Lot Casters and the Idol-Smashing God

Jonah tells the sailors how to stop the storm. All they need to do is toss him overboard since he is the guilty one. For Jonah’s part, this still reveals a refusal to repent. He could have confessed to God, “Lord, I have disobeyed Your command to go to Nineveh. Forgive me, and please spare the lives of these men!” Already being in rebellion to God, however, Jonah does not consider anything that would demonstrate a change of heart. On this, Bruckner writes,

Jonah does not seem to be capable of simple repentance. He could have sought forgiveness during the storm (as the Ninevites do later) and committed himself to go to Nineveh. But perhaps he believes that too much “water had passed under his ship” by this time. Perhaps he is not sure that his repentance would bring forgiveness. He prefers to believe (wants to believe?) in a God who only judges and does not forgive. He would rather die in the sea than suggest to the sailors that they turn around and return him to Joppa to complete Yahweh’s call to Nineveh. (Jonah, 47)

Also, Daniel Timmer adds the important observation, “Nowhere in this chapter, or anywhere else in Jonah for that matter, are we told that he repented of his disobedience” (A Gracious and Compassionate God, 71).

Because the seafarers care more about Jonah than he cares about them, they try to row. They are rowing in a storm that required them to hurl their cargo over the ship; their actions are futile. Yet in their minds there must be another solution, even though Jonah clearly proclaimed to them the identity of the Creator. They want a solution without acknowledging the Lord.

The Lord, however, is not going to have that. The sea grows fiercer and fiercer against them. The sailors finally realize they cannot beat the storm—they cannot beat the Lord. So they decide they are going to do what Jonah says. Now watch what happens.

They understand they are under God’s fierce judgment and so they say, “Please, Yahweh.” They are not calling on their gods anymore. They now call on the God Jonah has revealed: “Please, Yahweh, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For You, Yahweh, have done just as You pleased” (1:14).

And they want God to free them from that guilt. They recognize that “[the Lord] judges human actions by retribution on wrongdoing and that he can be appealed to for justice” (Baldwin, “Jonah,” 2:562). This is God’s prerogative and responsibility as sovereign Ruler over the hearts of all people. He will bring all souls into judgment for their sins. Even as Paul exhorts Timothy to preach the word of God faithfully, he reminds him that God “is going to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim 4:1).

“You have done just as You pleased” (Jonah 1:14). What God wants them to do is stop calling on false gods, stop looking for a solution with lots, stop rowing, and throw Jonah into the sea. When they do this, the storm stops in an instant! In an instant the Lord’s wrath is gone from being over them—the moment they stop putting forth effort and instead rely on God’s solution. This is the difference between works and faith. These men experience real conversion. Their testimony is the same as that of the Thessalonians: “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thess 1:9-10).

A less careful reading of Jonah might allow one to suggest that Jonah’s story supports universalistic or pluralistic concepts of salvation. That is, it might seem that the sailors and the Ninevites experience salvation apart from the disclosure of Israel’s God as the only Savior. Or it might appear that these Gentiles were saved without calling on the name of the Lord. Quite the contrary, however, the narrative demonstrates an exclusivistic position, showing that salvation outside of the Lord is impossible for both the sailors and the Ninevites.^[6]No other god comes to their rescue, and neither does their hope of salvation remain in their gods once Jonah speaks.

Instead of a pluralistic option for salvation, the sailors receive revelation that the Lord is the absolute ruler, and that His wrath is on the ship in the storm. They hear that they need a substitute to die—in their case, Jonah—so that they don’t have to die for their idolatry of self-effort. They trust the word of the prophet and cry out to the Lord for mercy on their guilt for killing the prophet. They place their faith in the death of the prophet to stop God’s wrath, and their faith produces corresponding actions of fear. This is real conversion. If the Lord did not smash the idols of their self-efforts, they would not have seen the only true solution and they would not have experienced conversion.

Everything that looks like conversion is not conversion. Real conversion means that when someone hears that a substitute is needed, he or she cries out to the Lord for salvation by means of God’s substitute, and then accomplishes works demonstrating the conversion after the confession. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 testified that he trusted God’s promise in Genesis 15 (Jas 2:21-24). Similarly, Simon Magus’s “belief” in Acts 8 was not conversion, even though he came forward with the Samaritans who placed their faith in Christ.

