Jonah, and other Prodigals - Jonah 1:1-3

 

Jonah, and other Prodigals

Jonah 1:1-3

Introduction: Today we start a new series on the little book of Jonah. Dr. Paul Tripp suggests that this short book, just 48 verses, tells us “…everything we need to know about a biblical worldview in a podcast…” He points to four major themes…   

   1. A God of awesome glory who is at the center of the universe (He is, not you!). He is King of the Universe! Sin is the desire to put ourselves in that place that is God’s alone.

   2. This world in which we live is terribly broken by sin. It is evident in big cities, and in small towns… in human lives… Society might tolerate sin, but sin is not ok. Nineveh was corrupt, exceedingly evil, so is Philadelphia. What is true of cities begins in human hearts. When we would rather have our way, our control, our pleasure, that is sin, we too, like Jonah, are turning away from God, we’re trying to flee to Tarshish…

   3. Human beings were created to live for something bigger than “me” and “mine.” We have a higher purpose, to live for God’s glory. Not just my heart, but the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea!

   4. The reality of unrelenting, transforming grace (compare the first couple of verses with the last verse of the book!). Announcing judgement is also a call to repentance. God could have sent someone else, but he was also working in Jonah.

That’s a lot of truth in a children’s Sunday School story! But we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, “All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16,17). God included Jonah in the Bible for our edification! And by the way, don’t let anyone tell that it is just an allegory, and that the events it describes aren’t meant to be taken literally. Jesus himself referred to Jonah as a picture of his own death and resurrection when He said,

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  ⁴¹ "The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here (Mt 12:40-41).

If Jonah is ahistorical, then why would Jesus refer to it in connection with His own death and resurrection? Jesus clearly assumes that Jonah is an historical narrative, trustworthy history. People who doubt that get caught up in the idea of someone being swallowed by a fish and living to tell about it. This is a miracle, and many people deny anything supernatural in the Bible. Listen, if you can believe Genesis 1:1, is this really so hard to believe? God, who brought the universe out of nothing, would He not be able to prepare a great fish to swallow a man, and then keep him alive inside that animal for three days? What about raising from the dead, after three days in the tomb? Nothing is too difficult for God! Let’s hear together what God is saying in this book.

The BIG Idea: God is our Creator and King, He knows best, so we should trust Him and obey His Word!

I. The Sovereign Lord of the Universe has spoken (1). The main character of this story is introduced in v.1 (and it is not Jonah!). The Lord, The God who is, Yahweh, the Creator of the universe, the Great I AM, has spoken. The Hebrew construction occurs in this exact pattern 24 times in the Bible, all but once when God was speaking to or through a prophet. We see it here, then again in 3:1 when God calls Jonah for a second time. Preaching on this book Greg Laurie said, “God said ‘GO!’ Jonah said, ‘NO!’ And God said ‘Oh???’” “Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying…”

       Jonah (“dove,” but cf. Hos 7:11) the son of Amittai (“son of my faithfulness”), is the principle human character in this story. We don’t want to read too much into the significance of names, but in Hosea, Israel is described as a “silly and senseless” dove. Will Jonah live up to his name? “Amittai” means “my faithfulness,” and that certainly describes God’s character. We don’t know a lot about Jonah beyond what is written here. We do see him mentioned in his prophetic role in 2 Kings 14:23-27,   

²³ 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, and he reigned forty-one years.  ²⁴ And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin.  ²⁵ He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.  ²⁶ For the LORD saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter...

So, we see Jonah, the son of a prophet, himself prophesying in the northern kingdom, and his word being fulfilled. We learn that he is from Gath-hepher, which would be near Nazareth, in Galilee, near where Jesus was raised. What we are not so sure about is whether the book of Jonah describes an earlier time in Jonah’s life, perhaps His initial call to prophetic ministry, or whether it is later. It seems more likely to me that the Book of Jonah presents an initial call to prophetic ministry, but I am not sure. So, this we do know. Assyria was a rising power in the east, a threat to Israel (eventually, in 722 BC the nation God would use to overrun the northern Kingdom). It was a pagan nation, and Nineveh was its capital. And so, the Word of the Lord came to Jonah. God told Jonah to bring to that violent, pagan nation, a warning of impending judgment. Is a call to repent implicit in that warning? (We’ll see in Chapter 3 that Jonah certainly thought so!).

