What We Learn From Jonah

Thinking he knew better than God, Jonah decided there was nothing left but to flee God’s presence.

What We Learn From JONAH

The Book of Jonah is unique in the Old Testament. That God sent His servant into the heart of a reprobate Gentile city for the purposes of salvation is an astonishing precedent. And what a mighty miracle when the Ninevites repented at the preaching of an Israelite prophet! Contrary to what some scholars theorize, the Book of Jonah is not mere satire or legend. And the Lord Jesus did not use the story merely as an illustrative parable. For whereas Jonah’s survival was the miracle which moved the Ninevites to a miraculous repentance, there are no miracles related in the Lord’s parables.

Jonah lived about 787-747 BC in the time of Jeroboam II. He also came from Gath Hepher which is generally identified as a place in Galilee near a city later known as Nazareth. It is then little wonder that Jonah also pre-figured the Christ as attested by His own words in Matthew: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt. 12:40 KJV). However, as proven by the fulfillment of his prophecy in 2 Kings 14:23-25, we know that, like the Christ, Jonah prophesied to Israel first. The geographical origin of Jonah also confounds the Jews’ objection that no prophet ever came out of Galilee (Jn. 7:52).

CHAPTER 1
Jonah was commissioned to prophesy while in his own land, a world away from Nineveh and its abominations. He was appalled when ordered to go and warn pagan sinners of their terrible fate. The prophet could not believe that God was interested in idolaters who deserved death and damnation. And Jonah was not deceived: he divined that the Lord God intended to save these wretches. Also, as a prophet, Jonah knew that the grandchildren of the evangelized Ninevites would be worse than their fathers. For as traditional enemies of Israel, the fourth generation Ninevites would commit unspeakable atrocities against his own nation which itself had rejected the faith of their fathers.

Thinking he knew better than God, Jonah decided there was nothing left but to flee God’s presence and get far away from Nineveh, in the hope that the message of salvation would arrive too late. Like an answer to prayer, Jonah found a merchant ship going to Spain, which would take months to reach its destination.

Leaving Nineveh to die in its sins, Jonah went below deck to lapse into a smug slumber. However, God had not changed His mind about Nineveh nor Jonah’s mission of mercy. Because “the way of transgressors is hard” (Prov. 13:15), Jonah would have to learn the hard way.

And so a storm broke whose fury was so great it created panic among the sailors who cried vainly to their many gods. However, by the end of chapter one all were sacrificing to the Lord, a picture of New Testament Gentiles turning from paganism to God and worshiping together with acceptance outside of Jerusalem.

When casting lots revealed that Jonah was the cause of this “evil” storm, the mariners asked how to appease the prophet’s God. They were shocked to learn that nothing short of throwing Jonah overboard would save them. While at first the pagans may have assumed they were being asked to sacrifice Jonah to the sea, the prophet made it clear that the sea was not a god, for the Lord had made both sea and dry land.

Naturally, the mariners were not prepared to drown a prophet of God, and vainly tried to row to safety. In the end they listened to Jonah, and with a prayer for forgiveness, cast him into the raging deep. However, human sacrifice was never an integral part of Old Testament worship, and Jonah was rescued from drowning when the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow him. Thus Jonah himself was a saved soul for there was only one Person worthy to die for sinners, namely the Christ whom Jonah foreshadowed. The instant and miraculous calm which followed was typical of the peace of God experienced by all those justified by faith (Rom. 5:1).

CHAPTER 2
God’s control of the storm reveals His power over His creation which is later seen in the scorching wind, castor-oil plant and the consuming worm. The great fish was capable of swallowing a man. The miracle of Jonah’s survival should never be marred by scientific explanations. Jonah was a sign (Mt. 12:39), which means that the Ninevites accepted the prophet out of the sea as a living miracle. Jonah means “dove” suggesting that he had been bleached white inside the great fish. Like Christ who retains the wounds of Calvary in resurrection, so Jonah had the proof of survival. It was the latter miracle which convinced the Ninevites of the validity of the message. This means that Jonah’s attempt to flee his responsibilities actually helped the Ninevites to repentance and faith.

The Lord tells us plainly that this miracle was a foreshadowing of His own death and resurrection (Mt. 12:40). However, Joseph’s new tomb was not in the heart of the earth, for the soul of the Savior descended to the lower parts of the earth known as “Abraham’s Bosom” (Lk. 16:22). Had Jonah died his soul also would have been in the heart of the earth, but in contrast he was three days and nights in the belly of the fish. However, being good as dead, we may say that in type he was as good as resurrected!

The Omnipresent God who spoke to Jonah in his own country, was also with the ship and was later able to be approached by Jonah from the belly of the great fish. God heard the prayer of His repentant servant who was confident of survival, believing that he would live to worship the Lord in His holy temple. The prophet’s faith was justified when the fish vomited him onto dry land again. God also made up for lost travelling time, for the prophet was able to go directly to Nineveh from his place of landing.

