Fourth Quarter 2003 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"Jonah"

Insights to Lesson 2
Jonah—People and Places?
October 4-10, 2003

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

Studying Jonah seems to some like a waste of time. Why spend 13 weeks poring over a simple children’s story about a man who was swallowed by a big fish? Doesn’t seem like there’s much “gospel” in those four short chapters, so why bother?

Well, we should “bother” because God chose to tell us the story for a reason, or maybe many reasons. We can begin by asking: Do we find in the book of Jonah any significant correlation to our day and current spiritual condition? and Why did the Holy Spirit provide this lesson fast on the heels of a study of the covenants and then the sanctuary?

Let’s begin our exploration to see if there’s anything significant for us in this “children’s story” with a brief outline of points to consider:

1. Jonah’s story seems to drop in on us from nowhere. It starts abruptly: “The word of the Lord came unto Jonah.” For me, that phrase started the wheels turning. A quick look at the concordance showed why.

   1. The phrase “the word of the Lord came” appears 22 times in the Bible, all in the Old Testament. Most are in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. But the ones brought to my mind involved Elijah and King Ahab. A similar story, but with a very different outcome.

   2. How similar? A prophet of God suddenly appears out of nowhere and confronts a sinful nation, speaks ominously, and walks away.

   3. One nation repents immediately. The other rejects God’s word, attempts to kill His messenger, resists His will and suffers the consequence of obstinate disobedience until it does finally “hear the word of the Lord.” Then the rain was poured out abundantly.

2. It’s an interesting parallel that two messengers appeared almost as “out of nowhere,” at a General Conference Session of this church. They were young, not the usual age for such speakers. Jones and Waggoner were not “prophets,” but Ellen White characterized them as “the Lord’s messengers,” “special messengers,” with “heavenly credentials.”

   1. They were not “reluctant” messengers, but the “king and his nobles” unto whom their message came were reluctant to accept the message. “In a great degree,” says Ellen White, they rejected the message and “shut [it] away from our people” (Selected Messages, book 1, pp. 234, 235).

   2. If “the king and his nobles” in 1888 had received the message as the Lord intended, a grand repentance would have followed, as with Nineveh. “From the greatest of them even to the least of them,” Seventh-day Adventists would have responded, for the people were ready to accept the message. Then, according to God’s plan in 1888, the dark world itself would have heard the message and many would have responded (see The Great Controversy, p. 612). The parallel with Nineveh’s repentance would have been striking.

3. Outside the book that bears his name, Jonah is only mentioned one time in the Old Testament. From that one brief verse we learn that Jonah is a prophet of God and that he preached also to the wicked Israelite king, Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23-27).

This fact places Jonah preaching during a time of serious backsliding among God’s people (like Elijah). Despite the military advances made by Jeroboam in expanding the borders of Israel, the relative political security enjoyed by the people, and the extravagant outward display of religiosity, the northern kingdom was living in deep moral corruption (see Amos 5:21, 22; 2:6-8; Hosea 6:6-10).

The spiritual condition of Israel at this time was parallel to that of the seventh church, Laodicea, today. Prosperous, proud, but so sick spiritually that it makes Jesus want to throw up (Rev. 3:14-21).

4. As we read through the narrative in the book of Jonah we find that in each instance where Jonah gave his witness to pagan peoples, they were converted from their pagan ideas, confessed faith in “the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land” and changed their evil ways. Jonah was a powerful witness for the Lord, even when he didn’t want to be, even when he was running away from God, resisting the work that the Lord had given him to do.

We cannot dream of the wonders that would have attended the proclamation of that “most precious message” if “we” had given it to the world  just after 1888.

5. “People and Places”—two nations contrasted. One claimed to have the name and power of the living God on their side, while they were actively resisting His will for their lives. The other nation was recognized for its sinfulness, which was founded on the apostasy of Nimrod—the desire to make a name for themselves; to make themselves a “great nation” in defiance of the living God (Genesis 10:9-11; 11:2-4; compare this to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12?).

   1. Both are living in opposition to God’s will for them, but one had heard the word of the Lord preached to them, the other had not. One was actively resisting, the other was living in ignorance.

   2. Between these two nations stands a reluctant prophet, sent by God to preach righteousness to the fallen nation of Assyria. Here is where the real contrast comes in to play. While Israel stubbornly resisted God’s call to repent and remained in rebellion, Nineveh repented from the top to the bottom with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes (compare this to the language describing the day of atonement in Leviticus 16).

6. God used Jonah to show his rebellious people how easy it is to be saved, if one will truly believe in the “word of the Lord” as it is given to them.

Read the study notes for Lesson 3