      God, Yahweh, is the main character in this story. The God who spoke the universe into existence, who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, who parted the sea and allowed the Israelites to walk through, before drowning the army of Pharaoh. The God who led them through the wilderness by the Pillar of cloud by day and Pillar of fire at night, who dwelt in the midst of the people in the Tabernacle and then later in the Temple, the God who IS, He spoke to Jonah… and by the way, He has spoken to us. Hebrews begins, “In different times and in different ways God spoke in times past to the fathers through the prophets, in these last days He has spoken in [the] Son…” (Heb 1:1,2). The Word of the Lord has come to us — the Word was made flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). Does that astonish you? It should. If we grasp just a little of who God is, of His holiness and majesty, His awesome power, His omniscience, it is astounding that He would stoop to talk to us, through the prophets, and ultimately, through the Son. We should be quick to listen, and to obey!  In 2 Kings 14:25 Jonah is called the Lord’s “servant.” That is a precious title, a time in his life when it seems he knew God and walked with Him. He is not at that point in this story. At least not yet. How about you? The God of the universe has spoken! That’s the BIG Idea: God is our Creator and King, He knows best, so we should trust Him and obey His Word!

II. God is Holy and Just, He is also compassionate and calls us to bring His message to the world (2). "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me."  

       It wasn’t so unusual for God to speak an oracle against a pagan nation through one of His prophets. We see many such oracles in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the other prophets. What’s different about Jonah, is that rather than just his words, his actions tell a story. God is telling him to actually go to that pagan nation, and to pronounce against it God’s impending judgment! What do we know about Nineveh?

       Nineveh later became the permanent capital of Assyria. In Jonah’s day it was already the political, cultural, and economic center of the Assyrian Empire. The ruins of Nineveh are located about a mile east of the Tigris River, opposite Mosul in northern Iraq. It was one of the largest cities of its time, maybe close to half a million people, including women and children. Because of the wealth and power of Assyria, they were considered a threat to the security of Israel. In 722 BC, they would be the ones who would overrun the northern Kingdom and sack the capital city of Samaria. These were enemies, and God tells Jonah to go to them, and to announce His coming judgement. Why did he run? We’ll learn more later in our study, but, as Tim Keller asks, “How long would a Jewish rabbi have lasted if he stood on the streets of Berlin and called on Nazi Germany to repent?” (Prodigal, p.14). That wouldn’t be too different that asking you or me to go to Tehran, or Peking, and to preach the Gospel in the public square! How would that go?

       God said to Jonah go to that “great city,” it seems talking about its size, population and influence. The need for the mission is that their evil had come up before the Lord. The wickedness of their pagan culture was like a stench in God’s nostrils, an offense to His holiness. They were a violent, immoral, and idolatrous culture. Like the world in Noah’s day, like the world in our day, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes… there was none righteous, no not one…” God is holy, and He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. But why send Jonah to warn them? What happens when he does? They repent, they put on sack cloth and ashes and cry out to God for mercy!

       God had souls to save in that city, and He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. It would seemingly be only for a generation, but some would believe! But they were pagans, violent and sinful, the enemy of Israel! And Jonah did not want to go. Are you convinced that God has souls to save in Philadelphia?  God said “Go!” and Jonah said, “No!” Your neighbors, family and friends who have not yet believed, are separated from God. God has placed you where you are, as His witness, and said, “Go and tell.” The Word of the Lord has come to us, as surely as it came to Jonah! Will we make excuses? Will we run and hide? Or will we speak the truth in love? God is our Creator and King. He knows best, so trust Him and obey His Word!

III. We must overcome the temptation to resist His Word and to think that we know better than God what is best for us (3)!

But Jonah rose 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 on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. 

