Jonah Sermon Revision 4
Jonah 1:1-3
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord…
Jonah 3:1-3
1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord…[1]
The story of Jonah is often taught in Sunday school classes in almost all of our churches. It is probably best remembered because it tells of a great fish, commonly thought to be a whale, which swallowed Jonah whole and then spit him out onto the beach. Sometimes we remember why the fish swallowed Jonah in the first place and then even what happened next. But how often do we actually look at the story to see what exactly is going on? This morning, I want to use this story to point out just a couple of what are many barriers that Jonah faced in his ministry that still remain as barriers for us in the church today. I really struggled with this topic because I face these same barriers more often than I care to admit, so we will be learning together.
In the first two verses we find that Jonah has been called by God to go and preach to the city of Nineveh. However, instead of going straight to Nineveh, Jonah headed out in the opposite direction to get as far away from Nineveh and God as he possibly could. Though we are not told why Jonah ran away from God’s call at this particular point in the story, we can begin to understand when we learn that Nineveh had a reputation for violence and terrorism. Nineveh was a symbol of everything that opposed God and God’s people. “Nineveh was the capital of one of the cruelest, vilest, most powerful and idolatrous empires in the world.” [2] The prophet Nahum even called Nineveh “the city of blood” (Nahum 3:1). The wickedness of the Assyrians included not only idolatry, but also pride, cruel oppression and especially inhumane warfare. In fact, the name of Nineveh struck terror into the hearts of all those living in western Asia in this period. [3] The people of Israel would have still had memories of their own ancestors suffering under the cruelty of Nineveh and the Assyrians. James Lindburg says that for an Israelite prophet … (to be asked to) accept a mission to that city would be like a Jew who had lost his family in the Holocaust being asked to undertake a mission to Germany just after the Nazi period.[4] But at the time Jonah was called into ministry, Assyria was in decline and the nation of Israel, under King Jeroboam II, was extending its borders to their greatest extent since king David sat on the throne. So Jonah was being called to preach to a city that was on the decline, and even though it still had a bad reputation, it was not necessarily a major threat to Israel at this time. Everything that Jonah knew about Nineveh and the Assyrians was probably handed down to him from others who had experienced the cruelty of Nineveh first hand. I believe the first barrier Jonah had to face was to overcome what he thought about the people of Nineveh because of their reputation.
Another barrier that Jonah had to overcome was that of preaching to a people that were considered the enemies of the nation of Israel, a people not like him or his people. Jonah was an ardent nationalist and very much pro-Israel. He was also anti-foreign, or at least anti-Assyrian. In addition, Israel had come to the place where they thought that they were the only ones worthy of God’s blessings while others were not. [5] After all, was it not Israel that had received God’s special revelation and was not God’s covenant made with Israel when God gave Israel his laws? Was not God the God of Israel? Was not Israel God’s chosen people? Surely God would not reveal himself to those outside of the nation of Israel, would he? Because of these prejudices, Jonah did not want to preach to such people as the Ninevites. It is no wonder he ran from God as fast as he could.
Next in the story, we read that the ship that Jonah took to Tarshish was caught in a ferocious storm that was caused by God. When the sailors on the ship identified Jonah as the probable reason for the storm, he invited the crew to toss him overboard. The sailors reluctantly agreed and after they tossed him over, the storm subsided. Amazingly, this caused the sailors to “worship” Jonah’s God, sacrificing and making vows to God. Meanwhile, God “appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” While spending three gloomy days and nights in the belly of the fish, Jonah repented and prayed. He was then delivered onto the beach when the fish spewed him out.
