by Pastor Glenn Layne

September 22, 2002
This Week's Message:

Third Message in the Series
You're Drafted! Jonah and You

On the Town

Jonah 3

A couple was staying at a small motel in rural Georgia. The wife woke up first and began packing, getting dressed and taking things to the car while her husband snoozed away. "Get up," she said. "I'm taking some things to the car and I swear if you're not up when I get back, you'll regret it." As she stepped out, the husband got up.

Meanwhile, outside, the wife put her things in the car and went back to the room. Only one problem-she went to the wrong room. She opened the unlocked door to see a man snoring away. "I SAID GET UP!" she shouted. Then at once she realized that she was in the wrong room, turned around red as a beet and slammed the door. The dazed man inside rubbed the sleep from his eyes and said, "Man, that's what I call a wake-up service!"

Jonah: a storm, a whale, a second chance: that's what I call a wake-up service. He is fully engaged now.

But now he has a tough challenge. Now what could be tougher than living in a whale's belly? NINEVAH!

Let's be clear: obedience to God is not as tough as disobedience. Disobedience produces grief and guilt and regrets that last forever. But obedience is no cakewalk either. Obedience can cost dearly. For Martin Burnham, missionary to the Philippines, obedience led to his death just a few months ago. For Jesus, obedience meant the cross. For Stephen, it meant being stoned to death. Obedience does not grant immunity from hardship.

And disobedience doesn't always lead to hardship-right away at least. Disobedience to God can mean money, pleasure and power. For a while. Never forever. In the long run, the pleasure of obedience always outstrips the pleasure of disobedience. Always.

I. A New Jonah, 3:1-4

31Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2"Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
3Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city--a visit required three days. 4On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."

• Spiritually, for Jonah this means a second chance! This is Jonah's second commission-or his recommission. The wording is almost the same as in chapter 1:2: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."

Now, it's "preach the message I give you"-a more hopeful sounding message. When I hear the phrase "preach against it," it reminds me of a true story about President Calvin Coolidge. He was an old Vermonter who faithfully attended church each week. One Sunday he returned to the White House after church and one of the servants asked the President what the pastor had preached on. "Sin," was Coolidge's answer. "What did he say about it?" asked the servant. "He's against it."

Well, so there's a nuance of difference here now. Just preach what I say, Jonah. And this time, there's argument. Just think what would happen in this country if God's people were to just stop arguing with God and obey Him! Let me give you three quick concrete things that would happen:

1. Millions of people would be won to the faith by witnessing Christians-overnight!
2. All financial stresses in all Bible-believing churches would be solved. Evangelical Christians today are giving to the work of the kingdom at a lower rate that during the Great Depression.
3. The work of world missions would receive a money and personnel jolt on a massive scale. We can see the fulfillment of the Great Commission from where we stand now. That kind of obedience would bring it within easy grasp.

• Personally, Jonah is now "Ninevah-obedient." The task God commissioned him to he's now doing. This is what it's all about.

Jonah was being a FAT disciple. No, I don't mean he gained a lot of weight. FAT stands for faithful, adaptable, and teachable. Let me repeat that: faithful, adaptable, and teachable. It should be the ambition of every believer to be FAT.

Let me tell you the story of Don Orvis. He was 26 years old when he became a believer. He was a bright guy, but had no education to speak of, but he soon found that he enjoyed kids and he enjoyed teaching. So he volunteered to teach the elementary Sunday school class when an opening came up. Reluctantly, the Sunday school superintendent allowed him. He had to study like mad. He was teaching a Bible he barely knew. He would actually call up the 10-year-old daughter of the pastor to ask her how to pronounce the names he found. He stayed just one step ahead. But he was faithful, adaptable and teachable-FAT.

Don kept studying. To make a very long story, today Don is Dr. Donald Orvis, seminary Vice-President and professor of New Testament. (That means he's really FAT today!)

• Historically, the timing of Jonah's preaching couldn't be better. The Assyrian Empire was being challenged by the Kingdom of Uratu, a power to the north of them in what's now southeast Turkey and northwest Iran. It was at the right moment in time. The Assyrians were threatened. Their might had never been so challenged. But now Uratu threatened to wipe them out. (Note: they would fail, but in less than a century, the Babylonians would succeed.)

But there's another level to consider:

• The Redemptive level. What I mean by that is how Jesus refers to the "sign of Jonah" in the gospels. Take for example Matthew 12:39-41:

39He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.

Jesus says that the "sign of Jonah"-three days in the belly of the fish-would be the same sign given to His generation. No doubt the story of Jonah-his rebellion and his rescue from death-went with him to Ninevah. This is a God of reality and power: life-giving power. Resurrection power. And the shadow of the experience of Jonah would be the substance of the redemptive experience of the Messiah. The God-appointed Messenger must die and be brought back from death to demonstrate the reality of the God of heaven and earth.

