Jonah 3:1 - 4:3
The Insubordinate Messenger

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."

Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city--a visit required three days. On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh. "By the decree of the king and his nobles: do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

New International Version

Jonah should have been fired from his job in the Kingdom's Communications department.

First, Jonah's employment should have been terminated for excessive unexcused absences. As every Sunday School child can tell you, when God called Jonah to go to Ninevah, he went the opposite direction and encountered that large fish. Oddly enough, that didn't stop God from sending him out again.

The second set of grounds for termination, substandard performance, are evidenced in the passage above. His visit should have required three days, but he spent only one day. His distortion of the message, too, is significant, for all Jonah told them was that destruction was coming. This passage omits mention of repentance, which is what God wanted that people to do.

The last part of this passage gives both a third reason for termination, conflict of interest, and a fourth reason, insubordination. God wanted restoration; Jonah wanted destruction. His substandard performance was premeditated, for he feared that if he had done as he was ordered, God's powerful love would change the people of Ninevah. Jonah even confronted God, correctly accusing God of being gracious, in an insubordinate act most executives would not tolerate.

How, then, did God successfully use such a horrid employee as Jonah?

Before we answer that question, let's critique other instances of God's "poor hiring practices", for if we wish to be so foolishly presumptuous, we can establish a strong pattern of "dubious" decision making by the universe's Chief Executive. Consider:

• Abraham, at 100 years old, became a father
• Moses, who had difficulty speaking in public, was God's spokesman to Pharaoh
• Gideon, a coward, was appointed general of an army
• Paul, the man early Christians feared the most, became a Christian evangelist

Yet, look at the results! Abraham was the patriarch of the Israelite nation, Moses led God's people to the promised land, Gideon won a huge victory with 300 soldiers, Paul took Christianity across the known world--and Jonah's message somehow convinced the people of Ninevah to repent. Evem Jonah, with his all his performance problems, would be impossible to terminate if we assessed him on his results.

In all seriousness, this is a pattern we see in how God works all through the Bible and continuing today. God does not need human proficiency, mastery, and excellence. Instead of relying on human strength, God chooses to use human weakness, so that what is done will draw people closer to God. If Abraham had been 30 years old, it would have been ordinary for him to have had a son; at 100, this was God's doing, and everyone learned about the power of the God of Abraham. If Moses had been a persuasive negotiator, he might have made an arrangement with Pharaoh for the Hebrews' freedom, rather than God convincing the Egyptians to "let my people go." If you read my articles for dazzling prose and elegant wit, your judgment of good writing should be questioned, and you miss what God wants to say to you through, around, and often in spite of, my words.

It is amazing and energizing to think that God can take our most feeble and insufficient gestures and make something eternally powerful happen! It also deflates our pride to know that God doesn't need our best to achieve success. In fact, God doesn't need any particular individual, for, as the song goes, "God will make a way / When there seems to be no way."

God doesn't need my best work in serving the Kingdom; instead, I need to give my best to God in everything I do. It is for my benefit that I develop my skills, practice my crafts, and strive to excel in what I do for God. God calls me into service to help me grow into a stronger Christian. I need to be reminded that all that is best in me was given to me, and that what I might accomplish on my own for the Kingdom is insignificant compared to what God can do when I give myself in service to God. I also need to practice that feeling of helplessness when I have no more reserves, when I have expended all that I have, and when I have dredged the depths of my knowledge, for when there is nothing more left of me, all that happens next must be God's doing. The more I practice, the faster I can get my "self" out of God's way, and the sooner the miracles can begin!

Jonah showed us an extreme example of a miserable human effort, and I pray I will never work so hard to oppose what God wants to do. At the same time, Christian service is never about what I can do, for my capabilities will never be sufficient. Christian service is about what God can do, and God's power will never fail.