You Can't Ignore God For Long Series

Since he couldn’t work, he spent the rest of the summer reading his Bible again, writing things out, praying, and making some necessary changes. That was really a key turning point for him. Even though he should have made those changes a lot earlier, he tried to ignore God, but the God who created us knows the most effective way to get our attention.)

Before we move further I want to give you some background information on Jonah. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of historical details, but it is always helpful to understand the context of the story we are reading. That’s especially true in this case. Jonah’s response to God was dramatic, what would have caused him to so blatantly disobey God?

First of all Jonah was a prophet of God. The prophets why men who were appointed by God to pass on important information to the people of God. When the Israelites began to slip into idolatry and ignore God, the prophets would remind them of their promises and warn them of God’s coming punishment. A prophet was someone who spoke for God. It was a very important responsibility, especially during a time prior to the completion of the written word of God.

The book of Jonah is set during a period of time of relative peace in Israel. During this time the nation experienced prosperity, there was probably a lot of pride and nationalism in Israel. As often happens in good times, the nation of Israel had begun to ignore God. They were falling into that trap of thinking that they didn’t really need God. Israel was becoming hardened.

The dominant world power of the time was a country called Assyria. Assyria was infamous for its cruelty, its torture of captives, and its evil, pagan practices. Assyria had been an enemy of Israel for years. I’m sure that many people in Israel, including Jonah, hated Assyria and prayed daily for God to wipe them out.

The city of Nineveh was the largest city in the Assyrian empire, and possible the largest city in the world at the time. It was about eight miles long and had a population of around 600,000 people. It was the pagan empire of the world.

So God calls Jonah to go and preach hellfire and brimstone in the capital city of Israel’s greatest enemy. This part of the story is pretty simple. God’s calling was clear. Jonah knew exactly what God wanted Him to do. God had seen the wickedness of Nineveh and commissioned Jonah to go and tell them about it.

This was certainly an unusual request. Usually the prophets would direct their warnings to the people of God, not to pagan nations. Why did God send one of His prophets to this horrible place?

Why did God call Jonah? I think God called Jonah to Nineveh for a couple of different reasons.

First, God is demonstrating His love for all people, even gentiles. The Israelites had developed this elitist idea of their relationship with God. They were His chosen people and everyone else was not. But all throughout the course of OT history God demonstrates that he is the God of all men, not jus the Jews. But the Israelites had a tough time seeing this truth.