Join us on a journey through the story of Jonah, a prophet who dared to defy God’s command. As we unpack the first chapter, discover the complexities of Jonah’s character and the profound lessons his actions can teach us about faith, obedience, and divine mercy. This episode delves into the historical and spiritual backdrop of Nineveh, a city marked by its wickedness but touched by God’s grace. Explore the reasons behind Jonah’s disobedience, from his personal animosities to his understanding of God’s merciful nature. We also reflect on how Jonah’s story mirrors our own struggles with following divine instruction,
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellence.
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We’re hard on Jonah, aren’t we? The Lord told him to go to Nineveh with a message, and instead, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. What made him disobey? I wonder if when we hear the answer, we’ll go a little easier on the old prophet. In this study, Dr. J. Vernon McGee is going to outline four reasons we disobey God. So hop aboard the Bible bus for a very interesting journey bound for Tarshish. I’m Steve Schwetz, and here at Through the Bible, we’re bound for destinations all around the world, many of which are not unlike the city of Nineveh. We’re taking the whole word to the whole world, reaching people in more than 250 languages. And if you’d like to know more about the mission and to pray with us, why don’t you check out our world prayer team over at ttb.org forward slash pray. Now, each weekday, the World Prayer Team prays for listeners like this sister from Africa who studies God’s word with us in her language of Rinne Katara. She says, I would like to thank God for this teaching. I’m grateful that my mom and I can listen to your teaching. We used to listen to it with my grandmother as well, but she has moved to heaven. She was the one who first introduced us to Through the Bible. Through her, I came to know the Lord Jesus, and together with you, we learned more about our Savior. I’m grateful for those precious days with mom, my grandmother, and my Heavenly Father. And then a pastor, this time in Syria, writes, Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all working with you and supporting the word of God. The study on the book of Esther taught me many new things. I follow you continuously because of the comfort I receive. Well, isn’t that amazing? If you recall, Syria is over 87% Muslim and one of the top 10 nations known for persecuting Christians. And it’s really just a difficult place to live, much less be a believer. So keep praying. Pray for this pastor and others in Syria to receive and be comforted by the word. And then pray for their faithfulness as they share it with others. Our last note comes from Umir, a listener of our Urdu programs in Pakistan, and he wrote this. I found you on Facebook and feel encouragement and happiness from your programs. My entire family now joins in the teaching. Well, let’s pray for our study and for all those who are joining us now. Heavenly Father, your grace and mercy are a banner over us, so thank you. Thank you for your unfailing love. Please teach us now, through your Spirit, all that you have for us. In your Son’s name we pray. Amen. Now here’s our study of Jonah chapter 1 with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now I’d like to read the first two verses here in the book of Jonah. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. Now, this is the call and commission of this man Jonah to go to Nineveh. And the thing that I’d have you note here again is that he’s identified for us as a prophet, and also he’s the son of Amittai. Now, we have found out that he’s a historical character. We saw that in 2 Kings 14, 25. Now, his commission is to arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now, the city of Nineveh is called here a great city. It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. It was on the Tigris River. Now, later on, we’re going to deal with this matter of the size of this city because it is emphasized two more times in the book. In fact, a great emphasis is upon the size of the city. But here, the emphasis is actually upon the wickedness. It’s a great city. but great in wickedness. It was so great that it had come up before God, and God now is determined that he is going to judge the city. That is, if the city does not turn to him. And actually, this man leaves his hometown of Gath-Hefer in the northern kingdom of Israel, And now with this commission and call, you would think that he’s going to head for the city of Nineveh. And he does a very strange thing. He heads in another direction. I’m reading verse 3 now. