When God Breaks In: God Disturbs the Status Quo
The Story of Jonah
Introduction.
I am
taking a different approach to Advent this year. Traditionally, the four Sundays of Advent
revolve around four themes: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Taken together, these four Advent themes,
tell the story of the first Christmas.
God sent his Only Begotten Son to be born of a virgin in order to give
us true Hope, true Peace, true Joy and true Love.
This
year, I am approaching Advent differently.
Christmas is the only way we could ever experience Hope, Peace, Joy and
Love because God has broken into our world.
Do
you believe that God breaks in? Or, do
you believe that God lives far away from us and remains aloof and unconcerned
about our world?
Some
people believe that God is something like a “cosmic watchmaker.” A watchmaker makes all the individual parts
of a watch (gears, springs, face, hands, etc…) and precisely assembles all the
pieces into a beautiful, functional watch.
Once the watch has been made and
assembled, the watchmaker winds up the watch and sets it in motion. Then, the watchmaker stands back and never
concerns himself with the watch ever again.
This
is not a biblical view of God. In the
Bible, we discover that God created the heavens and earth. God precisely assembled all the parts and
pieces of the creation. Then, God set
the universe in motion. But, God does
not stand back and watch his creation.
God is continuously interested and involved in his creation.
The
cosmic watchmaker is not a Christian view of God. In the Christian view, God is constantly
breaking into his creation. God even
went to the extreme by sending his Son, Jesus, to bring us Hope, Peace, Joy and
Love.
The
Bible is filled with stories about how
God’s breaks in. God broke in and
revealed himself to Moses. God broke in
and called Samuel by name. And, God
broke in and disturbed the status quo in the story of Jonah…
What
do you think the story of Jonah is about?
If we went into one of our children’s Sunday School classes and asked
them, I guess the most popular answer would be that it is a story about a
whale. In fact, I think most adults
would probably give the same answer.
Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
But
the Book of Jonah is NOT a story about whale.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is a whale (or perhaps a fish, we don’t
really know) in the story. But the fish
only shows up in 3 verses. The fish has
a very minor role in the story. All it
does is follow God’s command to swallow Jonah and follow God’s command to spit
him out.
The
story of Jonah is really a story about God.
We know this because in Jonah 1: 1 we read…The word of the LORD came to
Jonah…God is the 1st character introduced in the story…And God is
the main character throughout the story…God is the one doing most of the
work…Sometimes behind the scenes…Sometimes out in the open…
Jonah 1: 1 – 5a…1 The word of the
LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go
to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because
its wickedness has come up before me."
3 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.
4 Then the LORD sent a great wind
on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break
up. 5 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.
The Book
of Jonah teaches us some very important things about God…God IS interested in
what goes on in the world…God IS involved in the affairs of the earth…
When God
noticed the wickedness of the people of Nineveh, God called Jonah to the Great
City and to preach to the people. But,
Jonah did not want to go. Instead, Jonah
ran away from God, bought a ticket and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish…Did
God sit back and watch? NO…God sent a
wind, a storm…
The
men on the boat decided Jonah was to blame and threw him into the raging
sea…Did God sit back and watch? NO…God
sent a fish, a whale
Jonah
1: 17…17 But the LORD
provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and
Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Notice
that verse 17 says God “provided” a great fish.
This was not a bad thing. It was
actually a Grace of God. When Jonah was
swallowed by the great fish, God saved Jonah’s life. If there had been no fish, Jonah would have
drowned in the ocean!
In
the belly of the fish, Jonah cried out to God for mercy…Did God sit back and
watch? NO…God caused that fish to spit
Jonah onto land…
Jonah
2: 10…10 And the LORD
commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
When
Jonah repented and committed himself to God, did God sit back and watch? No. God
called Jonah a 2nd time, and this time Jonah went!
Jonah
3: 1 – 5…1 Then the word of
the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it
the message I give you."
3 Jonah
obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very
important city--a visit required three days. 4 On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He
proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." 5The Ninevites believed God. They
declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on
sackcloth.
