His Mercies are New Every Morning! - Jonah 3:1-5

His Mercies are New Every Morning!

Jonah 3:1-5

Introduction: Since we’ve been away from our series on “Jonah, the Prodigal Prophet” for a while, I want to remind you of the main line of the story. We tend to think of Jonah and immediately think about the great fish. We’ve seen that this is really a story about a great God. God is guiding this story for His purposes, and in the process revealing truth to Jonah, and to us, about His character, while also exposing our hearts, and our desperate need for mercy and grace.

       I decided to resume this series today since we are in the interval between Advent, and the start of a New Year. We’ve been reminded during Advent of the supreme demonstration of grace, as God sent forth His Son to redeem us, making it possible, in Christ, for sinful humans to be reconciled to Holy God. This is how God showed His love among us! How then, should we live? Jonah was in rebellion against God. He knew what God said, but He chose to do the exact opposite: God said “Go!” and Jonah said, “NO!” He ran away. He turned his back on God.  It's not that he didn't understand what God had said!

       Mark Twain famously said: “Many people are troubled by the things they can’t understand in the Bible. As for me, the things that trouble me most are those that I DO understand!” Jonah is, at least for me, one of those annoying Bible characters that is a little too much of a mirror. And I think that is part of God’s purpose. He wants us to see ourselves in the story, and in the process, help us to understand and long for the mind of Christ. Our prayer should be: “God help me to think more like you and less like Jonah!” But what about when we don’t like or understand what God is saying, what about when His will conflicts with ours?

       Nate Saint, one of the five missionaries martyred as they sought to reach the Auca tribe in South America, said that his life didn’t change until he came to grips with the fact that obedience is not a momentary option, it is a die-cast decision made beforehand. Trust and obey. Period. God was still working on Jonah; he had some lessons to learn about himself and about God’s love for the world. He didn’t know about what had become of the sailors on the boat, who, at Jonah’s urging, had finally relented and thrown Him into the sea. God used that near-disaster to reveal his power and holiness and to bring those heathens to repentance and faith. All the while, He was working. And He wasn’t finished with Jonah, and He hadn’t forgotten the Ninevites! And He is still interested in you!

The Maine* Idea: God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

I. God will use us, despite our past failures (1,2). It is pretty common among believers to think that something from their past has disqualified them from being useful to the Lord, from having a meaningful part in His mission. There is no doubt that sin has consequences, and that sometimes the consequences of a past sin may disqualify us from certain kinds of ministries. Pastors and elders for example are held to a higher standard, I think because of the potential to cause others to stumble. Nonetheless, if God has left you in this world, and you are seeking Him, and have repented of those past sins, He has a place for you in His mission! Remember the prodigal son, how the father so joyously received him back, not as a servant, but as a son? That is the kind of love that God has for you and me.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying,  ² "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against [“to”] it the message that I tell you." 

      That language might sound familiar, Jonah had heard God’s call before… and had run away! The language here is very parallel to 1:1,2…

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,  ² "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me."

       God had called Jonah to go to Nineveh and to call out against it. And Jonah understood and rejected God’s word. He ran from God’s presence. When we looked at that a couple of months back, the lesson was that that is essentially the nature of sin. We know, at some level, what God would have us to do. We want to do something else, something contrary to God’s word. We might rationalize, justify our actions, explain away our choices, but just like Jonah, we are turning away from the face of God. As Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Remember the story of Christina, told by Max Lucado? She was a young teenage girl who lived with her mother in a small village outside of Rio de Janeiro. Longing for life in the big city, one day she ran away. Her mother pursued her, knowing the dangers of the city. She knew how stubborn her daughter was, but also knew how desperation can drive people to do the unthinkable. But the odds of finding one girl in a city of 8 million? Christina’s mother put little pictures of herself around hotels and bars, with a little hand written note on the back. Finally, the pictures ran out, her money was gone, and the woman returned home without her daughter. It was a few weeks later that Christina came down the staircase of another hotel, the joy and excitement long-gone from her face, knowing now what a mess she had made of her life, but how could she ever return? Suddenly she saw a little picture on a mirror by the desk… it was her mother! She took the picture off the mirror and turned it over, the hand-written note said, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter, please, come home!” And she did.

