“The most powerful weapon for silencing the mouth of the world is not brilliant theological apologetics, but the practice of a holy life that resembles Jesus Christ.” “Now it happened, as Jesus went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath, that they were watching Him closely. And behold, there was a certain man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus, answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’ But they kept silent. And He took him and healed him, and let him go. Then He answered them, saying, ‘Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?’ And they could not answer Him regarding these things” (Luke 14:1–6). (1) As I meditated on today’s passage, Luke 14:1–6, the phrase that first caught my attention was: “they were watching Him clos...
A servant of God who did
not imitate God’s loving heart.
The
prophet Jonah, who had been disobedient,
received
salvation from God twice.
The
first salvation occurred when the unbelieving sailors,
at
Jonah's suggestion, threw him into the sea.
God
had already prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, thus saving him
(Jonah
1:12, 16, 17).
The
second salvation happened when God
commanded
the great fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land,
thus
saving him from being in the belly of the fish (2:10).
However,
even after experiencing God's salvation twice,
the
prophet Jonah, who proclaimed God's word, believed it,
proclaimed
a fast (3:1-5), and turned from evil ways, genuinely repenting.
Yet,
when God relented from bringing the disaster He had threatened
against
the people of Nineveh who also repented (v. 10),
Jonah
became exceedingly displeased and angry,
even saying, "It is better for me to die
than to live" (4:1, 3).
How
could Jonah, the servant of God
who
received salvation twice
at
the crossroads of life and death due to his disobedience,
be so
displeased and angry when the Ninevites,
who
lived in disobedience and committed evil deeds,
repented
and received salvation?
It is
because he did not imitate the heart of God,
who
cherishes those who cannot distinguish between good and evil (v. 11).
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