Jonah 4 June 23, 2002
God’s great concern & our petty concern
Have you ever got it completely wrong? Have you ever flown off the handle, and let someone really have it only to discover that what you thought had happened hadn’t really happened or that you were the one in the wrong? It’s the stuff that life’s most embarrassing moments are made of, or at least what sit-coms are made of.
Jonah gets it wrong.
Jonah was called by God to go and preach to the people of Nineveh that God was going to destroy the city because of its wickedness. Nineveh is wicked, and powerful, so Jonah is afraid for his life. Instead of taking the next camel train to Nineveh, he jumps on a ship and heads for Tarshish, which is at the exact opposite end of the then known world. He is running from God, but God runs after him with a huge storm that threatens to break up the ship. The sailors figure out that Jonah is the problem, they ask him what they should do, and he says that they must throw him overboard into the raging sea. They don’t want to do it, but the storm is so bad that they finally throw him over. The storm stops as Jonah sinks to the bottom. God doesn’t let him drown, but sends a fish to come and swallow him. Jonah is three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. While he is there he prays, and admits his wrong.
The fish spits him up on to dry land, where God calls him again to go to Nineveh. This time he obeys, and he goes and preaches to them.
It would have taken about three days to cover the city, on the first day Jonah begins his task, and prophesies God’s message to them. Jonah may have said more, but all we are told that he said was “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” He is only one day into his three-day preaching stint and the people repent.
The Ninevites demonstrate the greatest example of corporate regret that we find in the Bible. They declare a fast, they remove their fancy clothes, they sit in the dust, and go about mourning.
This fast of regret and mourning is complete in that from the least person in the city, to the greatest, they all fast.
Even the King, when he hears the news of their impending doom, gets off his throne, removes his royal robes puts on sackcloth and sits down in the dust.
He sets a royal decree to fast and wear rags. He extends the fast to not just people, but the animals as well. Nineveh goes from this powerful, arrogant, wicked city to become a city of massive mourning. They actually turn from their wickedness and begin to do what is right.
3:10 speaks of God’s fantastic mercy: “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”
What an amazing thing! These people were so evil that God saw the need to wipe them from the face of the earth! But they repent – show true remorse, stop their evil ways and begin to live right. Some Judges would say, too bad, you still did all that evil, it doesn’t matter that you turned it around, your still toast. But not God – he has mercy and changes his plan.
And Jonah is furious.
1. These guys deserve it – they are evil
2. Jonah looks the idiot – he said they’d be destroyed and now they won’t be
3. Race – they are Assyrians for Pete’s sake!
And Jonah is dead wrong. He doesn’t get God’s heart at all – he knows it, theologically speaking, but he doesn’t get it.
Forgiving is what God does best. Jonah knows it, and he hates it – I bet you never thought you would hear the words of verse 2 spoken in anger: “I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity!”
Jonah does not see this as a good point. Because these people deserved judgement!
As I told you in my sermon on chapter 1, The Assyrians were a cruel and heartless people - Assyrian engravings depict people being tortured, skulls worn around their necks to show their cruelty. When they took over a town in battle they would take any survivors and they would impale them on stakes in front of the town. After a battle they’d pile up the skulls of their enemies making pillars out of them. Their leaders would often remove the heads of their enemies and wear them around their necks. And, this is the nation that eventually invades and destroys Israel in 722BC
The truth is that they did deserve Judgement – but Jonah is saying this as if he is someone who did not deserve judgement. The truth is that he is extremely lucky that God is “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”
Jonah is a prophet who knows the very Word of God, he proclaims the righteousness of God to the nation, and yet he spends all of chapter one running from God in disobedience. The Ninevites don’t know right from wrong, they are ignorant of over half their evil.
Parable of the unforgiving servant.
23"For this reason, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. 24In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.[7] 25He couldn’t pay, so the king ordered that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt. 26But the man fell down before the king and begged him, `Oh, sir, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ 27Then the king was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
28"But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars.[8] He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. 29His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. `Be patient and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. 30But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and jailed until the debt could be paid in full.
