I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.
Today I read the book of Jonah. I am not used to this. Most of the time when we look at the book of Jonah we either look at the first part where he runs from the Lord’s command, is cast into the sea and swallowed by a very large fish, or we look at the second part of the book where he prophecies in Nineveh, they repent, and Jonah gets angry and sulks when God withdraws His judgment against Nineveh.
The story starts with God calling Jonah to go to Nineveh and prophecy that God is going to bring judgment against it because of its wickedness. Now we do not know when this took place, but it is reasonable to believe that it took place while Nineveh, as the capital of the Assyrian Empire, was at the height of its powers and represented the primary threat to Israel and Judah. Jonah did not want to go and warn them of God’s coming judgment because he wanted God to bring destruction upon them. So, in order to avoid giving them warning, Jonah not only refused to go to Nineveh, he decided to get as far away from them as possible. “God, you can’t expect me to go to Nineveh now. I’m all the way over here in Tarshish.” I am sure you know times when you were sure that God could not mean for you to do whatever it was you were being convicted to do because it was such an inconvenience to do so. I think there are two messages from the book of Jonah. The first message is that, yes, God does mean for you to do that even if it is inconvenient. The second is that God will make His will perfectly clear. Of course, if we are stubborn the way Jonah was, we will not like the results of God making His will clear.
When Jonah fled, he got on a ship sailing for Tarshish. We are not exactly sure where Tarshish was, but it was the farthest place that anyone in Israel could think of at that time. God raised a violent storm against the ship, a storm so violent that the sailors were afraid for their lives, nevertheless Jonah slept through the storm. The ship’s captain woke him up to demand that he pray to his god for a calm in the storm. When the storm did not calm, the sailors cast lots to determine who on board had offended the gods. The lot fell to Jonah. They immediately wanted to know who he was and what god he worshiped. Jonah told them that he worshiped the God who had made the sea and the land. He then told them to throw him into the sea. When the sailors finally gave up on their own efforts to escape the storm and threw Jonah into the sea the storm stopped at once. They were struck by God’s power and vowed to serve Him. Notice that even in the midst of Jonah trying to avoid God’s will, God used him to touch the lives of those around him and to bring them to following the Lord. When Jonah entered the water, he was immediately swallowed by a great fish. We have no idea what kind of fish it was, nor how Jonah was able to survive three days inside of it, because neither of those things are part of the point of the story.
While inside the fish, Jonah prayed to God and rededicated himself to doing God’s will. God had the fish spit Jonah out onto the beach. God then once more called Jonah to go to Nineveh and prophecy His judgment against that city. This time Jonah obeyed. He went to Nineveh and prophesied that in forty days God was going to destroy Nineveh. When the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s prophecy, they declared a fast and dressed in plain, somewhat uncomfortable clothes to show their remorse. Even the king of Nineveh got off of his throne and did this. The king called for people to turn from their sins and violence in the hope that God might turn aside His anger. When God saw their sorrow and repentance, He chose not to destroy them.
Jonah was furious with God for sparing Nineveh. He had run away to Tarshish in the first place because he was afraid that God would change His mind and not destroy Nineveh. I see two things here. One, Jonah was upset because he really wanted God to destroy Nineveh. That is bad enough, but the second was that part of the reason he wanted God to destroy Nineveh was because he had told them that God was going to. Jonah was upset because what he had prophesied did not come to pass. He was not grateful that the people had heard his message, repented and been spared the terrible judgment. Rather he was upset because he felt that he looked like a fool, he had said that Nineveh would be destroyed and it did not happen. He had not preached God’s word in the hopes that people would listen and turn from their sin. He had preached God’s word out of a sense of satisfaction of telling people how wrong they were and how much they would suffer for it.
There are two overall lessons here. When God calls us, He will make His call clear, but we had better not pretend that we do not understand His call after it is clear because we will not like what God does to convince us to follow His will. The other lesson is that we should always seek to turn people away from their sin and towards following God, even when we think they deserve the judgment we see coming to them if they do not change their ways.
The writer of Revelation tells us in this passage that he saw a scroll in the hand of the one sitting on the throne of Heaven. The scroll was sealed. An angel cried out asking if anyone was worthy to open the scroll, but no one was found who could open the scroll. The writer was heartbroken because no one was found worthy to open the scroll. At that moment he was told that the Lion of Judah had been found worthy to open the scroll and when he looked he saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slain. This is an interesting juxtaposition. He was told that the Lion was worthy to open the scroll because it had been victorious, yet when he looked, he saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slain. A lamb is usually considered as the opposite of a lion. A lion is considered an apex predator, that is something that nothing else preys upon. A lamb on the other hand is among the most vulnerable of all prey animals. Here we are told that not only is a lamb the victorious lion, but a lamb that has been slain. This disrupts our entire understanding of power dynamics. When the Lamb stepped forward and took the scroll, the beings that were in the presence of God changed their song and began praising the Lamb. They sang that the Lamb had ransomed people from every possible division of people to become the people of God. This is an important message. Think of all of the things that divide us from one another, tribe, nation, ethnic background, the language we speak, the culture we grew up in, this passage is telling us that Jesus has claimed someone, or multiple someones from each of those groups to be part of the people of God. From all of these divisions, Jesus has brought people to be priests before God, priests who will rule over the earth. None of us represent a group that has special dispensation to consider itself better than others because all are equally dependent upon Jesus to become the people of God.
Let us live together in harmony with our fellow believers. Harmony among believers is a precious oil from the Lord.
People seek the favor of those who rule, but justice comes from God. We can tell a lot about people by who they dislike. The righteous dislike the unjust, while the wicked dislike the godly.