The Tragedy of an Unwilling Missionary

Jonah 1-4

     As I mentioned to you this morning, in our service tonight I want us to examine the very wonderful and intriguing prophecy of Jonah in the Old Testament as we come to a conclusion of this particular emphasis on reaching the world for Christ.  No more fitting Old Testament book than this could be examined.  So we're going to look precisely at the book of Jonah, and I'll give you a few minutes to find it.

     There are, of course, in the Scripture many very wonderful and special texts which emphasize the missionary theme.  Texts particularly familiar to us in the New Testament, our Lord speaking about the fields being white unto harvest.  As we saw this morning, the great commission, "Go into all the world, make disciples of all nations, preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins to all people."  The great text of Acts 1:8, "You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth."  Great words from the Apostle Paul who said, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation."  And then the great text of 1 Corinthians 16:9 in which the Apostle Paul says, "There is a great door and effectual open unto me and there are many adversaries."  Texts like these that remind us of the missionary theme, the emphasis of reaching a lost world for Christ.

     We could even read, as we did last Sunday morning, Psalm 96 which is a parallel to 1 Chronicles 16 in which the Scripture says to declare God's glory among the nations, His wonders among all people.  Show forth, it says, from day to day His salvation.  We could read Psalm 18 verse 49 which says, "Therefore I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the heathen I will sing praises unto Thy name."  In Isaiah 43:21 God says, "This people have I formed for Myself, they will show forth My praise."  Many passages.  I'm thinking also of Deuteronomy chapter 4 verses 5 and 6, "Behold I have taught you statutes and ordinances even as the Lord my God commanded me that ye should do so in the land to which you go to possess it.  Keep therefore and do them for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations who shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people."  And God is saying to His people, "If you're the people you ought to be, you'll attract the attention of the world.  And when they see your wisdom and understanding, you can speak to them of the one who is indeed the source of that."

     Israel as we know was chosen as a nation of missionaries, to proclaim God's truth to the world.  This was God's design.  In addition to calling the nation as a witnessing nation, both by their life style and by their speaking of the truth of God, in addition to calling the nation in total, He called from within the nation very special men who were prophets.  And their object was to speak the message of God to Israel and other nations as well.  First to Israel in order that Israel might maintain its purity and its holiness and its righteousness, and therefore maintain a testimony in the world.  And then also they were to speak to other nations as well, mainly a message of judgment and repentance from sin. 

     Each of the prophets had special direction from God.  Each of them had a varied ministry.  Their message came directly from God, as ours does. Theirs came directly from God not necessarily through the written Word, our comes through the written Word. They received theirs in revelations and visions and voices from heaven.  But they were called of God from within the nation to speak to the world.  And among those prophets to the heathen, those very special missionary prophets, we could mention Abraham.  Abraham, who was a prophet to his neighbors.  We go back even into Genesis and if you'll look for a moment at the twentieth chapter of Genesis, just one verse to point you to, verse 7, "Now therefore restore the man his wife for he is a prophet and he shall pray for thee and thou shalt live and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou and all that are thine."  And in this situation where Abraham could have forfeited his wife, God instructs that the woman be given back to him for he is a prophet.  He is a transmitter of God's truth.

     Moses also is called a prophet, a unique prophet who spoke the Word of God, who spoke the Word of God to a pagan nation, Egypt, as well as to his own people Israel.  Then there was Elijah who preached to Ahab and Jezebel and Elisha who was used in the life of a heathen Syrian by the name of Naaman.  So there were very unique prophets of God, even as far back as Genesis in the early years of God's redeeming work, whose task was to speak to the nations the truth of God.

     Then came the literary prophets that we know so well because books of the Old Testament are named after them.  And they also preached to the heathen world.  There was Isaiah who in chapters 13 through 27 preaches to the heathen.  There was Jeremiah who in chapters 46 to 51 of his marvelous prophecy speaks to Egypt, Philistia, Phoenicia, Moab, Amman, Edom, Syria, Kedar, Hazor, Elam and Babylon.  And there is Ezekiel who preached judgment to Tyre and Sidon and Egypt and such judgment recorded against the Gentile nations in chapters 25 to 32.

