Obeying the Call

Jonah 3

I found out on Thursday that Carl’s oral surgery was more extensive than he had expected and that he wouldn’t be talking comfortably for a while. When Mimi asked if I could give the message today in his place, she apologized for the short notice, but I reassured her later that it was not the shortest notice that I have received. One time a few years ago in Nepal, I was sitting in church when the leader announced, “Brother Tim will be giving the message today. Let’s pray for him as he comes up.” I had the whole time during his prayer to think about what I would say.

Anyway, I have really enjoyed Carl’s teaching and appreciate his insights into the Word. I hope I can do justice to the flow of what he has been sharing from the book of Jonah. As he said, it is such a familiar story to those us who grew up hearing it in Sunday School and at home that we easily miss the impact that it would have had on people in Jonah’s day, hearing it for the first time. The audacity of Jonah, trying to run away from the Lord, heading toward Tarshish, as far away from Nineveh as he could go. The desperate struggle in the storm, with the only solution being to throw Jonah overboard to a certain death. God’s dramatic provision of the great fish to swallow Jonah and preserve his life. Last Sunday we considered Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish, his acknowledgement of God’s power and salvation, an expression of his willingness to submit to God, but not really an admission of any wrongdoing or a sincere change of heart.

As we will see in the rest of the story, Jonah does not really care about the Ninevites. At the beginning of the story, he appears to be motivated by fear, but this seems to change as time goes on. As Carl mentioned, his initial reaction to God asking him to go to Nineveh might be compared to that of a Jew considering the prospect of going to Nazi Berlin and speaking out against the wickedness of Hitler. His terror at the thought of brazenly confronting the powerful and ruthless enemy of his people might have been understandable, except that he was forgetting who was asking him to do it: the almighty creator of the universe. It evidently occurred to him during the storm that he would not be able to resist God. He admitted to the sailors that he worshiped Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land. We read how this terrified the sailors, because they realized that they were not dealing with a limited local deity that needed to be appeased, but the supreme God who had power over everything.

So in Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish we see his thankfulness to God for sparing his life, his recognition that salvation comes from the Lord, and his promise to fulfill the vows that he has made, which presumably includes being obedient to what God has asked him to do. His prayer ends in verse 9 of chapter 2, and we take up the narrative again in verse 10: 

And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

We do not know where this happened – obviously nowhere near Nineveh in northern Iraq – but it may have been near a populated area, since Jonah likely needed some help after his ordeal. The account of this story in the Koran actually says that Jonah was in a state of sickness at this point, which would certainly be understandable. (Incidentally, Jonah is the only one of the Old Testament’s 12 Minor Prophets that is mentioned in the Koran.) The Bible doesn’t say, but I wonder if Jonah might have become something of a celebrity after this event. Any trace of fear certainly disappears. And you can imagine how a story like this would spread far and wide, accompanied by a sense of awe that someone could calm a raging storm by being thrown overboard, survive in the belly of a fish for three days, and then be deposited safely on dry land. You can picture people treating Jonah like he was someone with special powers or at least closely connected with a very powerful God. His reputation probably preceded him wherever he went, and people wanted to see him and talk to him. So now we move to chapter 3: 

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.--Jonah 3:1-3a

Notice how the word of the Lord has changed from the first time. At the beginning of chapter 1 Jonah is told to preach against Nineveh because of its wickedness. Now the Lord is leaving the message more vague. He wants Jonah to be willing to go and give whatever message God desires. Jonah obeys and goes, but we will see that he is not open to be a part of whatever God chooses to do. He has his own ideas. The second part of verse 3 is a sort of parenthetical comment: 

Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.

Archeologists in the mid-1800s identified exactly where Nineveh was, now part of northern Iraq next to the modern-day city of Mosul. It had been almost completely lost, wiped off the map, for more than 2000 years. Because Nineveh was built mainly of mud bricks not much remains. But people have laid out where the walls and gates were. Some parts of these have been reconstructed, for example the Adad Gate on the northern side.