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa. He found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now, here is a man who is a prophet of God. And God calls him to go to Nineveh. Nineveh at this time was the great world power. In fact, it was the world power of that day. And this man does a very strange thing. God calls him to go to Nineveh. And Nineveh is in the east. You’d have to go east to go to Nineveh. And instead of going that direction, he goes down to Joppa, buys a ticket on the first boat for Tarshish. Now, Tarshish is way over on the southern coast of Spain. In fact, it was a city founded by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were the great seagoing people of that day, and they had founded certain great cities along the Mediterranean, North Africa, for instance, and along the southern coast of Spain. In fact, they had gone as far as Great Britain. They were the ones gave it its name of England, means the land of tin. And they went there to get tin. So this was a city founded by the Phoenicians. And it was at the jumping off place on the west. Now, we have before us here what I consider a greater problem than Jonah and the fish. In fact, I don’t think we’re going to have any problem with that at all. But we are going to have a problem here with Jonah. The problem in Jonah is not the fish. It’s Jonah. Jonah. And God asks him to go to Nineveh. He goes down and buys a ticket for Tarshish. God told him to go east. He goes west. You see, he liked very much what Horace Greeley of the New York Sun was going to say later on. Go west, young man, go west. And so Jonah decides not to obey God, but he goes west. And the question naturally arises, Why did he do this? There are several explanations for this, and I want to pass them on to you. First of all, let me say that this man Jonah reveals he hated Ninevites. He did not want them saved at all. And they were a brutal people. Now, there’s a basis for his hatred. Assyria was one of the most brutal nations of the ancient world. They were feared and dreaded by all of the peoples of that day. And they used some of the most cruel means of torturing people. And they could extract information from them very easily. One of the things that they did that we have heard of today, I’m sure none of us have witnessed it, they would take a man out in the desert, in the sands of the desert, and they would bury him up to his neck, nothing but his head. stuck out. They would put a thong through his tongue. and leave him there to die as that hot, penetrating sun would beat down on his head. And it said that the man would go mad before he died. That was one of the nice little things that the Assyrians hatched up. They moved in a very unusual method. One of the reasons the Babylonians overcame them was because the slowness of the march of the Assyrians. They took their families with them. They had very little order in the army. It was just a mob moving out across the countryside. And as they would move, why, it was very easy to see that their disorder would militate against them. But when they moved down, just like a plague of locusts upon a city or a village or a people anywhere, they were so feared and dreaded that it is said on some occasions that an entire town or city would commit suicide rather than to fall into the hands of the brutal Assyrians. So you can see that they were not loved by the peoples round about. Now, we also know at this particular time, they were making forays down into the northern kingdom of Israel. You see, for a long time, it was Syria and the northern kingdom that fought against each other. They came finally into an alliance because in the north and to the east of them, there arose Assyria. And Assyria finally took both Syria and Israel into captivity. And they first began to penetrate into the nation they were getting ready to take. They would come in and they would make an attack upon a city by surprise. And they would take captive the women and then brutally slay the men and the children. Now, I don’t know this, but it’s well and reasonable to conceive that in Jonah’s hometown of Gath Hefer, that the Assyrians had come down at one time. They probably came to his home. He may have seen his own father and mother just cruelly and brutally slain before his eyes. Or he might have seen his sisters raped by the Assyrians. At least we know that Jonah hated the Assyrians. He did not want them saved. And therefore, he goes in the opposite direction. He’s not going to carry a message. Now, let’s look at the second reason. Somebody’s going to say to me, well, wait just a minute. His message was not one of salvation. His message was one of judgment. True, that was the message. But you see, this man Jonah knew God. I was very much interested in reading a liberal’s record of this. He didn’t accept the historicity of the book of Jonah. But he thought Jonah wrote the book and that it was just a story that he wrote and that it revealed the fact Jonah did not know God. And that’s the reason he ran away. May I say to you, the very opposite is true. It’s because Jonah knew God that he went in the opposite direction. He knew that if he went there with a message of judgment and the people of Nineveh turned to God in repentance, which they did, He knew that if they turned to God, that God wouldn’t judge the city. He would save the city. And therefore, Jonah didn’t want the city saved. It just wasn’t something that he looked forward to. And here is a man that goes in the opposite direction because he does not want the city saved. We’re going to talk about that a little later on. Now, I want you to notice a third reason here. Why did this man go in the opposite direction? Well, he is definitely a disobedient prophet of God. There’s