The Sign of Jonah

During Jesus' ministry He spoke of the "Sign of Jonah" as  the only sign that that wicked generation would see, that is that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and then came out.   Jesus was, of course, speaking of His own death and resurrection.  However, there actually is another lesson from the life of Jonah that is also relevant today.

Most people only remember the fish story about Jonah.  But few remember how he came there in the first place.  God had called him to go to the city of Nineveh to preach repentance to them.  Foolishly, Jonah tried to run away from God because he was afraid of this task and we can understand that.  Nineveh was the capital of the Great Assyrian empire.  Assyrians had a reputation for tremendous cruelty to those other countries that they captured.  They killed so many that they ran out of space for the bodies.   This is not the place to itemize their evils but they would sure blow past the death and cruelty even of the Nazis. Ironically, though, the city of Nineveh as beautiful with parks and fountains adorning it.   Jonah was not optimistic that calling them to repentance from their evil would work.  He thought that it was more likely that they might kill him.  But His greatest fear was that they actually really would repent and because He knew God, He knew that God would forgive them.  

Here is the record from Jonah 3:

On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."  The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.  When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.  Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish." When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Praying for repentance

Before we can receive revival from the Lord we must pray for repentance.  We must repent from our own culture of more and our culture of lack of gratitude and our culture of corruption and death.  We must pray for the veil of ignorance to be lifted from people and from our leaders.  Our leaders reflect the people in many ways.  The end justifies the means.  I remember hearing growing up someone say, "It's only wrong if you get caught." Our leaders reflect this value but we can find it everywhere in our society.  Worse still we have said that we are the final judge of right and wrong.  This has been our country.  We find stories of ancient religions sacrificing babies to their gods to be abhorrent.  Yet, we kill millions of babies every year in our country in the name of freedom.  Are we better than the Assyrians?  We have parks and fountains yet we have such incredible cruelty among us.

I repent that my prayers for leaders were mostly about removing them instead of praying for the veil of ignorance over their eyes to be removed.  We must pray for repentance in our homes, our communities, our states and our nation.  If our nations does not repent then we can expect any new crop of leaders to likewise become corrupted.  All of us are corruptible by the lure of power, prestige and money.  We must pray that any new leaders be protected from the evil of corruption. We must pray that all of our leaders, current and prospective, humble themselves before our God.

We cannot have revival without repentance.

This is what Jonah knew, Ch 4: I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Seeking His Face

Sometimes it's easy, while fasting, to forget why we are doing this.  We can find ourselves a bit irritable.  We may have expectations that our relationship with the Father will instantly blossom into this great new level of communication and understanding and find ourselves a bit discouraged if it doesn't happen immediately.  Then one morning wake with the memory of a dream that feels like He's told you, "I am pleased with you".  In fasting and prayer we may find ourselves not actually spending more time with Him, in prayer and worship.  Let's remember to seek His face and take pleasure in His presence.  Psa 16:11  "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

Revival: When you pray, you must forgive.

This is rather long but it is a great teaching on prayer and faith from Charles Finney who wrote extensively on Revival.

Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them . - Mark 11:24.

These words have been by some supposed to refer exclusively to the faith of miracles. But there is not the least evidence of this. That the text was not designed by our Savior to refer exclusively to the faith of miracles, is proved by the connection in which it stands. If you read the chapter, you will see that Christ and His apostles, as they returned from their place of retirement in the morning, faint and hungry, saw a fig tree at a little distance. It looked very beautiful, and doubtless gave signs of having fruit on it; but when they came nigh, they found nothing on it but leaves. And Jesus said: "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And His disciples heard it" (Mark 11:14).

"And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.

"And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto Him, Master, behold, the fig-tree which Thou cursed is withered away.

"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith"(20-23).

Then follow the words of the text: "Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

Our Savior was desirous of giving His disciples instructions respecting the nature and power of prayer, and the necessity of strong faith in God. He therefore stated a very strong case, a miracle - one so great as the removal of a mountain into the sea. And He tells them, that if they exercise a proper faith in God, they might do such things. But His remarks are not to be limited to faith merely in regard to working miracles, for he goes on to say:

"And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses" (25, 26).