Christian Devotional – October 28, 2023

Evangelism 101, Day 13

It’s not fair! Read Jonah 4:1-3.

Well, we saw that God made the decision to spare the people of Nineveh at the end of the last chapter. However, not everyone is happy about that. Jonah’s really angry with God about God’s decision to spare the people of Nineveh. In fact, Jonah gets so angry that he starts starts telling God that it’s not Fair and that he would rather die than live. In the verse before this, Jonah even mentions the characteristics of God that in other places in the Bible are used as a positive description of God. However, here Jonah is using them as a indictment against God. Jonah doesn’t want God to be compassionate and full of mercy. Jonah wants God’s judgment.

Unfortunately, many times when we think about ourselves, we want God’s mercy. But then when we think about other people, we want God’s judgment. We want life to be our definition of fair, but it doesn’t work that way. God is holiness and we must understand that the same mercy that God extends to us, he extends to others. Are we truly understanding who God is if we cannot see others and extend them the same mercy that God has given to us?