Pastor Brad Reaves
(c) 2019 Grace Community Church, Winchester, VA
View this sermon at:
https://youtu.be/n9X6xs7MjwA
“Knowing the depth of God's mercy begins with repentance”
Several years ago, The British Weekly published this letter:
Dear Sir: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for 30 years, and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my dismay, I discovered I could not remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent on something else?
A response to this editorial could not have said it better:
Dear Sir: I have been married for 30 years. During that time, I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly my wife’s cooking. Suddenly I have discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.
Who knows how many messages the Ninevites had heard or in how many ways God tried to reach them. When Jonah showed up, two things were evident: 1.) He knew and experienced the depth of God's mercy in his own life. 2.) He was faithful to preach God's word as God commissioned him to preach.
Remember that Nineveh was the most brutal and barbaric of cities. Mercy was something they knew nothing about until Jonah appeared. God poured out Mercy on Jonah so that others could come to know God. God poured out mercy in your life so that others can know Him.
If we want to see our community change its views on issues like sexuality, marriage, abortion, or treatment of the poor. If you desire to see crime and violence leave our community. If you want to see the miraculous, marriages healed, and our youth turn to God. It does not begin with protests or programs. It starts with a renewed desire for the power of God to move in our own hearts and then sharing God's grace and mercy with others.
Jonah came to Nineveh. After fleeing and backsliding, he experienced God's mercy again and faithfully preached the message that God
I. God's Mercy is Realized Through Humility
And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. (Jonah 3:5)
The fact that Jonah does not go to the King, but instead the people of Nineveh is a break in cultural protocol. Nineveh experienced one of the greatest revivals of all history. People began fasting and praying to God. They were mourning over their sin and humbling themselves before God. There was a genuine change in people's hearts and attitudes toward their sin and relationship with God. It was an attitude of humility.
"The oldest of hearts, the deepest despair, the most distant of souls are God's greatest works about to take place." (Richard Phillips)
To experience God's mercy and see him change your heart, there must be a desire for him to rewire your heart. This requires true humility. For the proud heart will never allow God to do His work in your life. True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.
I saw someone at Hershey Park one day with a t-shirt that said “I’LL LOVE YOU WHEN YOU ARE MORE LIKE ME” This is humility turned on its head.
The American Church is in trouble. Today we lack the humility to submit to God our pride, our will, our sin. Instead, we say, God, I want you to accept my sin instead of dying for my sin. This is the way of the wide road instead of the narrow.
On the opposite side of the coin are those who think they've become God's police force. Did you notice how simple Jonah's message was to Nineveh and how powerful they responded? Our message is a message of repentance and grace. To preach the gospel without repentance is to preach an incomplete message.
II. God's Mercy is Realized Because of Our Repentance
6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish." (Jonah 3:6-9)
Instead of the king proclaiming to the people, the changed hearts of the people reached the heart of the king (v. 6). This is how God works.
if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
The king then passed back down to the people a declaration of repentance. This would have been a message to all the doubters and fence-sitters who heard Jonah’s message. The noblemen were now responding as the common people responded. Had the king not responded to Jonah’s message, it may have splashed water on the fires of revival, and now his actions were like adding gasoline to the fire. Every person was to hear and respond to God’s message, and even the livestock was called to fast.
“It is God’s will through his wonderful grace, that the prayers of his saints should be one of the great principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for his church, it is his will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of his people; . . . and it is revealed that, when God is about to accomplish great things for his church, he will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication (Jonathan Edwards)
It all started with repentance in the hearts of the people. A hunger for the things of God and a distaste for the things of man. The problem we are facing in America is there is little difference between the church and the rest of the world. We've been taught that all we need to do is to say and prayer and we're in the club. This is the greatest lie of the American Church. The gospel without repentance isn't the gospel.
The church should look different from the world and be attractive to the world because the desire of our heart is the desire of very One the world cannot have. I think the reason the church today is becoming less effective in the West is that we do not need God or depend on God in our church. We have become very effective in operating our services without the radical intervention of the Divine. This should break our hearts
Biblical repentance must start with us, Grace Community Church and must include at least
3 crucial elements:
1. Sorrowful mourning over sin (v.5)
2. An Actual turning from the things that are sinful (v.8)
3. A turning to God in renewed and fervent faith (v.8)
“Repentance is a change of mind issuing in a change of life (J.J. Packer)
For the grace of God has appeared to us... training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions (Titus 2:11)
III. God's Mercy is Realized Because of His Grace
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. (Jonah 3:10)
“When Nineveh repented, a city whose wickedness was so great and whose guild was piled as high as the pyramids of skulls its conquering rulers delighted to construct; God relented of his judgment. This shows that God can and will forgive anybody who believes and repents.” Just as God showed Jonah mercy by commanding the fish to rescue him from the depths and then vomit him up after he prayed a prayer of repentance, now God is merciful to a repentant city of wicked men. Both Jonah and Nineveh had been under a death sentence. It was crying out to God with a repentant heart that turned the tide of His Judgement.
“True repentance hates the sin, and not merely the penalty, and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered and felt God’s love.” W.M. Taylor
“Repentance is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose; it is simply a description of what going back is like. Fallen man is not merely an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” C.S. Lewi
Repentance allows us to experience the depth of God's grace and experience His mercy at work in our lives. Without repentance, God's grace deflects off our hardened hearts.
I want you to understand an important point here: Repentance did not prompt God's grace; God's grace prompts repentance of people. Just as Jesus told the woman caught in adultery that she was not condemned... "go and sin no more," God's grace was already at work in Nineveh and the people were compelled to repent. They saw God's mercy in Jonah. So did God change His mind about his judgement on Nineveh or was there mercy in God's warning that moved the hearts of the people
Let me illustrate my point this way: Suppose you see a sign on a fence around a power station, "Warning, do not enter. High Voltage." If you turn away and do not enter the restricted area did the danger of the voltage go away?
Suppose the electric company sends you a notice that unless you pay your bill by Thursday, your electricity is going to be cut off. The warning from the electric is really an act of mercy, is it not? Grace is that they did not cut your electricity off as soon as your bill was overdue. Repentance is paying your bill. Did the electric company change their mind or did the penalty for not paying your bill remain. The change was your behavior through the mercy of the electric company.
This is what God's mercy is all about: to revive our hearts to love the things God loves and despise the things that God does not. His mercy is calling out to you today that if you keep doing the things you are doing and fail to repent, you are on the broad road; the road of destruction. Our repentance is empowered by God's grace.
Grace wins every time! The greatest act of Mercy was on the cross. It served as a warning and act of grace all at the same time. To those who are too prideful to break their hearts before God and repent, we stay on the road to destruction. That's the warning.
You know what the evil thing is you are hiding in your heart. You are trying to please both God and man. It is not possible. You can come to church, and you can recite prayers, and sing the songs, you can pay your tithe. All of those things are fine and good, but you still need to turn from your sin in the belief that the broad road is the road of destruction. That's not the voice of an angry God, that's the voice of mercy who is giving every possible warning.
If Jonah's reemergence from the great fish spurred the Ninevites to hopeful repentance, how much the resurrection persuades more out we of Jesus? His grace is knowing he is withholding his condemnation, his mercy is seen in His words of invitation, and His power is seen in the cross and resurrection.
Take it to the Cross
