God's Second Chances Run Out

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[0:00] And our sermon text is from Jonah chapter 3, 1 through 5, and we have a little gap there, and then there's verse 10 afterwards. So we're in the season of Epiphany here in the church calendar, the lectionary readings, this three-year repeating cycle of readings. And in the season of Epiphany, we see a lot of, especially the gospel lessons, are about discipleship, Jesus calling the disciples. It's kind of after Christmas, this is how the church year continues to start, is Jesus has been born, he kind of grows up, and now he's an adult, and his ministry begins. His ministry begins at the Jordan with John, but then he moves up to Galilee, and he starts to call his disciples.

[0:45] Simon, whose name you just heard, that's the apostle also, his name is also Peter. Andrew, James, John, Nathaniel, we've seen all of them. And so this time that we're in now is kind of a time of discipleship or calling of disciples. That's kind of the... theme of the church year that we're in. And we're often encouraged as pastors to preach the gospel text. So if you go to a Lutheran church, I keep talking about the Lutherans, almost every time they're going to preach the gospel text, because that's kind of what's expected of them. But there's always freedom to preach the other text. So you could read the epistle, which would be the second reading, and I jumbled them up today, or you could preach in the Old Testament. And I think since we're doing discipleship, I think we need to preach the Old Testament every now and then. And I hope you realize that every now and then we preach from the Old Testament, both Victoria and I, because we think we need to...

[1:30] as a form of our discipleship, be familiar with the entire stretch of the Bible, not just the New Testament. And the reason for the lectionary, partly, is that some preachers have their favorite parts of the Bible, and they'll just kind of keep preaching that part. But the lectionary forces you or kind of encourages you to broaden it out. So this is actually the third Sunday in a row that we've been preaching on the Old Testament. Remember, we started with Genesis two weeks ago. Last week was from 1 Samuel, and today is from Jonah. And we're actually progressing. We're moving forward in time, as it turns out. So a little bit of background on Jonah. And the first thing I'm going to say about him is that he was... This is a little provocative, so I hope you're going to listen. Jonah was probably a racist. How do you like that? How do we like all our, like, you know, all the saints and prophets of the Bible? He was probably a racist. Okay, we'll get into why.

[2:21] He didn't... And so he had been... We're in chapter three, but at the beginning, God says to Noah, Get up. Go to Nineveh. Nineveh, which is one of the leading cap... It's not the capital, but one of the leading cities of the Assyrian Empire. This is an empire that controlled most of the Fertile Crescent from about 900 B.C. until about 580 B.C. And then it was supplanted by a different empire. It was always in conflict with Egypt at the sort of the far southwestern end of the Fertile Crescent. And it was often in conflict with the Persians or the Parthians or the Medes. On the eastern side of the empire, what we now know as the country of Iran. But roughly speaking, if you want to think of the Assyrian Empire, kind of would look like the countries of Syria and Iraq kind of melded together and all... a lot of the land around it. Anyways, at this time Jonah... Jonah's country, the northern country of Israel, was subject to the Assyrian Empire. So the Assyrians were conquerors. They were colonizers, if you want to use that word. It's not very popular, right? And they were brutal. They, when they conquered a place, they just kind of want to kept it conquered. So they just, I don't know, they were very bloody and brutal when they conquered a place.

[3:38] And to keep things from getting too rebellious, they would, if any sign of rebellion popped up, they would put it down with extreme harshness, extreme violence. And so we could say that Jonah was a racist. You could also say he probably thought he had a good reason to be. He did not like these people. And yet God says, get up and go to those people and tell them this message. And he doesn't even know the message yet. Just tell them the message that I need to talk to these people, and you're going to be my voice to these people. So you remember the first part of Jonah is he's like, nope, I'm not going. He goes the opposite direction. He gets in a boat and he goes west into the Mediterranean, which is the absolute opposite direction. And you know the story. The storm comes because he's disobeyed God. He agrees. It was a bad thing. He kind of convinces everybody on the boat that he should be thrown overboard. So he kind of sacrifices his own life to save all of them. As soon as they throw him in the ocean, the storm subsides. So it seems like he was right. A giant sea creature swallows him up. He's in there for three days. Miracles happen. You don't have to worry about whether this could actually happen. I mean, some people spend a lot of time on this, but you don't have to worry about that.

[4:49] If God's involved, you know, it's okay. So here he is three days in the belly, the deeps. And then he's sent, kind of spit up onto the... That was probably, that experience alone probably was enough to kind of wake him up. That was horrible. And so he's spit up back on shore, probably not too far from where he started. So probably not too far from the northern kingdom. He's just kind of sent back. And so that's sort of the background that you know what this is, right? So you kind of know this story. If you've seen the... Veggie Tales movie, you know all about it. Okay. So let's go to our reading. It's pretty short. Jonah 3, 1 through 5 and verse 10. And so it says, verse 1, The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.

