1 Kings 19

Discussion Questions

1. Why does it seem that we are often most vulnerable—spiritually, emotionally, mentally—after a time of success?
2. Have you ever felt crushed in spirit, where you were dealing with fear, isolation & discouragement similar to Elijah in this passage? Did you experience an awareness of God’s provision during this time?
3. What is the significance of God speaking to Elijah in a gentle whisper—rather than through the powerful wind, earthquake or fire?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and we have some extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high and somebody will drop one off at your row or your aisle along the way. There’s also a QR code up there on the screen, and if you would like to grab the notes and quotes ahead of time, you can do that.

We’re continuing in our series on the Minor Prophets, a series that we call “This God of our Salvation.” We’re focusing in on Him through these last 12 books, these 12 minor prophets as they’re called. They’re not minor in the sense of insignificant, they’re just minor in the sense of the volume of the size of their writing. It’s smaller.  But they’re very, very important, very significant, and I’m sure you are familiar with the one that we’ll be studying today. I’m going to call this “The Wideness in God’s Mercy” as we take a look at the story of Jonah. How many of you heard the story of Jonah when you were a kid growing up in Sunday school, you saw the flannelgraph? Anybody remember flannel graphs at all?

Oh yeah, good. We need to go back to that. That’s like something that could be so old that it’s cool again. I don’t know. But you put a little thing up there, a little cut-out felt thing and it sticks to whatever that backdrop is, the fabric or the fuzz or whatever it is, and it’s just awesome. I remember, I think her name was Sarah Compton, who was my Sunday school teacher when I was a little guy, and I remember her telling the story. Of course, the answer was always Jesus to every question that was ever asked. It was a picture of a whale, “What’s this whale’s name?” “Jesus.” Okay. All the stories just kind of came to life in front of us because of flannelgraphs. Now, I think Veggie Tales even has a movie on Jonah and everything. So, you got way more than I had when I was growing up.

But this is still a really important story, an important book of the Old Testament. I hope that you can, like me, as you approach reading it once again and looking at the story once again, set aside any kind of indifference that’s bred from your familiarity with this particular text. So, we’re going to look at the wideness in God’s mercy as we read through Jonah. I’m going to give you in advance an overview of the book. It’s only four short chapters. The whole book is 48 verses in our English Bibles. And so, it’s really a small book, but Chapter 1 is really a story of Jonah running from God. Chapter 2 is the story of Jonah crying out to God. Chapter 3 is a story of Jonah reluctantly obeying God. Raise your hand if you’ve ever reluctant. No, you don’t have to. But you ever reluctantly obeyed God? I think you probably have if you are being honest.

Chapter 4 is really a story of Jonah questioning God and then God questioning Jonah, which I find fascinating. I’ll look forward to that study next week. Let me just pray for us and then we’ll get right to reading the first two chapters: Lord, thank You for Your Word that it is living and active. Thank You, Lord, for the fact that You even spoke into reality like this, how cold and silent our world would be without Your voice echoing throughout eternity. And we thank You for the timelessness of Your truths that we find even in 3,000-year-old stories or accounts. Maybe, that’s a better way to say it. We thank You for the sharpness and the clarity that’s here. We pray, Lord, as we read, that You will renew and refresh our love for You. There’s so much to learn here and Holy Spirit, please come speak to us. Give us a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.
So, let’s read the first two chapters. I always like to give you a little something to do other than just listen to the talking head up front that’s reading. Some of you may need that like I do. I’m a short attention span guy. But you’re going to see the fish is going to be mentioned only four times in the entire book. You’re going to see that the city called Nineveh, or the term “the city,” nine times. You’re going to see Jonah, the prophet, is mentioned 18 times. But you’re going to see that the Lord or God, the title God, in all four caps, that’s a translation of His personal name, Yahweh, Jehovah. He revealed that personal name to a guy named Moses many, many, many years ago in the book of Exodus. We read about that. But LORD is Jehovah, and God is a title. There are other words and other title names for God as well in the Old Testament, but here in this one we’ll see LORD or God 38 times in 48 verses.

