Running Rebel (Part One): The Runaway

Transcript

JROT 18
10/08/2023
Running Rebel (Part One): The Runaway
Jonah 1:1-3
Jesse Randolph

Alright. Well, at long last here we are. After announcing it many many months ago, we are finally ready to embark on our Sunday evening study of the Book of Jonah. I’m really looking forward to our time together in this book. And one of the reasons that I’m looking forward to our time in this study in Jonah, is Andrew even eluted to it earlier, that Jonah, like many of the Old Testament books and especially the prophets, is often an overlooked book. Often a very underdeveloped book. Especially in the modern evangelical pulpit. Pastors elect not to preach it. And I think one of the reasons they may do so is some sort of fear of there only being a surface level familiarity out there with books like Jonah. Driven by things, like the old flannelgraph stories or these days, Veggie Tales. I think Pastors might be doubtful even, of the relevance of a book like Jonan to modern day Christian audiences. But I just have to say, I can’t think of a book with more pertinence to us today than a book like this one. Not only, of course, is it inspired and breathed out by God. And therefore, profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and righteousness, just like any of the other 65 books of the bible. But practically speaking, we see so much in the book of Jonah, specifically, that has so much to do with lives today, for us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. We see so much in this book about God and His character. As we’re going to see in our study of this book. We see so much in this book about this servant of Yahweh, Jonah. Who, as we’re going to see, as we go through this study, had a difficult time getting his act together. A man who wasn’t always obedient. A man who, at times, had difficulty remembering who it was he was serving. This is the profile of a man, who I suspect many of us at different times in our Christian walk, can relate to. Not because we necessarily want to relate to Jonah, but as we strive to do better and better for the glory of God, by the power of the Spirit. But it’s still a profile of a man that we can relate to, in our fallen humanity, it our fallen flesh. Now, tonight’s message is going to be very much, as you can imagine, introductory in nature. We’ll do a survey, a very high-level survey. To sort of start off the message, we’ll do this overview of some of the major elements, and the features of the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah as a whole. And that will be sort of our way to ramp up to where we’ll be going in the next several Sunday evenings. And then what we’ll do in the second half of the message tonight, is we’ll actually start working through some of the text. And specifically, the first 2.5 verses of Jonah chapter 1.

So, with that, let’s get right into considering some of the background features. The backstory to what’s happening in the book of Jonah. We’ll start with things like authorship and dating. We’ll start with the authorship and the dating of this book. In doing so, we’re asking the question, who wrote Jonah, humanly speaking. We know the Holy Spirit breathed out the book of Jonah. But who, in human terms, was the author the Holy Spirit moved to write this book? And then, when was it written? Well, as you can see from the opening lines . . . I’ll have you go ahead and turn to Jonah now. If you’re not there already, it might take you a bit. So, Hosea, Joel, Amos, then work your way through a few more of the minor prophets, and you’ll find, eventually, the book of Jonah. Just four chapters.
So this account, as you can see in Jonah 1:1, it actually doesn’t tell us, and if we were to survey the entire book tonight. We would see that the book actually doesn’t tell us who wrote the book. Now the book, clearly is about a man named Jonah. It has the title. And he’s mentioned throughout the book. But the book doesn’t tell us precisely who wrote the book. And some have argued that that means that the author Jonah was not Jonah. Because he’s referred to in the third person in this book. And it would be kind of odd to refer to yourself in the third person all the time. If I was just to have a conversation with you in the south lobby and say things like “Hey Jesse thinks your shirt is really nice today.” Or “Jesse thinks whether is nice today.” You’d be like, who’s this Jesse you’re talking about? Well, like, it’s me. And then, we would have other issues. But some have argued that it wasn’t Jonah who wrote the book, but instead, somebody else who is referring to Jonah. And that is actually not a very strong argument though. Because we know from other Old Testament books that biblical authors refer to themselves in the third person. We know, for instance, that Moses, very often in the Old Testament Pentateuch, referred to himself as Moses in the third person. Often calling himself by his proper name. Even going so far as he infamously did, he would declare himself the most humble man who ever lived. Isaiah did the same thing. Daniel did the same thing. Referring to themselves in the third person. So, the point is there are other prophets who refer to themselves in the third person. That means, that fact alone doesn’t disqualify Jonah as being the human author here. And really, as you look through the book, and as you look through other features, like we’re going to get to in 2 Kings. Where we see another reference to Jonah. There really is no reason to discount the traditional position, which is that Johan wrote the book of Jonah. Jonah was the guy with the front row seat to all that happened. Jonah is indeed a prophet, as we’re going to see in 2 Kings, in just a second. And there’s no reason to discount that he was the one who wrote this book.

Now, who was Jonah? Well, looking here again at Jonah 1:1, we see that he was “the son of Amittai”. And we know nothing about Amittai, Jonah’s father. Except that that word, or that name, Amittai means, my true one. We know that Jonah was a Hebrew. We look down at Jonah 1:9, we’re going to get to this episode likely next week, where it says, “he said to them, [to the sailors on this ship] I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land”. We also know that Jonah was a Hebrew prophet. So, he was not ordinary Hebrew, he was an appointed Hebrew Prophet. And one of the reasons we know that is from the only other place we see Jonah’s name mentioned in the Old Testament, which is 2 Kings 14. In fact, let’s turn there, back to 2 Kings 14. And as you’re finding your way there to 2 Kings, the book of 2 Kings, I’m going to go ahead and lay out some of the history of the entirety of Old Testament Israel as we sort of catch up and ramp up to where Jonah fits in this story.

