Minor No.5 Jonah

When I was at Sunday school, one of the choruses I loved to sing was, come listen to my tale of Jonah and the whale, way down in the middle of the ocean. The preaching he should be, at Nineveh you see, he disobeyed, it was a foolish notion. But God forgave his sin, salvation entered in, way down in the middle of the ocean.

And we had some very acrobatic actions which we enjoyed doing to our great delight and the utter consternation of our Sunday school teachers. The only thing that I feel on reflection I would object to in respect to that chorus is the slight suggestion in the word tale that the account of Jonah and his submarine experiences might be conceived in terms of legend, in terms of myth. Whereas despite certain trends to suggest this in more recent times, I am convinced when I look into this account and when I study the words of our Lord Jesus that it is the intention of the author of this book to relate something that literally happened.

And I'm not spending time this evening going into great explanations as to how this could have happened or citing other examples of people who've had the unpleasant experience of being swallowed by a fish. If the Bible says that this happened, and the Bible also tells me that God can be contracted to a span and be born as a babe in Bethlehem and die as a man on the cross and be raised again the third day and now ascended into heaven. If the Bible can tell me that and I can believe it, then I've got no problems with Jonah whatsoever.

Our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ever ask or think, even stopping us from going out of his will by causing a fish to swallow us and ultimately the first person to be involved by the beaching plan to be vomited out on the beach so that the prophet could go on his way to declare God's purposes to the people of Nineveh. However, I don't want time to run away with me this evening because that wouldn't be in keeping with my theme, or maybe it would, the runaway prophet. We're going to be looking at Jonah, whose name means, I wonder if you knew that, his name means the dove.

And I think that that's rather extraordinary for starters because if there was one thing that Jonah didn't like about God, it was the peaceful quality of his message. At least, let's trim that a little. He thought that it was nice that God was a God of peace towards the Jews, but he wasn't so convinced that the Lord should be so charitable to non-Jews, to Gentiles.

So Jonah did not immediately live up to his name. Another thing that strikes me as being of singular importance, of great significance, is the contrast that Scripture runs between Jonah and our Lord Jesus Christ. This is quite unique.

You don't find this in respect of any other Old Testament prophet in the degree that the Lord Jesus is taken up and placed alongside Jonah. And there are several parallels, several things which our Saviour has in common with Jonah. But when you've done with all the parallels, then you have to come to the conclusion, as Scripture makes clear both in Luke's Gospel and Matthew's Gospel, that when you talk about Jesus, you have to say, a far greater than Jonah.

There are certain things, I say, that overlap between the experience of our Lord and the experience of Jonah. But the most majestic thing is this, that Jesus Christ came to save the world and Jonah was rather startled that God might even stretch His saving purposes from the Jew to the Gentile. Jonah comes from Galilee.

You remember on one occasion it was said in the hearing of our Lord Jesus when it was suggested that He was from the northern part of Israel, can anything good come from there? After all, there were very, very few great religious leaders amongst the Jews who came out of Galilee. Well, Jonah was the exception. He lived, as my overhead projector here indicates, at a place called Gath-hither, which was just one hour from Nazareth.

And according to tradition, Jonah was buried in his birthplace. And one commentator very interestingly suggested, did our Lord, as a lad, sometimes walk up to Gath-hither and did He begin to work out some of the contrast that there would be between Jonah and Himself? Not just that Jonah and Jesus came from the same area of northern Israel, but our Lord was going to have an experience which was similar, though even more traumatic than that of Jonah's. I refer, of course, to His great death on the cross and His mighty resurrection.

Three days He was in Hades. Three days He sunk to the depths, so to speak. And yet the Bible tells us that as Jonah was vomited up, if you don't mind me using that word, by the great fish, so our Lord Jesus Christ was brought back to this world, was brought back to life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And as Jonah discovered sooner or later, actually later rather than sooner, that God had saving purposes for the people of Nineveh, so Jesus made it the main thrust of His ministry that He had come for the Jews in the first instance, but His responsibilities lapped over from the Jews to every fallen son and daughter of Adam, and His saving concerns are for all men and women. And thus we can say of our blessed Saviour, though running this contrast and rightly so, a greater than Jonah was represented in His ministry. Now, I'm not expecting one day to be offered a prize for my artwork, but here in diagrammatic fashion I trust to set out for you this evening, particularly with some of our young folks here, and we're so glad to have them, I want to set out for you the main thrust and the application of the message of Jonah and his prophecy.

