Today we continue a four part series entitled Jonah: The Stubborn Evangelist. Jonah is also a man on the run from his responsibility – to share the message of God’s mercy to others. And this is what Jonah is really about – first experiencing God’s mercy and then extending God’s mercy. And it’s just this reason why Jonah shows his stubbornness. For he hates his enemies and does not want to show God’s mercy to them.
God had commanded Jonah to speak His message to Nineveh. At the very mention of the city of Nineveh, Jonah revolts from God and runs from God. And all throughout this short story is one where Jonah is in flight; it’s also one where God is in pursuit. And in the end, it’s God’s pursuit that eventually extinguishes Jonah’s rebellion.
The Story of Jonah: Catching Up from the Last Two Weeks
The story begins by the word of the Lord coming to Jonah where God says, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2). Many of you remember the general outline of what happened. Jonah did not go east to Nineveh on the Tigris River. He got on a boat in Joppa bound for Tarshish (probably in Spain) – the opposite direction. God hurls a storm against the ship. When the prayers of the crew prove useless, they awaken Jonah and tell him to pray. Then they cast lots to see whose guilt brought the storm, and the lot fell to Jonah. When they asked who he was, he said, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9).When the crew asked what might still the storm, Jonah said, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you…” (Jonah 1:12). The crew threw him overboard, and the storm ceased. And Jonah sinks in the water to be swallowed by a big fish. Jonah sends a big fish not to punish Jonah to turn him around.
Today we watch a prophet walk from the beach to one of the most prominent cities of the eight-century.
Today’s Scripture
“Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:1-10).
The book of Jonah 's message is first experiencing God’s mercy and then extending God’s mercy.
1. The Man is the Message
When we catch up with Jonah, he’s had a brief time to recuperate from being swallowed by a big fish as well as time to digest the spiritual lessons from the entire incident. Nothing is recorded of when Jonah stretched out his hand to make sure he was on dry ground. His life had been shattered and then saved. It was sometime after this that our story begins: “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time…” (Jonah 3:1a). Had Jonah been your quarterback, you would have cut him from the team. Had he been your employee you would have fired him. Would you take an officer who has just been court-martialed and immediately give him command of a post? Yet, notice the amazing patience God has for Jonah.
Remember God’s big purpose in this book is to first experience God’s mercy and then to extend God’s mercy. I want you to notice carefully the man (Jonah) who delivers this message today. For the man is the message. Some 800 years later, Jesus would say of Jonah: “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation” (Luke 11:29-30). Jesus calls our attention to Jonah himself. Jesus tells us that it is our failures that make us useful. Jesus points to Jonah as the message. And what’s the message? God brings life out of death (John 12:24).
More on this in a few moments… but let’s turn from the man to his message.
A washed up prophet delivers a brief message: “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4)!
Eight words in English and only five in the original language of Hebrew – his message is a succinct as it is direct. We do not have the full transcript of Jonah’s message but we know God’s intentions in sending Jonah. God sent Jonah to Nineveh not for the purpose of judgment but for mercy.
“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it” (Jeremiah 18:7-8).
Notice carefully the phrase in verse four again: “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4)! Had God wanted to overturn the city, He would have done so with warning.
You are here for that very reason this morning. I am Jonah telling you of the judgment of God. I am here today to tell you to experience His mercy rather than His judgment. When they people of Nineveh heard the message of God from Jonah it was Jonah’s life experience that shouted to his hearers: “Look at me! Forgiveness is possible for even those who run the other way.”
There may have been something about Jonah that caught the city’s attention. We would think of him as a kook today. Perhaps it was Jonah’s dress or some remaining scars from his time inside the great fish. Perhaps it just simply he looked neither to the right or the left as he strode to the center of the city. Or, perhaps he explained that he just came from the belly of a great fish. Nevertheless, when he finally shouted, ““Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” the news spread like wildfire.
Every believer should be motivated to share the mercy they experienced with other sinners. Every believer should be able to tell the story of their conversion briefly and boldly.
Introduce “Your Story”
Jonah’s message also included what God had done in his life. God spoke to me twice before I would listen. The first time that I remember Him calling me was during a camp worship experience in Greenville, SC. Yet, it took Him speaking again in a dorm room on a Friday morning in dorm called Blanding during my Fall semester of my sophomore year.
God is persistent in His grace. God loves to use failures just like Jonah. God takes longer to correct His prophet than He does to turn a godless city around.
“This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation” (Luke 11:29-30).
God is persistent in His grace. God loves to use failures just like Jonah. God takes longer to correct His prophet than He does to turn a godless city around. Jesus is telling us that Jonah the man had become part of the message. Jonah had experience God’s mercy and was now called on to extend God’s mercy to others. The story of Jonah is swept up in the very story of the Gospel.
2. The Great City’s Response
The city’s response is given in two stages. First, the people’s response is described (Jonah 3:5) and then the king’s response is explained (Jonah 3:6-9). Notice first the people who Jonah is preaching to: “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth” (Jonah 3:3). It was an impregnable fortress. When people thought of Nineveh they thought of military might, economic might, and cultural might. I doubt Jonah had ever seen such a city as when he arrived in Nineveh in verse three.
