SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Please take your Bible with me if you have it to Jonah chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: So we pick up where we left off in the account of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: If you you use a device, you can open that to Jonah 3, or if you're using a Pew Bible, it's uh I think 776, page 776, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: As we open our Bibles to this text, we need to imagine being a prophet who preaches what he fully expects will be the most consequential two-minute sermon in a city's history.
SPEAKER_00: So if you can imagine that, you are going to preach the most consequential sermon you've ever preached, and it will only take you maybe 60 to 120 seconds.
SPEAKER_00: So you walk into the city and you announce God's decision to destroy the city.
SPEAKER_00: Then you leave the city and you climb a hill and you find a seat on that hill and you wait for the fireworks.
SPEAKER_00: That is where we find Jonah in Jonah chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: So he has survived the storm in the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: He has spent three days in the darkness of the inside of a great fish.
SPEAKER_00: He has prayed to God from the depths, finally looking up, and he's delivered out onto dry ground.
SPEAKER_00: And now for the second time, God speaks to him.
SPEAKER_00: And as familiar as most of us are in Christian churches with this account, we may not realize just how unusual it is.
SPEAKER_00: It records the shortest sermon ever preached in the Bible, delivered by a prophet who least wanted it to succeed.
SPEAKER_00: And it also records one of the greatest acts of repentance recorded in the entire Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: That's the story, and it is far more convicting than it at first sounds.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it with me.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, I'll read the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: It's short if you'd like to follow along.
SPEAKER_00: So again at the end of chapter two, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry land.
SPEAKER_00: Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
SPEAKER_00: And the people of Nineveh believed God.
SPEAKER_00: They called for a fast, and they put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
SPEAKER_00: The word even reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
SPEAKER_00: And he issued a proclamation, and he published it throughout Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Quote, By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast herd nor flock taste anything.
SPEAKER_00: Let them not feed or drink water.
SPEAKER_00: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.
SPEAKER_00: Let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: As we've seen many times throughout Jonah, this is a story about God.
SPEAKER_00: Not so much about a great fish, not so much even about the prophet, but about God.
SPEAKER_00: A God who saves, ironically, Jonah says from the belly of a great fish down in the depths of the sea.
SPEAKER_00: This is a story about God, and specifically in chapter three, God overturns a city by his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And that same mercy is wide enough to encompass the same prophet who resents it.
SPEAKER_00: That's where this chapter begins.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah hears at the very beginning from the God who starts over with Jonah without even correcting him or rebuking him or challenging him.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter opens with four words, not four words, several words, that should make us kind of sit up and take notice.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.
SPEAKER_00: Now we know, right?
SPEAKER_00: We know why it comes to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: It's because he ran away the first time.
SPEAKER_00: He ran away.
SPEAKER_00: God has brought him all the way back, and he gives it to him a second time.
SPEAKER_00: We understand that that's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a bigger issue than that.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other prophet in the Old Testament who has to be recommissioned like this.
SPEAKER_00: True prophets receive their assignment from God and they go.
SPEAKER_00: They get up and they go.
SPEAKER_00: That is the pattern throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's maybe one qualification to that.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah receives a second word from God, but it's new content.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of fresh, new assignment.
SPEAKER_00: Here, the word comes a second time in the same way that the first one came.
SPEAKER_00: It's verbatim.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jonah of all the biblical prophets is told twice.
SPEAKER_00: And the even more incredible thing is that God says nothing critical to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: That's incomprehensible.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah doesn't just say no to God.
SPEAKER_00: He resigns his commission and he runs away.
SPEAKER_00: And God doesn't say a thing.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't review Jonah's flight to the sea.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't remind Jonah of the storm or of the great fish.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't remind Jonah even of the sailors who are put in a dire situation because of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: All God does is repeat the commission.
SPEAKER_00: Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, understand what that says about God.
SPEAKER_00: That is a picture of God's enduring patience at work.
