God's Mercy & Redemption

Welcome

We have been working our way through a sermon series called “Jonah & The Mercy of God” in which we are walking through the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament.

If you’ve been here, you’ll remember that God called Jonah to travel to Nineveh to preach against them because they were evil. Instead of obeying God’s will, Jonah ran the opposite direction and boarded a boat for a faraway place. On the journey, the Lord sent a great wind to bring a storm and the pagans who were onboard prayed to God and finally decided to toss Jonah overboard.

You might remember that God provided for Jonah in an unusual way. God provided a great fish to scoop Jonah up and carry him away, holding him for transport for three days and three nights...

Jonah 2:10 CSB

10 Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Jonah 3 CSB

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.” 3 Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command. Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk. 4 Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!” 5 Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least. 6 When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he issued a decree in Nineveh: By order of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. 8 Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish. 10 God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.

[pray]

I. God Saves Jonah

We talked last week about the fact the Jonah deserved death, but he found deliverance at the hand of God, through the action of the great fish.

We’ll see in today’s text that the people of Nineveh will find God’s deliverance as well.

And we, through our salvation in Jesus Christ have access to the same deliverance.

2 Corinthians 1:9–10 CSB

9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again

Repentance - A change of mind and behavior from negative to positive.

I think that one thing we can see in scripture is that sometimes we choose repentance and sometimes God uses circumstances to lead us to repentance. I know that many of us here today have experienced the hand of God in our lives as he leads us toward repentance. In our series we have talked about the word of the Lord coming to Jonah.

The word repentance is only used explicitly in scripture a few times. The Lord spoke to Solomon about repentance when he showed him the place that he wanted his people to make sacrifices for the purpose of atoning for their sins...

2 Chronicles 7:12–14 CSB

12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple of sacrifice. 13 If I shut the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on my people, 14 and my people, who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.

That Hebrew word for “turn” is שׁוּב shub, the sense of the word is “to turn away from sin” and “return to God”. But look at that process. God was instructing his people, who were experiencing some negative consequence (no rain, plague, or pestilence) to:

Remember who they are and to whom they belong.

Humble themselves. — This is a step of humble reflection and examination of the motives of the heart.

Pray and seek the face of the Lord. — Seeking the face of God is a way of saying that we need to enter into the presence of the Lord. As we can see in James 4:8 we enter into his presence when we draw near to him: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8).

Turn from their evil ways. — This is the transformational step of leaving our sinful ways behind and choosing to act in a different way that is pleasing and honoring to God.

This is the process of repentance. And we can also see when we look back to 2 Chronicles that there is a promise attached.

2 Chronicles 7:14 CSB

14 and my people, who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.

God tells us that he will:

Hear from heaven

Forgive sin and

Bring healing

While this was a promise that God was making to Solomon for his people the Israelites, we have much the same kind of promise as believers in Jesus Christ. When Paul tells the Roman Christians about God’s judgment, he reminds them of God’s kindness saying that it “is intended to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4)

The Greek word there is μετάνοια metanoia. Which carries the sense of a change in our motivations that abandons our former ways of thinking and results in new behavior, with a sense of regret over our formerly held mindsets and behaviors.

It is interesting to note here that God can use positive methods or negative methods to lead us to repentance.

We were talking with Alex Sanchez from the Baptist Student Ministry at our local UTRGV campus. As she was telling us about her Global Engage program that serves international students, she told us that she sometimes would ask international students who had come to know Christ how they came to faith. She said that often times their response began something like, “Someone invited me to have dinner at their home.”

Many people can come to faith in Christ simply through an act of kindness. You never know when you are encountering people on your path of daily life if it will lead to a conversation of faith. This would be an example of God’s kindness, working through his people to reach others.

On the other hand, I think that some of us did not respond to God’s kindness, but God’s more punitive means of getting our attention. I call this method the “Holy 2X4” because some of us need a literal whack upside the head or in the seat of our britches for God to get our attention.

Some people have come to God after having experienced the negative effects of an abusive lifestyle, addiction to drugs, a negative relationship or family problem. God can use these things to get our attention and bring us to that point of repentance (metanoia) that is the change in our motivations.

That is what Jonah was experiencing in our text for today.

In review, he had experienced the word of the Lord, he had been told by God to go to Nineveh and proclaim the Lord’s judgment over them. He refused and went the opposite direction. After a storm of judgment came to sink his boat and Jonah being thrown overboard and swallowed by a big fish, he spent three days and nights in the belly of the fish.

Jonah 2:10 CSB

10 Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

This might be an extreme example of God’s Holy 2X4, but it was what God used to get Jonah’s attention and draw him back to the calling that God had given him.

After three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, Jonah was deposited on the shore

II. God Redeems Jonah & Restores His Call

The text doesn’t waste any time continuing with the narrative.

Jonah 3:1–3 CSB

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.” 3 Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command. Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk.

God gave Jonah an imperative command. He said “Get up! Go...”

This is exactly the same command that God gave Jonah the first time. I have to ask myself “What has changed?” I think it is safe to say that Jonah has changed. There’s nothing like three days and nights in the belly of a great fish to change your mind. Three days and nights under the hand of the great Judge, Father God, could be enough to change many of us from our evil ways of thinking and being.

