Proud to be TJ's man

If this book had ended at the last verse of chapter 3, history would have portrayed Jonah as the greatest of the prophets. After all, preaching one message that motivated thousands of people to repent and turn to God was no mean accomplishment. But the Lord doesn’t look on the outward things; He looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7) and weighs the motives (1 Cor. 4:5). That’s why chapter 4 was included in the book, for it reveals “the thoughts and intents” of Jonah’s heart and exposes his sins.

If in chapter 1, Jonah is like the Prodigal Son, insisting on doing his own thing and going his own way (Luke 15:11-32); then in chapter 4, he’s like the Prodigal’s Elder Brother—critical, selfish, sullen, angry, and unhappy with what was going on. It isn’t enough for God’s servants simply to do their Master’s will; they must do “the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart, and that’s where Jonah’s problems were to be found. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry” (Jonah 4:1).

The remarkable thing is that God tenderly dealt with His sulking servant and sought to bring him back to the place of joy and fellowship.

Had Jonah been any other prophet in the history of Israel, he would have been overjoyed with the results of his ministry, the repentance of the great city of Nineveh. Throughout Israel’s history, her prophets had failed to turn the nation to God, and were rejected and even killed by the people. As Stephen put the matter, “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52a).

In spite of joy at the repentance and salvation of so many, something for which his colleagues would have been overjoyed, Jonah was angry with God: “But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry” (4:1). Why would Jonah have been so angry with God? Jonah is not hesitant to explain, and so he prays this prayer of protest:

“Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life” (Jon. 4:2‑3)

God listened to Jonah (Jonah 4:1-4).

For the second time in this account, Jonah prays, but his second prayer was much different in content and intent. He prayed his best prayer in the worst place, the fish’s belly, and he prayed his worst prayer in the best place, at Nineveh where God was working. His first prayer came from a broken heart, but his second prayer came from an angry heart. In his first prayer, he asked God to save him, but in his second prayer, he asked God to take his life! Once again, Jonah would rather die than not have his own way.

This petulant prayer lets us in on the secret of why Jonah tried to run away in the first place. Being a good theologian, Jonah knew the attributes of God, that He was “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (v. 2, niv). Knowing this, Jonah was sure that if he announced judgment to the Ninevites and they repented, God would forgive them and not send His judgment, and then Jonah would be branded as a false prophet! Remember, Jonah’s message merely announced the impending judgment; it didn’t offer conditions for salvation.

Jonah was concerned about his reputation, not only before the Ninevites, but also before the Jews back home. His Jewish friends would want to see all of the Assyrians destroyed, not just the people of Nineveh. When Jonah’s friends found out that he had been the means of saving Nineveh from God’s wrath, they could have considered him a traitor to official Jewish foreign policy. Jonah was a narrow-minded patriot who saw Assyria only as a dangerous enemy to destroy, not as a company of repentant sinners to be brought to the Lord.

When reputation is more important than character, and pleasing ourselves and our friends is more important than pleasing God, then we’re in danger of becoming like Jonah and living to defend our prejudices instead of fulfilling our spiritual responsibilities.^2-4 Jonah certainly had good theology, but it stayed in his head and never got to his heart; and he was so distraught that he wanted to die!^2-5 God’s tender response was to ask Jonah to examine his heart and see why he really was angry.

Of all the books of the Bible, Jonah has the most unexpected and overlooked final chapter. Most people have heard the story of Jonah, but they think of it as ending at Jonah’s repentance and release from the fish. A smaller number of people may be able to tell you that the story goes on and that Jonah went and preached successfully to Nineveh. Almost everyone thinks the story ends right there. Yet there is a final, startling chapter in which the real lessons of the entire narrative are revealed.

The Incredible Collapse of Jonah

Assyria was the greatest power in the world, and the cruelest. It is understandable that, at first, Jonah did not want to go and preach in its capital. Yet when he finally announced God’s coming judgment, there was massive repentance. In response, God granted a reprieve and did not destroy the city.

It was nothing short of astonishing. Many modern readers respond to such a story with skepticism. We are quick to believe accounts of mass violence, but it’s harder to believe that the various classes and people of a great city would unite and agree to turn away from injustice. However, that is what happened. It shows that the Word of God is more powerful than we can imagine.

This would lead us to expect that the book would end in chapter 3 on a note of triumph, with “and Jonah returned to his own land rejoicing.” Instead, events take an unexpected turn. “But what God did was so terrible to Jonah, that he burned with anger” (verse 1).

The reaction is shocking and inexplicable. Do artists get angry when a prominent museum accepts their art for an installation? Do musicians get angry when they are given a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall? Why, then, when Jonah has just preached to the toughest audience of his life—and they have responded positively down to the last person —would he melt down in furious rage?

The Theological Problem

What specifically was Jonah’s problem?

In verse 2 he says, “Oh Lord, is this not what I spoke of when I was still in my homeland?” Readers are now let in on the ongoing argument Jonah has been having with God all along. Verses 2 and 3 give us a brief sample, but it is not hard to imagine the rest of it. “I just knew you might do something like this! These people are evil, and they only changed because they were scared. They didn’t convert and start worshipping you. They merely promised to start changing—and you bestow mercy on them for that! It’s good that you are a God of mercy, but this time you’ve gone too far.”

The name “Yahweh” (translated “the Lord”) has not appeared since chapter 2, but now Jonah literally cries, “Alas, Yahweh!” This is the personal, covenant name of God, which he reveals only to his people Israel, and it is the covenant of God with Israel that is much in Jonah’s mind. The Lord had promised to preserve Israel and accomplish his purposes in the world through them. How can God keep his promises to uphold his people and at the same time show mercy to his people’s enemies? How can he claim to be a God of justice and allow such evil and violence to go unpunished?

In Jonah’s mind, then, the issue is a theological one. There seems to be a contradiction between the justice of God and the love of God. “He knew that God loved Israel and extended his mercy to his chosen people; he felt, in the very marrow of his bones, that this special love of God . . . should not be extended to gentiles, above all to evil gentiles such as the inhabitants of Nineveh.”1

The Heart Issue

Jonah’s great anger, however, shows that he was not merely perplexed by a theological conundrum. When he says he wants to die (verse 3) and God, with remarkable gentleness, chastises him for his inordinate anger (verse 4), we see that Jonah’s real problem was at the deepest level of his heart. Perhaps we could say that all theological problems play themselves out not merely in our intellects but in our commitments, desires, and identities.

When Jonah says, in effect, “Without that—I have no desire to go on,” he means he has lost something that had replaced God as the main joy, reason, and love of his life. He had a relationship with God, but there was something else he valued more. His explosive anger shows that he is willing to discard his relationship with God if he does not get this thing. When you say, “I won’t serve you, God, if you don’t give me X,” then X is your true bottom line, your highest love, your real god, the thing you most trust and rest in. Here is Jonah saying to God, who should be the only real source of his meaning in life, “I have no source of meaning!”

What was it for Jonah? Nineveh’s repentance was pleasing to God, but it was threatening to Israel’s national interests. The will of God and the political fortunes of Israel seemed to be diverging. One would have to be chosen, and Jonah leaves no doubt as to which of those two concerns was more important to him. Of course, anyone who cared for his own country would have been anxious about Assyria’s survival. It was a terrorist state. Jonah, however, did not turn to God with his anxiety, trusting in him as so many of the psalm writers had done. If he had to choose between the security of Israel and loyalty to God, well, he was ready to push God away. That is not just concern and love for one’s country; that is a kind of deification of it.

Some years ago I was preaching on this passage in Jonah, and after the sermon a listener expressed his displeasure. He did not feel I should have criticized Jonah. “Jonah was just a good patriot,” he told me. “We should all be patriots.” I answered him that while love of country and your people is a good thing, like any other love, it can become inordinate. If love for your country’s interests leads you to exploit people or, in this case, to root for an entire class of people to be spiritually lost, then you love your nation more than God. That is idolatry, by any definition.

As a missionary, Jonah should have been glad that the Ninevites had taken a first step. Coming to full faith in God does not usually happen overnight, as it did with the sailors in Jonah’s boat. The people of the city showed their willingness to repent, and Jonah should have prepared to help them continue in their journey by teaching them the character of this new God, the Lord, and what it means to be in a covenant relationship with him. Instead he was furious that they had even begun to move toward God. Rather than going back into the city to teach and preach, he stayed outside it, in hopes that maybe God would still judge it (Jonah 4:5).

When Christian believers care more for their own interests and security than for the good and salvation of other races and ethnicities, they are sinning like Jonah. If they value the economic and military flourishing of their country over the good of the human race and the furtherance of God’s work in the world, they are sinning like Jonah. Their identity is more rooted in their race and nationality than in being saved sinners and children of God. Jonah’s rightful love for his country and people had become inordinate, too great, rivaling God. Rightful racial pride can become racism. Rightful national pride and patriotism can become imperialism.

Misusing the Bible

When Jonah begins to berate God, he quotes God’s own words to him. They are from Exodus 34:6–7, where God reveals himself to Moses and says he is “compassionate and gracious” and that he “forgives wickedness.” “Jonah sets God against God . . . all to justify himself.”2  He reads the Bible selectively, ignoring the latter part of Exodus 34:7 that speaks of God not leaving “the guilty unpunished.” He creates a simplistic picture of a God who simply loves everyone without judgment on evil. He uses the sacred text to justify his inordinate indignation, anger, and bitterness.

What Jonah is doing is a great danger for religious people, even the most devout Christians. It is possible to use the Bible selectively to justify oneself.3  One example is the scholar who “dissects Scripture to set it against Scripture” in a way that undermines the Bible’s authority so we don’t have to obey it. Another is “the simple Christian who opens his Bible to find himself justified . . . against non-Christians or Christians who do not hold the same views, arguments which show how far superior my position is to that of others.”4 Whenever we read the Bible in order to say, “Aha! I’m right!”; whenever we read it to feel righteous and wise in our own eyes, we are using the Bible to make ourselves into fools or worse, since the Bible says that the mark of evil fools is to be “wise in their own eyes” (cf. Proverbs 26:12).

In other words, if we feel more righteous as we read the Bible, we are misreading it; we are missing its central message. We are reading and using the Bible rightly only when it humbles us, critiques us, and encourages us with God’s love and grace despite our flaws.

For what [the Bible] teaches us about ourselves is all to the effect that we are not righteous, that we have no means of justifying ourselves, that we have . . . no right to condemn others and be in the right against them, and that . . . only a gracious act of God . . . can save us. That is what Scripture teaches us, and if we stick to this, reading the Bible is useful and healthy and brings forth fruit in us.5

Ellul concludes that if we use the Bible to puff up our own egos with our correctness and righteousness, and to denounce all others, then studying the Scripture “becomes a source of death and Satan’s work.”6  The one other example we have of anyone quoting and twisting the Bible to resist God is when Satan does it against Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11). Indeed, Jonah’s use of the Bible is not bringing him joy but rather taking him to the brink of despair. He asks God to take away his life.

The Problem of Self-righteousness

In hindsight, there was a clue to Jonah’s future meltdown within his prayer in the great fish.

Jonah had fled in the first place because he thought God was going to be merciful to Israel’s enemies and therefore, in his view, unjust. Then in chapter 2 he was confronted with the reality that he needed mercy and had no hope if God was completely fair with him and gave him only what he deserved. Therefore, in the belly of the fish Jonah received a deeper understanding of his need for grace.

However, at the very end of his prayer he said that those who cling to idols forfeit God’s love (Jonah 2:8). Jonah had seen some of his need for grace, but there was still some pride left. Pagans have idols—but not him! Yes, of course he needed mercy, but surely he wasn’t on the same level as these people. Surely he still had some spiritual merit—he still had some claims on God. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt concludes from his research that “self-righteousness is the normal human condition.”7  That fits in with what the Bible says about the inevitable human desire to justify oneself through one’s performance and effort, and therefore to “boast” in one’s righteousness, race and pedigree, or accomplishments (cf. Jeremiah 9:23–26; Romans 3:27–31).

Jonah’s self-righteousness had been diminished somewhat but not destroyed. He cried, “Salvation comes only from the LORD!” yet also, in effect, “But I’m not like those awful pagans!” (Jonah 2:8–9). That is why he was still susceptible to the spiritual crash that happened to him after God showed Nineveh mercy. He still felt, to some degree, that mercy had to be deserved, and they didn’t deserve it.

We learn from Jonah that understanding God’s grace—and being changed by it—always requires a long journey with successive stages. It cannot happen in a single cathartic or catastrophic experience (like being swallowed by a fish!).

During the building of Interstate 79 from Pittsburgh to Lake Erie, one stretch remained unfinished for years because of a swamp that had to be crossed. They kept putting down pilings, trying to finally get to the bottom so the bridge would not sink. But whenever they thought they had gotten to bedrock, the piling would give way and they would have to drill deeper.

Jonah’s heart was like that. Every time it seemed he had taken God and his grace to the very bottom, it turned out that he needed to go deeper. What does it mean to get to “bedrock” in one’s heart? If you say, “I’ll obey you, Lord, if you give me that,” then “that” is the nonnegotiable and God is just a means to an end. “That”—whatever it is—is the real bedrock. It is more foundational to your happiness than God is.

As long as there is something more important than God to your heart, you will be, like Jonah, both fragile and self-righteous. Whatever it is, it will create pride and an inclination to look down upon those who do not have it. It will also create fear and insecurity. It is the basis for your happiness, and if anything threatens it, you will be overwhelmed with anger, anxiety, and despair.

To reach heart bedrock with God’s grace is to recognize all the ways that we make good things into idols and ways of saving ourselves. It is to instead finally recognize that we live wholly by God’s grace. Then we begin serving the Lord not in order to get things from him but just for him, for his own sake, just for who he is, for the joy of knowing him, delighting him, and becoming like him. When we’ve reached bedrock with God’s grace, it begins to drain us, slowly but surely, of both self-righteousness and fear.

God quietly rebukes Jonah with a question: “Is it good for you to burn with such anger?” (Jonah 4:4). Anger is not wrong. If you love something and it is threatened or harmed, anger is the proper response. But “such” anger—inordinate anger of self-righteousness and fear—is a sign that the thing Jonah loves is a counterfeit god. He is inordinately committed to his race and nation. God will have to deal with this idolatry if Jonah is ever to get the infinite peace of resting in God’s grace alone.

Heart Storms

1. 1. Peter C. Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 1, Hosea, Joel, Amos, O badiah, Jonah (Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox

Press, 1984), p. 233.

2. 2. Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1971), p. 74.
3. 3. I bid.
4. 4. I bid.
5. 5. Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, p. 75.
6. 6. I bid.
7. 7. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New Y ork: Vintage, 2013), pp. xix, xx.

Jonah’s anger is incredible. Let us take note of what his anger was all about.

(1) Jonah was angry with God. In the final analysis Jonah was not angry with himself, or with men, but with the holy, righteous, perfect God. Jonah’s anger was so intense that he would rather die than live. Having prayed in chapter two that he might live, Jonah prays now that he might die (4:3).

(2) Jonah was angry with God because He acted consistently with His character, and for doing exactly what Jonah expected Him to do.

 

(3) Jonah was angry with God, protesting those very attributes of God for which the psalmists praised Him. The psalmists of the book of Psalms praise Him for His lovingkindness, His grace, and His mercy (cf. Ps. 86:5, 15), but for Jonah this is grounds for protest rather than praise.

(4) Jonah was angry with God because He showed grace toward the Ninevites. God’s question to Jonah should have served to instruct this prodigal prophet. It should have called Jonah’s attention to the utter sinfulness of being angry with God in the first place. Who can sustain a holy anger against a holy and perfect God? Furthermore, the gentleness of God’s rebuke should have reminded Jonah that He was not only gracious to the Ninevites, but also to Jonah. Indeed, more so, for while the Ninevites had repented, Jonah had not. Jonah persisted in his rebellion.

The Plant and the Prodigal

Because of Jonah’s persistence in maintaining his anger toward God, God presses on with yet another experience for Jonah which will serve to expose the root problem of the prodigal prophet. This is accomplished by means of the giving and the taking away of a plant, which gave Jonah pleasure.

It would seem that the forty days have passed, yet the judgment of God does not fall upon the city of Nineveh. This is no surprise to the reader, but it was a great disappointment to Jonah. Jonah went outside the city, where he made himself a mini‑grandstand, a shady booth from which he could enjoy the spectacle of the destruction of Nineveh, perhaps in a hail of fire and brimstone like that which overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Here was Jonah, a spectator waiting for disaster to strike, so that he could watch, like the Romans who later would gather at the coliseum to watch the Christians eaten by the lions.

God caused a plant to grow, the shade of which gave Jonah great comfort (4:6). For the first time, Jonah is described as being happy, extremely happy in fact, over the presence of this plant. His happiness was short‑lived, however, for on the following day a divinely appointed worm came to do its work, which resulted in the destruction of the plant. When you stop to think about it, Jonah should have found it easier to identify with the worm than with the plant. He, like the worm, seemed to find greater fulfillment in the destruction of God’s creations than in bringing pleasure, as the plant brought shade and enjoyment to Jonah.

Along with the worm, which brought the demise of the plant, God sent a scorching wind, which caused Jonah great discomfort. While Jonah wanted the Ninevites to be “torched,” he himself was “scorched” by the heat of the wind (4:8). Jonah did not need to be here, and thus did not need to suffer, but he was determined to stay put. He once again begged God to die.

Jonah is angry with God again, now in regard to the plant and the worm. For the second time, God challenged Jonah to consider his anger: “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” (4:9). In no uncertain terms, Jonah reiterated his right to be angry with his God: “I have good reason to be angry, even to death” (4:9).

God comforted Jonah (Jonah 4:9-11).

For the second time in this book, Jonah abandoned his place of ministry, left the city, and sat down in a place east of the city where he could see what would happen. Like the Elder Brother in the parable, he wouldn’t go in and enjoy the feast (Luke 15:28). He could have taught the Ninevites so much about the true God of Israel, but he preferred to have his own way. What a tragedy it is when God’s servants are a means of blessing to others but miss the blessing themselves!

God knew that Jonah was very uncomfortable sitting in that booth, so He graciously caused a vine (gourd) to grow whose large leaves would protect Jonah from the hot sun. This made Jonah happy, but the next morning, when God prepared a worm to kill the vine, Jonah was unhappy. The combination of the hot sun and the smothering desert wind made him want to die even more. As He had done in the depths of the sea, God was reminding Jonah of what it was like to be lost: helpless, hopeless, miserable. Jonah was experiencing a taste of hell as he sat and watched the city.

A simple test of character is to ask, “What makes me happy? What makes me angry? What makes me want to give up?” Jonah was “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8, nkjv). One minute he’s preaching God’s Word, but the next minute he’s disobeying it and fleeing his post of duty. While inside the great fish, he prayed to be delivered; but now he asks the Lord to kill him. He called the city to repentance, but he wouldn’t repent himself! He was more concerned about creature comforts than he was about winning the lost. The Ninevites, the vine, the worm, and the wind have all obeyed God; but Jonah still refuses to obey, and he has the most to gain.

God instructed Jonah (Jonah 4:9-11).

God is still speaking to Jonah and Jonah is still listening and answering, even though he’s not giving the right answers. Unrighteous anger feeds the ego and produces the poison of selfishness in the heart. Jonah still had a problem with the will of God. In chapter 1, his mind understood God’s will, but he refused to obey it and took his body in the opposite direction. In chapter 2, he cried out for help, God rescued him, and he gave his body back to the Lord. In chapter 3, he yielded his will to the Lord and went to Nineveh to preach, but his heart was not yet surrendered to the Lord. Jonah did the will of God, but not from his heart.

Jonah had one more lesson to learn, perhaps the most important one of all. In chapter 1, he learned the lesson of God’s providence and patience, that you can’t run away from God. In chapter 2, he learned the lesson of God’s pardon, that God forgives those who call upon Him. In chapter 3, he learned the lesson of God’s power as he saw a whole city humble itself before the Lord. Now he had to learn the lesson of God’s pity, that God has compassion for lost sinners like the Ninevites; and His servants must also have compassion.^2-6 It seems incredible, but Jonah brought a whole city to faith in the Lord and yet he didn’t love the people he was preaching to!

The people who could not “discern between their right hand and their left hand” (4:11) were immature little children (Deut 1:39), and if there were 120,000 of them in Nineveh and its suburbs, the population was not small. God certainly has a special concern for the children (Mark 10:13-16); but whether children or adults, the Assyrians all needed to know the Lord. Jonah had pity on the vine that perished, but he didn’t have compassion for the people who would perish and live eternally apart from God.

Jeremiah and Jesus looked on the city of Jerusalem and wept over it (Jer. 9:1, 10; 23:9; Luke 19:41), and Paul beheld the city of Athens and “was greatly distressed” (Acts 17:16, niv), but Jonah looked on the city of Nineveh and seethed with anger. He needed to learn the lesson of God’s pity and have a heart of compassion for lost souls.

God has the final word in the book of Jonah. His last words press to the heart of the matter:

“You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (4:10‑11).

By means of the provision of the plant there is at last some common ground between Jonah and God. Jonah had compassion on the plant; God had compassion on the people. Jonah’s “compassion,” like his “psalm,” are inferior. God now presses His point, to show the self‑centered nature of Jonah’s “compassion,” especially when contrasted with His compassion of the people of Nineveh. Consider the following points of contrast between the “compassion” of Jonah for the plant and the compassion of God for people.

 

(1) Jonah had compassion on a plant; God had compassion on people. Jonah was willing for the entire city to perish in great pain, even though there would be many innocent victims, including 120,000 people and many cattle. Cattle and people suffer pain. There is no evidence that plants do. Jonah had compassion on the plant, but not on people or their cattle.

 

(2) Jonah had compassion on a plant, in which he had no investment; God had compassion in people, whom He had created, and for whom He had prepared and promised blessing. Jonah had no real relationship with the plant. He had not made it, nor had he contributed to its growth. God created man, and He is the Creator of every creature. God cared for that which He had made, so much so that He purposed to bless men through the offspring of Abraham, so much so that He would send His Son to die for men. Jonah cared for something that cost him nothing.

 

(3) Jonah had compassion with respect to the demise of a plant; God had compassion with respect to the eternal damnation of people. Jonah had compassion for a plant which existed for a day. Granted, the plant might have lived for a year, perhaps longer. But the judgment of men is for eternity. The “passing” of a plant has no real significance; the death of the people of Nineveh was the outpouring of divine wrath. The eternal judgment and damnation of people is vastly more important than the withering of a plant.

 

(4) God had compassion on the innocent; Jonah did not. He would have enjoyed watching the destruction of the innocent, along with the guilty. (Remember, it would be the descendants of this generation of Ninevites which would take Israel captive.) It was one thing to want the wicked to suffer for their sins, but totally another to want the innocent to suffer along with the wicked.

 

(5) Jonah had compassion on himself; God had compassion for others. Jonah’s “compassion” is not really centered on the plant, but rather on what that plant did for him . The plant made him very happy. Had the plant not pleased Jonah, he would have had no compassion toward it at all. Jonah’s compassion was really self‑centered. He cared for himself, but not for others. On the other hand, God cared for people, people who had greatly sinned and who had offended Him.

The Plant and the Point

For a long time, I thought that Jonah’s root problem was selfishness, that he wanted God’s grace for himself and for his people Israel, but not for anyone else, especially the Ninevites. It is my strong conviction now, however, that Jonah’s selfishness was only symptomatic. Jonah’s major grievance with God was His grace. The very nature of grace made it repulsive to Jonah. Let us pause to consider the characteristics of the grace of God which made it offensive to the prodigal prophet.

 

(1) The Nature and the Origin of Grace. The nature or the essence of grace is unmerited favor—a blessing which is not deserved. The origin or source of the grace Jonah disdained is God. Jonah did not like grace because it was not something which one could earn. One could never feel any sense of accomplishment or ownership, because it is given without cause. To put the matter in plain words, Jonah did not like grace because it was charity.

 

(2) The Recipients of Grace. The recipients of grace, those to whom grace is bestowed, are those who are undeserving and unworthy. Jonah did not wish to view himself as unworthy. Essentially, Jonah suffered from a large dose of racial pride. He felt that as an Israelite, God was somehow obliged to bless him and his people. The Ninevites, Jonah would gladly concede, were unworthy, which is exactly why Jonah protested against God’s grace shown to them.

 

(3) The Distribution of Grace. Grace, because it is unmerited, and is bestowed upon those who are unworthy, has no one who can claim it. That is, no one can legitimately feel that he or she has a claim on God’s grace, that there is something they have done or can do which obligates Him to respond with some gift of grace. Since grace is not given out on the basis of merit, it is sovereignly distributed, “just as He wills.” As God put it, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion” (Exod. 33:19).

 

(4) The Goal of Grace. The goal of grace, the purpose for which it is given, is holiness, not happiness. The plant which God gave to Jonah made him “extremely happy,” we are told (4:6), but it did nothing to make him holy. Thus, God took the plant away. Grace is not given to make us happy, to make us feel good, to give us pleasure, but to bring us into fellowship with Himself.

 

(5) The Means of Grace. If the goal of grace is to make us holy, then the means of grace include not only those things which are pleasant and comfortable, but also those painful experiences which cause us to turn from our sin and to trust in Him. If we are honest with ourselves and with God, and if we read our Bibles carefully, we must acknowledge that most of us grow spiritually more in painful experiences than in pleasurable ones.

Think about Jonah, for example. God did answer Jonah’s prayer that He would save him from drowning, but not with the most plush and pleasurable means possible. God saved Jonah by means of a great fish, and Jonah got to soak for three days in the stomach juices of that creature. Being vomited onto dry land was not exactly flattering to Jonah’s ego, either, but it was what was best for him. So, too, the shade of the plant was not furthering Jonah’s walk with God, and thus the destruction of the plant and the sweltering sun was given to him instead. God is not committed to our pleasure, but to our piety. Thus, He often uses painful means to bring us to holiness. These painful experiences, just as much as the pleasurable ones, are a gift of God’s grace. Grace is often experienced in the midst of the most unpleasant of experiences.

This explains all that God has done, as well as why Jonah disliked it. God could bestow the grace of salvation on the unworthy Ninevites because grace cannot be merited. Likewise, because grace is sovereignly bestowed, God can provide a plant for Jonah, and then take it away.

Because of these two characteristics of grace, Jonah wanted no part of it, and no part of life. GRACE, TO JONAH, WAS OFFENSIVE AND UNWANTED. It is easy to see why Jonah would resent the fact that God would be gracious to the Ninevites, but how can it be said that Jonah disdained grace, even when shown to him? BECAUSE GRACE IS REQUIRED ONLY BY THE UNDERSERVING, AND JONAH WAS UNWILLING TO ADMIT THAT HE WAS UNDESERVING OF GOD’S BLESSINGS.

How can a prophet protest the gift of forgiveness to the Ninevites? Only by believing that God’s blessing must be merited. How can the prophet protest when God takes away the gracious provision of the plant? Only by supposing that he deserved the plant, by thinking that God owed him the comfort of the plant.

Here, then, is the key to the entire book of Jonah, and to the sin of the nation Israel, which caused God’s people to assume that God owed them blessing and their enemies judgment. Jonah had rejected the principle of grace, exchanging it for a doctrine of works. THE ROOT PROBLEM OF THE PRODIGAL PROPHET WAS SELF‑RIGHTEOUSNESS. The only person who despises grace is the one who thinks that he is righteous. To the self‑righteous, grace is charity, which is demeaning to the recipient.

What Jonah had forgotten was that God’s choice of Israel and His blessing of Israel was due solely to His grace, and not to Israel’s righteousness.

6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face” (Deut 7:6-10, emphasis mine).

Take careful note of the term “lovingkindness” which is found in verse 9 above, for this is the basis for God’s kindness to Israel, just as it was the basis for God’s kindness to the Ninevites (Jon. 4:2).

God warned the Israelites that when they entered the land of Canaan and began to experience His material blessings, the blessings of His grace, that they would be tempted to take credit for their prosperity:

11 “Beware lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, 14 then your heart becomes proud, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. … 17 Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ 18 But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 8:11-14, 17-18, emphasis mine).

If this were not ample enough warning, God further warns Israel about taking any credit for their success or for their blessings, which He has given as a gift of His grace:

“Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people” (Deut. 9:4‑6, emphasis mine).

Jonah, and his people, the Israelites, had forgotten that God’s blessings were the product of God’s grace, not the result of Israel’s righteousness or superiority over the Gentiles. They had also forgotten that God had promised to bless all nations through Israel: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3b).

Jonah’s prophecy to the nation Israel, as recorded in 2 Kings, was the promise of prosperity, in spite of the nation’s sins. God promised to prosper Israel, not because of its piety, but in spite of its sin.

Look with me once again at this prophecy.

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty‑one years. And he did 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 sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath‑hepher. For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter; for there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel. And the LORD did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash (2 Kings 14:23‑27, emphasis mine).

Israel’s king was evil, as were the people. The prosperity which Jonah promised was not due to Israel’s spirituality, but in spite of her sin. The blessings he promised were thus the blessings of divine grace.

Jonah was also the recipient of the grace of God, and yet it is for being gracious that Jonah protests against Him, even to the point of preferring death to life. Jonah’s deliverance by means of the great fish, and his exodus from the fish were all provisions of divine grace. So, too, was the gift of the plant, which afforded him shade and comfort. Perhaps the greatest evidence of the grace of God to Jonah, however, is the way in which God responds to his rebellion and his protests. How easy it would be for us to have read that God burned Jonah to a crisp with a sudden blast of lightening!

Jonah typified Israel in that he no longer viewed God’s blessings as a manifestation of God’s grace to an undeserving people, but rather as the blessings which He was obligated to give a righteous people. No wonder Jonah despised the grace of God. He knew that only the undeserving received grace, and he and his people were not in need of divine handouts. The pride and the self‑righteousness of Jonah and of his people are now glaringly apparent. The reason for the sacking of Israel by the Assyrians is now obvious.

4. The marvel of an unanswered question (Jonah 4:11)

Jonah and Nahum are the only books in the Bible that end with questions, and both books have to do with the city of Nineveh. Nahum ends with a question about God’s punishment of Nineveh (Nahum 3:19), while Jonah ends with a question about God’s pity for Nineveh.

This is a strange way to end such a dramatic book as the Book of Jonah. God has the first word (Jonah 1:1-2) and God has the last word (4:11), and that’s as it should be, but we aren’t told how Jonah answered God’s final question. It’s like the ending of Frank Stockton’s famous short story “The Lady or the Tiger?” When the handsome youth opened the door, what came out: the beautiful princess or the man-eating tiger?

We sincerely hope that Jonah yielded to God’s loving entreaty and followed the example of the Ninevites by repenting and seeking the face of God. The famous Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte believed that Jonah did experience a change of heart. He wrote, “But Jonah came to himself again during those five-and-twenty days or so, from the east gate of Nineveh back to Gathhepher, his father’s house.”^2-7 Spurgeon said, “Let us hope that, during the rest of his life, he so lived as to rejoice in the sparing mercy of God.”^2-8 Alter all, hadn’t Jonah himself been spared because of God’s mercy?

God was willing to spare Nineveh but in order to do that, He could not spare His own Son. Somebody had to die for their sins or they would die in their sins. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Jesus used Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh to show the Jews how guilty they were in rejecting His witness. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here” (Matt 12:41).

How is Jesus greater than Jonah? Certainly Jesus is greater than Jonah in His person, for though both were Jews and both were prophets, Jesus is the very Son of God. He is greater in His message, for Jonah preached a message of judgment, but Jesus preached a message of grace and salvation (John 3:16-17). Jonah almost died for his own sins, but Jesus willingly died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2).

Jonah’s ministry was to but one city, but Jesus is “the Savior of the world” (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). Jonah’s obedience was not from the heart, but Jesus always did whatever pleased His Father (John 8:29). Jonah didn’t love the people he came to save, but Jesus had compassion for sinners and proved His love by dying for them on the cross (Rom. 5:6-8). On the cross, outside the city, Jesus asked God to forgive those who killed Him (Luke 23:34), but Jonah waited outside the city to see if God would kill those he would not forgive.

Yes, Jesus is greater than Jonah, and because He is, we must give greater heed to what He says to us. Those who reject Him will face greater judgment because the greater the light, the greater the responsibility.

The book of Jonah does not end nicely and neatly, with a “happily ever after” feeling. Far from it. We are left somewhat suspended by the final words of God to Jonah, words of rebuke. We are never told that Jonah repented. The reason is simple, I believe. It is because there was no final solution to the sin of self‑righteousness and to the waywardness of the nation Israel apart from the new covenant and the coming of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ. The conclusion of the book of Jonah is fitting, for it portrays the stalemate between Israel and her God which persisted till the time of Christ and indeed to the present moment. The last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, is a record of Israel’s belligerent argumentation with God, who is accusing the nation of sin:

The oracle of the word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. “I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob” (Mal. 1:1‑2, emphasis mine).

