Jonah
The story of our gracious God.
Jonah 2:2 "…In my distress I called to the LORD, and he
answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to
my cry.”
What do you think of when you hear the name “Jonah”? You most likely answered,
“A fish.” Well, its true, Jonah was the first one to prove “you can’t keep a
good man down.” But it is also true that in the story of Jonah the big fish
played a minor role. We get distracted by the fish and miss the central themes
of God’s mercy and grace. It is also the story of the working of God’s
sovereignty. What happens when God’s sovereign will comes into conflict with a
contrary human will? What happens when a Believer gets far from the Lord,
neglects His word, and walks in disobedience? God, being God, could crush the
human’s will making it conform to His purpose. There have been times when God
has done just that. Read the story of Pharaoh and his contest with Moses. But
generally God doesn’t act that way. What does God do? Does He give up? Does He
alter His plans? Does He go to Plan B and accomplish His purpose in some other
way? The answer is found in the Book of Jonah. Truly God is the central figure
in the Book of Jonah.
We will be looking at this book for the next several WEEKLY THOTS. The title of
this series is SURPRISES IN JONAH. We will see the greatness and toughness of
God’s grace and mercy. We will see the hope and comfort it gives for those who
find themselves, for whatever reason, far from the Lord. We will see the divine
Hound of Heaven does not only pursue us for salvation, but also for blessing.
As we begin this series I want to ask you, are you running from God? Are you
fleeing obedience to His will and word? This book will show you that the God who
is love will not allow you to continue. His Spirit within you will either
convict you or perfect you. It’s up to you which He will do. But He will not let
you go.
Also, have you run from God and now think He has no place for you in His work?
Do you think God has set you aside and no longer wants anything to do with you?
If you think this way you are wrong. Jonah’s story shows God to be the God of
the second, third, fourth, and many more chances. Confess your waywardness,
allow Him to restore you to that place of blessing and spiritual wholeness He
wants you to have,
Take heart, Jonah shows us our God is a God of grace, mercy, and love.
PRODIGALS
We all know the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.
There we read of the son who asked his father to give him his share of the
estate. In doing so he disgraced his father for, among other things he was
saying in effect, “I wish you were dead,” for it was upon his father’s death
that he would receive his inheritance. He took his inheritance, fled his
father’s presence, and wasted it and himself. He went downhill fast until even
pigs were eating better than he was. In Luke 15:17 we read, “he came to his
senses” and said that his father’s servants were better off than he was. So he
set off, with a confession ready, and returned to his father. But Jesus said,
“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with
compassion for him.” We know the rest of the story of how he was received
back with open arms.
Here is a picture of our Heavenly Father. He welcomes His erring children home
with open arms and celebrations. We leave His side and go astray and become so
guilt ridden and spiritually defeated we think not even God would want us. This
parable tells a different story. It tells us our Heavenly Father welcomes us
back.
But there is another story of a prodigal son in Scripture. That other prodigal
was Jonah. In Jonah 1:2 it says, “…Jonah ran away from the LORD.” We are looking
at his story, and we know this one as well. But notice it gives another view of
our Heavenly Father. The picture here is not of Him waiting in a distance to
welcomes us home, but of Him actively pursuing us to bring us home. These two
pictures of our Heavenly Father are not contradictory but complimentary. They
are two sides of the same coin. In Jonah He pursues His child with a storm and a
fish in chapter one. He continues to work with him even in his half-hearted
obedience in chapter 3, and continues to refine him in chapter 4 as he falls
into depression, anger, so great he desires to die.
What a picture of our Heavenly Father! He not only receives His prodigal
children back with open arms, He actively pursues after them while they are in
their rebellion. Jonah is the historical narrative giving life to Philippians
1:6, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry
it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” He loves us too much to let
us go! He loved us before we became His by faith in Christ, while we were still
sinners. And He continues to love us after we are His.
