First Baptist Church
Jonah 3:1-10
July 21, 2002
As of last Friday, how are your investments doing? If you invest in the stock market you’ve lost money — lots of it. If you had $100,000, 2 years ago, you now have about $70,000. While our economy may be in a recession, while there may have been concern after September 11, the main reason the markets have gone down is because of a lack of trust in big businesses. Over the past year we’ve learned that people will do whatever they can to make themselves look successful.
Think about what has happened in the past months and weeks —
Enron is the largest recorded American company to go bankrupt. Now if WorldCom files for bankruptcy, that will be the largest. The chief financial officer at WorldCom hid billions of dollars in liabilities and took them off the corporate books, falsely inflating the company’s cash flow. Auditors from Arthur Andersen -- you remember them from Enron -- missed it. And WorldCom deceived some of the biggest banks in America. Similar news is coming from Tyco, Xerox, Global Crossing, J & J, among others. Arthur Andersen, convicted of a felony in the Enron case, will probably shut their doors. And now, of all people, there are cartoons of Martha Stewart showing her tidying up a jail cell.
So what does all this have to do with our reluctant hero, Jonah? Well, he was called upon to go to a foreign land and tell them judgement day was coming. The people of Nineveh were to repent from their wicked ways. But Jonah didn’t want to go, he didn’t want God to forgive these people. What about you, do you want the likes of Arthur Anderson and other accountants forgiven? What about Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, who claims he didn’t know what was going on? Or even Martha Stewart, who most likely, with the help of inside information made 1/4 of a million dollars by selling a stock that was about to nose-dive . . . how about forgiving them. Have you noticed the size of their homes?
Because of some of their actions, you and I have lost $1,000’s of dollars. In the same way, Jonah did not want God to forgive the people of Nineveh.
If you recall, in chapter 1, Jonah heard the word of God, "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it," but Jonah rejected it and ran. He jumped on a ship headed in the other direction. God didn’t let Jonah get away, so He sent a huge storm, ultimately leading Jonah to implore the sailors to throw him overboard. So they cast him into the sea after praying to God to forgive them for harming Jonah. The moment Jonah hit the water, the sea stopped its raging, and these pagan idol worshiping crew members, came to know the Lord. They worshiped Him and vowed to serve him. In the midst of this prophet’s disobedience, a whole ship’s crew came to know the Lord.
So a great fish is appointed by God to swallow Jonah and he was in the belly of this fish for 3 days & nights. During this time he prayed to the Lord and praised Him.
One of the miracles is the fact that the fish didn’t digest Jonah, but he vomited him onto the dry land, and Jonah was probably like a beached whale, wondering which way to Nineveh!! And that is where we continue this morning.
One of the things that is clear in the book of Jonah and really throughout the Bible, is that God is a God of 2nd chances, in fact maybe it would be more accurate to suggest He is a God of almost unlimited chances. I’ll explain that in a few minutes. Jonah received a 2nd chance and so do the people of Nineveh, and think about how many times in our lives we have messed up. . . and pleaded with God to forgive us and we come to the amazing understanding . . . that God has forgiven us.
Pastor John Ortberg wrote, "Redeeming is what God is into. He is the finder of directionally-challenged sheep, the searcher of missing coins, the embracer of foolish prodigal children. His favorite department is ‘Lost and Found.’ If there is one way that human beings consistently underestimate God’s love, it is perhaps in His loving longing to forgive."
Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh and he finds a city of about 200,000 people going about their business. As he looks around, he sees temples, shrines and statues. These people believed in sea gods, moon gods, rain gods, sex gods and you name it, they had a god for it. And they were serious about their worship and religion. However, they were slaves to their gods, because their idols were unforgiving. If there was no rain, they assumed the gods were angry. Of course, there was no rhyme or reason for the reactions of their gods, for a simple reason, the gods had no power.
Amazingly, God loved these wicked Assyrians even though they worshiped other gods. Now Jonah walks into all of this, under the command of God, and says, "Guess what? In 40 days, if you don’t repent, the God of the universe, who is over all your, is going to destroy this city and all the people in it." How would you feel if someone came to Ashland and said, "40 days from now, on August 31, the city of Ashland will cease to exist unless everyone repents of their wickedness?" This makes it a little more real and serious. We think - "What about my children? What about my husband? What about my wife? What about... ? "
In verse 5, a strange thing happens — The people of Nineveh responded to the God of the universe. Listen again to what Jonah records —
Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast & put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. When word reached the king, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. And he issued a proclamation saying, "In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let man call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?
