SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/27/2015
10:27 PM
My Worship Time Focus: God
Challenged Jonah
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jonah 3:1-2
Message of the
verses: I realize that we have been
looking at these two verses for a while, but they are very important verses
contained in the book of Jonah.
“1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second
time, saying, 2 "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation
which I am going to tell you."”
We see the city of Nineveh called the great city four
times in the book of Jonah. Dr. Wiersbe
writes in an endnote: “Great’ is one of
the key words in the Book of Jonah.
Besides a ‘great city,’ the book mentions a great wind and tempest (1:4,
12); great fear (vv. 10, 16); a great fish (v.17); great people, probably
nobles (3:5, 7); and Jonah’s great displeasure and great gladness (4:1-6).” It is interesting to me how the Spirit of God
uses different key words in the Word of God, as many different books have
different key words in them to help us better understand what the writer is
saying.
The city of Nineveh, according to Genesis 10:8-10 was
founded by Noah’s great grand-son, Nimrod and this could have been as early as
4500 BC. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The
circumference of the city and its suburbs was sixty miles, and from the Lord’s
statement in Jonan 4:1, we could infer that there were probably over 600,000 people
living there. One wall of the city had a
circumference of eight miles and boasted 1,500 towers.” So I guess that we get a good idea of why it
is called great.
The city of Nineveh was one of the great cities of the
Assyrian Empire and was near the Tigris River and it also had the Khoser River
running through it. It was a very
wealthy city as the army of the Assyrians was feared most everywhere at this
time in history.
Another reason that the city is called great in the book
of Jonah is that it was great in sin, and this is why the Lord sent Jonah to
preach to them. I mentioned earlier how
the Assyrian’s would conquer a people and make a pyramid out of their heads,
something that was very cruel and very sinful.
They would also skin people alive and kill women, along with
babies. According to Nahum 3:10 they did
this so that they would not have to care for them, “ Yet she became an exile,
She went into captivity; Also her small children were dashed to pieces At the
head of every street; They cast lots for her honorable men, And all her great
men were bound with fetters.”
We see from verses one and two that God was going to send
Jonah to this wicked city and He would give to Jonah the message that He wanted
them to hear.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “The will of God will never lead you
where the grace of God can’t keep you and the power of God can’t use you. ‘And who is sufficient for these things? ...Our
sufficiency is of God (2 Corinthians 2:16 and 3:5).”
11/27/2015 10:47 PM
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