Standing at the Precipice

Meditations on Seeking the Life in Christ

 November 25, 2020

Standing at the Precipice

Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

Jonah 1:8

God called Jonah to go to Nineveh to announce God’s intention of destroying the city because of the great wickedness of the people of Nineveh. But Jonah didn’t go directly to Nineveh.

Jonah was a passenger on a ship sailing toward Spain. His assignment from God was to go to Nineveh, a city in what today is Iraq and located northwest of today’s city of Bagdad. Jonah was going in the opposite direction of Nineveh. The ship encountered a violent storm, and the captain examined all on board to discern whose sin had caused their calamity. Jonah owned his sin.

The Bible tells us very little about Jonah, but we can infer he was a man of great faith and courage for God to call him for such an important assignment. However, Jonah’s choice of words in his self-description reveals he had divided loyalties. Jonah had a deep and abiding faith in the God of Israel. He believed the Jews were unique in the entire world as God had called them to be His people. He was deeply committed to worshipping the God of Israel. He also knew his God was the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land, which means God is the Creator of all that has been created. He told the captain he worshipped this God when actually he was in open rebellion against God’s assignment for him.

In Chapter 4, Jonah reveals his dilemma: “I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love” (Jonah 4:2). Jonah was all for God destroying Nineveh for their wickedness. He was not at all pleased that his merciful, compassionate God, who is filled with unfailing love, would extend those attributes to Nineveh. Not to Nineveh. Not to those people.

My Takeaway: That we are living in a much-divided country is so true and so often repeated, it has become a cliché. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly true. Within our divided politics and our divided churches, there is a great temptation to not share the merciful, compassionate God, who is filled with unfailing love with those on the other side of the divide. My response to this great divide is answered by a line in my meditation from 1 John 3 (October 27, 2020), “Do we belong to God, or to the world?”

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

 

Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.