Trinity is beginning a new sermon series on the book of Jonah. Listen in as Dr Verbruggen overviews the book.
Transcript
Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. We are starting a series about Jonah, and in this first sermon, we’re just going to look from a very high vantage view. As he said, an overview of the book. Now for most of us, the book of Jonah is a well-known book. We like it. We probably heard it when we were young, being told to us, and we like it because we do like stories. And of course, Jonah is so much easier to read than all of the rest of the prophets. But yet, Jonah has a very profound message for us in that God, in His sovereignty, reached out to confront a sinful generation, a sinful city, sending a prophet to confront them and
Historical Context
using him to call unbelievers to repentance. So let us dive in. So open your Bibles, if you can, to the book of Jonah. It will be all over the place, but we’ll still look at things in general also. So Jonah lived in the beginning of the 8th century BC, and at that time, God’s people were split up in a northern kingdom, normally referred to as Israel, and guided by non-Davidic kings, meaning kings that were not descended from David, and a southern kingdom called Judah, which was guided by Davidic kings. Israel and Judah were often subjugated, confronted by the Assyrians, a people group out to the east. But the king of Israel at the time of Jonah’s ministry was Jeroboam II, and his father Joash actually had to pay tribute to the king of Assyria, Adath-Nerari III, at the end of the 9th century. Now, paying tribute is not like arguing for $10, it is a heavy, heavy economic burden.
And that together with the Assyrians being very cruel, they were not very well liked by the people in Israel. Now in the time of Jonah, during the reign of Jeroboam II, actually the Assyrians had a weaker period, and the result was that economically, Israel was able to survive better, was able to function better, was able to flourish. But still, it is to the city of Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, that Jonah is called to preach. Ancient Nineveh is where modern Mosul is in Iraq, so it’s kind of incorporated there, so you kind of know, you can find it on the map if you wanted to. Jonah had prophesied concerning the northern kingdom, that Israel would be able to restore its borders, because God had compassion with Israel, as we read in 2 Kings 14, 26-27. For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left,
bound or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. So he saved them from the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash. So as the text says, the Lord had compassion on Israel, although they were being ruled by an ungodly king, but because God is always true to his promises, he would not allow Israel to be blotted out. While we are not told explicitly who wrote the book of Jonah, it has been traditionally viewed as being from the hand of Jonah, since only the prophet could have given us some of the information that is included into the book. Now some scholars disagree with this, and have challenged even the historicity of the book. But since Christ takes the book as referring to a real historical event, I don’t see any
problems with it, and I’m going to follow Jesus in that. It’s always good to follow Jesus, you know, whatever he does. So the book of Jonah is full of contrast, full of irony. Let me just give you one example, and more will come as we go through the sermon. There are two moanings in the book. A moan is described by the dictionary as a prolonged, low, inarticulate sound uttered from physical and mental suffering. The first moan we find in Jonah 1.14, when the sailors approach God because they are faced with the dilemma of having to throw one man overboard to save all the others, and the sailors are in mental distress over this. They say, oh Lord. The second moan is found in Jonah 4.2, when Jonah realized that God was going to spare the Ninevites based on God’s gracious and merciful character, and this fact, God’s grace,
evokes a moan from Jonah. The prophet did not want these Ninevites to get a reprieve from the Lord. He desired these thousands of Ninevites to come to their deserved end. How ironic that the prophet of God would bemoan the grace of God, while the pagan sailors bemoan the fact that they felt forced to condemn a rebellious prophet to what they thought was a watery death. While most of the focus in the book is upon Jonah, it is God who is the main character of the whole story. It is the Lord who commissioned Jonah to go to Nineveh. It is He who appointed a storm to be thrown upon the waters to thwart Jonah’s plans. It was God who appointed a great fish to rescue Jonah. He commanded the fish to spit him back on dry land. Then the Lord commissioned Jonah a second time. While not explicitly stated, it was God’s spirit who caused the people to repent, to
be serious, and to realize their sin. He appointed the plant, the worm, and the scorching east wind. He’s the one who appointed out to Jonah his faulty theology and his lack of compassion. God is the moving force in salvation and not man. This brings us to the main point in the book, namely, that God is sovereign in His work of salvation. Although Jonah was written as a correction to a fault of theology existing in Israel, that thought that God’s grace should be limited to Abraham’s descendants. God reveals that He was serious about what He had promised to Abraham, namely, that through Him all the families of the earth would be blessed. But we also can struggle with how we apply God’s salvation message to our own present context. The Lord has compassion for all the people of the earth, as His sending of Jonah to these
Four Essential Questions
Gentile Ninevites was a clear demonstration of this. Are we willing to be instruments in this plan of God to reach our world for Christ? And if so, what are we actively doing in this? In this sermon, we will look at the book of Jonah through four questions. And each question is derived from one of the chapters of the book. The first question from chapter one is, do you truly fear God? The second chapter provides us a question, is the Lord the God of your salvation? The third chapter forces us to ask ourselves, who are our Ninevites? And the last chapter presents the question, would you limit God’s mercy and grace? So let us deal with the first question, do you truly fear God? The book of Jonah is a fast-moving story. Immediately after Jonah received his marching orders from the Lord to go to Nineveh, he