So, what’s the story about? That fish gets four mentions. The story is about God’s dealings with His prophet, one of His people. And so, I sit up straight myself. I’m not a prophet; I am not a son of a prophet, and I work for a non-profit organization. (This is all stolen from Don Carson. I give him all the credit in the world for that.) But I find myself in a position where, usually, when you read a story, you kind of identify with the protagonist, the main character. And it seems like for most surface readings, this is a book called Jonah, about a guy named Jonah. And it is in a way, but it’s really about God and His dealings with Jonah and their interactions. So, keep all of that in mind as we open the book called Jonah.
His name means “dove” by the way, which I think is interesting. He probably lived somewhere in the 8th century B.C. around that time in the Northern Kingdom, the 13th king out of 20 was a guy named Jeroboam II. He did some good things, but none of the kings in the Northern Kingdom ever come off looking very good at all. And this was the time that Jonah was likely alive and operating. We don’t have that kind of full detail. A lot of this we have to triangulate, and he’s mentioned in 2 Kings 14. So those of you that were down in our class on 2 Kings, we have a class that meets at the nine o’clock hour, so none of you probably, but there was that class and that class is about to finish up its study of 2 Kings.

Jonah was the son of Amittai who we read about in verse 1 here, that guy, the exact same guy mentioned the exact same way in 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 25, here it is. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise. Go to Nineveh the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me’.” We could camp out right here in these two verses for a while. There’s a lot here, just in verse 2. There are four points I could make about what is it God says, and in a moment maybe I’ll just do that real quickly. But there’s a lot in these first two verses. Here’s a God who speaks, not just a battery, sort of the hum of the universe, but here’s a God who speaks speaking, and speaking to an individual, and a very specific individual that we can sort of triangulate with other Scriptures. And actually, a real person would be the sort of way I would say that and not just a fictional person.

There’s a name of a real city, Nineveh, and we’ll talk about that in a minute as well, but this is a city that actually existed. Critics of the Bible for years and years and years when there had been no discovery of Nineveh, the ancient city, critics of the Bible say, “Ah, it’s just making up names. It’s just making up places and all that sort of thing.” Until sure enough, somebody’s digging around in the dust over there in Iraq, near Mosul, and right across the river from Mosul, a guy digging around in the dust finds Nineveh. That’s an amazing archeological find. You can go online and check it out if you’d like to. But that happens. All of that’s going on. And here’s what we get in verse three.

So, here’s the Lord speaking, here’s the Lord calling him to go to Nineveh. That’s not an Israeli town. That’s a great city as God puts it here. It’s probably in that time may have been the largest and most powerful kingdom, the Assyrian kingdom. It’s the capital of Assyria. Assyria will literally dismantle the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC. So, a few years later that’s coming. Right now, I think we’re probably earlier on in the 8th century BC, and it may be like 790 or something like that BC. The numbers go up when you’re in BC. As the further you go back, the numbers go up.

It says, “But Jonah,” and that’s a contrast there, “But Jonah,” here’s what God says, “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa,” real place, “found a ship which was going to Tarshish.” Far as we can tell, and we can’t tell where everything is that’s mentioned in the Bible, Tarshish, a lot of Bible scholars think this is probably on the coast of Spain. That may be the case. “But he goes down to Joppa,” a real place, we’ve been there, those of us who have traveled over to Israel before, “found a ship that was going to Tarshish, paid the fare…” So, Jonah is working really hard. He’s going to even pay money, “And went down into that ship to go with them to Tarshish.” And then he’s very careful to tell us, “…away from the presence of the Lord.” That’s the second time that’s said in verse three. It’s about getting away from God, getting away from what God wants him to do.

“The Lord,” verse four, “hurled.” I like this. “The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.” Between verses 3 and 4, there may have been a day or two that passed, but the next important thing that happens, we’re told, is that the Lord “hurled.” You just kind of imagine that. He threw the wind out on the sea. And there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break for Jonah.

Most of you know the story. This will be a storm of correction. We read about storms throughout the Bible. In the New Testament, Jesus and His disciples in Mark, Chapter 4, they go through a stormy sea incident and that’s a storm of perfection. Jesus perfecting their faith. Where were they when they went out on the boat in the stormy sea? They were right where Jesus told them to be. It was Jesus’ idea to cross the sea of Galilee that night. So, they were doing what Jesus told them to do. They were right where Jesus wanted them to be. And in spite of that, up comes a storm, which I believe Jesus threw upon the sea of Galilee. But it was a storm of perfection, perfecting their faith because they, at the end of that storm, they asked the question, “Who is this that even the wind in the waves obey Him?”

