Sermon Tone Analysis

Our next stop on our tour through the minor prophets is Jonah.

We love Jonah.

It is familiar to us.

It is one of the prophetic books that feels more accessible.

The book is short, being only four chapters, but three out of the four are in narrative form.

It is easier to follow and interpret than books like Hosea, Amos, and Joel.

It also shifts focus from the sins of Israel to the sins of Assyria.

Well, sort of.

Jonah is also easy to place in the timeline of historical events.

Thanks to 2 Kings 14:23-25, we know Jonah prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II, king of the north.

This puts Jonah in the same time period as Hosea and Amos.

Israel is enjoying a relative peace from their enemies, enlarged borders, economic prosperity, and a resurgence of religious observance, though shallow in substance.

Remember that Israel also has a lot of corruption going on as the upper class exploits the poorest among them.

All this is going on, but is not the immediate focus of the book.

So God calls His prophet Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, about 550 miles northeast of Samaria, the capitol of Israel.

Nineveh was the capitol of Assyria, whom Israel had a difficult relationship with.

The enlarged borders Israel now enjoyed was a result of a successful military campaign against Assyria and Aram, resulting in great military strength for Israel, and a weakened state for the Assyrians as they dealt with internal dissension.

Verse two of our text says that the evil of the Assyrians had come up before the Lord.

The Assyrians had a reputation for being a barbaric people.

Their kings are recorded describing their conquests.

Included in them are some deeply disturbing things.

They did terrible things to the bodies of their captives and to the dead.

It could be that this is what God can tolerate no longer.

Unlike all the other prophets so far, Jonah flees instead of embracing his task.

He goes to Joppa, which is a port city off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and hops aboard a boat headed to Tarshish.

Now the location of this city is unknown, but there are a few theories.

First, Tarshish is the name of a city now lost off the coast of Spain.

If this is true, Jonah is fleeing 2,000 miles in the opposite direction.

The other suggests that Tarshish is an ancient name for Tarsus, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, which is now in southwest Turkey, 330ish miles north of Samaria.

Either way, the point is Jonah is fleeing from the call of God.

Why is Jonah fleeing from God? Perhaps he fears the Assyrians’ response.

Maybe he fears for his life.

Maybe he fears what will happen if they listen.

We are not given the reason here, but chapter four indicates Jonah knew Nineveh would listen and God would have compassion on them, which he did not want.

So in response to Jonah’s attempt to flee the presence of God, God brings a windstorm upon Jonah.

So the windstorm comes and everybody panics.

They start calling out to their own gods, but none of them answer.

Frantically, they try to keep the ship afloat by throwing all their cargo overboard.

In the midst of this frenzied attempt to save themselves, the captain of the ship goes into the lower deck to discover Jonah fast asleep.

The captain calls Jonah to participation.

“Come on, man! get up and do your part!

Call on your god.

Maybe he will be concerned about us!”

They have tried everything and nothing has worked.

Notice though that the story does not indicate whether Jonah called on God or not.

It does not look like he did.

Instead, the crew members begin to cast lots.

Casting lots was an ancient form of divination.

It was thought that if you threw sticks, stones, or other objects, depending on the pattern in which the fall, it will tell you what the will of God is.

Today, this might be akin to something like rolling dice, drawing straws, or flipping a coin.

Whatever the outcome, that was perceived to be the will of God.

So the crew cast lots, and the lots revealed Jonah was at fault.

They begin interrogating him.

He tells them who he is and who his God is.

Note here the word Lord in all capital letters.

In the NASB translation, this word always signifies the covenant name of God, YHWH.

This name distinguished our God from other gods who might be credited with creating the heavens and the earth.

So they are all afraid of him and say, what should we do?

He tells them to throw him overboard and the sea will calm down.

Notice also that they don’t do that at first.

They try to row back to shore.

which doesn’t work.

Then they throw him overboard, offer sacrifices, and make vows.

Now these acts of worship should not be seen as conversions, but as a polytheistic culture trying to appease a god in the hopes that no other calamity might befall them.

We don’t know what kind of fish, but that is beside the point.

Skeptics would say this story is not true because it’s simply unbelievable that a man could be swallowed by a great fish and survive for three days and three night.

Under normal circumstances, that would be true.

But God is by his very nature a supernatural being.

If we believe he spoke the universe into existence out of nothing, closed the mouths of lions for Daniel, and saved his friends from being burned alive in a furnace, surely he can keep his prophet alive in the belly of a great fish.

But even that is not the point of the story.

Obedience to God’s commands will save you from unnecessary storms in life.

What strikes me about this whole chapter is that the storm would have never happened if Jonah had done what God told him to do in the first place.

If Jonah had gone straight to Nineveh, perhaps those sailors would have had a calm voyage to Tarshish.

The storm was brought about through Jonah’s disobedience.

He was reluctant to go and chose to get as far away as he could.

This scenario is entirely Jonah’s fault.

Obedience to God would have saved him from the storm, which means he never would have been thrown overboard, and never swallowed by a great fish.

Our disobedience to God affects everyone around us.

Try to put yourself in the position of one of the sailors on this boat.

For you, this starts out as any other day.

You have made this trip 100 times.

You know the route, you know what to expect, you know the weather patterns for this time of year.

You have accounted for every variable you can, including provisions needed to take care of your last minute passenger.

This is your job.

So you set sail, this storm kicks up, you pray to your god, and nothing happens.

Next, you throw your entire business and livelihood into the ocean.

These men didn’t know what they would lose that day.

In the face of certain death, you don’t care anyway.

But the actions of one of God’s prophets affected everyone around them.

The story of Jonah shows God’s sovereign care for His creation and his desire for his children’s obedience.

There is a great irony here in Jonah chapter one.

While Israel had enough problems of their own, they were called by God and established as a nation to be a light to all other nations around them.

It was through Israel God would demonstrate to the world what it means to be in relationship to Him.

Israel did not do this job well.

They had an obedience problem.

But I want you to notice something.

When the crew asked Jonah what they should do and he told them to throw him overboard, they tried to row back to shore first.

Do you see what is happening here?

God wanted to use Jonah to show mercy to the Assyrians.

Jonah said no.