Jonah

Jonah 3 - God warns of judgement, but longs to save

As an opener, I’d like to give a little bit of geographical context to the situation which Jonah finds himself in. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen him hear from God, run in the opposite direction, caught in a storm, get thrown overboard, get swallowed by a fish and get sicked up on a beach.

So the word of Yahweh comes to Jonah a second time ”Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you”. And this time he does.

But I wonder whether you, like me, view this sentence through the haze of children’s books on the subject. I know that I’ve heard someone preach once about what a sight Jonah must have been, walking through Nineveh and preaching while disfigured by digestive juices and seaweed.

But lets look at a map for a moment. Take note of the scale there. Distance to Nineveh? Nearly 600 miles as the crow flies, probably more by road. Now Lands End to John O’Groats is less than that as the crow flies, but 874 miles by foot. Fit people walk it in about 70 days along pleasant routes. It seems likely that Jonah would have spent at least 2-3 months walking to Nineveh to fulfil the mission which God gave him.

Does that give us pause for thought?

Now, to chapter 3. I find it helpful to remember two things about the Old Testament whenever I read it, and I’d like us to bear these in mind as we read this passage today.

Firstly – God is the hero of the Old Testament narratives. They reveal his character.
Secondly – God doesn’t change. Which means that we can apply the lessons we learn to today.

God warns of judgement, yet longs to save

God will judge

The message which Jonah has to bring to the Assyrians is pretty uncompromising. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”. God has already said back in chapter 1 that Jonah was to preach against it “because its wickedness has come up before me”, and I believe Harry mentioned two weeks ago about the prophet Nahum who gave more detail about its wickedness – its cruelty, its exploitation, its idolatry and prostitution.

God has sent a warning

Yet even to people such as this, God leaves a door open to hope. Not an explicit message of hope, no ‘do this or else’ in Jonah’s preaching. But the message gave them a deadline. Forty more days. Implicit in that deadline was the opportunity to change. To change their behaviour, to make amends. Forty days to attempt to do something to turn away wrath.

Jonah can hardly have been more astonished than us when he sees the instant reaction to God’s message. It hardly seems likely that a pagan nation that neither knows nor cares about God might be affected by Gods message, does it? Yet what happens (v5)?
From the greatest to the least they believed God, and they started taking action to show that they were sorry in the way that they knew best – putting on sackcloth. They believed that Jonah’s message was credible, they recognised their own guilt and sin, and spontaneously wanted to do something about it. Such a unanimous, spontaneous response seems to be a sign of the Holy Spirits work in those pagan Gentiles.

In some respects this brings to mind the famous Welsh revival of 1904 – a time when Evan Roberts and others preached the length and breadth of Wales and over 100,000 people came to Christ. Chapels sprung up in every community, the crime rate dropped, drunkards reformed and bad language disappeared. (it was reported that some of the pit ponies could no longer understand their masters without the cursing!) Time and time again prayer meetings were packed out and huge crowds attended the meetings. An incredible work of the Holy Spirit in the UK little more than a century ago.

Even the king of Nineveh responded to the message, humbling himself in sackcloth and sitting in the dust; issuing a proclamation calling on everyone to repent, to give up their evil ways and their violence; calling on everyone to call urgently on God with prayer and fasting.

They had no assurance that this would make a difference, only some small hope that perhaps God would show compassion on them and turn from his anger...

God is compassionate

He can see that their response is not just in words (we all know that talk can be cheap). They attached action to their words, they turned away from their evil ways, which is exactly what ‘repent’ means. They took every opportunity to demonstrate how much they meant it.

God saw, and had compassion on them. He didn’t bring the destruction which he had promised, and we learn in the next chapter that this was God’s plan all along. While Jonah was hoping for destruction to come to this evil and dangerous enemy of Israel, it was God’s desire to rescue these gentiles. To display through Nineveh that he intended to keep his promise made to Abraham all those years ago, to bring blessing to all nations.

Jonah chapter 3 shows us God who judges evil, who warns people of the consequences of it and gives them opportunity to respond, because he wants to show compassion to them.

God hasn’t changed. The details of the message are different now, but fundamentally God hasn’t changed.