And that’s exactly what Jesus wanted them to realize, that He, in their boat, was greater than the storm itself. And so here though, I think this is a storm of correction, not perfection. “And the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea, so the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid, and every man cried to his god.” These are likely pagan sailors, not Jewish sailors. These are likely pagans from Joppa down there. Each one cried out to his god, meaning each of them may have had a different little G god, a god of the storm, a god of the sea, a god of the moon, a god of the stars, a god of the sea, or the sun rather. Any number of different sorts of nature deities, and they’re all crying out to each one of them hoping some way to appease their little G god.

“They threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.” In other words, they’re literally throwing away thousands, maybe millions of dollars back then to what would be parallel for us, of gear. That’s the whole reason for them being out on this journey at all. I mean, Jonah’s just a tiny little passenger. They’ve got all this gear and equipment that they’re taking somewhere, these goods for market or whatever, and they just start dumping it overboard, right? The storm is so difficult, and they see their lives passing before their eyes. To lighten the load, they throw over all that stuff. “But Jonah had gone down below in the hold of the ship, lain down, and fallen sound asleep.” Isn’t that interesting?
What a contrast between Jesus who was sound asleep in the storm of perfection. Here’s Jonah who sound asleep during the storm of correction. Yeah. The captain approached him. “Isn’t there one more guy, isn’t there one more little G god that we can appeal to? Where is that dude, he paid us the fare. Let’s go find him,” right? He approached Jonah and said, “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. [Your little G god] Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.” In other words, “Our gods don’t appear to be concerned about us. They’re not doing anything or can’t do anything. Maybe yours can.” Still thinking in terms of little G god.

And then verse 7, which is so cool. “Each man said to his mate,” and I like that that word is in our Old Testament. It just sounds so pirate-like, doesn’t it? “Hello, matey!” Just puts me right out there in the old… I want my pirate clothes and my eye patch and that sort of thing, matey! “Each man said to his mate, ‘Come, let us cast lots so we may learn on who’s account this calamity has struck us’.” They just really thought in terms of karma, didn’t they? “So they cast lots and the lot fell to Jonah. And they said to him, ‘Tell us now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?’” All these identity questions. And they think that the answer is going to be to find out some answer to some identity questions. Does that sound like a problem we might have in our own day and time?

He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” Evidently, not enough to obey Him. He’s so used to saying it. He’s so used to the religious rhetoric. It doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. Certainly, doesn’t mean obey Him. I don’t want to get that way. I hope you don’t get that way. I hope we don’t get that way as a church. “I’m a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God. And that’s all capital letters, LORD, that’s Yahweh. “I fear Yahweh God of heaven who made the sea,” the one that we’re about to die on, the one that the storm is raging on. He’s actually the one that made this sea that we’re out on. “…And the dry land” as well, by the way.

“Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, ‘How could you do this?’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Lord because he had told them.” In other words, “How could you run from your own God? And look what’s happening. Your God is really angry because you’ve run from Him.” “And they said to him, ‘What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?’ – for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.” In other words, the wind was gusting before, but now it’s really, really blustery. And the ship is being tossed and the water is filling it up and they’re seeing their lives pass before them. “He said to them, ‘Pick me up, throw me in the sea, then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you.’”

I would’ve said something different. I would’ve said, “Hey, I think Nineveh is north, northeast of here. Would anyone mind if we change course?” No. Jonah would rather die than go to Nineveh. He’d rather die. There’s probably a lot of different reasons but notice the collateral damage that’s being done as a result of one person’s disobedience to God. There’s fear in these people’s hearts. They’re seeing their life pass before them. There’s financial ruin for them because they threw the entire cargo overboard, and yet God is still at work.

Watch this. This is so amazing. “However,” how do they respond to him when he says all of this? “Throw me overboard. Go on, do it. That’s what we need to do. And then the sea will become…” He begs a promise. “The sea will become calm for you.” Here’s this disobedient prophet, this prodigal prophet, this petulant prophet running away from God. “I know this has happened because of me, so toss me.” “However, the men rowed desperately to return to land, but they could not.” They couldn’t do what? They couldn’t return to land. So “the sea was becoming even stormier against them,” and that’s just so fascinating to me. “Then…” And there’s always a little change we see. “But or then,” okay?

“Then they called on…” What’s it saying right there? “The LORD.” Is it all caps? Yeah. And they’re no longer calling on their little G deity, little nature deities. They’ve abandoned them. Why? Because their little G gods have abandoned them. And actually, their little G gods were not gods at all. But they now are calling on Jonah’s God, Yahweh, and they called on Yahweh and they said, “We earnestly pray, oh Yahweh, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us. For you, oh, Yahweh have done as you have pleased.”

