Somebody has to go to hell!

 

Read Jonah 3

We see rebellion.  Jonah ran away.

We see Jonah being reconciled to God’s purpose, at least in his mind.  This took place in the belly of a big fish.

We see Jonah obeying God’s command and preaching repentance to Nineveh.  Nineveh repented and God spared them.

Do we see ourselves?

Rebellion, reconciliation, and then obedience have marked the journey of many who now profess Jesus is Lord!

We see God’s own prophet who does not know the heart of God.  He obeys, but as we see in the next chapter, he is angry that God spared Nineveh.

Have we ever claimed God’s salvation and rejoice in it and celebrated the professions of faith of our children and their children?  Do we get goosebumps when our kids are baptized?

Do we love the grace and mercy of God?

Are we thankful that God loved us first and so much that he made a way for us to be in right standing with him and to spend eternity with him?

Do we love being a child of God but still think a little judgment and condemnation is appropriate for some folks.

Oh, they will need an extra level of hell for that guy.

God needs to send some fire and brimstone on those people.

Do we love grace for ourselves and our families but desire judgment for everyone else?

Do we have a little Jonah in us? 

Do we enjoy preaching hellfire and damnation but deep down hope that some people don’t respond?

I have had this conversation with some people that knew their Bible but missed the heart of God.  Here is what I have heard from professed Christians.

Somebody has got to go to hell.

That’s saying that God cannot make life abundant good enough unless it’s worse for someone else.

God can’t make heaven glorious enough unless somebody is burning in hell.

We need to wrap our minds around the fact that God desires none to perish.  He wants all to come to repentance and the saving grace offered to all.

Why do people gossip?  If they can make people believe that someone else is not as good as they are, they feel better, maybe superior about themselves. 

Gossip is a cheap fix.  It’s a drug and it’s addictive.  It is ungodly.

It reeks of us wanting grace and mercy and forgiveness for ourselves for not for others.

It is not of God.

Jonah obeyed God but his heart was still in rebellion.  He complied with God’s authority.  He did not accept it or embrace it.

I have divided our response to authority into four areas.

Reject, comply, accept, and embrace.  So many live in the realm of rejection.  Some live in the realm of compliance.

Few know what it is to accept authority and even fewer to embrace it.

God is sovereign.  Does that bother us or comfort us?

God’s thoughts and ways are beyond our comprehension.  Does that bother us or comfort us?

God’s answers to our prayers may not always be what we ask for.  Does that bother us or comfort us?

We can tell people that God loves them and he has made a way to be right with God, but do we want them to repent and believe the good news?

Do we also desire that none perish and all come to repentance and life eternal?  Do we know God’s heart and are we teachable enough to let God make our hearts like his?

And you thought we were just going to talk about those wicked people in Nineveh.

Amen.

Trending in Nineveh--Sackcloth

 Read Jonah 3

Jonah was on the shore.  He had his toes in the water…

Actually, chapter 3 begins with business.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.  Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you.

His time in the belly of a great fish reconciled Jonah, at least in mind, to God’s purpose for him.  He went to Nineveh.

It was a big city.  It took 3 days to cover all of it.  Jonah went around the city proclaiming, “You guys have 40 days to repent of your evil ways or you're done for.”

The people believed Jonah and started fasting and wearing sackcloth.  These were not God’s Chosen People but somehow, they knew to wear sackcloth when they were repenting.  They may not have been God’s Chosen People but they knew of God’s ways.

They knew that they had gone way off course.  God could not be happy with them.  Numbering them with Sodom or Gomorrah seemed like the logical thing for God to do.  The people repented by fasting and wearing sackcloth.

Sackcloth would not be a standard wardrobe item for these gentile people.  That was something that the Israelites did.  Wouldn’t you like to go back in time and invest in burlap bags when you heard that Jonah was running away from God?

What difference would selling a few burlap bags make?  Probably not much but selling 125,000 or more would turn a tidy profit.  That would be every person in Nineveh. How would that be possible?

When Jonah’s words reached the king of Nineveh, he decreed that everyone would fast and everyone would wear sackcloth.  This was not just for the people but for their livestock as well.  Perhaps this gives us insight into what it is for the whole creation to groan in hopes of reconciliation that we know today in Christ Jesus.

You just don’t see a lot of cattle or sheep adorned in sackcloth, unless you were in Nineveh when Jonah was.  Wow!  That’s going all out on the participation.

