Read
Jonah
3
Jonah was on the shore. He had his toes in the water…
Actually, chapter 3 begins with
business. The word of the Lord came to
Jonah a second time. Go to the great
city of Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you.
His time in the belly of a great fish
reconciled Jonah, at least in mind, to God’s purpose for him. He went to Nineveh.
It was a big city. It took 3 days to cover all of it. Jonah went around the city proclaiming, “You
guys have 40 days to repent of your evil ways or you're done for.”
The people believed Jonah and started
fasting and wearing sackcloth. These
were not God’s Chosen People but somehow, they knew to wear sackcloth when they
were repenting. They may not have been
God’s Chosen People but they knew of God’s ways.
They knew that they had gone way off
course. God could not be happy with
them. Numbering them with Sodom or
Gomorrah seemed like the logical thing for God to do. The people repented by fasting and wearing
sackcloth.
Sackcloth would not be a standard
wardrobe item for these gentile people.
That was something that the Israelites did. Wouldn’t you like to go back in time and
invest in burlap bags when you heard that Jonah was running away from God?
What difference would selling a few
burlap bags make? Probably not much but
selling 125,000 or more would turn a tidy profit. That would be every person in Nineveh. How
would that be possible?
When Jonah’s words reached the king of
Nineveh, he decreed that everyone would fast and everyone would wear
sackcloth. This was not just for the
people but for their livestock as well.
Perhaps this gives us insight into what it is for the whole
creation to groan in hopes of reconciliation
that we know today in Christ Jesus.
You just don’t see a lot of cattle or
sheep adorned in sackcloth, unless you were in Nineveh when Jonah was. Wow!
That’s going all out on the participation.
The king thought that if God saw this,
maybe he would relent. We repent and God
relents.
He did! Destruction was not delivered to Nineveh, at
least for another hundred years or so.
Eventually, the Medes and Babylonians would lay waste to the city, but
for this time, God had spared them.
God sent Jonah. Jonah delivered God’s message. God had mercy on Nineveh and forgave
them. God has always been a God who
desires none to perish.
That’s chapter 3. Jonah was reconciled to the will of God at
least in his mind while he was in the belly of the great fish. We will get a glimpse into Jonah’s heart in
the next chapter.
For now, let’s just celebrate that
Nineveh repented and was not destroyed.
You might think, yeah, but it didn’t
last. It didn’t. The great city of Nineveh would be gone in little
more than a century. So did it make a
difference?
I look at our country today and what
do I see?
Hatred.
Division.
Orwell’s ministry of truth is no
longer fiction.
Denying history in favor of the
narrative to be advanced.
Contempt for anything godly.
Movements to declare multiple genders.
Killing children in the womb and
killing those who make it out of the womb but succumb to senseless violence.
The sanctity of life has been
forgotten.
Platitudes for the most profane music.
Death
of dialogue.
And of course, the ubiquitous misuse
of your and you’re. Some of you were ok
with the first few examples but offended by my grammar Nazi example.
The world that you know does not
worship God. Evil abounds. The stench of this nation’s wickedness has
risen to God.
We would be well served to fast and
put on sackcloth—every one of us, including our animals. We have something better than sackcloth. We are called to confess. We have already repented, but still miss the
mark on a recurring basis.
Many of us do confess daily or weekly,
but we are surrounded by a culture that would not hear Jonah’s words but surely
needs to repent.
But Nineveh was eventually destroyed. So, what’s the point?
I would take a 100-year reprieve in
this country right now. I would covet a
century of godliness. I would sing Hallelujah for this nation to return to God,
even just to get my children’s children through their lives in a godly land.
I would love to see my children’s
children pass the godliness baton to their own children.
I know that eternity with God is
promised to me, but I would rejoice beyond measure in the wholesale repentance
of my nation.
Imagine being the king of a wicked
people and deciding that everyone would repent.
They would at least do the outwards signs of repentance. Imagine wholesale repentance.
What would we repent of?
Not being white.
Not being black.
Not being born male or female.
Not of having a job.
Not of paying your bills.
Not of trying to make a living and
support your family.
Not of any of the things that the
world would tell us to discharge.
We must all repent of rebelling
against God. We must all repent of a
me-first culture. We must repent of unclean
hearts and minds.
We must repent of our sin. Many have but so many more have rejected God
and the stench of that rejection has risen to heaven.
The twin gods of Apathy and
Ambivalence rule in this country.
We have hope for ourselves and our
families. We are people of hope. We believe and we confess
and we get back in our race of faith, but our country is in peril.
I long for wholesale repentance, but
perhaps it must come at the
loss of luxury and liberty. I like
being able to go where I want and have a vehicle to get me there.
I love to go to the store and complain
that out of the 40 different types of bread, they didn’t have my favorite.
I love to complain about the heat or
the cold from the comfort of my sheltered abode, then complain about my gas or
electric bill.
Jonah is not coming to America, but we
are charged—commissioned—to take the good news to the world. Most of that ministry will take place in
America.
I am thankful for eternity with my
loving God. I would love another 100
years in a country that loved God and served him.
If the pagan, evil king of Nineveh can
call all of his people to repent, I have hope that America could do the same.
As we draw nearer the time when God’s
Spirit is poured out upon this sinful world, I pray that his Spirit is
irresistible.
I also pray that people repent of the
ways of the world now and come to God.
So many people pray that God will
bless America again. I pray that people
will repent for repentance must precede God’s forgiveness and his blessings.
I pray that we as a nation can repent
better than Nineveh. Maybe I should
invest in burlap.
I will read something directed
at God’s Chosen People, but I pray it applies to us.
If my people, who are called by my
name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their
wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and
will heal their land.
Amen
