I am very excited to write this post this week because it really hits at the heart of my work as a scholar, church leader, friend, father, and husband. As many of you may know, I like to think about the “big picture” things and this week in particular is about the big picture vision that Scripture casts about us as humanity made in God’s image. I hope this is inspiring, challenging, and gives you a bigger idea of the goodness of our God for, in, and through us, his people.
Part of the inspiration for this week’s content is our Life Group’s study of Jonah through Right Now Media. Specifically, we take a look at the end of the book of Jonah, where we get a dialogue between God and Jonah. For quick summary, the events of the book of Jonah surround a call from God for Jonah to go preach Ninevah’s impending doom for their wicked ways. Ninevah was the capital city for the truly cruel empire of the Assyrians. We mentioned Assyria last week as one of these empires that are pitted as the antithesis of the Lord’s design and plan for humanity.
The book of Jonah is mostly known, however, for him fleeing this call to preach, getting stuck in a storm sent by the Lord, and being swallowed up by a “big fish” or the Leviathan dragon as the Greek Old testament says. So, you might know that Jonah gets spat up and preaches to Ninevah, who repent, and God’s judgement is stayed. These popular aspects of Jonah are not really the literary focus of the book, though. As mentioned last week, thinking of Scripture as revealing Jesus and the nature of God’s very person would lead us to consider the dialogue between God and Jonah as the very essence of the book.
This dialogue is really powerful, so I suggest that you go read it for yourself. For this post, I am really going to highlight Jonah’s seething anger at God. In fact, Jonah the prophet of God, claims that God has done an injustice in relenting from judgement! In this amazing turn of events, Jonah explicitly states precisely why Jonah fled from God’s presence, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. (Jonah 4:2)” Jonah then proceeds to ask God to take his life, the same life that Jonah praised God for saving earlier in the book.
What I hope to do is dig a bit deeper than the surface, though. I think the low-hanging fruit is that God loves even the worst of people and would like them to repent and be saved. However, when thinking about being a light in a dark place, Jonah becomes a particularly interesting case study. See, Jonah does not care that Ninevah is a dark place outside of how it personally affects him. Jonah does not even really care about being in God’s presence if life can be comfortable (Tarshish is a very wealthy place). Jonah cares that Ninevah has been a particularly oppressive city that has wrought immense havoc and tragedy in the lives of the Israelites. Jonah is a member of a severely oppressed and marginalized people at the hands of the Ninevites. Jonah does not just want to be comfortable; he simply does not want Ninevah to repent. Jonah wants Ninevah destroyed; Jonah has specifically malevolent motivations for running from God. Jonah allowed anger to overwhelm his soul, causing him to commit murder in his heart (1 John 3:15).
Jonah does not want Ninevah to repent, be transformed, and reap the blessing of an abundant life of righteousness. God called Jonah to partner with him in the re-creative work of
moving Ninevah from darkness into light. See, the Old Testament carries all the same themes that Jesus and the apostles discuss because the Old Testament is the authority that they stood upon in the emergence of this new expression of God’s people in the Church.
I would ask you to rethink what mission and evangelism means. I would ask you to think beyond conversions, beyond attendance, and beyond discipleship. Mission and evangelism in the most sincere and foundational sense is see people move from agents of catastrophe in their lives and others to becoming agents of health, well-being, and goodness for themselves and others. I say this because it might help us think about how God’s eternal life touches down in peoples’ lives. It might help us to form our hearts in such a way that we see a larger goal than simply religious ends.
When we think about our evangelical efforts, are we thinking about convincing people of objective facts? Or might it be better for us to wish good for people, praying for them and suggesting to them that it is possible to experience God’s gracious care as they follow him, taking the leap of trust that God really is good?
When God created the world, it began with his word unleashing light into the cosmos, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light, and God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:3–4)” The initial creative process ends with, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” John 1 testifies to Jesus as being the Word and being the “light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:4–5)” Being the light of the world is directly related to the re-creative or redemptive process of God in saving humanity.
Jesus folding us into his very person to be his body means we become participants in God’s mission of creating and re-creating that which would be called very good. This all begins, however, with a submission to being made in God’s image. It means with need to spend time with him to experience and know firsthand his goodness over us. May we become a people that know his goodness, can speak of his goodness, and encourage others to take steps in finding the transformative salvation of Jesus, the light of the world.
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