“Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying…” Jonah 1:1

 Truth and Peace

The Lord sent me to Jonah this morning, I stopped on verse 1, wondering what the names meant. Jonah means “dove.” Immediately I thought of peace. Amittai means “my truth.” In the very first verse God tells us what His plan is. By His truth, He plans to bring peace.

God desired to bring peace instead of destruction to Nineveh, and Jonah wanted no part of it. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and, to say the least, the Assyrians weren’t nice people. So Jonah headed off to Tarshish, the very opposite direction, fleeing from the presence of the LORD. He boarded a ship; then the Lord sent out “a great wind and a mighty tempest on the sea…” (Jonah 1:4). Jonah finally told the sailors to throw him overboard and the sea would be calm. They did, and “the sea ceased from its raging” (verse 15).

Even though Jonah was fleeing from the Lord, and at this point was totally disobedient, God still used him. Verse 16 tells us, “Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows.” The truth of who God was became very apparent to these sailors, just as it would to other men of the sea some 800 years later (Luke 8:23-8:25). And with that truth came peace.

God used the great fish to give him some “alone time,” and after three days when Jonah has remembered, “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9), the LORD has the fish vomit Jonah onto dry land (don’t you just love the Bible!)

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and this time he did. Jonah proclaimed the disaster that would befall Nineveh for its wickedness. The king proclaimed a citywide fast, there was great revival and God brought peace instead of destruction. Incredible!

So many things amaze me about this story: Nineveh is vast; it took three days for Jonah to walk across it proclaiming disaster and yet no one touched him. From the king down, they heard the truth and responded, resulting as it did for the sailors, in peace.

You’d assume Jonah fled from what the Lord called him to do the first time out of fear, but we find out in Jonah 4:2 that’s not the case. He knew if Nineveh would repent, God would relent. His “Salvation is of the LORD” moment in the fish was forgotten; the truth of God’s grace and mercy was cause for anger because he didn’t think the people God extended it to were worthy of it.

None of us are worthy. We all deserve death, but God loves us too much. In His grace and mercy, God brings eternal peace and salvation to those who believe in the truth of His Son, Jesus.

“Thank you, Lord, for Your truth and the peace it brings when we believe. Amen.”