Article 2016-11 - Jonah: Missionary Against the Odds
Chapter 26: Jonah: Missionary Against the Odds
Introduction
Missionaries can learn many lessons from Jonah, e.g. that success in ministry guarantees no ‘status’ with God and that not all missionary jobs are attractive; on the contrary. Being allowed to work for God doesn’t mean that He stops working in you, because He is more interested in who you are than in what you do for Him. Then, God allows no exclusive thinking; He is equally interested in all people groups of the world. Nobody can run away from God or His assignments. Finally, in his greatest need Jonah began to look like Jesus.
Scripture reference
He [Jeroboam II] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher (2 Kings 14:25)
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’ But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish (Jonah 1:1-3)
The story
Once, God sent Jonah to King Jeroboam II to tell him to attack the Syrians and restore Israel’s eastern borders. Although not at all obedient to God, the King complied this time. It suited his political agenda, so he set out on a battle and regained Israel’s rightful territory. This established Jonah’s reputation at the court and he may have liked to think about himself as ‘Prophet of the King’s Court’ since that day. But God wanted to teach Jonah some things that he liked a lot less than his previous, royal assignment.
Jonah did not want to go to those ‘cursed Assyrians’. Maybe he wondered whether it was really God speaking to him, because his assignment did not suit his theology. How could the God of Israel now send him to Assyria of all places? Did God not know how this huge empire was becoming a threat to Israel? How then could he go there and preach? The cage in which his narrow theology was locked up had been rattled. So he decided to walk out on God and turn west to sea, instead of east, to the desert where God sent him.
After sailing for some hours the sky turned dark and the wind rose. A violent storm hit the ship and the crew panicked. The captain of shook Jonah awake. ‘Come on man, pray to your God, otherwise we’ll perish!’ Jonah rubbed his eyes but dared not pray. Nothing changed for the better, the weather got worse. The crew decided to throw the dice, to establish whose fault it was that the ship was in trouble. Jonah was indicated. He confessed that God had spoken to him, that he had decided to flee and that the only way of their salvation was to throw him overboard. At first the sailors refused, but they feared for their lives when the storm got worse. At last they complied, but not without praying for forgiveness first. So they threw Jonah overboard. They couldn’t see what happened to him but before the storm abated miraculously, a large fish had swallowed him up. Jonah prayed in the belly of the fish, convinced that he would die soon. Three days later however, the animal vomited the prophet up on dry land.
Hardly had his clothes dried when the Lord spoke again. His commission was simply repeated. ‘Go to Nineveh. Tell them what I will tell you…’ Five weeks of walking through the hot desert didn’t really improve his mood, and when he reached Nineveh and was ready to preach, all he uttered was ‘In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ Jonah’s message even reached the king. The response was overwhelming. All people tore their garments, fasted, prayed and repented. Not even the cattle were fed.
Jonah couldn’t care less. He was hot and wanted some spectacular climax to his tiring job. He looked forward to another Sodom and Gomorrah scenario. He sat down, outside the city on a hill, tortured by the sun, but fortunately a tree grew up fast. That gave some shade. He took a comfortable nap. On the third day however, a worm ate the tree’s root and the plant died. Gone was his shade and back was his temper. Then God started to talk to him about love, mercy and compassion. Just what he needed…!
Scripture reference
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, ‘O Lord is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live’ (Jonah 4:1-3)
Comment
Jonah may have thought, that when important work for God has been done, menial tasks are no longer required of them. He learned the hard way, that the greatest would be the servant of all, even of the Gentiles. Until then he had only done only local work in his own culture, among his own people. Now he was granted the privilege to work abroad, in a foreign culture.
God elevated Jonah to get to know Him and His heart for the nations more intimately – but the honor was lost on him. During his ministry he had developed an unhealthy national pride, which we call ‘ethnocentrism’. It means that you set your own people and nation in the centre of the world; only the way you and your people do things is the right way. All else is wrong or dumb. This attitude hampered Jonah’s spiritual growth. He had been used by God and now assumed that he was perfect. He lacked the insight that God works in the hearts of His missionaries until the day they die. God wants to see His character reflected in His workers, more than He wants them to finish their work for Him. Jonah was a ‘Martha’, whom the Lord wanted to turn into a ‘Mary’.
During his earlier ministry, Jonah developed a ‘friend-foe thinking’. He came to think that it was ‘us’ Israelites against ‘them’, the Assyrians. Automatically he had adopted the same stance with regard to his new assignment – except that he failed to distinguish God’s motives behind His assignments. Jonah elevated national, mono-cultural thinking above international, cross-cultural thinking. He was at best an evangelist, but lacked missionary motivation and had to learn that Israel’s God is interested in the whole world. Could Jonah have known that? Of course! If he had read only David’s Psalms he would have known enough! But what is knowing, if the heart refuses to believe?
Running away from God or His assignments is a useless deviation. He cannot be run away from because He is everywhere simultaneously . Running away from His assignment is also impossible. If we try to escape He takes us by the hand and leads us back to it. He designed that job especially for us, to work through us and in us. Therefore, never expect Him to abandon His plans with us and through us with others.
When things went ‘wrong’ with Jonah, he looked more like Jesus than anywhere else in the story. When he was in the belly of the fish, he became an image of the Lord Jesus when He was in the grave. Similarly we may trust the Lord to use our greatest depths and depressions to make us look more like Christ: of consistent pure and holy, compassionate character.
This is what failed Jonah. There was a gap between what he knew about God and what he preached. He knew that God was ‘gracious and merciful, slow to anger and great of kindness’. Yet he preached hell and damnation. That needed to change and God worked at that continually, relentlessly exposing Jonah’s egotism, self-righteousness, anger and lack of compassion. In this story, God had the last word and therefore we don’t know whether Jonah ever repented. Would you repent, if God spoke to you as clearly about your character flaws, as He did to Jonah?
Discussion & dialogue
- Which other Bible person started to look like Jesus when everything in his life appeared to go wrong?
- Jonah suffered from ‘ethnocentrism’. Explain to your study group why ethnocentrism is the worst enemy of any missionary
- Which six of the ten themes reoccur in this story? How? (Answer is in the Teacher’s Guide)