     Then there was Daniel and Daniel was God's personal missionary to the courts of Babylon, an effective missionary during the captivity of Israel, both to the Babylonian and the Medo‑Persian Empire.  There was Obadiah.  Obadiah was God's missionary to the nation of Edom, the Edomites and he gave to them a message of doom. There was Nahum.  Nahum was sent to preach the coming judgment of Nineveh, the same city to which Jonah was sent.  And there was Zephaniah whose mission was to proclaim judgment on all unrepentant Gentiles.

     So, God has always had His prophets, both those prophets whose ministry was primarily a vocal one, and those whose primary ministry was a literary one to call the nations to the truth of the only true God.  The amazing thing, I suppose, is that if I were to ask you to recite the story of many of these prophets, you would be hard pressed to do that.  One of the richest elective courses I ever took in my life was in college when I took a course, a full three‑unit semester course on the minor prophets and spent the whole time absorbing myself in the message of the minor prophets.  I remember buying minor...only because their books are shorter...I remember buying a set of colored pencils, one color was for a geographical identification, another color was for a message of judgment, another color was for a message of promise, another color was for an attribute of God, another color was for the identification of a sin within that people against whom the prophet spoke.  And I went through those for that whole semester underlining all through those prophets in order that I might be able to perceive fully and in detail the message they gave to the world.  And the overwhelming impression that came from that was that God indeed did send messengers to preach repentance and faith in the one true God to the world, even as early as those days.

     And though we may not be familiar with all of those prophets, in fact we may not be familiar with most of those prophets, there is one prophet with whom we have great familiarity.  And his name is Jonah...Jonah.  He is the best illustration in the Bible of what a missionary should not do. He is disobedient, selfish, sinful.  He has a rotten disposition.  He is prejudice.  And yet the Lord puts his story here because it is so instructive.  He teaches us more about the wrong way to do things than anyone called of God to a specific task.  It's a marvelous lesson we learn from Jonah.

     We also learn from Jonah not only how not to be a good missionary but we learn from him how deeply concerned God is for the heathen and utterly unconcerned Israel was for them.  The contrast in Jonah is two‑fold.  It is the contrast between what a missionary ought to be and what Jonah was.  And it is a contrast between the concern of God for a heathen world and the unconcern of Israel for that same heathen world.  And it tells us from about a rather ancient perspective about problems that we face even today, for there are people today who are as reluctant as was Jonah to obey the call of God and there are churches today who are as unconcerned about the lost as God is concerned about them.  So we want to look at his story.

     Now it has two parts.  There are two calls issued to Jonah and two responses.  The first call comes in the first two chapters and we see his response.  The second call in the last two chapters and see his response there.  Now I want you to follow closely, we're going to cover 48 verses tonight and go from start to finish, so hang on. 

     The first missionary call comes in the first two chapters, beginning with the commission in verse 1.  "Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah...by the way, the word Jonah means dove and was symbolic of a messenger of peace...the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying," the time is between 800 and 750 B.C. at this time Israel is prospering under Jeroboam II, the ancient boundaries have been restored.  In fact, the kingdom of Israel goes as far to the northeast as Damascus.  But since the days of King Omri and around 885 the northern kingdom had been under flash attacks from Syria and Assyria, the capital city of Assyria being Nineveh.  So it's a time when Israel in terms of boundaries is enlarged, the northern kingdom, but it is also a time in which they are under sort of guerilla raids from the Assyrians and Nineveh has become for them the epitome of hatred.  They despise the people and the place because it represents to them their enemy.  Israel was in fear of a serious power because Assyria was a growing giant to the east.  At that very moment, God called Jonah.  We know very little about him, as I said.  We know his name.  We know his father's name.  We know nothing more.

     At that time, God speaks to him and in verse 2 we find what God says, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry...or perhaps better to capture the meaning...preach against it for their wickedness is come up before me."  Now as I said, Assyria was a growing power.  Nineveh had originally been built by Nimrod.  It was a city of approximately 600 thousand people, according to archaeology.  And by the way, there has been a lot done to discover the original city.

