MINISTRY IS NOT ABOUT THE MINISTER; IT’S ABOUT GOD.

To read the Bible carefully is to soon expose oneself to a frightening pattern: the worthies of the Bible were fallible men who did things that might shock the members of a drug ring in Chicago. After all, we want our ‘heroes’ to be a cut above the rest of us; we want them to be holy men, raised to a level of sanctify not achieved by us. This attitude makes Christianity very much like the world. We blindly follow our spiritual superstars and pay big bucks and travel many miles to see them. Our infatuation clouds our minds so that we often overlook the fact that these men are just like us, fallible creatures who can be rather ugly. We tend to paint their portraits in gentle colors and neglect the browns and the blacks, the pimples and the blemishes. How we love our heroes and often we make them to be what they are not.

The Bible does no such thing. It presents a painfully honest picture of the lives that are splashed across its pages. No biblical worthy escapes the brutal hand of honesty. We as readers tend to overlook these faults or view them as a rare blemish in an otherwise spotless life. But this betrays in us a gross miscalculation about the depth of sin in every human being. By looking at others that way- especially leaders— we do them a grave disservice. For human pride is so ingrained in us that any accolade or any flattering remark has the potential to build up the pride in the object. Having said all that, let us review the Bible and note how it goes out its way to show us the dark side biblical characters. And let us remember that this undressing of the biblical characters is God’s message to us not to think too highly of others while neglecting His greatness. To be sure, all of the Bible heroes demonstrate that at times they can fall into egregious sin. Abraham, the father of faith? Here we have a man who fears the face of man and who consequently lies about the identity of his wife not once but twice. Gideon? He is a great warrior, or is he? We find him hiding from the Midianites but God finds him and mockingly calls him ‘a mighty man of valor.’ He tests God twice because he doesn’t believe God. He then defeats the Midianites but only by God’s hand. Later on he seems to forget his humble beginnings and, lifted up in pride, loses the support of the nation. He uses his power to accumulate riches and builds an icon that the nation will worship. And the stories could go on. What could be said about Jacob and Samson and David, and Solomon and Uzziah and Hezekiah? Frail, sinful men who have only one thing in common; they were imperfect men who were mightily used by a merciful God.

Of all the chequered lives of our favorite biblical heroes none are more instructive than than the life of the prophet Jonah. His life is a testimony to the truth that the minister of God is not always a godly person who serves God with a pure heart and who ever dwells on that high plain of sanctity. We expect our ministers to be just that. But the Bible constantly reminds us that our leaders are weak, fallible men whose actions and motives are often suspect. Indeed the Bible is not remiss to show us their flaws. God’s intent in all of this is to prevent men from receiving the glory in their service to Him. He uses the weakest of vessels so as to magnify His power. Indeed, God will not share His glory with another. And to magnify His greatness, God will use the most unimpressive vessels in His work. Jonah is perhaps the greatest example of a weak, resistant, ugly servant who God used so that God alone would get the glory.

In the Book of Jonah, the prophet’s ministry is bookended by two glaring acts of failure. Who but God could have written this puzzling script? Written it was to serve as the general pattern of all ministries in history past.

So the story of Jonah begins with the prophet’s RESISTANCE. He goes on an epic journey in the wrong direction. God tells Jonah to go east and he purposely hops a ship going directly west. This is not the case of a bad sense of direction but a bad heart. His pride then takes over. He is self- satisfied that he has outwitted God and lies down to sleep in the belly of the ship - even as it battles the Mediterranean’s version of Katrina.

But Jonah has fooled no one, and certainly not God. The author symbolically points out that Jonah’s ‘escape’ from God is not really a deceptive ascent into cleverness but a hopeless descent into dark places. Sin always moves us downward to places of inextricable danger. Thus we note Jonah’s DESCENSION. It is no mistake that the author says Jonah went “down to Joppa” (1:3a), “down into the ship” (1:3b), and “down into the lowest parts of the ship” (1:5). Later on Jonah will go all the way into the belly of a fish which Jonah likened to being in Sheol and the deep (chapter 2). The way of sin is always downward. It leads us into places from which there is no escape. Only God can rescue us from it as Jonah found out (see 2:6).

This leads the great turning point in the story, God’s INTERVENTION. Is not this the great story of the Bible? Man gets into irreversible trouble and God comes in grace and power and does the impossible. If we follow the verbs in the story we see that God has been active from beginning to end. As in the Book of Esther, His name lurks behind the curtain … but He is clearly there. In 1:4 we learn that God “sent out a great wind on the sea.” Storms do not arise by chance or natural causes alone. God raises up storms, catches falling sparrows, names the stars. While men are freely exercising their wills (sleeping in the ship, rowing hard, praying) God is behind the stage pulling the strings of human activity. In verse 17 we learn that God “prepared a great fish.” What this fish was, no one knows. But this we do know; a huge sea creature obeyed the voice of God and swam right up to Jonah’s battered ship as a maritime taxi cab, waiting to whisk Jonah away. Later in the story we learn that God prepared a shady tree for Jonah, and a vehement east wind and and a worm. All this shows us that Jonah’s ministry was really God’s ministry. God had control of everything from beginning to end. The story of Jonah is about God’s intervention in every ministry.

