Considering Jonah 3

Jonah miraculously survived 3 days in the belly of the fish/whale.  There he was humbled, submitting himself to God who then had the sea dwelling creature spit him up on the shore.

Then the Word of the Lord came to Jonah again.  He is again sent to Ninevah, the difference in wording being “the message that I give you.”  He is still to call out against it, warning the people to prompt repentance.

Some have argued that it could not have been a genuine revival.  How, they argue, could these coverted Ninevites then resume their conquering ways resulting in the defeat and exile of the Northern Kingdom?  Students of revivals will notice that often revivals last but a generation.  The effects are not permanent.  For instance, barely 100 years after the Welsh revivals, Christianity is nearly extinct there.  This shows how long their declension has lasted.

“People who experience mighty revivals may be all the more hardened against God in the generations that follow.  The presence of the Spirit of God is a far more delicate matter than we are prone to imagine.”  Sinclair Ferguson

This is illustrated in the life of Jonah, and repeatedly in the history of Israel and Judah.  So we mich take Paul’s warning against greiving the Spirit seriously.  We cannot be sure we will repent of any sin we are tempted to commit.  But such disobedience will produce spiritual declension at the least, if not be evidence that the person was spiritually dead to begin with.

God’s evangelistic sovereignty is revealed in this passage, as Ferguson notes.  God sent a messenger in Jonah.  He authorized the message Jonah would declare.  It is good to pray for revival, but we must also evangelize for revival.  The God-declared end has a God-ordained means.  He sent an evangelist AND He opened their hearts to the message.  This is the very reason He sent Jonah in the first place.

The message was simple, but the effect was profound.  Historically the Spirit works in 2 ways.  The first is in the messenger or preacher, and is called unction (anointing has also been used but this term has recently been hijacked by televangelists like Benny Hinn to mean something quite different).  The message is delivered with power and conviction.

“That word can only come with power to our hearers when it has come with power to our own hearts.”  John Owen

The Spirit also works in the hearers to illumine them.  Paul describes this in 2 Corinthians 3-4.  God sheds His light into our hearts that we might see the glory of Jesus.  Suddenly people see their need AND the sufficiency of Jesus’ work on behalf of sinners.

The revival was profound in some ways.  It included a decree by the rulers of Ninevah.  Jonah includes some details that seem odd to us.  Not being rational beings, the livestock didn’t repent but the manifesations of repentance used by the Ninevites included putting the livestock in sackcloth and ashes.  Like Sodom and Gemorrah, all of Ninevah would be destroyed, not just the people.  So great is the sin of people and our connection with creation established in Genesis 1-3.  Adam’s sin brought misery and death not only to himself and to his descendants but to all of creation.

What has happened is amazing.  A city dedicated to many gods has been converted to faith in the One, True God.  Like the Thessalonians the turned from worthless idols at the preaching of Christ and Him crucified.

It is hear that I think Bryan Estelle does not go far enough.  He “limits” the meaning of this book to need for Israel to repent for their lack of compliance to the powerful preaching of the prophets God has sent to them.  That is certainly part of the message of Jonah.  But that is not the fulness of the message of Jonah.  I mentioned a triperspectival approach (normative, existential, circumstantial or God’s Word, our hearts & our community).  Jonah’s normative perspective is that salvation is of the Lord.  Its existential perspective to Israel and us is our need to repent to experience the salvation God provides instead of ignoring God’s servants the prophets.  Its circumstantial perspective is to make this salvation known to those around us, rather than giving in to fear, xenophobia, racism, and other sinful obstackes that may inhabit our hearts.

Estelle does note that some have used this book, among others, to defend a view called Open Theism.  Estelle spends a few pages arguing that advocates of this view, among other things, do not take the nature of Scripture in mind when it says “God repented/relented.”  We must not forget the Creator-creature distinction.  We are made like Him, but we are not like Him in some significant ways.  We are not infinite, eternal and unchanging.  But God speaks to us, as Calvin notes, as a parent to a baby.  He lisps to us, or accommodates to our minds so we understand.  Jonah describes this as if God were a man.

We can rather understand this as God producing His eternally ordained ends (revival) through His eternally ordained means (preaching & evangelism).  The threat of justice & wrath is met with faith and repentance, the means by which they receive salvation.  God does not bring just wrath, but merciful salvation to Ninevah.

Some have argued that Jonah is not part of the main thread of redemptive history.  I’ll address this again in my discussion of its genre and historicity later.  But we see this as an intrustion of Pentecost, which is the fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 12- the blessing to the Gentiles.  God has always had a heart for Gentiles as well as Jews.  We see this in places during the OT history.  Jesus mentioned this, infuriating the Pharisees.  But in Christ this promise bursts forth as believing Gentiles by the millions and billions are grafted onto the vine of the true Israel.  The revival of Ninevah is a foreshadowing of what will be fulfilled in Christ.  This puts it clearly in the mainstream of redemptive history.