The king thought that if God saw this, maybe he would relent.  We repent and God relents.

He did!  Destruction was not delivered to Nineveh, at least for another hundred years or so.  Eventually, the Medes and Babylonians would lay waste to the city, but for this time, God had spared them.

God sent Jonah.  Jonah delivered God’s message.  God had mercy on Nineveh and forgave them.  God has always been a God who desires none to perish.

That’s chapter 3.  Jonah was reconciled to the will of God at least in his mind while he was in the belly of the great fish.  We will get a glimpse into Jonah’s heart in the next chapter.

For now, let’s just celebrate that Nineveh repented and was not destroyed.

You might think, yeah, but it didn’t last.  It didn’t.  The great city of Nineveh would be gone in little more than a century.  So did it make a difference?

I look at our country today and what do I see?

Hatred. 

Division.

Orwell’s ministry of truth is no longer fiction.

Denying history in favor of the narrative to be advanced.

Contempt for anything godly. 

Movements to declare multiple genders.

Killing children in the womb and killing those who make it out of the womb but succumb to senseless violence.

The sanctity of life has been forgotten.

Platitudes for the most profane music.

Death of dialogue.

And of course, the ubiquitous misuse of your and you’re.  Some of you were ok with the first few examples but offended by my grammar Nazi example.

The world that you know does not worship God.  Evil abounds.  The stench of this nation’s wickedness has risen to God.

We would be well served to fast and put on sackcloth—every one of us, including our animals.  We have something better than sackcloth.  We are called to confess.  We have already repented, but still miss the mark on a recurring basis.

Many of us do confess daily or weekly, but we are surrounded by a culture that would not hear Jonah’s words but surely needs to repent.

But Nineveh was eventually destroyed.  So, what’s the point?

I would take a 100-year reprieve in this country right now.  I would covet a century of godliness. I would sing Hallelujah for this nation to return to God, even just to get my children’s children through their lives in a godly land.

I would love to see my children’s children pass the godliness baton to their own children.

I know that eternity with God is promised to me, but I would rejoice beyond measure in the wholesale repentance of my nation.

Imagine being the king of a wicked people and deciding that everyone would repent.  They would at least do the outwards signs of repentance.  Imagine wholesale repentance.

What would we repent of?

Not being white.

Not being black.

Not being born male or female.

Not of having a job.

Not of paying your bills.

Not of trying to make a living and support your family.

Not of any of the things that the world would tell us to discharge.

We must all repent of rebelling against God.  We must all repent of a me-first culture.  We must repent of unclean hearts and minds.

We must repent of our sin.  Many have but so many more have rejected God and the stench of that rejection has risen to heaven.

The twin gods of Apathy and Ambivalence rule in this country. 

We have hope for ourselves and our families.  We are people of hope.  We believe and we confess and we get back in our race of faith, but our country is in peril. 

I long for wholesale repentance, but perhaps it must come at the loss of luxury and liberty.  I like being able to go where I want and have a vehicle to get me there.

I love to go to the store and complain that out of the 40 different types of bread, they didn’t have my favorite.

I love to complain about the heat or the cold from the comfort of my sheltered abode, then complain about my gas or electric bill.

Jonah is not coming to America, but we are charged—commissioned—to take the good news to the world.  Most of that ministry will take place in America.

I am thankful for eternity with my loving God.  I would love another 100 years in a country that loved God and served him.

If the pagan, evil king of Nineveh can call all of his people to repent, I have hope that America could do the same.

As we draw nearer the time when God’s Spirit is poured out upon this sinful world, I pray that his Spirit is irresistible.

I also pray that people repent of the ways of the world now and come to God.

So many people pray that God will bless America again.  I pray that people will repent for repentance must precede God’s forgiveness and his blessings.

I pray that we as a nation can repent better than Nineveh.  Maybe I should invest in burlap. 

I will read something directed at God’s Chosen People, but I pray it applies to us.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Amen

Affirmations in our Distress

 

Read Jonah 2

 

From inside the fish and in his distress he prayed.  This whole drowning thing was not something that I looked forward to, but this belly of the fish gig isn’t all warm and fuzzy either.  Slick and slimy might describe my current lot.

I called out to you and you answered.

Lord, you let me dig my own hole, actually you let me run as far as I could and then be thrown into a raging sea.

The sea was winning this battle.  It was futile to fight against it.