Nineveh was a city that sat on the Tigris River, or on the edge of Mosul, Iraq today. Assyria is the old name for what is today called Iraq. We learn from Jonah 4:11 that it was at least 120,000 in population. Nineveh would have been four times as large as anything Jonah had experienced in his country. Yet, Jonah would not have approached the city as a tourist snapping pictures. He would have known that the city’s immensity would have come a cruel price. The city was designed to not to win the world’s admiration but it’s fear.
Nineveh was a prominent city in the Assyrian Empire – an empire built upon violence. King Ashurnasirpal II lived more than a century before the prophet Jonah. He records his deeds as cutting off his enemies hands at the wrists, their noses, ears, and fingers. He burnt their young women to death and skinned alive rebellious royal officials.
When Jonah arrived in the city the empire had declined due to drought, weak leadership, and intense military conflicts in the north. The God who created the great storm and commanded the great fish is now doing something even more difficult: changing the hearts of sinful people in the great city. One word continues to show up in the pages of Jonah’s story over and over – it’s the word “great.” The storm that God sent to redirect Jonah’s path is called “great” in Jonah 1:4, 12. The fish that God sent to redirect Jonah to Nineveh is called “great” in Jonah 1:17. And four times through the book, the city of Nineveh is called “great” (Jonah 1:2; 3:2, 3; 4:11). And just as the city is large so is the effect of Jonah’s message. The turnaround of Nineveh is huge – perhaps the greatest revival the world has seen. “And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them” (Jonah 3:5). God has thoroughly humbles a great city, a violent and arrogant city. God has resurrected the spiritually dead. The city of Nineveh was the sin center of the world. Everything godless happened there. Its people were perverse, sadistic, and evil. The very fact that Jonah was even sent to such a place reveals God’s capacity to forgive.
A team of physicists using Google’s massive collection of scanned books has claimed to identify universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words. Google has scanned the contents of five-million-plus books, dating back to 1800.This represents about four percent of the world’s texts. The results have been surprising. For example, they identified that there are approximately one million words in the English language, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 348,000). And they noticed the death of certain words, or words that are not used as frequently as they once were. For example, the words “The Great War” fell out of use around 1939 when people realized that it wasn’t actually the war to end all wars.
There is a word that I have found is dead in our conversations – it’s the word “repent.” The famous poet Lord Byron said, “… the weak alone repent!” Only weaklings repent, only losers. The Bible teaches our problems will only be dealt with through repentance. Modern discourse has completely gotten rid of any language that smacks of moral overtones or values, and we have borrowed jargon out of the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
I see four stages of Nineveh’s turnaround that we can model today. Here are four telltale traits of real repentance.
2.1 You Must Hear the Word of God
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Most of us assume that God owes us a good life. And when we hear the word “repent” we hear that we are to have a vague and general sense of guilt. Or we hear that we must have a sense of self-loathing. Jesus says we are sinners.
Why is it when we give all the power to the men at the top of capitalism they become selfish and exploit everyone else? Why is it that when you give all the power to the workers in socialism they become selfish and unproductive? It’s the Bible says we are out for ourselves. We are radically self-centered.
2.2 You Must Believe God
You believe in His patient love for sinners. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). You have the opportunity to really do something about our guilt.
Let me list some ways people often try to push away their guilt. None of these work…
2.2.1 You Shift Blame
It’s Not My Fault It’s my parent’s fault. You don’t understand the situation I was in.
2.2.2 You Become Incredibly Generous
Some give incredibly generously to charities as way to deal with their guilt. They worshipped their work for so long and sacrificed their family along the way. Then they give with incredible generosity to a hospital. What they haven’t recognized is that their drive is really their guilt.
2.2.3 “I’m Going to Make Up For It”
I know I did wrong but I’m going to show you what a good person I really am.
2.2.4 You Live for Achievement
You deal with your guilt by overachieving.
2.2.5 You Run Others Down
It’s important to say, “Everybody is on the take more than me. Everybody is sleeping around more than me. Everybody is breaking promises more than me.” That’s how you deal with it
2.2.6 You Deaden Yourself
Medicate it. Go shopping. Get drunk. In other words, do pleasurable things to try to forget the pain. How do we know about Jonah’s racism? How do we know anything about Jonah’s anger at God’s compassion at God’s compassions? Jonah told us his sin. Sin must be confessed. Confession is unmasking your sin and calling it by name.
2.3 You Must Take Action
Repentance is not just an emotional upheaval. It’s a thoroughgoing change of life.
The Word of God swept through Wales in the early 1900s, and it was a tremendous revival. A fifth of all of the country was converted and came into the church. At the same time, there were tremendous labor union problems that were happening inside the mines. When the awakening came, they were wiped away, because on company time, the managers started to sponsor Bible studies, and the miners, were part of the Bible studies. They began to bring back all the things they had been stealing. Do you know how all mines had one shed where the company kept its tools, and you used the tools? Miners had been stealing them for years. During the revival, they had to build five new sheds at most mines just to put back all the tools the miners started bringing back. The managers started to say, “On company time, we want to spend time praying and reading the Bible with you.” What happened? Repentance.
2.4 You Turn From Specific Sins
“…Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands” (Jonah 3:8b). Contrition is true repentance for it involves heartfelt sorrow for offending God. This is when an external change is motivated by an internal change. My desire is to stir inside you a strong motivation to extend God’s mercy and kindness to others. “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…” (Romans 5:20).
Remember what Jonah is really about – first experiencing God’s mercy and then extending God’s mercy. Take a moment and confess your sins before Him now.
