The Unwilling Prophet
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD (Jonah 1:1-3).
Everything about the book of Jonah is designed to surprise us. We are first surprised to find that God would send one of His prophets outside of Israel to a pagan nation. God had sent all of the prophets to Israel because they were the chosen people who were in a covenant with God. All of the other nations worshiped other gods. So we are surprised by God’s concern for Nineveh. Furthermore, the city of Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, which was the enemy of both Israel and Judah. So God was sending Jonah to speak to pagans who worshiped other gods and who were the enemies of God’s chosen nation! Secondly, we are surprised by Jonah’s foolhardy attempt to run away from God. Not only was this a blatant act of disobedience to a direct command from God, it is also a futile effort. No one can really run and hide from God. But Jonah tried it nonetheless. These surprises are only the first few verses of the book! The surprises do not stop coming. We are surprised throughout the book by the piety of pagan peoples and their responses to God, especially when compared to the prophet Jonah’s stubbornness. Of course, Jonah is mostly remembered for spending time in the belly of a great fish. But the real surprise is that God gave Jonah a second chance, the very thing God was also giving to the city of Nineveh! The biggest surprise was perhaps reserved for Jonah himself. After walking through the city of Nineveh and preaching a very stark message of doom, Jonah sat down outside the city presuming to watch God destroy it. This is what Jonah actually wanted to see. Yet, the people of Nineveh repented and God spared the city! Surprisingly, this made the prophet Jonah very angry, though he had no right to feel that way.
God shows us in the book of Jonah that, while He elected Israel for a special purpose, He also has care for the rest of the nations of the world. Jonah was so angry after preaching in Nineveh because he wanted God to destroy the enemies of his people. Perhaps Jonah had forgotten all of the times God had spared the people of Israel. God had chosen to make a special covenant with Israel because He would use them to reveal Himself to the rest of the world. God’s promise to Abraham was to bless the whole world through Abraham’s family (Genesis 12.1-3). Ultimately the blessing would come in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the Seed of Abraham (Galatians 3.16). God had a plan that included the entire world and so it should not surprise us that God would have care for the city of Nineveh. Israel’s privilege was for service to God and the accomplishment of His purpose. This purpose included the blessing of the nations of the world. The people of Israel would be the Divine Conduit through which this blessing would flow out to the world. Apparently, if Jonah knew this at all, he had forgotten why God had chosen Israel. The plan of God had not progressed to the point we now see in Christ. So we cannot be too hard on Jonah and hold him to our standards today. We have more revelation than he concerning God’s purpose. But Jonah should have known enough about God not to be so surprised or offended by His compassion.
Jonah’s stubborn unwillingness to go to Nineveh reveals his lack of compassion for them as well as his ignorance of God. I do not want to speak evil of the Lord’s prophet. Yet I cannot excuse Jonah’s behavior. Jonah surely knew from the Law that God had often had compassion for Israel when they sinned again Him and did not treat them according to how their sins deserved. But Jonah was completely unwilling to extend this same compassion to the people of Nineveh. I cannot be too hard on Jonah for this attitude because I have had this same attitude every time I have harbored bitterness in my heart toward someone. When someone else sins, especially if they sin against me, I am quick to become angry, to want revenge, and to desire to see that person punished by God. This is the most natural human response, seen in Jonah and in my own heart. But the book of Jonah is teaching us that this response is not appropriate for those who have known and even personally experienced the compassion and forgiveness of God. Jesus even went so far as to say that if we are unwilling to forgive those who sin against us, God will withhold forgiveness from us (See Matthew 6.14-15). This is a serious warning to us all! Those who know the compassion of God cannot be unwilling to see others enjoy this same compassion.
As I have already mentioned, in the account of Jonah we are also surprised by the response of pagan people to God. Jonah seems to have a stubborn and rebellious spirit toward God. He refused to obey God until he has no other option. Yet, the pagan people that Jonah encounters seem ready and willing to listen to God and do what he says! When Jonah is on the boat, foolishly trying to get away from God, the sailors are much more devout than Jonah is:
So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish” (Jonah 1:6).
Now Jonah knew why the storm had arisen. When he told the sailors that they must throw him overboard to save themselves the men at first refused to do so, seeking to spare Jonah’s life! This was ironic considering that Jonah himself did not seem to care if the entire city of Nineveh was destroyed. Upon finally arriving at the city of Nineveh, Jonah did his duty and preached to the people:
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them (Jonah 3:3-5).
I have to ask why, if the city of Nineveh took three days to cross, why Jonah only spent one day preaching? Clearly, Jonah still did not want to be there and he did not want to preach to the city of Nineveh and he extended as little effort as possible, not even giving much explanation for the impending doom of the city. Amazingly, the king himself heard about Jonah’s preaching and alerted the rest of the city:
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it (Jonah 3:6-10).
Again, we are amazed that this pagan king and all of his subjects there in the city of Nineveh believed Jonah’s preaching and repented before God! There are people we think will never repent and turn to God. We may avoid these people, thinking that we should not waste out time on them. We may even dislike them intensely. Yet these may be some people who have simply not heard the Word of the Lord and may be ready and willing to believe and turn to God!
Jonah teaches us that God must first prepare His messengers so that they can see things from His perspective. When we turn to the pages of the New Testament Scriptures, we see Jesus surprising his disciples by preaching in Samaria, even speaking to a sinful woman at Jacob’s Well (See John 4). The Samaritans were hated by the Jews, being a mixed race with a heretical worship and theology. Jesus was willingly doing what Jonah had refused to do. And Jesus was preparing His disciples for their mission, not only to Samaria, but to the ends of the earth. After Jesus had risen and ascended, it was time for the Gospel to go to the Gentiles. Much like Jonah had been with the city of Nineveh, the early Christians were not eager to preach to Gentiles. But God was preparing to open the door to the Gentiles, and He was preparing both the messenger and the hearer. A gentile man named Cornelius had received an angelic visitation, telling him to send for a man named Simon Peter. Meanwhile, God also gave a vision to the Apostle Peter. When the reluctant messenger was finally prepared, and Peter stood in Cornelius’ house, Peter finally saw the truth that had previously escaped him:
So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).
Peter then preached the Gospel to the first Gentile hearers, something that had long been promised by God and prefigured in the story of Jonah. This realization that Peter had must also come over anyone who might be an unwilling participant in God’s mission to the world.
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