His Mercies are New Every Morning! - Jonah 3:1-5

 

His Mercies are New Every Morning!

Jonah 3:1-5

Introduction: Today we’ll start Part 2 of our series on “Jonah, the Prodigal Prophet.” We tend to think of Jonah and immediately think about the great fish. We’ve seen that this is really a story about our great God. God is guiding this story for His purposes, and in the process revealing truth to Jonah, and to us, about His character, while also exposing our hearts, and our desperate need for mercy and grace. Because Jesus came and lived a sinless life, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross, God made it possible for us to be forgiven, to become His children, by faith. John said, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God, and such we are!” (I Jn 3:1). How then, should we live? Jonah wasn’t ready to trust God. He knew what God said, but He chose to do the exact opposite: God said “Go!” and Jonah said, “NO!” He ran away. He turned his back on God.  

       Jonah is in the Bible to teach us about God, and about ourselves. God wants us to see ourselves in the story, and in the process, He wants to help us to understand and long for the mind of Christ. Our prayer should be: “God help me to think more like you and less like Jonah!” But what about when we don’t like or understand what God is saying, what about when His will conflicts with ours?  A little more like Jesus, a little less like me… Jesus became obedient, even to the point of death, even death on the Cross! As we think God’s thoughts after him, we’ll be moved to find our place in God’s mission.

       Nate Saint, one of the five missionaries martyred as they sought to reach the Auca tribe in South America said that his life didn’t change until he came to grips with the fact that obedience is not a momentary option, it is a die-cast decision made beforehand. Trust and obey. Period. God was still working on Jonah. The prophet had some lessons to learn about himself and about God’s love for the world. Jonah didn’t know about what had become of the sailors on the boat who  had finally relented and thrown Him into the sea. God used that near-disaster to reveal his power and holiness and to bring those sailors to repentance and faith. And He wasn’t finished with Jonah, He hadn’t forgotten the Ninevites, and He is still interested in you and me!

The BIG Idea: God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

I. God will use us, despite our past failures (1,2). It is pretty common among believers to think that something from their past has disqualified them from being useful to the Lord, from having a meaningful part in His mission. There is no doubt that sin has consequences, and that sometimes the consequences of a past sin may disqualify us from certain kinds of ministries. Pastors and elders for example are held to a higher standard, I think because of the potential to cause others to stumble. Nonetheless, if God has left you in this world, and you are seeking Him, and have repented of those past sins, He has a place for you in His mission! Remember the prodigal son, how the father so joyously received him back, not as a servant, but as a son? That is the kind of love that God has for us. We are forgiven, so we should learn from the past, but we shouldn’t live there! “Don’t let yesterday take too much of your today.”

 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, ² "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you." 

      That language might sound familiar, Jonah had heard God’s call before… and had run away! The language here is very parallel to 1:1,2…

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah… saying, ² "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me."

       God had called Jonah to go to Nineveh and to call out against it. And Jonah understood… and rejected God’s word. He turned his back on God. When we looked at that initial call the lesson was that that is the nature of sin. God has told us what he wants us to do. When we want to do something contrary to God’s word, we might justify our actions, explain away our choices, but just like Jonah, we are turning away from the face of God. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jer 17:9).  Max Lucado told the story of a girl named Cristina…

She was a young teenage girl who lived with her mother in a small village outside of Rio de Janeiro. Longing for life in the big city, one day she ran away. When her mother realized she was gone, she pursued her, knowing the dangers of the city. She knew how stubborn her daughter was, but also knew how desperation can drive people to do the unthinkable. But what were the odds of finding one girl in a city of 8 million? Cristina’s mother put little pictures of herself around hotels and bars, with a short, handwritten note on the back. Finally, the pictures ran out, her money was gone, and the woman had to return home without her daughter. It was a few weeks later that Cristina came down the staircase of one more hotel, the joy and excitement long-gone from her face. She knew what a mess she had made of her life, but how could she ever return? Suddenly she saw a little picture on a mirror by the desk… it was her mother! She took the picture off the mirror and turned it over, the hand-written note said, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter, please, come home!” And she did.