Verse 3 says that Jonah set out to take on the task that God had given him. We do not get any insight into Jonah’s demeanor, only that he had given up his rebellion and was now taking action rather than avoiding it.

There are repeated references to Jonah being “an extremely great city.” Some have interpreted this to mean that the city was important to God, who had taken a great interest in the outcome of this chance at redemption.

Verse 3 also says that the city was a three-day walk or journey, which we take to mean that it was large enough that it would take Jonah some time to deliver God’s message.

III. Nineveh Believes

Jonah set out to begin delivering God’s message.

Jonah 3:4 CSB

4 Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!”

We gre aiven no other dialogue or commentary other than the simple message that Nineveh would be demolished in forty days. The Christian Standard uses the word “demolished.” The Hebrew word is actually הָפַךְ haphak, which could mean “demolished” or “destroyed” but could also mean “overthrown” or “turned around.”

Whatever fate they were facing, it was made very clear to the people of Nineveh that they had gained the attention of the God of Israel and something had to change or they would experience his judgment.

However, these horrible, awful, and evil people were being offered a chance at God’s mercy.

The mercy of God describes his focused disposition of compassionate forgiveness toward his people, especially in light of their distressful and dire circumstances.

[J. Owen Carroll, “God’s Mercy,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).]

Here’s the thing about mercy. Even when it is compassionate and forgiving, mercy has its limits. Mercy is a limited time offer. Time was ticking—forty days—tik, tik, tik, accept the offer, make the necessary change, or the Ninevites would experience the consequence of judgment.

Have you ever been in a similar situation with God? Are you in that situation today?

Maybe you have been dodging God’s call. What day are you on? How many days do you have left before God brings destruction?

Has God been calling you to have a spiritual conversation with your neighbor?

Has God called you to do something that you have been resisting?

Maybe it’s that God is calling you to salvation and you have refused to make a decision to believe. I don’t know what God’s call is for you.

IV. Nineveh’s King Repents

When the people of Nineveh were confronted with the word of the Lord, they did something most surprising. They believed! They didn’t believe Jonah. They believed God!

Jonah 3:5 CSB

5 Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.

This reminds me so much of the story of Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho, who believed in the God of Israel under the most unsuspecting circumstances. Rahab had a surprising faith and the people of Nineveh had the very same surprising faith.

This to me is like the social media posts that we see sometimes that the shock rocker Alice Cooper from the 60’s and 70’s has returned to his faith in God. Nobody back in his heyday would have ever expected to learn that Alice Cooper is a committed servant of the Lord who is proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior. However, we who believe know that God can bring the hardest sinner from the farthest reaches of their sin to a place of faith in him.

Nobody in Jonah’s day would ever have expected Nineveh to believe in God and change their ways. The news even reached the king of Nineveh...

Jonah 3:6–9 CSB

6 When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he issued a decree in Nineveh: By order of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. 8 Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.

These people repented. They changed who they were and performed an about face—180-degree turnaround.

This was not only the people of Nineveh, but the king. He himself mourned the decisions that he had made and what his nation had become. He called his entire nation into mourning and issued a decree that they would enter into a fast and pray to God begging for forgiveness.

It is clear here that they were not doing this with a promise that they would avoid God’s punishment, but they hoped that God might relent and spare them from the punishment that they had deserved.

How different a response we can see here that the people of Nineveh had from Jonah’s response to God.

V. Nineveh Experiences God’s Redemption

Nineveh experienced something miraculous for their repentance...

Jonah 3:10 CSB

10 God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.

What Nineveh experienced was God’s redemption. We’ve talked about redemption before.

Redemption: The act of buying back or rescuing something or someone that was lost, enslaved, or in a state of bondage.

Redemption is something that we also experience when we choose to believe in Jesus Christ and take him as our savior...

Colossians 1:13–14 CSB

13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

There’s that idea of rescue and forgiveness. This is a powerful concept. Some people hear this and think, “Why do I need redeeming? I’m okay aren’t I?”

What some people don’t understand about religion is that Christianity is different from religion. Many of the world religions are all about what you can do to earn your way into heaven (or some other highly regarded after-life location).

Christianity is not really about anything that we can do to fix ourselves.

In fact the Bible says that no man can earn his way into heaven.

Even some Christians I know concentrate way too hard on what people need to change about themselves to earn God’s favor (or perhaps it’s their favor that people need to be earning).

I’ve stood in the courtyard outside the Basilica de Santa Maria de Guadalupe and watched people bloody their knees crawling for miles on a pilgrimage as they try to earn Mary’s favor in the healing of some sick relative or some sorely needed change in their lives.

I saw that Pope Frances recently authorized the plenary indulgence, a grace granted to remove the temporal punishment due to some sin in the lives of the Catholic believer.

These are not biblical practices. In fact they are false theology.

Jesus taught us...

John 14:6 CSB

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

We cannot buy our way out of sin. But we can be forgiven.

Even though we are all sinful and separated from God, through Christ we can experience forgiveness and salvation once and for all.

See, while we are still capable of sin, we are forgiven. The work that Christ completed on the cross bought our redemption once and for all.

Galatians 4:4–7 CSB

4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.

Conclusion

Have you chosen to follow Christ? Have you made a decision to believe in him?

If you are here today and you know that you need Christ, I want to invite you to respond to this invitation to salvation.