In the final analysis, this hardness of heart will persist until the Great Tribulation and the return of Messiah breaks the stubborn pride and will of His chosen people, who will be finally saved, not because of their righteousness, but by His grace.

Jonah’s Self-Righteousness and the Israelites of Jesus’ Day

Not only did Jonah typify the spiritual state of Israel in his own day, he also prototyped the self‑righteousness of many Israelites, especially the religious leaders, at the time of the first coming of Christ. When our Lord was born, it was not to the religious elite that His birth was made known, but to the humble and the meek (cf. Luke 2). This was indicated in the magnificat of Mary (Luke 1:46‑55). The coming of the Christ was for the Gentiles (Luke 2:31‑32), as well as for the Jews, and so the magi were informed of His birth and came to worship Him (Matt. 2:1ff.). Our Lord’s introduction of His ministry in Luke chapter 4 (esp. vv. 16‑21) indicated this same emphasis on Christ’s coming to the poor and the oppressed. The Sermon on the Mount gives similar testimony to the recipients of God’s grace.

When Jesus commenced His ministry, much of His time and energy was devoted to “sinners,” which brought an immediate reaction from the religious elite of Israel, the scribes and Pharisees:

And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax-gatherers, they began saying to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax-gatherers and sinners?” (Mark 2:16).

Why would the scribes and Pharisees be offended by the fact that Jesus spent more time with “sinners” than with them? For the same reason that Jonah was angry with God. The religious leaders felt that they were worthy of Jesus’ time and presence, and that the “sinners” deserved nothing but the wrath of God (cp. John 8:2‑11). They despised the Gentiles and even the masses of Israelites (cf. John 7:49).

Why did the scribes and Pharisees react so vehemently to the teaching of Jesus? Because He exposed them as sinners, and they were not willing to admit this. They were self‑righteous. Thus, they rejected God’s Messiah and instigated His death on that Roman cross.

Even the disciples of our Lord seemed, like Jonah, to be eager to have the “heathen” perish at the hand of God:

52 … And they went, and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make arrangements for Him. 53 And they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:52b-54).

Later, after our Lord’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, it was the Jews who opposed the proclamation of the gospel (cf. Acts 22:19‑23). Even Christian Jews drug their feet in the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles (cf. Acts 10‑11, esp. 11:19). Because some Jewish Christians felt superior to Gentile believers, they either segregated themselves or they sought to force the Gentiles to conform to their Jewish practices (e.g. Acts 15:1; Gal. 2:11ff.). Truly Jonah’s self‑righteousness typified a tendency among Israelites which has continued on throughout the centuries.

The God Who Is Patient

Jonah seemingly had a conversion experience in the fish. He grasped God’s grace and obeyed the command to preach God’s Word fearlessly. He predicted that the wrath of God was about to fall—but then nothing happened. He felt like a fool. They deserved God’s judgment. So why extend mercy to them? The wrath of God had earlier come upon Jonah in that lethal storm, and he had survived only because of the mercy of God. He too had deserved judgment, received mercy instead, and been glad for it. Now all that is forgotten. Jonah is like the ungrateful servant who, having been forgiven, refuses to forgive others (Matthew 18:21–35).

Despite all this, God is patient with him. Jonah returns to the same angry opposition to God he had at the outset. This time, however, God does not send a towering storm but instead begins to counsel Jonah gently. He asks him the kind of question a therapist might pose: “Is it good for you to burn with such anger?” (Jonah 4:4).

This is both a lesson in humility and a strong consolation. Often we give people the impression that “after conversion every thing is rosy, there are no more problems, one is automatically in tune with God’s will. . . . It is not hard but sweet to do what God demands.” On the contrary, “Paul speaks of two men battling in him [the ‘old man’ and the ‘new man’] Jonah shows it too. . . . We continue to be sinners” (cf. Galatians 5:17; Ephesians 4:22–24). Of course, we cannot use this to justify bad behavior, but we can take the deepest comfort in seeing that “God knows the totality of [the human heart] . . . that this does not exhaust God’s love and patience, that he continues to take this rebellious child by the hand.”1

The God Who Weeps

God comes to Jonah one more time and begins to reason with him. What is his strategy with his depressed, spiritually blind prophet?

Jonah still has a great deal of self-righteousness. His response to God’s mercy foreshadows that of the elder brother in Jesus’s parable in Luke 15. When he sees God begin to have mercy on sinners, he is offended. There is an angry exchange with God in 4:1–5. After that, Jonah decides to stay near the city, making himself a temporary shelter. Even though God declared a stay of execution, Jonah still wants to see “what would happen to the city,” meaning he still had hopes that God would not spare Nineveh for a long period of time.2

To make Jonah’s stay more comfortable, God directs a gigayon—a shade plant—to grow up. Commentators have identified this as the Ricinus or castor oil plant, which grows very quickly and provides shade with its broad leaves.3  We are told that Jonah is “delighted and glad,” unusually strong words. In deep discouragement and grief, sometimes rather small comforts can be particularly sustaining. Self-pity may have played a role in his joy over the plant. “Well, finally,” Jonah may have said to himself, “something is going right for me.”

Jonah is therefore all the more shocked and angry when God sends a worm to gnaw and wither the plant just as a season of brutally hot, windy weather is beginning. “Unbelievable!” we can imagine him saying. “On top of everything else—this?! Why can’t I ever catch a break with God?” Jonah’s anger is renewed along with his despair. “I am angry and dejected enough to die,” he says (Jonah 4:9). Yet all this has been preparation for God’s next assault on Jonah’s self-righteousness. This last divine speech to Jonah is brief but sharp and logical.

Ancient philosophers spoke of “the love of benevolence.” This meant doing good and helpful things for people even if you didn’t like them. It was an exercise of the will. It meant performing loving actions even if your heart was not drawn out in affection for someone. In contrast there was the “love of attachment” in which you loved someone because your heart was bound up with them in attraction and loving desire. The Greek Stoic philosophers insisted that God was marked by apatheia. God could certainly do loving things, but a god could not have heart attachment to mere human beings.4  That is why God’s language here is shocking.

The word used in verses 10 and 11 for “compassion” is a word that means to grieve over someone or something, to have your heart broken, to weep for it.5 God says, “You had compassion for the plant” (verse 10). That is, God says, “You wept over it, Jonah. Your heart became attached to it. When it died, it grieved you.” Then God says, in essence, “You weep over plants, but my compassion is for people.”

For God to apply this word to himself is radical. This is the language of attachment. God weeps over the evil and lostness of Nineveh. When you put your love on someone, you can be happy only if they are happy, and their distress becomes your distress. The love of attachment makes you vulnerable to suffering, and yet that is what God says about himself—here and in other places (cf. Isaiah 63:9). In Genesis 6:6 it says that when God looked down on the evil of the earth, “his heart was filled with pain.”6  While this language cannot mean that the eternal, unchangeable God loses any of his omnipotence or sovereignty, it is a strong declaration at which we must marvel.7

Most of our deepest attachments as human beings are involuntary. Jonah did not look at the Ricinus plant and say, “I’m going to attach my heart to you in affection.” We need many things, and we get emotionally attached to things that meet those needs. God, however, needs nothing. He is utterly and perfectly happy in himself, and he doesn’t need us. So how could he get attached to us?

The only answer is that an infinite, omnipotent, self-sufficient divine being loves only voluntarily. The whole universe is no bigger to God than a piece of lint is to us, and we are smaller pieces of lint on the lint. How could God be attached to us? How could God say, “What happens to Nineveh affects me. It moves me. It grieves me”? It means he voluntarily attaches his heart. Elsewhere we see God looking at Israel, sinking into evil and sin, and God speaks about his heart literally turning over within him. “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . . My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8, ESV).

The God Who Is Generous

God’s compassion is not something abstract but concrete. It plays out not just in his attitude but in his actions toward human beings. It is intriguing that he speaks of these violent, sinful pagans as people “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). That is an exceedingly generous way to look at Nineveh! It’s a figure of speech that means they are spiritually blind, they have lost their way, and they haven’t the first clue as to the source of their problems or what to do about them. Obviously, God’s threat to destroy Nineveh shows that this blindness and ignorance is ultimately no excuse for the evil they have done, but it shows remarkable sympathy and understanding.

There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong. God looks down at people in that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn’t say, “You idiots.”

When we look at people who have brought trouble into their lives by their own foolishness, we say things like “Serves them right” or we mock them on social media: “What kind of imbecile says something like this?” When we see people of the other political party defeated, we just gloat. This is all a way of detaching ourselves from them. We distance ourselves from them partly out of pride and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to be ours. God doesn’t do that. Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their condition makes us sad; it affects us. That is deeply uncomfortable, but it is the character of compassion.

God’s evident generosity of spirit toward the city could not be a greater indictment of Jonah’s ungenerous narrowness, what John Calvin calls his greatest sin, namely that he was “very inhuman” in his attitude toward Nineveh.8

“They Don’t Know What They Are Doing”

If you are acquainted at all with the New Testament, it is impossible to read about this generous God without remembering Jesus. God is saying to Jonah, “I am weeping and grieving over this city—why aren’t you? If you are my prophet, why don’t you have my compassion?” Jonah did not weep over the city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did.

Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on the last week of his life. He knew he would suffer at the hands of the leaders and the mob of this city, but instead of being full of wrath or absorbed with self-pity, like Jonah, when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes . . . because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41–42,44). “Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

On the cross, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus is saying, “Father, they are torturing and killing me. They are denying and betraying me. But none of them, not even the Pharisees, really completely understand what they are doing.” We can only look in wonder on such a heart. He does not say they are not guilty of wrongdoing. They are—that is why they need forgiveness.

Yet Jesus is also remembering that they are confused, somewhat clueless, and not really able to recognize the horror of what they are doing. Here is a perfect heart—perfect in generous love—not excusing, not harshly condemning. He is the weeping God of Jonah 4 in human form.

Over a century ago the great Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield wrote a remarkable scholarly essay called “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” where he considered every recorded instance in the gospels that described the emotions of Christ. He concluded that by far the most typical statement of Jesus’s emotional life was the phrase “he was moved with compassion,” a Greek phrase that literally means he was moved from the depths of his being.9  The Bible records Jesus Christ weeping twenty times for every one time it notes that he laughs. He was a man of sorrows, and not because he was naturally depressive. No, he had enormous joy in the Holy Spirit and in his Father (cf. Luke 10:21), and yet he grieved far more than he laughed because his compassion connected him with us. Our sadness makes him sad; our pain brings him pain.

Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been. Yet, of course, he is infinitely more than that. Jesus did not merely weep for us; he died for us. Jonah went outside the city, hoping to witness its condemnation, but Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross to accomplish its salvation.

Here God says he is grieving over Nineveh, which means he is letting the evil of the city weigh on him. In some mysterious sense, he is suffering because of its sin. When God came into the world in Jesus Christ and went to the cross, however, he didn’t experience only emotional pain but every kind of pain in unimaginable dimensions. The agonizing physical pain of the crucifixion included torture, slow suffocation, and excruciating death. Even beyond that, when Jesus hung on the cross, he underwent the infinite and most unfathomable pain of all—separation from God and all love, eternal alienation, the wages of sin. He did it all for us, out of his unimaginable compassion.

“God Is a Complex Character”

This brings us back to the theological problem of Jonah.

How can God relent from judging evildoers? How can he forgive and not punish sin? Many people in the modern West are not troubled by God’s mercy because they don’t accept the idea of a God who judges. They want a “God of love,” but a God who does not get angry when evil destroys the creation he loves is ultimately not a loving God at all. If you love someone, you must and will get angry if something threatens to destroy him or her. As some have pointed out, you have to have had a pretty comfortable life—without any experience of oppression and injustice yourself—to not want a God who punishes sin. One writer, who had seen genocide in his homeland, wrote that “it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis” that we should desire a “God who refuses to judge.” He adds that “in a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent,” such an idea “will invariably die.”1 0

So God, if he is God, must punish evil. Then how can he also be merciful? How can a holy and righteous God forgive those who deserve divine retribution? How can God be perfectly holy and yet completely loving at the same time?

Many share Jonah’s difficulty. Some years ago I was in a study of the book of Jonah with a woman who had very little religious background. When we were done, the woman, who was an art critic and skilled at reading literature, sat back and simply marveled. She said that she had always thought of the Bible as basically marked by melodrama. Melodramatic stories have one-dimensional characters that are either all good or all evil. She went on, “And I thought the God of the Bible was just a figure of melodrama, smiting the pagans and blessing believers,” she said. “But the God of this book is not like that at all. He is an extremely complex character. He sometimes blesses believers and judges the pagans, but at other times he blesses the pagans and punishes the believers. He’s not just

a being of wrath or love—he’s both, and in unpredictable ways.” How can he be both at the same time?1 1

In Exodus 33:18 Moses asks to see God’s glory. God replies that to see his glory would be fatal, but he offers to shelter him in the cleft of a rock, to let “all my goodness” pass before Moses, though he will see only “my back” (Exodus 33:23). Then, when God shows himself to Moses in 34:6–7, and all God’s goodness passes before him, Moses hears God put his goodness into verbal form. He says he is “compassionate and gracious . . . forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” but then adds, “yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” Remember Jonah’s accusation using God’s own words from Exodus 34? This second statement is the part of God’s declaration to Moses that Jonah wrongly left out. God said to Moses that he is both compassionate and committed to punishing evil. These are both aspects of his goodness that God declares. He says, “Here is all my goodness. I’m infinitely loving and I want to pardon everybody, and I’m infinitely just and I never let sin go unpunished.”

It seems like a striking contradiction, but upon reflection it can be seen that the single word “goodness” binds these apparently contradictory traits together. Why is it that God must punish sin? It’s because he would not be perfectly good if he overlooked evil. But then why does God not want people to be lost? Because he’s too good, in the sense of being loving. He would not be perfectly good if he just let everyone perish. So his righteousness and his love, far from being at loggerheads, are both simply functions of his goodness. He could not be infinitely and perfectly good unless he was endlessly loving and perfectly just.

Nevertheless, we still experience a contradiction. We don’t see how he can both punish sin and accept and forgive sinners. We reason: Either God is perfectly just, and then will only love people who obey all the commandments, or he’s perfectly loving, and will overlook a lot of sin that really should be punished. We think God could not be all good in being perfectly just and perfectly loving at once. If we lived at the same point in redemptive history as Moses or Jonah, we would, like them, see no real way forward. Moses saw only the “back parts” of his goodness. It remained a mystery to him, as it was to Jonah.

But we don’t stand where they stood.

In John 1, the gospel writer has the audacity to say, “Jesus Christ became flesh and [literally] tabernacled among us” (John 1:14). Using this term deliberately evokes the story of Moses, since God’s glory dwelt in the tabernacle. Paul likewise says that we see “the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” and that it is “the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4,6).

Through Jesus Christ, and only through him, we can see all the goodness of God that Moses wasn’t allowed to see and that Jonah couldn’t discern. If Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, that’s how God can be infinitely just, because all sin was punished there, and it’s how God can be infinitely loving, because he took it onto himself.

If you don’t believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you might believe in a God who just accepts everyone no matter how they live or behave. That might be a bit comforting, but is it electrifying and glorious? Or you could have a God who’s only just, and the sole way you can get to heaven is if you live an exceptionally good life. That might be bracing, but is that beautiful? Does it move you and change your heart?

Only when you look into the gospel of Jesus Christ does all the goodness of God pass before you, and it’s not the back parts anymore. Now you know how he did it. There’s the glory of God in the face of Christ through the gospel.1 2

The Goodness and Severity of God

On the cross the justice of God exacted full punishment for sin and in the same moment provided a free salvation to all who believe. On the cross both the justice and love of God fully cooperate, have their way, and shine out brilliantly. “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith . . . so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25–26). As Martin Luther put it, when a Christian believes, he or she is simul justus et peccator— simultaneously righteous in God’s sight and yet still a sinner.

Even though Jonah never receives an answer to his question about how God can be simultaneously gracious and just, Jonah’s story exhibits both the goodness and the severity of God in living color. On the one hand, Jonah receives grace upon grace. Perhaps no other Old Testament prophet looks as bad as Jonah. Jeremiah and Habakkuk often struggled with the messages God gave them to convey to the people. However, Jonah literally ran away from the Lord rather than declare his Word.

Elijah became desperate enough to ask for death (1 Kings 19:4), but that was because the people had failed to believe his preaching. Jonah also asks for death (Jonah 4:3), but it is because the people believe him. At every point in the story, Jonah falls lower in the test not only than other prophets before him but also than the supposedly benighted, profane pagans around him. Yet God continues to save him, be patient with him, work with him.

Nevertheless, God does not just accept Jonah and leave him alone. He does not allow Jonah to remain undisturbed in his foolish, wrongful attitudes and behavior patterns. God sends a storm, a fish, a plant. He commissions him again and again and in the end counsels and debates with him directly. Here we see God’s righteousness and love working together. He is both too holy and too loving to either destroy Jonah or to allow Jonah to remain as he is, and God is also too holy and too loving to allow us to remain as we are.

The book of Jonah, then, indeed shows us that God is often a confusing, complex character. This is not to deny the historical Christian doctrine of the “simplicity” of God, namely, that God is not a composition of “parts” but rather that all the attributes of God are ultimately one with one another. God does not have a “love” part and a “righteousness” part that must be reconciled. What we see as being in tension is ultimately a perfect unity.

However, that unity can be seen only in light of the work of Jesus Christ. To be confused or angry at God is quite natural. But if we remain in that condition, as Jonah did, it will be because we do not embrace the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ alone, the gospel of which Jonah himself was a sign.

The Cliff-hanger

One of the most notable features of the book of Jonah is its surprising “cliff-hanger” ending. The entire story has been one of God pursuing Jonah, first with a fearsome storm, then with gentle questions and reasoning. Yet even though the methods vary, the purpose remains the same. God wants Jonah to see himself, to recognize the ways that he continues to deny God’s grace and the ways he holds on to self-righteousness. He poses one final question: “You don’t want me to have compassion on Nineveh, but shouldn’t I? In light of all I’ve shown you, Jonah—should I not love this city, and should you not join me?”

Without an answer, the book ends! We are never told what Jonah’s response was, whether he understood and accepted the logic of God’s mercy.

We feel that there must be a missing page. Why would the story end so abruptly? One commentator, like many others, suggests: “[The book] forces us to contemplate our personal destiny. It remains unfinished in order that we may provide our own conclusion. . . . For you are Jonah; I am Jonah.”1 3  It is as if God shoots this arrow of a question at Jonah, but Jonah disappears, and we realize that the arrow is aimed at us. How will you answer?

Because the book of Jonah ends this way, the text invites us to write our own final paragraphs and chapters. That is, God calls us to apply this text to our own lives, in our own time and place. The introduction showed three layers to the Jonah story—Jonah and God’s Word, Jonah in God’s world, and Jonah and God’s grace. So what is our relationship to God’s Word, world, and grace? In the next chapters we consider all the episodes in the life of Jonah and ask—what does that mean for us today?

The Character of Compassion

1. 1. Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 72–73.
2. 2. Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah

(Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 127.

3. 3. Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel (G rand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976), p. 232.
4. 4. See Massimo Pigliucci, “Stoicism,” I nternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, no date, w w w .iep.utm.edu/stoicism.
5. 5. James Bruckner, The NI V Application Commentary: Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (G rand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 2004), p. 116 and 7n.
6. 6. The translation is the New Century Version. The Hebrew w ord used here is to grieve to the point of pain and anguish.
7. 7. Even Christian theologians must w restle w ith how this language fits w ith the idea of G od’s “aseity.” See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2 (G rand Rapids, MI : Baker Books, 2004), pp. 149–53. That is a technical w ord that describes the historical Christian belief that G od is not just one more object in the universe, but is the upholder of all existence. He is dependent on nothing and no one—everything is completely dependent on him. We cannot read the various places that speak of G od’s compassion and even the pain in his heart that his love for us causes (G enesis 6:6; Hosea 11:8–11) w ithout asking w hether G od is changing or becoming in some w ay dependent on us. We must not in any w ay move tow ard an “open theism” position that sees G od as evolving or dependent on his creation. Rather, in his freedom and sovereignty he voluntarily allow s his love for us to cause him grief in w ays analogous (though not identical) to the w ays love causes us pain and sorrow . See also note 9 in this chapter.
8. 8. John Calvin, Commentaries of the Twelve Minor Prophets, vol. 3, translated by J. Ow en (G rand Rapids, MI : Baker

Books, 1979), p. 141.

9. 9. See “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” in B. B. Warfield Person and Work of Christ, ed. Samuel G . Craig

(Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1950), pp. 93–145.

10. 10. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of I dentity, O therness, and Reconciliation

(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 303–4.

11. 11. See James E. Dolezal, All That I s in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (G rand Rapids, MI : Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). This book expounds the historical doctrine of the “simplicity” of G od, namely, that he does not consist of parts, but that all that is in G od is a perfect unity. Nevertheless, this right understanding of the simplicity of G od must not be made to flatten or trivialize the biblical descriptions of G od’s heart attachment to and sorrow over his creation, nor to undermine the necessity and reality of atonement if G od is going to pardon us. See Joseph Minich, “A Review of James Dolezal’s All That I s in God,” The Calvinist I nternational, August 31, 2017, https://calvinistinternational.com/2017/08/31/review -james-dolezals-god.
12. 12. This interpretation of Exodus 33–34 and the argument that the cross show s us “all the goodness” are indebted to D.
13. M. Lloyd-Jones, “The G oodness of G od Made Manifest,” in Revival (Wheaton, I L: Crossw ay Books. 1987), pp. 225–36.
14. 13. Sinclair B. Ferguson, Man O verboard: Study of the Life of Jonah (Wheaton, I L: Tyndale House, 1981), p. 118. Conclusion

The book of Jonah has much to say to 21th century Christians, as well as to Israelites of all ages. Let me conclude by pointing out a number of points of application to our lives today.

(1) God’s dealings with men have always been on the basis of His grace, and not on the basis of man’s works. Dispensationalists (among whom I would include myself) must be very careful to avoid giving the impression that God deals with men today by means of grace, and dealt with people in the Old Testament by some other means. The distinction of this “age” as “the age of grace” tends to imply that God dealt with men according to some other principle in the Old Testament. Jonah was wrong because he forgot or had forsaken the principle of grace. God has always dealt with men according to the principle of grace. The New Testament and the new covenant simply enable God to bestow His grace more freely and fully. Let us never view God’s past dealings with men as anything less than gracious.

(2) Resisting and rejecting the grace of God are just as great and just as common a sin today as they were in Jonah’s time. Christians become angry with God today, and for the same wrong reasons as Jonah. We are just not as open and honest as Jonah to admit it. When do Christians get angry with God?

• Whenever we think we deserve something from God and we find Him guilty for not giving it to us.
• Whenever we think someone else to be unworthy, and we are angry with God for giving them blessings they don’t deserve.
• Whenever God takes away some blessing from us, which we think He has no right to remove.
• Whenever we are self‑righteous.

I believe that self‑righteousness had deeply penetrated the Christian community in America. Americans are very inclined to take credit for our prosperity. We believe that we have been “blessed” due to our intelligence, our ingenuity, our hard work, and our devotion to God. Conversely, we excuse ourselves from sharing our wealth and prosperity with others by convincing ourselves that other nations suffer poverty because they lack the righteousness which we have. Thus, while the nation India lavishes in poverty and starvation, we assure ourselves that their poverty is the result of their worship of cows. Simple, isn’t it? But in the final analysis, it is self‑righteous.

Some Christians today view divine healing as a result of one’s righteousness than as a gift of God’s grace. I do not wish to argue whether there is a gift of healing today; I am willing to grant that God does heal. What I wish to vehemently reject is the contention that God must heal, if we but have the faith to claim it. Is divine healing a gift of God’s grace? If it is, then it is undeserved, not earned, even by “having faith.” Is healing a gift of grace? Then God is free to give it to whomever He chooses, to a believer or an unbeliever, and He is also free to withhold it from one who asks for it, or claims it in faith. We don’t demand grace, nor do we dare to protest when we don’t receive what makes us happy (remember Jonah’s plant).

Let us remember, too, that God’s grace does not always come in the form which we might choose or prefer. God was gracious to Jonah, saving him by means of the great fish. Had Jonah been able to choose which form the grace of God would have taken, it wouldn’t have been in the form of a fish’s stomach. God is gracious to His children by chastising them, by bringing pain and adversity into their lives, just as He was going to do in the history of Israel. Adversity is just as much a gift of grace as is affluence. Remember the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount!

Job understood that God was both good and gracious, whether He gave prosperity or took it away, whether He gave pleasure or pain. Thus, when he received word of the loss of his family he responded, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

Failure, suffering, and adversity are often the result of God’s grace, for when these things come into the life of the Christian they are for the purpose of displaying the grace of God, to us, to others, and even to the heavenly host.

The principle of grace, by which we are saved, is the governing principle of God’s dealing in all of our lives, whether He shows Himself to be gracious in bestowing wealth or health, or whether He shows Himself to be gracious in our hour of trial, by sustaining us and drawing us to a deeper trust and intimacy with Him.

The principle of grace is also to govern our relationship with others. Just as God is gracious to us, so we must be gracious to others, especially to the undeserving: the cruel and those who are our enemies, who would persecute and spitefully use us. Only by showing grace to others do we reflect God’s grace to us.

(3) The book of Jonah has much to teach us about evangelism and revival, which we desperately need in America. I believe that the book of Jonah informs that the following elements are required for revival. These are not the only elements necessary for revival, but they are essential:

Revival requires those who will go and who will warn the lost of the impending wrath of God on sinners. A deep conviction of sin and the motivation to be saved is rooted in the proclamation of the fact that men are sinners, destined to face the wrath of God.

 

Revival requires genuine repentance. There was revival in the city of Nineveh because men turned from their wicked ways. They not only confessed their sin, they turned from it. Revival requires repentance, and repentance requires change.

Furthermore, the book of Jonah confronts us with what is perhaps the foremost enemy of evangelism and revival—a smug self‑righteousness which detests the grace of God, and which expects and demands God’s blessings for us, but not for others. It was Israel’s self‑righteousness, pride, and selfishness which kept God’s people from sharing the blessings of God with the Gentiles. Likewise, I believe that it is our self‑righteousness, pride, and selfishness which hinders us from telling the lost of the salvation which God offers all who repent and who believe on His Son for salvation.

Imagine, for example, that God called you to devote your life to finding a cure for AIDS, or to give your life in ministry to the victims of AIDS. ‘But they deserve to die,’ you protest. The fact is that many suffer from AIDS apart from any willful act of sin on their part—an immoral spouse, a contaminated blood transfusion, an infant whose parent was infected.…

Many of us are just like Jonah.  We are eager to condemn those suffering from AIDS as a whole, even though there are many innocent victims among them. Jonah was willing, indeed eager, to see the entire city of Nineveh perish, even though there were 120,000 innocent children among them, and animals as well. Jonah was not just seeking divine judgment for guilty sinners; he was condemning the innocent along with the wicked. (To Jonah, their “real sin” was that of being Gentiles. And by this standard, all Ninevites should perish, according to the prodigal prophet.)  The fact is that the wicked repented of their sin when the prophet proclaimed God’s Word to that city.  God was not only eager to save the innocent, but to save the guilty as well.  Not so with Jonah.

All sinners deserve to die (the wages of sin is death), which includes every one of us. Isn’t it amazing that the sin of sexual immorality is (or at least was) readily condemned by Christians, but pride and self-righteousness are often tolerated, and sometimes even praised (a “good self-image”).  We must remember that our Lord came to seek and to save the lost—those whom the self-righteous religious leaders disdained and avoided. Apart from his saving grace, we are all sinners, who deserve God’s wrath and should be cast out of the presence of a holy and righteous God.  Surely those who have become the recipients of God’s grace should be the first to seek to show and to share that grace to others.

(4) God’s grace has come to men in Jesus Christ. The grace of God has been revealed to men in the person of Jesus Christ, who promises all who will believe the gracious gift of eternal life. All you need to do is to acknowledge that you need it, that you are a sinner who can never merit God’s blessings, and to receive God’s gift of grace in Jesus Christ. It is by faith in Jesus Christ that our sins are forgiven and we are declared righteous in God’s sight. It is by faith in Christ that we receive the gracious gift of eternal life.

There is no word that better sums up the goodness of God to men than the word “grace.” Jesus Christ is God’s grace personified, sent to men (cf. John 1:14, 17; 2 Tim. 1:9; 2:1; Titus 2:11). Salvation is God’s grace to sinful men, the forgiveness of sins and the provision of eternal life (cf. Acts 14:13; 20:24, 32; Romans 1:5; 3:24; Ephesians 2:8; Colossians 1:6; Titus 3:7; 1 Peter 5:12). We grow in and by means of God’s grace (2 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 13:9). We are eternally secure in the grace of God (Romans 5:12). When we pray we approach the “throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). When we serve, we serve by grace (Eph. 4:7ff.; 1 Peter 4:10), and we live by the standards of grace (Ephesians 4:29; Colossians 4:6).

But the real issue isn’t how Jonah answered God’s question; the real issue is how you and l today are answering God’s question. Do we agree with God that people without Christ are lost? Like God, do we have compassion for those who are lost? How do we show this compassion? Do we have a concern for those in our great cities where there is so much sin and so little witness? Do we pray that the Gospel will go to people in every part of the world, and are we helping to send it there? Do we rejoice when sinners repent and trust the Savior?

All of those questions and more are wrapped up in what God asked Jonah.

We can’t answer for him, but we can answer for ourselves. Let’s give God the right answer.

May the grace of God be precious to you, the basis for your praise of God, not your protest, as it was with Jonah.

Lessons

(1) We learn about the character of God.

(2) We see his omnipotence as he controls the wind, the sea, the fish and the plant. And all of his power is directed toward a single goal – the reclamation of sinful humans – both Jonah and the Ninevites. (Chisholm, Interpreting The Minor Prophets, p. 129)

(3) We see his love and compassion as he gives Jonah a second chance and as he forgives the Ninevites.

(4) We see that God answers prayer. He answered the sailors’ prayers, Jonah’s prayer and the Ninevites’ prayers.

(5) I think it ironic that God would spare the Assyrians so that they could destroy the Northern kingdom of Israel only a few decades later.

(6) I think this book shows that Jonah knew a lot about God. He presumed on God’s grace and assumed his deliverance while still in the fish. He knew God was compassionate and gracious and would not destroy the Assyrians if they repented. So, although Jonah knew about God, he did not want to obey him. It could even be said that Jonah disobeyed in the name of justice. (Chisholm, Interpreting The Minor Prophets, p. 130) The Assyrians certainly had committed enough atrocities that they deserved judgment, and Jonah wanted them to get their due. But he was ignoring the sovereignty of God and disobeying God. He also was displaying a double standard. He was forgetting that Israel had been forgiven many times for her sins and that he himself had just been forgiven for his disobedience. He was a walking contradiction. I think we need to be careful that we do not fall into the same trap.

Jonah and the law of love:

I think Jonah gives us a negative illustration of love. I see Jonah as a good example of how we tend to judge others and consider ourselves to be better than others. I mentioned at the beginning of the series that the prophets were more concerned about the present failings of the people to follow the law than with future predictions. Jonah’s life illustrates this failure. Jesus summed up the whole law in one phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jonah definitely illustrates not loving one’s neighbor. Loving involves forgiveness. Jonah would not forgive the Assyrians for their evil. Instead, he clung with pride to his heritage as a Jew, the chosen people of God, and he condemned the Assyrians. I think Jonah mistakenly thought that he deserved the favor of God. I think his prayer in chapter 2 demonstrates that. He called on God for deliverance without repenting of his evil. Why did God choose Israel? Because they were the biggest nation? Because they were more spiritual than the rest? No. He chose them out of grace. If you read Eze 16, you will see a good description of what Israel was like and what God did for them. It also describes how they became proud and forsook God. They certainly did not deserve the special relationship with God.

Jonah forgot that. If he had recognized his evil, he would have seen that he was just as bad as the Ninevites. This reminds me of the parable of the unforgiving servant, who was forgiven an enormous debt by the king. He in turn refused to forgive a fellow slave a small debt. When the king found out, the unforgiving servant was handed over to the torturers until he could repay the debt. I think God was torturing Jonah to try to make him see his evil, so he would repent and so he would recognize that he was no better than the Assyrians. He should have forgiven them and gone to help them. The message of the unforgiving servant is that we should forgive, because we have been forgiven. Jonah was forgiven and delivered from the fish, but he did not see it that way.

