Sermon series: Learning Life's Lessons From Old Testament Characters

Subject: Jonah--The Great Refusal

Jonah 1:1-4
The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: "Get up and go to the great City of Nineveh! Announce My judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are."
But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord.
He went down to the seacoast, to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping that by going away to the west he could escape from the Lord.
But as the ship was sailing along, suddenly the Lord flung a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to send them to the bottom."
Verse 15-17
Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! The sailors were awe struck by the Lord's great power, and they offered Him a sacrifice and vowed to serve Him.
Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights."

There are other Scriptures in the Bible that refer to Jonah.
2 Kings 14:25-27
"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 Ammittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw the bitter suffering of everyone in Israel, and how they had absolutely no one to help them. And because the Lord had not said He would blot out the name of Israel completely, He used Jeroboam II, the son of Jehoash, to save them."
Matthew 12:39-40
"An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonah; for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Verse 41
"The men of Nineveh will rise up in the

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judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here."

The book of Jonah is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of biblical literature. The account of Jonah's dramatic attempt to escape from God’s presence by boarding a ship bound for Tarshish, only to be thwarted by a raging storm and returned to land incarcerated within a great fish, is possibly one of the best-known stories of the Bible!
But here is the question....
The book of Jonah--is it history, allegory, or romance? Was Jonah a real person? The answer to these questions is of much deeper consequence than many persons realize; For if the book is really a narrative of actual fact, it brings to us one of the most striking revelations of God, and one of the most priceless messages of divine comfort ever given; whereas, if it be merely fictional, it contains no authentic significance at all!
Modernist theologians, true to their Sadducean lineage, would discredit the book because it relates that which is miraculous; but their own supposedly scholarly "explaining" so ludicrously contradict each other that we turn back to the Scripture again, preferring even the miraculous to the ridiculous!
That Jonah was a real person there can surely be no doubt.
As noted in the above Scriptures, he is referred to in the record of the Old Testament prophets, and more importantly, Jesus referred to him. It may be worth noting that Gath-hepher, the town in which Jonah lived, is now identified with a village named El Meshed some miles north of Nazareth, in Zebulon, where, according to a firm tradition dating back to Jerome’s time, the tomb of Jonah is pointed out even to this day!
But what about the whale?
This matter of the "whale" has been aggravated into an altogether disproportionate prominence by the contention which our modern critics have created around it. Were it not for that, we would not trouble to add this extra word here; for there is no fundamental difficulty about it to those who believe in God and in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The truth is, that this physical miracle of the "whale" is not nearly so wonderful as the moral miracle of Nineveh's repentance, or as the spiritual miracle of the

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Divine self-revelation at the end of the book. This much is certainly true, that just as often as critics have held up this "whale" incident to ridicule, able writers have turned the ridicule of the critics back upon their own heads. Our modern critics have urged that no kind of fish ever heard of could perform such a feat as the swallowing and containing of a grown man; but alas, for them, they have thereby exposed their own ignorance of the marine world.
Here is a true story!
"In February 1891, the whale-ship STAR OF THE EAST was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands, and the look-out sighted a large sperm whale three miles away. Two boats were lowered, and in a short time, one of the harpooners was enabled to spear the fish.
The second boat attacked the whale, but was upset by a lash of its tail, and the men thrown into the sea, one being drowned, and another, James Bartley, having disappeared, could not be found. The whale was killed, and in a few hours, the great body was lying by the ship's side, and the crew busy with the axes and spades removing the blubber. They worked all day and part of the night. Next day they attached some tackle to the stomach, which was hoisted on deck.
The sailors were startled by spasmodic signs of life, and inside was found the missing sailor, doubled up and unconscious. He was laid on the deck and treated to a bath of sea-water which soon revived him; but his mind was not clear, and he was placed in the captain's quarters, where he remained for two weeks a raving lunatic. He was kingly and carefully treated by the captain, and by the officers of the ship, and gradually gained possession of his senses. At the end of the third week he had entirely recovered from the shock, and resumed his duties.
During his sojourn in the whale's stomach Bartley's skin, where exposed to the action of the gastric juice, underwent a striking change. His face, neck and hands were bleached to a deadly whiteness, and took on the appearance of parchment. Bartley affirms that he would probably have lived inside his house of flesh until he starved, for he lost his senses through fright and not from lack of air.
Bartley is also said to have explained that when he was drawn into the darkness of the whale's stomach, there was intense heat. In the dark he felt around for an exit and found only slimy walls around him. Then the awful truth rushed into his mind. And