God
gave Jonah a second chance. And, this is
important. Jonah’s second chance was
actually a second chance for the great city of Nineveh. Jonah obeyed God and went to preach God’s
word to the people of Nineveh.
There
is something unusual about Jonah’s preaching in Nineveh…It just doesn’t seem
like his heart is in it…His sermon is only 5 words in Hebrew, 8 words in
English… “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned”… Jonah didn’t put a whole lot of effort and
study into his sermon. It was not what
we would call a good sermon. And, Jonah
was half-hearted in his delivery.
Did
God sit back and watch his half-hearted prophet? NO…God used a bad sermon and a half-hearted
prophet to bring about the greatest spiritual awakening ever recorded in the
Bible…Over 120,000 people repented and followed God…(The spiritual awakening
was so great that even the cows repented!)
There
are two remarkable things about the spiritual awakening in Nineveh. First, this is the largest spiritual
awakening recorded in Scripture. 120,000
people repented and trusted in God for salvation. Second, Jonah should have
been happy about these results…but Jonah was not happy!
Jonah
4: 1 – 11…1 But Jonah was
greatly displeased and became angry. 2 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 knewthat you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and
abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for
it is better for me to die than to live."
5 Jonah
went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a
shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his
head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God
provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered.8 When the sun rose, God provided
a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew
faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better
for me to die than to live."
"I
do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
10 But
the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did
not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has
more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand
from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about
that great city?"
After
participating in the most successful spiritual awakening in Scripture, Jonah
went outside the city limits to feel sorry for himself…Actually I think he went
to wait for the fireworks…I think he still wanted God to destroy Nineveh…Did
God sit back and watch? NO…God sent a vine
to grow overnight and give Jonah shade…
NOW
Jonah could be happy…Happy because he finally got his way…Happy that he could
sit in the comfortable shade…In fact, Jonah was complacent… He was happier that
he could sit in the comfort of the shade from a vine than he was that the
sinners in Nineveh had turned to God…Jonah was happy about a vine, God was
happy about Nineveh…Did God sit back and watch?
NO…God sent a worm to teach Jonah a lesson.
I
want you to notice something about this story…Notice how God was involved in
the story…
God
sent a MAN to Nineveh…
God
sent a STORM to the sea…
God
sent a FISH to swallow Jonah and commanded it to spit him out…
God
sent a VINE to give Jonah shade…
God
sent a WORM and a WIND to teach Jonah a lesson…
And
only one of those disobeyed God…
Jonah
is not a good character…He was a disobedient, half-hearted, complacent
complainer… In other words, There is
a little bit of Jonah in all of us!
God Always Works According to His Nature.
Jonah
knows how to pray. He prays his honest
feelings to God. He was angry, and he
told God that he was angry. If you ever
find yourself in this situation, let me give you some advice. Tell God the truth. There are 3 reasons why you should tell God
the truth:
1.
God can handle the
truth.
2.
God knows what you
are feeling, even before you tell him.
3.
At least you are
talking. Relationship problems begin to
develop when we stop talking. Notice how
open and honest the Psalms are…
Jonah
was probably angry because God made him look bad…Jonah looked like a false
prophet…He prophesied destruction…But destruction never came…What would people
think?
Or, Jonah was angry because people back home
in Israel would find out he was responsible for the salvation of 120,000 foreigners
/ Gentiles. Jonah did not want God to do
the right thing…Jonah wanted God to hate just like he hated!
Gracious…God’s
attitude toward those who are undeserving.
Unmerited Favor…Undeserved Blessings…
God offers salvation to those who do not
deserve to be saved…Did the people of Nineveh deserve to be saved? Of course not…Nineveh was the capital city of
the Assyrian Empire, who utterly destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel…Nineveh
was the home to the pagan goddess Ishtar, goddess of love and war…The city was
filled with cultic worship involving promiscuous sexual activity and gratuitous
violence…These people did not deserve salvation, they were immoral and
idolatrous!
But
guess what…So was Jonah…And so are you. You
are an immoral and idolatrous people who do not deserve salvation…But God has
offered it to you through Jesus.