SPEAKER_00: It's the patience that desires everyone to come to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: That's the patience and the mercy at work that is going before Jonah to the city of Nineveh, drawing them to repentance before Jonah ever gets there.
SPEAKER_00: So the first person in Jonah chapter 3 to receive the grace of a second chance is not Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: It's Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: God is patient with his own prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Now in Jonah chapter 4, Jonah will confront God with what amounts to an accusation.
SPEAKER_00: He will say to God, I knew that you would do this.
SPEAKER_00: I knew it.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I said that I had to run away.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You are gracious and merciful, you're slow to anger, you're abounding in steadfast love, and you relent from disaster, so I refused to go.
SPEAKER_00: I knew it.
SPEAKER_00: He says it like a complaint, right?
SPEAKER_00: Receiving that same mercy himself.
SPEAKER_00: God saying, Okay, Jonah, I'm assuming you've learned your lesson.
SPEAKER_00: Now get up and go.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah is receiving the same mercy that he is about to protest at Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Now there isn't much that we're told between verse 1 and verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, get up and go.
SPEAKER_00: So we aren't told how Jonah felt.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't told what Jonah was thinking.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Everything that the guy's been through, there's got to be stuff going through his mind as God tells him, get up and go a second time.
SPEAKER_00: He's got to be feeling something.
SPEAKER_00: Is there strain inside of him?
SPEAKER_00: Is there tension?
SPEAKER_00: Is there anxiety?
SPEAKER_00: Is there worry?
SPEAKER_00: Or is there just nothing?
SPEAKER_00: We're not told.
SPEAKER_00: Did he debate going this time?
SPEAKER_00: Did he debate running a second time?
SPEAKER_00: We're not told.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 1, verse 2, God told Jonah to go and to cry out against Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: There, God uses a Hebrew preposition that implies speaking against something, as though you're opposing it, you're denouncing it.
SPEAKER_00: But things are starting to change.
SPEAKER_00: Because here in chapter 3, there is a slight shift in the preposition.
SPEAKER_00: It's not so much a proclaim against Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's proclaim to Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: That even adds to what we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Does Jonah hear that?
SPEAKER_00: Does he pick up on that?
SPEAKER_00: Does he understand that there's something happening now that's different than before?
SPEAKER_00: If so, what is he thinking about that?
SPEAKER_00: At the very least, there is a hint here that God is intending to give mercy to Nineveh even before Jonah arrives there.
SPEAKER_00: So what is Jonah processing?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: All we know is in verse 3, Jonah got up and went.
SPEAKER_00: At the very least, he has learned that you can't run from God, that you can't get away from a pursuing God.
SPEAKER_00: But he gets up and he goes according to the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting because that formula, that according to the word of the Lord, is a pattern that we find throughout the Old Testament that is sort of prophetic obedience.
SPEAKER_00: It's what the prophets do.
SPEAKER_00: They get up and they do and they say according to what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: So this shows in some small way that Jonah is acting faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: He has come back in line to fulfill his prophetic obligation.
SPEAKER_00: After fleeing to Joppa, after getting in the boat, enduring the storm, going down in the fish, Jonah's finally back doing what he's supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_00: It seems though that he's like that little kid in elementary school who's told to sit down by his teacher, but he's standing up on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's going, but he's not going happily.
SPEAKER_00: He is fine receiving the mercy of God himself.
SPEAKER_00: But his heart is not wide enough, not open enough to let others receive that mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The wideness of God's mercy, friends, ought to challenge how broad our mercy is.
SPEAKER_00: Before we hear anything about Jonah's preaching, we need to know about Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Nineveh, middle of verse 3, was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.
SPEAKER_00: Our English translators have made an interesting choice here.
SPEAKER_00: They've left out a few words that are in the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew Bible adds about the great city, a great city to God.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a study Bible, you might have that in a footnote in your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That Nineveh was a great city to God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that might imply that it's an enormous city.
SPEAKER_00: That even from God's viewpoint, this is a massive city.
