"FISHY" PROPHETS

Jonah 1:1-4:1; Revelation 5:1-14; Psalm 133:1-3; Proverbs 29:26-27

“Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said, ‘I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!’ .…Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did.”

“And they sang in a mighty chorus: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered—to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.’”

““How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!”

“Many seek the ruler’s favor, but justice comes from the Lord.”

What a living contradiction Jonah was! Commissioned by God Himself as a prophet, Jonah ran from the responsibility. Then, recognizing the trouble his disloyalty caused innocent others, in an overwhelming fit of guilt, he convinced those sailing with him to pitch him overboard. The storm immediately calmed, and Jonah was allowed to stew in his own juices (somewhat literally) to think about what he’d done and how he would subsequently respond. Finally, after three long days of indigestion, the fish spit him out on land, whereupon he went to Ninevah as God originally directed to preach repentance, and it worked! I’m not sure any other prophet was ever as successful in turning the hearts and minds of errant people back to the Lord. But was Jonah happy? Not on your life! He pouted because the people of Ninevah had repented, and his gloom and doom prophecies therefore did not come to pass. Instead of celebrating the saving of a city in the power of God, Jonah remained more worried about his own appearance. He felt he looked the fool to those whose destruction he’d predicted. At least, that is what he said. The reality could be he felt ignored, having not apparently been lifted up by the people as a great prophet in the aftermath of their conversion. As far as Scripture takes us, he never changes his mind or feels any joy over the work his prophecy accomplished. How sad. Apparently, “He must increase, and I must decrease” was not a philosophy Jonah shared with John the Baptist.

Oh, Jonah! Talk about a guy who did not deserve the results he got! Why on earth did the Lord choose such a reluctant ingrate to carry His Word to the sinful people of Ninevah? Pardon the pun, but there is something very fishy about this story. There almost has to be more to it than meets the eye. Looks to me like Jonah was pretty much a waste of space as a person, and that does not seem to have changed even after his “religious experience.” He was still the same old moody, “me first” person he’d apparently always been. (It could be argued that, even in the boat, he was too quick to take full credit for the calamity the crew faced, once he finally roused from his depressed slumber. Perhaps, all he really needed to do was pray. It worked in and on the fish, after all….) What is the point of this story, really?

I’m beginning to think the point of this story is… us. We, too, tend to head the other way when God calls. We also duck spiritual responsibility. Then, when things start to go south, we overreact and overcompensate in abject guilt. Until we’re in the true belly of the beast, we tend not to resort to such an “intangible” hope as prayer, either. Even then, when the work is finally done and others benefit without giving us due recognition, we pout. Maybe the point of Jonah’s story is much more contemporary than we suspect. Maybe the question it actually asks is why would God use “fishy prophets” like us to carry His Word and His hope to others.

There are a lot of pat answers to this question, and all of them deflect the fundamental point. “Why” is not the point. The Lord’s ways have never been ours, and that is not likely to change anytime this side of heaven. The point is that. That God does expect us, his “fishy prophets,” to carry His Word to others is a just one more non-negotiable, spiritual truth which will not be denied. That is what Jonah learned, and his attitude about it really turned out to be pretty much irrelevant. That is what we need to accept in our own lives as well.

Christ does not expect perfection in His prophets. He commands obedience. It is what we were designed for, and the longer we deny it, the closer to the fish’s belly we get. It’s a simple message. It raises one final point, though. How much misery could we avoid in our lives if we simply reconciled ourselves to carrying out the Will of our Father?