God Will Be God

We don't see much of what actually happens when Jonah comes to Nineveh, what the prophet says or does in the midst of the people, except to know that he proclaimed to them the word that God had sent him with in the first place. And then, when Nineveh repents and turns from their wicked ways and experiences the grace of God, Jonah gets angry. 

But not at Nineveh.

He gets angry with God.

It's an interesting rant, one that should leave most of us scratching our heads. When Jonah sees what happens in Nineveh as a result of God's powerful word to them, he really loses it. He goes off. See, God? I knew that You would be God. I knew that You would act according to Your good nature and do something completely Lord-like. I knew that if You sent me and I came, You would show up and be God and be good.

How could You?

It's extremely bizarre. Most of us, if not all of us, would love the opportunity to see God show up and be God. Most of us would relish a moment in which we got to know for sure that the God that we believe in is the God that He says He is. After all, isn't that what we want? We want a God that we can know, a God whose character is fully revealed, a God who is, particularly when we worship a God who claims that He Is. 

Most of us, if you told us that we could go to Nineveh and speak one word of truth about God and then see Him in the fullness of His glory and grace, at His very best in redemption, would not hesitate to go. We'd run to Nineveh, if for nothing more than the chance to see God be God. 

And yet, this is exactly the reason that Jonah has run away from Nineveh. It's what he's so angry about when he finally does get there. He knew all along that God was going to be God, and it absolutely infuriates him. He wanted no part of it. 

It's extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, to say why Jonah felt the way that he did about this. There are a couple of possibilities that are perhaps not so foreign to our fallen human hearts, however.

First, it's possible that Jonah found the people of Nineveh undeserving of God. Maybe even by comparison - to, say, himself. Maybe Jonah knew that these people would experience God in a way that he never had, a way that maybe he longed to, and he found them unworthy. He didn't want to give them the gift of God, particularly not if it was a gift that he had never experienced himself. (Never mind that he had, by this point, actually experienced it, as God had done something completely God-like for him in the raging sea with that whole giant fish thing.) 

It's easy for us to do the same. Sure, we could offer the gift of God to someone else, tell them about mercy and grace and all that. But do they really deserve it? Just look at what they've done. Why would we give it to them when we, who are more deserving in our own eyes, have yet to fully experience it in the way that we want? If this is Jonah's perspective, it's not laudable, but it's at least relate-able.

Second, maybe Jonah thought that if he went to Nineveh and preached the judgment that God had given him, knowing that if the wicked people repented, God would forgive them, he thought that it would make him look wrong or foolish in their eyes. If he comes preaching judgment and convicts them, but then God turns His wrath when they turn their hearts, this judgment never comes to pass, and Jonah is laughed right out of town. A prophet of the Lord? Ha. He couldn't even get one simple thing right. 

None of us wants to be "wrong" about God. But I think what Jonah might have missed if this was his perspective was that he would not have been wrong; he would have been exactly right. The people would not have said that God being God was not directly connected to their own repentance and change of hearts; they would have known that it required something of them, just as Jonah would have preached that it would. In other words, Jonah may not have recognized that if God did, indeed, save a wicked people who turned from their wicked ways, then Jonah was not wrong; he was exactly right. The people would not laugh at him; they would love him. 

If only we knew who would love us if we dared to speak truth to them who need most to hear it. 

So it's bizarre, indeed, and there are a lot of questions we just can't answer about what was running through Jonah's heart and mind at this point. God will be God and he knew it, and it was just too much for him. Maybe it's too much for us. I don't know. 

But I hope that it's true that if we knew there was a chance to see the glory and goodness of God on display, we'd go running there. Even toward a place like Nineveh.

Big Fish

In a very Hollywood-esque fashion, it's tempting to think that perhaps when Jonah was thrown overboard into the raging sea, the sea calmed and then, a giant fish jumped out of the water and snatched him up, Free Willy-style. This fish would have been un-missable, with even the sailors on the ship turning their heads to look at the spectacle. 

But there's no reason from the Scriptures to think that this is at all how it happened. And is this really the way that God often works? 

It's far more likely that Jonah was treading water, then sinking into the sea, and a big fish came through the waters to swallow and to rescue him, quietly, and that the sailors on the ship didn't know anything about it. They probably never saw the fish, never knew about it, never had any idea what happened to Jonah once he hit the waves, except, of course, to say that he surely drowned, for they never saw him again. (It would have been nice of him if he'd gone and found those sailors at some point, though, and let them know they had not killed a man. But whatever.)

It raises an interesting point, and one that is worth reminding ourselves of over and over and over again. That point is this: you just never know what kind of provision God is making in someone else's life. 

It's so easy for us to look at someone else's life and to judge it. Oh, we say, they're drowning. How tragic and sad. Why isn't their God coming to rescue them? They must be sinners. Can't even tread water long enough to save their own lives. What a shame. What a pity. You'd think that if their God were real, He'd be here by now. So much for faith. So much for believing in anything. What a waste. 

