This book review is by my husband, Dave, who loves reading and sharing book recommendations. He recently preached through the book of Jonah, and Rediscovering Jonah was one of his top resources.
There’s something about the book of Jonah that makes it a favourite subject for cutesy children’s art: adorable cartoon whales flipping their tails at stylized storm clouds on the horizon. Noah suffers in the same way, probably because both stories involve animals, but the tales of Jonah and Noah are also alike in that they are terrible Precious Moments candidates. Both are complex accounts of divine judgment and of human rebellion that tend, in the popular imagination, to get reduced to misleading moral summaries like, “If you’re bad, God might send a whale to eat you.”
This misapprehension can easily lead Christian people to think of Jonah as a book about divine surveillance, even though its main theme is God’s stunning mercy. Fortunately, for anyone looking to understand the message of Jonah, the contemporary church has a wonderful resource in Rediscovering Jonah: The Secret of God’s Mercy, by Timothy Keller.
Highly devotional
Over a little less than three hundred pages, the late New York pastor sketches out a devotional commentary on the book of Jonah. His notes lie close to the text—his purpose is to deal extensively with the language and message of Jonah, rather than to use it as a jumping-off point for daily meditations—but his writing is easy to follow. Rediscovering Jonah is best read together with the book of Jonah itself close by, as the author works through nine major plot points as the story unfolds, and three concluding chapters that reflect on the book as a whole.
And because the text of Jonah itself sometimes hits hardest in its shortest phrases, Keller’s sections deal with blocks of story, not set lengths of text. He has one chapter each for the mad idea of a prophet running from God (which occupies only two and a half verses of the Biblical text), of God summoning a storm to recall him (a verse and a half), or of a prophet who disdains to tell anyone what he knows (two verses). These are alongside chapters on Jonah’s prayer after being rescued (all of chapter 2) and God’s dialogue with Jonah on the subject of compassion (all of chapter 4).
Although attentive readers will note the marks that show the book as having grown out of sermons, Keller adapts his material well, so that there’s never a sense of listening to an audio transcript. Yet Keller does this without losing his tone of earnest appeal. Jonah is a story that, when told properly, deeply provokes the reader, and Keller excels in bringing the provocative questions of this text right to you: what do I really think about these issues?
“Jonah wants a God of his own making, a God who simply smites the bad people, for instance, the wicked Ninevites and blesses the good people, for instance, Jonah and his countrymen. When the real God – not Jonah’s counterfeit – keeps showing up, Jonah is thrown into fury or despair. Jonah finds the real God to be an enigma because he cannot reconcile the mercy of God with his justice … only when [we] grasp this will we be neither cruel exploiters like the Ninevites nor Pharasaical believers like Jonah, but rather Spirit-changed, Christ-like women and men.”
Timothy Keller, Rediscovering Jonah
Gospel application
The text of Jonah is so brief and so familiar that it’s possible for us to skate right over the powerful challenges that lie just under the surface. The strength of this book is that Keller carefully and accurately points our attention to each one, forcing us to sit with them and let them confront us.
Two more points are worth noting: first, this is a book on an Old Testament text, but one that is alive to the deep integration between the OT and the NT. As he explores what Jonah has to say about God’s demands for justice side-by-side with his commitment to mercy, Keller excels in drawing the reader’s attention to how this tension, which so frustrates the prophet himself, is resolved only in the ministry and message of Jesus, in both the gospels and in the New Testament letters.
To understand Jonah is to understand the New Testament better, and vice versa.
Secondly, Keller notes wryly that,
“usually those who are most concerned about working for social justice do not also … speak clearly about [God’s] judgment … On the other hand, those who publicly preach repentance most forcefully are not usually known for demanding justice for the oppressed.”
Although they lie on different sides of our present Western cultural divide, these two issues are bound inseparably together in the message of Jonah. Some readers may wish that discussion of one or the other were more muted. But part of the blessing of the book is that the reader is confronted with the scriptural imperative of both, and this tragic and damaging separation can perhaps begin to be repaired.
One of Keller’s best works
Rediscovering Jonah deserves to be ranked together with the best-known and most popular of Keller’s works, and of contemporary Christian literature as a whole. It brilliantly illuminates a portion of God’s word that is often obscure and misunderstood and does so while highlighting the beauty of God’s character and the urgency of the gospel in the life of each person living today. If it enjoyed an obvious spot on every church book table and in every Christian’s library, we would all be the better for it.
“In Rediscovering Jonah, pastor Timothy Keller reveals the hidden depths within the book of Jonah. Keller makes the case that Jonah was one of the worst prophets in the entire Bible. And yet there are unmistakably clear connections between Jonah, the prodigal son, and Jesus. . . How could one of the most defiant and disobedient prophets in the Bible be compared to Jesus?” (Amazon description)
Other books by Timothy Keller
“With his trademark insights and energy, Keller offers biblical guidance as well as specific prayers for certain situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love, and forgiveness. He discusses ways to make prayers more personal and powerful, and how to establish a practice of prayer that works for each reader.” (Amazon description)
“Forgiveness is an essential skill, a moral imperative, and a religious belief that cuts right to the core of what it means to be human. In Forgive, Timothy Keller shows readers why it is so important and how to do it, explaining in detail the steps you need to take in order to move on without sacrificing justice or your humanity.” (Amazon description)
“In The Prodigal God, Keller takes his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity and uses the parable of the prodigal son to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.
Within that parable Jesus reveals God’s prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.” (Amazon description)
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