Daily Blast - Minor Prophets: Day 13
Scripture
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
Reflection
Jonah is an interesting book in the Bible. It is a well-known story and is probably the most famous book of the minor prophets. Most Sunday schools would have taught Jonah in some capacity. Over the next three days we are going to look at the story of Jonah and what it can teach us but today we are going to look at the whole book and see why it is different.
Unlike many books in the Bible, the book of Jonah is told from a story perspective, with the main character being the man in the title, Jonah. The characters in this book all represent something greater than just the character they are portraying. Jonah, the sailors, the people of Nineveh, they all have a greater meaning behind them rather than them just being another character in the story.
One of the biggest misconceptions of the book of Jonah is that Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he was scared of the people. In actual fact, Jonah doesn’t want the people of Nineveh to be saved and knows full well that God can and will save them if he shares the message from God to the people of Nineveh. If this is the case why then does Jonah disobey? Why does he try to consistently get out of this?
Jonah knows that God is loving and God is merciful, but Jonah wasn’t ready to see his enemy forgiven and saved.
Challenge
Are we ready for the time when God saves our enemies? How are we going to react when God does the things that maybe we don’t want? For example, the bully from school comes to church, or the person who’s always in detention and everyone avoids because he’s not very nice turns up at youth?
Are we willing to forgive and move on as God does to those who sin against Him?