When I read Larry Crabb and Dan Allender’s books, they say that love means moving into another person’s life to build them up, to help them see their evil so they will repent. It usually involves sacrifice on our part and forgiveness for the harm they do to us. I see Jonah as failing to do this. He failed to forgive and therefore was unwilling to move toward the Ninevites to help them see their evil so they could repent and have a relationship with God. He failed to love.

When you study this book, you have to ask: Why did God pick an unwilling man to go to Nineveh? Weren’t there any willing prophets in Israel who may have swallowed hard, but at least would have said, “All right, Lord, I’ll go”? Why pick Jonah?

I think God picked Jonah because he reflects the attitude of so many of God’s people down through the centuries. Israel was God’s covenant people, supposed to be His channel of salvation for all people (Gen. 12:1–3). But they had bottled the blessings for themselves. They had lost God’s heart for the nations.

But before we condemn those comfortable covenant people, we need to see that, like Jonah, we often value our own comfort above the souls of millions of lost people who need to hear of God’s judgment and mercy.

Jonah was an orthodox believer. He had his theology straight. He knew that God created the earth (1:9). He feared God (1:9). He knew that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness (4:2). That’s a paraphrase of Exodus 34:6, which shows that Jonah knew his Bible. If he had been a New Testament believer, he would have known the Great Commission and John 3:16.

But the problem wasn’t Jonah’s knowledge or beliefs. The problem was Jonah’s heart: He lacked God’s heart for lost people. The message of the book of Jonah is summed up in the question God asks Jonah in the last verse of the book: “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city …?” What do you think: Should God have compassion on a bunch of wicked, violent people? Be careful how you answer, because your answer will have drastic effects on how you live! Since God leaves it as a question, I want us to think about it as a question:

Since God has compassion on lost people, should not we?

1. God has compassion for lost people.

God’s heart for Nineveh comes through in 4:11, where He refers to it as “the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals.”

In fact, every time God mentions Nineveh to Jonah, He calls it a great city (1:2; 3:2, 3; 4:11). I’m sure that Jonah would have used some other adjectives to describe it: That rotten city … wicked city … evil city … expletive deleted city …. God called it a great city, because there were many lost people there on whom He had compassion.

Commentators are divided over the meaning of “120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand.” Some say it refers to the total population, meaning that they were morally ignorant. In support of this view, it can be argued from archaeology that Nineveh couldn’t have been much larger than this, since the inner city wall was only about eight miles around (although it was 100 feet high, 30 feet thick!).

But 3:3 mentions that Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk. This must refer not just to the city within the walls, but to the population in outlying areas (“suburbs”). Thus I prefer the second view, that the 120,000 refers to young children who were not yet old enough to know their right from left hands.

This view is especially appropriate in the context, where God is appealing to his hardhearted prophet, who had compassion on a silly plant, that he must share God’s compassion toward the people of Nineveh. God is saying, “Jonah, even if you can’t stand the adults, look at the children! Look at the animals!” Little children and animals will melt the hearts of the most crusty of men. God is saying, “Jonah, if I wipe out Nineveh as you want Me to do, 120,000 small children and many animals will die. Is that really what you want Me to do?”

Isn’t it significant that God knew all about that foreign city? He had the infants and toddlers counted. He even knew about the animals! God never puts the value of animals above the value of people, as those in the animal rights movement of our day do. They kill unborn babies and spend millions to save the whales. But God does want His people to treat animals with kindness (Prov. 12:10). God also knew about the wickedness of Nineveh (1:2). But even so, He had compassion on it.

Not all lost people are wicked and violent, like those of Nineveh. The text also shows that God had compassion on the pagan sailors, who were much nicer than Jonah was! They had to throw their cargo overboard to try to stay afloat in this storm. When they finally figure out that Jonah is the cause of it, I could see them flying into a rage and saying, “Throw the bum overboard! Look at all the trouble he’s caused us!” And yet they did everything they could to avoid throwing him overboard.

What irony! Here’s the man of God who is more concerned about a silly plant that provided shade for him for one day than he is for a whole city full of people who are about to perish. And yet here are these pagan sailors who are concerned for the life of one man, even though that man has caused them to lose their cargo and almost lose their lives! But even though they were nice guys, they needed to repent and believe in the one true God, which they did when He calmed the sea (1:16).

The point is, God has compassion on lost people, whether they’re outwardly wicked or “nice” lost people. They all need to turn from their sin and trust in God’s provision for their sin, the Lord Jesus Christ. God wants His people to reflect His compassion so that all people will see that He is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity” (4:2). But,

2. God’s people don’t always share His compassion for lost people.

You would think that those who have received God’s mercy would be quick to extend it to others. But it doesn’t work that way. Like Jonah, we’re all quick to want God to judge people we dislike, forgetting that apart from His grace, we would be just like them. “Judge them, God, but don’t judge me! I’m one of your chosen people!”

Let’s be honest: Just like Jonah, we all have people we dislike. Maybe it’s noisy, rude neighbors who blast their stereos and throw empty beer cans on your property. I get irked with irresponsible people who blame others for their problems. Sad to say, but there’s a lot of racial prejudice among Christians.

I’ve heard Christians make derogatory comments about African Americans, Jews, Mexicans, Native Americans, and other ethnic groups. I can hear Jonah complaining, “Lord, if these people weren’t so wicked, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. So why should I go help them?” I’ve often felt like that.

It’s just a short step from dislike to disobedience. Like Jonah, it’s easy to turn away in dislike from the very people God wants us to reach. And it’s always easy to excuse our disobedience with theological reasons. I can imagine Jonah thinking, “The Lord didn’t stop me from getting a ticket to Tarshish. This must be His will.” Or, “The people of Nineveh couldn’t be open to God. They’ll laugh me out of town. Besides, there are so many unreached in Israel. Why go to Nineveh?”

But, after his unplanned submarine ride, Jonah finally went to Nineveh. But he went reluctantly. His preaching must have been as exciting as hearing somebody read through the phone book. But, amazingly, everybody from the king on down believed God and repented! It was an evangelist’s dream! Over 500,000 conversions in one short campaign! You would think Jonah would be ecstatic.

But he was greatly displeased and angry (4:1). If he had gone and preached judgment and God had rained fire and brimstone on Nineveh, Jonah would have returned to Israel as a national hero: ticker tape parade through Jerusalem! Maybe he would have made it out of the minor prophets into the major prophets! But of all things, they repented. Jonah justified his anger by quoting the Bible back to God! “God, I knew this would happen. That’s why I didn’t want to go there in the first place.”

Have you ever thought about the fact that Jonah, sleeping in the ship while the sailors are about to perish, is a graphic picture of God’s complacent people? The captain’s rebuke to Jonah is as pointed as you can get: “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish” (1:6). Ouch! Isn’t that just what we do–we snooze comfortably while the world around us perishes and wonders if our God cares?

Even after Nineveh repents, Jonah is more concerned about his own comfort than he is about the needy people in this great city. God never told Jonah to leave the city. He may have wanted Jonah to stay and teach these people His word. But Jonah still holds to his hope that God will blast the city. So he goes a safe distance outside of town and pulls up his lawn chair to watch the fireworks (4:5). It’s a bit warm, even under his umbrella, so God sends a plant that grows up overnight to shade the pouting prophet.

It’s the first time in the book that Jonah is happy. He was unhappy about God’s command to go to Nineveh; he was unhappy about the storm; he was quite unhappy inside the fish; he was unhappy about the repentance of Nineveh; but he was very happy about this plant that gave him temporary comfort. But just as Jonah is pouring himself a glass of lemonade, God sends a worm to destroy the plant and a hot wind to make Jonah miserable. So Jonah gets angry about the plant, so angry that he again asks God to take his life. Note how God deals with his reluctant missionary: He asks him three questions which lead to an unstated, but implicit fourth question:

1. Do you have good reason to be angry (4:4)?
2. Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant (4:9)?
3. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh … (4:11)?

The implied fourth question to Jonah and to us is:

3. Should we not have God’s compassion for the lost?

The Book of Jonah could have ended quite nicely after chapter three: Everybody repented and lived happily ever after. But there was still a problem with God’s reluctant missionary.

• In chapter one, God had Jonah’s mind. He knew the truth about God. His theology was straight.
• In chapter two, God got Jonah’s will. He repented and agreed to pay what he had vowed.
• In chapter three, God got Jonah’s body, as he went to Nineveh to preach in obedience to God’s renewed command.
• But as chapter four shows, God still didn’t have Jonah’s heart. God’s final question is, “Jonah, should I not have compassion on Nineveh?” The implicit question behind it is, “Should you, too, not have My compassion for Nineveh?”

The book ends with this unanswered question. Did Jonah get the point and repent? I think that the existence of the book shows that he did. The abrupt question at the end catches the reader off guard. As we read along, we tend to think, “How can Jonah be so callused and selfish? How can he be so concerned about his own comfort while a whole city is on the brink of judgment?” But just when we’re clucking our tongues at Jonah, God ends the book with a swift knockout blow that drops us to the canvas: “Your problem is that, like Jonah, you’re self-centered. You lack My compassion for lost people!” POW!

Notice how God gets Jonah to see his petty selfishness. First God asks him, “Do you have good reason to be angry?” (4:4). At this point, Jonah may have thought, “Yes!” After all, he’s angry at God for showing mercy to Israel’s enemy. That sounds noble enough. But God’s next question, after the incident with the plant, is, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” (4:9). Being angry about a silly little plant and a worm isn’t quite as noble as being angry about a “just” cause! God is saying, “Jonah, the fact that you’re angry over such petty little annoyances shows that you’re totally caught up with yourself. You care more about your momentary comfort than you care about the eternal destiny of thousands of lost people.”

That’s God’s question to us: “Since I have compassion on lost people, should not you?” I would guess that most of us have trusted Christ as Savior and been baptized in order to have our sins forgiven.

We hold to orthodox theology. I hope most of us have yielded ourselves to Jesus as Lord. Many of us are involved in serving Him in some way. But, like Jonah, we’re so caught up with pursuing our own comfort that we’re insensitive to those around us who are perishing without Christ. The question I need to ask myself frequently is, “Do I have God’s heart of compassion for the lost?”

Practical Lessons of Permanent Value

1. When God enjoins a disagreeable duty, it is far easier to go and do it than to run

away from it.

2. You can limit God by your disobedience.
3. God will be gracious if you will repent.
4. We are foolish to consider another’s good conditions as hurt to self.
5. All things are worked together for good if we will yield to His purpose. Good

will come out of evil circumstances.

6. Our concern should be with souls not gourds!

7. The tragedy of narrow-minded patriotism.

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD’S WORD

Running from God (Jonah 1:1–3)

God commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh, but he ran in the very opposite direction. Why did he do it? We have seen that at the root of Jonah’s disobedience was his mistrust in the goodness of God. He did not believe God had his best interests at heart.

If you want to understand your own behavior, you must understand that all sin against God is grounded in a refusal to believe that God is more dedicated to our good, and more aware of what that is, than we are. We distrust God because we assume he is not truly for us, that if we give him complete control, we will be miserable.

Adam and Eve did not say, “Let’s be evil. Let’s ruin our own lives and everyone else’s too!” Rather they thought, “We just want to be happy. But his commands don’t look like they will give us the things that we need to thrive. We will have to take things into our own hands—we can’t trust him.” Jonah is doing the same thing. He is recapitulating the history of the human race and showing us how our own hearts operate every single day. Seldom do human beings lie, twist the truth, cheat, exploit, manipulate, act selfishly, break promises, destroy relationships, or burn with resentment motivated by a simple desire to be evil.

Although we may have been taught that we shouldn’t lie or be unfaithful to our spouses, people find themselves at a crossroads where they say, “If I obey God I’ll miss out! I need to be happy.” That’s the justification. Sin always begins with the character assassination of God. We believe that God has put us in a world of delights but has determined that he will not give them to us if we obey him. This is the lie of the serpent, the original temptation of Satan to Adam and Eve that brought about the Fall (Genesis 3:4–5). The serpent told the human race that disobeying God was the only way to realize their fullest happiness and potential, and this delusion has sunk deep into every human heart.1

One of the main reasons that we trust God too little is because we trust our own wisdom too much. We think we know far better than God how our lives should go and what will make us happy. Every human being who has lived into middle age knows how often we have been mistaken about that. Yet our hearts continue to operate on this same principle, year after year. We remember how foolish we were at age twenty but think now that we are forty we know. But only God knows.

Therefore, because of our deep mistrust of God’s goodness and Word, we do everything we can to get out from under his hand. This is really the most fundamental temptation that there has ever been in the world, and the original sin. Specific details may vary, but the deep heart song of “I have to look out for myself” is always there.

Jonah mistrusted God and ran from him. What should he have done instead?

Years earlier, God had given Abraham a command that made absolutely no sense. “Take your son, your only son, whom you love. . . . Sacrifice him . . . as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you” (Genesis 22:2). No reasons were given, and God had never before asked for human sacrifice—it was an abomination. Also, he had promised in a solemn covenant to make Abraham’s descendants more numerous than the sand. God’s Word to Abraham was even more inexplicable than his Word to Jonah. Nevertheless, what did Abraham do? He went up the mountain. He refused to act as if he knew best. He reminded himself who God was. Abraham himself had said earlier, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). From our vantage point today we can see many things that God was doing in Abraham’s life. He did not know then that God was strengthening his faith, but he didn’t need to. He trusted God.

Jonah knew the story of Abraham and of his faith. That should have been a spiritual resource for him. He could have followed in Abraham’s footsteps, but he did not. We have even less excuse than Jonah, because we have an infinitely greater resource in Jesus Christ. He saved us by saying, under unimaginable pressure, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39).2

The mission God gave Jonah meant possible death and suffering. This is a call that many Christians have heard over the years, going to preach and do good in parts of the world where sudden death is possible every day.3  Jonah, however, refused to go, thinking only of himself. The mission God gave Jesus, however, meant certain death and infinite suffering, and yet he went, thinking not of himself but of us. The “cup” of which Jesus spoke referred to Christ’s bearing in our place the divine wrath on sin, our penalty.

And if you see him doing that for you, and if you take the wonder of it deep into your heart, it will finally kill off that stubborn belief that you can’t trust God’s goodness. You can begin to say, “He is good! If he did all that for me, he must love me. He must be willing to do anything to give me joy and what I need.” If you see Jesus trusting God in the dark in order to save us, we will be able to trust him when things are confusing and difficult.

The World’s Storms (Jonah 1:3–4)

Jonah ran from God, but a storm pursued him. Whenever we disobey God, we are violating our own design, since God created us to serve, know, and enjoy him. There are natural consequences, and so, as it were, all sin has a storm attached to it. Yet we see that the storm not only came upon Jonah, who deserved it, but also upon the sailors in the boat with him, who did not. Life in the world is filled with storms—with difficulties and suffering—some of which we have directly brought on ourselves but many of which we have not. In either case, God can work out his good purposes in our lives through the storms that come upon us (Romans 8:28).

One reason for storms in our lives is to get us to depend on God and discover his love and strength in ways we would never do otherwise. In a pastoral letter on trials and temptations, the Anglican minister John Newton wrote that it is only when we are in the most pain that God’s “power, wisdom, and grace in supporting the soul” may become evident, enabling it to hold up and even triumph “under such pressures as are evidently beyond its own strength to sustain.”4  Another way God works through suffering, Newton writes, is that suffering now “prevents greater evils” later.5 The greatest danger of all is that we never become aware of our blindness, pride, and self-sufficiency. We naturally believe that we have far more ability to direct our lives wisely than we really have, and that we are far more virtuous, honest, and decent than we really are. These are deadly errors, and Satan would be happy to let you have a charmed and prosperous life for many years so that you don’t see the truth until it’s too late. God, however, out of love, wants to wake you up to your condition so you can do something about it. In many lives he uses storms.

Years ago, I read an old fairy tale about a wicked witch who lived in a remote cottage in the deep forest. When travelers came through looking for lodging, she offered them a meal and a bed. It was the most wonderfully comfortable bed any of them had ever felt.

But it was a bed full of dark magic, and if you were asleep in it when the sun came up, you would turn to stone. Then you became a figure in the witch’s statuary, trapped until the end of time. This witch forced a young girl to serve her, and though she had no power to resist the witch, the girl had become more and more filled with pity for her victims.

One day a young man came looking for bed and board and was taken in. The servant girl could not bear to see him turned to stone. So she threw sticks, stones, and thistles into his bed. It made the bed horribly uncomfortable. Every time he turned he felt a new painful object under him. Though he cast each one out, there was always a new one to dig into his flesh. He slept only fitfully and finally rose, feeling weary and worn, long before dawn. As he walked out the front door, the servant girl met him, and he berated her cruelly. “How could you give a traveler such a terrible bed full of sticks and stones?” he cried and went on his way. “Ah,” she said under her breath, “the misery you know now is nothing like the infinitely greater misery a comfortable sleep would have brought upon you! Those were my sticks and stones of love.”

God puts sticks and stones of love in our beds to wake us up, to bring us to rely on him, lest the end of history or of life overtake us without the Lord in our hearts, and we be turned to stone. Indeed, the Bible speaks of salvation like this. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Self-sufficiency, self-centeredness, self-salvation make us hard toward people we think of as failures and losers, and ironically makes us endlessly self-hating if we don’t live up to our standards.6

Deep inside the storm and waves that lashed at Jonah, God appointed a great fish to save him. This is a vivid picture of the Romans 8:28 principle. There’s love at the heart of our storms. If you turn to God through faith in Christ, he won’t let you sink. Why not? Because the only storm that can really destroy—the storm of divine justice and judgment on sin and evil—will never come upon you. Jesus bowed his head into that ultimate storm, willingly, for you. He died, receiving the punishment for sin we deserve, so we can be pardoned when we trust in him. When you see him doing that for you, it certainly does not answer all the questions you have about your suffering. But it proves that, despite it all, he still loves you. Because he was thrown into that storm for you, you can be sure that there’s love at the heart of this storm for you.

His love in time past Forbids me to think He’ll leave me at last In trouble to sink . . .By prayer let me wrestle, and He will perform. With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm.7

The Pattern of Love (Jonah 1:11–17)

We need not doubt that the New Testament sees Jonah’s near death to save the sailors physically as a sign of Jesus’s actual death to save us eternally. Commentators have pointed out the fascinating parallels between Jonah’s experience in the storm and Jesus’s experience in the storm on Lake Galilee in Mark 4:35–41. Both Jesus and Jonah are out on the water in boats. Both Jesus’s and Jonah’s boats are overtaken by storms. Each storm is described as particularly violent. Both Jesus and Jonah are, surprisingly, asleep in the midst of the mighty storm. In each case, the others in the boat come to the sleeper and cry out to him that they are perishing and that he needs to do something. In Mark 4:38 the disciples seem to express our personal feelings toward God in suffering: “The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’” In both Mark 4 and Jonah 1 there is a miraculous intervention by God and the sea is calmed. And finally, after the deliverance, both the sailors and the disciples are described as more terrified than they were in the storm (Mark 4:41; Jonah 1:16). These parallels can’t be coincidences. By this parallelism, Mark is telling us that Jonah’s willingness to die for the sailors points us to an infinitely greater sacrificial love that brings an infinitely greater salvation. Unlike Jonah, Jesus was not thrown into the waters, because Jesus came to save us from a far greater peril than drowning. Jesus was able to calm the storm on Galilee and save his disciples because later, on the cross, he was thrown into the ultimate storm of divine wrath so he could save us from sin and death itself. Jesus himself says, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).

When Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard, sacrificing himself to save them, he was enacting perhaps the central theme of the Bible. There are at least two aspects of it that we can consider. One aspect is the ethical—that love should be self-giving. We can live life well in this world only through sacrificial love.

New Testament writers took a rather general Greek word for affection—agape—and infused it with a new, unique meaning. In the Bible, writes biblical scholar John Stott, “agape love means self-sacrifice in the service of others.”8 1 John 3:16–18 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” When John says that “this is how we know what love is,” he is arguing that, on this side of the cross, love is ever after defined as self-giving. “Just as the essence of hate is murder . . . so the essence of love is self-sacrifice. . . . Murder is taking another person’s life; self-sacrifice is laying down one’s own.”9

Many recoil from this definition. The complaint is that it leads some to stay in abusive or exploitative relationships. However, that is to forget the whole definition. Self-sacrifice is always, as Stott says, “in the service of others.” Allowing someone to exploit you or sin against you is not loving them at all. It only confirms them in their wrongful behavior and could lead to the ruin of you both. Some people do indeed allow themselves to be browbeaten and used, for many psychologically toxic reasons, all under the guise of being “self-giving.” In reality it is selfish, a way to feel superior or needed. To say that self-giving love must lead to abuse and oppression is to misunderstand it entirely.

One of the greatest contrasts between our Western culture and Christianity comes at exactly this point. Our society defines love basically as a transaction for self-fulfillment. It is a market-based definition. You stay in a love relationship as long as both of you are profiting from it. This approach, however, has led to widespread damage.

A recent book on parenting explains why so many modern people are having fewer children or none at all. We are “free to choose or change spouses . . . to choose or change careers. But we can never choose or change [who are] our children. They are the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all.”1 0 In our individualistic society even marriage has been reshaped into a consumer relationship that exists only so long as each party benefits and profits. As soon as the relationship requires sacrifice on your part—more giving than receiving—society says it can be discarded. Parenting, however, stubbornly resists this modern attitude. It still requires substitutionary sacrifice. You can suffer voluntarily, in love, in a way that gives them life, or they’re going to suffer involuntarily for their whole lives.

Another area where the modern view is dysfunctional is in that of reconciliation. No society can hold together if there is not an ability and willingness to forgive. Constant blood feuds and vengeance for past wrongs lay waste to civil society. Yet the ability to set aside grievances and work together requires habits of the heart that our culture no longer forms in us.

In 2006 a lone gunman took hostage ten girls, ages six to thirteen, in an Amish schoolhouse. He shot eight of them, killing five, before committing suicide. The Amish startled the nation when as a community they forgave the killer of their children. They came to the shooter’s funeral, expressing support for his traumatized family that he left behind. Also, the individual Amish families that lost children forgave the gunman and his family. While many admired their actions, sociologists studying the event wrote that modern American society can no longer produce people capable of the same response. America, they argued, is now a culture of self-assertion in which all people are encouraged to express themselves and assert their rights. The Amish Christian community, by contrast, had created a culture of self-renunciation, patterned on Jesus’s self-sacrifice, renouncing rights in the service of others.1 1  Because it has lost the ideal of self-giving and sacrificial love, our society cannot provide its members with the resources for this basic requirement for human life in society.

The second aspect of this theme is the theological. We can be saved eternally only through Christ’s sacrificial love.

In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, “My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!” we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross.

In Ernest Gordon’s memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, “I did it.” He stood quietly at attention, and “he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all.1 2

In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can’t touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. “Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T]o have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever.”1 3  Why do these stories move us? It’s because we know from the mundane corners of life to the most dramatic that all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice. We know that anybody who has ever done anything that really made a difference in our lives made a sacrifice, stepped in and gave something or paid something or bore something so we would not have to.

Many today reject the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. They believe it depicts a loving Jesus who extracts forgiveness from a wrathful, reluctant God. Some have called this “divine child abuse.” But that insults Jesus. It demotes him into some kind of lesser being, and it is a denial of one of the cardinal doctrines of the Bible and Christianity, namely that there is only one God who exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three persons are not three Gods, but one. So the name “Jesus” means “God saves,” and his name “Immanuel” (Matthew 1:21–23) means “God with us.” Paul says “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Even while on earth, Christ said that he indwells the Father and the Father indwells him (John 14:11, 17:21–23) and Paul adds that all of the fullness of God dwells in Christ (Colossians 2:9).

What happened on the cross was that God came and substituted himself for us. “The righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character.”1 4

In an old Italian church there is a painting of the crucifixion. But behind the body of Christ stretched out on the cross there is the “vast and shadowy Figure” of God so that “the nail that pierces the hand of Jesus goes through to the hand of God. The spear thrust into the side of Jesus goes through into God.”1 5 The painting shows us a very biblical truth. Paul is able to say that God purchased us “with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Jesus’s blood is God’s blood.

And this is the answer to objections about the seeming injustice of substitutionary atonement. John Stott writes: The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us. The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.1 6

A God who suffers pain, injustice, and death for us is a God worthy of our worship. In a world of pain and oppression, how could we give our highest allegiance to someone who was immune to all that? This is a God who knows what storms are like because he came into the world and dove straight into the greatest pain and suffering. Because of his self- substitution, we can have life. To the degree you grasp what Jesus did for you, and rest in the salvation he bought for you, to that degree this pattern of substitutionary sacrifice and love will be reproduced in your relationships. And you will become the kind of person the world desperately needs.

CHA PT ER 10:

Our Relationship to God’s Word

1. 1. For an exposition and explanation of this important idea, see Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaton, I L: Crossw ay Books,

2016), pp. 68–82.

2. 2. From the King James Version.
3. 3. See Nicholas Kristof, “A Little Respect for Dr. Foster,” New York Times, March 28, 2015, w w w .nytimes.com/2015/03/29/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-a-little-respect-for-dr-foster.html.
4. 4. John New ton, “Letter XVI Temptation,” Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), pp. 94–
5. 95. All of “Letter XVI Temptation” is relevant.
6. 5. New ton, “Letter XVI Temptation,” p. 94.
7. 6. While it is right to believe that G od w orks good things in our lives through suffering, w e must not breezily respond to people w ho are in pain by just quoting Bible verses about G od’s purposes in trials. When w e meet people w ho are going through life storms, w e must not try to be “minimizers, teachers, or solvers,” three unhelpful responses w e can

make to people going through suffering. Minimizers may say things like “Things could be w orse—you could have been born in poverty in some foreign country.” Teachers may say, “G od is teaching you things—so look for the lessons.” Solvers w ill talk like this: “I f you just keep your chin up and do X, Y , and Z, you can come through this.” (These three unhelpful responses are laid out by Kate Bow ler in “What to Say When Y ou Meet the Angel of Death at a Party,” New York Times, January 26, 2018.) A better w ay to help sufferers is often to simply w eep w ith them and love them, as Jesus did w ith Mary w hen her brother Lazarus died (John 11:32–36).

7. 7. John New ton, “I Will Trust, and Not Be Afraid,” in “Olney Hymns,” in John New ton and Richard Cecil, The Works of

John Newton, vol. 3 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1824), p. 609.

8. 8. John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 1986), p. 276.
9. 9. Stott, Cross of Christ, p. 292.
10. 10. Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood (New Y ork: HarperCollins, 2014), p. 44.
11. 11. Donald B. Kraybill et al., Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2007), pp. 114, 138.
12. 12. Ernest G ordon, Through the Valley of the Kwai (New Y ork: Harper, 1962), pp. 104–5.
13. 13. J. K. Row ling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (New Y ork: Scholastic Press, 1999), p. 299.
14. 14. Stott, Cross of Christ, p. 159.
15. 15. G eorge Buttrick, quoted in Stott, Cross of Christ, p. 158.
16. 16. Stott, Cross of Christ, pp. 159–60.

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD’S WORLD

Who Is My Neighbor? (Jonah 1:5–6)

One of the main concerns of the book of Jonah is that believers should respect and love their neighbors, including those of a different race and religion. The captain of the ship rebukes Jonah for doing nothing for the common, public good. In the boat during the storm, Jonah contradicts the teaching of Jesus’s famous parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) at every point.

In that story a Samaritan, journeying through a desolate, dangerous place infested with highwaymen, comes upon a Jew who has been attacked, robbed, and left wounded and dying in the road. Jews and Samaritans were enemies, but the Samaritan rescues the wounded man. He then takes him to a place where he can be nursed back to health, all at the Samaritan’s expense. With Jonah as a bad example and the Samaritan as the good one, the Bible answers several questions about a believer’s social relationships.

Who is my neighbor? By depicting a man helping his enemy and saying, “Go and do likewise,” Jesus is telling us in the strongest terms that anyone at all in need, regardless of race, religion, values, and culture, is your neighbor.

How should I regard my neighbor? By making the Samaritan—a member of a people that the Jews considered to be racial outsiders and theological heretics1 —the hero of the story, Jesus is sending the message that God can and does give gifts of moral goodness, wisdom, and love to all people, all races and classes.

What does it mean to “love my neighbor”? In answering that question, Jesus depicts someone meeting the most practical physical, material, and economic needs. These are needs every human being has, regardless of faith and race. Meeting these needs constitutes the common good, and the Samaritan’s actions to seek that common good were extravagant. One commentator sums it up like this: He stops on the Jericho road to assist someone he does not know in spite of the self- evident peril of doing so; he gives of his own goods and money, freely, making no arrangements for reciprocation; in order to obtain care for this stranger, he enters an inn, itself a place of potential danger; and he even enters into an open-ended monetary relationship with the innkeeper, a relationship in which the chance of extortion is high.2

The lengths to which the Samaritan went to help a man of another race and religion were extraordinary, yet Jesus says to us, “Go and do likewise.”

Behind Jesus’s parable is one of the bedrock truths of the Bible, namely, the teaching that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26–27). While there have been many debates over what specific traits compose the image, it is clear that this makes every human a being of value and worth. Obvious implications are that we must not attack, exploit, or do violence to any person (cf. Genesis 9:6), but the Bible says we must not even curse or treat anyone disrespectfully, because they are in God’s image (James 3:9).3

John Calvin, who is often thought to be a narrow dogmatician, counters that reputation when he discusses how Christians should regard all their neighbors. He draws remarkable implications from the doctrine of the imago Dei. Calvin repeats what he has heard many Christians say to him. A person who is a foreigner deserves no help from them, and many people in their neighborhood are immoral and irreligious, so why should the Christians go out of their way to meet these people’s needs? Calvin replies that even those who in themselves deserve nothing but contempt should be treated as if they were the Lord himself, because his image is upon them all. “Say [about the stranger before you] that you owe nothing for any service of his; but God, as it were, has put him in his own place in order that you may recognize toward him the many and great benefits which God has bound you to himself. . . . You will say, ‘He has deserved something far different from me.’ Yet what has the Lord deserved? . . . Remember not to consider men’s evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.”4

Calvin’s call, that we treat every human being “as the Lord deserves,” has some breathtaking practical implications. He goes on to spell them out. “Each [Christian] will so consider with himself . . . a debtor to his neighbors, and that he ought in exercising kindness toward them to set no other limit than the end of his resources.”5

What does this all mean practically for us? It means that Christians cannot think that their role in life is strictly to build up the church, as crucial as that is. They must also, as neighbors and citizens, work sacrificially for the common life and common good.6 What is that? In the most basic sense, it refers to things that benefit the entire human

community, rather than only the selfish interests of some individuals, groups, or classes. It may refer to:

a safe environment rather than a community that is plagued by crime or health hazards;

economic prosperity and humane workplaces rather than a community with few jobs where poverty is rampant;

a state of peace rather than one marked by violence between individuals, races, groups, or nations; a just social order rather than one marked by corruption and by a justice system weighted against the weak or poor;

publicly available resources such as good educational institutions, medical services, parks, and recreation;

social harmony and civility in which people from different races, cultures, and moral frameworks relate to one another with respect;

a community committed to caring for the weak: the elderly, the chronically ill, single parents and orphans, immigrants, and the poor;

a government that works on behalf of all citizens, not just the rich and powerful.

Christians and Politics

Jonah fled from God rather than seeking the spiritual good of a city he despised. He had allowed himself to become too aligned politically and emotionally with the national security interests of Israel. We must avoid the same error. Nonetheless, after a quick look at the bulleted list above, some will respond that it will be impossible to work for the public or common good without Christians getting involved in politics. That is true, and so a careful balance must be achieved.

First, we must not think it really possible to transcend politics and simply preach the gospel. Those Christians who try to avoid all political discussions and engagement are essentially casting a vote for the social status quo. Since no human society reflects God’s justice and righteousness perfectly, supposedly apolitical Christians are supporting many things that displease God. So to not be political is to be political. Churches in the U.S. in the early nineteenth century that did not speak out about slavery because that would have been “getting political” were actually supporting the slavery status quo by staying silent. The Bible also shows us individual believers involved in politics and holding important posts in pagan governments—think of Joseph and Daniel.7

Individual Christians can and should be involved politically, as a way of loving our neighbors. To work for better public schools in a poor neighborhood or to end segregation in a country requires political engagement, and Christians have done so and should continue to do so. Nevertheless, while individual Christians must do this, they should not identify the church itself with one set of public policies or one political party as the Christian one.8 There are a number of reasons why.