I couldn’t run away from you but it seems that I have been banished from your sight.

Even in the belly of this fish, it was not possible to see the salvation of dry land, but I am looking towards your holy city and know that one day I will see it again.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I am adorned in seaweed and it’s not a spa treatment.

I think this new abode of mine is resting on the bottom of the ocean.

Woe to me.  I am ruined.  I am a person of unclean lips.

Even as I knew my life was demanded of me and my time was short, you brought me up from the deep.  You rescued me.

All of my efforts to resist your will and wisdom have been like worshiping false gods.  You are the one true God.  I am your servant.  I will proclaim the salvation that you placed upon my lips.

Not my will, but your will be done!

And the fish deposited Jonah upon the shore.  The text says vomited upon the shore.  Now that’s an answer to prayer—vomited upon the shore.

We all have prayed for those in the belly of the fish.  We pray for those in accidents, with life-threatening disease, who are on the front lines in areas where lawlessness prevails, who are forward deployed to hostile areas, and so many more circumstances.  We pray for them.

We also pray for ourselves in our belly of the fish lives.  We may not understand that being in the belly of the fish is a good thing compared to drowning in our seas of disruption, but that time granted us to pray in our distress is time to make our affirmations to God.

In our distress, affirmation of God’s promises is so powerful.  Our trust in the Lord over our own understanding is demanded of us.

Jonah’s own understanding got him into a raging storm, thrown overboard, and swallowed by a great fish.

His trust in the Lord brought him to cry out to the Lord from the depths and to know that his prayer was heard.  Hear David’s words in Psalm 3.

Lord, how many are my foes!

    How many rise up against me!

Many are saying of me,

    “God will not deliver him.”

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,

    my glory, the One who lifts my head high.

I call out to the Lord,

    and he answers me from his holy mountain.

We continue with David’s words in the Psalms.

David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.  He said:

 

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;

     my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

    my shield and the horn of my salvation.

He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—

    from violent people you save me.

I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,

    and have been saved from my enemies.

The waves of death swirled about me;

    the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

 The cords of the grave coiled around me;

    the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called to the Lord;

    I called out to my God.

From his temple he heard my voice;

    my cry came to his ears.

Whether we are surrounded by our enemies or in the bondage of our own understanding, the Lord hears our prayers.  We should ask for what we need but not to the exclusion of the affirmation that the Lord of all the earth will do what is right.

We may not always understand the answer to our prayers.  God’s ways are higher than our ways.  His thinking is beyond our comprehension. 

He will answer our prayers.  Our prayers are powerful and effective. 

Jonah wasn’t just having a bad day or three.  He was rebelling against God; yet God heard his prayers and affirmations and delivered him.

He probably didn’t ask to be vomited from the fish, but that was his deliverance from the bondage of his own understanding.

All of God’s answers might not have been what we thought they should be, but for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, they are exactly what they need to be.

Jonah was called according to God’s purpose, not according to Jonah’s convenience.  When we understand that we too are on a mission from God, his answers to our prayers start to make better sense to us.

We don’t have to figure out the details of everything.  We just live according to the purpose that God gave us.  That might be proclaiming God’s call to salvation through repentance to the wicked people of Nineveh.  It might be something else.

When we pray and ask God to make all of the bad stuff go away, can we make an affirmation that we are living according to the purpose he gave us?  Are we doing what he called us to do?

Sometimes we can’t—we fall short time and time again—but we can always affirm the promises of God. When we affirm God’s promises in our distress, our chances of reconciling ourselves to God’s purpose for us go way up.

Can we who are commissioned to go into the world with good news say what Jonah said in his distress?

What I have vowed I will make good.

    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’

In our times of distress, let us not pray as people who do not know the Lord and do not have hope.  Let us pray as people of hope and in affirmation.

I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’

Amen.

Don't worry, God will get someone else to do what he called you to do...

 

Read Jonah 2

Have you ever had this conversation with other Christians?  I thought God wanted me to do something but I didn’t do it.

That’s ok.  I’m sure God used somebody else.  There’s a logic to it.  God can do all things.  If not through you, then why not someone else?

Let’s examine that and go beyond the standard sophomoric level it most often receives.

God knew you before you were born.  He formed you.  You are unique. 

You are called according to his purpose.

So, can just anyone do what God made you to do?  Of course, God may equip whomever he wants.  We can neither restrain nor constrain God.

But he is the Potter.  We are the clay.  Who are we to deny the person that God made us to be?

