The Other People in the Story

Pretty much everyone knows the story of Jonah. It's told on flannel graphs in Sunday School classes probably every week. But how often do we think about the other characters in the story?

A few weeks ago I was listening to someone teach out of the book of Jonah. The focus of the message was on Jonah's prayer (chapter 2), but I got distracted by the first part of the story, in chapter 1. As we know, Jonah was running away from God (which is rarely a good idea). In his running, he gets on a ship and sets sail. That ship quickly becomes caught in a storm. Jonah tells the sailors on that ship about the God he serves...and that the only way to stop the storm is for them to throw him overboard. Now, here's the part that caught my attention: If Jonah recognizes that God was demanding his life, why didn't he just jump overboard himself? Wouldn't that action have met God's demands? Why bring the sailors into it by telling them they must throw him over the side?

Perhaps the first part of the story is just as much about Jonah's running from God as it is the sailors' running toward God. Jonah has told these sailors about God (verse 9) - from the previous verses we can infer that up to this point they worshipped other gods (verse 5). After Jonah tells them to throw him overboard, the sailors do everything they can to try and avoid having to do so. Yet eventually they realize their attempts are futile, and they ask God to not punish them for throwing Jonah into the sea. In my Bible, it says the sailors cried, "Oh LORD..." (all capitals). After they pitch Jonah over the side and the sea becomes calm, verse 16 tells us they "greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him." I'm no Bible translator, but I've always been told that 'LORD' in all caps signifies the name of God as 'Yahweh'...the 'I Am'...in other words, these sailors are recognizing that this God is the true God.

Hmm... something happened in the hearts of those sailors between Jonah's telling them about God, their crying out to a God they had just learned about, and then their worshipping of this God after seeing a display of his power and authority over nature. Was their having to throw Jonah over the side a way to test their not-yet-realized faith? Would they have come to worship the LORD if Jonah had jumped over the side on his own? (Probably, because of "irresistible grace". But that's another topic).

Maybe sometimes God wants us to do things that seem crazy to us for the purpose of building our faith in Him. Yep, I think that's it.