| What I Can Learn From . . . , Part 8: Jonah |
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| Written by David Lawrence |
| Monday, October 31 2005 00:00 |
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The book of Jonah is much more than an amusing tale about a man who was swallowed by a great fish (probably not a whale); it is a short theological treatise of great profundity. We may learn from Jonah the lesson that God labored to teach him: namely, that he needed to develop the compassion for people that God manifested when he sent him to preach to the Assyrians. God cares about people and wants them to hear His word. The assumption that because certain people belong to the wrong categories they are somehow of less value to God and therefore not worthy of hearing the gospel is a fallacious conclusion many of us often reach. God wanted these violent, immoral, pagan Ninevites to hear his word and to repent. It took God’s little object lesson of the plant that shielded Jonah from the blazing sun to break through to him how if he could have concern for a plant that he considered valuable to him, God could have concern for a vast city that he considered valuable. Another very obvious lesson we can learn from Jonah is that you do not run away from God, at least successfully. Man is very good at running away from God, but when God calls him, God will come after him in one way or another. I remember a junior high student in a Sunday school class I taught a number of years ago wisely concluding what evades so many adults: “How could anyone resist the call of God?” He obviously meant resist finally and completely. God was determined that Jonah should go to Nineveh, and Jonah was determined that he would not go. Thus Jonah went as physically far from God’s land of Israel as he could in those days, far west to Spain. But God is in Spain as well as Israel, and the great fish convinced him. When we speak of the effectual call of God, we do not refer to an idle theological speculation, but to a reality. Truly, all whom the Father gives to the Son will come to the Son (John 6:37), and all those the Father has foreknown and predestined, he will call, and all those whom he calls will be justified and glorified (Rom. 8:29-30). |
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