A Sign To The Gentiles Series

As we begin looking toward our mission conference next month, I want to share some thoughts with you from the book of Jonah – a prophet who ran from God to avoid carrying a divine warning to the people of Nineveh.

Jonah undoubtedly feared the bloodthirsty Ninevites, but in Jonah 4:2 he plainly tells God that he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want them to repent and find mercy – he wanted God to zap them and eliminate Israel’s enemies.

So he boarded a ship and fled in the opposite direction. But he didn’t get far before God sent a storm to intercept him. Jonah told the mariners they’d have to throw him overboard to stop the storm. When they did, the storm miraculously ceased, and the sailors became Jonah’s first Gentile converts as they worshipped the God Who had spared their lives.

Meanwhile, God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and God miraculously kept him alive for three days and nights during the world’s first submarine voyage. Centuries later, Jesus said that Jonah’s experience in the fish’s belly was a picture of Christ’s burial for three days and nights in the tomb.

We left off last week with Jonah having finally repented. The fish spat him out, most likely somewhere near his point of departure, where a greatly humbled Jonah, for the first time in the story, finally began moving in the direction God had for him.

1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for being the God of second chances – and third and fourth and fifth – and for 70 times 7 chances! We thank you for your boundless mercy toward those who repent and trust in Your amazing grace!

May we have the grace to share Your mercy with those around us – may we have a better spirit about it than Jonah did – may we be less reluctant about it than he was – may we be diligent in serving you with our lives – and may we love You more than to need being told twice!

And we ask You to draw any who are yet facing Your judgment to repentance and faith in the resurrection power of Your Son, Jesus Christ – in Whose name we pray, Amen!

Jonah’s last words that led into this chapter were back in 2:9 – Salvation is of the Lord. That statement of faith bridged his previous prayer of repentance and his deliverance which immediately followed. How sincere was that repentance and faith? We’re about to find out here in chapter 3:

And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

Jonah might well have wondered if, having forsaken the Lord’s will once, would God condescend to call him again? The Israelites who refused to cross Jordan and face the giants were barred from ever entering.

But for them, that was the end of a long and hardened pattern of rejection.

No doubt, Jonah was relieved to find that the Lord is a God of second chances.

Like the Apostle Peter who denied his Lord was later forgiven and recommissioned, so Jonah is called once again to serve his Savior.

Someone has said, “If you are not dead, then God is not done.” By all rights, Jonah should have been dead – but God still had a work for him to do.

And that same God still has something for you to do as well. It would be a lot better if you didn’t make Him have to tell you twice!

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, and now verse 2 tells us what the word of the Lord said:

Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

If that sounds vaguely familiar to you, there’s a good reason. It’s the same thing God told him to do in the first place back in Jonah 1:2. It’s not too late for Jonah to jump right back into the will of God at the very place where he left it.

That’s not always the case. Sometimes the window of opportunity closes sooner than others. Sometimes lost opportunities in the past are exactly that – they’re in the past, and they’re lost. In those cases, you have to follow the path God has for you from wherever you are.