Sermon – Epiphany 3 – "The Universal Grace of God" – Jonah 3 – 1/25/09
January 26th, 2009Click play to listen to the audio version of this sermon.
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"The word of the Lord came to Jonah saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you."
Of all of the prophets of the Old Testament, Jonah is definitely the bad boy in the group. Jeremiah may have complained that he wasn't the right man for the job, but at least he didn't try to skip town. But when the call came to Jonah, Jonah hopped a boat headed in the exact opposite direction as the Lord told him to go.
But as Jonah would learn, it's hard to hide from God. "The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up." The old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes applies to sailors too, but for sailors, instead of foxholes, its sinking ships. The sailors call out to their gods for help. Call it religion, call it superstition, but they conclude that God is hopping mad as someone onboard the ship. They cast lots to see who the problem passenger might be. And sure enough, the lot fell to Jonah who was in his cabin sleeping.
To his credit, Jonah confesses his sin and tells them that their only hope is to throw him into the sea. So, overboard goes Jonah and suddenly the sea is calm. Just listen to what happens next. "Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly…" They were terrified that they were going to all drown in the sea, and now they are even more terrified that the sea grew calm.
This, by the way, is the same reaction of the disciples who were in the boat on the stormy Sea of Galilee. While the storm threatened to sink them, Jesus was asleep in the stern of the boat. They woke Him up and He commanded the waves and the wind to stand down, and immediately the sea was calm. And Mark writes, they were exceedingly afraid.
No sooner does Jonah hit the water but a big fish comes along and swallows him up and takes him on a three day, all expenses paid, cruise on the Mediterranean Sea. Needless to say, Jonah did not have a room with a porthole. At the end of the third day, "the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land." Thrown over the side of one boat and now vomited out of the belly of another, Jonah picks the seaweed out his hair, washes off the gastric juices and gives thanks to the Lord for saving him.
And with that, we come to chapter 3, our assigned reading for this morning. "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." And so this time we read, "So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord." Jonah was one of those people who have to learn things the hard way, but at least he learned his lesson.
This might be a good place to interject a little bit of background about Nineveh. Nineveh was the capitol of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians were a ruthless and brutal nation, a terrorist nation. When Assyria overtook Israel, they put fishhooks through their nostrils and led them into exile through the desert. They literally lead them by the nose. The Lord told Jonah to go to Nineveh and "call out against it." Kind of makes a mission trip to Thailand and Cambodia seem like a vacation retreat.
As soon as he arrives, Jonah starts preaching. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
Now that's a short sermon. Only seven words in English, five in the Hebrew. I know you all would like me to preach shorter sermons, but really, five words? This may be the shortest sermon in the bible, but it gets the job done. As sermons go, its got everything a good sermon has to have. It's got law. And it's full strength law. "Nineveh shall be overthrown." No watering down the law of God there. No preaching what the congregation wants to hear in that. That word, "shall be overthrown" is the same word that's used in Genesis 18 regarding Sodom and Gomorrah. If Nineveh doesn't repent, it's going to be toast just like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But there's also wonderful gospel in this sermon. "Yet forty days." There is still time to repent. Time to turn away from your godless ways, time to turn to the way and the truth and the life.
"Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." As short as it is, you can learn a lot about God from a sermon like that. We learn that God really doesn't want to overthrown Nineveh. He doesn't want to destroy them. He wants them to repent, quit their evil and wicked ways, believe in Him and be saved. If God had just wanted to get rid of Nineveh, He would have just sent fire from heaven and destroyed them. The very fact that He sends His prophet Jonah means that He wants to save them. Here we learn that God "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." He wants to "relent from disaster." "God is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance." (2Ptr.3:9).
Granted, it would have been nice had Jonah developed this text a bit more than he did. It's a though he's only doing the bare minimum required of him. Only doing what he had to do to avoid another three day cruise on the "U.S. Whalebelly." In fact, as we'll see here in just a moment, unlike His Lord, Jonah really does not want to see the Ninevites saved. He wants to see them "overthrown."
But just like Jonah couldn't run away from God, he couldn't prevent the Word of God from accomplishing its purpose. In contrast to this meager little sermon, the people of Nineveh respond with great enthusiasm. "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."
They believed God. That's the same phrase as in Genesis 15 regarding Abraham. "And [Abraham] believe the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness." (Gen.15:6). And not just a few believed, but "from the greatest of them to the least of them" believed and they fasted and put on sackcloth, visible signs of their change of heart and mind.
