Embedded Files
Jonah – Martin Mowat
Readings:- Jonah 1:1-17
A couple of weeks ago we came to the end of studying the heroes of the New Testament, and in a couple of weeks’ time we’re going to start looking at the life of one of the greatest men of faith of all time. But today we’re turning our attention to a singularly un-heroic prophet of the Old Testament.
In fairness to Jonah though, Old Testament prophets weren’t generally known for their heroism, so much as for their ability to hear and understand and relay the voice of God.
“Jonah and the whale”. A quintessential Sunday School Bible story. And who was more fascinating to us, as kids, was it Jonah, or the whale? Probably the whale, although in actual fact the Bible tells us almost nothing about it. It’s mentioned only 3 times and the only description we have of it is that it was “huge”.
What on earth, we thought, was this enormous fish that could swallow a grown man, keep him alive in its stomach for three days and nights, then spit him out, vomit him out in fact, on a beach, and without getting stuck on the beach itself?
But of course, the central character of the story isn’t the fish, and in a sense it isn’t even Jonah, the prophet, nor is it really the people of Nineveh that Jonah was sent to save, it’s God. Our God, your God, my God. Strangely too, it’s also about us, as we’ll see.
If you read the whole book in one sitting, which isn’t exactly hard as it only has 4 short chapters, a mere 48 verses in total, the first thing that strikes you is that it starts with God and Jonah having a disagreement, and then it ends with them having another disagreement. Not really good prophet behaviour, one would think.
Let’s start with the first one that we’ve just heard. It was all about a place called Nineveh which is the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It was located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and in those days it was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It was absolutely huge, so huge in fact that it took three days to walk from one side of it to the other.
It had a grizzly reputation for removing the noses and ears of its prisoners, to both mark and maim them for life. Added to that its culture was grossly immoral and included practices like temple prostitution, child sacrifice, abortion, and infanticide.
So God told Jonah to go and tell its people to repent of all this horrendous behaviour, or else get destroyed. Not an enviable task for Jonah, if you think about it. I’m not sure that I’d want to do that.
But for Jonah it wasn’t just that. He was a man of principle, and in his opinion the city thoroughly deserved to be destroyed, and under no circumstances should it be given a chance to escape. As far as he was concerned, the world would be a better place without Nineveh.
So, astonishingly, he simply refused to go.
Instead, he gathered up all his belongings and set sail for Tarshish, 2500 miles in the exact opposite direction, at the extreme western end of the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere near modern-day Gibraltar. That was the edge of the known world for him, and importantly it was as far from Nineveh as he could physically get.
Well, you’ve just heard the consequences of his actions, and unsurprisingly, from the murky innards of this sea creature, whatever it was, Jonah did pray a prayer of contrition, and also of thanks that he hadn’t been left to drown. It’s the whole second chapter of the book but it’s presented as a sort of aside, almost as if he’d recounted it at a later date to whoever wrote the book.
Interestingly though, it hadn’t been until Jonah’s life was ebbing away that he remembered the Lord and said his prayer. It doesn’t sound like a hugely sincere prayer, to be honest, although give him his due, he did finish it by saying ‘Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, “Salvation comes from the Lord.”’
And saying “Salvation comes from the Lord.” was just what he was going to have to do. Chapter 3, tells us the very first thing God says to Jonah as he’s rinsing off the fish vomit. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you”.
Jonah’s attitude to Nineveh and its wicked inhabitants hadn’t changed though, not one iota. But his attitude to God’s commands had, and this time he did as he was told. How long it took him to get there we don’t know because it would have depended on where on the Mediterranean coast the fish spat him out. It was certainly hundreds of miles, maybe thousands, and all on foot.
During those days, weeks, months of trudging eastwards, dreading the reception he was going to get, convinced, perhaps, that he too would get his nose and ears cut off, he would have been rehearsing his lines.
They weren’t complicated - ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown, forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’
Surprisingly, and to what must have been his great relief, it worked. The people listened to his warning, dressed themselves in sackcloth and declared a solemn fast. Even the king, perhaps the most powerful man on the planet, the Donald Trump of his day, even he joined in.
These were not believers, most of them probably never heard of YHWH, they were supremely powerful, but the God’s Holy Spirit was instilling them with fear.
The outcome? When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, the book of Jonah tells us, he relented and did not bring on Nineveh the destruction he had threatened.
The points that we need to take on board from the story so far are these:-
- God spared the sailors … They survived the storm, as did their ship
- God used a fish …. He can use me, he can use you
- God spared the Ninevites …. He’s in the salvation business
- But God did not change his mind when it came to what he asked Jonah to do. ….
So, the Ninevites lived happily ever after?
Not a bit of it.
Some 300 years later, having probably turned back to its immoral and wicked ways, Nineveh was besieged for 3 months and brought to its knees by a huge allied army under Babylonian leadership.
As for Jonah, you’d think he might have been suitably chastened by his experiences, but no. Chapter 4 tells us that to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, ‘Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’
But the Lord replied, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ ….
‘It is,’ he said. ‘And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.’
And as I told you at the beginning, the book closes mid-argument, the outcome of which we will never know.
In some ways the book of Jonah is so weird that you might wonder if it’s really true, but in another, it’s so, so human, it just has to be.
But let me close by asking you a question.
Do you have a little bit of Jonah somewhere inside you? Do you make judgements about terrible situations and refuse to listen to anyone else’s opinions on the subject? Or if you do listen, you’re not REALLY listening.
Do you like to make your own decisions about what action to take, turning a deaf ear to what God might be whispering, or even shouting into it?
I think that we’re all guilty of that sometimes, but I’ve got good news for us. If God could use a stroppy prophet like Jonah to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Nineveh, he can certainly use us to make an impact in Mirepoix, if we’ll only listen and then do what he’s asking us to do.
God DOES know best.
Page updated
Report abuse