Luke 12:6-7 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.
A good friend sent us this story.
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of two hundred, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands immediately started going up.
"I am going to give this $20 bill to one of you but first, let me do this." He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up. He then asked, "Who still wants it?" Still, hands were up in the air.
"Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground, spit on it and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Still want it now?" Surprisingly, hands still didn't go down.
"My friends, I think we've all learned a valuable lesson here. No matter what I did to this money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was worth twenty whole dollars no matter what I did to it."
"Often in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, spit upon and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.
But here's the kicker. No matter what has happened, we will never lose value in God's eyes. To Him, dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, we are still priceless. The worth of our lives does not come in who we are but by whose we are! Let's give our lives back to the Lord today, our disappointments, our suffering, our feelings of worthlessness. He is the God of healing. He has made us clean and worthy of our calling in Him!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]A “second time.” Jonah’s repentance gave him a second chance to obey the Lord and to fulfill his ministry. And he did it successfully. The apostle Paul tells us that “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” [Romans 11:29]. Jonah’s disobedience did not take away his calling as a prophet. The discipline of the Lord was fruitful in his life. But compare King Saul. He also got a second chance after failing to wait for Samuel [1 Samuel 13] and he disobeyed again, and lost his kingship [1 Samuel 15]. But even that took many years to transpire after David was anointed.
Jonah now acknowledges that God put him where he is, and he accepts His discipline. “Sheol” is the “grave”, the “pit” or the “abode of the dead”. Did Jonah die, or was he only nearly dead from three days of fish stomach acid, and little or no air? The text doesn’t say; only that if he didn’t actually leave his body, he came as close as a man can get to it; three days worth. In this nebulous and miserable place Jonah cried out, probably from the deepest depths of his agonized soul…he cried out to the Lord.
While most read the story of Jonah focusing on Jonah’s journey, I want to pause and examine the lives of the pagan sailors. What a journey they were on! We see the hand of God touching them providentially through Jonah’s disobedience. Talk about God bringing good from evil.
So the captain came to Jonah, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.” At this point the captain (who probably worshiped Baal and Yamm, god of the sea) has more faith than Jonah.
It must have been a bad storm. These men were experienced, hardened sailors who had seen it all at sea. If they were scared, this could have been the first “perfect storm” since Noah’s flood. So they started the first interfaith prayer meeting in the Bible, each man crying out to his own god. As the ship groaned and creaked in howling wind and massive waves, and the men threw cargo overboard in a desperate attempt to save it, where was Jonah? On deck helping them? Confidently praying to His own God? Shaking with fear and paralyzed with deep conviction? No, he’s taking a nap down below…
For the next week or so we’ll be looking closely at the life of Jonah the prophet. Jonah was told to “preach against the city of Nineveh”, that was in the ancient kingdom of Assyria. Nineveh was a major city on the banks of the Tigris River about 500 miles north and east of where Jonah was; located on a contemporary map in modern Iraq, about 300 miles north of Baghdad. Archaeologists have found the ruins of ancient Nineveh right outside the Iraqi city of Mosul. Yes, the same Mosul that was taken last week by jihadists!
So Jonah goes and begins to preach in this pagan city. His message is very simple. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown”(v. 4). That’s it. That was his whole message. It’s eight words in English; only 4 words in Hebrew.