Jonah – it’s not about the fish
Jonah 4:1-11
Most people know the story of Jonah. God tells him to go to Nineveh in the east – so he heads west to Tarshish, but he never arrives. Instead he is cast into the ocean during a violent storm, swallowed by a fish, regurgitated on a beach and heads off to Nineveh where there is a great revival.
It is one of the great success stories of the bible – if it happened here, you wouldn't be able to move for TV cameras. But Jonah was not happy – he was miserable:
Read Jonah 4:1-11
This is the bit you don't teach in Sunday school, it is almost impossible to get inside Jonah's mind at this point... what is wrong with him? Hard as it may be, we are going to have to get inside his head to answer that question.
Sitz im leben
Jonah lived almost 750 years before Jesus, he was an Israelite prophet at the court of King Jereboam II (2 Kings 14:25). Jonah's Israel was an unhappy little place:
- Years of godless leadership had made it vulnerable to famine and attack
- Like Belgium in World War 1 and 2, Israel was the country everyone invaded if they wanted to attack somewhere else.
Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Israel was invaded again, and everyone knew who it would be, Egypt to the south or Assyria to the east. And everybody hates a superpower; today it is the USA, in Jonah's day it was Assyria and the capital of Assyria was Nineveh.
A tourist in Nineveh would have marvelled at the brilliant artwork on the palace walls, beautifully detailed action sequences of Assyrian emperors in battle. There's even one, where the captives are being skinned alive – it gets worse, but this is a family service and we have to think about the tiny tots. But it is all there, and it was in vivid colour!
(This is why we don't do this bit of Jonah with the Sunday school – but something tells me that the kids would enjoy this stuff far more than the bit about the fish! Whatever Jonah is about, it’s not about the fish)
That is why Jonah did not want to go... he says so himself (2-3).
The all-to-gracious God
Can you think of anyone you do not want to get into heaven? That 'uncle' who abused you perhaps? Or the teacher who humiliated you all those years ago? The Japanese who ran the POW camps, or my favourite – the men and women who ran the Nazi death camps. Now what if God sent you to explain the gospel to that person... he spoke directly to you and told you to go?
Now, you are not daft, you know he is lining up to forgive; to be his gracious self. Are you starting to get inside Jonah's head... would you go, really? Some of us are thinking, “Well of course!” But that is because we don't understand; others of us are thinking, “No, no way, I would run in the opposite direction!” Now it’s you folks that are are inside Jonah's head! You know how he felt.
At the heart of Jonah's problem is a problem with God's heart. You see this when Jonah quotes Exodus 34 (Jonah 4:2). Jonah is a prophet of God, but he doesn’t actually like the all-too-gracious God he is sent to proclaim.
Jonah was a prophet active in God's service but completely out of touch with the heartbeat of God.
- God was compassionate, Jonah wanted vengeance
- God was rejoicing over Nineveh, Jonah was outraged
- God loves the human race, but like some Christians I know, Jonah loved his garden more than he loved people (4:6-9)
He was (a bit like the animal rights movement today) more bothered about the plant than he was about the human beings in Nineveh.
Jonah is an exaggerated version of the way I behave – I am a Christian pastor and I go through times when I am completely out of touch with the heartbeat of God.
How far out of touch are you? Let's find out... Where is your Nineveh?
Here is a good question... where is Nineveh for you?
- The kids on the street in Houghton?
- The skanky families on the council estates in Sunderland?
- Your colleagues at work, you just couldn't care less what happens to them!
You know... you don't need me to tell you.
When I left Sunderland in 1973 to go to university I was determined never to return. I had applied for a place at Exeter university because it was as far away from Sunderland as I could get. Exeter didn't want me; Swansea did, and that was far enough away for me. Cathie (my wife) will tell you this; when we were first asked to come and work in Houghton le Spring, we turned the offer down. Six months later, we realised that Sunderland was my Nineveh, and I just had to go. When we started detailed planning for Bethany City Church in Sunderland Margaret Vardy stood up in a meeting and said - “You have to do it... you should lead the plant” - I felt just like Jonah, and I knew deep down inside me that she was right.
So here's another question, the one God asked Jonah (4:10-11) – what do you really care about?
If it is something other than the people in your Nineveh... I am sorry but you and I are going to have to address our warped sense of priorities!