Who are we to deny the purpose that God gave us?

Saul of Tarsus felt he was called by God.  He was sure that included persecuting these newfangled rebels who followed the way of Jesus.  Saul persecuted them with a passion.  He was sure that was the purpose to which God had called him.

Meeting the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus was what psychologists might call a Significant Emotional Event.  Actually, it was much more than that, but the world tries to put everything into a box that it can understand.

Through Saul’s blindness and some help from other believers—most of whom were very skeptical of him at first—Saul learned the purpose to which God had truly called him. 

Saul took some time in the wilderness—Arabia to discern this calling he had yet to understand.  This might have taken up to 3 years.  So 3 days in the belly of a fish might have seemed like a crash course to Saul, whom you know best by his Greek name, Paul.

Think to Balaam and the 7 messages that God gave him to give Balak.  The prophet was inclined to do what God wanted, but needed some rudder from an angel armed with a sword and the voice of his own donkey.

Balaam delivered God’s messages.

God chose Moses to go to Egypt and deliver his people from bondage.  Moses didn’t want to go.  Suppose this happens.  What if…

But God had chosen Moses.

Jeremiah told God that he was too young to be his prophet.  God told Jeremiah that he knew him better than he knew himself.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

    before you were born I set you apart;

    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

We must never forget that God is sovereign.  When he appoints us to something—we will label it a calling—he has already factored in our short comings and made his sovereign decision.

Jonah was to go to Nineveh and preach repentance to them.  He didn’t want to go.  God could have said, “OK, next candidate.”

He didn’t.  These were not tryouts.  God had already made his selection.  It was Jonah.

When Jonah ran away, God could have just written him off.  He didn’t.  He sent a storm.

When Jonah was thrown overboard, God could have just said that’s judgment day come early for you.  He didn’t.  He provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.

In the belly of that fish Jonah was reconciled to his purpose.  He confessed he had gone astray.  He affirmed that God heard his prayers, even from the depths of the ocean.

And the fish vomited Jonah on the shore.  You don’t get a lot of happy ending that involve fish vomit, but today you did.  Actually, it’s not the end of the story.

Jonah would finally do what he was purposed to do.  He had resolved in his mind to do this.  He would proclaim the Lord’s salvation.

His heart might have needed some more time in the belly of the fish. Keep reading.

So for us, consider my initial provocation.  If you know that God has called you to something and your thinking is that if I don’t do it, then someone else will, are you asking for a time of blindness, a talking donkey, or a 3-day/3-night all-inclusive stay in the belly of a fish?

I challenge you to a time of discernment before you write off what you think might just be God’s calling.  It could be to ordained ministry, service as an elder, service coordinating cleanup after F4, delivering gospels, straightening hymnals in their holders, beginning a prayer group or Bible study, or a dozen other things that you think you might just be called to do.

If you know with certainty that God has called you to this, just do it.

If you are not sure, spend time in prayer and discernment before you just say, God will get someone else.

This is different than saying, well nobody else is going to do this.  I am talking about when God has called you.  Remember, his sheep know his voice.

Jonah ran away.  Today, we prefer convenient excuses.  Running away takes too much energy. Has God called you to something that you have shrugged off capriciously?

God doesn’t make mistakes.  You were designed with his purposes in mind.  Don’t run away and don’t wait until you are praying in the belly of a fish to realize that God is serious about who he made for his purposes.

To run away or simply shrug off his calling saying he will just get someone else denies God’s sovereignty.  It makes you a rebel and in league with the enemy.

How can we say as for me and my house we serve the Lord and be in league with the enemy?  Obey God’s callings.  He chose you.  He factored in your height, weight, intelligence or lack thereof, your looks, and your compliance with Taco Tuesday and Throwback Thursday regulations.  He still chose you.

We should regard running away from God and just shrugging off his callings saying he will just get someone else as sin.  God will forgive us our sin if we confess to him, but how long will we keep on sinning.

What shall we say then?  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound even more?  No!  By no means! That is not who we are now.

Answer the callings that God has placed on your life.

Amen.

 

Jonah - Part 1

 

Read Jonah 1

So we begin this short book of the Old Testament about Jonah Ben Amittai. And to begin, we go to John’s gospel.  Jesus was getting everyone’s attention.  Some were amazed and some were offended or just ticked off that this man from Galilee was cutting in on their action.

