Go To Nineveh

Jonah 1:1-3

Can you imagine God speaking to you on October 11, 2001 and saying, "I want you to go to Afghanistan and preach the gospel to the Taliban"? Many of us would have wondered if God had lost His mind. Many people expressed explicitly that God's forgiveness was not what they wanted for those people. Our country had suffered great loss because of them. Our people died. Our people lost loved ones. We were still very active in cleaning up the rubble. There was fear of ongoing attacks. Had God said such to us, many of us would have refused.

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“NOW the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.”

Jonah 1:1-3

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Jonah was a prophet before he was called to go to Nineveh. The first mention of Jonah is in II Kings 14:25.

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“He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.”

II Kings 14:25

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Jonah served God. He had no problem delivering God's message to the Israelites. He stood against King Jeroboam II in Israel. He called Israel to repentance. Jonah did not have a problem with the message of sin, judgment, and repentance. As we will see, the message was not the problem. Jonah's issue was with those who would receive the message.

In II Kings 15, the Assyrian army came against Israel and extorted silver from them to prevent an attack. Then, later in the chapter, a king by the name of Tiglath-Pileser took captives from Israel. In II Kings 16, King Ahaz pays Assyria to help them fight the Syrians. This led to Israel falling further into idolatry. In chapter 17, Israel again has to pay tribute to Assyria. When King Hoshea tried to rebel against Assyria, he was thrown into prison. Then, they lay siege to Samaria (the capital of Israel) for three years. This leads to Israel being taking into captivity by the Assyrians.

Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. Jonah was a prophet to Israel. The Assyrians were attacking, stealing, and forcing the people to pay tribute money to them. No doubt Jonah had to pay tribute to the Assyrian army. They were cruel, and Jonah grew to hate these foreign invaders. Many people, if they put themselves in Jonah's shoes, would feel he was entitled to his hate. How could God make such an unreasonable demand of Jonah?

I do not want to jump ahead in the story, but I cannot end on this note. The story of the book of Jonah is all about the preaching of the gospel, which leads to repentance of sins, and forgiveness and mercy from God. Flawed human messenger aside, the Gospel is at the center of this story. But then again, isn't that true for us as well? Those of us who are Christians, we are all flawed human messengers called to share the gospel with a lost and dying world We may not like everyone we are called to share the gospel with. Who we like or do not like is not the issue. What if the person who preached the gospel to us had said “no” because they didn't like us? The Gospel is to be preached to every nation (Matthew 28:18), to every creature (Mark 16:15), including Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world (Acts 1:8). None of those verses have an exception clause in them.

Father, thank You for leading someone to preach the Gospel to me. You did not exclude me, my family, my state, or my nation because of our sins. It was because of our sins that the Gospel was preached to us. Thank You for Your mercy and grace. May we always remember that when we ourselves are tempted to not share Your message of salvation with someone that we do not like.