Fleeing the Call

Jonah 1:1-16

Welcome! Today we begin a new series on the book of Jonah. For many people, the story of Jonah, at least the part about the whale, or more accurately, big fish, is one of the most familiar stories in the Bible, right up there with Adam and Eve and the serpent, Noah and the ark, and the shepherds and the angels at the birth of Jesus. If you had a Christian upbringing, you were probably told this story countless times in Sunday school, and perhaps had it read to you as a toddler on multiple occasions by your parents. Unfortunately, this kind of familiarity sometimes makes it harder for us to really look at the account carefully, with fresh eyes. The reality is that, as a literary work, Jonah is a masterful tale, full of surprising twists and turns. It is written so that the events in the story really do come as surprises; it is only because of our over-familiarity of the work that we miss this. A second problem some of you may have with this work is that the book of Jonah is a pinpoint of frequent attacks on the Bible. You have probably heard people say, “Come on, how can a whale swallow a person, and how could such a person live?” These attacks may cause you to question whether Jonah is true. It is possible that Jonah is a fictitious account, just as it is possible that Job and Ruth and Esther are fictitious accounts, but I don’t think so, for multiple reasons.

One reason is this passage from 2 Kings about Jeroboam son of Jehoash. I am going to give the entire portion about Jeroboam so that you can see the context.

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through His servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher. – 2 Kings 14:23-25

The Lord had seen how bitterly everyone in Israel, whether slave or free, was suffering; there was no one to help them. And since the Lord had not said He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash. As for the other events of Jeroboam’s reign, all he did, and his military achievements, including how he recovered for Israel both Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? Jeroboam rested with his ancestors, the kings of Israel. And Zechariah his son succeeded him as king. – 2 Kings 14:26-29

This passage mentions Jonah, son of Amittai, the same person (same father) as given in Jonah 1:1, as we will soon read. This shows Jonah a real person, who lived at the time of Jeroboam, which likely means that the book takes place between 793 and 758 BC, roughly 750-800 years before Christ. Now the book of Jonah does not mention these activities of the prophet Jonah – prophesying that Jeroboam would restore the boundaries of Israel – at all. But like most Old Testament prophets, it appears that the Lord gave him multiple prophecies to proclaim. Most often these prophecies were to the Jewish people, but on occasion they were also to other nations, often proclaiming doom for how they mistreated the Israelites. In the book of Jonah, as we will soon see, Jonah is told to give a message to the non-Jewish people of Nineveh.

Another reason we should take the account of the book of Jonah to be true is that Jesus refers to it as if it were true. And so, if you accept the accounts of Jesus as truthful, you really don’t have much choice except to accept Jonah as well. Jesus mentions Jonah on multiple occasions. One is in the account recorded in Matthew 12:

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 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.” – Matt. 12:38-40

^“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.” – Matt. 12:41-42

Here Jesus clearly speaks of Jonah as a real person and as his miraculous three days in the big fish as a historical event, just as he speaks of “the Queen of the South” – that is, the Queen of Sheba – as a real person and as a real event. Just as how nobody would talk about some event from Abraham Lincoln’s past and some event involving Bugs Bunny in the same breath (that is, without being laughed at for doing so), nobody would equate history and fiction in the same breath back then either. We will talk more about this passage as we get further into this series, but for now, let me just point out that Jesus in some way compares Himself with Jonah: “For as Jonah was… so the Son of Man will…” By the way, a very similar account is also found in Luke 11:29-32.

Jesus also mentions Jonah in the account recorded in Matthew 16:

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested Him by asking Him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away. – Matt. 16:1-4

Here Jesus again in some way compares Himself with Jonah, implying that something about the story of Jonah points to Him, “the sign of Jonah.” Again, we will look more at this later in the series.

Interestingly, Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet that Jesus compares directly to Himself. Clearly Jesus considered the account of Jonah very important and relevant to His own purpose and ministry. The town mentioned in the 2 Kings account of Jeroboam mentions that Jonah was from Gath-hepher, a town it turns out that was only a few miles north of Nazareth; both towns were in Galilee.