But before we move into the actual story, let me remind you that Jonah was told to go to Nineveh, and Nineveh, though a great city, was a long, long way from where Jonah lived. Let's plot where Jonah lived, just about there for a moment, and Nineveh is way up here. Those of you who are good at geography will know that these rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Down here you've got the Red Sea and you've got Egypt and so on and so forth. So for any man to get a call to minister in Nineveh meant a mighty long trek. I mean, it was more difficult to go from Jonah's birthplace to Nineveh than what it was to go from Sheffield to Worthing, and it's much easier to preach in this place than what it was for Jonah to preach in Nineveh.

How many of us would rush to volunteer to give out streets, or rather to give out trikes on the streets of the cities of Iran? Who would go and place John's Gospel in the hand of the Ayatollah Khomeini? Well, it would be rather a daring thing and perhaps the last thing that you ever did. Now that's the context of Jonah's call to go to Nineveh, so far away from where he was born, and amongst the Assyrians, who have been for many centuries the bloodthirsty enemy of the Israelites. So when you discover Jonah is not very happy about the pastorate that God is suggesting for him, at least by now you should have a semblance of pity.

As R.T. Kendall says in his book of sermons on Jonah, most fascinating sermons, I am Jonah. Whether he meant that he was reluctant to leave the States and come to London, and therefore he makes that comment, I don't know. But there's a great deal of Jonah in you and me.

And that's why I think many of you have turned out this evening, because you can identify already with this prophet. He has to go a long way from his home country to Nineveh, a city that is populated by Gentiles, some 120,000 people, and the city is wicked. That's what we're told in the opening verses of the first chapter.

As God was mindful of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, so he is mindful of the sinfulness of the people of Nineveh. You see, there are those, this is why I'm stressing the point, who believe that the Gospel only becomes universal, God only has concern for other people than Jews, in the New Testament, and that's not so. That is not so.

God is the God and Father of every son of Adam, though he works out specifically his saving purposes through the nation of Israel. But God, as we discovered when Ken Jow was preaching from the book of Amos in this series a little while ago, God has a concern for every nation. Indeed, you found this when we were looking at Obadiah this past week.

Jonah is told to go to Nineveh, and it reveals that God has a concern for Nineveh, but Jonah is reluctant to go. And what we find him doing is attempting the impossible. Attempting the impossible.

He decides that he is going to get a ticket that will give him a passage on a ship that will sail him away from the presence of God. Now, that's why I say it's an impossible destination and it's the most expensive ticket. An impossible destination for what reason? Well, you can't flee from the presence of God.

Psalm 139 says that God is everywhere, and the psalmist is very daring. He says, even in Hades, you'll find God's presence. God is sovereign in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and you can't get a ticket out of God's presence.

And that's one point for application right away. If you're trying to run away from God, I tell you, it is absolutely impossible. And what's more, the ticket that Jonah gets is expensive.

I'm just negotiating to go and see my dear mum-in-law. Now, let me give a piece of advice to young people. If you get married, try and ensure that your parents-in-law-to-be live a little nearer to England than mine do, because it's rather expensive going to see them, though they are very, very dear people and worth every pound that it costs us.

But it does take an awful amount of pounds to get out to Cape Town, to get out to South Africa. But it's even more expensive to move out of the will of God. It will cost Jonah a great deal.

Alexander White, who writes a delightful book entitled Bible Characters, and will the person who borrowed my copy of Alexander White's book please return it to me? I've been waiting for it for about six months now, and I can't remember who I loaned it to. Alexander White says this. No booking clerk in Joppa could have counted up to Jonah all it would cost him in his future life to have fled to Tarshish.

Tarshish was probably a port, a small fishing village in Spain. And Jonah thought that if he got there, that God would leave him in peace, because God had said, go to Nineveh, and Jonah said, no way am I going to Nineveh. I'm going to put myself as far from Nineveh as possible, and in so doing, I'm going to get out of your presence.

Well, if you've ever been a runaway from God, and I think many of us would say at some point in our lives we have, we know how painful an experience it is, and how much does it cost. I've had the upsetting experience from time to time of speaking to elderly people, trying to pastor those decades older than myself who have said, you know something, the years that the locusts have eaten have been so many in my life. I've run away from God.

I knew Him as Savior, but I didn't perform His will. And oh, that I could catapult myself back ten or twenty years, because the price of being out of His direct will has been so expensive. Well, there's another piece of application as we go along.

Don't move out of God's will. It's terribly expensive when you compute the cost. So, as you move on in Jonah's prophecy, into the middle of the first chapter, you find that he's bought his ticket.

