a special plan for my life but He loves the person beside me and has a special plan for their life as well. And maybe part of His plan for me is to do something great for them.
Well, all this was too much for Jonah. He could understand how God could love and forgive jewish people but he wasn’t too excited about being in fellowship with a God who could love and forgive Assyrians. So rather than change he fled.
II Response
"But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord."
a) What does it mean to flee from the presence of the Lord? Surely Jonah had served God long enough to know that there was no way he could ever escape from God’s presence. And the fact that he would later pray to God from the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea tells us that he certainly believed in the omnipresence of God. I believe leaving his presence simply means he was quitting his position as a prophet. He was getting out of the ministry.
Let me point to a couple of verses that support this idea. In Genesis 4:16 it says, "And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." We understand His leaving God’s presence here to mean that he no longer had open access to God in the sense that he was out of fellowship with Him. He no longer experienced the fellowship that he had previously enjoyed. We see the same idea over in Deuteronomy 10:8 where it says, "At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister unto Him, and to bless in his name, unto this day." The Levites were to stand before the Lord. If we took this standing literally then we would have to conclude that this was all they did. Everyone saved or unsaved, believers or not stands before the presence of the Lord. Obviously this refers to their position as priests. Over in 1 Kings 17:1 it says, "And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, ’As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.’ " Again his standing referred to his position as a prophet. We even see the same idea in the New Testament. In Luke 1:19 it says, "And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings." His standing indicated not his posture but his position. So leaving God’s presence indicated that Jonah no longer wanted to be used of God and as far as he was concerned he and God had nothing else to talk about.
b) So he’s abandoning his call as a prophet and taking a ship to Tarshish. Nineveh was 500 miles northeast of where he was and Tarshish was 2000 miles to the west. Tarshish was the boom town of his day. It was a famous smelting city and well known for the production of silver, iron, tin and lead. Maybe Jonah had decided that since he couldn’t have his own way in the spiritual world he was going to get his piece of the material world. From a geographical perspective it would be the equivalent of being sent to Montreal and then heading out for Thompson, Manitoba. He was going in a different direction, to a different culture and looking for a totally different lifestyle.
c) It says, "He went down to Joppa and then he went down into the ship." The farther man gets from God the farther down he goes in life. We are seeing the affects of our society getting farther and farther from God all the time. We are becoming a very ungodly society. I was watching the news the other night and thought about how we are seeing the morals of our country slipping farther and faster than ever before. The other night they had what appeared to be some kind of a report on the CBC about the issue of censorship in Canada. On one hand they had a man who was a playwright and his position was anything goes. Nothing should ever be censored. On the other side of the discussion was a lawyer who was complaining about how the laws weren’t specific enough when defining immorality. After watching it for a few minutes I realized they were both on the same side. The lawyer’s perspective wasn’t that there was a problem with pornography but with the way pornography is defined. There was no one there to say, this is wrong. The media is treating the whole issue like the censors are the problem. The fact is, the farther we get from God the more permissive our society becomes and the perception is that the bad people are not the ones who promote immorality but the bad ones are those who object to its promotion.
We also see a shift in social values. Take the whole issue of gambling. Twenty or thirty years ago the police were breaking down doors to arrest those who were involved in any kind of gambling activities. Now, the government is looking to gambling as the great fix for the economy. Anyone with half a brain knows that the key to a strong economy lies in the area of job creation. When people work they pay taxes. When people work they have money to buy products and the purchase of these products provides more jobs. And when people are producing goods there are all kinds of spin-off jobs associated with that production.
Gambling produces nothing. And this is compounded by the social costs associated with it. We also see the various groups of native Canadians have picked up on the idea. As if they didn’t have enough social problems already they’re looking toward the fast, easy money from gambling to solve their economic problems. And I noticed in the paper the other day the Red Cross is looking to gambling to solve their fund-raising problems. The farther our society gets from God the farther down we go. First our morals, then our values and who knows what’s next.
There used to be in our society what was referred to as the protestant work ethic. Basically that meant that people had a sense of responsibility for themselves and others. Everyone went to work to take care of themselves and their families. This work ethic grew out of the scriptures that clearly admonishes people to do something productive with their lives.
Genesis 3:19, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Work itself wasn’t the curse but the fact that the work would be harder since creation would be affected by man’s sin that was the curse. We were not created to lay around and do nothing. Throughout the book of Proverbs we see laziness and non-productive people continually warned about the consequences of such a lifestyle. In Proverbs 13:4 it says, "The soul of the sluggard desireth, and has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat." So there’s a psychological benefit to work. In Proverbs 20:4 we read, "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing." Then Proverbs 21:25 says, "The desire of the slothful kills him; for his hands refuse to labour." And then one of my favourites is in Proverbs 24:30-34, "I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man." Paul even goes a step farther in the New Testament. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11 he tells the believers, "And that you study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you." And then in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 he writes, "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat." Its one thing to help the needy but he tells us that its wrong to do anything for the lazy. Handouts and money gained through gambling revenues will do nothing for the people who receive them and in the end will be the downfall of the society that depends on them.
Jonah reminds me of the prodigal who left home and kept going down. First his morals as he squandered his money on prostitutes and then the basic values he grew up with went out the window when of necessity he found himself slopping pigs. Jonah went down and he kept going down until he found himself at the bottom of the ocean with no one to turn to but God.
Conclusion
Some have questioned the reason why God would include a book like the book of Jonah in the Bible. I believe its here for several reasons. God’s sending Jonah to the gentiles demonstrates that God’s love for the gentiles wasn’t something that originated in the New Testament. God always loved the gentiles. The special place that the jews held in His heart didn’t exclude anyone else.
God’s call of someone like Jonah shows us that God uses common people and not super saints. Regardless of what you think of Jonah it can’t be denied that God had His hand on him and He wouldn’t let him go. Surely there must have been others in the nation of Israel who God could have sent to Nineveh and they would have gone gladly. For some reason He chose to use Jonah. And His choice had nothing to do with the quality of his spirituality or his willingness to be used.
The book shows God’s desire is always to extend mercy to those who repent rather judge those who harden their hearts and go their own way. And by the end of the book we have to come to the conclusion that the will of God will be done regardless of the rebellious nature of man.
We are like Jonah in that every Christian is called to reach out beyond his comfort level and communicate the gospel to those whose world view, religion, values and morals are contrary to our own. This is the call of every Christian. If we were brutally honest with ourselves we would have to admit that our first priority has not been doing the will of God but like Jonah many of us are more concerned with pleasing ourselves.
I hope that as we see more of Jonah’s heart in the weeks to come that we will see how God wants to use us maybe not to the same extent but certainly in the same way that He used Jonah.
