Today’s reading: Jonah 1-2; Mark 12
Jonah gives us a really potent picture of how spiritual rebellion leads us to act and operate in ways that directly contradict what we would know and desire in any other circumstance.
When the word of the Lord comes to Jonah, at the beginning of the book of Jonah, he immediately tries to flee from the Lord. It could be easy to assume that this was the first time the Lord spoke to Jonah and that he simply wasn't interested in being the Lord's mouthpiece, or that he didn't really understand the God he was dealing with, but neither of those options is actually the case. We know, on the one hand, from 2 Kings 14 that Jonah was a prophet of God, and we can see, on the other hand, from the rest of the book of Jonah, that Jonah knew the God he was dealing with. As an example, when Jonah is explaining himself to the sailors, he doesn't restrict Yahweh to being a regional god that he could actually run from, but calls Him the God who created the sea and dry land.
The point is that it wasn't ignorance or misunderstanding that led Jonah to try to flee from the presence of the Lord, it was the insanity of rebellion.
As Christians, we acknowledge that God is the creator of all things, and that, as the author of life, He is uniquely suited to know what is best for us at any given point in time. This means that, even when what He calls us to is different than what we feel or want, it is still the best possible course we could pursue. This is simple, logical truth, but that does not mean our flesh will submit willingly to it. Even as Christians, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, our flesh is still at enmity with God, constantly seeking to rebel against Him. And when our rebellion wins out, it is not a matter of truth or understanding that leads us to rebel, but our flesh or the Lord’s enemies (or both) convincing us to run away from what we know to be true. This is the insanity of rebellion.
How often do we, like Jonah, give in to temptation in some area of sin that we know to be harmful and, in our saner moments, to not be what we actually want to do? And how often can such initial rebellion lead to shame and pulling back, hiding from God, like Adam and Eve in the garden, as though if we don’t approach Him He won’t know about it? How often do we act, before God, like little children trying to hide their disobedience from their parents; standing there with our faces covered in chocolate and swearing up and down that we didn’t steal our sister’s candy bar?
The times when we are obedient, no such notions of hiding ourselves from the Lord exist in our hearts and minds as even possible. We know the God we are dealing with, and we know that everything is laid bare before Him. But when we sin, choosing to step out in disobedience, we are easily led to abandon reason and seek, like Jonah, to flee from the presence of the Lord.
Jonah was not unaware of the transcendence of the God He was dealing with, or of the power of his God, when he chose to flee from the presence of the God who created the sea and dry land. He fled in rebellion, no longer thinking well or rightly about the Lord, himself, or his relationship to the Lord. But praise God that He is a God who doesn’t write us off when we rebel, but pursues us, even in our rebellion, and calls us back to Himself. That call back may at times be painful, as Jonah himself experienced, but it will always be better to turn back to our faithful Father than to continue in our fruitless efforts to outrun Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment