Jonah: A Great City Needs a Great Salvation | Guest Speaker: Bill Fullilove

All right.

Well, last week we looked at Jonah 1 and 2.

The story of a prophet who didn't want to do his job.

God said, Go to Nineveh, the we should just call out wicked and awful city that was the chief city of Israel's enemies, and pronounce a judgment upon it because of how bad and sinful it is.

But Jonah didn't want to go.

And so last week we asked the question why?

Why is it that Jonah doesn't want to go and say, you guys are awful and God's going to judge you for it?

And somewhat surprisingly, if you haven't looked closely at the book of Jonah before, the answer is Jonah didn't want to go because he knew God's heart.

And he knew that in fact God was giving this prophecy that sounded like judgment and death precisely because God wanted those people to turn.

He wanted them to repent, to admit that they'd been doing wrong so that he could have mercy on them.

So that he could not punish them.

And to put it simply, Jonah didn't want that.

Jonah didn't want God to have mercy on people like that.

Because their sins were just a little too big, and we might add, a little too personal.

And it's probably too much to try to reduce Jonah to a single motivation.

There was probably some fear, there was probably some arrogance, there was certainly a lot of anger, and the whole stew of it had stewed down just into an utter hate.

God might want to have mercy on these people, but Jonah says, I want no part of that.

So Jonah decides to run away from God.

This plan goes, as if you were here last week, rather poorly.

And before long, Jonah is drowning in the ocean, saved only from certain death, because God sends a big fish to swallow him whole.

And in the fish, having, we might also add, already been saved, having been saved, having done nothing to earn it, he was just drowning.

In the fish, Jonah himself realizes he needs to repent.

So picking up where we were last week, if you're looking at Jonah 2, in verse 4, Jonah said, I've been banished from your sight, but I will look again towards your holy temple.

In verse 7, he prays.

In verse 9, he finally says, What I have vowed, I will make good.

Well, what has he vowed?

He's a prophet.

He has vowed to say exactly what God wants him to say.

And so finally, when Jonah gets to that point, verse 10 says, God told the fish, and it spat him up onto dry land.

At which point you can imagine not just Jonah, but the fish both say, Man, I'm glad that's over.

You know, bitter prophet tastes terrible.

So now, chapter 3, God says, Let's try it again, Jonah.

Let's do this a second time.

So we're going to pick up reading from the word in chapter 3 of the book of Jonah.

This is on an insert in your bulletin, by the way.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.

Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.

Now Nineveh was a very large city.

It took three days to go through it.

Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming, Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.

And the Ninevehes believed God.

A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sacloth.

When Jonah's warning 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.

This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh.

By the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let people or animals, herds or flocks taste anything.

Do not let them eat or drink.

But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth.

Let everyone call urgently on God.

Let them give up their evil ways and violence.

Who knows?

God may yet relent, and with compassion turn from his fierce anger, so that we will not perish.

And when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.

He prayed to the Lord, Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?

That is why I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.

I knew that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it's better for me to die than to live.

But the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry?

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city.

There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade, and waited to see what would happen to the city.

Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head, to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant.

But at dawn the next day God provided a worm which chewed the plant, so it withered.

When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.

He wanted to die and said, It would be better for me to die than to live.

But God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

It is, he said, and I'm so angry I wish I were dead.

But the Lord said, You've been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow.

It sprang up overnight and it died overnight.

Should I not be concerned for this great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals.

This is God's word to us this morning.

Will you pray with me?

God, we come to this text, trusting that we are not coming under our own power or ability, but praying that we would come under the authority and teaching of the Holy Spirit, that you would show us, Lord, not about Jonah, but that you would show us about ourselves.

That in learning about Him, we would learn about ourselves and about you, so that we'd love you more deeply, we'd follow you more dearly.

If you do that, Lord, we promise you all the glory will be to you, not to us.

In Jesus' name we pray it.

Amen.

So if you tried the challenge I left you with last week, you probably realized how difficult it is.

You know, we ended last week with a question who are you supposed to forgive this week?

What would it look like to do that?

And if you actually purposed to do that, it probably didn't actually go that well.

Now, it usually starts off okay with some good intentions, a real honest I want to forgive.

But then the anger, the bitterness, the hurt, the wound, the frustration all just well back up.

You know, if we actually purpose to forgive someone else, we very quickly realize that it's not a binary thing.

It's not a one or a zero.

You forgave or you didn't.

We realize it's very much an analog thing, a repeated process again and again and again.

Because it's difficult.

You know, we can't just forgive and forget.

Now, don't get me wrong, we should.

But in real life, in real practice, it just doesn't happen that way.

Now, last week I made the argument that at the root of our difficulty of forgiving is the fact that we don't really appreciate the richness of the forgiveness we've been given in Jesus.

That if we really see the depth of grace in the gospel, we will forgive.

And so, in a sense, if we have trouble forgiving, it's a diagnostic.

It says, wow, if I can't forgive others what they've done to me, am I really appreciating the depth of what Jesus has forgiven me?

Now I'm not questioning are you a Christian or not?

I'm just pointing out that if it's difficult to forgive, we need the gospel to press down deeper into our lives.

It would be easy to misunderstand something from that and think that forgiveness is one and done.

I get a good look at Jesus, I realize what he's done, and so I go over here and I forgive him for what he did to me.

And it's all.

But in real life, forgiveness is much more of a repeated journey that's difficult.

And here's the graciousness of God.

He knows it's difficult.

I mean, after all, he gave his son for it, remember?

And so the great news is, and this is what Jonah 3 and 4 teach us, that to help us in forgiving others, God gives us reminders of his forgiveness to us.

That to help us in forgiving others, God gives us reminders of how he's forgiven us.

And we'll look at it under three categories: one truth, one problem, and one answer.

The truth that God loves to forgive.

The problem that we really don't.

And third, God's answer for that, that he gives us reminders to help us.

So here's the truth.

This is the spiritual truth of the passage.

God loves to forgive.

Note that it begins, chapter 3, with a parallel call to what happened.

In chapter 1, God said, Go to Nineveh and preach against it, because its sins come up before me.

Now, in chapter 3, God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh.

And the text goes out of its way to make them parallel.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

We're going to try this again, Jonah.

And Jonah goes, verse 4, he gets there.

It's a big city.

It takes three days to walk through the whole city, proclaiming his message.

And his message is what?

Forty days and Nineveh's toast.

Forty days, and you're going to get conquered and overthrown.

This is the message of judgment in chapter 1 that God wanted Jonah to go give.

But then look how the Ninevites respond.

Look in verse 5.

To a person, from least to greatest, they put on sackcloth, which is a really itchy, uncomfortable type of clothing to wear.

They fast.

These are the things you do when you're in mourning.

When you're regretting and wishing somebody hadn't died.

They are mourning their own sin.

They are recognizing how bad, how right Jonah is.

When it gets to the king, he himself does the same thing and then gets down off his throne and sits in the dust.

This is repentance.

And here's the point.

What they are doing is exactly what God wants to happen when he gives a prophecy of judgment.

They are responding and saying, God, you're right.

So God is calling them out for their sin.

He's not dismissing it, he's not ignoring it.

He's not acting like it's not that bad.

God is a God who calls wrong wrong, and by the way, you want that kind of a God.

And in response to him calling the wrong wrong, they repent.

They say, God, you're right.

We are sinning.

We are sinful.

We do deserve punishment.

Now, if you are here either as not a Christian or not terribly associated with Christianity, you may have this reaction going on.

There you go again.

Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin.

It's all I hear out of the talking preachers.

It's all I hear on the radio.

It's all I can't you Christians just get over the sin thing?

I mean, would you consider looking on the positive side for once in life?

But here's the thing.

To look at the negative, if it's true, isn't a problem.

It's called realism.

And there's no moody more realistic than the authentic Christian who says, you know what, God, you're right.

I am not what I'm supposed to be.

There's all sorts of stuff I should do that I don't do.

There's all sorts of stuff I do that I shouldn't do.

You know, for some of us it's really bald and right on the surface in behavior.

For others of us, it's really subtle and worked in the way we manipulate people.

For some of us, it's in our head, it's mental.

For others of it, it's action.

But when it really comes down to it, yeah, I'm a mess.

And sin, the Bible teaches us, deserves death.

What's going to happen to Nineveh if 40 days from now it gets conquered by another army?

They're going to die.

And sin always brings death.

Sometimes in this life, always in the life to come.

The Ninevites respond by saying, God, you're right.

Forgive me.

The question is, will you?

Because the Bible says you should never decouple this message of possible judgment from the grace that's there in the gospel.

God doesn't yell about our sin.

He doesn't call out about what would happen, except because he wants us to do exactly what the king of Nineveh and all the people did.

Come back and say, I'm sorry, Lord, I repent.

You're right.

Save me.

Because this is the truth of this passage.

God loves to forgive sinners.

But then that gets to the problem.

This is point two.

We're not so sure we do.

We made the point last week, and it still holds true that Jonah is parallel to us.

When we're studying about Jonah, we can track all of our own same emotions as we try to forgive people through it.

And that's still true in chapter three.

Jonah is deeply upset that God is this way.

Now recognize he's got his theology completely correct.

Last week we looked at chapter 1 and he said, Who is God?

God's the one who made heaven and earth, the sun, the sky, the sea, everything in them.

Good Orthodox theology.

Look what he says today, chapter 4, verse 2.

He says, I knew that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sin and calamity.

That is good Orthodox theology.

In fact, it was one of the basic confessions of Judaism at Jonah's day.

