Archive for January 2007
Running from Grace (Jonah 4:1-4)
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Why did Jonah run from God? We do not learn the answer to this question until near the end of the story. And when we do, it’s not the answer we expect.
If I were Jonah, I would offer several reasons for running from God. For one thing, the message God commissioned Jonah to deliver was a message of judgment. Who wants to be the bearer of bad news? For another thing, the recipients of that bad news were not exactly “good people.” According to the Ninevites own testimony, they were guilty of “evil ways” and of “violence” (Jonah 3:8). And a few decades after Jonah preached to them, Assyria (of which Nineveh was a great city) overran the northern kingdom of Israel (of which Jonah was a citizen) and sent its people into permanent exile (2 Kings 17). So, if I were Jonah, I’d run for the simple reason that I was afraid of Nineveh. But that’s not the reason Jonah offered God for running.
Instead, if I read Jonah 4:1-4 correctly, Jonah is running from grace.
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”
Think with me, for a moment, about the absurdity of Jonah’s emotional response. First, he is irrationally angry. According to his own testimony, he knows that his message of judgment is really an offer of divine pardon. And yet, he is ticked off that the Ninevites take God up on the offer. That makes about as much sense as Billy Graham holding an evangelistic crusade in Las Vegas and becoming angry that people are leaving the poker tables to follow Jesus. But anger is often irrational.
Second, Jonah is hypocritically angry. He is happy that God gave him a second chance, but he is unwilling to extend second chances to Nineveh. But anger is often hypocritical. We condemn in others the sins we commit ourselves.
And third, Jonah is unrighteously angry. He freely confesses that God is “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” But he doesn’t conform his character to God’s character or mirror God’s love to the Ninevites. Instead, he goes suicidal on God. He would rather die than love. That’s un-God-like. That’s unrighteous. And unfortunately, that’s Jonah.
At some point, each of us must face our inner Jonah, the person who wants grace but doesn’t want to give grace. And when we face him, we must kill him off, for the only way to live is to love as God loves.
The Nature of Repentance (Jonah 3:6-10)
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According to Mark 1:15, the essence of Jesus’ message was this: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” What does it mean to repent? In Jonah 3:6-10, we see an Old Testament description of a New Testament imperative.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
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.
This passage describes repentance first and foremost as an act of humility. Notice the actions of the king in particular. “He rose from his throne.” In ancient days, the king sat while others stood in his presence. But when the King of Kings spoke, the king of Nineveh stood in his presence, recognizing God’s superior authority. He “took off his robe” and “covered himself with sackcloth.” Usually, our outward appearance reveals our inward disposition. Royal robes are external symbols of power, but sackcloth is the external symbol of mourning. The king of Nineveh knew he had done wrong, and he showed it to all. Finally, he “sat down in the dust.” In Genesis 3:19, when God announced judgment for Adam’s sin, he said, “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” When the king sat in the dust, it was an act of humility—he should have been sitting on a throne—as well as an act of contrition. He knew he deserved judgment.
Second, repentance is an act of turning away from sin. The king of Nineveh declared a fast, which applied to every living creature in the city, whether human or animal. Fasting is an act of deprivation. When we fast, we stop doing something—usually eating or drinking—in order to focus our minds on God. But God demands holiness of life. So in addition to fasting, the king of Nineveh called on his subjects to “give up their evil ways and their violence.” Their sins were both personal and social in nature, and all sin results in divine judgment. True repentance is an ongoing fast of sin.
Finally, repentance is an act of hope. As a pagan, the king of Nineveh had no biblical revelation telling him that God would act graciously toward him and his city. But he hoped nonetheless: “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” (As Christians, we have the sure promise of Scripture that God has given us grace through Christ.) In the end, God did in fact have “compassion” on Nineveh.”
He will do the same for you and me today if we humbly turn from turn from sin and turn to Christ in hope.
The Bad News of the Gospel (Jonah 3:1-5)
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As Christians, we believe we have “good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). Jesus Christ came into the world to “save sinners,” including us (1 Timothy 1:15). But saved from what? If the salvation of sinners is the good news of the gospel, then the judgment of sinners is the bad news of the gospel.
