The Jonah Show: Don’t Try This at Home (Part 2 of 2)

6.  Let’s Reason Together

God needed to do something to get this stubborn child’s attention again.  Perhaps it was time to call a family meeting (Isaiah 43:26); time to “reason together,” as He once invited in Isaiah 1:18, regardless of our inferior IQ.  How can a mortal reason with the Omniscient?  The Father doesn’t care.  He understands.

Moses had reasoned with God when the Almighty was so angry that He might have destroyed an entire nation in a flash.  Moses told Him, “Ahh, Lord, You can’t do that.  It will spoil Your great name before the Egyptians and other heathen nations who have come to fear You.  Besides, if I may remind my Lord, ‘Remember’ the promise You made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  You are not a promise breaker ….”  The result?  “And the LORD REPENTED of the evil which he thought to do unto his people … And the LORD said, I have pardoned ACCORDING TO THY WORD” (Exodus 32:9-14; Numbers 14:13-20).  Wow!  A very reasonable God.

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The Jonah Show: Don’t Try This at Home (Part 1 of 2)

1.  Disclaimer

“Don’t try this at home” is a popular catchphrase from the 1980s and 1990s.  It is the usual disclaimer and cautionary intro to TV shows featuring stunts, experiments, or other extreme activities considered dangerous for ordinary viewers, especially children, who might wish to attempt the actions shown.  While it still generally serves that earlier cautionary purpose, it is also deployed humorously in contexts that have little to do with potentially hazardous actions that the amateur viewer might wish to copy.  Here, I offer it as a telling intro to a common Bible story, which many have told from different perspectives.  Let’s call my story The Jonah Show, but remember, don’t try it at home.

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OCCULT VIRGINITIES: PRAYER POINT

In one of our Nigeria universities, once upon a time, there was a campus female cult one of whose codes was to sleep with no man, and if any man should force them, he died.  Their virginity was one of their occult covenants for power in their territory.  They were virgins (or entered at some point into that state of celibacy) not because of a good upbringing or personal discipline or fear of God.  It was their sacrifice for occult power.

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THE SPIRITUALITY OF YOUR MONEY (Part 2 of 2)

5.  The Voice of Your Gift

If gifts or monies were just the paper or coins in the hand, or the amount in the account; if there was no spirituality about money and gifts; if the character of the giver has nothing to do with the spirit of the gift, a passage like Deuteronomy 23:18 would be meaningless.  There, God strictly warns, for example, that “the wages of a harlot” and the proceeds from selling a dog – an unclean animal, must not be brought into His house, because “these are an abomination to the Lord your God” (NKJV).  “Abomination” is very strong language.

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THE SPIRITUALITY OF YOUR MONEY (Part 1 of 2)

1.  Money Scanners

Even banks don’t usually take money at face value.  In critical cases, they pass money through a UV scanner to verify its status, which the naked eye might never detect.  Money is much more than the coins and paper notes or e-data that convey its value.  Money takes the spirit of its transaction.  Also, the property or service procured often takes the ‘name’ of the money used to purchase it.  What does all that mean?  The following story has answers…

Judas Iscariot had a contract with the haters of Jesus, to secretly ‘supply’ Him to them.  In the nocturnal boardroom of their mischief, the deal was signed for 30 pieces of silver.  The agreement was that he would take them to the Product site, from where they would take charge of the forward shipment themselves.

Like an eager supplier, Judas took them to where Jesus was holding a closed session with some of His staff and His Boss Abroad.  Judas made clever attempts to blend into the meeting as a late arrival.  He went straight to the target and gave Him a kiss.  That was the cue he had given to the business partners: whomever he kissed was the Product.  He kissed the Boss, gave Him away to His haters, then disappeared into the night.  Smart man.

Judas got his pay, but the nature of the transaction from which that money came tainted the money.  All dollar is dollar; all Euro is Euro; all Rupee is Rupee; all Yen is Yen; all Naira is Naira; all Cedi is Cedi, but it takes a spiritual scanner to further identify some money’s mystical character.  Judas’ silver coins, physically gleaming though they were, were spiritually tarnished by the corruption from which they had been earned.  To the natural eye, the coins were attractive; to the seeing eye, they were corroded and dangerous. Spiritual people are usually able to tell, as did the priests who had been dealing with Judas, mischievous though they were.