       That’s the Father’s love for prodigals. A parent’s love. It is God’s appeal to us. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, He is watching, waiting. Jonah had rejected God’s word, he had turned his back on the Father and gone in the opposite direction, but God didn’t write Jonah off. The same is true about you and me. Listen: Our past failures don’t mean we are now discharged from God’s army, he hasn’t waived us from his team. As long as he leaves us in this world, he has a purpose for us, we have a part in His plan. He will give us work until our life is over, and life until our work is done.

      The ESV misses a slight variation in the first and second call of Jonah. In chapter 1 Jonah was to “call out against” Nineveh. In chapter three a different preposition is used, he is told to “call out to it…” It may only be a stylistic variation, but it’s possible that because of Jonah’s hard-heart, and in light of God’s intended result for this mission, the Lord is softening His language to prepare Jonah for what will soon happen. Yes, he is to preach God’s wrath against sin. But why did God give Nineveh 40 days? He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

     God is not only working on the Ninevites, He is still working on the prodigal prophet. You know the parable of the prodigal son. So far, we’ve seen Jonah as the younger son, who takes his inheritance and turns his back on the father, choosing to do things his own way. That is Jonah in chapters 1 and 2. But we’ll also see in the next chapter Jonah’s heart is that of the elder son, angry over the Father’s compassion. Yes, Jonah is to be God’s prophet, and God is also working on Jonah, seeking to expose his lack of compassion for the lost outside of Israel. God isn’t finished with Jonah. We are all a work in progress. Even so, we have a part in God’s program. God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan, His mission to the world!

II. Believers should Hear and Obey the Word of God (3a). The contrast with chapter one is noteworthy. There God said “Arise and go…” And Jonah arose… but then “…fled from the presence of the Lord!” He knew what God said, but he chose to do the exact opposite. His heart was not right with the Lord. But God wasn’t about to let him go. Only after Jonah was about to lose consciousness and drown, did he pray to the Lord, he remembered the LORD in His temple, and his heart turned toward home. That was all it took, a tiny mustard seed of faith, a hint of repentance, and God heard him and rescued him. Now, the same call to “go” is repeated. As we taught this lesson to the Sparks, the big idea was, “a new chance to obey comes every day!” We can’t change the past, but we can decide today to obey, to choose to do God’s will. What will Jonah do this time? We read in v.3, “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD.” 

       Again, the Word of the LORD comes to Jonah, Arise and go! This time, Jonah arose and went!  In this call, in chapter 3, Jonah is told to preach “…the message I tell you…” There is a slight softening in the language. Rather than the evil of Niniveh, the focus is more on Jonah, and he is more closely constrained in terms of the message he is to proclaim.  He is to faithfully bring the Word God gives him in Nineveh, literally, “preach the preaching I tell you.”

       This simple statement summarizes what the response of believers should be to God’s Word. Listen to God, and do what He says! Jesus said in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me…” That is the mark of genuine faith. Hearing and believing the Word. We believe God. And we do what He says. All the time, right? Yeah, right… just like Jonah! We struggle, resist, question, and sometimes rebel. But God won’t just let us go on in our rebellion. He chastens every child that He receives. Because He loves us, God will do what He needs to, even send a storm to get out attention, or a giant fish to get us where we need to be!  That’s the BIG Idea: God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

III. God’s plan is to use us to warn the lost (3b-4). We read in vv. 3-4 Jonah’s mission,

…Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.  ⁴ Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

These people were pagan, depraved idolaters, enemies of Israel. In chapter 1 the language implies that their sin was a “stench” in the nostrils of God. That may have been part of the reason Jonah ran away in the first place. But Jonah needed to understand, and so do we, that all sin is an abomination to God. He is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. It is not only the sin of people worse than me, my sin is an offense to God.

       Let’s look for a minute at the message Jonah preached. “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Notice this: the word translated “overthrow” can have the meaning, “destroy,” as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 19:25, “And He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities…” That is surely the meaning that Jonah intended as he preached to the Ninevites. It can also mean “turn” as in transform, as in Jeremiah 31:13, “…for I will turn their mourning to joy…” Could it be that God had Jonah use this word, perhaps intending more than Jonah himself understood? It seems that is the way it turns out! Nineveh is indeed overturned, but not in the way we, or Jonah, might have expected! It is transformed, as the people believe the word that Jonah preached, and receive it as the Word of God. They repent, and cry out for mercy. Think about it, why did God give Nineveh 40 days?  There was time to reflect, time for all to hear, time to believe and to repent. That doesn’t appear to have been Jonah’s motivation however.

