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INTRODUCTION JONAH:THE SELFIE PROPHET

Some people might think a walk through the book of Jonah is a little like opening the pages of Pinocchio. They envision a campfire in the mouth of a gentle giant whale that has provided all of the comforts of a living, breathing RV. Sorry, but that is absolutely not the case. It couldn’t be further from the truth. The story of Jonah is not a myth, legend or children’s storybook. It is a testimony of the extreme methods God will use to reach the most vile wicked people with His most wonderful message of grace. It records the danger of disobedience and the impact it can have on those around it. It flies in the face of the belief that, “I can do whatever I want as long as I don’t hurt anyone else.” Our disobedience and sin always affect those around us. This “Selfie Prophet” preaches one of the shortest messages with the greatest salvation response of all time. It is proof that God’s Word has great power. But it is also proof that God’s heart is filled with love for a world that is far from Him. Picture a world without Christ. A short message of repentance to the city of Nineveh…it was eight words. And then there is the challenge to us. An even shorter message. It is …“Go!”


WEEK 1: DAY 1 JONAH 1:1-4 Jonah was a prophet of God. His name means “dove” and his father’s name, Amittai, means “truth.” This dove, the son of truth, was to fly to take the message of God’s judgment to the city of Nineveh. Destruction was coming. They needed to know.God was bringing an end to their homes, their families, and even their lives. They needed to know. Why? So their last days would be filled with fear? No! So their last days would be filled with repentance. Jonah heard the Word of the Lord. How did he hear? Was it the audible voice of God Almighty? Was it a whisper that was quiet but commanding? Was it spoken in the breeze or shouted in the wind? We don’t know how he knew. We do know that he knew. The command was to go. God gives us that command also. How do we hear? Is it through the Word? Through a gentle tugging on our hearts? A conviction? A calling? Open doors? Yes, yes, yes! And when we know, we are to walk, drive or fly to bring the truth wherever we go.

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God had spoken to Jonah. He had a mission to accomplish, but when God made it clear to him what that mission was, he didn’t bow his knee; he bowed out.Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa to find a ship going in the opposite direction. He went down below deck. The Scripture text is pretty clear. Jonah went DOWN to Joppa. He went DOWN into the ship. The only way you end up going when you run from the Lord is DOWN. So while Jonah was going down, the Lord began to stir things up. You see, there is no place where you can run from the presence of God. You can go to the most remote island, the busiest crowded city, the deepest cave, the highest mountain, a pit, a cell, a corner office, a silent room, a screaming mob. You cannot run from the presence of God. There is no place on earth where He isn’t. No matter where you run, you will run into Him, if you have eyes to see. The storm on the sea was a catastrophe, but the storm inside Jonah was about to become even greater, because he had set his feet to run and set his eyes on the storm. God hurled the wind. The mighty tempest threatened until Jonah saw.

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WEEK 1: DAY 2 JONAH 1:4-8

God hurled the wind while the crew hurled the cargo. Maybe, just maybe, they had the means to beat a storm that was, most likely, unlike any they had ever seen. But this storm didn’t come from the sky. This storm came from on high. This storm was not just misery. It was a message. Fear gripped the sailors. Their only response was to cry out to their god, but they knew it wasn’t enough. Was there anyone who had a stronger god? And then they remembered. Perhaps there was one. He was asleep below because he had settled in as soon as he went down. The captain ran to awaken the sleeper. He commanded. “Call on the God.” Yes, he even referred to Him as THE God. He screamed over the wind to Jonah to wake up and call on God, THE God. It’s often easier to recognize the true God when the storm rages. They were desperate to be saved. Yes, their cry was for the storm to be stopped and they wanted to be saved. We must remember that there are those all around us who are also desperate to be saved. Our world faces storms. They can be financial, personal, physical, in our relationships, in our jobs, in our hearts and lives. Storms cause desperation, a desperation to be saved.

