For these next few weeks, we’re going to look at the life and ministry of the prophet Jonah. I’ll also link to YouTube lectures that I’ve posted in conjunction with each blog post for an International Missions class I’m teaching at Metro Christian Academy this year.
The book of Jonah is fascinating. It’s a short, pithy story packed with powerful rhetoric, convicting theological themes, and crushing irony. One of Israel’s earliest prophets, Jonah’s ministry as recorded in Scripture was both brief and provocative. Called by God to bring a message of impending judgment to Nineveh—the capital of the vast and brutal Assyrian Empire—Jonah not only refused but intentionally ran in the opposite direction!
“But Jonah rose to flee from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” – Jonah 1:3
What was God’s response? He sent a massive sea-storm into Jonah’s path. Now here in the narrative is where we see the first major irony. Jonah, the Israelite prophet of YHWH, was doing his best to hide from God. But the pagan, Gentile sailors on the boat, who worshipped a multitude of other gods, recognized YHWH’s supremacy over their gods and even nature itself! The pagans here were more in tune with God’s sovereignty and truth than God’s own prophet. This is the first of many ironies in the book.
You know the rest of the story…God appointed a huge fish to swallow Jonah up and transport him, over a three-day-and-night period (that’s important) to Nineveh. And we’ll pick up the narrative in chapter 2 next time.
To conclude, I believe the author is making an enormous theological point in chapter 1. And this theme, which will recur in each subsequent chapter, is God’s sovereignty over nature and the created realm. It was a common belief in the Ancient Near East that different “gods” ruled over different geographical domains. But Israel’s God rules over all of Heaven and Earth.
Check out the YouTube video which accompanies this blog post here.