Wanted Dead or Alive

When we last left the prophet Jonah, he was running away from his God and his responsibilities.

You remember the circumstances: Jonah was an Israelite prophet, a spokesman for Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, the Maker of heaven and earth. But he chose to rebel and defy God’s orders to travel to the great Assyrian city of Ninevah and preach against their sins that had come up before the Lord, righteous Judge of all the nations.

No, that was an assignment Jonah was NOT willing to accept! Instead, the runaway prophet hurried down to Joppa on the shore of the great sea, and boarded a ship sailing in the opposite direction away from Ninevah. He meant his actions to be a clear negative answer to God’s command: “No way will I obey You in this matter! Just You try and MAKE me do it!”

But we learned last time that God’s plans cannot be turned aside by anyone’s puny human will or human choices. It is foolish and futile to say “no” to our Creator when He has made His will plain about what He wants us to do. If necessary, as it was in Jonah’s case, God will even send a STORM to wake us up and bring us to our senses.

Humanly speaking, of course, we know that Jonah had a pretty powerful REASON for disliking the task God had ordained for him. The Assyrians were Israel’s bitter enemies. Two other prophets had even predicted that one day they would come and punish the Israelites for their sins! So, we can sympathize with a Hebrew prophet resisting a preaching mission to the Ninevites.

But the fact is that those who love and serve the true and living God must be prepared to “deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow Me,” to quote the words of the Lord Jesus. This has always been true. Think of the challenges faced by Moses and Joshua and Gideon and Samson and David...as well as all the other prophets God sent to those who had no love for them or for their message of repentance.

By assigning us difficult--even hateful--duties to perform, the Lord is putting our faith and our love for Him to the test. In the 22nd chapter of Genesis we read the story of Abraham’s greatest test of faith: God’s command to take the son he loved--Isaac, the child of promise--and offer him up as a burnt sacrifice. What a terrible assignment and what an impossible test of Abraham’s love for his God! And yet, the patriarch was ready to kill his own son when the angel of the Lord called out for him to stay his hand.

Even the Lord Jesus Himself was tested by God to prove both to Himself and to all of creation that He really was the perfectly obedient Son of God! Immediately after His baptism by John in the Jordan river, we read in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil for forty days. Of course, our Lord passed this test and never gave in to the demonic seduction of Satan. And because He passed the test, He gained a perfect record of obedience that is credited to the account of all that trust and follow Christ!

At this point in Jonah’s career, it certainly looked like he would never pass the test of obedience God had arranged for him. It appeared that even the great storm the Lord hurled on the sea was not enough to convince the prophet to obey. The ship’s captain had to rouse Jonah from his sleep in the hold of the ship, and urge him to “cry out to your God--perhaps He will take pity on us and we will not die!” At this time, we don’t even read that Jonah DID pray. How strange!

And yet, perhaps it isn’t so strange. Jonah seemed to calmly answer the sailors’ questions about who and what he was and where he was from. He didn’t seem to be alarmed at the ferocity of the storm, or the danger they were in. Almost as if he’d been expecting God to pursue him and punish him for his rebellion. Jonah may have been thinking, “I would rather die in a storm at sea than follow the Lord’s instructions and preach to the Ninevites. Just let me DIE!”

The Bible is a very true and practical Book. It never shrinks away from or turns a blind eye to the negative aspects of life. In several places it speaks of the desire to end one’s own life. Moses and the prophet Elijah both asked the Lord to take their lives--because the demands of their responsibilities seemed too great. The Apostle Paul struggled with his “thorn in the flesh--a messenger of Satan” he called it. Many times he longed to “depart and be with Christ, which is far better.” But in all those cases, God had other plans besides death for His faithful servants.

And in spite of Jonah’s stubbornness, the same was true for him.

We saw before that God uses His storms to display His awesome POWER, to remind us of His PERSONALITY, and to achieve His righteous PURPOSES. Far from signaling Jonah’s death, God was letting the prophet know: “Jonah, I am not finished using you yet. When I give my man an assignment, I expect it to be done, whether he is happy with it or not!”