Jonah has now reached rock bottom. But God has Him where He wants Him. He has driven Jonah to despair to the place where Jonah must cry out in desperation. He has arrived at the place of REPENTANCE. Jonah has nowhere to go but to watch his body dissolve in the gastric juices of a large fish. No scenario could envision an escape. Jonah is done. All he has left is a cry for help and a God who is by nature merciful. And let me say that a minister who has not come to this place cannot minister effectively. Desperation leading to repentance is the foundation for any ministry. It is only the empty hand that can plug into the power of God. So Jonah prays… he cries… he repents. Prayer is the handmaiden of repentance; they fit together like a hand and glove. Jonah acknowledges his desperate plight. He vows to change direction. He turns away from self to the temple. His desire is to sacrifice to God if he ever gets free (2:9). Jonah who thought he was in control of his life now admits that God is in control. So he cries, and so God saves.

God now does what He does best. He pulls Jonah out of the fish’s belly and commissions him again. What! A second chance to this rogue minister? Yes. Welcome to God’s world. Now we come to Jonah’s RESTORATION. What Christian has not experienced this most delightful feeling? ‘I have screwed up royally and God is willing to use me again?’ The God of the second chance is the God every minister must serve. The pattern always flows according to this pattern. We willfully run from God. We are humbled. We cry out. And God restores us. That is the point of the book. God is gracious and He uses messed up people to demonstrate His grace.

So Jonah heeds the call, and preaches a message that is hardly what we would call gospel. But lo and behold the entire city repents en masse. But alas, the man who should be praising the magnanimity of his God is not happy. In fact he is rather sour. Jonah is back to his old tricks. Does sin ever stop? The man who began the story running from God still has a heart of RESISTANCE. Oh, and I thought we were done with this aspect of Jonah’s ministry. Resistance again? Hasn’t the man learned anything? Let us say it here that the Christian minister will battle the flesh all the days of his ministry and if he doesn’t carefully guard his heart the old nature can return in vengeance at any moment. Yet we believe this is a great gift of God to the minister. Such failures protect the minister from the minister. The return of old sins has a humbling effect that keeps the servant of God low and less sanguine about his own abilities. More importantly, it keeps him looking upward for God’s help. No ministry has ever succeeded when the minister operated out of a stodgy, self-sufficient spirit. So it was with Jonah. God has brought him great success in the conversion of a heathen city. But at that very moment his old polluted nature, his grumpy, restrictive, heart comes to the surface. That man who repented in the belly of the fish had long taken a vacation. Jonah now harrumphs with disgust at he sits on a mountain overlooking the city waiting for God to strike the inhabitants with vengeance. His own evil will has taken over and the will of God is suppressed. Such is the life history of every minister.

And so who gets the glory?

The answer to that question is found at the end of the book. The book of Jonah does not end with Jonah but with LESSONS ABOUT GOD. Two things are highlighted about God. First we see that God is ever in control of all situations, even a rogue minister. In kindness God erects a shady tree for Jonah so that he won’t burn up. We love that aspect of God until we read next that He raises up an insignificant worm to destroy the plant that afforded Jonah comfort. And to make matters worse God then ushers in a hot sirocco to make the prophet’s life even more miserable (4:6,7,8). All this is to show us that God is ever in control of every minister and every ministry. He can bless it; He can hinder it; He can make his labor easy; He can make his labor hard; He can bring success; He can bring failure. This confuses the reader at first. But as Job once said, “God gives and God takes away.” God is completely sovereign over every aspect of life, especially in our ministry. That is the first lesson.

The second lesson is about God’s never ending grace. What a beautiful offsetting truth to God’s sovereignty. He controls all things, yes. But His overall inclination, the way He employs His sovereignty, is to give grace to a fallen human race. Just as Jonah had pity in his heart for a silly, shady bush, so God reveals His heart of compassion for human beings, even those who are at their worst. We learn through Jonah that God has always loved sinners no matter how we may personally feel about them. So the book ends with great hope. Hope for heathens who raise their fists to heaven. Hope for the minister who now understands that God uses weak, sinful, useless, clumsy, resistant, biased, instruments to achieve His will. Hope for the reader who sees that the God who is in control of everything desires most to show His mercy.

On that note the story ends. We do not know what happens to Jonah. And why should we? Jonah is not the hero. Did he prophesy again? Perhaps. Did he retire and sulk for the rest of his days? Maybe. Did he become a plumber? You get the point. As Jonah’s life decreases what we are left with is a God who saves a vile city. And that, dear reader, is all we need. So reader if you are not saved, God can save you. If you think that God is against you, think again. If you boast in your ministry, read Jonah. Everything is about God and about His saving the worst of the worst, even His ministers. And God will always get the glory. He used Jonah and He can use you. Amen.