Jonah starts out with him running away from God because God told him to go to Nineveh the capital of Assyria which was rising to be the next super power. And no one liked a super power because that meant that the surrounding nations needed to bow to the super powers' wishes or face destruction. So Jonah ran away, but when he told the sailors that he was running away from the God who created the waters and the earth, that didn't jive with what he was doing. He didn't believe in what he said because if God created the earth and the waters there would be no place for Jonah to run away to. Then Jonah as you know gets swallowed by a whale or something in the big blue, well small blue as it's the Mediterranean. Then Jonah thinks that dying in a whale or something isn't the greatest way to go so he decides that it may be in his best interest to do as God commanded. So he gets spat up with all the fish goo on the beach and has to walk a few days to get to Nineveh. He gets there and speaks his piece and then goes up on a hill fully expecting for God to rain destruction on Nineveh.
"Bring on the fireworks God!" I can imagine Jonah saying this.
But God doesn't bring destruction on Nineveh because they repent and fear the Lord. Jonah, as he is sitting on the hill with the sun beating down on him, grows faint; so God makes a tree grow to provide him with shade. Then the day after the tree is grown God makes worms attack the tree and it dies, killing the tree and the shade that Jonah had. Jonah then gets angry about the tree. This is what the book is about. Jonah was mad about the tree being destroyed but looked forward to seeing the city of Nineveh destroyed. He cared more about the shade than a city with thousands of people in it.
Jonah is a picture of Israel and the tree is a picture of the promised land. Israel was given the promised land as a gift just like Jonah was given the tree as a gift. But Israel didn't follow through with their calling of being a blessing to the nations and bringing others into a knowledge of who God is. They bought into the pagan mindset that Jonah shows. A pagan mindset was thinking in territorial gods. One nation's god was the god over their territory which is what Jonah believed and showed by running away from God. Also, Jonah would have likely thought that God, because He chose Israel, was against everyone else. Again thinking territorial because when one nation attacked another and one was defeated, it showed that the god of the victor's nation was stronger than the god of the loser nation. Israel believed that God was for them and against everyone else because they were chosen by God. Even though they said that God created the world they thought in a pagan mindset that placed God in a territory and acted like other territorial gods.
Christians today can sometimes act the same way as the Israelites did. Us versus them. Christians against non-christian, church against church. But that's not what God created. God created mankind to have relationship with. Mankind. Not different levels of mankind but simply mankind, all on the same level, all having the same opportunity to have relationship with Christ. No one better than the other, but all loved just the same. God loved the Assyrians, He gave them a warning and a chance to repent and forgave them even though they weren't His "chosen" people. God loves all and wants relationship with all. But we as humans make distinctions where there should be none. We say to one person that they have to meet this certain standard in order to become a part of the church or a certain community. But really Christ followers should be loving and accepting all as they are. That doesn't mean we agree with sin, but that means that we love all people and form relationships with them. Christ followers need to be pointing the way to Christ by how they live their lives and interact with others.
This has challenged me. Is there any us versus them in my life as a Christ follower? Is there any in your life? It's definitely something to work towards becoming more like Jesus. Accepting all, loving all.
