You Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to Him. - Jonah 1:15-16

It is often said that the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 is one of the greatest short stories ever written. Perhaps that's true, but there are many powerful vignettes in the Bible, and the story of Jonah, while also brief, is multifaceted and of great depth. It is usually summarized as "Jonah and the Whale"; however, the whale or the great fish, while a vital element of the plot, is not the antagonist. Jesus conveys the significance of Jonah when He says that the only "sign" which will be given to the unbelieving is the "sign of Jonah". That is, as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ constitute the Gospel and the foundation of the Kingdom.

Jonah was a prophet - one who spoke for God and by God. One day he received a commission from the LORD to go to Israel's most imminently threatening enemy located at the royal city of Nineveh in Assyria. Jonah was supposed to tell the Ninevites to repent and thus avoid destruction. Since he hated the Assyrians and knew that they would destroy Israel at some point in the future, he really didn't want Nineveh to turn to God. Instead of heading for Nineveh, he obtained passage on a ship headed west from Joppa to Tarshish. This is roughly equivalent to a man in Phoenix having been told to go to San Francisco immediately booking a flight to Miami.

On the way, the ship bearing Jonah in the wrong direction encountered a massive storm. As the sailors struggled valiantly to remain afloat, Jonah slept peacefully below the deck. Finally in great distress, the crew attempted to find out the cause of their impending demise by casting lots. Jonah, by this time, had been roused and brought up among them. The lot fell upon Jonah who explained that he was indeed the cause of their dire predicament and the only solution was to cast him overboard - an action which the decent, though pagan men of the ship were reluctant to carry out.

Now it was not true that the only solution was for Jonah to be relinquished to the sea. He could have simply said that he repented and would go willingly to Nineveh on his mission. The storm would have ceased, and the ship could have returned safely to Joppa delivering Jonah to his foreordained destination. The truth was that Jonah was so hard-headed that he would rather die - and possibly take the whole crew with him - than go and preach repentance to the Assyrians. His fear was not that he would fail but that he would succeed and the city be spared judgment.

I don't know where the most ancient forefathers of my Celtic ancestors originated, but it would not surprise me in the least to find that the Scots-Irish are descended from Jonah himself. Certainly his spirit is upon us.

As evidenced by the text quoted above, pitching the disobedient preacher overboard resulted in revival. Some churches and some preachers might want to give this truth careful consideration.

Jonah fully expected to die. He was prepared to die. You might even say he was determined to die. He was certainly determined not to go to Nineveh. What he did not understand is that no one - no one ever succeeds in mocking God. It is always the mocker who is mocked. He could not anticipate being intercepted on the way down by a whale on a mission. After seventy-two hours entombed in fish guts, Jonah finally realized - as I see it - that he was not going to get away with anything, not even by death. The Lord refused to allow him to dissolve into that primordial chaos of non-existence that the sea represents. The only option for Jonah was to remain in "hell" - immobilized in a living death - or to repent and do that which he had been called to do.

Do you really think God has a problem with waterboarding?

Eventually Jonah was cast up, that is to say, hurled onto a beach in the general vicinity of Nineveh. I have heard preachers get considerable mileage out of painting the image of a bleached-out, wild-eyed prophet in really acid-washed, sea-weed-covered clothes charging through Nineveh screaming, "Repent!" Does it seem strange that they took him seriously? We should not, however, allow ourselves to be misled as to the actual basis of the convicting power of Jonah's message.

Could God not have found a more compliant prophet? Did He have to pick out the one guy who just absolutely hated the Assyrians so much that he'd rather die himself than see them spared? This would be equivalent to sending a Jew to save the Third Reich, or having a black person work to preserve the Klu Klux Klan. That alone would be good evidence that the messenger had really heard from God - or that he was genuinely and completely insane.

Still, far beyond the natural, the Lord had added to His prophet a higher dimension of testimony - one so powerful and irresistible that Jonah became a type of Christ and prophesied, not just of the need for repentance in Nineveh, but of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead. Jonah's "resurrection" from a virtual hell foreshadowed Christ's conquest of death, hell, and the grave. The power of Jonah's call for a turning around on the part of the Ninevites was underscored by his own miraculous deliverance from death. This is the power and authority by which he preached and saw an entire heathen nation humble itself in sackcloth and ashes, to cry for mercy to the True and the Living God.

In the end, Jonah was right, of course. God did hear, relent, and spare Nineveh the judgment it so richly deserved - in Jonah's eyes. He was angry, and he told the Lord as much. "I knew what kind of God You are," he said. "You're just far too merciful and compassionate. Why don't You kill me?"

God responded with a question. "Have you any right to be angry?" I don't know what Jonah said, but I can imagine there's a reason it isn't printed in the Bible.