The Prophet Jonah was a bad news evangelist. Consider what we read in Jonah 3:1-5:
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city-a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Notice several things about these verses:
First, God is the God of Second Chances. When God first commissioned Jonah to “preach against” Nineveh (Jonah 1:2), Jonah disobeyed him, running literally as far away from Nineveh as possible. But Jonah’s initial disobedience was not the end of the story. God brought him back to the starting line and gave him the commission all over again. If God gave his disobedient prophet a second chance, might he give Nineveh a second chance too?
Second, evangelism is urgent. Nineveh, we read, required a three-day visit. Jonah didn’t waste any time. “On the first day,” he began to proclaim his message. If the good news is a matter of life and death, we too should feel more urgency about sharing it with others.
Third, the evangelistic message includes bad news. In a real sense, Jonah was not an evangelist at all. His entire message was one of judgment: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” That’s all God told him to say. And yet, since God is the God of Second Chances, the bad news of the gospel is always a prelude to grace. As Paul states the matter in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Ninevites certainly interpreted Jonah’s message as a call to repentance. “They believed God” and “declared a fast,” which is a symbol of repentance. They did not believe Jonah. They did not believe Jonah’s message. They believed God. That’s important. It indicates that they had taken Jonah’s message to heart as God’s personal word to them. And recognizing that God stood opposed to their sin, they turned to him for gracious forgiveness.
We don’t hear a lot of talk about God’s judgment of sin today. But unless we understand the bad news of the gospel, we can’t even begin to understand why the good news of the gospel is supposed to produce “great joy.”
Salvation Comes from the Lord (Jonah 2:8-10)
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In the modern world, many people believe that each religion is as good as any other. “All paths lead to heaven” is one way of stating the matter. But this belief—usually referred to as religious pluralism—is neither logical nor biblical, and therefore it is not spiritually helpful.
Religious pluralism is not logical for the simple reason that however similar they may be, the various religions make contradictory truth claims. Consider the case of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Traditional Judaism condemns Jesus as a heretic. Islam praises him as a merely human prophet. Christianity worships him as the Incarnate Son of God. Logically speaking, these religions’ individual beliefs about Jesus Christ may all be false, but they cannot each be true, for they cancel each other out.
From a biblical point of view, religious pluralism does not fare much better. Consider the end of Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2:8-10:
“Those who cling to worthless idolsforfeit the grace that could be theirs.But I, with a song of thanksgiving,will sacrifice to you.What I have vowed I will make good.Salvation comes from the LORD.”And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Notice the explicit criticism of non-biblical religions in verse 8: “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” That is the consistent position of the Bible. There is one true God who made the heavens and the earth, who reveals his will to men and women, who judges them for their sins, but nonetheless saves them from themselves. Verse 9 states the biblical position more positively: “Salvation comes from the LORD.” Now this biblical position is either true or false. If true, it means that non-biblical religions are unable to save you. If false, it means that the biblical religion is unable to save you. You can take or leave what the Bible says, but you cannot deny that it teaches what it teaches. And it does not teach religious pluralism.
If religious pluralism is both illogical and unbiblical, then it is also spiritually unhelpful (assuming, of course, that the biblical teaching about salvation is true). If all paths do not lead to heaven, then it is spiritually harmful to tell people that they do. It would be like telling people to take the sea route to Fresno or the land route to Hawaii. It just can’t be done, and all you will do if you try is experience the frustration of an impossible project.
Some people think that the notion of one religion teaching the correct path of salvation is too narrow and bigoted. Jonah thought otherwise. He rightly concluded that if God saves a sinner such as himself, the proper responses are thanksgiving and obedience. A drowning man has only two options: rescue or death. It would be churlish to quibble with the lifeguard about how he saved you, rather than gratefully to acknowledge the simple fact that he saved you.
Try Repentance (Jonah 2:3-7)
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When life is hard, do you become bitter or better? How you answer that question will determine whether God can use you for his purposes.
In my experience, life is hard for three basic reasons: (1) Rotten luck. Sometimes, bad things happen for what seems like no particular reason. (2) Evil people. Someone else has done something wrong, and we are experiencing the negative consequences of their actions. And (3) personal sins. We have done something wrong, and we are experiencing the negative consequences of our own actions.
If Job is an example of reason (1) and Christ an example of reason (2), then surely Jonah is an example of reason (3). Though we sympathize with Jonah’s parlous situation, we also realize that it’s his own fault. If he didn’t want to spend time being digested in a fish’s belly, he shouldn’t have boarded the fast boat to Tarshish. He should have caught the caravan to Nineveh.
