
Jonah Part 2 – Jonah’s Whale of a Problem with God
A Patriot’s Problem with the Grace and Mercy of God
Jonah 4:3
“And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Jonah is so upset he want to die!
What could cause him to be so upset?
Last week we put a few ideas out there about why Jonah may have been running from God and I told you that today we would unpack the real reason Jonah was running from God. So here ya go. The real answer to Jonah’s flight to ‘sheol’ far from God.
In Jonah’s time they decided who was IN with God and who was OUT with God based on heredity and a promise from God that the Israelites were in! [ therefore, they naturally assumed that everyone else was OUT and they liked it that way. It was like eternal security of the receivers for those in the bloodline of Israel. It was a nationality linked to a Holy promise and therefore they assumed that not only were they chosen by God but that they were the ONLY ONES chosen by God. They seemed to operate by a view that God only had enough space in His heart for the Israelites – it was them alone and there could be no others.
Jonah lived in a time when he truly hoped that the assyrians would be smote[d] by God. Jonah hoped that God would go all ‘sodom and gomorrah’ on the evil empire and especially Nineveh and rain down hell fire and brimstone and burn them to charcoal remnants or hollow lava statues.
It’s certainly what Jonah wanted to see done to the Assyrians and especially to Nineveh.
He prayed for their demise and he despised them more than he loved his own life. His nationalism became a blinding idol that demanded the sacrifice of the Assyrian enemy – even innocent children and puppies.
Jonah was THE SELF APPOINTED ‘ELF ON THE SHELF’ reporting back to ‘Santa God’ on the fitness of the Assyrians for gifts or lumps of coal and they certainly deserved not only lumps of coal but to become fossil fuel for those who would drive automobiles thousands of years later. His negative reports about the Assyrians indicated that they deserved a resounding ‘smoting’! —Jeff Fuson
SMOTE
smite
/smīt/verb: smite; 3rd person present: smites; past tense: smote; gerund or present participle: smiting; past participle: smitten
1.LITERARY> strike with a firm blow.> “he smites the water with his sword”>
◦ ARCHAIC> defeat or conquer (a people or land).> “he may smite our enemies”>
◦ (especially of disease) attack or affect severely.> “various people had been smitten with untimely summer flu”>
2. be strongly attracted to someone or something.> “she was so smitten with the boy”>
nounARCHAIC
noun: smite; plural noun: smites
1. a heavy blow or stroke with a weapon or the hand. —Dictionary
So, what is the book of Jonah really all about? What sense can we make of it and what’s the message for you and me in 2019?
Jonah 4:3
Why is Jonah so upset that he just wants to die?
Recap last week Jonah 1 & 2 – that story took us deeper than most of us have ever gone into how God appointed a storm and a great fish to show mercy and grace to Jonah in spite of the fact that he chose to run away from God and the mission God appointed him for.
Recap: Assyrians – terrorist state Nineveh - capital city where Mosul, Iraq is currently; Jonah – Israeli Patriot turned Reluctant Prophet to the city he despised the most – Nineveh.
Jonah 2:10
*Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.*
Let’s pick it up at ‘fish vomit’ …
Jonah 3:1-2 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a ‘second time.’ Get up and go to that great city of Nineveh and preach the message taht I tell you.
Jonah’s front row seat to a good smoting!
Work through the text from 3:1 up to Jonah 4:8
This is where many of camp out in relationship to God’s mercy on our enemies isn’t it?
Many of us have a view of God [ a theology ] that has boiled all that Jesus said and did down to just one binary destination option that occurs when we die and it goes like this:
‘People who pray the pray get to be with God when they die. People who did not pray the prayer go to Hell and are separated from God and tortured for all of eternity [ by a loving God. ]
That is, we have developed a reductionist tendency to boil the whole Bible and all that Jesus was about into being about who’s gonna get smote and who’s not gonna get smote! We are often in Jonah’s shoes aren’t we?
We find comfort in the binary who’s in and who’s out theology don’t we.
It lets us determine who is IN and OUT. Who is good and who is bad.
