Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

I was reading the Book of Jonah for an Adult Bible Study that I lead on Wednesday nights. We all know what happens in the first two chapters but what struck me the most was what happens in Chapter 4 and its relation to our current situation. Jonah when called a second-time goes forth to Ninevah so that they who are wicked and evil may REPENT and submit to the mercy and power of the Lord of Israel. If they do not then God will destroy them. Jonah being a good Israelite looks forward to their destruction at the hands of his Lord. What happens? A befuddled Jonah sits on a hill looking on as the Ninevites REPENT even their king commands them to bow down at the foot of the Israelite God. God then relents and grants mercy to the Ninevites and allows them to live. Jonah is beside himself with anger. He cries to the Lord that he knew the Lord was a lord of mercy and it angers him that God chose to show mercy to the gentile Ninevites. Look at what God says:

4The LORD said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?"5Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. 6 So the LORD God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 7 But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.8 When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life."9Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" And he said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to death." 10 Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight.11"Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"

What really strikes me is that are anyone of us willing to go to Louisville and preach the word of God or will we like Jonah and run off to Tarshish? I believe that we are being called by the Lord our God to stand up and say to Louisville the same words that Jonah preached to the Ninevites so that they may REPENT of their evilness and wickedness. Who among us will go and be a prophet to the Ninevites, who will be the Jonah of our time? Who shall lead the wicked to Christ? Who shall go and preach the Word of Mercy upon those that REPENT? For we all know the fate of the cities that denied the cries of the man of God Lot. We know of other cities that have had the same fate befall them. Ultimately it is up to the Lord our God to decide on whom he will show mercy. But for their sake let us hope and pray Louisville takes the path of the Ninevites and learns from the death of the twin cities Sodom and Gomorrah so that the Lord may show mercy upon them. Amen.