Jonah the Prophet

Intro

Name the Superhero

The Thing

Blue Marvel

The Punisher

Dr. Strange

Rocket and Groot

Spider Ham (a pig version of Spider-Man hailing from an alternate dimension. When a regular spider named Peter Porker was bitten by a radioactive pig, he became the superhero known as Spider-Ham, who has the same powers as Earth-616's Spider-Man, as well as his zany sense of humor)

Prophets Are Interesting People

Let’s talk about another sort of superhero. A real-life one: a prophet.

How would you describe a prophet?

Jonah the Prophet

So in the “Minor Prophets” section of your Bible, you will find many short books of various men who prophesied in Israel and Judah during the time of the kings.

One of these books is Jonah, and includes his whole story.

What do we know about this guy Jonah?

Offer opportunity for answers to be compiled.

If you remember, this is a Divided Kingdom we’re in now. Jonah was a prophet to Israel during that time, while Jeroboam II was king. He actually prophesied that revival would come to Israel.

2 Kings 14:23–25 NLT

23 Jeroboam II, the son of Jehoash, began to rule over Israel in the fifteenth year of King Amaziah’s reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria forty-one years. 24 He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. He refused to turn from the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had led Israel to commit. 25 Jeroboam II recovered the territories of Israel between Lebo-hamath and the Dead Sea, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had promised through Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher.

Now, obviously, this is not the event that Jonah is best-known for.

God had called Jonah to go and prophesy to the city of Nineveh. God wanted him to call them to repentance.

What’s pretty interesting is that Nineveh was not a city within Israel’s territory. It was an Assyrian city. And the Assyrians were enemies of Israel. They had cause Israel harm multiple times.

Jonah was pretty reluctant about prophesying to Nineveh. He didn’t want to go there and he certainly didn’t want to preach to them.

So… he ran away.

Jonah 1:3 NLT

3 But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.

So - important here - Jonah didn’t just run away; he tried to flee from the presence of God.

Nineveh and Tarshish were about as far apart as two cities could be. Going to Tarshish was like going to Los Angeles when God called you to New York.

He had no idea the rake he was about to step on because of his disobedience.

Truthfully, we all face moments when, like Jonah, we are reluctant to do what’s right.

You’ve been in situations when you knew the right thing to do, but felt tempted to do the opposite.

Like: you really know you probably shouldn’t decide to play spoons because you don’t want anyone to get hurt or for Sophie to go to jail… but you would LOVE to see Sophie bodyslam someone!

But for real… let me present some situations here:

Maybe someone your age who isn’t nice to you gets an opportunity you wanted. You knew you should be excited for that person, but instead you were upset and hurt.

Perhaps you’re at some friend’s house, and your friend wanted to watch something inappropriate. You knew it was wrong, but you didn’t want your friend to think you were weird.

Or maybe you felt the Holy Ghost nudging you to share your testimony with a friend, but you chose not to because you didn’t want to get teased.

Again… we all face moments like Jonah when we are reluctant to do what’s right. We might think that what God is asking of us doesn’t make sense, and we would rather do things our way instead.

And the writer of Proverbs 3 offered some wisdom for this:

Proverbs 3:5–6 NLT

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

We’ve got a difficult decision to make sometimes. We can choose to rely on our own understanding and fall short of God’s will, or we can trust in God and act in obedience to Him.

And if we’re going to carry out God’s plan for our lives, we have to realize that we will not always agree with Him. But we have to overcome that reluctance and obey Him anyway.

He doesn’t call us to understand all of His ways. Just that we trust Him.

Jonah, the Rejecting Prophet

Now, if you’ve been to any sort of Sunday School as a kid at all, you know what happens next in Jonah’s life…

He meets some interesting people who have a boat headed the direction he wants to go. He boards the boat to Tarshish.

While he’s on the boat, it encounters this terrible storm.

The crew and passengers all begin to panic. Eventually, they woke up Jonah and told him to call out to his God.

As everyone was praying, they cast lots to figure out what caused the storm. And through this process, God revealed Jonah was causing the storm. Jonah responds, “Well I’m a Hebrew who fears the Lord, who is God of all creation, including the land and sea.”

The crew asks him what they could do to make the sea calm. Jonah tells them that if they would throw him overboard, the storm would end.

The men were a bit hesitant, but to save their own lives, they eventually took Jonah up on his offer. They threw him in.

Then this little beauty:

Jonah 1:17–2:1 KJV 1900

17 Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. 1 Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly,

God “prepared a fish!”