Sometimes I’m not so sure that the Amercanized version of Christinaity have evolved much beyond the views of Jonah and his fellow citizens. We invest an enormous amount of rhetoric, anger and ink trying to determine who is ‘GOOD’ and therefore IN and who is ‘BAD’ and therefore OUT with God.
Most of us grew up with a God story that goes something like this:
God is really angry and mad at everyone. And, what he’d most like to do is to fire up hell ten times hotter than it already is and toss your nasty rascally butt in there for all of time to be tortured forever and ever AMEN!
As a matter of fact, God is so disgusted with this whole enterprise called humanity and this planet that He can’t wait to take a blow torch to it and burn it all to charcoal. God is so mad and disgusted that he hates everything about us and about this planet and cannot wait to burn it all to a crisp and start fresh.
It reminds me of a song that a music group called ‘ACTS’ sang back in the early 2000s
[ ACTS featured two of our own super talented singers, Tim Gooch and Julie Fuson! ]
Imagine this … great vocalists all gathered around a baby grand piano singing great songs and then they come to this one and they were instructed by their director to cheese it up and be very very very ridiculously ‘Happy’ while they sang:
“God’s Gonna Set this world on fire!
God’s gonna set this world on fire!”
They may as well have been singing ‘Zippitey do dah zippety yay my oh my what a wonderful day’
Where does ‘THAT’ come from? How did we boil it all down to this?
Is that what Jesus had to say about who God is and what God intends for anything or anyone in His creation?
You remember some of the things that Jesus said right?
Like this from Matthew 5:43-45
You have heard it said, Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But, I tell you, love your enemeies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the rightous and the undrighteous. —Jesus in Matthew 5
Or, this, “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28)
Or, this: *
That “love your neighbor” thing? I meant that. - God
In a culture that is at war with people who are ‘different’ from us what does it mean to love your neighbor?
When Phos started we had a simple phrase that is in our DNA:
Love God. Love your neighbor. Expand the neighborhood.
Jonah had a neighbor problem similar to the Jews that Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan to.
I know sometimes I have a ‘neighbor’ problem and I bet you do, too.
There are some people I just don’t want to love and some people I just want to see get smoted!
Overall I think that most westernized Christians [ I cannot speak for the rest of the world’s Christians as I do not know their story as well as our own ] have a ‘neighbor problem’ but there are a few shining examples among us like this story tells:
The Amish Response to a Gunman’s family who mowed down their innocent children in a tiny classroom. [ see page 151 of The Prodigal Prophet ]
Here’s what it might look like to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
This is what it might look like to move from the Sheol of being counted as dead and far from God like Jonah was in the belly of that fish to being a person of ‘shalom’ – a wish for health and total well-being on others – for not only those we love but for those who we totally disagree with.
Complete the Scripture work-through from 4:3 to end of the chapter.
Isn’t it amazing the love, compassion and concern that God shows to Jonah’s arch enemies?
How can God do that? Why is He not ONLY on the side of the Jews?
Story of Compassion from Page 183-184 of The Prodigal Prophet
I think to be invited into the work of Jesus in our angry world in 2019 and beyond is to shift from ‘sheol’ to ‘Shalom’ for all who we encounter. Shalom is the concept of wishing God’s very best on the other. Is it possible that Jesus means for us to be people of ‘shalom’ even for those, maybe especially for those, with whom we disagree? Perhaps that is what the book of Jonah is all about. —Jeff Fuson
Jonah 4:8-4:11 work through – God even seems to be concerned about the livestock … so, it seems that He cares of all of His creation.
Jonah 4:11
Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?”
God’s final question to Jonah is haunting isn’t it?
The writer of Jonah leaves us hanging as to how Jonah answers God’s final question.
What if that is God’s question for me and you?
How will you respond?
—– end of message ——
- To learn more about the concept of ‘neighbor’ go here: https://www.biblehub.com/niv/luke/10-29.htm
Thought homework to prayerfully consider: How are you like or unlike Jonah in this tale? Who is your neighbor? Who is your enemy? Where do you suspect you might like to grow becuase of Jonah’s whale of a tale?