Tawa Baptist

Power

Scripture: Jonah

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Patient & Omnipotent
  • Wise & Equitable
  • Redemptive
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

You may have heard the saying: ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…’

This phrase was coined by Lord Acton, who was a British historian and politician during the 1800’s. He wrote this in a letter to an Anglican bishop. Whatever Lord Acton’s reason for writing about power in this way, it has stuck. It resonates with people. Generally speaking, we human beings are suspicious of power and reluctant to trust those who hold it.

Certainly we can think of many people throughout history who have abused power but really the problem is not power itself, the problem is with the human heart. Power simply reveals the contents of a person’s character. 

Sadly, a negative attitude to power tends to taint our faith in God. By definition God is the most powerful being there is and if we think that power corrupts then we may struggle to trust God.

We need to understand that God’s heart and character are quite different from that of a human being. This morning we are looking at five aspects of God’s character through the story of Jonah. That is, God’s patience, God’s omnipotence, God’s wisdom, God’s equity (or fairness) and God’s redemption. Firstly, let’s consider God’s patience and omnipotence.

Patient & Omnipotent:

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been fortunate enough to spend some time walking on the beach. The ocean is both powerful and patient. A beach is created over thousands of years as the surf gradually pounds stone and shell into sand. The work of the ocean points to the power and patience of God in transforming the human heart.

Patience is the ability to wait something out or endure something tedious, without losing your temper. Having patience means you can remain calm, even when you have been waiting ages or dealing with something painstakingly slow or trying to teach someone how to do something and they just don’t get it.

In Corinthians 13, when Paul writes about love, patience is the very first descriptor he uses. “Love is patient, love is kind…”

Patience, therefore, is an expression of love. 

Omnipotence simply means ‘all powerful’. Omni means ‘all’ or ‘everything’ and potence refers to ‘power’. Power is the ability to do something. To say that God is omnipotent, therefore, is to say that God can do all things; there is nothing beyond God’s ability or reach.

In the book of Jeremiah 32:27 the Lord says to the prophet, “Is anything too difficult for me?” It is a rhetorical question. The answer is clearly, ‘No, nothing is too difficult for the Lord’. God is omnipotent – all powerful.   

We see God’s patience and power in the story of Jonah…

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Ninevehand preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa,where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

You see, Jonah was an Israelite and Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the headquarters of Israel’s enemies. Most of the time when God told his prophets to preach a message against Israel’s enemies the prophets had the luxury of doing so from the relative comfort and safety of home. But God wanted Jonah to physically go to Nineveh and tell the Assyrians how bad they were.

Talk about a hospital pass. Jonah knew it was a bad assignment and so he got on a ship headed in the opposite direction. It was not that Jonah doubted God’s power. Jonah was quite convinced God could make the mission successful. And that was precisely the problem. Jonah did not want to be involved with saving his enemies. That would feel like a betrayal of his own people.

But God was patient with Jonah. In truth, God’s omnipotence (his power) is tempered or controlled by his patience. God waited for the ship to get out to sea and then he sent a storm. The storm was a frightening display of God’s omnipotence.

The pagan sailors did everything they could to save the ship but the storm just got worse. Meanwhile Jonah was asleep below deck. When the sailors woke him up he explained that he was running away from the Lord of heaven and earth, who made the land and sea. Their best chance of survival was to throw him overboard.

The sailors were honourable men and did not want to do this but eventually Jonah persuaded them and as soon as the prophet hit the water the storm stopped. Once again God’s omnipotence was on display, this time to bring a great calm.     

God’s omnipotence is not limited to the weather though. God has power over all things. God sent a giant fish to swallow Jonah whole. The incredible thing here is not that Jonah was eaten by a fish. The truly incredible thing is that Jonah was able to remain alive inside the fish. 

This may seem impossible to some of us but that is precisely the point: God is omnipotent, nothing is too difficult for the Lord. Not only that but God is in control, not Jonah and not us, which is just as well.

A giant fish that can swallow a man whole, without digesting him, is a symbol of God’s patient omnipotence. The Lord has the power to destroy Jonah but instead God uses the very same power to save his messenger.   

God’s omnipotence and patience go together. God did not get frustrated with Jonah. God did not use his power to kill Jonah. Nor did God use his power to overthrow Jonah’s will. It may have been much easier and quicker for God to find someone else to go. But God’s ways are not our ways.

God waits for Jonah and his patience is rewarded. After Jonah had repented from the belly of the fish, the fish spat him out on dry land and Jonah went to Nineveh in obedience to God. 

