Jonah 3:1-4 – A Straight Stroke with a Crooked Stick

In chapter 1, Jonah fled from God. In chapter 2, he turned back to God in prayer. Now in chapter 3, he returned to the work God had originally given him. The text Jonah 3:1-4 focuses on God’s restoration of Jonah, the prophet’s renewed obedience, and the way God uses imperfect messengers to proclaim His perfect Word. If Jonah is a prophet of God, why did he rebel against God in the first place? Nineveh was a major Assyrian city, and just like any pagan city, they are characterized by their religion. According to the historical records, they are notoriously cruel. They worshipped Ishtar, a goddess of war, sex, and fertility. According to their texts, she is protective, possessive, intense, impulsive, aggressive, jealous, erotic, and destructive. Did Jonah have every right to hate Nineveh? Yes. Is Jonah’s fear of the city also understandable? Yes, any man would have. Jonah was being sent as an Israelite prophet into a foreign and potentially hostile city to proclaim divine judgment. It is easy for us Christians to condemn Jonah as cowardly while ourselves being afraid to speak openly about the gospel even to neighbors, friends, or acquaintances. Jonah, therefore, is a man that reflects ordinary believers. And Jonah shows the sins of an ordinary believer as any of us would have.

Nevertheless, God did not leave Jonah in rebellion. By God’s grace, Jonah’s severe affliction in the sea and in the belly of the fish became a divine discipline that humbled him and brought him back to God. Look at 2 Corinthians 7:9–10, where Paul distinguishes godly sorrow leading to repentance from worldly sorrow leading to death. The pain brought repentance in Jonah. See Psalms 119:67 and 119:71, “Before I was afflicted I went astray,” and “It is good for me that I was afflicted.” God uses painful discipline to expose sin, break stubbornness, and restore His people, as Calvin says, “nothing is better for us than to be humbled under God’s hand,” It is a mercy from God that He even cares to humble us.

But would you trust a prophet that committed sins? I say, we don’t even trust a man that can’t speak eloquently, let alone a man who doesn’t seem to be perfect. God could have forgiven Jonah while removing him from his prophetic office, but instead He commissioned him again. Peter denied Christ and was restored. He later faced Paul’s public rebuke, yet he continued in his office. Moses suffered serious consequences for his sin but continued to minister until the end of his life. Jeremiah, after allowing his complaint to cross into an improper questioning of God, was told, “If you return, then I will restore you,” and was again commissioned to serve as God’s spokesman in Jeremiah 15:19. Ministers are not sinless men. Scripture establishes qualifications for church officers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, so restoration cannot become an excuse for tolerating disqualifying or unrepentant sin. Yet we must also avoid seeing pastors as if they can’t sin. Or as they ought to be perfect. Those are destructive to the churches, and we are stepping over the bounds the grace God has given us. Ministers need accountability, repentance, forgiveness, and continuing sanctification just as other Christians do. God uses sinners to proclaim His message. Jonah is a “crooked stick,” yet God is able to draw a straight line with him.

This crooked stick is called back to the prophetic ministry, “proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.” Jonah is God’s herald. Or as Jeremy 15:19 says above, spokesman, which literally means “mouth” in Hebrew. His responsibility is therefore not to insert his will into the message but to transmit faithfully what God gives him. This principle goes the same for preaching. A pastor is called to a prophetic ministry of preaching. He must therefore resist the temptation to twist, soften, omit, add to, silence, overemphasize, or deemphasize portions of Scripture according to personal preference or fear of the audience. The preacher’s authority does not originate in himself; he has authority only insofar as he faithfully declares the Word entrusted to him.

Whereas Jonah was struck with fear of Nineveh, with the renewed obedience, Jonah has found a renewed fear in God. In Chapter 1, he fled. But now we see in 3:3, “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.” Many modern commentaries that observe Jonah’s journey of one day in a city that is three day’s worth (circumference of the city), and his message that is only five words in Hebrew, use them as evidence that he preached halfheartedly. However, when we look at Jonah’s immediate obedience and the rapid response of Nineveh emphasize the power of God working through a plain message. He did according to the word of the Lord. He arose immediately in obedience. Even in his extraordinarily simple message, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown,” it contains the message God has given to Jonah. “proclamation which I am going to tell you.” Charles Spurgeon notes,

His message was short and sharp, there was not a word of mercy in it. There was nothing to distract the attention of the hearers from the one point and the one subject ; and there is a great deal in that. We may sometimes say too much in a single sermon, and give our hearers a field of wheat instead of a loaf of bread. But Jonah said what he was bidden to say, no more and no less: “ Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

It contained nothing distracting from its central subject. Jonah simply delivered what he had been commanded to say—“no more and no less.” Again, this is a valuable lesson for churches today: faithfulness does not require rhetorical brilliance or eloquence on every occasion. We are always concerned about how we sound, possessing perfect knowledge, or being perceived favorably. Like Jonah, we need to demonstrate that obedience as God’s mouth consists simply in declaring clearly what God has said.

Jonah is not just a Sunday school story for children. It is an account of a story that addresses our failures and weaknesses. God’s grace is able not merely to forgive but also to restore and use sinful people. At the same time, it warns where we place our fear. It warns us about our temptations to silence and twist the proclamation of God’s Word. Our calling is simple and straightforward: faithfully declare God’s truth and the gospel entrusted to us. Sure, knowledge and how we word needs to continue to grow, but perfection is not a prerequisite. God draws a straight line with a crooked stick. God uses sinners to humble us, and humble those who hear his message.