They’re Calvinists. These guys are Calvinists before there was even a John Calvin. That’s amazing. “You’re sovereign, You are going to have Your will, Your way, Your plans, Your purposes will be accomplished.” That’s awesome. Verse15. “So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging.” Isn’t that just remarkable? Exactly as Jonah, the prophet of Yahweh, had said it would be. And God, who’s the one controlling the storm in the sea, actually went on ahead and stopped the storm right then and there. Fascinating. And then I love verses 16 and 17, “Then the men,” these pagan men, these pagan men that were just doing their everyday jobs, they were just out to sea, and they had just recently been praying to their little G gods, their pagan deities all the time, and all of a sudden the intruding into their lives comes this storm. This storm hurled out onto the sea by this God they’ve never heard of and didn’t believe in.

And now they find out a little bit about him and they see what happens. “Then the men feared Yahweh greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and they made vows.” There’s a three-point sermon in verse 16 just all by itself. What kind of an impact could you and I have if we just followed God’s will and God’s call and God’s commission on our lives when He sends us out to speak, to live out the Gospel, to be the people of God in front of other people who are suffering, who are hurting, who are afraid, who are all caught up and tangled up in identity issues? What would happen if we actually opened our mouths and spoke the truth, spoke the Gospel in a loving way to these people?

Verse 17, “Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.” It’s that verse right there, verse 17 is the one that gives a whole lot of people a whole lot of trouble about this entire story. The first time you heard some resistance to the story, somebody said, “There’s no fish big enough to swallow a man. That’s impossible.” And so now they’re kind of, “It must just be a parable or something like that. It couldn’t really be historical narrative. It’s got to be fictional parable.”

Look, whatever kind of literature this is, the first thing I can tell you is that you go online and look. I did. There are fish big enough to swallow a full-grown human person. Great white sharks, sperm whales, and there may be more. Has it ever happened? You go online and research that yourself. But the point is that I don’t think this story’s about the fish, so I’m just going to stop talking about that. You can spend all the time you want on it, but fish only gets four mentions, so I’m not going to stop a lot here on that. This is said so beautifully and so plainly in verse 17, “The Lord, Yahweh, appoints a great fish to swallow Jonah.” It’s like, “Hey, great white shark. I want you to go to this nautical location, 40 miles north, 80 miles south. And there’s going to be a boat there. No, as a matter of fact, the boat’s long gone. There’s going to be a guy who’s been drowning in the water there for, how many hours I don’t know, during the middle of this big storm and just open your mouth and swallow him.”

This is fantastic, and fantastical to some people to the point of almost they can’t believe it because they don’t believe in supernatural things that could happen. But I got past that a long time ago when I started believing Genesis 1:1 that says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now a lot of people will say, “Oh yeah, I believe there’s a God, that God exists,” but they believe in a toothless God. A lot of people say, “Yeah, I believe in God. And I believe we’re created not just the random co-location of atoms and chemicals. We are actually created, designed and created by some kind of God.” And the beauty of the world around us at least suggests some kind of love for order and design. And so there must be a designer. And yet when it comes down to something like this, this gives them a problem.

It doesn’t give me a problem. I believe in Genesis 1:1. I can believe Jesus walked on the water. I can believe Jesus got up out of the tomb. I can believe Jesus and His Father, God the Father from heaven can say, “You fish over there, swallow that dude.” And this is what happens. He spends three nights and three days in the belly of the fish. See, I actually find that harder to believe than that a fish could be big enough to swallow a human person. Big enough to swallow them is one thing, but big enough for him to set up camp for three nights and three days. How do you exist? And what was that like? No windows, no air conditioning, no cable TV. What was that like? I’d like an upgrade. Can I use my points on this to get an upgrade on this particular housing thing? No, you can’t because the Lord is doing something in Jonah’s life, and He’s using another part of His creation, this fish, to do it.

Jonah prayed to the LORD. “Oh, so now it’s time to pray. Oh, you mean that thing the pagans did earlier on in the story, earlier on in the storm.” Now it’s time for Jonah to… For how many hours into the belly of the whale or fish, how many days of the three days into the belly of the fish before Jonah goes, “Maybe it’s time to pray.” Are you ever like that? Do you ever find yourself in a pickle in a little situation, a little difficulty and then all of a sudden, the light goes on and you go, “Maybe I should pray. Maybe it’s time to actually go before God here”?