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he became unconscious till the sea-water bath revived him on the ship's deck."
And where now are the critics who have declared the swallowing of Jonah to be an impossible feat?
The Bible says it, Jesus confirmed it...the story of Jonah is an event of biblical history that reveals to us the truth that there is no where you can hide from God!
Having satisfied ourselves that this Book of Jonah is a genuine bit of history, we are now ready to learn its priceless significance. There are four chapters to this little book and chapter one tells of Jonah and the storm, chapter two tells us about Jonah and the fish, chapter three speaks of Jonah and the city, and chapter four tells us about Jonah and the Lord.
In these four chapters we have Jonah's disobedience, preservation, proclamation, and correction. In chapter one he is fleeing from God, in chapter two he is praying to God, in chapter three he is speaking for God, and in chapter four his is learning of God.
In understanding the story of Jonah, it is important that we answer the question...Why did Jonah try to flee from the Lord's command to go to Nineveh?
The common idea is that Jonah was a narrow-minded Jew, unwilling to carry a merciful warning to a Gentile people. For instance, even a writer of such keen insight as the late Dr. A. T. Pierson says: "His national prejudice construed God’s election of Israel as a rejection of all others. His religious intolerance was mixed with no mercy for the heathen. His legal spirit inclined more to vengeance than to grace. His disloyal temper made him willful and wayward."
The common idea about Jonah is mainly due to our misunderstanding the motive for his flight. The usually suggested reasons for it are three--(1) cowardly fear of going to Nineveh, (2) bigoted prejudice against the Gentiles; (3) selfish jealousy for his own prestige.
The answer to our question is found in Jonah’s own words in chapter four, verse two. "Therefore I fled to Tarshish, because I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow of anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil."
Moreover, Jonah had shown himself prepared to forfeit his prophetic office, prepared to flee into exile, prepared even to resign life itself, rather than that Nineveh should be spared! Now such deliberate self-abandon, followed by such frankness to the One who, as Jonah realized, could read his in-

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most motive, surely will persuade us that Jonah must have had some far greater reason than any thought of personal safety, or prejudice, or prestige, for wishing to leave Nineveh to its doom; and as a matter of fact, we know that Jonah did have such a reason--a reason which transforms his motive from apparent pettiness to something touchingly heroic.
There are two awesome facts about Assyria which gave Jonah a vehement dread lest the threatened judgment on its wicked capital, Nineveh, should be averted, through the compassion of God.
First, Assyria was the rising world-power destined to destroy Israel; and Jonah knew this. Second, the notorious brutality of the Assyrians was such as to make the surrounding peoples shudder with a sickly terror of ever falling prey to them.
Speaking of the Assyrians, it has been said: "No considerations of pity were permitted to stand in the way of Assyrian policy. It could not afford to garrison its conquests, and it practiced a plan which largely dispensed with the necessity for leaving garrisons behind the Assyrian armies. There was unsparing slaughter to begin with. The kings seem to gloat in their inscriptions over the spectacle presented by the field of battle. They describe how it was covered with the corpses of the vanquished. This carnage was followed up by fiendish inflictions upon individual cities."
Every man in Israel knew these things. Jonah most certainly did, for he came of a border town, and may even have witnessed Assyrian savageries in frontier raids.
Besides knowing full well the blood-curdling savagery of the Assyrians, Jonah knew that Assyria was the nation which was predicted to destroy his own beloved land and people.
When Jonah was told by the Lord that Nineveh was to be destroyed in forty days, he surely rejoiced. There was but one thing Jonah feared--Jehovah was a merciful God; and if Nineveh cried to him, even at the eleventh hour, Assyria might be spared, and then Israel would perish! Oh that he might be quite sure that Nineveh would not be spared! But how could that be? Well, there was one way--he could leave Nineveh without the warning! "Thus she would be left to reap the deserved harvest of her wickedness!
Jonah must now make the most costly choice of his life. He must choose between suffering the Divine vengeance upon himself for awful disobedience, and thus save Israel; or else he must go to Nineveh, and possibly cause the salvation of Nineveh, which would