sets out in the opposite direction. He went down to Joppa, a harbor on the Mediterranean Sea, and he found a ship that would go to Tarshish. And Tarshish is very likely either on the island of Sardinia or on the western coast of Spain. So he went west instead of going east to Nineveh. He boarded the ship, and as they started their journey, the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and because of the ferocity of this storm, the ship was in trouble. The sailors started immediately crying out to their gods, while Jonah, Jonah was oblivious to this. He was asleep in the bowels of the vessel. And the captain woke him up and admonished him to call upon his God, for he said, maybe God will hear us and we will not perish. But in contrast, Jonah did not call upon God. Then through the casting of the lots that the sailors did, it was revealed that this
calamity was upon them because of Jonah. So they asked him, who are you? Where do you come from? What is your occupation? And so on. And then he made this bold statement, this bold declaration that he was a Hebrew who feared the God who made a sea in the dry land. And at the same time, he told them that he was fleeing away from the Lord. The fact, this fact, that he was fleeing from the Lord frightened the sailors even more. And when I come at this point of the story, I often kind of have to chuckle inwardly and thinking this is such a complete disconnect between Jonah’s words and his actions. All his actions demonstrated that he did not really fear the Lord. He proclaimed that he feared the Lord who made a sea in the dry land. But at the same time, his picture of God was small enough that allowed him to travel
to Tarshish to get away from that Lord, from the wrath of God, from the reach of this great God. When he was confronted that the storm was upon them because of his actions, Jonah did not repent. He doubled down in his obstinance and told the sailors, throw me in the water. With this command, he is demonstrating what he would later express in words, my death is better than my life. His actions denied the theology he was proclaiming. He acted as if he could live independently from God without having to give an account for his actions. The sailors, on the other hand, showed a far greater reverence for the Lord than Jonah. Look at this. One, as soon as a storm hit, they knew that God or in their worldview, gods could only help them. They recognized their desperate situation. And we all have to recognize, see clearly our own situation in order to fully understand
where we stand before God. Secondly, they started to ditch all the goods from the boat. Material wealth could not help them when they are coming face to face with the wrath of God. The one with the most toys does not win because you cannot take it with you. God does not look on your wealth. He looks at your heart. And they realized this. Three, they immediately examined their current community to see what could have been the sinner, who could have been the sinner that caused this calamity to come upon themselves. Four, when Jonah told them that it was because of him that they were in this predicament, they were exceedingly afraid. Fear is often the right attitude in the face of a holy God, realizing you’re a sinner. Fifth, they were so also fearful of taking things into their own hands. And they did not want to follow Jonah’s suggestion to cast him into the sea.
It sounded so wrong to them because they were fearful to put their hand on one who claimed to follow the Lord, to fear the Lord. And so they tried to get things done their own way. They tried to row back to the dry land. And of course it was the wrong way. We cannot create our own salvation. We cannot make our own salvation. Sixth, when that failed and before they act upon Jonah’s suggestion, they approached the Lord and pleaded with God not to hold the life of Jonah against them. And then seventh, after they threw Jonah into the water and the sea calmed down, that’s when they truly got afraid because God again had shown up, had shown his power again by calming the sea. And they made vows and sacrifices to the Lord. This is the behavior that you would have expected from someone who claims to fear the Lord.
The God of Salvation
They acted unlike Jonah, who was passive in all this. He would rather be thrown into the sea than truly show that he feared God. By his sinful attitude, he brought unbelievers in danger. He turned and ran away from God while really the sailors turned towards God. But God is in the business of saving people. So he saved those ignorant sailors, but who responded to his great display of power. So if you’re here and you do not know the Lord, the Lord is calling you to put your trust in him. He is reaching out to you wherever you are at. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t have to have all your ducks in a row. I don’t know why we say ducks in a row, but anyway, God allows you to come just as you are. If you’re a believer, how do your actions line up with your theology?
Now I know. I mean, I can look at my own life. Often my actions don’t always connect and I realize,-oh, I got to come to the cross again. I have to repent. I have to confess my sin. So we have to do it on a constant basis. But examine your heart on a daily basis. Are your goals, your priorities in agreement with your faith?. We come to our second chapter and our second question. Is the Lord God, the God of your salvation? As this chapter opens, we learn that Jonah had been saved, swallowed by a big fish. And it is in the belly of the fish that he recalled his ordeal when he was in the water. And Jonah described in his prayer how he first was on the surface of the water and how the waters were crashing over him. And then how he sank underneath the water.
