Thoughts on Jonah 1

This month at all services we are looking at the book of Jonah, i get a break from teaching but this book is very interesting and has caused a lot of thoughts for me

When we come to the book of Jonah we tend to think:

•    A silly prophet thought that he could run away from God, but you can’t do that.

•    He was in a whale for 3 days, then he went the way that God wanted him to.

•    Gulump went the whale

I remember as a kid being frightened that if I didn’t go God’s way I would swallowed by a fish.

But Jonah is far more than that.
 
We need to look at a bit of his background and the situation he is in to understand him better.

He was a prophet who loved and served God during the days of Jeroboam the second, a very wicked king who did evil in the sight of God.

Jeroboam was the fourteenth king over the nation of Israel, the ten tribes that broke away 150 years earlier during the days when Solomon ruled. After Solomon died there was a civil war; ten tribes went to the north and were called Israel, two tribes went to the south and they were called Judah.

Now Jeroboam the second was a king who desired to do those things that pleased himself, and one of the things he did immediately was to introduce the worship of the two golden calves.

When the Jews wanted to go down to Jerusalem to worship God, Jeroboam said, "Wait a minute! I can't have all my people going down to Jerusalem. They might stay and I'd lose some of my best people. I'll make two golden calves and I'll put one all the way up north in Dan, and one halfway down, in Bethel. I'll get a bunch of priests together and we'll just work these people through this system." So he got some wicked priests together and they collected all the money they could from the poor and they sprinkled calf worship with a little Jehovah worship to make it sound religious.

At the same time there was one little irritant in the land. His name was Amos, who was running around telling the king, "You're going the wrong way." They didn't like Amos very much,

Now, in the midst of all this, there was a war going on between Syria and the ten tribes of the north. Syria would come down and afflict Israel, so God looked down on them and said, "These people are afflicted, and they are bitter, so I'll send someone to help them."

Now, as Amos was going about telling the bad news, God called on Jonah to be the bearer of good news. "Jonah, I want you to go to this wicked king Jeroboam the second and I want you to tell the king that I'm going to allow him to deliver the people from the Syrians." (This is all in 2 Kings 14.)

So Jonah went to Jeroboam the second with this great good news, and he says, "Jeroboam, guess what? God's going to use you to deliver the people of Israel from the Syrians."

Jeroboam the second thought that was great news. He got his army together, went up, defeated the Syrians. Jonah of course felt great. I mean, it's nice to be a prophet who brings good news, and have it all fulfilled! So he's walking around town feeling very good about all this.

Then there was another day, perhaps several years later, when God decides to pick one of his men again--not Amos, but Jonah. He has a whole new ministry for Jonah. In Jonah 1, it says,

     1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."

 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.

Jonah faced three problems that i can see
1.    was that Israel itself was also involved in idolatry, drunkenness and sexual immorality. Israel was really in trouble, morally, spiritually, socially, and militarily, and so we can imagine Jonah saying, "Why should I go to Nineveh? We need to take care of our own act at home first. But God says, "No, I want you to go to Nineveh."

2.    Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrians, the greatest city on the earth at the time. They knew about the wickedness of these people, knew about their worship of gods and goddesses, he knew that no one wanted anything to do with Nineveh. 

Now you don't mind being a prophet among people you like and are happy to bring good news too, but you certainly don't want to be a prophet among people you hate. You're not about to go and give them good news.

But God asks Jonah to go and cry against the city.
To "cry against" means to give them a chance to repent, though Jonah did not want to give them that chance because they were wicked idolators and they should be dealt with, he thought.

3.    Jonah was worried about the fact that God would show compassion to Nineveh, and if he did and they accepted his compassion and repented, then God might love them more than he loved the Jews.

You see Jonah knows God’s character, he knows that God gives people the opportunity to return to him (we see this in Jonah 4)

So Jonah does five things:
•    He rises up,
•    goes to Joppa,
•    finds a ship,
•    pays the fare and
•    goes on board to run away from the presence of God.

A lot of us think of Jonah as the dumb prophet who thought he could get away from God, but Jonah must have known the Psalms of David as later in chapter 2 he quotes.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
       Where can I flee from your presence?

 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
       if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.

 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
       if I settle on the far side of the sea,

 10 even there your hand will guide me,
       your right hand will hold me fast.