Jonah himself seems to have realized that his submarine ride was an act of divine discipline. Just look at his prayer in Jonah 2:3-7. Speaking to God, Jonah confesses:
You hurled me into the deep,into the very heart of the seas,and the currents swirled about me;all your waves and breakersswept over me.I said, “I have been banishedfrom your sight;yet I will look againtoward your holy temple.”The engulfing waters threatened me,the deep surrounded me;seaweed was wrapped around my head.To the roots of the mountains I sank down;the earth beneath barred me in forever.But you brought my life up from the pit,O LORD my God.When my life was ebbing away,I remembered you, LORD,and my prayer rose to you,to your holy temple.
Jonah is pretty chipper for a guy stuck in a fish’s belly at the bottom of the sea. It’s not because he’s a masochist—the suffering-for-Jesus type who equates hardship and obedience. (Sometimes, obedience to God’s will is hard, but not always. Remember: Jesus also said that his yoke is easy and his burden light.) Nor is Jonah happy because he’s a Panglossian optimist who despite his circumstances nonetheless thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds. Rather, Jonah is a theological realist. He realizes that “the LORD disciplines those he loves” (Proverbs 3:12). Discipline is a temporary judgment, and its purpose is reform, not retribution. God wants Jonah to see the error of his ways and get back on the right path.
Are you going through a rough patch in life at the moment? If so, try to figure out why. If it’s because of rotten luck, learn patience. If it’s because of evil people, fight for justice. And if it’s because of personal sin, try repentance. God gives second chances to those he loves.
Sometimes, you see, what seems like the end of your world is really the beginning of a new adventure with God.
Look Up and Speak Up (Jonah 2:1-2)
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Several years ago, I found myself in the middle of a deep depression. I have never felt sadder or lonelier in my life. But I have also never felt closer to God. The prophet Jonah probably felt the same way during his three days in a fish’s belly, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about today.
Let’s quickly recap Jonah’s story. God called him to speak a hard word to Nineveh. Instead, he booked the fast boat to Tarshish. Mid-cruise, a storm arose, and to calm it, the sailors threw Jonah into the sea. But instead of drowning, Jonah got himself swallowed by a providentially large fish.
That brings us to Jonah 2:1-2:
From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said:“In my distress I called to the LORD,and he answered me.From the depths of the grave I called for help,and you listened to my cry.”
Old Testament scholars debate whether Jonah is an historical narrative or a parable. Much of the debate centers on whether we’re supposed to interpret Jonah’s submarine ride literally. Personally, I don’t think resolving that debate is very important. If God could raise Jesus from the dead after three days, I’m sure he could keep Jonah alive for the same time in a fish’s belly. So maybe this isn’t just another fish story. But even if it is a parable, the lesson about prayer is still the same. And it is this: When you’re in trouble, pray.
Our passage gives three clues about the parlous nature of Jonah’s situation.
First, he is “inside the fish.” In the order of creation, God did not make humans to be fish food. If anything, it should be the other way around. We should not be inside a fish; the fish should be inside of us. But as an unnatural act, sin results in the reversal of the order of creation. What God created to bless us becomes instead a means of judgment.
Second, Jonah mentions “my distress.” The objective peril of his situation causes him subjective discomfort. We’d feel the same way if we were in Jonah’s situation. And in a sense, we were. Apart from Christ, we too were under the sentence of death that sin imposes (Romans 6:23).
Third, Jonah describes his spiritual location as “the depths of the grave.” When I was depressed, I couldn’t think past the present moment. There seemed to be no future for me. Hopelessness is a dying man’s way of thinking.
And yet, despite all this, Jonah is quite sure that God has not abandoned him. Speaking of God, he says, “he answered me,” and “you listened to my cry.” Notice the past tense voice of those verbs. Jonah is so confident of God’s grace to him that he speaks of an as-yet-unanswered prayer as an already accomplished fact. That’s the kind of faith we all ought to have.
When you hit rock bottom in life, look up and speak up. God heard the prayer of Jonah’s distress, he heard the prayer of my depression, and he’ll hear the prayer of your trouble too.
Stormy Weather (Jonah 1:4-17)
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As I write these words, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. A storm is brewing. Usually storms are just the result of natural causes. But sometimes God stirs the clouds with his fingers. The trick is to learn which is when, and to respond appropriately.