SPEAKER_00: It could also imply something about God's investment in this city, that it's an important place to God.
SPEAKER_00: Or it could mean that it's God's city, that God kind of owns it and possesses it.
SPEAKER_00: It's his city.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really know exactly why those words are there.
SPEAKER_00: A great city to God.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever the case might be, Nineveh has God's attention, and that's the point.
SPEAKER_00: That's why God is sending his prophet there.
SPEAKER_00: This city is significant enough to God that he's going to send his messenger to that city.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told that it's a three-day walk.
SPEAKER_00: Some point to that and say, that's reason to disbelieve the historicity, the accuracy of this book.
SPEAKER_00: Because archaeologists note that ancient Nineveh was a walled city, and that wall was seven and a half miles in circumference.
SPEAKER_00: That's still pretty big.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't take you three days to walk across that.
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on here?
SPEAKER_00: It's not literally three days across.
SPEAKER_00: However, especially if we consider the suburbs that have been discovered around the walled city, it could have easily taken three days to proclaim God's message to all of the parts of that city.
SPEAKER_00: So Jonah's not being inaccurate.
SPEAKER_00: We just have to figure out how he is discussing this, how is he talking about it?
SPEAKER_00: It could easily have taken three days to proclaim God's message to the suburbs, to the city, all of it together, encompassing the place of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: But regardless of that, I think Hans Wolff is right.
SPEAKER_00: He says the reader is not supposed to do the arithmetic.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be trying to figure out the math, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the reader is supposed to be lost in astonishment.
SPEAKER_00: This is a massive place.
SPEAKER_00: And God sends one man to proclaim his message.
SPEAKER_00: One man who's standing up on the outside but sitting down on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's task is enormous.
SPEAKER_00: And all we're told is that Jonah goes in one day's journey.
SPEAKER_00: Now wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: I thought it takes three days.
SPEAKER_00: It does.
SPEAKER_00: However, that works itself out.
SPEAKER_00: The city is enormous enough for it to take three days, but Jonah goes one.
SPEAKER_00: What that means isn't exactly clear.
SPEAKER_00: It could mean that he only preached one day when it would really take three days to cover it all.
SPEAKER_00: It could also mean that he preached to a third of the city before there was a response across the whole city.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the city is this big, but all Jonah had to do was this much in order to get a response from the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: Either way, a prophet who hurries into a three-day city and delivers a message of doom on the first day is about to produce the greatest repentance scene in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: In your English Bible, at least in the English Standard Version, Jonah preaches eight words in English.
SPEAKER_00: It's five words in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: A five-word message.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe, maybe it was a little bit more than that, but it boils down to just those five words.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: All that we know are the five words recorded in the Hebrew Bible that translate into eight English words.
SPEAKER_00: Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overturned.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah sits down.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: That's my sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what Jonah didn't say.
SPEAKER_00: There's no call to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: There's no altar call.
SPEAKER_00: There's not even a mention of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's no offer of mercy.
SPEAKER_00: There's no offer of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: This is the sermon of a man who wants his message delivered as efficiently as possible so that he can get out and watch the fireworks.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: He is fully anticipating God's judgment that will overturn this city.
SPEAKER_00: And that last word of Jonah's message is the most significant: overturned.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word used in Genesis of Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_00: For God overturned those cities.
SPEAKER_00: So when a Jewish listener would hear this account being read to them, they would hear that word, and only one image would come to mind: fire from heaven, smoking rubble, absolute disaster, and an end of the city, so that you can't even find it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah! God destroys his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jonah wants, right?
SPEAKER_00: He wants God to overturn their enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Jonah's going to get.
SPEAKER_00: But it's an ironic statement because that word for overturned can also be translated turned around or reversed or transformed.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the ancient Jewish rabbis understood this and they preserved it in the Jewish Talmud.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote from the Jewish Talmud.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was told that Nineveh would be turned, but he did not know whether it would be turned for good or for evil.
SPEAKER_00: So Jonah did.