We need to remember then when we take the Path of the Prodigal. Do not allow
Satan to tell you God no longer loves you and no longer wants you because of
your failures and sins. He loves you with an outrageous love. Don’t ever be
afraid to come home to him.
Bigots
All of us are called to be obedient to
God, and God will not allow us to walk away from that obedience. For the Apostle
Paul it took being struck on the Damascus Road. God literally knocked him off of
his horse with a blinding light. A voice from heaven asked him why he was
persecuting Him (Jesus). When Paul got up he was blind. God restored his sight
at the home of Ananias in Damascus.
Each of us has a place of obedience. For some it only takes a nudge of pressure
to gently lead us to do God’s will. For others a lightning bolt is needed to get
our attention. For Jonah it took a storm, a fish, and a gourd.
God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah fled to Tarsish and to Jonah’s mind
that was about as far away from God as he could go. Why did he flee? Maybe he
thought of the difficulties of his mission. Nineveh is described as a “great
(large) city” and he was being sent alone with a message from an
unknown God. What could one man do? But the text doesn’t say he feared the
difficulties.
Maybe he was afraid for his physical safety. God said Nineveh was a “wicked
city.” Read Nahum 3:1-4 to find out something of Nineveh’s wickedness. What
would one little preacher do against such wickedness? Again, the text doesn’t
say he feared for his safety.
What the text does say is that Jonah was a bigot (Jonah 4:2). He hated the
people of Nineveh and would rather see them in hell than in heaven. He wanted
them judged, not saved.
The commission given to us is no less demanding than Jonah’s. We’ve been
commissioned by the Risen Christ to tell the world the message of the Gospel.
You can read that commission in Matthew 28:19-20. We come across those who need
to hear that message but often we keep that message to ourselves because we
don’t like these people. Those without Christ can be very unlikable. They can be
dirty inside and out, arrogant, blasphemous, disagreeable, and immoral. They may
espouse positions that violate the Scripture, are unethical and anti-God. And we
do not like them. We forget they are the way they are because they do not know
our Savior. They need to hear the message of Jesus dying for their sin and God’s
offer of forgiveness. But too often we, the ones with the message and the
commission to tell it, flee to our “Tarsish.” Rather than reach out to the
unlovable outsider we congregate with those in our Christian circle and leave
the lost to go to hell.
Jonah’s disobedience was born out of his hatred for the lifestyle of the lost of
Nineveh. Is that our excuse for not reaching out to the lost of the “Nineveh”
where we live?
Think about it!
Misappropriated Grace
The Book of Jonah has been called “A Whale of a Tale.” And it is! But it’s also a story of misappropriated grace. What is “grace”? Some have made an acrostic of it:
G – God’s
R – Riches
A – At
C – Christ’s
E – Expense.
It has also been described as “God’s unmerited favor.” And this is true. But another angle on grace is one a Bible teacher who is now with the Lord taught - “Grace is ability.” Grace is the ability God gives us to accomplish something. We are “saved by grace,” that is, we are given the ability through Christ’s work on the cross to have forgiveness of our sin and be transferred from the world of the lost to the world of the redeemed. Scripture teaches us that we are gifted by grace, that is, we receive abilities from God to accomplish His purpose. Whenever you see the word “grace” in Scripture think of the word “ability.”
With that in mind let us remember that God never calls us to do something without providing the ability, or the grace, to do it. God provided Jonah with the health, mental capacity, and physical strength to go to Nineveh and get the job done God wanted him to do. But instead of using this ability to obey God, Jonah used it to disobey God. And that is “misappropriated grace.” God gave him the strength to go. Jonah used that strength to flee.
Now before we get on Jonah’s case let’s think about ourselves. Since you are reading this devotional you know you have received the grace of life, you are alive. You have enough mental and physical ability to be able to read these words and understand them. God has given you this ability, this grace, and many more. What are you doing with them? Are you using your God-given abilities to:
1. Build a career
2. Advance your education
3. Provide for your comforts
Good! You should be doing this. But what are you doing with your God-given abilities in service for Him? If you are using these abilities only for your self, you are misappropriating God’s grace just as Jonah did.
