Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk
image courtesy of matthains at stock.xchng
Five prophets, one day – that’s what I’m talking about! The longer I do it, the more I love the Bible in 90 Days Challenge!
VeggieTales has a great song at the end of their Jonah movie. The chorus goes something like this:
Jonah was a prophet, ooo ooo!
But he really never go it, sad but true!
If you’ve been watchin’ you can spot it! A doodely doo!
He did not get the point!
They make a great point, those signing vegetables. God sent Jonah on a mission of mercy to call Assyria to repentance by preaching God’s coming wrath to its capital Nineveh. You know the story – God calls boy, boy runs away, boy gets on boat, other boys through boy off the boat, fish eats boy – your basic ingredients for an awesome Sunday School lesson or feature film. While in the belly of the great fish (the Bible never calls it a whale), Jonah repents and God commands the fish to spit him up onto dry land. Jonah receives the mercy he wasn’t willing to offer the Assyrians.
Jonah keeps his word and preaches to Nineveh. Based on his actions in chapter 4, it seems that he was hoping his preaching would not be heeded by the Ninevites, but it was. The king himself repented and commanded the people to seek God’s forgiveness. God sees their turning away from sin and toward Him and forgives them, not bringing the disaster He had threatened. After receiving mercy from God himself, you’d think that he would rejoice at the repentance of Nineveh and God’s great mercy toward the people.
Instead, Jonah’s ticked!
He’s actually angry that God made him preach to Nineveh because he knew that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love (4:2)! He gets all suicidal and mopey, crying over the death of his shade tree/weed. It’s funny, we normally leave the story of Jonah right after people repent, because this is the happy ending. But where the Holy Spirit leaves the story is with Jonah whining and God telling him how messed up it is that he’s crying over the death of a plant but doesn’t care about the lives of over 120,000 people in Nineveh. For Jonah, God’s forgiveness just wasn’t fair. The Assyrians were just too wicked to forgive.
Later on, Assyria turned back to its wicked ways and God send Nahum to preach their coming destruction. Because of their endless cruelty (3:19), God wiped them out with the Babylonians. Many of the atrocities that the Assyrians had subjected other cities to during their hey day were brought into the walls of Nineveh. The scene is horrific, but is very much the same as what they had done throughout the years to other nations. Because they did not turn to God this time, His judgment, not His mercy, fell on Nineveh.
What Jonah asked for, Nahum got to see.
Is it right for us to expect God to hold others to a different standard than we hold ourselves to? Paul tells us that we are to forgive as we have been forgiven (Ephesians 4:32). Our sins against God are much greater than any sin someone could commit against us. For that matter, if God forgives someone, how can we withhold our forgiveness from them? Are we more offended than God? God tells us that we don’t have to worry because ultimately He will settle all accounts (Romans 12:19). This was true of Assyria – in the end they got what they deserved. Each of us will stand before God and give an account, and if we don’t have the forgiveness of Christ we will be punished accordingly.
Let’s not put ourselves above God’s judgment by withholding forgiveness from those who’ve wronged us. Let’s be willing to forgive, and not presumptuous about our own right to be forgiven. Let’s learn the lesson that Jonah didn’t: God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy (Romans 9:15; Exodus 33:19).
Words of Reason 