no question about that. He’s out of the will of God. And in such a state, he is very much like the prodigal son. The prodigal son ran away from home. He didn’t want to live under the will of his father. And so he goes to the far country. And Jonah’s out of the will of God, definitely. Here, a prophet that was certainly not in step with God. And you’re going to find that the last chapter, all of it deals with this problem of Jonah, of how God brings him back into step with him. So that is a reason that I think is a good reason. And it is a legitimate reason that this man, Jonah, goes in the opposite direction. Now, let me mention a final reason. You may not have noted this before, but have you ever noticed that God never used the prophets to carry a message to the nations round about? It is true Jeremiah sent one to Babylon, but God did not send messages to the nations round about. God never sent his messengers as missionaries in the Old Testament. The method that God used in the Old Testament is really the opposite method that’s used today. Understand that Israel was to serve and worship God in a nation that was at the crossroads of the world, where three continents meet. And that, of course, is in this area here that joins Europe, And Asia and Africa and nations in that day, if they didn’t go by water, this is the route they would take through the land of Israel. So God took these people, put them there at the crossroads, had them build a temple to worship him. And they were to witness to God by serving God or, shall I say, by looking in. They had the inward look. The invitation was, come and let us go up to the house of the Lord and worship. And in that day, they witnessed by serving God at the crossroads of the world, and the world came to them. Now, somebody said, I didn’t know that. Oh, yes. The Queen of Sheba came from the ends of the earth. We’re only given one example. And after all, in the New Testament, you have one son of Ham, one son of Japheth, one son of Shem that’s converted. And you have those instances given. Ethiopian eunuch, Saul of Tarsus, and Cornelius, the Roman centurion. And they’re just examples. There were literally thousands and later on millions that were led to Christ. But we’re only given in the book of Acts these three examples. Now, in the Old Testament, we are only given the one example of the Queen of Sheba. And she came from the ends of the earth. Why? She heard something. And she heard how they worshiped. And she got there and found out there was an altar for sinners. And that was the thing that brought her to a saving knowledge of God. Now, if you’ll read the historical record, you will find out not only did she come, but the kings of the earth came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. So during that period, and it’s a brief period to be sure, they did witness. to the world, but they witnessed not by going out as missionaries, but by the world coming into them. Actually, for us today, it’s the opposite. It was rather startling, I think, when the Lord Jesus said to those 12 men, and every one of them was an Israelite brought up on the Old Testament. Our Lord Jesus said to them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. And I imagine one of them looked at the other and said, my, this is something brand new. We never knew that it was to be done this way. And he told them, instead of come up to Jerusalem, he says, beginning at Jerusalem, you’re to go now to the ends of the earth, to Judea, Samaria, and on to the ends of the earth. That’s the method today. And that is the problem. We like to criticize Israel for failure, but we build a church on the corner and expect the world to come to us. We’re to go out to the world. It took me as a pastor years to learn this, but that’s the reason we’re on radio today. We’re trying to go out and get the word out. We believe that’s God’s method today, but that wasn’t the method in Jonah’s day. And Jonah was surprised when God said to him, arise, go to Nineveh. I think if Jonah talked back to the Lord and if he’d been like Simon Peter, I think he did. And he was that kind of a man. This book reveals that. I think he’d say, wait a minute here. You never did send Elijah down to Egypt. And you never did send Isaiah over into India. Why are you asking me to do something you’ve never asked a prophet to do before? I have great sympathy for Jonah, by the way. He’s a little surprised that God would ask him to do it this way. This wasn’t God’s method. But this book reveals, as we’ve said, that he’s the God of the Gentiles. Paul makes that very clear. And I read this last time, Romans 3, 29. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, Paul says. And Jonah would say amen to that statement. Not at this moment, but later on when he found out that God did want to save Gentiles. So now we have here, now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai. I’ve always called it Amittai, and now I’ve discovered that it’s Amittai. