SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/28/2015
10:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Jonah’s
Message to Nineveh
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jonah 3:3-4
Message of the
verses: We are beginning tonight a
new main point from the outline of Warren Wiersbe to which he entitles “The
Marvel of an Unparalleled Awakening” and covers chapter three and verses three
to ten and that includes the entire third chapter.
Now just for a moment let us look at what God has told
Jonah to do from a human perspective.
Jonah, one man, a Jew, is going to go to a city of somewhere around 600,000
people and tell them that judgment is going to come to them if they don’t
repent to a God that they don’ even know, and perhaps never heard of. From a human perspective this does not sound
to likely, but this is what the Lord wanted Jonah to do and Jonah in obedience
to the Lord went to Nineveh to do it. I
have to believe that it was God who was working in the hearts of the people,
especially the leaders of the people who caused Jonah to be successful, something
we will see a bit later. When man sinned
in the garden every offspring that was born to Adam and Eve, which is everyone
who has been born on planet earth were and are born sinners, that is having a
sin nature and the only thing they can do is sin, that is until the Lord,
through His Holy Spirit gives a person an effectivual call for salvation, and I
am not saying that is what happened in Nineveh during Jonah’s preaching, but I
am saying that the Lord did cause the people to listen to Jonah’s preaching and
then to repent as we will see. It was a
God thing.
Jonah’s Message to
Nineveh (Jonah 3:3-4): “3 So Jonah
arose and went to Nineveh according
to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’
walk. 4 Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried
out and said, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’”
It is not clear exactly what is meant when we read: “Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’
walk.” Three day’s walk could mean it
took that long to walk around it, or maybe through it, but we all can agree that
Nineveh was a very large city.
Jonah tells the people after one day that in forty days
Nineveh shall be overturn, and Dr. Wiersbe points out “Throughout Scripture,
the number forty seems to identified with testing or judgment. During the time of Noah, it rained forty days
and forty nights (Gen. 7:4, 12, 17). The
Jewish spies explored Canaan forty days (Num. 14:34), and the nation of Israel
was tested in the wilderness forty years (Deut. 2:7). The giant Goliath taunted the army of Israel
forty days (1 Sam. 17:16), and the Lord gave the people of Nineveh forty days
to repent and turn from their wickedness.”
I am not sure how this fits in but our Lord Jesus Christ fasted for
forty days before He began His ministry.
We are not really told much about the ministry that Jonah
had and what other things, if any that he told the people of Nineveh, but
perhaps he told them about the One true God, and this I have to believe he
did. At any rate we are told in verse
five that the people of Nineveh believed God, so as I earlier stated it had to
be a God thing.
We do have to believe that in order for them to repent
that they would have had to know something about the God of Israel.
11/28/2015 10:59 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment