Old Sandals

“Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead,  I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.”

If our worship does not stir in us a greater love for God, a greater desire to do His will, to live upright lives, what good is it?

“But still you would not return to me,” says the Lord.

The LORD is the Sovereign Ruler over heaven and earth.  And while we can’t always be sure of the divine message communicated to us by our circumstances, we can be sure that God’s consistent message to his people has not changed since ancient times: “Return to me, return to me!”

“From among all the families on the earth,  I have been intimate with you alone. That is  why I must punish you for all your sins.”

To whom much is given, much is required.  O LORD God, give me grace to be faithful.

This is what the LORD says: “The people of Israel have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished!  They sell honorable people for silver and poor people for a pair of sandals. They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way. Both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name.”

The essence of the LORD’s character is love. This is the main reason why He hates sin and expresses His wrath against sinners—because of the destruction they bring upon themselves and others. Love’s reaction against sin and all its misery is what we understand to be God’s holiness.

Thus saith the Lord; “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof…”

God is our Judge. A righteous judge, yet we shouldn’t think of Him as stern. A compassionate judge, yet we dare not think of Him as soft.

So [Jonah] complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.”

What a wonderful insight into the heart of God!  How comforting! How inspiring! God is Love.

 

“When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.”

Here is an example of the LORD God changing his mind in response to circumstances.  Because the people of Ninevah repented, the LORD did not carry out his original plans to destroy the city.

Some may refer to this comment as “open theism”. But it is based on a plain reading of the text, and does not diminish at all God’s character or His sovereignty.

“Then the LORD ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.”

The sovereign LORD even orders whales to spit! God is everywhere, and controls everything.  There is nowhere to hide.

“Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once!  The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power.”

These were pagan sailors who had earlier shouted to their gods for help because of the terrible storm.  Oh that the Lord would do miracles like that in this day and age, that the peoples of the earth would sit up and take notice.

“For the Lord saw the bitter suffering of everyone in Israel, and that there was no on in Israel, slave or free, to help them…He used Jeroboam II to help them.”

The Lord is indeed very merciful.  The kings of Israel—to a man—turned from the Lord, and took the people of Israel with them.  And yet, for all this, the Lord was mindful of their bitter suffering, and had compassion on them.