Compassionate…This
is the loving nature of God…Motherly love.
The Hebrew word for compassion is the same word for a mother’s
womb. God surrounds us and protects us
the way a mother surrounds and protects her unborn child.
There is no better verse to describe this
than John 3:16…For God so
loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him would
not perish but have eternal life…
This explains why God is gracious…Because he loves us…
Slow
to Anger…The idea is patience…God waits and withholds his anger toward us…God
does not respond like we do…When someone commits a sin against us, we are
usually quick to anger…God patiently endures…Look at the way he dealt with
Jonah…
Does this imply that God is easy—a “push
over?” NO…It means that God wants us to
repent…And therefore gives us every opportunity to turn from sin and give
ourselves to him…
Abounding
in Love…The word is hesed…Hesed
is probably my favorite Hebrew word…
There
is no English word good enough to capture the meaning of hesed…English
translations = loving kindness, steadfast love, mercy…There are two prominent
ideas in this…Covenant Love & Active Love.
Covenant
=> Ongoing relationship…God is faithful, committed…
Active
=> God does not say he loves us, or even feels love toward us…God has
demonstrated his love…Perhaps this is the idea behind what Paul said in Romans 5: 8…God demonstrated his
love for us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us…
Relents from
Sending Calamity…Does not mean that God changes.
Rather God stays the same…Offers the same
Loving kindness to all who repent…
Imagine that! Jonah is mad at God and accuses God of the
worst things he can come up with. And
the worst he could say is… “God, I am mad at you because you are Gracious,
Compassionate, Slow to Anger, Abounding in Love and Relent from Sending
Calamity.”
Conclusion.
Why
was Jonah angry? He was angry because of
Grace! Jonah was thinking, “If God shows
Grace to outsiders—people who are not like me—then I don’t want to live!”
It is
God’s will that all people repent and be saved…Including the people that we
don’t like…Including rebellious and angry prophets like Jonah…
And
that is the way the book of Jonah ends…God asks a question and issues a call
for repentance… God calls Jonah to repent!
The story of Jonah does not have a happy ending. In fact, it doesn’t have an ending at
all. Instead, it ends—in the middle of
the story—with a question from God. I
think this was an intentional device to make us think about ourselves. The story does not end here. It is left to us to finish the story.
Of course I don’t mean that we should finish WRITING
the story. I mean that we should finish LIVING
the story!
When Jonah saw God at work in the world, Jonah saw
God for who he really is. Gracious,
Compassionate, Slow to Anger, Abounding in Love, One who Relents from Sending
Calamity… And Jonah was angry. He couldn’t stand for others to know the
Grace of God. Jonah didn’t like to see
God working in the world.
We
see this same character of God at work in the Christmas story. For example, just think about the first
visitors who came to see the baby Jesus.
Luke
tells us the first visitors were shepherds.
Shepherds were honorable men in the ancient world. Every family kept sheep and needed a shepherd
in the family. But, shepherds spent a
lot of time with sheep. As a result,
shepherds were dirty and smelled like sheep.
Jewish Law also tells us that shepherds were unclean and could not enter
into the Temple without going through a period of religious cleansing. The shepherds could not enter the Temple, but
they were invited (by angels) to enter the presence of God at the manger.
Matthew
tells us the first visitors were Wise Men (or Magi). These Wise Men were “stargazers” who had
discovered a new star in the night sky.
They traveled from foreign lands to meet the new King. Since they traveled from afar, we can assume
that they were foreigners / non-Israelites / Gentiles. As Gentiles, they were rejected by the Jews
but accepted by God and welcomed to meet with God at the manger.
In
the Christmas story, God has broken into our world and disturbed the status
quo. God welcomes dirty and unclean
shepherds. God welcomes foreigners and
outsiders. God calls us to love the
people we are inclined to hate. God did
not send his Only Begotten Son just to the insiders. God sent his Son to the world and calls us to
love the world as God loves the world.
1 comment:
Thanks,
I see the Jonah in me better and my attitude about today at work. I'll wait to see what God sends and see if I can be a part of His plan for today without judging... I'll try!
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