As a kid, I once threw a toy and accidentally broke our kitchen chandelier. In my infinite wisdom, I hid under a countertop 3 feet from the scene of the crime. Needless to say, I was found quickly.
Hiding feels like it works, but it doesn’t.
In the book of Jonah, God calls his prophet to preach to Ninevah, but Jonah doesn’t want to go. So, Jonah tries to hide from God. He flees, encounters a storm, gets swallowed up by a giant fish, gets vomited out, and then reluctantly preaches to Ninevah.
Hiding from God feels like it works, but it doesn’t.
We often focus so much on Jonah getting swallowed by the fish that we miss the point. The book of Jonah holds a mirror up to the readers’ souls. If we’re willing to take an honest look, we’ll find that we are much more like Jonah than we would like to admit.
Jonah did not want to obey God, so he fled. We read this and think it is ridiculous that Jonah is trying to hide from God. But will we take an honest look in the mirror? Don’t we do the same things? Fleeing to Tarshish was a blatant attempt to hide from God’s will. We often put more sophisticated trappings on our attempts to hide from God.
We pray less.
We attend church less.
We make our lives busy.
We focus on the commands we like and ignore the ones we don’t.
We don’t call it hiding from God. But at the end of the day, when God gives us commands and we don’t obey, are we any different than Jonah?
Grace is prevalent in every part of Jonah’s story. The wicked people of Ninevah received God’s grace when they did not deserve it. God’s response to Jonah (the prophet who fled from God and did not want Ninevah to receive God’s grace) was to firmly call Jonah to obey him while lavishly pouring out his grace upon Jonah.
We, like Jonah, sometimes ignore the commandments of God that we don’t like. God’s response to us is the same. He does not remove his commandments when we dislike them. In his goodness and wisdom, God still holds firm to them. Just like he gave grace to Ninevah and Jonah, he extends that same abundant grace to us, as well.
Are there commands of God that you choose to ignore? Do not gossip? Go and make disciples? Have no other gods? That one command you just wish God didn’t give us?
We can judge how ridiculous Jonah was for trying to hide from God, or we can realize that we do the same thing, just in more sophisticated ways. May we be like the people of Ninevah who are convicted by God and repent of their ways. May we trust God’s ways even when they don’t make sense to us. May we be obedient when it is not easy.
May we also marvel that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, relenting from treating us how our sins deserve (Jonah 4:2).
Tyler Cole is the lead pastor at Lincoln Glen Church in San Jose, California.
