Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
Today we consider what our Lord says to us through the prophet Jonah.
Dear friends in Jesus, the Messiah,
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you concerning my work as a missionary and evangelist. My name is Jonah, the son of Amittai. Many of you may have heard about my experience inside the great fish, which some have mislabeled a whale. Yet if you have read my short book of four chapters, between Obadiah and Micah in the Scriptures, you realize that the greatest miracle I write about is not how the Lord used the fish to save me. The greatest miracle is how the Lord used his message of judgment and compassion to save the people of Nineveh. He did that despite my sinful, selfish attitude in bringing his message.
So today I would like to encourage you to see how the Lord can use you to share his message with those around you. First of all, I want to encourage you not, NOT, to follow my sinful attitude of selfishness as you think about those who need to hear of Jesus. Secondly, I want to encourage you to boldly share God’s great message, which is for you, for me, for all sinners.
1) My sinful attitude of selfishness
It is hard to admit ones own sins and failures. Yet the Lord has brought me to see how selfish, loveless, and bigoted I was in my actions. I share this with you so that you can learn from my example and fight against those sins before they lead you done the deadly path I followed.
When the Lord first called me to go to Nineveh, I did not want to go. It wasn’t so much laziness or being caught up in my day to day life or fear of what they might do to me. I just did not want those people to learn about the true God. They were the Assyrians, mind you. They were the people that had hurt my country, enslaved some of my fellow citizens, and extracted tribute from all of us. Now they had weakened and we we’re finally coming out from under their yoke. They didn’t deserve to hear God’s Word. And what would my friends think of me, if I tried helping those people? No. In my sinful, selfish attitude I did not want them to hear God’s Word. Then they might repent and the Lord might have compassion on them. I didn’t want that.
So I ran away. I got on a boat heading to the opposite end of the Mediterranean world. Because of my sinful attitude, I deserved for the Lord to send me to the depths of hell. When the sailors through me overboard to save themselves and the ship, I should have died. I should’ve died and gone to hell.
But the Lord showed compassion to me. He sent that great fish and kept me alive in it’s belly for three days and nights. Blessed be the name of the Lord, who saves!
Yet I still hadn’t learned my lesson. I did go and preach in Nineveh as the Lord had commanded me. But my attitude was still selfish and sinful. When I saw the people repenting and knew that the Lord would not destroy the city because the people now believed in him, I became angry. I went out of the city and prayed in anger, “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:2, 3 NIV).
Once again the Lord compassionately called me to repentance. As I sat out their in the desert, waiting, hoping for the Lord to destroy the city, he made a vine grow to help shade me from the sun. Early the next morning, though, God sent a worm to chew the vine so that it dried up. When the sun rose and God sent a scorching wind, I was miserable and angry. God asked me, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?” “I do,” I said. But then the Lord replied, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. . . 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?” (Johan 4:10, 11)
Here I had felt more concern for a vine that I had put no work into than for a 120,000 children who were all a special creation of God’s. I saw my loveless, selfish attitude. Thanks be to the Lord that he was not only compassionate to Nineveh but to me too.
The Lord may not call you to go to a foreign city, like he called me. But he has placed many opportunities in your lives right now to share the Good News about Jesus. Don’t fall into the sin that I fell into. Don’t run away from these opportunities. Don’t ignore them because of a selfish attitude in yourself.
Examine your heart. Are their people that you don’t like? People you almost hope won’t believe in Jesus so that they get what they deserve? That attitude is sin. Are their people you don’t really want to share Jesus with because their life style is so different, or their skin color is darker, or their speech is heavily accented, or they seem undesirable? That attitude is sin. Do you fear what others might think if you talk to certain kinds of people? That attitude is sin. Do your fear that you might hurt a friendship or look foolish if you bring up the subject of Jesus? That attitude is sin. Do you just want to stay in your own comfortable bubble, where it feels safe, so that the message of Jesus can’t burst out from you? That attitude is sin.
Like me, you also have sinful, selfish attitudes. Like me, we deserve to sink to the depths of hell under the weight of our sin, to be scorched by the unrelenting anger of God.
But the Lord has had compassion on you. He has sent something better than a great fish or vine. He has sent you a Savior, God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus has brought you up from the depths of sin by lifting the burden of your sin off of you. He has carried it in your place. He absorbs the scorching heat of God’s anger against our sin, because he has taken the full blast of God’s wrath in your place. By faith we live in the shadow of his cross that shades us. We deserved none of this kindness. Jesus has done it all for you because he is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.
That same love and compassion Jesus has shown to you, he has for all others, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they have done. Imitate that compassion and love as you reach out to the lost with the Good News of what Jesus has done to save sinners. Imitate that compassion and love first of all by praying for those who need to hear about Jesus. To help you do that, you have a half-sheet in your bulletins this morning, entitled “Friends Who Need Jesus.” Think about people who can be placed on your chart. Pray for them. Pray for love and compassion to fill your heart. Pray for the opportunity to talk to them about Jesus before it is to late and they are lost forever. Pray for them, not with sinful attitude of selfishness that I had. Pray with the attitude of compassion and love that Jesus has for them and for you.
2) God’s great message for sinners
Despite my sinful attitude, God worked a great miracle in Nineveh. The message that he proclaimed through me worked repentance in the hearts of the Ninevites. I can take no credit for that.
What was the message God spoke? “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” This was a message of judgment and compassion.
It is easy to hear the judgment in that message. God will destroy this city because of its sin and rebellion against God. But God’s compassion is present as well. He gave them forty days and he sent a prophet to warn them. Why else would he do that, if he do not sincerely want them to repent so that he would relent from his punishment?
They knew the message came from the Lord. The way the Lord had rescued me through the great fish showed that he stood behind the words I spoke. By God’s power working through this message, his Holy Spirit changed the hearts of the people. They turned away from theirs sins. They humbled themselves before the Lord. They relied completely on his mercy and compassion. Through his great message God brought them to faith.
He has given you the same great message of judgment and compassion. In fact, you have a much fuller revelation of it than I did. Share it.
Share the warning judgment of God’s Law. Whoever does not fully keep every thing written in the Law will die forever in hell. Whoever fails to love God above all with all their heart and love his neighbor as himself is a lawbreaker condemned to hell. When we examine our hearts in the light of God’s Law, we see we fall under the Law’s curse of death and hell. God’s Law convicts you and me and all sinners.
Share the forgiving compassion of God’s gospel Good News. Although we have failed to keep the Law, Jesus has kept it for you and for me and for every sinner. God freely credits us with Jesus perfect record. What is more, Jesus took the curse of the Law in our place. He suffered the full punishment instead of us. He has paid the full price of his holy blood to set us free.
Share the amazing proof that this Good News about Jesus is the truth. You have a more amazing proof than someone surviving three days and nights in the belly of a great fish. What is the ultimate proof of God’s forgiveness? Jesus coming back from the belly of the grave after three days. Yes! Jesus rising from the dead on Easter Sunday is the proof that God forgives you and all sinners. Share that Good News so that others believe and are saved.
I pray that God’s Holy Spirit has worked through my testimony this morning to encourage you to share the Good News of Jesus with others. Pray for the lost with an an attitude of love and compassion. Share the Good News with the lost, for through the Good News of what Jesus has done for us, the Lord saves them from hell’s destruction, just as he has saved you.
