Jonah 3:1-10

The Third Sunday after Epiphany | 21 January 2024 | A Sermon on Jonah 3:1-10 by Samuel D. Zumwalt, STS |

Jonah 3:1-10 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles 

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, ² “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”³ So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days‘ journey in breadth. ⁴ Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” ⁵ 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.

⁶ The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷ And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, ⁸ but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. ⁹ Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” ¹⁰ 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.

HOLY KEYS: TURNED

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Rebellious Reluctance

Jonah was not just a reluctant prophet. He was rebelliously reluctant prophet. He did not want to go to Nineveh, that gigantic city filled with people who did evil. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, was the dwelling place of the king who sent vicious warriors to capture and destroy the Northern Kingdom of Israel and to place the Southern Kingdom of Judah under his rule. When Israel was defeated, the Assyrians led away its leaders and a significant percentage of its people with fish hooks through their noses. This was fearsome king and kingdom who forced a kind ethnic cleansing through importing foreign men to father children with Israelite women, thus, creating the Samaritans, the mixed race descendants of the so-called lost tribes of Israel.

Doubtless, you remember that Jonah set out for Tarshish, in the opposite direction from Nineveh, making him the rebelliously reluctant prophet. The LORD caused the storm that caused Jonah to be thrown overboard that resulted in the big fish swallowing Jonah, then, Jonah was in its belly for three days before the fish spit out Jonah at the very place from which he departed. Then the LORD speaks: As I was saying, Jonah… “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” Now, it was 500 miles from Jerusalem to Nineveh, and Jonah went to this city that took three days to walk from one side to the other. As he walked into the city, Jonah spoke God’s NO. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown (or overturned).” Could the hearts of such a wicked people be reached? Jonah did not think it possible.

The question each of us must ask him- or herself is: “How am I reluctantly rebellious like Jonah?” Please remember that Jonah did not want to speak God’s No to Nineveh. The “feelers” on both the theological left and the theological right are all about their own feelings and, then, those of others. This leads to the proverbial: “What would Jesus do?” And, then, the answer is always put in feeling terms. But the problem with theological feelers is they fail to hear the clear Word of God in the text: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” Listening to the Word of God is not a matter of feeling. It is a matter of obedience. Jonah wasn’t asked how he felt about speaking God’s NO. God told Jonah to go… to speak. So, to whom is God calling you to warn that the rebellious world they live in will be overthrown?  Are you reluctantly rebellious to speak such a hard Word? Did not the Lord Jesus speak hard words?

The second question each congregation must ask is: “how are we reluctantly rebellious like Jonah?” Are we fearful that we will be laughed at or ridiculed or called the usual name-your-phobic label? This narcissistic, nihilistic culture thrives on intimidation and mockery and canceling to silence every Jonah who speaks God’s NO. And if you do not know who and Whose you are because you do not listen to God’s Word, then you will be as rebelliously reluctant as Jonah even when the Lord God does not desire that anyone would be lost…especially those ensnared by evil. You know what the LORD did to Jonah to get his attention. What might it take for you… for us?

Magnificent Mercy

From the beginning of Scripture to the end, the Word of God has power to accomplish what God intends: to create out of nothing, to cast out of Paradise, and to lovingly cause death to make us mortal so that we might not live forever separated from God by our rebellion. The Word of God can make us male and female that we might be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and tend it, and the Word of God can destroy by the flood, repopulate the world with people and beasts, then scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and, yet, call two idol worshipers, Abram and Sarai, to be the parents of a servant people through whom all nations would be blessed.

God can call Moses from a burning bush and send him to speak God’s NO to Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” God can destroy all the firstborn of Egypt and yet spare enslaved Israel by the Blood of the Passover Lamb painted on their doorposts. God can open the sea for Israel to pass through safely and wipe out Pharaoh’s army. God can make covenant with His people by grace at Sinai and yet destroy those who fear, love, and trust in other gods. The LORD God is within Himself gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and His NO is spoken both to the rebellious and to the rebelliously reluctant that He might call them from evil to good, from chaos to blessed order, and from death to life. God wanted to spare Nineveh not destroy it.

