Good morning my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
Warnings are only helpful if taken seriously, am I right? It could be the sign which reads: ‘warning…road closed ahead’ that you see on the road you are traveling; or the sign: ‘warning… unattended vehicles will be towed’ as you are parking your car; or the sign: ‘warning… no swimming’ which you see as your children are about to jump in the lake on a hot day, while an alligator is sunning itself over there on the shoreline! Yesterday we left Jonah reflecting on his remarkable Nineveh experience and God’s challenge to Jonah about how God sees ALL people of the world. God also challenged Jonah about his attitude toward Gentiles and the Assyrians in particular.
Jonah gives us no record about his return trip back to Israel from Nineveh, nor any events in the rest of his life, but we can presume Jonah did return home and he not only wrote down the record of his experiences with God but he certainly shared them with many people. Can you imagine the questions Jonah must have received as people heard his God stories, both his adventure at sea with the great sea creature and his adventure at Nineveh!?
I wonder what you conclude my friends is the main message God was trying to send to our world through Jonah? Yesterday we considered the power of God’s MERCY & GRACE shown to the Assyrians by not destroying Nineveh in response to their repentance. Do you also see God’s LOVE and God’s constant awareness of all that is happening in our world? Do you also see God’s full understanding of our attitudes and His expectation that His people will view the world as God does and live in our world in a way that shows God to our world and draws our world to God?
As Jonah returned home to Israel, I have no doubt Jonah was fairly quickly summoned to meet with King Jeroboam of Israel to explain what had happened in Nineveh. The leaders of Israel were well aware of the conquest efforts of the King of Assyria to enlarge his kingdom and some were beginning to wonder if Israel might be next!?
Can you imagine the response of the Israel leaders when they heard Jonah’s explanation of how God relented in response to Nineveh’s repentance? But Israel was entering a time of chaos! Not long after Jonah’s return to Israel the Biblical record of 2 Kings 15 gives us a picture about the leadership chaos in Israel as King Jeroboam died. May I summarize it this way:
* Zechariah became king after the death of his father King Jeroboam II who had reigned 41 years. I’m sure Zechariah would have heard Jonah’s reports as given to his father King Jeroboam. Sadly King Zechariah reigned only 6 months for the record says a man named “Shallum conspired against Zechariah and attacked him in front of the people, assassinated him and succeeded him as king!” (2 Kings 15:10) If you live in a country which has experienced violent changes of government, you understand the chaos Israel was experiencing! After 41 years of stability, Israel was suddenly in leadership chaos and running away from God!
* Shallum claimed the throne of Israel by violence but he only reigned one month, for he too was assassinated by a vigilante named Menahem who overtook the throne! (2 Kings 15:13,14)
* Menahem was an unusually vicious man who led Israel for 10 years by a reign of terror. (2 Kings 15:16) It was during these frightening years the King of Assyria saw Israel as vulnerable and attacked Israel with his formidable Assyrian army from Nineveh. King Menahem imposed a tax on the wealthy people of Israel giving the money to the King of Assyria and the invading army relented in their forceful invasion and returned home to Nineveh, leaving Israel alone, at least temporarily. (2 Kings 15:19,20) If Jonah was still living at this time, I wonder what he thought as he watched the wicked Assyrian army from Nineveh, which had been spared the judgment of God Jonah had warned about, now attacking Israel, Jonah’s people?
Menahem died after 10 violent years and his son Pekahiah succeeded him and became King of Israel reigning in Samaria for only two years. This summary phrase “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD” (2 Kings 15:23,24) describes God’s view of Pekahiah’s reign and each of the previous kings I’ve mentioned. It was a spiritually and morally dysfunctional time in Israel during these years of leadership chaos. One of Pekahiah’s chief officers named Pekah, conspired against King Pekahiah and assassinated him and assumed the throne of Israel violently, as others had done before him.
* Pekah reigned as King over the northern kingdom Israel for about 20 years. But he too “did evil in the eyes of the LORD.” It was during these years the famous Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-Pileser led the Assyrian army for a second time to invade Israel, this time conquering the area we know as the Galilee and he took captive and deported many of the Jews from the Galilee region back to Assyria.
By this time we can assume the prophet Jonah had died, perhaps several years before, but the little book Jonah had written about his experiences with God and left in the hands of trusted Jewish leaders, we have in our Bible, and it bears his name. It was intended by God to be a warning and an invitation to the Kings of Israel to do as the King of Nineveh had done and lead Israel in repentance.
But clearly Jonah’s book and his passionate appeals were disregarded by each of these leaders of Israel during these years. God also raised up another prophet named Amos, but his messages of warnings and appeal from God were also ignored by these wicked kings of Israel. It seemed as though these kings were determined to remove every mention of God, every memory of God, every evidence of God from the land of Israel. In so doing, the Kings invited God’s wrath, and the invasion of Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser was the beginning of God’s final judgment on His people of the northern kingdom Israel.
2 Kings 15 is a warning my friends and a call to all of us, in every nation of the world, no matter where you live. Are the leaders of your nation and mine leading the people away from God? Are they seeking to remove from your society and mine any mention of God, any memory of God? Are they disregarding the warnings from God? Is God about to begin pouring out His judgment upon the wickedness of your nation and mine?
Is your voice one like Jonah’s, calling your nation back from the precipice of despair and possible destruction? Let’s pause and ponder that my friends, for history is being made even now, in the summer of 2024 in many countries of our world! No song today, simply my invitation to look closely at what you see happening in your country and talk with God about it! He’s the very same God as He was in the days of Jonah, and His expectations for how humanity should function have not changed!
Today’s Scripture: 2 Kings 15.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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