Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

[This is part one of a series on the Book of Jonah. See part 2 and part 3 here].

Everyone knows the name of the Biblical story, “Jonah and the Whale.” But most of us have nothing more than the kid’s version that remembers more so the whale part than the prophet part. How many people even know Jonah was a prophet?

What was the basic outline of this “minor” prophet who is nevertheless remembered more than others for being the namesake of this story? What was this prophet’s duty? Why did Jonah end up in a whale’s belly?

The call goes out to Jonah

As with all the prophets, Jonah is sent to relay God’s will to wicked people whose sins have led them to do things like build up kings, statues of the gods associated with these systems, and champion wars and plunders: That wickedness cannot stand and will come under judgment. 

Jonah’s mission was to preach repentance to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, one of the main violent, warring, plunderous enemies of Biblical Israel.

Using our present society—the schemes and evils of history have yet to come to an end—to understand the types of people the prophets were preaching to, the people and lands that are nearing closer to God’s judgment are always places where sin and its late-stage manifestations abounded.

There was probably in Nineveh, as in our society today, many idolatries associated with kings, princes, and rulers. And there was probably great moral support for the violence and plunders of the regime, and for the philosophies and ideas that are behind these systems. There were most likely all the things you see in our world today.

We can assume that, like our societies today, Nineveh at the very least lacked morals and spiritual discernment. We are told they had “more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). They were most likely, as men are today, fools who “call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20), i.e., men who think that militaristic police states are “good” and bring “law and order,” and that liberty is a “bad,” “dangerous,” and “lawless anarchy” that requires a Pharaoh and a large army to make society workable. 

Speaking as if He puts sinful statist societies on a calendar and schedules their destruction when He’s seen enough, God instructs Jonah,

“Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me” (Jonah 1:2). 

God wanted Jonah to tell the people the same thing He sends all the other prophets to relay: Your violent political systems and artificially ordered societies are going to come down thus saith the Lord, because they’re sinful rebellions against the natural order of God. 

But Jonah got scared and ran for shore to hop a boat and hope to escape the duty of the godly man to tell his foolish neighbors of their errors (Jonah 1:3). He wanted to get “away from the presence of the LORD” (Jonah 1:3). These were the events preceding the whale incident. 

Fearing God’s calling

It’s hard to blame Jonah for running at first. It’s easy to see why Jonah evaded God’s order to preach the destruction that comes to the unrepentant (i.e., people who build murderous states and plunder their own people and their neighbors). It is the equivalent of being told to go into Washington D.C. today and tell everyone that their empire isn’t as “great” as they think it is, or speaking out period in a surveillance state that puts the prophet at risk. 

Telling people that their false gods will not endure is dangerous and might lead you to being assaulted, caged, or killed, by those who don’t like what you’re saying. Men who support violent systems may potentially become violent when they are challenged. “I dare you to tell a soldier to his face that he’s serving evil” or “Stomp my flag and I’ll stomp your ass” are two common ones. 

So naturally, in a coercive society where the threat of violence looms over our heads by the political elites, most have chosen silence. It is simply the easiest for most, no matter how great the evils, to keep silent and just “go along to get along” in life. If speaking the truth can lead you to a cage as a political prisoner, then most will reason that it’s better to keep quiet or not even think about those ideas.

But God surely wants us posted up all around telling people about Egypt, and for those with ears to hear to be listening. Some are called to do this. “I have set watchmen upon thy walls…which shall never hold their peace day nor night” (Isaiah 62:6). 

God spares Nineveh for the time being

The prophets all tell us how God gives men a chance to repent before facing destruction. One thing that empires and their worshipers can never say when their beloved kingdoms fall is that no one warned them. There is always someone around—a remnant—to preach the sins of Babylon to men. 

And praise the Lord that a few godly men have been left over to tell of her sins. For as the scripture says, “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).

The sinful and dangerous society of state-worshiping is always in need of prophets to teach that judgment comes upon people who are deep and unrepentant in their sins, i.e., those who refuse to do away with worshiping their false idols and the kings and ruling system associated with them — who refuse to hear the preachers telling about Babylon and her coming fall. 

And they tell how God is, on the other hand, merciful to those who repent from their ways, such that a people just recently worthy of destruction for putting state flags on their houses, supporting Pharaohs, etc., can avoid the judgment that God always brings upon these statist societies.

The prophets show this back-and-forth nature of societies where men sin (i.e., worship false god States) and bring judgment upon themselves, or where they call upon God again, repent, and get delivered from destruction (war, famines, military invasion, and general statist tyrannies). 

In the Book of Jonah, God was also merciful upon Nineveh for their repentance.

“When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them” (Jonah 3:10).  

The sin of statism and God’s judgment

Although the capital later fell anyway (perhaps a couple hundred years after Jonah), God initially accepts Nineveh’s repentance in the time of Jonah and spares it. 

That they fell later on tells us, however, that their society must have strayed from their repentance and returned to their old false god worship — that they went back into Egypt instead of out of it. For we know that leaving behind God is what eventually brings kingdoms down on men, and eventually those kingdoms down on themselves.

The Lord tells us through the prophets why these systems come down:

“They have forsaken My law, which I set before them; they have not walked in it or obeyed My voice. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts and gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them” (Jeremiah 9:13-14).

Men and their statist systems go down because

“they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have worshiped and served other gods” (Jeremiah 22:9). 

Judgment in the scriptures, coming in the form of destruction or an invasion of your society, is always upon statists whose societies are founded on the sins of idolatry, murder, and theft. God always promises to tear down these statist societies, and the prophets had given the same message to Nineveh.