That was almost like their apostles' creed.

Jonah knows the right stuff about God.

He even says the right stuff about God.

But what happens in chapter 3, verse 10 when he actually has to live it?

When he actually sees God forgive people like that who've done that to him.

Well, then suddenly, this is a lot harder than you think.

You know, starting in chapter, well, let me read 3.10.

In response to the message, and then their repentance, when God saw what they did and how they turned away from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he'd threatened.

So, chapter 4, verse 1, Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.

What's going on here?

Well, look at the context, even of two.

That Orthodox confession of Judaism is surrounded by Jonah beginning what can only be described as an adult temper tantrum.

He prayed to the Lord, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home?

This is why I disobeyed you, because I knew that you loved people.

I don't want that.

Verse 3, what does he do?

He says, God, I would rather be dead than have these people receive mercy.

By the way, this is the second time Jonah tried that trick.

Chapter 1, he said, throw me in the ocean and kill me.

I'd rather have that happen than actually go to Nineveh and give them mercy.

Now he says, okay, if the ocean didn't work, well you just kill me yourself.

I would rather die than see those sinners not get judged the way I think they should.

God says, Jonah, do you really have a right to be angry about this?

And Jonah doesn't even answer God.

He just turns around, stomps up to a ridge that overlooks the city, and plunks down and sits there to watch and listen and see if maybe God will judge him anyway.

And it's almost like the ultimate disrespect, right?

You're arguing with your kid or your spouse, and they don't even answer you.

They just turn around and walk off.

How do you react?

This is what Jonah's doing to God.

And it's interesting, yet again, the pagans show a lot more spiritual sensitivity in this text than Jonah.

In chapter one, the sailors were the ones who actually prayed to the Lord, not the prophet of God.

Now, in chapters three and four, the pagans, the ones who don't even really know Yahweh, repent.

But Jonah won't even talk to God.

He just storms off in a hissy fit.

What's going on here?

You know, we can laugh at him until we look in the mirror.

Chapter 2, in the belly of the fish, Jonah repented.

He said, Okay, Lord, I get it.

I'm going to do it your way, and I'm going to go and I'm going to give mercy.

But then he had to go do it.

And it's roughly 500 miles from Israel to Nineveh.

Even if you've got a horse or a donkey, that's a long trip.

And he has 500 miles to re-remember all the awful things the Ninevites have done.

To drag back up the memories, to get bitter again.

To nurse the wound.

And by the time he gets there, he's willing to say the words, but he's no longer willing to say them with God's heart.

He's happy to say 40 days and you're dead.

But he doesn't say it for God's reason.

In fact, he's very clear.

God, I want you to smite them.

The prophet wants blood.

What's going on?

Forgiveness doesn't hold very easy.

Forgiveness doesn't stick.

It's a lot easier to nurse a grudge and bitterness than it is to nurse grace and forgiveness.

And this is us, right?

So here's the best analogy for forgiveness I can give you in my life.

For six months, there was a pothole at the entrance to our subdivision.

And for six straight months, I hit that pothole every single day.

It didn't matter that I knew it was there.

It didn't matter that I was getting ready for it.

I would get in the car and I'd think, okay, remember the pothole's there.

And then I'd start driving.

It's only a half mile from house to entrance.

By the time I got to the half mile, I'm going along, I'm thinking about work, whatever.

Did it again.

Right?

No matter how much we purpose to forgive, when you get right back into life, suddenly the bitterness just hits you again.

Because when it really comes down to it, forgiveness isn't a once-and-done thing.

It's a long, slow, painful process every step of the way.

This is us with forgiveness.

There's just something in us that just doesn't like to.

That just doesn't want to.

And here's the great thing God knows how hard this is to forgive him, her, them.

Because remember, he gave his son to do it.

And so, and this is point three, God gives us reminders to help us in our forgiveness.

Look back at our prophet sitting up on that ridge, looking over Nineveh, praying that it's going to get destroyed.

By the way, he's not very smart.

He just stomped off into a high ridge in the ancient Near Eastern sun with absolutely no shelter to sit there in a desert with no water.

What do you think is going to happen to him if he doesn't come down from there?

He's going to die.

Right?

So this is the second time God's going to save silly Jonah's life.

Last time he saved him from water, now he's going to save him from the sun.

And sitting up there, God is not content just to save this prophet's life.

He is determined to save his soul.

So he creates a little object lesson.

Jonah's having his pity party saying, God, won't you waste them?

It's getting hot.

A shelter of sticks or rocks doesn't do a whole lot.

It becomes an oven.

So God provides a green plant that grows up, shades him.

This is probably the difference between life and death.

And in verse 6, Jonah loves that plant.

I love my plant.

And this is the severe part of the mercy.

The next day, what does God do?

He sends a worm to kill the plant, sends a scorching wind to blow in out of the desert, and has the sun beating down on Jonah's head.