Interestingly, in John 7, we have this:

On hearing His words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.” Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? – John 7:40-41

And this:

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” – John 7:50-52

I guess Jonah doesn’t count! Or perhaps he was considered somewhat an embarrassment. Anyway, for what it is worth, I find this geographical connection between Jonah and Jesus interesting. So let’s get into the account of Jonah itself.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me.” – Jonah 1:1-2

Now Nineveh was approximately 600 miles east of Jerusalem, located east of the Tigris River in what is now Iraq. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the biggest enemy of Israel at that time. Assyrians worshiped many gods including Ashur, the god of power.

By the way, the book of Nahum also mentions Nineveh, but the prophecies and events of Nahum take place about 150 years later than the prophecies and events of Jonah. In Nahum’s case, the prophecies of destruction do come to pass a short time later, when the entire nation of Assyria falls, including Nineveh, for the evil that they had done in the years long after Jonah. Who conquered Assyria? The Babylonians conquered a lot of people, they conquered the non-Judah part of Israel, and later conquered Egypt, and then conquered Assyria, and finally conquered Judah. But all of this happened well after the events in Jonah.

So Jonah went east to Nineveh, right? Because that’s what prophets do. When the mighty God, creator of heaven and Earth speaks to you, you do what He says, right? Well… no. 

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. – Jonah 1:3

Tarshish was most likely Tartessus in what is now southern Spain. Tarshish was 2500 miles west of Joppa, which was itself south and west of Jerusalem. Going to Nineveh was a pretty giant journey, 600 miles, but going to Tarshish – in the Old Testament world you could hardly go farther in the wrong direction! To put Israel, Nineveh, and Tarshish on the same map makes all of Israel look like a small smudge compared to the vast expanses of land and sea to make these two journeys.

Now this is one case where we are somewhat spoiled by having heard the story so many times. But to a reader of that era, to someone who had not read the story before, why would one say Jonah went to Tarshish? What is the natural, presumed reason? It is that he was afraid! Nineveh was a scary place; it’s kind of like a Jew in World War II who lives in America being told to go to Berlin and tell them how bad they are! The account wants you to think this is why Jonah is going the wrong way. It uses the phrases “ran away” and “flee” to give this impression. But if you note carefully, it doesn’t actually tell us why Jonah did this. The real reason is one of many surprising plot twists in this true story.

We too can run from God, at least for a while. Notice that God could have stopped Jonah by making no ships available, or by blocking his entrance onto the ships, or causing him to lose his money, or otherwise stopped him any of a countless number of other ways.  But He didn’t. A ship was available, the fare was affordable, and Jonah seemingly had no problems going his own way. God sometimes lets us do this too. Never assume that just because doors open for you that it must mean that something God would not approve of is therefore in this case OK. That’s just not how God works and not how life works. Beware of justifying shady practices by saying that the fact that it came across your path must mean something. God will often allow us to discover the folly of running from Him by letting us run.

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. – Jonah 1:4-5a

Today we might call the sailors pagans, although more properly that term refers to something that only came to be later. I suspect the sailors were more like modern Hindus; there were many gods to choose to worship from, and they worshiped the gods of their families or added other gods as opportunities and situations arose.

Now don’t misunderstand me on this, but I think these sailors were what we might call in quotes “good people.” Now I know my theology; Scripture is clear that none of us is good, that all our righteousness is in reality as filthy rags, apart from Christ living in us and the renewing of us and empowering in us through the Holy Spirit. But what I mean is that I think these sailors were, well, god-fearing folks; they tried to do right, to live moral lives, most of the time, just like many modern Hindus and people of every other religion and even people of no religion. And to their credit, they knew their weaknesses, their frailty, and in times of peril they didn’t just rely on their own strength but cried out to the higher powers that they believed in. And to their credit they didn’t just try to kill each other and throw each other overboard; they understood that people were infinitely more valuable than stuff, and so they threw away their stuff so as to try to save their people.

