7. The Shadow of Self
CHAPTER 7
The Shadow of Self
Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:3)
This was the best prayer that Jonah ever uttered—it is too bad, though, that he had the wrong intentions. The greatest need in Jonah’s life was to die to Jonah. His life is an object lesson of the foolishness of the spirit of selfishness in any person, especially in anyone who professes or pretends to work for God and the souls of men.
Jonah was the first of the prophets whose writings have come down to us in the sacred canon. He lived in the reign of Jeroboam II and it was through his admonishments that Jeroboam was able to restore Israel to its former greatness.
Sent as the prophet of good tidings to his own people, Jonah gladly went. His divinely inspired messages cheered on his countrymen until they had won back the captured northern territories.
Had Jonah’s career ended on this high note he would have gone into history as one of the most successful and brilliant of Israel’s prophets. But God had other plans for Jonah. He commissioned him to carry a message of warning to the city of Nineveh, the mighty capital of the Assyrian empire. Though the command came from God, Jonah was reluctant to obey it. In fact, he ran—or tried to run—in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
Disobedience always brings separation from God and so it was with Jonah. It was not difficult for him to find a way out of his predicament. He located a ship at Joppa bound for the coast of distant Tarshish and secured passage on it. But he should have known he could not run from God. Shortly after the ship set sail God sent a powerful storm that nearly broke it apart. The sailors were terrified and decided to cast lots to see who was responsible for bringing God’s wrath down upon their ship. The lot fell on Jonah.
Realizing that the storm was his fault, Jonah told the sailors, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea … and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you” (Jonah 1:12).
At first the men were reluctant to do this; they even tried rowing back to land. But God was not to be put off. Finally they followed Jonah’s advice and threw him overboard. Immediately the sea calmed down and “The LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights” (verse 17).
After the three days God commanded the fish to vomit up Jonah onto dry land. The word of God came to him a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” (3:2). This time Jonah went without any evasion or questionings, and for a while it seemed as if he had died to self.
But it was not long before self came to the surface again. As long as his work succeeded and the people listened and repented, he was satisfied. When God in His mercy accepted the penitence of the Ninevites and cancelled His judgment upon them, Jonah was bitterly disappointed and fiercely angry. Why? Because his reputation as a prophet had supposedly been ruined. Pouting Jonah went outside the city, made a shelter from the sun and sat down under it. He was hoping God might change His mind and destroy the city. What a spectacle of humiliation and contempt! All the glory of his prophecy had been blighted by the dark shadow of self which he threw over it in his egregious folly and unspeakable selfishness.
The Test of Character
In Jonah we see a man who succeeds in the work God has given him but only as long as it is congenial. When the first test of his character comes he fails. How many of us react the same way? In the sunshine of prosperity we seem to be extraordinary workers and ideal saints. But character is more than work. God desires to see if we are truly, totally His. The tests bring us to the death of self and to the place where He can use us as His messengers.
We also see in Jonah a person who obeys and serves God as long as it suits him. In reality, though, he is a stranger to the obedience that knows no choice except the Master’s will. “You are my friends if you do what I command” (John 15:14). The true friend of God does whatever He commands.
We see in Jonah a man destitute of the true missionary spirit, a man who thought he was full of zeal yet had no real love for God or other men. Jonah represents those people who will work hard for their own cause, even for the church, but they know nothing of the real missionary spirit. They care not for the Ninevites, the Chinese or the Africans and they think it unreasonable waste to pour out millions of dollars for the evangelization of the world. They see it better spent at home to promote the welfare of their own people.
Separation from God
When we disobey God we no longer want to be in His presence. After Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? They hid from God. It is foolish to think we can indulge in an act of disobedience and still look upon God’s face and call ourselves His children.
Jonah had no difficulty in finding a way to carry out his disobedience—Satan saw to that. The ship was ready to sail, and it was going to the right place. Jonah was soon on board and comfortably asleep in his berth. The saddest thing about backsliding is that it brings with it the devil’s sedatives. A person can calmly sleep amid the fiercest storm and complacently dream that all is well. There is nothing in all the judgments of God so terrible as a reprobate mind and a soul past feeling.
God pursued Jonah, though, and brought him to his senses. His mercy will not let us rest in our self-complacency and sin. Happy for us that we have a Father who loves us so much that He is willing to see us hurt if it drives us home to His loving breast.
What a pity that we should compel God to bring us back to Himself by the officers of judgment, instead of flying to the arms of His love and choosing the blessing that He is determined we shall not lose.
Crucifixion of the Self-Life
We see in Jonah a man who had to die to himself before he could do any real good. The great lesson of Jonah’s life is the need for crucifixion of the self-life. In the story of Jonah we see God lovingly pursuing the selfish prophet. He caused his misfortune so that He could bless him as He really wanted to.