It kind of happens in our world when things go wrong in our world. And for two weeks after every disaster, churches see an uptick in attendance. “Maybe we ought to return to God. Maybe we ought to return to the one that made us, seek the person who wants to redeem us in some way.” So, he does pray. And read this prayer. Just look at this prayer with me. I’ll go through it fairly quickly, but it’s an honest prayer. It also reveals, I think, some of his own confusion in all things, but I think it’s honest and I really do appreciate that.

He’s praying out of his affliction, not out of his affection for God. There is a difference. Here’s the great news though. Our God, the God of the Bible, will hear both kinds of prayers, okay? So, if you’re here today and you just can’t even find yourself loving God, if you’re in the middle of some kind of storm or in the middle of some kind of stomach full of bile and all kinds of who knows what; it’s just not going well for you. And if it took you two days of the three days to get to praying, here’s what happened. “Jonah prayed to the LORD God from the stomach of the fish.” By the way, the Lord can hear your prayer no matter where you are. It wasn’t one of those things where God’s trying to hear it, and because he’s inside of fish… It’s not like that. No.

“I called out in my distress to the LORD, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The current…” Notice he didn’t say, “The sailors cast me in.” He knows God has been in charge. He’s admitting it now, right? “You cast me into the deep, the heart of the sea and the current engulfed me and the breakers and billows passed over me. So, I said, ‘I’ve been expelled from Your sight.’” In other words, “My disposition was that You expelled me from Your sight, when really I ran from Your sight. I fled from Your presence.” We already read that, didn’t we? Yeah.

“Nevertheless, I will look again toward Thy holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head.” You can see it, can’t you? “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever.” He’s describing creation, underwater. I don’t know how he sees. There’s no window in the stomach. It’s not a corner room in a posh hotel. But he imagines as he’s in the dark down there, and he’s praying. “You’ve brought up my life from the pit, O LORD, my God.” How many times has that happened for you? Yeah.

“While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD.” Listen, what’s important there is that you remember the Lord like the prodigal son, face down in the mud, remembered his father and wondered if he could go home or not, and would his father accept him or not? His father was better to him than he would’ve asked, even than he asked. And he was better to him than the prodigal son could have imagined to welcome him home, right?

“I remembered the LORD. My prayer came to You into Your holy temple.” Wow. It’s never too late to return to the Lord. You cannot outrun His grace. If you’re here today and you feel like you’re in a storm or in the belly of a fish, the Lord will reveal Himself to you. “Those who regard vain idols,” those sailors, he’s thinking about them. We cried out to all of those gods. They’re all empty idols. “Forsake their faithfulness,” the faithfulness of those, the steadfastness of those idols.
And I realize some of your English translations will have that a little bit different and there are those that have a little different take on verse eight. This is my take. I’m just giving it to you. You’re welcome to go research and dig into all of that yourself if you would like to. I don’t really have time to explore all of that. But remembering God’s mercy toward us opens us up to the idea of God’s mercy toward others. These sailors included.

So, as he’s thinking about all that’s just gone on, he knows they were worshiping vain idols, and they forsook the faithfulness of those vain idols. But he says, “I will sacrifice to thee,” he’s talking to Yahweh, “with a voice of thanksgiving.” In other words, with thanksgiving from the belly of a whale with thanksgiving, like the Apostle Paul. From the belly of a dungeon, he writes about joy in the book of Philippians. It’s amazing that he could do that in prison, where he’s imprisoned, he’s shackled to some big guy named Brutus, a smelly Roman soldier, and he’s writing about joy to the church of Philippi. It’s just brilliant.

Here’s Jonah. He says, “I will sacrifice to You with the voice of Thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay.” In other words, “Yahweh, I’m sorry. I will do my job. I am sorry.” So, he has this prayer of confession, this prayer of commitment, that I will do my job. And because at the heart of his job is an unwillingness for the Ninevites to actually turn to the Lord, he has a hatred. He has a prejudice; he has a racial prejudice. He’s got a bit of nationalism in him as well, and he just doesn’t want God’s grace to go to people outside of Israel. And add to that, those people were probably terrorists in every way, the Ninevites. As they marauded into Israel, especially if this is before or during the time when Assyrians dismantled the Northern Kingdom with their ten tribes. Look at how violent that was.

