Prophet Jonah: The Missionary Prophet

Jonah is one of those Books of Scripture that are a delight to read for their brevity yet demand a lot for study. The Book can easily be read in one sitting of ten minutes. We are not told much about the life of Jonah but we are clearly told that he was given a message by God for the people of Nineveh—an unbelieving people, a Gentile people, a lost people. In this, you and I share something in common with Jonah—we have a mission to the unsaved; we like Jonah are a missionary prophet.

Jonah is one of those few Prophets whose prophetic prediction actually failed. He prophesied of the overthrow of Nineveh in 40 days—Jonah 3: 4. That didn’t happen in 40 days. No doubt we consider Jonah to have not been very successful in his mission despite the fact that the Ninevites repented and experienced a revival. Isn’t it ironic how human failure can be turned into spiritual success by the sovereign God? But lest we become hard on Jonah, you and I can, like him, easily make three mistakes in our Prophetic mission and I present them as positive cautions rather than negative rebuke.

Mistake #1: Passion for your Ministry

That Jonah knew he was called of God cannot be disputed. Whether you are called of God to some mission or not, I cannot determine. That is between you and God. But I do know that one thing that is essential for a successful mission is to be passionate about the ministry to which you are called. I don’t say these next words with any sense of flattery. But I do know one such man personally. Roger Charley leads the campus fellowship I am a part of and sometimes I wonder why the ministry fairs quite well in building an intimate group of College students and I have come to the conclusion that his passion flows into the lives of us college students and spills further into others. Despite ministry for more than 20 years Roger is present at the majority of activities, meets individually with members and has a honest heart. Roger is not perfect; no one is. But I am confident that his passion is one that challenges me and makes his ministry successful.

Jonah was called to an “unclean” people and he desperately and intently ran from the call. To be honest to Jonah, religio-historical considerations help one to sympathize with his seeming insecurity towards his mission. The Jews were a holy and consecrated people. The Ninevites were not. One can see how Jonah can despise the ministry to a Gentile people and lest we think there are no “Gentiles” for us today, I have to remind myself that we, as Christians, think that the sexually and morally impure, the “unclean” don’t deserve the Gospel and we intently run away from them. Yet, what God tells Jonah is what God tells you and me i.e. to drop our prejudices and develop a passion for the ministry of our call. You can have the truth of the Gospel in your heart and I can have the Gospel in my life but it becomes entirely unprofitable to the mission if the ministry is not a passion both within and without. The first mistake Jonah made was that he was not passionate about the ministry he was called to because of a religious prejudice. The mission became a drudgery—a checking off of the list of things-to-do.

Mistake #2: Passion for your Message

But there was a second mistake in Jonah’s mission which centered on his message. Jonah knew the message of God’s grace. It seemed he was disgusted about that message for he seemed to not want God’s grace but rather God’s wrath to prevail over a repentant Nineveh. Jonah 3 ends by telling us God relented from overthrowing Nineveh and Jonah 4: 1 tells us this “greatly displeased” Jonah such that he prays to God saying “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity”—Jonah 4: 2. What audacity!!! Jonah knew of God’s grace and lovingkindness and tried to hide that from the Ninevites. So willing was he to do this that he preferred death to God’s grace upon an “unclean” people—v. 3. It required a hat-trick of days in the fish’s belly to be reminded of God’s grace to even him for Jonah to change his heart and spread the message. It was in the belly of the fish that Jonah praised God’s lovingkindness—Jonah 2. You see, you and I can make the mistake of Jonah when we claim to know the message of grace but fail to internalize it in our mission. And when Jonah failed to internalize it, he despised the message when it was extended to the Ninevites. Why?

I believe this came as a consequence of the first mistake. When the passion for the ministry is lost, a corresponding loss of passion for the message is inevitable and the message you and I have for the world (Christian and not) is that the God of grace has given the world grace in the face of Jesus not to live their own way but to live God’s way. Jonah wanted the Ninevites to earn their salvation maybe by proselyting to Judaism or circumcision. We want the Hindu to stop being Indian; the Muslim to stop being Arabic; the homosexual to abandon homosexual tendencies despite the fact that we can’t even abandon our own illicit heterosexual tendencies; the gangster to abandon his vulgarity when majority of us speak only one language anyway. In all this, we forget that the call of Jesus was a call to repentance and repenting and not a call merely to conversion but one to discipleship—a constantly growing process. Jonah misplaced his message and my hope is that you and I won’t misplace our message either.

Mistake #3: Passion for your Audience

Thirdly and finally, Jonah not only lost passion for his ministry and passion for his message but he also lost passion for his audience. When the ministry becomes a drudgery and the message is misplaced, the audience of the message is bound to be reduced to a lesser value. Jonah came to be more concerned about his own comfort in the shade and vine provided by the grace of God than about the salvation of the lost Ninevites. As you and I prepare for or serve in ministry, let us not be carried away by the financial constraints or the constraints upon our time and other resources that are a cancer to the soul. Rather, let us be burdened by the persons in our audience who are, like us, created in the very image of God and reflectors of that image. People really do matter to God and Jonah forgot that. Let us not do the same.

As I conclude, I summarize that the life of Jonah as a missionary Prophet entailed the need for a passion for the ministry, the message and the audience. May the grace of Christ implement this in your life and mine as we become missionary prophets.