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Morning Message Text: Jonah 3: 10 – 4: 11
Jonah 3
1 Then 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.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.
4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning 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.
7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.
8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah 4
1 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.
2 He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
3 Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.
6 Then the LORD God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant.
7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered.
8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Morning Message:
The city of Nineveh was a great city, the capital of Assyria. It housed anywhere from 120-thousand inhabitants to nearly 600-thousand and was perhaps the world’s largest metropolis in Jonah’s time. As great as the city was, however, its people—the Assyrians—were equally cruel and wicked. They were idol worshipers were especially wicked toward the Israelites. All of Israel hated the Assyrians for their cruel, barbaric ways. The armies of the Assyrians often skinned their captives alive, removed tongues, gouged out eyes, and mutilated the populations of entire cities by driving over people with chariots affixed with iron spikes. They also burned children alive and committed other atrocities that were designed to terrorize their adversaries and make them submit. The Ninevites may have been guilty of much cruelty and injustice even among their own people.
What do you do about people you simply don’t like? It may be the person you sat beside on the airplane last week, but at least you won’t have to see him again. But what if that person is your relative? Or a coworker? Or someone in the church? They may be nice enough, but something about them rubs you the wrong way. These are the people God wants us to love, to pray for, to bless, and to serve. Their personalities might be different from ours. But remember how Jesus managed to love people of every temperament, in every place, at all times, and under all circumstances. You can say this little prayer: Lord, give me your love just now. It’s as simple as that. When we confess that our human affection is insufficient to care for a certain person, we must ask the Lord to give us His love, and then we have to act on it. Here is where we get confused; love is service rather than sentiment. Let that sink in.
According to a 2024 survey, 85% of all employees have had an experience with a coworker who annoyed them, and 41% wish they could tell their annoying coworker what they think about them. In first Samuel we read about David when he was a young man and running for his life. He encountered an ill-tempered man named Nabal. David almost went to war against him. Only the intervention of Nabal’s wife, Abigail, kept the two men from bloodshed. God gave her the grace to be a peacemaker. What do we do with people who get on our nerves? First, we have to look at ourselves and ask if we are the cranky and irritable one. Sometimes fatigue can create friction, and neglecting Bible study can cause our love to ebb.
Second, we have to look at the other person and see if they have a need behind their nuisance. We are to consider their souls and remember that we are all children of God. When people get on our nerves, we should get on our knees. We are all in relationships, we all face conflicts, and we all have to learn how to navigate them so that we, and our relationships, can truly thrive. As usual, prayer is the best response to our anger.
Did you listen closely to our first scripture reading this morning? In the sermon on the mount, Jesus corrected a faulty reading of Leviticus 19: 18. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jewish scribes had added these words to that verse: “and hate your enemy.” If that had gone unchecked, we would be no different than other religions who preach hate against anyone who does not adhere to their religion and call all others infidels worthy of death. But Jesus corrected that tradition by saying, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you.” This is another major difference between Christianity and all other faiths.
When God choose to withhold judgment on the city of Nineveh, the demonstrated enemy of Israel, Jonah became angry. He had readily received grace and forgiveness from God for his own disobedience but could not reconcile the idea of God forgiving the Assyrian people. Jonah was violating the eventual New Testament principle of grace: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God.” (Ephesians 4: 32 – 5: 1). What God has done for us, we are to do for others. True forgiveness breaks a man, and he must forgive. Think about that. If you can’t find it in your heart to forgive, maybe you have a spiritual problem.
Our scripture says that Jonah cried out and warned the people of Nineveh that in forty days they would be overthrown. “So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.” Gipsy Smith was a British evangelist who preached in Great Britain and America for more than seventy years. He is famously known for this formula for bringing about revival: “Go home. Lock yourself in your room. Kneel down in the middle of the floor, and with a piece of chalk draw a circle around yourself. There, on your knees, pray fervently and brokenly that God would start a revival within that chalk circle.” That is, there can be no corporate revival (renewal) that does not begin with prayerful, personal revival.
God sent Jonah to Nineveh to preach a message of impending judgment if the city did not repent. Thankfully, the city listened to Jonah’s message and repented before God. But that corporate repentance only happened because Jonah repented first of his personal sins and submitted to God’s direction for his life. The awakening in Nineveh was the result of renewal in Jonah. God used a storm, and a great fish to bring Jonah to the point of repentance and acceptance of God’s will. What will it take for us? I truly wonder sometimes as I see the possibilities of terrible things that we could go through in this nation because we refuse to pay attention and stand for what is right. I wonder exactly what God will allow us to go through before the church falls to our knees and repents and accepts the work that God has created for us. I know that it is not this simple, and God does not think like we do, but I hear God saying, “We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but I will have My way in the lives of My people.” So, be in prayer for your family, church, city, and nation. But pray most fervently for revival in your own heart. Waiting for general revival is an opportunity for enjoying personal revival.
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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