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Listen to the Bible come alive through handcrafted teachings from Scripture! Join Pastor Cliff Johnson as he takes you deeper into the Bible in a way that will encourage, inspire, challenge, and sharpen your faith. Will you join Cliff as he walks with you on The Ancient Path into deeper discipleship and thriving faith?
Yeah. We all have those people in our minds that we think would automatically just shut us down and have nothing to do with this. But what if what we don't know is what we don't know? What if God's working on them? What if God has a plan for them?
Cliff Johnson:He just wants you to deliver that word. Last week in the story of Jonah, we've gotten to the point now where he rebelled against God, tried to run-in the opposite direction, chartering a boat heading to the other side of the world, only to have God send a storm that was so severe that it scared, and it really caused the sailors who were gritty, lifelong mariners who knew what they were doing to panic and finally to acquiesce and throw him overboard since Jonah knew that he was the cause of the storm. And now we don't know exactly if this was Jonah's way of sort of like a assisted suicide just to get out of his life because later he has more thoughts about wanting to die, and we know he was running for his life and he was conflicted with the calling of God in his life. And he said later he would be better off to be dead than to do this thing God's asked him to do. No matter what his motivation was, when Jonah was thrown overboard into the fiery, stormy, crazy, unbelievable seas that caused the storm to calm.
Cliff Johnson:And as he's dropping down through the waters and drowning, a great fish comes up and swallows him whole and dives back onto the water. And now Jonah, while he's in the belly of this great fish, whether it's a huge whale shark or a sperm whale or whatever type of large fish that it was, get out of our minds that scene in Pinocchio or Nemo or even recently in Super Mario Brothers where this big fish has a massive internal stomach where you can kind of build a fire and set up shop and, you know, do some exercising. Picture more like a a small claustrophobic flesh tunnel that you're stuck in at 105 to 110 degrees, smelling the gastric juices and the digestion, the digestive system of a whale, and you're in there for three days. You have no idea where you're going. You have no idea if you're gonna survive.
Cliff Johnson:Part of you probably even wonders in the madness of the heat and the stress and anxiety that you're undergoing. Maybe you've already died and this is some horrific dream. Maybe even for Jonah since he died rebelling against God, maybe he's thinking this is his ride to the underworld because he deserves separation from God. Who knows? But no matter what, this is a nightmarish moment.
Cliff Johnson:I feel like every time I heard the story preached, it was like Jonah was thrown overboard, but then a friendly whale came up and swallowed him. I was like, hey, Jonah. Let's take you to Nineveh. Not remotely what happened. This is a story full of fear, full of death, full of anxiety and pain and smell and drowning and seawater and just the worst imaginable three days.
Cliff Johnson:While Jonah's in the belly of this fish, he repents. But it's interesting because even in his repentance, he's not saying, I'm sorry, God, take me to Nineveh. I'll do what you asked. In fact, he does sort of the opposite by saying, Hey, I want to get back to the temple. Take me back to the Southern Kingdom.
Cliff Johnson:Take me back to Jerusalem, God. Give me a chance to worship you and make things right. He never offers once to actually obey God. In fact, he even calls it by saying, The rebellious, the pagans shall never come before you, shall never be forgiven, shall never be be given grace. And he almost is saying, like, I still don't wanna go to Nineveh.
Cliff Johnson:They don't deserve it. But what happens after three days, after being thrown off a ship into the sea and nearly drowning, all of a sudden, Jonah finally says, but with the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And in that moment, the fish's journey had concluded to the shores of, guess where, Nineveh.
Cliff Johnson:The place God had called him is where he was. So now we don't know how far away from Joppa Jonah was when the storm came in. We don't know how many miles, but if he had gone straight from Joppa to Nineveh, that's a 600 mile trip. So picture now, he got a little bit on his way before God sent the storm, so 600 plus miles. He's traveled in the belly of a great fish.
Cliff Johnson:He would have no idea where he is. It's not like he can somehow hear his phone in his pocket telling him, Turn right, turn right, turn right. When he's like, try or make a u-turn, make a u-turn back to Tarshish. Go back, make a u-turn. If you've ever done that, you know what I'm talking about.
