INTRODUCTION
Jonah is one of the shortest books in the Bible. It’s just 48 verses long. That’s shorter than a lot of chapters in the New Testament. Because it’s such a short book, when Bible translators begin work translating the Bible into other languages they’ll often start with Jonah. They can complete Jonah quite quickly and get it into Christians’ hands.
There’s another reason for choosing Jonah to translate, apart from the fact that it’s short. Jonah has a wonderfully positive message!
In Jonah we see that God is missional. He sent Jonah to the city of Nineveh to deliver a message that resulted in their salvation.
We see that God is able to rescue when rescue seemed impossible. He rescued Jonah when he was thrown into the sea and rescued him when he was swallowed by a great fish.
And we see God’s quite extraordinary compassion. The people of Nineveh, and especially their rulers, did not deserve God’s compassion one little bit and yet God sent Jonah to them.
We’re going to have four weeks on Jonah and I hope that during those four weeks we’ll see some of those great themes.
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Before we can really make head or tail of what’s going on in Jonah, we need to have a basic understanding of the situation.
The story of Jonah is set about 2800 years ago. So you might think, how can we know anything about what was happening then?
I think it’s really important that we have CONFIDENCE IN SCRIPTURE so I’m not just going to tell you what we know but also a little bit about how we know it.
The historians have known about Assyria for a long time. Nineveh had disappeared under the desert sands but it’s mentioned occasionally in the Middle Ages. It’s located in what is now the Iraqi city of Mosul. If the name Mosul rings a bell, it may be because it was the site of a battle between ISIS and various coalition forces in 2016 and 2017.
In 1842 a French diplomat working in Mosul found a building which turned out to be the royal palace of a famous Assyrian emperor, Sargon II. Not long after that, a British diplomat, Sir Austen Henry Layard, started to excavate the site. He found lots of pictures, carved in relief in stone. And he found the Library of Ashurbanipal. Ashurbanipal was a king of Assyria who lived a hundred or so years after Jonah. His library had about 22,000 clay tablets in it, mostly written in the cuneiform script. The Library of Ashurbanipal is considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made.
Layard shipped almost the entire library back to England. At the time, no one could read this script but a few years later the scholars worked it out.
What’s the point? Because of the pictures and Ashurbanipal’s library we actually know a great deal about the ancient Assyrians. The information helps us to make sense of Jonah’s story. The pictures and the written material tell a story. Assyrian kings were extraordinarily cruel. In our afternoon service last week I mentioned some of the things they did. I’m not going to do that this time: you’ll have to use your imagination.
In 2002 an Austrian archaeologist of the Middle East called Erika Bleibtreu wrote a paper titled ‘Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death.’ She started, ‘Assyrian national history, as it has been preserved for us in inscriptions and pictures, consists almost solely of military campaigns and battles. IT IS AS GORY AND BLOODCURDLING A HISTORY AS WE KNOW.’ In effect, Erika Bleibtreu is saying that the Assyrians were probably the cruellest civilisation that has ever existed.
These Assyrians were definitely threatening Israel at the time of Jonah. They weren’t friendly, and Jonah must have known their reputation.
That is the setting for the story of Jonah.
When we see how wicked the people of Nineveh were, then we see how compassionate God was. The people of Nineveh deserved God’s judgment. They didn’t deserve a second chance. But that was what God gave them. Look at verse 2. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital city, and ‘preach against it.’ Some versions say, ‘call out against it’ or ‘cry against it.’ The sense is the same. If God had decided to destroy Nineveh he could have done so. The only reason he would send a prophet is if he was willing to give the city a chance.
I’d like to offer a modern-day comparison. Suppose, five years ago, God had told an Iraqi, ‘I want you to go to ISIS and preach against it’ he would probably have said, ‘Not a chance! Those people don’t deserve any mercy at all.'
That was exactly Jonah’s position. God told Jonah, ‘Go to Nineveh and preach against it.’ What did Jonah do? The exact opposite. Nineveh was to the north-east; Jonah headed west. Was Jonah afraid to go? Not apparently. Jonah tells God why he ran away later in the book. Can you look at 3:10-4:2? The people of Nineveh repented in response to Jonah’s preaching. What happened next?
‘When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.’
The people repented so God relented.
Jonah knew that God was compassionate. That’s why he fled to Tarshish! Jonah didn’t want Nineveh to get God’s compassion! He wanted them to get God’s judgement!
There is a powerful message in this for us. Jonah knew that God was merciful. But he didn’t like it. God sent Jonah on a mission of mercy, a mission that – if successful – would allow him to have compassion on the people of Nineveh. Jonah tried his best to get out of it.
Let’s draw some practical applications.
First, and the main point I hope we’ll get from this, is how incredibly merciful God is. People today regularly describe God – especially God in the Old Testament – as vengeful and angry. It’s so unfair to God. Jonah knew God as extraordinarily merciful and many of the Old Testament writers described him the same way. It’s Jonah, not God, who was desperate for the Ninevites to get a taste of God’s justice.
Jesus told his disciples, ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’ Jesus expected his disciples to recognize how merciful God is and to be similarly merciful. That applies to us!
The news is full of stories of people who are fighting for justice. People typically want justice! But what if we fought for mercy instead?
What would you do if, for example, someone burgled your house? Would you wish that they could have a second chance? Here’s a story from 2019. A man stole £500 and some other items from a couple’s house in Birmingham. He was caught, but instead of being sent to jail was placed on a rehabilitation programme and now looks after their garden. Let’s hear what happened:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-56536649
In the story of Jonah, God was merciful. Jesus tells us ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’ So we have to really search for ways to show mercy.
Second, God calls people into mission. God wants to show people mercy, but in order to do that, people need to repent. We – the church – need to call people to repent! It’s a vitally important job! I suppose God could have spoken to the people of Nineveh out of a cloud, but he didn’t. He sent Jonah. That’s God’s normal way of working. He sends people. Matthew’s gospel ends with Jesus giving his disciples a commission. He told them, ‘Go into all the world…’ It’s a mission Jesus gives to all of us. He wants to send all of us out. It’s REALLY important! We have to be willing to go when God calls us to.
Third, God sent Jonah to the worst people of his time. Is there a principle there? Does God usually give greater attention to the worst people? It’s certainly logical to shout the loudest warning to the people who are in greatest danger. We have a job to sound a warning. Maybe we suspect that no one will listen. But God wants people to have the chance – and maybe, as in the case of Nineveh – something remarkable will happen.
Fourth, God didn’t mind sending Jonah into danger. 21st century British society is incredibly risk-averse. If we looked at what God was asking Jonah to do with a typical British mindset there’s no way at all that we would do it.
Of course, a degree of common sense is needed. In 2015, Canon Andrew White, who got the nickname ‘the vicar of Baghdad’, reported that he’d invited future leaders of ISIS to dinner. This is what he said in a radio interview:
‘I actually knew the people who would eventually become the leaders of ISIS. I invited them to dinner one night, and said ‘Look, I want to get to know you more and when we meet, we eat. So come round and have dinner, and let’s talk’. They said ‘Yes, we’ll come to dinner but afterwards we’ll chop off your head.’ So I didn’t take it any further.’ That sounds sensible!
So - we are to be merciful as God is merciful. That is very, very merciful. God is merciful to those who don't deserve mercy at all. We are to be missional because when we are, God can be merciful. We should look out for those who are in great danger and shout a warning. And we should take Jonah's attitude towards danger rather than being too British and risk-averse. There is no safer place to be than in the centre of God's purposes.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 20th June 2021
