Tag: redeemed

Fish Food

Jonah 1-4

We all probably know the highlights of the story. Jonah was commanded to go to Nineveh, but thought he could hide from God if he fled to Tarshish. After a storm bombards their ship, Jonah confesses what he has done to his shipmates. They aren’t even followers of God and can’t believe what he has done. Jonah tells them to toss him overboard and eventually, they do and he is swallowed by a great fish sent from God. Jonah repents and is vomited out of the fish in Nineveh. He spreads God’s word and the people of Nineveh listen and repent. Jonah gets mad that God showed Nineveh compassion, gets angry about his plant dying, and begs God for death.

Today, I want to focus on Jonah’s time in the sea and in the whale. As a child, I remember being introduced to the story of Jonah. Thanks to Disney’s “Pinocchio” and its depiction of the inside of the whale, I envisioned Jonah in a vast yet watery cavern of a stomach. I thought it sounded a little fun, honestly. In my mind, he had light, could eat seafood, and just needed to hang out for a few days before his live submarine dropped him off at Nineveh. However, Jonah’s experience was nothing like Pinocchio’s.

In his prayer from the belly of the fish, he recounts his dismay as the seaweed wrapped around his head as he sank to the sea floor. He details being on the brink of death and how, in those seemingly last moments, he desperately calls out to God for help.

We can further imagine what it might have been like for Jonah, thanks to a passage from “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. In Chapter 9 a character named Father Maple reads this hymn for the crew:

“The ribs and terrors in the whale,

Arched over me a dismal gloom,

While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,

And lift me deepening down to doom…..

…In black distress I called my God,

When I could scarce believe him mine,

He bowed his ear to my complaints

No more the whale did me confine….

…I give the glory to my God,

His all the mercy and the power.”

I don’t know what Jonah’s life was like before this event, but I have to imagine that this is the lowest and darkest event that he had experienced. And yet, he cried out to God and God answered. Even though Jonah made a calculated decision to run away from God, God still answered when Jonah called out. Jonah could never truly outrun God or be too damaged for God to care for. God didn’t just listen to Jonah’s cries, he saved him, redeemed him, and entrusted him to still go speak to the people of Nineveh.

In our fast-paced, chaotic lives it can be easy for us to make a calculated decision to run from God and try to hide. Inevitably, we will have a time or times in our lives when we hit rock bottom and feel as though we can see the mountains of the deep rising around us, suffocating us. But don’t lose hope! Just as God still loved Jonah no matter how far he ran, God still loves us. God can break the chains that hold us down in our distress. He offers love, freedom, forgiveness, and a purpose.

If you are feeling low or see someone around you who is struggling, it’s time to cry out to God. God loves you and has a plan for you. Let him comfort you and free you from whatever might be holding you back.

-Lacy Dunn

Reflection:

• Is there anything weighing you down that you feel like you can’t escape? If so, take some time to give your burden to God. Also, talk to a Godly friend or mentor who can help you so you aren’t alone.

• What do you think Jonah looked like and smelled like after arriving in Nineveh via whale vomit? Imagine what you might do if you saw Jonah arrive in your town/city like this. 

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The Key

numb 2&4 cain

Over the last four years I have done a lot of moving. I’ve moved from an apartment, to a house, to a trailer, back to a house, to my in-laws, and now to my home. Not to mention, I have helped plenty of others move during this time. Despite my many moving back aches and cardboard box forts, I’ve experienced nothing in the moving department compared to the Levites in chapter 3-4 of Numbers. These chapters are dedicated instructions for the Levites about how to live around and move the Tabernacle.

A portion of the third chapter is dedicated to uncomplicated, yet purposeful counting of all the male sons of the Levites a month or older.  Remember the Passover in Egypt where God spared the first born sons of Israel while passing judgement over the rest of Egypt’s first born sons? In Numbers 3, we see God take the first born of Israel not to death, but to holiness. Numbers 3:13 says that God is making the Levites “sanctified” to Himself. This word sanctified means to make holy. Instead of killing the first born sons of Israel, God uses them to be mediators between Him and the Israelites. Does this sound like any other first born son to you? Jesus is now the first born son that acts as a mediator between us and God. It is so cool to me that the number of Levite males a month or older and the number of first born sons in Israel are almost the exact same number. God sees the males of the Levites being the ransom in place of the first born sons of Israel. In Numbers 3:39, the number of Levite males comes out to 22,00 and in 3:43 the number of first born males is 22,273. I will draw your attention to the extra 273 first born sons which aren’t covered by the ransom of the sons of Levi. Instead of taking their lives, which is what they would deserve, God only requires the small price of 5 shekels per person. That comes out to a total of 1,365 shekels in exchange for the lives of 273 first born sons. I guess I was wrong in my last post when I joked about Numbers being a math text book. But really, the math should be done from this point on. The point is this: God would rather redeem people than kill people; God opts for mercy instead of judgment. This is just one of the great things about Him that makes Him a God worth worshiping.

