A God who loves surprises.

Jonah, Part 4: God has a penchant for employing screw-ups to proclaim his faithful love for fools and failures.

Photo by Jesse Schoff on Unsplash

Jonah is a book that is full of surprises. Like a great “whodunnit” mystery novel, Jonah keeps you guessing. For example, instead of Yahweh’s chosen prophet going where he is commanded, he runs away; instead of being swallowed by the raging breakers of the Mediterranean, he’s swallowed by a divinely appointed fish. And that’s just the first two chapters! The surprises in Jonah’s story escalate as the narrative unfolds. Indeed, rather than being discarded in the scrap heap of other failed prophets, Jonah is given a second chance to follow God’s will; and rather than being annihilated like Sodom and Gomorrah for all the evils they had inflicted on humanity, Nineveh is redeemed.

This just goes to show that God has a particular fondness for surprising his children. What we often expect God to do he doesn’t do, and this is true right from the very beginning. Instead of casting our first parents into oblivion for their blatant disobedience, he gives them a promise that their rebellion will be rectified by his own doing (Gen. 3:15). From there, the story of the Bible continues to be a series of surprises. The apostle Paul expresses this with incandescent precision when he reminds the Corinthians that in God’s peculiar wisdom, he has chosen “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” and “what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).

Nevertheless, God’s penchant for surprises is on full display in Jonah 3, as this portion of the narrative contains some of the “most surprising” surprises in the entire Bible. Although the attention is often given to the prodigal prophet finally obeying or to the awful people actually repenting, the greater focus of this surprising part of the story ought to be given to God himself.

We have a God who employs screw-ups.

It is the way of God to use those who have made a mess of their lives to be his representatives. There are several examples of this throughout Scripture, for example: Moses the runaway murderer was chosen to lead Israel out of Egyptian bondage; David the murderer and adulterer was selected to be the progenitor through whom the promised Messiah would come; Peter the disciple with a never-ending case of foot-in-mouth disease was chosen to be a chief voice in the establishment of Christ’s church. The list of those who’ve torpedoed their lives only to be miraculously employed in the service of God’s will and wisdom is extensive, to say the least. But there is almost no better example of this than Jonah himself.

There is something obvious that occurs right as Chapter 3 begins. After the events of the first two chapters, we are right back where started, with God’s Word coming to Jonah and summoning him to preach (Jonah 3:1–2; cf. 1:1–2). The only difference is that instead of running, he obeys. “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord” (Jonah 3:3). With Yahweh’s words on his lips and in his heart, the very people who were deemed unworthy of hearing or receiving the word of the Lord are now being invited to call upon the name of the Lord in faith and repentance. The only difference is that Jonah is now unabashedly aware that he is just as unworthy of that message himself. His sojourn in the gastric juices of “some great fish” did a number on his ego (at least for a while), forcing him to fess up to all the ways he had screwed up the opportunity God had given him.

But instead of jettisoning Jonah, God gives him a second chance. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time” (Jonah 3:1, emphasis mine). This, of course, is who God is. The heartbeat of the Bible lets us know that ours is a God of the second, third, and tenth chance. He’s not a one-strike-and-you’re-out kind of deity. Rather, because he is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Exod. 34:6), he patiently works in us and with us, until we come to grips with the fact that his ways are best. More often than not, this means God has to graciously suplex us until we realize that. This is who Jonah was introduced to when he received the call to preach after having spent the night in a whale’s belly. God, you see, has a surprising penchant for employing screw-ups to proclaim his faithful love for fools and failures.

We have a God who emancipates super-villains.

The general conception of the Assyrians in those days was that they were the worst of the worst; they were the “terrorists of the ancient world,” with a litany of accounts that can barely be repeated. The conquests and exploits of the Assyrians are mostly unmentionable due to the amount of cruelty and brutality they inflicted on their enemies (rivaled only by Genghis Khan, perhaps). This is what makes it so surprising when these “super-villains” of the ancient world are brought to their knees through nothing but the Word:

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. (Jonah 3:4–5)

The five words preserved from Jonah’s sermon give us the gist of his proclamation to the Ninevites, which makes it all the more remarkable that everyone in that city repented, “from the greatest of them to the least of them” (Jonah 3:5–9). Historians and academics have spent a great deal of time debating whether or not the repentance of Nineveh was genuine, especially in light of Nahum’s prophecy, in which the same city of Nineveh is put on blast for their apparent rebellion (Nah. 2:13). It is, indeed, jarring to go from “sackcloth and ash” to “I am against you.” But, perhaps, less so once we remember that the same citizens who were reformed by the Book of the Law were soon after overtaken by the Babylonians because of their waywardness (2 Kings 22—25). All of which to say that the reasons to question what occurred in Nineveh in the days of Jonah are thin, at best. (Jesus thought so, too.)

Nevertheless, through Jonah’s preaching and God’s prompting, the Ninevites are brought to their knees in a kingdom-wide show of contrition. “The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them” (Jonah 3:5). To sit in “sackcloth and ashes” was a physical sign of intense mourning or repentance, with sackcloth being an incredibly uncomfortable textile. The irritation and lowliness of “sackcloth and ashes” were meant to demonstrate one’s guilt and lowliness of heart, corresponding to a genuine movement of repentance throughout this Assyrian metropolis, down to their words of fragile hope. “Who knows?” the king of Nineveh says, “God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish” (Jonah 3:9).