Cliff Johnson:It's like your Siri is like, where are you going? What are you doing? You have to go the other way. He didn't have that. There's no way he knew where he was until he says those words and says at the end of chapter two, the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Cliff Johnson:It doesn't say it opened its mouth and Jonah just walked out slowly and kinda went, oh, man. Whew. That was hot. It says it vomited him. Projectile launched him.
Cliff Johnson:Now we find out at the beginning of chapter three that he is in Nineveh when he gets spit out. So he's onto the shore of Nineveh. Now let's go back and remember how did the people view the ancient view in The Middle East, the ancient view of the open water, of the ocean, of large bodies of water was what? It wasn't like it is now where it's like paradise. We all want lake houses.
Cliff Johnson:We all want a vacation on the water. We all want waterfront. We all wanna be as close to the water as we can. Not so here. They viewed the water as the gateway to the underworld.
Cliff Johnson:And so as Jonah, so I just, if this was directed by Steven Spielberg, if you remember Jaws, you know, the kids sitting on the beach playing with the sand or floating around, the big fish comes out and everyone's screaming and running, but some kids not paying attention. That's what I see here. I see a kid sitting on the beach playing with his stuff and all of a sudden, out of the water is a breach of a huge fish and out of his mouth rockets. This man, a fully grown man, and he lands into the sand, slides across. Now, what would have happened inside the belly of a great fish?
Cliff Johnson:What does acid do? Acids, stomach acids, bleach. They break things down. That's what happens. So it's believed by many historians and scholars that Jonah's clothing would have most likely been bleached bright, bright white.
Cliff Johnson:Even his skin would have had a bizarre glow. And how do you think Jonah might have smelled? It doesn't say Jonah was vomited out onto the shore, walked into the Hilton, took a shower, cleaned up, did his hair, trimmed his beard, brushed his teeth, and headed out to go do what God told him. No. It says it vomited him out with all the other stuff that was in the stomach.
Cliff Johnson:So nasty. He hits the ground and God tells him, Jonah, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah, verse three, so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. In Hebrew, that's an an exceedingly great city to God is the original Hebrew.
Cliff Johnson:In other words, Nineveh mattered to God. Nineveh did not matter to Jonah. Nineveh did not matter to others that hated this city and hated this oppressive barbaric empire. Remember when I said originally when we started this that only two times in scripture is the phrase, its evil has come up before me where God has said that about a city. It happens here with Nineveh, and it happened earlier in the book of Genesis with Sodom and Gomorrah.
Cliff Johnson:So this was the Assyrian Empire barbaric, evil, cruel, nasty out. One scholar said it would be the equivalent if if the barbaric ways of ISIS had actually taken control of a lot... Of the whole Middle East and built it into an empire, and the way they tortured and the way they burned things down, the way they treated their enemies. If a large terrorist state had actually taken over and become powerful enough to become an empire, that would be a great equivalency to what the Assyrians were actually like. So they were hated, and they were evil.
Cliff Johnson:And what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? Abraham's pleading for it, pleading for it. If we could just find 45 people, 40, 35... You know, he gets all the way down to this low number. God's like, there's no one there.
Cliff Johnson:There's no righteous people in this city. I'm not going to spare it. They get Lot out, and they get his family out. His wife looks back, and disaster befalls. Sodom And Gomorrah was destroyed, and this is meant to evoke that.
Cliff Johnson:This is meant to remind us of the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah. So there's a tension as you read this, like, Well, we know what happened to Sodom And Gomorrah. Was destroyed by God. What's going happen to Nineveh? And so as Jonah starts to walk and says it's a great city, three days journey in breath, meaning to get from where Jonah was on the edge of town to all the way into the king's palace where he needed to deliver this message.
Cliff Johnson:It was gonna take him three full days to get there. That's a long journey. That's a big city. That's big. Jonah, verse four, began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out.
Cliff Johnson:So Jonah does not go all the way where he was supposed to go. Jonah stops a third of the way in. It's almost like Jonah is exhausted. Jonah's, like, had the worst weekend you could possibly imagine. He's like, I cannot keep walking.
Cliff Johnson:I can't stay anywhere. I've gotta get a shower. I... I'm done. And he stops after one day.