And so on and so on it goes, from the outside looking in, knowing only what we know and what we can see in the raging seas.

But God is always, always at work in this world in ways that we don't know, in ways that we cannot see, doing things that we could not fathom and that, a lot of the time, we'll never even know about. Because when they aren't our things, we don't necessarily need to know about them until and unless the person whose things they are decides to give a testimony on them. 

Who on that ship would ever have thought that God was at work in the seas, bringing a big fish into the choppy waters to swallow, but not to eat, His prophet? Who on that ship could have possibly known it was even possible to live in the belly of a fish? They spent their entire lives on the sea, knew the waters well, and yet, God was doing something they still could not have known, let alone fathomed or understood.

Who among us has eyes to see what he cannot see? 

What would it change about our faith if we could? What would it change about what we believe about God, about faith, about one another, about grace, about mercy, about love if we could see the provision that God is making right now for someone else? Provision that is beyond our wildest imagination, beyond our best knowledge base, beyond our line of sight? What would it change about the way we believe if we could see what we cannot yet see? 

How would it change the way that we love the wayward prophet, if we knew what God was doing for him? How would it change the way we love the Lord? 

What if we knew there was a fish in all that water? Seriously. What if we knew?

No Turning Back

As we saw yesterday, at the point when Jonah realizes that the storm is his fault, he commands the crew of the ship to throw him overboard. He didn't have to; there were other options, options that would have shown his repentance and taken him toward Nineveh, where the Lord had commanded him to go, but he didn't choose any of those. He chose to be thrown into the raging waters. One possible reason, of course, is that he still did not, under any circumstances, want to go to Nineveh.

Another option, however, is that perhaps he didn't think that he could. 

Perhaps Jonah thought that if the Lord was so mad at him, so disappointed in him, that He would send a raging storm into an open sea, putting the lives of hundreds of sailors at risk and costing them at the very least their cargo, challenging their very best skills, unrelenting in the winds and the rains and the lightning, then maybe this God was not open to repentance right now. Maybe this God was not interested in Jonah turning around. Maybe this God didn't want to hear it. Maybe this God had already decided the prophet's fate, had already made His judgment, had already signed His decree. 

Remember - this is Old Covenant disobedience. Remember - this is before Jesus. Remember - that doesn't even really matter.

It doesn't matter because it's a feeling that even we, as Christians, as New Covenant people, as people with a Promise know all too well. It's a feeling that strikes most of us at one point or another, some of us more violently than others.

Oh, no. I've messed up too bad. I've gone too far. I've done too wrong. There's no way I can go back, no way God would welcome me back, no way I can just turn around now and do what God had asked me to do in the first place. I was wrong, dead wrong, and now, there's nothing left to do but to suffer my fate. 

Throw. me. over.

Sound familiar? I think this is one of the hardest truths about the Christian faith that we wrestle with; it's the story of the prodigal all over again (or perhaps, since it came first, the first time). We are a people prone to condemnation, even self-condemnation, and we just never really know what to do with mercy. Jonah lived in an age of mercy, and even he didn't get it. There was no grace yet, just mercy, and Jonah still thought his only option at this point was to throw himself into the storm, into the sea, to get swept up by the waves of judgment. 

His divine moment? he missed it. His mission from God? gone and past. Any chance at redemption? not even a fat one. Mercy? ha! The wind and the waves are proof enough that it's over for him. 

I wonder if Jonah even thought about Nineveh in those moments. I wonder if he reconsidered himself, if - faced with the wind and the waves - he cursed himself for ever thinking Nineveh so bad. Maybe he didn't. Maybe it is as we proposed yesterday, that he just didn't want to go to Nineveh ever and so had no qualms in his heart about what he was getting himself into. But maybe he did. Maybe as he stood on the edge of the rocking ship, believing wholeheartedly that it was now too late, he thought himself too hasty and began to wonder what would have happened if he'd gone. 

Maybe this moment was his divine moment after all. Maybe this was the beginning of the turning of his heart. Maybe as he shielded his eyes from the pounding rain, he saw visions of what might have been, thought about what he could have seen if only he'd gone before it was too late. 

But now, it's too late. Isn't it? No turning back now. God? He doesn't like disobedience, and who is the disgraceful man who goes only because it might save his own life? 

Okay, Jonah sighed. It is what it is. Throw me over. 

Throw. me. over.

Never Nineveh

As the story of Jonah continues, we see that the prayers that are being offered from the ship to the various gods of the crew are not working, not even Jonah's prayer, and the crew begins to seek the cause of the storm. Who among them is responsible for the anger of the gods? And what do they need to do about it?

At this point, Jonah steps up and confesses his guilt among them. He tells them that he boarded the ship as a way to get away from what God was calling him to do and that this entire storm is his fault. He tells them that the only way to calm the seas is to throw him into them, although we should also note that he stops just short of jumping for himself.