Spiritual gifts have been described as “God given abilities for service.” God’s gifts as not to be used in a self-centered way, but in a God-centered way.
What are you doing with the abilities God has given to you?
WINGS OF THE DAWN
We have been looking at the Old Testament Book of
Jonah. Jonah is the story of a fleeing prophet and a pursuing God. In verse 3 of
chapter 1 we read, “But Jonah ran away from the LORD…” Jonah knew what we know
about the possibility of running from God. He knew, as we know, you can’t out
run God. But he tried anyway just like we do.
Jonah lived relatively late in Old Testament history, long after the psalms were
written. He had ample opportunity to know the words of 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.”
Someone has suggested that a good name for the ship Jonah was on would have been
the Wings of the Dawn. But if it had been its name would Jonah have taken note of
it? The history and experience of sin is that we allow ourselves to get into a
“zone” where no amount of evidence will move us from our course of disobedience.
When we take our Wings of the Dawn – preoccupation with a job, an attitude, a
cherished sin, or other type of disobedience – we try to sail away from God only
to find God all along the way and waiting for us at our destination.
When David used the imagery of the “wings of the dawn” he was referring to the
sun rise and the first beams of light breaking the night rushing across the sky.
Today we would say, “If I traveled at the speed of light to the far side of the
sea, when I arrive you are standing on the shore to meet me.” This was not
something David feared. On the contrary, it gave him comfort and hope that he
could not out distance God.
The story of Jonah tells us that when we flee God in disobedience He is there,
not to condemn and punish, but to bring us back to Himself and to continue the
work He began in us.
Here is another picture of our great God and His desire to have us walk with
Him. If you are running away from Him, if you are riding your Wings of the Dawn,
remember you can’t out run Him. And there is no need to. He loves you, wants
you, and will embrace you in His grace.
The Way of Disobedience
As we continue our look at Jonah we come to see four lessons of what happens when we turn our backs on God’s will for our lives.
LESSON 1: The way of disobedience leads downhill. Oh, Jonah wouldn’t have put it that way at the beginning. He felt he was improving his life just as we do when we get involved in sin. In Jonah chapter 1, verse 3, we read, “…he went down to Joppa.” The way of the Lord is “up,” away from Him is “down.” The way may look good when we start, but it is all downhill. As the proverb reads, “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).
LESSON 2: The way of disobedience is a dead end street. Jonah didn’t get to his destination. After paying his fare he was eventually thrown overboard and never got to where he wanted to go.
LESSON 3: Disobedience is costly. In his commentary on Jonah, Donald Gray Barnhouse wrote, “When you run away from the Lord you never get to where you are going, and you always pay your own fare. On the other hand, when you go the Lord’s way you always get to where you are going, and He pays the fare.”
A great example of God paying the fare is found in the story of the baby Moses. When Moses was born his parents tried to hide him for as long as possible. But when they could no longer do so his mother made a little boat and placed her baby in it, and set it among the reeds by the river bank. Though she wanted her child more than anything else she put the matter in God’s hands allowing Him to do as He wished. Pharaoh’s daughter found the baby and hired its mother to care for him. In Exodus 2:9 Pharaoh’s daughter told his mother, “Take the baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.”
LESSON 4: The way of disobedience always gets worse. In this situation it resulted in terror for the crew and loss of the cargo for the merchant. There is no such thing as a victimless crime or sin.
Which way are you going? Be careful, the way of disobedience yields nothing but grief, but the way of obedience leads to all blessing.
Tough Love
We’ve come to the first chapter of Jonah and verse 4.
