Jonah 1:1-2 / I am Jonah - Calling
Amen. Well, it’s good to see you all. I hope you’re all doing well today. I get the privilege of following Dr. Rick Taylor this week. Good luck with that! In ancient Roman cities, the primary North-South road was called the Cardo. The Cardo would be the equivalent to our Blackstone Avenue here in town. Along the Cardo, you would find all the shops, all the merchants, and all the business. Everything was based off that main road.
In many ways, what Dr. Taylor did for us last week was lay down the Cardo. Following his tremendous overview of the book of Jonah, we now get to play with the side streets. He has already laid out the theme and the major high points; now, we get to tease out the sub-points along the way. We are going to be in Jonah chapter one, verses one and two. We are booking through the book already! But to introduce where we’re going, we need to pause for a moment and ask some bigger questions.
Why did God make Adam and Eve? Why are we here? What was the purpose of humanity? I won’t bore you with all the backstory, other than to say it seems from the text that the overwhelming reason for the people of God being here is to bring him glory. There is a sense that we were created to be a distinct people. God calls us to himself so that we would live differently from the world around us. Would you agree? From what you read in the Scripture, there ought to be a certain kind of “otherness” to us as those who claim to be followers of Christ. Whether it was Adam and Eve in the garden, Abraham, or Moses and the giving of the law, it was about distinction and giving God a sense of renown.
The Heart of the Shema
When you begin to read through the Old Testament, you see that one of the central tenets of the Hebrew faith was the centrality of the Word of God. If you read through the book of Deuteronomy, you come across chapter six, which is probably the prime piece of literature for the Hebrew people to fall back on. It was the pinnacle. It is commonly called the Shema, and the main point of the entire Old Testament could be summarized in this passage.
The Shema was something everyone in the Hebrew nation memorized. That’s just what you did. The men would repeat it every morning and every night in their prayers. In every worship service, the Torah would be brought out, and the Shema was the pinnacle piece. It is ripe with theological truth.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NASB)
’Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! ’You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ’These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. ’You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ’You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
“Hear, O Israel.” The word for hear is Shema. It means to listen, take heed, and give attention. “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” This was a significant call to monotheism. Their faith was an exclusive faith in the Lord and the Lord alone. That is why the first of the Ten Commandments is to have no other gods before Him. Because God is one, and there is no other.
These people who lived the Shema were not just people who worshiped, though that was certainly part of it. If you look into it, there is an obedience component as well. You were to love God with all your heart, soul, and might. Worship and obedience go hand-in-hand. If they lived according to the Scripture, it would express itself in the way they lived before the pagan nations around them.
Look geographically at where God took these people. He plopped them right in the midst of the frying pan and said, “Now, live distinct—not aside from the pagan, but distinct among the pagan.” They were called to influence culture and society right there in the middle of a people who did not care about the one true God. That was the calling of the people of God.
Success and Spiritual Decay
What’s interesting about the nation of Israel is that their obedience to God was kind of like a high school relationship gone bad. It was on-again, off-again. You read one book and they’re doing great; you read another and they’re sacrificing their children to Molech. You think, “What happened?”
In the context of Jonah, we find them in an “off-again” point. Their distinction is gone. The magnetism they should have had for other nations is gone. We find the context for the book of Jonah in 2 Kings chapter 14. This is after the kingdom split. Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, took the Southern Kingdom, and a guy named Jeroboam—who, in my opinion, may be one of the biggest morons in the Bible—took the Northern Kingdom. He officially implemented idolatry, building places of worship in Dan and Bethel to keep people from going to Jerusalem.
By the time we get to Jonah, he is preaching to the Northern Kingdom under the reign of Jeroboam II. On the outside, things looked great. They had military victories and reestablished borders almost to the extent of Solomon’s reign. They were experiencing success and prosperity. However, there was a fundamental problem: they became focused on themselves. They became comfortable, spiritually lazy, and religiously wicked. They would worship God one moment and then offer their infants to the bronze statue of Molech the next.
God was not impressed with their military victories or their political reign. They were distracted. So, God raised up a prophet. A prophet had two roles: foretelling (calling the shots of what is to come) and forth-telling (proclaiming the Word of God to a situation that isn’t right). The prophet advocated for obedience to the Shema. And that is why Jonah chapter one is so strange.
The Scandalous Call
Jonah 1:1-2 (NASB)
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.’
When Jonah heard “Arise and go to Nineveh,” he must have thought it was a typo. There is no way God is calling a prophet to go to Nineveh! Those were the enemies of God. Why not to Israel? Why not to Judah?
