Jonah 3-4: You Don't Deserve a Second Chance

Huh… That title’s a little harsh. I can’t actually mean that, can I? Well, give me a few minutes and you’ll see. But until then, I want to talk about something completely different.

The Bible is filled with some weird and wacky stories about prophets. A prophet, as we learned last week, is someone who delivers messages from God to His people. And man, these prophets did some strange stuff to deliver those messages. Elijah called down fire from heaven. Ezekiel laid on the ground for over a year. Isaiah ran around naked… (Don’t try that one at home kids!). But each of the prophets did those odd things because God asked them to.

Then there’s Jonah… Jonah ran away from God, risking a bunch of sailors’ lives in the process, and then got eaten by a fish to get him back on track. And when Jonah finally did go to Nineveh like God had wanted to all along, Jonah still got it wrong! As far as prophets go, I can’t see Jonah winning the “Prophet of the Year” award any time soon.

Now when I learned the story of Jonah in Sunday school, the moral of the story was usually that God can use anyone, even when we make mistakes. And don’t get me wrong, that’s absolutely true. After all, that’s exactly what we talked about two weeks ago. All we have to do is turn back to God, ask Him to forgive us, and then be willing to do what He asks from that point forward. We partly talked about that last week. And if Jonah’s story ended with Chapter 3, I’d say that those would be two great morals for the whole book.

But the problem is that we get to hear about what Jonah did after he preached to the Ninevites. And sadly, it’s not pretty. But let’s slow down for a second and first make sure that we know about the amazing thing that happened in Nineveh.

After brushing off the whale vomit, Jonah received another message from God telling him to do the same thing that God had told Jonah to do before. Go to Nineveh. Give the Ninevites a message from the LORD. Jonah had learned that running from God didn’t end well, so off to Nineveh he went. He would give them God’s message, and Jonah hoped it would come true.

See, the Ninevites were not very nice people. They were unkind, they hurt people, and they did whatever they wanted without ever thinking about what God wanted. So the message from God was that if the Ninevites kept acting like this, their entire city would be destroyed in 40 days.

Now as far as Jonah was concerned – as far as everyone in Israel was concerned for that matter – the Ninevites deserved to have their city destroyed! God was finally going to get rid of that cruel, awful city! And it was about time too!

So Jonah made sure that every single Ninevite knew what was coming. He went through the entire city for three days telling everyone he saw that in just over a month, BAM! Fire and lightning! Destruction! Nineveh would be history! Jericho’s walls coming down would have nothing on what God was going to do to Nineveh.

But as Jonah wandered the city telling everyone they were going to die in a blazing glory in a few weeks’ time, something incredible happened. The Ninevites realized that Jonah was serious. They realized that if they kept doing what they were doing – if they kept disobeying God – they were actually going to be destroyed.

For some of them, this would have been shocking. They didn’t know any better! They thought it was normal to be mean to others. But when Jonah came, they realized that what they were doing was wrong. And as a result, they repented – they were sorry for what they had done, changed their minds, and decided instead to listen to what God wanted them to do.

So, they fasted for a few days. This means that nobody ate or drank anything, and they used that time to say sorry to God instead. But even more importantly, they stopped doing those terrible things they were doing before. The king of Nineveh even sent out a message to the city, saying, “All of you must call out to God with all your hearts. Stop doing what is evil. Don’t harm others. Who knows? God might take pity on us. He might not be angry with us anymore. Then we won’t die” (Jonah 3:8-9, NIrV).

And you know what? God did take pity on them! When God saw that the Ninevites stopped doing those terrible things and started listening to Him, He showed His love and compassion to the people of Nineveh – people who didn’t deserve it – and God ended up not destroying the city after all!

Again, back when I was in Sunday school, this is where the story ended. Jonah had learned his lesson that God is willing to show love and compassion to everyone, including both the people of Nineveh and Jonah himself. The Ninevites were saved and probably had a big party to celebrate. And we all thought Jonah was down there celebrating too!

But that’s not what happens… The Bible tells at the beginning of Jonah 4, “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong. He became angry” (4:1).

Angry? Jonah was angry that God had forgiven the Ninevites? He thought it was wrong? And here I thought Jonah would have been happy!

Jonah goes on to say, “LORD, isn’t this exactly what I thought would happen when I was still at home? This is what I tried to prevent by running away to Tarshsish. I knew that you are gracious. You are tender and kind. You are slow to get angry. You are full of love. You are a God who takes pity on people. You don’t want to destroy them” (4:2).

That’s what made Jonah run away? It wasn’t because he was scared of the mean old Ninevites. No, it was because Jonah knew that if the Ninevites repented and turned back to God, then God’s love was so great that He would forgive them. Jonah didn’t think the Ninevites deserved this second chance. They had been terrible people. As far as Jonah was concerned, it was time for them to be destroyed. And sadly, the story ends with Jonah still thinking this.

But here’s the funny thing guys: None of us deserve a second chance. Yeah, I was being serious with that title. Not the Ninevites. Not Jonah. Not you or me. Because we sin – because we do things that are wrong and that God doesn’t like – we all deserve to be destroyed, just like Jonah thought the Ninevites should have been destroyed.

But you know what?  God wants to forgive everyone, even though we don’t deserve it. There’s a special word for this: mercy. Mercy means not getting what we deserve. Mercy means that when you do something wrong, you don’t get punished for it like you should be. God shows us mercy by forgiving us when we ask instead of punishing us like we deserve.

And there’s one very important reason why God is willing to do this. It’s because He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross and rise again. When Jesus died, he took the punishment that we all deserve: death. Even though it was thousands of years ago for us, and hundreds of years after Jonah lived, Jesus died so that all of us could be forgiven. All we need to do is ask.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s amazing that we serve a God who would do something like that. That He would make a way to save all of us, even though we don’t deserve it. And yeah, there may be days like Jonah where you think that someone else doesn’t deserve a second chance. But in those times, remember Jonah and the Ninevites. Remember that you don’t deserve a second chance either. And then remember that, because of Jesus, God still gives us one anyway.

                                                            

That’s it for Jonah! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this first big story as much as I’ve enjoyed telling it. Next week, we’re going back in time a little ways to talk about a guy named Joshua, a girl named Rahab, and that Jericho place I mentioned above that actually did get destroyed.  See you then!

~Brentagious