Here is a man who never did “get it” regarding God’s heart for the lost. Right from the very beginning, he was on the run. He knows how to accurately hear the Word of the Lord, as a prophet of God, but doing it is completely another matter.

JONAH:   The Book of God’s Love for the Gentiles

Dr   D

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.’ But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (Jonah 1.1-3).

Here is a man who never did “get it” regarding God’s heart for the lost. Right from the very beginning, he was on the run. He knows how to accurately hear the Word of the Lord, as a prophet of God, but doing it is completely another matter.

The quickest way out was by boat, and about the most distant place he could go to at that time was Tarshish, probably near present day Gibraltar in southern Spain. So carefree was he that he even went to sleep, completely incognizant of the savage and tumultuous storm developing above.

The experienced seamen easily discerned this was no ordinary storm, as the elements hurled themselves against their increasingly frail vessel. But they soon found the culprit, and upon his own advice, threw him into the raging tempest. Following 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a great fish, Jonah was soon out preaching the same words originally given to him.

It was not so much the contents of the Word that vexed Jonah so much … it was WHO the beneficiaries of it were. Nineveh, after all, was the capital of that harassing and cruel world empire, the feared and hated Assyrians. In Jonah’s mind, these people were completely undeserving of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and God’s redemption. They deserved wrath, not mercy!

Jonah was a man so consumed with personal prejudices, self-interest, and racial pride, that he could not, and would not, even hear of such a concept as “the Grace of God.” And so the story ends, with yet no change in the heart of Jonah; still complaining, griping, and railing against the very purposes of God. He gets to the point of even wishing he were dead.

Jonah could neither calculate nor comprehend God’s love for the unlovable. As we ponder our duty and responsibility to share the gospel, what prejudices, excuses, personal obstacles, and the like, do we allow to dilute and bury the Gospel? Are we really any different to what he is?