God’s patience (his fuse) is very long indeed. When the nation of Israel turned away from him, the Lord patiently waited for them to return for a couple of hundred years.

And he waits patiently for the world to turn to him again. As we read in 2nd Peter 3:9, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.     

God’s omnipotence is tempered by his patience. What’s more, God is wise and equitable in his dealings with creation.

Wise & Equitable:

We live in a democracy but the Kingdom of God is not a democracy. The Kingdom of God is a theocracy, which means it is ruled by God. Heaven is a place where God’s will is done. This is not to imply that God is a dictator. No. Dictators are closed to the voice of the people and tend to eliminate anyone who disagrees with them. By contrast, God is secure enough within himself to be open to what his subjects have to say. God listens to people and takes our thoughts and feelings into account when making his decisions. That is one of the reasons we pray.

When Jonah finally made it to Nineveh his preaching was simple. “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” At first that sounds like a very closed message. There is no hope in it. No call to repentance. No nuance. No clever illustrations. No compassion. No redemption. No PR. No subtle maneuvering of the media. Just doom and destruction.

Nevertheless, Jonah’s message was wise and fair. While God is patient, he is no one’s fool. God’s omnipotence includes the capacity to destroy. God must be worshipped. If we do not put God first (if we worship something else in God’s place) then God is well within his rights to exercise his power either to destroy the things we worship or to destroy us.

God gave Jonah that message for Nineveh because the people’s behavior was very bad. They were incredibly violent and ruthless. God’s sentence on the people may have seemed harsh but it was wise and equitable, it was fair. God could not, in good conscience, allow the Assyrians to run amuck oppressing other people groups. That would not be kind or just. 

Jesus said the measure we use for others is the measure God will use for us. If we are generous with others, God will be generous with us and vice versa. The Assyrians were violent in their treatment of others so God gave them fair warning, he would destroy them.    

We can see God’s wisdom in sending Jonah. While Jonah’s preaching was incredibly blunt, it was also without pretense or guile. He did not disguise his contempt for the Assyrians and this (paradoxically) made his message all the more believable. Had God sent a diplomat to speak smooth words, the people of Nineveh probably would not have believed the message.

In response the people of Nineveh decided that everyone should fast, which means go without food. And everyone from the least to the greatest was to put on sackcloth to show they had repented.

The king of Nineveh issued a decree that all people must pray earnestly to God and must give up their evil ways. Perhaps God will change his mind and we will not die, they thought. 

God saw what they did; he saw that they had given up their wicked behavior. So he changed his mind and did not punish them as he had said he would.      

The people were open to change their ways and so God was open to give them another chance. 

As much as it grated with Jonah to preach to his enemies, actually, it was in Israel’s interests. Having their enemies bow to Yahweh was a victory of sorts. From a political point of view, Nineveh’s repentance meant some respite for Israel.

Not only that but God’s mercy with the Assyrians offered hope to Israel when they strayed from God’s path. If God relented with the Assyrians, then how much more when Israel repented.

God is patient and omnipotent. He is also wise and equitable. Ultimately though, the Lord’s patience & power, wisdom & justice, all serve the purpose of redemption.

Redemption:

As I mentioned earlier, we were fortunate enough to walk the beach during our holiday. The beaches between Pekapeka and Paekakariki collect quite a bit of drift wood. As a consequence, you see these wooden structures at regular intervals along the beach. People have redeemed the drift wood and detritus for a creative and useful purpose. Human beings seem to have this insatiable urge to build shelters with whatever is at hand. 

I wonder if this urge to build and create and redeem reflects something of the residue of God’s image in us. It is interesting that when God became a man (in the person of Jesus) he chose to apprentice himself to a carpenter, a builder.

In any building or renovation project there is usually some demolition involved. But this demolition serves the ultimate purpose of creating and constructing something new and better.      

To redeem something is to reclaim it, to save it or restore it. God’s heart, his preference, is to redeem whatever he can. The story of Jonah is full of God’s redemption. Let me touch briefly on three examples.

First there is the way God redeems Jonah’s running away. God used Jonah’s disobedience to inspire the sailors’ worship.

I said before that the sailors were honourable men. They may have been pagans but they were good pagans. They had a moral compass and wanted to do the right thing. At the height of the storm, just before they reluctantly threw Jonah overboard, the sailors cried out to the Lord saying…   

14 “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man,for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly fearedthe Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vowsto him.

If Jonah had not done a runner, the sailors would not have encountered the Lord in the way they did. The sailors’ prayer shows us they believed the God of Israel to be powerful, just and wise. Jonah’s attempt to get away from the Lord actually resulted in the sailors getting closer to the Lord. That is the power of God’s redemption.