31"When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him what had happened. 32Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, `You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34Then the angry king sent the man to prison until he had paid every penny.
35"That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters[9] in your heart."
Jonah has been forgiven for intentional disobedience, but he can’t handle God forgiving ignorant disobedience.
The Ninevites might be undeserving of mercy, but no more than Jonah. The reason that it is called mercy is that we don’t deserve it! Jesus says don’t try to pluck the speck out of other’s eyes until you take the plank out of your own. The Ninevites may have had a two by four in their eye, but Jonah was judging them while he had a two by six in his own.
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that unless we forgive others, God will not forgive us, C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce tells us that not accepting God’s forgiveness for others can also keep us out of his grace.
Jonah doesn’t get God’s heart
In Luke 15 there are 3 parables about lost items. In the first one, A shepherd with 100 sheep loses one, he leaves the ninety-nine to find the one, brings it back and has a party with his fellow shepherds to celebrate. Because as Jesus says: “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” (Luke 15:7)
In the second story a woman loses a coin, and searches the whole house until she has found it – when she does she calls her neighbours to rejoice that she has found what was lost. And Jesus says once again “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10)
In the third story, a man has two sons – one rebels, asks for his inheritance and leaves to spend it on loose living. Finally the money and good times run out and he comes to himself and returns to the father in repentance. The father has been waiting for him, he forgives him, gives him clothes, shoes and a ring and throws a big party because as he says, “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” The older son, who stayed behind and obeyed comes in from the field to hear the party going on and he is furious. It says "The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in (to the party). His father came out and begged him, 29but he replied, `All these years I’ve worked hard for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest calf we have.’
"His father said to him, `Look, dear son, you and I are very close, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’ " (Luke 15:28-32)
If there is great rejoicing among the angels of God over the repentance of one sinner, can you imagine the party that was going on in heaven on the day that Nineveh repented?! There are more than 120,000 evil people who turn and repent and follow God, and Jonah, like the older brother is standing outside the party in a snit because they didn’t deserve to be saved.
1 Timothy 1:15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
You could imagine Jonah saying, “Yes but not these sinners! They are Assyrians! From Nineveh, the capitol!”
Jonah was racist, bigoted, prejudiced. (what ever word you want to use)
He hated the Assyrians – they were the enemy of Israel.
In these weeks I’ve been telling you that Jonah ran from God and sailed to Tarshish because he was afraid for his life at the hands of the Ninevites – this is true, but it is not the whole picture. He also fled from God’s call because he wanted God to destroy Nineveh. He didn’t want to warn them, on the off chance that they did repent and God wouldn’t destroy them. He says to God, “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish!” (NLT)
Jonah didn’t want Nineveh saved because he hated the Ninevites!
The hatred that Jewish people had for the countries around them has been a constant thing – This is one reason that the Apostle Paul had so much trouble. In a day when some rabbis were teaching that God had created the Gentiles only to feed the fires of hell, Paul was teaching that the Gentiles were created in God’’ Image and he sent his son to come and die for their forgiveness as much as he did for the Jews.
But are we any different than Jonah?
Are there not some groups out there that we would rather not have in the church? Ethnic groups? Socio-economic groups? Subcultures? With out minds and our lips we believe that God can and, maybe even, should forgive them, but we’d rather not have to sit beside them in church. We believe that they need salvation, but by our action, or inaction, we show that we’d rather that they go to hell.
Who is it for you? Who are your personal Ninevites?
Some of you know two friends of mine: Fred Witteveen and Rick Tobias. Fred is the Pastor of Friendship Community Church in Downsview, Rick is the director of Yonge Street Mission. A few weeks ago Fred had invited Rick to speak at his church. Rick is and old-school urban minister, he showed up on his big old motor bike (it’s not a Harley, but it’s trying to be) and when he took of his helmet he showed his long hair and multiplely pierced ears. The members of the church were sure that they had a member of the Hell’s Angels sitting in their church – they were even more surprised when he got up to speak!