I would say that these people wanted to be good. And in our world today, I would say that most people, of every religious persuasion, want to be good. Wanting to be good is actually a necessary starting point in presenting the gospel successfully to someone. The message of the gospel – which means good news – is in part some bad news; that wanting to be good just isn’t good enough. Because the reality is that although a part of us wants to be good, there is another part that is selfish and leads us to do bad things; we all do bad things too. The good news is that, unlike those who worship these false gods, we don’t need to try harder, whether it is trying harder to be good or trying harder to please the gods we say we worship. Instead we need to, in faith, present ourselves to God, accepting the penalty of Christ on the cross to pay for our sins, the bad things we have done, and asking Christ to replace our broken hearts with His heart, so that day by day God changes us to want to be good with our whole hearts (which are really His heart). But I am getting off topic. Let’s continue the narrative:

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” – Jonah 1:5b-6

Here you see in the captain the reason that in religions such as Hinduism the number of gods is constantly expanding. Worshiping many gods is actually pragmatic; people do it because it seems to work. It is similar to how so many so-called “old wives tales” about home remedies, including many that are quackery, come to arise. Somebody tries something once and it seems to work, so a new treatment (whether it had anything to do with it or not) is born. In the same way, someone adds a god to their pantheon when something good happens after praying to him.

There is a great irony here; the captain wanted Jonah to call on his god, when his only reason for being on that ship at all was because he was fleeing from his God! “Calling on his god” was the last thing Jonah wanted to do! God does this kind of thing today sometimes as well; don’t be surprised if someone comes up to you and asks you to pray for help in the very sin area that you are struggling with and refusing to come to God about!

Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” – Jonah 1:7-8

When God is after you, even stuff that shouldn’t work works! Casting lots to choose among apparently equally good choices (such as when the remaining 11 apostles cast lots to decide which of two good choices would replace Judas) is fine, but casting lots as a form of divination is something else. I Samuel 14 and Joshua 7 give examples of using lots to determine who is guilty, but these are descriptive, not proscriptive; the Old Testament law never proscribes casting lots to determine guilt, and some passages such as Lev. 19:26 and perhaps Deut. 18:10 seem to imply the opposite. The sailors, however, are not Jewish, and so casting lots seems to them a perfectly reasonable approach. However, God (the real God) is not under any obligation to honor this practice. In general, it is hard to see why God would honor the casting of lots by people who worship false gods; in general, answering such a prayer would only tend to make the people have greater faith in their false gods. However, the great irony here is that God does honor it in this case so that Jonah’s sin of fleeing from the Lord is revealed.

He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” – Jonah 1:9

The word translated “worship” here may more literally be translated as “fear.” It is the word used, for example, when Abraham is about sacrifice Isaac and God says to not lay a hand on him because He now knows that Abraham “fears” God. This is the same word used when it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Again this is ironic, because up until some moments ago, Jonah apparently did not fear God; it takes a lot of non-worship, non-fear to be willing to violate a direct command of God.

This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” – Jonah 1:10-11

Why did this terrify them? Because the God he said he worshiped was God of the sea. The comment adds that they, from past conversations, already knew he was running away from his God. Picture the scene. The storm is getting rougher and rougher. They are about to sink at any minute from a giant wave that crushes their ship to pieces. And they have just learned that Jonah’s God is very real and very powerful, and apparently, very upset with Jonah. The “What have you done” could be translated as “Why have you done this?” Implied is the idea “What in the world were you thinking?” It is a rebuke, an entirely appropriate one.

I am reminded of a poem by Francis Thompson called the “Hound of Heaven.” It’s a long poem, and some of it is hard to understand, but I want to quote the first few verses, as it describes this situation pretty well. The idea is that the “Hound” is God, pursuing a sinner as a dog pursues a rabbit or a fox.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat-and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet-

'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'

This describes Jonah perfectly; all things – the storm, the sailor’s queries, the casting lots – were betraying Jonah who had betrayed his God. By the way, if you make it to the end of the poem, you see that the “Hound” didn’t want to kill the “I” in the poem, but to restore him, to embrace him as he gave up his flight. As we will see in later in this series, I think the same can be said of God with regards to Jonah’s life.

The terrified sailors ask, “What should we do to you?” I think “unto you” is perhaps a better translation, as there is no implied meanness or anger here. They, using the logic of the gods they worship who (in their minds) when angry demand sacrifice, want to know what is the appropriate thing to do to appease this God of the seas and dry lands whom Jonah has made so angry.

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”  Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. – Jonah 1:12-13

Jonah seems to come to the same conclusion; God is angry at him, not at the sailors, so if he separates himself from the sailors, perhaps God will spare them. There is a fantastic irony here, but we will need to get a few chapters further to see it.