One reason it is harmful is that it gives listeners to the gospel the strong impression that, to be converted, they not only have to believe in Jesus but also need to become members of the [fill in the blank] party.9  It confirms what many skeptics want to believe about religion, that it is not a genuine spiritual truth and encounter but only one more political constituency and voting bloc, one more way to get power over others.

Another reason not to align the Christian faith with one party is that most political positions are matters not of biblical prescription but practical wisdom. This does not mean that the church cannot ever speak to social, economic, and political realities, because the Bible does. Racism, as we have seen, is a sin, violating the second commandment to “love thy neighbor.” Also, the biblical command to lift up the poor and to defend the rights of the oppressed is not an option for believers; it is a moral imperative. And speaking out against particularly egregious violations of these moral requirements is important.1 0

However, as soon as any group of Christians decides exactly how to best pursue these moral ideals in our particular society, they are usually moving beyond biblical prescription into the realm of wisdom and prudence.1 1  Is the best way to help the poor to shrink government and let the private capital markets allocate resources, or is it to expand the government and give the state predominance? Efforts to find in the Bible a clear mandate for completely laissez-faire capitalism or for communism fail to convince.1 2

The best social policies are somewhere between those poles, but the Bible does not define that point exactly for every time, place, and culture.

I once heard from a friend about a man from Mississippi who was very conservative in every way. He was a conservative Republican; he was also a very traditional Presbyterian. He had long wanted to visit Scotland, the homeland of American Presbyterians. Eventually he arranged to serve for a month as a worker in a little Presbyterian congregation in a village in the Scottish Highlands. The church and its people were as conservative as he expected. They were extremely strict in their observance of the Sabbath. No one so much as turned on a television on Sundays.

However, one day he got into a discussion with several of his admired Scottish Christian friends and discovered, to his shock, that they were all (in his view) socialists. That is, their understanding of tax structure and government economic policy was very left-wing. He couldn’t believe it. He had firmly believed that to be conservative theologically meant you were conservative politically on every issue. He spoke long with them and came to learn that their understanding of the role of government was grounded in their Christian convictions. The man came home to the U.S., not any more politically

liberal than when he had left but, in his words, “humbled and chastened.” He realized that thoughtful Christians, all trying to obey God’s call, can reasonably appear at a number of different places on the political spectrum, with loyalties to different political parties.

Another reason why Christians, especially today, cannot allow the church to be fully aligned with any particular party is the problem of “ethical package deals.” Many political parties today insist that members commit to all the proper positions on all issues. So you cannot align on one issue if you don’t embrace the full gamut of all approved positions.1 3

This emphasis on package deals puts pressure on Christians in politics. For example, following both the Bible and the early church, Christians will be committed to racial justice and the poor but also to the understanding that sex is only for marriage.1 4  One of those views seems liberal and the other looks oppressively conservative. Christians’ positions on social issues, then, do not fit into contemporary political alignments.

As a result, Christians are pushed toward two main options. One is to give up and withdraw, trying to be apolitical. The second possibility is to swallow hard, assimilate, and fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to be admitted to the table. Political parties will offer Christian churches, organizations, and leaders heady access to power, support, favors, and protections. All this can be theirs if they support the whole political agenda and look the other way on matters to which Christians ought to object. The spiritual danger here is very great.1 5

Neither of these options is valid. In the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus forbids us to withhold help from our neighbors. On the other hand, if we do experience some exclusion and even persecution (Matthew 5:10), we are assured that some will still see our “good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:11–12). Our labor in the Lord is never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). In fact, if we are only offensive or only attractive and not both, we can be sure we are failing to live as we ought.

The gospel gives us the ability and the resources to love people who reject both our beliefs and us personally. Think of how God won you over. Not by taking power but by coming and losing power and serving you. How did God save you? He came not with a sword in his hand but with nails in his hands. He came not to bring judgment but to bear judgment. That’s why the hymn says: For not with swords loud clashing, Nor roll of stirring drums; With deeds of love and mercy

The heavenly kingdom comes.1 6

The Good Samaritan risked his life and sacrificially loved someone who was not merely a stranger but a member of a racial group that the Samaritan would have seen as dangerous and even responsible for much suffering in his own community. The Jewish man deserved the Samaritan’s wrath but instead received sacrificial, practical love, the meeting of his physical and material needs. In this the parable points us to the “Great Samaritan,” Jesus Christ. We deserved nothing but his rejection. Indeed, he knew that we, the human race, would put him to death. He did not just risk his life for us—he gave it. He died for us that we might live. Until we see Jesus as our Good Samaritan, we will never be sacrificial in our love for our neighbors.

Embracing the Other (Jonah 1:7–10)

When Jonah introduces himself to the pagan sailors, he puts his racial identity first. This is the first clue that the book gives us of what will be revealed more fully later, namely, that Jonah resents God’s mercy given to racial “others.” His race and nation have become not merely good things that he loves but idols. When this happens, it leads us to exclude people who are different from us—to reject, denigrate, avoid, or segregate them or to assimilate them forcibly, demanding they believe and act just like us.1 7

Cultural exclusion seems to happen almost universally. People are shamed and punished in our modern, pluralistic societies if they do not conform to the reigning pieties. For all our talk of tolerance, we demand that others adopt our characteristics and beliefs. They must express no difference from us, or we will name them as beyond the pale of engagement. It is common for us to insist that everyone “respect difference”— allow people to be themselves—but in the very next moment we show complete disrespect for anyone who diverges from our cherished beliefs. We sneer at people more liberal than us as social justice warriors; we disdain those more conservative than us as hateful bigots.

Many argue that tribalism was a survival mechanism and therefore humans are hardwired to get their significance and security from demonizing others.1 8 One author wrote that “one of the most troubling aspects” of human identity is that “the formation of any ‘we’ must leave out or exclude a ‘they,’” so that our identities are inevitably dependent on the people we exclude.1 9  Only by denouncing, blaming, and despising people’s different identity factors—of race, class, religion, and viewpoint—can we feel good about our own. Exclusion provides us with “the illusion of sinlessness and strength.”2 0 Exclusion seems to be unavoidable.

Some call for an ideal society of absolute inclusion. They urge us to accept every perspective and equally affirm every kind of person. No one really can tell anyone else what is right or wrong, they say, and so we have to include all viewpoints. Any effort to practice absolute inclusion, however, always leads to new forms of exclusion. You may say, for example, “There are no good people and bad people,” but now those who think there are good and bad people are the bad people. Supposedly rejecting all “binaries” immediately creates new ones. Also, those who insist on the illusion of total inclusion often demonstrate the inability to name and condemn behavior that is evil or unjust.2 1

So complete inclusion is, in the end, impossible to practice. Everyone ultimately believes in some moral absolutes. Once we realize this, the new question becomes: Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?

Is there anything between the poles of completely affirming all viewpoints and excluding people as “the Other”? Yes, there is. Jesus said: “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. . . . If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:44,47). Here Jesus said that his disciples’ way of life must contrast sharply with the ordinary way human beings relate to “the Other.” Jesus tells us to “greet” all people, and in his time one did this with the word shalom. To wish someone shalom—the word for full flourishing, health, and happiness—was to want their good. Jesus is acknowledging that some people are indeed opponents, even persecutors. He does not say that everyone is equally right and good, but he does insist that their needs as human beings are equally important, regardless of their beliefs. He charges his disciples to open their hearts to those who are different, and to make space for them in their attention, emotions, and lives.

As we have seen, many will claim that this is simply impossible, that our identities are irreducibly based on feeling superior to groups and persons whom we see as inferior. But this should not be true in the case of those who claim a Christian identity.

Ordinarily, human identity and self-worth come from our achievements. We are proud of being a successful professional, or we are proud of being part of a racial group that has so many great accomplishments. We build up the self-esteem of individuals and groups by showering them with praise for their attainments. But such an identity is inherently fragile and unstable. It needs constant recognition and shoring up. Most religious identities are the same. We may say, “I have worked hard at prayer, at studying religious doctrine, at living a good life, and so I think I can say that I know God.”

Christian identity, however, is received, not achieved. In C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the characters is asked if he knows Aslan, a lion who is the Christ figure of the books. He answers, “Well—he knows me.”2 2  This echoes Paul’s statement to the Galatian Christians, “But now that you know God—or rather are known by God” (Galatians 4:9). Keep in mind that to know someone in the Bible does not mean simply to know about but to be in a personal relationship. What makes a person a Christian is not our love for God, which is always imperfect, but God’s love for us. To ground your identity in your own efforts and accomplishments—even in the amount of love you have for Jesus —is to have an unstable, fragile identity. We are usually in doubt as to whether we have been good enough, and even if we have had a good week, we fear that next week may be worse.

However, when we put our faith in Christ, we are fully received and accepted by God on the basis of Christ’s work, not ours (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are adopted into God’s family (John 1:12–13) and we are loved by God with the unconditional love of a parent, not the conditional regard of an employer or a mere sovereign. This puts our self-worth on an entirely new footing. With Paul we can say that in ourselves we are “unworthy” but “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Because our security and assurance of being loved do not rest in our performance, we have the psychological freedom to do what Jonah could not do—to look into our hearts, recognize our flaws, and admit them (Romans 7:21–25). Yet despite such heightened awareness of our sinfulness, a Christian is not without great confidence. Paul says that Christians “boast”—we get courage—from looking not at our own strength or attainments but at how we are regarded in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:31; Galatians 6:14; Philippians 3:3).

This new understanding of who we are in Christ transforms how we relate to people who are different from us.

Christians still have the same jobs, the same families, the same racial and ethnic backgrounds, yet God’s love in Christ now becomes the most fundamental source of our self-worth. This displaces, but does not efface or remove, our other identity factors. So Paul says, on the one hand, that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Gentile” (Galatians 3:28), and yet as a Jew he still embraced his unique cultural customs and patterns (Acts 21:24–26). That means that when you become a Christian you don’t stop being Chinese or European, but now your race and nation don’t define you as fully as they did. You do not rely on them for worth and honor in the same way. You are a Christian first and Chinese or European second. Being a Christian gives you some distance and objectivity so you can see both the good and the bad parts of your culture more clearly than many who are still relying on it for their fundamental self-worth.

Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans, Russians or Tutsis, and then Christians. . . . When they respond to the call of the gospel they put one foot outside their culture while the other remains firmly planted in it. [Christianity] is not flight from one’s original culture, but a new way of living within it because of the new vision of peace and joy in Christ.2 3

I came to experience all this directly some years ago when I visited a church meeting in a poor black township in South Africa. There I visited with the leaders and members of a small church. One of the pillars of that church was a single mother who had faced great deprivation, oppression, and suffering over the years. Yet her faith had not simply helped her to cope with all these things; she had triumphed over them. The hardships of her life had not made her bitter, or cynical and hard, or weak and dependent. She was a radiant Christian, filled with confidence in God and sacrificial love for others.

Though I was a minister in a large church in a big city, I was able to recognize in her someone who was my superior in prayer and faith in Jesus. If I had not been a Christian, as a white American male I would have had little more than pity for her. She had not started any new organizations or campaigns. She was not a great political leader. She had none of the traits that I would have valued most. However, I am now a Christian first and a white American second, and because of our common bond in Christ, I recognized a sister who was equal with me as a sinner saved by grace and who excelled me in many crucial ways. This meant I was able to listen to her in a way I would not have done otherwise. That experience then had spillover effect—I began to regard other marginalized people with a new understanding I could not have discovered in any other way.

The early Christians startled the Roman world with this unique facet of their identity. Until that time, one’s religion and faith were nothing but an extension of one’s national identity. Your race determined who your gods were—race came first and religion was just a way of expressing it. Christians said that their God was the God of the whole world, and that people of all races could be Christians, and that therefore faith was more important than race.2 4  The early Christian churches were multiethnic in an unprecedented way. They brought together people who would never have gotten along before they believed in Christ.

This is not a lesson that Jonah ever learned within the time frame of this story. At the very last moment God is urging him to see it. However, we have far less excuse than Jonah if we fall into othering people of different races and cultures.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, one of the main characters, Gimli the Dwarf, shares with his whole race a distrust and dislike of the Elves. In Tolkien’s narrative, Elves and Dwarves have had centuries of strife in their past. Then Gimli comes to the land of Lórien and stands before the Elf queen Galadriel. Though he is wretched and sad, she speaks words of encouragement to him in his own secret language, a tongue the Dwarves teach to no one. Gimli is amazed at her knowledge of him and the generous gesture.

And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer.He rose clumsily and bowed in dwarf-fashion, saying, “Yet more fair is the land of Lórien, and the Lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth!”2 5

After this, in the rest of the book, Gimli’s attitude toward the whole Elvish race begins to change, and he is freed to become closest friends with another Elf, Legolas. When he is embraced in love by an Other whom he thought was an enemy, it transforms him and enables him to welcome others who are deeply different from himself.

When Jesus calls us in the Sermon on the Mount to love our enemies and greet those who are different, he is not asking us to do anything that he did not do himself. He was Other from us—he was “in very nature God” (Philippians 2:6). He was the deity whose holy presence daunted Moses and Isaiah (Exodus 3:1–14; Isaiah 6:1–9) and whose glory was fatal if seen (Exodus 33:20). Yet Jesus, the wholly Other, became the same as us.

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6–8)!

Here we have the model for loving and welcoming those who are deeply different, rather than excluding them as Other. Jesus certainly had the right to exclude us, but he did not. He loved, welcomed, and reconciled us to himself—all the while not merely affirming us in some general sense but calling us to radical repentance. He neither included us as if we had a right to be welcomed nor excluded and rejected us as our sins deserved. His voluntary sacrificial death to pay the penalty for our sins both convicts us of sin and the need to change and assures us of his love and pardon despite our flaws, at once.2 6

Here, then, is the model for how we should treat those who are different. Here is also the power to do it. When Paul was on the road to Damascus, on his way to imprison and execute more Christians, Jesus appeared to him and said that by persecuting Christians Paul was persecuting him (Acts 9:5). Paul was Christ’s enemy. Yet Christ forgave him and healed his physical and spiritual blindness. Paul encountered one who should have treated him as an enemy but found love. When the one you thought to be “the Other” has not treated you as Other but given himself in love for you, how can you ever treat anyone else as an enemy? The fear and insecurity that generate the need to protect and justify one’s self-worth will be gone.

In 2004 the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed by a Muslim radical. In the aftermath of his death, both churches and mosques in the Netherlands experienced retaliatory attacks, including the bombing of an Islamic school. The outpouring of violent rage shook a Dutch nation that had prided itself on being a peaceful and open society.2 7  At this incendiary moment, a Dutch Protestant minister, Reverend Kees Sybrandi, did something radical. Sybrandi was a very conservative, traditional Dutchman who lived in a community where poor Middle Eastern immigrants had brought much poverty and crime.2 8 Yet that week Sybrandi “walked to his neighborhood mosque. He knocked firmly on the door, and to the shock of the Muslims huddled inside, he announced that he would stand guard outside the mosque every night until the . . . attacks ceased. In the days and weeks that followed, the minister called on other churches in the area and they joined him, circling and guarding the mosques throughout the region for more than three months.”2 9

Why would Sybrandi have done such a thing? One interviewer tried to find out. Was it some experience that had made the change? No. The minister “recounted no stories of past friendships or dialogues with Muslims.” Perhaps the secular, liberal values had softened him? No. “Multicultural appeals for a celebration of difference had little pull on his heart.” So what had overcome his inherent traditionalism and temperamental conservatism? “[He] simply replied ‘Jesus. Jesus commanded me to love my neighbor— [and even] my enemy too.”3 0

And on what basis did Jesus command such a thing? Christ tells us we must be gracious to others because we have received grace ourselves. In his parable of the Unmerciful Servant, he tells us that Christians who know they live wholly by God’s undeserved mercy must be generous, forgiving, and welcoming to all others, even those whom they see as opponents (Matthew 18:21–35).

Doing Justice, Preaching Wrath (Jonah 3:1–10)

The mission of Jonah to Nineveh bristles with practical lessons for us.

There is the lesson about mission.

Jonah’s call to leave his homeland to preach God’s Word was unprecedented in the Old Testament, but this is the mandate given to all believers by Jesus (Matthew 28:18–20). So while we are not all called to be preachers or prophets or missionaries, every believer is called to go. It means to be willing to leave safety and security in order to share the good news of Jesus with others. This may or may not entail leaving physical and social locations, but it always means risk and vulnerability.

Mission is not only for a spiritual elite, or for the well rested, or for people with the gift of gab, or for outgoing personalities, or for those with theological training. It is for every person who belongs to him. It is because God is by nature a sending God. He never calls us in to bless us without also sending us out to be a blessing to others.

The first and great example of this is the father of all the faithful, Abraham. God came and said to him, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing . . . [for] all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:1–3). God called Abraham to leave his familiar culture (“your people”) and his personal and emotional security (“your father’s household”). That is, he is called to abandon everything he has relied on for meaning and security. Here’s an outline of his life: “Go.” Where? “I’ll tell you later. Just go.” (GENESIS 12)

“You will have a son.” How? “I’ll tell you later. Just trust.” (GENESIS 15 )

“Offer up your son on the mount.” Why? “I’ll tell you later. Just climb.” (GENESIS 22)

We may respond that Abraham was a unique forefather and Jonah was a Hebrew prophet and that their calls to mission, to go into uncertainty and insecurity, are not for all of us. However, Hebrews 11:8–10 uses Abraham’s answer to God’s call away from security as a model for all believers. Verse 8 says that when God called Abraham to go out, “By faith [he] . . . obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Why did he do it? Verse 10 answers: “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” It is only God’s kingdom that has “foundations” that will last. It is only God’s approval, God’s protection, and God’s eternal inheritance that are permanent. So if we think we might look foolish to someone if we talk about our faith, or if we think that the needs of a particular ministry or mission may require sacrificial financial giving—and we do what is necessary—we are answering the same call away from security that God gives to all who believe. The call to both Abraham and Jonah, then, is a model for us.

Also, there is a lesson about cities.

Jonah undertook what we could call an urban mission. He went to a city that was one of the largest in the world at that time. When God is arguing about why he should be deeply concerned for Nineveh, he cites its population figure as a reason for the city’s significance to him and uses the term adam—the word for humankind: “120,000 of humanity.” It is as if God was saying, “I care about human beings, and so how much more should I be concerned to reach a place where so much humanity is amassed?”

This simple logic is powerful. Many people simply do not like cities, but if we care about people, and if we believe that the deepest human need is to be reconciled to God, then all Christians must be concerned for and supportive of urban Christian ministry in one way or another. If anything, God’s appeal to sheer size as an indicator of spiritual need comes home to us today with greater force. At the beginning of the nineteenth century only 5 percent of the world’s population lived in cities, a percentage that grew to 14 percent by 1900. The number is over 50 percent today and is on the way to perhaps 80 percent by 2050.3 1  In 1950 Shenzhen, China, had a population of 3,148 and Kinshasa (then called Léopoldville), Congo, had 200,000. By 2025 the United Nations predicts the two cities will have grown to 12 million and 16 million, respectively. During that same time Latin America’s population has gone from being less than 40 percent urban to over

80 percent.3 2  In the West, cities are growing much more slowly, but most are growing in their centers, attracting young adults and new immigrants, and in general they are more secular and resistant to Christian witness than other places.

This is “the most massive migration of people in the whole of history” and, as two international observers point out, “there is a massive imbalance in the proportion of Christian resources devoted to Christian presence, witness, and mission in the huge and growing cities of the [global] South.”3 3  Surely God calls Christians and churches to go and live everywhere that there are people, but the people of the world are moving into the city much faster than the church is going.3 4  “This context may give a special resonance to God’s final . . . question to Jonah, Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city?”3 5

One of the reasons that believers today dislike cities is because they are often places of great opposition to Christianity. Cities are seldom hotbeds of orthodox faith, and many young Christians move to cities and lose their faith. Some today believe that Christians should remove themselves from these centers of unbelief.

Jonah was called to have compassion on a city that was a threat to his people (Jonah 4:11). Years later, God made the same call to believers to seek the common good of a pagan city that already had done violence to their nation (Jeremiah 29:4–7). The Babylonian empire had invaded and sacked Jerusalem, carrying off many of its people into exile. The strategy of the Babylonians was to assimilate the Jews culturally so they would lose their faith, culture, and view of the world.3 6  To counter this strategy, there were prophets, such as Hannaniah (Jeremiah 28:1–17), who called the Jews to remain outside the city. This was a sort of tribalism in which the city was despised and hated and dealt with only to the degree necessary to build up your own economy. Ironically, both assimilation and tribalism are radically selfish. There is no love for the city—in both cases the city is being used to build up wealth, status, and power.

God rejects both assimilation and tribalism for his people. He forbids both blending in and withdrawal. Instead he says:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:4–7).

This must have been an enormous shock. Some of the leaders of Babylon had hands stained with the blood of the Jews’ kindred. Idols and false gods filled the city. Yet God had the audacity to tell them to become deeply involved with the city, seeking its peace and prosperity, all the while not compromising on their beliefs and faithfulness to him at all. Either withdrawal or assimilation is easier. Seeking the common good, yet without any compromise of faith and practice, is much more difficult. Yet that is God’s call to his people.

This model—of exiles seeking the common good of their city—is also the model given to the New Testament Church. Both Peter and James call Christians “exiles” (James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1). Peter uses parapidêmos, a word that means “resident aliens.” Parapidêmoi were citizens of one country yet full-time residents of another. Christians are citizens of “the Jerusalem that is above” (Galatians 4:22–26; cf. Philippians 3:20 “our citizenship is in heaven”), and yet we are to also pray for and seek the well-being of our earthly cities.

Finally, there is a lesson about justice.

We have seen that Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh resulted not so much in conversions (although we cannot be sure there were none) as in social reform. The brutal society promised to turn away from its violence (Jonah 3:8). The prophets’ messages to the Gentile nations ordinarily consisted of a denunciation of their exploitive social practices and a call to do justice. What does the Bible mean when it calls people to “seek justice” and “defend the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17)?

It means seeking equal treatment for all. Leviticus 24:22 tells believers that they must have “the same law for the foreigner and the native-born.” You are promoting injustice if you privilege one race or nationality over another, or citizens over immigrants. A host of other biblical texts denounce any judicial system weighted in favor of the wealthy while disenfranchising the poor (cf. Isaiah 1:23–24).

It means having a special concern for economically and socially vulnerable groups. Proverbs 31:8–9 says: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. . . . Defend the rights of the poor and needy” (cf. Zechariah 7:9–10). It does not say, “Speak up for the rich and powerful,” not because they do not merit equal treatment—they do—but because the Bible here is concerned with distributing power to those without it.

Finally, doing justice means broad-based, radical generosity. When Isaiah 58:6 calls us to “loose the chains of injustice and . . . set the oppressed free,” the next verse defines that as “to share your food with the hungry, and to provide the [homeless] with shelter.”

When Job is recounting the admirable life he has lived, he says that he did not put his trust in gold, saying “‘you are my security’” (Job 31:24), but rather shared his bread, clothing, and other possessions with the poor (verses 16–19). It is unjust to fail to share with the poor. This lack of just generosity can take other forms. Exploiting your employees, paying them an ungenerous wage, is considered injustice (Isaiah 58:6–7). Whatever you have is only by God’s gift and appointment (1 Chronicles 29:12–14). So to not share what you have with those who have less—to fail to meet their basic human needs like food, safe housing, health, and education—is being not simply unmerciful but unjust.

The book of Jonah shows not only that justice was important to God but also the preaching of repentance and God’s wrath. How, practically speaking, can we combine evangelism and doing justice?

One proposed model is to see these two things as “two wings on an airplane.” While that analogy conveys the necessity of both, it does not describe how integral they are, how one leads to the other. Another model sees helping the needy as a mere means to an end. We give people things so they will turn to Christ. That does not fit with Jesus’s teachings that we should give without expecting in return (Luke 6:32–35) and that we should serve the needs of our neighbor even if he or she does not share our faith (Luke 10:25–37). A third mistake is to insist that doing justice is all we need to do to declare God’s good news, as if helping the marginalized were evangelism. Nor should we treat justice as optional work that we may get to if we have the time or money. All of these very common formulations lack biblical nuance.

We must realize that since all our social problems stem from our alienation from God (Genesis 3:1–17), the most radical and loving thing you can do for a person is to see him or her reconciled to God. Yet while preaching repentance is fundamental, doing justice must be inseparably attached to it. If you have a new relationship with God, it must affect all your other relationships. The Old Testament prophets regularly declared that while you may be religious and fast and pray, if you don’t do justice, your religion is a sham (Isaiah 58:1–7). Isaiah said that if we don’t care for the poor (Isaiah 29:21), then we may seem to honor God with our lips but our hearts are far from him (Isaiah 29:13).

The New Testament is no different. Like the prophets, Jesus condemns people who make lengthy prayers but exploit the poor (Mark 12:38,40). And both 1 John 3:17–18 and James 2:14–17 likewise state that if you say you have faith in Jesus but see someone “without clothes and daily food” and do nothing for “physical needs,” such faith is “dead.” All this is to say that compassion for the poor is an inevitable sign of a living relationship with God and an experience of God’s grace. While it does not initiate God’s favor and acceptance, it is a sure symptom of having experienced his love. Those who truly know they have eternal life only because of the free, charitable grace of God will be charitable.

So preaching repentance is fundamental, but doing justice must be inseparably connected to it. This combination of doing justice and preaching judgment—and therefore offering grace—goes together not only theologically and philosophically but also practically.

When the world sees the church doing evangelism, making converts, it only sees us increasing our tribe, adding to our numbers and increasing our power. When it sees us sacrificially serving the needs of our neighbors whether they believe as we do or not, then it may begin to see that believers are motivated more by love than by the desire to accrue power. In Christian theology our belief in the God of judgment and grace is the basis for doing justice in our society. In the eyes of those outside the church, it is Christians’ doing justice that makes belief in the gospel plausible. Doing justice for our neighbors, whether they believe in Christ or not is, paradoxically, one of the best recommendations for the faith. Like Jesus, we must be mighty in both word and deed (Luke 24:19).

They also go together philosophically. Our Western culture is secular, so it is widely believed that moral values are socially constructed rather than God given. As it is commonly asserted, “No one has the right to tell anyone else what is right or wrong for him or her.” It is a cultural given that every person determines his or her own moral values. Nevertheless, it is just as strongly believed that all people are obligated to support equal rights, justice for all, and care for the poor. This is one of the great contradictions of our society today. It insists that all morality is relative and then it demands moral behavior. What if someone has the temerity to ask, “Why should I sacrifice my time and money for people far off who are starving? Why do I have any obligation to embrace people of other races and beliefs? Why should I be unselfish?” The culture can manage only two answers, both inadequate. The first answer is that to do so serves your own selfish interests. Many thinkers have pointed out the foolishness of basing self-sacrificial behavior on pragmatic self-interest. The other answer is that these values are simply self- evident, but for many people in the world they are not.

These modern beliefs—that we must all be committed to equal rights and justice but that there are no God-given moral absolutes—undermine each other. Modern secular education teaches every child that they must be true to themselves, that they must identify their deepest desires and dreams and pursue them, not letting family, community, tradition, or religion stand in their way. Then it calls for justice, reconciliation, and benevolence, all of which are basic forms of self-denial, even as it encourages self-assertion. It teaches relativism and calls people to be ethical. It encourages self-seeking and calls people to be sacrificial. As C. S. Lewis says: We continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. . . . In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. . . . We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.3 7

Christians can make a major contribution here. The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, points out that modern society is “on the deepest level incoherent” with regard to morality.3 8 Our culture demands impartial benevolence toward all people, social justice for every oppressed class, and the reduction of hunger, disease, and suffering everywhere in the world, “while [at the same time] in principle denying that any such moral value is other than an arbitrary, subjective preference.”3 9  One reviewer of Sources of the Self, himself an atheist, admits that Taylor’s thesis makes him very uncomfortable. He writes: Perseverance in virtue will . . . require self-sacrifice. And self-sacrifice seems to require some transcendental justification or motivation, of which the most common, and perhaps the most logical, is belief in the existence of God. Or so Taylor argues, circumspectly. Since modern freedom entails the rejection of transcendence, modern virtue is wholly contingent. Can we be good for long without God? Taylor’s doubts are daunting.4 0

Christians, of course, share all those moral commitments—to human rights, equal human dignity, universal benevolence, and the interests of the poor. Indeed, it is widely and well argued that those values were imported by secular, modern society from the Bible. Christians have the resources for “perseverance in virtue” and self-sacrifice. They come not just from belief in God and the afterlife in general but from every feature of the Christian gospel—the incarnation of Christ, his atoning death on the cross, and the hope of the resurrection. The more Christians draw on these resources and love their neighbors, the stronger society can be.

CHA PT ER 11:

Our Relationship to God’s World

1. 1. To Jew s, Samaritans w ere “socio-religious outcasts.” Joel B. G reen, The Gospel of Luke, The New I nternational

Commentary on the New Testament (G rand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), p. 431.

2. 2. G reen, Gospel of Luke, p. 432.
3. 3. An accessible treatment of this doctrine is Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s I mage (G rand Rapids, MI : Wm. B.

Eerdmans, 1994).

4. 4. John Calvin, I nstitutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lew is Battles, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), pp. 696–97. I talics are mine.
5. 5. Calvin, I nstitutes of the Christian Religion, p. 698.
6. 6. An important, scholarly w ork exploring how Christians and local churches can w ork for the common good of neighborhoods and cities is Luke Bretherton, Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Bretherton addresses the question “How do w e build a common life in places characterized by deep religious and cultural diversity?” He calls for churches and Christians to engage in “broad-based community organizing,” in w hich believers come together w ith people of deeply different beliefs, identify w ays to improve life for all in their locale, and w ork together for change.
7. 7. I t is important to note that believers can serve in politics and government faithfully w ithout the obligation to turn the government into a Christian state. Daniel calls a pagan king to act justly tow ard the poor and the oppressed (Daniel

4:27), and Amos 1–2 show s G od holding pagan nations accountable for their behavior. They are not being called to acknow ledge G od as Lord; still less are governments being held to a full Christian ethical standard. But they are being held to something like the golden rule. That golden-rule level of justice and fairness in society is something that Christian ministers can call pagan governments to honor, as Amos and Daniel did.

8. 8. I n ancient I srael it w as the state’s role to promote true religion and punish heresy. Thus I srael w as a theocratic state.

I n the New Testament, how ever, Jesus tells us to “give back to Caesar w hat is Caesar’s, and to G od w hat is G od’s” (Matthew 22:21). Many (including me) see this as a change in the relationship of the church to the state to one of

“nonestablishment.”

This does not mean that any government can really be completely “religiously neutral.” All political orders are based on some vision of moral good. A government might be committed to a post-Enlightenment belief in absolute individual freedom or instead a traditional one of family and clan solidarity. I t w ill embrace one of the many particular definitions of “justice,” w hether it be the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill or individual-rights justice or the virtue ethics of Aristotle. But none of these view s is empirically provable. They are faith-based moral visions grounded in beliefs about human nature and purpose. That means that Christians have every right, as individual citizens, to seek social policies based on their ow n beliefs, just as all other citizens inevitably w ill be doing.

That is not, how ever, the same as seeking to establish one religion or denomination as the official church of the state. I n general, then, the church should produce individual Christians—“the church scattered”—w ho engage in political action, but the institutional “gathered” church and its leaders should not be aligned w ith particular political parties and leaders. See Daniel Strange, “Evangelical Public Theology: What on Earth? Why on Earth? How on Earth?” in A Higher Throne: Evangelical Public Theology, edited by Chris G reen (London: I nterVarsity Press, 2008), pp. 58–61. This is a sympathetic but critical review of Abraham Kuyper’s teaching that the “organic” church of individual Christians should do cultural transformation but that the “institutional” church should not. For a lengthier critical, but ultimately sympathetic case for Abraham Kuyper’s public theology (w ith lots of appreciation for pessimists like MacI ntyre and Hauerw as) see James K. A. Smith, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (G rand Rapids, MI : Baker Academic, 2017).

9. 9. The gospel itself undermines extreme partisanship because of the doctrine of sin. I t tells Christians that the evil ruining human life on this planet resides in every single human heart, including theirs. Each side of the political spectrum has a tendency to argue that the evil w e suffer is mainly from certain classes of people—the w ealthy and pow erful people and races or the poor and the immigrant. But the Christian believes in the doctrine of “total depravity,” namely, that no race, class, or gender is more sinful and depraved than any other. Y es, a group w ith more pow er can do more damage w ith their sin, but Christians are forbidden to think that a different class of person w ith pow er is intrinsically less prone to sin and exploitation.