The second main act of redemption is seen when God changes his mind and decides not to destroy Nineveh. The people of Nineveh are similar to the pagan sailors in that they recognize the power and justice of God and submit themselves to the Lord in fear and hope.

The Assyrians’ redemption is not unconditional or automatic. Their redemption hinges on their response to Jonah, their enemy. Paradoxically they are saved by trusting the word of their enemy. Sort of like in the second Terminator movie when Sarah Connor is confronted by a Terminator who she thinks is out to kill her. But the Terminator (played by Arnie) says, ‘Come with me if you want to live’. The people of Nineveh were helped by their enemy. This shows God’s wise redemption.

But the one who is offered more redemption than anyone else is Jonah himself. At the beginning of the story Jonah is like the younger prodigal son who has run away from home. But God redeems Jonah and puts him on the right path again using a storm and a sea monster. 

By the end of the story though, after God relented and saved Nineveh, Jonah is more like the older son in Jesus’ parable (in Luke 15). Just as the older son stood outside the party refusing to celebrate the return of his younger prodigal brother, so too Jonah sat outside the city of Nineveh refusing to celebrate the Assyrians’ repentance and salvation. In chapter 4 of the book of Jonah we read,

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is why I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knewthat you are a graciousand compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life,for it is better for me to diethan to live.”

Jonah acknowledges that it is God’s heart and character to redeem but strangely this makes Jonah depressed. He’s had enough and wants it to be over.

There are any number of reasons why someone might become depressed, human beings are complex. But the cause of Jonah’s depression is related to his anger. If you hold onto your anger and resentment, if you bury it deep inside, the in-rage you feel will eventually result in depression.

This is not to suggest that all depression is caused by repressed anger. But we know it was the case for Jonah because God says to the prophet, “Is it right for you to be angry?”   

This is another rhetorical question. We all know it was not right for Jonah to be angry but Jonah has to arrive at that conclusion himself. Even though God is omnipotent he does not click his fingers and resolve the issue for Jonah. He makes Jonah do some inner (soul) work.

Jonah was angry and depressed but God did not give Jonah a pill or counselling or a support group or cognitive behavioural therapy, as helpful as some of those things may be. God patiently sought to redeem Jonah by giving him a parable. 

5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. [I imagine this shelter was similar to what one might see on the beach along the Kapiti Coast.] The Lord God provideda leafy plantand made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die,and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concernfor the great city of Nineveh,in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

And that is how the story of Jonah ends. God has the last word.

The Lord’s message to Jonah seems to be that Jonah is the one who is not being fair and equitable.

If it was up to Jonah the city of Nineveh would be destroyed but God’s power (his omnipotence) is different from the way human beings exercise power. God’s power is tempered with patience, guided by wisdom and equity and used to serve his redemptive purpose.  

Conclusion:

God is free to use his power as he wishes. Sometimes that will disappoint us and make us angry, as it did with Jonah. We do not control God and we cannot leverage his power for our own ends. We have to make peace with the fact that we are not in the place of God. We are not omnipotent. We have to embrace our powerlessness and let God be God. Or, as Jesus put it, we must pick up our cross and follow him.

Like Jesus’ parable of the two sons in, Luke 15, we don’t know how the story of Jonah ends. We don’t know whether the older son let go of his anger and joined the party. Nor do we know how Jonah responded. Did he sit with his resentment or did he find redemption?

This is not a rhetorical question. It is not an abstract theoretical debate about a man who lived thousands of years ago. It is a very real existential question that we must all face. If it hasn’t happened already it is just a matter of time before you will feel disappointed by God. When that day comes (and I expect for many of us here it has already arrived) I pray that we will be able to forgive.

Forgiveness is the greatest power available to us. It is the pathway to redemption.  

Questions for discussion or reflection:

  • What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
  • How does God’s power make you feel? In what ways is God’s power different from the way human beings exercise power?
  • In what ways do we see God’s patience and power at work in the story of Jonah? In what ways are you aware of God’s patience and power at work in your own life?  
  • In what ways do we see God’s wisdom and equity (fairness) in the story of Jonah?
  • Discuss / reflect on the various aspects of God’s redemption in Jonah. For example, how does God redeem Jonah’s running away? How has God redeemed your mistakes?      
  • The people of Nineveh were saved by believing the word of Jonah, their enemy. Can you think of a time in your own life when God has used an enemy to help or save you?
  • Why does Jonah want his life to end? How does God help Jonah? What does Jonah need to do to find redemption? Have you ever felt disappointed by God, like Jonah? If so, how did you find redemption from resentment?