Jonah 3
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Last time we visited with Jonah, we was living in a fish condo.
Finally, after he prays to God, he gets “evicted” from the fish.
Now God has a job for Jonah to finish.
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.”
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I can just picture Jonah going “OK, OK, I get the point.”
Do we sometimes need a really big push to do what God asks?
God gave Jonah a relatively simple job.
Not necessarily an easy one, but a simple one.
And Jonah ran away.
God reminds Jonah of the mission he was given.
Go to Nineveh and preach the message that God has given him.
Have you have had a message that God wanted you to deliver, but you didn’t want to?
Maybe something God wants to you say to a friend, but it would make things uncomfortable?
Or a family member who’s sin has been found out, but you don’t want to upset them?
I have been in both positions, and it’s not fun.
Thankfully, I didn’t ne
As a preacher, I often get messages the God wants me to preach.
Sometimes I know they are going to be unpleasant, or upset someone, but I have to preach them anyway.
Sometimes I cannot get the idea out of my head until I put it down on paper or preach it.
Thankfully, so far, I haven’t needed a fish to get me to preach God’s message.
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.
So Jonah finally goes to Nineveh, as he was instructed.
Nineveh is a BIG city. About 30 miles across.
An average person can walk 10 miles a day in a urban setting.
10 miles per day, three days = 30 miles
That’s roughly three times the size of Nashville.
And Jonah has some preaching to do.
Sounds like a job for a Billy Graham crusade, doesn’t it?
But God has Jonah walk through the city giving the people His message.
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!”
Jonah starts his “revival” in Nineveh.
No tent revival.
No audio system.
No video displays.
Just a prophet and the Word of the Lord.
The end of the world, well the end of Nineveh, is coming.
You’ve got 40 days to make your peace.
Reminds me of the end of the world preachers I used to see in NYC.
What would you do if someone said the world had about a month before it was going to be destroyed?
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There have been claims of climate destruction for decades.
Even though the evidence is slim at best, some people have gone crazy, doing anything they can think of to stop the crises.
When I was young, some people would build bomb shelters in their back yards, afraid of nuclear war.
We spend billions looking into space for asteroids that might destroy the earth.
We rush to the doctors to get the latest vaccine to save us from a potential pandemic.
Sadly, those who look to God in such desperate situations are often portrayed badly.
What type of reaction do you expect from the Ninevehites?
So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
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.
Wait, what?
Wait, what?
The people of Nineveh believed God.
You’d expect a few to believe, but all of them?
This most wretched hive of scum and villany?
They fasted and put on sackcloth.
When was the last time Americans fasted for our nation?
Are we not on the edge of destruction?
Everyone, up to and including the king did this.
Imagine the President coming out of the Oval Office, taking off his suit, putting sackcloth and praying in a pile of ashes.
In the rose garden.
On national TV.
Just image the field day the press would have with that.
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,
Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?
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.
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Talk about a revival!
The king proclaims a fast.
Everyone, man and beast, should neither eat nor drink.
We can’t even get Christians to get involved in the National Day of Prayer,
Imagine trying to put together a national day of fasting!
Even Weight Watchers can’t get people to do that.
Everyone, even the animals, was to wear sackcloth.
I’m trying to picture my cows wearing sackcloth :-)
And my dog.
And someone else is going to have to try to put sackcloth on my cats!
They are to cry to God.
Not their gods, but the God in heaven.
They are to turn from evil and violence.
Notice, Jonah didn’t have to tell them what their evil ways were.
They knew when they were doing evil.
God is everywhere, and the knowledge of God is in man’s heart.
All of this in their hope that God may relent and not destroy them.
When was the last time you put a tenth of the effort shown here in crying out to God that he not destroy this nation?
We murder our babies.
We’ve defiled our marriages
We’ve used violence to get others to live the way we want.
Both within this nation and in other nations.
Give me one good reason why, in God’s eye, we should not perish?
Yet most of the people who claim to be his do little if anything to intercede for this nation.
Do we need some guy who smells like the inside of a fish to get us to do more?
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
When God saw the change in the people of Nineveh, He relented.
God decided not to destroy Nineveh because of what they did, not what they said.
How many times have we seen God relent after witnessing the repentance of His people?
In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’ ”
Then he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying, “Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. And I will add to your days fifteen years. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake, and for the sake of My servant David.” ’ ”
The majority of the books of 2 Kings and both Chronicles are stories of Israel and Judah doing evil, suffering the consequences, then praying to God who delivers them.
Yet God’s people in the west don’t seem to bother praying for the nation they live in.
Much less for forgiveness for the sins of that nation.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Just as in Nineveh, it’s never to late.
The question is, will we, as a nation, repent?
Will we show that we’ve seen the sins of this nation and assume a posture of prayer and repentance?
Will we, individually, pray for the repentance of and forgiveness for this nation?
Will our leaders repent of the evil they have participated in and beg forgiveness of our Creator?
Nineveh was forgiven because God saw their repentance.
If we will not repent, why should we expect God to forgive?
We cannot control what others do, but we can be an example to others.
If we repent, maybe our family will.
If our family, maybe other families will.
If many families, then maybe our county, maybe even our state will repent.
And if our states repent, maybe even our nation will.
And maybe the idea of our President praying and repenting on national TV won’t seem so strange anymore.
Not only do we not have control of others, we are not responsible for their actions, only our own.
Sure, we will often suffer the consequences of the actions of others, but that is not the same as being responsible for them.
But if we use the fact that we cannot force others to change as an excuse not to change ourselves, then we are the wicked servant
who squandered the talent he was given and was worth of the punishment.
Will you be an example today?
Will you be an example for the rest of your life?