Down the lane, when Judas was struck by guilt and returned the same money to his erstwhile business partners, they made a very telling statement.  They said that certain monies carry the spirit of the transaction from which they were earned; that whereas all monies might look alike on the surface, there was a metaphysical dimension to them; that the money Judas had brought back was “the price of blood,” and therefore not spiritually safe to be put together with other monies, because it could corrupt what was there.  They were saying, in other words, that Judas’ money, even though ‘willingly’ given (or returned), was a potential pollutant, because it had come from transacting in “innocent blood.”  They understood the spirituality of money.  They understood that money is much more than the coins or paper or electronic codes that express its value.  They understood that money can carry a spirit, good or bad (Matthew 27:1-8).  Sadly, greed hurries, and it blinds.

Until that bloody transaction, the money with which Judas was paid had been holy, having been the devout offerings of worshippers.  When the temple authorities used it for a wicked transaction, its spiritual nature was accordingly altered.  The problem was not the money, whether it was crumpled notes or dented coins, whether it was dollars or pounds sterling.  The matter was the character of the transaction in which the money was involved.

 

2.  The Name of Your Purchase

Evil as those ‘business partners’ were, they understood the spirituality of money and were careful with whatever they received.  When Judas returned the money, they would not let it stay in the church account; they would not let it stay in their homes; none of them even dared to steal from it or gift themselves with any part of it.  They were unanimous that it had to depart immediately, before it should begin to cause trouble in their hands, like Achan’s loot in the camp of Israel (Joshua 7:10-13).  They decided promptly to buy a piece of land.  Anything.  Anywhere.  I am not sure if anyone was prepared to inspect the land before the purchase.  So far as it was available to be bought, that was sufficient.  “Good riddance,” as it is said, but that was only the beginning of another chapter.

Every purchase or receipt carries the product name.  The land that was bought with Judas’ money immediately took a name in the nature of the money that had purchased it.  That field became known as “the field of blood,” a name decided in the physical and spiritual realms by the character of the money that had purchased it.  If the same land had been bought with purer money than the ‘offering’ of a bloody kidnapper, it might have had a different name, maybe “Bethel,” or “The Field of God,” or “The House of Love,” or “The Place of Mercy” (Matthew 26:15; 27:5,7-8).  Judas’ money named (or renamed) the land with its particular bloody character.  Unfortunately, not everybody knows the ‘name’ of their house, or of their gift dress, their gift car, or their ‘free’ lunch in the archives of the spirit realm.  Like natures usually attract.

 

3.  Change of Status

Before the present purchase, that land used to be called The Potter’s Field.  It was a land where potters found fine clay for making beautiful vessels that decorated homes.  With the change of ownership, especially because of the kind of money that had been used to purchase it, there also came a change in the spiritual nature of the land.  Previously, it attracted artists, designers, craftsmen, workers in beauty, people who transformed ordinary mud into attractive vessels, specialists who gave great value to common clay.  Even holy men never feared to walk there.  With the coming of Judas, however, morticians took over where holy men and artisans used to prosper.  The same field began to attract corpses, death, decay, stench, fear, shame, and repulsion.  Holy men feared to tread there anymore, lest they be defiled with the bones of the dead (Matthew 23:27; Luke 11:44).

The kind of things that that field attracted seemed to have been determined by the nature or spirit of the money that had purchased it.  The money that was used to acquire it had come from transacting in the death of an innocent Person.  The land, accordingly, began to attract death. It became a cemetery for burying “strangers.”  If anyone was wondering about the mystery of the sudden change from Potter’s Field to “the field of blood,” from the making of beauty to a holding for corpses, from decorations to death, from the sounds of merry craftsmen to the silence and coldness of a cemetery, they only needed to check the details of its recent acquisition (Matthew 27:7-8; Acts 1:18-19).

 

4.  Third-Party Transactions

Sometimes people are careful about certain places and certain transactions, but they send their money to do things or go where they do not wish to be found themselves.  For instance, they might be embarrassed or terrified about going to a witch doctor’s shrine, yet not mind sending someone to consult there on their behalf; or they contribute to a general evil purpose, like a community’s annual fetish sacrifice, like a Halloween festival.  Although they had not personally undertaken those transactions, according to the story of Judas, what their money does is attributable to them.

