Interpreting God

Interpreting God

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

March 22, 2014

OT: Jonah 3:1-5, 10.

NT: Luke 21:5-11

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the evil empire, an arch-enemy of Israel. Jonah was a Jewish prophet. God ordered Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach doom. Jonah refused to go because he worried God would not carry through with his threat of doom. Under considerable duress, Jonah finally went. He preached doom in the streets of Nineveh. The people reacted by doing a searching moral inventory and renouncing their evil ways. Doom did not happen. Jonah was embarrassed and angry. God was happy. God's purpose in Jonah's prophecy was not to predict the future but to change it.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a prophet named Jonah. He was a respected leader in the kingdom of Israel. Israel was prosperous. The kingdom was a major regional military power. I presume that a major theme in Jonah's preaching was the importance of honoring God all the blessings God was pouring on the nation. Life was good.

Then, out of the blue, God gave Jonah an unusual message.

“Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are." Jonah 1:2

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. Assyria was an evil empire, and an arch-enemy of Israel. Asking Jonah to go preach doom against Nineveh would be like asking a good, flag-waving, gun-toting Southern Baptist preacher from Atlanta to go to Moscow and preach the downfall of Mr. Putin in Red Square. Or like asking an Iranian mullah to travel to Washington, D.C. And wave an Iranian flag out on the Mall while preaching the imminent doom of America.

Jonah understood his assignment. He was used to getting messages from God. He was a prophet, after all. So Jonah set out on a journey. But instead of heading north to Nineveh, Jonah traveled west to the port city of Joppa. There he found a ship leaving for Tarshish.

(Tarshish was a city in Spain at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea. If you sailed very far beyond Tarshish you'd come to the edge of the world where sailors who ventured too far fell off the world into an abyss populated by dragons and monsters.)

Jonah bought a ticket and went on board and settled in, determined to get as far away from Nineveh as possible.

The crew finished loading cargo, lifted their lines and sailed out of the harbor into the Mediterranean. The sails pulled into the sky. It was a beautiful day.

I'm guessing Jonah breathed a huge sigh of relief. Stiff-arming God is a pretty nervy thing to do. God had given Jonah a direct order and Jonah had said no. He had to worry at least a bit how that was going to go. But here he was on board a west-bound ship, putting miles between him and this crazy mission of preaching doom in Nineveh.

Then the blue skies turned gray. The brisk wind became a howling hurricane-force gale. The sailors dropped all but a tiny fragment of sail, just enough to keep the ship from broaching. Still the force of the storm threatened to break the ship apart. The sailors were praying to their gods for help. They threw the cargo overboard, hoping to lighten the ship and reduce the strain on the hull.

At some point in this all-hands-on-deck drama, the captain noticed Jonah's absence and went looking for him. He found him sound asleep down in the hold. Jonah must have been exhausted. I'm thinking it was the emotional strain of thumbing his nose at God. He must have lived in terror over the recent days, wondering what God was going to do to him for refusing the mission. When Jonah finally got on the ship and it left harbor, the load left his shoulders. He was home free. No shouting doom in the streets of Nineveh.

Now, the captain shakes him awake. “Hey, what are you doing? We're about to sink. How can you sleep? Get up and pray to your god! Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives."

A little later, as doom appears inevitable for the ship, the crew cast lots to see who had offended the gods and caused the terrible storm. When they did this, the lots pointed straight to Jonah.

"Why has this awful storm come down on us?" they demanded. "Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?"

9 Jonah answered, "I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."

10 The sailors were terrified when they heard this. He had already told them he was running away from his god, but they had not realized his god was the Lord of earth and sea and sky. This was serious!"What were you thinking?” they demanded.

And since the storm was getting worse all the time, they asked him, "What should we do to you to stop this storm?"

12 "Throw me into the sea," Jonah said, "and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault."

This is the second act of defiance in this story. Jonah defied God's order to go to Nineveh. Now the sailors defy the prophet's instructions about saving their lives. Instead of throwing Jonah overboard they work all the harder to get the ship to the land.

Despite their desperate efforts, the storm inexorably eats their ship. They can feel it breaking under them.

Finally, they face the inevitable. Jonah is going into the water with them or without them. If they don't toss him overboard, the ship is going to sink and they will all drown together or they can throw him overboard and take their chances that the storm will calm and they will be saved.

They still hate what they are going to do. These pagan sailors cannot casually sacrifice another human being even if doing so will save their own lives.

They prayed to Jonah's God. "O LORD, don't make us die for this man's sin. And don't hold us responsible for his death. O LORD, you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons."

Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once!

At that point, the sailors became true believers! What kind of God could turn a raging storm into sweet calm? They offered a sacrifice to Jonah's God and pledged themselves as his devotees for the rest of their lives.

But what about poor Jonah? Is this the end of his story? Is the moral of the story: disobey and die? You better do what God says or else? God gave Jonah an assignment. Jonah ran away. God tracked him down and nailed him.

