Jonah and Jesus- Part 5 5.10.26

Jonah finally obeys and an entire city stops in its tracks. In this sermon we walk through chapter 3 and wrestle with two themes in Scripture: justice and repentance.  We'll close with a conversation betweenJesus and Pilate. 

Transcript

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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 day forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown. The Nineveh 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. He took off his royal robes. He covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued to Nineveh. By the decree of the kings and his no by 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. We haven't done this in a little while, but I just want to prepare our hearts for for this message. So if you just in a posture of prayer, we're gonna use our hands if you would like, I invite you to. So if you put your hands on your knees just kind of downward, that's a that's a uh just a symbol of release. So maybe your prayer is releasing something that's consuming your thoughts right now. Maybe your release is uh letting go of anxiety or whatever happened this weekend.

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Just commune with your father as uh you release some things.

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And then if you turn your hands upward facing in a uh a receding posture, and ask the Holy Spirit to give you a new word today.

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A fresh wind that will blow through you.

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And each of us help me to surrender to you as I speak. In Jesus' name.

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Amen. Amen.

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Well, I don't know if you've noticed yet, but uh nowhere have we seen the word whale uh in this story. Uh have you noticed? Um I don't somewhere along the way the whale got attached to Jonah. Jonah and the whale, and that's usually the way we say it. But nowhere has that been said yet. We have the writer talking about a great fish, a big fish. Um ancient Greek manuscripts use the word sea monster, which will kind of mess with us a little bit. Uh, take a look at this early depiction. This was in the first couple centuries of the story of Jonah. And this doesn't necessarily look like a whale. Um, this is a sea serpent of some sort. Uh and this next picture does the exact same thing of that. Maybe there's a vomiting going on there. I can't tell. Um, but these are ancient uh uh mosaics of the story of Jonah. Um to the people of the ancient near Middle East, uh the seas were a place of chaos and death, and stories were told of these monstrous sea creatures uh of the deep. Job, if you've read the book of Job, you may have noticed a guy, uh, a creature called Leviathan that's described in that story. Uh but we still do it in today's culture. We we uh turn monsters out of the creatures of the deep. Uh if you were back in the 70s, Jaws took the world by storm. Most of you would never go back into the ocean after watching that. Um so sea creatures were also at this time were known as deities. The Ninevehites they worshipped a sea creature uh named Taimot, who was this monstrous serpent that was somehow part of the creation of the world, and the Assyrians worshiped it. But for the biblical writers, uh, whatever those extreme powerful creatures were in this story, it was just a big fish. That's all it was. One of the commentaries, uh uh a scholar named Philip Carey wrote about it this, and it reminds us that this book is a comedy. It's meant to be read as satire. And so here he says, the great fish is a comic version of an ancient nightmare. The great monster of the deep that represents chaos and destruction, the flooding and the undoing of the world. In Jonah, this nightmare is turned into comedy. This creature that swallows Jonah up is not one of the terrible monsters of the deep, but just a great big fish. Call it a monster if you wish. It's no big deal. Whatever you wherever you go in the world, the Lord who created it is there before you and can prepare a way for you, even if the way is a great big fish. This imagery goes a little bit deeper than that. This imagery actually goes into uh uh from the gods to to empires. Oftentimes, this great fish to a Jewish reader. You okay? You good? You good, man? You're okay? Uh everybody's caring for you so well. Oh yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh so uh this imagery goes deeper. So the this fish can also, if you're a Jewish reader, your mind goes to empires. Like that, this is representing an empire that swallows up Israel. Uh so eating and devouring are graphic descriptions of how empires would come in and they would take over other nations and bring them into exile. So there's this other prophet named Jeremiah, and he describes this uh exactly this way as being swallowed up, as Israel being swallowed up. Look at this story, Jeremiah 51. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has devoured us. He has thrown us into confusion, he has made us an empty jar. Like a serpent, he swallowed us and filled his stomach with our delicacies, and then what? He has spewed us out. Doesn't this sound like Jonah? Like Nebuchadnezzar came and ate up uh Israel and then just spews it out. It's like the big fish taken over for Jonah. Jonah, if you remember, is to represent us, the human part, uh, but it also represents the whole of Israel being swallowed up by other empires, and that has happened over and over uh through the centuries. This empire versus God's story and versus God's people story is all throughout the the scriptures. From the Tower of Babel in Genesis to the Beast of Babylon in Revelation. There's a story that reveals a human heart that constantly thinks that empire and its kings are gonna save us. However, oftentimes empires eventually do the exact opposite for many people. Over time, human life becomes devalued and disposable, all for the sake of the empire to grow bigger. And this is completely contrary to the heart of God. We see this in this uh in the descriptions of the Assyrian Empire, specifically this great city of Nineveh. So cities tend to get these reputations. Uh I grew up in Las Vegas, and Las Vegas has kind of a reputation. Um so early on when we first moved uh to Las Vegas, the it was the era of the mafia. So they were, they had, they had control, and that was starting to fade. And then somehow in the 90s, it went from that to casinos thinking they could turn uh their casinos into family fun, and they were trying to invite all the kids along with their parents, and that just didn't go long because that doesn't work. And so uh then it moved from that to the attorney, the lawyer for the mafia got elected to become the mayor. Uh and he's the one that coins the the uh phrase what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. All right, so leave that to a mafia lawyer to do that. So that becomes the reputation of the city, and that's a lot of us know uh Vegas as as uh that's the reputation. Um Nineveh also has a reputation, and Jonah knows it well. And we catch a glimpse of it if we remember, let's go back to chapter 1, verse 1. It says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness, oh, I'm uh because its wickedness has come up before me. Nahum, another prophet, describes uh Nineveh as the city of blood. It says this, woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims. And then the king today, did you pick up on how the king describes his people? Evil and violent. So this city has a reputation. Violence is described by biblical scholars in this way arbitrary infringements of human rights.

