A Tale of Two Prophets
Long ago, at many times and in may ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. One of these prophets was Isaiah. In Isaiah 6, the prophet has a vision where he receives his commission:
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.””
Isaiah gets a call from God to go preach to a wicked and unrepentant people (the Israelites) and he says “Here I am.”
Jonah got a similar commission:
“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”
Jonah gets a call from God to go preach to a wicked and unrepentant people (the Assyrians) and he says “I’m out of here.”
God gives the two men basically the same assignment and yet the response is totally different. Why is that?
I think we can get a clue from the verses just before Isaiah’s commission and the verses later in Jonah. Just before Isaiah gets his commission, He sees God in all His glory and recognizes his own sinfulness. Then an angel touches Isaiah’s lips with a coal taken from the altar and says that his sins have been taken away (Isaiah 6:4-7). Isaiah was focused on his own shortcomings and the fact that he had received mercy and forgiveness. He recognized God’s love and was eager to pass that on to others. Jonah, however, was only focused on the sins that the other person (or nation) was committing. He was upset that Nineveh repented and was not destroyed (Jonah 4). At no point did he recognize that he was also a sinful person and that God had given that same mercy to Nineveh that he gave to Jonah.
Eagerness to serve the Lord begins with recognizing the sin you have been forgiven of. Hardheartedness begins with focusing on the sins of others.
Your guilt has been taken away and your sin atoned for. Will you go and share that love with those around you or are you hoping that they will get what they deserve?
May God fill you with love until your cup runeth over and pours into others.