On missing the lesson of Jonah

The story of Jonah gets a lot of attention but often for the wrong reason. 

People want to argue over whether he was swallowed by a whale or a large fish and whether it is an allegory or whether it actually happened, and they end up missing the important lessons of this book of the Bible. 

One of those important lessons has to do with calling.

The calling of Jonah

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” Jonah 1:1-2.

Nineveh was a great city of Assyria, Israel’s most feared enemy.  That is almost certainly why Jonah didn’t want to preach to them. In fact, he says later to the Lord that he knew the Lord was gracious and he was afraid they might repent and be spared. See Jonah 4:2.

Running from our calling

So, Jonah ran.

And he ran in the opposite direction. Tarshish is 2,500 miles in the opposite direction from Nineveh. Of course, we know he doesn’t get far because the ship he boards hits a storm of such force that everyone on the ship is convinced it is the wrath of God being poured out on them.

They end up throwing Jonah into the sea, where he spends three days in the belly of a fish, until he repents and the fish spits him up on dry land. This is the most fascinating part of the story of Jonah, and it’s not because he survived for three days in the fish. If God can raise the dead, He can enable a man to survive inside a great fish.

The most interesting part of Jonah’s story

No, the most interesting part of this to me is that God didn’t permit Jonah to run away from his calling.

In movie-speak, He made Jonah an offer he couldn’t refuse, and ironically it included “sleeping with the fishes.” 

Now people run from their calling all the time, and the Lord in His grace and mercy permits it. But here, God orchestrates circumstances in such a way that Jonah is brought to repentance. Jonah then turns and fulfills his calling.

What we can’t always see — but God sees

I had a pastor once who fought the calling of God in his life for years. He told me he knew he was called to the ministry, but at the time he was one of the richest people in Houston. He had nine cars, a large house with stables, and a thriving real estate business. It was a lot to leave behind, so he resisted. 

Then his son died in a motorcycle accident, his house burned down, and the real estate market in Texas cratered with the oil crisis. It drove him into bankruptcy. At that point he gave up trying to run from God and entered the ministry. I met him when the church reached about 500 in Sunday attendance. He ended up discipling me and others, not just in the ways of the Lord, but in leadership skills that would serve me later in the church world and in my work as a lawyer. He was one of the most effective leaders I had ever seen.

To the man who would eventually serve as a pastor, the ministry may not have looked too attractive when he was living in his mansion, with his nine cars, and all the other trappings of wealth, but God saw the whole picture. 

But like Jonah, instead of showing him the whole picture, he arranged his circumstances in such a way that answering his calling looked more attractive than remaining in the situation he was in. That is a severe mercy—as C.S. Lewis called it. Not one you would hope for, but one you would thank God for later. 

The takeaway from the story of Jonah

Jonah ultimately fulfilled his calling. Nearly 800 years later, Jesus would mention Jonah: 

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. — Matthew 12:41

Jonah probably could not have imagined that nearly eight centuries later the Savior of the world would point to his preaching as an example for Israel. God saw the significance of Jonah’s calling long before Jonah did.

My pastor couldn’t see it either. To him, leaving behind wealth and success to enter the ministry looked like loss. God saw the people he would lead to Christ, the church he would build, and the lives—including mine—that he would shape through decades of faithful leadership.

We rarely see the full significance of our calling while we are living it, but God does.

That is one reason obedience comes before understanding. We walk by faith, trusting that the One who calls us sees a much bigger picture than we do. GS

Better to obey than learn obedience through severe mercy. GS