Isaiah 55:8 “ For my thoughts are not
your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
God is the
personal Spirit, perfectly good, who in holy love creates, sustains, and orders
all. He is the absolute personality--an object of worship. There can be no
definition of the idea of God, because we can have no idea of Him, no
knowledge, in the strict sense of knowing. No one can know His mind, St. Paul says in Romans 11:34. If it were not for the
fact that God reveals His thoughts to us, we would know nothing about them.
God, however, does reveal to us some of His thoughts, sometimes.
Although
Israelites had been influenced by Canaanite worshipping practice for centuries,
it was King Ahab who had conferred an official status on Baal worship at the
instigation of his Sidonian wife Jezebel and built a temple for Baal in Samaria. Persecution of
Yahweh worshippers and his priests took place in Israel with government connivance.
It is at this
time Elijah appeared on the scene, confronted Ahab, and predicted a severe
drought all over Israel
as God’s punishment for the sins of the royal house. Following this, God
instructed the prophet to run and hide by a stream. He was there fed by crows.
Human logic would have warned Elijah that a river was not an ideal place to
hide from a powerful government and it was bound to go dry anyway, in a long
drought; that crows were unclean under the law and he was to have nothing to do
with them. But he obeyed orders. When the stream did go dry God sent him to a
widow who lived in the Sidonian town of Zarephath.
Israel’s
famine had not spared the surrounding areas and the widow and her son were
dying of starvation. Elijah through a miracle ensures a life-long food supply for
them and brings back to life when the widow’s son died.
Three years
later Elijah returns to Israel
and confronted King Ahab. By this time the famine in Israel had reached catastrophic
proportions. Elijah approached the people, determined to prove the Lord alone
is God and worthy of worship. He managed to get Ahab to summon all the
Israelites and assemble the prophets of Baal and Ashera on Mount
Carmel where he challenged them to prove the might of their gods.
When they
failed, Elijah demonstrated the superiority of Israel’s God, and in holy zeal
rounded up all Jezebel’s priests—900 of them--and had them massacred. On
hearing this the enraged queen swore to have Elijah killed, and he escaped
again into the desert where he was fed by angels and put on his way to mount Horeb.
There the Almighty granted a personal audience to the discouraged prophet and
assures him that he still had work to do, he was important to God; he must
return to Israel
to attend to some unfinished business. After several years of courageous
service that determined the fate of three nations, God sent a chariot of fire
and collected him in a most spectacular manner.
It cannot be
denied that among those of His servants God chose to personally honour, Elijah
holds a special place. Let us look at another unusual person, totally different
from the above, but unique in his own way, Jonah son of Amittai.
Jonah was the only prophet in the Old Testament who was sent out of his country to deliver
God’s message; the only prophet who openly defied God’s command and tried to
conceals His message. He is the only Old Testament prophet Jesus compares
Himself to, referring to him on two occasions.
Assyria was a great world power during Jonah’s time. Assyrians flaunted
their power before God and the world through numerous acts of heartless cruelty
– an evil empire the neighbouring Israel dreaded and hated. Nineveh was its capital
city. It is to this city God told Jonah to go and preach the message of God’s
forgiveness and redemption. Jonah decided he cannot do it, he must not do it.
Surely they are beyond redemption! Was God not making a mistake?
Jonah decided
he can avoid God’s call by running away. He took a ship that was headed in the
opposite direction. As a prophet, Jonah should have known it is futile to flee
from the omnipresent God. As he slept peacefully on the deck, a huge storm arose
and the sailors, realizing that it is no ordinary storm, cast lots and discovered
that Jonah was to blame. Jonah admits this and states that if he was thrown
overboard, the storm will cease, and they reluctantly do this. The storm calms.
God rescues the hapless prophet by ordering a large fish to swallow him. In its
belly, he spends three days and three nights. While in the stomach of the fish
Jonah prays humbling himself and confessing his sin of disobedience. The fish
throws up Jonah.
This time Jonah
arrives in Nineveh
and starts proclaiming God’s message - half-heartedly though. He presents a
summary judgment “Nineveh
will be destroyed in forty days” without offering forgiveness for the
repentant. Still the whole city repents, right from the king to the lowest
slave. God sees their repentant hearts and spares the city at that time. Jonah
is aggrieved by this development. He was hoping Nineveh
would be defiant and God would destroy the city, its king and population, and
the evil empire of Assyria that has been tormenting Israel would collapse. In
disappointment, he sulks and “accuses” God of being to lenient to people who
don’t deserve it.
God’s answer to
Jonah reveals His nature. During an age when the idea had permeated the Jewish
psyche that Yahweh was a personal God of Jews alone, God makes it clear His
grace and love are universal, 750 years before Christ’s arrival on earth.
We learn from
Jonah’s story that God won’t give up on you once he has chosen you to do a
particular job. God will use any device to get His job done through the one He
has commissioned. He won’t reject you or your service because you failed him
once. (Jesus in his mercy accepted a remorseful Peter into His fold). God’s
forgiveness is available even to the most hardened sinners when they repent.
We see the enormous power of God’s word - even when reluctantly delivered by
Jonah – to change the worst kind of sinners.
According to
human logic, St. Paul
was most suitable to preach the Gospel to the Jews because of his background
and training. But God sent him among the Gentiles. Peter with his rustic
fisherman background would have been the ideal person to be sent among the
masses. But God reverses this order. Moses was thoroughly tutored in Pharaoh’s
palace, he was already leadership material. Why expose him to the harsh life of
a desert shepherd for forty years before commissioning him? He commissions
Gideon to rescue the oppressed Israelites from the Midianites, but when Gideon
raises a huge army to beat back the marauders, God tells him He needs only
three hundred men.
God’s ways are
mysterious, but they are the best!
No human is worthy
of His reward. What will become of us if He treats us according to what we
deserve? Obedience begins with humility. Believe His ways are better; you may
not understand His ways, but obey humbly and receive His blessings. God’s
patience and mercy go beyond our understanding – he’ll pursue you until you
respond.
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