INTRODUCTION
Divine Surprises
A farmer
every morning went out to feed his chicken. Each morning, when it saw the
farmer approach, the bird got ready for breakfast. This scenario happened
over and over until, one morning, the farmer arrived and, instead of feeding
the fowl, wrung its neck.
The point is this: The past is no guarantor of the future. Though things
that have happened before, even regularly, can and often do happen again,
they don't, automatically, have to. The unexpected does arise and often when
least expected (which is part of what makes it unexpected).
This concept was hard for many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europeans
to grasp. The tremendous advances in science, particularly through the seminal
work of Isaac Newton, led many to believe that all of nature works through
cold, uncaring, and unvarying laws. Once these laws were understood, it was
conceivable (if enough other information were given) that a person could
know everything that would happen in the future because everything—from
what the king would want for dessert on New Year's Eve to the number of
hailstones in the next hailstorm over Paris—could be predicted with
unerring accuracy.
By the early twentieth century, however, scientists like Niels Bohr, Max
Planck, and Erwin Schrodinger-with their discoveries in quantum
physics—brought these deterministic assumptions into great question.
According to quantum theory, reality at its most fundamental level reveals
itself in a transitory, elusive, even statistical, manner, so that we can
know only the probability of events, nothing more. Gone, now, was the clockwork
universe of the previous few centuries. Einstein, responding incredulously
to quantum uncertainty, once said, "I shall never believe that God plays
dice with the world."
No, God doesn't. But He can be full of surprises, and some of His most unexpected
ones appear in the topic for this quarter—the book of Jonah, which on
the surface seems filled with the uncertainty and surprise of the quantum
realm, though, in fact, it is based on a certitude more solid and constant
than the physics of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Europe.
First, there's Jonah, a prophet who refuses to accept his call—hardly
the usual biblical paradigm, to be sure. Though a Daniel he isn't, a prophet
he, nevertheless, is: "He restored the coast of Israel from the entering
of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God
of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of
Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher" (2 Kings 14:25, emphasis
supplied). This is the same Jonah, son of Amittai (hard as it, at times,
might be to believe), whom we'll be following for the next few months.
Next, this prophet flees from the Lord in a boat (A prophet fleeing the Lord?),
only to have the Lord send a storm that threatens to sink the vessel. Amid
the storm, it's the pagans, not the Hebrew, who pray for deliverance (another
surprise), and Jonah is thrown overboard, only to get swallowed alive by
a big fish that holds him in its stomach for three days before spewing him
out, alive, on the land.
Jonah, finally, after all this prodding, delivers the message of warning
to the Ninevites, who en masse repent from their evil ways, sparing themselves
divine condemnation (a rather surprising turn of events, as well). But the
greatest surprise comes next, because Jonah becomes saddened, even angry,
over their repentance. A prophet angry over those who repent and turn
away from sin? (As said before, this book is full of surprises.)
Yet, the most important point of Jonah isn't found in the surprises that
spill out of its 48 verses but in the one thing that's constant all the way
through those verses, and that is, God's incredible grace toward wayward,
erring people, even wayward, erring prophets like Jonah. If the Lord would
continue to work with someone who squandered privileges and ignored light,
then there's hope for us, we who surely have done as badly as this weak-willed,
spiritual pipsqueak of a prophet who should have known better than to do
what he did, even though he did it just the same. Of course, grace is the
most gracious when bestowed upon those who know better but do wrong anyway
(Who among us can't relate?).
The focus of Jonah, then, really isn't on the "great fish" that swallowed
Jonah alive but on "the great God" who prepared that fish. The great God
who never manifested His greatness more than when He was the most "helpless";
that is, when in the person of His Son He was nailed to the cross, His life
crushed out for the sins of those who don't know better and even, maybe
especially, of those who do. In one sense, it hardly matters which, because
we're all spiritual charity cases, taking where we don't give, receiving
what we don't deserve, and getting what we don't earn . . . like Jonah.
Many thanks to this quarter's able author, Dr. JoAnn Davidson, assistant
professor of theology, in the Department of Theology and Christian Philosophy,
at the Andrews University Seminary. Her love for the book of Jonah, and
especially for the God revealed in that book, is apparent all through this
Bible Study Guide.
Challenging, baffling, even occasionally disturbing, the book of Jonah, with
all its surprises—maybe even through those surprises—reveals one
truth that never changes: God's love, for even the most unlovable, which,
at times, is all of us.
Contents:
(all lessons may not be posted)
Giardina Sabbath School
Study Helps
Jerry Giardina of Pecos, Texas, assisted by his wife, Cheryl, prepares a
series of helps to accompany the Sabbath School lesson. He includes all related
scripture and most EGW quotations. Jerry has chosen the "New King James Version"
of the scriptures this quarter. It is used with permission. The study
helps are provided in three wordprocessing versions
Wordperfect; Microsoft
Word; RTF for our MAC friends; and
HTML (Web Pages).
Last updated on September 11, 2003
Editorial Office: 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904.
Principal Contributors: JoAnn Davidson
Editor: Clifford Goldstein
(goldsteinc@gc.adventist.org)
Associate Editor: Lyndelle Brower Chiomenti.
Editorial Production Manager: Soraya Homayouni Parish.
Art and Design: Lars Justinen.
Pacific Press Coordinator: Paul A. Hey.
Copyright © 2003 Office of the Adult Bible Study Guide,
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist. All Rights Reserved.
This page is Netscape
friendly
SSNET Web Site Home page
Directory of adult SS quarterly Bible Study
guides
Prepared for the Internet by the SSNET Web
Team.
|