SPEAKER_00: Delivers God's word.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and he obeys, he gives God's word, but God puts far more into what Jonah says than what Jonah put into it.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh is indeed overturned.
SPEAKER_00: But it is overturned in a way that transforms it.
SPEAKER_00: Transformed not by the fire of judgment, but by a conviction of sin and evil.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, this is the nature of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word for word is repeated multiple times in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 1, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 2, the message is literally the word that I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 3, he goes according to the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 6, the word reaches the king.
SPEAKER_00: And what God said in verse 10 he would do is literally the word, the words he would do to them.
SPEAKER_00: This is all about God's word through a prophet to an evil city, and what happens when those two come together.
SPEAKER_00: If you know your Bible, you already know the answer to that because Isaiah said it.
SPEAKER_00: God said through the prophet, my word will accomplish everything I intend it to do.
SPEAKER_00: When it goes out, it will return fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: So when God sends his word to Nineveh, what should we expect?
SPEAKER_00: It's going to do what it was supposed to.
SPEAKER_00: And it will.
SPEAKER_00: In Jonah's case, the word was sent, it moved through the city, it accomplished its purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't really matter what Jonah's intentions were.
SPEAKER_00: God uses even insincere people and incomplete messages to bring about his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, whenever you are nervous about speaking of Christ to your neighbor, to your friends, to your family, don't worry about what you say.
SPEAKER_00: Just open your mouth and start talking about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because God will accomplish his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Even though we don't get it exactly right.
SPEAKER_00: We see that played out in verses 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 in the city that believed.
SPEAKER_00: Now we expect what is about to happen because we know the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: But put yourself as much as you can in the shoes of a person who is hearing this for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: What's going to happen?
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes in one day to a three-day city.
SPEAKER_00: He preaches five words.
SPEAKER_00: He wants the city overturned.
SPEAKER_00: What's going to happen?
SPEAKER_00: What's God going to do?
SPEAKER_00: What will happen when the word goes out?
SPEAKER_00: What happens is that the people believed.
SPEAKER_00: The people believed it.
SPEAKER_00: And the people of Nineveh believed God.
SPEAKER_00: The evidence of that is they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least.
SPEAKER_00: They believed.
SPEAKER_00: And they act on it.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, this exact same construction appears only one other time in the Bible, in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 78, verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: And there Asaph recorded about the generation of Israel in the wilderness wanderings that they did not believe God.
SPEAKER_00: Despite everything God had done for them in bringing them out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, providing for them in the desert, they did not believe God.
SPEAKER_00: The narrator of Jonah is not using this phrase accidentally.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh hears five words from a Hebrew prophet who never named himself, never identified himself, didn't even name God.
SPEAKER_00: And the result is a positive example that is in contrast to the Jewish people in the wilderness wanderings.
SPEAKER_00: It's devastating.
SPEAKER_00: These pagan, evil people are responding to God's word in a way that God's people didn't respond.
SPEAKER_00: In a way, the pagan enemy outbelieves God's own people.
SPEAKER_00: And the response is far-reaching.
SPEAKER_00: It's from the greatest, from the least to the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: From the homeless person on the street all the way to the king on his throne with fasting and sackcloth.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the narrator here goes out of his way to picture the extent.
SPEAKER_00: The king, when he hears the news, takes four steps of action.
SPEAKER_00: And these are designed to show us how comprehensive the action is.
SPEAKER_00: First, he stands up.
SPEAKER_00: He gets up from his throne.
SPEAKER_00: Once he stands up, he takes off his royal robe and he sets it aside.
SPEAKER_00: And in place of his royal robe, he puts on sackcloth, that symbol of mourning and grief.
SPEAKER_00: And then he sits back down.
SPEAKER_00: But not on his throne, on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: He's taking off and away everything that gives him position and status and puts himself on the ground, submitting to the word.
SPEAKER_00: A Jewish king named Jehoiakim.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah was commanded by God to write out a scroll for the king.