Now, we have to remember that the book of Jonah was, like each of the other books of the Old Testament, and like each of the books of the New Testament, written to a specific group of people and a specific time in history. And a very specific context. And so, to set the stage for where we’re going to look here in 2 Kings 14 eventually. We need to go way back in time. Like, way way back in time, to the very beginning. As we remember Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. And what that tells us, is that several thousand, not millions, not billions of years ago, God made the world and everything in it. And we know that God created the world perfectly. And that He did so in six literal 24-hour periods. God created the Sun. And He created the moon and the stars. He created the earth and the seas. He created plants and vegetation. He created animals on land, animals in the sky and animals in the sea. And as the crown of His creation, we know from Genesis 1:26, he “created man in His own image”. And in doing so, He created them, Genesis 1:27, “male and female”. That’s an internal standard, doesn’t matter how many votes or politicians try to change that. He created them male and female. Then we see in Genesis 1:31, that “God saw all that He made, and behold, it was very good”. So, God did His part. He created all things. He created flora and fauna. He created people, male and female. He did His part. Man did not. Man disobeyed. Man did the one thing that he was commanded not to do. Man sinned. And as a result, sin entered the world. Romans 5:12 “through one man sin entered into the world,” which brought about the curse on the world, with humanity coming under God’s judgment. That’s sin culminated in the flood during Noah’s day. But once the waters from the flood started to recede, the world began to repopulate. And then, we know after the tower of Babel episode in Genesis 11 in which the people all gathered in one place to try to make a name for themselves, God scattered them. And then, in Geneses 12, He called Abram, later Abraham, to be the father el many nations. Abraham had Issac. Issac had Jacob. And Jacob, later called Israel, had twelve sons, who would later be known as, or called the twelve sons of Israel. And then, following the lead of Joseph, Israel ended up in Egypt for 400 years. Where they went from being favored to ultimately being oppressed. After Pharaoh turned on them and enslaved them, Moses eventually let them out of Egyptian captivity. And then, under Moses’s successor, Joshua, the people we know, eventually entered the promised land of Canaan. Where they were first ruled by Judges. And later by Kings, the greatest of whom was, of course, David. Who despite his obvious flaws, was still described as a man after God’s own heart. David’s son, Solomon succeeded him, and though Solomon was, outside of Christ, the wisest man who ever lived. He was still deeply human. And deeply flawed. And he was eventually overridden by his love for women and wealth and the world’s philosophy. Solomon started off strong, we know, in the earliest part of 1 Kings. But eventually, those cracks in his character, the compromise started to show. Which we see him, later lamenting now as an old man, in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was eventually succeeded by his son, Rehoboam. Rehoboam though, was opposed by Jeroboam. And that’s when the 12 tribes of Israel split. That was sometime in 931 B.C. The unified Kingdom, up to that point, was now a divided kingdom. With there now being 10 tribes in the north called Israel or Ephraim, led by Jeroboam. And now two tribes in the south called Judah. And we know that much of the history from that point forward, of the northern kingdom, was marked by bloodshed, with one king murdering the next king. To take the throne, to succeed to the throne, all while the people were engrossed with the worship of false idols. And then, by the time we get to Jonah’s day, somewhere in the middle of the 8th century B.C. the kingdom was still divided. But life, at least in some areas, had improved. Because the northern kingdom was now this place of relative political peace and economic prosperity. However, it was still very much a place marked by spiritual idolatry. In fact, we saw that very thing in our study of Hosea last year, in which we took much of Sunday nights last year. And that’s interesting and important because Hosea and Jonah were actually contemporaries. They were battling and going after the same false worship that was dotting the land at the time. So, the point though, is that at this time in history, there was sort of this schizophrenic personality to Israel. They were very economically wealthy and prosperous and doing well. But at the same time, they were spiritually devoid and lacking and drifting. And that’s the context for where we’re going to be tonight, as we look to Jonah. And that was just to give you guys enough time to get to 2 Kings 14. Are you there yet? Just making sure.

2 Kings 14, where we’re going to see a few more details here about Jonah. Now that we’re all caught up, look at 2 Kings 14, and we’ll start in verse 23. It says: “In the fifteenth year of Amaziah [we’re now in the divided kingdom] the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned for forty-one years. [That Jeroboam, by the way, is Jeroboam the 2nd, that’s who our focus is tonight] He did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, [that would be Jeroboam the 1st] which he made Israel sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher”.

So, a few additional details about Jonah, this is all by way of background for our study of Jonah, that we can pull from this account here in 2 Kings 14. First, we know that Jonah served during the reign of Jeroboam II. That’s who’s referred to here in 2 Kings 14. And we know that Jeroboam II was a wicked king. Look at verse 24 again there, “He did evil in the sight of the Lord”. We know that Jeroboam II was a powerful and long reigning king. In fact, he reigned, it says, 41 years. And we know from piecing the chronology together that he reigned from 793 B.C. until 753 B.C. So, Jonah was serving this wicked king for many of those years. And he did so, in these years between 793 and 753 B.C. Some segment of those 41 years. Most in our camp, meaning conservative inerrantists, would say that Jonah’s ministry during that period of 793 to 753 B.C. And when Jonah most likely wrote this book, the book we’re studying, Jonah . was around 760 B.C. Somewhere toward the tail end of Jeroboam II’s reign. So, that’s a bit about Jonah from 2 Kings.

