Jonah 3:1-2
“Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.’”
A second chance! How many times do we all need a second chance at something or in life? How many times do we all need a second chance to get right what God desires for us? How many times do we all WISH we had a second chance to go back and do something over? God gives Jonah a second chance at the original assignment he had for him.
God brought Jonah full circle; Jonah was back to where he and God were originally when God had a task for Jonah to fulfill. Jonah’s journey away from God has a lot to say about our free will and God’s persistence. God will let us choose what we want to do, however it is limited free will; it has to be or God can’t be sovereign. I think what I sometimes neglect to understand is the persistent power of the Holy Spirit and the work he is capable of doing in our lives even when we are disobeying God, moving away from God or choosing to ignore God. All of that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit goes off and takes a nap somewhere and says “oh well, I guess Jonah’s gonna do what Jonah’s gonna do.”
I love how the King James states Genesis 1:2 “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” God’s Spirit moves; God’s Spirit is constantly moving and working and doing—even before the world existed and was created. And when Jonah was running from God, when Jonah was asleep in the bottom of the ship during a raging storm, the Spirit of God was moving. The Spirit of God moved the sailors to ask questions, the Spirit of God moved the sailors to pray, the Spirit of God moved the sailors to take action, to ask Jonah to pray, to inquire of Jonah if he was the reason for the storm; and the Spirit of God was moving a giant fish into position to gulp down Jonah at just the right time.
God’s task for Jonah hadn’t changed; he was still to go to the pagan city of Nineveh, preach against it and warn of the impending judgment that was to come if they didn’t repent.
I find that this is how God works with me too. God moves to teach me something; but I’m pretty hardheaded, so I don’t often get it the first time. “Hmmm, so you like pain Dillman? You like frustration? You like hardship? You like learning something two, three or four times? You’re a knucklehead, Dillman!” That might be what God thinks to himself about me some times. Maybe that’s a little of what he was thinking with Jonah too. “So, Jonah, you like to swim? You like fishin’? You like the smell of belly bile? Well, wait ‘til ya get a load of what’s gonna happen on your little boat ride!”
I’m sure God didn’t say or think that; God’s way beyond how I think; that’s just how I’d think in my puny mind if I were God. But, God is so much bigger, so much more majestic; oh yeah, and God, he has far more compassion and love than I do.
“So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.” (v3) Nineveh was a rather large city; it took three days to walk across it.
As the book of Jonah progresses we see what Jonah’s reason for not going to Nineveh was, he didn’t like the Assyrians. But, with Nineveh being such a large city Jonah could have easily been intimidated by the size of it. In the past, I think there have been times when I’ve ran from God because of how big or huge something was that God wanted me to do or to face. For several decades I would tell God that I was willing to do whatever he wanted me to do; but just don’t send me to be a missionary in Africa. Man, I stiff-armed God in that area; I limited what I would do for God and what God could do with me. All because something like being a missionary in Africa seemed bigger than anything I could handle.
God was big enough for Jonah’s hatred of Assyrians and God was big enough for my fears of African missionary work. I haven’t yet gone to Africa; God let me start in Iraq, but Ekklesia sure has a lot of stuff going on in Kenya and Uganda. Yikes!
“Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” (v4)
I’m not sure of the significance of the fact that Jonah journeyed into the city a day before he began to call the city to repentance. I guess there could be a couple of things going on. First, he may have journeyed into the heart of the city to begin ministering; he may have known there was a bazaar or marketplace where large numbers of people gathered and that would be the perfect place to begin speaking to the people. I want to think that was the case; I want to think positively about Jonah. However, there might have been the possibility that Jonah wrestled for a day with being able to get himself to the point to speak to the people. Maybe Jonah was still wrestling with some of his hatred and prejudice toward the Assyrians; later chapters seem to indicate that THAT might be a possibility.
But Jonah does it, he proclaims the message that God wanted him to proclaim all along. God not only gave Jonah a second chance, but he gave the Assyrians a second chance. The Assyrians had forty days to repent, turn from their pagan ways and follow Jehovah God. Thank God for second chances.
I regularly go and visit a friend in prison at the Madison Correctional Institute in London, Ohio. My friend and I have known each other since 7th grade; he’s two years older than I am and has spent the last 34 years in prison for killing a police officer. In the Spring of 2009 he comes up for a parole hearing. I remember his last parole hearing almost five years ago; I had spoken on his behalf. Originally, the Parole Board recommended his release, however there was a great outcry from the victim’s family and the Fraternal Order of Police against his release.
I sat and listened as the City Prosecutor, who tried my friend’s case thirty-four years ago, came out of retirement to make statements to the Parole Board for why they should keep my friend in prison. I listened to the tormented testimony of the victim’s adult children and I listened to the current City Prosecutor advocate for continued incarceration. During the Parole Board hearing one member of the Parole Board sensed what I too had been sensing and had a few questions for the original City Prosecutor.
The Parole Board member asked the former Prosecutor if there were any mitigating circumstances that should be considered in the case, especially since my friend was just a teenager when this happened. The Parole Board member also mention that my friend was “high” during the crime, and asked the former City Prosecutor if any of those circumstances should be factored into why the crime was committed and how it happened that my friend killed a police officer. The former City Prosecutor was adamant that none of those things should be considered; killing a police officer was flat out abominable and deserved no mercy.
As I sat and listened to the discussion I could only think that nobody sitting in that hearing was the same person that day as they were thirty-four years ago; I wasn’t, the City Prosecutor wasn’t, the Parole Board member wasn’t, the victim’s children weren’t, the current City Prosecutor wasn’t, and neither was my friend. My friend had been a stupid kid from a broken home, he was a drug addict, he was “high” and all that combined led to one great tragedy. My friend has been a model inmate, is spoken of highly by the Corrections Officers, has been recommended for parole by the former warden of the prison and is remorseful and has written the victim’s family a letter asking for forgiveness.
In my mind that day at the hearing I kept thinking to myself, all of us sitting here today have been given second chances by the grace and mercy of God. None of us DESERVED a second chance, but we were given it. My friend doesn’t DESERVE a second chance, and most of the people involved in his case are determined NOT to give him a second chance. Jonah received mercy from God and was spared death in the open sea. However, Jonah could have just as easily lived out the consequences of running from God, much like my friend is living out the consequences of his actions thirty-five years ago, and Jonah could have drowned.
Evidently, God in his omniscient wisdom knew that the Assyrians would repent, and that in part is why God gave Jonah a second chance. “And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.” (v5)
I suppose it is God’s omniscient wisdom that has allowed me to have second chances, and third chances, and fourth chances too.