This was Jonah’s prime opportunity to die to self. That he did not surrender his will completely was his own fault. He speaks of that living tomb as the belly of Hades—the very bosom of death. The prayer he uttered certainly sounded like the voice of a man who meant what he said. And when he came forth it really did seem as if the old Jonah was going to be out of the picture henceforth. But as we see later, he was only half dead. God can use only a crucified person to preach about the crucified Savior.
When Jonah came out of the fish he was ready to go anywhere that God wanted him to go. When we are dead to self and sin we too will be ready to do what God commands. Our only question will be: “Lord, what will You have me do?”
Dead, but Only in Part
Despite all his suffering and humiliation we see that Jonah had only died in part. For a time he carried out God’s commands. He warns the Ninevites of God’s impending destruction and a great revival takes place. Everyone from the king to the lowest of his subjects is prostrate at the feet of Jehovah pleading for mercy.
But the moment God hears their cry and disappoints Jonah’s predictions of their destruction, the prophet breaks down and falls into a fit of petulance and anger. God had failed to do what He had threatened, thus destroying Jonah’s reputation as a prophet.
It was but another form of the self-life. A person may give up the selfishness that seeks its gratification in the pleasures of the world, yet seek gratification of the same self-life in some religious form.
The orator, for example, as he holds spellbound the hearts of thousands as he tells them about Jesus and salvation, may be just as selfish and selfconscious as an actor on the stage or a politician on the rostrum who speaks only for personal triumph and ambition. Jonah’s success was his snare. It led him to forget his Master’s glory and the good of the people whom he was sent to save.
God can never use anyone until the person has grace enough to forget him or herself entirely while doing God’s work. He will not give His glory to another or share with the most valued instrument the praise that belongs to Jesus Christ alone.
We can never succeed in our service for God until we learn to cast our own shadow behind us and lose ourselves in the honor and glory of our Master. It is said that Alexander the Great had a famous horse that nobody could ride. Alexander spent much time trying to break it. In the course of his efforts he saw that the horse was afraid of its own shadow. Leaping into the saddle one day and turning the horse’s head to the sun, he struck his spurs into the flanks of the noble steed and dashed off like lightning. From that moment on the fiery charger was thoroughly subdued and it never gave its master any trouble again. It could no longer see its own shadow.
Oh, that we could look into the face of our Lord and forget forever ourselves! Then He could see us for His own glory and afford to share with us the glory and gladness of our work.
Partakers with God
We see in Jonah a man whom God had to humble in order to save him from destroying his own work. God loves to make us partakers with Him in the fruits of our work. We can see this in the way He honored Moses, Samuel and Paul. Their names have come down to us associated with their blessed service for the Master. But this was because they loved to forget themselves and seek only their Master’s glory.
How different it was with poor Jonah! He was seeking his own glory and God had to humiliate him and let him fail in the thing he wanted. Surely “God opposes the proud/but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Surely the person that would be first may well become the servant of all. As Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24). And, “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me” (John 12:26).
Jonah lost this honor because he sought it, and Paul found it because he renounced it and sought only to live that Jesus might be satisfied, even if Paul should be forever forgotten. This is the spirit of true service and this is the lesson that comes down to us through that humiliating spectacle sitting disappointed and rejected under the vine.
God’s Great Mercy
We see in Jonah a man who wants to die when he is least prepared to die. It can only be attributed to God’s great mercy that he did not take Jonah at his word and kill him when he cried with childish petulance, “Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:3).
Jonah asked that he might die and from the moment he disappears from the page of history and passes into an oblivion that has no ray of hope or light of recompense. The best way to be prepared to die is to be living for some high and noble purpose. The men who are ready to die are those who are needed most to live for God and their fellow men.
The True Secret of Dying
We learn one more lesson from Jonah’s life: the true secret of how to die and then live for God and our own highest interest and blessing. Thank God, Jonah’s life lifts our thoughts to another and a nobler life—the Lord Jesus Christ. He has died for us and taught us not only how to live with Him, but also how to die with Him. He has taught us how to live the life that has been crucified with Christ and is alive forevermore.
Not unwillingly but with His whole heart did Christ lay down His life for us, so that in His dying we might be saved from death eternal. Not for His own glory did He live and die but for us and for His Father. Only through His dying can we truly die. We can never crucify ourselves but we can be crucified with Christ and say: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Let us learn to die, and thus let us live. Someday we shall know all the meaning of these mighty words:
He died for me that I might die,
He lives for me that I might live,
Oh, death so deep! Oh, life so high!
Help me to die, help me to live.