Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy
Part 4: Mercy Not Destruction
This is a summary of my notes for a 6-part Sunday School lesson I recently led. It is an adaptation of my previous posts on Jonah along with some points based on the book, The Prodigal Prophet by Time Keller.
“Fresh from his detour in the belly of the fish and with a heart full of repentance for his wayward decisions, Jonah begins the journey that started with his original calling. He receives the call once again from God to arise and go to Nineveh. This time, Jonah does indeed arise and go to Nineveh. As we will see, there is obedience in his actions but there is still lingering doubts and feelings of injustice deep within his heart that will need to be dealt with at some point.
Take-Two… with an Amendment
Amost the Same Message
Take two. Now that Jonah has been delivered from Sheol having been vomited out upon the dry land, God basically resets the story and begins at the beginning. The Lord once again gives a command to Jonah by reiterating the original call from Chapter 1. Jonah is once again told to arise, go to Nineveh, and call out against it. The only difference in this new call is that God did not give Jonah a reason for the message like he did the first time. This time he simply commanded him to go and give the message that will be revealed later on.
The focus has shifted from the sin of Nineveh to the obedience and faithfulness of Jonah. Where we seemed to take for granted that God’s holy ordained prophet would obey the word of the Lord, this time there is no room for a personal interpretation or misunderstanding. God is making it obvious that this call is not optional. He is to go and preach the message that will be told to him later. God is simply being direct and to the point with Jonah.
What is Jonah’s response? Thankfully, his response is one of obedience. Jonah arose and went to Nineveh… “According to the word of the Lord.” I think Jonah wants to start off on a good foot by not hesitating since he makes a point to tell us that he did exactly what was asked of him this time.
Jonah’s Appearance
One of the interesting points of this message Jonah delivers is the physical appearance of Jonah himself. After being swallowed by a giant fish at the bottom of the sea, Jonah then spends three days inside its belly. Now, I don’t claim to understand the science behind how Jonah survived in the belly of the fish, but I do know the outcome of spending so long a time inside a humid and acidic environment. His flesh had to be bleach white to some degree. Either he had the appearance of an unnatural paleness or he had bleached areas all over his body.
There is an understanding that Jonah must have looked like a ghost, or at a minimum he looked like someone who had been recently delivered from the grave. To go along with how he physically looked, there must have been a tremendous smell emanating from him. The man not only lived in the belly of a giant fish but had been vomited up. There is no feasible way to disguise the smell or mask it with a more pleasant scent.
This all added to the message he was delivering. A message of a coming destruction from the mouth of a man who appears to have just escaped an apocalyptic event himself.
They Believed God
Jonah went through all of Nineveh to proclaim God’s message of a coming destruction. Picture this scene in your mind. Here is this man who has the appearance and smell of someone who has possibly been in the grave fairly recently wandering around the community shouting at the top of his lungs that the city will be overthrown in 40 days. Can you imagine this happening in Over the Mountain Birmingham? I dare say, he would be taken to jail or a local mental facility within a short period of time. In Ninevehh, the real possibility was that the people would just kill him and be done with this mentally unstable and unwanted vagrant preaching a message nobody cared about. The people of Nineveh were not known for their patience or tendency toward compassion and tolerance.
Yet, they didn’t lay hands on Jonah. In fact, the text doesn’t even say that the people believed him. The text states that the “people of Nineveh believed God.” That’s an amazing statement. These enemies of the One true God, heard this message of destruction that was delivered by an apparent madman and responded by believing not the messenger but the One who owns the message.
There is a guiding principle in this that we must address in our own hearts. We want to personalize the calling God has given us. We want to take ownership of the message and the ministry. We want people to believe us and then God by extension.
We base our success and failure on how people respond to us. We get our feelings hurt or our pride is wounded when our message is rejected. Why? Because this means there must be something wrong with us or they would have responded favorably. We take the attention and focus off God and put it directly upon ourselves. We want to make everything, even ministry, about us doing the Lord’s work. We are so self-righteous and so full of pride that we take even the gospel message of hope and cloud it with our sin.
The key takeaway for us to integrate into our lives is that the people of Nineveh believed God and not the messenger.
Take a moment and reflect on how this influences your own heart. Have you had moments in your life where you desired to be the center of attention, when the focus should have been on Jesus? How did God use this to draw you closer to Jesus?
Repentance… with Fasting
What’s the Kings Response
What’s a word or phrase that you would use to describe the response of the king?
• Humility, Fear, Repentance, Pleading, Brokenness
Typically throughout the Bible and even in our modern world, there is a top-down flow of decrees and mandates.
- King Nebuchadnezzar installed a 90-foot golden statue and then required everyone to bow down and worship whenever the music played. If you didn’t, it was off to the fiery furnace.
- King Jehoshaphat called for a national fast in response to a threat from the Moabites and Ammonites coming to wage war against Israel.
In this instance with Nineveh, there was an upward flow of repentance that started with the common people of the kingdom and made its way to the palace where the king and the nobles responded in like manner. Isn’t that amazing to think about? The people responded to this message of destruction by putting on sackcloth and fasting. When the king heard about this response and the words of the message itself, he was struck in his heart. In the same manner as all the people in the city.