I mean you can imagine; you can do some research if you’d like to, but imagine how violent they were to the Northern ten tribes. If this is written after that, he’s got an amazing image in front of him. If it’s written even during the process of some of that dismantling, again, he sees the violence. It’s very real to him. It’s not very real to us. It’s interesting, but we’re removed from it in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons. Wow. But here he says, “I’ll do my job.” And then he caps it off by saying, “…because salvation is from the Lord.” Psalm 3:8, salvation belongs to the Lord. It’s sourced in the Lord Yahweh. It belongs to You. It doesn’t belong to Jonah. He can’t withhold it from the Ninevites. It doesn’t belong to Jim. I can’t withhold it from people who are my repugnant others. You can’t withhold it from people who are your repugnant others either if you follow Jesus because He came to a world of repugnant others, who were His enemies. And He brought salvation if we will trust in Him.

Then here’s verse ten that just caps it off. It’s so amazing. “Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.” Whoa. What if you were like the engaged couple walking along the beach there and all of a sudden comes this thing as big as an apartment building and opens its mouth and… You’re out like that and out comes this guy who has been three days marinating in bile and stomach juices? Not a hair left on his head. And if it is, it’s kind of weird looking, you know? And his clothes are probably eaten away and he’s kind of dazed a little bit. “Oh, it’s a little bright. Oh my gosh.” And he’s just not sure what’s going on and where he is, and this couple is going to run away and supposed to tell that story to their friends for the rest of their life. Wow, so much.

All right, I got to move quickly because I do have a couple of sermon points I want to make here. I think this is an amazing text, and I so enjoyed studying it myself. Chaim Lewis has written what’s called the Assembly of the Rabbis. He says, “The Assyrians were the Nazi storm troopers of the ancient world. They were the pitiless, power-crazed foe. They showed no quarter in battle, uprooting entire peoples in there fury for conquest. They extinguished the Northern Kingdom of Israel… For Jonah, Nineveh, then was no ordinary city; it carried doom-laden tragic memories. It stood as a symbol of evil incarnate.” That’s Nineveh. That’s the kind of view, and he’s right. I think that’s fair. That’s what he saw Nineveh as. And Yahweh comes to Jonah and says, “Go preach to them because I love them as decadent as they are, as horrible. Their sin has come up before me, but I want them to repent. I want to give them an opportunity to repent.

And so, there’s this wideness in God’s mercy, and Jonah can’t handle it. He doesn’t want them to repent. He doesn’t want them to have a chance or an opportunity to hear from God at all. It’s fascinating to me to make a comparison. The pagan sailors prayed from the start, Jonah didn’t pray until all seemed lost. Pagan sailors acted to save the ship. Jonah was asleep in the storm. Pagan sailors wanted to root out sin. Jonah persisted in sin. So, while he’s on board the ship, this is the disposition of his heart. He’s still there. “Hey, toss me over. I’d rather die than go…” He just said he was running from the presence of the Lord to these guys, but he wants to persist in it rather than saying, “Let’s turn the ship around and go to Nineveh.”

Pagan sailors were obedient to what they knew. Jonah was disobedient to most of what he knew. Pagan sailors ended up with worshiping the Lord Yahweh, not just their pagan little nature gods, but actually they ended up worshiping God. And Jonah resisted the Lord. It’s like going on one of those Alaskan cruises and the speaker, the keynote speaker is Billy Graham, except Billy Graham doesn’t say anything and God moves anyway. All these sailors have literally come to faith in Yahweh. There’s a revival that happens in spite of this prodigal prophet, this petulant prophet. God is moving. There’s a wideness in His mercy, and Jonah doesn’t like it.

I see here at least four things, the clarity of the call. Look at verse 1, just look at it real quick. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai. So, it’s very specific. It’s a word from God. Now, there are people that come up to me all the time, not all the time but occasionally, and say, “I got a word from the Lord for you.” My red flag goes up. I’ve just been doing this too long, but I am committed to always hearing them out. So, no matter what, 60 seconds, man. I mean I want to hear the word of the Lord. Usually, it ends up being something that’s not really a word from the Lord, but it’s a word from their preferences on how we ought to be doing things here at the village chapel. Or it’s their preference. So, it’s not really that. But if it were…

See, I don’t want to shut that off altogether because if I do, I’m saying I don’t want to hear from God ever. So that’s wrong also. So, you can’t go in extremes on this sort of thing. But this is pretty clear. This call is really clear. Some of us would love for the call to sound this clear, “Jim, marry Kim.” Amen. And I am so glad I listened to that one. I’m really glad I convinced her that that was God speaking to her too. I know so many guys in this city especially, “The Lord told me to move to Nashville and marry so-and-so” or whatever. She didn’t get that same word from the Lord. So, it’s just really funny. I love that this call is so clear.

