The Pathetic Prophet Jonah 4

"God in the hands of an angry sinner" is how I heard Warren Wiersbe title Jonah 4. That title fits.

Only in the mind of pathetic, highly prejudiced Jonah could the grand description of Yahweh as "gracious and compassionate...slow to anger and abounding in love" be viewed as a flaw in God's character! What the Bible celebrates as the hope of the human race, Jonah fitfully spurns as a deficit weakness in God. "That's why I booked it to Tarshish because, whaaa!, whaaa!, you're that kind of namby-pamby God. I knew better. You embarrass me, God, by loving and sparing these stinking Ninevites. You've wasted your grace on the wrong people!"

What get's me is God's patience with Jonah. God just keeps asking, "Do you really have a right to throw a tantrum like this?"

"Yes, I do! Whaa! Whaa! I'm so mad and righteous, I just want to die!" He said this thinking that he was in the same league with his contemporary Elijah. I can just hear God saying under his breathe to the angels, "Jonah is no Elijah...just like Dan Quayle was no J. F. Kennedy."

The writer of this profound little book was a poetic genius. He draws us in, getting us to side with the captain and the sailors over against rebellious Jonah (chapter 1), getting us to admire the repentant king and the people of Nineveh and feel absolutely disgusted with Jonah (chapters 3-4). Then, whamo! The big conclusion: God humanizes Israel's greatest enemies of the time: the Assyrians.

Not only is that violent, pagan people humanized, they are being treated with compassion by Yahweh just as he treated Israel through the prophet Joel. God is no respector of persons when it comes to repentance! This really jerked Jonah's chain...and the first readers of this prophet and the people in Jesus' day. Remember Jesus' story about the vineyard owner who paid the guys who worked from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (1 hour) the same as the ones who worked from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. (all day)? "Whaa! Whaa" That's not fair!!" God is free to "waste" his grace on whomever he pleases.

God is not fair. God is gracious. We should celebrate his loving, compassionate heart and affirm that God can express it when, on whom, and however he chooses.

Jonah had more "love" (or was it ugly self-interest?) for one plant--here today, gone today--than he had for an entire city of human beings. Pathetic.

Yet, let's be careful. A "Jonah" lurks in my heart and in yours, too. How many of us have wanted Al Qaida incinerated? How many have thought, if not outright said, "Nuke the Iraqis into oblivion?" We can only think that when we've dehumanized men and women and children who have been created in the "image of God."

Jesus never dehumanized Rome or Romans or Roman soldiers. As a matter of fact, he prayed, "Father, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing."

Is there more to "the sign of Jonah" than Jesus being in the grave? Could the sign of Jonah include an outrageous grace to "enemies"?

The Openness of Jonah 3

We serve a God of second chances. "Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:..." (Jonah 3:1).

Jonah obeyed and went to Nineveh. Smart man.

Nineveh was "very important city" (NIV). Actually, it was "great (according) to God," which is what the Hebrew reads (vs. 3). Allen sees the phrase as an intensive phrase, something like "Nineveh in comparison to God was great." Or, "Nineveh was God-sized." Whatever the meaning, it presents the mammoth task of Jonah as he begins his apocalyptic preaching to this massive city, "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned (demolished)." This message is the biblical inspiration for seeker-friendly preaching.

I love it. Brevity is the soul of repentance. From the king to the kindergarteners the whole city turns to Yahweh. If Jonah were Napolean Dynamite, he might have said, "Gosh! I just can't believe it. Sackcloth and ashes? These ratty Ninevites have gone maximum religious on me."

Jonah chapter three ends with one of those Old Testament bomb blasts. The writer tells us in verse 10 that "God repented," too. The words create a gasp in us. God repents or relents or changes his mind? It sure sounds like it even in the NIV: "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."

At least 36 times in the Old Testament we read that God changed his mind, or relented or repented. These 36 occurrences cause severe mind cramps in many people. They get knotted up because they reason like this: God is perfect. Perfect can't change. If perfect changes for the better, then it wasn't perfect to begin with. Yikes! We can't start with an imperfect God. Continuing, if perfect changes, then it must be only for the worse. Yikes again! We can't end with an imperfect God. Therefore, the Bible is dead wrong 36 times when it flat out tells us that God changed his mind.

The insider, wise ones among us help out here. What we have 36 times, they propose, is an anthropomorphism. This is a long, catchy word for "These 36 verses don't fit our theology." The mantra is: "God can't change! God can't change!" God is the great unblinking unfeeling stare. We're told that God condescends to our childish state ("baby steps") and merely reports that God seems to be like us--we can change our minds after all--but, really, God is not like us. We can do something that God can't do. Doesn't that make you feel really special? You can change your mind, but God can't change his. What a mighty God we serve!

Oops! I misspoke or miswrote. We really can't change our minds because everything we think, say, feel or do has been decreed beforehand. We, too, are cosmic unblinking little stares just living out the programming of Big Daddy Stare. Ooh, I get goose bumps from such articulate, warm theology. Just think, everything that I am writing at this moment has been decreed by God from eternity past. He decreed that I write about how silly it is that he decreed everything. This is just too fun.

