The Prodigal Prophet

Camilo Buchanan, Campbell Sims, and Emily Buchanan open up the book of Jonah together, highlighting the pitfalls of this story vs. the goodness of God and how He used Jonah for His glory.

Jonah is a crooked prophet. He has some lesser gods that he's so committed to that he refuses to deliver the message God told him to give. Not only is Jonah being disobedient, he chooses Tarshish, the furthest place he could run to get away from God.

Ninevah was a brutal place with brutal people who had attacked the Jews for years. Jonah didn't want to tell them how good his God was. He viewed his job as speaking to only the Hebrew people on behalf of God, but God had him set apart as His prophet who would speak to anyone He told Him to. Jonah speaking to Ninevah would have been for his good, but he chose to hang on to offense.

A storm came upon the ship and everyone was scared except for Jonah who was fast asleep. They, nonbelievers, beg him to call on his God. They know that when you disobey God, there will be a consequence and you miss your assignment. It's discovered that Jonah is running from God, so he asks to be thrown overboard. When the storm subsides after they toss him into the sea, the crew praises Jonah's God because they know how powerful the true God is.

Jonah would rather die than obey and gets swallowed by a great fish. When God's Word doesn't live up to Jonah's beliefs and identity, he rejects God's Word. We refuse to believe that God is more dedicated to our good and knows better what that good is. We struggle to trust God's character. We think we know better. We assume that if God is good to our enemies, He is being cruel to us.

Jonah's plan gets thwarted. He is on the run from God because he doesn't want to tell who God is to wicked pagans, yet that's precisely what happens on the boat. Isaiah 55:11 says God's Word will accomplish what it sets out to do.

What is Jonah running from? To love the other.

What do you do when God tells you to love the other? The other that you disagree with? The other political party? The other race?

Jonah hated the Ninevites because of who they were, where they were from, and what they did. They were a brutal people, but he also hated their background. He didn't want to go to them because he knew God would forgive them. He didn't want them to experience grace. We feel like our enemy receiving grace is a threat to the supremacy of our own beliefs. We let our beliefs hold so much weight that we start to dehumanize those on the other side. We let our stance be our identity rather than Christ be our identity. Because of the gospel, we are linked in unity. The ""other people"" in your life are actually your brothers and sisters in Christ.

So, finally, Jonah delivers the message, but as soon as they repent, he gets angry. Jonah prayed a humble prayer and surrendered in chapter 2, but by chapter 4 he was over it. That's because our trust in God has a shelf life and we want to take the pen back to start writing our own story.

This is a misunderstanding of grace, both in the sufficiency and the intensity of it for us.

What's blocking your view of grace?

•  Your head knowledge. Jonah blamed God for being Himself. In Jonah 4:2 he acknowledges who God is and is mad that God will be God to his enemy. When we don't experience grace and just have head knowledge around it, it breeds resentment. You can't just see it, you have to taste it. Grace is when one moves towards the other in the gap of a broken relationship. His kindness leads us to repentance.
• The idol of the desired outcome. Three times Jonah says he would rather die than have God deliver his enemy. We do this too. We are sick and tired because God is not finishing the story the way we want him to. God doesn't operate on our game plan. When we start seeing ourselves as the arbiters of justice rather than the messengers of grace, His loving-kindness becomes our enemy when it lands in a place we have not sanctioned. See Jonah 2:8. Our idols have us forsaking God's mercy.

Jesus is the better Jonah. He went down to Hell and back bringing us to life with Him through His resurrection. We are Ninevah. We have a Savior that went to Hell and came back to save us undeservingly. We walk in God's grace if we don't remember we need it. We can't walk in its power if it becomes ordinary to us.