Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The story of Jonah is not an autobiography – an historical account of some newsworthy event, nor a fictional short story, but functions rather something like a parable (didactic fiction). It’s a parable that talks about God’s universal love, and in hearing that message — that God actively seeks the lost, that God earnestly desires the salvation of those who have turned away from Him — I think we can begin to understand why Jonah ran away from God in the first place.
Jonah had a pretty good idea that God had a streak of mercy in Him, and that His real purpose for sending him to Nineveh was to get the people to repent so that God’s judgment wouldn’t have to be carried out.
Jonah wasn’t sure he wanted those Ninevites to have the opportunity to repent. You see, Jonah was that kind of person who really believed that there are those people who, because of what they have done in the past, or who they are, don’t deserve any kind of consideration, the benefit of the doubt, let alone forgiveness.
Jonah didn’t want the Ninevites to have the opportunity to be forgiven. “I don’t want to be your agent of forgiveness and reconciliation,” Jonah tells the Lord, “I want to be your prophet of doom!”
So Jonah went down to the docks at Joppa and bought a ticket on a cargo ship headed for Tarshish – in the opposite direction, as far as one could get, from Nineveh.
To run away or avoid one’s vocation, what God has called you to do, will usually result in being swallowed up – of not knowing where you’re going.
Another purpose of the great fish, which we ought not overlook, is to make it plain that sometimes God has to deliver us from what we do in the name of religion.
- Like throwing somebody overboard because it might appease the gods, or sacrificing somebody else instead of rightfully assuming part of the blame so that we don’t have to feel so guilty.
- Like assuming that our enemies are God’s enemies.
The fundamental problem Jonah & a few others of us have with God is not that God is cruel or vengeful, but that God is gracious.
