This morning we begin with a few moments of review and reflection. First I am going to review the messages of this Lenten series and then give you a few moments to reflect on this Lenten series by taking time to write out your thoughts for your personal use.
We have spent this Lenten season with Jonah that interesting, and very human, prophet.
(Slide 1) The first Sunday we were introduced to Jonah and we approached Jonah with a reminder of just how challenged we are sometimes with an over abundance of communication, electronic, social, and otherwise these days. An over abundance that makes listening not just to others but to God a very difficult thing to do. Our text was Jonah 1:1-3 and we noted that Jonah “hung up” on God and took off to get away from Him and His request to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s message to them.
(Slide 2) The second Sunday we went to Jonah 1:4-16 and spent time with Jonah as he dug in his heels and refused to obey God’s message. I suggested this working definition of disobedience:
Refusal to obey is a willful and defiant act of disobedience whereas the failure to obey some times some times comes out of circumstances that prevent full obedience such as when you “fail” to complete your job due to equipment failure (or the unwillingness of a co-worker to do their job!)
Disobedience was the main theme of our time together as we considered how willful disobedience to God’s call affects our relationship with Him, and like Jonah and the ship’s crew, affects our relationship with others.
(Slide 3) On the third Sunday we focused on Jonah 1:17
Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. (NLT)
“God sticks with us” is what we were told and God stuck with Jonah as we heard him pray honestly and earnestly from the belly of a fish.
And it is this kind of praying (Slide 4) that was our focus for our fourth Sunday from Jonah 2:1-10 when I asked the absurd question, Have you ever prayed in/from the belly of a great fish? In that message we were challenged to think about the power of sincerity and persistence in prayer during those “in the belly” moments of life.
(Slide 5) Then, in last week’s message, we were told that there is a second half still to be played even when we have failed. That God wants to give us a second chance as evidenced in Jonah 3:1 “Then the Lord spoke to Jonah a second time…”
So (Slide 6) here is the question for your reflection this morning, “What has the Lord shown you from the life of Jonah these past six weeks and what are you doing with it?”
Take a few moments and write down your response to that question.
Now as we prepare to hear today’s text from Jonah 3 and verses 5 through 10, I want to talk for a moment about literature. (Huh, PJ?)
When you study the structure of a story, one of things that you study is how the story unfolds, right? You study, discuss, and ponder the implications of plot, character, setting and the like.
One key aspect of studying a story is to study the change in directions of a character’s path, the setting, and other factors that illustrate that a major change may be on the horizon. Climax is the term that is often used to describe the high point of the story when the main character’s life (or story plot) reaches a decision point that affects the rest of the story.
I believe that this third chapter of Jonah is the climactic turn of the entire book for it is here that Jonah, after running away from God’s command to go to Nineveh, gets a second chance. What is he going to do now that the word of the Lord comes to him a second time and says, “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message of judgment I have given you.”
What is Jonah going to do? He tried running once and look where it got him! Nowhere… well at least back to shore.
He can try to run again or he can change his direction. What does he do? Our main text for this morning tells us:
This time Jonah obeyed the Lord’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they decided to go without food and wear sackcloth to show their sorrow.
When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes. He dressed himself in sackcloth and sat on a heap of ashes. Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city: “No one, not even the animals, may eat or drink anything at all. Everyone is required to wear sackcloth and pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us. When God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he had mercy on them and didn’t carry out the destruction he had threatened.”
Reed Lessing notes of Dr J Edwin Orr’s study of the great Welsh revivals of the nineteenth century that a problem arose at the shipyards along the Welsh coast during that revival.
It seems, according to Lessing and Orr, that “over the years workers had stolen all kinds of things, from wheelbarrows to hammers. However,” they note, “as people repented, they started to return what they had taken, with the result that soon the shipyards of Wales were overwhelmed with returned property. There were such huge piles of returned tools that several of the yards put up signs that read, “If you have been led by God to return what you have stolen, please know that the management forgives you and wishes you to keep what you have taken.”
Then Lessing asks this question, “Can you imagine if that type of repentance came upon our town; it might do a number on our economic system?”
