Category: Jonah

Reading

Audio, Visual

SAA Notes

The Assyrians were a savage and cruel nation who practised terrible barbarities on the peoples they raided. Jonah wanted judgment, not mercy for them! Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts! Isaiah 55:8

SJA Notes

* Loving God, please open our hearts to hear Your word today.

“And the people of Ninevah believed God.”

This is a wonderful picture of revival.

At the heart, as always, is a trust in God and in what He says (believing what Jonah told them was what God has said).

We can be reminded of Abraham, as we read in Genesis 15,

“And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

This is an active hard-won daily trust in God, a faith accompanied by good works.

We see from this passage in Jonah that all the people of Ninevah did the same, casting away their sinful practices, walking instead in obedience before the Lord.

This is a word for us today.

Do we pray for a revival in the hearts of those around us, such as happened in Ninevah?

A true conversion seen in the outworking of obedience, the turning from darkness to light as blind eyes are opened to the truth.

That we would believe in God as Abraham did, as the people of Ninevah did – That His word is true, TRUTH, that He is the ONE AND ONLY God.

* Great God,

Please save those around us, please revive dead hearts for Your glory.

Please help us grow in our trust and belief in You, in what You tell us in Your word.

Amen.

Reading

Audio, Visual

SAA Notes

Jonah prophesied about 50 years before Amos and Obadiah. He lived in the Kingdom of Israel, north of the Kingdom of Judah. Jonah’s prayer has much in common with the great prayers of men like David – Psalm 86. Jesus uses this passage to teach His resurrection. Matthew 12:39-41

SJA Notes

* Loving God, please open our eyes to see Jesus today from Your word.

“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”

Jonah is a broken character of a man, given to anger and unresolved frustrations, railing at the world around him, and railing at his Lord God.

Here we have a most wonderful passage.

It is a passage that can give the seeker hope, the downtrodden and lost and lonely – The Lord answers prayer! He loves us His people with a love that has no end!

Deeper still, here Jonah’s word echo the journey of our King Jesus while on earth – Who went to the cross, and went deeper still for us.

Three days and nights Jonah was in the belly of the great fish.

“Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.'”

We see Jonah pointing us to Jesus, God in the Person of the Son, forsaken by His Father (God in the Person of the Father).

Jesus tells us about this in Matthew 12,

“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.”

Our King took the punishment for each sheep in His flock, He took the totalled weight of the sin of every one of God’s people from Adam through to those who will be alive on earth at the last trumpet – And He took that sin to the cross, then as with Jonah so with Jesus – Three days and nights in the deep (deeper for Jesus than the ocean, down to the grave itself).

Jonah was not Jesus. He did not save anyone. But he points us to Jesus – Who did with absolute effectiveness and steadfast intention save His people.

Once for all time.

* Mighty God,

Thank You for this day. Please help us to go about Your will as we submit underneath it.

Thank You for Your word. Please write it on our hearts as we read and dwell on it.

Thank You for Your saving work to and in us. Please save those around us.

Our hearts go out to the lost and lonely, please call them home, Good Shepherd.

Amen.