Jonah Week

Kiara’s sick, so I’m taking this week again for her. And with the Random Chapter Night choice being Jonah 1, I decided that this is Jonah Week. (The Discovery Channel has Shark Week, so this is Big Fish week). So today’s study:

Jonah 1:7-11
And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”
So he said to them, “I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, “Why have you done this?” For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us?”-for the sea was growing more tempestuous.

So Jonah was asked to tell the group who he was. What’s your job? Where are you from? What nationality are you? How do you identify yourself?

Jonah’s response to this is ‘I’m Jewish, I serve the God of Heaven who created the ocean and land’. That’s our equivalent of ‘I’m a Christian, I serve Jesus, who created the land we walk on’.

His identity was all wrapped up in God, so much so that when he was asked who he was, he responded with a comment about God. He was God’s. And although at that moment, he might not have been serving God, he was still God’s, and God was still with him, even to force him to do what God wanted to do. So they knew

And as soon as he said who he served, the men knew what was going on. They put two and two together and four! They realized that the storm was because of Jonah’s running away from God, even though they didn’t serve God. They also knew enough to ask Jonah what they were supposed to do. Jonah’s response is coming next.

I’m going to try to avoid the major story in this story, for the most part. Jonah gets caught in the belly of a whale because he did the opposite of what God told him to do. So the whale spits Jonah out near the city he’s supposed to be at, and Jonah serves God just like he’s supposed to. We know that story. So during Jonah week we're going to try to find the other lessons God put in that story.

Have a great week in the dry land and ocean that God created.
In His Service,
Joyce