Sermon on AUGUST 2

Interesting Note: I prepared this with another version, and then discovered that the pew Bible translated the passage differently. This made me have to ad lib a little bit.

 

JONAH 3

Jonah 3

Jonah Preaches at Nineveh

 ¹ Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, ² "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you." ³ So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey^[a]in extent.
⁴ And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

The People of Nineveh Believe

   
⁵ So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. ⁶ Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. ⁷ And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,

   Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. ⁸ But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. ⁹ Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?

¹⁰ Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.

 

He Had Compassion

Jonah must have been a heck of a preacher. That is all I have to say. He preached for three days, walking the highways and the byways of Nineveh, and in those three days he prompted a city-wide revival. Perhaps we might even say a nationwide revival. Yep. Jonah must have been quite a preacher.

 

The Bible says the call to go and preach to the Ninevites came to Jonah a second time, and this time Jonah obeyed what the Lord had told him to do. He marched north to the great city of Nineveh. And he walked through the city prophecying about the coming judgment of God.

 

Now Nineveh was a big city. In fact it was one of the biggest cities in the ancient world. Just to walk through the whole thing, to visit all the neighborhoods and to bring the news of the impending judgment of God to them. Jonah must have been a hellfire and brimstone kind of preacher I think.

 

It must have took a little bit of gumption to preach this sermon in Nineveh. If you don't think so, think about it this way. Go to Tehran right now. Take a flight. Land on the tarmac. Purchase a truck. Hook up a sound system in the back. Go to the most fundamentalist neighborhoods in Tehran, Iran. And start preaching to the people in Tehran, Iran that if they don't repent and accept Jesus that God will destroy their whole nation in 30 days. Or if that is a little too distant, go into Juarez, Mexico right now, make your way to the most violent, gang-infested neighborhoods and start preaching against, gangs, drugs, and then preach against how evil specific gang warlords are doing the work of the devil.

 

But God told Jonah to do it, so he did it. He said "In forty days, God will overthrow you!" Strange thing. All of the people started to repent. They started to put on their sackcloths, cry, and wail. They whined and they cried. They begged God for forgiveness.

 

This call for repentance spread faster than any of us or Jonah could have imagined. It spread faster than an internet rumor or a viral video, the warning of God's judgment spread faster than the Macarena dance craze did a few years back, or as fast as a really juicy rumor makes it through the phone lines of Fowler.

 

Before long the news had gotten to the King. And, though a king usually pronounces decrees to be followed by his subjects, this news came up from the people to the King. And the King did a strange thing. He repented to. He stripped off his kingly clothes, dressed in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. In other words, he too began to grieve all the ways his nation and his people betrayed the way of God.

 

He repented of their violence and mercilessness. Their unwillingness to listen to God. Their unwillingness to do what they knew was right. He also extended the fast. No feeding the livestock. No watering the livestock. No food or drink for the people either. Maybe if God sees how sorry we are, the king thought, he might see that we have made a change, that we have repented, and spare us the judgment that he has promised.

 

So nobody ate or drank. For one day. Then another. And when God saw this, he saw that they were serious about their regret and repentance of their sinful behavior. And God forgave them.

 

Actually the Scripture says, "He had compassion upon them". At least this is what many versions have. This version talks about God relenting and forgiving, but in many versions the passage correctly translates the phrase: He had compassion.

 

Compassion is an interesting word. It is a word that when it is used of human beings, speaks of having a visceral response that causes you to move in loving action. The New Testament word for compassion—the root of which is the cognate spachna—with refers to kind of love that has a physical effect on your being. Specifically, with the New Testament word it refers to shaky guts and jittery bowels. This may sound strange to us, until we think about it. In Jewish thought, the bowels were the seat of emotions. When we are stressed we talk about our stomach churning. When we are nervous we talk about having butterflies in our stomach. When we are emotionally upset, sometimes we say we feel nautious. When the ancients wanted to talk about compassion, they spoke of the kind of compassion that gave you indigestion, that made your guts shake a little bit. The kind of love and mercy that when you saw someone hurting that it you felt it in your body…right here…in your gut. And you had to do something for those people you felt so much for.

 

That physical from the gut kind of love that spurs you to action…that is the kind of love and compassion God has for these people. Eating nothing. Drinking nothing. Putting sackcloth and ashes on their dogs and cows, their kids and their cats, and hoping and praying that somehow that God would have mercy on them for their violence and selfishness, their conquest and greed, their lack of mercy and compassion. It must have been quite a sight. It moved God to compassion. It moved him. He felt for them. Deep down in his gut, he felt for them. So he pulled back the wrath he was going to pour out.

