Jonah’s Dilemma and Nineveh’s Salvation
Below are a few thoughts on the book of Jonah. Well, not just a few but more of a continuation of a few posts I made for the students on the student ministry website that I work for. Just a few follow up thoughts to our current series in Jonah that I thought would be beneficial to share here.
Chapter One
Jonah isn’t the first guy to flee from the presence of God. Yet what’s so crazy about Jonah is the shear audacity of his pride. To flee from an ever-present God is the most ridiculous thing to ever consider. The psalmist made it clear when he said “where shall I flee from your presence?”(Psalm 139:7) God is everywhere. Yet Jonah a prophet of God thinks he can flee. What’s so profound about this is the foundational issue at hand. None of us seek after God (including Jonah). Yet, God seeks to display who He is in some of the most remarkable ways and draw us near to him.
Jonah could have been killed when he was thrown into the water. Yet, God spared him and sought after him to go. How remarkable is God’s redemptive desires that He will go to great lengths to bring us back to Him.
Chapter Two
Wow, Chapter 2 is very insightful into what went down once Jonah was thrown over. It wasn’t quite like swimming with flounder and Sebastian. In fact it was quite the contrary. It makes me wonder: Has Jonah recognized his foolishness yet? Is giving himself over to the sea a display of defeat and admitting his guilt? Jonah’s prayer gives insight into what had come upon his heart in the midst of sinking to the depths of the ocean.
His willing response to the circumstances reveals that his heart had hardened and it’s need for softening. He knows this must be his cue to admit he was wrong willingly or else things could get worse for himself and the crew. Was jumping ship an effort to continue running further from God by his hopes of death, or was he admitting his guilt and humbling himself to his evident “judgment” for running from God? If Jonah thought he could run that far, he had lost his mind at this point. I think what we see hear is a clear understanding that Jonah knew he was in the wrong and God was making that clear to him.
He recognized he was in the wrong and humbled himself just a tiny bit. His prayer makes this clear. He recognizes God’s hand against Him in verse 3. (vs. 3 “For YOU had cast me into the deep”) An unlikely response after seeing how deliberately he ran from God. Part of me wants to think he would have continued in his pride and not admit that God was against him at this point. Yet, Jonah’s prayer while in the fish shows that he cried out to God for salvation from the ragging sea around him.
Being thrown into the depths was not a casual swim. He was in this situation because of his own desire to flee God’s plans. He was in the waters because of his selfishness and disobedience. Jonah realigns himself with God yet God’s purposes for Jonah are not yet complete. Still more is to be done in Jonah’s heart as we will see in Chapter 4. Yes, believe it or not God spares Jonah in his distress despite all that Jonah has done thus far. Isn’t that amazing! Finally Jonah claims the most significant truth with the last words of his prayer “Salvation is from the Lord”
Chapter Three
So, Did Jonah forget that he had to go to Nineveh? Wasn’t the whole crazy storm and being swallowed by the fish a bit of a wake up call that he disobeyed. Yet, here in Chapter 3 he’s reminded again to go. This kinda reminds me of myself sometimes in my forgetfulness, but I haven’t been swallowed by any fish lately either. I think by this point I would be booking it to Nineveh, that’s if I had the strength.
Honestly it reminds me of Psalm 33:10 “The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.” Wow… Jonah’s plans, whatever they were, were brought to nothing.
So the word of the Lord comes to Jonah. I wonder what was going through his head at this point. I’m sure he was a bit out of it to some degree, and thankful to be alive as we saw in his prayer. After three days in the belly of a fish, you are more than likely going to have a hard time standing, if you’re still alive.
Yet, the word of the Lord came to him again. An amazing thing about the book of Jonah is how it displays a few awesome characteristics of our God. Especially here, we see how His yes is yes and His no is no. God is faithful to his plans and His desires. He really isn’t going to play a guessing game with us when it comes to His will being carried out on the earth. God makes it clear to Jonah not once but twice, and believe it or not He has Jonah’s attention now. True, sometimes we struggle to perceive God’s desires, but it’s never sent to us in ways we can’t understand. Jonah was a prophet, he knew when God was talking to him at this point.
So, Nineveh was not a city that Jonah wanted to go to in the first place and several would say it all boils down to Jonah’s opinion of Nineveh’s value in being redeemed. As we will see in Chapter 4 Jonah’s heart issue comes to light once again, and God displays how he seeks out to display His glory whether we are all on board or not. It was pretty remarkable how quickly this city turned to God. To see this happen should blow us all away. God is a pretty amazing God if He can take such a twisted city and draw it to himself so quickly is what some might say. I say it is amazing that God has withheld is rightful judgment on us and has set His heart to save us.
This should transform our thoughts about God’s ability to take whatever condition we are in and change hearts! His greatness is displayed in our lives when we turn from our sinful desires to Him. This glorifies Him for who He is. He can take even the filthiest city or people group and redeem them to himself no matter what, but just for him to take out our rightful punishment on his very own son should be magnified here. This is huge! He is worthy of our praise and adoration for his great love for us. How GREAT is HE who has redeemed our traitorous race to himself!! 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Chapter Four
Soon to come!
Five Errors that Arise from Christ-Replacements
In a culture where everything in most churches is man-centered the way that we interpret Scripture is often focused primarily on us. What we must realize is that all of Scripture points to Christ. The only way to correctly interpret Scripture is to have a Christ-centered focus on the text - for no other reason than that is exactly what Scripture does - it points to Christ!
Jesus most clearly taught that “you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40)
Hendryx comments in his paper that “Jesus never condemned a Pharisee for taking Moses too seriously. They take him far less seriously than they should. For Jesus says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for He write of Me. But if you don’t believe His writings, how will you believe My words. Your accuser is Moses.” (John 5:46). So to understand Moses is to come to know Christ when He is revealed. Likewise, Abraham saw Jesus’ day and was glad, the Bible testifies. And “…foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” (Gal)”
“The Scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth.” - John Calvin
I ran across an excellent article by John Hendryx entitled “Five Errors that Arise from Christ-Replacements” and it’s a must read. He outlines five examples of doctrinal errors that arise when Christ is unBiblically removed as the key focus of Scripture (which is so terribly common today).
Take some time to read this excellent article over at monergism.com.
Getting A Handle on the Bible
Most of us have probably run into at least one person who says that they don’t enjoy reading the bible. They will probably tell you that while they would like to, they end up not understanding it or not getting anything out of it. Most of these people usually follow up this comment with a desire for a resource that will teach them about what the bible says without actually having to read it - something that will break down the truths for them.
I would like to say that this is a new thing, but all the way back to the time of the Exodus, people have wanted someone else to talk to God and just tell them what He said. I think a great deal of it has to do with the fact that they are either blinded by unbelief and unable to see God’s truth or that they are convicted by His holiness as presented in the Word and want something that will tone it down a little.
Christian publishers have built an entire industry around this desire to avoid God’s Word and read someone else’s commentary and this is evident from any Christian bookstore. These books, workbooks, tapes, videos, TV programs, etc. are of varying degrees of worth depending on the author, but ultimately, we should all agree that the real thing that we should be studying is the Bible rather than what someone else tells us it says.
Recently, I noticed that my iPod is only about half full and while I enjoy music during my commute, I decided to redeem that time by listening to sermons or scripture during my drive. I have found two sermons by Mark Dever of Capital Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. that I would highly recommend if you are struggling with reading the bible. The first gives an overview of the Old Testament and puts into context what it is about and why we should read it and the second gives a similar treatment to the New Testament.
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