Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Evening Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/ev/ev20090104.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Jonah: Replacing Heartless Nationalism With God's Universal Love
Part III: Heeding God's Call To Disciple Spiritually Fickle Folk
(Jonah 3:4-10)
  1. Introduction
    1. God is so gracious, He often seeks to evangelize or to disciple people who are so fickle spiritually that we of our own volition might never otherwise want to bother trying to disciple them.
    2. Nevertheless, God calls us to reach these folk as long as there is an opportunity that they will repent, a lesson magnified and illustrated in Jonah 3:4-10 (as follows):
  2. Heeding God's Call To Disciple Spiritually Fickle Folk, Jonah 3:4-10.
    1. We know from history that only 150 years after Jonah's ministry in Nineveh, the Assyrian empire of which it was a part was destroyed evidently due to its sin, cf. Bible Know. Commentary, Old Testament , p. 1470.
    2. We also know that the people of Nineveh of Assyria whom God called Jonah to evangelize were already predicted in Jonah's time (in Hosea 11:5 and Amos 5:27) to invade Jonah's people of Israel, Ibid., p. 1461.
    3. Probably aware of this spiritual fickleness of the Assyrians who evidently had a tendency to express momentary intense persuasions, but ones that did not last, Jonah was motivated not to evangelize them as God had called him to do as it did not seem fair to have such a fickle nation be prepared by God's great grace to hurt Jonah's own wayward people!
    4. However, trying to run from God's call to preach repentance to the Assyrians was corrected by God's having Jonah swallowed by a fish, so Jonah obeyed God out of fear, and went to Nineveh, Jon. 2:10-3:3a.
    5. In Nineveh, Jonah simply and undiplomatically preached the message: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown," Jonah 3:3b-4!
    6. Amazingly, the people of Nineveh then responded to this simple, undiplomatic message by this visiting Jew with intense remorse and respect for Israel's God and the message from His prophet, Jonah 3:5-9:
      1. The people of Nineveh responded to Jonah's simple, undiplomatic proclamation of woe by believing his God was about to punish them for their sin, Jonah 3:5a.
      2. Thus, they expressed this repentance in very extensive actions of repentance (as follows), Jonah 3:5b-9:
        1. They proclaimed a fast, and wore sackcloth, a coarse of cloth uncomfortable for usual wear to show distress and remorse, and that from the greatest to the least of them, Jonah 3:5b; Ibid., p. 1469.
        2. When even the king of Nineveh heard of Jonah's simple, undiplomatic message, he arose from his throne, changed into sackcloth and sat in ashes, Jonah 3:6. This demonstrated true contrition and faith in Jonah's message and his God, Ibid.
        3. Nineveh's king also made a proclamation and had it published throughout the city by his nobles, a message that neither man or animal, be it beast or bird, could eat or drink, but were to be covered with sackcloth, and to cry mightily unto God for His mercy so as to prevent judgment, Jonah 3:7-8. [Treating animals this way was an Ancient Near East practice at the time, Ibid., p. 1470.]
        4. The king's proclamation expressed great respect for God's fierce anger at their wickedness, an amazing attitude in view of the fact that "the Assyrians were a cruel, violent nation (cf. Nahum 3:1, 3-4) fearing no one (cf. 2 Kings 18:33-35)" (Ibid.) and thus would not be expected to express such fear from the preaching of a visiting Jew who hailed from a weaker nation such as Israel!
        5. The king's proclamation also acknowledged respect for the sovereignty of God over the great city of Nineveh: it noted that God only might turn away from His fierce anger by their massive expressions of repentance by both man and beast in the great city of Nineveh, cf. Jonah 3:9 with 3:2!
    7. When God saw the visible reaction of the people of Nineveh to Jonah's preaching, how it indicated they had genuinely turned from their sin, God relented of the calamity He had planned against it, Jonah 3:10!
Lesson: Though the people of Nineveh were spiritually fickle as seen in the broad context of history, God STILL wanted Jonah to warn them to repent even for a SHORT time due to His GREAT GRACE! When Jonah warned Nineveh of God's judgment, the people repented, so God temporarily spared them!

Application: May we yield to God's call to KEEP seeking to DISCIPLE even difficult or spiritually fickle folk, for God's INFINITE GRACE is RELENTLESS in its pursuit of SINFUL MEN!