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result in Israel's ruin. His mental agony resolves itself into the determination to flee rather than risk delivering the message! He would sacrifice himself that Israel might be saved; for if it came to a choice as to which should not be spared, Nineveh or Israel? --then let it be wicked Nineveh!
Jonah put his own life on the line for his nation. Moses did the same when he prayed: "If Thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book." Paul said: "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."
You see...God knew the motive of his servant; and surely that is why He preserved and restored him; and surely that is why Jonah could express himself with such intense frankness to God afterwards.
When Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, he certainly did not think he could go where God was not! He knew that he could not escape Him; but he was willing to suffer the inescapable vengeance of Heaven if only Israel might be saved.
The writer of the book has chosen his language carefully to convey the implications of disobedience. Jonah was called to go to a place in the east, so he set off for the west. He was told to go to Nineveh, but "went down" to Joppa, and there "went down" into a ship. And twice the writer stresses that Jonah's westward journey was away from the presence of the Lord. The act of disobedience always has attendant circumstances, for the point of decision makes it impossible for things to remain as they were. The one who disobeys cannot remain in God’s presence and fellowship, for the act of disobedience is always a journey away from God. And the one who will not go up, in response to God’s challenge, inevitably finds that the path in life following disobedience is a downward path.
Ordered to Nineveh, he sets out for Tarshish. There were two cities on his map and only two. There was Nineveh, the city to which he might go in the fellowship of God and within the circle of the will of God. There was also Tarshish, the city that lay at the end of the rebel's road, the city whose streets, if ever he walked them at all, he would walk without the fellowship of the God whom he had disobeyed.
And...there are just two cities on the map of our life! The Nineveh of obedience and the Tarshish of disobedience...we are going to one or the other! Walking the paths of obedience

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means a life of joy lived in divine fellowship. In Tarshish, the city of disobedience, there is no garden called Gethsemane without its gates and no rugged hill called Calvary that overlooks its walls. It is a city without a cross and yet it is a city where people seldom sing and often sob. It is a city where nobody looks joyously into God’s face and calls Him Father.
Jonah, in disobedience, flees duty, and in doing so, he renounces the friendship of God. You cannot walk with Him and at the same time be in rebellion against Him! When Jonah had fully decided that he would rebel against God, and give up all claim to God, a dreadful restfulness came to his troubled spirit. He went down into the sides of the ship and went to sleep! Though he has forgotten God, God has not forgotten him. Our text tells us that "the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up." The storm does not abate nor the danger of disaster subside, in desperation, the sailors call upon their various gods for help, driven to an unfamiliar piety by the jeopardy of their situation. Despite their pleas, the tempest continues to take its toll; it seems that death by drowning must be their fate!
And then Jonah is found, snoozing on the lower decks; doubtless the captain found him there, as he supervised the removal of the final bottles and bales of cargo to be cast overboard.
Jonah was asleep! He is not only without God, but he, in a measure, is satisfied to be without Him...he is asleep! No greater danger can come to any man than that. As long as your sin breaks your heart, as long as your disobedience makes you lie awake nights and wet your pillow in tears there is hope for you. But when you become contented with your wickedness, when you come to believe that it is the best possible for you, then you are in eternal danger indeed! Jonah finds himself back on the deck with the sailors who finally decide to cast lots to determine who on board could be the cause of their plight. Jonah is found guilty and makes his confession of disobedience, then recommends they cast him overboard to the raging sea. Man overboard, and the sea is immediately at rest!
When Jonah is cast overboard by the reluctant sailors, his only prospect was that of drowning. But God prepares a large fish and Jonah now finds himself in the belly of that fish. Prior to being cast into the wave, Jonah had gained some new perspectives on

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his miserable life; now, still retaining those new perspectives, he turns to prayer! In his prayer, he says: "When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. And my earnest prayer went out to You in Your holy Temple. Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies. 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."
In Jonah's prayer, there is no cry for deliverance for he knew that he was already being delivered. His prayer is really a Psalm of praise! There is not one word of petition in Jonah's prayer. It consists of thanksgiving, contrition and rededication. Inside that fish Jonah realized in a new way the wonderful love and care of his God. It was there that he came to understand with vividness the folly and futility of disobedience to God.
Now we come to chapter three which recounts Nineveh's repentance. As though primed by some divine hand, the suburbanites immediately respond to Jonah's preaching; they believe in God and turn aside from the evil which has become their daily diet in life. And so radical is their conversion that immediately those who have responded pass on the prophetic message to friends and neighbors. Like a brush fire whipped by the wind, the message travels quickly through the suburbs to the heart of the city; the king and his council hear it and they too respond. And what began as a populist movement is promulgated and strengthened by royal decree. The very heart of the city is transformed. The royal proclamation requires not only ritual response and fasting, of both humans and beasts; it calls also for a change of heart, for a turning from evil and the defeat of violence.
But Jonah is angry! Now Nineveh will be spared and eventually Israel will be captured by the Assyrians. And so Jonah prays again, though the tone of his prayer is entirely different than his previous prayer. Seeing what is happening to the city, Jonah prays that God may take his life, for he has lost his desire to live! Jonah was angry because his theology was in evident conflict with the nature and action of God.
The wrath of Jonah is thus an all-too-common human phenomenon. Having tasted the divine love, he could not bear to think of it being extended to others; blinded by his own jealousy, he wanted to restrict the compassion of God to himself and his own kind. He did not understand the love God. Are we not acting the same as Jonah when we imply that our way of worship or our religious affiliation is the only one God really loves?