This teaching of total depravity undermines partisanship also because it prevents us from thinking that either the “invisible hand” of capital markets or the pow er of government is more intrinsically trustw orthy as a guide for the allocation of material resources. The extreme Left is far more suspicious of capitalism than of the state, and the extreme Right tends to be the opposite. But the “market” and the “state” are simply human beings. Human beings are intrinsically self-centered, and they w ill find w ays to use the pow er they have to privilege themselves.

I t is true that secular political systems of the Right and Left make idols out of individual choice or the state or capitalism, and this leads to policies that favor certain classes over others, undermining the common good. Believers should not, how ever, think that somehow a Christian political party w ould necessarily be free from the same problems. The Christian doctrine of sin should lead Christians to mistrust even themselves, since our sinful hearts are perfectly capable of finding justification for abuses of pow er w ithin a doctrinally orthodox framew ork.

10. 10. See Sean Michael Lucas, “Ow ning Our Past: The Spirituality of the Church in History, Failure, and Hope,” Reformed Faith and Practice: The Journal of Reformed Theological Seminary 1, no. 1 (May 2016), https://journal.rts.edu/article/ow ning-our-past-the-spirituality-of-the-church-in-history-failure-and-hope. Lucas discusses the Presbyterian Church’s Westminster Confession of Faith 31:4: “Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that w hich is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle w ith civil affairs w hich concern the commonw ealth, unless by w ay of humble petition in cases extraordinary.” Many have argued that this forbids the church to speak officially about any social issues, and southern Presbyterians in the 1840s and 1850s invoked this part of the confession against abolitionists w ho insisted that the church speak out against slavery. Lucas counterargues convincingly that this does not mean that the church cannot speak corporately about issues of race, sex, and poverty, all of w hich have social implications, since the Bible itself addresses these subjects. He aims to retain, how ever, the great restraint that the Westminster Confession w ants the church to exercise about involvement in electoral politics.
11. 11. This means that ministers and other church leaders ought to exercise great caution in speaking publicly to current political issues, because even if they try to speak as “private citizens,” they w ill unavoidably be seen as speaking officially for the institutional church and thereby claiming that their particular view is the biblical or Christian political position. Some years ago in a private conversation, I w as asked w hat I thought about the I sraeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. An agenda w as presented to me for a w ay forw ard, a possible resolution. After considering the proposal, I said it sounded quite good to me. Then I w as asked if I w ould sign a public petition calling for all parties to adopt this approach. While I w as honored to be asked, I declined immediately. I knew the reason I w as being asked to sign it w as because I w as the pastor of a large church and therefore I w ould be seen as representing a lot of people. But I knew that this particular political solution, though in my view a w ise one, w as not one dictated by Scripture. The Christians in my church w ere free, then, in their consciences to believe otherw ise about this issue, and

I knew that many did. They w ould not feel it w ould be fair for me to sign the petition as if I represented the view s of the entire congregation. As a minister w hose job it is to preach the Bible to a church, my signature w ould be read as saying, “This is the Christian, biblical political position on this issue.” I t w ouldn’t matter if I protested that I w as signing only as a private citizen. I w ouldn’t have been view ed or heard that w ay. I w ould have been tying the gospel and the faith to one debatable political program. Christian ministers and leaders, then, should instruct and encourage believers to be politically active, seeking to be “salt” and “light” (Matthew 5:13–16), using their biblically shaped w isdom to seek the common good. But as representatives of the institutional church, they should not press partisan political agendas.

12. 12. See Craig Blomberg, Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions (Leicester, UK: Apollos, 1999).

Biblical scholar Craig Blomberg examines the biblical data on w ealth and economics. He looks at the Mosaic law s, including (a) the Sabbath-year law s that all indentured servants w ould go free every seven years, w hether they had paid off their debts or not; (b) the gleaning law s that limited profit taking by landow ners; and (c) the Jubilee, in w hich land that had been lost in fair business dealing returned to its original ow ners every fifty years. Blomberg concludes that the rules for the use of w ealth and property challenge all major contemporary economic models. They are incompatible w ith either socialism or democratic capitalism. The Bible “suggests a sharp critique of (1) statism that disregards the precious treasure of personal rootage, and (2) the untrammeled individualism that secures individuals at the expense of community” (p. 46). The Bible teaches “the depersonalization of both market forces and state-run societies” (p. 83).

13. 13. See James Mumford, “Package Deal Ethics,” Hedgehog Review 19, no. 3 (Autumn 2017), also available at w w w .jamesmumford.cuk/package-deal-ethics-2.
14. 14. See Larry Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016). Hurtado points out that the early church w as committed to a unique “social project.” I t stressed (a) multiethnicity and equality betw een the races, (b) strong concern for the poor, (c) forgiveness and nonretaliation, (d) prohibition of abortion and infanticide, and (e) a sex ethic that prohibited all sex outside of marriage betw een a man and a w oman. As some have pointed out, the first tw o characteristics sound “Democrat” and the last tw o sound “Republican,” but the third trait—nonretaliation—doesn’t sound like either party!
15. 15. Some reading this in 2018–19 w ill think of evangelicals and Republicans. But this happens across the spectrum. For another example of the pressure of today’s political “package deals” w hen it comes to African American Christians, see Justin E. G iboney, “Oddly, Neither Political Party Reflects the Values of Black Voters,” The Hill, May 30, 2018,

http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/389491-oddly-neither-political-party-reflects-the-values-of-black-voters. Both African American Christians and Catholic social teaching combine “liberal” values in the areas of labor, race, and economics and “conservative” values in the areas of sex, gender, and abortion.

16. 16. Ernest W. Shurtleff, “Lead On, O King Eternal, the Day of March Has Come” (hymn), 1887.
17. 17. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of I dentity, O therness, and Reconciliation

(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 74–78.

18. 18. See Jonathan Haidt, “The Age of Outrage: What the Current Political Climate I s Doing to Our Country and Our

Universities,” City Journal, December 17, 2017,  w w w .city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html.

19. 19. Paul G ilroy, “Diaspora and Detours of I dentity,” in I dentity and Difference, edited by K. Woodw ard (London: Sage/Open University, 1997), p. 302.
20. 20. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p. 78.
21. 21. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 63–64.
22. 22. C. S. Lew is, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New Y ork: Harper Trophy, 2000), p. 110.
23. 23. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 40, 49.
24. 24. See Larry Hurtado, “A Different I dentity,” in Destroyer of the Gods, pp. 77–104.
25. 25. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 50th anniversary ed. (New Y ork: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 442.
26. 26. We should not think that the model of the incarnation and the unique Christian identity are the only resources that

Christians have for becoming agents of peacemaking and bridge building in a pluralistic society. Here are tw o others: (1) Our doctrine of history undermines both the nostalgia and the utopianism that can lead to extreme political view s. Progressives look at the past as filled w ith darkness and evil and believe our only hope is in a future society w e

can achieve through politics. On the other hand, conservatives often look back to past “golden eras” and see the present and future as flaw ed and bleak. But St. Augustine’s great w ork The City of God show s the biblical view of history, namely, that the past, present, and future w ere all filled w ith human evil and G od’s sustaining grace, that w e can w ork for a more just society now w ith both realism and hope, know ing that w e w ill never achieve it until Christ’s return. This prevents Christians from either romanticizing the past as conservatives tend to do or putting hopes in utopian political projects as liberals tend to do.

(2) Our doctrine of salvation by grace alone undermines perhaps the basic human barrier to peaceful, cooperative relationships. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has said: “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, w e must understand how our minds are built. We must find w ays to overcome our natural self-righteousness.” Jonathan Haidt, “The Psychology of Self-righteousness” (interview w ith Krista Tippett), O n Being, October 19, 2017, https://onbeing.org/programs/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-of-self-righteousness-oct2017/. I t is not being righteous but being self-righteous that leads to constant polarization and alienation w ithin our multicultural, pluralistic societies. One can disagree and critique strongly w ithout demeaning, demonizing, and dehumanizing the opposing view in both tone and language, but self-righteousness engages in these routinely. John I nazu, in Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), argues that w e cannot have a peaceful, thriving, pluralistic society, w ith cooperation among people of deeply different beliefs, unless people speak using the qualities of tolerance (treating others w ith respect and dignity even w hen w e find their view s appalling), humility (recognizing the limits of w hat w e can prove to them, realizing our beliefs are not self- evident to all), and patience (being w illing to stick w ith people, in hope, over the long run). These three traits result in: (a) slow ness to attribute bad motives, (b) slow ness to think w e’ve figured the other person out, (c) unw illingness to attribute to them a view that they do not hold, even if w e think it is an implication of their other view s, and (d) refraining from critiquing them until w e can first represent their view s in w ays so compelling that they could not say

it better themselves. All of these attitudes and skills are, arguably, becoming less and less prevalent among us. The doctrine of salvation by grace alone means that all human beings are equally lost, unable to save themselves, and saved only by sheer grace. That gives pow erful resources for producing tolerance, humility, and patience in Christians. When w e speak to a person w ho is a Hindu or an atheist, w e have no reason to feel superior. We are not saved because w e are w iser or more moral but because of grace alone. Even if Christians may have the truth, the remaining sin in our hearts keeps us from ever being as good as our right doctrine should make us.

27. 27. Associated Press, “Dutch Call for End to Religious Violence,” NBC News, November 9, 2004, w w w .nbcnew s.com/id/6446342/ns/w orld_new s-europe/t/dutch-call-end-religious-violence/#.Wm9sq5M-dmA.
28. 28. Matthew Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim I mmigration in an Age of Fear (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 2018), p. 25. Thanks to Derek Rishmaw y for pointing out this great example.
29. 29. I bid.
30. 30. Kaemingk, Christian Hospitality and Muslim I mmigration, p. 26.
31. 31. United Nations, “The World’s Cities in 2016” (data booklet), no date, w w w .un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/the_w orlds_cities_in_2016_data_boo
32. 32. “Cities in Numbers: How Patterns of Urban G row th Change the World,” Guardian, November 23, 2015, w w w .theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/23/cities-in-numbers-how -patterns-of-urban-grow th-change-the-w orld.
33. 33. How ard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra, “Jonah 1–4,” in The Message of Mission: The Glory of Christ in All Time and Space (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 136.
34. 34. Nevertheless, the move of people, w ealth, and pow er aw ay from the countryside and into the great cities has left rural communities in great need. There is far more drug addiction, poverty, transience, and other social problems in these areas than there w as a generation ago. Ministry in these areas requires new skills and resources. There is a great need for many new churches and for the renew al of innumerable historic churches in those places.
35. 35. Peskett and Ramachandra, “Jonah 1–4,” p. 136.
36. 36. Tremper Longman I I I , The NI V Application Commentary: Daniel (G rand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 1999), pp. 47–

48.

37. 37. C. S. Lew is, The Abolition of Man (New Y ork: MacMillan, 1947), p. 35.
38. 38. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern I dentity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1989), p. 89, speaking about John Raw ls’s w idely accepted theory of moral value. See also pp. 342, 464, 510.

39. 39. G eorge Scialabba, “Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern I dentity: A Review ,” Dissent, September 1, 1990, http://georgescialabba.net/mtgs/1990/09/sources-of-the-self-the-making.html.
40. 40. Scialabba, “Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self.”

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD’S GRACE

Running from Grace (Jonah 2:1–10)

One of the messages of this book is that anyone, even a successful prophet (or preacher), can be in the dark about grace. Jonah’s fears, prejudices, and emotional breakdown all stem from his blindness to the reality of grace. In chapter 1 he runs away because he finds God’s grace and mercy an inexplicable mystery. In chapter 2, in the belly of the fish, we find him wrestling with that same mystery. It is only when he has a breakthrough in his understanding about grace that he is released. Only then can he become a fearless preacher. The main purpose of God is to get Jonah to understand grace. The main purpose of the book of Jonah is to get us to understand grace.

If Jonah failed to understand the mystery of God’s grace, it is most certainly possible for us. Ignorance of the depth of God’s grace causes our most severe problems. Until we understand it, we are, like Jonah, just a shadow of what we could be and should be. The doctrine of the grace of God is that which sets Christianity apart from all other faiths. It is the central message, the “gospel.” “The gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace” (Colossians 1:6).

It is an understanding of God’s grace that makes a person a Christian and not merely a moral person or a religious person or a nice person. This is a truth that, when it is grasped, is electrifying. When Martin Luther finally understood it, he went from being an anxious, guilt-ridden seminary professor to a lion ready to take on the whole world by himself. He wrote: Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God’s grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.1

It is an understanding of God’s grace that makes it possible to take a hard stand. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in trying to understand how so much of the German church was willing to accept Hitler, identified the problem as “cheap grace.”2  They believed that God loved them despite their sins, but that led to an attitude that ultimately it didn’t matter how they lived. Standing up against Hitler at that time would have been dangerous. Many therefore reasoned, “Well, maybe it’s cowardly and maybe it’s wrong. But God will overlook it. He accepts us despite our sin.” As Heinrich Heine, the nineteenth-century writer, was reputed to have said when he was dying, “God will forgive me. That’s his job.”3

If you believe that—that God just forgives us and overlooks sin with a shrug—then you will take sin lightly because apparently God does too. However, if you realize that our salvation cost Jesus his glory in heaven and his life on earth, that it entailed unimaginable suffering for him, then you begin to understand that grace is not cheap but costly (Philippians 2:1–11).

Unless we see what it cost him to save us, we won’t be glad to obey and serve him, regardless of the cost to us. Packer writes: Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity . . . are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.4

And what gives God delight? It is when we stop boasting about and getting our identity from human wisdom, might, and wealth and begin to live in generosity, justice, and righteousness. “For in these I delight, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

It is an understanding of God’s grace that removes our burdens. Religious people often invite nonbelievers to convert by calling them to adopt new sets of behaviors and new ritual practices, all the while redoubling their efforts to live a virtuous life. That, however, is to load more burdens on people. The Pharisees did this, laying “heavy, cumbersome loads” on people (Matthew 23:4), and so they sank. All other religions put on people the burden of securing their own salvation, while God provides unearned salvation through his son (cf. Isaiah 46:1–4). While the gospel must lead to a changed life, it is not those changes that save you.

A group of young men around John and Charles Wesley in the 1730s struggled to know and serve God. They began reading aloud Martin Luther’s commentary on the Galatians. One night, one of the men, William Holland, had an experience of grace that he wrote about later.

Mr. Charles Wesley read the Preface aloud. At the words, “What, have we then nothing to do? No! Nothing but only accept of Him, Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” there came such a power over me as I cannot well describe; my great burden fell off in an instant; my heart was so filled with peace and love that I burst into tears. I almost thought I saw our Savior! My companions, perceiving me so affected, fell on their knees and prayed. When I afterwards went into the street, I could scarcely feel the ground I trod upon.5

Charles Wesley himself had a similar experience, also through the writings of Luther. And he wrote about it like this:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke. My dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.6

Grace becomes, as it were, the background music of your life. If that is the song your heart sings much of the time, it changes you (Ephesians 5:19–20).

How can God be so merciful, patient, and gracious? A clue to the answer is embedded in Jonah’s prayer, where he cries: Out of the belly of Sheol I cry, and you hear my voice. For you cast me into the deep. . . . All your waves and your billows pass over me. . . . I am driven away from your sight (Jonah 2:2–4).

“Sheol” meant the realm of divine punishment and death.7  Jack Sasson says that to speak of already being in such a place expresses extreme anguish and pain. The metaphor is “unique to Jonah and conveys despair of the darkest hue.”8 Jonah knows his suffering is a penalty, that his sin banished him from God’s sight.

When Jesus calls himself “greater than Jonah,” he refers to the three days and three nights of Jonah in the deep (Matthew 12:40–41). For on the cross Jesus recapitulates the suffering of Jonah, but to an infinitely greater degree when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jonah went into the depths of the sea in order to save the sailors, but Jesus went into the depths of death and separation from God—hell itself—in order to save Jonah. Jonah is crushed under the weight of the “waves and breakers” (verse Jonah 2:3) of God’s “waters” (verse 5), but Jesus was buried under the waves and billows of God’s wrath. Jonah said he was in Sheol and driven from God’s sight. The Apostles’ Creed says that, for our sake, Jesus “descended into hell.” A classic explanation of that line: The point is that the Creed sets forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ’s body was given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man.9

Whatever your problem, God solves it with his grace. God’s grace abolishes guilt forever. You may be filled with regret for the past or you may be living with a sense of great failure. It doesn’t matter what you have done. If you were a hundred times worse than you are, your sins would be no match for his mercy. There is a hymn that goes: “Well might the Accuser roar / Of sins that I have done / I see them all and thousands more.”

Yet if you are in Christ, “Jehovah knoweth none.”1 0

Grace abolishes fear of failure, which may have been part of Jonah’s problem. So many of our deepest longings to succeed are really just ways to be for ourselves what Christ should be for us. Really we are saying, “If I achieve this, then I am acceptable!” But when we stop trying to steal self-acceptance from other sources, we lose our fear. We become fearless without becoming defiant.

Salvation belongs to the Lord. It is all from him. It is not partly from you and partly from him. It is from him. If you feel, “I wish I were more worthy,” you still don’t understand it. He is your worthiness. If you say, “I want him in my life but I don’t see him working,” you still don’t understand how fundamental his grace is. If you want it at all, that is God working in your life. You are not capable of wanting him on your own. Salvation is of the Lord.

Heart Storms (Jonah 4:1–3)

We have seen that Jonah’s angry relapse has to do with an inordinate concern for his nation’s political fortunes. One could say he fell into a kind of extreme partisanship, where he would rather have people destroyed and spiritually lost as long as it benefited his country. We could also say, as many have, that Jonah was at best a jingoist and at worst a racist. The danger in doing so is that, while such denunciation may make us feel virtuous, we must also do justice to the rightful love of country and attachment to one’s people and culture that is good.

1. C. S. Lewis’s set of essays The Four Loves is famous for what it says on the subjects of friendship and sex. Less well known is his treatment of patriotism. Lewis had served his country in World War I. He was wounded and lost comrades. He felt pride and love for his nation and land. Yet he begins his discussion of “love of country” by saying, “We all know now that this love becomes a demon when it becomes a god.”1 1Lewis was referring to Nazism, a form of intense patriotism that had become demonic.

Lewis says that, in response to the horrors visited on the world by overblown nationalism, “some begin to expect that [love of country] is never anything but a demon.” Certainly today in Western culture that sentiment has grown. On many college and university campuses virtually any expression of national pride is seen as a fascist and/or racist. But Lewis rejects antipatriotism as just another form of extremism. Those who see love of nation as always toxic “have to reject half the high poetry and half the heroic action our race has achieved.” He adds, strikingly, “We cannot even keep Christ’s lament over Jerusalem [where] He too exhibits love for his country.”1 2

Instead, Lewis leads us wisely to break down patriotism or love of country into several aspects or kinds, some of which are less likely than others to lead to cruelty and oppression.

The first kind is “love of home”—love of the places we grew up, of the types of people who live there, of the landscape, the sights and sounds, the food and smells and way of life. Lewis thinks that this kind of love of country is the least likely to produce animosity toward those who are different. Appreciation of the things that make your place unique helps you to imagine others loving their distinct places in the same way.

The second kind of love of country is “a particular attitude to our country’s past . . . the great deeds of our ancestors.” He says that this already presents a danger. It is tempting to airbrush our history and hide how “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings.” When that happens we lose a sense that our nation and culture is, like all others, a mix of good and evil people and elements. Here is where a sense of national superiority may begin to breed, along with a potential to believe that our race inherits this superiority automatically.1 3

Lewis believes that when a nation intentionally suppresses and erases its own historical misdeeds, this can lead, thirdly, to conscious and deliberate feelings of racial superiority. He remembers a time when he heard a man explicitly voice English superiority to other countries and cultures. Lewis responded, perhaps with a bit of humor, that every country likes to think its people the bravest and fairest in the world, to which the man replied without irony, “Yes, but in England it’s true.”1 4  Here, Lewis says, we are on the doorstep of racism and oppression. “If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. [This is what happens when] a false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.”1 5

The final stage of this pathway—from healthy love of one’s home and country to making one’s race and nation into a god—comes when a race or country uses the premise of its superiority as a basis for cruelty, oppression, exclusion, and even extermination. “Dogs! Know your betters!”1 6

The pathway from a healthy love to a toxic patriotism that Lewis lays out has a number of stages, and it appears Jonah is moving through them. We know from history that Assyria eventually destroyed the ten northern tribes of Israel. So Jonah was not unrealistic in his fears. Yet God was calling him to put his Word and the spiritual good of people ahead of Israel’s interests.

Jonah’s love for his people and his patriotism—which were good things—had turned sour. His love of his people had become bigotry, and now, without the hope that Israel would win this international power struggle, his life had lost all meaning. As long as serving God fit into his goals for Israel, he was fine with God. As soon as he had to choose between the true God and the god he actually worshipped, he turned on the true God in anger. Jonah’s particular national identity was more foundational to his self-worth than his role as a servant of the God of all nations. The real God had been just a means to an end. He was using God to serve his real god.1 7

Race and nation are just two of an infinite number of good things that can become idols. The philosopher Paul Tillich argued that everyone must live for something in order that life have meaning, and whatever that thing is becomes “the ultimate concern.” Tillich doubted, therefore, that true, thorough atheism was really possible. He argued that if you don’t call the meaning of your life a god, it still functions like one and therefore everyone’s life is based on faith.1 8 In the same vein, the postmodern novelist David Foster Wallace said that in daily life “there is no such thing as . . . not worshipping.” He went on to say that “where[ever] you tap real meaning in life”—whether it is having enough money, being beautiful (or having a beautiful partner), or being thought smart or promoting some political cause—“everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Wallace knew that modern, secular people would protest very strongly that they are not worshipping, but he likened these denials of secular people about worship to the denials of addicts. “The insidious thing,” he said, “is [that] they are unconscious. They are default settings.”1 9  Whatever you live for actually owns you. You do not really control yourself. Whatever you live for and love the most controls you.

How can we identify these “default settings” that can so distort our lives, as they did Jonah’s? Look at your unanswered prayers and dreams. When God doesn’t fulfill them, do you struggle with disappointment but then go on? Or do you examine yourself and learn lessons and make changes and then go on? Or do you feel that “to me death is better than life” (Jonah 4:3)? The difference can tell you if you are dealing with a normal love in your life or an idol.

Once we identify them, how can we change these default settings? The only thing that releases us from the grip of idols is a heart grasp of the radical grace of God. Jonah is on the very brink of understanding this for the first time. In 2:8 he speaks of pagan idolaters and says, “Those clinging to empty idols forfeit the grace that is theirs.” Literally, he says idolaters forsake their own grace. For a moment he understands. He is saying, as it were, “I see now that since salvation is of the Lord, it is only by free grace and mercy alone, and therefore no one is different. The morally ‘good’ people and the wicked pagans—the grace of God is as much theirs as it is ours! We are all undeserving, but we can all receive it.” Had he grasped this idea fully, it would have purged him of the self-righteousness that reasserted itself after Nineveh was spared. It would have demoted his love of country from an ultimate thing to a good thing, and so his disappointment in chapter 4 would not have erupted into suicidal despair.

At the end of chapter 2, it seemed that Jonah was about to make the change from a moralistic identity to a gracious identity. It turns out he is somewhat like the man who needed more than one touch by Jesus (Mark 8:23–25). Most of us are like Jonah. We must have multiple exposures both to our need for God’s grace—which usually come through experiences of disappointment and failure—and to the gospel message. To get God’s love and Christ’s grace down into the motivational principles of our hearts, to the foundational layer of our identities, is a process, and often a slow one.

How can we be freed from our idols, self-salvations, and self-justifications, which are so fragile and subject to circumstances? Only through the grace of God, which cuts us to the quick (Acts 2:37) but lifts us higher than the heavens (Ephesians 1:3–10), grounding our happiness and identity in the unchanging love of the Father. The gospel holds out to us the prospect of a self-worth not achieved but received. While we maintain all our identifications with our race, nationality, gender, family, community, and other connections, the most fundamental thing about us is that we are sinners saved by grace. In ourselves we are lost, flawed, and undeserving, but in Christ we are completely accepted and delighted in by the one in the universe we adore the most.

On the one hand, such a received identity sweeps aside our pride and humbles us. How can we feel superior to anyone else if our standing before God is only by grace’s riches at Christ’s expense? On the other hand, we are absolutely assured of God’s endless, unchanging love as we appear in Christ. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no need to inflate our self-image by excluding others.

The Character of Compassion (Jonah 4:4–11)

God did not try to liberate Jonah from his self-righteous identity with only a speech. We must not forget he also sent Jonah difficulties and disappointments. The first time he sent a life-threatening storm. The second time he took away the plant that had been such a comfort to him. Something he loved withered and died. Why did God do it? Because he was being merciful and therefore was doing spiritual surgery on the idols of Jonah’s heart. John Newton has an entire hymn about this passage where God blasts this vine, here called a “gourd.”

I asked the Lord, that I might grow In faith, and love, and every grace; Might more of his salvation know; And seek more earnestly his face . . .I hoped that in some favored hour, At once he’d answer my request; And by his love’s constraining power Subdue my sins—and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel The hidden evils of my heart; And let the angry powers of hell Assault my soul in every part. Yea more, with his own hand he seemed Intent to aggravate my woe; Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, Blasted my gourds, and laid me low. “Lord, why is this,” I trembling cried, “Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?” “Tis in this way,” the Lord replied, “I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I employ, From self, and pride, to set thee free; And break they schemes of earthly joy, That thou may’st find thy all in me.”2 0

This remarkable hymn is almost a commentary on the final dialogue between Jonah and God. Jonah, like any prophet of the Lord, certainly wanted to grow in character and wanted God to help him. God seemed, on the contrary, to be pursuing him with disappointment and disaster. God “blasted his gourds,” not just the literal one that had given him shade and comfort but also the bigger one, his passion for his nation’s prosperity and success, and his biggest one, his pride in his own righteousness.

Why was God sending a deluge of disappointments? “Tis in this way,” the Lord replied, in essence: “I am answering your prayers for grace and faith. I am only trying to liberate you from the things that enslave you, drive you, and control you. Do you not see that if you loved me supremely, more than anything else, you’d be truly free? Find your all in me.”

This call of God to Jonah is a call to us. It is a painful process to find our all in him, but it is the only real path to joy. So let us not feel sorry for ourselves. Jesus trod an infinitely more painful path for “the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2)—for the joy of delighting his Father and redeeming us, his brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:10–15).

The final verses of the book tell us that the mark of those who have been immersed in the grace of God is compassion and love, not contempt, for people who aren’t like them. God challenges Jonah for confronting profane, ungodly people without weeping and compassion. Certainly error and evil must be denounced. However, God is both just and loving, and he rebukes Jonah for preaching to the city without loving the city.

We live in a world fragmented into various “media bubbles,” in which you hear only news that confirms what you already believe. Anyone who uses the internet and social media or who even watches most news channels today is being daily encouraged in a dozen ways to become like Jonah with regard to “those people over there.” Groups demonize and mock other groups. Each region of the country and political party finds reasons to despise the others. Christian believers today are being sucked into this maelstrom as much as if not more than anyone else. The book of Jonah is a shot across the bow. God asks, how can we look at anyone—even those with deeply opposing beliefs and practices—with no compassion?

If your compassion is going to resemble God’s, you must abandon a cozy world of self- protection. God’s compassion meant he could not stay perched above the circle of the earth and simply feel bad for us. He came down, he took on a human nature, he literally stepped into our shoes and into our condition and problems and walked with us. If you have a friend who’s going through a really hard time, don’t be too busy to spend time with them. Walk with them through this suffering. Of course you’re going to weep. It’s going to hurt! That’s what God did for you.

CHA PT ER 12:

Our Relationship to God’s Grace

1. 1. Martin Luther, “An I ntroduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” in Dr. Martin Luther’s vermischte deutsche

Schriften, edited by Johann K. I rmischer, vol. 63 (Erlangen, G ermany: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp. 124–25.

2. 2. See “Cheap G race” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New Y ork: Touchstone, 1995), pp. 43–56.
3. 3. Sigmund Freud attributes this to Heinrich Heine in his The Joke and I ts Relation to the Unconscious (New Y ork: Penguin, 2003), p. 109.
4. 4. J. I . Packer, Knowing God (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 1973), p. 124.
5. 5. Cited in Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth Century

Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970), p. 183.

6. 6. Charles Wesley, “Amazing Love” (hymn), 1738.
7. 7. Bryan D. Estelle, Salvation Through Judgment and Mercy: The Gospel According to Jonah (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2005), pp. 82–83. 8. Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with I ntroduction, Commentary, and I nterpretation, The Anchor Bible

(New Y ork: Doubleday, 1990), p. 172, cited in Estelle, Salvation Through Judgment and Mercy, p. 82.

9. 9. John Calvin, I nstitutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lew is Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), p. 516.
10. 10. Samuel G randy, “I Hear the Accuser Roar” (hymn).
11. 11. C. S. Lew is, The Four Loves (New Y ork: Harcourt and Brace, 1960), p. 22.
12. 12. I bid.
13. 13. Lew is, Four Loves, p. 26.
14. 14. I bid.
15. 15. Lew is, Four Loves, p. 29.
16. 16. Lew is, Four Loves, p. 27.
17. 17. Some interpreters resist this characterization of Jonah. Some have argued that Jonah’s anger has nothing to do w ith the race or foreignness of the Ninevites, that Jonah w as only distressed that any such w icked, violent group of people could be forgiven and not punished.

Others have countered that Jonah knew that to go to a foreign nation w ith the message of salvation w as part of G od’s rejection and judgment on I srael (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:15–21). As an example of this view , see Peter Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the O ld Testament (Moscow , I D: Canon Press, 2000), pp. 181–82. Leithart argues that w hen Deuteronomy 32:21 says that G od w ill “provoke” I srael “to jealousy by those w ho are ‘no people,’” it is predicting that G od w ill judge I srael by going to the G entiles, show ing them mercy, and thereby provoking the

Jew s to “jealousy” in order to w in them back to himself. I ndeed, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32:21 in Romans 11:19 and says that this is w hat G od is doing in Christ’s time, namely, through the grow th of the Christian church. Leithart insists that Jonah in his ow n day still w ould have read Deuteronomy 32:21 in the same w ay that Paul did, even though there is no indication that Jew ish teachers before Christ understood the text that w ay. Leithart’s explanation of w hy Jonah refused to go Nineveh is novel, but it is definitely a minority view .

Another group rightly w arns that calling Jonah a racist can itself be an exercise in anti-Semitism. I t can be a w ay of criticizing only Jew s, rather than pointing to the universal human propensity for racial bigotry and prejudice.

Nevertheless, the evidence for Jonah’s race-tinged nationalism is too strong. Of course it is natural for Jonah to w ant to see evildoers punished, and it is also completely understandable to w orry about the Assyrian capital’s threat to I srael. But w hen Jonah refused a direct order to bring G od’s message to the Ninevites, he w as making a decision to put I srael’s national and political interests ahead of G od’s w ill. To make your nation and race more important than G od is by definition to make them into idols.

There are other indications that the book of Jonah is addressing racist nationalism. Many have pointed out that the entire story very “deliberately gives a sympathetic representation of G entiles” at every point in the text. Compared to both the pagan sailors in the boat and the Ninevites themselves, Jonah appears ungenerous, cruel, and closed- minded. Allen argues that this appreciative view of nonbelievers and racial outsiders is targeted to a Jew ish community “embittered by its legacy of national suffering and foreign opposition.” Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel (G rand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976), p. 191.

I t is important, how ever, to see that it is not only Jonah w ho is critiqued for his racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. G od is also condemning the Ninevites for their imperialism, oppression, and social injustice. As w e have noted, the Assyrians w ere not being called by G od at this point to stop w orshipping idols and start w orshipping him. Jonah’s message w as a call to do justice, just as Amos preached to the nations (Amos 1:1–2:3). G od tells the pagan nations to stop their violence against the w eak and the poor. The text, then, calls out injustice and nationalism on all sides.

18. 18. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New Y ork: HarperOne, 2009). He w rites that to have no deity or god w ould be “to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one’s existence,” and so “G od can be denied only in the name of G od” (p.

52).

19. 19. David Foster Wallace, “David Foster Wallace in His Ow n Words” (commencement address, Kenyon College, May 21,

2005), 1843, September 19, 2008,  http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-w allace-in-his-ow n-w ords. See also a printed version in Dave Eggers, The Best Nonrequired Reading 2006, 1st ed. (Wilmington, MA: Mariner Books,

2006), pp. 355–64.

20. 20. John New ton, O lney Hymns, 1779, quoted in J. I . Packer, Knowing God (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press,

1973), p. 229.

EPILOGUE: WHO TOLD THE STORY?