God was reaffirming His heart for the nations. He wanted Israel to live distinctly so that people in cities like Nineveh would be drawn to the one true God, much like the Queen of Sheba was drawn to the wisdom of Solomon. But Israel compromised. They enjoyed prosperity above obedience. So, God sent the prophet to the pagan. It’s a pattern we see again later with Jesus.
When Jesus came, He came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Matthew 10:6 (NASB)
but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
But when the nation of Israel rejected His miracles and claimed they were done by the power of Satan, Jesus began to speak in parables. He began to move from a Jewish focus to a Gentile focus—to people like you and me. He began to gather a Gentile bride.
John 10:16 (NASB)
’I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock [with] one shepherd.
Romans 1:16 (NASB)
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
We see this shift where God moves toward the church. Now, I want to take a quick theological side trail. There is a school of thought called “replacement theology” which suggests the church has replaced Israel. I do not support that. Paul says in Romans 11 that God has not rejected His people. We are simply grafted into the rich root of Israel. We have a Jewish Messiah, and His rejection gave us salvation.
Magnetic Distinction
As the church, we inherit a similar calling. Jesus said we ought to be salt and light, like a city on a hill. We need to live in such a way that God is “one” in our lives. We need to be distinct. And by distinct, I mean magnetic.
I don’t mean distinct as in “weird.” There have been plenty of weird Christians over the years doing stupid things in the name of worship. Magnetic distinction means people look at your life and ask, “What is it about you?” It’s about the way you treat your neighbor, the way you work, and the hope you carry.
In Mark chapter 12, Jesus is being tag-teamed by religious factions asking him questions. Finally, an expert in the law asks him which commandment is the foremost of all.
Mark 12:28-31 (NASB)
One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, ‘What commandment is the foremost of all?’ Jesus answered, ’The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ ’The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’
Jesus turns right back to the Shema. The most important thing is to love God with all. All your heart (affections), all your soul (will), all your mind (intellect), and all your strength (physical energy). What would you hold back from the Creator of the universe?
Then Jesus adds the one-two punch: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s where it gets personal. It’s easy to say we love God; it’s harder to love the neighbor who doesn’t take their trash out or has the barking dog. But this is our calling as the ekkaleo—the “called out ones.” We are called out from the pagan nations to live distinctly.
I Am Jonah
How are we doing with that calling? Are we living with spiritual reckless abandon? Or are we like the people in Jonah’s day—focused on our rights, our preferences, and our comfort?
If we are honest, too few of us are living our calling well. In the Old Testament, when the people were disobedient, God sent a prophet to call them back. If this is the status of our lives, our marriages, or our church, then we need men and women to stand up and say, “I am Jonah, and this isn’t right.”
We need people who will say, “I am Jonah, and we are called to be distinct, but we aren’t living that way.” We need to be called back to worshiping God because He died for us and rose for us. This isn’t a religious theory; it’s a reality.
God doesn’t need us. He could use a donkey to accomplish His will. But God is blessing this place. Marriages are being restored, and people are finding wholeness. Why? It isn’t because we are the most talented. It’s because the eyes of the Lord move throughout the earth to support those whose hearts are completely His.
My concern is that God would look at His people, find no one whose heart is His, and be forced to move His hand elsewhere. May it never be that God’s blessing is pulled from this place because we became complacent.
A Call to Be Sober
I hope this series bothers you a little bit. The church has become so soft-handed. We are so afraid to offend that we soft-pedal the gospel. We want our ears tickled. But Paul’s words to Timothy ring true for us today.
2 Timothy 4:2-5 (NASB)
preach the word; be ready in season [and] out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but [wanting] to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
I can see Paul’s finger pointing at Timothy’s chest, and it needs to point at ours, too. We cannot just tickle ears. We need to stir things up. The virus growing in the church today is complacency born of comfort and apathy.
It might be awkward. It might feel like Bambi learning to walk—a little wobbly and gangly. But let’s come alongside each other and say, “I am Jonah. I’m willing to be the person God called me to be.” It starts with us looking in the mirror and taking inventory.
Are we obsessed with ourselves? If we find a love of self, or status, or ego above God, may we repent. May God find people right here, right now, who are all in. May He find hearts that are completely His so that He never has to send the prophet elsewhere.
Father, I pray that we would rise up as men and women who say, “I am Jonah.” Help us to love you with everything we have and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Find in us hearts that are completely yours. In Jesus’ name, Amen.