This post is based on the Grace Commentary on Jonah. Make sure you sign up for the email newsletter to get a free digital copy of this commentary when it is released.

Whether or not a person believes that God sends storms, one thing that all agree on is that God can use storms to accomplish His will. And it is not just storms. At numerous places in Scripture, and especially in the book of Jonah, God uses a whole host of created elements to carry out His divine will. He sends wind and a storm. He sends a great fish. He sends scorching heat. He sends a plant, and a worm to kill that plant. And they all respond immediately and willingly.

But the one thing in the book which God tries to send which does not go willingly is a man: Jonah. Jonah eventually goes, but only grudgingly.

Does God send wind, waves, insects, and fish to help direct us toward His will? Such a view might make you look upon the daily “annoyances” of life a little differently. But can we really believe that the bug which just splattered on our windshield is somehow there because God told it to fly into the path of our car? If not, then how can we tell which natural elements were sent by God, and which are simply the results of a natural chain of events? Is there a difference?

A Question of Free Will

Does it come down a question of free will or is all divinely ordained? Both sides of the debate claim Jonah as defense of their views:

The one who believes in free will says, “See? Jonah has free will. God told him to go to Nineveh, but he went the other direction.”

“Yes,” counters the one who believes God divinely ordains everything. “But Jonah ended up going to Nineveh, didn’t he? God’s will cannot be stopped. All of creation is used by God to bring Jonah into obedience to God’s divine decree.”

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[This post is based on the Grace Commentary on Jonah. Make sure you sign up for the email newsletter to get a free digital copy of this commentary when it is released.]

Many people wonder what God is like. This is not a new question, and throughout history, different people have approached the question in different ways. Some turn to nature to see what God is like, and others turn to Scripture. The Bible, of course, does teach that nature reveals the character of God. Yet what is it that nature reveals?

In 1850, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a poem called “In Memorium A.H.H” in which he said that man:

…Trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation’s final law;
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed.

In other words, people believe God is love, and also claim that nature reveals the character of God to us. But nature is full of death and blood, which contradicts the idea that God is love. So which is right? What is God like? Is nature right, or is Scripture?

Of course, if we are honest, nature is an inconsistent witness… and so is Scripture. Nature has just as much beauty, order, love, and wonder as it does death, blood, suffering, and murder, and Scripture has hundreds of dark and disturbing passages which seems to paint a different picture of God than we read about in the Gospels or in 1 John 4:8.

So what is God like? How can we know Him?

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