We are called to be people in mission, to become vulnerable in order to share our faith and love our neighbors. That is what God did in Jesus Christ, and that is what even Jonah eventually did. He went to Nineveh and preached. Yet in his anger, he withdrew. He stayed outside the city in hopes of viewing its demise. Did he fail in the end?

As we have seen, the book of Jonah ends with a cliff-hanger. We are never told how the prophet responded to God’s final appeal. I propose, however, that we can make a reasonable guess about how Jonah ultimately responded to God. How do we know Jonah was so recalcitrant, defiant, and clueless? How do we know that he made that unbelievable “I hate the God of love” speech? How do we know about his prayer inside the fish? The only way we could possibly know these things is if Jonah told others. What kind of man would let the world see what a fool he was? Only someone who had become joyfully secure in God’s love. Only someone who believed that he was simultaneously sinful but completely accepted. In short, someone who has found in the gospel of grace the very power of God (Romans 1:16).

If it can change Jonah, it can change anyone. It can change you.

The question is usually asked in Old Testament survey classes, “Was the great fish more relieved to be rid of Jonah than Jonah was to get out of the great fish?” Maybe their sense of relief was mutual. At any rate, we hope that Jonah gave thanks to God for the divinely provided creature that rescued him from certain death.

When I read the third and fourth chapters of the book of Jonah, I see that he was stubbornly attacking God in chapter 4. He will seriously overstep his boundaries. As we read the chapter we just know that Jonah is going to get a proverbial “kick in the head” from God. And we will not be able to work up much sympathy for him if and when this happens.

Strangely enough, Jonah is not kicked in the head, even though he deserves it. The book ends with a rebuke which lingers in mid‑air, leaving the reader with a most uneasy feeling. The book does not leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling, like we might wish it did. The book did not begin with a “Once upon a time …” Neither does it end with a “happily ever after.”

Our uneasiness at the end of the book is by design. God does not want us to be comfortable, for repentance and change seldom result from our comfort. The question is, “What is it that we are to feel uncomfortable about?” The third and fourth chapters expose a very serious sin in Jonah, which is just as common today. Let us listen very carefully to Jonah’s protests and God’s probing as we conclude our study of the book of Jonah.

The stage for the events of these last two chapters of Jonah has already been set in the first two chapters of the book. In chapter 1 Jonah was commanded by God to go to Nineveh, where he was to cry against this great city for its sins. Instead of traveling to the northeast, Jonah went down to the seaport of Joppa, where he boarded a ship headed to Tarshish, apparently on the coast of Spain. Jonah was headed in the opposite direction!

Jonah’s disobedience resulted in God bringing about an intense storm, which was breaking up the ship, and which had frightened the sailors to the point that they were fervently calling on their gods to save them. At the same time, they were casting all the cargo overboard. Finding Jonah sleeping soundly below deck, the captain of the ship commanded him to pray (which he apparently never did). At the seamen’s initiative, lots were cast to determine on whose account the ship was about to sink. After persistent and thorough interrogation, Jonah told them he was at fault and what they must do to save themselves and their ship—cast him overboard.

Only after God thwarted their diligent efforts to get Jonah to shore did the sailors consent to do as Jonah had instructed them. They preceded this act with a prayer which expressed their concern for putting an innocent man to death. When Jonah was cast over the side, the sea calmed and the seamen worshipped the God of Israel with sacrifices and vows. If this first chapter revealed anything, it dramatically contrasted Jonah with the heathen sailors. He was disobedient to the command of God; they obeyed what God told them to do through Jonah. They prayed frequently and fervently; Jonah did not. They had great compassion on Jonah; he seemingly had none on them.

Chapter 2 records the “psalm” of Jonah. The poetic form and terminology of Jonah’s “psalm” is very similar to that of the psalms of the Old Testament. In theology and emphasis, however, Jonah’s psalm falls far short of the biblical pattern and ideal. Jonah’s “psalm” was self‑centered, focusing more on the prophet’s dilemma, danger, and deliverance, than on the God who spared his life.

In this “psalm” there is an evident disdain for the Gentiles and the telltale signs of self‑righteousness in the “praise” of Jonah. Nevertheless, when Jonah gave the glory to God for his physical deliverance, God commanded the great fish to spit Jonah up on the beach.

In chapters 3 and 4, all appearances of piety vanish in the account of the prodigal prophet. This is the reason for my subtitle for this message: “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” In chapters 1 & 2, Jonah’s sin is apparent, but it is still somewhat subtle and passive. All of this changes in chapters 3 and 4, for Jonah’s preaching and the repentance of Nineveh causes Jonah to “blow his stack” and now his sinfulness is seen in its ugliest dimensions. In chapter 1, Jonah simply sought to withdraw from God’s service, but in chapter 4, Jonah attacks God, persisting that it is his right to be angry with Him. In chapter 2, Jonah prayed that God would save his life, but in chapter 4, Jonah prayed that God would take his life. Things go downhill very quickly in our passage.

It is at this critical point that our story begins. God’s first words to Jonah were virtually a repetition of the command given to him before the storm and his incarceration in the fish. We have an account of the preaching of Jonah in Nineveh, and the dramatic repentance of the entire city, along with God’s relenting of the evil He had foretold through the prodigal prophet.

In chapter 4 Jonah blurts out his reasons for rebelling against the command of the Lord to preach against the city of Nineveh. The events which take place in this chapter were intended to reveal the sin of Jonah. While the sins of the prodigal prophet become very apparent to the reader, they apparently do not have much of an impact on Jonah, and so the story ends in a kind of stalemate, with God’s final words of admonition suspended in mid air, and Jonah still angry with his God.

1. The marvel of an undeserved commission (Jonah 3:1-2)

Did anybody see Jonah emerge when the great fish disgorged him on the dry land? If so, the story must have spread rapidly and perhaps even preceded him to Nineveh, and that may help explain the reception the city gave him. Had Jonah been bleached by the fish’s gastric juices? Did he look so peculiar that nobody could doubt who he was and what had happened to him? Since Jonah was a “sign” to the Ninevites (Matt 12:38-41), perhaps this included the way he looked.

What the people saw or thought really wasn’t important The important thing was what God thought and what He would do next to His repentant prophet. “The life of Jonah cannot be written without God,” said Charles Spurgeon; “take God out of the prophet’s history, and there is no history to write.”^2-1

God met Jonah.

We don’t know where the great fish deposited Jonah, but we do know that wherever Jonah was, the Lord was there. Remember, God is more concerned about His workers than He is about their work, for if the workers are what they ought to be, the work will be what it ought to be. Throughout Jonah’s time of rebellion, God was displeased with His servant, but He never once deserted him. It was God who controlled the storm, prepared the great fish, and rescued Jonah from the deep. His promise is, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5, nkjv; see Josh. 1:5). “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isa. 43:2, nkjv).

God Spoke to Jonah.

After the way Jonah had stubbornly refused to obey God’s voice, it’s a marvel that the Lord spoke to him at all. Jonah had turned his back on God’s word, so the Lord had been forced to speak to him through thunder and rain and a stormy sea. But now that Jonah had confessed his sins and turned back to the Lord, God could once again speak to him through His word. One of the tests of our relationship to God is, “Does God speak to me as I read and ponder His Word?” If we don’t hear God speaking to us in our hearts, perhaps we have some unfinished business that needs to be settled with Him.

God commissioned Jonah.

“The victorious Christian life,” said George H. Morrison, “is a series of new beginnings.” When we fall, the enemy wants us to believe that our ministry is ended and there’s no hope for recovery, but our God is the God of the second chance. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time” (Jonah 3:1). “Do not rejoice over me, my enemy; when I fall, I will arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me” (Micah 7:8, nkjv).

You don’t have to read very far in your Bible to discover that God forgives His servants and restores them to ministry. Abraham fled to Egypt, where he lied about his wife, but God gave him another chance (Gen. 12:10-13:4). Jacob lied to his father Isaac, but God restored him and used him to build the nation of Israel. Moses killed a man (probably in self-defense) and fled from Egypt, but God called him to be the leader of His people. Peter denied the Lord three times, but Jesus forgave him and said, “Follow Me” (John 21:19).

However encouraging these examples of restoration may be, they must never be used as excuses for sin. The person who says “I can go ahead and sin, because I know the Lord will forgive me” has no understanding of the awfulness of sin or the holiness of God. “But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared” (Ps. 130:4, nkjv). God in His grace forgives our sins, but God in His government determines that we shall reap what we sow, and the harvest can be very costly. Jonah paid dearly for rebelling against the Lord.

God challenged Jonah.

Four times in this book, Nineveh is called a “great city” (1:2; 3:2-3; 4:11),^2-2 and archeologists tell us that the adjective is well-deserved. It was great in history, having been founded in ancient times by Noah’s great-grandson Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-10).^2-3 It was also great in size. The circumference of the city and its suburbs was sixty miles, and from the Lord’s statement in Jonah 4:11, we could infer that there were probably over 600,000 people living there. One wall of the city had a circumference of eight miles and boasted 1,500 towers.

The city was great in splendor and influence, being one of the leading cities of the powerful Assyrian Empire. It was built near the Tigris River and had the Khoser River running through it. (This fact will prove to be important when we study the Book of Nahum.) Its merchants traveled the empire and brought great wealth into the city, and Assyria’s armies were feared everywhere.

Nineveh was great in sin, for the Assyrians were known far and wide for their violence, showing no mercy to their enemies. They impaled live victims on sharp poles, leaving them to roast to death in the desert sun; they beheaded people by the thousands and stacked their skulls up in piles by the city gates; and they even skinned people alive. They respected neither age nor sex and followed a policy of killing babies and young children so they wouldn’t have to care for them (Nahum 3:10).

It was to the wicked people of this great city that God sent His servant Jonah, assuring him that He would give him the message to speak. Alter making the necessary preparations, it would take Jonah at least a month to travel from his own land to the city of Nineveh, and during that trip, he had a lot of time available to meditate on what the Lord had taught him.

The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God can’t keep you and the power of God can’t use you. “And who is sufficient for these things? . . . Our sufficiency is of God” (2 Cor. 2:16 and 3:5).

Jonah’s Preaching and Nineveh’s Repentance (3:1‑9)

For the second time, the “word of the Lord” came to Jonah: “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you” (vs. 2). It is not a new command that Jonah is given, but almost a repetition of the command given to him in chapter 1. This time Jonah obeyed, not joyfully or with a proper attitude, as we shall soon see, but at least Jonah went to Nineveh.

The population of the city of Nineveh, perhaps including its “suburbs,” was exceedingly large (cf. 1:2; 3:2; 4:11). We also know that the city was great in size. The city was described as being a “three days’ walk” (3:3). Secular history has a great deal more background information concerning this city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria.

Jonah’s message was simple, to the point, and frightening: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4).[1]

2. The marvel of an unparalleled awakening (Jonah 3:3-10)

From a human perspective, this entire enterprise appears ridiculous. How could one man, claiming to be God’s prophet, confront thousands of people with his strange message, especially a message of judgment? How could a Jew, who worshiped the true God, ever get these idolatrous Gentiles to believe what he had to say? For all he knew, Jonah might end up impaled on a pole or skinned alive! But, in obedience to the Lord, Jonah went to Nineveh.

Jonah’s message to Nineveh (Jonah 3:3-4).

“Three days’ journey” means either that it would take three days to get through the city and its suburbs or three days to go around them. The niv translation of verse 3 suggests that it would take three days to visit all of the area. According to Genesis 10:11-12, four cities were involved in the “Nineveh metroplex”: Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen (niv). However you interpret the “three days,” one thing is dear: Nineveh was no insignificant place.

When Jonah was one day into the city, he began to declare his message: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over-thrown.” Throughout Scripture, the number forty seems to be identified with testing or judgment. During the time of Noah, it rained forty days and forty nights (Gen. 7:4, 12, 17). The Jewish spies explored Canaan forty days (Num. 14:34), and the nation of Israel was tested in the wilderness forty years (Deut 2:7). The giant Goliath taunted the army of Israel forty days (1 Sam. 17:16), and the Lord gave the people of Nineveh forty days to repent and turn from their wickedness.

At this point, we must confess that we wish we knew more about Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh. Was this the only message he proclaimed? Surely he spent time telling the people about the true and living God, for we’re told, “The people of Nineveh believed God” (Jonah 3:5). They would have to know something about this God of Israel in order to exercise sincere faith (see Acts 17:22). Did Jonah expose the folly of their idolatry? Did he recount his own personal history to show them that his God was powerful and sovereign? We simply don’t know. The important thing is that Jonah obeyed God, went to Nineveh, and declared the message God gave him. God did the rest.

Nineveh’s message to God (Jonah 3:5-9).

In the Hebrew text, there are only five words in Jonah’s message; yet God used those five words to stir the entire population, from the king on the throne to the lowest peasant in the field. God gave the people forty days of grace, but they didn’t need that long. We get the impression that from the very first time they saw Jonah and heard his warning, they paid attention to his message. Word spread quickly throughout the entire district and the people humbled themselves by fasting and wearing sackcloth.

When the message got to the king, he too put on sackcloth and sat in the dust. He also made the fast official by issuing an edict and ordering the people to humble themselves, cry out to God, and turn from their evil ways. Even the animals were included in the activities by wearing sackcloth and abstaining from food and drink. The people were to cry “mightily” (“urgently,” niv) to God, for this was a matter of life and death.

When Jonah was in dire straits, he recalled the promise concerning Solomon’s temple (Jonah 2:4, 7; 1 Kings 8:38-39; 2 Chron. 6:36-39), looked toward the temple, and called out for help. Included in Solomon’s temple prayer was a promise for people outside the nation of Israel, and that would include the Ninevites. “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel . . . when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of You, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You” (2 Chron. 6:32-33). Jonah certainly knew this promise, and perhaps it was the basis for the whole awakening.

Like the sailors in the storm, the Ninevites didn’t want to perish (Jonah 3:9; 1:6, 14). That’s what witnessing is all about, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, nkjv). Their fasting and praying, and their humbling of themselves before God, sent a message to heaven, but the people of Nineveh had no assurance that they would be saved. They hoped that God’s great compassion would move Him to change His plan and spare the city. Once again, how did they know that the God of the Hebrews was a merciful and compassionate God? No doubt Jonah told them, for this was a doctrine he himself believed (Jonah 4:2).

Just like the seamen of chapter 1, the people of Nineveh took these words of imminent divine judgment seriously. We are told, “They believed in God” (3:5), which focuses on the faith of these Gentiles in the God of Israel, and not just their fear of judgment. It suggests to me that there was a real revival resulting from Jonah’s proclamation. This revival seems to have begun from “the bottom up,” rather than being imposed from “the top down.” The people, we are told, believed in God. They called a fast and put on sackcloth (3:5). The response was unanimous, from the lower to the upper classes.

By the time word reached the king, the city’s repentance was already well under way, but because the king also believed Jonah’s warning, he made every effort to assure total compliance to the city‑wide repentance. He began by personally repenting (3:6). The king then made a proclamation which required all of Nineveh to fast, and to abstain from drinking water (3:7). Both men and animals were to be covered with sackcloth, and all the people were to call upon God and to abstain from their wicked ways and their violence (3:8).

ticularly interesting to note that there was apparently no need for the people to be told what their wicked ways were. Of course, Jonah could have filled in the details for the people, but it seems as though no one needed any such clarification. The issue, then, was not one of having inadequate knowledge of what God considered sin, but lacking the desire to abstain from it. The issue was not that of information, but that of motivation. I have the distinct impression that if our nation received word of God’s impending judgment, we would have little difficulty determining what it is we are doing which is offensive to God, which is, in short, sin.

If the Ninevites had but 40 days left, why would they cease sinning? One would think that they might be inclined to act in accordance with the expression, “Eat, drink, and make merry, for tomorrow (or 40 days) we may die.” Nineveh’s motivation for putting off the wickedness of the city is described in verse 9: “Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?” (3:9).

God’s message to Nineveh (Jonah 3:10).

At some point, God spoke to Jonah and told Him that He had accepted the people’s repentance and would not destroy the city. The phrase “God repented” might better be translated “God relented,” that is, changed His plan. From the human point of view, it looked like repentance, but from the divine perspective, it was simply God’s response to man’s change of heart God is utterly consistent with Himself; it only appears that He is changing His mind. The Bible uses human analogies to reveal the divine character of God (Jer. 18:1-10).

How deep was the spiritual experience of the people of Nineveh? If repentance and faith are the basic conditions of salvation (Acts 20:21), then we have reason to believe that they were accepted by God; for the people of Nineveh repented and had faith in God (Jonah 3:5). The fact that Jesus used the Ninevites to shame the unbelieving Jews of His day is further evidence that their response to Jonah’s ministry was sincere (Matt 12:38-41).

Some people find it very troubling that God would “relent,” that is, change His mind, regarding the destruction of Nineveh. Let me simply point out that Jonah expected God to do so (4:2), and the Ninevites at least hoped He would do so (3:9). If God intended to destroy Nineveh, why would He announce to them that He was going to do so? The proclamation against Nineveh which God instructed Jonah to deliver was not simply a promise of things to come, but a warning. The Ninevites were absolutely correct in understanding Jonah’s words as they did, as the occasion for repentance. This is entirely in keeping with what God has said in the book of Jeremiah:

Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it, if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it, if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds”’” (Jeremiah 18:5‑11, emphasis mine).

God’s promises of blessing are contingent upon man’s obedience, and God’s judgment may be averted by repentance. The Ninevites hoped for and Jonah expected God’s “relenting,” based on the principle expressed above.

God took note of Nineveh’s repentance, something which involved more than mere words or token gestures. Verse 10 does not tell us that God heeded the words of the Ninevites, or even that He regarded their sackcloth and ashes, but that He took note that their deeds had changed, that they had “turned from their wicked way.” Here is genuine repentance. No mere words of regret, no trite, “I’m sorry,” but a change of conduct signaling a genuine change of heart. Nineveh had truly repented of her evil ways, and God therefore relented of the calamity which He had threatened.

It is noteworthy that we are given no explanations for the quick, sincere, and virtually universal repentance of the Ninevites. It may have been that the sailors preceded Jonah, and gave a report of the miracle which had taken place. Jonah’s appearance, in and of itself, may have proven to be an awesome sign to the Ninevites. There may also have been other incidents which served to prepare the Ninevites for their repentance,[2] but they are not so much as mentioned. Indeed, the absence of such reports serves to dramatize the conversion of this Assyrian capital city.

Our Lord’s reference to the repentance of the Ninevites is particularly informative, and confirms our observations:

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation in the judgment, and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:38‑41).

The request of the scribes and Pharisees for yet another sign from our Lord, prompted Him to turn to the book of Jonah, where two lessons could be learned. In His first use of Jonah, Jesus promised one final sign that was similar to that of the prophet Jonah. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, Jesus would be in the belly of the earth for the same period of time. Jesus’ resurrection would be a “sign” to Israel, just as Jonah’s “coming forth from the fish” was a sign (perhaps to Israel). This one final sign, the “sign of the prophet Jonah,” Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, would be irrefutable proof that He was Israel’s Messiah.

There was yet another lesson which the book of Jonah had for the Israelites of Jesus’ day. The Ninevites immediately repented at the preaching of Jonah, even though there was far less evidence than that which the Israelites of Jesus’ day had witnessed. And, compared with Jesus, Jonah was not nearly as important, or, I think, as persuasive or powerful in his preaching. If the Ninevites could repent with so little evidence, then surely the problem with the Jewish leaders, the scribes and Pharisees, was not a lack of evidence. The problem was not one of evidence at all, a problem which would be solved by some compelling sign. The problem of the scribes and Pharisees was the same as Jonah’s, and thus no evidence could change their willful rejection.

I am inclined, on the basis of the teaching of Jonah and that of our Lord, to see the “sign of the prophet Jonah” as two‑fold. It is the “sign” of Jonah’s three day entombment in the great fish, from which he is released, alive. It is also the “sign” of Jonah, whose hardness of heart kept him from grasping what God was trying to teach him, regardless of how clear and forceful that message was, while at the same time this message is perceived and acted upon by the less well‑informed Gentiles.

Jesus’ use of the account of the repentance of the Ninevites in Matthew chapter 12 accepts and affirms the impression which we gain from taking the narrative at face value. He confirms the fact that the Ninevites believed in God in spite of little evidence. Hearts that were open to the word and the will of God were quick to recognize it and respond to it. Hearts that were not so inclined—as was the case with Jonah’s heart—would not get the message, regardless of how clear it was.

Threefold Repentance Jonah 3:1–10

THIS passage falls into three parts: Jonah’s renewed commission and new obedience (Jonah 3:1–4), the repentance of Nineveh (Jonah 3:5–9), and the acceptance thereof by God (Jonah 3:10). We might almost call these three the repentance of Jonah, of Nineveh, and of God. The evident intention of the narrative is to parallel the Ninevites turning from their sins, and God’s turning from His anger and purpose of destruction; and if the word ‘repentance’ is not applied to Jonah, his conduct sufficiently shows the thing.

1. Note The Renewed Charge To The Penitent Prophet, And His New Eagerness To Fulfil It.

His deliverance and second commission are put as if all but simultaneous, and his obedience was swift and glad. Jonah did not venture to take for granted that the charge which he had shirked was still continued to him. If God commands to take the trumpet, and we refuse, we dare not assume that we shall still be honoured with the delivery of the message. The punishment of dumb lips is often dumbness. Opportunities of service, slothfully or faintheartedly neglected, are often withdrawn. We can fancy how Jonah, brought back to the better mind which breathes in his psalm, longed to be honoured by the trust of preaching once more, and how rapturously his spirit would address itself to the task. Duties once unwelcome become sweet when we have passed through the experience of the misery that comes from neglecting them. It is God’s mercy that gives us the opportunity of effacing past disobedience by new alacrity.

The second charge is possibly distinguishable from the first as being less precise. It may be that the exact nature of ‘the preaching that I bid thee’ was not told Jonah till he had to open his mouth in Nineveh; but, more probably, the second charge was identical with the first.

The word rendered ‘preach’ is instructive. It means ‘to cry,’ and suggests the manner befitting those who bear God’s message. They should sound it out loudly, plainly, urgently, with earnestness and marks of emotion in their voice. Languid whispers will not wake sleepers. Unless the messenger is manifestly in earnest, the message will fall flat. Not with bated breath, as if ashamed of it; nor with hesitation, as if not quite sure of it; nor with coldness, as if it were of little urgency,—is God’s Word to be pealed in men’s ears. The preacher is a crier. The substance of his message, too, is set forth. ‘The preaching which I bid thee’—not his own imaginations, nor any fine things of his own spinning. Suppose Jonah had entertained the Ninevires with dissertations on the evidences of his prophetic authority, or submitted for their consideration a few thoughts tending to Show the agreement of his message with their current opinions in religion, or an argument for the existence of a retributive Governor of the world, he would not have shaken the city. The less the Prophet shows himself, the stronger his influence. The more simply he repeats the stern, plain, short message, the more likely it is to impress. God’s Word, faithfully set forth, will prove itself. The preacher or teacher of this day has substantially the same charge as Jonah had; and the more he suppresses himself, and becomes but a voice through which God speaks, the better for himself, his hearers, and his work.

Nineveh, that great aggregate of cities, was full, as Eastern cities are, of open spaces, and might well be a three days’ journey in circumference. What a task for that solitary stranger to thunder out his loud cry among all these crowds! But he had learned to do what he was bid; and without wasting a moment, he ‘began to enter into the city a day’s journey,’ and, no doubt, did not wait till the end of the day to proclaim his message. Let us learn that there is an element of threatening in God’s most merciful message, and that the appeal to terror and to the desire for self-preservation is part of the way to preach the Gospel. Plain warnings of coming evil may be spoken tenderly, and reveal love as truly as the most soothing words. The warning comes in time. ‘Forty days’ of grace are granted. The gospel warns us in time enough for escape. It warns us because God loves; and they are as untrue messengers of His love as of His justice who slur over the declaration of His wrath.

1. Note The Repentance Of Nineveh (Jonah 3:5–9).

The impression made by Jonah’s terrible cry is perfectly credible and natural in the excitable population of an Eastern city, in which even now any appeal to terror, especially if associated with religious and prophetic claims, easily sets the whole in a frenzy. Think of the grim figure of this foreign man, with his piercing voice and half-intelligible speech, dropped from the clouds as it were, and stalking through Nineveh, pealing out his confident message, like that gaunt fanatic who walked Jerusalem in its last agony, crying, ‘Woe! woe unto the bloody city!’ or that other, who, with flaming fire on his head and madness in his eyes, affrighted London in the plague. No wonder that alarm was kindled, and, being kindled, spread like wildfire. Apparently the movement was first among the people, who began to fast before the news penetrated to the seclusion of the palace. But the contagion reached the king, and the popular excitement was endorsed and fanned by a royal decree. The specified tokens of repentance are those of ordinary mourning, such as were common all over the East, with only the strange addition, which smacks of heathen ideas, that the animals were made sharers in them.

There is great significance in that ‘believed God’ (Jonah 3:5).

The foundation of all true repentance is crediting God’s word of threatening, and therefore realising the danger, as well as the disobedience, of our sin. We shall be wise if we pass by the human instrument, and hear God speaking through the Prophet. Never mind about Jonah, believe God.

We learn from the Ninevites what is true repentance. They brought no sacrifices or offerings, but sorrow, self-abasement, and amendment. The characteristic sin of a great military power would be ‘violence,’ and that is the specific evil from which they vow to turn. The loftiest lesson which prophets found Israel so slow to learn, ‘A broken and a contrite heart Thou wilt not despise,’ was learned by these heathens. We need it no less. Nineveh repented on a peradventure that their repentance might avail. How pathetic that ‘Who can tell?’ (Jonah 3:9) is! We know what they hoped. Their doubt might give fervour to their cries, but our certainty should give deeper earnestness and confidence to ours.

The deepest meaning of the whole narrative is set forth in our Lord’s use of it, when He holds up the men of Nineveh as a condemnatory instance to the hardened consciences of His hearers. Probably the very purpose of the book was to show Israel that the despised and yet dreaded heathen were more susceptible to the voice of God than they were: ‘I will provoke you to jealousy by them which are no people.’ The story was a smiting blow to the proud exclusiveness and self-complacent contempt of prophetic warnings, which marked the entire history of God’s people. As Ezekiel was told: ‘Thou are not sent … to many peoples of a strange speech and of an hard language. Surely, if I sent thee to them, they would hearken unto thee. But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee.’ It is ever true that long familiarity with the solemn thoughts of God’s judgment and punishment of sin abates their impression on us. Our Puritan forefathers used to talk about ‘gospel-hardened sinners,’ and there are many such among us. The man who lives by Niagara does not hear its roar as a stranger does. The men of Nineveh will rise in the judgment with other generations than that which was ‘this generation’ in Christ’s time; and that which is ‘this generation’ to-day will, in many of its members, be condemned by them.

But the wave of feeling soon retired, and there is no reason to believe that more than a transient impression was made. It does not seem certain that the Ninevites knew what ‘God’ they hoped to appease. Probably their pantheon was undisturbed, and their repentance lasted no longer than their fear. Transient repentance leaves the heart harder than before, as half-melted ice freezes again more dense. Let us beware of frost on the back of a thaw. ‘Repentance which is repented of’ is worse than none.

III. We Note The Repentance Of God (Jonah 3:10).

Mark the recurrence of the word ‘turn,’ employed in Jonah 3:8–10 in reference to men and to God. Mark the bold use of the word ‘repent,’ applied to God, which, though it be not applied to the Ninevites in the previous verses, is implied in every line of them. The same expression is found in Exodus 32:14, which may be taken as the classical passage warranting its use. The great truth involved is one that is too often lost sight of in dealing with prophecy; namely, that all God’s promises and threatenings are conditional. Jeremiah learned that lesson in the house of the potter, and we need to keep it well in mind. God threatens, precisely in order that He may not have to perform His threatenings. Jonah was sent to Nineveh to cry, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shah be overthrown,’ in order that it might not be overthrown. What would have been the use of proclaiming the decree, if it had been irreversible? There is an implied ‘if’ in all God’s words. ‘Except ye repent’ underlies the most absolute threatenings of evil. ‘If we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end,’ is presupposed in the brightest and broadest promises of good.

The word ‘repent’ is denied and affirmed to have application to God. He is not ‘a son of man, that He should repent,’ inasmuch as His immutability and steadfast purpose know no variableness. But just because they cannot change, and He must ever be against them that do evil, and ever bless them that turn to Him with trust, therefore He changes His dealings with us according to our relation to Him, and because He cannot repent, or be other than He was and is, ‘repents of the evil that He had said that He would do’ unto sinners when they repent of the evil that they have done against Him, inasmuch as He leaves His threatening unfulfilled, and ‘does it not.’

So we might almost say that the purpose of this book of Jonah is to teach the possibility and efficacy of repentance, and to show how the penitent man, heathen or Jew, ever finds in God changed dealings corresponding to his changed heart. The widest charity, the humbling lesson for people brought up in the blaze of revelation, that dwellers in the twilight or in the darkness are dear to God and may be more susceptible of divine impressions than ourselves, the rebuke of all pluming ourselves on our privileges, the boundlessness of God’s mercy, are among the other lessons of this strange book; but none of them is more precious than its truly evangelic teaching of the blessedness of true penitence, whether exemplified in the renegade Prophet returning to his high mission, or the fierce Ninevites humbled and repentant, and finding mercy from the God of the whole earth.^[3]

Why Do People Repent?

Jonah repented, survived in the belly of the fish, washed ashore, and went to Nineveh to preach. He traveled into the city and began to preach: “In forty days, Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

To Jonah’s shock, the people neither laughed nor laid hands on him. Instead, the entire city responded. The Hebrew word for “repent” (shub—to turn) occurs four times in verses 8–10, and that is the striking, central message of this passage. Against all expectations, the powerful, violent city of Nineveh put on sackcloth—a sign of mass repentance. And they did so “from the greatest of them to the least” (verse 5), from the top to the bottom of the social spectrum. How could this have happened?

Historians have pointed out that about the time of Jonah’s mission, Assyria had experienced a series of famines, plagues, revolts, and eclipses, all of which were seen as omens of far worse things to come. Some have argued that this was God’s way of preparing the ground for Jonah. “This state of affairs would have made both rulers and subjects unusually attuned to the message of a visiting prophet.”1  So there was some sociological explanation for this response.

While such a movement toward God always has social aspects, since we are embodied beings who live in particular places, cultures, and historical times, nevertheless such factors cannot wholly explain or account for this kind of repentance. Ellul is amazed at what happened. “Nineveh, with its wholly war-like orientation accuses itself of violence (3:8). . . . Nineveh, proud of its power and invincibility, ceases to be itself when it thus humbles itself.”2

In January of 1907 a revival broke out at a Bible conference in Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea. Those attending the conference came under deep conviction of sin, especially when a preacher called them to repent of their traditional hatred of the Japanese.3  Of course, the Korean Christians had accepted the fundamental truths of the gospel of grace, and yet these had not sunk in deeply enough for them to forgive the Japanese. They felt morally superior to a nation they saw as oppressive and cruel. In the light of the gospel, however, the Koreans at the conference saw that they stood before God as equally sinful and condemned with all other human beings, yet rescued by the sheer and costly grace of Christ. This drained away their pride and bitterness.

They returned to their homes with a new willingness to repent of wrongdoing. People went house to house repairing relationships and returning stolen articles. The worship services were filled with a new power.4  The result was explosive growth of the church. The Methodist church, for example, doubled in membership size in a single year. There have been many such spiritual movements across the world in the history of the church.

How do we explain such phenomena? Many have pointed out that the Japanese-Korean pacts of 1904 and 1907 imposed Japanese rule on the country. Did this sociopolitical background open many Koreans to a Christian message that offered resources for addressing ethnic hatred, for repenting and offering forgiveness? Yes, but can such factors fully explain what happened? Of course not, since these conditions occur constantly in the world and they do not have results such as these.

Repentance is always a work of God (2 Timothy 2:25).

Preaching Justice

However, we must not be too quick to liken Nineveh’s “turning” to the revivals of modern church history. While it says they “believed God” (verse 5), there is no indication that the Ninevites came into a covenant relationship with the God of Israel. The word the Ninevites use is “God,” the generic word Elohim, rather than the personal, covenant name, “Yahweh,” that the Lord uses with his people Israel. There is no mention of the residents of Nineveh forsaking their gods and idols. They did not offer sacrifices to the Lord, nor was there any rite of circumcision. This is why almost all commentators agree that Jonah did not successfully convert the Ninevites.5 What, then, was really happening?

