Harvest Daily 02/08/05

February 8
A Way Out

And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk.  Then he cried out and said, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"  So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them." - Jonah 3:4-5

The Prophet Jonah very reluctantly went to the city of Nineveh and preached that God was going to judge them in forty days.  Amazingly the people of Nineveh repented from their sins and the king commanded his subjects to "cry mightily to God" (Jonah 3:8).  Therefore, God lifted His judgment from the people of Nineveh.  There was a way out from God's judgment.

Understand this: God doesn't want to judge us.  If He wanted to, He would have judged us a long time ago.  In the book of Ezekiel, God said, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11).  Peter echoes this principle about God when he wrote, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).  The last thing God wants to do is see you go to hell.  The last thing He wants to do is see your life wasted and thrown away. 

God created you in His image.  He cares about you.  That is why He sent His own Son to die on the cross in your place and in mine.  There is a way out from God's judgment.  It is through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Bible text from the New King James Version is not to be reproduced in copies or otherwise by any means except as permitted in writing by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Attn: Bible Rights and Permissions, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214-1000.