Sermon - Jonah 3 – Turn from Evil

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon - Jonah 3 – Turn from Evil

Beaver Dam and Pitts Creek Churches

16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 22, 2012

Our journey with Jonah continues. Jonah's disobedience and flight from God are over. The raging sea and three days in the belly of a fish are behind us. All of this has had a transformative effect on Jonah. He has earned his name, “dove”, a symbol of God's forgiveness because God has forgiven his disobedience. Jonah has been transformed. And in the scripture you heard earlier from chapter 3 Jonah is now obeying God and will travel to Nineveh. We will soon see what happens next, but first let's pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Jonah 3:3-10 Now Nineveh was a very important city-- a visit required three days. ⁴ On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." ⁵ The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. ⁶ When 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. ⁷ Then 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. ⁸ But let man and beast 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 had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

When Jonah arrived in Nineveh he found a gigantic city that required a three day journey to walk from one end to the other. This should sound familiar to Jonah and to us. Where have we heard about a giant already in this book? Maybe a giant fish? And what about three days? Three days in the fish, three day in a tomb, three day in Nineveh, it all sounds familiar. As Jonah walked across the city he proclaimed what God told him to proclaim, "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned." Forty days? We have heard this too. What about the forty years the Israelites spent in the desert before entering the promised land? What about the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan before starting his ministry. Forty days, something important is going on here.

So what will the Ninevites do to prevent this disaster? Will they expand their army and build additional weapons? Will they strengthen the walls of the city? Will they stockpile extra food and water in preparation for a long siege? Will they pray to the Assyrian gods for success in battle? This is what we would expected them to do to prevent catastrophe. They would do whatever they could to protect themselves.

And so too would we. We save money so we can use it on a “rainy day” or this year when it is too hot to grow corn or raise chickens. We keep meat in the freezer and potatoes in the basement and some of us still can summer vegetables so we will have things to eat in the winter. Sadly for many American their savings is running out. The recession has lasted for over three years and people have tried to maintain their life styles with unemployment, food stamps, and their savings. But now with their savings gone and benefits drying up they are becoming desperate. Whenever we try to save ourselves from disaster we soon find out that we are not enough. We cannot save ourselves. We are not saviors.

The Ninevites realized that they had come to the end of their rope. Their money and military strength could not save them. They did not have the resources to continue to dominate the world. And they were about to find out what it was like to be slaves to others just as they had enslaved the people they conquered. What do you think they did?

Of course the Book of Jonah is filled with surprises. The evil Ninevites, the most depraved people on earth did the last thing you would expect. They believed what Jonah said and in Jonah's God. And they did exactly what the Israelites would do. They set aside their rich diet of gourmet food and began a citywide fast. And they took off their expensive clothes and made new ones out of the empty bags where they had once stored grain. By doing these things the Ninevites demonstrated that they were no longer going to depend on their wealth and power to save them. Beginning now they were going to depend on Jonah's God to save them.

This is an important lesson for us. There is nothing wrong with setting aside resources to get you through some rough times. If fact we must prepare for bad times. But if times ever get really bad and we lose everything, as is happening to many people today, we can depend on God who will save us.

As the Ninevites were turning to God the setting of our story changes to the royal court and the King of Assyria. What would he do? Would he order his army and his people to prepare for war to protect what little they had left? Or would he follow his people and believe in Jonah's God? We are told that the king removed his royal robes, put on sackcloth and sat in the dust. He too realized that depending on wealth and military power was no solution to the problems his kingdom faced. Their only hope of salvation was to believe in God. He ordered a fast throughout his kingdom and dressed everyone, even the cattle, in sackcloth. He ordered the cattle to mourn because God was the only power who save them too.

Our government would do well to follow this example. As we enter a political season there will be no shortage of ideas of how we can solve the problems we face. There will be arguments about how we can increase our wealth and power. We will be told tat wealth and power will save us. But we know differently. Here, we do not worship wealth and power. We worship the only one who can save us, our savior, Jesus Christ. So the one thing we can do is to select leaders who understand that our wealth and military power will only go so far and that our only hope of salvation is God.

Then the Assyrian king did something that is really surprising. He told his people to give up their evil ways and violence against other and against their enemies. In other words he told them to repent, to stop doing what displeases God and start doing what God calls us to do. Fasting and wearing sackcloth wasn't enough. They had to begin loving God and loving their neighbors as they loved themselves. This command had to be difficult for the people of Nineveh, They had always behaved a certain way. They took what they wanted from others using their superior wealth and military power. But now the king wanted them to think in another way. Facing immanent disaster they were ready to obey God.

Hopefully this will happen to us as well. As we face unemployment or drought or loss of health as we get older what will we do? Will we try to depend on our savings and abilities and social security? Or will we turn from our evil ways and turn to God?

And we have one more surprise in this chapter of Jonah. We hear that the Ninevites not only listened to their king, but they also changed their behavior. They threw out their evil ways and embraced God's law. This is something we can follow. By coming to church and meditating on God's word we can find out what God wants us to do. And we can turn from what we are doing now and obey God. This is called repentance.

And this brings us to great climax of the Book of Jonah. The evil Ninevites repented and turned to God and they experienced God's abundant love and forgiveness. God changed His mind. He withdrew his sentence of destruction on the Ninevites and blessed them.

Next week we will see that this was hard for Jonah to take. How can a people so depraved like the Ninevites be forgiven? Aren't good people supposed to be blessed and evil people cursed? But Jonah found out that his idea of God was way too small. God was not just a local God of the Hebrews. God, the creator of the world, is the God of everyone in it, including the Ninevites. And anyone who accepts God and repents and turns from their evil ways will experience God's forgiveness and abundant love.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for being our savior. We know that setting aside something for a rainy day is a good thing to do. But we know not to worship the things we have set aside because we know if this get really bad they will not save us. Only you will save us, and that is why we worship you today. Amen.