Why? Because the Cycle begins when God gives a command:
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (1:2, ESV).
Today, God has given me a command to go and stand with friends who will face an angry mob, not to fight, not to hate, but to stand for truth.
But immediately temptation sets in:
“But Jonah rose to flee…from the presence of the Lord…” (1:3a).
I have never faced a mob; the media will be there; something bad could happen; I am too old for this…temptation…let someone else go and defend these members of my church family.
No! Temptation happens to everyone. If Adam had said “No!” to Eve’s offer of the apple in the Garden of Eden, we can only wonder how different the world would have been in perfect unity with God at the beginning of time.
It is when we say yes to temptation and disobey a direct command from God that the Cycle plays out tragically:
“He found a ship going to Tarshish…away from the presence of the Lord” (1:3b).
Today I say “No!” to disobedience.
The result of disobedience is disunity from God:
“But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up” (1:4).
When we give in to temptation and disobedience, we put at risk the very ones we are trying to help and who are trying to help us.
But God knows us and gives us warnings:
“Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ for the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord” (1:10).
God’s warning to me today is: If you cannot stand and defend the helpless, I will forgive you, but you will not be able to forgive yourself.
When we are in a state of disunity, we cannot control whether turning toward God at his warning will suffice or whether the judgment of God is at hand:
“So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging…And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (1:15, 17).
Yet as bad as it can be, judgment does not have to be the end, but rather the beginning, of something beautiful. Why? Because God our Father suffers with us, maybe even hurting more than we do, while hoping for one thing – repentance:
“Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (2:1).
Today I repent of all the times I have had a chance to make a difference and have failed to stand up. O Lord, throw me into the sea of this mob demonstration today and immediately calm the seas of protest and attacks against innocent believers, in your mighty name!
And what comes of sincere repentance? The Father waits, patiently and longingly, with a broken heart, but when he hears sincere repentance, there is a rush, stronger than the greatest hurricane, of his never-ending love:
“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love” (2:8).
In other words, those who sincerely repent reconnect with God’s never-ending love.
And this leads directly to restoration. In Jonah’s case, it is his second chance:
“And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land” (2:10).
Jonah then goes forth in unity with God to Nineveh and converts the entire city and its rulers to believe in the God of Israel, even though he continues to snipe because God is letting them off too easy (see 4:1).
As I write this, I do not know what will happen today. But I feel the presence of God very strongly.
Postscript: The mob never showed up; there were only a few individual protesters with signs, who engaged in peaceful conversation. But God showed up at a humble cake shop in the form of about 500 joyful believers, representing many different denominations of Christ. It was the most beautiful emergence of unity with God I have ever seen.