The prophet went out into the countryside east of Nineveh, perhaps on a little hill so he'd have a good view just in case fire and brimstone did fall on the city. He built a little shelter there, determined to stay, still hoping that God would destroy his enemies. As he waited, a vine wound its way over the top of Jonah's lean-to and provided him with a bit of welcome shade from the relentless sun and scorching wind. This made Jonah happy. But a worm came along and bored its way into the vine causing it to wither and die. Once again Jonah was exposed to the heat, the blazing sun and the scorching wind which made his life miserable and left him wishing he were dead. God asked the prophet if he had a right to be angry about the loss of his vine, and Jonah responded (we're getting used to this) that not only did he have every right to be ticked off, but that he was (again) angry enough to die.

The Lord pointed out to Jonah that the whole vine thing really wasn't too big a deal. The vine sprang overnight and gave him shelter only to subsequently die overnight leaving him no worse off than he had been before. Jonah had no part in causing the vine to prosper or to die, yet its demise had thrown him into a near suicidal depression. God, on the other hand, was concerned about the destiny of tens of thousands of human beings within the walls of Nineveh. He described those He cared for as "not knowing their right hand from their left" - indicating, perhaps, children numbering 120,000. In addition, there were many animals -- also part of God's creation -- which could be viewed as innocent even if the rulers of Nineveh were wicked and deserving of judgment.

There are a number of lessons we can take from Jonah's story. One is that God is reluctant to destroy the righteous with the wicked. Jesus confirms this in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Some of us might assume that God could send a very specific plague that would only strike the wicked. The trouble, I think, is that God is not evil Himself and when He decides that evil must be unleashed in judgment there is great potential for collateral damage. This is further evidence of the existence of free will within the cosmos.

But the main point I take from Jonah's misadventures is a very personal one. Like Jonah I am reluctant at times to obey God. My disobedience does not cut me off from God's presence - not on His side. I am rather like the child who covers his eyes and thinks he is hidden from his parent. Nevertheless, like Jonah, I am inclined to stubbornness and to persist in my determination to thwart God. I know that seems crazy, but it is true - and I don't think I'm the only one. There's a certain (false) sense of power to be gained in thinking that I might be in control of something, even when it is to my own detriment. Even if it buries me in hell.

As we saw with Jonah, persisting in my rebellion does not free me, but entombs me. I become encased in a body that is not mine - which is to say, not true, and that is not under my control. My seeking after control robs me of control. This is one way to understand Romans 7:24 when Paul speaks of "this body of death". It is depicted by C.S. Lewis in the scene from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace is trapped in the body of a dragon and Aslan methodically rips the dragon body apart in order to free the boy from what amounts to a tomb of flesh.

The way of escape from this living tomb is repentance. All Jonah did, literally, was change his mind about God's plan. He did not take over his living submarine's guidance system. He did not cut his own way out of the fish's belly, fight his way to the surface, and commandeer a passing dolphin to take him to shore. He prayed and agreed that he would go in the direction that God had ordained for him. I don't need to perform great feats of power. I don't need to perform noble acts of self-sacrifice or self-abasement. All I need to do is talk to God and admit that my path has been wrong and that I am, after all, just a bit hard-headed. I need to pray and agree and obey. There is no call here for spiritual superheroes.

An equally personal secondary point can be taken from Jonah's actions after he had obeyed God and gone to Nineveh. Despite his deliverance from the body of sin, Jonah still wanted his way about things. He went out and built himself a very crude and inadequate shelter. He refused to move on with his life. He continued to believe, you might say, for the destruction of his enemies. Even knowing he had obeyed and done the right thing, Jonah was reluctant to leave the scene of his "defeat". I appreciate Jonah's presence in Scripture. This is a man with whom I can identify. I don't like to give up and move on. I think sometimes that God should look out for me even when I persist in pursuing an end that is clearly contrary to His will and intention. Like Jonah, I get angry when God tries to motivate me to "get on down the road" - physically, psychically, or spiritually. I always think that I can somehow get my way in the end.

This was God's final lesson to Jonah in the book that bears his name. There was no reason for Jonah to suffer out in the elements, to be tortured by the heat. He could have stayed in Nineveh, at least for a time, and enjoyed the hospitality of a grateful people. Or he could have gone back to wherever he had been living in relative comfort before his trip started. The Lord did not send Jonah out on the ridge to sit and nurse his grudge. If I find myself in a spiritually inconvenient and inhospitable place, if I am beset by mental suffering, depression, anxiety, anger, or fear, it might be a good idea for me to consider who put me in that place. If I did it myself, and if it is only my hostility, hatred, anger, or willfulness that keeps me there, I might be wise to get up and move instead of cursing the barrenness and unpleasantness of my habitation.

Instead of crying over dead weeds of the past, let's go find ourselves an apple tree.