Second, we also know that Jonah, from this passage, was a prophet of God. We know that this was a time of crisis in Israel. And though the reigning king, Jeroboam II, as it says ”did evil in the sight of the Lord”. And that there were some real consequences to the evil that he was doing in the sight of the Lord. Even then, we know that because of God’s love for the people of Israel. The people that He had originally set His love upon. He continued, because of that love, to send prophets to His people, to get them to turn around. And He did so, during these reigns of these wicked kings. And what these prophets did, is they served as these pockets of light and truth in the midst of the darkness. As they were continually calling on these kings and these rulers and the people to repent of their wickedness. And to turn back to God.

Jonah was one of those prophets. And if we were to lay his ministry on sort of like an Old Testament timeline what we would see is that Jonah’s immediate predecessors, to being a prophet in the prophetic office, would have been Elijah and Elisha. And then his contemporaries, as I just mentioned, one of them was Hosea. And another would have been Amos. Now, in the case of Jonah, he was God’s appointed mouthpiece to the Israelite people of his day. Meaning, though he served under a wicked king he was still required, as a prophet, to speak on behalf of God both to the king and to the people of Israel. He was there to be a voice of truth in the middle of all the wickedness and the apostasy. Third, we know from this passage here in 2 Kings 14, about Jonah. Is that Jonah did, if fact, speak the word of God in Israel. We’re told there in verse 25, that when Jeroboam II restored this border, “the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah”, he did so “according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet.”

So, what that means, as God’s mouthpiece, Jonah was accustomed to receiving “the word of the Lord”. And then communicating “the word of the Lord” to those under his care, or within earshot. And that is going to play a part, later when we get into “the word of the Lord”, back in the book of Jonah.
Fourth thing, that we get from this text, 2 Kings 14, is where Jonah was from. We see that he was “the son of Amittai”, verse 25 here, “the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher”. All we know about that place is from Joshua 19:13, which is where this city is described as a village that was in the territory of Zebulun. One of the ten northern tribes. Which was somewhat close to Nazareth.

And then, to add to the potpourri of other facts that we know about Jonah, as we do all this background on the front end tonight. We can add a few more. One, is that Jonah’s name in Hebrew, means dove. Which doesn’t appear to have any real special exegetical significance for what’s happening in the book. But I reserve my right to change my mind, as we work through the book, and go through the study.
We also know that Jonah is identified in Jonah 1, as a worshiper of Yahweh. Again, Jonah 1:9, he says, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land”.

We know, as we’re going to get into the text even tonight, that Jonah was an ardent nationalist. He was very much pro-Israel. And, as we’re going to see, he was very much anti-Assyrian. And then one final observation, just in terms of his person is that Jonah, I’m sure as you’ve done any studying in this book, you know this, he was incredibly strong-willed and incredibly stubborn. And we’re going to see that in various places in the study. So that’s a bit about the authorship, the dating, the background of the book of Jonah.

What about themes? What are some of the major themes of the book of Jonah? What are some of the points of emphasis or stress in the book? Of course, when most people, the common man on the street. You could go to the Haymarket and ask somebody, what’s the book of Jonah about? And you might get an answer that would have something to do with a fish, right? Or a whale. Or the perennial debate, was it a fish or a whale? And did it really happen? Those are the questions that people think are the main issues going on in the book of Jonah. Those are the things that people assume are the essential facts of Jonah. Was he swallowed by a fish? Was he swallowed by a whale? Did he actually survive, or did he die? Did he come back to life? Was this some kind of resurrection? Pre-Christ, you know, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, in Jonah, in the belly of the whale or the fish? Those are the kind of questions people wrestle with, as though those are the main points, or the main ideas of Jonah. But those aren’t the main points of Jonah. Those aren’t actually the big issues of the book. Those aren’t the major themes of the book. Those aren’t the essential points of the book. At the heart of this book, rather, are themes like, the sovereignty of God, in accomplishing all that He decrees. And accomplishing all that He purposes. Another theme is the glory of God. The glory of God demonstrated in this context, through Israel to the nations. And that’s consistent with what we see elsewhere in the Old Testament. In places like Isaiah 49:3 “You are My servant, Israel, in whom I will show My glory”, says Yahweh. Or Psalm 67:1-2 says, “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us – that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations”. So, the glory of God displayed to the nations is a theme in Jonah.

We also know that major theme in Jonah, is the mercy and the grace that God displays to unrepentant sinners. By not smiting them. By not bringing on them, right away, the divine hammer of justice that their sin deserves. As one commentator notes: “The book of Jonah is not so much about this great fish that appears in the middle of the book . . . [but] in order to teach Jonah that he has a gracious God”.And here’s another one, another theme, obedience to God. The obedience to God that He requires of all of His subjects, at all times and all eras and all places. So, there are some of the themes. The sovereignty of God. The glory of God. The mercy and grace of God. And obedience to God.

Here’s another background detail that I can’t not discuss tonight. We’ll get into it later, when we get to Jonah 2. But we have to at least note the fact that Jesus accepted Jonah as being true. The account of Jonah as being historical fact. Now, the fact that Jonah is in the bible, should be enough for us, right? We studied inerrancy and canonicity all summer long on Sunday evenings. We looked at the process of how the scriptures were recognized to be what they already are. So, we know that the fact that Jonah is here, means that it is from God. That it is profitable. That it does belong in the cannon. That it is canonical. But on top of that, Jesus, in multiple places in the gospels, three times, to be exact, affirms the historicity of Jonah. Three different places. I’ll read to you one of those. In fact, why don’t we turn there so we can see it with our own eyes? Look at Matthew 12. Matthew 12 is one of the key references where Jesus makes very clear that He wasn’t doing textual criticism, as He encountered the book of Jonah. He accepted it for what it is, God’s very word.

