The Jonah Test
When we think of Jonah, most of us picture the storm, the sea, and the great fish. But the sharpest test comes later, in chapter 4.
Jonah has proclaimed God’s judgment against Israel’s enemy, Nineveh, and because God’s Word is a powerful means of His mercy, all of Nineveh repents and is saved. This leaves Jonah angry, and God’s test has begun. Would Jonah perceive that he - Jonah - is saved by the same grace that saved Nineveh?
No. Instead, Jonah’s resentment and pride are exposed. God’s rebuke is gentle but piercing: “Do you do well to be angry?”
Jonah’s test is designed to help him see the source of his anger: an ideology that enabled him to despise people God loves.
Would Jonah repent?
The artistic beauty of the Jonah story is that the reader is left to wonder. Rather than answer that crucial question: would Jonah repent?, Jonah challenges his reader to answer.
Will you?
This is “The Jonah Test”. God reveals something in our hearts competing against Him, and through the test we are led to repentance and restoration.
The Job Test
Scripture calls Job “blameless and upright.” This doesn’t mean Job is perfect, it means that this won’t be a test to reveal some hidden sin. Something else is in order.
Suddenly, almost everything Jonah loves gets stripped away: his children, his wealth, his health. He is left with ashes, sores, and friends who insist that suffering must be God’s punishment against Job’s guilt.
Job’s test is not about hidden rebellion, but about perseverance in the face of tribulation. Stripped of every visible sign of God’s favor, would Job begin to believe that God’s ways are as harsh and crooked as the world’s?
Job’s cry is not one of anger but of anguish: “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.”
Through long silence, through questions without answers, Job clings to God even as he demands explanation.
It’s not always pretty. Job says some things to God that make the reader cringe. Who would dare speak to God that way!?
And before you realize it, you see that you have.
We all mistake the weak, imperfect, human concept of justice as the standard by which God will be judged. But God cannot be judged, and Job’s faith in that precept is his test.
“I know that my redeemer lives”, Job finally confesses, and it’s as if Job has been given a vision of how God will one day allow Himself to be slain... that God will allow Himself to be judged, not for His own imperfection but for Job’s and all mankind’s.
And He will live!
This is “The Job Test.” God allows us to walk through suffering we cannot explain, to build in us faith, not built on visible rewards but on God Himself and the “reward” He has won for us. It is a test that deepens patience, endurance, and hope, even when every earthly prop has been removed.
Two Experiences We Know
Being tested by God is a familiar experience.
It’s helpful to know what kind of test God is giving you.
Sometimes God presses on a hidden sin. It could be bitterness, self-centeredness, or some emotional crutch that you are leaning on more heavily than you ought. It could just as easily be a behavioral sin that is stealing little pieces of you away from living the fullness of the life God has in store for you.
The “Jonah Test” is that uncomfortable moment when the Spirit confronts you with what you don’t want to admit.
Repent. Believe in the Gospel.
Other times, the trial comes without explanation.
A diagnosis.
A loss.
A setback that makes no sense.
Old age is often a prolonged “Job Test”.
The “Job Test” asks whether we will hold to God’s goodness even when we can’t see it, don’t feel it… When bitter circumstances seem to require God to defend Himself against our pain, will the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus be our balm?
How do you know what kind of test you are enduring?
One test feels like rebuke; the other feels like mystery.
One might be shorter once repentance comes; the other might stretch on with no quick resolution.
Both, however, are God’s way of shaping faith.
Passing Through, Not Passing
The good news is this: God’s tests are not meant for pass or fail.
The goal is not that you “pass” God’s tests, it’s that you “pass through”.
Jonah’s anger did not end God’s mercy. Job’s confusion did not disqualify him from God’s care.
So also with us. Christ has already passed through every test on our behalf. At the cross, He bore both rebuke and mystery. He carried our sin and entered our suffering. And in His resurrection, He guarantees that whatever test we face, we will not be left there.
Takeaway: Faith’s tests come in different forms, some expose what must be confessed, others stretch us to endure the inexplicable. But in every case, Christ Himself is the one who carries us through.
Prayer: Lord, when You confront us, give us humility to repent. When You bewilder us, give us strength to endure. And in every test, fix our eyes on Jesus, who has already carried us safely through. Amen.