SPEAKER_00: And he sent it to the king.
SPEAKER_00: And it was read before the king in the winter.
SPEAKER_00: The king is in his royal residence, and there's a nice little fire to provide warmth in his room during the wintertime, and somebody is standing there holding this scroll and reading it.
SPEAKER_00: From left to right.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, from right to left.
SPEAKER_00: Left to right is English.
SPEAKER_00: Right to left is Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: As he reads a column from top to bottom, the king takes his knife and he slices off that column and he puts it in his fire.
SPEAKER_00: Scribe reads another column.
SPEAKER_00: He slices it off.
SPEAKER_00: It goes in the fire.
SPEAKER_00: He burns, destroys God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And here a pagan king humbles himself in ashes and led his people by example.
SPEAKER_00: So that highlights the seriousness of the response, but it doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: No one, human or animal, is allowed to eat or drink.
SPEAKER_00: And even the cattle were covered in sackcloth.
SPEAKER_00: This seems a little strange to us in our modern world, where animals are put together with human beings in this context.
SPEAKER_00: That's not so odd to the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even in Genesis, right?
SPEAKER_00: Animals and human beings were created on the same day.
SPEAKER_00: They're both creatures.
SPEAKER_00: So there are similarities, there are substances that are similar.
SPEAKER_00: They're not the same, but they're similar.
SPEAKER_00: And here they are all brought together, saying that everything, every creature under the king's command, under the king's order, is expected to act the same way.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're a rational creature or an irrational creature, you must submit to God.
SPEAKER_00: The king of Nineveh understands that true repentance involves all of creation under his authority.
SPEAKER_00: And this rationale is in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know, but who knows?
SPEAKER_00: God may turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.
SPEAKER_00: You know by now already that there are a lot of other biblical parallels to what's happening in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: There's another one here.
SPEAKER_00: The phrase, who knows, appears in two other Old Testament circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: One is David in 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 22, when his child conceived with Bathsheba is about to die.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh may be gracious to me, and the child may live.
SPEAKER_00: Another situation is Joel chapter 2, where Joel is praying for the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows whether or not God will turn and relent?
SPEAKER_00: In both of those other situations, a fast is taking place.
SPEAKER_00: People are not eating.
SPEAKER_00: They're mourning, they're grieving, and they're not presuming upon God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they're not even talking about presuming upon God.
SPEAKER_00: They're refusing to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And now in Nineveh, a king without access to Israel's scripture adopts a similar stance of, should we say, cautious optimism, cautious hope?
SPEAKER_00: And the king is acting like one of Israel's prophets and urging his people to respond properly.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to ask the question who's acting like a prophet?
SPEAKER_00: Jonah or the king?
SPEAKER_00: Five words from a reluctant prophet that seem to have shaped some convictional categories in the king.
SPEAKER_00: Convictional categories that some of Israel's own prophets struggled to adopt.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah only warns.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't intercede for the people of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't ask God to be merciful.
SPEAKER_00: So God acts alone in granting mercy without a mediator.
SPEAKER_00: It says when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way.
SPEAKER_00: God turned from his disaster that he had said he would do.
SPEAKER_00: And he did not do it.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that it says God saw what they did.
SPEAKER_00: So it's identifying and highlighting actions, real, observable, costly deeds that God sees from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: These people responded in such a way that God could see it.
SPEAKER_00: Their fast was genuine.
SPEAKER_00: Their turning from their evil was real.
SPEAKER_00: And then God relents.
SPEAKER_00: Some of your translations might say God repents.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning that God decided to act otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: You need to understand, though, that God isn't making a better decision.
SPEAKER_00: It's not telling us that one decision was poor and one decision was better.
SPEAKER_00: It's that God is choosing to be who he said he would be.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the prophet Jeremiah described this exactly in Jeremiah 18 when God sent him to the potter's house.
SPEAKER_00: God sent him to a potter's house and he watched a potter make a pot.
SPEAKER_00: And God taught him through that.
