Anyone who has ever been to Sunday School or Church with any regularity or has read a children’s Bible Story Book is familiar with the story of Jonah and the Whale. However, the story is not really about a man being swallowed by a whale. It is about a man named Jonah, who was a prophet of God, being commanded in Jonah 1:2 “2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.”
Most of the time, when people teach or preach about Jonah, they make him out to be a terrible person. Jonah indeed disobeyed God. Disobeying God is wrong and brings chastisement. But the same thing holds true for you and me today. Everyone should be taught the lesson that Jonah was chastised for his disobedience.
What exactly had God commanded Jonah to do? God told him to go and preach to his arch-enemy. Nineveh was a very large city of more than six score thousand (120,000) people. Before we make any conclusions about Jonah’s character, perhaps we should understand the magnitude of what God had commanded him to do and compare that with the smaller tasks he commands us to do.
Jonah had his faults, but so do we. One lesson that can be learned from the Book of Jonah is the peril of running away from duty. While not everyone is a prophet, teacher, or preacher, everyone has a duty to God. Whatever God commands us to do, is our duty to perform. The lesson of Jonah being in the belly of the whale for three days should point to the certainty of chastisement to those who shun their duty.
Another lesson to be learned from the Book of Jonah is that God takes imperfect men and women and leads them to do his perfect will. Many people feel, rightfully so in some ways, that they are too weak, too ignorant, or some other excuse to do the duty God calls them to do.
Here we have a man who was very much imperfect but who loved God, as stated in Jonah 1:9, 9 …I am an Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.”
If God can put a fish in the right place at the right time to do his bidding, then how much more can God do with human beings who were made in the image of God and who were created to worship and adore God? If God can take a donkey and cause it to see the Angel of the Lord, then talk with the voice of a human to the prophet whose eyes were blinded to the sight of the Angel to save the prophet’s life, how much more can God do with humans that he created for the purpose of serving him?
When Jonah was finally vomited on dry land by the whale and went to Nineveh the way God had commanded him to do in the first place, the people of Nineveh repented, and God was merciful and spared the city. It is important for us to know that when we succumb to the will of God, God will do the work that we can not do.
Ricky Wilborn Fort Payne, AL