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When someone has done us a great wrong or when we are in a great conflict with someone, it is easy to look at them only from that perspective. When we do, it is comforting to know that God is dealing with people. He will right all wrongs. He will bring justice. He will restore what was lost. That’s the lesson we learned from the book of Obadiah. We can give up revenge and leave room for God’s wrath. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord.
However, it would be very wrong for us to think that this is the only perspective from which God views such people, as if He had no interest in them apart from us and our conflict with them. It would be wrong to completely identify our perspective with God’s. That’s the lesson that Jonah learned that he records in his book.
Jonah is one of the most famous characters in the Bible. He was told to preach to Nineveh, and he refused to go. A great storm came up on the sea, and Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard to stop the storm. They were hesitant, but they were so scared that they did so. When he landed in the water, he was swallowed by a huge fish or whale. From there, he cried to God. God heard him in the depths and delivered Jonah. Then, God sent him back to Nineveh. That’s what I want us to think about this morning from chapters 3 and 4 of this prophecy. We will see Jonah’s preaching, Jonah’s complaint, and Jonah’s correction. This consideration will lead us to some important lessons as we think about God and the world..
Jonah’s Preaching
Once Jonah got back on land, God sent him a second time to the city of Nineveh, the capitol of Assyria. Assyria was the first of a series of land empires in the Middle East: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. Learning these empires is really crucial to understanding much of the Bible after the period of King David. The Assyrians were the first, and they were the most brutal. They did not live in a place of great security, so they built security by centralizing the state and making the military the first priority. They dealt with their neighbors by conquering them and brutally subjugating them. If you think of toxic masculinity, these guys would probably be the poster boys for it and proud of it. So, the nations around them did not like them at all but also feared them. Note: this is in contrast to the later empires who used carrots as well as sticks to keep people in line. Assyria basically just used sticks.
So, Jonah was going to walk into the capitol city of this nation and tell them that God was going to overthrow their nation in 40 days. So, that’s what Jonah did. It was a huge city. You can’t walk through it in one day. So, he went to the center of it and then began to preach. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4).