God warns of judgement, yet longs to save

God will judge

The stench of wickedness still rises up to heaven today. The large scale national wickedness which causes a leader to drive his own people into starvation such as in Zimbabwe or North Korea. Selfish and self-centred policies which damn those less fortunate or less able. Or the small scale wickedness which makes our newspapers every week. Stabbings. Domestic violence. Theft. Adultery. Greed.

By and large, we live in a world that doesn’t seem to care. Certainly a world that doesn’t seem to care what God thinks. I came across the following interesting dialog from Bill Hybels, the Christian author and church leader:

Bill Hybels tells the story of an encounter he had with a young woman: “I recall one time being in a restaurant studying for a message, and a gal looked over from her table and saw me reading my Bible. She said, ‘Why do you study that stuff?’ And I thought, just to stimulate a little discussion, I’d try to knock her off balance. So I said, ‘Because I don’t feel like going to hell when I die.’ I was going to be really blunt, but I took the edge off it a little bit.

And she said, ‘There is no such thing as heaven or hell.’ I thought, Well, I got something going now. So I turned in my chair and I said, ‘Why do you say that?’ She said, ‘Everybody knows that when you die your candle goes out — poof ’ I said, ‘You mean to tell me there’s no afterlife?’ ‘No.’ ‘So that means you must be able to just live as you please?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Like, there’s no Judgement Day or anything?’ ‘No.’

I said, ‘Well, that’s fascinating to me. Where did you hear that?’ She said, ‘I read it somewhere.’ ‘Can you give me the name of the book?’ ‘I don’t recall.’ ‘Can you give me the name of the author of the book?’ ‘I forget his name.’ ‘Did that author write any other books?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Is it possible that your author changed his mind two years after he wrote this particular book and then wrote another one that said there is a heaven and a hell? Is that possible?’ ‘It’s possible but not likely.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘ Let me get this straight. You are rolling the dice on your eternity predicated on what someone you don’t even know wrote in a book you can’t even recall the title of. Have I got that straight?’ I was playing a little Columbo act with her. She looked me right in the eye and said, ‘That’s right.’

And I said back to her, ‘You know what I think, sweetheart? I think you have merely created a belief that guarantees the continuation of your unencumbered lifestyle. I think you made it up, because it is very discomforting to think of a heaven. It is a very discomforting thought to think of a hell. It is very unnerving to face a holy God in the day of reckoning. I think you made it all up.’ We had quite a conversation after that.”

God has sent a warning

Just like God sent Jonah with a message to a population who didn’t have any belief in God, so God sends us with a message to a people who typically couldn’t care two hoots for Him and what He says. Remember the great commission from Matthew 28?

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Rom 10:14 says
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Right here is where we so often have a crisis of faith. It is so easy to think “What’s the point. They are not going to believe me. All the people I know, all the people I see are thoroughly secular – or have a different religion. No way will they respond to the gospel of Jesus”. Or equally we might think “I’m no good at talking to people about Jesus. I don’t have anything clever to say, I just couldn’t convince anyone”.

Fact is, Jonah probably wasn’t a convincing orator either. But our responsibility (like his) is not to save people. Our responsibility is to proclaim Gods message – that all will face judgement when they die, and whether you go to heaven or hell depends upon your response to Jesus, who died on the cross to save you.

Their response is between them and God – but the wonderful thing is that the Holy Spirit is still doing his work, convicting people of sin, righteousness and judgement (as Jesus said in John 16v8).

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes

And whether it is marvellous revival such as was experienced in Wales in 1904, or the quickening of a single person in whom the Holy Spirit has been working.

God is compassionate

God still longs to save. He values people far more highly than we think or dream of. From the best of saints to the worst of sinners, Gods values them... as much as the life of His Son, Jesus.

Jonah 3 draws back the curtain on an amazing cosmic truth. That God will judge, but that he sends a warning because he is compassionate, and wants to save.

God wants to save people. And it seems that he has put himself under one small limitation – he wants to work through individual believers such as you and I.

I find this incredibly challenging. And at the same time incredibly liberating.

Alex White