You can see from the map how large the site is, perhaps 3 miles in length. It could take 3 days to cover all of its neighborhoods, which is what Jonah began to do. But just another word on the historicity of this story. The two smaller areas on the map are actually mounds, where important structures once were, built up in layers. The one called Nebi Yunus gets its name from Jonah himself. It is revered by Muslims in the area as the place where Jonah was buried, and there is a mosque on top of it today, built on the site of what once was a Christian church.

Because of the mosque, archeologists have not been able to excavate much of the mound, but there is evidence that this is where King Esarhaddon built a palace about 100 years after the time of Jonah. Incidentally, there are sites in Palestine and Lebanon that are also identified by tradition as the burial place of Jonah, so this doesn’t prove his connection with Nineveh, but the fact that his name has been associated with this area from antiquity does support the Biblical account of his visit and the impact of that.

There is another interesting connection between Jonah and the god Dagon referred to in the Bible, for example in 1 Samuel 5, during the time when Samuel was the leader of Israel and the Israelites were at war with the Philistines: 

After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place.  But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon’s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.--I Samuel 5:1-5

Dagon was actually a fish-god, half man and half fish, worshiped in the Middle East from at least 2300 B.C. Some images of Dagon have been found that show him with the top half of a man and the bottom half of a fish. That might be why only his head and hands broke off in this story: he didn’t have any legs. Anyway, the traditional place for where the whale deposited Jonah on dry ground, some 300 years after this incident in 1 Samuel, is in Ashdod, a place on the Mediterranean coast where this fish-god was worshiped. Now wouldn’t Jonah cause a sensation in a place like that, appearing out of a great fish with a message from the Lord, the creator of the sea and the land!

And it wasn’t just next to the Mediterranean that the fish-god was worshiped. This image was excavated in the palace of Assyrian King Sargon II in Khorsabad from around the time of Jonah. Khorsabad is less than 10 miles from Nineveh.

So we can clearly see God’s hand at work in the story of Jonah in a remarkable way. His using a great fish to rescue Jonah was not happenstance. His amazing and gracious purpose was to open the way for Jonah to have a hearing with the Ninevites. And they certainly listened to him. Jonah 3 again: 

Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown." The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals 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.”--Jonah 3:4-9

Look at Jonah’s message: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Is this exactly what God told him to say? We don’t know. We know that God was concerned about the wickedness of the city and that he wanted Jonah to speak out against that. But if we look ahead, we see that Jonah was more definite about the destruction of the city than God was. Jonah wanted to see the city destroyed; it became a matter of prestige for him. He hadn’t wanted to come on this mission anyway. He hated the Assyrians and didn’t want to have anything to do with them. He probably enjoyed seeing them grovel when he gave them this message of judgment.

It’s interesting to note what verse 5 says. “The Ninevites believed God.” It doesn’t say they believed Jonah – they probably weren’t too impressed with his attitude. Somehow they realized that this was a message for them from Almighty God. Did Jonah talk to them about their wickedness? Maybe he didn’t have to. Somehow they all knew that they were guilty. What did they do? They repented. We tend to think about repentance as a verbal admission of our guilt and a promise to “try to do better next time.” Sometimes we don’t take it very seriously. But historically, repentance has typically been accompanied by some outward actions as a sign of a contrite heart. Here we have wearing sackcloth, fasting, and sitting in the dust.

We tend to think of sackcloth as being something like burlap, but in biblical times it was probably woven from coarse goat hair. In any case, it would have been very itchy and uncomfortable to wear next to one’s skin. It was intended as a continual reminder of the seriousness of one’s sin. Have you heard of a hair shirt or cilice? That was the equivalent in later times when Christians, particularly monks and nuns, would try to “mortify the flesh” with clothing or devices that were designed to induce discomfort. The concept of self-induced suffering for spiritual benefits is a tricky one, however. The practice became corrupted in the Catholic church when people began thinking that God’s forgiveness is dependent on “doing” penance. We can’t earn God’s forgiveness by anything that we do. It is only a matter of receiving his grace by faith – not by works, so that no one can boast, as it says in Ephesians 2:9.