 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
       and the light become night around me,"

 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
       the night will shine like the day,
       for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

Jonah knew God and he knew God's character. He is not a dumb prophet, he knew there was no hiding from him, but he tried to hide anyway, because I he didn’t want to see the salvation of the Gentiles. He wanted nothing to do with them. He forgot what he was all about.

The calling Jonah to go to the Ninevites was like asking a Jew from Maroubra to go to Hitler and tell him that God loved him, and that everything he did would be forgiven if he would but repent.

So the Jew got on ship, and went to New Zealand; He wanted nothing to do with it. That's the struggle and tension that is going on here.

I was talking to a mate recently we were talking about this, "Why do you think God chose a man to go to Nineveh when he knew that man would run away?" he thought for a moment and said, "I guess there aren't any other kinds of men. We all run away."

Gideon had a lot of things he wanted to work out first before he followed God. Moses said, "Lord, they'll never believe I talked with a bush, so could you do a couple other things?" The most common thing God or his messangers have to say when they appear to men is “fear not” so they don’t escape.

I run all the time, I remember just as I was finishing school telling my parents that there was no way I would ever go into minstry, because of the little money that my parents had as I was growing up, the stress, that dad went through, there was no way I was going into ministry.

I ended up as one of the youngest intakes ever at Moore

“I will never go to the North shore” was my next statement which I held all the way through college, I still remember the day that the list of churches came out, there was Chatswood and some other churches in the Northern Suburbs which I had been recommended to, so I just whited them off the list casue there was no way I was going to go to the North Shore, I ended up in Chatswood.

Then "I don't want to have to go in and clean someone else' mess up, there are so many other healthy churches that want me" I ended up learning the lesson by then an even though not wanting to clean up messes i knew there was no way to get out of what God wanted.

The Lord caused this great storm and these Phoenician sailors began calling on their gods to save them. And there were many, believe me, that they called on. There was Asherad (the sea goddess), Baal-shamin (the god of the sky), and Baal-tyre (the god of the mariners). There were all kinds of gods and goddesses they could call on so they were trying them all, but they were not working.

Then one sailor said to somebody else, "Hey, there's a passenger down in hold, and he's sleeping. Maybe the captain will tell Jonah to pray to his god. Maybe his god will work."

So they go down to the hold and say, "How can you sleep? Don't you understand that if the gods get angry you're supposed to get right up and pray to them to get us out of the storm?" Finally, because the storm doesn't stop, they cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah. So they say to him, "Hey, we discovered it's you! Now what is going on? Where are you from? Why is this all happening to us?"

Jonah knew who he was. In the midst of the storm he understood who he was and who God was, and so he gave his testimony in the midst of his disobedience,

"I'm a Hebrew. I'm of the nation of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We're the ones who came out of Egypt into Canaan. I worship the true God, the one who made the heavens, the earth, the sky and the dry land."

    10 This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?" (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.)

 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"

 12 "Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."

 13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried to the LORD, "O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased." 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him.

I don't understand where Jonah got the confidence to say, "I'm responsible for the storm. All of you are in trouble because of me, so throw me into the sea." Maybe he thought God would deliver him because of his relationship with him, or maybe he was giving up totally and deciding that this was it, that he couldn't fight it any longer, and was going to commit suicide.

I find it interesting that Jonah is quicker to say “throw me overboard, rather than saying turn back to shore so I can go to Nineveh”

Either way in the midst of Jonah's disobedience, the ship's crew came to know the Lord. That happens a lot in the midst of our disobedience.

The crew did three things. First, they prayed that the Lord would forgive them for this innocent blood, "Then the men feared the Lord greatly [accepting him], and they offered a sacrifice [worship], and made vows [they were willing to serve]."

In the midst of his disobedience God brought a whole ship of people to himself, a bunch of most likely Phoenician fishermen, the grace of God was shown.

Jonah was not a dumb prophet, he actually was so in tune with the mind of God that he knew exactly what God would do, he just didn’t like what he saw, and disobeyed.

May you be like Jonah and realise that God is a God of compassion to all nations.

May you realise that God will work through you no matter how much you kick and scream.

May you be like Jonah and hear God’s voice clearly, and respond appropriately.

Comments

[niels]

niels en kyra

[Trisha Northup]

I love this, it's been so helpful... I've been stuck in Jonah and Ezekiel lately and it's been driving me insane..... I'll wake up to Damon Thompson (one of my favorite preachers) in the morning talking about Jonah. So thank you. That has helped me more than you know.