Jonah Was a Prophet
In the Old Testament, God often spoke to His people through the prophets. These were people specifically chosen by God to speak His messages to His people. They were not to misrepresent God in any fashion. If they spoke falsely, or gave a prophecy that was not 100% accurate, they were to be stoned to death. To be a prophet was serious business, it was never to be treated lightly. Prophets spoke not only the foretelling of future events, but also the commands of God to His people. Often those messages included the command to repent of the sins against God which had brought judgment on them. If the nation of Israel would repent of its collective sin, God would deliver them from the judgment He had poured out.
Jonah was such a prophet chosen by God. Jonah had a unique mission in that he was commissioned by God to preach coming judgment, not to Israel, but to the Gentiles in Nineveh. The Ninevites were a pagan people who had oppressed the Jews. Such a nation was not viewed favorably by Jonah or any other Jew. When God directed Jonah to preach to Nineveh that His judgment was forthcoming, Jonah did not leap at the chance to preach to them. Rather, he booked the first ship to Tarshish he could find (Tarshish is NOT in Nineveh, just in case you were not aware). God sent a storm and a giant fish to forcefully bring Jonah back to the Ninevites.
Three days later, Jonah was spit up on shore and he was once again sent to Nineveh by God. Jonah arrived and preached the message he had been given, forty days and God would judge them. Then he sat back and waited for the judgment to come. But Nineveh understood what this meant. They had sinned greatly against the one, true God of the universe. They understood that his judgement would be righteous and true. They did not fall back on false worship of false gods to deter this judgment. They bowed the knee in utter repentance, seeking the gracious mercy of God. And God, because He has already promised that those in repentance toward Him will be saved, abstained from pouring out His wrath upon them. God mercifully spared them, a picture of the glorious gospel which was later fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Where we rejoice in their repentance, Jonah did not. Jonah hated the Ninevites and did not want them spared. And Jonah revealed his heart to God, saying that he fled to Tarshish because he knew what would happen if he preached God’s message. He had known Nineveh would repent and God would withhold his wrath. Jonah was willing to defy God Himself to prevent people He hated from being saved. And he even became angry with God for doing exactly what Jonah knew He would do. How much hatred must a person have for a people that he would not only avoid sharing the way of salvation to a people, but would actively desire their destruction? It seems impossible to believe doesn’t it? However, have we stopped to think about much we act like Jonah in the modern political climate we find ourselves in today? I would venture to say there are far more modern day Jonahs in American Evangelicalism than we would care to admit.
The State of Affairs in American Evangelicalism
America looks a lot look Nineveh these days. Our nation embraces virtually every form of pagan worship it can find. Simultaneously, it seeks to marginalize and even persecute followers of Christ for rejecting that pluralistic ideology. America has promoted immoral acts of perversion as virtuous and has celebrated the sacrifice of unborn children as freedom. Much like Jonah, we have every right to look at the state affairs in our nation and detest the wickedness that it is mired in.
Much of what has happened is directly linked to the corruption of the political system under which we live. Politicians have been bought and paid for by special interest groups. The division of government powers, which was intended to protect the citizens from government intrusion, has been used to establish monopolies for political agendas. Individual representation has been lost while ideological groups have gained power. Where agendas could not be forwarded by legislation, these groups have forced their will through judicial activism. Courts have ruled by fiat that laws, once based on common sense and morality, have no place in our new modern, tolerant society. And many of these things have occurred right out in the open for us to see. Such deals may have once happened in back alleys and smoke filled rooms, but today, they are paraded on the evening news and social media as great victories.
Christians watching these events being played out would have good reason to see the political and ideological groups as being a source for much of what has occurred. Their public cries for the promotion of immorality and denouncing of all things godly has become an easy target on which to focus our frustration. In doing so, Christians lost focus of the actual problem. It is far too easy to look at the symptoms as being the actual problem and fail to diagnosis the disease. American Christianity has begun to see the political ideology as the source of all the evil rather than realizing that it is only the inevitable result of the true reason, the sinful nature of man.
The true reason we see evil promoted in our nation is that man is a sinner by nature. Outside of Christ, the desire of the hearts of men is evil continually. We all may vary by degree in what form those sins take, but it is all evil in the eyes of God. We all fall short because we are not morally perfect as God is perfect. The stain of sin taints all of our thoughts, words and deeds. And as we live longer outside the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we can become more seared against the conscience God gave us. The very warning alarm of God’s law written on our hearts to tell us we are sinning against him. The longer we live in sin, the more we justify our evil deeds, the more hardened we become against the things of God.
The only true cure for such growth in depravity is the gospel message itself. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, second Person of the Triune Godhead, took on human flesh and lived a life of perfection. He was completely obedient to the Father in all things, tempted as we are, but never sinning. Then He willing laid down His life, dying a brutal and bloody death on the cross so that the perfect wrath of God might be poured out on Him. He suffered, died and was buried for the sins we have committed, enduring the punishment we deserved. But He rose Himself from the grave, defeating the power of sin and death, making a way to eternal life with God. Only by admitting our sins and repenting of them, putting our sole faith and trust in Christ’s completed work can we be saved. There is no work possible that we can do, it is all completed in Christ alone. When a sinner repents and trusts in Christ, God makes him a new creation and the Holy Spirit indwells him. He has a new nature and new desires. The old man has passed away and the new man is born. This is the only solution to the moral morass in which our nation has fallen, because it is the only one that actually addresses the truth of why things are they way they are.