       A parent’s love. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, watching, waiting. Well, Jonah had rejected God’s word, he had turned his back on God and gone in the opposite direction, but God was not going to write Jonah off. The same is true about you and me by the way. Our past failures and rebellion don’t mean we are now discharged from God’s army, he hasn’t waived us from his team. As long as he leaves in this world, he has a purpose for us, we have a part in His plan. It took a storm, nearly drowning, and three days in a fish’s belly for Jonah to learn that lesson!

      The ESV seems to miss a slight variation in the first and second call of Jonah. In chapter 1 Jonah was to “call out against” Nineveh. In chapter three a different preposition is used, “call out to it…” It may only be a stylistic variation, but it may be that in light of Jonah’s hard-heart, and in light of God’s intended result for this mission, the Lord is softening His language to prepare Jonah for what will soon happen. Yes, he is to preach God’s wrath against sin. But why did God give Nineveh 40 days? He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

     God is not only working on the Ninevites, He is still working on the prodigal prophet. You know the parable of the prodigal son. We’ve seen Jonah as the younger son, who takes his inheritance and turns his back on the father, choosing to do things his own way. But we’ll also see in the next chapter Jonah’s heart is akin to the elder son. Yes, Jonah is to be God’s spokesman, announcing his wrath against sin, and God is also working on Jonah, seeking to expose his lack of compassion for the lost. As long as we have life, God will work in us and through us. We are a work in progress, and even so, we have a part in God’s program. God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

II. Believers should Hear and Obey the Word of God (3a). The contrast with chapter one is notable. There God said “Arise and go…” And Jonah arose… and fled from the presence of the Lord! He knew what God said, but he chose to do the exact opposite. His heart was not right with the Lord.

       Only after Jonah was about to drown, did he pray to the Lord, he remembered the LORD in His temple, and his heart turned toward home. And that was all it took, a mustard seed of faith, a hint of repentance, and God heard him and rescued him. Now, essentially the same call is repeated. As we taught it to the kids in our Olympian group, “a new chance to obey comes every day!” What will Jonah do this time? We read in v.3…

³ So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. 

       Again, the Word of the LORD comes to Jonah, Arise and go! This time, Jonah arose and went!  In this call, in chapter 3, Jonah is told to preach “…the message I tell you…” There is a slight softening in the language. The focus is more on Jonah.

       This simple statement summarizes what the response of believers should be to God’s Word. Jesus said in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me…” That is the mark of genuine faith. Hearing and believing the Word. We believe God. And we do what He says. All the time, right? Yeah, just like Jonah! We struggle, resist, question, and sometimes rebel. But God won’t just let us go in our rebellion. He chastens every child that He receives. Because He loves us, God will do what He needs to, even send a storm to get out attention, or a giant fish to bring us where we need to be!  That’s the Maine* Idea: God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

III. God’s plan is to use us to warn the lost (3b-4). In the first chapter God told Jonah that he was to cry out against the city because their “…evil has come up before me." This time God says to preach the message He would give. We read,

…Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.  ⁴ Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

These people were pagan, depraved idolaters, enemies of Israel. In chapter 1 the language implies that their sin was a “stench” in the nostrils of God. That may have been part of the reason Jonah ran away in the first place. But Jonah needed to understand, and so do we, that all sin is an abomination to God. He is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity, and He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. It is not only the sin of people worse than me, my sin is an offense.

       Let’s look for a minute at the message Jonah preached. “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Notice this: that word “overthrow” can have the meaning, “destroy,” as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 19:25, “And He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities…” That is surely the meaning that Jonah intended as he preached to the Ninevites. It can also mean “turn” as in transform, as in Jeremiah 31:13, “…for I will turn their mourning to joy…” Could it be that God had Jonah use this word, perhaps intending more than Jonah himself understood? It seems that is they way it turns out! Nineveh is indeed overturned, but not in the way we, or Jonah, might have expected! It is transformed, as the people believe the word that Jonah preached, and receive it as the Word of God. They repent, and cry out for mercy. Think about it, why did God give Nineveh 40 days?  There was time to reflect, time for all to hear, time to believe and to repent. That doesn’t appear to have been Jonah’s motivation however.

