Jonah 1.

Voices: Jonah and his world

“See Nineveh?  It's pretty bad: they are evil, mean, immoral. Their sinfulness is right in my face,”  God says.  

And Jonah is like “Yes. Amen Lord!  I agree.  They deserve your judgement Lord!”

And God says “Go there.  Tell them.  Warn them.” 

Now Jonah lived some-when around 800-750 BCE, in Israel,  when Jeroboam II was King.  Israel didn’t have the Temple: that was in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.   Israel was always the first to rebel against the Lord, though usually Judah wasn't far behind. As kings of Israel go, Jeroboam was not as bad as some,  He continued to worship false gods, but on the positive side, he bad tried to rebuild the nation that had lost power and prestige.  To make Israel great again.  (Sounds familiar?)   And Jonah was there, bringing words from God about “Restoring the boundaries of Israel” (2 Kings 14. 25)

500 miles North East of Samaria, the capital of Israel, was Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire.  As Jeroboam worked to get Israel back almost to the strength of Solomon's days, there was this empire to the north, getting bigger and bigger.  Demanding tributes and taxes.  And God was telling Jonah, “Go there”.  So Jonah says “What?  You cannot be serious?”  (A quote from John MacEnroe as it's Wimbledon week!)

And God says “Go there, go to Nineveh, and read out the charges against them.”

Now, as I said, Nineveh is 500 miles north-east, overland, across fields and deserts.  So Jonah went and found a boat.  He went to Joppa (Jaffa) and booked  a passage to Tarshish – possible Tarsessus (around modern Cadiz) in Spain, the other side of the straits of Gibraltar.  About as far away as he could go, in the opposite direction.

And (he thought) he had done it.  It looked like he had shaken God off.  Got away from his disturbing, nagging presence,  It wasn't as though he imagined God was limited to one place: Jonah wanted to get away from intimacy with Him.    Jonah 1.  God Nil.  Or so Jonah thought.   But God really isn't limited to one place.  On a ship, crossing the Med, God could still reach Jonah.  He sent a storm, (sovereignly using the forces of nature, as he did again in verse 17.)

Huge, frightening waves... slippery decks, timbers groaning beginning to split, everyone soaking wet, sea water in the hold...  

Picture by G Lilly

So the crew start to get religious. They're from different places and they are praying to different gods.  But Jonah is asleep.  Snoring (the Greek OT tells us!).  Possibly had a few glasses of wine to keep him warm, and drown out that voice.... Sometimes the people of God are running away, sleeping, drowning out God's voice, and people who are not the people of God, are praying, each doing their own thing to try to contact God and find an answer to the challenges they face...   

The sailors do a bit of divination to find out why this disaster has overtaken them.  They recognise that this is no ordinary storm.  And the dice they throw, tell them the problem is the passenger, Jonah.  So they go to the hold.  They shake him, wake him up, and demand to know what is going on.  He confesses it all.  He's a fallen preacher.  He's been running away from God, but God has caught up with him.  At last, it looks as if Jonah is beginning to get the message.  He is beginning to show some interest in speaking out for God – even if that means speaking to foreigners.

As the sea gets rougher they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?’”

“Throw me in. It's not you God is after, it is me.”   At last there is a change in Jonah himself. He is willing to take his punishment.  Here is at least some sign of a conversion, however incomplete.  “He meets again not only God, but the truth from which he fled. He not only meets that truth, but he offers his life for it.”  (Expositors Bible Commentary)

Understandably, the sailors were reluctant to throw a passenger overboard in cold blood.  So they continued rowing for the shore – but the storm only got worse, and eventually they did what Jonah said, threw him overboard.   They were praying “Lord, don't judge us for this.  We're doing what Jonah told us.”  And God comes through:  when Jonah goes overboard, the storm stops.   When they do throw Jonah into the waves, the sea becomes calm.. And immediately, there's a prayer meeting on board.. These sailors from all over the place, with their different gods, begin to fear the Lord. 

That's what we want, isn't it?  In our messed up and godless world, to see men and women – maybe some of them “spiritual”, some superstitious, everyone doing their own thing – beginning to “fear the Lord” and turn to him in surrender and faith.  If it's going to happen, we need a Jonah moment.  We need to hear and deal with the different voices that are shouting at us...

1. We hear the voice of our own prejudice, bigotry and disobedience, and turn from that.  That is perhaps the most difficult bit to sort out.  Jonah wasn't through on this one by any means.  It would take several miracles, a lot of prayer, and listening to God's voice, and a big step of cold, intentional obedience when he didn’t feel like it, before he beat that one. 
2. Responsiveness to the voice of the missionary, compassionate God.   We have to sober up.  We have to get more spiritual.  We cannot afford to drown out the voice of God.   Not with  busyness; not with clever ideas.  Not by surrounding ourselves with people or noise.  Not by substances including our won adrenalin!
3. Understanding the voice of our neighbours – the pluralism, the spirituality as well as the superstition.  Can we understand a world where “everyone prays to his or her own God” and where that is seems as OK?  I'm not asking you to agree with it (far from it!)  But we need to understand it.  We may see superstition, but we may also see an element in belief in the Supernatural.  Are we in the place where we can respond effectively to that?   Heaven help us if we make Christianity all about “believing ideas” rather than about an encounter with God Himself. Many people have abandoned the church not because it is too spiritual, but because it is not spiritual enough. Heaven help us if the world is praying and we are sleeping.
4. Finding our own voice – speaking honestly and faithfully.  The bad news and the good news.  “I am a runaway prophet” is not a great way to be starting, but it was honest.  It is that honesty about his own failure that gave Jonah the opportunity to talk to the sailors about who God is and how the could be saved from their predicament.  We need to find our voice – admitting we have as a Church in the Western world messed up, failed to live the life of jesus.  And we need to find our voice, pointing to who God is. 

So it's not all over for the sailors.  And it's not all over for Jonah, either.   God stepped in again.  He appointed a huge fish to swallow up Jonah (which should not create a problem for people who believe in God:  we don't need to “prove it's possible” and we don’t need to spiritualise it away.)  It's simply a  “miracles of divine intervention.” Chapter 4 tells us the Lord also appointed a Plant (v6) a worm (v7) and a scorching wind (v8). 

God uses things he has made to carry on his work with Jonah.  He is still on Jonah's case. 

Picture by G Lilly

  And he is still at work to bring us to the place where he wants us to be: a place of trust, obedience, intimacy, and engagement with his mission in the world.     Jesus said “unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.”  (John 12. 24 NLT)  that's the Jonah experience.  That's what the people of God need. As we surrender ourselves to Christ and to his mission, then the harvest will come.

© Gilmour Lilly 2016