Today’s thoughts take us to chapter 3 of Jonah, and I want to start by asking you a few questions…
Are you glad that God gave you a second chance? What about your family and friends getting a second chance?
Now ask yourself, are you glad God gave the people who get under your skin a second chance? The boss that doesn’t like you. The person who is spreading gossip about you? Your mortal enemy?
That is where Jonah is mentally in chapter 3. He is now going to deliver a message so that he is faithful to God, to a people he doesn’t think deserves it. But God is there to give you a second chance and use you to give second chances!
Before we go any further, take a moment and read Jonah 3
God Can Use A Bad Messenger To Pronounce A Good Message
Let’s start by saying this; Jonah follows up on his second chance by now being faithful to bring God’s message. However, he did not deliver it the way God wanted him to.
A big part of the reason that Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah was that Assyria would be judged. But, of course, Jonah had a rooting interest against these people because the Northern Tribes of Israel were being held there.
Yes, they were wicked, but Jonah didn’t want them to perish for lack of righteousness. He wanted them to perish so he could live the way he wanted.
Just listen to his sermon. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” So does that sound like someone who wants to see the people change? It sounds like an individual following through on his direction but hasn’t captured the heart!
Jonah had the right message but was delivering it in a crummy fashion. But God can take a crummy message from the mouth of a poor communicator and work it for His glory.
Jonah walked all around Ninevah for 40 days proclaiming this message; if he were to do this today, it would probably be considered hate speech.
But God’s plans are bigger and more significant than our plans. You see, Jonah’s message had a double meaning. I think God inspired him with those words to speak to mess with Jonah.
The phrase he would have used to say overthrown in the Hebrew was hāpak.
And yes, one of the meanings of hāpak was to overturn or destroy something perverse. But it has another meaning. It also means to turn around something. So God allows a poor messenger to bring a good word. Jonah is given a second chance, and God makes the most of that chance.
Over Turned or Turned Around
So that brings us to our second point. We have the opportunity as people to be overturned or turned around. I am only responsible for deciding for myself. But! I am to share that good news with others. And I am to share it so that they have the best chance possible to be turned around.
Our job is to speak the truth in love. Not one or the other, but both. Thankfully God can still use us when we make mistakes, but it should always be our goal to speak the truth in love.
If you use truth as a weapon, you are like Jonah. You want the people overturned. But what if God wants to use that truth to turn around?
I love verse 5. It said the people believed in God. It doesn’t say they believed Jonah, but they believed God. They believed the source and not the messenger. Because they caught the heart of what was being said.
The people decided that they would call for a period of fasting. The people were declaring a move of righteousness and fasting for themselves. The momentum became so much that the king decided that this fast would be for everyone… including the animals!
And what happened? The people’s hearts were changed, and so was God’s. They were turned around instead of turned over. And Jonah gets ready to pout about it in chapter 4. But that is next week’s post.
Want to catch the entire sermon that this post was based on? Watch it here on YouTube!