In one sense Jonah’s story is over. God had given His command and Jonah has said
“No.” Now Jonah must sit back and suffer the consequences as God intervenes to
alter the story. This is made clear by the contrast between the first words of
verse 3 “But Jonah,” and the first words of verse 4, “Then the LORD.”
Now God is going to act and His actions are lessons on Tough Love.
First, God send a great storm and then a great fish.
Here was a storm of unusual ferocity. It was so fierce that even the experienced
sailors on board were frightened. In Matthew chapter 8 there was another storm
and it was on the Sea of Galilee. This storm also involved experienced seamen
who were frightened by it. These men were Christ’s disciples. In the midst of
their storm they came to Him and cried out, “Lord! Save us!” To which
Jesus replied, “Why are you so afraid? Then He rose and rebuked the winds and
the sea and there was a great calm.”
Notice that the Lord who can calm the troubled waters of your life is the same
Lord who can stir them to a great storm. Why would the Lord of peace and love
stir the waters of your life? It is a feature of His love, His Tough Love. He
loves us too much to allow us to just drift away. He loves us too much to leave
us as we are. He has invested too much in us to leave us shipwreck our lives.
This storm and fish in Jonah were sent not to ruin Jonah but to rescue Jonah.
God sends storms into our lives for various reasons. But be sure of this, they
are never sent to ruin us but to perfect us and to show us some aspect of His
great heart. Even in the midst of Jonah’s great rebellion against God, God is
reaching out to Jonah.
And the same is true today. Paul wrote the Philippians “being confident of
this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until
the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6). Jonah is the Old Testament
example of that verse of Scripture.
God loves you and wants the best for you. He will do whatever it takes to bring
you to Himself and work His good work in you. He will use a storm, a fish,
whatever it takes. That is how much He loves you.
Bigots
All of us are called to be obedient to
God, and God will not allow us to walk away from that obedience. For the Apostle
Paul it took being struck on the Damascus Road. God literally knocked him off of
his horse with a blinding light. A voice from heaven asked him why he was
persecuting Him (Jesus). When Paul got up he was blind. God restored his sight
at the home of Ananias in Damascus.
Each of us has a place of obedience. For some it only takes a nudge of pressure
to gently lead us to do God’s will. For others a lightning bolt is needed to get
our attention. For Jonah it took a storm, a fish, and a gourd.
God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah fled to Tarsish and to Jonah’s mind
that was about as far away from God as he could go. Why did he flee? Maybe he
thought of the difficulties of his mission. Nineveh is described as a “great
(large) city” and he was being sent alone with a message from an
unknown God. What could one man do? But the text doesn’t say he feared the
difficulties.
Maybe he was afraid for his physical safety. God said Nineveh was a “wicked
city.” Read Nahum 3:1-4 to find out something of Nineveh’s wickedness. What
would one little preacher do against such wickedness? Again, the text doesn’t
say he feared for his safety.
What the text does say is that Jonah was a bigot (Jonah 4:2). He hated the
people of Nineveh and would rather see them in hell than in heaven. He wanted
them judged, not saved.
The commission given to us is no less demanding than Jonah’s. We’ve been
commissioned by the Risen Christ to tell the world the message of the Gospel.
You can read that commission in Matthew 28:19-20. We come across those who need
to hear that message but often we keep that message to ourselves because we
don’t like these people. Those without Christ can be very unlikable. They can be
dirty inside and out, arrogant, blasphemous, disagreeable, and immoral. They may
espouse positions that violate the Scripture, are unethical and anti-God. And we
do not like them. We forget they are the way they are because they do not know
our Savior. They need to hear the message of Jesus dying for their sin and God’s
offer of forgiveness. But too often we, the ones with the message and the
commission to tell it, flee to our “Tarsish.” Rather than reach out to the
unlovable outsider we congregate with those in our Christian circle and leave
the lost to go to hell.
Jonah’s disobedience was born out of his hatred for the lifestyle of the lost of
Nineveh. Is that our excuse for not reaching out to the lost of the “Nineveh”
where we live?