SPEAKER_00: And in that teaching, God said to Jeremiah, this was in direction specifically to Israel, he says, if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to bring upon it.
SPEAKER_00: God is being who God said he would be.
SPEAKER_00: This city hears God's word, they respond to God's word, and so God acts according to his character.
SPEAKER_00: But this relenting against Nineveh is different from other divine relentings in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: In other cases, God called off disasters after people interceded for them in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: For example, God said to Moses about Israel in the desert when they did not believe him.
SPEAKER_00: He said, stand aside, Moses, I'm going to destroy them.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses intercedes for them.
SPEAKER_00: He prays for them.
SPEAKER_00: Amos pleaded twice for God to forgive Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah urged Jerusalem to change.
SPEAKER_00: He served as their advocate to God.
SPEAKER_00: In every other case of divine relenting in the Old Testament, somebody is standing in the gap between the people and God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Where's Jonah?
SPEAKER_00: Sulking.
SPEAKER_00: Waiting for the fire from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody advocating for Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah never prayed for Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: He preached a five-word message of doom, and then he waits for that doom.
SPEAKER_00: There's no advocate before God for Nineveh, no intercessor, no human mediator.
SPEAKER_00: God simply acts on the basis of his own character.
SPEAKER_00: He responds to a city's turning to himself with no one standing up to plead their case.
SPEAKER_00: And this shouts the wideness of God's mercy and the narrowness of Jonah's heart.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, the king of Nineveh expresses his hope that God, God might just turn and relent.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens in verse 10?
SPEAKER_00: God turns and relents.
SPEAKER_00: The city hoped God would not bring the disaster Jonah proclaimed.
SPEAKER_00: God's response to their turning was to turn from his planned destruction in accordance with his own character.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's overturned.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, Jonah's overturned.
SPEAKER_00: It's overturned by the God whose mercy went before his own prophet, fulfilling his purpose, fulfilling his plans when the preacher wanted something different.
SPEAKER_00: And his mercy reached out to soft hearts without any human advocate.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, never think that God needs you or others to say the perfect words, to deliver the perfect sermon, or to have the ideal application.
SPEAKER_00: Because God often uses nobody to fulfill his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah chapter three shows that God doesn't have to rely on human beings to do exactly the right thing in exactly the right way at exactly the right time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, the underlying message is that Jonah was supposed to have been faithful, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the implication, is that God's people should be like God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: They should have that wideness of God's mercy themselves to those who are looking to God.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't need a reluctant prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're about to turn the page into chapter 4, where we're going to witness an uncomfortably honest portrait of a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: The man who has just witnessed one of the largest acts of united repentance in the Old Testament will respond to it in rage.
SPEAKER_00: He will be furious that God was faithful to his own character.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one more detail that we need to notice before we turn to chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: And it may play a very significant part in the overall story.
SPEAKER_00: If you look carefully in chapter 3, you will see that in verse 1, the word Lord is in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 3, the word Lord is in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_00: And that word doesn't appear again until chapter 4 and verse 2, when Jonah speaks to the Lord in all capital letters.
SPEAKER_00: The personal name of God, Yahweh, Jehovah, is placed at the beginning and then later after everything's done.
SPEAKER_00: But not at all in all of the interaction with Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: They don't seem to be aware of Israel's covenant God.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we find the common or generic term for God, like in verse 5, they believed God, which is the Hebrew word for Elohim.
SPEAKER_00: This is important because it suggests that Nineveh might not be responding directly to Israel's covenant God.
SPEAKER_00: It might be like me or one of our pastors preaching a sermon to the city of Grand Forks, and all we're doing is saying, turn from your evil with nothing about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: These people seem unaware of or disconnected from Jonah's God who saves, the Lord who is his salvation in chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's sermon doesn't even mention God, not even in a general way.
SPEAKER_00: So it seems like this isn't a record of Nineveh turning to saving faith in the God who saves.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it likely shows they recognize they've been really bad.
