Jonah and the Nature of God
Jonah 1:1-17; 2:10; 3:1-10; 4:1-11

The book of Jonah is a staple of children’s Sunday school, vacation Bible school, and Bible story books and videos.

The first Veggie Tales movie was about Jonah. I remember watching it with our children when they were little. I recall that the Ninevites were depicted as particularly disagreeable and vulgar folks. They spent much of their time fighting with each other and slapping each other with fish! The G-rated movie grossed twenty-three million dollars.

In truth, the book of Jonah is more like a PG-13 or R-rated story. Jonah is commanded by the LORD to go to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, and to cry out against the city’s wickedness. “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 'Go at once to Nineveh, that great city and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me'” (1:1). But Jonah refuses. He hated the Assyrians and with good cause.

There is a spectacular wall relief from King Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh that is displayed in the British Museum of Art. It depicts the Assyrian siege of the Jewish city of Lachish. There are multiple images of Jews being impaled by the Assyrians and stacks of Jewish heads being counted by Assyrian scribes, presumably for a pay- per-head policy.

The Assyrians eventually conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and erased its existence as a nation. The Jews and the Assyrians were bitter, mortal enemies. They hated each other and delighted in killing each other.

Jonah had no desire to help the Assyrians. Instead, he attempted to flee to Tarshish (in the completely opposite direction from Nineveh) by ship, but the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea. The waves were so big the ship was in danger of breaking apart. If you have ever been caught on a boat in a bad storm, you know just how terrifying it is. The ship’s crew cried to their gods for help and tossed the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. Finally, they cast lots to figure out who was responsible for the calamity and the short lot fell to Jonah.

Jonah told them to throw him overboard to save themselves, but the sailors could not bring themselves to do it. They tried to row back to land, but it was hopeless. In the end, they threw Jonah into the raging sea and certain death. This is not exactly G-rated stuff! But it gets worse. The LORD sent a monstrous fish that swallowed Jonah alive! I do not know if you saw the viral video last week of kayakers paddling off Avila Beach in California. Suddenly a humpback whale appears from nowhere and literally seizes the kayak and its passengers in its great jaws. The people filming the event are dumbfounded and cry out with expletives we will not repeat. Remarkably, the kayakers escaped unscathed, but Jonah spent three days and nights in the great beast’s belly. As Max Lucado, in his book A Cast of Characters, humorously observed, there were only two ways out! Thankfully for Jonah, the fish regurgitated him onto dry land.

The LORD was relentless with Jonah. God ordered him to Nineveh again, and, not surprisingly, Jonah obeyed the second time. He walked throughout the city declaring, “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4). Mind you, Jonah was a Jew, and we have already described how the Assyrians felt about the Jews. Jonah was not the sort of fellow the Ninevites would have listened to. He must have been terrified for his life. In addition to being a stranger in a strange land, Jonah’s sermon was extremely short and terrible!

It has been observed that the great fish which swallowed Jonah alive is the least unbelievable element of the book. Consider this. Jonah was the most successful missionary in the Bible. Pagan sailors prayed to Yahweh, feared God, made vows, and offered sacrifices to the God of Israel. Miraculously, the citizens of this great pagan city heeded the warning of this unlikely and repellant witness. Nineveh’s people, including the king and the nobles, repented in dust and ashes, fasted, turned from their evil ways, and cried out mightily to God. And the LORD relented.

But this remarkable series of events only made the most successful missionary of the Bible angry and depressed. The LORD asked Jonah twice, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (4:4 and 9). Jonah’s response was pretty much, “You’re darn right it is. I’m so angry I want to die.”

You see, Jonah knew something important about the LORD. Jonah prayed with these words, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (4:2b). Yahweh had revealed this about the divine-self in Exodus 34:6-7. Exodus records that Yahweh passed before Moses and declared, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

God is not to be trifled with. He will by no means clear the guilty, but God’s first inclination is to be merciful and gracious. That is good news for us. It is interesting that the book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. A Jewish midrash (an ancient commentary on the Hebrew Bible) reads, “Israel said to God, ‘Master of the universe, if we repent, will you accept it?’ God responded, 'Would I accept the repentance of the people of Nineveh, and not yours?’” The book of Jonah is a reminder that if God could forgive the wickedness of Nineveh, of course, God can forgive us. That is deeply reassuring.

But there is another implication of Jonah that is more difficult to comprehend and embrace, namely, that God cares about the people we hate! The last four years have been bitter, contentious, and hateful. The presidential election brought all this acrimony to a crescendo. I do not think it is hyperbole to say that at least some Democrats and Republicans hate each other. They hate each other’s leaders, ideologies, and party members.

Although the election results are not completely certain yet, it seems likely that former Vice President Joe Biden is the President Elect. Some of us are really, really mad, and some of us are really, really glad. But now, more than ever, we need to remember and believe that God cares about people we deeply dislike, the people we might even hate. As the LORD said to Jonah, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (4:11). God was concerned for the innocents who resided in Nineveh and even the animals.

Jesus teaches the same thing. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:43-48).

Nota Bene: This is not to say that a person’s beliefs and actions are a matter of indifference to God. The LORD was not neutral about the Ninevites’ beliefs and actions. The good and the evil, the righteous and the unrighteous are God’s moral categories. God cares about the good and the righteous, but God also cares about the evil and the unrighteous. As the Apostle Peter says, “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

The upward call of God is to be like the LORD who cares for all, especially those who do not know their right hand from their left. It is even possible that God can use us, the way God used Jonah, to bring the truth of God to people we really do not like, to the evil and to the unrighteous.

I think the book of Jonah is the perfect text for the Sunday after election day. It really is not a G-rated story. It declares in no uncertain terms that God holds us accountable. God held Jonah accountable for his disobedience. God was ready to hold Nineveh accountable for its wickedness. But God cared for Jonah. God provided a great fish, a second chance, a shade-yielding bush, and even the worm. God was gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love to Jonah. And God was the same to the citizens of Nineveh, even though they were the sworn enemies of God’s own chosen people. Thankfully, God is the same towards us and our enemies with all our foibles and failings.

So, let us ask God to make us as He is, so we may care about our neighbors and our enemies, the good and the evil, the righteous and the unrighteous.

To God be all the glory. Alleluia! Amen!