JONAH: STARTING OVER WITH GOD

Transcription

1 JONAH: STARTING OVER WITH GOD By Andrew Wilson Jonah 3:1-10 October 4, 2009 Psalm 130:1-4, 7 The second half of Jonah, which starts at chapter 3, is the story of a man who has been reborn. God has just caused the great fish to vomit Jonah onto the beach. And now God tells our gooey, stinking hero once again to go to Nineveh to proclaim his message. Jonah is being given a second chance to redeem himself and fulfill his life s purpose. But the story isn t just about Jonah and the fish that swallowed him. In chapters 1 and 2, the people of Nineveh were hundreds of miles over the horizon. Now they re front and center. The lives of 120,000 people hang in the balance. How will they receive God s message, assuming Jonah is willing to preach it? If they believe it and they repent and turn from evil, how will God respond? These are the questions that now hang over the story. We already know about Jonah s change of heart. He humbled himself and renewed his vow to serve the Lord before the fish spit him up. We aren t surprised when he packs his bag and saddles his ass - assuming he has an ass and heads for Nineveh. The message that God gives to Jonah is simple and emphatically negative: Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. That s not a message that s likely to go down well in a place like Nineveh. Remember the analogy I used a couple of weeks ago: Nineveh is to Israel what Nazi Germany was to the Jews of Europe. Imagine what the Nazis would have done to any Jew crazy enough to walk the streets of Berlin crying, Forty more days and the Third Reich will be wiped out. If God had put me in charge of the Nineveh campaign I think I would have come up with a more hopeful theme. I might have tried the Joel Osteen approach: God is your friend, and he wants you to prosper. Or better yet, I might have borrowed that tried and true line from Campus Crusade: God loves you and has a plan for your life. Apparently God wants the people to know he s holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. But surely there s a way to do that without driving them to the brink of despair! One of our sister churches just sent out a postcard with this intriguing message: Weighed down with stress and fear?... What if God really does want to get inside of your junk? What if God can even use your junk to carry out His purposes in the mess of today? 1

2 That works. That grabs your attention without scaring the living daylights out of you. Besides, it s true. God really does want to use the Ninevites, with all their junk, to carry out his plan of salvation. Thankfully, Jonah doesn t give in to the temptation to soften the message. He takes a deep breath and starts preaching, fully expecting to be torn to bits by an angry mob. It takes him three days to make his way through the city. Many Bible commentators trip over this part of the story. If it took Jonah three days just to walk from one side of the city to the other, they reason, the city must have contained millions of people. Yet we learn in chapter 4 that the population was around 120,000. This apparent conundrum is easily solved. It takes Jonah three days to move across the city, I think we can assume, because he s a meticulous sort of guy. He s walking every street and alley, and looking behind every garbage can to make sure everyone hears God s word. Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. The prophecy sends a chill down the spine of every Ninevite. They all know they ve behaved badly and are deserving of the worst kind of punishment. They also know enough about Israel s God to know that he s capable of wiping them out. But instead of turning on Jonah and cursing Yahweh, every one of them repents. How will Yahweh understand that they mean it? What visible sign can the people give him that they re sincere? They declare a city-wide fast. They also rip off their clothes and cover themselves with a course and maddeningly uncomfortable fabric called sackcloth. Maybe by punishing themselves and demonstrating their remorse they ll soften Yahweh s heart? When the unnamed king of Nineveh hears Jonah s message, he also repents. Like most politicians, he wants to appear to be in control of the situation. Unfortunately for him, the people have already acted, but he finds a creative way to partly redeem his soiled reputation. If he can t tell the people to fast and wear sackcloth, he ll tell them that their animals have to fast and wear sackcloth. That ll remind them who s in charge, and who s looking out for them. I don t want to be too hard on the king. His animal fast does seem to fall into the category of Stupid Things Politicians Do to Rehabilitate Their Careers. But also makes several wise pronouncements. He tells the people to pray to Yahweh. He orders them to stop drinking, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering and spitting on the sidewalk. Better late than never or so he hopes. The story of Nineveh has a surprise ending. Or at least it s a surprise to Jonah, who still thinks it s the Lord s job to keep a record of other people s sins. I m reading from Jonah chapter 3, verse 10: 2

