CENTRALITY OF GRACE (4 OF 52)
Scripture: Jonah 1:1-3, Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 4:1-11
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Centrality of Grace (4 of 52)
Series: Discipleship
Christopher B. Harbin
Jonah 1:1-3; 3:1-4:11
Grace is a concept we find difficult at best. Far more than grace, we are enamored with retribution, revenge, and violence as solutions to conflict. It is hard for us to accept grace for ourselves, just as it is hard for us not to feel cheated when we see grace lavished on others. We want to categorize grace as a display of weakness. We like to consider violence as the demonstration of true strength. In the end, grace falls by the wayside in our lives. So why would we consider it an important concept when it is so often absent in the world we inhabit?
The Jonah story begins with a man who knows about grace, but does not want God to use grace toward his enemies. Yahweh called Jonah as a prophet, giving him a specific mission to take a word of warning to the enemies of Israel. This was not something Jonah wished to do. He much preferred the idea of Yahweh simply destroying the enemies of his people, so he decided to flee instead of being obedient to the instructions and call set before him.
Jonah chose to get on a boat heading the opposite direction from Nineveh. He determined to go to the opposite end of the world to escape the mission before him. He wanted his enemies to die. He wanted God to go ahead and condemn them. He wanted no part in taking them a message they might heed and thus avoid the calamity Yahweh was promising to send upon them.
We mostly know the story of the big fish that swallowed Jonah and coughed him out on the shore near Nineveh. We so often hear Jonah's story as a miracle story used as a test case for proving God's intervention in the world. We concern ourselves with how Jonah could stay alive in a fish for three days. Perhaps we should wonder, instead how a fish could circumnavigate the continent of Africa in three days, as there is no water connection between the Mediterranean and the coast near Nineveh. All of that kind of specula ...
Series: Discipleship
Christopher B. Harbin
Jonah 1:1-3; 3:1-4:11
Grace is a concept we find difficult at best. Far more than grace, we are enamored with retribution, revenge, and violence as solutions to conflict. It is hard for us to accept grace for ourselves, just as it is hard for us not to feel cheated when we see grace lavished on others. We want to categorize grace as a display of weakness. We like to consider violence as the demonstration of true strength. In the end, grace falls by the wayside in our lives. So why would we consider it an important concept when it is so often absent in the world we inhabit?
The Jonah story begins with a man who knows about grace, but does not want God to use grace toward his enemies. Yahweh called Jonah as a prophet, giving him a specific mission to take a word of warning to the enemies of Israel. This was not something Jonah wished to do. He much preferred the idea of Yahweh simply destroying the enemies of his people, so he decided to flee instead of being obedient to the instructions and call set before him.
Jonah chose to get on a boat heading the opposite direction from Nineveh. He determined to go to the opposite end of the world to escape the mission before him. He wanted his enemies to die. He wanted God to go ahead and condemn them. He wanted no part in taking them a message they might heed and thus avoid the calamity Yahweh was promising to send upon them.
We mostly know the story of the big fish that swallowed Jonah and coughed him out on the shore near Nineveh. We so often hear Jonah's story as a miracle story used as a test case for proving God's intervention in the world. We concern ourselves with how Jonah could stay alive in a fish for three days. Perhaps we should wonder, instead how a fish could circumnavigate the continent of Africa in three days, as there is no water connection between the Mediterranean and the coast near Nineveh. All of that kind of specula ...
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