A Broken Heart
What we see in this response is a broken heart. The word of the Lord comes to the people of Nineveh and brings disruption and destruction to their daily lives. The word of the Lord tears down the walls that had been built up around their hearts. The word of the Lord destroyed the lies that the people were believing. The word of the Lord overwhelmed their kingdom with the bright light of judgment and wrath. It revealed their sin and forced every person in the city to be confronted with the seriousness of their spiritual state.
Have you been broken like this? Has the word of the Lord come into your life and destroyed the fairy tale life that you were trying to pursue? Has God broken your heart by revealing the depth of sin clinging to your heart? Have you been confronted with the waywardness of your fleshly desires and ambitions? Has Jesus opened your eyes to the truth of your situation?
We all need to be broken at different times in our lives. We all need to be confronted with the true state of our hearts. We may be the prodigal son who has wandered away to indulge in open sin and rebellion. We may be the older brother who stays in the family house but is so bitter and angry at his father that he simply puts on a mask to give the appearance of obedience when his heart is just as far away as his younger brother’s. We all need the Word of the Lord to penetrate and transform our hearts.
What’s Missing?
Jonah 3:9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish. (ESV)
What is missing from the response of the king? —Hope. The king and the people have the proper response to the message of destruction and rightly seek repentance, yet there is no hope in their response.
We on the other hand know the rest of the story. We know that there is hope in Christ alone. There is forgiveness… There is healing… There is steadfast love… We don’t have to put on a performance and take the right steps to appease a finicky God who never really lets you know if you’re heard and forgiven. We have Jesus. We have the Holy Spirit living within us. Our Father hears us all the time. Even in the depths of Sheol, the Father loves us… the Father hears us… and the Father answers us.
So as the Word of the Lord comes to us and tears down our precious idols, let’s respond in repentance and faith with hope and assurance in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
How has the Word of God brought brokenness into your life and how did God use this to draw you closer to himself?
Mercy… God Relents
What is God’s Response?
When you read this verse about God relenting from bringing the promised disaster, what are some words that you would use to describe God’s choice?
• Mercy; Patience; Kindness; Goodness.
Is this the response Jonah is anticipating? We will get more into this question in our next meeting, but the short answer is, “Absolutely not.” Jonah’s expectation for God to respond would be more along the lines of “unrelenting.” Jonah was probably excited to be preaching a message of wrath and destruction. Jonah knew without a doubt that this city was full of sinners who hated Israel and hated God. Therefore they should be destroyed without mercy. He wants to see an unrelenting judgment pouring wrath upon all these people
God’s Heart was Moved
Unlike this hard-hearted prophet, the Lord was moved in his heart by the response of the people. It’s a bit of a shocking statement if we are truly honest with ourselves. I would dare to say that at different points in our lives, we have all had this similar expectation of God that Jonah had. We have all probably thought to ourselves that certain people were “worthy” of destruction. We were/are certain that some of our so-called enemies, who we assumed were enemies of God as well, deserve to be punished and feel God’s wrath. Our hearts tend to lack mercy at times. And we project that back onto God and assume that he too enjoys bringing wrath when it feels justified.
The heart of God was moved… This thought has occupied my mind for the past few days as I contemplated what it really means for the heart of God to be moved. There are so many stories throughout the Bible where the heart of God was moved, but I want to bring up just a few instances in the life of Jesus.
- Mark 10:21 | And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (ESV)
- Mark 1:40–41 | And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” (ESV)
- John 11:33–35 | When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. (ESV)
- Luke 19:41–42 | And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. (ESV)
Look at this gentle heart of Jesus that is moved to have deep emotional responses. Are we moved like this? Do we look at others with compassion and love? Are we moved with pity by those who are at a loss with how to move forward? Do we weep with others as they weep? Have we looked out over our city and wept?
My office is located on First Avenue North, where many homeless men and women gather to sleep under the interstate. When I first began driving by this area over a year ago, I remember being moved in my heart with compassion leading to prayer on a daily basis. There was a real emotional hurt as I looked upon their lives in that passing moment. But as the days progressed and it became more a part of my daily routine, my heart became numb to their lives and situation. I need to rekindle that movement of my heart toward them. I can picture Jesus drawing near to them and being moved in his heart for them. I want that same compassion…
Our Hope is in Christ
The short answer to having my heart moved in this way is that seeing people, seeing “others”, should stir within me the memories of my own lost days wandering without hope and bound for destruction. When I look around the world and see so much pain, so much suffering, and so much hatred, I want my heart to be moved. I need my heart to be moved just like the heart of Jesus. Why? Because that was me… Because that could still be me… Because that would be me if not for the steadfast love of the Lord moving in my life.
This same compassion and mercy that relented from the promised destruction of Nineveh has been poured out over me. It is the grace of God who relented with me. More than that, it was this same God who came down from heaven to secure my freedom from destruction permanently.
But the cost was immense. The Father poured out his wrath upon Jesus on the cross and Jesus took every ounce of punishment for my sin and for your sin. It was the heart of Jesus being moved by compassion and mercy. It was Jesus looking at each and every one of us and loving us. It is the wonderful mystery of God’s mercy saving us and bringing us safely home.
The hope that the king of Nineveh could only guess at is ours in Jesus Christ and we get the privilege of experiencing it each and every day.
What are some big rocks you’ve experienced that mark the grace and mercy of Christ in your life? How often do you remember these acts?