He's bought it at Joppa, the place incidentally where Peter will be when he receives a vision from the Lord and is somewhat reluctant to obey the Lord. And his circumstance isn't that dissimilar from Jonah, because Peter is told to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and he doesn't want to go. So Joppa's got a double significance for us this evening.

Well, Jonah buys his ticket, and he sets out on board ship. And once again, quoting Alexander White, the ship gave signs that it was not chartered to carry such contraband cargo as Jonah. That ship, when Jonah got on board, became a marked ship.

And no way was it going to reach the country of Spain unless Jonah was taken off from the ship, because Jonah was not destined, in God's will, to go to Spain. And so you've got this rather lovely account of the sailors in their primitive fashion trying to work out why the sea is so rough and why they are getting so alarmed about the ferocity of this particular storm. I think the characters here come out in a very lovable fashion.

Do you remember our Saviour once said that the children of this world have more sense than the children of light. And what he meant by that was sometimes they can read circumstances and make conclusions better than believers. And so you've got these men, and they know that there's something about this storm that is more than purely natural, so they start to pray to their various gods.

Each one of them praying to his own gods, and somebody nips below and finds Jonah asleep and hauls him up on deck and says, you believe in God? Well, you get praying too, as many as possible. Let's pray to the gods. And Jonah gives them a lesson in theology and says, you know, fellas, this is Sargent's paraphrase, in effect, all your gods, they don't exist.

There's only one God, and He's ours. He's ours. Verse 9, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the seas, or who made the sea and the land.

And then he concedes the information that they needed to know, that he was running away from the Lord, and they want to know what they're going to do about it, and Jonah says, throw me overboard. Well, you can't do that, can you? I mean, dash it all, it's not decent, is it? It's not cricket or whatever game sailors play sailing out of Joppa to dump a Hebrew. They may be a little troublesome, these Jews, but isn't it drastic? However, Jonah prevails, and as my diagram indicates, he's thrown overboard.

And as soon as that happens, there's a great calm. And these primitive men, still showing that they are trying to feel themselves towards God and the morality that they feel that God has placed in their hearts, they offer sacrifice to the Lord. Verse 16, At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to Him.

And then we read of poor old Jonah, there in the water, a great fish comes along, and Jonah is swallowed and spends quite a period in the belly, in the stomach of that great fish. And it seems to me that when you move into that second chapter, as I indicated in my reading, you start to meditate on one of the great chapters of Scripture. Here is Jonah brought to his senses as a result of God sovereignly giving him a shark.

And it really was a shark, wasn't it? For him, for the man who should have been at Nineveh to discover himself in the bowels of the Mediterranean Sea and more literally in the bowels of a fish. But it strikes me that what also is interesting as you read Jonah's prayer, as he comes to his senses and he intercedes before the Lord God, the parallel between Jonah and a greater than Jonah. Here is this man and he is in the belly of the earth, so to speak.

And there feeling that in Spain he could have got away from the presence of God, he discovers that down in the depths of the Mediterranean God is still present. Verse 4, I said, I have been banished from your sight. And yet he discovers that God is present, fathoms down in the sea.

Look at the second verse, 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. And so Jonah starts to plead with the Lord.

Look at the sixth verse, but you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. And the seventh verse, when my life was ebbing away I remembered you, Lord. Now let's go to the greater than Jonah.

And there he was on the cross and from his parched lips there came that cry, My God, my God, why have you deserted me? Why have you abandoned me? Jonah, the natural Jonah, never knew utter abandonment. He thought that he would. He recognized that he deserved it.

But in the trauma of his experience in the stomach of a great fish, God was still present. But the greater than Jonah was to know that utter desolation of soul where the Father turned his back on him. My God, my God, why? When Jonah's life is ebbing away he remembers the Lord.

And what does he do? You look at the seventh verse and the latter part. My prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Well, what does that mean? That Jonah suddenly caught an airplane out of the fish's mouth and flew to the temple at Jerusalem? No.

You see, the Hebrews were not as primitive as some of us or some critics try to make out in their understanding of God. They recognized that God could be contacted at other points in this world. Indeed, ultimately they recognized that in all the warp and woof of life it was possible to be in contact with God even in the depths of the sea, even in the belly of a fish.

And my friend, that applies to you. I don't know what experience you're going through or what prompted you to come here this evening. And although we sang with a great deal of joy and rightly so, it may well be that that was a cosmetic joy and there are some who are going through great traumas like that of Jonah.

Let me tell you this. God can hear you. You don't have to be in the sanctuary of this tabernacle to pray to God, although it's not a bad place from which to offer prayer.

