Who will save the Pagans: A Survivor’s Tale
by Andrew Chan, Pilgrim Baptist Church, Vancouver, BC
May 20, 2001
Text: Jonah 3:1-10 (NLT)
3 Then the LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: 2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message of judgment I have given you.”
3 This time Jonah obeyed the LORD’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. 4 On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” 5 The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they decided to go without food and wear sackcloth to show their sorrow.
6 When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes. He dressed himself in sackcloth and sat on a heap of ashes. 7 Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city: “No one, not even the animals, may eat or drink anything at all. 8 Everyone is required to wear sackcloth and pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. 9 Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.”
10 When God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he had mercy on them and didn’t carry out the destruction he had threatened.
Jerusalem this past week — Israel launched more air strikes against Palestinian targets on Saturday and Arab foreign ministers reacted to the latest violence by recommending a suspension of political contacts with the Jewish state.
During Friday and Saturday, 22 people died in Arab-Israeli violence.
Two spates of air raids in as many days prompted Arab foreign ministers meeting in Egypt on Saturday to recommend that political contacts with the Israeli government be severed until it halted its military assaults against the Palestinians.
The bombardment of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was Israel’s response to a suicide bombing that killed six people, including the bomber, in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya on Friday.
In the latest strike, helicopters rocketed Palestinian Authority headquarters in the north West Bank towns of Jenin and Tulkarm, wounding at least 50 Palestinians, mainly civilians.
Israeli troops also killed a Palestinian policeman during a gunbattle in the West Bank and shot dead another Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said both were armed and posed a threat to its forces.
A 20-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire while throwing stones at troops in the West Bank city of Nablus after a funeral for 11 Palestinian policemen who died on Friday night in the Israeli bombardment there, hospital sources said.
"This is war, my friends, this is war," Israeli Minister of Communications Reuven Rivlin told Reuters in Jerusalem.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo called for a halt to what he termed "Israel’s crimes of terrorization and wholesale destruction of the Palestinian people."
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met Arab foreign ministers in Cairo to discuss the rising tensions.
In our text, Jonah would have felt at home… He feels hatred oozing from every pore… That’s why he ran away from his divine assignment. No way he is gonna speak to these guys... he has felt personally the sting of death and misery caused by them.
God too is justifiably angered. He is angered by the people of Nineveh (see the atrocities mentioned in Nahum as an example which includes genocide). He sees lives being wasted, and He has seen enough and so He sends Jonah: 2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message of judgment I have given you.”
They are in danger of being voted off by God just like people of BC did to the NDP.
Victoria Day long weekend… Past week we saw the demise of NDP government in BC politics. 76-3 reads the headlines of the Vancouver Sun. This is a defeat of historic proportions! Thus, the anger, disenchantment and disappointment of many in BC was shown. Premier Dosanjh is right British Columbians have spoken loudly and clearly. Justifiably so, as news commentators in BC politics all over noted.
In a letter published on Friday’s May 18, 2001 Van. Sun paper …
“Gordon Wilson’s pronouncement that he was beaten by Adriane Carr through a Green-New Democratic party vote split is wishful thinking. Assuming that the Green Party voters would have supported the NDP if the Green Party did not exist is wrong. Perhaps in 1996, but not in 2001. If the Green Party option had not been available, green-leaning voters across BC would have been more inclined to stay home or vote for another party – maybe even the Liberals. I hate to break it to you, Mr. Wilson, but you and you party lost fair and square.” No excuses! They just got booted because of their poor record
(see cartoon depicting the NDP government scandals and bloopers).
No way those guys by their efforts can win any more immunity challenges. In tv game show Survivor you can get out of being voted off by winning immunity through contests or challenges. But for the Ninevites - They have run out of immunity. No more excuses! The score will not be 76-3 like the NDP experienced in their fall from power in BC. It will be more like 79-0. It will be a complete drubbing that will go down in history faster than a speeding bullet!
4 On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!”
Yes, God is justifiably angered, He is miffed to say the least. You think the road rage on our city streets is bad, wait till you see the red-hot holy anger of God. I think that is why Jonah chose those words. He wanted them pagans to feel the heat. He wanted them to fry. They have caused him and his people enough grief. They have wasted his people, taken them out without mercy. Yeah it’s payback time. No need for the kleenex, it’s pass the popcorn and reserved front-row seats for 40 days from now, gonna see a fireworks display you can write home about. It’s their just desserts. I can just see Jonah smirking and as he shouts out his carefully brief and scripted text sentence. Ha, Ha…Fry baby, fry!
