Jonah 3:10-4:3

Did you ever have a missionary come to your church to tell you about his work?  Maybe he told you about getting Bibles to people who have never had one in their own language.  Or maybe he told you about a church he built for people who had been worshipping out under a tree or something.  A missionary usually excited about the work God is doing, even if that work is difficult.

If I were a gambler, I’d be willing to bet you’ve never had a missionary come to your church and say,

“I never wanted to go there in the first place, but God sort of made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  So I get there, preach one sermon, and the whole city, including the king, demonstrates serious, heartfelt repentance and believes in God.  (Insert disgusted sigh here.)  I knew this was going to happen.  Just kill…

Jonah 3:5-9

One of the reasons people sometimes give for not believing that the book of Jonah is literally true is the mass repentance of the Ninevites.  If you’ll recall, the city of Nineveh was huge for its time—120,000 to 600,000 people (by the way, if you’re wondering where this figure comes from, check out 4:11.  Some scholars believe the phrase “120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand” refers to the children of Nineveh, and they add on extra people to account for teens and adults.  Some believe that phrase is a metaphor for being spiritually blind and leave the number at 120,000.  Others take the size of Nineveh, perhaps 60 miles in circumference, divide the area of the city into square yardage and assign a certain number of people per square yard based on population formulas.  Anyway, it was big.)

But…

Jonah 2:10- 3:4

Eject!  Eject!  Jonah’s hitchhiking days were over, and my guess is that he was probably much cuter the first time he entered the world than this second time.  (I’m just wondering how much ceremonial cleansing and sacrificing he had to do.  I’m thinking back over Levitical law, and I don’t remember anything about how many days you’d be considered unclean or which sacrifices you’d have to offer if you’d been swallowed by a fish.  Not much legal precedent on that one.)

With his “rebirth” came a re-commissioning of the original commission.  And this time, Jonah didn’t hesitate to get up and go.  Wise choice.  Some people just have to learn things the hard way, and many times, they are the ones who most passionately warn people not to go down the road they traveled.

Was this the case with Jonah?  Did he have compassion on the…

Jonah 2:1-9

There’s a lot we can learn about prayer from Jonah:

It’s ok to cry out to the Lord in distress (2).

If you’re like me, you’ve heard a million times that our praying shouldn’t be relegated only to crying out to the Lord in distress.  You’ve probably also heard verses like James 1:2, which might make you think that when tough times come our way, God wants us to just grin and bear it.

It’s true that we need to maintain a healthy, balanced prayer life by spending time with God every day.  One of the benefits of doing so is that we won’t find ourselves in Jonah’s shoes nearly as often, because we’ll be more in tune with the Spirit’s leading, and more apt to be obedient.

But when those tough times come, whether of our own making, or not, God wants us to cry out…

Jonah 1:17-2:7

Well, Jonah had finally belly-flopped right into his brick wall.  No more running.  If he wanted any chance at living, he had no choice but to fling himself at the foot of  God’s throne, own up to everything, and beg for mercy.  And that’s just what he did.  Once he caught his breath, that is.  And in order to do that, he needed a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, circa the Iron Age.  Which God graciously provided.

Now, a lot has been written about just what kind of fish or aquatic mammal this was that swallowed Jonah.  There’s been speculation that it was this kind of whale or that kind of shark, or that maybe it was some kind of unknown sea creature.  There are scientists who say that the story of Jonah couldn’t possibly be true because there isn’t a whale or fish alive today that’s anatomically…