SPEAKER_00: They've been evil, worse than evil, and they need to stop it.
SPEAKER_00: Or a sovereign God is going to destroy them.
SPEAKER_00: They probably have a sense of guilt, of conviction of some kind, but there is no indication that they know that the Lord is their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Nineveh's turning from violence doesn't make them a part of Israel's covenant people.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter uses Elohim instead of Yahweh because Nineveh doesn't know Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah hasn't told them about him.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we see a people who believe in a sovereign God who speaks to people and they repent, and that was enough for God to not destroy the city.
SPEAKER_00: God's mercy in chapter 3 reaches people before the prophet gets there.
SPEAKER_00: And it reaches out to people even though they don't belong to the right religious tradition, and even though they don't understand him fully.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, They're just a bunch of normal people who don't go to church, who don't really know Christ, who don't know a Bible, but they have a sense of right and wrong, and they're being confronted about it.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a massive city.
SPEAKER_00: One scholar describes it like this He says the narrator strips the people of Nineveh of everything foreign or provocative of envy and hatred, and he presents them to Israel as just a whole bunch of people.
SPEAKER_00: Do you care about a whole bunch of people?
SPEAKER_00: They're just overflowing with people.
SPEAKER_00: Normal people who have a conscience of understanding right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Do you care about the people?
SPEAKER_00: They don't know anything about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know anything about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They don't even have a Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Do you care about God being merciful?
SPEAKER_00: People.
SPEAKER_00: That seems to be the narrator's tactic.
SPEAKER_00: The people and even the animals in Jonah are presented to us as worthy of our concern.
SPEAKER_00: They're not particularly special.
SPEAKER_00: They're particularly awful.
SPEAKER_00: Do you really want God to destroy people and animals?
SPEAKER_00: And to not be merciful?
SPEAKER_00: But God says if they turn from their evil ways, I will be merciful to them.
SPEAKER_00: There are cities, subcultures, groups of people whom we believe deep down inside deserve judgment.
SPEAKER_00: I think if you're honest with yourself, you'll find somebody there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just one person.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a group of people.
SPEAKER_00: You'll find somebody.
SPEAKER_00: We might view their turning from their ways with suspicion.
SPEAKER_00: We might even find satisfaction in their destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah chapter 3 shouts at us.
SPEAKER_00: What about the God who is merciful?
SPEAKER_00: God's mercy doesn't need Jonah's consent.
SPEAKER_00: He did not wait for Jonah to like the city.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't wait for Jonah to find some good things about the city.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, God is generous with his mercy toward those who turn from their evil ways.
SPEAKER_00: I think the key question here is whether we can rejoice in God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: If we can open our narrow hearts, or if we will be like Jonah and refuse to be glad when God is merciful.
SPEAKER_00: Here's God's word achieved its purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And we should celebrate and be glad whenever it happens.
SPEAKER_00: We should find joy in serving as messengers of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Now they may, the people of Nineveh may not have understood the importance of trusting in the Lord as their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They may not have understood with any sense of completeness what believing in God as their redeemer meant.
SPEAKER_00: But at the very least, they responded to their awareness that God is a God who judges.
SPEAKER_00: And the result of that response is God relenting from his disaster.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter four will challenge how we respond to God's relenting.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, thank you that we have such a massive wealth of your revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your grace and your mercy to us that has that we've already proclaimed this morning that you are our rock and our redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: You, Abba, Father, have made a way for us to be right with you by sending your Son to pay the price for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And that the Lord Jesus Christ now functions as our eternal advocate before the Father.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know that the Lord is their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, may you be merciful to them.
SPEAKER_00: And cause them to know that you are a God who judges.
SPEAKER_00: Grant them the ability to turn from their sin and for us to be rejoicing in your mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, use us.
SPEAKER_00: Use us to proclaim.
SPEAKER_00: Give us hearts that are soft and willing to be your messengers to a world that needs to hear.
SPEAKER_00: For your sake we ask these things, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.