     Also, the city was so large, and this is hard to imagine, I guess, in an ancient city, but it was so large that it was a three‑day journey from one side to the other.  That's a large city.  It was located on the east bank of the Tigris River.  It was very advanced culturally.  The people were arrogant, they were proud of their achievements, but it was sinking in corruption.  Nahum the prophet, who also spoke against Nineveh, called it a bloody city full of fraud, full of lies, full of robbery, full of sensuousness, full of violence, witchcraft and idolatry.  Their soldiers were famous around the world for brutality and cruelty.  And God knew very well about their wickedness.  The knowledge of man's wickedness on earth ascends to the throne of God like smoke from a fire.  He knew all about them.

     And so, He calls this prophet, Jonah, during the reign of Jeroboam II to go to Nineveh.  He gives him three commands, "Arise, go, preach...arise, go, preach."  Now he is sent there not only...and I want you to get this...not only for Nineveh's good but also to shame Israel in a very dramatic way.  Instead of evangelizing, instead of reaching out and proclaiming the one true God to the nations around them, Israel was entrenched in a self‑indulgent form of religion.  And when this one sort of non‑ descript strange prophet goes to Nineveh all by himself, preaches to them, and the whole place repents, it is going to be a rather large rebuke of Israel's attitude.  I mean, it is in a sense the slaying of Goliath all over again.  For here was this formidable enemy Assyria which the Jews were very afraid of and yet one, as I said, sort of unknown non‑descript prophet causes them to fall to their knees prostrate before the one true God by simply going there to preach.  What a rebuke of Israel's attitude.  Israel's own spiritual defection had caused them in their unrepentance to be unwilling to preach and so they were unwilling to do what God wished and they are rebuked in the way that God uses Jonah.  Their enemy is made a believer in the true God by the faithfulness of this man.  Hard coming, but nonetheless eventual.

     So, the Lord sends this prophet to do what the people will not do.  And I only want to point out at this point that it seems to me that in this commission that's a pattern that God has had to follow for many many centuries.  What the larger group will not do, He sends individuals to do and not only does He accomplish His work for the work of God cannot be thwarted, but He rebukes the group that was unwilling to do what the one was able to do.

     Now in response to the commission we come to a second point in verse 3, and that is the disobedience.  For Jonah does not respond positively.  "Jonah rose up to flee."  Now you say, "Wait a minute, why is he doing this?"  Well think about it.  This is the enemy.  You understand that?  This is the enemy in a time of war.  You don't just walk into the chief city of the enemy and preach at them, especially if you are the ones that they are attacking.  That's a tremendously frightening thought to most people.  I don't want to go there, this is the enemy.

     Secondly, the last thing the Jews wanted was Gentiles horning in on their God.  They were so far away from the mentality of reaching the lost nations with the truth of Jehovah as to be locked into an attitude that says "we don't want any Gentiles sharing any of this good stuff with us," they were entrenched and had no thought for reaching the Gentiles.  So he substituted, like so many people do, his own will for God's.  And he rose up to flee to Tarshish.  Apparently that's a commercial port on the southwest coast of Spain.  I mean, he was going as far as he could go in the opposite direction, clear across the Mediterranean.  And he went to Joppa, he was really running, it says, from the presence of the Lord.  He went to Joppa.  Joppa, you could still there go there today, it's just to the south of Tel Aviv, a little area there, I've been there.  Jaffa, it's called.  And he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, second time, from the presence of...what?...of the Lord.  "I've got to get away from this, I'm not about to get into this deal, I'm not interested in this calling.  This is one opportunity I'm not going to take."

     Now the reason he is running is given over in chapter 4, you might want to get a little preview.  Very interesting.  He says in the middle of the verse, "Therefore I fled before to Tarshish."  Why did you do that?  "Because I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness and repentance Thee of the evil."  You know why he ran?  Because he knew God was gracious and he knew that even though the message against Nineveh was judgment, if Nineveh repented, God would forgive Nineveh and he couldn't stand the thought...the couldn't stand the thought of heathen people being forgiven.  He couldn't stand the thought of any Gentile nation that was an oppressor and an aggressor against Israel being forgiven.  I mean, that is prejudice that runs very very deep. 