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The plan? Cast lots to see who the guilty party was. They wanted to be certain who had dared to come among them with travel baggage but also sin baggage. The lot fell on Jonah. God controlled the dice just like He controlled the storm. God wanted Jonah to understand that there was no chance they wouldn’t recognize that he was on the run. God also wanted them to see that Jonah was guilty, but they were paying the price. There is a belief that I can do what I want as long as I don’t hurt anyone else. Jonah may have thought that, but here is the news flash and it came in the flash of lightning: we never sin alone. Our sin always affects others. Sin impacts. It smells, bites, digs, blinds, plugs up ears to truth and opens ears to lies. We never sin alone.Their questions were just like ours. “Who?” “What?” “Where?” But did you notice? They didn’t ask the “why?” question. You know, when sin comes, that question doesn’t need to be asked. There is no reason good enough for sin. We don’t answer “why” because there is no answer, no excuse. Sin is sin and there is no sliding scale. “Who?” “What?” “Where?” There is no “why” to excuse it. There is only the “why” to accuse it. Why do we sin? Because we are sinners.

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He then gave testimony. He laid out the truth after he had lived a lie in front of them. He was no average passenger. He was a fugitive from God. He said he feared God, but he had lived as if that fear had been left at the dock. There had been no desperation as he boarded that boat. There had been no heart to follow the God of heaven. There had been no fear as he fell asleep. Fear now? Yes. But the crew also feared God. They had no chance to see the compassion or love. They only saw the fury. The storm raged and so did their fear. He was on the run. He had run right into them. Their cargo was gone. Their peace was gone. They feared their lives would be gone. He finally gave his testimony…very little, very late.

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Jonah knew the plan. He knew that the only solution to the tempest that swelled was to lay down his life. The men had hurled the cargo. God had hurled the storm. Jonah had to be hurled into the heart of the sea. He looked around at the fear on their faces. He saw the loss. He saw the desperation. He had done it. He had run and run right into this band of men. We get to choose our actions, but we do not get to choose the consequences. “It’s just one more drink…” Does it mean a sleepy drive home and tripping over the lamp in the hall? Does it mean a very hefty traffic ticket and a night in jail to sober up? Does it mean crashing the car and having to declare it totaled as the wrecker comes to get it? Does it mean hitting a car head-on of teenagers coming home from Bible study, leaving three dead and one in critical condition? What does “just one more drink…” mean? We get to choose our actions. We don’t get to choose the consequences. Jonah confessed. It was because of him. What has happened in the past week because of me?

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It is impossible to end up on dry safe ground trying to out row the Lord. He is ahead, behind, beside your boat. You cannot row fast enough, hard enough, steady enough to beat the storm. Yes, the crew tried, but our best efforts to get to safety are never enough. There is only one place of safety and that is to surrender the oars to the Savior and let Him take you to the shore. These men tried to do it the right way, but it was not enough. It never is. The swells in the sea grew. The waves raged louder. The thunder clapped and the lightning flashed. There was no eye in this storm. There was no time to breathe, because the wind took every breath. But hurl a man into the sea? They pleaded with God not to count this sin against them. They probably got up that morning with no thought that they would encounter the Living God on a raging sea. They didn’t see that coming. But then most of us don’t. Most of the time our days are ordinary days. We live our lives in ordinary ways. But then there are times when God interrupts and our lives are changed forever. We don’t know what happened to these men after this day, but we know this… It was no ordinary day.

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Jonah touched the water. The sea swallowed him up and was finally satisfied. Immediately, a silence broke the sound barrier and everything became deathly still. Most likely the massive hush was every bit as frightening as the waves crashing against the sides of the boat. The storm had made its threats of destruction. The silence would have brought its own threats of extinction. Would they live to whisper the story or would the silence engulf them? The agony of the wind…the agony of the silence…they experienced both. What will it take to make us listen?