If you’re not clear about your calling, man, there are so many things you can do, though, to hear from the Lord. Put yourself in a position to tune your ear and the ears of your heart to His voice. That’s a great beginning. Study His Word. He’s spoken very clearly in his Word. Pray. Don’t wait until you’re in the belly of the fish after the storm, after the people tossed you in the water. Pray early on. Start there. Why not do that? The challenge of the commission to Jonah was great because it was Nineveh and he was Jewish, he was Hebrew.

It was hard for him. It was so hard for him. Imagine if you will, the parallel, a lot of commentaries will do this. They’ll say, “Imagine, if you will, a Jewish rabbi standing in the middle of Berlin in about let’s say 1936, just before World War II starts and going into the center of Berlin and crying out as a Jewish man, ‘Repent! Repent!’ How long would that Jewish man last?” Or put it later, put it after 6 million Jews have been put to death, and you’re told by God to go preach to your deepest, darkest enemy. That is a challenge of a commission. That’s to be sure.

Three, the crucible of course correction, which is really most of our chapter here or most of these two chapters. The crucible of course correction grinds slowly, doesn’t it, you guys? The course correction thing, why does that so? Because I’m so stubborn. I’m the challenge. I’m the kid that wants to arch his back and scream and holler and “No, I don’t want to…” And all it was, mom just wanted to know whether I wanted this cookie instead of that cookie. We’re strong-willed some of us. And so, the crucible of course correction sometimes takes longer and is more painful for me. That’s certainly on display here with Jonah because he doesn’t pray until, I don’t know, is it day one? Is it day two in the belly of the whale? Or is it day three in the belly of the whale?

How long will you wait to return to the Lord? That was such an important part of our message from the book of Joel, wasn’t it? Yeah, return to the Lord. Repent, return to the Lord, and He will restore us. And then the wideness in God’s mercy, which is all throughout this entire book, you’ll hear that next week as well as we study chapters 3 and 4. God is throughout this. And remember, 38 times the Lord or God has mentioned throughout these four chapters. He’s merciful in so many ways that most of us probably would not be. To even consider Nineveh at all, to consider sending someone to Nineveh, means that He doesn’t just love one nation. He loves all people. He’s intentionally desirous of all people coming to worship Him and know Him and to repent from their sin and to live lives of wholeness under His providence and under His sovereignty.
There’s a wideness in His mercy and it’s really, really a beautiful thing. Modern theologian, Miroslav Volf says, “Forgiveness flounde

rs because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and exclude myself from the community of sinners. No one can be in the presence of the cross for long without overcoming this double exclusion.” Lord, don’t let us be guilty of the double exclusion, excluding others who aren’t like me or don’t live in my zip code or don’t have my lifestyle. Don’t let me exclude them from the offer of the Gospel, which is so clearly in the Bible. The offer of the Gospel is universal. It doesn’t mean everybody accepts it, but the offer is there. If you will repent and believe, you will be saved.

You call upon the name of the Lord, and that means something. It doesn’t just mean, “Hey, I hate what’s going on.” No, it means, “I’m sorry.” Like Jonah. “I know I was wrong.” And you turn to look. Listen, he’s going to struggle in the next two chapters. He’s still going to struggle. These are long-held beliefs, long-held attitudes. They don’t just go away with the flip of a switch. And the same thing is true in my heart and my life too, but I cannot exclude others from the community of human beings. And I certainly cannot exclude myself from the community of sinners. I’ve got to be smart and real and honest and humble about that.

Rosemary Nixon, great commentary on Jonah. “A fierce mercy lies at the heart of God’s nature such that no man-made boundary, be it moral or geographical, may exclude the glory of that most exquisite quality from the human arena.” The most exquisite quality is what? Look at the sentence again. It’s God’s fierce mercy. Isn’t that interesting juxtaposition? His fierce mercy. It’s another way of saying, “This wideness of God’s mercy.” But she said, it’s just to be fierce, God’s in pursuit of Jonah who’s running away from God. God’s in pursuit of him and throwing up little things. He gives him some leash. He said, yeah, yeah, okay, I see him go. Didn’t God stop him before he got the Joppa? Why didn’t God stop him before he got on board the ship?

