Jonah

Jonah was brought to the point where he knew he had to obey God. But his feelings were still out of alignment with God’s.  God wants more than our obedience – he wants us to share his feelings and reflect his character.  And he was determined to remake Jonah to be like himself.

Jonah was angry with God. He believed that God had treated him badly and treated the people of Nineveh too generously. Yet in his sinful anger it was to God he complained, and God answered him.

God was gracious to Jonah.  God was gracious to the sailors who threw Jonah overboard.  And God was gracious to the people of Nineveh to whom Jonah preached. 

A believer who deliberately chooses a path of disobedience may later repent and be restored.  But is he doomed from then on to live “in God’s second-best”? 

Jonah sang a song of testimony from the belly of the fish.  Thrown into the sea, he had experienced all the horrors of death.  Yet the Lord rescued him and raised him back to life.  His experience became the sign which convinced the people of Nineveh to repent.  The sign which we present to the world is the death and resurrection of Jesus.