Popular images of God in heaven make us think of God up in heaven with a lightning bolt in one hand and a eye on punishing us and putting us in our place. Here we see God quick to forgiveness and compassion. God is quick to be moved by us when we move toward Him.

 

The word describing God's judgment is translated "overturn" or "overthrow". This is an interesting word to describe God's judgment on the Ninevites. On one hand, it does speak of God's ability to disturb and destroy. To crush and destroy the Ninevites. But it can also mean at the same time an openness to repentance. I have thought about how to communicate this. God judgment can overthrow the greatest governments, the wealth and comfort and security that we trust in, the evil that we do, and the power that we have. God's judgment can come as painful and bloody, and burning hot with flame. Like a war without end when we refuse to surrender. At least that is the way the Bible describes it.

 

But this overthrow can also have the picture of a burning of a field, an overthrow of the soil to make it fertile for new crops to grow in. And that is more of God's goal in the overturning. This preparing the soil of our hearts to understand his call, to receive his grace, to accept his love.

 

When Jonah pronounces this judgment, in the middle of this pronouncement of destruction for these warlords and destroyers is this message of the possibility of grace and forgiveness. This sliver of possibility that if they repent the possibility of new life is open to them. They do repent. They do cry out for mercy. And God loves them. He is moved with love for them. God forgives those Ninevites.

 

The God who loves the Ninevites in the Old Testament is the one that Jesus speaks about in the New Testament in John 3 when Jesus says that "God so loved THE WHOLE WORLD that he sent his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him should not PERISH but have everlasting life." The God who has compassion on the Ninevites is the one who throws a party in heaven when one sinner repents. The God who has compassion on the Ninevites is the one whom we cry out to for mercy and forgiveness, the one we count on for grace and love.

 

You see, when we are religious it is easy to think of the world made up of people like "us" that God likes, and people like "them" who God disapproves of and who we should not associate with. It is easy to see ourselves as the good guys, and others as the bad guys. And when we think that way, it is possible to gather into little holy huddles and insulate ourselves from the world around us. To outsource missions to missionaries across the world and pastors in our community, and to try and carve out this safe little space.

 

God did not let Jonah do that. He does not want us to do that either.

 

Jonah was a country boy. He sent him to the city. Jonah was a Jew. God sent him to Assyrians. Jonah was a preacher. God sent him to warriors. Jonah worked in the temple. God sent Jonah to the streets.

 

We have this thing called the backyard mission project coming up. I am very excited about it. I am also very nervous. As we progress through this project I am learning a few things.

 

When we started putting this together, I thought of it as "us" going out to "them" who might need our help, helping "them" for a little bit, and searching for projects that were "worthy" of our effort. Projects that would be a good investment in deserving people who just needed a little help because they were down on their luck. I sought out projects. I got ZERO responses. Nobody else seemed to get any others. Nobody wanted to admit they needed help. Nobody wanted to be a project. Deep down I know better, but this becomes an easy way of communicating what we are trying to do.

 

Now, especially in the last week, as I have went around I have talked about this as our opportunity to serve. I stress that there are no income qualifications. We are just trying to be good neighbors and friends. We are just looking for opportunities to be friends and servants of our community as a church.

 

We have gotten 7 new projects in the last week. It is because instead of offering to do something for them, we have asked how we can work together to be good friends and neighbors. And in the process to express the love of Jesus to them in a simple way.

 

In the process, we as a church can be instruments of kindness and compassion with friends and neighbors. We can share God's love as friends and peers instead of approaching people with an approach that might be read as us-them. As we do this, we express God's compassionate love instead of self-righteous judgment.

 

As we come to this table. We remember that God has compassion for us. We remember Christ's blood shed for each person, that we may accept God's good news and know Jesus. As we come to this table, we remember God has had compassion on us. He showed that to us through his broken for us.

 

As we take the bread and the cup, we remember that we are told we do this "to proclaim Jesus until he comes. To proclaim that no matter what we have done, Christ is calling us to repent. To proclaim that God is waiting to show not only me and you his compassion and his love, but everyone his compassion and love. Our friends and our enemies. Our family and our friends. Strangers and neighbors. Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, and Whites. He loves us all the same. He wants to have compassion on us no matter who are parents are, what our background is, no matter how we have failed or succeeded. His grace is offered. His compassion is waiting.

 

We are not only told to believe this. We are told to proclaim it. Through committing to this truth through the cup and bread. And through taking this truth out in the world through our words and especially our actions as we go.

 

We serve a compassionate God. God had compassion on me. God has compassion with me. He has compassion on you. And he calls us to be a people who are moved to action to take that compassion and love with us into the world.

 

Amen.