[5:50] So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was an exceeding... A three days walk across. Jonah began to go into the city going a day's walk. And he cried out, And the people of Nineveh believed God.

[6:17] They proclaimed a fast. And everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw... What they did. How they turned from their evil ways. God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them. And he did not do it. All right. Let's pray.

[6:42] Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this is how I think about Jonah. And not everybody has seen this movie. But maybe I show... Who has seen a movie with Bill Murray called The Groundhog Day? It's kind of funny. It's a little crass here and there. But it's pretty funny. The idea is that there's this man who's a newscaster. And he goes to observe the Groundhog Day where the little groundhog comes up. And does he see his shadow in six more weeks of winter? And he's a terrible person. He really doesn't like himself. And he doesn't like anybody else. And he's just rude to everybody. And he goes through the day. And he's just kind of... He's being rotten to everybody. And then the next morning he wakes up. And he notices that everything is exactly as it was the day before.

[7:32] And so there's a Jeopardy show on. And he hears all the same questions on the Jeopardy show. What's going on? And he goes out. And very quickly he realizes that he's almost been transported back in time by 24 hours. And so at first he uses that to his benefit. So he starts guessing all the... He makes himself look really smart by getting all the Jeopardy answers right. He starts stealing money from the bank. You know, he starts doing... And then after a while he despairs. And he starts to kill himself. This is kind of weird. He starts... But then he wakes up and he's alive. You know, he tries several ways of killing himself. Because he thinks he's in... He's in some loop. Finally he realizes that he's destined to keep repeating this day until he gets it right. Which is really a great movie in a way. Because it's a little bit about how he needs to change. He needs to address what's going wrong with him. He has to have a perfect day. And as much of a perfect day as possible before he's allowed. It's kind of like... If you want to think about it theologically, it's kind of like he's in purgatory or limbo or something like that. He's in this in-between state. And so finally, of course, to give away the end of the movie,

[8:36] is he finally has the perfect day. And he's allowed to go on to the next day. And he's a changed person. But I think of Jonah as a little bit like Groundhog Day. Because it starts off. Go to Nineveh. No. You go somewhere else. And then all sorts of stuff happens. And he comes back. And then here in chapter 3, God says, Go to Nineveh. He says, okay, I'm going to go. But does he have a perfect day? That's the question. We'll look at that in just a second. We'll say, does this turn into a perfect day? Well, we'll see.

[9:04] So he's already gotten it wrong once, right? And he says, God says, get up and go to Nineveh. And you know what? It sounds like it's around the corner. But if you look at a map, this is not a short trip. If you go from the coast, the Mediterranean coast, to Nineveh, which is sort of the northern bow of the Fertile Crescent, it's hundreds of miles away. And the way people travel then, it would have taken weeks to get there. So it's compressed time here. He goes to Nineveh, but that's a week's long journey there. It's not an easy journey. And so the whole way, I can only imagine him going, this is a long trip. This is a hard trip. I still don't want to go. But the fish or the sea creature kind of taught me that I shouldn't say no to God because it'll just be another groundhog day, right? So I'm going to try, right? And so, but I do also think that he's beginning to change because this experience in the depths of the sea has some, beginning to have some change on him. And if you read chapter two of Jonah, which is beautiful, it's almost like a song. It's a song that he sings in the sea and it's about the deliverance that God can bring. So Jonah is beginning to change, but he's definitely not there yet. Now we get to Nineveh.

[10:21] It's a large city. It's an important city. As we heard, it's not the capital of the Assyrian empire, but it's probable that the emperor or the king of the empire had a palace there and would spend some time there as they would often do. They'd move from town to town and kind of oversee their lands. And he needs to go into the town and he needs to start saying whatever it is that God says. But there's another challenge, which is for Jonah, he doesn't like them. Well, guess what? They don't like him. They don't think much of him. He's an outsider. He's from a. Different kind of a different race, different language, different part of the empire. They're in the sort of the center of the empire. He's from one of the conquered territories. He's definitely a second or third class citizen as he walks into this town. Why would they listen to him? He's a foreigner. He's a, you know, he's and power. The only thing that is really respected then is power. So if you're part of a subjugated people group, they're not going to respect you. But if you manage to win some wars, well, then they'll listen to you. So there's some there's some challenges here for him. But as we find out, it doesn't matter. He walks into the city and he proclaims what God tells him.

