The Lesson of Jonah

Free will! It’s in the Bible! God has clearly given us a “free-will”, and He blesses or disciplines us depending on the free-will choices we make. It is very important for us to "freely" submit our will to His. To the degree we do this we are rewarded, and to the degree we resist, we are rewarded with unpleasant rewards.

Our “free will” is clearly limited! Example:

Mt 5:36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

We have not been given will power to make our hair change color. (We can dye it, but it still continues to grow in according to God’s choice of color, not ours.)
We might have chosen different skin color, or eye color, or skin smoothness or hair thickness or different mental apptitude or different nationality, or different parents or any number of temporary physical attributes, but God has severely limited our free will in these choices.

Lu 12:25 And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?
Jesus taught that our free will is very limited!

Jonah exercised his free will, and headed for Joppa when the Lord had told him to go to Nineveh. The Lord allowed Jonah the free will to head toward Joppa, however, He also used extraordinary methods to change Jonah’s mind, and to cause Jonah to “choose” to go and preach in Nineveh. It’s extremely interesting to me that Jonah made that choice in a state he described as “hell”.

Jon 2:1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

Jesus confirms that Jonah had a death experience in the fish for three days and three nights when He compares His own death experience with Jonah’s.

Mt 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

So Jonah is a picture of a man who exercised his own free will against God’s known will. We see in this story how God changed Jonah’s direction, took him to hell, waited for him to repent, which he did, and when he cried out to God out of the belly of hell, God heard him and delivered him. At that point Jonah went on to carry out God’s will of his own free will. Jesus validated the testimony of the event and even declared that the people of Nineveh would rise up in judgment against the Jews of His day. So we know this is not just a fiction story, but a real account of God’s dealings with Jonah and with Nineveh.

Mt 12:41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

So we can exercise our free will to repent now, like the people of Nineveh…or we can be like Jonah, go to hell, and repent later, but we will all repent “in due time”.

1Ti 2:6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

1Co 3:13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. 14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.