Jonah 3:1 10
1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city a visit required three days. 4On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."
5 The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
"9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."
10 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.
Jonah visited Nineveh during the glory days of the Assyrian
empire. From about 885 to 625 BC, the Assyrians dominated the ancient world. As
early as 841 BC, Jehu, King of Israel, was forced to pay tribute to the
Assyrian ruler, Shalmaneser III. This kind of harassment continued for over a
century. Then Assyria brutally conquered Israel in 722 BC.
God called Jonah to go to the heartland of his people’s worst
enemy. It was a radical order which would have taxed the obedience of any
prophet.
Once there, Jonah goes straight to work. He doesn't look for the
local Holiday Inn to drop off his luggage. He doesn't buy a paper to check up
on the local news. He doesn't request an audience with the king. He shows no
interest in the power structure of the city. He just marches in and for three
days he shouts to the Ninevites that their time is limited. Whatever the
Assyrians may have thought about him, Jonah got their attention.
Jonah foretells gloom and doom, death and destruction. His voice
is not one of woe, but of triumph. Nineveh, the capital of Jonah’s hated enemy,
will be overthrown. This is a good deal! These pillaging, plundering and
looting Assyrians are finally going to get what’s coming to them, and it’s
about time, too!
Jonah is a man of judgment, certitude and certainty. In Jonah’s
world there are actions and consequences. This is how things are. No wriggle
room, that’s Jonah. How can we argue with that idea? It’s true, isn’t it? if
you work hard, you get ahead. If you make good grades, you get into a good
college. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Actions have
consequences.
In fact, the promises God are often found in scripture phrased in
“if-then” terms. In Deuteronomy we read, “If you fully obey the Lord your God
and carefully follow all his commands, the Lord your God will set you high
above all the nations of earth. However, if you do not fully obey the Lord your
God and do not carefully follow all his commands, all these curses will come
upon you.”
At the beginning of the story, Jonah learns that the wickedness of the Ninevites has come before God. Jonah pronounces doom for the Ninevites, but he never tells them why they deserve it. Presumably, the Ninevites understood why an Israelite and an Israelite’s God would condemn them. There is no word of grace in Jonah’s proclamation. Throughout scripture and in our own experience of knowing God, God’s grace is always pre-eminent. It is prevenient, to use the Wesleyan term. God’s grace always goes before his messengers and prepares the receivers of the message to hear it. As things turned out, Jonah’s imperfect prophecy didn’t prevent the Holy Spirit’s work. The Ninevites were convicted of their wickedness by Jonah’s warning. The whole city repented and was spared.
Despite Jonah’s imperfections, we need people like him. It’s far
too easy to become morally, economically, culturally and religiously lazy, even
wicked. Especially when things are going pretty good, as they were for the
Ninevites then and are for most Americans right now. I am pro-prosperity. I see
no inherent moral virtue in poverty. We have nice homes, good schools, good
jobs, nice clothes and a high standard of living. These are good things. We
have a good life. I don’t mean they are good in some sort of double talking,
theologically wisecracking sort of way. I mean genuinely, truly good. But how
easy it is to be seduced by the siren song of secular success and forget whence
comes our wealth and good life. It’s all on loan from God.
One of the richest persons in the Bible realized this. When Job
lost all his wealth, he honestly acknowledged, “I came naked from my mother’s
womb, I will leave this world naked. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. May
the name of the Lord be praised.” The Bible is clear about who gives us what we
have. Deuteronomy records God’s admonition to the Hebrews in chapter 8. I’m
going to slightly—but only slightly—paraphrase it:
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to
keep his commands. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build
fine houses and settle down, when your companies grow large and your stock
holdings increase and all your stock investments beat the S&P 500, your heart
will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God and you may say to
yourself, “My power and knowledge have produced this wealth for me.” But
remember the Lord your God, for it is God who gives you the ability to produce
wealth. If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and bow down
to them and worship them, you will surely be destroyed.
We are the wealthiest nation ever to exist. Stupendously endowed with enormous natural resources, fresh water and fantastically productive soil, we have formulated an economic and political system unmatched in all history for material production and comfort. Are we blessed by God? You bet! Yet I fear that as a nation we say, “Our power and knowledge have produced this wealth for us.”
A few years ago survey by the Barna Group discovered that almost
two-thirds of Americans agreed that the purpose of life was enjoyment and
personal fulfillment and that each person’s responsibility is to oneself.
