“When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy temple.” Jonah 2:7
One’s extremity is often the moment of greatest opportunity. Why? The answer is found in the mercy of God. Scripture tells us that God waits to be gracious to us. The problem why He is waiting and not intervening is that we are not in a right attitude of mind and heart to receive His blessing and working. There still remains something in the heart that pushes back against Him reigning, and working to accomplish His will. This was the case with Jonah and Samson.
Jonah was a prophet of God, God-fearing, and faithful to God until the day that the Lord called him to go and preach the Lord’s message to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire which had been, and still was, a great nemisis of Israel, and the people of God. The Assyrians had inflicted great suffering upon the Israelites, the amount and depth of which was keenly felt by the prophet. There rose a resentment in his heart to the point that he wanted their destruction, even their annihilation. There remained no mercy in his heart, only bitterness that blocked not only his communion with God, but the accomplishment of the purposes of God through him in saving the Ninevites. The matter was very serious, as it involved eternal souls, and an open window of opportunity which the Lord saw, and knew, and certainly had been working to bring about, so that the Ninevites would received the message of Jonah. But here is a man who chooses deliberately to believe a lie. He calls it “lying vanities.” (2:8) The lie is believing that Jonah was more capable and responsible than God to decide the best and highest for any people or individual. Jonah believed that he could alter the eternal, blessed plan of God to save the Ninevites by fleeing God’s presence in a ship. Here the lie manifests itself, for who can flee the presence of God? Jonah knew that he could not, but decided to believe that he could. This way of thinking was empty, without meaning, and useless. But, if Jonah would be saved from the lie, and his adherence to it, he would need to repent of it, change his way of thinking. The only way that this would occur would be by the intervention of God, and His grace, to lead him to repentance. This would occur in the belly of a fish, after three days in a hellish circumstance. Then Jonah would look again to the Lord, remember Him, and appeal to His mercy. This time it would be with a willingness to obey. He had repented.
Samson is another individual, not a prophet but a judge in Israel. Scripture tells us that he judged Israel for twenty years. What we can understand by the unfoldiing of Samson’s life and ministry is that Satan pursued him over the space of twenty years, gradually bringing him, not to a point of decided defiance of God like Jonah, but of careless neglect, which would result in a change of mind with regard to his consecration vow. The result of Samson’s “decision” to reveal to Delilah his consecration vow, that one thing that remained of devotion to God, was that he lost his strength to overcome his enemies. They made him their slave, putting out his eyes. Scripture tells us that his head was shaved, as his unshaven hair was the symbof of his devotion to God. Scripture also tells us that in his solitude, darkness, and suffering, while being the Philistine’s slave, his hair began to grow. (16:22) Why do the Scriptures mention this small point? It is because Samson was coming back to God, renewing his consecration vow. His mind and heart were changing to the attitude he had at the beginning. He too, like Jonah, remembered His God, praying: “O Lord God, remember me, I pray Thee, and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this once, O God.” (Judges 16:28)
Dear Father, Give us repentance today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.