Moving on to chapter 4 we again see the detailed and intentional nature of God through instructions He gives the Levites for the Tabernacle. Remember holiness is one of God’s main priorities when it comes to the Tabernacle. We are blissfully reading along in chapter 4, hearing about the job of the sons of Aaron….then we get to verse 15. Things get serious in verse 15. It becomes clear to us that the sons of Aaron took so much caution in covering all the holy objects in the Tabernacle so that when the sons of Kohath come to move the stuff they don’t die! Remember God’s holiness is serious. All it would take for an unclean person to die is to touch a holy object. It doesn’t sound like a simple list of instructions anymore; this is a life or death situation. I thought I had it rough when I had to take the legs off my couch to fit it through the door but at least I wouldn’t die if I accidentally touched it! I like to look at verses 5-20 as the “how not to die when moving the Tabernacle” verses. If you were a son of Kohath, in charge of carrying one of the holy objects, you would be thankful that one of the sons of Aaron did their job well.

Reading though chapter 4 and hearing how the jobs of these different people are broken down reminds me of the body of Christ. We have different positions and skills which allow us to come together and work for God. Moving the Tabernacle in a holy and dignified way was no easy task, so too is serving God and His son, Jesus. It takes a team effort with everyone pitching in to make it a success.

Reading this also gave me another idea. Maybe we should only ask people between the ages of 30-50 to help us move. I should have quoted Numbers 4:3 to all the people who have asked me to move over the years. But in all seriousness, there is one big take away that I see from Numbers chapter 4; it is a lesson taught all over the Old Testament. Keeping God’s holiness and His people being holy are top priorities. We need to be holy as God is holy (Lev. 19:2). That is a direct command from God to us. We see this in how God treats even the moving of the Tabernacle. Holiness is key. When God was setting up the nation of Israel He wanted to make sure that they were going to stay separate from the world, separate from their idol worshiping neighbors. All the laws and rules are supposed to help them stay righteous and holy. Of course, we know that this is an impossible task for us to do on our own. Thankfully, we have a God who understands us and knows that we need help. This is why all of history, all of God’s plans, even back in Numbers with the counting of some Jewish men, was leading to the revealing of Jesus. Don’t think for a second that we are redeemed by accident. God was working out the world to be in such a way that you now, reading this post, have the option to be redeemed and righteous. We might be tempted to skip these boring chapters of the Bible where all we do is read about how many 30-50 year olds were in the household of Gershon, but we would miss out on watching God reveal his plans. Seeing God act with such intentional detail reminds me that God is not too big to deal with our everyday highs and lows. God works in the details of our lives today, just as He did in the lives of the Levites moving the tabernacle.

Josiah & Amber Cain

 

Today’s passage can be read or listened to at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+3-4&version=NIV

Tomorrow’s passage will be Numbers 5-6 as we continue our 2020 Chronological Bible Reading Plan

 

Thief

Jacob

A THIEF redeemed (1)

Read Genesis 27:1-37 and Genesis 35:9-12

 

My husband and I attended Atlanta Bible College when it was located in Morrow, GA and lived in one of the duplexes across the street from the college. One bright Saturday morning we decided that it would be a perfect day to ride our bikes. We went out to our patio so we could hop on our bikes and ride like the wind. However, wind was all we found on the patio and we quickly realized that our bikes had been stolen, never to be seen again. As a broke college student I remember feeling so angry that this had been taken from me because it wasn’t something that could be easily replaced at the time. Now imagine how you might feel had a bike or even something much more precious been stolen from you by a thief. It seems Esau had some rather strong feelings toward his twin brother Jacob after his blessing was snatched away from him.

Jacob was the favorite child of Rebekah and he was pretty cunning. We read in Genesis 27 that with the help of his mother, Jacob tricked his father Isaac into giving him the blessing that was meant for Esau. While Esau was out doing what Isaac had told him to do to prepare for his blessing Jacob was getting dressed up in goatskin so he could trick his father. He even went so far as to lie to his blind, on the verge of death father that he was back from hunting so quickly because God caused the animal to come to him (Gen. 27:20).

Although I’m sure God was not pleased with Jacob’s actions God didn’t strike him down or have the earth swallow him up but instead God eventually changes Jacob’s name to Israel (Genesis 35:9-12) and makes him a nation. Many times when God is mentioned in the Bible He is referred to as the “God of Jacob”. When doing a search in the NASB version of the Bible, Biblegateway.com brings up 353 results for “Jacob.

I’ll be honest, in the past I have found it difficult to be a Jacob fan because I would get hung up on his flaws; but thankfully, God sees things much differently than I sometimes do. Jacob was a thief and a liar in whom God saw potential. Instead of writing him off God redeemed him for His own and made him into a great nation.

-Lacey Dunn