Jonah 1

Scripture Reading:  Read Jonah Chapter 1. 

A Reason for Disagreement:

Jonah 1:3 – “But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.”  (NLT)

The book of Jonah is the minor prophet we find ourselves most familiar with.  At the start of this chapter, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh to proclaim judgment upon them.  Jonah instead disobeys God and boards a ship in the opposite direction.  By the end of the chapter, the sailors throw Jonah overboard, by his request, and a huge fish swallowed up Jonah. 

Perhaps you’ve grown up with this story and even seen it portrayed on a flannel graph!  (Before churches had TV’s!) The truth is Jonah disobeyed God. However, there is something that we must keep in mind. The Ninevites were a brutal people who showed no mercy to the nations they intended to conquer. 

Although Jonah disobeyed God, we often oversimplify Jonah as a heartless prophet, which is maybe only partially true.  Jonah would have known about the Ninevites.  He would have known about how they murdered women and children as they conquered communities in the ancient world. 

Jonah disobeyed God and ran the other way, but he likely had an understandable reason. That’s not to excuse Jonah; he disobeyed God.  But we must understand Jonah’s disobedience in the proper context.  Jonah was likely faithful to God in many ways, but becoming a conduit for God’s grace to the Ninevites was incredibly difficult for Jonah to swallow. 

Likewise, you and I likely have areas in our lives where obedience to the Lord is difficult. Praise the Lord; our God is gracious with disobedient prophets. This merciful God will graciously help us navigate circumstances in which we also have difficulty obeying the Lord, as Jonah did.