But you say: God didn't predetermine everything beforehand. He just knows everything beforehand. Well, if God just knows the future, but doesn't determine it, does that mean I can actually do something different than what God "knows"? If God merely knows beforehand that I am going to eat Copper River salmon today and then I choose to eat a Johnsonville brat instead, was God's knowledge imperfect? There's that dastardly word again. Just because God merely knows beforehand doesn't mean we have actually have a choice in the matter. We will think, feel, and do exactly and only what God "knows." And remember, according to the insider, wise ones, God knows all things actual and possible. Sing to the tune of "I'd like to be an Oscar Mayer weiner"...

"Oh, I'd like to be a predetermined pup-pet.
"That is what I'd really like to be-ee-ee.
"For if I were a predetermined pup-pet,
"God would always be in charge of meee."

Fun, eh? We must, at all costs, protect God's sovereignty. It's up to us, you know. God needs us to protect his meticulous control. How mighty we are! We must protect his omniscience, too. How can God get along without us protecting him?

And God changed his mind. Whoopty-doo. I would like to think that God is free and if he wants to change his mind, have at it. I like a truly relational God, a truly interactive God. I like a give-and-take God who mixes it up with us. I'll take Jonah 3:10 and the other 36 verses any day over the imported perfection of Platonism.

The Aquatic Prayer of Jonah 2

Nothing improves a person's prayer life better than getting swallowed by a great fish. Jonah is witness to this biblical truth.

With what one writer calls "intuitive perfection," Jonah crafts an artistic, even stunning prayer of thanksgiving. With a deep memory of the Psalms, Jonah writes his own, drawing on words and phrases from "the prayer book of Israel." I imagine this was quite challenging as he was being churned in the stomach of a large grupper and marinating in fishy, digestive juices. My heart goes out to Jonah because I have a hard time praying in a decent, comfortable room. Maybe I need to use the Jonah method of prayer.

The Prayer of Jonah. It has a faint, familiar ring to it. I can't quite put my finger on it. What is it? Do you think "The Prayer of Jonah" and its unusual Sitz im Leben* would make a really marketable little book?

Just as Yahweh--the God of Israel--is the real hero of chapter 1, so Yahweh captivates Jonah's mind as he shapes his prayer in chapter 2. Feel the impact of his resounding conclusion: "Salvation comes from the LORD!" Jonah doesn't just know this truth, he incarnates it. Jonah compresses the glorious, central message of the Bible into five English words (just two in the Hebrew).

Jonah, by his own admission, was snatched from the jaws of a watery death. On the verge of unconsciousness, Jonah prayed. Yahweh heard. Thinking that he would die from seaweed wrapped around his throat, he gets swallowed by a God-appointed fish. In the dark, slippery folds of the fish's gut Jonah begins to faint away. Perhaps the last conscious thought of this rebellious prophet was "Help!!" Yahweh helped him. God talks to the fish (2:10) and, blurp!, Jonah is deposited on dry land. Terra firma never felt so good to him, having been to hell (well, Sheol) and back.

Did Jonah first scrawl out his thanksgiving prayer in the sand on the beach near Joppa? Who knows? We do know there was one happy prophet with a whole new appreciation for God recuperating on the Mediterranean coast.

Pagan sailors cried out to God for help in chapter 1. A rebellious Jewish prophet called for help in chapter 2. Yahweh heard both. Human need and honest prayer get the attention and response of the God of the Bible. Yahweh is no respecter of persons.

Liberated from the fish's "bowels of mercy," Jonah wonders about Nineveh.


*Sitz im Leben means "setting in life."

Jonah the Anti-Hero Prophet 1

"...and the ship thought it would shatter (like pottery)" (Jonah 1:4).

What creative personification by the poet-author of Jonah! God "hurls" a great wind onto the sea and the ship thinks, "Uh oh, I am going to crack up!" The ship thinks. Remember the little engine that could? "I think I can..." A rebellious Jewish prophet makes a ship think.

Jonah 1 presents an Israelite shocker: Jonah gets a Yahweh-call and immediately proceeds to disobey it. When verse 3 was read for the first time, the Jewish listeners sucked all the air out of the room. Jonah did not go for or with the LORD; twice we read that he went away from the LORD. Silly, silly man.

During the hurricane, sailors and captain are frantically throwing cargo overboard and crying to their gods, "Help! Help!" But Jonah "has a real peace" about his decision. He is below deck sound asleep.

Never bank on "having peace about it" to verify the will of God. Jonah had "peace" and was in active rebellion from God. "Having peace about it" for many is a cloak to do what they want to do or to avoid what they don't want to do..."I just don't have 'peace' about it." Be careful with that tom-foolery.

"The lot fell to Jonah." Now Jonah owns up to his rebellion. Lots don't lie.

Jonah got tossed overboard to settle the fury of Yahweh as symbolized in the fierce storm. At first the sailors tried to get to shore, but couldn't make it. They were good guys. As soon as Jonah sank, the storm stopped. The pagan sailors worshipped Yahweh. Jonah is a sorry specimen of faith compared to them.

God "appointed" a great fish who went fishing for men and caught Jonah. Jonah can tell you a lot about "bowels of mercy." He does in the next chapter.