Look at Matthew 12:38. “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, [meaning Jesus] ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You’. But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.’” The other cross references you can jot down would be Matthew 16:4 and Luke 11:29-32. But again, it’s obvious from those passages, that Jesus Himself accepted the record, the historicity of the book of Jonah, including that record of him being in the belly of the fish.

Now, what about form and style in the book of Jonah? One more bit of background information to give you is that Jonah is one of what is known as the Minor Prophets. Or historically what was known as The Twelve. And of course, the Minor Prophets aren’t “minor” because of the significance or the insignificance of their content. They are “minor” because of the brevity of their content. It just means that Jonah is a short book. It’s four chapters. It’s a total of 48 verses. Meaning, we’ll be able to move through it completely, relatively quickly. I use that word “relatively” intentionally there. I can’t tell you exactly how long it’ll take. But we’ll move through it relatively quickly. And its prophetic narrative is the genre here. This book parallels, in many ways, the writings of other major and minor prophets. It has prophetic aspects to it. But it’s also recounting historical events as they actually occur.

But there is one major difference between what Jonah reports, the book of Jonah reports, and what those other prophetic works report. And we’ll get into this many times through this series. Which is that in those other prophetic accounts, considerably emphasis is given by the author, on the prophet’s faithfulness to God’s call. Think of Isaiah 6, in the heavenly throne room scene. And he says, what? “Here I am, send me”. Or last year, we studied Hosea. And one of the most moving, I think, riveting portions of all of Hosea is actually in Hosea 1:2 or 1:3, where after God tells Hosea the prophet, to go marry a prostitute, Gomer. Right away, the next few words are, “so he went”. Immediate obedience. First time obedience. Immediate action to do something. And none of us would want to do. But because it came from the command of God, he did it. So, we have those examples, Isaiah and Hosea. But Jonah is a lot different. Jonah gets a command. And the example he gives us is what we’re not to do. How we’re not to respond when there’s a command from God.

So, that’s all background. Much more certainly could be said. But I’m eager to get into our text itself. So, I’m going to cut off the preliminaries at this point, let’s go ahead and dig a bit more deeply into the book of Jonah. And again, tonight, we’re going to work through the first two and a half of the 48 verses of this book. We’ll start in verse 1, Jonah 1:1. God’s word reads: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me’. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”

So in these nearly-three verses, we’re going to see three central points are being made. We’re seeing who Jonah was. What Yahweh [God] wanted him to do. And then, what Jonah’s response was. The way I’ve framed it up. From the standpoint of giving you a three-point alliterated outline. Is we’re going to see: The Description, that would be in verse 1. We’re going to see: The Decree in verse 2. And we’ll see: The Departure in verse 3.

Let’s start with the description, “description” in verse 1, as in . . . what this first line of prophetic narrative describes about this initial touchpoint between Yahweh and Jonah. The text tells us “the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai”. The book of Jonah, in other words like many other books of the bible, begins by affirming God’s word. By affirming its central message as being God’s word. “The word of the Lord [it says] came to Jonah.” So, as the bible records it, God’s sovereign call to Jonah came without any warning or explanation. We’re not giving it any runup to what happens here. It was sudden. But its source was without question. This was the “word of the Lord”. Now that introductory phrase there is going to be something that you’ll encounter, as you go through each of the different minor prophets. You’ll see something very similar as you open any one of the books of the 12. Like Hosea 1:1, I’m going to rattle off a few of these here.

Hosea 1:1 – “The word of the Lord which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.” Or Joel 1:1 – “The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.” Or Micah 1:1 – “The word of the Lord which came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.” Or Zephaniah 1:1 – “The word of the Lord which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah of Amon, king of Judah.” Or Haggai 1:1 – “The word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah.” Zechariah 1:1 – “The word of the Lord came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo.” Or Malachi 1:1 – “The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.” So, in those books, that I just rattled off there, the “word of the Lord” refers to the message that the prophet was presenting to his audience in the name of the Lord.

In Jonah 1:1, by contrast, what we see are the instructions that were given directly by the Lord to His prophet. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai.” And in what way, might we ask, did these instructions come to Jonah? How did he receive the “word of the Lord”? Was it in an audible voice? Or did an angel of the Lord deliver this message to him? Did God speak to Jonah through a dream . . . or in an appearance of some sort? Was there a still small voice involved? The text doesn’t tell us. The exact manner in which “the word of the Lord” was relayed to Jonah here is not given. The specific means of divine-human communication is not specified. The personal circumstances and the psychological state of Jonah at the time God spoke to him are not disclosed. Attention to any of those details is not revealed at all. Rather, what’s being emphasized and what’s in focus here, is the single and supreme fact that “the word of the Lord came to Jonah.” And a point to stress here is that in this time the very time that Jonah lived and ministered. We do know that there was what’s called a famine in the land. Not a famine in terms of hunger for food. We know that this was a time of prosperity, economically speaking, in Israel. But there was a famine for God’s word. The prophet Amos, in Amos 8:11 would say that very thing. And Amos, again, is this contemporary of Jonah.

