God Loves the Ninevites Too!

Jonah 4: 10-11 But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

I love the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet. There are so many lessons God wants us to learn from this story. So much to apply to our lives and the work of the church in these end days.

Lesson number one is that you cannot run from God . Jonah had a direct word from the Lord to go and preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Here was the reaction of Jonah:

But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD. Jonah 1: 3

There can be a little bit of Jonah in all of us sometimes during our Christian walk. We know that God has given us a word about what role we are to play in His kingdom and we run. We know we are supposed to do missions work, or preach, or serve in an outreach ministry whatever. It is all labor for the Lord; yet we run. We run because it makes us uncomfortable. Because it isn't popular, or maybe because it costs us something. Whatever the rhyme or reason, we need to remember that:

for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Romans 11:29

Sorry, but God is not going to change His mind folks. You can hop the boat to Tarshish, but God will be there too. When I first was called to a preaching ministry, I was Jonah. I had an opportunity to speak at a very relaxed small gathering and I turned it down. I didn't even pray about it. I had decided that I was not ready and that was it. I was serving in seven ministries and was just too busy. Within one month I lost half of my ministries. God was pruning away the clutter I had made my service to Him about. And then He made me wait 2 years for another opportunity, just to make sure that I was more afraid of not speaking then I was about speaking.

Jonah had his reasons for running from God too. I am sure that in his mind, he was justified. The Ninevites were an infamous bloodthirsty people who often raided the towns of Israel, killing whom they wanted. Perhaps Jonah had even lost loved ones at the hands of the ruthless Ninevites. Throughout all history, this nation was one of the cruelest on record and Jonah hated them. So, Jonah had cause did he not? Well...

Lesson number two is God is always knows better. Sometimes the hardest thing about faith is keeping it even when it doesn't line up with our rationale. We can fall into the habit of Jonah and think that we simply know better. When faced with the mighty walls of Jericho, Joshua was given instructions by God that would have made most army commanders scratch their heads.

Then the LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in." Joshua 6: 2-5

Wouldn't most of us be thinking, "Let me see if I got this right? Walk around the city for six days saying nothing and then on the seventh day, yell at the walls and the entire city will collapse?" Was God right? He sure was because the walls fell down just as He said they would, after Joshua acted on faith and did what God said.

Gideon also acted on faith. God told Gideon that he had too many men for his impending war against Midian. Gideon had 30,000 men ready to fight but God had other plans:

The LORD said to Gideon, "With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place." So Gideon sent the rest of the Israelites to their tents but kept the three hundred, who took over the provisions and trumpets of the others. Judges 7: 7-8

I don't know about you but I think I would have been more comfortable with 30,000 men fighting for me then 300! Gideon however did not have the spirit of Jonah in him and he obeyed what God had instructed. Sure enough, God delivered Midian into their hands. Many of us are facing a Midian in our lives too. It is a formidable foe. It has been battling us for years maybe and we still can never seem to get the victory over it. God wants to deliver but He will always do so on His terms. His way is always right and do not forget:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55: 7-8

A lesson Jonah would learn in the belly of a great fish. Lesson number three is God always hears our prayers and provides another chance. If God was merely a God of a second chance, we would all be finished a long time ago. God understands the continuous war we have with our own flesh. God is always willing to provide redemption. Chapter Two of Jonah is a prayer offered up to God as Jonah was beginning the process of repentance, within the stomach of the fish. The result of this prayer is found at the end of the chapter:

And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Jonah 2: 10

The fish was under the command of God because everything is under His command! Whatever situation you find yourself in today, God can command that situation. There is nothing too big for God. Nothing that is above Him. We know that He always hears our prayers:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have what we asked of him. 1John 5: 14-15

What is the key in this verse? According to His will. Jonah repented and by doing so brought himself back into the will God had for him and thus not only was he heard but God delivered him from the great fish. Too often we pray without seeking His will first! That is a hit or miss approach to prayer and when we "miss" we can end up blaming God, or thinking He somehow has not heard us. Some of us can also find ourselves in the belly of the great fish and give up. We start to believe the lies of the enemy who is whispering in our ears that we are not worthy of God's love and forgiveness. It is so sad to watch Christians constantly live under condemnation for things God has already forgiven them for. God will always provide you with another chance beloved. He has a will for you and wants you to step back into it.

