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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.