If we stopped the story right here, it would make a great “fire and brimstone” sermon. Resist God's leading and DOOM! Refuse to go where God sends you? DOOM! You can run from God, but you cannot hide. So watch out! Is this the moral of Jonah's story?

Not quite. The sailors threw Jonah overboard. Jonah disappeared. The sea became calm. That's all the sailors knew. It was enough to make believers out of them. Meanwhile, God had a great fish waiting for Jonah. The fish swallowed Jonah. And Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of that fish.

I love what artists do with this. My favorite painting the fish's stomach is pictured as a large cave. Jonah is sitting on a large turtle shell. You can see the fish's backbone over Jonah's head. Jonah is not happy!

After Jonah had been there for three days, he decided he better talk to God.

As my life was slipping away, I remembered the LORD. And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy Temple. (2:7)

God spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah up on shore. Once Jonah got his bearings, I'm guessing he wondered, “Now what?” God did not leave him guessing.

Then the LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: "Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you." (3:1-2)

Jonah did not mess around this time. No more fish rides! He headed straight to Nineveh and began preaching. "Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!"

Astonishingly, instead of lynching him or stoning him or ignoring him. The people listened to his preaching and believed him. Even the king of Nineveh believed Jonah. He made the dramatic gesture of stepping down from his throne and putting on burlap cloth himself. Then to push it as far as possible in that society, he sat on an ash heap.

He called his nobles together and they had a decree published throughout the city: "No one, not even the animals from your herds and flocks, may eat or drink anything at all. 8 People and animals alike must wear garments of mourning, and everyone must pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. 9 Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us."

A question for you: Does God ever change his mind? Was this statement by the King of Nineveh a wise statement or a foolish statement? 

Did Jonah's message include any wiggle room in it? Did he say God is going to destroy Nineveh UNLESS you change your ways? No. Jonah's message was simple and emphatic. Forty days from now DOOM upon Nineveh.

The King of Nineveh set out to change God's mind. He enlisted his people in the effort. And amazingly, it worked.

When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.

God changed his mind. The prophecy did not happen.

Jonah got very upset with God.

"Isn't this just what I said I left home? I knew this would happen. That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.

Then Jonah speaks his bottom line:

Just kill me now, LORD! I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.

Here is the moral of Jonah's story. God's highest value is the well-being of his children. Jonah's highest value is reputation—God's and his own. The book leaves us with the question: what is our highest value? Are we more like the prophet? Or more like God?

Another way to ask this question: Are we more worried about God's reputation than God is?

When people ask me my opinion about the return of Jesus to set up his kingdom of everlasting righteousness, I always tell them that I hope is today. This afternoon. Often Adventists will assure me that this cannot be. Jesus cannot come this afternoon.

Why? Because some of the bad stuff prophesied in the Book of Revelation has happened yet. Jesus cannot come until after “the time of trouble,” or “the great tribulation.” We have to have more wars, famines, pestilences, and false prophets. There has to be a national law compelling false worship from everybody. When people talk like this I wonder if they have considered the implications of the book of Jonah. Prophecies of doom are quite negotiable. Every terrible prophecy in the Bible is optional.

God is far more interested in saving people than in making himself look good by making sure predictions of doom actually happen. When we partner with God, we will quit insisting that doom must happen. Instead we will join with God in doing all that we can to avert doom, to minimize suffering, to promote righteousness, to enhance human well-being.

In Jonah's story, it is the pagan sailors who are most like God. In the face of an explicit statement by the prophet of God announcing divine judgment against Jonah and offering them a way to save themselves and consign Jonah to the judgment of God, they refuse to throw him overboard. They do everything they can to save him. They work to keep Jonah in the boat, even at great risk to themselves.

This is a model of the work God has given us.

What are you doing to avert doom?

You have something to contribute to the kingdom of heaven. I saw this vividly this week.

I participated with other family members in the funeral for Karin's uncle, Kenneth Stringer. Uncle Kenneth was brilliant, a master of numbers. His contribution to the Kingdom of heaven was to work with mathematician Frederick Stephan of Princeton to develop statistical sampling methods for auditing. This is not exactly the kind of missionary work I grew up imagining. It is not doctoring, nursing, preaching or teaching. But it did create reliable, powerful tools for helping foster accountability in the handling of huge sums of money. And accountability is part of the very foundation of good and just society.

In the funeral we talked a bit about Uncle Kenneth's intellectual genius.

Then we turned to another group of people who were present. None of them is famous for the books they have written. None of them have plaques and awards from prestigious professional societies hanging on their walls. But for the last five or six years they have been the absolutely indispensable caregivers, first for Kenneth's wife, then for Uncle Kenneth himself.

Cousin Bob told us that staff at two different hospitals told him they had never seen such compassionate, competent care.

As I thought about these two different visions of service—one arcane, abstract, and highly paid—the other concrete, direct and poorly paid, who could say that one is more valuable than the other. Both kinds of service contribute to the great goal of God which is highlighted in Jonah's story: the amelioration of human suffering, the advance of human well-being.

May God stir our hearts to participate with the sailors and God himself in doing our utmost to save and bless all we can.