• Finally, there's a Missions reality here. The missions message of Jonah is that God is determined that all nations hear the gospel and turn and be saved. God wants that for Iraq (Ninevah's remains are in Iraq today!), he wants it for Temple City, he wants it for the scattered villages of Thailand, He wants it for Tijuana.

What was the value of the Ninevites? What was their economic value? Their political value? Their military value?

What was their value to Jonah? Chapter 4 will demonstrate that he still has some mixed feelings on this one.

But what was their value to God? Beyond measure!

1 Peter 3:18 says, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

Romans 5:6-8 says, "6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

The festering boil of the western world is Haiti. Poverty there is deep and life is short and cheap. In 1982, thousands of Haitian tried to imitate the example of Cubans in sailing for Florida. But the reception they received was less than enthusiastic. They were turned back and away, and while I'm not asking you to necessarily agree with him, you need to hear the bitter pain expressed by a Haitian-born Catholic priest in Florida: "If these were white Europeans, the government would be falling all over itself to help them. If they were Spanish-speaking refugees from a communist country, the Cuban community would help. But these are black French-speaking people fleeing poverty, and no one knows what to do with them-or even seems to care."

A Haitian does not have a great value in this world. But to God, a Haitian child is worth the same as your child. An Afghan woman is worth as much as your wife. A Sudanese man is worth as much as your husband, your son.

And the gospel goes forth to all these very valuable people! You will not hear this anywhere else, so pay attention: while the "10/40 window" of challenging peoples remains a challenge (Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist), the portion of the world's population turning to Christ is amazing. While the "official" Christian population has remained at about 32% for the last 100 years, the untold story is that there has been a massive shift away from dead traditional European churches to living Bible-believing churches in Africa, Latin America and Asia. That's meant a growth in born-again Christians from about 1% of the world's population in 1900 to almost 10% in 2000. The portion of people who are now within reach of the gospel has skyrocketed.

II. Ninevah Repents, 3:5-9

But on with Jonah!

5The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh:

"By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

• This is amazing. This huge city (population, between 600,000 and 1 million-when the world's population was about 150 million), this godless city (they regularly practiced genocide of enemies and may have invented crucifixion)-repented.
• Note that faith comes first: "The Ninevites believed God." Not believed in God (they believed in zillions of gods!) They believed GOD, the one and only, and the message of Jonah His prophet.
• Then comes repentance. They put on sackcloth. They fasted. They prayed. Lesson: real faith always means changed lives. Not perfect lives, but truly changed lives. The king himself urges all to give up their evil ways and to call upon God. And they did. No wonder Jesus said the men of Ninevah would rise up and condemn the generation of His ministry. And they could condemn our generation as well.
• The evidence of their changed hearts is their changed lives.
• We see here a national turning to the Lord. And the cry of my heart is, O Lord, do it again!

III. Ninevah is spared, 3:10

10When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

• This may seem matter of fact to you, but passages like this have sparked a debate called the "openness of God" debate. Does God know and determine the future? Some theologians, Clark Pinnock being the best known, say that even God doesn't always know what's going to happen next.
  q But the Bible speaks clearly about God's changelessness:

Numbers 23:19: "God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and then not fulfill?"

Malachi 3:6: "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed."

• But-doesn't He change here? In 3:4 the message is clear: 40 days and the clock to destruction is ticking. Now He says, OK, no destruction.
• Well, actually, God hadn't changed. The Ninevites changed. His unchanging principles were, Stay as you are and face judgment; repent and I will spare you. His standards did not change: human beings, from high to low had changed.

It was a new beginning from the God of all hope. It was a new beginning for Jonah, the wayward prophet. His renewal in faith and obedience led to a new beginning for Ninevah. In eternity, we will be joined by a generation of Ninevites who believed on the Lord of all and changed their lives and worshipped Him. You can say it didn't last, that Ninevah soon returned to worship their gods of evil and destruction, their gods of nature and fertility. But for one generation, it made a huge difference.

And I cannot help looking at the state of the world and the church today, and asking, "What good thing would God do for the world when a new beginning would take root in His people today?"

What would it mean for a Jonah kind of renewal to come over God's people today?

What would it mean for us to go to our Ninevah with the word of new life in Jesus?

What would it mean for our neighborhood? Our community? Our country?

What would it mean for our world?

I don't know about you-but I'd like to find out.

I'd love to see that.

And I pray, O Lord, do it again-and start today!

© Copyright 2002, Pastor Glenn Layne, www.templecitybaptist.org