Jonah Talk 2: God of Mission
Last week I started a new series on Jonah. My major theme last week was how compassionate God is.
At the time of Jonah, the Assyrian Empire was expanding. Historians of the Middle East tell us how cruel the Assyrian rulers were. I spared you the grizzly details. If people did things like they did today there’s no question that they would be guilty of crimes against humanity. The people of Nineveh absolutely deserved God’s judgement and God intended to destroy them. Their situation was analogous to the situation of ISIS in recent years. ISIS is such an evil entity that the major nations of the world decided that it needs to be destroyed.
But although Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was extremely wicked and deserved God’s judgement, God decided to give it a chance. He sent his prophet Jonah to it. There would be no point in God sending Jonah if it was 100% certain that he was going to destroy the city.
The fact that God wanted to have mercy on the Ninevites shows us how amazingly compassionate God is. People sometimes say that God in the Old Testament is a God of wrath but that certainly isn’t how Jonah – or many of the other Old Testament writers, for that matter – saw him. They knew God as a god of mercy.
So, last week our focus was on God as a god of COMPASSION. In order that God could show compassion something would need to change in Nineveh. God therefore sends Jonah.
We now see that God is a god of MISSION.
Since we’re made in God’s image, and we’re trying to serve God and be like God, then it should go without saying that we should also be compassionate and be missional.
Today, we’re going to look at how God goes about mission.
The minister of a church I attended many years ago would often say that in order to understand the Old Testament we need to look at the New Testament. We need to see what the New Testament writers say about the Old Testament passage.
This is particularly important in the case of Jonah. Jesus has some things to say about Jonah which aren’t immediately obvious from the book of Jonah.
Here are two questions which we don’t see the answer to in the book of Jonah but which we find the answer to in Jesus’ words.
First, is the story of Jonah true? Maybe, we think, Jonah is really a kind of parable. It’s fiction. That is possible. There are parables in both the Old and New Testaments.
So, is Jonah true, in the sense of historical, or is it fictional?
We can answer that question when we look at what Jesus said about it. Jesus said (Matthew 12:40):
“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Jesus was saying, ‘my death and resurrection will be true as the story of Jonah being three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish is true.’ I assume we believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection is true. Therefore, based on Jesus’ words, Jonah being three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish must also be true.
The miracle of Jonah emerging after three days in the great fish was a foreshadowing of Jesus’ emerging from the tomb after three days.
It’s therefore important that we believe the story of Jonah is true. If we don’t, we find ourselves in disagreement with Jesus. That’s the reason why I gave so much historical background last week. History doesn’t tell us if Jonah was swallowed by a whale. But history tells us that there was a place called Nineveh and it really was wicked. That was also why I showed the video clip of ISIS blowing up Jonah’s tomb. As far as I know, fictional characters don’t have tombs. We can’t say from history that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. But we can at least say that Nineveh was a real place, it was very wicked indeed, and Jonah appears to have been a real person.
I said that Jesus’ comments on Jonah help us answer two questions. The first question was, ‘Is the story of Jonah true?’ The second question is, ‘Did the people of Nineveh know that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish?’ If they did, then it tells us a lot about how God does mission.
We need to look carefully to see the answer to this. Let’s take a look. In Matthew 12:39 Jesus says, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.’ Then in the next verse Jesus says, ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish…’
So ‘the sign of the prophet Jonah’ is the fact that he spent three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.
Now go on to Luke 11:29-30. Jesus said, ‘This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites…’
The Pharisees and teachers of the law wanted Jesus to give a sign – and they certainly had in mind a miraculous sign. So when Jesus said, ‘Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites’ he must have been thinking of the fact that Jonah was three days inside a great fish.
So, on the basis of what Jesus said, the people of Nineveh knew that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. That was God’s great sign to them.
What’s the significance of this? What does it tell us about how God does mission?
Let’s go back a few steps.
God is a god of compassion. He wants to have mercy on Nineveh. But he can only have mercy if the people of Nineveh repent and change their ways.
He decides to send his prophet Jonah. But put ourselves in Jonah’s position. That’s a pretty tough assignment! How could Jonah ever persuade the wicked people of Nineveh to change their ways?
What actually persuades them? Was it Jonah’s preaching? Or was it the fact that he’d been swallowed by a great fish and yet survived?
