The Jonah Show: Don’t Try This at Home (Part 1 of 2)

1.  Disclaimer

“Don’t try this at home” is a popular catchphrase from the 1980s and 1990s.  It is the usual disclaimer and cautionary intro to TV shows featuring stunts, experiments, or other extreme activities considered dangerous for ordinary viewers, especially children, who might wish to attempt the actions shown.  While it still generally serves that earlier cautionary purpose, it is also deployed humorously in contexts that have little to do with potentially hazardous actions that the amateur viewer might wish to copy.  Here, I offer it as a telling intro to a common Bible story, which many have told from different perspectives.  Let’s call my story The Jonah Show, but remember, don’t try it at home.

2.  Prelude

Prophet Jonah was instructed by God to take a warning to Nineveh, that ancient capital city of the brutal Assyrian Empire that had done much harm to his people, the Jews.  God had a plan, but Jonah had other plans.  Jonah actually boarded an international ship, which gave the general impression of a prophet setting out on one of his holy missions abroad, but he knew that his ship was going in a different direction. Photo trick?  Was Jonah trying to fool anyone?  That was Case Number 1: to hear God so clearly yet choose to go in a different direction from revealed truth.  What was God going to do about this stubborn child?  He promptly sent a storm to intercept him.

That storm was very unusual, and everybody on the ship was troubled.  Their native instincts told them, after much fruitless struggle, that it was ‘bad luck’ brought upon the ship on account of a wrong passenger.  The culprit had to be found.

While every other passenger cried out their lungs, begging the elements for mercy, Jonah found himself a safe corner in the ship and fell heartlessly asleep.  That was enough for anyone to have strangled him in anger.  How could he be so thoughtless when everyone was in terrible panic, and others had lost much goods, all on account of his ‘bad head,’ as they were later to find out!

The passengers and crew began a mystical investigation that ultimately led to Jonah as the bringer of their woes.  The next concern was getting the ship safely to shore with all the passengers alive.  While everybody laboured in the direction of that common goal, Jonah presented a proposal that seemed to mock their sincere concerns.  He asked to be thrown overboard into the raging sea, an appeasing ‘sacrifice’ to the angry waves.  Having heard his story, everyone wondered at his request, but Jonah was resolute on what appeared to be his suicide wish.  He would rather die in the sea than go where God was sending him, as he was later to confess to God in repeated codes of death wishes (Jonah 4:3, 8). “What a petulant child!” God may have wondered to Himself!  That was Case Number 2: to choose to die rather than obey. The mariners had no choice but to comply with his choice.  They threw him out, and the sea was immediately calm, but that was merely the beginning of another chapter.

3.  The Protocols of Heaven

The Father in Heaven took hold of Jonah’s mischievous suicide plan and revised it into a divine agenda. He “prepared a great fish” to transport him to the determined destination.  The fact that the fish had been “prepared” for that mission even before Jonah got into the waters meant that Jehovah had been a step ahead of the naughty Jonah – many steps ahead of him. According to the respectful protocols of Heaven, however, Jonah had to be willing for him to be deployed.  Almighty though God was, He wouldn’t force anyone.  His terms were: “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land” (Isaiah 1:19).  Fast forward: part of the reasons for the massive reception to Jonah’s message was that the preacher had landed not from a ship, as usual, but mysteriously from the mouth of a big fish in the sight of bathers at Nineveh’s shores.  Who dared to argue against the mystery man from the sea with his fiery imminent doom!

Well, trapped in the prison of a fish’s slimy tummy, Jonah had no choice.  He began to beg for his life, promising everything if he was spared.  “Got him at last,” God breathed in relief.  Whatever it had to take, at least God had got him to the point of surrender, and he had signed the “Willingness Form,” to go wherever God wanted him.  God promptly instructed the fish to proceed with Jonah to the place of his assignment.  Once there, “the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (Jonah 2:10, NKJV).  Even fishes hear God, and they obey, unlike stubborn children like Jonah who waste the Father’s precious time.

4.  The Second Chance

Jonah landed on the shores of Nineveh, but God still had to be sure that it was a willing mission; not pressured, not coerced.  After all, Jonah still had the power to say No, and God was going to respect it.  It was not His nature to force anyone.  So, God reopened the file, “And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go …” (Jonah 3:1-2).  Amazing!  A second chance?  After all the time wasted, plus the silliness endured from the man?  Don’t ask me what I would have done to Jonah if I were God.