[11:34] Now, finally, it's revealed what God wants to say in 40 days. You think this is Jonah talking, but really he's being faithful to God. In 40 days, the city will be overthrown. Right. And that's actually a short one. Like, can you imagine? He's like spent weeks going there to say something that takes like five seconds to say, you know. Okay. I said it. Now, I assume that he said it on one street corner and then he walked around and said it to another street corner. If you spent all that time going there, he probably kind of broadcasted as far as he could. So then something happens that he really didn't want.

[12:11] What he really wanted was for him to say in 40 days the city will be overthrown and then he could leave and go up on a hillside, which is what he does, and watch and wait for the fire to rain down on it. And he would really enjoy it. Because this is my enemies are getting punished, which is great. Right. But what happens is what he doesn't want to happen. The people begin to repent from the lowest to the greatest, from all the way up to the king. And the part that we're missing talks about the king's response to this. But the king has the right response is that he says everybody needs to repent in this town. So for 40 days, we're going to fast and put sackcloth on as kind of a way of showing off. Showing that you're visible sign that you're repenting. And as a result, as we get to chapter four, you know, it's great to read Jonah. You can read it at home. You can read the whole thing like 10 minutes. Really short. It's beautiful.

[13:07] But you get after 40 days, God does stay his hand. God does. You know, God doesn't destroy Nineveh at that time, at least right now. One question that comes to me as I was thinking about this is why does this work?

[13:25] Here's somebody coming from a long way. They don't really respect him. He doesn't say anything super complicated or like insightful or scholarly or anything. He just says in 40, it's a short message. In 40 days, the city will be overthrown. Why does that work?

[13:42] The clue is a bit in our text. It says the people believed God. Doesn't say they believed in Jonah. So in a way, you could say that God speaking through Jonah is more powerful than the insignificant person he is. I think that's a good thing to remember. So God speaks through Jonah and it seems like the people are hearing God speak when Jonah speaks. This is a bit miraculous. This is a bit powerful. So I think it works partly because they perceive somehow that this was a message from God himself, not just from some random crazy person that walked across the desert to find them. And I also think because the king was convinced and he made an order to the whole city so that the whole city sort of a communal way. The king is saying communally we need to repent. And that's an important kind of topic that we could talk about some other day. So the city is communally repenting for the sins of the whole empire, really.

[14:36] And I think also it was time. Like in the Bible, we often see that there's a certain time for certain things. And at a certain time, it's the right time. At a certain time, things just work. And I can only imagine, and maybe we're approaching that in our world now where you look around at your society. And you say, this place is so completely corrupt and broken that if all it would take is just a tiny pebble to fall at the top and an avalanche comes down from it and one person standing up saying, this place is not working. This place needs to change or something worse is going to happen. And deep inside almost everybody, they would go, finally, someone's telling the truth. We are messed up. We are in trouble. We are in trouble. You know, if we don't change what's happening, if we don't repent, turn around, something's going to happen. Now, not everybody. I don't think in this society, the whole society can do that. But I think enough people who are paying attention would say, we can't keep going like this. So maybe that's what's happening in Nineveh too. The people were in a wicked empire and they knew they were in a wicked empire and they were despairing of it. And finally, somebody showed up and told the truth about it.

[15:46] And they said, he's right. Let's repent. It's this outside sort of catalyst that is what we needed. You know, if we don't change what's happening, if we don't repent, turn around. Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right?

[16:17] Right? Right? And eventually, with enough days, they still didn't get it, right? There was a civil war inside the Assyrian Empire, a little history. I think this is fascinating. The Babylonians were to the south. They were part of the empire, but they rose up. And so then they fought, and they went up, and they destroyed Nineveh, and they moved the capital further south. And so thus it was the Babylonians who conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C., not the Assyrians. The Assyrians had tried, but they had failed. And after all this turmoil of the civil war, the Babylonians were eventually able to gather all their strength and complete the conquest down sort of the western sort of branch of the Fertile Crescent. So that's when Jerusalem was destroyed. So the repentance didn't stick. Nineveh was destroyed in a civil war inside the Assyrian Empire. It was destroyed by the Babylonians. And this is like if you want to read the story of God's people, and these aren't necessarily God's people, but they are. They are God's children, right? God's people Israel. It's the same thing. We have a covenant, and then we keep it, and then we break it, and then we make a new covenant, and we keep it, and then we break it, and good king is followed by bad king,

[17:35] is followed by good king, and then followed by bad, bad, bad, bad, bad king. You get the idea. Like if you read through the history of the people, there's more bad than good. And it is like Groundhog Day. In a way, God keeps saying, I'm going to give you another chance. I'm going to give you another chance.

