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| Sperm whale (Physeter microcephalus) illustration by Uko Gorter |
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.
Whatever Jonah’s beef was with the Assyrians (no one really knows), there was no legitimate excuse to refrain or refuse to present the message of repentance to others for personal or impersonal reasons. Jonah taking off for Tarshish was like telling God, “You got the wrong guy; get someone else.”
God doesn’t make miscalculations on anything or anyone. “Get
someone else” was not an option for Yahweh. Jonah apparently vowed before Him
in Jerusalem during the commission (cf. Jon 2:9); Yahweh purposed to hold Jonah
to it. In other words, Jonah will do it, but as we all know, he didn’t like it,
to his detriment.
This reminds me of an article I wrote in Blue Moon
Devotionals about STOP signs being an acronym (the sign behind the sign!)
for Send The Other Person. It was a contrast to
Isaiah’s, Here am I. Send
me (Isa 6:8)! Now I am reminded by every STOP sign that I come across to question
myself if I am inadvertently or intentionally throwing a STOP in His will for
my life for submission is not automatic; it is a daily choice.
That octagonal sign
for me, spiritually speaking, is an outright all-in-go sign – “Here am I. Send
me.” Regardless of whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever it is, just do it. The question of “why” is no longer a factor.
I didn’t jump into M-G because I had nothing else to do. When my
wife and I received a vision from God to divinely legitimize a turn in my mission,
we would tell our Christian friends about it, but the betraying facial gestures
of incredulity told us what they really thought about that!
Admittedly, this is rare. I have a friend after receiving his doctorate, he spent forty years in church ministry and testified to me that he had never received a vision. So, I understand the skepticism. If I was on their end of it, I probably would be skeptical, too! What lends some kind of authenticity to our claim is that the fruit of it is Word-centric. Regardless, whether people believe my wife and I are crazy (well, maybe just a little), we know what happened that Sunday morning, and it does not conflict with Scripture, and M-G is rolling along.
To be very clear here, I am primarily Word-driven; we all should be, but my wife and I didn’t ask for this vision, it
was given by the grace of God to her first and a short time later to me to close the deal on the decision to move forward,
and this is in no way suggesting believers should have a vision from God before obeying God’s
Word. I was already involved with M-G. So, I was already obedient to His leading; it was in the next turn in my life that I needed direction and approval. The vision was that stamp of approval.
In the early stages prior to M-G, I had protested to Yahweh that there are people far
more equipped than I to do this, but that fell on deaf ears. I know that I
know this endeavor is sanctioned by God. It has the feel of eternity all over it.
I am not beholden to any theological or ecclesiastical organization, but that should not be construed to mean that I am a free-bird or have contempt of such structures. I am keenly aware of Jas 3:1, and I have a fear of saying incorrect things about God. I operate under the principle of freely given freely give. I report the
Scriptures; you decide (Jn 7:17; Acts 17:11).
Truly, my only desire here is to
promote the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ in the life of a believer.
Jonah attempted to put a STOP on Yahweh’s will for him in going to foreign soil to preach repentance, anachronistically speaking; we all know how effective Jonah catching a boat to Tarshish was.
Getting back to the will of God, this is why we are
instructed to pray according to Jesus’ pattern of prayer in Mt 6:10,
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.
My obedience to executing M-G was nothing like that verse above!
But God graced me through it. There is coming a time when the will of God will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. This does not preclude us in striving to do
God’s will in our lives as His will is done in heaven right now!
How is God’s will being carried out in heaven? We are given
insight by the angels. It is done immediately and completely. God’s will is to
be our will in the here and now as it will be in glory; that’s the objective
anyway. The challenges we are confronted with are the systemic resistance of the world system, the flesh, and the devil. This was true during Jonah’s day.
We have been working up to this climax in chapter four for a
while in our series. “Some Observations? Yeah, right!” As my
brother would say, “Trudat.” We barely scored the surface of Jonah; so, yeah, “some
observations” would be an accurate description of my approach to Jonah. I leave
the heavy lifting to the scholars.
The angelic score is intense, loud, and glorious with alleluias
in heaven over each Assyrian coming to faith in God. Was it not Jesus who said,
There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one
sinner who repents (Luke
15:10)?