Once again, we find the answer in Jesus’ commentary on the story. Look at Matthew 12: 41. ‘The men of Nineveh … repented at the preaching of Jonah.’
There’s our answer, we think. The people of Nineveh repented at Jonah’s preaching. But let’s not be hasty. Look at our verses in Luke 11. In v.30 Jesus says, ‘For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites.’ We understand that the sign was the fact that was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish.
So what do we see? God sent Jonah to Nineveh. He needed Jonah to preach. But God then worked an extraordinary miracle to give authority to Jonah’s words. God was absolutely engaged in Jonah’s mission. This was God’s plan, through and through. It wasn’t all down to Jonah. Jonah certainly had to play his part. It wasn’t a very big part. The commentators tell us that Jonah’s message was just five words in Hebrew. God did the real work of persuading the Ninevites that this was God’s message.
Let’s now apply this to our own situation.
First, God took the initiative in sending Jonah. Mission is God’s mission. We need to break out of thinking about how WE do mission and listen to God and try to understand how HE wants to do mission – and fit in with it.
Second, Jonah had to preach. God engages us in his purposes. Jonah might have thought God was asking the impossible, but he didn’t know God’s plan! Maybe – as in the case of Jonah – God will call us to do something that we think can’t be done. But if God calls, it CAN be done, and it isn’t our job to do it anyway!
Third, God is breathtakingly creative! Suppose you’re a group of teachers at All Nations Christian College – the best-known missionary training college in the UK. You’re thinking about mission strategy. Would any of those teachers on mission suggest having a prophet swallowed by a great fish? I don’t think so! God has plans that leave us shaking our heads. ‘Totally crazy!’ we think. And yet that’s what God is like. He’s amazingly creative. Think of creation with its spiders and octopuses! We need to be open-minded about how God wants to do mission and fit in. There’s a place for Messy Church and Alpha courses but God has plenty of other ideas. The New Testament describes Noah as a preacher of righteousness. He preached righteousness by building an ark! The ark meant: God’s judgement is coming. What are you going to do about it?
Sometimes people think that a particular activity is a distraction from the real work of proclaiming the gospel. I’d like to give a personal example. In my late twenties I felt that God called me to study business and I spent two years doing an MBA – a ‘Master’s in Business Administration’. After that, I felt God call me into mission. Since I felt both a calling to do business and a calling into mission, I concluded that I should do business as part of mission. This is a recognized pattern, it’s called ‘BAM’ – ‘Business as Mission’. I joined a missionary society and went with them to Kyrgyzstan. They were operating a business there as it was the only way they could be in the country. But the business was very secondary – they viewed it as a platform, merely a means to be in the country. The business should not distract from the main task, which was the gospel.
I took a different view. I believed we should take the business seriously. At the end, we agreed that our visions were different and I left the mission organization; it was all quite amicable. Priscilla [my wife] and I then moved to Azerbaijan. We founded a business and I later became the director of another business.
Were these businesses a distraction from the gospel or were they a way for God to carry on his mission? Priscilla and I strongly believe the latter. The businesses created many, many missional opportunities. But beyond any witness that we had, Priscilla and I believe strongly that God witnessed to himself in the way he protected and prospered the businesses through countless storms.
Applying Jonah’s story to ourselves, we may not know God plan. God is so creative that we may never grasp the full picture of what he’s doing. We don't need to. We need to discern what God wants US to do and do it.
Fourth, God did the really heavy work. He convinced the Ninevites that HE was speaking to them by giving them an amazing sign. God is still the one who does the heavy lifting. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ‘I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.’ Paul affirms what Jonah experienced. It’s true in our day too. We have to play our part, but it’s God who does the real work.
I have one more point. God put Jonah through a very unpleasant experience. It hardly needs saying that Jesus also went through some very unpleasant experience for our sakes. There is a cost in mission. Perhaps God will see fit to put us through some unpleasant experiences. But what a story Jonah had to tell afterwards! What a lot he achieved!
I’m going to conclude with the first part of Jonah 3:3: ‘Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.’ Jonah knew what God wanted him to do and he did it. He played his part in God’s mission. May we do the same.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Boscombe, Bournemouth, UK, 4 July 2021
