Jonah Meditation: The God of Second Chances

Jonah 3:1-5 Meditation

"Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a days journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 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 3:1-5

How many of you have longed for a second chance at something? It could be something as innocent as an interview that you botched or test you should have studied harder for. Or an important conversation where something wasn’t articulated the way you intended, or a relationship that just, kinda drifted apart…or maybe you wish you had another chance to say good-bye to a loved one.

Everyone who has ever had Cancer wants to hear the word…“Remission”…second chances are an amazing thing. None of us deserve them and yet, every one of us wants them. In many respects Jonah 3:1 is a summary of the Bible, “Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time”

Praise God for His indescribable grace given to wayward sinners.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Romans 3:23-26

Paul summarizes it this way in Romans 6:23,

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The God who is perfect and holy and just is also abounding in love and rich in mercy.

Jonah is a big fat knot-head (we can run from God, but we can’t outrun God)…and when Jonah’s sin had found him out he decided that death was preferred over obedience. He knew full-well the nature/character of God. Jonah was thrown into the sea and as death closed in on him, he finally came to terms with his desperate situation. He finally sees himself and his sin in light of God’s Holy-Love and he cries out to God from the belly of Sheol.

God heard the prayer of Jonah and delivered him by appointing a great fish to swallow him up and sustain him for 3 days. Jonah Repents. The Fish then barfs Jonah out onto dry land. Did Jonah’s waywardness change the plans of God? Absolutely not. Was God like, “you learned your lesson Jonah, now you get to go home.” Nope – Jonah’s mission remained the exact same.

G.K. Chesterton once said,

“How much larger your life would be if yourself could become smaller in it.”

Jonah needed to be made smaller in his life, so that he could be used by God. The

toughest things we go through are the best things for us. The Lord uses those experiences to make us into what He will have us be. I forget what Puritan said it but, it’s true, “Thou art beaten that thou mayest be better.”

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time and Jonah now obeys. Have you ever

known people, and thought to yourself, “if you tried just as hard at making an honest living, as you are at trying to make a dishonest one, you’d be doing pretty good. If you worked half as hard at being obedient as you do at being disobedient, you’d be amazing.”

So Jonah’s mission still stands. Jonah still has to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, which was a brutal and violent nation, and was no friend to Israel. He has to make this journey alone traveling approximately six hundred miles over the desert, which probably would have taken him about forty days with an uncertain outcome.

Hugh Martin describes some of this tension as follows,

“Jonah was about to enter, unprotected, a city, whose inhabitants were preeminently wicked and violent; and he was to threaten them in the name of the Almighty with speedy and complete destruction. It was as going into the lion’s den.”

Jonah didn’t need to parse out Hebrew words, or go to seminary to determine what he was supposed to do in Nineveh, nor did he need to pray about it – the Lord already told him what to do. Jonah didn’t need to wait and raise money for his dynamic cross-cultural church planting mission, or build up his core group, or make sure he had good music or a youth ministry. Jonah just needed to go.

And go with what message? Certainly, not a very winsome one by today’s evangelical

standards. “Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” The number 40 is not insignificant here, (something that wouldn’t have missed on Jonah) it was a generally a period of testing, a period of judgement or transition.

There is also something else that we should notice, and it’s certainly something that the Ninevites noticed. That is, God had given them time to repent. “Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown”. Repentance is baked into the cake of judgment. God used this time to turn the entire city upside down with the simple message of judgment.

WHY? They believed it! As evidenced by what? Their repentance Jonah 3:5,

“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.”

Many churches do everything in their power to “not” talk about the reality of God’s judgment because they don’t think it’s evangelistic, “We’re not going to win people if we talk this way”. Unbelievers don’t like it – to which we would respond with a simple, “Duh!”

All of the preaching in the New Testament begins with a call to repent. Whether it’s John the Baptist, or Jesus, or Peter or Paul…every example we have of preaching in the New Testament includes a call to repent and turn to Christ. When we don’t call sinners to repentance in the name of “winsomeness” we are actually damning them to hell. And more often than not, this is a matter of making things easier for the messenger than it is showing love for the recipient.

The good news is not that good if the bad news is not that bad!… The gospel has sharp edges and we’re not doing people any favors by removing them. If we remove God’s judgment, and our need for repentance from the equation we also remove the redemption that we have in Christ. We remove the healing that we have in Christ. The forgiveness and restoration that we have in Christ, and we also remove the hope of heaven that we have in Christ.

If there is no genuine godly grief over sin there is no genuine salvation…Nineveh mourned over their sin and this was reflected in their actions…what would this look like if the church mourned over her sin? What would this look like if our country mourned over her sin?