Some have tried to suggest that the book of Jonah is either an allegory or a parable and that we are not meant to understand it as a report of actual historical events. But Jonah was an actual historical figure. He is mentioned by name in 2 Kings 14:25 as having lived in or before the days of Jeroboam II of Israel.

Speaking of Jeroboam II, the Bible says that he restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher. (2 Kings 14:25).

Jonah is a book about God. Everyone and everything that God touches obeys...

• The Storm
• The Sailors
• The Fish
• Nineveh
• The Plant
• The Worm
• The East Wind

Everyone obeyed except for the preacher. Have you ever told God, "No"? Perhaps you didn’t do it on the outside, but if you were honest, you were saying, "No" on the inside.

 JONAH 1 -- THE PROPHET WHO RAN FROM GOD

Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians lived along the banks of the Tigris River as it flowed down from Upper Mesopotamia. Theirs was an ancient empire. But the Assyrians had not remained within the borders of their homeland. They were an aggressive, warrior race and they had often conducted raids southward to the very borders of Israel.

Jonah’s mission was like a modern Jew being sent to Adolph Hitler or to Saddam Hussein. The Assyrians were the Nazis of the ancient world. They were known for their terror-tactics. They could conquer a city and gouge out eyes and cut off arms and legs and then they would get down to serious torture.

The Assyrians were a bad people. Even God said that. He said that "their wickedness has come up before Me."

This was the people to whom Jonah was sent. He was to speak to them about the Lord. This is a book with a missionary theme. It tells us that God has a heart for missions. He had one Son and He was a missionary. Jesus was the most cross-cultural missionary of all time. He crossed from heaven to earth.

Jonah was told to go. He went, but he went in the wrong direction. Instead of heading to Nineveh, he got on a boat heading for Tarshish.

Jonah knew God’s will. But he did not obey it. There is a lesson here. It is that knowing God’s will is not enough. Having the correct theology is not enough. Knowing requires doing.

Here is the principle. Obey the obvious; trust the Lord for the obscure.

Jonah does the opposite. He goes down to Joppa and gets on a ship going to Tarshish. We aren’t exactly sure where Tarshish was, but we do know that it was in the opposite direction. The Jews were landlubbers. For a Jew to get on a ship for ANY reason was serious business. There was only one people who avoided the ocean more than the Jews. It was the Assyrians. The Assyrian Empire crossed mountains and deserts, but they never crossed an ocean.

Did you ever notice how pagans get spiritual when they face troubled times? These sailors did that. They recognized that this storm was not normal. It had come about as a direct result of Jonah’s sin.

There is a lesson here. It is that sin affects more than merely the sinner. A believer who is in sin brings grief to others. These sailors were in the midst of a storm only because of their association with a sinning believer named Jonah. This was illustrated in the case of Joshua and the Israelites at Ai. They suffered a great defeat because of the sin of one man.

Proverb 16:33 tells us that the lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the LORD. This is not to say that God always honors such a method, but He did in this case.

Notice that the men knew of the fact that Jonah was fleeing from the presence of the LORD. Didn’t he know about God’s omnipresence? Did he not know that it was impossible to escape from the presence of God? I think he did. But he was in a state of rebellion against God.

It is doubtful that Jonah knew how to swim. He was planning to drown. He was prepared to die so that these men in the boat could live. In this he is a picture of Christ who died in our place. And as Jonah was three days and three nights in the fish, so also Christ was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Some have found this fish story a bit hard to swallow. But the God of the universe is able to do things much more difficult than that. Which is harder?

• What you learn in the light will be valuable in the darkness. Jonah did not start reading these Psalms while in the belly of the fish. He didn’t have any copies of the Scriptures with him and certainly no reading lamp was available. Jonah remembered the prayers from the Scriptures and he put them to good use.

• You can pray anywhere. God was able to hear the prayer of Jonah, even from the belly of a great fish.

The psalm presented in this chapter is one of the most humorous in the Scriptures. The humor comes from the fact that the standardized (even clicheic) language of Hebrew psalmody is now given a literal meaning.

