A Mission’s Moment
Text: Jonah 3:1-10
Introduction: One of the old cartoons that we use to watch as kids has now come back onto the TV. Surprisingly, my children enjoy it and watch it all the time. I’m referring to Popeye. You remember "Popeye the Sailor Man", don’t you? Every episode was based on the same scenario. Popeye would get into a confrontation with Alice the Goon, Sea Hag, Brutus or another enemy, a fight would ensue and it would look as if Popeye was going to get the worst of it by far. Then eventually, when he had been pushed to the brink he would say, "I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!" Then he would pull out a can of spinach from his back pocket or sock and down it in one swallow. The strength he received from the spinach would enable Popeye to easily conquer his foe and win the admiration of his beautiful girlfriend, Olive Oyle.
Did you know that there are moments in history when God seems to say to various elements of humanity, "I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more?" Almost exclusively these times have to do with the sinful rebellion of people created in His image and for whom He possesses a great, longsuffering love. He said this to the whole earth during the time of Noah and to the Israelites repeatedly throughout their history. Such is the case in the text that we’re studying this morning.
The people of Nineveh and the Assyrians in general had lived in a cesspool of sin for most of their existence. Not that they had an excuse for their wickedness. The law of God written on their hearts brought a cloud of condemnation that constantly overshadowed them (See Romans 2:14-15). It took many years, but finally, they filled up the measure of their sin and God said "I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more. Prepare yourself for judgment." "Forty more days and you will be overturned," was the message Jonah spoke to them on behalf of the God of Israel. (Note that the once rebellious prophet was now as compliant as the wind, the sea and the fish had been to God in the first two chapters.) The word "overturned" can mean "overthrow" as in the case of Sodom in Genesis 19:25 or "change" as in 1 Samuel 10:6. It is likely that the Lord intended a double meaning in this warning. The only way the Ninevites could avoid being overthrown was to change the way they were living...and that’s precisely what He was going to do by bringing them to true repentance! Let’s take a few minutes and try to understand what constitutes true repentance as we witness the hand of God at work in the people of Nineveh.
I. Repentance means acknowledging our sin (See Jonah 3:1-5). When Jonah entered Nineveh it was inhabited by about 120,000 people and had a circumference of about 7 1/2 miles. It took him three days to preach the message so that everyone could hear. Whatever we might have expected their response to have been to a Jewish prophet that had just spent the last 72 hours in the belly of a great fish, we discover that the people believed the word of Jonah! They’d not questioned whether or not Jonah was speaking the truth or if God’s actions were justified. They needed no one to tell them that they were a sinful and rebellious people that had earned everything they were about to receive. Their sin was ever before them.
What had they done? One historian comments on their exploits by saying, "It is as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know." Records indicate that they were extremely cruel to captured peoples following the siege of a town. They bragged of live dismemberment, often leaving one hand attached to a victim so they could shake it before the person died. They made parades of heads, requiring the friends of the deceased to carry them elevated on poles. They stretched prisoners with ropes so they could be skinned while fully conscious. They pulled out the tongues of other prisoners and burned children alive...and on and on. The Assyrians were a wicked people (See Jonah 1:2) who could not deny the inhumanity of their actions. Application: Many of us have a hard time relating to these kinds of atrocities. Our sins are rarely, if ever, on this scale. Most Christians struggle with subtle, more private offenses that even our closest friends and family may be unaware of. Sins like addictions to alcohol, drugs or pornography; unwholesome talk, self-centered priorities, lying, laziness, poor stewardship and treating others with a lack of authentic love. Yet, just like the people of Nineveh, we are not able to experience the grace and mercy of God until we come to the point where we can acknowledge our sin. This is the first step in true repentance.