I said before that I thought the sailors were “good people.” They don’t know the true God, and they certainly don’t know the gospel, but they know basic right from wrong and they didn’t want to sacrifice this man to his angry God. So they tried to row back to dry land (that’s the same word that Jonah uses when he says God is the God of the dry land and the sea) but as you know, it doesn’t work. God’s not going to let Jonah off the hook this easily. We can’t see into Jonah’s heart at this instant, but I think that if God had relented at this point, Jonah probably wouldn’t have resumed his assigned task to go to Nineveh; he might have stayed out the sea, but I question whether at this point his repentance was genuine. I cannot see into Jonah’s heart, but this is so common to human nature; we promise God anything when in trouble, but as soon as the trouble is lifted, we go back to our old way of life. This is not repentance. But it didn’t work. 

Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for You, Lord, have done as You pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. – Jonah 1:14-15

Again, I like these “heathens.” They, at this point, truly fear the true God; they know of His power and standards for righteousness but not of His love and mercy, for these have not come out through this encounter. And so they prayed to God, asking Him to not blame them for throwing Jonah overboard. And the sea, more literally, ceased from its raging. There is no “growing” in the Hebrew, only ceasing. Even more literally, the word means to stand. I don’t know that I have the appropriate image, but I like the picture of a Giant bending down from heaven to stir the seas with a giant spoon, and then, suddenly, ceasing the stirring so that the seas quickly return to normal.

We have one more verse, but if you would allow me to summarize so far, we have had a story in which a man was in a boat, and the boat was overtaken by a terrible storm. The man was asleep while the storm raged. One of the sailors woke up the sleeper and said, in effect, “We are going to die! Do something!” And then there was a miraculous intervention by God and the storm was calmed. But wait; I’m not talking about Jonah! I’m talking about a story from the New Testament! Let’s turn to this other story.

That day when evening came, He said to His disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took Him along, just as He was, in the boat. There were also other boats with Him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, don’t You care if we drown?” – Mark 4:35-38

Do you see all the parallels? 

Jesus: A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jonah: Such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 

Jesus: Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. Jonah: But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 

Jesus: The disciples woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, don’t You care if we drown?” Jonah: The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god!”

But the second parts of the stories seem quite different. Continuing in Mark 4:

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him!” – Mark 4:39-41

There are parallels in the supernatural calming of the sea. Jesus said “Quiet, be still,” and the wind died down and it was completely calm. Jonah said, “Throw me in,” and they eventually did, and the raging sea grew calm. And I think that the disciples perhaps made the connection; it was God who calmed the wind and the seas around Jonah, and it was God who commanded the wind and the seas to be calm on the disciples’ boat so that they obeyed. Who is this? God!

Although there are obvious differences in the fact that Jonah had been running away from God whereas Jesus was always in the dead center of God’s will, there is a deeper parallel if you stand back and think about the overall events of the gospel. Jonah said to the sailors, in effect, “There’s only one thing to do. If I die, you will live.” The same was true for Jesus, not at the water’s edge, but at the cross. Jesus too could say, “If I die, you will live.” It was Jonah’s choice to be thrown in, and similarly it was Jesus’ choice to follow God the Father’s will and die on the cross.

In Matthew 12:42, Jesus calls Himself a “greater-than-Jonah” and He was. Whereas Jonah had himself thrown into the sea expecting to die to fix the mess that he himself had caused, Jesus had Himself put on the cross to fix the mess that all of humanity, that we have caused.  Jonah did it to fix his mess and save those who were not at fault, but Jesus did it to fix our mess, and save those who were at fault. Truly a “greater-than-Jonah” was here. It is an infinitely greater-than-Jonah that we worship.

Let’s go on to the last verse for today:

At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to Him. – Jonah 1:16

Irony alert! Jonah’s messed up decisions, his messed-up life ends up turning a whole boatload of “pagans” to believe in the true God! Again, we will see how deep this irony runs in later weeks. Now, as it says in Romans 6, we should not go on sinning so that grace would increase, but sometimes God uses even our sin to draw others to Him.

As we wrap up, I need to ask the obvious question. Are you running from God? Are you avoiding doing something that He has previously laid on your heart to do, whether it is to confess a sin, or get with someone for accountability and prayer, or to serve in a way God has been leading you to serve but you resist Him. Whom do we really want to follow, Jonah or our “greater-than-Jonah”?