And Jonah's starting to faint and starting to go out.

And what does Jonah say?

He repeats the same death wish.

You can't miss the parallel because the text won't let you.

I wish I were dead because you took away this plant.

Just like he wished he was dead because you took away the judgment on the Ninevites.

Jonah is reacting exactly the same way to the death of this plant as he was to the non-death of hundreds of thousands of people.

And at which point God springs the trap and says, Jonah, hold on.

You had a one-night stand with this plant, and you're telling me you love it more than I should love a city?

Men, women, children, even animals?

What is the plant?

The plant is an object lesson.

It's an attempt by God to break through the prophet's calloused heart.

Because Jonah's just angry.

Angry at everybody else.

Here's the point.

Well, let me get it this way.

Tim Keller used this as an example, and it fits really well here.

When somebody sins against one of us, if I sin against you, if you sin against me, a debt is created.

And that debt is, in a sense, objectively there.

And there are really only two options to deal with that debt.

Option number one is you can make the person you sinned against you pay down the debt.

And we're endlessly creative about doing this.

You can make them come back and grovel to you.

You can eviscerate them in public.

You can eviscerate them person by person as you work through your friends.

Here's my favorite.

You can get really cold and withdrawn, and then when somebody asks you what's wrong, you say, oh nothing, and you lie.

Poor Jill has put up with this more times than I can count, and usually not even because she sinned, usually because I did.

I'm sorry, Ann.

You can find a way to make the other person pay down the debt.

Or, option two, you can do the much more difficult thing, which is to forgive.

But if you forgive, don't think for a minute that the debt magically vanishes.

In a very real sense, when we set out to forgive, we set out to pay down the debt ourselves.

And we really pay it out even out of our own flesh, as time and time again, when the bitterness rises back up, we say, no, I am going to tear that out of myself.

Because the debt is just objectively there.

And this is what God has done for you and for me in Jesus Christ.

He paid down the debt himself.

He didn't ignore the sin.

He didn't just pretend it's not there.

He made it go away by paying it out of his own flesh.

And this is the great news.

You sit in a better spot than the king of Nineveh.

Nineveh had to say, who knows?

We don't really know this God.

Maybe he'll forgive.

Let's take a shot at it.

In Jesus Christ, you know what happens when you come back to God and say, You're right, God.

There are levels of sin in me that I haven't even bothered to plumb.

You know me.

You know me better than I know me.

The gospel says that in Jesus Christ, God paid down the debt himself for you and for me.

Psalm 103, verse 12.

Psalms 103:12

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.

Second Corinthians 5 21.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And this is the difference, by the way.

When we forgive, it's incomplete and repeated because we're frail.

And we don't really do it that well.

And so we have to come back and fight it again and again and again and again.

When God forgives, it is once and for all.

Because he's God.

And he pays the sin himself and he wipes it clean.

And he looks at you and he says, That's my boy.

That's my girl.

I love him.

We can have more hope than the Ninevehites did because of Jesus.

We don't have to say who knows.

One final thought.

This is interesting, isn't it?

The book doesn't tell us what Jonah did.

I mean, don't you want to know?

Did he come down?

Did he repent?

Did he stay up there and die?

Did he go down and still but just walk off somewhere?

We don't know.

Why?

Because maybe that's not the point.

Throughout this book, this prophet has been out of sync with the Lord who he serves.

He's been angry, seething.

Angry at the Ninevites, angry at them getting mercy, angry at losing the vine, angry at God.

Angry anytime people don't get what they deserve.

In a way that's scary, reminiscent of the way a lot of Christians relate to our society.

And you know, we've been tracking all the way through the book and saying, wow, we are Jonah.

Jonah is us.

At least we need to ask, are we still?

Does the shoe still fit at the end of the book?

And somehow, in the midst of Jonah's anger at everybody else's sin, he has just managed to miss his own sin.

To miss his own self-righteousness, his own arrogance, his own hatred.

Dressed up in religious language, sure.

And isn't it remarkable how patient and loving and kind God is with this petulant prophet?

That ought to give us some great hope.

Because God does know this is hard, and he knows we're human, and he knows we're frail, and he knows how hard it is to forgive.

So he gives us these reminders.

For Jonah, it was the object lesson of a plant.

One of them, there are many, but one of them is what we're going to come to do in just a moment to share communion.

The reminder of the grace that God has given us in Christ.

Because ultimately that's not the question.

The book's not asking, did Jonah repent?

The book's asking, will we?

So with that in mind, let's pray.

God, our Father, we pray that we would learn something from this petulant prophet.

That we would have your heart to each person that we deal with each day.

That we would rejoice in grace given and the grace we have received in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That you would push that so into our hearts that it actually does flow out of how we forgive other people.

Would you do that for us, Lord?

We pray it in Jesus' wonderful name.

Amen.