The king of Nineveh understood God to be saying that each citizen of the city must “forsake his evil way and the violence that he plans toward others” (verse 8). Violence is “the arbitrary infringement of human rights. . . . Of such social injustice Nineveh was blatantly guilty.”6 Assyrian imperialism, cruelty, and social injustice were condemned by other Hebrew prophets as well (Isaiah 10:13ff; Nahum 3:1,19).

This call to repent of oppression and injustice fits with the messages of other biblical prophets in the relatively few times they spoke to pagan nations. In Amos 1:1–2:3 the prophet denounced Israel’s neighbors for their imperialism, cruelty and violence, and oppression of the weak. Biblical scholar Christopher J. H. Wright points out that “in the Old Testament . . . where an Israelite addresses pagan nations, the condemnation is typically targeted at their moral and social wickedness.”7  That is what Jonah did as well. His message to Nineveh focused on the city’s social practices, their “deeds” (verse 10), and the call was to change their ways (verse 4).

As we have seen, the Assyrian empire was unusually violent. It slaughtered and enslaved countless people and oppressed the poor. It was renowned for its injustice, imperialism, and oppression of other countries. Yet the text shows that the impulse toward exploitation and abuse was also eating away at the fabric of Nineveh’s society. It wasn’t merely that the Assyrians as a nation were oppressing other nations, but individuals were violent toward one another, poisoning social relationships. “Let every person forsake . . . the violence that he plans toward others” (verse 8). The wealthy enslave the poor while the poor strike back through crime, and middle-class people cheat one another. It may be that the repentance “from the greatest of them to the least” (verse 5) shows the beginning of a reconciliation of the various strata of society.

Many argue that while the reported summary of Jonah’s message to Nineveh was a bare threat (verse 4), it is reasonable to infer that he gave them more information about God than is mentioned in the text. That is almost certainly true. They did, for example, turn to God in the hope that he would hear them. This makes it likely that at least they questioned Jonah to find out if there was any hope of God’s forgiveness.8

Nevertheless, the biblical text does not tell us that God sent Jonah with the purpose of converting the populace into a saving, covenant relationship with him. He was warning them about their evil, violent behavior and the inevitable consequences if they did not relent and change.

And while we know from the rest of the Bible that changing social behavior is not sufficient for salvation, and that God cannot give final forgiveness without faith and an atoning sacrifice (cf. Numbers 14:18; Hebrews 9:22), nevertheless, God’s response is instructive. Though the people of Nineveh do not forsake their idols and sacrifice to him, God in his mercy relents from his threat to destroy the city. For the time being, he expresses favor in response to the city’s intention and effort at social reform.

Preaching God’s Wrath

What kind of ministry brought about this remarkable result? Some commentators jump to the conclusion that Jonah preached salvation through faith and the city’s response was a great revival. However, as we have seen, there is no evidence of conversion to faith in the Lord. Others conclude that modern-day readers should emulate Jonah by providing social services in cities rather than doing evangelism.9 However, Jonah did not go to Nineveh just to quietly do social work. He preached the threat of divine judgment loudly in God’s name.

What actually happened doesn’t fit into either of these categories. There was a coming together of different warring classes and individuals within the body politic in order to bring about social healing and a more just society.1 0 And yet it was the result of a preaching ministry that proclaimed the wrath of the biblical God explicitly.

It is hard for us to even imagine today the ministry that happened in Nineveh. Usually those who are most concerned about working for social justice do not also stand up and speak clearly about the God of the Bible’s judgment on those who do not do his will. On the other hand, those who publicly preach repentance most forcefully are not usually known for demanding justice for the oppressed.

Nevertheless, this text encourages us to do both. In this instance, God seeks social reform through his prophet, a change in the Ninevites’ exploitative and violent behavior. Yet he also directs that the city should be told about a God of wrath who will punish sin. Ellul writes: [Jonah] . . . did not become free to select for himself what he would say to men. He did not go to them to tell them about his experiences. . . . He did not decide the content of his preaching. . . . Thus . . . our witness is fast bound to the word of God. The greatest saint or mystic can say nothing of value unless it is based solely on God’s word.1 1

We seldom see ministries that are equally committed to preaching the Word fearlessly and to justice and care for the poor, yet these are theologically inseparable. In Isaiah’s time Israelite society was marked by greedy exploitation and imperialistic abuses of power, rather than by generous, peaceful service and cooperation. This led to social breakdown and psychological alienation. However, when Isaiah looked at this unjust society he saw “Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is scorched, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no one spares another . . . they devour . . . but are not satisfied. . . . Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim devours Manasseh . . .” (Isaiah 9:19–21).1 2  Isaiah did not see social injustice as merely meriting God’s wrath. Rather, the misery and social breakdown, the economic and political “devouring” of one another (yet the inner emptiness and discontent it brings) is all actually the outworking of God’s wrath.

Imagine if a house were on fire but you couldn’t see the flames. As the house crumbled and collapsed, you would wonder what was happening. Only if someone enabled you to see the fire would the dissolution of the building make sense.

Without understanding the wrath of God, it is impossible to fully understand why so many societies, empires, institutions, and lives break down. Referring to this passage in Isaiah, Alec Motyer wrote that in a world created by a good God, evil and injustice are “inherently self-destructive.” The resulting social disintegration “expresses [God’s] wrath. He presides over the cause and effect processes he has built into creation so they are expressions of his holy rule of the world.”1 3  That is, God has created the world so that cruelty, greed, and exploitation have natural, disintegrative consequences that are a manifestation of his anger toward evil.

To work against social injustice and to call people to repentance before God interlock theologically.

Martin Luther King Jr. did not make the mistake of separating the call for social justice from belief in a God of judgment. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” he responds to the question of how he can advocate civil disobedience, the breaking of some laws, in this case laws of racial segregation. He answered that some laws are unjust.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.1 4

Here there is no separation between working for justice in a society and declaring the displeasure of a just God. In his great “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King did not appeal to modern, secular individualism. He did not say, “All should be free to define their own meaning in life and moral truth.” Rather he quoted Scripture and called his society to “Let [God’s] justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).1 5

The Mystery of Mercy

Even though Jonah let the Ninevites know that forgiveness was possible, that wasn’t the main thrust of his preaching. The summary that the text gives us of his sermons was not “In forty days, Nineveh might be overthrown” but “In forty days, Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That was what Jonah enthusiastically wanted and predicted. He enjoyed preaching wrath. He did it with glee, not tears, because he couldn’t wait for God’s hammer to fall on them.

But God responded with mercy. “When God examined their deeds, how they forsook their evil way, he renounced the disaster he had said he would do to them, and he did not carry it out” (verse 10). At this, Jonah is plunged back into the depths of his despair and disappointment with God. His response is surprising to the reader, and it sets up the remarkable final chapter of Jonah’s encounter with the Lord.

Doing Justice, Preaching Wrath

1. 1. Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah

(Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 94.

2. 2. Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1971), p. 97.
3. 3. See Thomas S. Kidd, “The North Korean Revival of 1907,” The G ospel Coalition, May 2, 2017, w w w .thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/the-north-korean-revival-of-1907/; and Y oung-Hoon Lee, “Korean Pentecost: The G reat Revival of 1907,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 4, no. 1 (2001): 73–83.
4. 4. See William N. Blair and Bruce Hunt, The Korean Pentecost and the Sufferings That Followed (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977).
5. 5. P. Trible w rites: “The narrator reports the radical theological turning of the city, though not its conversion to

Y ahw ism.” P. Trible, “Jonah,” in The New I nterpreter’s Bible, vol. 7 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 513.

6. 6. Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel (G rand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976), p. 225.
7. 7. Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2013), p. 185.
8. 8. See Timmer, Gracious and Compassionate God, p. 41.
9. 9. Old Testament scholar H. L. Ellison concludes that modern-day readers should learn from Jonah that Christians are called to go to the cities and places of great need and become involved in “social services” that are “not simply . . . a means to an evangelistic end.” See R. E. Clements, “The Purpose of the Book of Jonah,” Supplement to Vetus Testamentum 28 (1975): 18, quoted in Baker, Alexander, and Waltke, O badiah, Jonah, and Micah, p. 86.
10. 10. See Trible, “Jonah,” p. 516, w here she speaks of the repentance of Nineveh across the classes as “addressing systemic concerns,” as an encouragement for those w ho desire “corporate and social” healing for cities.
11. 11. Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, p. 88.
12. 12. The translation is the English Standard Version.
13. 13. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of I saiah: An I ntroduction and Commentary (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press,

1994), p. 109.

14. 14. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, w w w .africa.upenn.edu/Articles_G en/Letter_Birmingham.html.
15. 15. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” (speech, Washington DC, August 28, 1963), w w w .americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm.

[1] The word “overthrown” had strong connotations for Jonah. This term was used in connection with the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:21, 25, 29). It was also used in the poetic description of the overthrow of the Egyptians at the exodus (Ex. 15:7). It was also used in Deuteronomy 29:23 in connection with God’s warning of judgment on His people Israel, if they disregard His law. Cf. also 2 Sam. 10:3; 1 Chron. 19:3.

[2] “Before Jonah arrived at this seemingly inpregnable fortress‑city, two plagues had erupted there (in 765 and 759 B.C.) and a total eclipse of the sun occurred on June 15, 763. These were considered signs of divine anger and may help explain why the Ninevites responded so readily to Jonah’s message, around 759.” John Hannah, The Bible Knowledge Commentary (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), Vol. 1, Old Testament, p. 1462.

^[3] Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 189–196.

Introduction

Sometimes the prophets of the Lord tried to challenge His wisdom in calling them for divine service (see Moses in Ex. 4; Jeremiah in Jer. 1). However, Jonah is the only case in the record of Scripture where a true prophet of the Lord (see 2 Kin. 14:25) tried hard to thwart the will of God by fleeing from the task that God had given him (1:3).

In contrast to Elijah’s obedience to the Lord (see 1 Kin. 17:8–10), Jonah tried to go as far as he could in the opposite direction from where God had commanded him. Jonah hoped that Nineveh would get just what it deserved. He was afraid that if he announced judgment the people of Nineveh might respond in a manner that would prompt God to change His mind (4:2). So, in an attempt to restrain God from being merciful to his national enemies, Jonah ran away.

There is something humorous in this account. How could a prophet of God hide from the Creator of the universe? The location of Tarshish may have been the southeast coast of Spain. In any case it represents the farthest place known to the people of ancient Israel. It is similar to going “to the ends of the earth.”

Yet there is also something frightening here: Were a prophet of God directly to disobey the Sovereign God, he might place not only himself, but others connected with him, in dire jeopardy. Sadly, Jonah was not on a mission of mercy, even if he had achieved his goal. He was, in a way, an antimissionary; one who resisted God’s call to go to the nations. The repetition of the words “from the presence of the Lord” emphasizes Jonah’s attempt to remove himself as far as possible from his service to the Lord. When we remember that the people of Israel were not a maritime people, but rather had a great fear of the sea (see Ps. 93), we are all the more amazed at Jonah’s risky action. Jonah’s natural aversion to the ocean was overcome by his greater distaste for the thought that Nineveh might escape God’s threatened doom.

Thankfully, God did not allow Jonah to succeed, so there is something reassuring here as well. God accomplished His work despite the resistance of His reluctant worker.

From an experience of rebellion and discipline, Jonah turns to an experience of repentance and dedication, and God graciously gives him a new beginning. Jonah no doubt expected to die in the waters of the sea,^1-10 but when he woke up inside the fish, he realized that God had graciously spared him. As with the Prodigal Son, whom Jonah in his rebellion greatly resembles (Luke 15:11-24), it was the goodness of God that brought him to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Notice the stages in Jonah’s spiritual experience as described in his prayer.

He prayed for God’s help (Jonah 2:1-2).

 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. {2} He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

After noting the place (inside the fish) where he voiced this prayer, Jonah poetically recounted the story of his deliverance.

It may be asked, “How could Jonah either pray or breathe in the stomach of the fish?” Very easily, if God so willed it. And let the reader keep this constantly in view; the whole is a miracle, from Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish till he was cast ashore by the same animal. It was God that had prepared the great fish. It was the Lord that spake to the fish, and caused it to vomit Jonah upon the dry land. All is miracle.

“Then Jonah prayed” (2:1) suggests that it was at the end of the three days and three nights when Jonah turned to the Lord for help, but we probably shouldn’t press the word “then” too far. The Hebrew text simply reads, “And Jonah prayed.” Surely Jonah prayed as he went down into the depths of the sea, certain that he would drown. That would be the normal thing for any person to do, and that’s the picture we get from verses 5 and 7.

His prayer was born out of affliction, not affection. He cried out to God because he was in danger, not because he delighted in the Lord. But better that he should pray compelled by any motive than not to pray at all. It’s doubtful whether any believer always prays with pure and holy motives, for our desires and God’s directions sometimes conflict.

However, in spite of the fact that he prayed, Jonah still wasn’t happy with the will of God. In chapter 1, he was afraid of the will of God and rebelled against it, but now he wants God’s will simply because it’s the only way out of his dangerous plight. Like too many people today, Jonah saw the will of God as something to turn to in an emergency, not something to live by every day of one’s life.

Jonah was now experiencing what the sailors experienced during the storm: he felt he was perishing (1:6, 14). It’s good for God’s people, and especially preachers, to remember what it’s like to be lost and without hope. How easy it is for us to grow hardened toward sinners and lose our compassion for the lost. As He dropped Jonah into the depths, God was reminding him of what the people of Nineveh were going through in their sinful condition: they were helpless and hopeless.

I cried … I cried: These terms come from two different verbs. The first is a more general term meaning “to call aloud,” with a wide range of usage in the Bible. The second is a term that means a “cry for help,” particularly as a scream to God (see Ps. 5:2; 18:6, 41; 22:24; 28:1; 30:2; 31:22; 88:13; 119:146). Jonah was terrified. Out of the belly of Sheol: When the sailors threw Jonah into the sea, he seemed to be “as good as dead.” Thus for Jonah, the sea became like Sheol, the place of death (see Gen. 37:35; Ps. 16:10; 88:4, 5; Prov. 9:18; Isa. 28:15).

God heard Jonah’s cries for help. Prayer is one of the constant miracles of the Christian life. To think that our God is so great He can hear the cries of millions of people at the same time and deal with their needs personally! A parent with two or three children often finds it impossible to meet all their needs all the time, but God is able to provide for all His children, no matter where they are or what their needs may be. “He who has learned to pray,” said William law, “has learned the greatest secret of a holy and a happy life.”

Jonah’s conduct in the storm is no less noble than his former conduct had been base. The burst of the tempest blew away all the fog from his mind, and he saw the stars again. His confession of faith; his calm conviction that he was the cause of the storm; his quiet, unhesitating command to throw him into the wild chaos foaming about the ship; his willing acceptance of death as the wages of his sin, all tell how true a saint he was in the depth of his soul. Sorrow and chastisement turn up the subsoil. If a man has any good in him, it generally comes to the top when he is afflicted and looks death in the face. If there is nothing but gravel beneath, it too will be brought up by the plough. There may be much selfish unfaithfulness overlying a real devoted heart.

Jonah represented Israel here too, both in that the consequence of the national unfaithfulness and greedy, exclusive grasp of their privileges would lead to their being cast into the roaring waves of the sea of nations, amid the tumult of the peoples, and in that, for them as for him, the calamity would bring about a better mind, the confession of their faith, and acknowledgment of their sin. The history of Israel was typified in this history, and the lessons it teaches are lessons for all churches, and for all God’s children for all time. If we shirk our duty of witnessing for Him, or any other of His plain commands, unfaithfulness will be our ruin. The storm is sure to break where His Jonahs try to hide, and their only hope lies in bowing to the chastisement and consenting to be punished, and avowing whose they are and whom they serve. If we own Him while the storm whistles round us, the worst of it is past, and though we have to struggle amid its waves, He will take care of us, and anything is possible rather than that we should be lost in them.

The miracle of rescue is the last point. Jonah’s repentance saved his life. Tossed overboard impenitent he would have been drowned. So Israel was taught that the break-up of their national life would not be their destruction if they turned to the Lord in their calamity. The wider lesson of the means of making chastisement into blessing, and securing a way of escape—namely, by owning the justice of the stroke, and returning to duty—is meant for us all. He who sends the storm watches its effect on us, and will not let His repentant servants be utterly overwhelmed. That is a better use to make of the story than to discuss whether any kind of known Mediterranean fish could swallow a man. If we believe in miracles, the question need not trouble us. And miracle there must be, not only in the coincidence of the fish and the Prophet being in the same bit of sea at the same moment, but in his living for so long in his strange ‘ark of safety.’

The ever-present providence of God, the possible safety of the nation, even when in captivity, the preservation of every servant of God who turns to the Lord in his chastisement, the exhibition of penitence as the way of deliverance, are the purposes for which the miracle was wrought and told. Flippant sarcasms are cheap. A devout insight yields a worthy meaning. Jesus Christ employed this incident as a symbol of His Death and Resurrection. That use of it seems hard to reconcile with any view but that the story is true. But it does not seem necessary to suppose that our Lord regarded it as an intended type, or to seek to find in Jonah’s history further typical prophecy of Him.

The salient point of comparison is simply the three days’ entombment; and it is rather an illustrative analogy than an intentional prophecy. The subsequent action of the Prophet in Nineveh, and the effect of it, were true types of the preaching of the Gospel by the risen Lord, through His servants, to the Gentiles, and of their hearing the Word. But it requires considerable violence in manipulation to force the bestowing of Jonah, for safety and escape from death, in the fish’s maw, into a proper prophecy of the transcendent fact of the Resurrection.^[1]

He accepted God’s discipline (Jonah 2:3).

{3} You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

It wasn’t the sailors who cast Jonah into the stormy sea: it was God. “You hurled me into the deep . . . all Your waves and breakers swept over me” (v. 3, niv, italics mine). When Jonah said those words, he was acknowledging that God was disciplining him and that he deserved it.

Jonah’s use of the pronouns You and Your in this verse are not accusations, but acknowledgments of the Lord’s sovereign control of his life (see Ps. 88:6–18).

How we respond to discipline determines how much benefit we receive from it According to Hebrews 12:5-11, we have several options: we can despise God’s discipline and fight (v. 5); we can be discouraged and faint (v. 5); we can resist discipline and invite stronger discipline, possibly even death (v. 9)^1-11; or we can submit to the Father and mature in faith and love (v. 7). Discipline is to the believer what exercise and training are to the athlete (v. 11); it enables us to run the race with endurance and reach the assigned goal (vv. 1-2).

The fact that God chastened His servant is proof that Jonah was truly a child of God, for God disciplines only His own children. “But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons” (v. 8). And the Father chastens us in love so that “afterward” we might enjoy “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (v. 11).

He trusted God’s promise (Jonah 2:4-7).

{4} I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ {5} The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. {6} To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. {7} “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

I will look again toward Your holy temple: The man who had run from God’s presence (1:3) was alone, yet he clung to the hope that God would not abandon him. The temple, the sanctuary in Jerusalem (see v. 7; Deut. 12:5–7; Ps. 48; 79:1; 132; Heb. 9:24), was the symbol of God’s presence.

The deep: This is the same term used in Gen. 1:2 to describe the mysterious and terrifying sea. In the Bible, the sea is described as a part of God’s creation (see Gen. 1:10) that brings Him joy (see Ps. 104:24–26), but it also appears as a symbol for hostile forces (see Ps. 74:12–15; Isa. 27:1) which the Lord nevertheless holds in His firm control (see Ps. 93).

Jonah pictures himself so deep in the sea that it is as if he had found the moorings of the mountains. pit: This term is used to describe the realm of the dead (see Job 33:24; Ps. 30:9; 49:9).

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains—This also may be literally understood. The fish followed the slanting base of the mountains, till they terminated in a plain at the bottom of the great deep.

The earth with her bars—He represents himself as a prisoner in a dungeon, closed in with bars which he could not remove, and which at first appeared to be for ever, i.e., the place where his life must terminate.

Yet hast thou brought up my life—The substance of this poetic prayer was composed while in the fish’s belly; but afterwards the prophet appears to have thrown it into its present poetic form, and to have added some circumstances, such as that before us; for he now speaks of his deliverance from this imminent danger of death. “Thou hast brought up my life from corruption.”

Jonah was going in one direction only—down. In fact, he had been going in that direction since the hour he rebelled against God’s plan for his life. He went “down to Joppa” and “down into the sides of the ship” (1:3, 5). Now he was going “down to the bottoms of the mountains” (2:6); and at some point, the great fish met him, and he went down into the fish’s belly (1:17). When you turn your back on God, the only direction you can go is down.

What saved Jonah? His faith in God’s promise. Which promise? The promise that involves “looking toward God’s holy temple” (2:4, 7). When King Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem, he asked God for this special favor (1 Kings 8:38-40, nkjv):

Whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know . . . that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave to our fathers.

Jonah claimed that promise. By faith, he looked toward God’s temple (the only way to look was up!) and asked God to deliver him; and God kept His promise and answered his call. “I remembered [the] Lord” (Jonah 2:7) means, “I acted on the basis of His commitment to me.” Jonah knew God’s covenant promises and he claimed them.

I remembered: Jonah reaffirms his faith in the Lord and renews his commitment to Him (see Ps. 22:27; 63:6; 106:7).

He yielded to God’s will (Jonah 2:8-9).

{8} “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. {9} But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD.”

Now Jonah admits that there were idols in his life that robbed him of the blessing of God. An idol is anything that takes away from God the affection and obedience that rightfully belong only to Him. One such idol was Jonah’s intense patriotism. He was so concerned for the safety and prosperity of his own nation that he refused to be God’s messenger to their enemies, the Assyrians. We shall learn from chapter 4 that Jonah was also protecting his own reputation (4:2), for if God spared Nineveh, then Jonah would be branded a false prophet whose words of warning weren’t fulfilled. For somebody who was famous for his prophecies (2 Kings 14:25), this would be devastating.

Worthless idols: This phrase (also found in Ps. 31:6) condemns every alternative to God. Idols here means “vapor,” that which passes away quickly. These vaporous gods (see Ps. 86:8–10; Jer. 10:15; 51:18) were without value. Mercy (loyal love), the term that so often describes God’s faithfulness to His covenant and to His people (see Ps. 13:5; 59:10, 17; 89:1–3) is used as a name for the Lord (4:2).

Jonah closes his prayer by uttering some solemn vows to the Lord, vows that he really intended to keep. Like the psalmist, he said: “I will go into Your house with burnt offerings; I will pay You my vows, which my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble” (Ps. 66:13-14, nkjv). Jonah promised to worship God in the temple with sacrifices and songs of thanksgiving. He doesn’t tell us what other promises he made to the Lord, but one of them surely was,” I will go to Nineveh and declare Your message if You give me another chance.”

Jonah couldn’t save himself, and nobody on earth could save him, but the Lord could do it, for “salvation is of the Lord!” (Jonah 2:9b, nkjv) This is a quotation from Psalms 3:8 and 37:39 and it is the central declaration in the book. It is also the central theme of the Bible. How wise of Jonah to memorize the Word of God; because being able to quote the Scriptures, especially the Book of Psalms, gave him light in the darkness and hope in his seemingly hopeless situation.

I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving: This vow of praise is common in the Psalms (see Ps. 13:6; 142:7). I will pay what I have vowed: Jonah declares that he will keep his promise, a pledge both to sacrifice and to acknowledge God’s help (see Job 22:27; Ps. 22:25; 50:14; 66:13; 116:14, 17; see also Rom. 6:13, 19; 12:1; 1 Pet. 2:5). Salvation: It is the Lord who delivers His people. God acts on behalf of His creation and the redeemed community to insure a relationship with them (see Ex. 15:2, 17, 18; Ps. 88:1; 89:26; 140:7; Isa. 12:2). Chapters 1 and 2 both end with vows of sacrifice and thanksgiving.

OTHER NOTES

2:3–6 Description of Past Distress and Rescue. Other Psalms speak of the threatening nature of ocean depths (Ps 42:7; 69:1–2, 14–15; 88:7) which Jonah has just experienced and now are used metaphorically as a description of his rejection and rescue by God. The Lord does two things: (1) He hurled Jonah into the sea (2:3), using a different word than the “threw” of 1:4 (“sent”), 5, 12, 15. (2) He brought Jonah up (2:6). The verses are filled with images of the underworld common in Scripture and the ancient world.¹⁵ His near-death experience in the sea is described in ten ways: (1) He was in the deep (מְצוּלָה, m^əṣûlāh in 2:3; cf. Exod 15:5; Micah 7:19). (2) He was in the very heart of the seas (2:3) using the general word for “heart.” (3) He was caught in the currents using the common Hebrew word for river (2:3). (4) He was pressed by the waves or billows (2:3, used only five times in the Bible: 2 Sam 22:5; Ps 42:7; 88:7; 93:4, “breakers”). (5) He was buffeted by the breakers (2:3; literally, “heaps of water”). (6) He was threatened by the waters (2:5).¹⁶ (7) He is surrounded by the deep (2:5), using the Hebrew word תְּהוֹם (t^əhôm, cf. Gen 1:2; 7:11). (8) He is wrapped by seaweed (2:5). “Seaweed” is from סוּף (sûph), which is the word for “reed” or “red” (Exod 2:3) that appears in “Red Sea” (Exod 10:19). (9) He is so deep that he is at the roots of the mountains (2:6, cf. Micah 6:2). (10) He is in the pit (2:6). Often translated “corruption,” the Hebrews used this concept to describe death (cf. Job 33:18, 22). Jonah reports on his near-death experience by saying I have been banished from your sight (2:4). The same word for “banished” (גָּרַשׁ, gāraš) is used to describe the driving out of the first humans (Gen 3:24; 4:14). He is barred beneath the earth forever (2:6; cf. Matt 16:18). The NIV makes the Hebrew noun בְּרִיחַ (b^ərîaḥ, “bar”) into a verb. Just as the prodigal son remembered his father’s house while in the faraway land, so Jonah remembers the Lord’s holy temple (2:4; same phrase in 2:7) while in the netherworld. The psalm places the deliverance of the Lord against the tenfold description of distress to enhance the power of God’s salvation.

2:7 An Appeal to God. A long series of events led to a change of heart. After being called, Jonah rebelled and ran only to be trapped in a storm and finally cast into the sea. It was then, when my life was ebbing away that Jonah changed. In the middle of the watery chaos at the flood, God remembered Noah (Gen 8:1), now in the midst of another watery chaos, there is another remembering. Jonah remembers and prays. God remembers and rescues. The holy temple represents either heaven or the Jerusalem sanctuary, likely the former here (cf. Ps 5:7; 11:4; 79:1; 138:2; Micah 1:2; Hab 2:20). See the reference to praying in Jonah 2:1–2.

2:8–9 Praise to God. Just as the sailors had abandoned their own gods to turn to the Lord (1:5, 14, 16), so now Jonah abandons all idols to turn to God. Just as the sailors sacrifice to the Lord, so Jonah promises the same when he escapes his place in the deep. Israelites who sought God in idol worship could not find him (Hos 5:6). Sailors who prayed to their gods (1:5) received no answer. Jonah rejects idols as useless. The Hebrew phrase is “empty emptiness.” Those who pursue emptiness abandon fullness, here described as grace, in Hebrew חֶסֶד (ḥesed), the deep devoted love of God for his people. Instead, from his prayer room, Jonah promises to do three things: (1) Sing a song of thanksgiving. Such a song would be much like Jonah 2:2–9. (2) Offer sacrifice (cf. 1:16). (3) Make a vow to the Lord. The content of the vow here and in 1:16 is lacking. Jonah may mean that his singing and sacrifice will be consistent and not just a singular event. Still inside the fish, Jonah celebrates his salvation, knowing by faith that God will deliver.

2:10 As Jonah’s thanksgiving song comes to an end, so does his current means of transportation. Just as Jonah opens his mouth to shout, “Salvation comes from the Lord” (2:9), so the fish opens its mouth and ejects Jonah. Vomit appears only six other times: Leviticus 18:25, 28; 20:22; Job 20:15; Proverbs 23:8; 25:16. Jonah is returned to Palestine, having traveled away in a ship and back in a fish, he ends up on the dry land that the sailors had so desperately sought during the storm (1:13). The storm, sailors, and the fish are obedient to God. Chapter three takes up the obedience of the prophet.^[2]

‘Lying Vanities’ Jonah 2:8

JONAH’S refusal to obey the divine command to go to Nineveh and cry against it is best taken, not as prosaic history, but as a poetical representation of Israel’s failure to obey the divine call of witnessing for God. In like manner, his being east into the sea and swallowed by the great fish, is a poetic reproduction, for homiletical purposes, of Israel’s sufferings at the hands of the heathen whom it had failed to warn. The song which is put into Jonah’s mouth when in the fish’s belly, of which our text is a fragment, represents the result on the part of the nation of these hard experiences. ‘Lying vanities’ mean idols, and ‘their own mercy’ means God. The text is a brief, pregnant utterance of the great truth which had been forced home to Israel by sufferings and exile, that to turn from Jehovah to false gods was to turn from the sure source of tender care to lies and emptiness. That is but one case of the wider truth that an ungodly life is the acme of stupidity, a tragic mistake, as well as a great sin.

In confirmation and enforcement of our text we may consider:—

1. The Illusory Vanity Of The Objects Pursued.

The Old Testament tone of reference to idols is one of bitter contempt. Its rigid monotheism was intensified and embittered by the universal prevalence of idolatry; and there is a certain hardness in its tone in reference to the gods of the nations round about, which has little room for pity, and finds expression in such names as those of our text—‘vanities,’ ‘lies,’ ‘nothingness,’ and the like. To the Jew, encompassed on all sides by idol-worshippers, the alternative was vehement indignation or entire surrender. The Mohammedan in British India exhibits much the same attitude to Vishnu and Siva as the Jew did to Baal and Ashtoreth. It is easy to be tolerant of dead gods, but it becomes treason to Jehovah to parley with them when they are alive.

But the point which we desire to insist upon here is somewhat wider than the vanity of idols. It is the emptiness of all objects of human pursuit apart from God. These last three words need to be made very prominent; for in itself ‘every creature of God is good,’ and the emptiness does not inhere in themselves, but first appears when they are set in His place. He, and only He, can, and does, satisfy the whole nature—is authority for the will, peace for the conscience, love for the heart, light for the understanding, rest for all seeking. He, and He alone, can fill the past with the light in which is no regret, the present with a satisfaction rounded and complete, the future with a hope certain as experience, to which we shall ever approximate, and which we can never exhaust and outgrow. Any, or all, the other objects of human endeavour may be won, and yet we may be miserable. The inadequacy of all these ought to be pressed home upon us more than it is, not only by their limitations whilst they last, but by the transiency of them all. ‘The fashion of this world passeth away,’ as the Apostle John puts it, in a forcible expression which likens all this frame of things to a panorama being unwound from one roller and on to another. The painted screen is but paint at the best, and is in perpetual motion, which is not arrested by the vain clutches of hands that would fain stop the irresistible and tragic gliding past.

These vanities are ‘lying vanities.’ There is only one aim of life which, being pursued and attained, fulfils the promises by which it drew man after it. It is a bald commonplace, reiterated not only by preachers but by moralists of every kind, and confirmed by universal experience, that a hope fulfilled is a hope disappointed. There is only one thing more tragic than a life which has failed in its aims, and it is a life which has perfectly succeeded in them, and has found that what promised to be bread turns to ashes. The word of promise may be kept to the ear, but is always broken to the hope. Many a millionaire loses the power to enjoy his millions by the very process by which he gains them. The old Jewish thinker was wise not only in taking as the summing up of all worldly pursuits the sad sentence, ‘All is vanity,’ but in putting it into the lips of a king who had won all he sought. The sorceress draws us within her charmed circle by lying words and illusory charms, and when she has so secured the captives, her mask is thrown off and her native hideousness displayed.

1. The Hard Service Which Lying Vanities Require.

The phrase in our text is a quotation, slightly altered, from Psalm 31:6: ‘I hate them that regard lying vanities; but I trust in the Lord.’ The alteration in the form of the verb as it occurs in Jonah expresses the intensity of regard, and gives the picture of watching with anxious solicitude, as the eyes of a servant turned to his master, or those of a dog to its owner. The world is a very hard master, and requires from its servants the concentration of thought, heart, and effort. We need only recall the thousand sermons devoted to the enforcement of ‘the gospel of getting on,’ which prosperous worldlings are continually preaching. A chorus Of voices on every side of us is dinning into the ears of every young man and woman the necessity for success in life’s struggle of taking for a motto, ‘This one thing I do.’ How many a man is there, who in the race after wealth or fame, has flung away aspirations, visions of noble, truthful love to life, and a hundred other precious things? Browning tells a hideous story of a mother flinging, one after another, her infants to the wolves as she urged her sledge over the snowy plain. No less hideous, and still more maiming, are the surrenders that men make when once their hearts have been filled with the foolish ambitions of worldly success. Let us fix it in our minds, that nothing that time and sense can give is worth the price that it exacts.