Cliff Johnson:So a third of the way there, he stops, and he opens his mouth, and he says this, that God gave him the sakes. Remember God said, tell them what I want you to tell them. And he called out, in forty days, Nineveh shall be overthrown or overturned. So that's what he said. It's interesting.
Cliff Johnson:That's five words in Hebrew. That's all he said. He travels all that distance, goes a third of the way, stops in the middle of the street, and just makes a proclamation to whoever may be around. In forty days, Nineveh shall be overturned or overthrown. And he says it.
Cliff Johnson:It's almost like for Jonah, he's doing the bare minimum. He's doing the absolute least he can do to be obedient to what God's asked him to do, to actually do what God wants him to do. He's not going above and beyond. He's not going to the next level. He's not writing out a message.
Cliff Johnson:He's not doing a proclamation. He's not telling a story. There's no parable. But here's what's interesting too. Notice what he doesn't say to the Ninevites.
Cliff Johnson:He doesn't say, Yet in forty days, Nineveh shall be overturned. He doesn't say, Unless. He doesn't say if only. He doesn't say however. He doesn't say maybe.
Cliff Johnson:He says, this is what's happening with no pathway for repentance, no pathway for forgiveness. No pathway for confession. There's no other option. He's just saying to them, in forty days, this city is going to be burned to the ground. He delivers this message.
Cliff Johnson:Now, again, in week one, we talked about the risk of this journey, the risk of this statement for Jonah. This would be the equivalent of a Jewish rabbi walking or walking into Berlin in 1940 or 1939 or 1941, whatever, and standing in the middle of the square and pronouncing God's judgment against the third Reich. I don't think any of us have to imagine too much what's gonna happen to that rabbi after he does that. In his mind, he knows he's there to deliver a message and then probably die. In some ways, it's a suicide mission to deliver God's word to an evil people.
Cliff Johnson:And so we don't know with Jonah here. Once he delivers this message, he's like, okay. I've delivered the message. I've launched the... I've dropped the bomb.
Cliff Johnson:Let's see what God does now. Because in Jonah's mind, these people are barbaric. They're evil. They're wrong. There's all this horrible stuff against them.
Cliff Johnson:He's probably thinking, as soon as I say this, they're gonna grab me. They're gonna arrest me. They're gonna drag me into the prison. They're gonna take me in front of the king, and they're gonna beat me, and they're gonna execute me, and they're gonna do all the things to me that they do to their enemies, which are unspeakable and horrific. So maybe he got a third of the way in because he's thinking, if I deliver this here, I have a...
Cliff Johnson:I have an outside chance of getting back out of the city. If I drop this bomb, I can head out this way and head up on a hillside and have a good seat and camp out and watch Nineveh burn.
Angela Johnson:Hey, friend. We'll return to the teaching in just a moment. But first, I have a gift for you. Maybe prayer has started to feel like a duty instead of a refuge. You talk at God, you run out of words, and you walk away wondering if anything really happened.
Angela Johnson:If that's you, please hear this. You are not alone. So many of us have been there, and God doesn't want to leave you there. For three thousand years, his people have found their way back to him through the Psalms, the joyful and the grieving alike. So we made something just for you.
Angela Johnson:It's called Still Waters, a free ten day devotional through the Psalms. Go to ancient path bible and we'll send it right to your inbox along with our Monday morning devotional each week to keep walking with you. Ten quiet minutes a day, that's all. And ten days from now, prayer might feel a little less like a chore and more like coming home.
Cliff Johnson:Have you ever been challenged by someone to talk to someone in your life about God? Or maybe your wife or husband's like, Hey, why don't you talk to our neighbor? Why don't you invite them to church? Or, Why don't we reach out to this person? And you're like, Are you kidding me?
Cliff Johnson:Anytime Christianity comes up, they make fun of me. They mock anyone. They're so anti God, they curse us out. If we invite them to this, if I share my faith, if I reach out to them, if I offer to pray for them, they're just gonna laugh at me. They're just gonna mock me.
