“Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai,
saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great
city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me’”
(Jonah 1:2,
NKJV)
God is a forgiving God. As I read this small Book of Jonah, I’m amazed by a clear picture of a firm but
forgiving God. It starts with God ordered Jonah to preach in Nineveh, a foreign
town filled with the unusual immorality associated with major cities of
Assyrian Empire. “But Jonah arose to flee to
Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (1:3). Jonah ran away from
God (How funny is that!). Yet Jonah’s disobedience in heading in the opposite
direction didn’t result in his death or the end of his service. God’s mercy was
upon him.
In fact, God used Jonah to
convert the sailors on his escape ship, even when he rebelling and sinning.
Before they throw Jonah into the sea, the sailors prayed, “We
pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not
charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You”
(Jonah 1:14). And God used Jonah to reach Ninevites even though he hoped that
they would be destroyed. “Then God saw
their [Ninevites’] works, that they turned from their evil way; and God
relented from the disaster that He said He would bring upon them, and He did
not do it” (Jonah 3:10). God’s mercy was upon the sailors and the
people of Nineveh.
Of course, Jonah did
experience God’s anger – in the form of a storm, being swallowed by a big fish,
and suffering intense heat – but these were also signs of God’s mercy because
God used them to show Jonah that he had a second, a third, fourth… and so on
chances to him. From our human perspective, there can be few people who
deserved God’s mercy less than Jonah, the sailors and the Ninevites. Yet God
forgave them all.
Throughout the Bible,
God’s mercy is directed towards his children, the Jews. But in the Book of Jonah, God is clearly revealed
as also the God of non-Jews, of the Gentiles (us!). God is interested in a crew
of pagan sailors and He even forgives “more than one
hundred and twenty thousand” (4:11) of Israel’s greatest enemies. He
gave many chances to Jonah. See! God’s
forgiveness is not restricted to the Jews only but to all people who asking
for forgiveness and acknowledge their sins toward Him. Now, God even show
greater mercy toward us through His Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross
for the sins of all mankind. In Jesus,
God’s great mercy revealed to the fullest.
The Scripture says: “[Whoever]
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting
life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but
that the world through Him might be
saved” (John 3:15-17, NKJV). Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Thank you
LORD!
THINK BIG.
START SMALL. GO DEEP.