Probably still upset, Jonah didn’t reply to the “second” gesture of God; he simply drove into town preaching the shortest revival message in recorded history: “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed!”  That sort of sermon didn’t need elaborate lecture notes with the Greek and Hebrew meanings of words.  It gave no option of mercy to the sinners; it just announced their decided doom, and the preacher didn’t seem to care.  If you thought that he was nonchalant, that was your business. He had done his part.  That was what mattered.  No one could thereafter accuse him of not going or not preaching.  The rest was up to God and the people of Nineveh.

Notwithstanding Jonah, God mercifully made the people to hear the options of mercy that the preacher had not offered them.  The city called an immediate general fast, repenting of their sins, the way they knew best.  God was moved.  He pardoned them; but the preacher who had brought about that great revival was grieved and bitterly disappointed.  God was being too soft with sinners, he thought, especially the sinners he didn’t like. He was “very angry” (TLB), “greatly displeased” (NIV), “exceedingly” sad and “angry” with God (NKJV) (Jonah 4:1).  What a preacher!

Jonah had hoped that, somehow, God would side with his petty sentiments and punish Nineveh.  In the corner of his heart, however, he was aware that that was not the God he knew.  God was too merciful to ignore sincere cries, even from the wicked and the wayward (1 Kings 21:27-29).  Himself had just recovered from a terrible tempest and an unusual submarine ride from which he had cried, and God had heard him even though he deserved to die (Jonah 2).

While the preacher was still “very angry” that his mission had been so instantly and so massively successful – which is very strange, and while he was preparing to quickly check out of town to a safe corner on the eastern outskirts from where to properly view his predicted doom fall upon the city, God went to him, but Jonah was not ready to reason.  How dare Jonah!

5.  The Jonah Tantrums

1 This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. 2 So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. 3 Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.”

4 The Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry about this?”

5 Then Jonah went out … (Jonah 4:1-5, New Living Translation).

How dare mortal man question the Almighty God!  Who did Jonah think he was?  Was he claiming to know better than his God?  After all, was he the one who created the people of Nineveh?  A mere employee dictating to his Boss?  This is where our real story starts, but remember, don’t try it at home.

While the city settled their case with God, Jonah still hoped that his wicked wish would come upon the people.  That would be ‘breaking news’ at his upcoming ministers conference in Joppa; an ‘explosive’ ‘testimony’ for the opening chapter of his next book on Foreign Missions.  Best seller!  While he so dreamed, he secretly dared God to not spoil his plans and make him appear as a failed prophet before a people who had greatly trembled at his message.  Unfortunately, it was not in the nature of God to destroy anyone who had apologised to Him for their sins (Psalm 34:18; 2 Kings 22:19).  Jonah didn’t like that, not especially with Nineveh, even though himself had lately benefited from the same mercies of God when he deserved “hell,” according to his own confession (Jonah 2:2).

God took His time to go to Jonah, but before He could say anything, Jonah began to complain and to throw about his temper tantrums, like a selfish kid at the shopping mall raising an alarm because their mother tasted a bit of the ice cream that was bought for them. God let him talk until he was done.  After his tantrums, God asked him one question: “Is it right for you to be angry about this?” (v.4).  Jonah didn’t answer.  He simply walked away.  He has spoken his mind.  He “went out ….”  He walked out on God to make himself a shelter at the other end of town.  There, he “sat sulking” (v.5, Living Bible).  God had not only patiently indulged the discussion but also watched him walk off.  Don’t try this at home.

What audacity!  How dare Jonah walk out on God!  How dare he not respond when God asked him a question?  How dare Jonah threaten God with his own death if God would not do what he wanted!  And God could take all that nonsense from that spoiled child?  Did you really hear Jonah? “God, wipe them out; and if You won’t do that, kill me now.  Somebody has to die.  So, choose, between me and them; between Your holy prophet and the sinners of Nineveh!”  Putting God in a box!  Jonah enjoyed the mercies of God, but was unprepared to share that Daddy or those mercies with other children of God.  Only he deserved the ice creams of God’s “kindness.”  What a selfish child!  How many bishops would hire and keep a pastor like Jonah?

Jonah was lucky he was not a member of one of our churches today.  Try that with your General Overseer or Senior Pastor or Papa or Mama, and tell us how you made it out of the church or to the end of the week, especially in some parts of Africa.  But Jonah knew his God: “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm” (Jonah 4:2, NKJV).  Jonah knew his God, and his God knew him well.

From The Preacher’s diary,

December 15, 2025.