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Are you a Jonah, or will you welcome others to find God?

March 7, 2010
Background Scripture: Jonah 1:1-3; 3:1-9
Devotional Reading: Matthew 21:28-32

Mention Jonah, and people immediately associate him with a whale. Unfortunately, lots of people never get any further into the story than that.

Actually, the book is not really about either a whale or “a great fish,” and being swallowed by either is not its basis. The focus is the reluctant and recalcitrant prophet, Jonah, who lived in the eighth century B.C. during the reign of King Jeroboam II. (See 2 Kings 14:25).

It is really a story of negative example: Jonah is held up to us as one whom we are not to emulate.

The Book of Jonah is unique in that, of all the 16 books of the prophets that comprise the last part of the Old Testament from Isaiah to Malachi, it is the only one based upon a narrative, rather than a collection of prophecies. But as God speaks to Jonah in this narrative, so He speaks to us.

In a sense then, this book is our story, too.

No place to hide
God has come to him with a mission: “Go at once to Nineveh. That great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me” (1:2).

Nineveh was not a Judean or Israelite city, but the capital of the great Assyrian Empire. I used to think that Jonah simply didn’t want to be a prophet, but I have come to see his reluctance and downright refusal to obey God in a different light.

If God had called him to prophesy in Israel or Judah, he may well have obeyed with enthusiasm. But it was Nineveh that was his stumbling block. These people were not his people and Jonah, obviously a narrow nationalist, hated the Assyrians.

Many of us have turned deaf ears to God’s calls and, like Jonah, tried to hide from His all-seeing eye. For some of us it may be sheer laziness or preoccupation with our own agenda. For others it may be a fear of rejection and failure.

And still others of us may hide because we really don’t want to put our well-being and our lives on the line for “a bunch of non-believers.” After all … “We are God’s chosen few, all others will be damned; There is no place in Heaven for you; we can’t have Heaven crammed.”

There is a certain human logic in Jonah’s reaction. As a Jew he expected to keep himself undefiled by any association with Gentiles – just as we are fearful of being defiled in dealing with those whom we assign to the darkness outside the City of God.

Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh, but God wanted the people of Nineveh for Himself. So, “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you’” (3:2).

Often, God’s “second word” is the same as the first word that we have not yet obeyed.

More than our tribe
This time, although reluctantly and grudgingly, Jonah did as God commanded, as much as to get God off his back as to really obey Him. So, he went to Nineveh and proclaimed: “Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:5). That part of the job he probably relished – pronouncing doom and gloom on the people he despised.

But his satisfaction was quickly ripped from him: “And the people of Nineveh believed God” and repented of their evil” (3:6). Was Jonah exultant with this turn of events? No, he was very angry: he didn’t want Nineveh to be saved!

What should Jonah – and we – have learned from all of this? First, when God has a job for you to do, there is really nowhere to hide. You may think you’re out of God’s sight, but you’re not.
Second, you may think you are among “God’s chosen few,” but His will and grace extend far beyond you and your tribe.

My dictionary, apart from defining Jonah as the Old Testament prophet, also lists a Jonah as “one whose actions bring undesirable consequences.” So, are you a Jonah?

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.

3/3/2010