When last we checked in with Jonah, he was boarding a boat for Tarshish, although he should have been riding in a caravan to Nineveh. At first, sailing was smooth—so smooth, in fact, that Jonah went below deck for a nap. But according to Jonah 1:4-17, the smooth sailing didn’t last long. According to verse 4, “the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.” And according to verse 5, the sailors responded with a mixture of emotion, pragmatism, and religion: “All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.”
Unfortunately, none of the sailors’ initial responses to the storm calmed it. So they dug a little more deeply into their bag of religious tricks and cast lots to see which man’s god was angry at him. Jonah drew the short stick. According to verse 8, the sailors interrogated Jonah: “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?” According to verse 9, Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
Thinking quickly, the sailors asked Jonah in verse 11: “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” This is fairly logical. After all, from the sailors’ perspective, if the source of the storm was Jonah’s angry god, then doing something to Jonah would make that god happy and the storm less fierce. According to verse 12, therefore, Jonah instructed the sailors with these words: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea, and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” So they did, and it did.
Most people have a come-to-Jesus moment in the midst of a trial. They turn to God when things are bad. But the sailors had their moment after the storm had passed. Verse 16 says, “At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him.” That demonstrates the sincerity of their devotion. Everyone cries out to God in a storm at sea. Only believers pray when the waters are still.
And what about Jonah? He caught a submarine ride back to Joppa. According to verse 17, “the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.” As I said earlier, usually a storm’s just a storm. But sometimes, when we’re out of God’s will, God uses life’s difficult moments to grab our attention. When he does, make sure to do what you must to get back on the road to the Nineveh where God has called you.
A Lesson in Spiritual Geography (Jonah 1:3)
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If life is a journey toward a destination, then the most important question you can ask yourself is whether you’re headed in the right direction.
Yesterday, I talked about God asking the prophet Jonah to say a hard word to the Ninevites (Jonah 1:1-2). You might think that Jonah would quickstep it from his home in Gath Hepher all the way to Nineveh, but you’d be wrong. In fact, he went the opposite direction.
Here’s how Jonah 1:3 tells the story:
But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.
Old Testament scholars locate ancient Gath Hepher in the modern village of el-Meshed, about two miles from Nazareth, in northern Israel. And they locate ancient Nineveh in archaeological ruins near Mosul, Iraq. But they’re not sure where ancient Tarshish is. Some identify it with the ancient city of Tartessus, which would have been located on the Iberian Peninsula in Andalusia, Spain. Others with Tarsus, in the western half of Turkey.
Whatever the physical geography of Tarshish may be, its spiritual geography is well known. Nineveh is east, Tarshish west. Nineveh can only be reached by land, Tarshish only by sea. Nineveh is where God wants you to go; Tarshish is not. Nineveh is obedience, Tarshish sin. Tarshish is a flight away from God.
Interestingly, we don’t learn why Jonah fled from God at this point in the story. In fact, we have to wait until the final chapter of the book to find out why Jonah bought a ticket to Tarshish. But at this point in the story, why he fled is not important, only that he fled.
The same thing could be said of our Jonah-like behavior. There are a thousand reasons to sin: “It’s only a ‘white lie.’” “He started it.” “She had it coming.” “The IRS won’t miss a few dollars.” “What happens in Vegas….” Our minds are an excuse-making factory that produces rationalizations on demand. (As some wag pointed out, to “rationalize” means to offer “rational lies.”) Whatever the reason, sin puts us on the road to the wrong destination, to the place of God’s judgment rather than his blessing. And after a long arduous journey, who wants to arrive at the wrong place?
There may be a thousand reasons to sin, but there’s one big reason to obey God: It’s in your best interest. As we’ll see tomorrow, God made Jonah’s flight to Tarshish so difficult that Jonah finally obeyed and set out for Nineveh. He doesn’t always do that, but sometimes he does. And when he does, you’d better get back on the right road.
Spiritually speaking, we’re all in Gath Hepher. The word of God has come to us too. We can go to Nineveh and obey or Tarshish and sin. Today, are you headed in the right direction?
A Hard Word (Jonah 1:1-2)
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When we were children, our mothers told us: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Generally speaking, that’s good advice. But sometimes a hard word needs to be said.
According to Jonah 1:1-2, God asked a man named Jonah to speak a hard word to Nineveh: “The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’”
Who is Jonah? What is Nineveh? And does God expect us to speak a hard word too?