       First, let’s look at Jonah’s Plan, it wasn’t very complicated: Run away from God! Notice twice we are told in this verse that Jonah planned to flee “from the presence of the Lord.” A more literal rendering would be, “…from the face of the Lord…” He was turning his back on God. Tarshish was across that Mediterranean Sea, in Spain we think, it was essentially the end of the earth as far as Jonah knew, as far away from Jerusalem as he could run. But run from God? Now, Jonah knew something about God. Two hundred years before his time David had written the beautiful lines of Psalm 139 that describe the omniscience and omnipresence of God,

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!  ² You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.  ³ You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.  ⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.  ⁵ You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.  ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

 ⁷ Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?  ⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  ⁹ If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,  ¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.  ¹¹ If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,"  ¹² even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

That is not a God you can run away from! Yet Jonah turned his back on God and ran. Foolish? Yes. Yet we do the same thing, when we know what God expects of us, we know what He would have us do, we know what His word says, and yet we rationalize and justify our unbelief, choosing our sin, as if it is in that pleasure that we’ll find happiness rather than in the will of God! I am Jonah, and at times, so are you. God’s way is best. He has spoken in His book. Let’s take Him at His Word, trust and obey!

       Notice too, Joppa’s “provision”: A boat, going my way! I have talked with people who have convinced themselves that the circumstances through which they have passed, the series of events that came together, “proves” that God wants them to take a certain course of action – even though it is contrary to the Word of God. “This is an exception; this must mean that God knows it is how I will find true happiness…” If God is in it, know this: His Word is truth, He will not contradict His Word. God’s best for you will always be found in submitting to His Word. Jonah planned to go to Tarshish, as far as he could imagine away from the presence of the Lord. He arrives in Joppa, and what do you know, there it is, a boat going his way! To the end of the earth! Away from Nineveh. Did he think to himself, “Look, maybe God has realized this is really for the best!”? We can rationalize like that! This was not providential confirmation of Jonah’s decision. God was there, allowing him to go a bit further, before reeling him back in!

       If the town of “Joppa” sounds familiar, you may remember that it is the town where Peter went to stay in the house of Simon the Tanner in Acts 10. It was there that he received a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven, and got the message that it was ok to eat cheesesteaks and lobsters… and also to go to the gentiles with the Gospel of Jesus. He goes with some men to the house of Cornelius, and while he is speaking of Christ, God shows his grace to those present as they hear and believe and receive the Holy Spirit. Jonah had been called to go to a pagan, gentile nation, and ran to Joppa on his way to Tarshish. 800 years later or so, Peter is at Joppa, and he is told that God has included the gentiles in His plan, and He was to go to them. Jesus likewise said,

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Mt 28:18-20).

God said “Go!” Jonah said, “No!” And God said, “Oh???” We too have a mission. Jesus has said “Go!” Not necessarily across the sea or across cultures. But across the hall, or down the street, to the people in our sphere of influence. Will we trust and obey?

       The journey’s price: “He paid the fare…” In this case, Jonah literally paid in coinage a price to run away from God. But the cost would be much higher. Sin has a price. Yes, for believers, the price for our redemption is paid in blood, by Jesus himself. The debt is paid. But God is always working for our good, and for His glory. He will chasten every child He receives (Heb 12:5). Sin has consequences. Because God loves us, because He is working in us, to make us more like Jesus, He won’t let us go on in our rebellion, even if He needs to send a storm… or even a big fish!

What is God saying to me in this passage? This passage reminds us that God is our Creator and King, and that He knows best, so we should trust Him and obey His Word!

What would God have me to do in response to this passage? We’ll see if our study of Jonah will bear out Dr. Tripp’s assertion that we’ll find in this little book “everything we need to know about a Christian worldview in a podcast.” As for me, every time I look at Jonah I am learning, and being convicted, and challenged. This is no fish story. It is God’s story, God who cares about humans so much, that he is present in the storm, working to accomplish His purpose according to grace, and grow our faith. The God who is, has spoken. Just as surely as He called Jonah, His call is on my life and on yours. We will hear Him, sometimes through the wind and waves. Will we listen? We can’t run from God. We can trust Him. Remember the old song, “Trust and obey, there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” That truth is part of the message of Jonah. Over the next two months or so, let’s explore it together.   AMEN.