“Now this is what the Lord has decreed about you, Nineveh: ‘There will be no more children born to carry on your name. I will cut out the graven and molten images from the temples of your gods. I myself will dig your grave, because you are vile'” (Nahum 1:14). 

As at the Red Sea when God sent the waters crashing down on Pharaoh king of Egypt’s army, whose violent and slavish societies are against God, He promised the same here:

“Behold, I am against you [Nineveh]…and I will burn your chariots in the smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions” (Nahum 2:13).

God promised to “destroy Assyria,” to “make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness” (Zephaniah 2:13). 

Not running from our calling

Like men today, Jonah was trying to avoid his calling to show people their evils and set them straight. And this is the lesson as it applies to us. 

We don’t want to avoid rebuking our brothers and correcting them when they are in great error, e.g., failing to tell those who see no problem with their flag-waving, which they think combats socialism, that it’s the very idolatrous attitude that supports this socialist system we have today. 

We should not have silent tolerance for those who overtly and proudly sin against the Lord, such as those who worship Pharaoh’s military, his police, his politicians, and who have symbols of their false gods (flags, statues, campaign signs) everywhere. Especially when these men say they are, or wish to be, servants of Christ the Lord and are not aware of their participation in evil.

Instead of running for a boat to flee our responsibilities to our neighbors to show them God and His hatred for Babylonian systems, we should rather tell our neighbor that his “thin blue line” flag is a most appalling, idolatrous, evil, and ungodly thing.

There is no shortage of opportunities in American society. Our land is “filled with idols” (Isaiah 2:8). This means our work is cut out for us. We’re living in Sodom and Gomorrah with endless opportunities to tell the state worshipers around us of their evils, many of whom have never even thought about it. 

Yet men, as Jonah was initially, are afraid of telling other men the word of God: That judgment comes upon such sinful people—the rulers and their supporters—who don’t reverse course and leave behind their false gods for the Lord God. They are afraid of the call to be like Moses and shepherd our people out of Egypt.

Getting out there

If God is telling you to be the light to someone else who is still in the dark, then don’t forsake the calling. We ought to show the ignorant their unwittingly evil ways and tell the malevolent of the judgment that will come upon them for their unrepentant and deliberate evils, and lead the sheep back to the Lord and His ways. 

By seeing the story of Jonah running and having this mistake on our minds, we can avoid running from our duties when the call comes. As one commentator said,

“In case of great peril, the disciples of Christ may go out of the way of danger, though they must not go out of the way of duty” (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary, Matthew 10:16-42).

We need to do more than get holed up with our Bibles and see the evils of the world and the glories of God’s kingdom for ourselves, or to fear what men may bring upon us if we share the word of God. We must “get up and go” (Jonah 1:3) and tell our people what is going on — that they live in, and support, an Egyptian society that is bound for failure if they don’t change their ways. 

Those who know the word of God and see that Egyptian societies are bound to come under divine judgment should never grow tired of telling others. As the scriptures tell us, “Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence” (Isaiah 62:6). 

Hiding away and keeping silent as Jonah did at first does not save people and their societies from destruction. Keeping the word of God to ourselves does not change the world. We have to show others the political plunder system of these ancient false gods who still rule humanity today, who the people have been ashamedly and sinfully caught worshiping.

We have to do more if the same old tired fallacies are ever to die. “Police are just doing their jobs.” “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” “Things will get better with the next president.”

If the prophets could go to kings themselves and rebuke them to their faces, we can do so to the lower-level minions of the king (the police, local politicians, etc) and to our families, friends, neighbors, and strangers. 

Conclusion

One thing we learn from Jonah and his initial flight at the call to relay God’s word to sinful people facing repentance or judgment is that we cannot be scared to tell those around us that statism destroys and that they’re chasing after false gods, not only that do not profit, but positively destroy.

Sharing the word of God and showing men that salvation of the Lord (as Jonah found out in the belly of the whale) is a responsibility for all Christians. Those initially-hesitant Jonahs of the world often have to learn the hard way by getting swallowed by a big fish—or beaten on the side of the road by a badged thug who then arrests you for “assaulting an officer”—before they see the slavery and care to do anything about it. 

But Jonah, in the end, shows a courage that few men have today. He went out and preached in enemy territory. Men today are more prone to doing the buddy-buddy thing with wicked men around them and even trying to appease them or get promoted by the authoritarian system. We’re taught to be accepting of the fool who walks around in his favorite politician’s hat and complains that things are going socialist and he doesn’t know why. 

We should then want to be like the later Jonah who eventually obeyed God and delivered the prophetic message to the people God wanted it sent to:

“On the first day of his journey, Jonah set out into the city and proclaimed, ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!’” (Jonah 3:4). 

It worked! The rulers sent out the call for repentance to their people, instead of deciding to stick to their ways and come under judgment. They told everyone,

“Let each one turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:8-9). 

And this is what God wants to see, not an unashamed and prideful continuation of the sins of Babylon — saluting “the troops,” calling their King Nebuchadnezzar’s officers and agents “heroes” and “protectors,” pledging allegiance to States, waving their flags, singing national anthems, etc.

Remember that God has mercy on the repentant and that our society, though it must surely fail if it doesn’t change its ways, does not have to be utterly destroyed. Things can change course for people who give up their old evil ways (i.e., their “hoorah!” patriotism and love of war) and come back to the Lord. It worked for Nineveh. 

God withdraws His judgment from those who follow His instruction to “not walk the road with these sinners or set foot upon their path” (Proverbs 1:15). As the prophets always express,

“If that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it” (Jeremiah 18:8). 

Knowing this, we should be out telling anyone we can that things our people have done—the Babylonian idolatries above—are the sources of empowerment of the great evils we face today in the political system, which is perhaps the most destructive and most dangerous manifestation of sin in our society.