So what is it about Jonah that made 200,000 people including the king repent? I have 2 suggestions. One, God loves everyone. God is not willing that any should perish but that all people would know Him. God is a God of mystery and majesty. You’ve seen it in your own lives. People you never thought would come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are sitting next to you. Maybe you’re one of them. Know that I am one of those people. I never thought I would be a Christian, let alone work for Christ. People in your office you never thought would come to know Jesus Christ are Christians. Why? Because God loves them & worked in their lives in a mysterious way. If you look hard, you see it happening all around you.
The 2nd thing that caused their repentance, is because Jonah looked strange. There is evidence that in the late 1800’s a sailor fell overboard and was swallowed by a whale shark, it’s actually part of the shark family. Two days later the shark was caught, cut open, and the man was found alive. However the man looked different, somehow the fish’s digestive juices, had burned off his first layer of skin so that every feature of the man was white, and he stayed that way for the rest of his life.
It’s also inferred from Jesus’ statements in Matthew 12, that others saw Jonah getting spit upon the beach by the fish and his reputation preceded him to Nineveh. Imagine the people of Nineveh who heard this rumor and then see Jonah. Now Jonah tells the people his story. About God’s message, the ship, the storm, drawing lots, the raging sea and the calm sea, and of course the big fish. Finally Jonah gets to the point, ‘I am here to tell you that God is going to destroy you unless you repent of your wicked ways!’
Notice that the people immediately began to repent. Everyone in Nineveh accepted this message from Jonah. Even the king took off his robe and put on sackcloth, showing he was serious about repenting. He told the people not only to repent and put on sackcloth, but that they should GIVE UP THEIR EVIL WAYS AND TURN FROM VIOLENCE.
Of course God is God, and God turned from destroying them. This is a human term. We talk about God turning, changing his mind, but in reality he doesn’t change his mind; he knew exactly what was going to happen. As we learn more about God, we realize that God not only requires us to repent, but He also accepts us to show the fruit of that repentance. In essence, God requires an about-face.
Imagine a husband and wife in a car, the wife tells her husband to turn right at the next street and by mistake, he turns left. When he realizes what he’s done, he says to his wife "I’m sorry darling, I went the wrong way." But if that’s all he does, it isn’t enough. His saying sorry isn’t getting them any closer to where they want to be; it’s getting further away. He needs to stop the car, turn it around and go back to the correct road that his wife told him to take in the first place. That is repentance.
During the Welsh Revivals of the 19th century, the Holy Spirit convicted many people of their sin and the need to make restitution. But it created an unexpected problem for the shipyards along the coast of Wales. Over the years workers had stolen items ranging from wheelbarrows to hammers. As people sought to be right with God, 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."
Can you imagine if that type of repentance came upon our country?
We are also reminded that repentance doesn’t demand a response from God. Repentance isn’t a way of twisting God’s arm so that He must forgive us. Repentance is an act that occurs by people like you and I. It is when we are touched by the Spirit of God and we cry out to God, asking to be forgiven and not only that, but also to be changed — to be made into a new creation, into a person who resembles the character of Jesus Christ more and more in our everyday lives.
The repentance in Nineveh is nothing short of a miracle. It’s impossible to imagine that Nineveh would repent at the sound of this reluctant prophet’s voice. It would be like the Al-Qaeda leaders repenting at the word of Billy Graham; or these top executives suddenly recognizing their culpability in harming millions of people financially and asking for forgiveness. It would be a miracle – but not impossible for God. In the same way, when we repent of our wrong doing, it’s a miracle in our hearts that we have heard the word of God and responded.
One final thought, God’s offer to each of us is a limited time offer. Nineveh had 40 days, and then it was over. God is extremely patient with us, much more patient than I would ever be, but even God’s patience runs out. If we fail to hear the word of God and continue in our sinful ways, the consequences of our actions will eventually catch up to us.
Jonah was a reluctant, bitter prophet. He wanted to keep God to himself. But the call of God and the purpose of our church is to preach and teach Jesus, so that others, and yes, even our so- called enemies turn their lives around and embrace the love, joy, peace, grace and forgiveness God offers. We are ALL called to be Jonah’s, to go into our sphere of influence, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. I can only speak for myself, I know that I have been blessed with forgiveness from my sins and it is a phenomenal experience. Have you been forgiven, ask from the heart and know that God forgives. Now go to someone else and tell them that they too, can experience the amazing forgiveness of God.