WEEK 1: DAY 5 JONAH 1:16-17 Was this a foxhole conversion or true repentance? These men had seen the worst. They had heard the howls. They had felt the wind. They had experienced terror. They had picked up a man and tossed him into a snarling, growling sea that threatened with every wave to devour Jonah. The lot had been cast, but they played the hand. Was the silence as terrifying as the screaming tempest? They were not about to wait to find out what happened next. They fell to their knees with a sacrifice to the only God they had ever witnessed who beat the sky one moment and held the sea the next. It was fear that drove them to their knees. Too often we think that salvation should only be presented in a gentle, quiet way. Just look at Jonah. Sometimes it takes the storm, not only to bring the Jonah’s, but to also bring the sailors.

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Sin impacts. It smells, bites, digs, blinds, plugs up ears to truth and opens ears to lies. We never sin alone. But we do die alone. Jonah went down into the water alone. He was covered over by the waves alone. He went under alone. He expected to meet death; instead he met a scale covered, giant behemoth of the sea. He looked into the jaws. It was his rescuer. God sent a provision to meet him in his sin. It smelled. It bit. It put him in complete darkness as if he were blind. It plugged up his ears to the lie that he could run but opened his ears to the truth. He was saved but his salvation was also his grave. It would be three days before Jonah came out of that grave. He would pray and repent and determine to do the work before him to do. It would be three days before he came out of that grave. What sin has put us in the grave? What shame or guilt or pain has become our tomb? There is a Savior. He is calling us out. Don’t wait three days. The time is now.

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WEEK 2: DAY 1 JONAH 2:1

It didn’t look like provision. It didn’t feel like provision. It didn’t smell like provision. Staring eyeball to eyeball with a gigantic fish when his limited air supply was running out and he was sinking further into the deep blue sea, did not seem like God’s hand of mercy… And yet it was. So there he was. “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.” (NIV) “From inside the fish…” “From inside the fish…” God had sent provision in the form of something that appeared at first to be there simply to devour him. It didn’t look like provision; it looked like an enemy. How often have we looked at God’s provision as more to be feared than appreciated? How often have we stared God’s plans in the face and tried to swim the other way? A giant fish did not look like rescue; it looked like Jonah was lunch. But it was rescue. It was provision. It was a haven even if it included digestive juices and fish parts.

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Jonah prayed. Where is our place of prayer? Where do we go to seek the Lord? Jonah prayed in a fish. This was not church or a prayer room or a quiet retreat in the mountains, Jonah was in the stomach of a fish. His altar was a fish’s belly. It reeked of fish guts. It didn’t have a mountain view, and he was closed off from his ocean view. It wasn’t comfortable or even conducive to prayer. He didn’t have a candle burning. (He maybe would have appreciated a scented candle.) He didn’t have praise music in the background to set the tone. It didn’t matter because it wasn’t about the location or even the environment, it was about the need. Jonah prayed. He prayed earnestly and fervently. He praised and he promised. He prayed out of his desperation. Prayer was his only recourse. He had spent the previous hours of his life running. He now spent these hours praying. How many times can one say, “Lord help me!” when the clock is running out on your air supply and the peristalses motion of swallowing is sucking the life out of you? If ever there was a time for prayer, it was now. If ever in Jonah’s life there was a place for prayer, it was here. And God heard Jonah. The Lord he had been trying to run from, met him in a fish. The God who had called and Jonah had ignored, heard him. And God answered. Jonah deserved deaf ears from God, but he received God’s presence and God’s answer.

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And what an answer it was. There inside that fish Jonah praised as he recounted those last moments. He had been thrown into the deep water. Down, down, down, down. The waters swept over him. The currents swirled around him. The engulfing waves threatened him. The deep surrounded him. The seaweed wrapped around him. Down, down, down, down, he sank to the roots of the mountains. Running from God only leads down. He was for all intents and purposes a dead man swimming. And then when his life was ebbing away and his air supply was nearly gone, he remembered the Lord. And his prayer rose up to the Lord because God was in the water and in the ocean floor and even in the fish. Have you ever felt as if your prayers were getting no further than the ceiling? God is in the ceiling. Our God is everywhere and He hears from everywhere. Any moment we need to talk, God is available to listen. Any place we need to call out to the Lord, He is always present. Our circumstances do not dictate God’s availability or presence. Cory TenBoom interred in the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany, summed it up in her book, The Hiding Place, “There is no pit so deep that God is not there.” God was there in that pit with Jonah and God met him.