If ever there was an example of the power of God's Word to convert unbelievers to believers and turn the hearts of the wicked to renounce their wickedness, here it is. You certainly can't credit this to the powerful sermon of a charismatic preacher. All you've got here is God's Word. But it's "Thy strong word."
"Lo, on those who dwelt in darkness,
dark as night and deep as death,
broke the light of Thy salvation,
breathed Thine own life giving breath."
The one advantage of a five-word sermon is that it's easy to remember. You can repeat it word for word. And that's just what happened. "The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes."
What's interesting to note here is that the faith of the people changed the law of the land. Change didn't happen in Nineveh because the proper legislation was written into law. But proper legislation was written into law because change had come to Nineveh. Wouldn't it be something if instead of relying on legislation and Supreme Court rulings to overturn Roe vs. Wade it simply became obsolete because everyone from the 'greatest to the least' among us heard the Word, believed in God and repented?
The King issued a proclamation and published it throughout Nineveh. "Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish." This is really an amazing speech from the pagan king of Nineveh. It's the sermon that Jonah should have preached. Sometimes, sad to say it, the pagans are better preachers than Christians. If His believers won't proclaim it, God will sometimes use unbelievers to preach His word.
And then comes the wonderful response from God. "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it."
"Thy strong Word bespeaks us righteous;
Bright with Thine own holiness,
Glorious now, we press toward glory,
And our lives our hopes confess."
Now you would have thought that the book of Jonah would end right there, with the common doxology or "they all lived happily ever after." But it doesn't. There is a chapter four, and it begins with these very disturbing words, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry." Jonah knew what kind of God, God is. "I knew that you were slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster." "That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish."
Jonah wanted to see the Ninevites get what they had coming to them. He didn't want to preach the Word to them because he knew the Word has the power to create faith in the heart. And he knew that God was gracious and would forgive them all of their sins if they repented. Jonah was perfectly happy that he was saved back in chapter two. But he was "exceedingly displeased and angry" that God relented from destroying Nineveh in chapter 3.
The book of Jonah ends with a question. God questions Jonah saying, "Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" That's were the book ends. We're left hanging. Nineveh repented, but now we're left wondering, will Jonah repent too? It's a question that we need to ask ourselves as well. Will we repent of the limits that we put on God's grace and the borders we construct to withhold the offer of salvation by the forgiveness of sins?
Ultimately, "God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster," only because of the atoning and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for the SINS OF THE WORLD. The number of those for whom Christ died includes everyone. And everyone includes everyone. Christ died for Ninevites and Israelites, Christians and non-Christians, Americans and Iranians, heterosexuals and homosexuals, right to lifers and pro-choicers, the fetus in the womb and the one with dementia in the nursing home. Christ died for ALL people, "from the greatest of them to the least of them."
The grace of God in Jesus Christ is universal grace because God so loved the world. But salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone. And faith is a gift from God, which comes by hearing the Word and in no other way. As St. Paul reminds us, "How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how will they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15).
When Jesus called the fishermen to "follow Him" and become "fishers of men," it was net fishing that He was sending them to do. They weren't sent out to fish for brook trout with an elk hair cadis fly. They were to preach the Word like they cast their nets, catching every fish they could, leaving it to the Lord to sort out the good fish and the bad, the saved and the unsaved.
That's the way it should be for us too. That's the way it should be for the Church of Jesus Christ. We should be people who, being thankful that God has saved us by grace alone through faith alone, repent of our reluctance to do what we have been called and sent to do, and love our enemies as much as God loves them. Love them enough to give them the only hope they have for being saved and avoid being overthrown. "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Gospel."
Related Entries:
» "The Sign Of Jonah" – 6 Sermons on Jonah for Lent» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» "The Sign of Jonah" – Scene 4 – "God Calls Jonah A 2nd Time" – Jonah 3:1-3
» The Sign of Jonah – Scene 1:'God Calls Jonah' – Jonah 1:1-3 – 2/17/10
» The Sign of Jonah – Scene 3: "Jonah Swallowed Up and Spit Out" – Jonah 1:17-2:10 – 3/3/10
» The Sign Of Jonah – Scene 6 – "The Conversion of Jonah?" – Jonah 4:1-11 – 3/25/10
