Jonah 1:1-3 The Missionary God

Jonah 1:1-2 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

Jonah was a prophet. He served as a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Years earlier the kingdom of Israel was split in two. A man named Rehoboam, King Solomon’s son and King David’s grandson, laid heavy burdens on the people of Israel, so the people rebelled and split the kingdom.

10 Tribes formed the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and 2 Tribes formed the southern Kingdom of Judah.

The Kingdom Judah held the capital city of Jerusalem and the true throne to David’s throne because he was from the tribe of Judah.

And in Judah you had some good kings and some wicked kings.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel, on the other hand, where Jonah prophesied, only had wicked kings. Israel was constantly plagued by idolatry and wicked kings who only encouraged the people to sin.

All we know about Jonah comes from this book and a small section in 2 Kings.

2 Kings 14:23-27 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. 24 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. 25 He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher. 26 For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. 27 But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.

So Jonah prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II. And Jeroboam was a wicked king who reigned from around 780-750 BC, so close to 800 years before Christ came to earth.

And from what we know about Jonah’s ministry in 2 Kings, he was a prophet of grace. Jeroboam did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and yet God sent Jonah to prophesy that Jeroboam would restore the borders of Israel.

Meaning he would reestablish the boundaries of his kingdom and give the people of Israel peace. Peace that the did not deserve.

Look why God gave them grace. It wasn’t because they were living obediently to him and deserved his blessing. They were wicked sinful under Jeroboam.

But God saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, and there was none to help Israel.

Out of his grace, God saved Israel from their enemies by the hand of wicked Jeroboam.

So Jonah is a prophet who sees God’s people constantly sinning against him, and God commanded him to prophesy grace. This will help us understand why Jonah flees when God calls him to go to Nineveh.

Going back to the book of Jonah, the word of the Lord came to him saying Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

Now Nineveh was not in Israel. Nineveh was the capital city of a world empire called Assyria.

It was a 600 mile journey northeast from where Jonah was near present-day Mosul in Iraq.

And this commission must have been shocking to Jonah. Why would God send him to Nineveh?

Nineveh was a pagan city that hated God and his people. In fact, Assyria was constantly harassing Israel with threats of warfare and raids. And Jonah would have known this first hand because his home town of Gath-hepher [Gathe-heifer] was practically on the border of Assyria.

And Assyria was a wicked and violent nation. God says their evil has come up before me.

In Revelation 18:5, God talks about the sins of One World Nation of Babylon that is in blatant rebellion against God and says, her sins are heaped high as heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.

The idea here is Babylon the Great has piled sin on top of sin on top of sin and has built a tower of corruption and disobedience that has grown so tall that it reaches the height of heaven and come before God.

That is the same picture here. The wickedness of Nineveh is so great that it can no longer be ignored by God.

The Assyrians were well known in the ancient world for their brutality and cruelty on their enemies. Some of their kings like to tear off the lips and hands of their victims. Others skinned victims alive and made piles of t heir skulls.

Nearly 100 years after Jonah, the prophet Nahum prophesied against Nineveh and said

Nahum 3:1-4 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey! 2 The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! 3 Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies! 4 And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms.

So God judges Nineveh for two things. First, their grotesque violence. They are so violent its like they can’t even walk through their city without tripping over someone’s corpse.

And two their spiritual idolatry and corruption. That’s what Nahum means when he talks about the whorings of the prostitute with her graceful and deadly charms.

Assyria used their wealth, power, and violence to corrupt other nations in the Ancient Near East into paganism, idolatry, and injustice.

And this is who God wanted Jonah to go to? Why? Well God told him. To call out, literally to shout, to raise the alarm, against it.

Hearing that you might think, well that’s a good thing. Why wouldn’t Jonah want to go and proclaim God’s judgment to his enemies? What was Jonah’s problem? Wouldn’t Jonah want God to destroy them?

The word translated evil does mean depravity and wickedness. But it can also mean trouble or disaster.

In fact the word is used 7 times in Jonah and each time context demands it be translated as trouble or disaster, like the evil or disaster of the storm that God throws on the ship with Jonah tries to flee from his call to go to Nineveh.

So in a sense this a play on words. God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh to call out against it because they are a wicked city, but God also wants him to go because in his compassion, God knows their trouble.

And Nineveh was troubled.

Nearly a hundred years before Jonah was sent to Nineveh, Assyria was in a golden age. But for the past 70 years they were absolute free fall.

The Assyrian Empire was divided because Governors of provinces in the Empire set themselves up as mini kings only giving lip service to the throne. This led to division and rebellion in their borders, and the kings of Assyria were so weak, they could barely fend them off.

Two other nations Aram and Urartu were constantly taking advantage of Assyria’s downturn using it as an opportunity to expand their own borders.

And right before Jonah showed up there were three catastrophic events that rocked the nation.

There was a 7 year famine in the land, a giant earthquake, and a total solar eclipse.

All of this together would have filled the Assyrians with fear and dread because they could only be signs that their pagan gods were angry and on the verge of destroying them.

But none of these judgments were from false gods. They were from the Lord God for their great wickedness.

So when God commissioned Jonah to go to Nineveh because their evil and trouble had come before him, Jonah’s call was to go to that great city and shout to all who would hear him, “This is only a foretaste of the judgment coming for you unless you repent!”