Now he’s giving him some leash. Is this what you really want? If this is what you really want, he lets him have a little bit of leash so that he will learn, that Jonah will learn, it’ll be in some ways a storm of perfection to him, but it’s also a storm of correction for his course. And I need those all the time because I’m stubborn just like Jonah as well.

Peter Leithart, “The older son of the parable, the prodigal son, poses a challenge to us. We’re willing to receive our father’s gifts and Jesus at his table, but are we willing to eat and drink with all the riffraff he attracts?” Ooh, ouch. First day in heaven, what are you doing here? You’re kind of the riffraff. “I’m invited to sit down at table with the Lord Jesus and all the riffraff, all the tourists? I’m not a tourist. I belong here.”

No, no. Grateful, Lord, that you’ve invited riffraff. Here we are and thank you, Lord, for that. Prodigal Prophet is a book Keller wrote before he passed some time ago. It’s on the Book of Jonah. “Ignorance of the depth of God’s grace causes our most severe problems.” Ignorance of grace, the depth of it. Until we understand it, we are like Jonah, just a shadow of what we could be and should be. Folks, Keller was saying, “What could we be as a church if we understood the wideness of God’s mercy? And if we actually reflected that same wideness?”

“Oh, everyone is welcome here. Come on in. Come one. Come all, sinners, though you be. No matter how far you’ve strayed. Come on. Just like me, just like you, all of us. Come on. We’re all welcome here.” But it’s true, if you come in here and you’re just looking for affirmation, that’s not going to happen. We don’t affirm anybody at this church, including the pastor. The only thing we affirm about each other is that we need redemption. We need redemption. And if you’re not willing to admit that you need redemption, you’re not going to like it here. You’re just going to think we’re a bunch of losers. We’re just a bunch of people that are naive and gullible believing in a God like that.

What about a God that wants to give us everything we want, no matter how bad it is for us? That’s the kind of God people are looking for, sadly, and cry out to all of the time. Jesus, the greater Jonah, He’s obedient. The Lord Jesus was obedient to his Father. His father said, “Arise, go preach and save.” He did all of that. His father said, “Arise, go, preach, die. And in dying, save.” So, His compassion is towards all, including His enemies. Jesus, first words on the cross, “Father, forgive them.” He’s not pointing to them, but in His heart, that “them” includes the ones that put Me on this cross, which is really all of us. And so that’s amazing.

Jesus, the greater Jonah, suffered injustice, rejection, torture and death, paid the price for the sins of the world, rose from the grave and now offers new life even to the worst of His enemies. There’s so much about Jesus. Jesus even refers to Jonah and compares Himself to Jonah in Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel. And he even then says that He’s greater than Jonah. In what ways is He greater? We just showed you on those two slides. And all these slides, by the way, are available for you to download if you would like them.

Let me close with this quote from Oz and then we’ll pray. Oz says, “Do you want to know a truth that in the momentous challenges of our modern world will be at once a quest to inspire you, an anchor to hold you fast, a rich fare to nourish you, and a relationship you will prize above all others? Listen to Jesus from Nazareth. Answer His call.”

Let’s pray: Lord, as we read about Jonah not answering the call, running the other way, pretty much everything he did was the opposite of what You wanted. You said go east; he went west. You said go overland to Nineveh; he went over sea to Tarshish. You said go and preach; Jonah goes and sleeps. But Lord, how gracious of You, how gracious of You, in his life and in this story and in our stories, now that we think about it, that You’re still in pursuit of us. We, prodigal sons and daughters, we who have taken the reins of control ourselves because we think we know better. We don’t think You should be kind and merciful and gracious to those kind of people.

I pray, Lord God, that our eyes would see what You see. Our heart would long for what You long for, and that our heart would break over what Your heart breaks over, and that we would look not to Jonah for the example of what we should do, but to Jesus, our Savior, who can work in our hearts and change them so that we would begin to respond to others the way Jesus responds to others. Help us in that, Lord. That we might bring glory to Your name, that the world watching would be drawn to the campfire of the Gospel and the warmth of it. I pray this in Jesus’ name for His sake. Amen and amen.