Real conversion does not end with the day of belief. If someone calls on the Lord in salvation, he cannot reach back, subsequently, and grab his self-help idols when he is in trouble or life becomes rough. He cannot then attempt to appease God by more faithful church attendance, increased obedience to parents, more frequent reading of the Bible, or increasing sacrifices of his time and money. The moment you think that doing such things makes God move in your favor, you are grasping an idol, polishing it, holding it up to the Lord, and saying, “See God, look at me. I am doing everything right. You are going to act now to stop my storm, right?” However, if you think God is moved by such efforts, you are not talking to the God through whom “we have all received grace after grace from His fullness” (John 1:16). You are talking to your idol-manufactured concept of a god. Real conversion starts with grace and knows that grace will lead us home. This grace comes from Jesus Christ alone.

Jonah 1:17

This verse is troubling for some people. How in the world can a fish swallow a man and that man stay in the belly of a fish three days and three nights? Well, let me make very clear that the issue is not the fish or the improbability of this account. In the scientific age we have become thrown off from the point of this story and started saying, “Something miraculous like this is not possible.” Of course it’s not possible—it’s a miracle! Miracles by definition are outside the normal course of nature.

Consider, however, that there might have existed a now-extinct whale that could swallow a man. In a pre-scientific age a whale would not have been identified as a mammal. Those who saw it might have identified it as a fish, even if it were in fact a whale.

“But nobody could survive in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. That’s just scientifically impossible, so we can’t believe that,” someone might say. However, keep in mind what is going on in this story. If Jonah is right about the Lord—that He is the Creator of the heavens and of the seas, and the dry land, and thus Ruler over all—certainly the Lord could speak to whatever creature He wants to and assign it to swallow Jonah. The passage actually indicates that the Lord already “had appointed” a fish to come and get Jonah before the sailors had thrown Jonah off the ship. Because the Lord is sovereign, He knew exactly when and where Jonah would hit that water.

Having absolute knowledge and power in the universe, the Lord could appoint or raise up or create any sea creature He willed to swallow up Jonah! He could create an animal that allowed for a person to remain alive inside it. Or he could keep a person alive inside an existing animal. If the story had said that the Lord sent a shrimp to swallow Jonah, I would believe it. You could argue with me repeatedly that there is no way a shrimp could eat a man or that a man could stay inside of a shrimp for three days. If Scripture had said, “The Lord raised up a shrimp and it swallowed Jonah,” it would be true. God is the sovereign Creator. He could create a shrimp way bigger than “jumbo” that could swallow a man whole.

Nevertheless, the issue is not whether the miracle could happen; the issue is, “What is going on with the fish and the three days and the three nights?” In the Gospels Jesus said these words: “For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt 12:40), and “No sign will be given to [an evil and adulterous generation] except the sign of Jonah” (Matt 16:4). So the question must be, “How, in fact, is Jonah a ‘sign’? What does he signify?”

Bruckner notes, “Jonah and Jesus can be compared favorably in many ways.” He says,

Jesus did perfectly what Jonah also (if temporarily) accomplished: both were from Galilee; Jonah struggled with his call to preach, Jesus struggled to do the will of the Father (in the desert, at Gethsemane); both preached God’s message of judgment and reconciliation to the marginalized and to sinners; both chose death forsaken by others; both bore and removed the consequences of sin from others; both caused the storm to cease after sleeping through it (Jonah through repentance, Jesus through his divinity); Jonah entered the jaws of the fish, Jesus entered the jaws of the grave; both were kept for three days; both were raised up again by the Father; Jonah’s obedience in preaching led to the conversion of a great city, and Jesus’ obedience led to the conversion of many cultures of the world. (Jonah, 63)

In addition to Bruckner’s typology of Jonah and Jesus, I propose that there is another comparison between the story of Jonah and the work of Christ: the solution to the sailors’ dilemma is found in putting the prophet to death. The Lord pours out His wrath on the prophet as he dies to and for the sailors but is found to be alive to and for God.

You do not need to work to get rid of the wrath of God or His discipline. If you try to rely on work, all you will do is die in the waters of the storm around you. Your only hope lies in a fountain—one that is “filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins!” (Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”). Sinners hurl themselves into that blood so they can lose all their guilty stains.

Converted sinners don’t stop there—they don’t start putting in self-effort to please God or to turn God’s kind hand of discipline away. Instead, they keep going in the grace with which they began, in effect saying, “Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more” (Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”). It is then that we will meet our idol-smashing God face to face.