CHAPTER 3
If the men of Nineveh were to repent, then God’s servant must show them an example of obedience. On being instructed a second time, Jonah obeyed at once. And so, if Jonah's prophecy is a warning to unbelievers, it is also a rebuke to believers who do not love sinners. Likewise, if preachers love sinners they will warn them of the wrath to come. Stressing God’s love but omitting God’s judgment is not loving sinners but is merely smoothing their path to Hell. Thus Jonah cried, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jon. 3:4).

This specific period of time should be viewed against the background of history which attests that the children of Nimrod retained a haunting fear of a second Flood. As the waters of Noah were forty days on the earth, God also gave Jonah the Flood experience when He took him courtesy of the great fish down to the depths of the Mediterranean. This taught Jonah something of the awfulness of judgment, though the reluctant evangelist remained slow to learn compassion for the perishing. He still hoped that his message would be rejected. The prophet had travelled a whole day without crying out against the city and even then his message contained not a single reference to the possible mercy of God. Yet the vastness of the city provoked no feelings of compassion though the statistical estimate of one million souls may be deduced when one includes infants.

The prophet’s worst fears were realized when to his astonished dismay the whole city, from king to commoners, turned to the Lord and repented in sackcloth and ashes! This grieved Noah immensely for he sincerely hoped God would destroy every man, woman and child in that Assyrian city of legendary wickedness. Though Jonah had never seen such faith in Israel, he remained downcast like Cain who resented Abel’s acceptance. Little wonder that the Lord Jesus stated that the men of Nineveh would rise in the judgment to condemn the Jews of His generation (Mt. 12:41).

CHAPTER 4
In an age of feeble evangelism, there are those who weep for the lack of response from the unsaved. In contrast, Jonah was furious at Nineveh’s repentance! Though the prophet’s success is the dream of every preacher, Jonah had neither love for nor pastoral interest in these submissive converts begotten in response to his preaching. While they were as teachable as first-generation disciples, Jonah, the minimalist had no lingering desire to show the Ninevites the way of God more perfectly. Instead, his displeasure yielded to sulky anger whereby he not only reproached God for His mercy but also dared to justify his own disobedience.

One of the great miracles of Jonah is the miraculous turning of Gentiles to the Lord. Both on the ship and in the city, Gentiles turn in multitudes to God. Yet this miracle, much more impressive than the storm or the great fish, left Jonah unimpressed. And so while there was joy among the angels of God (Lk. 15:7), Jonah was in misery. For while he sat and waited for God to destroy the city, the hot sun shining from a cloudless sky gave no sign of a threatening or engulfing flood.

At this point Jonah, like Elijah in 1 Kings 19:4, desired of the Lord that he might die rather than live to see Nineveh saved. However, as the Book of Jonah is all about mercy, so God who had dealt graciously with sinners also spared His sinful servant. God reasoned with Jonah and encouraged him to take a loftier view of these great events. As a token of good will the Lord caused a sheltering gourd to spring up to give some shade of relief to the grieving prophet. While some identify this plant with the quick-withering castor oil tree, its sudden growth and demise were nothing less than a miracle.

When God attacked the tree the next morning with a devouring worm and vehement east wind, Jonah was not pleased. Deprived of the tree’s protection, the prophet again bewailed his fate and cried out for death a second time. However, this time God spoke strictly and to the point. Was God inferior to man? If Jonah had lamented the loss of a castor-oil plant was God to show less compassion to a vast city of a million lost souls? There was also “much cattle” showing the potential for worship. Jonah was not only out to populate Hell but to deny his God the pleasure of worship from a newly-redeemed and responsive people. And so the Book of Jonah ends appropriately with God’s having the last word, just as it began, with “the word of the Lord.”

LESSONS FOR US
There are many lessons to be learned from this small but immensely rich Book of Jonah. We have already noted that Jonah had to learn to love sinners. We may add to this that there is no salvation of sinners without repentance towards God and faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, foreshadowed by Jonah’s encounter with the big fish. The gospel to the Gentiles also features prominently in this book, and there are pointers to their ability to worship God throughout the whole world in the absence of a material temple and altar.

The extraordinary worm and wind remind us of Ezekiel’s warning about failing to sound the trumpet (Ezek. 33:6). Though Jonah knew God, we cannot forget the Lord’s charge against those who took away the key of knowledge from the common people thereby preventing their entering into life (Lk. 11:52). This would emphasize the awesome responsibility of religious leaders who will be held accountable for those who have perished for want of the Word of Life.

This book also shows that God saves with a view to service. Linking Jonah with Nahum (which some have called Second Jonah) we learn that nations which apostatize (forsake the faith) will become worse than their sinful forefathers. Already this fact is blatantly evident among the lapsed Christian countries where sin is now fearlessly sophisticated and scientific. Reverence for God and all that is divine are despised by those nations who revel in the shame and scorn of a secular society. But what of those disciples who themselves have become fond of the prevailing pleasures and licentious liberalism of this present evil age? And so Jonah remains a challenge to saints and sinners alike.

by Tom Summerhill