3 When God saw what [the Ninevites] did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. - Jonah 3:10 Once again Yahweh proves to be a God of mercy and compassion. He treats the Ninevites as he has treated Jonah. Instead of giving them what they deserve, he gives them a second chance. It doesn t really make sense, does it? Given the history of Nineveh, it seems all but certain that the people s newfound attitude of repentance is eventually going to fade, and that they re going to return to their old ways. What happens then? What happens when the people that Yahweh has spared throw everything back in his face? Won t that make him look weak? And won t that send the message to the rest of us that it doesn t matter what we do because the Lord is infinitely kind. And that he ll let us do whatever the heck we feel like doing, as long as we occasionally say we re sorry? These are the questions that Jonah is now asking. He can t accept the simple answer that God loves all people, even the worst of sinners. He can t respect a God who lets himself be manipulated by pagans. Next week we ll look more deeply at God s response to Jonah. Today we re talking about second chances, and what it means for us to start over with God. Nobody deserves a new start. Nobody ever became a child of God because they had it coming to them. We re all guilty of violating God s law and doing things that are contrary to his will. We all need to recognize and confess our guilt before God can help us. Until we do so, we re lost in this life. To borrow an image used by Jesus, we re like sheep without a shepherd. We re cut off from the one who created us, and we re headed for destruction. But it isn t enough just to acknowledge your sins. As the story of Jonah and the Ninevites shows us, we also have to repent. We have to actually turn away from our sin and surrender ourselves to God s will. If we confess, but we have no real desire to change, we re just taunting God and toying with his majesty. I love this quote by William Nevins: There are two kinds of repentance: One is that of Judas, the other that of Peter; the one is ice broken, the other is ice melted. Repentance unto life will be repentance in this life. The glorious, good news the good news that s so often hidden in all our bad news is this: God stands ready to forgive us. God stands ready to wipe the slate clean. When we truly repent, and we demonstrate our repentance by making an honest effort to change our ways, the Lord receives us into his arms and adopts us as his children. 3

4 The psalm says: If you kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, So that we can, with reverence, serve you. - Psalm 130:3-4 If God held us responsible for all the messes we ve created, all the people we ve hurt, and all the laws we ve broken, our situation would be utterly hopeless. But the truth is that God isn t interested in our past. He doesn t care about the dark places we ve been. He only cares about our future. And he s ready and able to steer us in a new direction in this new day. Jonah knew all those things about God, yet he still resisted him. Why was it so hard for Jonah to start over with God? Why is it so hard for us who know and love the Lord to begin the day anew? Why do we resist his call? I have a friend, George Stimson, whose father recently died. Yesterday I offered the eulogy at his memorial service in Pasadena. The elder George Stimson was an amazing man of God. Next to my own father, George was the most important man in my life when I was growing up. He was the scoutmaster of my scout troop. And he was a family friend for nearly 40 years. Little George, who is about my age, told me about a time in his life when he was struggling with difficult decisions, and felt like his life was all out of joint. He was discouraged and depressed and didn t see much of a future for himself. The counsel that his dad gave him at that time was like a revelation to him. After pouring out his heart to him, George s dad suggested that his problem was theological. It was rooted in a misunderstanding of God and his relationship with us. George used an analogy from football to explain himself. Who is the most important person in the game in the NFL? he asked. Of course it s the coach. Everyone knows that he s in charge. He s the one calling all the plays and making things happen. But that s not the way the game was played, George explained, when he played for Menlo High School. There, the captain on the field called all the plays. The captain, and not the coach, was in charge. The coach didn t ignore what was happening. But he respected the kids on the field enough to allow them to make their own decisions. And so it is with God and us, George s father concluded. God loves us enough to set us free in the world he has created. But he hasn t abandoned us. He s standing by, rooting for us. And he s ready to come to our rescue if and when things start to fall apart. 4

5 Some of us in the church have the same hang-ups about God that George had. We think of him controlling our lives like an NFL coach, or like a puppeteer who jerks us here and there in order to carry out his mysterious plan. Instead of feeling liberated by his grace, we feel trapped by his Providence. And, like Jonah, we find ourselves resisting him and even hiding from his presence. But what if God is actually the person he says he is. What if he really is our Father, our strength, our comfort, and our encourager? What if our past mistakes didn t really matter to him? And what if he really does give us the freedom to make own decisions and choose our own paths as we seek his will for our lives? For some of us, that would make a difference. It would make all the difference in the world because it would inspire us to come out of hiding and renew our vows to love and serve the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It s never too late to start over with God. God s invitation to this table is an invitation to be restored and renewed in the power of the Holy Spirit. May you open your heart to the Lord Jesus as you receive the meal he has prepared for you. 5