       First of all, if indeed Jonah intended “overturn” to mean “destroy” he was saying, “Judgement is coming!” Period. Just five words in the Hebrew text. Any call to repent, or to call on God for mercy, is at best implied by the prophet’s warning. I don’t think we should conclude that is all that Jonah said, the sermons in the Bible are normally summaries that capture the gist of a message given on a particular occasion. Even the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Upper Room Discourse (John 14-16) would take only 15-20 minutes to read aloud. It is certain that Jesus taught for much longer periods of time. These only present a part of what was said. The same is probably true of Jonah’s message. But this was the bottom line: “You’ve got 40 days, and you are going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah!” But they received Jonah’s message as the Word of God, and they were broken by it, they mourned, and looked to God for mercy.

       Jonah, didn’t seem to be interested in mercy for the Ninevites. In fact, notice that we are told that the city was “a three-day journey” (v.3). Yet Jonah only went “a day’s journey” and preached (v.4), and the people, from the least to the greatest, believed God! How did that happen? He didn’t have Facebook or Instagram to help! It seems the Word spread throughout the city, all the way to the king, one person hearing and believing, and immediately passing this earth-shaking news onto everyone they knew (their oikos and beyond). Can we learn something from the response of the Ninevites? If we believe this Word is really true, that humans are facing a lost eternity, God’s wrath against sin, should we not warn them? But you might think, “They won’t believe me!” Many won’t. But some, by God’s grace, will have their hearts opened and believe. Think of a day 800 years or so after the time of Jonah, during the Jewish feast of Pentecost. Peter was preaching about Jesus the Messiah. Near the conclusion he said in Acts 2:36-38,

³⁶ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."  ³⁷ Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"  ³⁸ And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you…”

Three thousand believed that day and were converted to faith in Christ! Peter didn’t do that, God did! Likewise, Jonah brought God’s Word, and thousands of Ninevites, from the least to the greatest, heard and believed the Word of God, as their hearts were opened. By the way, do you see the contrast between the Ninevites and Jonah himself from chapter 1? Jonah had heard the word of the Lord, understood it, but he chose to disobey, and even tried to get as far from God as he could! It took a storm, nearly drowning, and 3 days in the fish for Jonah’s heart to soften! The pagan sailors on the ship heard about Jonah’s God, saw his power and believed. The Ninevites heard a message of judgment, and repented, looking to God for mercy! All the pagans, the captain, the sailors, the Ninevites, were all more responsive to God than Jonah was at the beginning. But God still had a plan for Jonah, for his ministry, and for his heart. God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

IV. Be Encouraged, God’s Word will accomplish the purpose for which it is sent (5)!

⁵ And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

       This is not what we might have expected, considering the Ninevites reputation for idolatry, violence and debauchery!  But God’s Word is powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. His Word will not return void, but will accomplish His purpose. They “believed God.” The Apostle Paul said “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Do you know people who are always ready to share their faith, either through testimony, or handing out a gospel-tract or an invitation card, seizing every opportunity to point people to Jesus? We won’t all be evangelists like that, but we can all be witnesses! Will we pray that God would make us more sensitive to the opportunities around us to hold forth the Word of Life? Many, perhaps most, will reject it. But the result is up to God, not us. And the Good News is some will believe. We are called to be faithful, urging people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

What is God saying to me in this passage? We see that God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan! He didn’t give up on reaching the Ninevites. And he didn’t give up on convicting Jonah, exposing his heart, and leading Him deeper in faith.

What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Could it be that you have something in your past that you still struggle with? Something the enemy would bring to mind to taunt you, “How could God love someone like you? How could He forgive you? How could He use you?” Remember that Jesus paid it all, it is finished… Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. Jesus bore our sins in His body on the tree, and as He died He said, tetelestai - “Paid in full.”

       In Christ alone my hope is found! That is our testimony, and that is the Good News: More than good news, as the song says, it’s “The Best News Ever!” Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners! To God be the glory. God used Jonah to bring His word to the Ninevites. He later used 12 men to turn the world upside down. As we walk with Him in faith, we can reach this neighborhood, and beyond with the Gospel!  No matter our yesterday, we can be His witnesses today. AMEN.