Anyway, many people in the Bible dressed in sackcloth as an outward sign of inward mourning or penitence. It may seem strange to us, because we are so used to being comfortable, but comfort can be a snare, insulating us from the prompting of the Holy Spirit. That is why people who fast and pray often find a deeper communion with God, as their focus is taken off the desires of their flesh. The fasting here in Jonah was intended as another outward sign of inner repentance. It is unusual that the fasting and sackcloth extended to the animals as well. You can imagine the whole city, every living thing, crying out to God for mercy.

The king of Nineveh humbled himself along with everyone else, wearing sackcloth and sitting in the dust. I have seen beggars wearing rags and sitting in the dust of Nepali roadsides. Some are truly wretched and pitiable creatures. The king was lowering himself to be like a beggar, the lowest of the low. He acknowledged the sin of the people, their evil ways and their violence, and their need for repentance. He realized that their only hope was the mercy and compassion of God – nothing that they could do.

And what was the result? Verse 10:

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

God saw genuine repentance, and he had mercy. Clearly it was not a permanent change of heart, for the Ninevites turned away again from following the true God, and their city was completely destroyed in 612 BC, about 150 years after the time of Jonah. The prophet Nahum warned them of this destruction shortly before it happened – and there is no indication of repentance that time.

But God is always ready to show mercy, even on the enemies of his people. There are so many verses in the Bible about the compassion of God. Take Joel chapter 2, for example: 

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing—grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.--Joel 2:12-14

Jonah knew about the compassion of God – and he appreciated it when he and his people were the recipients of it. However, we will see next time in chapter 4 just how deep his resentment of the Ninevites was. He knew that the Jews were God’s chosen people, but he was missing an important reason for them being chosen! In God’s covenant with Abraham he made it clear that the blessings were not just for Abraham’s descendants. As Galatians 3 says:

Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”--Galatians 3:8

Jonah had no vision to be a blessing to the nations. He had reluctantly obeyed and gone to deliver God’s message to the Ninevites – as long as it was a message of judgment and he could be assured of his own personal safety. He was God’s prophet, but he did not share God’s concern for all the people of the world. How far does our love extend? I was thinking about this issue this week as I was reading the latest Go magazine. This is put out by Interserve, an interdenominational mission agency that began in the UK but which now has offices all around the world. This issue highlights the church bombing that occurred last September in Peshawar, Pakistan. I would like to read a few excerpts from this article, written by someone close to the attack:

"The Ninevites were the terrorists of Jonah’s day, destroying the people that he loved. He couldn’t bring himself to love them – or even to accept God’s love for them. How far does our love extend? Do we care about what is happening in Pakistan, where people are dying on a regular basis just because they are Christians? You have probably heard of Robert Pierce’s famous prayer: “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.” In 1947 Pierce was working with Youth for Christ when he visited China and was overwhelmed by all the needs there. He felt intense compassion for all the hungry Chinese children that he saw. He wrote this prayer in the front of his Bible and established an organization called World Vision, which has grown to be one of the largest relief and development agencies in the world, distributing almost $3 billion in aid each year in the name of Jesus in almost 100 countries around the world."

What breaks your heart? What actually motivates you – and me – to take action? Does your heart break over your sin, as the Ninevites’ did? Does your heart break for the lost, as Jonah’s apparently did not? Does your heart break over the suffering of God’s people around the world, such as these bombing victims in Pakistan?

You might be able to guess what song was running through my head as I was writing this – Hosanna, by Hillsong. We sing it here. The middle part goes

Heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Show me how to love like you have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks yours

Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause

As I walk from earth into eternity.

Let’s make that our prayer as we daily seek God’s will for how we should live, not reluctantly obedient like Jonah, caring only about his own comfort, but with God’s heart for the world, with His love and compassion that is always ready to forgive and reach out and help.