Perfect Theology
"Why is this in the trash?" My wife reached into the trash can, pulled out the paper she saw, and then placed it in the recycling bin. I didn't have a good answer, but I did think back to what I'd said in public. Just months earlier, I'd organized a large ministry event where Christians had discussed the importance of caring for God's creation. It was much easier to talk about being good stewards of God's world than to change my habits.
I thought the sailors cast lots because they were pagan, but this was a normal way to seek God's will in Israel. Proverbs 16:33 teaches, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD." Jonah knows what God wants but doesn't want to do it. Yet without any special word from the Lord, the sailors have deduced that the storm is a deity's punishment, and now they want to identify who to hold responsible. Without realizing it, they are cooperating with God, who points the lots at Jonah. In the middle of a storm that threatens to break their boat apart, the sailors have urgent questions for him. They need to know as much as possible about him to find out which god is angry with him. Jonah's answer appears truthful, but it's evasive and misleading. They ask five questions, but he only answers four of them. Jonah doesn't tell them that his business is to work as a prophet—the information the sailors would most want to know. He claims to worship the Lord, but when the sailors were praying, Jonah was sleeping. He knows the Lord made the sea and dry land—the two scenes that alternate in the book—but he is defying God in both places. Paul warned Titus about those who "claim to know God, but they deny him by their works" (Titus 1:16). Perhaps Jonah was sincere and didn't see the contradiction between his words and his actions. Or perhaps he's haughtily saying, "Unlike you pagans, I worship the true God." Either way, even after God's approved method of finding the guilty party has told everyone that Jonah is at fault, he's still trying to control the narrative.
Why do you think Jonah doesn't tell them he's a prophet?
How do you make sense of the pagan sailors showing more interest in God than Jonah?
What's one thing you believe about God that hasn't changed how you live?
This week, ask one friend who isn't a Christian, "What do you believe about God?" (Don't ask it to set up an opportunity to preach to them, but to understand how their beliefs shape their lives).