A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 03 October 2010
§ God’s call: “Get up, Go, Call” / Implies: Master, Mission, and Message
§ Jonah’s disobedience: Asleep in boat headed opposite direction.
§ The storm on the sea: The “Hound of Heaven” at work to reveal Himself to sailors and change Jonah’s heart.
§ Jonah’s witness to the sailors and their faith
· Pro’s: Personal God created everything & should be feared.
· Con’s: Confession w/o repentence; No grace or forgiveness.
• God uses “down” times to change our attitude.
• Waves & trials are God’s tools, we remain in His hands.
• Look to God - remember His word & pray to Him.
• Sing and make memorials of God’s salvation.
• Reassure self that prayers really do reach God’s ears.
– His sovereign power over circumstances.
– His active response to our prayers.
– His resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
– Stop trusting vain falsehoods; receive the lovingkindness of God in Christ.
– In private and in church.
– Whether you feel like it or not.
– Fulfilling all your promises to God.
– Emphasize that Jesus is your Savior.
Facing the big city
|
Wrong way (Jonah)
|
Right way (Jesus)
|
|
Fighting against God’s will |
Yield to God’s will
|
|
Giving up and dying |
Fight unrighteousness
|
|
Displacing onto self/others |
Get right with God
|
|
Blowing up |
Stop and think |
|
Internalizing it and sulking |
Trust God, delight in Lord (Ps. 37:3-5) |
|
Denying it |
Confess sin (Eph 4:26) |
So now we come to the final two verses and conclude our study of the book of Jonah.
Why should Jonah care more about Nineveh than he cares about the plant?
4:10 וַיֹּאמֶר
יְהוָה אַתָּה
חַסְתָּ עַל
הַקִּיקָיוֹן
אֲשֶׁר
לֹא
עָמַלְתָּ
בּוֹ
וְלֹא
גִדַּלְתּוֹ
שֶׁבִּן
לַיְלָה
הָיָה וּבִן
לַיְלָה אָבָד.
10 So Jehovah said, “You have been compassionate over the plant, with which you did not labour, nor did you make it grow, which was a product of a night, and in a night it perished.
God emphasizes the fact that this plant was not deserving of much sympathy by two relative adjective clauses.
¨ Jonah had gotten all bent out of shape over something that was not important!
¨ God, however models for us how to care about what is important:
4:11 וַאֲנִי לֹא
אָחוּס עַל
נִינְוֵה
הָעִיר
הַגְּדוֹלָה
אֲשֶׁר יֶשׁ
בָּהּ
הַרְבֵּה
מִשְׁתֵּים
עֶשְׂרֵה
רִבּוֹ
אָדָם אֲשֶׁר
לֹא
יָדַע בֵּין
יְמִינוֹ לִשְׂמֹאלוֹ
וּבְהֵמָה
רַבָּה.
11 And I, should I not be compassionate over Nineveh, the great city when there exist in her more than one hundred twenty thousand humans who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many cattle.
God even explains why the people of Nineveh were deserving of compassion.
x Because they were deserving? NO, Ex. 33:19 quoted in Jonah 4:2 makes it clear that God’s action was based on mercy to an undeserving people.
x Note that God’s explanation contains no hint of the grounds for His compassion being the fasting and sackcloth repentance of the Ninevites. His explanation here has more to do with what Nineveh IS rather than what the Ninevites DID.
1. They are NUMEROUS. In Hebrew it says literally, “which there-exist-in-her increasing from-twelve myriad-of human... and-cattle many.”
o A “myriad” is commonly understood to be 10,000 (although this number was so mind-bogglingly huge to people before the modern age that it often meant simply an undefined, vast number).
o The numbers from the older English versions also match up – “six-score thousand” = 6 x 20 x 1,000, or 120,000.
o And it says that there were actually “increasing/more” than 120,000! In fact, as we’ll see later, many commentators believe this number only counted the children in the city aged seven and under, making the total population five times the 120,000 figure! (This is plausible according to geographical and agricultural studies of the area K&D 416.)
o Nineveh was the largest city in the world during the seventh century B.C. There were a vast number of infinitely precious human souls gathered in this city, and for that reason alone, God said He was justified in having pity on them.
o Nowadays we might not consider that many people a particularly big city, but the point is that Nineveh WAS a big city and that cities are deserving of God’s compassion.
o When I think of big cities, I find it so overwhelming that I want to put it out of my mind. I’ve seen disturbing things in cities where I’ve lived, like Birmingham, AL, and Denver, CO, but it is mind-boggling to think of cities like Tokyo, New York, Sao Paulo, and Mexico City, which have 15 to 30 MILLION people each!
o The poverty, the filth, and the crime can reach such huge proportions in cities like those that it is understandable why people like Jonah would want to just destroy the city and start over again. But that’s not how God thinks. Each soul is valuable to Him and He is about the business of redemption.
o We should not despise cities, we should align ourselves with God and REACH cities!
o 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and urban areas are more accessible than rural ones, so if you’re thinking strategically, it makes good sense to target cities for ministry!