Robert Wuthnow wrote in his book, God and
Mammon in America, that Americans are, as a culture, spiritually adrift in
making decisions in economics, career choice, workplace commitment, consumerism
and charity. Those who described themselves as committed churchgoers often said
they had their materialistic and workaholic tendencies reinforced by their
religious beliefs and faith training. They live, they admitted, “pretty much
the same as those who have no faith at all.”
In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr.
lamented, “The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an
uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from
being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the
average community is consoled by the church’s silent, or often vocal, sanction
of things as they are.”
It is sometimes a Christian’s responsibility to stride like Jonah
into the hearts of our cities and the boardrooms of the powerful and proclaim,
“You are forgetting the Lord your God and are following secular idols like
consumerism, perverse entertainment and secular pride. You worship and bow down
to them, but the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Jesus said judgment comes
to those who store up things for themselves but are not rich toward God. Life
is more than good food and the body, more than fine clothes.
The Ninevites believed what Jonah told them. From king to pauper,
they repented and called upon God. They gave up their evil ways and violence.
“Who knows?” they declared. “God may yet relent and with compassion turn from
his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw they had turned from
their evil ways, he had compassion and did not destroy them.
Now how can that be? God went to a lot of trouble to get Jonah to
the Ninevites and now they are spared? Just because of a little sackcloth and
ashes and fasting? What’s the deal? Actions, consequences, right? Not here! The
dirty, rotten Assyrians beat the rap on a technicality. Jonah sulked and left
town.
Well, not so fast. The Assyrians were never ones for small gestures. Their army’s effectiveness would have made William Tecumseh Sherman green with envy. Nineveh was the largest city in the world at the time, almost sixty miles around. Its walls were so thick that three chariots could be driven abreast on top. Fifteen hundred watchtowers were set along the wall, each tower two hundred feet high—oh, yes, the Assyrians made big plans and did things in a grand way.
So it’s no surprise they went for big-time repentance. Their
repentance was no pro-forma, half-hearted, mealy-mouthed,
“Dear-God-we’re-sorry-please-forgive-us” ritual. It was Super Bowl level,
Nobel-prize caliber, Neiman-Marcus catalog, total quality repentance. No public
opinion polling. No encounter groups or sensitivity sessions. No city council
meetings or legislative deliberations. No Sunday School series or committee
meetings. There was no temporizing or excuse making. There was only a
collective shock of having been judged by the ultimately righteous God and
their desire to turn away from sin.
I’m not sure we know how to do that kind of repentance today.
Many of you may remember a best-selling book of the nineteen seventies called, I’m Okay, You’re Okay. I’ll bet the
Ninevites said that to one another before Jonah showed up. It’s hardly a
clarion call to repentance. We typically plead for God’s intervention in the
mess we’re in now, as if God is a cosmic lifeguard who exists to bail us out of
our self-made predicaments.
The Ninevites’ repentance was deep and profound—a genuine
conviction of ignoring God and going their own way, doing their own thing. They
urgently called upon God, giving up their sinful ways.
Jonah knew what kind of God he was representing. The forty days
came and went. Nineveh was still standing. Jonah was so mad he wanted to die.
He yelled at God, “I know this would happen! I knew you were a God of love,
gracious and compassionate. That’s why I didn’t want to come here is the first
place.” The Assyrians knew something about God, too. They knew something about
God that it’s easy to forget. God responds to humble, genuinely contrite
appeals for mercy. “Who knows?” they cried. “Perhaps God will relent and show
compassion.”
The Ninevites took a chance on God. They bet on God’s mercy and
love. We should not deride their faith.
Jesus told the story of the prodigal son who sank so low he
slopped hogs for a living. The pig slop was better than his own meals. He set
out for home, penniless, to ask his father to accept him as a servant. Who
knows? Maybe his father will say yes.
A Roman centurion approached Jesus of Nazareth. The centurion’s beloved servant was desperately ill and near death. Who knows? The centurion thought. Maybe this Galilean rabbi really can heal my servant.
Do we have the faith even to ask, “Who knows?” It is true that
the Ninevites had a deadline to meet to get right with God. Forty days is not a
long time. But how much time do we need? We would be alarmed if we knew we
would not live another month, but we are careless even though we don’t know
we’ll live another day.
Who knows but that there are people sitting here who are not
right with God and realize it? There’s no reason to wait any longer. No more
time is needed. Christ’s grace has already brought you to this place, and not
by accident. This is a church of the crucified and risen, living Christ, not a
social club or civic organization. Our founder was a homeless Jew who was
executed as a criminal insurrectionist and religious heretic. He was never on
the social “A” list and he wouldn’t have been invited to the Swan Ball. Yet it
is through this Christ Jesus that God accounts us as righteous. If you confess
with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved. Today is the day. Now is the time.