In Amos 8:11 he says, “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord’”. Meaning, Jonah was privileged. He’s living in this time where this famine is imminent, if it’s not already there. This famine for the word of the Lord. And now, he has “the word of the Lord” coming to him, mid-famine. And that’s a privilege we can relate to, can we not? What are we holding in our hands? What is sitting in your lap? What is sitting on this pulpit . . . but the very word of the Lord. What am I preaching from this evening . . . but the very word of the Lord? We have, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, not the mere “word of men”, in our hands, we have “the word of God, which”, is doing “its work in you who believe”.
We have, Hebrews 4:12, the word of the lord which is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart”. We have what 2 Peter 1:19 calls, “the prophetic word made more sure, to you which you do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place” . So, we understand what a privilege we have to hold the written word of the Lord. What Jonah had was some version of the word of the Lord. That came to him there in his home base in Israel. So, that’s a little bit about The Description. That’s just all background. All context, not only to the book of Jonah as a whole, but even to this first verse here, as “the word of the Lord [comes] came to Jonah the son of Amittai”.

And then we’re going to look at verse 2, we’re going to see this decree, or command, or instruction. That’s our second heading tonight, The Decree. I’ll read verse 1 again, to give us sort of a lead in to verse 2. But we’re going to focus in now, on verse 2. It says: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me’”. Now, look at those words of command there. “Arise.” “Go.” “Cry against.” And it’s all followed by that simple explanation there: “. . . for their wickedness has come up before Me”. Now, that first command there, “arise.” it actually modifies the next word, which is “go.” So, its “arise and go.” There’s a sense of immediacy here. “The word of the Lord [comes] to Jonah”, and then there’s this sense of now, he had to go at once. In other words, this was a definite and firm call from the Lord. There was no time to doubt what was being said. There was no time to question what was being said. There was no time to exegete or study this command, this word from the Lord. The Lord had given Jonah his traveling orders. He’d given Jonah his coordinates. And the destination was set to go, it says, to Nineveh. “Go to Nineveh.” Now, Nineveh, we know, was a great distance away from where Jonah’s home base would have been there in Israel. We know that Nineveh was in the heart of a violent empire – the Assyrian Empire. It was about six hundred miles northeast of where Jonah would have been. It’s near modern-day Mosul, in Iraq. This would have been one of the largest cities in the ancient world . . . which is why it’s called “Nineveh the great city.” In fact, if you drop down to Jonah 3:3, we’re going to see how large Nineveh was. Look at Jonah 3:3, it says, “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk”. We’ll get more into what that means and what that entails as we come upon that text. Or down in Jonah 4:11 at the very last verse of the book, God here says, “. . . should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand”.

Now, these are just some basic biblical details here about how large Nineveh was. How significant a city Nineveh was. And we also know from other extra biblical resources, that this was indeed a great city. It was a fortress city. It had walls, according to some records, that were at least a hundred feet high. And the walls were so thick that you could ride, it was said, three chariots, side-by-side, on top of the walls, and fit them all in there. And even in between the walls, there were gardens and entire fields for cattle and grazing. In other words, this was a large, strong, well-fortified city. But it wasn’t just large and strong and well-fortified, we know this was a very wicked city.

Now, though, the nature of the wickedness and the trouble that was in this city is not given in great detail here in the book of Jonah. It’s not really elaborated upon in the book of Jonah. The reader of Jonah and this prophecy, as they received it here in verse 2, where it says “for their wickedness has come up before Me”. In Jonah’s time, they would have understood what that meant. Because Nineveh’s reputation preceded it as being, in fact, an exceedingly wicked city. This, in fact, is well described and more thoroughly described in the book of Nahum. So, why don’t you turn with me, to the book of Nahum. Let’s see who can get to the book of Nahum the fastest. Two books to the right. Jonah, Micah, Nahum. Look at Nahum 3. And this just gives you a picture of God’s perspective on the wickedness of this particular city, Nineveh. Nahum is a prophecy that ties directly into the future destruction of this city, Nineveh. Look at Nahum 3:1 – “Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage; her prey never departs. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses, and bounding chariots! Horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies - they stumble over the dead bodies! All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries. ‘Behold, [and this is the Lord addressing Nineveh here] I am against you.’ Declares the Lord of hosts; ‘And I will lift up your skirts over your face, and show to the nations your nakedness and to the kingdoms your disgrace. I will throw filth on you and make you vile, and set you up as a spectacle. And it will come about that all who see you will shrink from you and say, Nineveh is devastated! Who will grieve for her? Where will I seek comforters for you?’” God clearly did not have a warm, fuzzy perspective on Nineveh. This was a wicked, wicked city. A large city. A pagan city. And a wicked city. And now, God here in Jonah, is sending this prophet to that city. And He’s sending him there alone.

And note, verse 2, Jonah was not only to go to Nineveh, the great city, he was, it says, to “cry against it”. Meaning, when he got to Nineveh, he was to proclaim a message of doom on this wicked city. He was to call on this wicked city to repent of their wicked ways. This was not a task for the faint-hearted. I mean, imagine being Jonah, and receiving this type of calling! This is not exactly like going down to the courthouse, or to Holms Lake. This would have been an incredibly daunting task.

