Second Time’s A Charm

Introduction

Sometimes a storm is a reset. An opportunity to look at the commandments of God through a fresh point of view. Truth be told that is the essence of grace. Grace suggest that sometimes we need a second chance. A second chance is only as powerful as you use the lessons you learned the first time around. When I was younger we spent a lot of summers at the local recreation center. Typically how basketball worked is you had your five and you would play a game. If the gym wasn’t packed and no one else was waiting to play you would hear a phrase, “run it back”. Run it back typically meant that we would play again in hopes that we could avenge ourselves by winning! The rules were the same, the players were the same, the court was the same, the basket was the same. The only difference this time is we had a different approach because we had already played against this opponent already.

Jonah gets a chance to run it back. God had already given him the instructions to go to Nineveh, except the first time he decided to do something different from what God had asked him to do. Many of us find ourselves at the same shore as Jonah. We’ve run from God’s assignment, went through the storm, swallowed by the fish of life, just to repent and commit to the initial assignment. When you’ve experienced the grace of a second chance you approach the assignment differently.

Today is your second chance, we are no longer running, we are embracing the assignment and doing exactly what God has asked us to do!

Experience Doesn’t Change the Command

Jonah 3:1–2 “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.””

One of the first things that we have to acknowledge is the covenantal aspect of commands. It’s going to take some humility to wrap our mind around the fact that God’s assignments are bigger than what we want and do not want to do. This proclamation was a word from God and inspired by God. The initial response was disobedience, remorse, repentance, mourning and eventually deliverance. At some point we ought to get tired of going through that same cycle.

Understand that the expectation and the command is not going to change. I believe it was Nene Leakes that once said, “I said what I said”. The word doesn’t change, it’s our response that must change for deliverance. What we fail to realize is when we disobey we could be getting in the way of the deliverance of other people. Just like your disobedience can cause storms in other people’s life, your disobedience can also delay the deliverance of people that God is using you to help.

Here’s the beautiful part about the grace of God, Jonah obeyed and went, what happened no longer mattered what mattered is that Jonah obeyed. Some of us won’t move in the direction that God is asking us to move in because we are stifled by our past. The only one tripping about your past is you. The command is identical to what we read in Jonah 1:2 ““Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”” Jonah arose and went, according to the word of Yahweh. You don’t need all the details, you just need to arise and go.

We Don’t Get to Chose Who God Decides to Deliver

Furthermore, we can’t let our past get in the way of the assignment, we also do let to chose who we minister to. God said, “go to Nineveh, that great city”. If we are going to change our community we are going to have to go through it to change it. We have to go through the impoverished neighborhoods. We have to go through the rich neighborhoods. We have to go through prisons as well as the C-Suites. The power of the word of God has the power to change any community that God’s word comes in contact with.

Jonah 3:3–4 “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!””

They are given 40 days, either within 40 days you will change or in 40 days you will be destroyed. Overthrown in this text doesn’t just mean to fall under the subjection of another ruler it means to be destroyed! In biblical text 40 is often used for the purification.

Genesis 7:4 “For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.””

Exodus 16:34–35 “As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. And the children of Israel ate manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.”

Deuteronomy 29:5 “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn out on your feet.”

Exodus 34:28–29 “So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. Now it was so, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the Testimony were in Moses’ hand when he came down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him.”

3 Days Can Change the Community

It is amazing what can happen with the power of God in three days. God states that Nineveh is a great city. It was three days that changed the city of Nineveh at the expense of the people responding to the word of Yahweh. See if the children of God don’t proclaim the word of God we give the people nothing to respond to. It’s amazing what God can do in three days, in three days it was a man by the name of Jesus that would conquer death and change the world forever. Even when people denied Him and betrayed Him, Jesus stayed the course because the assignment was world changing.

Side-note - Some of us are looking for some complex, deep word from God, I need you to see the power of God is in simplicity. An 8 word sermon in English, and 5 words in Hebrew would change the dynamic of an entire city!

Let’s think through this for a second, we get so caught up with who the word is reaching when in all actuality it’s just our job to be the light and share the word of God eventually it’s going to reach who it’s going to reach.

Jonah 3:5–6 “So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.”

Leveling the Playing Field

Repentance levels the playing field, no matter who you are, what you’ve been through the power of repentance can help ANYBODY. Understanding the condition of the city fasting and mourning had impact, so much so that word got to the King. Now history suggest that that Nineveh was dealing with a number of things economically, socially like things such as famine nonetheless the timing of God is always beneficial for restoration. See when the word of God shows up it’s a blessing.

Sailors acknowledged the power of God & now the people of Nineveh respond to the word of God.

A lot of times we look for a word from the Lord in the midst of our storm but truth be told if reflect, God has shared something with you that you should be walking in right now. Once Jonah was vomited onto dry land the word of the Lord showed up.

If nothing else when the word shows up, it’s time to move accordingly. Fasting was the response to the message, in other words what do I need to remove for a moment so I can make room for God. Putting on sackcloth adds purpose to the fast. This was typically worn during times of mourning. What it did was symbolize grief, penitence not just for the individual but for the collective community. The power of the word pushed the Ninevites to surrender to the word of God. They moved because the word of God was shared.

Even the animals fasted, overthrow was proclaimed, fast was enacted, mourning happened. There’s power in obedience to the word of God. Luke 11:32 “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”

Conclusion

Maybe you’re experiencing what Jonah went through, you are on the other end of disobedience and now you are making your way through the assignment that God has called you to accomplish. Let fear go, let doubt go, and move. Even if you’ve been thrown over the ship of life understand that God gave you a second chance for a reason.

Maybe you are experiencing what Nineveh is experiencing and your life has looked nothing like God expects it. There’s a word from the Lord, and to see the grace of God it might take some fasting and mourning. Just make sure you respond!

John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The word, Jesus in the flesh has come to change lives!