But wherever you are, down on the seafront, in the loneliness of your one room where you live, God is contactable. Jonah realizes this. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you.

And his prayer is raised to the holy temple, the celestial temple where God is. And ultimately Jonah starts to pray and to praise the Lord when in the ninth verse we discover I with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord.

Jonah has a theological lecture down in the belly of the fish and you would think from then on he'd get all his theology accurate. But let me tell you that some of the most stubborn people in God's world are theologians. They know, as Mr. Patterson was saying to the friends last night, there is a possibility of knowing God's Word but not acting on God's Word.

You can go to the seminary at the bottom of the Mediterranean, though I don't advise you going there. Learn the lessons that Jonah learned and you can still be defective ultimately in your discipleship, as you'll see with Jonah in a moment. But just to complete what I was saying about our Lord Jesus, remember that even when he was in the depths of the trauma through which he passed, prophetic scriptures said you will not abandon me to the grave.

You will not allow the body of your Holy One to see corruption. And as the fish belched out Jonah on the beach, so our Lord Jesus is brought again in the power of an everlasting life. Well, let's move on.

We find Jonah in the third chapter. Ready? Or so we would dare to believe to go to Nineveh. He's beached and he's looking pretty wet and bedraggled.

The voice of God comes to him the second time. Don't miss that. That verse has been bound to my soul.

The Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Thank God that he gives some of us a second chance. And many of us have cashed in on the 20th or the 100th as far as getting our discipleship right once again.

And so the Word of God comes to Jonah and he sets off now obediently and he starts to preach in this great city of Nineveh with its 120,000 people. And do you know what happens? The very thing that most preachers pour their hearts out for, e'er they preach, Jonah discovers is a consequence of his ministry. People are converted.

They respond to his message. He storms up and down the streets of Nineveh and he says, look at the verse, look at his words in verse 4, 40 more days and Nineveh will be destroyed and the Ninevites believed God. What a tragedy.

When people actually do what the prophet, what the evangelist says, what a great tragedy. Of course it's not. But as you will discover with Jonah, it seems to be the case.

What has happened is this. Jonah preaching in Nineveh, the message of repentance discovers that God has gone before and he's made these people sensitive to need. In a historical note that I give you in the outline which you can read later on if you've not done it already, you will discover that Nineveh and Assyria as a whole was going through a very bad time politically.

And Jonah was there just at the point when people were responsive. And they did respond. They bowed their heads.

They fell on the ground and they confessed to the Lord. And even the king got in on this renewal or this revival for he puts out a decree. The seventh verse.

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God.

Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish. What an extraordinary assertion from one of the most powerful men controlling the most powerful nation even though it was on not so good times.

But what an extraordinary declaration from their political regal leader. Would to God today that someone in parliament in the United Kingdom would have the common sense to repeat the words of the king of Nineveh as our country is confronted with the gospel. And the Ninevehites that's not easy to get out the citizens of Nineveh as I say engage in a wholesale repentance.

And what does that teach us? My friend, never limit God. And what can happen as a result of the faithful proclamation of his ministry of his gospel. I remember when I was out in Pakistan last year.

I came across the most remarkable fact that had utterly escaped me in my reading in the history of revivals. In 1904 something marvelous happened in this country as many of you know. The Principality of Wales to be exact.

There was a tremendous move of God's spirit. I think I spoke about this some while ago at the tabernacle. And many, many thousands of people were converted.

And do you know at the same time as there was a revival in Wales so there was the beginnings of a revival in part of Pakistan. And if you were to trace the history of the denominations in Pakistan today they invariably go back to that revival. So you see what I'm trying to say.

If Nineveh seemed hopeless to Jonah and it was a reasonable conclusion at the natural level that Nineveh was hopeless how much more so to us today does it seem that the Muslim world is hopeless. Iran and Iraq locked in a conflict for two years. 200,000 people have died in the last 24 months in those countries.

It seems an impossible situation. But the God who visited Nineveh with Jonah can visit people today in unpromising parts of our world and by the power of the Spirit compel them to respond. There's a place in India called Nagaland.

India is very, very limited as far as Christian communities are concerned. One out of every hundred will be Christian. And that would be a very the 1% would cover a great deal of nominalism.

But go to Nagaland and I forget the exact statistic it's something like 70% that are Christian. You trace it right back to the beginnings of the work of William Carey and the strict Baptist mission which has been very blessed in that part of India. And you come across this this almost unique thing in fact I would go so far as to say unique in northern India, in Nagaland in a country that's saturated with Hinduism with a lashing of Islam there is a state that in the majority is Christian.