But we know, do we not? That this is exactly the way that God has worked throughout history. Often giving His people, His chosen spokespersons the most difficult of missions. Right? He called Abraham to leave his father’s land and to journey to a distant land. He called Moses to stand before Pharaoh and cry out in Exodus 5, “Let my people go”. He directed Isaiah, sometimes a forgotten scene in Isaiah 20, to walk naked and barefoot for three years as he preached judgment against Egypt and Cush. He directed a teenage girl named Mary to carry the Messiah of Israel in her virgin womb, threatening her reputation and her betrothal. He’s called countless missionaries throughout church history to take the gospel to far-off-lands, with no promise that the message of the cross will ever be embraced, and not promise that their lives will ever be spared.

I think often of this missionary, you’ve heard of him I’m sure, named Adoniram Judson, missionary to Burma, many many years ago now. And there’s this infamous letter that Adoniram Judson wrote to his future father-in-law, as he sought his daughter’s hand in marriage. The man that he was writing this letter to, was named Mr. Hasseltine. And he sought again, to marry his daughter before he took off to Burma. Basically, he was looking to marry his daughter, and then take off to Burma, perhaps never to be back in the States again. I just want to read this letter to you, because it highlights the call, the ask that God often makes of His people.

This is Judson to Mr. Hasseltine: “I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world? Whether you can consent to her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life? Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death? Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?” We don’t write letters like we used to. But how profound. Judson got it. He got the cost of true service of a living God. And the point I’m trying to make here, tying it back to Jonah, is that God sometimes gives His people very difficult commands. And does so for His own sovereign purposes. And to achieve His own sovereign ends.

Bringing it back to Jonah. That’s what we see here in verse 2. Jonah was to “arise” and “go to Nineveh.” Not because that was the plan that maybe made the most sense in Jonah’s mind. But because that is what God had decreed and ordained. This is what had come to Jonah through “the word of the Lord”. And note, that Jonah wasn’t going to Nineveh for relaxation, or a little R&R. No. He was called to Nineveh again, to go “and cry [out] against it”. He was going as a herald. As a messenger. As a preacher. And he was going there with a message. And that message is given in the last part of verse 2: “for their wickedness has come up before me”, says God. These were words of denunciation, from God against this city, from the God who rules all things. From the God who is the “Judge of all the earth”. Genesis 18.

Now, taking just a step back for a minute. And putting ourselves in Jonah’s shoes for a bit. Going back to verse 1. As the word of the Lord came to Jonah. I imagine there might have at least been initially some sense of excitement on Jonah’s part, when he started to receive whatever this word of the Lord was going to be. Remember, he handled the word of the Lord before. We saw that back in 2 Kings 14. He knew what his commission was as a prophet, which was to receive the word of the Lord, and then to declare the word of the Lord to other people. So, you can almost picture the anticipation Jonah might have had here. As some new word was coming to him, from Yahweh, to announce. And of course, Jonah’s assumption likely was, as it was for any of the prophets of Israel, that this word of the Lord he was about to receive, had to do with Israel. The very nation to whom he’d been called. And what he was going to have to do now, is call Israel to repent of their idolatress practices. And turn back to God. But the word of the Lord had nothing to do with Israel. Rather, it had to do with Assyria – Israel’s enemy. Jonah here is told to pack his bags . . . and head to one of the great cities of Assyria – Nineveh.

So, not only was God’s command to Jonah sovereign. And not only was it sudden. It was difficult to hear. It was difficult to receive. It was difficult to process. He was to “go.” And go immediately. “Arise, go.” And he was to go to this faraway land. And this foreign land. And he was to cry out against it. Now, just so we know that this is not a total aberration here. This was not the only time, or the exclusive time where a prophet of Israel was called to go minister in some way to non-Israelites. Jonah’s predecessors, Elijah and Elisha, did that very thing. We know that Elijah was called to go to Zarephath in Phoenician territory . . . and give food to a widow and her family and restore her son’s life. That was a non-Israelite. That happened in 1 Kings 17. We know that Elisha healed the leper, Naaman, in 2 Kings 5. And that leper was not an Israelite leper, he was from Aram, or Assyria. So, again, it was not like he was above the paygrade of a Hebrew prophet to do things for people that were outside of Israel.

But Jonah here wasn’t asked to give food to widows or to heal lepers. He was being asked to go to this great city and cry out against it. And call it out for its sin. And again, it wasn’t just any city he was being called to. It was a city whose wicked ways . . . and whose evil name . . . and its evil nature . . . was on full display. “. . . their wickedness has come up before Me”...The wickedness of Nineveh had come to the Lord’s attention. That’s not implying that the Lord, the all wise, all knowing, all sovereign Lord was somehow unaware before, of this people’s depravity. But rather, what that’s indicating is that the situation had degenerated, it had gotten so bad, that the Lord’s patience and mercy toward Nineveh, and toward Assyria, were now being overshadowed by the demands for His own justice. And He was going to send Jonah to take care of it.

Well, Jonah didn’t agree. Jonah disapproved. Though God clearly had a plan which involved going to this wicked city, to give them an opportunity to repent. Jonah apparently wasn’t on board. Now, though this command came from on high. From Almighty God. Through His very word. Jonah wasn’t going to follow.

