Based on Jonah 3-4 (New King James Version)
“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.’ So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, ‘Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?’ Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!’ Then the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’ Then God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?’ And he said, ‘It is right for me to be angry, even to death!’ But the Lord said, ‘You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?’”
It’s easy to remember the prophet Jonah because of what happened to him because of his disobedience. He was the one that got swallowed up by a big fish for not wanting to do God’s will. What was Jonah’s problem? Why did he not want to go to Nineveh? The reason is simple. Nineveh was the Assyrian Empire capital of that time, one of the most brutal empires, and Israel’s main enemy. They were blood thirsty and power-hungry people, and within their own civilization, they were very decadent which much paganism, like many kingdoms during that time. Quite simply, they were despicable and for many reasons. But the Lord has always been a merciful God, and He loves all mankind, and at the very least, He wants to give everyone an opportunity for repentance, in one way or another. And He is even more merciful when there is ignorance, when people simply have not had a good and clear opportunity to know Him.
The situation is that God loves people incredibly. He is not the God that many think of as being cruel, like He is ready to punish or cannot control His wrath. If that were true, no one would exist right now. God’s wrath is something very terrible because He is the Almighty of the universe. But, within His incredible Being is this incredible love and mercy, and He desires everyone’s good, even those that seem most evil. No one is far away from God’s mercy. As it is written: “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord God, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live? Ezekiel 18:21-23. He always leaves the opportunity for repentance. God does not expect for us to be perfect here (because it’s impossible), but rather, He desires repentance and conversion, that there be at least a desire to change when confronted with our sin. That’s what God looks for in mankind.
What should be our incentive to help others come to the Lord, even our enemies? No one likes to know this reality, but here it comes, what our reality was before being born again in Christ: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” Ephesians 2:1-3. Whether we have sinned a lot or a little before coming to Christ, we were all children of wrath, dead in our sins, and faraway from God; and in reality, God’s enemies. And if God had mercy on us being what we used to be; He also desires to have mercy on those that are just as lost as we were. Are those of us that have come to Christ before better than the rest that have not come yet? Of course not.
Jonah’s error was believing that he was more deserving of God’s mercy than Nineveh. And this is the error that many believers commit, forgetting from where God took them from, of what they used to be before coming to Christ. None of us were good, and we are still not good. Quite simply, there is no place for pride or a feeling of superiority. And that is why we need to do what Christ did, even with His enemies, because the Lord even gave Judas Iscariot the opportunity to repent from his evil ways, knowing all of the thoughts that Judas had, and even the evil he was doing while with them, because God knows everything. This is the work of those that have come to Christ, our responsibility: “And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’” Mark 16:15-16. Can it be inconvenient or difficult to share the Gospel? Of course, it can, and very much! But that is the way it came to us. It cost many people much effort, pain, and even their lives so that I could come to Christ, so we could have what we have today. And of course, what can we say about what the Lord did for us, so that we could also have the opportunity of being saved? So then, will you form part of God’s mercy, so that others can also have the opportunity of being saved, at whatever cost? Lord bless! John