Studies in Jonah

Jonah 04

GOD USES FAIILURES

Jonah Chap 3 v1-10

Jonah 04

INTRODUCTIONMany who have trudged the sore path of repentance will know that it can leave us emotionally and psychologically drained. We can sink in a swamp of self-recrimination thinking, ‘God will never trust or allow me to serve him after this last failure. I will be dumped on a Christian scrapheap for the rest of my life.’ When this is true of our experience we need Jonah ch.3 v1. "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time". What an encouragement for those who have failed God.

THE GOD WHO RECOMMSSIONSHow would you have treated Jonah who had thought, "I would rather die than do what God wants”? Would you be influenced by his past record of faithful service and decide to pension him off? Or, give him a desk job, perhaps filing other prophets’ sermons? But what did God do? He said ‘Jonah, You can have your old job back. You failed me the first time I sent you to Nineveh but here is another chance.’ Does God really behave like that?

Yes!

People who have become overwhelmed by God’s forgiveness find it hard to believe that God's grace goes beyond forgiveness to restoration. God is a God of recommissioning grace. Peter is a helpful example. He boasted that he was Jesus’ most loyal disciple. Yet, he cracked under pressure and denied him three times. Peter the failure then returned to his former trade as a fishermen. Jesus met up with him on the shores of Galilee and recommissioned him -‘feed my lambs, feed my sheep’.Jn 21.15ff A second chance!

THE GOD WHO RECOMMSSIONS

God gave Jonah the opportunity to demonstrate his repentance and to learn from past failure. God's grief over our failure is exceeded by his grace after it. God always outstrips the expectations of the penitent. What was the expectation of the prodigal son as he returned home? - a kitchen job! But the Father insisted on complete restoration: "bring the robe, the ring the sandals and prepare the welcome banquet.” This is how God meets genuine repentance. He says, ‘I want you to become all you shouldhave been in the first place’.

THE GOD WHO RECOMMSSIONS

Previously, Jonah was ill-equipped to be an evangelist to the Ninevites. He may have taken the right message but the messenger was all wrong. And, when the messenger is wrong, little of God is communicated. Previously Jonah had no compassion for these sinful foreigners. Preparing the messenger is as important as preparing the message and God used Jonah's experience of failure to do just that.

GOD USES OUR FAILURE

Fresh in Jonah's mind were the awful consequences of his disobedience. The discipline of God's judgement formed part of the Jonah's experience. In 2 Cor. 5, Paul wrote "knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men..." General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, he wished his officers could spend 24 hours in hell to inject some urgency into their preaching. Jonah’s preaching was marked by great urgency.

GOD USES OUR FAILURE

Jonah also had a fresh experience of God's grace. If God dealt with Jonah according to the strict demands of justice he would have been a skeleton rattling about in a mobile grave in the Mediterranean. But God graciously forgave and restored him. The new Jonah knows he is a debtor to God’s mercy and is now in possession of a broken and contrite heart. He can speak with tender compassion to those, who stand where he once stood, under God's judgement. When we speak to others with grace in our hearts we are saying, "I am no better than you, if I am different that is God's doing and not mine. The God who has changed me is able to change you.".

GOD USES OUR FAILURE

Jonah's mission was a great success. The most powerful city of the ancient world, turned to God thanks to the Jonah principle of evangelism. What is that? Jesus was once asked to provide a sign to authenticate his claims. His reply is found in Matt.12.39ff... The reference to Jonah has a deeper significance. Jonah was entombed for 3 days and significantly, something inside him had been slain. He died to his disobedient self-will and experienced a sort of resurrection. He died to self and as a result new life was born in Nineveh. .

A PRINCIPLE OF EVANGELISM

Jonah’s experience foreshadowed a far more significant death. To Jesus’ followers his death seemed the end. He could no longer fruitfully serve humanity. But his death paved the way not only for his resurrection but for his ongoing mission of grace to bring ‘many sons to glory’. Jesus made this point shortly before his death ‘I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds’. Jn. 12.24…Do you see the pattern? Death, resurrection and then fruit..

A PRINCIPLE OF EVANGELISM

Jesus’ atoning death was unique, nevertheless the pattern of death, resurrection and fruit should mark the lives of all God’s people. Paul saw this principle operating in his own ministry. In 2 Cor 4.10-12 we read, ‘We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body... So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you’.

These deaths to self are found not only in Jonah and Paul but in every Christian whose life bears fruit. .

A PRINCIPLE OF EVANGELISM

In the 19th century three men made an impact for God in the U.K. in their care of orphans. Barnardo, Quarrier and George Muller of Bristol. Muller is the lesser known but he was the pioneer of the work and influenced the others. Once asked the secret of his remarkably fruitful ministry, he replied, "There was a day when George Muller died." There also was a day when Jonah died, when he dethroned self and enthroned God submitting to his will. That explains Jonah’s fruitful ministry!.

A PRINCIPLE OF EVANGELISM

Are we prepared to die to self-will for the sake of seeing spiritual life in others? The alternative is to continually send Jesus back to the end of the queue with the promise that one day, having satisfied our own selfish appetites, we will put him first.Are we conscious of failure? God can bring success out of that failure if you are prepared to die to self. There is no need to consign yourself to the junkyard of spiritual has-beens. God’s Word, and commission to you, to serve the King of Kings, comes ‘a second time’. .

CONCLUSION