Cliff Johnson:They're just gonna throw it back in my face or worse. And you're thinking, you know exactly how this person who's hostile or antagonistic towards you, or especially towards your faith, how they're going to respond to something. Maybe you've experienced this before. I know I have. Where sometimes we think we know how someone's going to respond to something, but there are things that have happened to them even that day or that week.
Cliff Johnson:There's things that have happened that we don't know about. In fact, sometimes what we don't know is what we don't know. Sometimes we have no idea how ready that person is to hear a word from God, to be invited to church, to be prayed for. We don't know what's going on in their life, but guess who does? God.
Cliff Johnson:And guess whose timing is always perfect? God. And guess who can be trusted? God. And guess who has a plan for all people?
Cliff Johnson:God. And guess who loves people even like the Ninevites? God does. And so when he asks us to do something and to be obedient, maybe he's been up to something. Maybe he has an idea.
Cliff Johnson:Maybe he's prepared people for something. Because what Jonah didn't know is that the Ninevites were ready to hear from God. Now here's something you've probably never heard before about this story in the book of Jonah. And I think it's relevant. I think it's powerful.
Cliff Johnson:And I think it helps explain what happens next. So here's the next verse. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They believed in forty days they're gonna be wiped out. They called for a fast.
Cliff Johnson:They put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to this god, to god. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that's in his hands.
Cliff Johnson:Who knows? Who knows? God may turn and relent from his anger so that we may not perish. Isn't that amazing? Who knows?
Cliff Johnson:Maybe if we repent and we fast and we stop doing what we're doing, we turn back to God. Maybe God will relent and show mercy and show grace, and we may not die. How in the world did this happen? How in the world did the most violent, vicious, barbaric, historically accurate, evil people... You look at the Assyrian Empire.
Cliff Johnson:They have got a horrifying reputation. How could they possibly have had this response to Jonah saying five words not even to the middle of town? Well, what if God was preparing them for this? I love how the king says, who knows? Because that's a good thing to remember.
Cliff Johnson:Who knows? Maybe your neighbor's ready to hear from God. Who knows? Maybe your coworker that's been antagonistic about your faith is ready to hear from God. Who knows?
Cliff Johnson:Maybe that friend of your son is ready to to hear from God. Who knows? If God has prepared their hearts for such a time as this? Because here's what we didn't know. Before Jonah showed up in seven fifty nine BC, before he showed up in 765, there was a severe famine that struck Nineveh and wiped out a lot of their people.
Cliff Johnson:A deep, disturbing, distressing famine. Now at that time, they believed that famines, natural disasters, signs and wonders, things that happened in the cosmos, earthquakes, they believed all of that was sent from gods, that it was supernatural. There were six years before that there was a famine. Four years before Jonah arrived, in seven sixty three BC, there was a total solar eclipse. So in the middle of the day, if you know how these work, everything lines up where the sun is completely blocked.
Cliff Johnson:And you cannot see, it goes completely pitch black. Completely pitch black. Just like what happened on the cross. When it says that when Jesus died, that the the sky went dark and everything went black at 3PM. That was a total solar eclipse.
Cliff Johnson:This is a total solar eclipse. They ascribe this to a god trying to get their attention, a God who is angry at them. And so they are asking, they're reaching out, what is going on? What have we done? We need to be ready for whatever deity is sending these calamities, we need to be ready to respond when they offer us what they want.
Cliff Johnson:And then in seven fifty nine BC, exactly when Jonah arrived, the people of Nineveh had found themselves in another extreme famine. Another famine. So two famines, a total solar eclipse. The people knew that there was a God trying to get their attention. There was a God that was angry with them, and there was a God who needed to step forward, identify himself, and offer them a pathway to tell them what their fate was.
Cliff Johnson:And so guess what? All of a sudden, while this famine's going on, out of the underworld, out of the sea comes a great fish. Guess what god they worshiped? They worshiped two main deities in Nineveh. They worshiped the sun god, and they...
Cliff Johnson:And so total solar eclipse. That was one. And then they worshiped Dagon, which was the name of their main deity in Nineveh, and Dagon was in form as a fish god. Dagon was a fish god. And so Dagon came up from the underworld and spit out of his mouth in the middle of a famine, after solar eclipse, after another famine, the people were asking for a divine message out of the mouth of Dagon, out of the underworld, spits a man glowing white out of the belly of a fish who walks into town with an ever growing entourage of curious onlookers like Forrest Gump following him everywhere.
