Jonah the Pharisee Prophet
Text: Jonah chapters 3 and 4
Well; we’re closing up our short series on Jonah today. I hope you’ve been blessed by hearing this as much as I was in preparing it. If you’ll take your Bibles and open them up to the Book of Jonah we’re going to read through chapter three and four today (READ TEXT).
So last week we saw that when you run from God, there’s always a price to pay, but we also saw that our God is a God of second chances. God didn’t owe a 2nd chance to Jonah, but He is merciful and gracious, and we are thankful!
And we ended our lesson last week with Jonah on the beach. He had prayed and the fish spit him out. And if you remember; we saw that regardless of our circumstances or situations, God’s plan doesn’t change. He told Jonah the exact same thing He told him before. “Go to Nineveh!”
Now before we get too far into the text; I want to give you a little background on Nineveh. Nineveh was a city state located in what is today, modern day Iraq. They were known throughout the ancient world as a wicked and violent people. They engaged in child sacrifices, immoral lifestyles, and just wickedness all around. And they were enemies of the Israelites. And it was a large city. It took 3 days to go through it, and had a population of 120,000. In comparison that’s about the size of Norman… according to the Census Bureau, Norman has a population of 110,000, Lawton has a population of 96,000 and Broken Arrow is about 90,000, so Nineveh wasn’t a small place. And so Jonah goes a day’s journey into the heart of the city and he starts crying out. “You’ve got 40 days before you’re all dead meat!” Now not only was Nineveh a fairly large city, it is also a city state, which means the king of the Ninevite people was there. And so this would be equivalent of you or I going to the halls of congress or to the gate outside the White House and saying, “You have 40 days to repent or your will be destroyed”
Anybody feel like God’s calling you to do that? The way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise me if God didn’t soon call someone to do that. But all I can say is you had better be sure it’s the Lord calling you to do it and not the pizza you ate for supper last night.
So Jonah goes and he preaches repentance and look what happens; verses 5 – 9 (READ).
Isn’t God amazing!
Now I want to touch on something here really quickly. If you remember, Jonah has been reluctant this whole time. He tried to run from God and got on a boat, and God used that situation to bring pagan sailors to repentance and faith. Now Jonah’s in the city of Nineveh, and he has no love in his heart for these people. He’s just doing this because he knows what will happen to him if he doesn’t. And the entire city repents and is calling out to God and making offerings to God. If this tells us anything it’s that God can use anybody, anywhere, at any time. What God is looking for is someone who will do what He has commanded. Moses couldn’t speak well… most scholars think he probably stuttered, it didn’t matter to God, what mattered was that Moses obeyed and went. And so we shouldn’t ever get it in our head that we can’t share the Gospel, or that we can’t do things for the Lord. One of the many Biblical truths we learn from Jonah is that it’s God’s power working in us in order to fulfill God’s purpose through us.
And so the people of Nineveh repent. These pagan; godless people actually turn from their sin, and God relents. He spares them immediate judgment. And there’s another principle right there.
Did you know it’s actually harder to do evangelism in the Bible Belt than it is outside of it? The Bible Belt is full of evangelized sinners. Let me explain to you what I mean by that.
Here in our neck of the woods we have people who have heard about Jesus, they’ve heard about God, they’ve heard John 3:16.
They’ve heard it all their lives and their ears have grown dull of hearing. They’ve heard it and they know it, but they haven’t darkened the door of a church in 5 years. They’ve heard it and they know it but they can’t name a single person they’ve ever led to Christ. They’ve heard it and they know it and they can count on one hand the number of spiritual conversations they’ve engaged in the past 10 years. In-fact; I’ve been doing a little study over the last month or so, talking to different people, and did you know that the majority of church growth taking place in Woodward County and in our association is actually just people moving from one church to another? And part of that is because the people who aren’t going to church are evangelized sinners. The people who are moving from church to church are going to go, they are just going to go to the one where they feel that they are being ministered to. Ed Stetzer from Lifeway, Acts 29 Network, and the SBC itself have all done studies that coincide with that. The bottom line is this. A church that replenishes its members exists, a church that doesn’t – doesn’t. The problem is that if all your church is doing is replenishing its members with members from another church then it’s a band aid, not a cure.
But before I get too far off track, let’s go back to the text.
The people repent, and God relents, and in chapter 4 Jonah gets angry! Now think about what’s happening here. Jonah, the man of God… the prophet of God, who just went through a hard lesson by being thrown off a boat and swallowed by a big fish… is now standing in judgment against people, who in all actuality are no worse than he is. And what’s really interesting here is that even though Jonah is angry, as you read through chapter 4, he has perfect theology. He says, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Then look what he says in verse 3 (READ) – “Just kill me!” How messed up is that? “God I’d rather die than see you save people.”
