Jonah tells the story of the prophet who ran from obedience to God. There are many lessons here to help us understand how God does His work through man and how He deals with His servants when they rebel against Him.
God never promised to remove all trials or to give us heaven on earth. However, He has promised that the man who separates himself from the world and gives himself over to the Lord will be blessed.
Uzziah was a great king and was greatly blessed of the Lord. At the peak of his strength, he began to trust in himself. His strength led to his fall. It is often in times of perceived strength that saints of God become most vulnerable.
It has been said that sin takes us where we do not want to go and that is a true statement. Sin is wrong because it rebels against the will of God; it is dangerous because of where it takes us.
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, begins to introduce a new relationship for the believer—the Sonship of the believer and the Fatherhood of God. This is not the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man in the liberal tone. We have lost our relationship to God as Father by sin. However, it is restored in Jesus Christ. Those who are saved restore their relationship to the Father. Jesus demonstrated this in His relationship with the Father; then, He introduced that same relationship to the believers.