While every human was born dead in our trespasses regardless of skin color, ethnicity, language of origin, biological sex, feelings, thoughts, and convictions, the LORD God sent His Son, the Word of God made flesh, to be born of the Virgin Mary, to be raised as a circumcised Jewish male, to live the perfectly obedient life we could not live and to die the perfectly innocent death we could not die. Indeed, the cross of God’s Son Jesus the Christ is His magnificent mercy for us and our salvation. The LORD God hates sin, because it is evil. But He desires everyone like Nineveh to be converted. Indeed, the point of God’s NO is to drive everyone to God’s YES, which is not affirmation or liberation from systemic name-your-ism. God’s grace in Jesus Christ is getting what we don’t deserve, and God’s mercy is not getting what we do deserve: namely, eternal separation from the very LORD God who wants none to be lost and all to be saved.

Fervent Following

Repentance is what the evil do, which is to turn from evil: to turn from fearing, loving, and trusting in anything other than the LORD God. Again, the point of God’s NO is not to leave people as we are in our rebellion or in our rebellious reluctance. God does not want or need people wallowing in guilt or shame, which, like the tears of those confronted with their evil, is often just another layer of narcissism. God’s NO is not simply: “You’re no good. You’re no good. You’re no good, baby, you’re no good!” The point is: “You’re going to come to no good end and soon!”

Repentance is not one and done… like when people walk the aisle to make their decision for Christ… or pray the sinner’s prayer during an evangelist’s commercial while watching Fox News. Repentance, in Jonah’s case began with his being thrown overboard in the storm rather than to cause the death of everyone on that express boat to Tarshish. Jonah’s near-drowning, including his three days in the belly of the big fish, is a type of Baptism, which is the beginning of a way of daily dying and rising. But don’t get too excited about Jonah’s conversion. Right? For when Jonah received his second call after being spit out at the very place of his rebellion, then Jonah went with none of God’s compassion, none of God’s grace and mercy. Like the 60s wannabes around the northern and western world, Jonah was hoping for heads to roll. “Let the rebellion begin. Burn it down. Kill them all. We can change the world.” Yada. Yada. Yada. “Bye, bye, Miss Ninevite Pie.”

God’s Word has power even over the mouth of a rebelliously reluctant prophet like Jonah… even over your mouth and mine. For when Jonah spoke God’s Word, miracle of miracles, Nineveh repented in sackcloth and ashes from the king to the nobles to the hoi polloi. Yes, even the beasts fasted! Nineveh repented. God relented. And Jonah just sulked. Where’s God’s #603 can of whup-fanny when the Ninevites really deserved it? Man, oh man, that just wasn’t right to Jonah! And, again, lest we get it wrong. This isn’t about how well Jonah spoke or how well Nineveh repented. The LORD God is always the hero. The rest of us, like Jonah, not so much!

This is a great pre-Lenten text, isn’t it? Forty days to repent. Three days to walk. Three days of God’s deliverance. Like Jonah, God is calling you, calling me, and calling this congregation to speak His NO to every kind of fearing, loving, and trusting in anything other than the LORD God, who desires none to be lost and all to be saved through His magnificent mercy in Jesus Christ! It begins not with feeling but with listening, not with us, not with others, but with God!

Not everyone can physically fast, but everyone can fast in particular ways. Fasting is not a type of New Year’s resolution to lose weight. We fast in order that we may better listen to God’s Word to discern how He is calling us to fervently follow His Son obediently by dying daily to our narcissistic, nihilistic feelings and affections. We will listen more closely in these next weeks, asking for our hearts and minds to be converted by God’s Word day after day. We will lift up particular books that rightly interpret God’s Word for us and for our church at this time. We will not give in to ecclesiastical coercion based not in God’s Word but in militant rebellion against His good and gracious will as defined by His Word. Listen, God is calling. Listen!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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©Samuel David Zumwalt, STS

   szumwalt@bellsouth.net

   St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church

   Wilmington, North Carolina USA