So, we’ve seen The Description, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai”. We’ve seen The Decree, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it”. Now, we’re going to look at The Departure. Look at verse 3, again, just the first part there. “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”
Now, I’ve already sort of alluded to this, but in just about every other instance in scripture. Where a prophet is given a command to act in a manner like this. When they are commanded to proclaim something on God’s behalf. Or to decree something on God’s behalf. When the Sovereign God called on them to do so, they answered. When Yahweh instructed, they obeyed. Not so Jonah. Yahweh commanded Jonah to go east to Nineveh. And as we’re going to see, Jonah in reply, went west to Tarshish. And it all starts with that adversative conjunction at the beginning of verse 3, where it says “but”. “But Jonah”, that’s indicating a sharp contrast. And it’s actually giving a real strong emphasis to the sad report that’s about to follow. Yahweh had commissioned Jonah to herald His word of judgment upon Nineveh . . . that great Assyrian city . . . that wicked Assyrian city . . . But Jonah, fully conscious of what he was doing, deliberately, defiantly disobeyed God. His bad attitude, his actions were extreme. As he willfully and intentionally chose to participate in the exceedingly serious sin of rebellion. Rebelling against God here.

And note what Jonah did instead. It says, but Jonah “rose up to flee to Tarshish”. That was not, by the way, Tarsus of Cilicia, where Paul the Apostle was from. Rather, Tarshish, was a commercial outpost on the coast of ancient Spain. Far west, beyond Gibraltar, far distant from the land of Israel. In other words, Jonah was apparently determined to go as far as he possibly could from where he’d been told to go.

So, anyway, the boldness of Jonah’s opposition to Yahweh, is on total display here. He’s called to go east. He goes west. He’s charged to go to Assyria, the center of the known world among the pagan peoples. But instead, he goes to this remote trading post on the Spanish coast. God seeks to have Jonah be this constructive participant in His divine purposes, in bringing about repentance there in Nineveh. But Jonah, instead, seeks to completely remove himself from God’s plans and God’s purposes.

But why? Why would Jonah go to that length? Why did Jonah flee? Why did he depart? Well, a variety of reasons have been offered. And theories have been offered over the years. Some have suggested that Jonah was simply overcome and overwhelmed and stressed out by the thoughts of the difficulties of this mission that God had set him on. In other words, for Jonah, this was just an intimidating task. To go far away to this far city. This great city. This wicked city. To arrive there all alone. Ready to preach this message of judgment and repentance upon the Ninevites. And the thought of thinking, how would they respond? What could one man there possibly do? Who would listen to him? Was too much for him. The thought was, I’d be ridiculed if I went to Nineveh. If I somehow breached those walls and got into that city. At best, they would ridicule me, and worst, they would kill me. And I’d be added to the pile of bodies that littered the streets there. We can at least understand, on a human level, why there might have been fear like that. To go to a city like Nineveh and preach a message like this. To cry against them and talk about their wickedness. But is that the answer? We don’t have any indication in the text that it was fear. We don’t have any indication in the text that it was fear of ridicule. We don’t have any indication in the text that it was fear of death.

So, what’s the reason? Well, the reason actually comes within the story itself. Look at Jonah 3. Where we actually get the reason for his refusal and his departure. In Jonah 3, we have this record of the second call of Jonah to go to Nineveh. After a series of intervening events. Including a ship. And a storm. And Sailors. And a fish. And prayer. And a spewing out of Jonah on dry land. Look at Jonah 3, which records this second call to go to Nineveh. It says, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, [and I know we’re jumping ahead, but this is survey night] saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.’ So, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk. Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’ Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. He issued a proclamation and it said, ‘In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.’ [Praise the Lord, and then it says] ’ When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.” And I’ve got to keep reading a few more verses. Look at chapter 4. “But it greatly displeased Johan and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life’.” So, we have our answer here to the question: why did Jonah flee to Tarshish in the first place. It’s right there in plain view in Jonah 4:2. Where he says, “. . . for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity”. In other words, it was precisely because of this outcome, that Jonah had disobeyed originally. He knew that God was a gracious God and that He sent him to Nineveh, not only to announce pending judgment on the Ninevites. You know, to preach the fire and brimstone sermons. Rather, God was sending Jonah to Nineveh, so that Nineveh might repent. And because of the possibility that Nineveh might repent. Jonah wanted nothing to do with it. Which is why he was so quick to flee, as it says, to Tarshish.

He didn’t flee to Tarshish because he was afraid of traveling to a foreign country. This wasn’t about traveling far or racking up too many miles. In fact, Tarshish was further away than Nineveh was from where Jonah’s home base was. Jonah didn’t flee because he was embarrassed by the prospect of standing on a street corner and looking like a fool, as people passed by. And Jonah didn’t even flee because he was afraid of losing his life there in Nineveh. Not only does the text not tell us anything of the sort. But we actually have already seen, in a couple of different places in Jonah, that he did not seem to have some sort of overwhelming fear of death.

Look at Jonah 1:12, we’ll get here real soon. This is when he’s confronted by the sailors in the storm on the sea, when he’s there on the ship. When he says, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea”. As the solution to having the sea and the storm eventually calm down. Whereas we just saw in Jonah 4:3, when he has his temper-tantrum over Nineveh’s repentance. He says, “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life”.

So, he didn’t flee to Tarshish because he was afraid of dying. No, he fled because the command God had given him was clear. The command God had given him, back in verse 2, to go to Nineveh, and cry out against it. It was clear. Jonah knew the implication of that. He knew what was being communicated there by God. He knew that what God was saying there, without even studying any commentaries or lexicons, was that there was going to be a call to repentance. And that repentance was indeed, if the call went out, likely to happen. But Jonah, his will, was on a collision course with God’s will. God’s will was evident. The wicked people of Nineveh needed to be called out by Jonah, for their wickedness. They needed to be called on to repent. But Jonah had his own desires. He had his own plans. His own ambitions to fulfil. He had his own concepts of how things ought to be. And how best he needed to serve God. For Jonah, it was not “thy will be done.” For him, instead, it was “my will be done.” God said, “go to Nineveh”. And then, Jonah said, “No, I’ll go to Tarshish”.

