Jonah 3:1-10
Aligning My Will with God’s
Prophets with a Purpose – Week 2
Do you ever feel like some people are beyond hope, that they are incapable of change? Or maybe you’ve felt like God wanted you to do something, but you resisted that urge? If so, you can identify with the prophet Jonah. We’re in a series of “Prophets with a Purpose.” Last week we looked at Samuel, the great priest of Israel, last of the judges and first of the great prophets, a maker of kings. And today we look at Jonah, the reluctant prophet.
One of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons depicts a bearded man standing at his front door. He is dripping wet and his clothes are in tatters. His wife opens the door. She takes one look at her disheveled husband and says, “For crying out loud Jonah! Three days late, covered with slime and smelling like fish. What story have I got to swallow this time?”
Yes, the story of Jonah is a little hard to swallow; some theologians treat it more like a fable. Yet, Jesus took it seriously enough to quote two or three times, so we will, too. The story of Jonah has some big lessons; in fact, you might say they’re “whale-sized lessons!” You can easily read through this short book in one sitting. Today we’ll highlight the story and contemplate a lesson from each chapter.
Life lessons from the book of Jonah:
1. Don’t run from God!
The book of Jonah begins with this Operations Order from God (Jonah 1:1-3):
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah ran away from the Lord.”
Jonah ran all right. God said, “Go east,” and Jonah went west! He went the exact opposite of the way God told him! In fact, if you look on a map, Jonah went about three times farther west than God told him to go east. Isn’t it amazing how far and to what extent we will go to disobey God?
And the interesting thing is, even though Jonah ran in the wrong direction, he still could not outrun God! Listen to the prayer of the psalmist, recorded in Psalm 139:7-10: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”
Jonah thought he was running from God; yet God was with him all the way. God sent a storm, and the sailors were scared out of their wits. When they drew lots to see whose god was angry, they drew his. So Jonah asked them to cast him overboard, to calm the storm. Finally, they did, and a big fish swallowed up Jonah.
The lesson? Don’t run from God! You can’t get away from him anyway. And you don’t need to; God really does know what is best for you. The second life lesson from Jonah comes from deep within the belly of the big fish:
2. When life gets you down, look up.
You might say, Jonah hit rock bottom. You find yourself inside the stomach of a big fish, it’s not a good day! So what did Jonah do? He looked up. He prayed. I’ve put the first couple of verses of his prayer on your outline:
“From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: ‘In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.’” (Jonah 2:1-2)??When life gets you down, look up. When you feel the seaweed wrap around your face, when the flood waters start closing in, look up! Even if it was your fault you’re at rock bottom, as it was with Jonah, reach out to God anyway. Confess your sin. Fall at God’s feet. Appeal to his mercy.
Billy Graham once said, “The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, ‘O God, forgive me,’ or ‘Help me.’”
Isn’t it sad that we sometimes wait until we’re desperate before we talk to God? But God still wants us to come to him, even if it’s been a while. He’s like the father in the Prodigal Son story, searching the horizon, waiting for you and me to come to our senses and return to him.
God can rescue in the most amazing ways. Here he does it by commanding the fish to vomit Jonah up on the beach. One creature’s stomach ache becomes another creature’s salvation, because God is in charge. Let’s get back to Jonah’s story, to see if God now has his attention. The big lesson from chapter 3 is:
3. Respond to God’s second chance.
Listen to these verses: “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.’ Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.” (Jonah 3:1-3)
Don’t you love that phrase, “a second time”? Thank God for second chances! (And sometimes third and fourth and fifth chances!)
Jonah repented. When you repent, you change from your direction back to God’s direction. That’s what Jonah did. He did an about face. He shot a new azimuth. He made a mid-course correction. He got back on track. You see it in that little word “obey.” Jonah obeyed. And when you obey, you find yourself right in the middle of God’s work. In fact, in that place, you may well see a miracle!
Jonah did. He walked through the streets of Nineveh and shared God’s pending judgment: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” What happened? The whole town repented! The king heard Jonah’s message and issued an order that everyone would fast, even the animals! Everyone stopped eating in the hopes that God might hear their prayers and relent on his pending judgment. And it worked! Their repentance changed God’s mind!
These guys had forty days to get it right. We don’t know how much time we have, but the truth of the Bible is that a time is coming when you will no longer be able to repent. Please don’t wait until it’s too late! You and I will have a time of reckoning before the God who made us. We will have to answer for our sin. My answer will be, “Jesus died for my sin, and since I’ve accepted him as Lord, I know he has forgiven me.” Can you say that? If not, turn over your life to him today. Start a new journey with a new commander-in-chief, with Jesus as Lord. You’ll never regret it. Now to our last part of the story, chapter 4, which teaches us to ...
4. Get God’s heart for people.
Chapter four is quite funny. Jonah got ticked off that the Ninevites repented and God withheld his judgment. We finally see why he first ran, in verses 2 and 3: “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:2-3)
Why was Jonah having a pity party? Because he didn’t like the Ninevites! He was upset that God had saved them. Jonah was prejudiced! That’s why he ran! He knew enough about God’s character to know that, if these rascals humbled themselves before God, the Lord would save them.
Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. In Jonah’s lifetime, Assyria was just starting to act out in some bothersome ways. It was known for its cruelty to prisoners but not yet a major threat. Many years later, Assyria would conquer Israel. Yet, because of Jonah’s obedience, God delayed that calamity for 130 years! It occurs to me that our obedience doesn’t just affect our lives; it can even affect the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even an entire nation!
Jonah symbolizes Israel, this country that sometimes wanted to hoard God’s love for itself. Can you relate? Do you ever want to keep God’s love just for you and your small circle of friends? Are you ever reluctant to share God with someone who doesn’t deserve it, all the while forgetting how little you or I deserve it?
Back to the story: Jonah was so depressed he plopped down in the shade of a big plant. Then God sent a worm to eat into the plant, and the next day it died. Jonah had no more shade. God compared Jonah’s concern for one measly plant to God’s concern for a city of over 100,000 people. So here’s the lesson: If Jonah could love a plant for what little it did for him, could not God love everyone, even those who don’t please him?
Scripture tells us God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). But through our own prejudices, we forget that. We hoard God’s love for ourselves.
When Jesus walked the earth, he hung out with sinners, tax collectors, people of questionable reputation—he loved everyone he met! Why can’t we as well? We can with God’s help. Let’s ask him now as we pray together:
Thank you, Lord, for the amazing story of Jonah, your reluctant prophet. Help us to learn from him and his mistakes. Help us to see the folly of running from you, and to appreciate how you never leave us; you’re out there in the far country with us, even in our rebellion, waiting for us to come back home to you. And when we do, we can see you at work in some amazing ways and let you change even the way we view others, people who are made in your image. Help us to love them as you do. For the one who needs to repent of their sin and turn to you for the very first time, help them to do that today, while there’s still time. In your son’s name we pray, amen.
