Our Scripture reading for this Sunday is Jonah 1:1-16.
For the next four weeks we will be working through the book of Jonah. Next week we will look at Jonah 1:17-2:10. The following two weeks we will look at Jonah 3:1-4:3 and Jonah 4:1-11.
As an introduction to Jonah and in preparation for this Sunday I invite you to read this quote from Paul Mackrell in his book, “Opening up Jonah.”
Having been told to get up, Jonah gets up. But instead of going north and east, he chooses west. To use a British analogy, directed to the John O’Groats of his known world, he opts for Land’s End instead. He does not argue with God about the mission; he simply runs from it. It is an in-your-face act of disobedience. Why? It was not because he was frightened, even though he had good reason to be. Neither did he fear ridicule, although a lone figure shouting out that Nineveh, with its massive walls and military might, was about to be overthrown would certainly invite it.
No, Jonah’s problem was the message itself. God told him to say, ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned’ (3:4). He was perfectly comfortable with prophesying judgment and destruction. In fact he warmed to it. But he choked on the forty days. It meant that there was just a possibility that God could be persuaded to relent. As we will see his fears would be realized.
So he buys his one-way ticket and runs from the Lord—or at least tries to. You would have thought Jonah ought to have known that nobody can ever escape from God. Indeed he did know it. Not only would he have been familiar with Psalm 139, but telling the sailors about fearing the Lord, the God of heaven who has made the sea and the dry land in verse 9 shows that at one level he believed it. But sin warps the thinking. What he knew in his head was distorted by a mind set on disobedience. He was also running from before the face of the Lord—the place of service. It was a case of resigning his calling.