Today is an exciting day in the life of our church family. Eight people will stand before us and confess their allegiance to Jesus Christ and go through the waters of baptism. It has been my joy to walk with them over the past couple of months through our Baptism Class. I can testify that they are serious about their relationship with God. They really do want to make a stand for Jesus! Let us rejoice with them as they testify to God’s goodness and grace!
Today we commence a new series in the book of Jonah. I am not sure what you may think of Jonah. Some modern scholars believe that Jonah is no more than a myth of allegory or at best a didactic story, that is, a story with a moral attached to it! I guess for many it is a story that is hard to swallow – forgive the pun! Is it possible for a man to be swallowed by a large fish or whale like creature and survive in it for three days unscathed? It sounds fanciful doesn’t it! But then again, who is our God? Is He not the Creator Himself? Is not all things possible with Him? But Jonah is so much more than a man being swallowed by a large fish!
Jonah is the account of how God called an unwilling messenger to take His message of warning to a hostile and foreign people. Jonah provides us with an amazing portrayal of God’s awesome power – power over nature in a variety of ways as we will learn. Mot of all we will witness the true heart of a loving, compassionate and gracious God. He has always had the desire to see all the nations of the world come to Him, even those nations who were hostile to His chosen people. In Jonah, we will see how God provides salvation to an entire city – the capital city of the greatest empire on the face of the earth at that time in history – Assyria! This is an exciting, sometimes humorous and powerful little book! Just 48 verses long and full of great Bible teaching exposing some of the great doctrines of our faith! I hope you will be greatly blessed as we commence a new journey together!