• In 2:1 where Jonah says, "I cried for help from the depth of Sheol," the phrase is literally "belly of sheol" and recalls that he is actually in something’s belly.
• Jonah 2:4 has him complaining that he is driven from God’s sight (I have been expelled from Thy sight), which is exactly what he had tried--and failed--to do.
• The phrase in verse 3 that reads, "All Thy breakers and billows passed over me" is an exact quote from the Hebrew of Psalm 42:7 (the English translations read slightly differently). While the Psalmist is speaking metaphorically of the waves of trouble that pass over his life, Jonah's use of the Psalm has literal ramifications.

We have already provided a brief, four part outline of the book of Jonah. However at this point we should take note that Jonah can really be divided into two basic parts. It is a book in parallel. The first part of the book stands in parallel to the second part of the book. This is vividly illustrated in the following chart.

 JONAH 4 -- THE COMPASSION OF GOD

In the last chapter, Jonah had just seen the biggest revival in history. You would think that he would be ecstatic. But his experience is another reaction entirely.

Jonah was displeased. He wasn’t merely displeased, he was GREATLY displeased. Why? Because he wanted to see the judgment of God upon the city. The last thing he wanted to see was salvation in Nineveh.

Now we see the real reason that Jonah ran away to Tarshish. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the Assyrians or of hardship or of failure on the mission field. It was to short-circuit the mercy of God from being offered to Nineveh.

Jonah was prejudiced. He was afraid of success. He was afraid that the Assyrians would repent and become a part of God’s people. He wanted the judgment of God to fall upon the Assyrians. His attitude was representative of all of Israel. This is why this book was written. It is to show that God is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity (4:2).

In verse 4, the Lord asks, "Do you have good reason to be angry?" (Jonah 4:1-4). The Lord is going to ask this same question of Jonah in verse 9.

God gives Jonah and object lesson. You may have gotten some of those from the Lord. They are the circumstances that are given to you to teach something.

We read in verse 6 that God appointed this plant. We see that three times in verses 6-8.

• God appointed a plant (4:6).
• God appointed a worm (4:7).
• God appointed the east wind (4:8).

There is a lesson here. It is that God appoints the good things and He also appoints those things that seem to be anything but good. Why? In order to teach you a lesson. In this case, the lesson that God was teaching Jonah was one of COMPASSION.

The book of Jonah ends with a question. Why does the book end the way it does? It is because God asks you the same question that He asks of Jonah. Have you identified with the compassion of God? What is your attitude toward people who are not like you?

• Who have a different theology
• Who have a different color
• Who have a different social status

The story doesn’t end with Jonah. It ends with Jesus. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so also Jesus was three days and three nights in the earth. The reason was the same -- it was a sign of the compassion of God.

• Of the sailors
• Of Jonah
• Of Nineveh.

3. God wants repentance. He looked for repentance in the city of Nineveh and He looked for repentance in the life of Jonah.
4. God is compassionate. This is the big idea of Jonah. It is that God is not willing for any to perish but is patiently waiting for people to come to repentance.

There are four similar names found in the Bible that must not be confused with one another:

• Joshua: Brought Israel into the promised land.
• Hoshea: Last king of Israel.
• Hosea: Prophet during the reign of Hoshea.
• Jesus: Fulfills the type seen by Hosea.

Over the years, I have heard quite a number of well-known scholars and Bible Teachers. There are a few whom I have personally gotten to know. In nearly every case, this further level of acquaintance took place outside of the classroom.

You can’t get to know a person very well in a classroom. Hosea must have known that lesson, for he takes us out of the classroom and into the privacy of his home. We get a glimpse of his home life and it is not necessarily a happy life. Hosea comes down from behind the pulpit and bares his soul.

When you learn how to do that, not for its shock value, but for its incarnational necessity, then you will learn how to be a pastor and a minister to real people.

