Responding to the Call: Reflections on the Book of Jonah (Volume 1) by Kent Sperry

Author:Kent Sperry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9781500563516
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2014-07-17T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Witnessing God’s Faithfulness

In the last chapter, we heard how God saved Jonah from drowning. After running from God, and after being pursued by God, he had been cast into the sea. God then caused him to be swallowed by a great fish.

Even though this sounds terrible, even though it sounds like an act of God’s judgment, it was actually an act of his mercy. While he struggled for his life in the sea, Jonah recognized his sin and repented of it. And God saved him from the fate he deserved. In this way, God had rescued him from death. For this reason, Jonah offered to God a prayer of thanksgiving as he sat in the stomach of this fish.

We heard, at the end of that chapter, how God then spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land. And we see in chapter 3 that, after all of this, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Once again, God said to him: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

I stated in the last chapter that, even in the course of his rebellion, God had not retracted his call on Jonah’s life. And we see this very clearly in his repeated command. God still intended for him to go to Nineveh and to call out against it.

I’ve heard a similar story numerous times from those called into ministry. They felt from a young age that God wanted them to serve as a pastor or missionary. And, like Jonah, they ran. But God pursued them. Throughout their rebellion, God continued to tug at them in various ways. In the end, they repented of their sin, submitted to God’s will, and pursued the call he’d placed on their life.

We find the same thing to be true even if our calling isn’t to missionary service or the pastoral ministry. We have seen that we all have a call from God, to serve him. We have that call from God, to reach out to the lost and to minister to the body of Christ. And, even when we run, this call isn’t retracted. As God pursues us, as he calls us to repentance, he continues to issue this call on our life.

We see right away that Jonah had learned his lesson. We see that he’d repented, that he’d turned from his sin. We see this because, as God issued his call a second time, Jonah obeyed. We see in verse 3 that he arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

As he did so, the results of his ministry were astounding. The city was three days in breadth, we’re told. This means that it would take three days to walk through Nineveh. He went in, a day’s journey, calling out: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” And the people of Nineveh believed God.

The people of the city called for a fast and put on sackcloth.

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