BUT… in God’s eyes…
Nineveh
v.2 – great city
v.3 - takes 3 days to see it all
Chapter 4 last verse “But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”
That’s a lot of people!
This story tells us more about our real hero God... it is not about Jonah... it’s about God!
SEE how God …
1. Moves: He initiates movement to them (v.1,2) even though….
a. people are oblivious to sin
Nahum 3:1ff. gives picture of Nineveh - “city of blood… , lies…plunder, …piles of dead… stumbling over corpses…wanton lust…witchcraft”
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12 (NIV)
b. blinded by sin (see Jonah 4:11)
Who can say, “I have cleansed my heart; I am pure and free from sin”?
The LORD despises double standards of every kind. Proverbs 20:9-10 (NLT)
c. attracted by sin
Temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires. These evil desires lead to evil actions, and evil actions lead to death. So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. James 1:14-16 (NLT)
CURRENT CHURCH STATISTICS:
50% are not certain of their salvation
60% seldom attend church
70% give less than one percent to the church
80% have no ministry within the congregation
80% do not attend a Bible study group
90% have never been discipled or trained
85% of churches have plateaued (not growing)
In 1900 there were 27 churches for every 10,000 people
Today there are 12 churches for every 10,000 people
The average attendance for churches today is 75
3,500 to 4,000 churches close each year (10 a day)
Less and less people are turning to God… and I believe God is angry at this generation too... but do u not think He is not at all concerned?
2. Mediates: He uses personal contact, even reluctant ones (v.3)
a. Biblical examples: Moses, Jesus, Paul, you and me.
b. We too are called to be ambassdors, messengers, holy nation, people belonging to God to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Do we mediate with our praise and declare it strongly?
c. Now is time of mediation: voice is heard through reluctant prophets many times like you and I to personally touch another.
3. Motivates: Message is not positive (v.4) not because of God but due to Jonah’s character
The message is given through the flawed, and hated character of Jonah, and it was short, as he did not desire to see the folks come to faith. He wants them to be wiped out, taken out as they had done to His people. Judgement!!! It’s coming! and in those few words less than you count with your fingers, He fingers them. Yeah, sometimes God’s message comes to us in a negative way. Just look at the cross of Jesus, it was nota romantic old rugged cross, it was a cross of shame, where criminals die justifiable deaths, it was judgment time, it was electric chair, definitely inhumane way to die. Yet it was this negative cross that the message of God came through to a sinful humanity. It through his negative event in history, mediation between God and lost people became a reality.
Greatest revival in the world’s shortest and negative message in Jonah... shows what God can do, what power!!
Blessed be the Lord!
4. Merciful:
a. See how God is moved by faith (v.5)
b. See how He hears repentant, prayerful, God-seeking folks (v.6-9)
c. See how He holds back justifiable destruction (v.10)
Do you see how God spoke to sinful people?
See how God MOVES, MEDIATES, MOTIVATES and most of all how MERCIFUL He is!!!
Who will love the pagans, when no one will? Answer: God will! You and are survivors because we have lived to tell the story of God’s offer of immunity to us!Bottom line: God will not let you go easily? He will initiate, use whatever means possible, even a negative message through a flawed, and reluctant person, but if you would believe, he will forgive and be merciful. God’s tactics has not changed.
He initiates movement – came in Christ, as He comes to human level
He uses a reluctant persons - see Moses, esp. Jonah
Message comes forth may not sound good, but hear it anyway! Comes even from some questionable people like Jonah, bad motives.
BUT God is moved by our faith. Bible says faith as small as mustard seed. See faith of Ninevites, pagans who dared to believe God. Start believing today… let it grow, seeds can grow, but first it gotta die, buried, will u bury your past now, let God bring new life to you.
Renew your faith … BC Assoc. confidence in assurance of one salvation all time low, little joy, I submit to you that God is angry but His mercy triumphs over judgment and He longs for you to come home. Will you?
The challenge is for Christians too! To be less like Jonah and more like God, do we judge others too quickly and never giving a chance for them to repent? With God it seems there is always loads of patience for people to turn around. Are we like God who gives a second chance, where there’s always a hope for some sort reconciliation? Do we move towards others, mediate God’s great news of love and mercy, do we do all we can to motivate them to accept Christ and then rejoice with them in the mercy that God has chosen to pour out to lost folks who don’t right hand from their left?