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And Jonah knew, as he had never known or experienced before, the reality of the One True Living God. How foolish to cling to worthless idols. How ridiculous to trust in wood or stone or even in silver and gold. None of that would have saved him. Holding onto any of it would have made him sink even further down into the ocean pit. Those who put their trust in anything man-made, those who believe in anything other than the Truth, forfeit the grace that God has made so readily available to every single person who will call on Him. And God’s grace washed all over Jonah. He felt it. He tasted it. He may have even smelled its sweet refreshing fragrance. God’s grace went as far as he had tried to run and right there in the pit of a fish’s belly, Jonah vowed to follow the Lord. How far did God’s grace go to reach all of us? How deep did His grace go to come after us? It went to the cross, to the grave, to the pit and conquered it all. God’s amazing grace walked out of the tomb.

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Jonah’s stay-cation inside that fish lasted for three long, long, long days. His parting words were these, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” And Jonah knew it. He knew salvation from his heart, not just his head. He knew salvation personally. The Hebrew word for salvation is Yeshua, Jesus. It was a deeper walk than he had ever known before, because in the darkness and dankness of a fish’s insides, the Lord showed up. And then suddenly the Voice, who at earth’s birth had commanded the seas to bring forth the fishes of the sea, issued a new command. The Lord’s voice echoed across the universe with the command to this giant fish to release the prisoner it held. The Lord, who provided the fish to swallow Jonah, now commanded the fish to vomit him onto dry land. Jonah became a real life picture of salvation. Jonah became a real life prophecy of a future resurrection. When the Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus and demanded to see a miraculous sign, Jesus said no sign would be given except one, the sign of Jonah. For three days it appeared that Jonah was dead and buried in the sea until God’s resurrection power commanded that he be brought forth. From his watery grave Jonah walked out onto dry land. From the pit Jonah was freed. He was the living illustration of a brand new life and a life size picture of the One who would also walk out of His grave to give the world a brand new life.

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WEEK 3: DAY 1 JONAH 3:1 A second time…the Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Let’s face it, Jonah messed up big time. He disobeyed God and he did it willfully. He had full knowledge that God had spoken to him with a clear directive, and yet he went a different way. But here God was giving Jonah a second chance to follow Him. Jonah had a choice. Follow God or choose his own path. It was a choice with eternal consequences. Jonah was vomited up by the fish where he had experienced nothing short of being buried alive. It was horrific, but when you think about three days compared to eternity it’s actually pretty short. It woke him up and this time he not only heard, he listened. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time…” Those are truly sweet words. Have we ever messed up? Have we turned and gone a different direction from where God was leading? Have we disobeyed what God has said in His Word? Has there been something that God has used to wake us up? Oh, most likely we didn’t face a big fish, but was our heart stirred during a message? Did we see some kind of sign that said, “You are going the wrong way!” Did a friend come to talk to us when he or she saw us veering off the right path? Whatever God uses to get us to not only hear, but also to listen, is a true blessing. God gives us another chance. He offers us a choice. Follow Him or choose our own path. It is a choice with eternal consequences. 15



God spoke. The calling was clear. God knows who He wants for every job and for the Nineveh mission He wanted Jonah. But Jonah had decided he would not accept the mission. He ran. Here are some things to remember: God is so much faster than we are, and He can catch us every time. God knows us better than we could ever even know ourselves. God knew that Jonah was the right man for the job. He gave him a second chance. When God calls us to do something it makes no difference if we think we’re perfect for the job or not. It actually makes no difference if we like the job or not. The Lord knows us best and we need to listen. Just like with lots of people in the Scripture, God will equip us for the task. God told Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh. Did you catch that? God called Nineveh a great city. But Nineveh needed help. They needed to hear about God. It was a big, important city. A visit required three days. Three days again…just exactly the amount of time he had spent in the belly of the fish surrounded by fish guts, seaweed, salt water and, oh yeah, stomach digestive juices. Three days in a city or three days in the belly of a fish…sounds like a no brainer! Following God the first time is sure the best way to live.