And not only that. He went to Tarshish, it says at the end of verse 3 here. To be away “from the presence of the Lord”. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. It’s quite the statement. The concept. The idea that you can flee from the presence of the Lord. But what does it mean? And what does Jonah mean in using that here as he writes this text out? Did Jonah actually believe that he could escape from God’s presence? No. I don’t think he did. I think he would have known and agreed with what the Lord communicated to the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 23:24. Jeremiah 23:24 – “Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?’ declares the Lord”.

Not only that. Jonah would have been familiar with Psalm 139 – which was written well before the book of Jonah. In which we read in the scripture reading for this evening. Where David says in
Psalm 139:7-8 – “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” So, if he knew these truths. If Jonah knew these truths. And he knew that he couldn’t actually physically flee from the presence of the Lord. Or escape God’s notice. Why did he run away? Well, it wasn’t because he thought he could escape notice of God. Instead, he was fleeing because he was trying to wiggle his way out of the commission of God. He was trying to weasel his way out of his duties. He was trying to do this as a way to maybe have this buck passed to somebody else. Some other prophets, who would eventually get around to doing what he had been called by God to do. So, that under somebody else’s watch, not Jonah’s, the Ninevites would ultimately repent. As one commentator notes: “Jonah, the ardent nationalist, therefore, attempted to flee to a place where no fellow believers would be found, hoping that his would help ensure that God’s word would not come to him again. If he stayed in Israel, he could expect to hear more from Yahweh, but if he left, he might hear nothing further.” And that was too much for Jonah to handle. That he might hear more from Yahweh. That he might hear yet another command to go to Nineveh and call on them to repent. And that was too much for him to handle, because in Jonah’s heart, the idea that another people group like the Ninevites. That they could experience the mercy of God. It was unbearable to him.

In the end . . . what we see is that Jonah, in fleeing, was motivated more by self-interest. And even patriotic duty to Israel, then he was motivated to heed and comply with God’s word, the word of the Lord. And what we see here is that while the prophet understood, and to a degree appreciated that God’s wrath hung over the wicked people of Assyria. That his prophet was not as compassionate as God was. As God commanded his people to be. Right? In Exodus 34:6, he would have known that God had decreed and declared that God was “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth”. He would have known from Jeremiah 18:7-8, that God very well might relent from the calamity that He was planning to bring to Nineveh. Jeremiah 18:7-8, it says, “At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it”. And while Jonah was happy that God saw fit to show mercy to him. For instance, on that day when he was spued from the mouth of the great fish. He resented the idea of God’s mercy being shown to the Ninevites. He wanted no part of any revival of Assyrian fortunes. Those people were pagan and had already shown their hostility to the Lord. To Jonah, they were only worthy of judgment. Jonah, in other words, was jealous. He was jealous in the very way God had predicted, all the way back in the days of Moses, His people would become whenever He showed favor to another nation.

Deuteronomy 32:21 says, “They have made me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation”. And we know later, in the New Testament. The apostle Paul would appeal to this very type of jealousy, when speaking of his “fellow countrymen,” the Jews. Romans 11:13-14 he says, “Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen [meaning the Israelites, the Jews] and save some of them”. The point here is that Jonah fled because he was jealous. And he fled because he was self-righteous. He had a great need for a mirror. A mirror that would show him his own inexcusable lack of compassion for those Ninevites who had specks in their eyes, when he indeed had the giant log in his.

Alexander Whyte, a preacher of at least 150 years ago now, said this once. He said:
“When I watch the working of my own heart . . . this is what I am compelled to write: I am Jonah.” Is he right? I mean, the word of the Lord has come to us. Has it not? And God has given us, in the church age, a central command. To Jonah, it was “arise, go to Nineveh.” To us, it’s “go and make disciples.” That’s our command. The question is, what are we going to do with His word? What are we going to do with His commands? I get it. Different eras, different times. Different context. But this is the same God that spoke to Jonah, that speaks to us today through His word. And the question is. Are we going to heed and obey the commands God has given us in His word? Are we going to heed the word of the Lord, unlike Jonah here? Or, instead, in our lives, whatever that looks like, going to run the other way? It's going to be an exciting study. Like I said, I don’t know how many verses we’ll handle per week. We’re going to take it section by section. I’d like to say that we’d be done by the year 2024. Can’t promise it. Anyway, we’re done for this evening. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank You so much for the chance to be in Your word tonight. Thank You for the book of Jonah. Thank You for the negative warnings. It’s going to continually provide us, as we look at this man, this prophet. This man who is continually running away from, and drifting from, and turning his back on Your commandments in Your word. I do pray that we would take the good from this book. The positive examples. The truths that are worth following positively. But we would also heed the negative commands. And the negative examples. Like these from Jonah, where he’s disobeying the word of the Lord. And going away from the Lord. Fleeing in the opposite direction of the Lord. May those be clear and timeless warnings to us, in our lives. May we always seek to do Your will. May we always seek You, through Your word. May we, in the age in which we live, continually go to the cross. And recognize that any ability that we have to do so, comes through the finished work of Christ on the cross. The eternal life that He has secured, and the Spirit that now lives in us. God, I pray that as we would go through this week, that we would continually come back to the text that we’ve studied today. That we’d be encouraged by them, and motivated by them, and challenged by them. May we seek to honor You with our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.