     The real issue here was not so much the fear, although we can understand that they may have been there, the fear of going into the city of an enemy.  The real issue here was he ran away because he knew that if they repented God would forgive them and he couldn't stand the thought.  He had come instead, now listen to this, he had come to the point in his life like so many of his contemporaries that instead of loving the lost, he hated them.  He despised them.  Sad, tragic attitude.  Racial feelings ran deep in those days and with some people they run deep even today.  He felt the Ninevites deserved judgment.  He felt that they deserved condemnation, not salvation. And he was afraid of the mercy of God and he was afraid of the grace of God.  And he felt the Gentiles would corrupt Israel's privileges.  And especially as a prophet of God did he know that if the Ninevites repent, they're going to be in a better position than the Israelites who are apostate.  And he could see the scene.  If I go and preach and they repent, they'll step into the place of blessing and Israel that is filled with sin will be out of the place of blessing and God will turn to the Gentiles and my people will be lost to His blessing.  Do you see his dilemma?  I mean, it's nationalism to the hilt.  He feared the end of Israel's special election.

     But here we're concerned with his disobedience.  Now he knew that God was omni‑present, he knew that God was everywhere.  And you can't get on a boat and run away from God.  He remember what it says, don't you, in Psalm 139?  "Wither shall I go from Thy presence, from Thy Spirit?  Wither shall I flee?"  Where am I going to go that you're not going to find me?  What's the answer?  No place.  But at least he was getting out of Israel and at least he would get himself so far from Nineveh that God would have to get somebody else to go if He wanted somebody to go.  He would be physically unavailable, even though he knew God would know...he's not saying I'm running from the presence of the Lord in the sense that I don't believe in omni‑presence, he says I'm running from availability.  What we were talking about this morning.  I don't want to be available, I want to get away from this and God will have to use somebody else.

     And I suppose all of us have struggled with that to one extent or another.  How many Christians have felt that God has called them to a task, God has called them to a preparation, God has called them to be a certain person in a certain ministry in a certain place, maybe a missionary, maybe a pastor, maybe a teacher, maybe someone who works in a Sunday‑school class?  All of us He has called to reach the people around us for Christ.  And we have instead of accepting that calling run from it, hiding from the call of God.  We know that God can see us and know that, but we run the other way, if we can just get involved in our work, busy in our activities, tied down, then we can't go.  I'm sure there are people and I have known some who when they sense the call of God got themselves so entrenched in where they were in order that they might not be able to be extricated to fulfill the call they knew God gave.  That's like trying to flee from light.  The only thing you're going to end up in is darkness.  That's like trading wealth for poverty.  That's like trading wisdom for ignorance, or joy for sorrow, or peace for chaos, or usefulness for uselessness. That's like trading fruit for leaves, reward for punishment.

     So, the commission and the disobedience...now let's look at the consequence.  Now they're out on the ship and they're going across the Mediterranean headed for Tarshish.  And the Lord set out a great wind.  This is a miracle wind, folks, the Lord sent this wind.  This is not normal course.  The Lord sent it.  And there was a mighty tempest in the sea so that the ship was in danger of being broken.  Now God goes after the fleeing prophet.  All the rest of the people are victims.  I suppose you've thought when you've gotten on a plane, "I hope there's not a fleeing prophet on this airplane," right?  See, rebellion never escapes God, He always identifies the person and says, "Thou art the man."  God may let a person go to a certain point, but eventually He'll step in.  And God sent a storm.

     The Hebrew verb is very interesting.  When it says the Lord sent out a great wind, it literally is the word "hurled" and it is used in 1 Samuel 18 verse 11, I think it is, where Saul hurled his spear at David.  I mean, the Lord just spun out a great wind, furious tempest and the ship was being potentially devastated and wrecked.  Verse 5 says, "Then the mariners.." that comes from a root word for salt, that's where we get the "old salt" concept for someone who sails the sea.  "Then the mariners were afraid."  Now when the crew gets afraid, you've got some problems.  They're supposed to know what they're doing.  Everybody starts crying unto his deity...they're polytheistic, they've got myriads of gods and they're all crying out to their gods.  "And they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them."  They start jettisoning the cargo and throwing it out because the danger, of course, is that the deeper the d