Who Cares About the City?

Jonah   •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Its easy to ask our selves who cares about the wicked, the people who do wrong, and the sinners. But the truth is that God cares and we are called to care as well.

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Are there any football fans in the room?
My father (some of you may have meant him last week) he is a die hard Redskins fan.
and the Redskins used to be amazing, but more recently if you know anything about football you know that the Redskins are awful.
You know they can draft someone amazing to be part of their team and that person ends up becoming awful.
and I remember growing up and watching my Dad and his friends game after game, year after year cheer for the Redskins and 90 percent of the time leave disappointed because they always loose.
And you would think after years of disappointment my father and his friends would have gotten to this point where they go who cares about the Redskins, they are constantly loosing game after game.
but whats amazing is while a lot of their fans have switched teams (jumping on the patriots bandwagon or going with the Ravens who are not much better), my dad he stayed with the Redskins ever though they seem like a lost cause.
But we like to give up on lost causes.
Because you watch them fail year after year and eventually you go “I don’t even care anymore.”
and if you have been with us the past couple weeks you know that we have been in a series called “Jonah.”
And Jonah is a prophet in the Old Testament who to us really seems to be a lost cause.
Because Jonah was called by God, ran away and it took Him getting swallowed by a fish for 3 days and 3 nights to realize He needs to do what God has asked him to do which is to deliver this message to the city of Nineveh.
And if you have been with us you know that so far in this series we have been focusing on Jonah and Him running.
But today we are going to make a shift from the focus being on Jonah, to the focus being of Nineveh.
Because today we are going to start understanding why Jonah did not want to go to Ninevah.
because Ninevah was a city that really was a lost cause.
And really a much bigger lost cause then Jonah.
They did unspeakable things
Just to give you an idea (and i debated sharing some of this) there are historical accounts of this city skinning people alive, Raping, murdering people
and really things that you cannot share on a Sunday morning.
and it would be easy to look at a city like this and say “all of these people are just wicked.” why don’t we just give up on them.
you know who cares about Nineveh?
As long as they don’t bother us why not just let them be.
Who cares about the city of Ninevah
and stick with me today because this question is going to be applicable for us today and really everything we talk about today is going to flow out of this question.
So we are in
and like we talked about we are really going to be diving into this question of “Who cares about the City of Ninevah”
So once again It says:
Jonah 3:1–10 NIV
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.” The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 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 their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” 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.
Its says
So look at verse one with me because we are talking about this question of who cares about the city of Ninevah?
because it probably wasn’t just Jonah who gave up on it but, probably every person around the city has.
But in verse one of this passage God calls Jonah to minister to Nineveh.
and the answer to our question of who cares about this wicked, evil city, is God does.
Ever since the beginning of this book God has been wanting Jonah to minister to this city, because he cares about the city of Nineveh.
God cares about the lost cause, God cares about the people who have done unspeakable things, and God cares about you.
You know it is easy to look at the lives around us and even our own lives and say “who cares?”
Its easy to watch the news and go who cares about the person to doing that thing. No one loves them or wants to pursue them.
Its easy to look at even Buchanan occasionally and go who cares about the city of Buchanan?
Because this or that
Its even easy to look at our neighbors and say who cares about them.
they are doing awful things
They are disobeying God.
But the truth is we have a God who cares.
and look what happens in the passage because Jonah approaches this huge city and He begins to preach this message that isn’t too well crafted.
Because Jonah goes in to this city and for 3 days he walks through the city and basically says look in 40 days you guys are done.
Judgement it coming.
and you think this would think with these people being so wicked they would just take out Jonah,
but if you read this passage it says that the Ninevites that heard this end up repenting by fasting and wearing sackcloth which was a way of mourning (and in this case mourning for what they did).
And eventually this message reaches the king of Nineveh and you think the king would get Jonah and end him as a way of saying no
but it actually says as soon as the king hears this message he gets up from His throne and actually takes off his royal robes off, the king puts on sackcloth and sat down in dust because he realizes what has happened.
And then He doesn’t just stop there but the king makes a proclamation for all of Ninevah to repent and turn from there evil ways.
You know I don’t imagine Jonah doing that great of a job proclaiming this message God gave him.
and even if Jonah did do an amazing Job, I don’t think it would have been enough to make an entire nation repent.
But the only way that this nation could change how it has been acting is through Gods presence and Him working through Jonah.
You know in college me and my roommates were not the cleanest people out there
And I remember at the end of the year we had to clean the shower before moving out
and we would clean the shower every-once in awhile but it wasn’t non stop and because of that there were nasty stains in it.
and so moving out I would spend hours trying to clean this shower to make it look okay.
And i would be scrubbing it and spraying all of these cleaning things on it.
But none of it would work.
and I remember calling Arika and was so frustrated because we were going to get charged if we couldn’t get these stains off and I spent hours with no luck.
And Arika told me there was something called bleach (I am guessing some of you are familiar with it)
and I put the bleach on it and guess what I scrubbed it after and in minutes the stains were gone.
Because bleach was going to be the only thing that could remove this stain.
and you know in this passage we are in and really this is always the case, but God is the only one who can change the hearts of the people in Nineveh and really change lives in general.
You know we can do everything we can to see someones life changed, we can reach out to them, we can sit down with them and explain why they need to turn their life around, but unless we have God in the middle of it their life is not going to change.
Unless we have God in the middle of our ministry we are just going to be sitting their scrubbing a stain that can’t come off.
And the only way we can change lives is through God.
And whats exciting about this is that God is calling us to be a part of changing lives.
I’ve said this before but God is calling us to reach that hurting family, to help to alcoholic, to help the person who thinks there no other way to get out of their situation then end their life.
And God is saying I want to partner with you in bringing the the kingdom of God here and now.
and look what happens when Jonah says yes I want to be a part of that because like we talked about all of Ninevah repents and changes the way they are living.
This entire city turns back and calls out to God.
But it took Jonah getting swallowed by a getting caught in a storm, and getting swallowed by a fish to be part of God’s plan.
So can I ask us a question?
What will it take for us to live up to what God is calling us to do?
What will it take for us to care about the people of Nineveh like God care for the people of Nineveh
What will it take for us to care about the city of Buchanan like God cares for the city of Buchanan?
Because when we say who could care about a city or a person like that the awnser starts with
God cares
But it doesn’t end there because His people should too
Or we can do what Christ did, where he went to an area where he was crucified
Or we can follow Christ where he said I am
Because everyday we have a choice where we can live like Jonah or where we can live like Christ.
Where Christ came down died for our sins so that we wouldn’t be separated from Him.
He knew we would be tortured but he pursued us.
He cared that much for us, and for you and He is asking us to care that much for the world that is in need of Him.
You know I want to end today with a story, because there was a Christian band a few years back that was doing a missions trip over in Pattaya, Thailand
and the band that wrote this song they were actually
And this area was a city built up because of the sex industry.
from children to adults
and they were in this place that just had this darkness surrounding it.
and while they were doing typical missions work, they ended up adding looking for places to play music.
and they found this bar where they described it as just an evil place.
And they were playing music and in the middle of this dark place they played this song that they latter called God of this city.
And it talks about how God has greater things planned for this city that is dark, because God is the God of this city and God cares for this city.
God has plans
and I thought it would be appropriate to end with this song. and some of you may have heard this song before but for others it may be new.
So I would invite you to listen or sing along but its saying God is the God of this city.
God cares for Ninevah and he cares for Buchanan.
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