2. They are NEEDY - God goes on to give His second reason to have pity on Nineveh: This vast number of human souls “cannot discern their right hand from their left.”
o Commentators take this phrase literally to mean that there are 120,000 “individuals not yet of accountable age” (Hail. 80), in other words, children who were so young they hadn’t learned the concept of “Left” and “Right” yet, who were, for all practical purposes, undeserving of judgment (Son. 150). They interpret this to be all one reason rather than two, namely that there were morally innocent parties in Nineveh (the children and the cattle), and so it would be unjust for God to destroy them in the act of overturning Nineveh (K&D 417).
o I wish to respectfully disagree on two grounds:
1. First, I do not believe that children are morally innocent. I happen to have 10 children of my own between the ages of 20 & 2, and I can attest that most of them already know their right hand from their left hand and also that none of them are morally innocent! All of them – even my not-quite-two-year-old – have knowingly broken at least one of the 10 Commandments (“children, obey your parents”).
2. Secondly, God had destroyed children and cattle before in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah and had instructed His people to slaughter every man, woman, child, and beast in some of the battles Joshua led against the cities in Canaan, so it cannot have been unjust for God to kill or cause the slaughter of children and animals in those cases, and therefore it wouldn’t necessarily have been unjust for Him to do so in the case of Nineveh either.
o No, I do not think it was a matter of justice (killing innocent children and cattle) but rather a matter of mercy (holding back judgment that the city rightly deserved).
o I believe that this phrase, “cannot discern their right hand from their left” should be taken figuratively, meaning that the people in Nineveh were clueless about right and wrong (cf. L.B., K&D 415, Urban. 68).
o It might have been prompted by God’s observation of their repentance – they probably did some unorthodox things in an attempt to appease God because they just didn’t know any better (perhaps sacrificing some of their children or something? – Bible doesn’t say).
o “The emphasis,” says Fernando, “is on the helplessness of the Ninevites. This brings us to the heart of the gospel. We are helpless, under the power of sin. We have no hope, no ability to save ourselves. But God looked down on us in mercy and provided a way for our salvation.”
o Perhaps this very phrase was also a challenge to Jonah – “They don’t know right from wrong, Jonah, (Hint, Hint) why don’t you get in there and TEACH them my Word so that they can learn right from wrong!”
o The most surprising thing to me in this verse, however, is the ending words, “and many cattle.” CATTLE? The dumb beasts were also a reason for God’s compassion!
o Perhaps this was prompted by the Ninevites’ action to include their animals in the fasting and sack-cloth-wearing, but in truth, humans were not God’s only creation. He made the cattle too – and also the rest of the environment – and He cares about them.
o Our environment is not something we should lightly dispose of and waste. God was intimately involved in the formation of each hill and stream and in the creation of each plant and animal. To treat nature and the physical universe with disdain is to slap its Maker in the face.
o Of course, we can go overboard and “worship the creature rather than the creator,” but I’m talking about keeping a healthy balance of care for God’s creation. We should make use of natural resources, but we should not needlessly destroy them, as Jonah wanted done to Nineveh.
o Our care of and compassion for the world should extend beyond the souls of the lost to also embrace their physical needs and environment.
Nowadays, the numbers of people who are spiritually clueless are just as many as ever.
"The book of Jonah is...significant for understanding the biblical basis of mission because it treats God's mandate to his people regarding the Gentile peoples and thus serves as the preparatory step to the missionary mandate of the New Testament... Israel has become so preoccupied with herself that she no longer directs her eyes toward the world of the nations. Israel, the recipient of all God's revelation, refuses to set foot in alien territory to tell the other peoples God's message of judgment and liberation. But the message of the book also is addressed to the New Testament congregation which tries various ways of evading her Lord's command to speak His message to the world."
q There are still some two billion people who do not even have access to hear God’s Word even if they wanted to hear it!
q The fact that there are people out there in the world who are so lost that they have no hope of ever hearing the Gospel should be a powerful motivation for us to exercise compassion, and yet, for every dollar given to Christian ministries, the odds are that ninety-nine cents of it will be spent right back on your own church and less than a penny will make it out to do good for unreached people.
q The same goes for Christian workers: for every thousand people who go into full-time ministry, only about three will actually make it out to reach people who have not been reached with the Gospel already before! There is an average of only two missionaries per million people in Muslim populations.
q Our modern church is much like Jonah, concerned with its own “needs,” and not truly concerned about the needs of people far away from us who are utterly lost. The book of Jonah is a powerful call to God’s people to align themselves with God’s redemptive purposes and exercise compassion for the utterly lost throughout the world!
• Predominately Islamic
• To be Arab is to be Muslim, but usually not orthodox Islam.
• Unfavorably disposed to Christian gospel because of misconceptions
• Diverse politically/culturally
• Small percentage of Christians
• Ancient Christian past
• Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim
• Cultural identity w/ religion
• Open to “Christ”, closed to “Christianity”
• Difficult time grasping the uniqueness of the Christian gospel
China very responsive to the gospel
– Growing house church movement
– Second largest evangelical population
– Blood of martyrs is seed of the church
– Susceptible to cult teaching
– Unreached Ethnic groups
• Eastern orthodoxy and the State
• Emergence of independent, evangelical movement
• Gospel and social and political justice
• Little access to training
• Spiritual vacuum in wake of communism – being filled with materialism
• Biblical Christianity plus ancient Paganism, modern Roman Catholicism, and post-modern Materialism
• Economic instability and political injustice
• Literacy
• Explosion of the Evangelical/Pentecostal movement - 60 million to 490 million in LatAm
APPLICATION
¨ We should not allow ourselves to get preoccupied with our personal interests and concerns, we should consider the needs of other people!
¨ We should exercise compassion toward urban populations.
¨ We should direct the Gospel toward those who are spiritually lost
¨ We should care for God’s creation, too.