God then called Jonah a second time, and this time he went to Nineveh. There, he preached the prophetic word, warning the citizens of that great city that if they didn’t repent of their evil ways, God’s judgment would soon come. To the prophet’s horror, his message was heeded by Nineveh’s citizens. They turned away from their violence and evil and were spared from divine judgment. This was simply too much for the prophet, who then became irrationally angry at God because of God’s act of mercy.[6]
I think that this brought Jonah to still another barrier he had to overcome: the audacity of thinking that God would take his side against those he felt were Israel’s enemies. You see, because they were Israel’s enemies, in his thinking they were also the enemies of God and didn’t deserve to hear of God’s salvation. He was so angry that he prayed to God and vented that anger. In his anger, he finally told God why he had run in the first place. He told God that he knew even before he left Israel that Nineveh would repent at his preachin. He also knew that God would change God’s mind about bringing destruction upon the people of Nineveh because God is “a tender, compassionate God, slow to anger, rich in faithful love, who relents about inflicting disaster,” (Jonah 4:2 NJB) and Jonah certainly did not want that to happen. In fact, throughout the book of Jonah, Jonah displayed a readiness to receive mercy and blessing for him-self while showing a stubborn reluctance to see his enemies, the Assyrians, or any one else for that matter, receive the same.[7]
God then asked Jonah a question: “What right (do you) have you to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4 (GNT)) Douglas Stuart wrote in the Word Biblical Commentary concerning this question:
The answer to the question is not complex, though it may be quite unpleasant to those who have always expected God to take sides… God does what is right by reason of the fact that it is his nature to do so (Jonah 4:2) as Jonah admits; no one therefore can rightfully be angry that God should act according to his own nature. Nineveh ought to have been spared, its rampant sinfulness past and future notwithstanding.[8]
What Jonah knew about God was certainly correct, but he just could not bring himself to the place where he felt what God did was right. He failed to remember that Israel was originally supposed to reveal God to the nations in order for God to be a blessing to all of the families of the earth. Although Jonah may have thought he understood the nature of God, it seems that he did not understand God’s concern for all people, including the Gentiles, and in this story, the Ninevites. So God tried to show Jonah his own selfishness and unreasonableness in wanting to withhold God’s blessing from the Ninevites through an object lesson. God caused a bush to grow to give Jonah shade on a hot day and then caused it to disappear the next morning. This made Jonah mad, and God asked him a second time, “What right (do you) have you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah replied that he had every right to be angry, though he didn’t explain why he had that right. God replied, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11) This object lesson and God’s reply to Jonah showed the character and nature of God.
What then can we learn from the story of Jonah? Don’t we sometimes feel the same way that Jonah felt about the Ninevites toward some persons that are members of our community, and in some cases, even persons that may be members of our congregation,. It seems that sometimes, in our effort to be good Christians, we wind up focusing our attention on ourselves and on our attempts to follow Christ in a way that we think is pleasing to God and then wind up becoming self-centered and closed minded. Just like Jonah, don’t we sometimes find ourselves believing that we alone deserve God’s blessing, just because we are the Church.
Like Israel, we only associate with those who look like us and think like us, and then we find ourselves insulated from the rest of the world. When those who do not look or think like us begin to “invade” or territory, we tend to get defensive and deem them our enemies, especially if they are of a different race, culture or background. We tend to hold them at arms length because of what we have heard about them or their kind because they are different from us and we don’t know anything about them. We perceive these persons as our “enemies” because of our prejudices, and then we think that because they are our enemies, they are also God’s enemies, deserving the wrath of God instead of God’s pardon. Like Jonah, we don’t want to see God save them, so when we hear God calling us to go and preach to them, we, like Jonah, tend to run in the other direction. In other words, there is a little Jonah in each and every one of us. As we think about this, we can begin see that the barriers that Jonah faced in his time are still with us even today.
As we approach these barriers, we need to understand that the story of Jonah itself demands that we continually reassess our view of events and motivations. Like Jonah, we are forced to re-evaluate our understanding of the world and of God’s will. [9] How we perceive people raises up real barriers, and every one of us has to face them when we hear God calling us to take God’s message to those around us. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” God is a God of justice, but he is also a God of love and mercy and grace. God is also compassionate. He sees people not just for who they are or what they may be doing. He sees them for who they are in Christ.