Chapter three provides us with lesson number four no one is beyond redemption. Jonah was saddened and angered to discover that Nineveh, the greatest force of evil in his time, actually heeded the warnings of the Lord and repented! The modern day American equivalent would be if the leaders of China, North Korea and Iran all repented and put on sackcloth! One of the favorite lies of the enemy is to tell you that you are too far gone and have done too much. The famous lament is, "If I walked in that church, the walls would fall down." Nonsense! Look at the people God used through out the Bible. Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. The Apostle Paul was once the Pharisee named Saul. He presided over the death of Stephen, the first martyr. He persecuted the church and oversaw the deaths of many Christians. Yet God still would use him to spread the Gospel to the gentiles all over the known world. What about Peter? He was told he would deny Christ three times and still did it! Yet when God sent the angel to the empty tomb to greet the women who had come, here is what message God had:

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " Mark 16: 6-7

Do you see it? Make sure you tell Peter! We must believe that at this point Peter was at his lowest. He had denied Christ three times. He had failed at the moment of testing. We have all been where Peter was that day. We had failed Jesus too. Our test came and we did not pass. We sat there wondering if we could even go on with the Christian walk. The enemy fed us lies and told us that God couldn't love someone who would fail like that. Yet here is God speaking today to us...make sure you tell Peter too! He is still in my plans! And so are we beloved. There is nothing that we can do that God cannot forgive. We cannot undo the work Christ has done on the cross. As long as we are sincere about the repentance, God will always be waiting to take us back into His arms and into His plans.

And that brings us to our key verses today, from the fourth chapter of Jonah. The reluctant prophet has now become the bitter prophet. He had not considered that Nineveh would repent or that God would spare them His judgment. The key verses reveal the final lesson of the Book of Jonah. It is a lesson that is often overlooked. Amidst the fish story and the angle of running away from God, these final verses can be passed over if we are not careful. The fifth lesson is that God cares about the Ninevites too! God scolds Jonah for being concerned about a vine that he had nothing to do with, while brooding over the salvation of Nineveh.

This can be us too in modern American Christianity. We get so easily distracted by things that we have nothing to do with. We get so distracted with the things of the world, the politics of man, or the pursuit of temporal pleasures. Meanwhile the Nineveh's of today are heading toward the wrath of God. Do we care? Or do we in fact relish it like Jonah was; anticipating Nineveh's impending destruction. I continue to see emails disguised as being Christian which are only designed to spread hate of one group or another. They decry the other people as the reason for the ills of this world. It used to be the communists, then the socialists, then the democrats, and now the Muslims. Hate is an insidious thing. It seeps into the core of who we are. They key verses today are reminding us that God loves the Ninevites too beloved. He loves the Muslims. He loves the homosexuals. He loves the woman who had an abortion. He loves even the democrats. There is no one specific group that is responsible for the fallen state of the world. We all are responsible. In Paul's day the Jewish people would think themselves loftier than the gentiles. Here is the answer from God to this line of thinking which still infects the modern day church:

What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Romans 3: 9-18

We need to think about these verses the next time we think ourselves better than another person or group of people. We do not want to fall into the trap of bitterness or hatred like Jonah. He may have even had a reason based upon the worldly standards. But God raises the bar. God expects prayer for our enemies. He expects us to turn the other cheek. He does not expect us to take a religion to the fallen world but the Gospel. The world is in desperate need of Christ, not Christianity. But sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking God needs us to defend Him.

Our job is not to defend God. He does not need our help. Our job is to learn the lessons of Jonah. That we cannot run from God and the call He has on our life. That God always knows better than we do. That God always hears our prayers and provides another chance for us, no matter how much we have messed up - true repentance is always available. That no one is beyond redemption and lastly that God loves everyone, not just people who look like us, think like us, talk like us and believe like us. God loves the Ninevites too. Our job is not to hate them but to bring them to the foot of the cross where God can save them.

Reverend Anthony Wade May 21, 2010