II. Repentance means grieving our sin (See Jonah 3:5-8). The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It means to "perceive afterwards." In other words, to repent is to come to the realization that a previous action or attitude was morally wrong and against everything for which God stands. I have been involved in a number of discussions with people who argue based on this definition that people have repented when they admit their sin. But to limit the definition of repentance to a change of mind is, of course, ridiculous. Romans 12:2 informs us that when a mind changes a life changes. There are far reaching consequences to the person or people who come to understand that they are living in sin before a holy God. One of these is the effect that awareness of sin has on our heart or emotions. When the Ninevites admitted that their actions had been morally reprehensible it stirred their hearts to grieve and cry out to God ith a sense of urgency. The actions of fasting and putting on sackcloth by the people and the king as well as the decree that everyone should demonstrate true remorse are evidence of real repentance (See Nehemiah 9:1-2). How do we know it was real? God spared them! I guarantee hat if their response was not truly reflective of sincere grief over their deplorable sin, they would have received the full wrath of God. Application: To repent is not only to acknowledge our moral failure, but it is to lament it. It is to be gripped with the wrongness of sin in such a way that our hearts are broken over a loss of fellowship with one another and God (See Joel 2:12; James 4:8-10). We’re told that Peter, when he denied Jesus for the third time went out and wept bitterly (See Luke 22:61-62).
Illustration: Those who do not grieve their sin will sadly find their hearts hardened by it. In The Magician’s Nephew, one the books in the series The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, he writes of the creation of fictitious Narnia through the song of Aslan (the lion who represents Jesus in the series). As in Genesis 1, it is a grand call to worship, but there was one (Uncle Andrew) who would not hear it. He had allowed some things to creep into his heart that shouldn’t have been there with devastating effect: When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point, for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a Lion ("only a lion," as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing--only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. "Of course it can’t really have been singing," he thought. "I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?" And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, "Narnia awake," he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings and howlings. Has your heart become like Uncle Andrew’s? Has Christianity become merely a religion to you instead of a call to worship? Perhaps it is because, in your failure to mourn your sin, you have allowed it to harden you heart.
III. Repentance means removing our sin (See Jonah 7-10). It is not yet true repentance if we acknowledge sin and even grieve it. We must also take any action necessary to remove it from our lives. The decree of the king and his nobles called on the people to give up their evil ways and their violence. To have settled for anything less would have amounted to a futile attempt to mock God (See Galatians 6:7-8). The simple fact is that we cannot follow after God without loosening our grip on sin. Jesus spoke to this in Mark 9:43-47. Confession of one equals the renunciation of the other. True repentance involves the removal of anything from our lives that would keep us from earnestly following Christ.
Conclusion: On Tuesday, July 20, 1993, in a forest one hundred miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Don Wyman was cutting up a fallen tree. It was about 4:00PM and he was alone in the woods. When he finished one cut, tragedy struck. The tree snapped back in his direction and knocked him to the ground. The massive oak landed on his left leg, shattering the bone and tearing flesh. Pinned to the ground, Wyman screamed in pain. He tried to free himself by using the chain saw that was still in his hands to cut away the tree, but he couldn’t reach far enough. Then he tried to dig beneath his leg, but this also was to no avail. "I’m going to bleed to death," he thought. Then the idea hit him. He had a pocket knife in his jacket. If he took the cord from the chain saw and tied it firmly around his upper left leg, he could then use the knife to severe the limb and free himself from the fallen tree. Somehow he managed to do just that. Though the blood flow had been slowed, it had not been stopped. Wyman knew he needed help fast. He crawled 135 feet uphill over loose gravel to his bulldozer. Then he drove it 1/4 mile to his truck, all the while clutching the make-shift tourniquet. The truck had a manual transmission, but he managed to shift by using a metal file to depress the clutch. He drove to a farmer’s house 1 1/2 miles away, stopped his vehicle and yelled, "I cut my leg off! Help me! I’m bleeding to death." The farmer phoned for emergency help and Wyman’s life was saved. When Don Wyman was in the woods, he came to realize that though his leg was dear to him, keeping it would cost him his life. Some of us have certain sins that are dear to us. We cling to them because the thought of living without them is more frightening than living with them. Releasing our grip on a particular sin that has over time brought us some sort of perverted comfort and satisfaction is like cutting off a leg when pinned under a tree. It’s scary but if we don’t do it the results can be devastating.
Application: If you think this sermon was aiming at the person down the aisle, you’ve missed the point. It’s for all of us. There isn’t a person in this room who is walking in perfect obedience to God. Either we have some things we should be doing, but aren’t, or we have some things we are doing, but shouldn’t be. (Give people a moment of silence to get their hearts right with God.)