Are you and I always HAPPY with the commands and duties God assigns for us? Is it always pleasant and easy to obey our parents or to submit to those in authority over us? Is it always a cheerful duty to submit to our husbands or to love our wives as Christ loved the church? Is it ever difficult and painful to live with a debilitating disease when our bodies long for the freedom of ending our physical lives? And yet, these are things God gives to His beloved children.

Hebrews 12:11 and following reminds us that “no discipline seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; yet, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Every one of God’s children is being trained and made ready for a future life where all is peaceful, and all is right with our Creator. And, as every parent knows, no child can be prepared for a brighter future without being trained by discipline--by difficult duties.

“Jonah,” the Lord was saying, “I realize this assignment is distasteful to you. I know you’d rather die than obey me and take on this task. But you are My child and I love you. I know what is best for you and what lessons you still must learn. Your training is not over yet.”

Jonah’s faithful God used far more than the STORM we spoke of last time. He even used the pagan sailors and passengers on Jonah’s ship to point him back in the right direction. Proverbs 16:33 says “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Jonah’s shipmates used the casting of lots to find out whose guilt had brought this awful storm upon them. And God, with whom nothing happens by chance, caused the lot to fall upon His wayward prophet. Finally, Jonah knew that he was found out. Trapped and ensnared by the divine Fisherman!

Even though the sailors were furious with Jonah for putting them all in danger by his rebellion against the Lord, they tried their best to avoid throwing the prophet overboard. They rowed hard to bring the ship to dry land. Maybe they feared that killing Jonah would make God even angrier with them...or perhaps they were simply being kind and gracious, feeling sympathy with their miserable shipmate.

But whatever the reason, they finally saw no alternative but to follow Jonah’s instructions and cast him into the violent sea. Imagine their wonder and relief when the wind immediately stopped blowing and the billowing sea became instantly calm! Can you remember another time and place where a violent storm became so miraculously still? Our God in heaven is Master of all the forces of nature--as is His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who can calm a troubled sea with the mere words: “Peace! Be still!”

As he was hurled into the turbulent waters, Jonah’s heart was far from peaceful, however. He surely felt that this at last was the END. God had pursued him in His fierce wrath and meant to drown him as punishment for his crime of treason.

And we must ask ourselves, “Would that have been a just thing for God to do?” What if the Lord chose to put us to death any and every time that we sin? After all, He warned Adam and Eve that the day they ate fruit from the forbidden tree, “you shall surely die.” Death, Paul reminds us in Romans 6:23 is “the wages of sin.” Every time we break God’s law--any of His commandments-- we are inviting the death penalty. Immediate death is the just payment we owe for any act of treason against our merciful, loving, righteous God.

So...Jonah undoubtedly expected the death he rightly deserved. And yet, even as he sank into the sea, there was reason for the prophet to HOPE. Because, as he would later confess, “I know you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.” Perhaps even the desperation of the sailors still rang in his ears: “Perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.” Would God forgive and save Jonah, even now?

Is it possible that one of us has been stubbornly resisting the authority and righteous commands of God? Is one of us convinced that we’ve been too far from God to expect any grace or forgiveness from Him? That we’ve sinned too badly or too habitually to ever be given another chance? The Good News is that there is a living Savior who died for sinners just like you and me. The Lord Jesus Christ is able and willing to receive lost and dying rebels who will cast all their hopes on Him alone to save them from eternal judgment. Call on Him today to save YOU!

Who would have dreamed that the King of the universe would save men and women by becoming a baby in a manger, growing up in our sin-cursed world, and dying on Calvary’s tree as our sin-bearing Substitute? How strange and unexpected that was!

And equally strange was the way God chose to rescue His prodigal prophet: by having Jonah swallowed whole by a gigantic FISH! But Jonah was as safe and sound in the belly of that fish as a sailor would be in a modern-day submarine. And in that dark, smelly, slimy resting place, Jonah had three days and nights to compose a magnificent prayer: a psalm of thanksgiving and confession of sin, a plea for God’s salvation and a pledge to honor Jonah’s vows of loving service.

No, Jonah’s merciful God wasn’t done with him yet. And there is no depth of sin and rebellion too far gone for our faithful Lord to pursue those He loves and assure them of His forgiveness!


MNA
12/27/2017