We begin a most interesting book today. Everyone in the book shines, but Jonah! We’ve loved this story since we were small, because it is so easy to understand: a fish swallows a man, it swims to shore and out comes the man! Alive and well. But when we are older, we look at the story and learn that it is so big in its meaning that we can see Christ going into death and coming back to life. Even that Jonah was the first Hebrew prophet sent to the Gentiles with a message. And further that Jonah is a picture of the Jewish nation utterly, hopelessly lost, and Nineveh is a picture of the whole world hearing a message from God through a Jew!
V.1-3 He is told by the Lord to go to the great Gentile city of Nineveh, and tell the people that God saw all their wickedness, and that the city would be destroyed in 40 days.
V.4-17 But Jonah runs away from the Lord. Did you ever do that? Did you ever feel that you should speak to someone about their soul, and then you didn’t? Did God let Jonah do what he wanted? Yes. He let him go the whole way, even letting the men throw him into the sea.
V.17 But! What kindness of the Lord!
Prayer is mentioned in each chapter Jonah 1:14; 2:1; 3:8; 4:214Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. (Jonah 1:14)
1Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly, (Jonah 2:1)
8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. (Jonah 3:8)
2And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. (Jonah 4:2).