I’m going to share with you the story of Jonah, whom I call “the reluctant prophet”. Now, let’s get something straight right from the beginning! Jonah 1:17 says that “the Lord God had arranged for a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.” Do I believe that this is true? You bet I do! Jesus believed it. In Matthew 12:38-40, a group of religious leaders were having a hard time believing that Jesus was the Son of God and demanded a sign of some kind to prove that He was. Jesus said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth!” Folks, if the Son of God, Jesus, believed it to be so, it was so! And that settles it. Scripture says “God is not man that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19) And in Hebrews 6:18, it says, “For it is impossible for God to lie”. So that settles it for me!
Now, why do I call Jonah “the reluctant prophet”? Because God had called him to do something he didn’t want to do. As a matter of fact, Jonah took a ship and headed in the opposite direction. That’s when a storm came over the Mediterranean Sea and his ship almost sank and that’s when the men of the ship dumped Jonah overboard into the middle of the sea and that great fish came along. You see, God had called Jonah to go and preach His message of mercy and repentance to a people who were about as evil and mean as they could be, the Assyrians, and anytime you heard that the Asssyrians were on the march towards your city, it was high time for you to get out of town, “out the back door” as quickly as you could! Don’t even pack a bag, just get out of town as quickly as you can.
A little about Assyria. They were the next great power after Egypt. When Egypt fell from power, a vacuum was created and that vacuum was soon filled by Assyria. As to the timeline, Jonah ministered in the year of 793 BC to 753 BC, and it was about 785 BC when Jonah was called to preach to the Assyrians. Assyria was not yet the power it would be but they were on their way. Yet here’s what the Lord said about Assyria, “Jonah, go to the great city of Nineveh, (the capital city of Assyria) and give them this announcement: I am going to destroy you, for your wickedness rises before Me; it smells to the highest heaven!” These guys were so bad that even God couldn’t stand them anymore, and the only remedy was their complete destruction. Their evil was so great that it was full of violence, bloodshed, idolatry, fraud, lying, and evil of all kinds! Kind of sounds like today, doesn’t it? But God had a plan. In Jonah 3:1, after that whale had spit Jonah up on the seashore, He told Jonah, “Jonah, my message hasn’t changed. Go to Nineveh and do what I said, warn them of their doom just like I told you before!” This time Jonah did what the Lord said. And then you know what? After marching around that city for three days and then proclaiming God’s message to them, he climbed up on a hillside and waited to see God’s “fireworks” to rain down upon that wicked city. But that’s not what happened. Instead,the whole city, from the king on down and even the animals repented of their sins, and God spared His destruction upon the Assyrian people.