[17:52] But until you get it right, until you have that perfect day, which will allow you to go into the future as a changed people, right? But they never do. So Groundhog Day, if it were in the Bible, never really comes until what? Until God sends his son. Until he sends Jesus. So Jesus himself talks about the sign of Jonah. Did you know that? Jesus mentions Jonah, which is a sign of Jonah. Just one of the cool things about Jonah is that Jesus talks about Jonah. Not much. He says, to this corrupt generation, no sign will be given except for the sign of Jonah. Who, just out of curiosity, who thinks they know or not thinks? Who knows what the sign of Jonah is? There's two possible explanations.

[18:38] I should have built it up a little bit more. But so there's two. I'll give them both to you, all right? One is the sign of being in the depths for three days and emerging again. So the sign of Jonah. Jonah could be the resurrection, right? Does that make sense? Jonah's down there. He comes back up. He's a changed person. Is that the sign that Jesus is talking to? So Jonah points forward to the resurrection of Jesus. But the other possible sign, and I think this makes a little more sense, the other possible sign of Jonah is that his prophetic word that God will bring justice to the wicked was responded to. So the sign of Jonah is what he said in the city of Nineveh. This city is going to be overthrown. That was the sign. It was like he held up a sign. He said, repent for the day is near. This is what Jesus says in our gospel reading. Repent for the time of judgment is near. He's holding up a sign. Not really a sign, but he's speaking. The sign of Jonah is that God is going to judge the wicked. And that's what Jesus also says. To this corrupt generation, the only sign will be given that God will bring justice. You have to pay attention to God.

[19:45] So I think it's both. But in a way, God decided that Groundhog Day, they finally had to come to an end. He said, my people are never going to have a perfect day. So I need to make a perfect day for them. So his word stands as a judgment on the world, and his son's resurrection is a sign of his grace. So both ways of understanding the sign of Jonah is a way of understanding how God makes the way forward. He says, I'm still going to judge the world because the world needs judging. But I'm also going to raise my son from the dead, and I'm going to give you grace. And so that when the day of judgment comes, you'll be covered. You'll be satisfied. You see how that works? So your perfect day has already come if you're a believer in Jesus, because Christ has perfected you and the Holy Spirit is moving through you. And so now you can go on to the next day and you're a changed person. And we believe this. We believe that we're changed when we become believers in Jesus.

[20:39] So, but if we're honest, we deserve to hear what Nineveh heard. And we deserve the destruction that Nineveh finally received. Do we think that Mountain View or Los Altos is any better than Nineveh? I mean, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know. I think it's about the same. So if Jonah showed up today and said, this place is going to be overthrown in 40 days, I think we need to respond in pretty much the same way.

[21:05] Because I think it would be true that God is judging all of human society, all of it. It's all broken. It's all broken. It's all in. And Nineveh, now? It's broken. It's just ruins. There's an archeological dig, as there should be, to find all artifacts. But nobody's living there, really.

[21:26] It's desolation. It really was destroyed. But God is merciful for the sake of his son, Jesus. So God, I think, does stay his hand. He's not going to destroy Los Altos. He's not going to destroy Mountain View or whatever. If you're from another town, Sunnyvale, I apologize. I can't list them all. There's many of us here. It's great.

[21:44] But God's not going to do that because of his son. But we deserve it just as much as Nineveh did. Okay? There's one final note about Jonah. Remember how Jonah was willing to be overthrown? Not overthrown. Was willing to be thrown overboard to save a handful of sailors from this storm. It was kind of a self-sacrificing type thing. Very noble. Good job, Jonah.

[22:08] But these were people he liked. These were sailors. They weren't particularly bad to him. Then it comes to a city of hundreds of thousands of people, as God says, many of them don't even know their left hand from their right, which is a way of saying they were children. This city of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children. And Jonah's mad when God spares it. Isn't that interesting? So Jonah, even at the end, still has work to do because he hates these people. But God says, and you know what Jonah says? He says, I knew that you were going to be merciful to them. And I'm so mad I want to die.

[22:47] A lot of work to be done. I think we have a lot of work to do. There's a little bit of Jonah in us. The people we like, oh, let's sacrifice for them. Let's forgive them. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. People we don't like, oh, let's go up on a hill and watch them get destroyed. That'll be fun. This really stands as a word to us, how we treat people we disagree with. And that's a separate topic, but it's really related to this whole book. It's a really good one to read. I encourage you to read it when you get home.

[23:15] So that's how I'm going to end. It's a bit anticlimactic. But there it is. So let's pray. Father, just thank you again for your word. And thank you for teaching us through this prophet who's sometimes a good example, sometimes a bad. Father, help us have that perfect day in Jesus Christ so that we can move forward in the future with you. In Jesus' name, amen.