(Source: Dr. Reed Lessing. © 2010 by Creative Communications for the Parish. creativecommunications.com.)
What is repentance? Let’s hear some definitions from you.
(Slide 7) I suggest this morning this definition of repentance: A spiritual, attitudinal, and behavioral change of direction made in response to the convicting work of God.
Real and good repentance is more than just saying ‘I’m sorry God.” (Slide 7a) It means “I’m sorry God plus…” “I am sorry God plus I will make amends wherever I need to do so with whom I need to do so.”
The evidence of Jonah’s change of heart is not in perhaps saying “I’m sorry God forgive me,” though that is important.
It is in the change in his behavior… in his obedience to God by turning toward Nineveh and going there as God wanted him to do.
Repentance, as I was reminded this past week, is a 180 degree turn. It is an intentional choice to go the opposite direction. This 180 includes, not just a change in our relationship with the Lord but a change in our attitudes and our behavior.
Those shipyard workers I believe really understood that as the Holy Spirit made clear to them what changes they needed to make.
But there is something else about repentance that we need to note in this part of Jonah’s story.
(Slide 8) Our repentance can, and does, make possible other’s repentance.
Now hear me here church. This does NOT mean that we can save people. That is God’s work. Each of us is responsible to God for our OWN confession, not someone else’s confession (as much as we would like to do that sometimes!)
But if Jonah would have bolted again, what would God have done then? What would have happened to the Ninevites?
Jonah’s repentance, his turning around, made it possible for the Ninevites to repent as well. By making the choice to go to Nineveh, obeying God’s call, the people of Nineveh, heard God’s message of judgment and they repented. (Granted God could have sent someone else. But He wanted Jonah to go.)
I remind us all this morning that each of us has a field, a circle of influence that contains people who listen to us (though it does not often appear that way) and pay attention to how we live our lives (though we do not often realize this). They are a part of our mission field that God has placed us in.
Our genuine repentance has an effect on them!
They see, hear, and sense the changes in us as we repent of our sins and turn around and go the right way. They notice this!
So it is vitally important for us to regularly examine our lives and allow the Holy Spirit to show us where we need to make changes by surrendering a particular area to Him and allowing Him to change us and help us turn around and go in the right direction.
When Thomas Edison and his staff were developing the incandescent light bulb, according to Ken Sande, it took hundreds of hours to manufacture a single bulb.
One day, after finishing a bulb, notes Sande, Edison handed it to a young errand boy and asked him to take it upstairs to the testing room. As the boy turned and started up the stairs, he stumbled and fell, and the bulb shattered on the steps.
Instead of rebuking the boy, Edison reassured him and then turned to his staff and told them to start working on another bulb. When it was completed several days later, Edison demonstrated the reality of his forgiveness in the most powerful way possible.
He walked over to the same boy, handed him the bulb, and said, “Please take this up to the testing room.” Sande then comments: “Imagine how that boy must have felt. I can imagine that he was a nervous wreck. And I do not doubt that Edison was also a nervous wreck.”
(Source: Dr. Reed Lessing. © 2010 by Creative Communications for the Parish. creativecommunications.com.)
But God is not a nervous wreck when, after we fall, confess, and get back up, He places the great commandment to love and the great commission to make disciples back into our hands and tells us “go back out there and share the good news that all has been and can be forgiven!”
In Matthew 12 beginning with verse 38 we read these words: “One day some teachers of religious law and Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign to prove that you are from God.”
But Jesus replied, “Only an evil, faithless generation would ask for a miraculous sign; but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so I, the Son of Man, will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The people of Nineveh will rise up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And now someone greater than Jonah is here—and you refuse to repent.”
The lesson I take from Jonah is the importance of repentance and obedience. Both are two sides of the same coin. Repentance of our disobedience to God’s ways is strengthened by our obedience. Our repentance sticks when we obey God’s ways and directions.
So as we enter this week that is different from other weeks, let us repent, let us obey, and let us go and continue to tell the good news that our sins and shortcomings are forgiven and life can be better now because of what Christ has done for us. Amen.