You see the point? God does it today as He did it yesteryear. He can cause men and women to come to a knowledge of Himself. There's no situation that's impossible for God is absolutely sovereign.

Well, here is Jonah responding in a very remarkable way to his successful ministry. Instead of dancing and singing all parts of the Hallelujah chorus he plunges into a terrible depression. The first verse of the fourth chapter.

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. I knew it Lord. I got some idea that you make a fool of me.

The problem with you Lord I say respectfully is that you're just a little bit too merciful. You've not just directed your mercy to the Jews but now you've gone and done it. You've let the people of Nineveh respond.

I knew that this would happen and this is one of the reasons I'm conceding it now. This is one of the reasons why I was so reluctant to go out there in the first instance because I knew the graciousness and the compassions of God would get on top of him and that he would be slow to anger and he would abound in love. Now again it's a paraphrase but that's not exactly unjustified, is it? When you read what Jonah's prayer or comment to the Lord is in that first verse.

So Jonah in a peak of depression goes and sulks waiting for the end of the forty days knowing full well that God is not going to pour out his vengeance on Nineveh because its citizens have responded. And what does God do? He gives Jonah one of the most fascinating visual aid lessons which, get that point in because it justifies my using the overhead projector this evening. He has one of the most remarkable visible lessons in the whole of Scripture.

Jonah is there looking towards Nineveh. It's very, very hot and he's not feeling very happy at all and God causes a vine to grow so there's a bit of shade and Jonah has an affection for that vine which some rather unusual people have for their cats or their dogs or whatever pet. I mean that vine was really, really choice.

A choice vine just for Jonah and what do you know when he's benefiting from it a worm comes along and causes the vine to die and the heat of the sun creates more problems for Jonah. Look at the fifth verse. Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city.

There he made himself a shelter sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort and Jonah was very happy about the vine but at dawn the next day God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered when the sun rose. Incidentally, do you think God has a sense of humor? I'm sure he must have.

There must have been a smile there in heaven as this worm eats the vine that Jonah is so affectionate towards. At dawn the next day God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.

He wanted to die and said it would be better for me to die than to live. And God the master teacher gets in the main point throws the book, so to speak, at Jonah. You have a right to be angry, Jonah.

Yes, Jonah says, you've made a fool of me. Here are these people in Nineveh I've preached and you're not sending your judgment. Jonah, have you a right to be angry over what I have done in regard to Nineveh? Are they not far more important those 120,000 people who don't know morally their right hand and their left hand? Are they not more important than a stupid vine? Man, what were you doing down there when I was lecturing you in the belly of the fish? You said that I am the God of salvation.

Salvation comes from the Lord. Then, Jonah, get your priorities in order and realize that my salvation will flood over from Jews to repentant Gentiles and I have done what I have because it's not my wish that any should perish among the Jew nor the Gentile but that all should be saved should I not be concerned about that great city. So, on reflection of this remarkable interesting account and the experience of Jonah we've learned many things.

Let me just throw in one or two more then open for some questions and comment. You discover a great deal about the doctrine of God as you read through Jonah. He's a God of pity.

A God of great compassion. He's a God of the universe. A universal God.

A God of all men. And He's a God of persistency. Thank God that when He saves us and we get stubborn He doesn't give us up.

If that had not been the case then I'd never have made Worthing. In fact, I'd never have made London moving out of my home city because I showed stubbornness that streak that is still there in my character even in my teenage days. But God is a God of persistency and He can move in on your life a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth time.

And then the corrective for Jonah. Jonah realizes something of the pain of disobedience. And he also realizes something of the necessity of evangelism.

But standing out for those who've got spiritual discernment on every page of the prophecy of Jonah is the anticipation. Those who can't see it at the back of the sanctuary on the lower part here of my overhead projector I've got Jesus Jonah because the Christ of Scripture stands out paramountly in the chapters of this prophecy and it's pointing to Him and all that He will achieve for men and women. Thank God for the greater than Jonah.

Thank God for the one who in heaven when asked will you go and preach the gospel and be the gospel for the sinful children of Adam said here am I Lord send me. No disobedience. No stubbornness.

Just a ready acceptance of the sovereign will of the Father in bringing salvation to this world by the ministry of the Spirit by the ministry of the Son through the power and the application of the Spirit. Well let me stop there. That's Jonah as I understand the book though there's a lot more that could have been said and should have been said and doubtless that some of you would like to add to our knowledge right now.