“Who knows,” of course, is not meant to cast doubt on God’s inclination to be merciful. Rather, it is a recognition that they have zero ground on which to stand to argue for their acceptance by him. They can only put their hopes in the fact that God will be gracious to them and — surprise, surprise! — he is (Jonah 3:10). Despite Nineveh’s apparent negligence of this moment in succeeding generations, don’t let this distract you from this surprising moment when super-villains are saved. The ones thought to be irredeemable and “too far gone” are treated with mercy, patience, and steadfast love. This is who God is; the Bible tells me so: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).

The Bible is a book of good news, which is nothing but the announcement that there is no one outside the saving scope of God’s redemption in Christ Jesus. There is no depth of sin that the cross cannot sound nor is there any mire of sin too thick to wade through. Your sin and mine, along with the sins of the whole world, are covered and canceled in the saving death of Jesus. What’s more, the glory of heaven constitutes a reunion of victims and super-villains who have been made into the family of God by the blood of God’s Son.

We have a God who embodies salvation.

There has been no shortage of debate over how to interpret and understand the meaning of verse 10, specifically the phrase “God relented.” “When God saw what they did,” it is reported, “how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). The Hebrew word for “relent,” here, is used in over 100 other instances throughout the Old Testament, the majority of which occur in the context of “changing your mind.” As a result, the word “relent” can also be translated as “repent” or “regret.” In fact, in some translations of the Bible, that’s exactly how verse ten reads: “And God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them” (KJV, emphasis mine). This sounds odd, doesn’t it? God, repenting? This isn’t the only time this phrasing appears in connection with the Lord either.

In Genesis 6, when the Godhead notices “that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” we are told that “the Lord regretted [or repented] that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6), after which, of course, the whole earth was swallowed up in a deluge of watery judgment. Thousands of years later, after a series of events that saw King Saul abandon or ignore the clear word of Yahweh, the Lord himself declares, “I regret [or repent] that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me” (1 Sam. 15:11). Though there are other similar occasions that occur in Scripture, these are the two most notable outside of Jonah’s prophecy.

What’s going on here? Is it right to say that “God repented” of something? Can God the Father really regret something he has done or put into motion? Can God change his mind? Well, the short answer is no. God is categorically unchangeable in every single degree. There is not an ounce of change or variation in God Almighty (James 1:17) nor has there ever been an instance of God “changing his mind.” Back in 1 Samuel 15, after King Saul is told by the prophet Samuel that his kingdom would be torn from his fingers, he is also told, “The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret” (1 Sam. 15:29). In one chapter, therefore, we read of how the Lord regrets making Saul king and, at the same time, that he doesn’t have any regrets at all. So, what gives?

To be sure, there is no discrepancy in any of these seemingly contradictory passages. From our perspective, there are several times when it appears as though God has somehow changed. This is especially true of the scene in Nineveh. He’s gone from disaster to deliverance. The thing he was going to do, he did not do. But the truth is, God hasn’t changed one bit. It’s the sinners who’ve changed. If there’s ever any change in any part of our lives, we’re the ones who’ve undergone a change, not him. “When God is said to change his mind,” notes John L. Mackay, “matters are viewed from our human perspective. It appears to us that there has been a change in God, but what has in fact changed is our human conduct” (59). God never changes (Mal. 3:6). He is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). He remains who he always has been, forever. He is who he is for all eternity. And who is he? Who is our God? As he himself proclaims:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation. (Exod. 34:6–7; cf. Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13)

It can’t be overstated how important this revelation is. God has taken it upon himself to tell us over and over and over again exactly who he is: he is a God who is bursting with patience, mercy, and forgiveness for the very worst of the worst. He is a God who is gushing with salvation. That’s who he is and that’s who he’ll always be. God has put this revelation on repeat in his Word and he’s even put skin and bone to this revelation in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. The renowned orator and theologian G. Campbell Morgan once put it like this:

Christ did not come to persuade God to love us, but to show us that God never ceased to love us. He did not come to make God change His mind; He came to make me change my mind, and to tell me that when I turn back to God, God is far more than halfway to meet me . . . for God in Christ came all the way to the far country to find me. (7.125)

When the Lord comes walking on this earth, in the flesh, we are made to see a God who exudes salvation come as close as possible to the likes of you and me. He comes close to sinners and offers them salvation from sin and death because he himself has atoned for all of our sins by surrendering to death himself.

We have a God who enjoys showing us himself.

This is our God. He shows us who he is in word and deed, both of which cannot be questioned. Unlike us, God doesn’t change. “God is not man, that he should lie,” the troubled prophet Balaam declares, “or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23:19). The character and demeanor of Yahweh is revealed to be one that always tends toward salvation, not judgment. His just judgment is holy, true, and certain, but it is not what he desires. It is not his delight. The prophet Jeremiah puts it as plain as day:

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’” (Jer. 18:5–11)

This offer isn’t just for Israel, it’s for every sinner who repents and believes (1 Kings 8:46–51) because that’s just who our God is. And he never changes nor does he change his mind about you. Although you and I waver and waffle constantly, he never does. He is constant in his pursuit of us. God never ceases to surprise us with a posture of grace that’s always ready to embrace us and receive us as one of his own. Therefore, when we repent and turn back to him (Acts 3:19–20), as the gospel beckons us to do, we are made to realize that God has never changed, not even the tiniest bit. God will never change his mind about you, sinner, because in Christ his mind is already made up.

Works cited:

John L. Mackay, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah: God’s Just Demands, Focus on the Bible Commentary Series (Ross-shire, England: Christian Focus, 2019).

G. Campbell Morgan, The Westminster Pulpit: The Preaching of G. Campbell Morgan, Vols. 1–10 (Fincastle, VA: Scripture Truth Book Co., 1954).