Greetings one and all! I figured I better get back to my blog series I’ve been working on.
I am now considering The Missional Church series closed now. We’ll continue with the others.
In Major Themes in the Minor Prophets, we’ll next look at Jonah. I have blogged about the book of Jonah in the past. So what I’m about to say may or may not have been said before.
Jonah was a prophet. God comes to him and commands him to go to Nineveh and speak against them. Nineveh??!! Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the chief enemy of Israel. Jonah didn’t want to go there.
So he boards a ship going in the opposite direction. He got on a ship going to Tarshish to try to escape from Jehovah (as if that was ever possible).
As they were going, Jonah goes to the bottom of the ship and goes to sleep. In the mean time, Jehovah sends a serious storm. The other men sailing with Jonah begin calling on their deities to deliver them from this storm. They go and get Jonah to call upon his deity. Nothing is working.
So Jonah tells them he was running away from Jehovah God, the One whom made everything there is. He then tells them it’s his fault this storm came on them and advises them to throw him overboard. These guys are apparently good guys, they try to make it to land and spare him. But the harder they tried, the worse the storm got. So they do what Jonah said and gave him the heave-ho.
As soon as he hit the water, the storm was gone, the sea grew still, and this these guys grew very afraid.
In the meantime, Jonah is sinking in the sea and a big fish comes and swallows him up. While Jonah is in the belly of this fish he prays for deliverance. And God tells him, He’ll give him one more chance to go to Nineveh and preach against them. This time he obliges. The fish spits him up on the sea shore (he had been inside the fish three days).
So he goes to Nineveh and preaches that they better repent or in forty days the city will be destroyed. And they did. This probably the greatest revival in history.
You’d think Jonah would be thrilled the city repented, right? Wrong! He wanted God to destroy the city, and he is upset that He didn’t, because Jonah hated Nineveh. He knew God was gracious and would forgive them if they repented. So he was angry at God.
At the end of Jonah, God tells Jonah this “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, … Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (4:11).
The application should be obvious. Don’t try to run away from God. He does forgive those who repent. We should rejoice when people repent. Don’t hate anyone. Any place that God sees even one lost person, He calls a “great city”.
A question to myself and you. Am I running away from God?
Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Any and all the above or anything else is always welcomed and encouraged.
God bless. Grace and Peace.
Zack