Think about it!
Great Things
In the Book of Jonah we see several great things. There
are the:
Great Commission
Great Refusal
Great Storm
Great Fish
Great Prayer
Great Deliverance
Great City
Great Revival
Great Jealousy
And above all a Great God.
In the midst of the storm it is learned that its cause is Jonah’s fleeing the
God of Israel. When all else fails to save the ship and themselves the sailors
toss Jonah overboard. In Jonah 1:17 we read, “But God provided a great fish
to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish 3 days and 3 nights.” If
this were a secular tale it might have ended here with a watery grave. But this
is the Word of God revealing the ways of God in storms and storm tossed lives.
Jonah 1:17 gives us a glimpse of the higher ways of God referred to in Isaiah
58:8-9.
Much has been written about this “great fish” trying to explain just what
kind of a fish it was. I know what kind of a fish it was; it was a “Provided
Fish.” Isn’t that what Jonah 1:17 says? This was no ordinary fish of the sea. It
was a fish provided by God, placed by God, and prepared by God for a special
task. That task was to catch Jonah when thrown overboard, swallow him to keep
him safe, and finally disgorge him on the shore. Here again is a revelation of
God’s working. God will do what He plans to do and no human or demon will stop
Him.
One of the gods worshiped by Nineveh was the fish god Dagon. When Jonah was
disgorged on the coast of Phoenicia in the sight of the local fisherman on the
shore it must have been a most startling sight. These fisherman would convey
what they saw to the people of Nineveh. No wonder Nineveh responded as it did,
here was a messenger who was seen coming out of the mouth of a fish, one of
their false gods. Here was instant validity.
The lesson? The lesson is that God is in control and His plans cannot be
thwarted. Jonah was to preach to Gentiles and his first converts appeared to be
the sailors on the boat he was on to flee from speaking to Gentiles. God
provided a fish to capture him and place him on the shore in the presence of
people who worshipped a fish.
Do things in this world seem out of control to you? Do you fear the forces of
evil have the upper hand? Does it seem that justice, righteousness and peace are
doomed to defeat? Take heart, God is still on the thrown. He is the God of
Storms; He is the Sovereign of the Universe. He cannot be defeated. As someone
once said, “I don’t know what the future holds but I know Who holds the future.”
WINGS OF THE DAWN
We have been looking at the Old Testament Book of
Jonah. Jonah is the story of a fleeing prophet and a pursuing God. In verse 3 of
chapter 1 we read, “But Jonah ran away from the LORD…” Jonah knew what we know
about the possibility of running from God. He knew, as we know, you can’t out
run God. But he tried anyway just like we do.
Jonah lived relatively late in Old Testament history, long after the psalms were
written. He had ample opportunity to know the words of 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.”
Someone has suggested that a good name for the ship Jonah was on would have been
the Wings of the Dawn. But if it had been its name would Jonah have taken note of
it? The history and experience of sin is that we allow ourselves to get into a
“zone” where no amount of evidence will move us from our course of disobedience.
When we take our Wings of the Dawn – preoccupation with a job, an attitude, a
cherished sin, or other type of disobedience – we try to sail away from God only
to find God all along the way and waiting for us at our destination.
When David used the imagery of the “wings of the dawn” he was referring to the
sun rise and the first beams of light breaking the night rushing across the sky.
Today we would say, “If I traveled at the speed of light to the far side of the
sea, when I arrive you are standing on the shore to meet me.” This was not
something David feared. On the contrary, it gave him comfort and hope that he
could not out distance God.
The story of Jonah tells us that when we flee God in disobedience He is there,
not to condemn and punish, but to bring us back to Himself and to continue the
work He began in us.
Here is another picture of our great God and His desire to have us walk with
Him. If you are running away from Him, if you are riding your Wings of the Dawn,
remember you can’t out run Him. And there is no need to. He loves you, wants
you, and will embrace you in His grace.
