Monday, July 14, 2014
Monday, July 14, 2014
Reading for today: Jonah 1-4
Jonah is one of those wonderful children stories from the Bible. Yet it is not just a children’s story, it is a valuable lesson for all ages. Jonah, I think is a lot like us. Jonah, a prophet of God, receives a word from God to go to Nineveh. Nineveh is a very large and prosperous city within the Assyrian Empire. The only thing is that Assyria is the “enemy” of Israel. It is a pagan city full of ungodly people.
So why would God send Jonah there?
Well, as you may know, Jonah does not want to go, and so he foolishly thinks he can escape God and go the other way. Now before you get too critical with Jonah, ask yourself how many times you’ve run away from God? Thinking that you can hide from Him, hoping that He doesn’t see you or what you are doing?
But God had other plans for Jonah and forces him to take a long serious look at what he is doing, oh yeah, he gets to do this contemplation in the belly of a fish, ehewww. Can you imagine what that must have been like? – ok not going to go there. Anyway, Jonah realizes that he needs to follow God’s direction if he’s going to have any prospects of living. So Jonah gets spit up on the shore. (can I say ehewww one more time?) He heads to Nineveh to deliver God’s message and guess what, the people listen.
Only now instead of being happy, Jonah is upset. Why? Because Jonah wanted the people of Nineveh punished for their wickedness. He didn’t want God to save them. He thought that God’s mercy and grace only extended to the people of Israel, not realizing that God’s grace is for everyone. He had forgotten that Israel was to be a blessing to every other nation, by sharing God’s message to everyone. John 3:16 that amazing salvation message says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (NIV, emphasis mine).
God loves all people, everywhere. We should never pick and choose whom we share the gospel with, salvation is for all who will believe and receive by faith. When we love God with our whole heart, we will find it a whole lot easier to love all of His children and be willing to share that message with everyone we meet.
And maybe, just maybe, we can avoid getting swallowed by a fish.
Blessings
PK
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So Jonah resembles the epitome of a spoiled, self-righteous child. As a Hebrew man who "fears the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land" (1:9), he understands the mercy and forgiveness of the God of Israel. However when God asks him to give a heathen nation a warning, and opportunity for repentance, he lets his prejudices get the best of him and refuses to take the message to them. He even admits to God that he was stalling because he knew He would be compassionate with them! (4:2) So he boarded a ship and sailed the opposite direction.
ReplyDeleteI love that even through Jonah's disobedience, and even when his sin affects those on the ship with him as he is attempting to run away, that God uses that opportunity to bring those on the ship to a saving knowledge of Himself. Sure, Jonah prays a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving once he's put in time out in the stomach of the giant fish, but then he's back to the same attitude once he hits dry land again.
He tells Nineveh only that they will be overthrown in 40 days; no mention of the possibility of forgiveness. Still pretty half-hearted and selfish, it seems... especially when he asks God to take his life rather than to see Him have mercy on the city. But like the good Father He is; God simply and calmly asks "do you have good reason to be angry?" (4:4) But Jonah, instead of seeing the "more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hands" (4:11), he sees a people he has grown up learning to hate. His prejudice had blinded him to the fact that they are also God's creation made in His own image.
So where do our prejudices lie? Who are the people we look at and seek for any opportunity to avoid them? Black, white, Muslim, Buddhist, Jehova's Witness...? What about the people we see that we know are living an ungodly and even wicked life? Thieves, murderers, rapists... the most heinous of criminals; do they deserve an opportunity to repent and know the mercy and forgiveness of our God? Is that up to us to decide?
As far as the criminals go, we have an appointed justice system for a reason, and people should absolutely face consequences for their actions in this life; but who are we to deny them the Kingdom of God? "For who regards us as superior? What do we have that we did not receive? And if we did receive it, why do we boast as if we had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7) So we have freely received great mercy, and freely we should give it.
So set your prejudices aside, let's not be self-righteous children. Let's accept our God's call to reach out to every living soul made in His own image. Just like Kathy pointed out, it all comes down to John 3:16.