It is reported in Acts 1:18, after Judas was dead, that he “purchased a field.”  Everyone knows that Judas did not do that transaction himself, yet it was credited to him because it was done with his funds.  The ‘receipt’ for the purchase of The Field of Blood bore the name of Mr Judas Iscariot.  We find the same principle in the matter of David and Uriah.  Even though Uriah was killed in battle by the enemy, God attributed that death to the man, far away from the crime scene, who had planned it.  God said that David was the killer, who had done it indirectly “with the sword of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:9).  It was their sword, but it was his hand; men saw them, but God saw him.

              From The Preacher’s diary,

January 2, 2026.

WHEN WHAT IS RIGHT DOES NOT SEEM FAIR

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

Jonah 1:13.

What is right does not always seem fair.  Not all right prescriptions are sweet.  That is one strange message from the story of Jonah.

There had been a storm, with much loss of time and property on account of one strange passenger on the ship.  The mariners cast lots to determine the source of their woes. Mercifully, God answered them in that language, as He usually speaks to everyone in their ‘native’ language.  Jonah did not need to cast lots to know the mind of God, but those mariners were not prophets, like Jonah.  They did what they knew how to, and God answered them all the same, in their ‘language.’ The lots fell on Jonah.

Then came the prescription for ending the storm: cast the storm’s culprit out of the ship. But those were nice men, kinder than angels, too religious to be right, too disciplined to do something so drastic, even if it was the will of God.  They ‘loved’ Jonah more than his God loved him.  They had an option: they would rather row harder.  They did, with greater vigour, trying to ‘fix’ the problem

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DISCERNING STORMS

1.  Once Upon an Intelligent Storm

It is critical to discern storms.  Some storms are natural, some are not, and nature carries its markers of times and seasons (Matthew 16:3; Genesis 1:14).  For instance, the “great storm” that “arose” to challenge Jesus and His disciples on their collective mission to “the other side” of their further missionary assignment was no ordinary storm.  It was a storm that could “obey,” meaning that it could hear, meaning that it had ears, meaning that it had some kind of volition and intelligence (Mark 4:35-41).  Maybe it was a he or a she of some strange sort, as modern meteorologists would categorise.

That storm “arose,” as if it had been sitting tactically still, monitoring the sea, until Jesus with His disciples, like a long-tracked enemy, appeared on its marine radar.  It was a storm whose strange and sudden ‘arising’ had to be matched with the superior arising of the Master of the storms and the seas in that boxing arena of the Galilee Sea.  It “aroseAnd he arose.”

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The Messengers of God

1.  An Amazing Paradox

As if some mischievous, mysterious logistics officer had been planning the trip, Jonah readily found a ship to take him in a different direction from the purpose of God.  To stop him, “the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken” (Jonah 1:4).  Alas, the amazing paradox: the Lord sent Jonah, he disobeyed; the Lord “sent” a wind, it obeyed, promptly; one faithful messenger commissioned against the other straying messenger.

 

2.  The Messengers of God

The messengers of God are not only angels and prophets.  Some are winds and storms (as those that stood in the way of Jonah’s rebellious trip to Tarshish), some are birds (as those that regularly supplied Prophet Elijah with food in his wilderness days – 1 Kings 17:6), some are donkeys (like the eloquent four-legged ‘prophet’ that God quickly ordained to restrain the straying Prophet Balaam blinded by greed – Numbers 22:27-30), and some are plagues (like those that Jehovah “sent” upon Egypt and Pharaoh their king, to “let my people go” – Exodus 7:5).

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A Ship to Tarshish

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

Jonah 1:3.

Jonah “rose up to flee” from the purpose of God, and “he found a ship.”  You will always find a ship when you choose to go away from God.  There will always be a ship to take one in the opposite direction from the will of God, but whether or not that ship arrives at the intended destination is another story.  Safe arrival is never guaranteed in that package.  The parable of the prodigal son teaches the same lesson.  There is usually somewhere to go when one chooses to depart from the Father’s house, some “far country,” but survival there is never included in the ‘attractive’ package (Luke 15:13).

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