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WEEK 3: DAY 3 JONAH 3:4-5 Do you ever look at your watch when the pastor is preaching? Do you ever squirm a little in your seat if the message goes a few minutes over? Do you ever find yourself wondering if the line at your favorite restaurant will be longer since church is running over a tad bit? Sometimes we complain because a sermon is a little longer than we think it should be. Jonah preached one of the shortest messages ever preached. It was an eight word sermon. So was that short sermon a great relief to the listeners so they could beat the crowd for lunch? Absolutely, positively NOT! Because Jonah preached one of the scariest messages ever preached. “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overturned.” It was a message of death. Imagine sitting in your doctor’s office and he says to you, “I’m sorry. It’s not curable. You only have forty days to live.” Now magnify that with a message of doom not only for you but your family, your work place, your whole city. When our pastors preach they are telling us the great good news of Jesus and God’s plan for eternal life. Be glad it’s not one of shortest messages ever preached that tells of death and destruction. So how did the people of Nineveh respond? The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest right down to the littlest. Again, let’s imagine if you heard that message of looming death in your doctor’s office. How would you respond?17


WEEK 3: DAY 4 JONAH 3:6-9 Nineveh had a king. Kings are powerful. They often have absolute rule. What they say goes. This king heard the message, those eight terrifying words that destruction was coming in forty days. Throughout Scripture we see examples of powerful kings who believed they were more powerful than God. So how did this king react? He didn’t argue. He didn’t fight with Jonah. He didn’t scream at God telling Him how unfair He was. He didn’t ignore the warning. This king stepped down from his royal throne and took off his royal robes. He covered himself instead with sackcloth and sat in ashes. This king heard the message of the one true living God and he knew that God was righteous and He was right. This king knew that he and his people were wicked sinners. The king ordered every man, woman and child, every beast in the field to neither eat nor drink. He ordered them all to be covered in sackcloth. The king asked them to cry out mightily to God. He implored them to turn from their evil ways. His hope? Maybe this God, that Jonah spoke of, would relent and turn from His fierce anger so they all might not perish. Forty days…if you only had forty days to live what would you do? How would your life change? Let’s be real honest here. We are not assured of the next forty years, or forty months or forty days. We are not assured of the next forty seconds. If we have changes we would make if we only had forty days to live, maybe, just maybe, we should make those changes today. 18



Do you remember the story of the prodigal son? He came back to his father. He was filthy, broken and broke. Did his father turn him away? Did he tell him to go back where he came from? Did he punish him for squandering his money? The father saw him from a long distance away and ran to him. The father’s heart was overwhelmed with joy. He ordered a robe to be placed on him. The old filthy clothing was replaced and the ring signifying a much loved son was placed on his finger. God does not in any way delight in doling out punishment. God delights in seeing a repentant heart. He delights in welcoming us home. The people of Nineveh were broken, from the king down to the smallest child. Every single one of them repented. A whole great city cried out to God. And God’s heart was filled with joy. He saw what they did. He relented of the disaster and He did not destroy them. God wants to have us come back to Him. He wants to take the sackcloth of mourning and replace it with the robe of a son or daughter. Oh how He loves us and wants us to come to Him.