The opening verse of Hosea states the date of its composition. This is a very long period stretching over a period of more than 50 years. Jeroboam came to the throne a few years prior to the accession of Uzziah.

In Hosea 1:4, Hosea prophesies that the Lord will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel. Jehu had taken the throne through assassination. Jeroboam II was Jehu’s great grandson. Jeroboam would be succeeded by his son Zechariah who would reign only six months before ending the line of Jehu.

Hosea would have therefore been a contemporary of Amos and Isaiah.

Hosea writes from the heart. His book is full of passion and emotion. As you read his words, you hear the sobs of a broken heart. While Jeremiah tells us that he is weeping, Hosea reflects this attitude in short, broken sentences.

As a result, there is a distinct absence of the normal rhythm and parallelism that is common to Hebrew writing. This makes it a bit harder for us to understand his message.

This is a book about the love of God and how Israel has rebuffed and ignored that love.

Hosea was one of the prophets to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. His day saw a great deal of prosperity in the land. What could not be readily seen apart from the prophetic message were the storm clouds on the horizon.

The reign of Jeroboam II (782-753 B.C.) saw the high water mark of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam II extended his influence northward all the way to the borders of Hamath, making Israel almost as big as she had been in the days of Solomon (2nd Kings 14:25). With this vast military victory came a period of great economic prosperity.. This period of prosperity brought with it a corresponding social corruption. At the root of the issue was apostasy. The nation had long since abandoned the Lord to follow after idolatry.

Hosea and Amos both prophesied during this period. Their writings reflect the moral and religious decay of the Israelites during this time.

• Hosea was called upon to act out the relationship between Yahweh and the nation by marrying an unfaithful prostitute.
• Amos, a shepherd from the eastern regions of Israel, spoke out against the social injustices of the day. He warned that the prosperity of the nation was fleeting. Within 30 years of the death of Jeroboam, the Northern Kingdom would cease to exist.

While the emphasis of Amos is upon social injustice, the emphasis of Hosea is upon spiritual unfaithfulness.

Hosea is divided into two major parts. The first three chapters contain a living parable as Hosea is told to go and marry a wife of harlotry - a prostitute. He has children by her and then she is unfaithful to the marriage. This relationship illustrates the similar unfaithfulness of Israel in her relationship with the Lord.

The remainder of the book consists of a large circuit that begins and ends with a Covenant Lawsuit. Both at the outset and at the close of this section the Covenant is specifically mentioned (Hosea 6:1, 7 with Hosea 12:1).

It has been suggested that Hosea can be outlined in the same way as the book of Deuteronomy. Both these books follow the Suzerain Treaty Format:

Hosea was told to do something that would have shocked him even as it shocks us. He was to go and marry a "wife of harlotry" (literally - a "woman of fornication"). Let me say for the record that Christians are not normally called to such a marriage. In Hosea’s case, he was called to play out the role of the Lord and His relationship to Israel. Hosea was to be like the Lord and his wife would demonstrate the same unfaithfulness that Israel had demonstrated.

There is a lesson here for us. It is that our marriages today are also to reflect the relationship of the Lord with His people. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25). Wives, you are to show the same submissive and respectful and loyal nature to your husbands that the church is to show toward the Lord (Ephesians 5:22).

Hosea was told to marry a woman who would reflect the same level of purity and devotion that Israel demonstrated toward God. He was to marry a prostitute as a picture of the people of the promise land who had prostituted their spiritual lives.

Hosea’s marriage would become a paradigm for God’s relationship with His people. By looking at Hosea’s unfaithful wife, they would see themselves.

Hosea’s portrayal did not end with his relationship with his wife. He was also to give names to his children that would reflect spiritual truths.

• Lo-Ruhamah: Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the LORD said to him, "Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I should ever forgive them. 7 But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the LORD their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen." (Hosea 1:6-7).

By these three names, the Lord is telling the Northern Kingdom of Israel that judgment is upon the horizon and that they will soon be judged for their sins. At the same time, there is given a promise of future hope.

