jonah

Happy Saturday!! Can you believe it’s almost Christmas?? This year has flown by and what a year it’s been. I am so excited to get into this week’s blog. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to write about next but I’ve been reading through Luke this month, and Luke 11 mentioned Jonah and his round-about way to Nineveh. So I immediately decided to study Jonah this week. 

Jonah’s story is an interesting one. Now, I’m only covering a snippet of his life in this blog, but let’s cover a little background about Jonah before. He was the son of Amittai and came from a city near Nazareth. He was one of the few prophets who came from the northern kingdom of Isreal. During the time that Jonah was a prophet, Isreal was politically very strong, but not spiritually. Rather than direct Jonah to prophesy to his own people, he sent Jonah to the Assryian capital of Nineveh. 

Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. So he hopped on a ship in Joppa to flee to Tarshish. To gain a better visual, Nineveh is now considered modern day Iraq, and Tarshish is modern day Spain– they’re over 2,500 miles apart from each other! Yikes! While Jonah was on the ship, “the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up” (Jonah 1: 4). 

This part makes me giggle. While this massive storm is going on, Jonah, is fast asleep. I don’t know about you but if I’m on a ship that’s threatening to break, I’m not sleeping. So the captain comes down and wakes Jonah up and asks him to ask his god to stop the storm. The other sailors wanted to know as much as they could about Jonah to save their lives. 

Jonah tells them who he is and what he’s done– telling them that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. He tells them to hurl him overboard. But because they truly believed Jonah’s God existed and were scared of the consequences if they threw a prophet into the sea, they refused. When all other efforts to get out of the storm failed they agreed to throw him overboard. 

This is where a giant fish comes up and swallows Jonah. Jonah sat in the belly of this fish for three days and three nights before doing anything. Can you imagine being in the belly of a fish?? Jonah 2:1-9 takes us through the prayer that Jonah prayed. Through his prayer, Jonah repented, so the Lord commanded the fish to vomit Jonah up. Jonah goes to Nineveh and spoke to the people of Nineveh. 

After Jonah had given the message to the people of Nineveh, he was so upset that he even asked God to take his life. This makes no sense, right? He delivered the message and the people of Nineveh were saved– shouldn’t he be thrilled?? Jonah was angry because God granted repentance to the Ninevites, and they were enemies of Judah and Isreal. Jonah wanted God to bring judgement to the people he hated. Jonah leaves the city and sits to the east of the city. 

The Lord appoints a plant to grow over his head, to save Jonah from his discomfort. The next night, God appointed a worm to destroy the plant and then He sent a scorching wind and the sun beating down right on Jonah’s head. Jonah again asks God, “Is it better for me to die than live?” (Jonah 4:8b). Through the plant, the Lord illustrated a beautiful picture to Jonah. God’s response showed Jonah that he really didn’t know God as well as he thought he did. Out of his anger, he quit serving God and his people, he separated himself from others, and he became a spectator. 

Not only does God’s concern for people go beyond Isreal, but He is totally justified in calling the nations to account. “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9), and not of any race or nation or class. 

The lesson of Jonah reminds us that God is the God of all people.