Jonah and The Whale
Text: Jonah 1:1-17, Matthew 12:38-40
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
August 18, 2024
Well, we’ve gone back to Sunday School this summer. We’ve been revisiting all those children’s lessons we were told when we were young, and in these sermons we have come to those Bible stories as adults. From Creation to Noah to Joseph and his coat to David and Goliath and others, we come to the end this morning with Jonah and the whale.
Let’s get right to it: read Jonah and there is no whale.
It says Jonah was swallowed by a “huge” or “great” fish. Most people don’t know this because they have never actually read the words of the book of Jonah. It became a whale as people wondered what type of fish could hold a human body, which is an issue in itself. But that Jonah gets swallowed by a big fish really is not a crucial point in the book of Jonah. If it wasn’t included the message of Jonah would stand. Maybe more important in the story of Jonah is a plant. We’ll get to this later.
The story of Jonah is about running from what God wants us to do. It is about not being able to stop the purposes of God. It is about getting angry with God when God doesn’t do things our way. And it’s about God’s massive compassion for this world.
Jonah was a prophet of the Lord. He was called by God to go to the great city of Nineveh to preach against it because of its wickedness.
Nineveh is in modern day Iraq. It was located in what as then known as Assyria, on the eastern banks of the Tigris River, and one of the great cities of Mesopotamia. It was the most glorious city of the day in terms of its physical beauty and cultural prestige. Not unlike Pleasant Grove.
The Assyrians had been absolutely terrible to the Israelites so hatred for Nineveh was great. The Ninevites were not a pleasant people. They were known for their violence and terrorism. And Jonah was to go and be a missionary and evangelist to these people. The Bible scholar James Limburg describes it this way: “It would be as if a Jew who had lost family in the Holocaust were asked to undertake a mission to Germany just after the Nazi period.”[1]
Knowing this, Jonah tells God “no thank you” and Jonah books a ticket on a cruise ship to Tarshish and heads in the opposite direction of Nineveh. He runs and tries to escape.
But there is no running from the Lord. And a great storm overcomes the ship. Jonah believes the storm has come because the Lord knows he is on the ship. His conscience gets the best of him and he tells the crew to throw him into the sea to appease the Lord and bring the storm to a halt. That is when the great fish comes and swallows Jonah. And Jonah spends three days and three nights in the great fish before he is spit out. That is all of about two verses.
Jesus refers to Jonah in the great fish when he is tested by the religious leaders who want him to prove that he is from God. He says the only sign and proof that will be given to that generation is what he called “the sign of Jonah.” “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus is making reference to his death and resurrection. But he doesn’t expound on this.
Back to the book of Jonah. He is spit out of the great fish and we read, “the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time…” Jonah after trying to run from what God told him to do gets a second chance. Has God ever given you a second chance? This time Jonah obeys and goes to Nineveh. Sometimes we need to be swallowed up, spend some time in darkness and a messy place, and vomited out before we realize it is easier to go the Lord’s way instead of our own.
Jonah preaches to the city of Nineveh that if they do not change their wicked ways, in forty days the Lord will overthrow that city. Lo and behold, the Ninevites respond to the message and believe God. The king of Nineveh issues a proclamation that all people, and even the animals, should not eat or drink; that everyone should wear sackcloth as a sign of their sorrow and repentance; that everyone should call urgently to God, give up their evil ways and violence, in hopes that God may change his mind, have compassion and not bring about a terrible destruction upon Nineveh. The whole place repents. If you are a preacher or prophet, you couldn’t ask for a better response to your ministry.
And it says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”[2]
You would think Jonah is overjoyed. “Wow God! People are turning to you. Your message has been heard!” But no. This makes Jonah angry. He cannot believe the Lord is going to let them off the hook. He goes ballistic over God having compassion on them. Now we are getting to the meaning of the book of Jonah.
Jonah has an absolute conniption and yells at God. The sense of the Hebrew words is like this: “it was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and his anger burned.”[3] The “it” of Jonah’s anger is the heart of the matter.
Jonah says that he knew this was going to happen. He knew it and that is why he ran off to Tarshish. He knew God was a God of grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love and ready at the drop of a hat to turn his plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness![4]
Jonah is angry that God’s grace has been extended to the Assyrians. He thinks God is too soft on sinners. If they are in on the love of God, then Jonah wants out.[5]
Every one of us has a “they” or “them”. “They” are the ones we don’t like. “They” are the ones we want to see get theirs. “They” are the people who have hurt us; wronged us; made our lives miserable; and keep us awake at night. If “they” showed up in church and sat next to us we wouldn’t like it.
Do you see what is happening? Do you see Jonah’s lack of compassion and his self-absorbed attitude? The irony of Jonah’s meltdown is that he knows exactly what God is like – gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He knows his Bible because those words are found in Exodus and several other places in the Old Testament to describe God. It was kind of a creed that every believer in the Lord knew over many centuries. It is biblical, true, and one of the soundest and best descriptions of the heart and nature of God in the whole Bible.
Jonah knows how the Lord is and now his cloak is all in a wad. Jonah is better at judgment than he is at mercy.
The Lord asks Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry?” And Jonah gives the Lord the silent treatment. He doesn’t respond. How many of us know how to give the silent treatment when we are mad and someone confronts us? We want to welcome all the passive aggressives today. Hello?