The Sanhedrin sent guards to arrest Jesus. They came back empty-handed.  In their own defense, they said that they had never heard anyone speak like this man.

That had to get the goat of these high and mighty leaders who valued their own words so much.  They discounted the people who followed Jesus as an ignorant mob, but one who was more knowledgeable spoke on behalf of sanity.

Nicodemus proffered:

Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?

I thought we were studying Jonah?  Here’s the connection in the answer of the Sanhedrin.

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

Let’s do what the Scribes and Pharisees directed.  Let’s look into it. We go to 2 Kings 14 and find that the Northern Kingdom, basically everything except Judah, had one bad king after another and did evil in the sight of the Lord.  We pick up at verse 23 and an introduction to Jeroboam II King of Israel

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.

From this biblical and historical account, we see that Jonah came from Gath Hepher, a city about 3 miles north—northeast of Nazareth in Galilee.  Jonah was from Galilee.

We also see that Jonah had been a prophet to wicked people before.  That will have more relevance as we continue through Jonah.

So let’s dive into the book of Jonah.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

In the first two verses, we have the mission statement and intent of the Lord.  Go to Nineveh and preach against it.  Why? Their wickedness is before me.  Basically, God said he could smell the stench of their wickedness.

So Jonah packed all of his scrolls containing his best sermons on repentance and headed to Nineveh.  He was experienced at preaching to the wicked and he was going to give this mission everything he had.

Not exactly…

Jonah ran.  He ran in the opposite direction of Nineveh.  Nineveh was north.  Jonah ran south to Joppa.

Nineveh was in what is present-day Iraq near Syria.  The modern-day town of Mosul might be the closest place near Nineveh that you might recognize.

Nineveh was within the fertile crescent, the route that Abram and his family took when they left Ur.  Abram, Sarah, and Lot continued along the fertile crescent into what would become the Promised Land.

Nineveh was a long trip from Galilee. It was a hike.  It was beyond the Northern Kingdom’s boundaries.

Jonah made sure it didn’t get any closer.  He ran in the opposite direction and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish. That was likely Spain, even the part west of Gibraltar.

Jonah was going to run away from God.  Jonah, the prophet who had spoken for God before, was going to run away from God. 

Do you want the theological term for this?  That’s a half-baked plan right there.  That dog don’t hunt.  Stupid is as stupid does.

We are 4 verses into this chapter and this book and God sent a storm.  It surely was a bad one because the sailors were already discharging cargo into the sea in fear for their lives.

Jonah had gone below deck and was asleep.  There is something to getting rocked to sleep while you are at sea.

The captain would have none of it and told Jonah to call on his god and make this stuff stop.  The captain and crew were obviously pagan but they knew Jonah had a different god.  They did not yet know it was the one true God.

The sailors cast lots—they drew straws to see who was responsible.  Jonah got the short straw.  Even long ago, people wanted to know who to blame.

So the crew decided it was time to get to know this Jonah a little better.

So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

Jonah answered.

 “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

I don’t give Jonah any points for smarts but he does get credit for honesty.  He had already told the crew—evidently before the storm—that he was running away from God.

Who is that honest?  I know that this makes me look like an idiot, but I’m running away from God.  You all don’t have any of those Wanna Get Away fares do you?

The crew was terrified.  They had given passage to a man of God who was running away from God and a great storm comes upon them.

They asked Jonah what they should do.  He told them that they should throw him overboard. That wasn’t their first choice.  Maybe they could row back to shore.

This tells us that this was not a huge ship like a Spanish galleon with huge sales and a high deck.  The ships of this age had decks lower to the water so sail and oar could both be used.  The Phoenicians then the Romans mastered the art of building this sort of ship.

Rowing back to shore didn’t work so they did just what Jonah told them but not before they asked his God to forgive them for killing him.

Jonah went overboard.  The storm stopped.  The crew feared the Lord and made a sacrifice to him.  I don’t know what the sacrifice was, but the pagans had a paradigm shift.

Jonah was swallowed by a huge fish.  Actually, the text reads that God provided a fish to swallow Jonah and he remained 3 days in the belly of the fish.

God provided?  Who would want to be swallowed up by a big fish?  How about someone who was about to drown?

Was it a fish or a whale?  I don’t recall the taxonomy addressed in scripture.  You can get a genealogy or two along your way through the Bible, but nothing definitive in this area. I don’t think the Old Testament authors took high school biology, so a big fish is as descriptive as the author knew to be.