       First of all, notice the message Jonah preached, if indeed he intended “overturn” to mean “destroy”: Judgement is coming! Period. Just five words in the Hebrew text. Any call to repent, or to call on God for mercy, is at best implied by the prophet’s warning. I don’t think we should conclude that is all that Jonah said, the sermons in the Bible are normally summaries that capture the gist of a message given on a particular occasion. Even the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Upper Room Discourse (John 14-16) would take only 15-20 minutes to read aloud. It is certain that Jesus taught for much longer periods of time. These only present a part of what was said. The same is surely true of Jonah’s message. But this was the bottom line: “You’ve got 40 days, and you are going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah!” But they received Jonah’s message as the Word of God, and they were broken by it, they mourned, and looked to God for mercy.

       Jonah, didn’t seem to be interested in mercy for the Ninevites. In fact, notice that we are told that the city was “a three-day journey” (v.3). Yet Jonah only went “a day’s journey” and preached (v.4), and the people, from the least to the greatest, believed God! How did that happen? He didn’t have Facebook or a podcast to help! It seems the Word spread throughout the city, all the way to the king, one person hearing and believing, and immediately passing this earth-shaking news onto everyone they knew (their oikos and beyond). Can we learn something from the pagan Ninevites? If we believe this Word is really true, that humans are facing a lost eternity, God’s wrath against sin, should we not warn them? But you might think, “They won’t believe me!” Many won’t. But some, by God’s grace, will be pricked to the heart, and believe. Let me take you 800 years or so after the time of Jonah. During the Jewish feast of Pentecost Peter was preaching Jesus the Messiah. Near the conclusion he said in Acts 2:36-38,

³⁶ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."  ³⁷ Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"  ³⁸ And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you…”

Three thousand believed that day and were converted to faith in Christ! Jonah likewise brought God’s Word, and thousands of Ninevites, from the least to the greatest, heard and believed the Word of God, as they were cut to the heart. By the way, do you see the contrast between the Ninevites and Jonah himself from chapter 1? Jonah too heard the word of the Lord, understood it, but he chose to disobey it, trying to get as far from God as he could! It took a storm, nearly drowning, and three-days in the fish for Jonah’s heart to soften! The pagan sailors on the ship heard about Jonah’s God, saw his power and believed. The Ninevites heard a message of judgment, and repented, looking to the God of Jonah for mercy! A pagan captain and a pagan King, pagan sailors and pagan Ninevites, were all more responsive to the Word of God than Jonah was at the beginning. But God still had a plan for Jonah, for his ministry, and for his heart. God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan!

IV. Be Encouraged, God’s Word will accomplish His purpose (5)!

⁵ 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.

This is not what we might have expected, considering the reputation for violence and debauchery that the Ninevites had!  But God’s Word is powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. His Word will not return void, but will accomplish the purpose for which it is sent. The Apostle Paul said “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Our brother Richard Cain was one who always was ready to share his faith, either through testimony, or handing out a gospel-tract or an invitation card, he seized every opportunity to point people to Jesus. Will we pick up the torch? Will we pray that God would make us more sensitive to the opportunities around us to hold forth the Word of Life? Many, perhaps most, will reject it. But the result is up to God, not us. And the Good News is some will believe. We are called to be faithful, urging people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

What is God saying to me in this passage? We see that God cares about us, and no matter our past, all who believe have a place in His plan! He didn’t give up on reaching the Ninevites. And he didn’t give up on convicting Jonah, exposing his heart, and leading Him deeper in faith.

What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Could it be that you have something in your past that you still struggle with? Something the enemy would bring to mind to taunt you, “How could God love someone like you? How could He forgive you? How could He use you?” Remember that Jesus paid it all, it is finished… Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. In Christ alone my hope is found! That is our testimony, and that is the Good News: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners! Let a New Year be a new beginning: His mercies are new every morning! To God be the glory. God used Jonah. He later used 12 men to turn the world upside down. As we walk with Him, we can reach this peninsula with the Gospel!  AMEN.