But, American Evangelicalism has failed to acknowledge this. We refuse to see that the problems of our culture fall into the area of original sin. It is too easy to believe that if we can establish a “moral majority,” we can cause the culture to act godly. With enough laws passed and proper control of the government, we can create a Christian utopia of sorts. We have been trying to establish this for decades and what has the result been? A total collapse in morality and rational thinking.
All the efforts of Christian political activism have resulted in a generation of people who have chafed under the yolk of a moral agenda which was pushed on them. Unregenerate hearts bound up in sin have yearned to break free from the “old fashioned” way of thinking and pursue their evil heart’s desires. Without the Holy Spirit changing and leading them, there was no reason to accept what they had been told to do. Once they had amassed enough support, they fought back in every quarter Christians had taken. Where we find ourselves today is no surprise if one understands the biblical view of man.
Yet, today, American Christianity has not accepted its role in our current state of affairs. We do not admit that political activism is doomed to failure. Rather, we have chosen to yoke ourselves to Fox News and conservative talk radio. They tell us that the problem is liberalism and progressivism. Those who espouse such ideologies are not fellow image bearers of God whom we are to show love and compassion. They are an enemy which much be conquered and vanquished. Much of evangelicalism prefers to spend its time in political arguments, proving that the other side is so completely wrong that they are undeserving of our time. They simply must yield. But as this effort goes forth, we see it continue to fail as hell bound sinners amass in greater numbers to pursue debauchery. Rather than admit we have failed to honor God by submitting to His commands, we have dug our heels in further and battled even harder.
The Wrong Approach
The body of Christ is not a political action committee. We are sinners saved by grace who have been given a commission. We have been charged to take the message of the gospel to other sinners and show them the one means of escape available to them. We are to recognize the amazing grace shown to us by Jesus Christ and, in our love for Him, proclaim His glorious message to those who are perishing like we once were. We are to proclaim that message, not to change minds and save societies, but because we serve an amazing God who has condescended to save sinners. We want to send perishing souls to the place of salvation someone once led us.
When we care more about winning moral and political victories than we do about the souls on the other side of the debate, we are acting just like Jonah. We show that we care ultimately more about seeing society bend to our will than we do about why they are desiring to live as perversely as they do. Our nation is in rebellion to God and we are watching his judgment on the culture play out before us. Rather than seeking to rescue people perishing in the flames, we want them to act morally so we feel comfortable as they march off to Hell.
We have a duty to preach the truth of sin, condemnation, righteousness, repentance and faith in Christ. It is the same message Jonah was commanded to give to Nineveh. Instead of taking a ship to Tarshish, we are jumping on the S.S. Republican and sailing into battle against those who need to be saved.
The world at large sees this, and it recognizes that many professing Christians have lost their way. In a roundabout way, they are correct that Christians have become a bunch of judgmental finger shakers. We are looking to subjugate society, take control of it and make it obey the moral dictates of our faith. God’s morality is perfect morality. Any promotion of behavior and beliefs that are contradictory to God’s will is moral perversion. So, yes, it is good for a society to live in accordance with God’s commands. Yet, hearts bound up in sin can only hold to moral behavior for so long. Eventually, they will succumb to the demands of their nature.
Therefore, society believes that Christians who seek to impose a religious morality apart from the supernatural work of Jesus Christ have no grounds to demand any change in their behavior. And the more we demand it, the more they will fight what they see as subjugation. We have given them no reason to believe we have a superior morality as we have disconnected the clear commands of God from the gospel that saved us.
Modern Day Jonahs
We have become modern day Jonahs. We are consumed with the idea of rescuing our nation from the pagan and immoral people of our day. We have wrongly believed that making Americans look and act like Christians meant we were a Christian nation. Society has turned on us and we stopped seeing them as a mission field. We see them, as Jonah did, as an enemy to be hated for opposing us.
Society at large sees Christians as regressive, puritanical and oppressive. In truth, what they are warring against is God Himself. Christians, being representatives of Christ, are the logical target for their hatred. Thus they will come against us in order to ease their consciences as the live out their depraved lives. This should be evidence to us of the desperate need they have for forgiveness in Christ. Rather, we have allowed it to galvanize us against the unsaved.
In the end, the city of Nineveh repented and God was glorified. Jonah was angry, yet God was merciful. God will save whom He intends to save. No amount of rebellion or disobedience on the part of the professing church will stop that. Jonah could not resist God’s will and neither can we. Yet, Jonah was humbled by God in his rebellion. God provided a plant to shade Jonah as he eagerly sat waiting for the destruction of Ninevites that would not come (not in his lifetime). It was the only comfort and joy he had during the entire account. And God took that from him overnight to teach him a lesson. Jonah pitied the loss of a plant that gave him comfort, did not God have the right to pity those who “did not know their right hand from their left?”
We never learn what, if anything, Jonah learned, or what he did after. But we do know that God would take away that which was comforting to him to rebuke and correct his hatred of those whom God loved. Will God not do the same to us? We mourn the loss of freedom and comfort we enjoy in this nation. We have been blessed to live in a nation that once cherished the right to worship God in every aspect of our lives. We war and fight to keep that comfort, and wail as ground is lost. Might it be wise to learn the lesson of Jonah, that God pities those whom He desires to save? And rather than shake our fist against them, should we not proclaim the gospel to them that they might repent? Let us shake off our anger against the unsaved and let us love them as God commands us this day.
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