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And violence takes a lot of different forms against human rights.

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Cities and empires like Nineveh show up throughout all of the Old Testament. We'll see them come up and rise up and be described. Sometimes the descriptions are about uh other countries and empires and nations, and sometimes they're described their descriptions of Israel and how it's misbehaving. And each of the stories is God talking, sending a prophet and saying, Listen, this is not what I expect of you. I expect more. This is not how you should be treating others, this is what I expect from you. This is how you should treat your people and other people of other nations. Just consider a couple of passages of God's expectations towards us and the nations. Isaiah describes Israel with hands full of blood, with rulers who love bribes and gifts, but don't defend the orphan or widow's cause. Isaiah cries out uh Yahweh's decree that denounces judicial systems that favor the wealthy while disenfranchising the poor. In Proverbs 31, a famous passage, there's a mother who speaks to her son who's a king and says this to him This is how you should rule. Speak up for those, say this with me, who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute, speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and the needy. There's a hopeful prophet. Generally, that's not a descriptor for prophets. Zechariah chapter seven says this. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another. Don't oppress, say this with me, do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other. Ezekiel says this to the city of Sodom. Now this is was the sin of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned. They didn't help the poor and the needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them, as you have seen. This is just a handful of a hundred and sixty plus verses that talk about God's heart for the poor and the needy, the vulnerable, and the foreigner. Telling nation after nation do not just privilege the rich, but care for the poor. Over and over, 160 plus verses, God is sending prophets over and over to cities and empires and nations. This is my expectation of you on how you treat one another. So remember that this book, as we read Jonah, is to reveal the human heart and then to say to my heart, Oh, help me to align my heart to God's heart. And so, as followers of the triune God, how then should we live? As we consider all of these uh decrees to nations and empires and people that God's heart is this, then how should we live? How should we, as a people, consider how to treat others around us? How should we think about empires? How should we think about nations and cities? The prophet Micah, many of us know this passage from childhood. The prophet Micah sums it up by this way in chapter six. He has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you. Join me in this to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Chapter 1. Jonah's called to go to Nineveh. At one point he goes to sleep in a boat that's about to go underwater. And all the sailors are going crazy, and the captain comes down into the bottom of the boat and says to Jonah, Wake up! This is what's happening to the people on this boat. Wake up, oh Jonah, why would you be sleeping? And then he begs him, Will you pray to your God for us? And for some reason, Jonah doesn't want to do it. He doesn't ever pray for the people in that boat. He doesn't ever, in chapter two last week, we read this whole prayer by Jonah, and not once does he pray for anybody else in that prayer. And they're all begging him on this boat, pray for us that we would be saved. Unlike Abraham, who prays to Yahweh for Sodom, which is a crazy story. Unlike Moses, who prays for God to spare Israel? Jonah just doesn't care about anybody else in the story. Why isn't Jonah praying for the people who are about to drown? Why doesn't Jonah have compassion towards those who are suffering? Why doesn't Jonah pray for the city of Nineveh, known for its wickedness? What's going on in Jonah's heart? So instead, what Jonah does, all right, let's try it. Instead, what Jonah does is he goes to the city of Nineveh. It's a massive city. We see it in Genesis. Nineveh shows up one time in Genesis as a great city. It's like four cities all put together. And so that's kind of like a DC area where you just don't know when one city stops and when one begins. And so Jonah begrudgingly walks into the city and he walks about a day's journey into the city. And it's almost like he he just kind of mumbles under his breath the thing that God wants him to say. It takes him about eight words to tell the people of Nineveh what's going on. He says, for 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. That's basically just five words in Hebrew. And he he just kind of mumbles it, must have, because uh maybe he just doesn't want the people to hear it or to really know what's about to happen. Um have you ever, parents of children or teachers of children, have you ever asked a child to apologize to another child? And and they end up just kind of mumbling under their breath their apology, and they say as few words as they possibly can. So here we have Jonah, it feels like he's doing the same thing. He has this grudge against the city, and he doesn't want to tell them anything that God has to say. Tim Keller wrote, Jonah was called to have compassion on a city that was a threat to his people. It's difficult to have kind compassion for people we feel threatened by. Would you do me a favor? Would you take out the bulletin and there's a message, a place to write uh in the center there? There might be a pen in front of you. Would you would you reflect for just a moment with me? Uh about this concept that that Jonah feels threatened by these people and God is calling him to have compassion for him.

