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Jonah Obeys the Lord
Jonah 3 1-5 and 10
Good News Translation (GNT)
*************************
1 Once again the Lord spoke to Jonah.
2 He said, "Go to Nineveh, that great city, and
proclaim to the people the message I have
given you."
3 So Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to
Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days
to walk through it.
4 Jonah started through the city, and after
walking a whole day, he proclaimed,
"In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!"
5 The people of Nineveh believed God's
message. So they decided that everyone
should fast, and all the people, from the
greatest to the least, put on sackcloth to show
that they had repented.
10 God saw what they did; he saw that they had
given up their wicked behavior.
So he changed his mind and did not punish
them as he had said he would.
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Taken from 'word-on-the-web'
supplied by the Scripture Union
Jonah Obeys the Lord
Jonah 3:1-5 and 10
If we read Jonah 1 out of the context of the whole book we would probably think that Jonah ran away from God because the task assigned him was too hard and that the storm and Jonah's subsequent adversities were God's punishment for his disobedience.
Chapter 4, however, makes it clear that the whole of the book of Jonah is about God's mercy.
Jonah ran away from God because he didn't like the thought that God's mercy might stretch as far as Nineveh and he certainly didn't want to play any part in that mercy being demonstrated to Assyrians.
This may be understandable when we consider the extent of Nineveh's atrocities, but it is not acceptable for anyone committed to following the God of mercy.
We can't pick and choose the elements of God's character that we think should be applied in any given situation.
God is bigger, better, more merciful and more scary than we or Jonah would sometimes like him to be.
The awfulness of the voyage towards Tarshish, resulting in Jonah's being thrown in the sea and swallowed by a fish, was not a punishment from God but a further sign of his mercy towards Jonah.
If Jonah was to be the best that he could be for God, to achieve his full potential, then there were things that he had to learn.
Because of his stubbornness, such learning could only come through very hard lessons.
If God had let him simply move away from Nineveh's influence, Jonah would never have come to terms with who God really was and that would have been a huge loss to him, but God is ready to show mercy not just to Nineveh but even to stubborn Jonah - and incidentally to the good-hearted, if somewhat theologically confused, sailors at the same time.
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