"If you thought Pastor X had a big ego before, you ought to see him now that he’s back from his evangelistic series in Africa," a friend of mine said recently. Dozens of pastors from North America travel overseas to "reaping meetings" in other fields of the Church. Not often, but sometimes they come back convinced that the thousands of baptisms are the result of their charisma, intelligence, and Power Point presentations.

I don’t think the devil cares whether we conduct evangelism and take the credit for any success to ourselves, or if we refuse to go because we don’t care or think evangelism is "outdated." Either way, we’ve put ourselves first and the word of God and those who would hear it second. Either way, we’re a lot like Jonah.

Jonah had already passed judgment on the people of Nineveh. They were beyond hope. Or if they weren’t, God could find another way to save them. Jonah didn’t need to get involved. He had heard of the Flood, and of the sudden destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. How could he be sure that he’d get out safely? No, he was fine doing God’s work at home among the chosen people, thank you. Besides, it didn’t seem fair. God should want to smite the Assyrian enemies. After all, he was Israel’s God, not theirs. These and other thoughts led Jonah down to the dock to buy passage on a ship to Tarshish.

Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard University notes, "Critics of the Bible have often said that its moral authority is compromised by the fact that it is filled with so many less than exemplary characters." But Gomes asserts that this is a plus for Bible readers.

What engages the reader of the Bible is the fact that it is filled with people very much like the reader, people who are confused and confusing, who are less than exemplary but who nevertheless participate in a developing encounter with God. If the Bible were just about the successful and the pious it would be little more than a collection of Horatio Alger tales or Barbara Cartland romances. It could aspire at best to the status of Aesop’s Fables or a Norse epic. What makes the Bible interesting and compelling is the company of human beings who through its pages play their parts in the drama of the human and divine.…Take, for example, the common theme of reluctance to accept responsibility that God wants to confer. None of the prophets took on their assignments willingly or gladly.1

Oh, there was another reason Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. He had also heard of the incident where Moses asked to see God’s glory. He, too, knew God’s "name."

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished." (Exod. 33:6, 7 NIV)

After running away from his responsibility, Jonah would excuse himself in part because he knew all along that God would be merciful. He was afraid God might spare Nineveh and make him look like a fool. He didn’t want to be thought of as a "false prophet," didn’t want that humiliation.

By the end of the book, Jonah has not made a lot of progress. He thinks more of gourd that he does of the Ninevites and perhaps most of all of himself. Somehow the petulant prophet is all too familiar.

William Dyrness, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, notes.

The fundamental conflict in the prophets is a moral battle between God and the forces of evil, but the arena in which this struggle is carried on is human history. It is here that God intervenes to show his mercy in delivering Israel from Egypt, and it is the same history that sees Israel and Judah sent away into exile.…The moral struggle between evil and righteousness is not carried on with a sort of cosmic inevitability (as in the Hindu doctrine of karma), but the course of peoples and nations lies under the control of a sovereign and loving God. Beyond this the events of history were moving toward—one could say were calling for—a final decision in which all of creation would be involved and which would be eternally decisive.…

Central to the vision of God’s future intervention on behalf of his people is the idea of judgment.…God’s judgment is a making right in such a way that the aggressor is punished and the victim is compensated. Judgment then, is a part of God’s redeeming activity. It is God’s activity of restoring the fallen created order by punishment on the one hand and deliverance on the other.…Since individuals in the covenant are to reflect God’s character,…from the human point of view, then, the "doing of justice," which characterizes God judgments, becomes essentially a religious obligation. To know God is to do justice.2

We are not told if Jonah ever got it right, but the next minor prophet in the Bible did.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8, NIV).

Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people, He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water" (Rev. 14:6, 7 NIV).

Notes and References

1. The Good Book (New York: William Morrow, 1996), 185.
2. Themes in Old Testament Theology (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster, 1998), 199, 201.

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