Jonah the Screwup
Jonah, son of Amittai, gets a lot of flak for not living up to his name. The name “Jonah” means “Dove”, which is a symbol of purity. And the name “Amittai” means true or faithful. From the beginning of the book, we expect Jonah to be a pure, faithful prophet, but instead we get a total screwup. Throughout the book of Jonah, he is blatantly disobedient to God's calling and runs away to avoid preaching to the Ninevites. When God calls him to travel East to Nineveh, Jonah flees West to Tarshish, running as far away in the opposite direction as was humanly possible at the time.
Jonah was openly disobedient. He even told the mariners that he was fleeing from his God before they set out to sea! (Jonah 1:10). The writer of Jonah paints the prophet as a pretty awful person who falls far short of living up to his expectations. And as a reader, it's easy to look at Jonah and say, “What are you thinking, you doofus!” …
But the truth is, we are all Jonahs. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23). We just try to cover up our sins and put on a masquerade of holiness, which only gets us in deeper trouble. If there is anything commendable about Jonah, it is his open brokenness. He never tries to hide his sin.
Jonah Chapter 2 recounts Jonah's prayer, where he finally cries out to the LORD after trying so hard to run away from Him. Of course Jonah knew this would not end well as he surely knew Psalm 139:7-8:
"Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! "
Holy Jonahs
It's ironic that it took so long for Jonah to have his “come to Christ” moment because he is a prophet that is supposed to be in close communion with God. Yet Jonah wrestles to the deepest depths before he surrenders himself to God.
I like to imagine how the story might have panned out if Jonah had prayed when he first heard God's calling to go preach to the Ninevites. What if he had said something like, “God, I don't want to preach to the Ninevites, but soften my heart to do your will. Help me understand why you want them to be shown mercy.”? This sounds so much better than ignoring God and running away like Jonah, right? I would say yes on one condition - this prayer still has to be followed by obedience.
If God is calling you to something and you wax eloquent about how you desire to follow Him, but don't actually obey, are you any better than Jonah who went on the lam? Of course not! God desires obedience, not empty prayers.
"And when you pray, do not heap up empty prayers as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. "
Matthew 6:7-8
The Bible makes it clear that our faith must be accompanied by works.
"If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. "
James 2:15-17
I think that Jonah's open disobedience should make us ask ourselves if we have been a "Holy Jonah" - someone who tries to cover up their disobedience by attempting to appear righteous.
There are plenty of examples of “Holy Jonahs” throughout the Bible. I think of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, when they try to cover their own greed by giving a portion of their profits to the church. Or how about David's conversation with Nathan in 2 Samuel 12, where David tried to appear righteous by casting judgement on the sinner in Nathan's hypothetical story, all the while not realizing he was the sinner in the story?
Perhaps my favorite example is the woman at the well in John 4. In verses 16-18, Jesus prods at the woman's brokenness by asking her to go get her husband, knowing that she is not currently married to the man she is with, and has had 5 previous husbands. In verse 19 she tries to deflect the conversation away from her sin by talking about doctrine!
"The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.' "
John 4:19
This is a sad reality about our human condition. We so often pointlessly try to hide the depths of our brokenness by making ourselves appear like we've got it all together… But God wants us to bring Him our brokenness. He is waiting for us to cry out to him so he can swoop in to our rescue like the loving father He is. This was God's heart when Jonah cried out from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, it was His heart when the prodigal son returned home (Luke 15), and it is still His heart every moment you have strayed away from Him throughout the course of your life.
How Your Brokenness is Healed
You've probably heard it said before, but your sin is not too great for God to restore you. The writer of Jonah wants to paint us a picture of how deep Jonah's brokenness truly is. They do this by using imagery of Jonah steadily going “down” in Jonah chapter 1.
- "He went down to Joppa" (v.3)
- "So he payed the fare and went down into it [the ship]" (v.3)
- "But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep." (v.5)
This imagery paints a picture of how Jonah's sin is driving him further away from God and leading to his spiritual death. You get the sense while reading the first chapter that Jonah is slowly slipping into a foggy, drowsy slumber.
The Bible often uses sleep as a metaphor for spiritual death.
"Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. "
Romans 13:11
Ephesians 5 also captures this idea of exposing our brokenness so that we can “wake up” from our metaphorical sleep and come to Christ:
"But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, 'Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.' "
Ephesians 5:13-14
The writer continues the imagery of Jonah reaching the very pits in Jonah chapter 2:
"The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. "
Jonah 2:5-6
You can't get much lower than “the roots of the mountains”. It was here, when Jonah was in the deepest pit of spiritual death that Christ rescued him.
You see, there is a common thing that both Jonah and the woman at the well did in order to receive God's healing - they simply asked God. When all hope was lost, and it looked like Jonah's spiritual death was about to lead to his physical death, he simply cried out to God, and the LORD brought salvation in the form of a big fish… The woman at the well was just going about her life as a spiritually dead person when Christ popped up out of nowhere and offered her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. She simply asked for the water, not even really knowing what she was asking for!
This is how our brokenness is healed. We bring our shame, hurt, and ugly parts to God and ask him to replace it with the life that He created us for. It doesn't matter how long, or how far, we've run from him. It doesn't matter if we don't fully understand what it means to have new life. We ask, and He is always faithful to rescue.
The Second Jonah
The Bible is clear that we can't rescue ourselves. We must rely on God for our salvation. This is why scriptures describe our life of sin, prior to receiving salvation, as being dead.
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved "
Ephesians 2:1-5
If you are dead, how can you make yourself alive? Answer: you can't.
The Bible says that everyone is dead and the only way we are made alive is by the grace of God, through a man named Jesus Christ.
Where Jonah spent three days "in the pit", unable to resurrect himself, Christ spent three days dead, but conquered death and rose again. Christ is the only one to ever walk this earth that has the power to conquer death. And God's plan for our salvation is for us to trust in Christ - that He has conquered our death when He was hung on a cross, put to death, buried in the ground, and raised from the dead three days later.
Christ is our second Jonah, the one that comes back from the dead and brings salvation for all those who believe.
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. "
Matthew 12:40
And all we have to do to share in Christ's victory is cry out to Him.
"And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. "
Joel 2:32