While we believe that Jesus died to save everyone, there are certain people groups that we just don’t expect to respond, and we are not so sure if we want them in our church if they do.
Today is the Gay Pride Parade downtown. They are expecting 800,000 to celebrate something that the Bible says is a sin.
What would we do if the Holy Spirit grabbed hold of the parade and everyone repented and called on Jesus to forgive them? What would we do if 40 drag queens showed up to church looking for God? What would we do if the HIV Positive and Proud group showed up on mass to give their lives to Jesus? Would we rejoice? Or would we squirm? It is not to surprising that even Christians that are HIV positive are terrified to tell their churches that they are positive.
We are not that far from the attitude of Jonah. I have watched in this “non-racist” city as dying English congregations would turn their church buildings over to the head office rather than give it to the thriving immigrant congregation from the same denomination that had been meeting in the basement. They may be allowed in the kingdom, but they can’t have my building!
Are you squirming?
I think that our squirming points out that at some place in our hearts we are all Jonah. We might believe that no one deserves God’s mercy, but there are some that deserve it less than ourselves. That there are places in our hearts where, for whom ever the Ninevites are for us, we would rather that God would just destroy them.
In his anger, Jonah leaves the city and sets up camp outside on the off chance that the Ninevites show their true colours and go back to their evil ways and God destroys them. Or God might smarten up anyway and destroy them.
He builds himself a little shelter against the sun and the hot wind, and God is gracious to him and he “provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
9 But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
10 But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
Jonah has set up camp to watch the execution of 120,000 people who God loves, and he gets spitting mad because he is uncomfortable. God lets him know that he misses the point totally.
Jonah is ready to die because he is so angry over the destruction of a vine in the desert, but he feels nothing for a whole city of people made in God’s image.
His anger is almost laughable if it didn’t sound so familiar. Mark Mittelburg, at the Contagious Churches Conference, said that most Christians are all for outreach and evangelism and reaching the lost for Christ, until those people start taking our parking spot at church, or sitting in our pew, bring kids who don’t behave the way we like, bring in worship music that we don’t relate to. Then our comfort becomes more important. We’d like to see the lost saved, but we’d rather that they got saved somewhere else.
But God’s concern is so much greater than our concerns.
Early on in Pam’s pregnancy with Hayley, a good friend stopped by the house. I answered the door and asked her how she was doing. She told me she was having a horrendous day, and then asked me how things were going. I told her that Pam had started to have troubles with the baby at about 2 in the morning, we were up all night and took Pam to the hospital at 6. We weren’t sure if we had already lost the baby, or if the baby would last the day. I was just home to get some clothes and head back to the hospital. My friend looked at me and said, “On second thought, my day has been just fine.”
There are people here who are dealing with huge issues in their life, but there are others of us who rate our days on whether we could get a good parking spot at the mall. We tell God what we are concerned about, and he comes to us and says, “do you want to know what I’m concerned about?”
There are millions of people in the world who are daily facing starvation, death from disease, war and disaster. There are millions who are facing a Christless eternity. There are thousands in our own city who don’t know there moral right hand from their left. God comes to us and says “Should I not be concerned about this great city?”
There may be days when we are deeply concerned and complaining about our own comfort level, but God comes to us and says “do you know what is concerning me?” As we listen to him, we come back and say, “On second thought, my life is pretty good.”
It is not that we should not bring our small concerns to God – there is nothing too small or too large to bring to God in prayer, but sooner or later we must ask God what is his concern in the world.
Conclusion
It should be our desire to be more like God than Jonah – to have God’s great concern rather than Jonah’s petty concern, to have God’s great mercy rather than Jonah’s great anger.
Ask God to show you your heart.
Pray for your Ninevites
Ask God to give you his heart.
Inform yourself of God’s Concern – Get involved with a missions Agency – come on prayer walks – help to send Julie to the Gathering and follow up with her.
