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Join us on February 19th after each worship service for our annual fastnaght treats made with love by Ann Trost! You might want to consider wearing white that day!

So are you ready for the dramatic conclusion of Jonah? This week I posted on Facebook an invitation to read the book of Jonah. Did anyone do it? For those of you who did, were there any surprises? What about the ending? How does it end? Yeah, the ending is Jonah just being a bitter old man! Does Jonah ride off into the sunset? Does Jonah get the girl? No, there isn’t any girl at all! In fact, if Jonah were a book on the shelves today, nobody would buy it. Why? Because God didn’t do what Jonah thought He should do; there’s no happy ending…at least in Jonah’s mind.

It’s just not fair! Have you ever said that? I know I have. And perhaps therein lies the message and lesson for us. God may love you and me, and usually we can wrap our minds around that; it feels good to be loved. But what about when God says he loves our enemies and those people who we feel should be judged instead of given grace? They are bad God, strike them down, judge them harshly, make them pay! Well, if we really like the idea of a gracious and loving God for us, then perhaps we need to learn a lesson like Jonah did…that God is gracious and loving, not just to us, but to all.

So are you curious? Well then, let’s dive back into the story?

Last Sunday I had you read most of the text with me. Today, I’d still like you to open up those pew Bibles again but I’ll read and you can follow along. So, please open up to Jonah, chapter 3, page 845 in your pew Bible.

Just to remind you of what happened: Jonah was swallowed by the large fish and he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed. He repented about running…sort of. Why do I say that? Because he did finally promise to sacrifice to God and vowed to follow through, claiming that “deliverance belongs to God”…yes, but we get the feeling that he’s repented only enough to be saved. I recognize this because I’ve done that before. Ever been there? Ever been at the point where you need to be delivered out of some situation but your heart had not really been changed? You wanted freedom but you didn’t really want to change.

And that is the tension that plays out for the rest of the book. Jonah claims that God is God and he will do God’s bidding, but is his heart in the right place? Is Jonah worshiping God with not only his actions, but his heart too, trusting God in both? We don’t really get that impression.

So, I’ll begin reading in the last verse of chapter two:
10 Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. 3:1The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” (no detours this time) 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (now check this out) 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. (They’re acting more like humble Hebrews than the big Prophet!) 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. (Even the king repented) 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. (Not only you all but your dogs and cats too okay…no drinking or eating, and by the way, put on a sackcloth—I can’t imagine my dog wearing a sackcloth bag!) 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? (The kings asking this) God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

I hope you see that this is a complete miracle! Remember what we said about the brutality of the Assyrians. They were vile and wicked people, and yet…they immediately decided to repent to a foreigner’s god. The scripture says that ALL shall turn and they did. Every last gangster, every last prostitute, every last bookie, every last drug dealer, every last adulterer…everyone! God worked some sort of miracle there to show mercy and grace to a people who deserved terrible judgment and punishment.

And therein lies Jonah’s whole problem. On week one of this series we talked about how Jonah was maybe scared of what might happen to him if he delivered God’s pronouncement of judgment to brutal people. But, now we have to wonder if it was the Assyrians he was afraid of OR if he was more afraid that God might actually have mercy on them.

Let’s read on:
4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. (The truth comes out—Jonah wanted them to burn like bratwursts on a grill) 3 And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Have you ever seen anyone pout like this? Maybe your three year old but an adult, God’s obedient prophet? He’s acting like a real pouty-pants! Jonah let his bitter heart take over all rational, all faith, all…everything.
5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. (waiting for those brats to burn) 6 The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort (see, God is trying to be gracious again); so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” (Is God really talking about the bush here? He’s actually making a comparison to Nineveh. What right does Jonah have to be angry about God’s decision to care for a city, even if it gets corrupted and infested with the worm of Evil?) And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

And…that’s it! That’s the book of Jonah. That’s the amazing heart-inspiring ending. PAUSE What a rotten ending! How does Jonah respond? Does he ever move? Does he get a sunburn? We will never know. So what is the point?

There are several things that could be said about what we’re to learn from Jonah. 1) The first one is that perhaps, just perhaps, God is more gracious with people than we are. And if God can be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love even with our enemies, then perhaps we should strive to be as well. Because, as Jonah exemplified, when we don’t there’s a pretty good likelihood that we will become bitter old men and women. When we try to keep track of everyone’s wrongdoings, rather than letting God do that, someone once said we are trying to be the CEO of the universe. Jonah begs the question, why don’t you resign? Let God be God and let us be content in the graciousness that God’s had on us. He hasn’t torched our city, condemned us, even though I’m sure we’ve all done things he could have used as ammunition. God is more gracious than we and we cannot be afraid of that, we have the opportunity of celebrating that! Our God is a gracious God to all.

2) A second thing we can learn from Jonah is that God can even use broken vessels to achieve His ends. We’re all cracked pots. ☺ We find that Jonah was all too human. Even the prophets were human and made mistakes. If God could still use Jonah, a broken vessel, surely God can use us too, no matter how broken we feel. The truth is that the power of God is not limited to our purity. It may be confusing for people to see God utilizing broken and sometimes very flawed people, it may even distort the Gospel, but in the end, God will accomplish his plan. Let us not be disheartened by the brokenness of our vessels. When we look in the mirror we don’t have to give up. Remember going to the fair or circus and seeing yourself in those funky mirrors that make you look skinny, fat, stretched, and squished? Because of the Sin in our lives and ourselves we often only get to see that kind of reflection of ourselves…we see what the Devil wants us to see. However, even when we’re broken vessels, 1) remember we’re works in progress, and 2) God can use us to further His kingdom. The power of God is not limited by our purity. We are not the weakest link that God can’t get around. Everyone here is a weak link, but our God can deal with that. God can even use you and me. Don’t believe the reflection you see in the mirror. You too can be the vessel that God uses for amazing things, despite your real or perceived flaws.

3) And a third thing we can learn from Jonah is that it’s usually best to ask to see someone from God’s point of view. Before we write people off ask God how He views them. We get stuck in our bitterness. And when we do it’s hard to feel sorry for someone who you’d secretly wish would die. You’re saying, “I don’t wish that!” Well, maybe not die, but at the least, get out of the way. Maybe you’re interested in a certain girl or guy and some other smooth person swoops in and gets them. Maybe you’re divorced and your ex is causing you so much trouble and pain. Maybe it’s a competitor in business. They just keep taking away your customer base. Maybe it’s the Islamic fundamentalists. Maybe it’s the gangs that corrupt and hurt our children. When it gets personal, we harbor feelings of resentment and even worse. “They deserve it God.”

And then God comes along, like He did to Jonah, and says, but I want to bless them. This is a tall order. Jesus says in Matthew 5:43 and 44, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

We have to trust God on this one. For some reason God sees something in that person, in those people, that maybe we don’t. One thing we can do, even if we begin secretly hating someone, is to pray for God to show us how He feels about them. This can be challenging. This is hard. I get it. But think about how Jesus was the one, whom hanging on the cross, said the very same thing about us. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We all “don’t know what we do” in life. We all play the pity party, like Jonah, claiming that they (whoever they are) should die and if not, then we should. We are such cracked people! But, God knows better. God is patient with us, even when we run, even when we fail to truly repent, even when we do things for the wrong reasons, even when we are bitter and baking in the sun. When we finally let go, when we finally step down from being the CEO of the universe, when we finally let God be God, there is a whole lot to be thankful for; there is so much to be joyful about. Why?—because he pursues us. And why does He do that? Because our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,…for everyone.

Thanks be to God. Amen.