This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 5: “Excuses to Avoid Mission”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The lesson tries to show that God was trying to make Jonah love people instead of seeing that God is revealing His own love .
- Jonah’s problem was not racism or nationalism but lack of trust in God and His words.
- The story of Jonah is not a moral instruction for Adventists.
Once again, the real point of the story of Jonah is obscured by the fact that adventism is not Christian. Because it has a liberal view of the Bible, not considering it to be the inerrant word of God but instead believing it has mistakes that must be interpreted away for today, it can’t see the real message of Jonah.
This book is not an example of Jonah’s worldview and of God’s making him love as He does.
To be sure, Jonah appeared to hate the people of Nineveh. The Assyrians’ reputation preceded them; they were cruel and violent. Yet God sent a Jewish prophet all the way to Assyria, north even of Syria, with a call to repent. Furthermore, they did repent.
God did for this nation what only He could do; He opened their hearts to see who He was and to trust Him.
Even though this miracle happened in the capital of Assyria, still this nation later invaded the northern kingdom Israel and took them captive.
Contrary to the Teachers Comments, Jonah’s problem was not “feelings of national pride” or of necessarily feeling “that he was better than others.”
Contrary to the Teachers Comments, Jonah’s problem was not “feelings of national pride” or of necessarily feeling “that he was better than others.”
Jonah was an Israelite, and part of the Mosaic law said that he was to be separate from the nations. He was not to fraternize with them. This call to preach to Nineveh was asking Jonah to trust God and to do what He asked without understanding the full background story.
Like Eve in the garden, Jonah’s job was to obey what God said even though he didn’t understand the fulness of the outcome.
In obedience comes insight, and Jonah resists understanding what God was revealing to him by refusing to preach.
Furthermore, his being thrown overboard when the sea churned into a storm does not mean he believed the pagan ideas that the sea demons demanded a sacrifice. Rather, he knew that the storm was from God, and he knew that he was the cause of this judgment from God. Jonah knew the God of Israel, and he wasn’t reacting to demons by asking to be thrown overboard. Instead, he was reacting according to the way the Mosaic law functioned. He knew he was guilty, and he knew he deserved the punishment.
The surprise for him was not dying in that fish! He acknowledged his sin as he prayed from the fish’s belly.
The Teachers Comments say this:
The question at the end of the book of Jonah is one for us to ask ourselves and our churches. Do we demonstrate a love for the communities around us, especially for its members who look different from us or come from other parts of the world? All too often, I have heard conversations in church or in Sabbath School that reveal prejudices and harmful ethnocentric attitudes. These attitudes are often accompanied by excuses for why certain groups of people fall outside our mission. Such thinking is no different from the mindset of Jonah.
This paragraph misses the point. Jonah does not end with a moral lesson nor is it teaching ethnocentric sensibilities. This is what the last two verses of Jonah say:
Then Yahweh said, “You had pity on the plant for which you did not work and [which] you did not cause to grow, which came to be overnight and perished overnight. So should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know [the difference] between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (Jonah 4:10-11 LSB).
Clearly God was not asking Jonah to love like Him. While that would be a great goal, the purpose of this book was to demonstrate that God was revealing Himself even to gentile nations who were hostile to Him and His people, and He was using His people to do the work.
God surprisingly even asked Jonah if He shouldn’t have compassion on not only the 120,000 persons in Nineveh but also on all their animals?
God’s care wasn’t just for people; it extended even to the animals.
God was showing Jonah who He is, and He was showing him that His compassion extends beyond even the boundaries set by the law itself.
God gave Israel the law and intended that the Jews keep themselves separate from the pagan nations. Yet God also loved the cruel pagans as well as their animals. They were all His creatures, and His intention has always been to extend salvation to all people through the Abrahamic covenant promises.
We misread Jonah if we see a moral, shaming command to go and share “the gospel” with everyone, even those we hate. While that message might not be wrong itself, the point is much deeper.
Adventism does not have the gospel. It is a false gospel, a false religion, and its proselytizing brings people into a dark religion that binds their consciences.
Adventism does not have the gospel. It is a false gospel, a false religion, and its proselytizing brings people into a dark religion that binds their consciences.
The call in Jonah is to trust God and to do what He asks even without understanding all the reasons. We have to trust God more than we trust our own heads. His word is our “command”. We have to believe it means what it says.
This book is not a call to do more works of evangelism. It is a call to give up what we believe and love the most for the sake of trusting God and allowing His word to direct us.
If we trust Him and His word, we will find that much of what we thought was truth isn’t, and we will discover that the Lord Jesus IS the fulfillment of the law and the One who deserves our repentance and all the loyalty of our hearts. †
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