Let me try to explain here what’s going on if I can.
Whatever pleases God should please us… but that’s not the case with Jonah here. And let’s keep in mind what we already know about Jonah… he was a man who knew God’s ways… we see that from our text. He was a prophet. He was religious. Now does that fit anyone else in the Bible? What about the Pharisees? The Pharisee’s had a prayer that went like this… they would say, “God I thank you that I am not a Samaritan, a gentile or a woman.” That same pharisitical spirit is in Jonah. Nineveh had been a thorn in the side of Israel, and he wanted them destroyed; and not only that… his language in verse 2 tells us that he was nationalistic to the point of sinfulness. “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in MY COUNTRY?”
This is a guy who is saying, My country right or wrong… this is a guy whose saying, My country – and to hell (Literally) with everyone else. This spirit continues on even to Jesus’ day.
Turn with me to Luke 19: 41-44 (READ).
So there we see Jesus coming to Jerusalem and the passage tells us that as He drew near He wept over the city saying, “If only you knew the cost of peace.” And we see in that passage we see that Jerusalem and all Israel was ignorant. Judgment was coming on them, and according to verse 44 it was coming because they didn’t know the time of their visitation. That term “visitation” has to do with God coming to His people, either to judge them or to save them. Luke consistently uses that term in reference to the lord bringing salvation to His people. So when Jesus says this, He was meaning that they didn’t recognize His coming was for their redemption and salvation from sin. They were looking for an earthly, political leader who was going to throw off the yoke of Roman bondage. Look at what Jesus says in verse 42 (READ).
Luke uses the same Greek words in Luke 14:31-32 (READ) “Conditions of peace,” is the same phrase used in both passages. So the picture we get is that the King of kings and Lord of lords is coming to a rebellious people, and He’s willing to make peace, but only on His terms. And His terms were told time and time again, in the OT through the Law and the prophets, in the NT by John and Jesus Himself. Jerusalem knew the terms of peace, but they rejected them. They should’ve known the time of their visitation. There are more than 300 OT prophecies fulfilled in Christ, but they rejected Him. They were looking for a political, earthly king, to deliver them from Roman rule and bring Israel back to its former glory days, when David sat on the throne. But time and time again Jesus went a long way to show them that they were mistaken. The King and His kingdom had already arrived – it had been manifested in Jesus’ words and deeds. That’s what Luke 11:20 tells us
Jesus goes on to say that judgment is coming. When that announcement was made, it was all over for Jerusalem. God had given them over to their own sin. That’s what Romans 1:18-32 tells us happens when people continually reject God. God gives them over. Judgment is declared and ordained by God Himself upon rebellious people, and it comes suddenly. The people of Jerusalem thought they could go on doing what they were doing, rejecting the terms of peace offered by Christ, rejecting the salvation offered by Christ, rejecting Christ Himself. I’m sure there were plenty of “religious” people who said, “Oh I’ll do what I want for now. There’s plenty of time to repent later.” But then judgment came. In 70 A.D. Rome surrounded and attacked Jerusalem. The Christians fled to the hills and amazingly escaped the judgment, but the Jewish people, those who had not believed, were butchered. Historians tell us that over 1 million were killed. The city was ransacked and the temple was completely destroyed. It was about 40 years from the time Jesus said this until the judgment of God fell on Jerusalem.
I wonder how long we have in the United States? Where people name the name of Christ, yet live like the world? Where the blood of 50 million aborted babies cry out to the Lord daily for judgment? Where homosexuality and perversion grows more and more accepted every day? In-fact we may even be worse than Jerusalem… We may be worse than Nineveh!
Now some of you might be sitting here saying, “Man, I’m not coming back to this church again. I don’t need to hear sermons that are so bleak, and fearful.” But I haven’t gotten to my main point yet. Luke didn’t write this passage just to tell us about judgment. The main point of this text is to let us know that Jesus Christ is always eager and willing to make peace with rebellious and sinful man. If we will only accept His terms.
The message of Jonah is the same.
God is merciful! God is gracious! God is forgiving! God longs to make peace with rebellious man. And He has paid the price and done what needed to be done in order to make that peace. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to pay the price. To die in our place. To take the punishment of our sins. To endure the wrath of His Father in our place… in our stead. And if you will turn to Him in faith and repentance He will accept you as His own and forgive your sins and give you eternal life.
The question for you this morning is: Will you accept those terms? Or will you run?
