Read Jonah 3:1-3
v.1-2 - We left Jonah on the beach after being thrown up out of the belly of the whale. Wet and stinking Jonah now hears from God again. By all rights Jonah probably was surprised by God speaking to him again. He didn’t deserve the salvation by whale that God provided him, and for God to speak to him after his disobedience is the ultimate act of Grace that God could show Jonah. Not only does God speak to Jonah with the desire to use him, but he is given his exact same task again, go to Nineveh and give them the message that God has for them. Jonah was given a second chance to be obedient to what God had called him to do. Many times in our lives when we disobey God we are brought back through a storm and perhaps even a whale to the place that we began with the opportunity to follow God from our previous starting point. This should encourage us and give us hope, that even when we mess up and miss out on what God has for us, many times he will desire to bring us back to that same task and give us a second chance at obeying Him. God responds to great sin with great mercy! Jonah did not know what the message that God would have him proclaim to the Ninevites was but he now knew that God was set on using him to bring the message to the Ninevites and hopefully change them. This was the second time God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. When we see things repeated by God that is when we know that God will bring it to pass. (Genesis 41:32). Nineveh is a great city and God has plans for this great city.
v.3 - The opening verses in chapter 3 parallel the opening verses in chapter 1. We see the similar call in verses 1-2 of each chapter, but when we get to verse 3, Jonah’s response, they begin to differ. I mean after all, the first time Jonah’s response was to flee from the presence of God. But after the storm and the whale Jonah’s response to God after being called a second time to go to Nineveh is drastically different. Instead of fleeing from God, he turns to God and all that God has planned for him. He responds to his second chance appropriately. Jonah is obedient to the will of God. Sometimes however when we disobey God, we are not afforded a second chance. Take for instance Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5), or Lot’s wife (Genesis 19), or King Saul (1 Samuel 15:22-23). But occasionally, like in the case of Jonah, God will give His children a second chance to obey His voice.
We see in God’s response to Jonah by giving him a second chance to go to Nineveh and obey Him a glimpse into the character of God and the grace that he shows us. We need to be thankful beyond measure that for Jonah and for us, God does not hold grudges. That is the essence of the gospel, the good news that despite our continual efforts to push God out of our lives He continues to pursue us and doesn’t hold our sin against us. For many of us, the relationships we have with others get messed up because we end up holding a grudge against them for things they did to us in the past. Not God. He doesn’t look at our sins anymore once we have Christ. In His infinite mercy, God exchanged our corruption and sin for Christ’s righteousness and perfection. We have a relationship with God today because instead of holding our sins against us and expecting us to make it right, God allows the perfection of Christ to be all that He sees when we are born again into a relationship with Jesus. We also see that God does not give up on us. God could have very well let Jonah sail away to Tarshish and brought up another more obedient prophet to go to Nineveh. But one remarkable thing about God is that He is more interested in us than in what we can accomplish. We cannot do anything for God. He does not need us for anything. Yet He chooses to use us because He wants to work on us and bring us closer to Him. God loves you, not for what you can do for Him, but He simply loves you. Period.
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