Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (NKJV)
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you."
3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. 4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them…
10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
There’s a popular saying in the world of business: “If you want to soar like an eagle, you can’t hang around on the ground with the turkeys.” In other words, if you want to have success in life, you have to surround yourself with successful people. And that makes sense. When it comes to the people we work for and the people who work for us, we want to make sure they’re the “right kind of people.”
So we have to make some judgment calls. We have to separate the “eagles” from the “turkeys,” the successful from the unsuccessful, the smart from the not-so-smart, the nice people (at least who are nice to us) from those who are not so nice, the people who are “like us” from people who are not “like us.”
But is that the way God works? If the Lord had to distinguish between “eagles” and “turkeys” when it comes to the kind of people He calls to be His disciples, from His perspective there’d be no “eagles,” only “turkeys.” And yet from God’s Word that’s before us this morning, we see that the Lord’s still calling people to Himself. We see here the true glory of Christ revealed, revealed in the kind of people He calls.
- He calls sinners everywhere to repent.
We see the glory of Christ revealed first of all in the fact that the Lord calls sinners everywhere to repent.
People talk about having dreams in life… well, preachers have dreams too. To be able to preach one sermon and have an entire metropolitan city turn from their sins and seek the Lord in faith—that would be a preacher’s dream come true!
Yet that’s exactly what happens in Nineveh! The city of Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. And the Assyrians were known far and wide for their violence and brutality, especially when they would go into battle. They’d do things to other human beings that would make any normal person’s blood run cold.
But with just one sermon from the prophet Jonah: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (4). Just one sermon preached in one day and the entire city, everybody “from the greatest to the least of them,” believed God, turned from their evil, sinful, violent ways and sought His forgiveness. They were repentant—so repentant that they didn’t just put that itchy, scratchy sackcloth on themselves; they put it on their animals and livestock too. Even the king expressed public repentance—all in the name of showing the Lord how sorry they were in their hearts for the evil they had done.
And yet this is more than just a preacher’s dream come true. It’s a miracle of God’s grace and mercy. His hand was behind it all. It was the Lord who had sent Jonah to Nineveh, who had given Jonah the message he was to proclaim. It was the Lord who through Jonah’s preaching led the hearts of the people of Nineveh to be crushed in condemnation. It was the Lord who did all of this, so that in the end He could relent and not bring about the destruction He had threatened.
Why? What was so special about the Ninevites? They weren’t God’s chosen people! They weren’t deserving of God’s love. They were wicked sinners. But the Lord wanted to have compassion on these people; he wanted to show them His mercy and grace; He wanted them to be saved, just as He wants all people on earth to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4).
So here we have the glory of Christ revealed to us, don’t we? That the Lord in His grace calls all people everywhere to repentance—no matter what your last name is; no matter what language you speak; no matter your gender. He calls each and every one of us, saying, “’For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord GOD. ‘Therefore turn and live!’” (Ezekiel 18:32).
And that miracle of grace extends to us too. Sometimes we get it in our heads that we’ve been called by God to faith because we’re special or because we sin less than other people. As though sinning less matters. But the truth is that it does not. Comparing the amount or size of our sins to others is about as pointless as comparing manure piles. Besides, just because we haven’t actually beat anybody up or stolen anything or committed adultery, does not mean that we’ve kept the commandments. In God’s eyes lust is the same as adultery and hatred is the same as murder. In our hearts we’re just as sinful and violent as any of those brutal Ninevites were. We’ve rebelled against God’s will and deserve nothing from Him but punishment in hell.
And yet Christ has had compassion on you! He’s allowed you to learn that difficult truth about yourself and your own sins. It’s He who led you to sorrow over your sins through the preaching of His Word. All so that He can share His grace—His love—with you in His own life, death, and resurrection. All so that you can be sure that by His sacrifice, God’s anger over our sins has been completely satisfied and our sins are totally forgiven. The glory of Christ is revealed in that He calls sinners everywhere to repentance!
For a lot of people this glory of Christ remains hidden, though. See, while we think it’s right for us to receive God’s grace and mercy, there’s always other people we can think of who shouldn’t be getting the grace of God. Maybe it’s drunk drivers. Maybe it’s people who are trapped in the sin of homosexuality. We fall into the trap of thinking that grace is earned somehow. We forget that God has placed no conditions on His love. We forget that the miracle of God’s grace to Nineveh was truly that: a miracle.
In fact, the grace of God shown to Nineveh is really the second miracle; the first is the grace God showed to Jonah. For it’s there that we see the glory of Christ is revealed in that:
- He calls sinners to serve Him.
“Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time.” The second time? What happened the first time? You remember. When the Word of the LORD first told Jonah to go preach to the people of Nineveh, Jonah ran the other way. Instead of heading inland to Nineveh, Jonah went straight to the town of Joppa on the coast, and caught a ship headed for the other side of the world.
But do you remember why Jonah ran? It wasn’t because he was scared. The people of Nineveh were so bad and had done so much to offend the Lord, Jonah just couldn’t understand how God would want to show love and mercy to these people! Jonah’s biggest fear was that if he went to Nineveh and preached to those people there, they might actually repent and be saved! He wanted those people to get what they deserved!
And so the Lord taught Jonah a lesson. He caused a terrible storm to blow up and for Jonah to be tossed overboard and swallowed by a large fish. But that wasn’t the end. For three days and nights, Jonah survived in that fish.
Yet even then the Lord the grace of Christ was with Jonah. There in the belly of that fish, alone with his thoughts, Jonah, as he was headed down, down, into the darkness of death itself, realized that he was getting what he deserved. He was led to repent—to repent of his disobedience, of his arrogance, of his unwillingness to do the will of the Lord, his attempts to trust in himself, and he clung to the simple truth that he had always known: “Salvation is from the LORD.” And the Lord rescued Jonah. He caused the fish to vomit him up onto dry land. And then, the LORD took this sinner, this man who previously had run from Him, and did the unthinkable. He restored him; He gave him another chance to serve. And this time, Jonah, in the glory of grace, did what the Lord told him to do. He preached the Word of God to the people of Nineveh.
Like Jonah we need to be reminded that God’s grace and love is not something we deserve. That in spite of our own thoughts to the contrary, we’re no better than anybody else, that we’re all “turkeys,” not “eagles.” For “there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Ro. 3:23). We all deserve to be dragged down—not to the bottom of the ocean, but to the depths of hell itself. We need to be reminded that salvation comes not from ourselves at all, but from the LORD alone. We need to be reminded that it’s Christ alone—His life, His death, His resurrection—that set us free from the guilt and punishment that was intended for us. It’s purely His grace.
And the fact that God not only saves sinners, but calls sinners to lead other sinners back to Himself? That’s a miracle of grace too! And there are more miracles. When we fail, when we run from the opportunities God gives us to tell others about their Savior, He changes our hearts. He leads us to repent. He restores us with His forgiveness. And He gives us more opportunities to proclaim His truth—not in an arrogant, self-serving way, but in the way that one homeless person tells another homeless person where the best soup kitchen is. He equips us with His Word so we can proclaim it as one sinner telling another sinner where to find God’s love and forgiveness at no cost. And by that same grace He blesses our efforts. He sends His Holy Spirit to make hearts truly hear what we’re saying.
So God doesn’t work the way we do. But that’s a good thing, a wonderful thing. That God reveals the glory of His grace by calling sinners—not just to repentance, but to service in His kingdom. Live in that glory of God’s grace. When you look at people, see them no longer as “eagles” or “turkeys,” but as blood-bought souls who daily need—and receive—the grace and love of God. Just like you. Amen.