Reading Through The Bible - JONAH

Some Books of the bible are very short and some are very long but this one is one of the shortest.

JONAH  -  OLD TESTAMENT  -  PROPHECY

32nd book of the OT 

32nd book of the Bible

It starts with hearing the Word of God -  and immediate disobedience to that Word.

Jonah chapter 1 v 1-2   The Word

"Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 

  “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me." 

Jonah chapter 1 v 3   The Disobedience

"But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord."

What is it?

The Book of Jonah is one of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament which means it is Prophecy.

The Overview Bible  tells us the following

"Jonah is the most widely known of the Minor Prophets, the last 12 books of the Old Testament. When God had a message for the people, He spoke through the prophets. His word came in visions, oracles, dreams, parables, and the like. Most of these book were written to the people of Israel and Judah, but Jonah, Obadiah, and Nahum are more concerned with surrounding nations.

These Minor Prophet books record those messages. They outline the people’s sins, the consequences of those sins, and the proper response to God. 

Well, except the book of Jonah. It’s a story, not a sermon. It focuses on the prophet, not the people. And Jonah contains hardly any prophecy at all . . . only one line: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). Among the books of the Bible, Jonah is a bit of an oddball."

How Long is it?

It only has 4 chapters yet the story of Jonah is one of the most famous from the Bible.

The Story of Jonah & the whale is regularly taught to children.

When was it Written?

It is generally said to have been written in 780 BC and the Ninevites repented 

by 775 BC.

Who Wrote it?

Jonah

The first verse of the book tells us who Jonah was

"Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai"

 

The Book of 2nd Kings also mentions Jonah in 

ch.14 v 25

"He [King Jeroboam the son of Joash] restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher"

telling us that Jonah was a prophet and came from Gath Hepher.

Who was it Written to?

It was written to the people of Nineveh as we see from what God said to Jonah in the second verse of chapter 1:

 "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me."

Why was it Written? 

It was written because God saw the evil of a nation but wanted to give them the chance to repent and also wanted Jonah to learn more about God's compassion and love.

It is also because it carries a very important message about Jesus' death and resurrection.

 

The Overview Bible  tells us the following

"Jonah’s life events told some of Christ’s story, and his message foreshadowed Christ’s message: repent!

But Jonah isn’t all about repentance. It’s also a story of God’s compassion for all peoples, not just Israel."

Teach Sunday School  tells us the following

"The Book contains not only one of the most famous Bible miracles but it is also a great study on what can happen when we behave like snobs ."

Who refers to Jonah in the New Testament?

Jesus refers to Jonah in Matthew 12 v 39-41 when he is replying to the scribes and pharisees who have asked him for a sign.

"But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 

 For 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. 

 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. "

What other books of the bible would have been written around the same time as Jonah or connected to it?

Hosea & Amos were also preaching during Jeroboam's reign.

Nahum was also written about the wrath of God on Nineveh although this was many years later.

How does it end?

In chapter 4 we see Jonah's anger and how God deals with this using a plant and the heat of the sun.

The message Jonah and the reader gets is that

 God is a compassionate God.

But Jonah should have remembered this because he had experienced this compassion earlier in chapter 2 v 2

Simple Brief Outline

The Overview Bible  gives us the following:

Jonah has only four chapters, which makes it easy to outline the book chapter-by-chapter:

1. God directs Jonah,  Jonah disobeys (Jonah 1)
2. God has compassion on Jonah (Jonah 2)
3. Jonah preaches to Nineveh,  Nineveh repents (Jonah 3)
4. God has compassion on Nineveh,  but Jonah does not (Jonah 4)

OTHER BOOKS OF THE BIBLE ARE ADDED REGULARLY AND AN UPDATED LIST CAN BE FOUND AT OUR READING THE BIBLE PAGE 

What is Mercy? - A Dose of Encouragement

Last month I wrote about God bringing my attention to a special song to share about His Mercy in the post You're Not Guilty Anymore.


Today I would like to draw some more attention to
God's Mercy.

The obvious thing might be to start by looking at
What Mercy is,

but

I think it is important to focus first on
what it is NOT!



Mercy is not:


A Gift of the Spirit.

Gifts of the Spirit are given to believers.

Mercy is extended to everyone.

Even to the people who have not accepted His Salvation, God has extended His Mercy.
Even to those who never accepted His Salvation, God gave them the chance to receive His Mercy.


A Fruit of the Spirit.

The Fruit of the Spirit is the result in believers of walking in the Spirit of God.

Mercy is not listed as a fruit of the Spirit in the Bible but rather it is one of the attributes of God it is part of His character.

"He is kind and full of mercy; he is patient and keeps his promise. . ."  Joel 2:13

As we grow and the fruit of the Spirit is produced in our lives then we will become more like Jesus and more merciful in our character because all the fruit of the Spirit are expressed when in a merciful character.


Something we can earn.

Mercy is freely given by God, not something we have to (or can) earn by how good we are or how much we do.

There is no grade of person we must be to attain Mercy or be worthy of it.

Mercy is:

God not treating us as we deserve to be treated.

We are so used to being rewarded, commended, praised or punished, rejected, attacked, condemned for our actions and words that we just naturally expect God to react to everything as others do.

But God is God 

and 

He is not like other people.

Even when in the eyes of everyone else we deserve punishment, even when we have broken God's laws, God decides what He will do so

His Mercy is

the act of  

NOT 

meeting out the punishment we really do deserve to get.

Shown in the form of several things.

There are many things that we could list here that would form part of His mercy like love, cleansing, forgiveness, and acceptance.
They are the ways we should recognise His Mercy.

It is like our mother heart for our children, we do not always punish wrong doing, we talk to them in love and explain things to them and show them the right way.
We are actually setting them examples of the type of God's Mercy.

By our mother heart for our children, we can actually be setting them examples of the type of God's Mercy

A Lifter of depression and oppression.

It is God's hand on us.

If He turned away from us when we disobeyed or didn't follow Him then His hand would not be on us and if His hand is not on us then the hand of Satan would be on us.

So each day when God's hand is on us we are receiving His Mercy in keeping the hand of the enemy from us even when we don't realise that is happening.

This means that Satan is hindered from continually oppressing our minds and bringing depression upon us.

Photo Credit: BigStock

MERCY
is

NOT

the receiving 
of the damnation that we are due 

BUT

the
offering
of a 
substitute 
to take 
our 
punishment

Are we like Jonah?

Jonah did not think the Ninevites merited the patience God was showing them and the second chance He was willing to give them because he did not understand what mercy was.

Even though he then disobeyed God and ran in the opposite direction God preserved his life, God showed him mercy.

Jonah did not have a merciful heart toward the people of Ninevah until he himself had fully experienced the mercy of God.

Even if we start out like Jonah we can also learn to recognise God's mercy toward us and in turn be merciful toward others.


Let's thank God for His mercy to us and have mercy for others stamped in our hearts

If you did not listen to the song "Not Guilty Anymore" by Aaron Keyes in the blog post last month then you can listen to it here

Join me for some more thoughts on
When Can I Receive Mercy?
Where, Why, Who of Mercy
The How of Mercy