Jonah and the Big Ask

Text: Jonah 3:1–5, 10

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. A day when a young person confirms their faith is always a special day. We give thanks to God for Lauren and the faith that He has given her.

You might have noticed that after Lauren made her promises and hands were laid on her in blessing, we then commissioned her with these words:

The Holy Spirit has prepared you to assume greater responsibility in the life and work of the church. Serve your Lord faithfully, as he calls you to work for him.

That commission applies to each of us as God’s baptised children. We’re going to explore exactly what that “greater responsibility” is by looking into the story of Jonah this morning. There are three things to pick up in today’s Old Testament reading:

1.     God gives Jonah an impossible task.

2.     God’s Word changes people.

3.     God has mercy on the wrong people.

Let us pray…

God gives Jonah an impossible task.

Most children’s Bibles feature the story of Jonah and the Big Fish, but the story is always cut short. It’s a unique book in the Old Testament and one of only a few books of the prophets that is a narrative rather than a collection of prophecies like Isaiah or Hosea.

In Jonah 3, we pick up the story just after Jonah has had his “big fish experience” and been coughed up on the beach. In our common memory of the story, that’s usually where it ends.

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.”

Jonah 3:1,2

The second time the word of the Lord comes to Jonah is pretty much the same as the first. The first time, Jonah didn’t try to deflect or make excuses why he couldn’t do it (like Moses, for example)—he flat out rejects it and runs in the opposite direction. The story doesn’t even mention any words at all.

God has given Jonah an impossible task. How can a single Israelite man walk into a city and convince the whole population that they are living sinfully and need to repent so that God doesn’t destroy them?

You imagine if God came to you and said, “Arise, go to Melbourne, that great city, and speak out against it.” You could react a few ways:

  • Think you must have been imagining things and pretend God never said it.

  • Know that God said it but flat out ignore it.

  • Present multiple reasons as to why that’s a bad idea and will never work: the practicalities of actually being heard, there are just too many people, and they won’t listen anyway.

We can’t really blame Jonah for reacting the way he did. Apparently, Nineveh was a particularly evil city. We don’t get a description, but that doesn’t really matter.

There is plenty of evil out there in the world today. There are plenty of people who worship false gods instead of the one true God. The root of all evil is idolatry—worshipping the self or other things instead of our heavenly Father.

Jonah was given the impossible task of going into that city and bringing them to repentance. This is not all that different to the task that Jesus gave to His apostles as He was returning to heaven: to “make disciples of all nations.”

This great task—the task of making disciples—is the mission of the whole church of God. Today, Lauren has been commissioned to take on “greater responsibility in the life and work of the church.” As a baptised child of God and having been taught the basics of the Christian faith, she now shares in the same “great responsibility” of every member of this congregation and the church of God on earth.

As people who have been given God’s message of hope, forgiveness, and new life, we share in Jonah’s impossible task. It would be impossible if it was left entirely up to us and our ability. God makes it possible, though, which takes us to our second point for today.

God’s Word changes people.

So, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

Jonah 3:3–5

Jonah has been taught a pretty significant lesson: don’t run when God gives you a job, or else you’ll be swallowed by a fish. God has more to teach him, though.

We learn a bit later in the book that even Jonah eventually agrees to go to Nineveh and pass on God’s message, he does it somewhat reluctantly. He doesn’t believe that God will actually change the people and save the city. Jonah expects—and actually wants—the people to be stubborn, reject Jonah and his message, and for God to destroy the city and the evil in it.

When God doesn’t do that, Jonah goes and sulks under a bush for a while. The book of Jonah ends with a rhetorical question from God: “Shouldn’t I pity Nineveh and the 120,000 lost people who live there?” (Jo. 4:11)

Jonah does go and preach a simple message of repentance to the Ninevites, but his heart isn’t exactly in it.

What makes a great preacher? A booming voice? Cracking jokes? Creative storytelling? Crafty language? Unstoppable enthusiasm and energy? pastor could have all these traits, but that’s not what a Sunday sermon is about. Jonah might have had all these traits, but that’s not what changed the people’s hearts.

When Jonah’s word of warning reaches the king of Nineveh, he repents too. His response is interesting, though:

Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

Jonah 3:9

It’s not exactly a firm conviction, is it? “Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind.” The Ninevites repent in the hope that God will have mercy. They have just enough belief in God to acknowledge that He might actually destroy them. “We’d better repent just in case.”

They don’t do a complete U-turn and dedicate their lives to God. They don’t promise to never do evil again. They don’t make a commitment to go to church every week from now on. They simply recognise that the things they have been doing are not what God wants and repent of them. That kind of change of heart can only be brought about by the Word of God.

It is not Jonah’s incredible preaching that convinces them. He doesn’t give a logical argument like Paul does to the Greeks. He doesn’t perform a miracle to prove God is real like Elijah. He simply relays God’s message to the people. That is not such an impossible task.

We do indeed have a great responsibility as Christians to bring the good news of Jesus into our community and into the lives of people that don’t yet know him. It is a responsibility to change lives and hearts—their eternal fate is at stake!

Yet, we don’t make disciples by our own power. God gives us particular strengths and places us in particular people’s lives, but it is His Word that has the power to change lives and hearts, just as it did the Ninevites.

God has mercy on the wrong people.

Really, Jonah was right about the Ninevites: they didn’t deserve to be saved from destruction. There is no place in God’s kingdom for evildoers. Why should God save Nineveh when He has already set apart Israel as His chosen nation? For the very same reason God gave Jonah a second chance.

Why should God save the people in our town who have turned away from God and refused to serve Him their whole lives? Why should we bother reaching into the community with the Gospel when we already have a friendly church to belong to? For the very same reason God brought you here in the first place.

When the Pharisees came to Jesus asking for a sign that he was really the Messiah, he said this:

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

Matthew 12:39–41

It has always been God’s intention to save the world from sin and death forever, not just the nation of Israel.

Through Jonah, God brought a city to repentance and saved them. Through Christ, God has brought salvation to the whole world.

Jesus lay in the tomb for those three days, but we know what happened next. In baptism, which Lauren has confirmed today and which we all live in every day, we were buried with Christ and have now also risen to new life with Him.

As with Jonah, who was chosen despite his shortcomings, Jesus sends us out to make disciples with the same simple message that He Himself preached: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” May we continue to follow and trust in Him with the faith gifted to each of us by the Holy Spirit.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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