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

Class Mammalia

Order Cetacea

That gets you close to a whale, but we don’t get that degree of specificity.  We don’t get genus and species. The whole binomial nomenclature didn’t come about until the 18^th Century.  Over the years that was sometimes a heated discussion.  We will just go with a big fish.

This is already a whale of a fish story.  It’s a big fish.  Not the one that got away but one in which Jonah found himself within as the chapter ends.

This running away from God business had not gone so well.

He had not pleased God.  He was thrown overboard and now was in the belly of a big fish. And not mentioned in the scripture, he was out the fare for his trip to Spain. You never know when you need to buy that travel insurance.

Praise the Lord that we never run away from God!  We don’t kick against the goads. We don’t walk on the other side of the road.  We obey his commands and they are not a burden to us.

We tithe. We give cheerfully.  Our entire lives are given to God as a living sacrifice.

We are always known by our love.  We are never afraid.  We are never discouraged. We are always people of hope!

Did anyone have to grit their teeth or roll their eyes through those affirmations?  I suspect that even as we try to follow Jesus, we all have some things in which we are still running away from him.

For now, we will leave Jonah in the belly of the fish, but let’s take some time this week to see if we still have areas in our lives where we are running away from God. 

Jesus said: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.  You can’t follow and run away at the same time.

Let’s take some time to see if we have places in our lives where we are running away from God.  When we find them, go to God immediately in prayer.

Amen.

 

Wanna Get Away? Get Away Fares to Tarshish Now Available

 

  

Read Jonah 1

Wow!  These are some short chapters.  Some of you are wondering how is Tom going to get 2 messages out of each chapter?

Not to worry.  If I can’t get 2 messages from each chapter, you will get the Parable of the Talents again.

Teshuva is the Hebrew concept of repentance.  It means return.

Return to what?  To God and the ways of God, of course.  We have expanded that concept of repentance in this age to include not only returning, but the act of turning away or around from the sinful direction that we were headed.

Even more, as we turn we must leave behind not only the ways of evil, but the thinking and mindset that embodies them.  It is a total change—or exchange of heart, mind, and soul.

Jonah is sometimes contested as to whether it is fact or a fictional story with a moral, not quite a parable but surely with multiple lessons.

Jonah Ben Amittai means Jonah son of Amittai.  Amittai means truth.  Jonah is the son of truth. 

Jesus said that he was greater than Jonah.  OK, we get that, but why Jonah.  Why not Moses or Elijah?

The story of Jonah was read every year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.  Some scholars consider Jonah a type of Christ. 

That sounds strange.  A reluctant Christ? I could write book or Netflix series on that.

Jonah is mentioned in the Quran.  Though his father is not mentioned there, Muslim scholars generally agree that is was indeed Amittai, and even note that Mohammed held Jonah in high regard.

But who is Jonah?  He is a prophet from Galilee who was called by God to preach a message of repentance to the people of Nineveh.  Nineveh lies beyond the Promised Land.

What did Jonah do?  He ran away from God.

He ran away from God?  How crazy does this sound to us.  Nothing is hidden from God.  You can’t hide from him.  What a knucklehead.

Then we have to consider the planks in our own eyes. 

What?  We are not running away from God.  We have not been sent to Nineveh. 

That’s correct.  We have not been sent to Nineveh, but we are commissioned to go everywhere else.  I know you have read the whole book of Jonah.  It’s the easiest reading that you have committed to for a while.

So you know that Nineveh does repent.  I don’t think I ruined the ending for anyone, but did you know that over a hundred years later it was destroyed by the Medes and Babylonians.

So, there is no Nineveh for you to go to, but there is everywhere else.

But do we carry a message of repentance everywhere else?  Do we reach out to people and charge them to turn away from evil and follow God?

Do we sing Jesus loves me this I know, but forget that part of that love is calling us to repentance?

Jonah ran away from God in the opposite direction of Nineveh.  He was trying to go to Spain from there.  You know what happened.

Are we running away from our commission?  As we go through this short book on Jonah, whom we consider among the minor prophets but the Hebrew people still hold in high esteem and is given a prominent place on what might be considered the holiest day of the year, let’s pull out a few things for ourselves.

Let’s start with are we running away from our commission?  Are we writing our own first chapter of Jonah when it comes to delivering a message that says:

Repent and believe the Good News!

Amen.