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Who do you feel threatened by?

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I mean that might be physical, but most often not. And maybe it's just kind of uh you feel threatened by another person's point of view, another person's convictions, another person's belief system. Uh maybe, maybe uh the the anchor person that you listen to or the algorithm that's following causes you to keep on being fearful of this group of people or this individual. What who do you feel threatened by? Are you brave enough to write it down? So Jonah's feeling threatened by this group of people that God is actually sending him to care for and to have a compassion for. And how do these people respond to his mumble? They actually listen. If you think about it, as I told you a couple weeks ago, everything goes wrong for Jonah. Even when he is hoping for failure, he is successful. Like his message becomes so successful that all the people repent. Even the word makes it to the king, and the king repents of this violence and evil, and he and the king calls everybody to stop being violent to each other. Jonah was not prepared for this. He is about to lose his mind in chapter four, which we'll talk about in a couple uh in a couple weeks. Tim Keller writes, The book of Jonah shows not only that justice was important to God, but also the preaching of repentance. Both seeking justice and preaching repentance are the themes in the kingdom of God. You and I play a role in seeking justice and preaching the gospel of Jesus. Some Christians tend to only seek justice and they miss out on speaking about who Jesus is, and some people only speak about who Jesus is and they miss out on seeking justice for people. And yet the kingdom of God says both are necessary. We see that over and over the heart of God towards justice and for people to hear the good news. This is the kingdom of heaven represented on earth. A kingdom unlike any empire this earth has to offer, a kingdom that sets captives free, that brings healing instead of destruction, a kingdom that is reflected in the lives of little children, a kingdom that is ruled by a servant king who willingly gave his life that we might live. What kind of king does that?

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So in the Gospel of John, there's a story where the Empire meets God in the flesh face to face.

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Pilate standing in front of Jesus. What's interesting about this story is the religious people, all the religious leaders, partner with Empire to take Jesus out. And so Jesus is standing there, and Pilate's standing before him. Pilate's wife says, Don't have anything to do with this. You don't want to have anything to do with this. And Pilate and Jesus, they have quite a conversation. He asks Jesus some really profound questions like, What is truth? And Jesus tells Pilate about his kingdom not being one of violence, a kingdom not of this world. Look at verse uh 36. Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants, if it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But my kingdom is from another place. And then Jesus later tells Pilate, who really is in control.

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The God of the universe, the creator of all things, Yahweh is the one that we put our trust in.

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And not an empire. Like the great monstrous sea serpent that is actually just a fish who will submit to its creator. So is the great empire who is run by mere mortals who will eventually submit and bow their knee to true king. Jesus is going to show us not to let empires and their rulers dictate how we live and define how we live, or how we treat other people, or how we care for our neighbor. Jesus is going to invite us into a kingdom that says this is the way. And this way is going to feel like an upside-down way. This way is going to say to love our enemy. This is the way that says you're going to lay down your life for one another. This is a way that says you are going to love others.

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And sometimes love doesn't make sense. This is a love that dies for the sake of the world. Would you pray with me? Jesus, we uh we see you standing before Pilate willingly laying down your life. For the sake of the world. Oh, what a love that you have for us. And oh that we would love one another.