‘It is only heaven that can be had for the asking;

It is only God that is given away.’

All sin is slavery. Its yoke presses painfully on the neck, and its burden is heavy indeed, and the rest which it promises never comes.

III. The Self-Inflicted Loss.

Our text suggests that there are two ways by which we may learn the folly of a godless life—One, the consideration of what it turns to, the other, the thought of what it departs from.

‘They forsake their own Mercy,’ that is God. The phrase is here almost equivalent to ‘His name’; and it carries the blessed thought that He has entered into relations with every soul, so that each man of us—even if he have turned to ‘lying vanities’—can still call Him, ‘my own Mercy.’ He is ours; more our own than is anything without us. He is ours, because we are made for Him, and He is all for us. He is ours by His love, and by His gift of Himself in the Son of His love. He is ours; if we take Him for ours by an inward communication of Himself to us in the innermost depths of our being. He becomes ‘the Master-Light of all our seeing.’ In the mysterious inwardness of mutual possession, the soul which has given itself to God and possesses Him, has not only communion, but may even venture to claim as its own the deeper and more mysterious union with God. Those multiform mercies, ‘which endure for ever,’ and speed on their manifold errands into every remotest region of His universe, gather themselves together, as the diffused lights of some nebulae concentrate themselves into a sun. That sun, like the star that led the wise men from the East, and finally stood over one poor house in an obscure village, will shine lambent above, and will pass into, the humblest heart that opens for it. They who can say, as we all can if we will, ‘My God,’ can never want.

And if we turn to the alternative in our text, and consider who they are to whom we turn when we turn from God, there should be nothing more needed to drive home the wholesome conviction of the folly of the wisest, who deliberately prefers shadow to substance, lying vanities to the one true and only reality. I beseech you to take that which is your own, and which no man can take from you. Weigh in the scales of conscience, and in the light of the deepest necessities of your nature, the whole pile of those emptinesses that have been telling you lies ever since you listened to them; and place in the other scale the mercy of God, and the Christ who brings it to you, and decide which is the weightier, and which it becomes you to take for your pattern for ever.^[3]

3. Redemption (Jonah 2:10)

(Jonah 2:10)  And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

What an ignominious way for a distinguished prophet to arrive on shore! In chapter 1, the sailors treated Jonah like dangerous cargo to be thrown overboard, and now he’s treated like a foreign substance to be disgorged from the fish’s body. But when Jonah ceased to be an obedient prophet, he cheapened himself, so he’s the one to blame. We can be sure that he was duly humbled as he once again stood on dry land.

The miracle. Few miracles in Scripture have been attacked as much as this one, and Christian scholars have gathered various kinds of evidence to prove that it could happen. Since the Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, we don’t have to measure sharks and whales or comb history for similar incidents. It was a “prepared” fish (1:17), designed by God for the occasion, and therefore it was adequate for the task. Jesus didn’t question the historicity of the miracle, so why should we?

The sign (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29). The “sign of Jonah” is seen in his experience of “death,” burial, and resurrection on the third day, and it was the only sign Jesus gave to the nation of Israel. At Pentecost, Peter preached the Resurrection (Acts 2:22–26) and so did Paul when he preached to the Jews in other nations (13:26–37). In fact, the emphasis in the Book of Acts is on the resurrection of Jesus Christ; for the apostles were “witnesses of the Resurrection” (2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).

Some students are troubled by the phrase “three days and three nights,” especially since both Scripture and tradition indicate that Jesus was crucified on Friday. In order to protect the integrity of the Scripture, some have suggested that the Crucifixion be moved back to Thursday or even Wednesday. But to the Jews, a part of a day was treated as a whole day, and we need not interpret “three days and three nights” to mean seventy-two hours to the very second. For that matter, we can’t prove that Jonah was in the fish exactly seventy-two hours. The important thing is that centuries after the event, Jonah became a “sign” to the Jewish people and pointed them to Jesus Christ.

Jonah was now free to obey the Lord and take God’s message to Nineveh, but he still had lessons to learn.^[4]

The focus in the story of Jonah is on the Lord’s sovereign control over creation to bring about His purpose. What an ignominious way for a distinguished prophet to arrive on shore! In chapter 1, the sailors treated Jonah like dangerous cargo to be thrown overboard, and now he’s treated like a foreign substance to be disgorged from the fish’s body. But when Jonah ceased to be an obedient prophet, he cheapened himself; so he’s the one to blame. We can be sure that he was duly humbled as he once again stood on dry land.

And the Lord spake unto the fish—That is, by his influence the fish swam to shore, and cast Jonah on the dry land. So the whole was a miracle from the beginning to the end; and we need not perplex ourselves to find out literal interpretations; such as, “When Jonah was thrown overboard he swam for his life, earnestly praying God to preserve him from drowning; and by his providence he was thrown into a place of fish—a fishing cove, where he was for a time entangled among the weeds, and hardly escaped with his life; and when safe, he composed this poetic prayer, in metaphorical language, which some have wrongly interpreted, by supposing that he was swallowed by a fish; when    should have been understood, as a place of fish, or fishing creek,” etc. Now
I say the original has no such meaning in the Bible: and this gloss is plainly contrary to the letter of the text; to all sober and rational modes of interpretation; and to the express purpose for which God appears to have wrought this miracle, and to which Jesus Christ himself applies it.

For as Jonah was intended for a sign to the Jews of the resurrection of Christ, they were to have the proof of this semiosis, in his lying as long in the heart of the earth as the prophet was in the belly of the fish, and all interpretations of this kind go to deny both the sign and the thing signified. Some men, because they cannot work a miracle themselves, can hardly be persuaded that GOD can do it. The text, and the use made of it by Christ, most plainly teach us that the prophet was literally swallowed by a fish, by the order of God; and that by the Divine power he was preserved alive, for what is called three days and three nights, in the stomach of the fish; and at the conclusion of the above time that same fish was led by the unseen power of God to the shore, and there compelled to eject the prey that he could neither kill nor digest.

And how easy is all this to the almighty power of the Author and Sustainer of life, who has a sovereign, omnipresent, and energetic sway in the heavens and in the earth. But foolish man will affect to be wise; though, in such cases, he appears as the recently born, stupid offspring of the wild ass. It is bad to follow fancy, where there is so much  at stake. Both ancients and moderns have grievously trifled with this prophet’s narrative; merely because they could not rationally account for the thing, and were unwilling (and why?) to allow any miraculous interference.

The miracle.

Few miracles in Scripture have been attacked as much as this one, and Christian scholars have gathered various kinds of evidence to prove that it could happen. Since the Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, we don’t have to measure sharks and whales or comb history for similar incidents. It was a “prepared” fish (1:17), designed by God for the occasion, and therefore it was adequate for the task. Jesus didn’t question the historicity of the miracle, so why should we?

The sign (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29).

The “sign of Jonah” is seen in his experience of “death,” burial, and resurrection on the third day, and it was the only sign Jesus gave to the nation of Israel. At Pentecost, Peter preached the Resurrection (Acts 2:22-26) and so did Paul when he preached to the Jews in other nations (13:26-37). In fact, the emphasis in the Book of Acts is on the resurrection of Jesus Christ; for the apostles were “witnesses of the Resurrection” (2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).

Some students are troubled by the phrase “three days and three nights,” especially since both Scripture and tradition indicate that Jesus was crucified on Friday. In order to protect the integrity of Scripture, some have suggested that the Crucifixion be moved back to Thursday or even Wednesday. But to the Jews, a part of a day was treated as a whole day; and we need not interpret “three days and three nights” to mean seventy-two hours to the very second. For that matter, we can’t prove that Jonah was in the fish exactly seventy-two hours. The important things is that centuries after the event, Jonah became a “sign” to the Jewish people and pointed them to Jesus Christ.

Jonah was now free to obey the Lord and take God’s message to Nineveh, but he still had lessons to learn.

The Setting of the Psalm

Jonah’s “psalm” is a poetic description of his deliverance from drowning. A great fish is not only the divinely appointed means of deliverance (1:17), but also the place from which the psalm was composed (2:1). One can only imagine the thoughts which must have passed through Jonah’s mind as he came to grasp what had happened to him.

As he sank below the surface of the water, Jonah knew that he was certain to drown (2:2‑7). In his last conscious moments, he cried to the Lord for deliverance. Suddenly, everything went black. Perhaps the dark form of the approaching fish was noticed by the prophet. Then, there was a sense of motion, of being carried along. There may also have been the near birth‑like experience of passing from the fish’s mouth into its stomach, probably through a very small opening. This could have served to extract any water from his lungs, something akin to artificial respiration.

As Jonah regained consciousness, imagine the horror of his first sensations: the feel of the stomach lining of the fish pressing about him; irritation of the acidic stomach juices of the fish beginning to bleach his skin; the foul smell of the place; the passing‑through of the normal diet of the fish; the darkness of this place. In

time, Jonah must have realized that this fish was not the means of his destruction, but the means of his deliverance. His prayer for deliverance had been heard by God. He was to live. His psalm, recorded in verses 2‑9, was composed in the stomach of the fish and later recorded for our edification. Let us now move on to the content of this “psalm of the prodigal prophet” to see what it teaches us about Jonah, about Israel, and about ourselves.

Jonah’s “Psalm” and the Psalms

The best way to understand Jonah’s “psalm” is to identify some of its unique characteristics, and then to compare these with the characteristics of the psalms in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament. By means of this comparison, the inferiority of Jonah’s “psalm” becomes evident. Consider the following characteristics of Jonah’s “psalm”:

(1) Jonah’s “psalm” employs the poetic form of the biblical psalms, as well as the terminology of many of these psalms.

In Jonah 2:9 we read, “Salvation is from the LORD.”

Likewise, in Psalm 3:8 we read, “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

Notice also the similarity of terminology between Psalm 18 and Jonah 2:

The cords of death encompassed me, And the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears (Psalm 18:4‑6).

“I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice . . . While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD; And my prayer came to Thee, Into Thy holy temple” (Jonah 2:2, 7).

In Psalm 42, the psalmist also employs “water” imagery, which has a familiar sound when we read Jonah’s “psalm:”

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember Thee from the land of the Jordan, And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls; All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me. The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life (Psalm 42:5‑8, emphasis mine).[5]

(2) Jonah’s “psalm” focuses on his physical deliverance from death by drowning.

All of the poetic description found in Jonah’s psalm pertains to his near‑death experience in the sea. He was engulfed by the breakers (vv. 3, 5), and seaweed was wrapped around him (vs. 5). Jonah was near to fainting away when he cried out to God for his salvation (vv. 2, 4, 7).

This plea was probably similar to that of Peter, who having walked upon the water towards our Lord, suddenly began to sink (cf. Matt. 14:22‑33). There was little time for anything but a hurried cry for help. The “great fish” was appointed by God to swallow Jonah, and while Jonah does not mention the fish, we know that it provided him with an underwater haven for three days and nights (1:17). It was from within the belly of this fish that this psalm was composed by the prophet (2:1).

Just as Saul, who would become the Apostle Paul, had three days of blindness in which to contemplate the gospel (Acts 9:9), Jonah had three days in which to contemplate his divine deliverance. It was not over, of course, because there was still the small problem of his release from his underwater incarceration.

(3) Jonah’s psalm is self-centered.

Jonah described his dilemma, his danger, his deliverance, and his delight. In The Book of Psalms the psalmists also described their deliverance, although the particulars were often left out, or only briefly mentioned, often in the introduction to the psalm (cf. Psalms 3, 18). Very quickly, the Old Testament psalmists turned from the details of their personal experience to the character of God, which was demonstrated in their deliverance. In short, the psalms are God‑centered, while Jonah’s psalm is self-centered.

Note how cryptic is this psalmist’s description of his dilemma, and how quickly he changes his focus to the character of His God:

The cords of death encompassed me, And the terrors of Sheol came upon me; I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I beseech Thee, save my life!” Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; Yes, our God is compassionate (Psalm 116:3‑5, emphasis mine).

Such is not the case with Jonah. Chapter 2 dwells on the details of Jonah’s dilemma, while God’s character is scarcely mentioned. Not until chapter 4 does Jonah get around to addressing the character of God, in particular His grace, compassion, longsuffering, and lovingkindness:

And he prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life” (Jonah 4:2‑3, emphasis mine).

While the biblical psalmists found the character of God to be the basis for their praise, adoration, and obedience, Jonah found the character of God to be the pretext for his disobedience and for his protest.

There is but one dominant reference in Jonah’s “psalm” to God’s attributes. He does allude to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. This attribute is distorted and abused, however. Rather than attributing his danger to his own rebellion, Jonah depicts God as the cause of his danger:

“For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:3).

This sounds similar to Adam’s explanation for his disobedience:

“The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12).

(4) Jonah’s psalm reveals his disdain for Gentiles and a smug self-righteousness as an Israelite. We have already been informed of the faith of the Gentile sailors in chapter 1, and of their obedience to all that they knew they were to do. In Jonah’s “psalm of praise,” we find no mention of these sailors, of their physical deliverance from death, or of their newly-found faith in the God of Israel. We can safely assume that Jonah did not find any of this to be a source of joy or the cause for praise to God. We can press this point further and conclude that Jonah really despised Gentiles and would have preferred their death and damnation to their deliverance and salvation.

This may be merely conjecture, to be demonstrated in chapter 4, except for the tone of Jonah’s words in verses 8 and 9: “Those who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness, But I will sacrifice to Thee With the voice of thanksgiving” (Jonah 2:8‑9a). Jonah has great disdain for the Gentiles, who practice idolatry. At the same time, he regards himself as one of the elite, who worships the true God by means of the sacrifices which God has appointed. Jonah, as an Israelite, is superior to the idolatrous Gentile heathen.

Jonah’s words do not square with what we have seen in chapter 1, however. The heathen prayed; Jonah did not. The heathen were eager to uncover sin; Jonah was not. The heathen wanted to practice their religion; Jonah did not. The heathen had compassion on Jonah, yet Jonah showed none toward them. By virtually any standard, the Gentile sailors proved to be superior to Jonah from all that we have read in the first chapter, and yet Jonah can unabashedly tell God that he is somehow superior to the heathen.

The psalmists of the Old Testament knew better. In their psalms, they spoke of the conversion and worship of the Gentiles:

I will tell of Thy name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise Thee. You who fear the LORD, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Neither has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.

From Thee comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, All the families of the nations will worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the LORD’s, And He rules over the nations (Ps. 22:22‑28, emphasis mine).

In Psalm 67, the psalmist goes even further, basing his words on the promise God gave Abraham, which informed him that the blessing of his descendants was to result in blessing for the whole world:

God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us— Selah. That Thy way may be known on the earth, Thy salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise Thee. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For Thou wilt judge the peoples with uprightness, And guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise Thee. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him (Psalm 67).

Jonah does not wish God to bless the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Jonah does not wish God to bless the Gentiles through the Jews. Thus, when God commanded Jonah, a Jew, to preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city, Jonah fled. No wonder we find no praise for the conversion of Gentiles, but rather a statement to God about the superiority of the Jews to the Gentiles.

The Lessons of This Chapter

Despite the discomforting reality of Jonah’s continued rebellion in this chapter—indeed, because of  it there are several important lessons to be learned from this chapter. As we close, let me draw your attention to the lessons for Israel, and for the church.

Lessons for Israel

As we have already shown, Jonah was not only a prophet by virtue of his declarations, but also by his deeds, specifically his disobedience. Jonah typified the stubborn rebellion of God’s people, Israel. Just as Jonah disobeyed God’s order, Israel disobeyed God’s law. Just as Jonah refused to carry out his task of preaching to the Gentiles, so did the nation Israel. Just as Jonah called on God for deliverance, yet without genuine repentance, so did Israel. Just as Jonah had the outward trappings of righteousness, the right forms and the right terms, but lacked genuine righteousness, so did Israel.

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day typify this same willfulness and rebellion. When He came, our Lord, as it were, swept away the three-fourth inch covering of snow from the accumulated garbage of Judaism. Jesus uncovered and condemned the smug self‑righteousness and hypocrisy of the Israelite leaders, just as the Book of Jonah has done with the prodigal prophet.

The scribes and Pharisees were meticulous about the details of their religious forms and ceremonies (the gnats which they strained), but they overlooked the essence of true godliness—obedience (the “camels” they swallowed). Just as Jonah chaffed at the thought of the repentance and forgiveness of the Assyrians, so the self‑righteous scribes and Pharisees bristled at the repentance of the “prodigal son,” as reflected by the older brother (Luke 15:11‑32). They protested against the fact that Jesus spent his time with “sinners” and not with them (cf. Mark 2:16). And just as Jonah smugly saw himself as righteous, while the pagan was a sinner (Jonah 2:8‑9), so the scribes and Pharisees looked down their spiritual noses at others:

“The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax‑gatherer. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax‑gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:11‑14).

The rejection of Christ and of the gospel by the Jews proved to be the occasion for the salvation of the Gentiles, just as Jonah’s disobedience was the means of God bringing the sailors and the Assyrians to salvation:

I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! (Rom. 11:11‑12).

If not by their obedience, God fulfilled His promise to Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations through Israel.

Lessons for Contemporary Christians

Before showing the similarities of Jonah’s sins to those of saints in our own day, let me point out one significant difference between Jonah’s thinking and ours today. Jonah, thinking with the mindset of the Old Testament Jew, rested and relied on his election as an Israelite, failing to see his relationship to God in terms of grace, but in terms of some kind of intrinsic worth, based upon his race and perhaps even on his calling as a prophet. Today we tend to presume upon God’s grace. We use the grace of God as an excuse for our disobedience. Jonah tended not to see himself as sinful, as much so, or more than, the heathen; we, on the other hand, see ourselves as depraved, and admit this as part of our human condition, but we view God as somehow committed and thus obligated to forgive. The common element, then and now, is viewing God as obliged to bless “His people,” regardless of their rebellion, and to view “heathen” sins as more reprehensible to God than “sacred sins,” like disobedience.

Jonah’s “psalm” warns us of the very real danger of superficial spirituality. The fact that Jonah’s “psalm” has been taken so seriously by scholars and laymen alike warns us that we are not sensitive to superficiality in spiritual things. The church at Sardis, addressed by God in the third chapter of Revelation, was superficially spiritual: “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and you are dead” (Rev. 3:1b).

Superficial spirituality is very skilled in following the approved religious forms and in the use of pious platitudes. Because of this, it initially looks holy and good. But a little probing reveals its true character. I might say also that a little persecution or suffering also quickly exposes the spiritual reality.

I greatly fear that superficial spirituality is the norm in America, rather than the exception. I fear that there is much of this in my life and in our church. May God give us the grace to see it for what it is and to deal accordingly with it.

Superficial spirituality has several tell‑tale symptoms. For one, it relies on the wrong things. It relies on one’s background, one’s ancestry, one’s denominational heritage, one’s position (an elder in the church, etc.), or one’s knowledge. None of these constitute spirituality. Many of them are used to counterfeit it.

Superficial spirituality relies heavily on forms. It borrows much from others; it mimics piety rather than manifests it. Superficial spirituality prays only in dire circumstances; it is motivated by crises, and is manifested by foxhole prayers. It is selfward in orientation, rather than Godward or manward. It seems insensitive or oblivious to personal sin, yet it recognizes sin in others. It lacks a depth of intimacy with God and has little evangelistic fervor. It has a very narrow band of concern, and is usually very introverted in focus (e.g., “Lord, bless our missionaries.”). It tends to distort doctrines and to accommodate or excuse one’s sins (such as Jonah’s use of God’s sovereignty, veiling his own sin).

The salvation of Jonah reminds us that God’s means of saving us are not those we would have chosen. God does not save us according to our preferences, but according to His provision. The great fish would not have been Jonah’s choice of accommodations, but as unpleasant as the belly of the fish was, it did the job. Jonah would have much preferred a dramatic search effort, employing a Coast Guard cutter, helicopters, and skin divers. He would rather have been hoisted aboard a ship and given mouth‑to‑mouth resuscitation by a beautiful female sailor. God did not flatter Jonah in the means by which He saved him because pride was one of this prophet’s principle problems.

So too, God’s means of saving men has never been flattering either. Spending 400 years as slaves in Egypt was not flattering to the Israelites, nor entering into the Red Sea or the river Jordan, nor slaughtering an innocent animal and pouring out its lifeblood on God’s altar, but these were the means which God provided. Looking up to a brazen serpent was not a flattering way to be healed from the bite of a serpent, but it was God’s way. Trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of a rejected king, the Lord Jesus Christ, is not man’s preferred means of finding the forgiveness of sins and of entering into eternal life, either. Nevertheless, this is the means which God has provided for man’s eternal salvation. This is the only means. If you have not experienced His salvation, you may have to be brought very low, as low as Jonah, so that any means of salvation is gladly received. May God keep us from the superficial and synthetic spirituality of Jonah’s “psalm”, and bring us to the vibrant and genuine spirituality of the Book of Psalms.

Where Do We Find God’s Grace?

The story reveals that God “appointed” a great fish to swallow Jonah. This verb is used several times in the book, as when God appointed a plant to grow and then to die, as we will see in chapter 4 of the book of Jonah. In each case, God orchestrated a circumstance in history to teach Jonah something he desperately needed to know.1  With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that the most important lessons we have learned in life are the result of God’s severe mercies. They are events that were difficult or even excruciating at the time but later came to yield more good in our lives than we could have foreseen.

The great fish is a perfect example of such a severe mercy. Obviously, the fish saved Jonah’s life by swallowing him. On the other hand, he was still in a watery prison. He was still sinking to the bottom of the world, to “the roots of the mountains,” far from help and hope. He was still alive, but for how long? It was only a temporary respite unless God provided another act of deliverance.

Peter Craigie writes that when we reject and disobey God, as Jonah did, it takes “radical treatment, if it [is] to be remedied.” He points out that the text has been depicting Jonah as descending—going down to Joppa, down into a ship, down into the depths of the ship —and now, finally, he goes even further down into the very depths of the ocean. “But not until he was all the way down, finally stripped of his own buoyant self-sufficiency, was deliverance possible.”2 There was a fatal flaw in Jonah’s character, and it had lain hidden from him as long as his life was going well. It was only through complete failure that he could begin to see it and change it.

This principle works itself out at multiple levels. In J. K. Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech in 2008, she described a point in her life in which she had “failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.” But, she added, “[I] began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena, [writing, in which] I believed I truly belonged.”3  In short, she said, her success was built on her failures.

Jacob was not prepared to lead the family of God until he had been forced to flee from his home, experienced years of mistreatment at the hands of his father-in-law, and faced (what he thought was) a violent encounter with is aggrieved brother, Esau. It was only then that Jacob met God face to face (Genesis 32:1–32). Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering. Countless Christians can attest to the same experience. It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God. As is often said, you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. You must lose your life to find your life (Matthew 10:39).

If Jonah was to begin finally to ascend, both in the water and in faith, he had to be brought to the very end of himself. The way up was, first of all, down. The usual place to learn the greatest secrets of God’s grace is at the bottom.

But it is not simply being at the bottom that begins to change Jonah but prayer at the bottom. As Jack Sasson says, at this point in the story, “the action is about to come to a full halt to leave Jonah alone with his God.”4  Jonah begins to pray, and at the climax of the prayer, he speaks of chesdh (Jonah 2:9). It is a key biblical word often translated as “steadfast love” or “grace.” It refers to the covenant love of God. It takes the whole prayer for Jonah to get there—to a declaration about God’s grace—but when he does, he is released back into the land of the living.

What Is God’s Grace?

In his great book Knowing God, J. I. Packer observes that many people talk about God’s grace, but it is an abstraction to them, not a life-changing power. He goes on to explain that there are several “crucial truths . . . which the doctrine of grace presupposes, and if they are not acknowledged and felt in one’s heart, clear faith in God’s grace becomes impossible.”5 Jonah’s prayer shows him coming to grips with three of them.

The first truth we must grasp is what Packer calls our “moral ill-desert.” That is a hard message for our culture to hear, however. We live in an age marked by “The Triumph of the Therapeutic.”6 We are taught that our problem is a lack of self-esteem, that we live with too much shame and self-incrimination. In addition, we are told, all moral standards are socially constructed and relative, so no one has the right to make you feel guilty. You must determine right or wrong for yourself. In a society dominated by such beliefs, the Bible’s persistent message that we are guilty sinners comes across as oppressive if not evil and dangerous. These modern cultural themes make the offer of grace unnecessary, even an insult.

Jonah’s prayer, however, recognized that “you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas” (verse 3). Jonah knew that there was divine justice and that he deserved it.

Second, we must believe in what Packer calls our “spiritual impotence.” We must admit not only our sins but also that we cannot repair or cleanse ourselves from them. Our culture, again, does not help us here, for it is dominated not only by therapy but also by technology. Even if we accept responsibility for wrongdoing, we believe “we can fix this.” The most common way we try to do that is to apply the technology of morality. We believe that with hard work and/or fastidious religious observance, we can repair our relationship with God and even put him in a position where he “can’t say ‘no’ to us.”7

This idea, that we can fix ourselves through moral effort, was certainly around in Jonah’s day. It is a foundational assumption of every other religion. But in verse 6, Jonah rightly rejects it. He says he is sinking to “the netherworld,” the underwater world farthest from living humanity and God in his temple, and that there “its bars are closed upon me forever.” He realizes that he stands condemned and permanently barred for his sin and rebellion, and there is no possible way to open those gates himself or make good his debt. The famous hymn expresses it like this: Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill thy law’s demands. Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone.8

We are “barred” from God, and the doctrine of grace resonates deeply only if we admit we cannot save ourselves.

Amazing Grace

The third truth we must grasp, if we are to understand God’s grace in a way that transforms, is how costly the salvation is that God provides. Not once but twice in his prayer, Jonah looks not merely toward heaven but “toward your holy temple” (verse 4) and “to the temple of your holiness” (verse 7). Why? Jonah knew that it was over the mercy seat in the temple that God promised to speak to us (Exodus 25:22). The mercy seat was a slab of gold over the top of the Ark of the Covenant, in which resided the tablets of the Ten Commandments. On the Day of Atonement, a priest sprinkled the blood of the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people on the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:14–15).

What a picture! The temple was the residence of the holy God, his perfect moral righteousness represented by the Ten Commandments, which no human being ever has or ever can keep. How shall we approach God? Won’t the law of God condemn us? Yes it would, except for the blood of the atoning sacrifice on the mercy seat, over the Ten Commandments, shielding us from its condemnation. It is only when the death of another secures our forgiveness that we can speak with God.

Neither Jonah nor any other Israelite at that time understood all that this meant, but a better picture of the gospel of Jesus could hardly be imagined. The temple and the sacrificial system established all three of these “grace truths” as a foundation: We are sinners, unable to save ourselves and able to be saved only through extreme and costly measures. Not until centuries later would it be revealed that atonement could not be effected by the blood of bulls and goats but only by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:4–10).

1. J. I. Packer is right. Many people sing “Amazing Grace” and give lip service to the idea, but that grace has not profoundly changed them. God’s grace becomes wondrous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself. Some people have too high a view of themselves. God’s grace is not stunning because they don’t feel they need it, or at least, not so much. Others do indeed see themselves as failures but, while they may have some notion of an abstract “God of love,” they have little idea of the enormity of Jesus’s sacrifice to purchase them out of debt, slavery, and death. They aren’t lost in wonder, love, and praise at the lengths and depths to which he has gone for us.

The Shout of Grace

Now we see why we find grace not at the high points of our lives but in the valleys and depths, at the bottom. No human heart will learn its sinfulness and impotence by being told it is sinful. It will have to be shown—often in brutal experience. No human heart will dare to believe in such free, costly grace unless it is the only hope. It is a combination of hard circumstances, insight from the biblical gospel of atonement for sin, and prevailing prayer that can move us to wonder and amazement, even in the darkest, deepest places.

Something of this amazement and wonder at grace is hinted at in Jonah’s prayer. He has recognized that the “bars are closed upon me forever.” However, he immediately adds: “And yet you lift me up from the pit alive, O Lord” (verse 6). He is lost, condemned, and unable to unlock the doors of his prison. And yet God saves him. Jonah begins to praise God and dedicate himself before he has any assurance that he will escape from the fish by some supernatural deliverance. This is important to notice. It is when he realizes the grace of God that the “great decision is taken.”9  “It is not when history is redirected by some supernatural event . . . that the great miracles occur. It is when a person comes to acknowledge his or her sin and confesses it before God and when, as a consequence, God restores the broken Creator-creature relationship.”1 0 That’s the real deliverance—not the release from the fish.

Jonah’s prayer ends with a shout. As he has been piecing together the constituent parts of a doctrine of grace, the wonder of it dawns on him, and in a climactic statement he says, “Salvation comes only from the LORD” (verse 9). Some have called this text the central verse of the Scriptures, or at least, it expresses with great economy of language the main point of the entire Bible.

It says, literally, that salvation is of the Lord, and the prepositional phrase denotes possession.1 1  Salvation belongs to God alone, to no one else. If someone is saved, it is wholly God’s doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you saving yourself partly. No. God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That’s the gospel.

The Process of Grace

When placed into the context of the entire book of Jonah, however, this prayer has a sobering aspect. In verse 8 Jonah says that “those clinging to empty idols forfeit the grace that is theirs.” Jonah rightly says that idolatry blocks people from receiving grace. But what people is he referring to? In the context he is saying that pagans who worship literal statues and idols forfeit the grace of God. While that statement is true, we can’t help but read it in light of Jonah’s relapse into anger and confusion at God’s mercy to the Ninevites, which we will see when we get to chapter 4 of the book of Jonah.

In other words, despite his breakthrough here, Jonah has not grasped grace as deeply as we might at first think he has. There is still a sense of superiority and self-righteousness that will cause him to explode in anger when God has mercy on those Jonah sees as his inferiors. He sees the literal idols that the pagans worship and doesn’t see the more subtle idols in his own life that keep him from fully grasping that he too, just like the heathen, lives only, equally by God’s grace.

God releases Jonah from the fish even though, as will become obvious soon, his repentance is only partial. Yet the merciful God patiently works with us, flawed and clueless though we are.

Appreciation to Timothy Keller

• CHAPTER 6:

Running from Grace

1. 1. Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah

(Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 77.

2. 2. Peter C. Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 1, Hosea, Joel, Amos, O badiah, Jonah (Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox

Press, 1984), p. 227.

3. 3. Marta Bousells, “J. K. Row ling’s Life Advice,” Guardian, March 30, 2015. The commencement address w as published as Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the I mportance of I magination (New Y ork: Little, Brow n,

2008).

4. 4. Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation, with I ntroduction, Commentary, and I nterpretation, The Anchor Bible

(New Y ork: Doubleday, 1990), p. 157.

5. 5. J. I . Packer, Knowing God (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 1973), p. 117.
6. 6. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: The Uses of Faith After Freud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1966).

7. 7. Packer, Knowing God, pp. 118–19.
8. 8. Augustus Toplady, “Rock of Ages” (hymn), quoted in Packer, Knowing God, p. 119.
9. 9. Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 48–49. Ellul w rites: “Jonah has not been answ ered if w e take the answ er to be rescue from the belly of the fish. . . . But he has been answ ered if w e take the answ er to be adoption under the care of G od w ho takes on the totality of our sufferings, dramas, and situations. He is answ ered because grace does not fail in any w ay. . . . Events have taken place w ithout any indication of a favorable intervention, only signs of judgment. . . . But simply in the very fact that he has been able to repent, to condemn himself, to recognize the sentence of the just judge [and see the atoning sacrifice in the temple], he has reason enough to say, ‘Thou has delivered me.’ I t is here indeed that the great decision is taken.”
10. 10. James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 1, Hosea–Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Baker, 1983), p. 288.
11. 11. Kevin J. Y oungblood, Jonah: Exegetical Commentary on the O ld Testament (G rand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 2013), p. 114.

^[1] Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 182–184.

¹⁵ See discussion and sources in Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, p. 477.

¹⁶ The Hebrew has the word nepheš which means soul or breath, the footnote suggesting that the waters were cutting off his breathing. On nepheš as neck or mouth, see Ps 69:1; Isa 5:14.

NIV New International Version, 1984

^[2] Harold Shank, Minor Prophets, The College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 2001–), 347–350.

^[3] Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 184–189.

^[4] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Amazed, “Be” Commentary Series (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 80–81.

[5] Compare also Psalm 88:6‑7, 17, in which the psalmist uses “flood” terms, but here the adversity of the psalmist is brought upon him by God, not by men.