Jonah goes outside the city, pouting, and makes himself some shade – because it can be hot in that part of the world - and waits to see what this gracious and compassionate Lord will do with Nineveh.
Then the Lord God does something very kind for Jonah. He provides a plant with huge leaves, makes it grow, and it gives shade to Jonah from the brutal Middle Eastern heat. Jonah loves this. Life is looking up!
But the next day the Lord sends a worm to devour the tree so that it withers. Then God sends a scorching east wind and the sun beats down on Jonah so strongly that he begins to faint.
Now Jonah says he would rather just die.
Again, the Lord challenges Jonah and asks him what right he has to be angry about the plant withering. First he was angry about Nineveh not getting blasted, and now he is angry about the plant. And Jonah snips back, “I have a right, and I am angry enough to die.”
Little does Jonah know that he has walked right into it. The Lord is working with this angry, pouting, self-pitying prophet. He definitely wants to teach him a lesson. And the Lord says, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”[6]
And that is the end of the story of Jonah.
When God asks Jonah, in the words that end the entire book, “Should I not be concerned about that great city?” the word for “concerned” in Hebrew is an expression for when tears flow from the eye. In other words, the Lord has such pity that he is moved to tears over Nineveh.
The Lord is trying to teach angry Jonah about godly compassion. The plant is a kind of parable about grace.
Jonah received abundant grace from the Lord. The Lord didn’t let him drown in the sea. He gave him a second chance after he disobeyed and tried to run away from his call the first time. He gave him shade in the brutal heat, even while Jonah gave him the silent treatment and pouted. But Jonah sure doesn’t like seeing that grace being shown to those he doesn’t think deserve it.
We want God to be gracious to us, to forgive us, to come to us but not those other people. No way God’s love should go to them. Us? We deserve it. One commentator that I read spoke of the “Jonah Syndrome.” Do we have the “Jonah Syndrome? We are so angry with someone or some group of people that we are just sitting and pouting our life away. And we sure don’t want them to have any part in God’s love.
Jonah resents the LORD showing mercy to Nineveh, even though Jonah has been a recipient of this mercy. Jonah thinks God’s mercy should only be shown to people like himself. When it says, “God so love the world that he gave his only Son…” Is that really something you believe? The world? All nations and peoples and individuals? That Jesus came, died and is for all? That God grieves for people who are apart from him?
Or are there people we don’t want to see in a church – or at least not in the church we go to – because they might find Christ? And we might have to be brothers and sisters with them?
God loves all people and wants all people to turn to him and know him including those we have a problem with. The writer Ann Lamott said, “You can tell you have made God in your image when it turns out He hates all the same people you do.”
Perhaps we Christians need God’s mercy more than those we think are far from God. That’s how it was with Jonah. And Jonah is angry with God for being God. God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Jonah, what is your problem?
Remember what we call the parable of the prodigal son? Jesus told that parable because the religious people were grumbling that Jesus was getting too close to the sinners. Remember the elder brother in the parable? He is furious that the father welcomes back and is prodigally gracious to the younger son who went off and lived totally irresponsibly.
Remember what the father tells the older brother? The father tells the angry oldest son, “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”[7]
The Lord says, “Jonah, we have to celebrate over what has happened to Nineveh!”
You know, it was the deeply religious and spiritually-serious people who had the hardest time with Jesus. He also had the hardest time with them.
Jonah was pretty convinced that his enemies were also God’s enemies. And when that didn’t turn out to be the case, Jonah became angry. We get angry when our expectations are not met. And we get angry when God doesn’t act like we expect him to act – when he doesn’t do what we think he should. There are people sitting and pouting and moping in anger because God hasn’t done everything they think he should do, the way they want it done.
It’s interesting that the book of Jonah ends with God asking Jonah a question. “Shouldn’t I be concerned about them?” Shouldn’t God be concerned about the “them” that so need his grace and compassion?
The Book of Jonah is read in Jewish synagogue services on Yom Kippur which is the Day of Atonement. On this day Jews confess their sins against God and neighbor. It’s a day to look at their own lives and hearts. To look in the mirror. It is a day to remember that God will forgive if people turn back to him.
The forgiveness we receive from God is a pure gift of grace. Jonah reminds us that we don’t own that grace. It is God’s to give. God can forgive, be gracious to, and abound in steadfast love to whomever God wants. His mercy is often much wider than ours.[8]
Have we not seen this in our Lord Jesus Christ? As John writes in 1 John: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”[9]
So the story of this old prophet is much more than about a whale. It’s about how a gracious and loving God, who is way more gracious and loving than humans.
Did Jonah ever get out of his anger? Did the elder brother ever accept, welcome and rejoice over the younger brother? Should God be concerned? I guess it’s up to you and me to provide our own answers with our lives.
Prayer: Lord our God we are thankful that you so loved the world. Help us to be glad in your desire to save all.
Remind us again of your great story that is made up from all the smaller stories in the Bible.
For those of us who were raised in children’s Sunday School, thank you for those who taught us.
Mature our faith. Deepen our understanding of your story and our part in it.
Amen.
[1] Interpretation Commentary, p.140
[2] 3:10
[3] Beth Tanner, www.workingpreacher.org, Jan. 25, 2009
[4] See The Message
[5] James Limburg, 154
[6] The Message
[7] Luke 15:31-32
[8] Beth Tanner, www.workingpreacher.org, Jan. 25, 2009
[9] 1 John 4:10-11