If we, on the other hand, look at people and judge whether or not they are worthy to be saved, then we need to take a look at ourselves and be honest with ourselves. Paul tells us in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) That means that none of us are worthy, but that we can only be “justified by (God’s) grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24).”
Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and he then added, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39, italics mine). Elsewhere he taught us who our neighbors are through the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Each of us has to search within ourselves and ask God to show us who we have deemed our enemies, whether or not they actually are. We then need to remember that we are to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who abuse us. (Luke 6:27-28) When we teach and preach that Jesus died on the cross for everyone, we then need to treat everyone as if that is true.
Matthew tells us that Jesus said to the disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). “Of all nations” is God’s way of saying that all persons, regardless of who they are, where they come from or what we think about them, are to be given the opportunity to hear the word of God and to become followers of Jesus Christ.
In our community there are many different kinds of people. We have Laotians living with us. The Hispanic population is on the rise in our neighborhood. There are large numbers of African-Americans living in our area. We have people of high income, low income, and everywhere in between. We have single parent families, both men and women. This is to name just a few. And according to the last demographic study of our area, the vast majority of these people are unchurched and many of them have no faith relationship of any kind.
We need to begin to bridge these barriers by living out the gospel message in our lives so others can see that we are different just because we know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We need to be reminded that our purpose is to make disciples for Jesus Christ. Jesus did not say that it would be easy, nor did he give us a definite way to do this. He just said “Go.” Let God use us to reveal Jesus to those who do not know him. It is God who saves, and the story of Jonah shows that God will always stay true to God’s “own character of patience, forgiveness, with an eagerness to prevent harm.”[10] We are just the instruments he sometimes uses.
For some of us it will take a great deal of effort to get over the barrier of getting to know people that we have only heard about through their reputation, especially when everything that we have heard has been of bad things. For others, the barrier of meeting and getting to know people that we consider enemies because they are Buddhists, or Islamic, or some other religion that we think works against God, is a barrier we don’t really want to face. The third barrier, thinking that we are in the right and that God will take our side against anyone we deem unworthy of God’s saving grace, is one that we face more often than not. It becomes evident in our prejudices in ways that are very unbecoming of us as Christians.
In conclusion, Douglas Stuart says,
“We who have had mercy shown to us must, of all people, be willing to show mercy in return (Matthew 18:33)[11]
So, what road are you on? What barriers do you see in your life? Are you trying to avoid these barriers by running away to Tarshish, or are you willing overcome these barriers in order to go to Nineveh, even though that is not what you would really like to do? Remember how God dealt with Jonah when he refused to go to Nineveh the first time. Ask the Lord to give you courage to go now instead of having to be forced to go later. And lastly, take comfort in the last words of Jesus in the Great Commission: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) Amen?
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[1] Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. Passages marked GNT are from the Good News Translation. Passages marked NJB are from the New Jerusalem Bible. (See Bibliography)
[2]Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985). The Bible knowledge commentary : An exposition of the scriptures (1:1462). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[3]Smith, J. E. (1992). The Minor Prophets (Jon 1:1-3). Joplin, Mo.: College Press.
[4] Limburg, James. Hosea—Micah, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1998), 140.
[5]Stuart, D. (2002). Vol. 31: Word Biblical Commentary : Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary (434). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
[6]Craigie, P. C. (2001, c1984). Twelve prophets : Volume 1. The Daily study Bible series (212). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
[7]Stuart, D. (2002). Vol. 31: Word Biblical Commentary : Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary (434). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
[8]Stuart, D. (2002). Vol. 31: Word Biblical Commentary : Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary (509). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
[9]Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (3:941). New York: Doubleday.
[10]Stuart, D. (2002). Vol. 31: Word Biblical Commentary : Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary (434). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
[11]Stuart, D. (2002). Vol. 31: Word Biblical Commentary : Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary (510). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.