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Everyone in the town repented. It was the most amazing revival. You might think that Jonah was overcome with joy. He preached and every single person responded by asking God for forgiveness. God had held back the punishment for Nineveh. Yes, you might think that Jonah rejoiced. But then you would be thinking wrong. Jonah was so angry. The ESV says, “it displeased him exceedingly.” Jonah was flat out mad. He hadn’t wanted to go to Nineveh in the first place. He didn’t like the Assyrians. They had treated his people terribly. Jonah wanted vengeance. Have we ever felt like that? Has there been someone who hurt us or maybe hurt someone we loved? We want the books to be balanced. They hurt us; we want them to hurt. Jonah may have thought he was preaching to such heathens that there was no way they’d listen. He may have been ready to pull out his lawn chair, sit down on the outskirts of town and watch the fire and brimstone fireworks show. Jonah may have believed that vengeance was right around the corner. But they repented. God heard and staved off the punishment. God was merciful to sinners. But wait, aren’t we sinners too? Don’t we need mercy? When God is merciful to us, we are so grateful. Shouldn’t we also be grateful when God is merciful to others? Jonah wasn’t. 20


WEEK 4: DAY 2 JONAH 4:2-3 I knew it! That’s the gist of what Jonah said. He knew the Lord was a merciful God. He knew God was slow to anger. He knew that God didn’t delight in punishment but rather delighted in repentant hearts. God had called him to go to the wicked, heathen people of Nineveh. He hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, because he feared they would repent and instead of being destroyed like he hoped, he was afraid that God would hear their prayers. And God did hear their prayers, just like He hears the prayers of everyone who has a repentant heart. For Jonah that was just completely unacceptable. Jonah didn’t want wicked people to be forgiven. Let’s examine our own lives. Is there someone we want to be punished instead of blessed? Is there someone we are so angry with that we would be glad if they ended up hurt? Jesus said, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” Love them? Pray for them? Yep, that’s what Jesus said to do. If we’re finding that hard, we have two choices. We can join the Jonah Revenge Club or ask God to help us. Jesus can and will give us the power to forgive.Jonah was so angry that he was ready to give up. He wanted the Lord to just come and take his life. He wanted to be done with it all. Again, maybe there have been times that we can identify with Jonah’s feelings. Maybe we’ve been so hurt that we just wanted to curl up and escape this world. But God wasn’t finished with Jonah, and He’s not finished with us. 21



“Have you any right to be angry?” (NIV) It’s a fair question. God asked it of Jonah. The Lord could see the anger seething in Jonah’s heart. Jonah wanted revenge. He wanted retribution for the things that the Assyrians had done to his people. He wanted to see those wicked people punished. But he wanted forgiveness for himself. He didn’t want to be punished. He had received a taste for three days in the belly of that fish. When he repented of the sin of running away from God, he wanted God to forgive him and bring him back. He wanted forgiveness, but he didn’t want it for someone else. Let’s face it, people hurt us. We can all look back over our lives and remember things that have been done or said. Pain can rise up even after years. Then anger lifts it’s ugly head as well. So God can ask us the same question. “Have you any right to be angry?” Of course we should hate the sin. Jonah should have hated the things that were done. But to hate the sinner is not part of God’s plan. We are to pray for those who have hurt us. We are to forgive those who have treated us badly. Easy? No. Doable? Yes! Ask God to give you the power to forgive.

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Jonah went out to a place east of the city. He made a small shelter. He waited to see what would happen. He had preached that in forty days disaster would come. He wanted to see disaster. He didn’t want them to repent. But they did repent. Every man, woman, child in the city cried out to God and pleaded for forgiveness in sackcloth and ashes. This was no flippant prayer. This was not lip service. The people of Nineveh were serious about seeking God. And God loves that. Jeremiah 29:13 tells us that God says, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jonah waited. It was hot. Jonah was hot because of the weather, but he was also hot because of his angry heart. White hot anger heats us up from the inside. God sent a lovely vine. It grew rapidly and provided shade. It cooled him and he was so happy about that vine. Do circumstances determine our mood? If things are going well, we can be happy. If things are challenging, we are in a pit. Happiness is often determined by circumstances. But that is not the case with joy. Joy wells up from a sense of knowing that God is in charge, He has our lives in His very capable loving hands no matter what the circumstances. Jonah was not believing that God had it all in His very capable loving hands. He was hoping for disaster.