The crew doesn't really want to throw a man into the sea, however. How could they? It sets a bad precedent for sailors to not bring a full ship to port, and an even worse precedent if they solve their storm problems by throwing men overboard. After all, they are the best sailors in all the world. If they have to resort to something outside of their skill set, what kind of sailors are they, anyway? And this Jonah fellow would most certainly die, which would make them essentially murderers, wouldn't it? Which would cause their gods, not to mention Jonah's Lord, to be angry with them. 

No, there are far too many negatives to what this Jonah is proposing; the crew can't just throw him overboard, not even on a chance that it may calm the storm. So they continue to throw ballast over into the sea, emptying the boat of everything that they can in order to make it more manageable, but nothing is working. Nothing is helping. 

Jonah is insistent. Throw. me. over. 

It's noble, Jonah sacrificing himself for the rest of the sailors. It really shows something about the prophet, doesn't it? It does, but what if it's not as noble as it seems? There are other reasons that Jonah might sacrifice himself to the seas than simply to save the crew of his wayfaring ship. 

The first one that comes to mind is: he still didn't want to go to Nineveh.

Because that would seem like "Plan A," wouldn't it? Jonah could have told the sailors to let him off at the next port so that he could obey the Lord and do what he was asked to do in the first place. He could have asked them to turn the ship around. He could have asked them to sail toward Nineveh, getting him to the closest port, whatever that might have been. He could have repented, told the Lord that he would go, and have gone. It would have thrown the sailors off course for a bit, but surely that's a small price to pay for his life. 

Except, of course, that that's still not the life that Jonah wants to live. He doesn't want to go to Nineveh. Period. Plain and simple. He'd rather be thrown into a raging sea and drown than go to the sinful city to which God had sent him. Maybe it even came up. Maybe the sailors offered to take him to port or even toward Nineveh, and he refused. No, no. Just throw me into the waters. 

For real, dudes.

All of a sudden, maybe our Jonah is not so noble after all, making a sacrifice of himself. Maybe...maybe he's a coward. Or a rebel. 

Or maybe.... (another possibility tomorrow). 

Jonah

Jonah is one of those stories that we're pretty sure we know. Even those who don't go to church know the story of Jonah - the guy who ran from God and got stuck in a whale for three days before washing up on a beach somewhere. 

Yet, every time I read through the book of Jonah, something new strikes me about the story, something that I don't often (or ever) hear preached from it. So I thought I'd take a few days to talk about some of the things that are striking me right now in case you, too, aren't hearing them anywhere else.

The first comes from Jonah 1, right from the set-up of the story. 

Jonah is on a boat, headed to Tarshish (and thus, away from Nineveh, despite the direct order of the Lord to go), and the boat is rocking heavily in a severe storm that has come on. The sailors are panicking up on the deck, and Jonah is sleeping underneath; the crew comes running to him, screaming for him to wake up and start praying to his God for the ship, for the storm, for anything! They don't want to die!

Now, I have heard this part of the story preached every now and then, related often to Jesus, who was also asleep in a ship in a storm and had to be woken up to pray for the safety of those on board. I have heard it said that the crew came to Jonah because they knew his God was powerful and they knew that if he prayed, something would happen that would save them from their sure-at-this-point fate. They knew what they needed was the Lord, and Jonah was the guy to get Him for them. 

Have you heard this? It's a nice story, but it's not the Jonah story. Not according to the Scriptures, anyway.

Jonah lived in a time not entirely unlike our own, where everyone had their own version of God and where there wasn't a big cultural commitment to any one God over another, but it was assumed that if you had a God, you prayed to your God in times of trouble or need and your God probably answered you. In fact, if you look a few verses prior to this more well-known verse, you'll see that everyone on the ship was praying to his god. Not to the Lord, necessarily, but each man to his own god, that some god might show up and save them. 

So when the crew goes down into the boat and wakes Jonah up to pray to his God, it's not because they have some powerful belief in who his God is; they might not even have known at all which God Jonah would pray to. But everyone on this boat is praying to his god, except the guy who is sleeping under deck, and they'll be darned if they aren't going to wake him up to pray, too. Everyone on board, get on board!

We need to stop, then, thinking that there's this pre-existing disposition for everyone to believe in the Lord. It's just not there. It's easy for us to read that into it because we know the power of the Lord and want Him to come out on top, but the sailors on that boat didn't know the Lord from Dagon from Molech from whoever. They were simply men in need of a god, and they wanted everyone to be praying to one. 

It's the same way in our world today. Our world offers "thoughts and prayers" rather frequently, even those whose god is not our God and who maybe never set foot in a church. We read "thoughts and prayers" and we think, oh, they must on some level then believe in the Lord and know His power, but that's not necessarily the case. 

The truth is we're living in a world much like Jonah's boat, where every man has his own god and in times of need, will call upon that god. And what this world is looking for is not the Lord, but anything - anything at all in the midst of a choppy sea. And so they pray. And they wake us up and ask us to pray. Everyone on board, get on board! 

But it's not because our God is anything special to them. Not at all. It's just not that easy. 

Let us never fool ourselves into believing that it is.