There is a promise given for future hope. It is that there will in the future be a restoration of the people of God. Paul gives us a New Testament commentary on this passage:

Notice how Paul interprets the passage from Hosea. He points to the fulfillment in those whom God has called not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. Do you see it? The ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to Hosea is seen in the CHURCH. We have been given the title of "sons of the living God."

At the same time, there is in Hosea’s writings a call for the recipients of HIS day to repent. This is seen as we enter into the dialogue of chapter 2.

In verse 6 the Lord proposes to put a hedge of thorns around His unfaithful wife? That doesn’t sound very nice. Thorns are sharp and they stick and they hurt. But this is for their own good. It is to build a wall so that the people will have no choice but to return to the Lord.

There is a lesson here. It is that God sometimes brings difficulties into our lives to drive us back to Himself.

8. "For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain,

Notice that one of the sins of Israel was that of ingratitude. Somewhere along the line, the people had forgotten that it is the Lord who had provided the prosperity of the land. As a result, He would begin to bring about economic hardships.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2000, televangelist Jerry Falwell came under a great deal of criticism when he publicly suggested that these events were God’s wake up call to Americans for the way they had ignored His teachings. Hosea’s message would have received the same sorts of criticisms.

In Hosea 3 we see the final chapter in Hosea’s family life. It is here that we see Hosea being told by the Lord to go and get back his wife.

Hosea goes out to find his faithless bride. He finds her as a slave and purchases her for himself from the slave market. He brings her home where he can command her future faithfulness. This is a picture of what the Lord will do with His people.

We know from history what took place in the days after Hosea. First Israel and then Judah were taken into captivity. When the final return took place in the days of Zerubbabel and Ezra, the Jews never again went aside to worship the false gods of the Canaanites.

Notice finally in verse 5 that the promise is that the people would return to David their king. This is especially significant when we consider that this is addressed to the Northern Ten Tribes who had rejected the kingship of the descendants of David. It is a prophecy that is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, the son of David.

A closer examination of the central chapters of Hosea suggest the possibility of a chiastic order to those central chapters.

Both the beginning and the close of this section contain phrasing that is reminiscent of a covenant lawsuit. Before we talk about what is a covenant lawsuit, we ought to begin by familiarizing ourselves with the concept of the covenant.

You did not sign a covenant in those days. Instead you "cut" a covenant. This practice was so widespread that in later times, one could speak of entering into a covenant merely by speaking of how he "cut" with someone.

Other examples of this same phenomena is seen in the following passages:

The word translated "covenant" is beryith. The origin of the word is uncertain. It is thought by some to have come from the Akkadian birit, which relates to the Hebrew -- "between." Another suggestion points to the Akkadian root baru, "to bind or fetter." Both ideas are present in the covenant. It is a binding action and its initiatory rite also mandated an agreement made between the pieces of two animals.

This practice of "covenant-cutting" involved taking one or more sacrificial animals and putting them to death and then cutting the animal into two parts and walking between the pieces of the animals.

As the makers of the covenant passed between the divided parts of the dead animal, they would recite the terms of the covenant. The implication was that if they broke the terms of the covenant, then may they also be killed and divided asunder as had been these animals.

The act of entering into a covenant involved in itself the symbolic death of the covenant maker. When the animals were cut, they represented the covenant-maker himself being cut and put to death.

Now we can better understand the words of Hosea when he tells Israel that they have transgressed the covenant.

This is covenant language. The Lord brings His legal dispute against Israel for having broken their covenant obligations.

We have all gone the way of Adam. We have all sinned and have become covenant-breakers. The good news of the gospel is that God has made a New Covenant with men in which Christ Himself paid the penalty of a covenant-breaker on our behalf. We enter into this New Covenant through faith in Him so that His righteousness is credited to us.

It is exactly for this reason that Hosea is able to close his book upon a note of hope for the future. He calls for his readers to repent and to turn to the Lord.

What is the result of such repentance? It is a restoration and a redemption.

1. The Problem of Insincere Repentance.

2. The Problem of Social Injustice.