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That vine was sure nice. It was lush enough to keep off the heat and Jonah was happy about the vine. But then a worm came along and chewed the vine until it withered. That vine shriveled up in the scorching wind that God sent and the sun beat down on Jonah. A worm…God used a worm. Now, this is no ordinary worm. Even for a worm this one is ugly. In fact it barely looks like a worm. It looks more like a disgusting growth on a tree. It is called the tola’at shani in Hebrew. In English it is called the crimson worm. It is from this ugly little worm that the priests got the red dye for the cloth in God’s Holy Temple. But what is even more amazing is a picture this little worm paints with its life. When the mom worm gets ready to lay her eggs, she climbs up onto a tree and attaches herself so firmly to the tree that to pull her off would rip and tear her body. She lays her eggs and when those baby worms hatch they have a choice. They can wander away from her or they can begin to feed on her body. The mother worm loves her children so much that she is willing to die so that they can live. As they are feeding she releases a red dye, her blood, and it covers them. They are stained with her red blood for the rest of their lives. It never fades. It never washes away. After three days the mother worm curls up into a heart shape, and her body, that now looks almost like wax, falls to the ground like a flake of snow.

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This ugly, homely little worm paints a beautiful picture. The Bible tells us in Psalm 22 about the crucifixion when Jesus would die on the cross. This Psalm says that the Messiah, Jesus, would actually say that He was the tola’at shani. Like the worm, the Bible tells us that Jesus wasn’t beautiful. Isaiah 53 says that there was nothing in His appearance to attract us to Him. Like the crimson worm, on the cross Jesus would be attached so firmly, that to pull Him off would rip His body. And of course, Jesus died and gave His life so that all of His children could live. We have a choice. We can wander away or make the decision to receive Him. Just like those tiny worms need their mother’s flesh to have life, we need to receive the Lord Jesus in order to have life. And just like those baby worms are permanently marked by their mother’s blood, Jesus covers us with His blood, and it is never washed away and it never fades or perishes. God was showing Jonah a picture, but instead of asking God about the worm, he was even more angry. He was angry enough to die.

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Jonah was so angry. God asked him if he had a right to be angry about the vine and he said that he did. Jonah hadn’t planted the vine. He hadn’t cared for it. God had caused it to grow and yet Jonah somehow felt that he had a right to be angry when the worm chewed it, and it withered. Let’s think about the blessings we have in our lives. If we get a new car are we proud of that shiny new piece of metal that WE just bought? When we move into a great house are we excited because the house is beautiful and WE got such a low interest rate? When we have good health do we congratulate OURSELVES for taking the right vitamins and doing a tough workout program? When we get the perfect job do we think about the hard work WE put in to get there? But if our car breaks down, the air conditioning goes out, our health becomes a challenge or we lose the job, when things go bad do we blame God? Do we have a right to be angry? Jonah cared more about the plant than the people. Nineveh had over one hundred-twenty thousand people dying and going to hell and Jonah was more concerned over the plant that was literally here today and gone tomorrow. Look around. Do we have family members that don’t know the Lord? Do we have neighbors who are dying and going to hell? Have we put off that decision ourselves? Are we more concerned about the here and now than we are about eternity?

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The book of Jonah ends with God asking Jonah, “Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (NIV)How encouraging that is. God was concerned about those people. He is concerned about us. What a challenge that is. Our hearts need to break over the things that cause His heart to break, and we need to be concerned about the things that God is concerned about.

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REFLECTION:CHOOSING GOD’S WAY OVER MY WAY


GALATIANS 6:17-18

PMS 425 PMS 305

4400 LINCOLN AVE | EVANSVILLE IN 47714w w w . B E T H E L E V V. C O M 8 1 2 . 4 7 7 . 8 8 8 8

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