Jonah was a prophet. Second Kings 14:25 tells us four things about him: when he preached, what he prophesied, who his father was, and where he lived. Jonah preached during the reign of King Jeroboam II in the first half of the 8th Century B.C. He prophesied that the king would restore the boundaries of Israel to their former greatness, and this prophecy was fulfilled. His father was an otherwise unknown man named Amittai, and he lived in Gath Hepher, a small town in the Galilee region of northern Israel.
In Jonah’s day, Nineveh was a great city of the Assyrian empire, located on the Tigris River, near modern-day Mosul, Iraq. It would eventually become the capital city of the empire. Nineveh was a large, wealthy, and powerful city, but it could also be quite cruel. In 722 B.C., long after Jonah, the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel, destroyed it, and sent its people into permanent exile. Needless to say, there was no love lost between the Israelites and the Assyrians.
And that’s what makes Jonah such an interesting prophet. He was a nationalistic prophet, foretelling the expansion of Israel’s borders. And he was commissioned to speak a hard word against Israel’s soon-to-be mortal enemy.
What was that hard word? What sins of the Ninevites had come to God’s attention? Were they personal sins? Was Nineveh rife with sexual immorality? Were they social sins? Was God concerned with Nineveh because of violence and injustice? We don’t know, and Jonah doesn’t say. All we know is that God asked Jonah to “preach against” the city. We also know that Jonah’s was a message of imminent judgment: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned” (3:4).
At the end of the day, however, the book of Jonah is not really about Nineveh and its sins. Instead, it is about Jonah and his responsibilities as a prophet. He lived in a messed up world, and God commissioned him to do something about it.
And that’s where Jonah becomes a model for us. Like Nineveh, our world—our country, our community—commits its fair share of personal and social sins. And like Nineveh’s sins, our sins are due for judgment. The important question is whether we will take up the prophetic responsibility of saying the hard word that needs to be said, or keep silent. If we read Jonah, we’ll speak up, knowing that the hard word of judgment is simply a prelude to the good news of divine mercy.
Advice for the New Year (Proverbs 3:5-6)
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Yesterday, my wife and I began a new adventure as pastors of Living Faith Center in Santa Barbara, California. While we do not know what the future holds, we know who holds the future. And that is a good piece of information with which to begin the New Year.
People often say that life is a journey, not a destination. I couldn’t disagree more. Life is a journey precisely because it has a destination. Would you really enjoy that hike through the woods as much if you didn’t know where you were going?
Tiffany and I are on a spiritual journey, and we know the destination. We want to pastor a healthy, growing church here in Santa Barbara. And we know many of the milestones along the path. Love the people. Preach well. Befriend the friendless. Help those in need. But in addition to well-known milestones, the path has many unknown twists and turns. How should we deal with the uncertainties of the journey?
Proverbs 3:5-6 provides an answer:
Trust in the LORD with all your heartand lean not on your own understanding;in all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make your paths straight.
This proverb tells us three things to do if we want God to guide us on life’s journey:
First, believe in God. There are two basic kinds of belief: believing that and believing in. I believe that George Washington was the first president of our country. But the early Americans believed in George Washington. They trusted him to guide our country with integrity and selflessness. When Solomon tells us to “trust in the LORD with all your heart,” he’s talking about the in rather than the that kind of belief. It’s not enough to believe many things about God, we must trust him wholeheartedly. That’s the only way to walk when the path of life is uncertain.
Second, distrust yourself. We live in a day and age of deep skepticism. We don’t trust government officials, business leaders, or even our own pastors. We distrust many people. And yet, we believe in ourselves to the nth degree. Personally, I’ve always found that a bit weird. I know myself better than anyone else. And precisely because I know myself so well, I’ve learned to distrust myself, to not “lean on my own understanding.” Sometimes, other people know what to do better than I do, and it would be the height of folly to ignore them but listen to myself. And obviously, God always knows best.
Third, give thanks! Several years ago, in the midst of a deep depression, I wrote down a list of all the things that I was nonetheless thankful for. And then, when I ate with people, I began to thank God for them when we prayed for the food. Those simple acts of gratitude broke the spell of my depression. Since then, I’ve learned (and am still learning) to “acknowledge” God in the midst of everything, for he is always present, trying to guide me.
As this New Year begins, I guess the best advice I have for you is this: If you want a straight path in 2007, get a Good Guide!