And this is why Jonah didn’t want to go. For God to say that Nineveh’s trouble had come before him, Jonah knew was considering being gracious to these wicked, sinful enemies of God’s people.

Jonah knew Exodus 34:6-7The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

He had even seen it in action. Remember, Jeroboam was a wicked king who led Israel into profound, high-handed sin against the Lord. And God was still gracious to them.

Jonah knew if he went, God would be gracious to Nineveh. He himself says so at the end of the book. Jonah 4:2 That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster [That’s our word “evil” again].

So Jonah wanted no business of going to Nineveh, because Jonah hated the idea of God giving grace to those wicked sinners.

They were God’s enemies. They were constantly harassing and bullying Israel and importing pagan gods that led the people into more and more idolatry and rebellion.

In fact, Assyria would be the nation God would use to ultimately destroy the Northern Kingdom and take God’s people into exile in 722, just around 40 years after Jonah would prophesy there.

Why would God care about such wicked people like the Ninevites that he would send a prophet to proclaim the opportunity for grace?

Because God is on a mission to save sinners. God. Loves. To give grace. To sinners.

Even sinners as wicked and evil as the Ninevites. God’s heart. The core of who he is, is a heart of grace.

Ezekiel 18:23 Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

Later in Ezekiel 33:11 God says As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die?

We can get so accustomed to this side of grace, that we forget what a radical statement this is.

None of us deserve God’s love. We are wicked and sinful just like the Ninevites. Pagan idolators who have our own towers of sin that reach as high as heaven.

And that means we are in trouble, because our sin demands God’s wrath.

But praise God that our trouble comes up before him. God knows we deserve damnation under his wrath, but in his grace he comes after us to reconcile us to himself.

That is God’s mission. God coming to Jonah, I want you to go to that wicked city so that I might have grace on them of God coming after us when we didn’t ask for it and we wanted nothing to do with him.

And that is what God has been doing ever since the Fall.

The entire Bible is example after example of God showing grace to sinful people, but let’s go back to where it all started.

God created Adam and Eve. He made them in his image to reflect his glory and worship him.

And God said you can eat of any tree in the garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for the day you eat of it, you will surely die.

Then one day, Satan came to Adam and Eve with temptation and they ate the fruit. And then what happened?

God came after them! Adam and Eve hid from the Lord ashamed of their nakedness and sin, and God called out “Where are you?”

And Adam came out and said, “I hid because we ate the fruit.”

But God didn’t kill them right then and there like they deserved. They were spiritually dead and if they died physically, they would suffer for all eternity under God’s wrath. But in his grace God didn’t kill them, but instead promised to save them.

He even made them clothes to cover their shame showing how he would one day clothe his people in the righteousness of Christ to cover their shame and guilt.

Even right after the fall, God took the initiative to save sinners.

He does not take pleasure and delight in the wicked. Peter says, God doesn’t want any sinner to perish, but for ever person to reach repentance (1 Peter 3:9).

This is God’s heart towards even the most vile and wicked sinner because God’s heart is a heart of grace.

This is why God called Jonah to go to Nineveh. And this is why Jonah hated the thought of God giving grace to anyone like the Ninevites.

Jonah’s heart is the one we might expect from a holy and righteous God, but praise the Lord that he desires grace and his mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).

Jonah teaches us that God is on a mission to save sinners, and this mission reflects God’s gracious heart towards undeserving sinners.

Continuing in Jonah God’s mission doesn’t just show us his heart, God’s mission is also why Jesus came to die.

1900/2,354

II. God’s Mission is Why Jesus Came to Die

Jonah 1:2-3 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

You’ll notice funny pun at the beginning of verse 3. When it says Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish, that is the same word from the beginning of verse 2 where God said, Arise, go to Nineveh.

So they way you should read it is God came to Jonah and said Arise and go to Nineveh. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish.

And when it says Jonah fled, that says he ran as fast as he could. Where God was wanting him to fun off to Nineveh, Jonah turned and bolted the other direction.

That’s actually literally what he did. If you look at this map, you’ll see [Gathe-heifer] in the Northern part of the northern Kingdom.

Jonah was supposed to go Northeast to Nineveh. But the Bible says we went down to Joppa, which is South West. The complete opposite direction.

And Jonah went to Joppa specifically to find a ship that would take him to Tarshish.

Now Tarshish was in modern day Spain between 2500-3000 miles away from Nineveh.

In Jonah’s day, it was basically the edge of the world. Jonah could not get farther from Nineveh than Tarshish.

When it said Jonah fled to Tarshish, it was to literally get as far from Nineveh as physically possible so he could ignore God’s call to preach repentance.

That’s why it says two times Jonah fled to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

That is a peculiar phrase that means something very specific.

God is infinite and therefore God is everywhere at once. The Psalmist says Psalm 139:7-12 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

Jonah knew God was omnipresent. That there was no hiding from from him. He says as much in Jonah 1:9 when he tells some sailors that he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land.

So when it says Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord, that doesn’t mean Jonah was literally getting away from God. That’s impossible.

Instead, it means that Jonah was renouncing his call as a prophet of God!

Elijah used a similar phrase in 1 Kings 17:1.

3800 ideal/ 4027 actual after point 1

III. God’s Mission is Our Mission

5700 ideal/

end of 1 REC

Conclusion

Aim: God’s heart for the Lost.

Let’s Pray

Scripture Reading

Related Media

Related Sermons