And this giant fish comes up from the deep and swallows him. At that exact moment, the storm stopped.

And, interestingly, Jonah did not die.

Now… you would think that Jonah would have cried out to God right away.

Instead, it took him three days and three nights before he was willing to pray. Finally, Jonah humbles himself and calls out to God.

This would seem to be a perfect moment for repentance. It’s looking like Jonah’s heart is turning back to God and he was willing to answer God’s call.

But when you look at what Jonah prays (and that’s what we’re about to do), you notice something is off. See if you can spot it.

Jonah 2:2–3 NLT

2 He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me! 3 You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.

Think… why is all of this bad stuff happening right now? (Because he had no desire to see God move in the people of Nineveh)

The problem: You can see in this prayer that he was more motivated by remorse about his decision than he was repentant over his attitude toward Nineveh.

Jonah 2:9–10 NLT

9 But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord alone.” 10 Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.

After all of this mess, Jonah is wisely going to obey God’s commandment. He goes to Nineveh and preaches that the judgment of God was coming (this is pretty common for the prophets).

He says that in 40 days the city would be destroyed because of their wickedness. Woah.

And strangely, Jonah, the preacher, never calls on the nation to repent. He didn’t share that God would make a way of escape if they turned to Him. He only prophesied doom and destruction.

But what’s pretty awesome is that even though Jonah refused to give an “altar call,” Nineveh still responded with repentance. Check it out:

Jonah 3:5–9 NLT

5 The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow. 6 When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes. He dressed himself in burlap and sat on a heap of ashes. 7 Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city: “No one, not even the animals from your herds and flocks, may eat or drink anything at all. 8 People and animals alike must wear garments of mourning, and everyone must pray earnestly to God. They must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. 9 Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.”

And as far away from God as these people had been, He had respect for that and He mercifully spared them.

If we keep on reading through the Minor Prophets, though, we see that Nineveh’s repentance was short-lived. They ended up returning to their old ways and God eventually brought judgment on them.

So when we disobey God (and we will), we have to be humble and turn to Him in repentance.

Repentance is more than just remorse in the moment. It has to go beyond feeling bad for what we have done wrong. Genuine repentance requires a life change.

But for now, Nineveh had repented. That short sermon Jonah preached ended up turning a whole city around.

And you would think that Jonah would have been excited! But no. Jonah was angry at God for showing mercy.

In fact, one major reason Jonah ran from God’s command in the first place is that he didn’t actually want to see God show mercy to Nineveh.

Jonah 4:2–3 NLT

2 So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. 3 Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.”

I’m going to quote Dawson: “THAT’S CRAAAAAZY.”

Jonah completely rejected God’s mercy. He was angry with God because he knew, based on Israel’s covenant relationship with God, that God forgives those who repent.

He actually didn’t want the Ninevites to walk in covenant with God. He didn’t want Nineveh to be saved. As a result, he ended up in the same place where he started: wishing he would die.

At this point, Jonah had completely rejected God’s calling on his life. But still, just as God gave Nineveh a chance to repent, He gave the same to His prophet, Jonah.

He does this using an object lesson.

God caused a shade tree to grow up in the heat of the day. Jonah was very grateful for it, and he slept under the shade tree.

But the next morning, the shade tree was destroyed, and Jonah was angry again.

God asked Jonah, “Do you have a right to be upset about a shade tree?”

Jonah responded, “Yes, I have a right to be angry, even to the point of death.”

God then asked Jonah a very pointed question, which is the end of the book of Jonah:

Jonah 4:10–11 NLT

10 Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. 11 But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

An important aspect of covenant is faithfulness.

We must be faithful to our mission to share the gospel with people who have not yet experienced the grace and mercy of God.

Conclusion

And it can be hard to have compassion on people, right? It makes sense that we have that problem, though. Because there are none alive who DESERVE mercy.

But check this out… the very first martyr of the New Testament, Stephen, was stoned to death for preaching the truth. Look at what he says in his last few moments as he’s being stoned:

Acts 7:59–60 NLT

59 As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died.

That’s entirely opposite from our guy Jonah. It’s not an easy place to come to in our heart. But we need to live with the understanding that no one - not even us - deserve mercy. But it’s there anyway!

Prayer

We believe that when anyone repents before you sincerely, you are ready and willing to forgive.

We know you have called us to reach this world. It is our responsibility.

Help us to have the same attitude of mercy and compassion toward others as You do. When You call, we will say yes!

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