Well, we got a bunch of Assyrians coming to Yahweh out of
Nineveh! What a difference Yahweh makes in the life of those who come to Him in
faith, yes! The angels would be excited over a son of Adam coming to salvation
for they know right well what awaits unbelievers who step out into eternity
without Yahweh!
On a personal note concerning salvation, the greatest decision I
had ever made in my life was accepting Jesus Christ as my personal sin-bearer.
He paid the penalty for sin, which is eternal separation from God, by His shed
blood on that wicked-wood on Calvary. Salvation addresses the question of who
is going to pay for the penalty of our sin?
Should you elect to pay on your sin debt yourself, it will take you
an eternity in the lake of fire to pay for it! In other words, you will never
satisfy or propitiate that debt for sin before God Almighty. The only Sacrifice
that satisfied the just and holy demand of God for sin was the death of His
Son, Jesus (1 Jn 2:2; 4:10).
Healing is in His blood, applied by faith alone. The question I ask of you, my dear reader, is this, “Are you satisfied with the
sacrifice that satisfied God?” If you are trying to be good to make it to
heaven without Jesus, you will never satisfy God through your efforts, never.
Moving
on, do we find Jonah high-fiving Yahweh and praising Him with the people’s
response to his message? Unfortunately, we read instead in Jon 4:1,
But
it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.
Jonah
was madder than a hornet! This wasn’t just general anger over the spiritual change taking place in Nineveh. This anger was focused on Yahweh (cf. Jon
4:2). Jonah probably reasoned that if he had not been forced to preach to Nineveh (Uh, he is a prophet of
Yahweh, and he did make a vow?), what was taking place before his very eyes would
not have occurred; that would be an assumption.
There is no doubt that he wanted God to destroy the Assyrians without his
involvement, no message of opportunity, only the message of destruction. By the
look of things, Yahweh is not going to destroy the Ninevites, and Jonah is
angry and sick to his gut over it.
Yes, their wickedness was heinous and egregious, but it was not fatal unless they went beyond the forty days without a change of heart! There was a window of opportunity during that period for grace, mercy, and love to do its work during that period of time! Here we witness in Jonah what He
knew about Yahweh, and what we would expect from a God who is immutable and
absolutely reliable: gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and One who relents from doing
harm.
I
get so weary of so-called Christians and ignorant believers pinning the
label on God in the Old Testament as GOWO: “God of Wrath Only;” don’t you? Nothing
could be further from the truth!
The only anger we see here in Jonah is not coming from the “GOWO” but from Jonah! You
have to wonder if Jonah had anger issues outside of dealing with the Assyrians.
None of these prophets of God were perfect and neither are any of us. Before closing out this segment, I
wanted you to take a look at this chart on Jonah’s pronouns.
I
was going to qualify all of the pronouns of Jonah as either positive or negative, for instance, I fear the LORD (Jon 1:9b). If Jonah
feared Yahweh, why was he running from His will that led up to putting
lives in jeopardy? It just hit me as all wrong. I would have characterized that
pronoun as (-). However, I thought better of it, leaving it up to the reader to
decide. In fairness to Jonah, I was impressed with the three me’s in Jon 1:12 and
would have rated them (+).
Note the increase in the number of pronouns while in the whale, and contrast that with zero references to himself while focused on his vow in Nineveh. Jonah was a very capable prophet when faithfully executing his office as a prophet of the LORD (2 Kgs 14:25; Jon 3:5, 10). He did a fantastic job of disseminating the ominous message to the inhabitants of Nineveh. The problem that plagued him as a prophet was that he disagreed with his Boss! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was wrong with this picture since his Boss was the Almighty! <><
Note the increase in the number of pronouns while in the whale, and contrast that with zero references to himself while focused on his vow in Nineveh. Jonah was a very capable prophet when faithfully executing his office as a prophet of the LORD (2 Kgs 14:25; Jon 3:5, 10). He did a fantastic job of disseminating the ominous message to the inhabitants of Nineveh. The problem that plagued him as a prophet was that he disagreed with his Boss! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was wrong with this picture since his Boss was the Almighty! <><
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