Cliff Johnson:He stops, opens his mouth, and delivers a word from God to people whose hearts were 100% ready. They were begging for whoever, whatever deity was gonna claim responsibility for what had happened. Tell us what to do. Tell us what's going to happen. Come forward and identify yourself.
Cliff Johnson:And so here's Jonah, the least likely prophet, the worst choice imaginable, the last one picked for prophet kickball. He's grabbed by God, put into this ship, thrown into the ocean, swallowed by a fish, spit out. God used every part of Jonah's disobedience to be the perfect messenger to deliver a message to people who are looking for supernatural messages. You see how God even used Jonah's disobedience. Even Jonah's desire to die and be thrown overboard.
Cliff Johnson:God's like, yes. I'm gonna swallow you up and spit you out. Your ride to Nineveh is going to affirm the authority and the power and the supernatural nature of your message. He spit out, and the people respond immediately. This is the the biggest reaction, the biggest repentance recorded in scripture.
Cliff Johnson:It's one of the shortest messages, five words in Hebrew, and yet hundreds of thousands of people. Again, we said before, Nineveh was about half a million people, over 100,000 children, 600,000 people, plus all the livestock they made do this. They're in the middle of a famine. They fast in the middle of a famine. So just imagine the devotion they're showing.
Cliff Johnson:And look what God does. Verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God relented of the disaster that he had said what he would do to them, and he did not do it. God saw the repentance, and his heart was moved. Remember?
Cliff Johnson:Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, and in the Hebrew, an exceedingly great city to God. In other words, Nineveh mattered to God. The people mattered to God. These children mattered to God. God did not desire them to perish but to come to repentance.
Cliff Johnson:That's all over the Bible. And Jonah was chosen to bring that message to people who were ready to hear it. Because what Jonah didn't know is what Jonah didn't know, that God can be trusted, that God's timing is perfect, and God had prepared their hearts to hear the words that were delivered. No matter how half hearted Jonah was, no matter how discouraged he was, no matter how angry he was, no matter how bitter he was, no matter how much he didn't want to be there, God just needed someone to show up and speak those five words and watch the result. I wanna just challenge each one of us to think through the lens of this story.
Cliff Johnson:Think about the people that God's placed in our lives. Think about the conversations we're able to have. Think about how often we write people off. Well, this boss I had, he's just a jerk. He's hostile to me and to what I believe and to my family and to my Christianity.
Cliff Johnson:He would never come to church if I invite him. He would never want me to pray for him or he would never engage in a conversation like that. We all have those people in our minds that we think would automatically just shut us down and have nothing to do with this. But what if what we don't know is what we don't know? What if God's working on them?
Cliff Johnson:What if God has a plan for them and He just wants you to deliver that word? How many times have you had that prompting where you're sitting down with somebody like, I'm not sure why, but I feel like I just need to tell you that God loves you and that he has a plan for you. If that doesn't mean anything to you, I I apologize. And all of a sudden, the person starts to weep and go, you have no idea. I woke up today and said, God, please show me today that you're real.
Cliff Johnson:And you hear those stories, and your heart just swells. It's unbelievable. Yet God does that all the time. This is the story of Jonah and the Ninevites. And next week, we're gonna wrap this up by looking at Jonah's response to this repentance and just be stunned with the rest of the book of Jonah.
Angela Johnson:Thank you so much for spending this time in Jonah with us. If it fed your soul today, can I share something with you? Everything The Ancient Path makes, this podcast, The Still Waters Guide, is completely free, and it stays free because of kind, generous friends like you who give. If this teaching encouraged you, would you consider making a one time gift to the ancient path? And when you give, we'll send you a gift.
Angela Johnson:A book called Pursuit, an inspiring forty day devotional journey into the spiritual disciplines built on the ancient rhythm of the daily office. Two short readings a day, one for the morning and one for the evening. It's a $25 book and would be our joy to send it to you. The link is right there in the show notes. Until next time, keep walking the ancient path, and may he lead you besides still waters.