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. And now this strange statement, but Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa and he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof, went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And we’ll find out next time that he went to sleep down there. This, I think, ought to be the answer to a great many people who are having a hard time and a difficult time and wondering whether they’re in the will of God. Now, I can’t answer to you whether you are in the will of God or not. But I can say this to you. The fact that you’re having a difficult time is not a proof that you’re out of the will of God. It may be a proof that you’re in the will of God. And if you are having it too easy today and things are just breaking right for you in every direction, I am prepared to say if that’s all you’re using to interpret the will of God for your life, then you’re leaning on a poor broken reed, and it won’t hold you up in time of a crisis. That is for sure. Now, the illustration is Jonah. Now, here’s a man headed in the opposite direction that God has called him to go. He’s definitely out of the will of God, and he goes down to Joppa. And when he goes down there, well, there’s no problem. He buys a ticket. He gets on board the ship. He goes down and he goes to sleep. Everything’s lovely. And I’m of the opinion that Jonah could give a testimony, the kind of which I’ve heard. He said, I went down there to buy a ticket. I’ve wondered whether I was in God’s will or not. He should have known he wasn’t. But a lot of us say that. We wonder whether we’re in God’s will. And he says, I was standing in line to buy a ticket. And the man right ahead of me, the ticket agent said to him, sorry, but all space is sold. And he says, I was about ready to turn away and the phone rang and the agent answered it and said, oh, Brother Smith, maybe I should say Brother Goldberg, you’re not going to be able to make the trip with us. Well, I’m sorry. What happened? Oh, you have taken sick suddenly and you’re calling us from the hospital. Well, thank you for calling. And then Jonah waited and the agent turned around and said to him, brother, are you lucky? My, are you lucky? I’ve just had a cancellation. And Jonah says, well, I sure feel lucky. I feel more than that. Maybe I’m in God’s will. Why, he was able to buy a ticket. No problem. And he went on shipboard. And the weather report was a good report. Said they’re going to have nice, pleasant weather. And this man goes down and he goes to sleep. And he says, well, I must be in the will of God. May I say to you, how many Christians are like that today? They think if they’re having a difficult time, oh, I’m out of the will of God. And if things are going easy and everything works out, oh, we must be in the will of God. We’re learning here at Radio Headquarters a great lesson. We started off out here, it was a breeze, friends. Probably there’s been nothing to equal our growth on radio as far as we know. We went from about a dozen stations inside of three years to 300 stations. That’s an amazing story, by the way. And everything seemed wonderful. And the funds came in. And then all of a sudden… We began to have difficulty. We found out we moved into the red. We had other problems that came up. And I want to tell you, friends, I began to wonder, Lord, are we in your will? The way things are going, we want to be in your will, you know. And all of a sudden, I thought of the book of Jonah. Glad we got to it so we can talk about it. Friends, may I say to you, I’m of the opinion that we were more in the will of God when we began to have our problems. It shows that the devil was getting a little uneasy. He paid no attention to us when we were small potatoes. Now that we are beginning to grow, you begin to cause us trouble. May I say to you, just because you’re having trouble doesn’t mean you’re out of the will of God. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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Knowing how good and faithful God is to his own, I’m certain that Dr. McGee’s final word is meant specifically for someone today listening, someone who needs the reminder that God is with them, even in difficult circumstances. As we go, let me simply close in prayer, remembering those who probably need a fresh reminder of God’s grace. Heavenly Father, thank you for never leaving us, for never forsaking us, even when our hearts are like Jonah’s. Please encourage those listening who are traveling through deep valleys. We ask that you would comfort them with your faithfulness and then help them sense your presence with them. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, there’s more in this great study of Jonah. So until then, you can always call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE or visit ttb.org if we can help you find something. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’ll meet you back here as the Bible Bus continues to roll along.
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Jesus gave it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left the prince of sin, he washed it white as snow.
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Our story on the Bible Bus today is just one step in a five-year journey through the entire Word of God. Come along for the ride, and you’ll study both the Old Testament and New Testament, discovering God’s great redemption story. Is this your story too?
