Jonah, Revival and Discipleship

This was written by my lovely wife Natalie
While reading Ray Bakke’s A Theology as Big as the City, I was stunned by an observation he made concerning Jonah’s preaching and the nature of lasting revival. He begins by attributing Jonah’s hesitation to preach God’s message of salvation to the people of Ninevah to his deep patriotism. In Jonah’s time, Ninevah was a city of violence and bloodshed and an enemy of God’s people Israel, with the Assyrian empire eventually carrying the Northern Tribe into captivity. In fact, Ninevah continued to rage against Israel until their own downfall at the hands of the Babylonians in 612 BC. So, Jonah logically assumed that his enemies, the Ninevahites, were also God’s enemies. Considering the way God dealt with Israel’s enemies in the past, Jonah firmly believed that God would and should destroy Ninevah. Imagine his surprise when God calls him to take his message of mercy and salvation to that bloody and hated city! Imagine his disappointment when he realizes that God is choosing to deal with Ninevah according to his mercy rather than wiping them out! Jonah, though he disagrees with it, knows that what God purposes He will do. If God says he will have mercy on Ninevah, He will have mercy on Ninevah. Poor disappointed Jonah! He would have gladly carried a message of doom to those people, but not one of salvation. Where is the justice in that? So, Jonah takes a boat as far from Ninevah as possible, but of course God, with the help of a fish, brings Jonah to city he hates, the very city God has chosen for salvation.
The observation Bakke makes about Jonah’s preaching is what really caught my attention. He says that Jonah brought only half of the gospel to Ninevah. He wandered the streets of the city barking a message of damnation. “Forty days and this city will be destroyed!” Where is the message of mercy and salvation? Where is the good news answer to this message of damnation? Jonah conveniently omits that part. I can imagine him shouting “destruction is upon you” hoping against hope that it would come to pass. To the very end, even on day 39, maybe Jonah was still crossing his fingers that God would rain fire and hail down on the city as he watched from the shade of his tree on the hill outside the city. But, God will have mercy on those whom He has chosen. As a result of Jonah’s preaching, the greatest revival in history before Pentecost took place among a Gentile nation, even one of the most feared enemies of Israel. God completely turned that entire city around. Ninevah became a God-fearing, Jehovah worshipping city in just over one month! Of course, Jonah continues in his disappointment, basically saying to God, “I knew it! I knew you would do this!”
So, we leave Jonah, still simmering over Ninevah’s salvation and we come to the prophet Nahum about 100 years after Ninevah’s revival. Without reading the book of Nahum one might think that Nahum’s message to Ninevah might be one of encouragement or at most one of exhortation to continue to walk in the ways of the one true God who saved their entire city not too long ago. But, surprisingly we find that through Nahum, God is now announcing a message of complete destruction to the people of Ninevah. No questions asked. Destruction, period. I’m sure Jonah was in heaven at the time asking why Nahum got to carry that message instead of him. The question that naturally comes to mind is “What happened?” This is a city that just one generation before experienced the greatest revival of Old Testament times, and now the children and grandchildren of those who were saved have, by this time, offended God to such an extent that He has determined to destroy them for good. Where was the miss? Shouldn’t a revival of that magnitude have effects that last beyond just one generation?
The key, according to Bakke, lies in Jonah’s message. Remember, Jonah only carried half the message to Ninevah. He didn’t experience God’s heart of love and compassion for those people. He preached doom, saw God save the whole city, and left disappointed that the Ninevahites escaped judgement. The Ninevahites experienced revival without follow-up. Jonah certainly was not going to volunteer to stay among the Ninevahites and instruct them in the ways of the God who saved them. One of the greatest revivals in history was snuffed out in one generation because it was a revival without discipleship. What began very well, fizzled out because the people did not know how to or missed the importance of passing God’s message down to their children and grandchildren. Jonah and Nahum is a lesson to all of God’s people called to take his message of salvation to the world. First, God is not a patriot. Second, revival cannot be sustained without discipleship.