Is This One Thing Hindering Your Victory?
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There is probably no book in the Bible that ends as abruptly and oddly as the book of Jonah.
So many times, I reach the end of chapter four and turn the page, expecting to see an ending, “and they all lived happily ever after.”
But no.
The book ends with God confronting Jonah after Jonah’s temper tantrum. After his little pity party.
The fact is, we don’t really know what happened to Jonah after this. Did he, like Job, humble himself before God and repent for his self-righteous attitude?
We don’t even know if he continued in his role as a prophet or if he slumped off somewhere, angry with God because God didn’t do what Jonah had wanted him to do.
God confronted Job when He said, “Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it…. Now, prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” Job 40:1, 7
And Job answered God, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer; yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.” Job 40:2
God corrected Job, and Job humbled himself before God, and the book of Job ends in Job’s victory over the plans of the enemy to destroy him and his family.
In contrast, God confronts Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
And Jonah retorts, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!”
As far as we read in the book of Jonah, we don’t see any humility in him at all.
Is This One Thing Hindering Your Victory?
After the great fish swallowed Jonah in chapter one, we read Jonah’s powerful prayer in chapter two as he repents before God, acknowledging God’s hand of discipline on him.
The fish vomits him onto dry ground, and Jonah obeys the word of the Lord and goes to Nineveh to proclaim the message God had given him.
It is here that we see Jonah do what so many believers do that hinders victory in their lives.
“Then he cried out and said, ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'”
That’s it.
That’s the whole message we read in the book of Jonah.
Where is the call to repentance? Where is the call to humility before God?
I have to believe that if Jonah had called the Ninevites to repent and humble themselves, it would be in the passage, but it’s not.
He marched right into Nineveh and basically said, “Hey, everyone! Just so you know, in forty days, God is going to come and smite you all! See ya! Wouldn’t want to be ya!”
To the credit of the Ninevites, they did repent: from the king, who laid aside his royal robes and covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, to even the livestock, who fasted along with the people of the land.
There was not a living thing that did not mourn before God for their wickedness.
And God relented.
“But this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.” Jonah 4:1
Jonah repented in part but never fully surrendered to God
Dear sister, obedience to God is important, but equally as important is the motive with which we obey Him.
After being swallowed by the fish, Jonah repented for his disobedience to God, but he made a fatal error.
While he surrendered to God’s plan, he did not surrender his will to God completely. In a way, he said, “God, I will surrender to you here, but no further.”
In doing so, he put a lid on and blocked unending victory in his life with God.
You see, He was willing to proclaim judgment on the Ninevites, and he did so with pleasure.
“So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city.” Jonah 4:5
It was like he got a bowl of popcorn, sat down, and expected to see the show he’d been wanting to see for a long time!
Nineveh getting their just desserts from God. Watching God blow them off the face of the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah.
He would have been quite satisfied with that ending. But that was not the ending he got. Instead, what happened was that God was merciful to them and withheld His judgment because they repented with sincerity.
And that incensed Jonah.
It says in Jonah 4:1 that Jonah was offended and became furious with God. Then he confronted God:
“Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.” Jonah 4:2
So that’s why he fled.
He knew there was a risk that the Ninevites might repent and God might spare them his judgment, and he couldn’t stand to see them experience God’s mercy.
The same mercy that God showed him when the great fish vomited him out onto dry land.
What are you withholding from God?
The final verse in the book of Jonah is God defending His decision to spare the Ninevites because of their sincere repentance.
It seems that Jonah didn’t care that more than 120,000 people, who were helplessly and hopelessly lost in their sin, repented before God in a historic way, never before seen in a pagan nation.
God was supposed to ignore their pleas for mercy: “Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” Jonah 3:9
He was supposed to turn a deaf ear to their cries and destroy them anyway.
Jonah’s bitterness and resentment toward the Assyrians had created a hard place in his heart that he refused to allow God to deal with.
He said to God, “You can deal with me this far and no further.”
He refused to release his judgment toward them, and that choice left him bitter and self-righteous. But more than that, it left him hard-hearted before God.
As far as we know, Jonah never did enter into the victory and pleasure of God’s presence in the way God wanted, because he put a lid on his spiritual walk with the Lord.
Dear sister, I have a question for you today:
Where have you put a lid on your victory?
Where have you put a lid on your walk with the Lord?
Where have you said the Lord, “I will surrender to you here, but no further”?
What area in your life are you refusing to fully surrender to Christ?
I pray that the story of Jonah will be a sobering lesson to us all of the danger of not living our lives fully and completely surrendered to the Lord.
May we not harden our hearts today.
May we live lives of complete submission to His Word and His ways in our lives so that, like Job, we can walk in victory and joy in the presence of the Lord!
