Jonah’s God (6)
[Jonah 3:1-10]
How should we view the crisis in our journey of life? When we encounter a crisis, we often think, "Why did this crisis come to me?" When we do that, we tend to blame on someone whom we think that brought crisis in our lives. And we tend to immerse in the crisis we faced in this thought and resentment. As a result, we don’t see others other than ourselves. And we are even more depressed in despair by falling into the swamp of crisis and losing the desire and hope of salvation. Is this the reaction of the crisis that God who controls the crisis wants from us? I don’t think so. I think crisis can be a good opportunity for us to experience His love in depth. Also, crisis can be the good opportunity for us to love those who are going through the similar crisis in their lives. If we don’t leave the Word of God in our crisis, then it can be a good opportunity for us to trust God and obey His Word so that His Word can become our possession (Ps. 11:51, 55-56). But the question is how many of us does see crisis in our lives as God’s given opportunity? I would like to think about God who gives us another opportunity under the title "Jonah’s God (6)".
Second, Jonah’s God is the God who spoke to Jonah the second time.
Look at Jonah 3:1 – “Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.” In Jonah chapter 2, Jonah prayed to God in the stomach of the great fish when he was suffering (2:1). The conclusion of his prayer was "Salvation is from the Lord" (v.9). Eventually, God answered Jonah's prayer (v. 1) and he commanded the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land (v. 10). God who delivered this salvation gave Jonah another chance to obey God's command. We know this from Jonah 3:1 – “Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.” What was the second word of God to Jonah? Look at Jonah 3:2 – “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Compare this word of God with the first word to Jonah from God in Jonah 1:2 – “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” The same is true of the first seven words: “Go to that great city of Nineveh.” The difference is that in the first word of God, God told Jonah the reason why Jonah should go to Nineveh ("because its wickedness has come up before me”) while in the second word of God, God told Jonah what he should proclaim (the content of the message). What Jonah should proclaim was “the message I give you” (3:2). And what is that message that God gave to Jonah? It may be “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned” (v. 4). What was Jonah's response to the Word of God that came to him the second time? In a word, Jonah's response was obedience. Look at 3:3 – “Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. ….” Compare this verse with Jonah 1:3. In Jonah 1:3, Jonah’s response to the God’s first command was “But Jonah ran away from the LORD ….” But in Jonah 3:3, when God spoke to him the second time, Jonah’s response was “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the LORD.” Jonah, who had fled from the presence of the LORD and had fled far from the word of God, was running toward the word of God. In the end, God made Jonah to return to His word and gave Jonah back His Word, and he wrote that Word deeply in Jonah's heart. So Jonah went into the city of Nineveh and walked for a day and proclaimed the word of God (v. 4).
What does it mean by the message that Jonah proclaimed to the people of Nineveh, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown?" (v.4) Here, ’40 days’ seems to have a special meaning when we look at the 40 days of the Noah’s flood (Gen. 7:17; 8:6), the 40 days when Moses was on Mount Sinai (Exod. 24:18), it took 40 days for Elijah to go to Mountain Horeb (2 Kgs. 19:8) and so on. And the choice of the word "be overthrown" is meaningful. There are two reasons for this: (1) First reason is that this word is written in the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:21, 25. (2) The second reason is that this word may mean better change. When Jonah didn’t miss the second opportunity God gave him and went to Nineveh and proclaimed “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown”, God gave the Ninevites the opportunity of repent their sins. I think there were two choices for the people of Nineveh: (1) When they heard the words proclaimed by Jonah, they could repent, or (2) the city of Nineveh collapsed and fell. Why then did God told (or allow) Jonah to proclaim to the Ninevites that "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown”? We can find its possible reasons in the phrase "extremely great" in verse 3. In Hebrew this phrase “extremely great” is written as “great to God” which refers to the importance of the city [In NIV, it is translated as "a very important"]. The importance here is that Nineveh is a religiously important city. According to Wiseman, in 'Nineveh of Jonah', there were many shrines that were devoted to the gods of Nineveh such as 'Nabu', 'Assur', 'Adad', 'Ninurta', 'Ishtar' of Nineveh. So what is the purpose of which God gave Jonah to said, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown" (3:4) and "cry against it" (1:2)? As a city full of religious idolatry, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, God reveals the justice of God by sending a prophet Jonah to proclaim the word of God, because "the wickedness has come up before Me" (v. 2). He also wanted them to repent their sins so that they could be saved by God. So Jonah went to Nineveh and proclaimed the message of God.
Here is one question we should think about. It is when the word of God came to Jonah the second time. It was after when Jonah was disciplined by God through the great wind and the great storm because of his disobedience to the God’s command in running away from the presence of the Lord, and after he confessed his sin before God and men, and after he was saved by God from the stomach of the great fish. What lesson does this give us? In the Book of Jeremiah, the stiff-necked Israelites didn’t listen to the word of God that was proclaimed through Prophet Jeremiah, not only twice but “again and again” (Jer. 11:7). But Jonah was obedient to God when the word of God came to him the second time. What is different? Those who confess their sins after the God's discipline, and have experienced repentance and salvation, will obey God's word for the second time. But those who don’t realize their sins and do not repent even after the God's discipline have no fruit of obedience, no matter how many times the word of God is proclaimed to them. Therefore, whenever the Word of God comes to us, our hearts must be pierced by the word of God and there must be a response “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). This is the response of the Christians who run to the Word. In doing so, there is true repentance (Acts 2:38), and such a repentant heart is good soil that can receive the word of God humbly. Our God is God who gives us the Word of God again. The reason is that God gives us another chance to obey God and fulfill God's will. Through another word, God wants us not to miss another opportunity that is given to each one of us.
There was an American named Mark Dubrin in English Ministry at Seohyun church in Korea. When he was in good health, he had to go back to America. When he suddenly had to leave Korea, I prayed for him and thought about baptizing him because he really wanted to receive it. The reason was I heard his confession of faith in his Lord and Savior once again, and his confession that he did all the service in the church by God’s grace alone. But on the day when Mark left to America, I and some brothers and sisters in Christ visited Mark in order to worship God together and to baptize him. But I was unable to fulfill that plan and had to send him back to America. Although God not only gave me one chance to baptize Mark but few more times, I didn’t baptize him. I was disobeying God’s command to baptize him (Mt. 28:19). At that time, I wasn’t sure God would give me a second chance to baptize him. But few months later, when I also came back to America, God gave another opportunity to baptize Brother Mark in the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But Heavenly Father didn’t give his one and only Son Jesus the second chance in regard to bear the cross and be crucified on the cross for our salvation. Why didn’t God have Jesus the second opportunity? The reason is because God loves us so much that He wanted to save us. What shall we do when this God of love speak to us the second time?