The Great Heart of GodToday's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: The Great Heart of God ---------------------------------- Date: 2/4/2003
Keyword: “forgiveness”
Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation.Passage: Jonah 3:10-4:3*
3:10. When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.4:1. But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry.
2. And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.
3. "Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life."
Questions
1. How did God respond to the repentance of the wicked Ninevites (3:10)?
2. How would you describe Jonah's response to God's dealing graciously with the sinful people of Nineveh (see verse 4:1)?
Practical help
Many of us know at least a little bit of the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of Israel who was sent to the capital of the Assyrian empire, Nineveh. They were a godless, immoral, violent society. They also posed the biggest threat to Israel's national security. (Actually, just a few years after Jonah prophesied, Assyria did overthrow Israel!)He didn't want to go east to Nineveh, so he traveled west to Tarshish, but was intercepted by a fish who took him back to the coast and vomited him in the direction of Nineveh.
Jonah preached judgment against Nineveh. Then, of all the things, Nineveh repented! They were all saved. God was gracious to them — and Jonah was hot! He didn't want those sinners saved. He wanted them judged.
What a picture of the heart of God for sinners. He is willing to judge, but is far more inclined to be gracious, to save, to deliver — even people as ungodly as the Ninevites.
eXXit readers can take away a life-changing thought from the book of Jonah. That thought? The great heart of God is for porn strugglers. He wants you to be delivered from your addiction.
Jonah was upset at the Ninevites' repentance. He just knew that God would do something silly (or so he thought) like save them if they turned to Him, because Jonah knew that this was what God was like. God's words of judgment against lust and all sorts of sexual immorality are genuine warnings. But they are also gracious invitations to turn from sin and to find forgiveness. Heed that gracious invitation, and you will find the Lord's deliverance.
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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."
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