Jonah 3: The Rebuking Prophet
Jonah 3:1-10
As our 4-week series on Jonah continues, a fish pukes… and the prophet rebukes. If a piece of walking, talking vomit stumbled into town and said you’ve only got forty days before God cuts you down, what would you do? Laugh? Get on your knees? I’d listen to the vomit if I were you.
Jonah strolls into town like a bleach-skinned zombie and mumbles a few words, and somehow an entire nation of over 120,000 people – men and women, kings and peasants, drops to their knees. We have seen God’s power over the air, the sea, animals, his prophet’s life, and finally the impact He can have over an entire city if it pleases Him. Jonah was not a powerful speaker, but the Word of God cuts through people’s hearts like a knife and causes repentance.
Do we believe Seattle today could be changed like Ninevah, or is our faith and trust in God weaker and more impotent than Jonah’s? Every day God does not bring vengeance upon a si nful city is another day we live commissioned to walk humbly and show mercy, instruments of God’s compassion testifying to salvation possible through our Lord Jesus Christ. If we don’t believe God can change the hearts of everyone in Seattle, our view of God is too small and we should begin to pray to the God of Jonah who is truly sovereign over both our habitat and our hearts.