And then just about at the time he was ready to faint and drown, he prayed to God and just the Lord immediately answered him. And a great fish rescued him from a drowning death. As he recounts this ordeal, he makes it clear that his rescue was from the watery death, not from the belly of the fish. Because the fish was God’s instrument of salvation for Jonah. He then avowed that indeed salvation belongs to the Lord. Jesus referenced this event when he foretold his death and resurrection. Just as Jonah’s stay in the belly of the fish was a sign of his salvation from death by drowning, so was Jesus’ time in a tomb for three days and three nights, after which he rose again as a sign of salvation, our salvation. Because he paid the penalty of our sins on the cross. We saw in the first chapter that God was in the business of saving those who are ignorant
of him. And we see in this chapter, God is in the business of saving even those who are disobedient to him, even disobedient prophets. So if you find yourself disobedient to God, whom you have previously called your Lord, come back to him and bow down to him and place him again as the Lord of your life. Nothing else will satisfy you. No one else and no other thing can save you. Your career can’t save you, your political affiliation can’t save you, your wealth can’t save you. These things are worthless idols. And if you trust in them, then you forsake your covenant love. Salvation belongs to the Lord alone and in him alone is salvation found. We come to the third chapter and the third question is, who are your Ninevites? As soon as Jonah recognized the Lord’s sovereignty over his life, the Lord commanded the fish
Who Are Your Ninevites?
to spit the prophet out onto dry grounds. It seems that Jonah needed a watery wake-up call before he would heed the divine call of the Lord. And what does it take for us to hear the Lord’s call? The Lord does not give up on his purposes and his purposes are not thwarted by a renegade prophet. So after his second commission, Jonah went to Nineveh. And Nineveh is about 500 miles east-northeast of Israel. Nineveh was a big city and it would take, it would have taken Jonah three days in order to preach in all of the neighborhoods of Nineveh. And so Jonah delivered the shortest sermon with the greatest impact. In 40 days, Nineveh will be overturned. It might be that the shortness of the sermon is another sign of his reluctance to bring God’s message to the Ninevites. Jonah realized that just the fact that God took notice of the evil of Nineveh was already
an act of grace. God could have ignored the Ninevites and let them die in their sin. One commentator wrote, the greatest curse that can ever be brought to a nation is for God not to allow their sin to come before him. The greatest curse is when God ignores sin, but God allowed their sin to come before him and he sent Jonah to preach this sermon. And the most beautiful thing happened. The people of Nineveh reacted positively in that they recognized that they were guilty and deserve the penalty that Jonah had pronounced over them. And they repented and showed contrition. They turned away from the evil that was in their hands and they threw themselves on the mercy of God for they said, who knows? God might relent. The fact that God gave them 40 days before he would execute his judgment is another indication of his patience and mercy.
Compare this with the attitude of King Jehoiakim of Judah in the time of Jeremiah. When he heard of the judgment that God had pronounced upon Jerusalem and declared by, revealed to Jeremiah, he burned down the scroll upon which the word of God was written. God is in the business of saving ignorant sinners. He is even in the business of saving disobedient prophets. And he’s in the business of saving rebels who have their hands stained with evil, but who repent of their sins. So if you are a rebel, listen to the word of the Lord. This life is not all there is. And the Lord calls you to repent, otherwise your life will be overturned. The path to your salvation is Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through him. He has already paid the price for your sins.
And what he asks you to do is to turn away from your sins and throw yourself at the foot of the cross and accept him as your saver. To the believer, my question is, who are your Ninevites? Who are the people that God placed you with and who do not know their right hand from their left? Are you reaching out to them with the gospel by sharing with them a clear gospel message that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but 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? He paid a penalty for our sins. As Isaiah expressed it, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us
all. This is the message to our Nineveh, Portland, Oregon. And Portland, Oregon must hear this also. Are we declaring it, or are we like Jonah, reluctant to bring God’s message? Let us recommit our lives to declare the message of mercy and grace. He wants us to offer to our neighbors, to your coworkers, to your family members who do not know him, the offer of salvation that we have received in Jesus Christ. He wants us to give us a clear message that unless they repent, they will indeed face the wrath and judgment of God. But God has opened the door of hope. He has provided salvation by allowing his son to bear our sins away on the cross. We need to declare this to our city, to our state, to our nation, to our world. Jesus Christ is the only hope for this world, and we need to be his prophets, his ambassadors,
God’s Unlimited Grace
and declare in a simple way God’s salvation plan to whomever will hear us. It is not our job to convert people. The Holy Spirit will do that. But it is our job to declare God’s message.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.
— Isaiah 52
(ESV)
We come now to the last chapter and the last question. Would you limit God’s mercy and grace? In this chapter, we find Jonah distraught over the fact that God was showing mercy to the Ninevites. Jonah’s distress was with the person of who God is. The Mosaic confession of Exodus 34, 6, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, is recalled here by Jonah in a shortened form.
But it is with this truth, this confession, that Jonah struggled. And as he confessed himself, this is because God’s graciousness, this is why he ran away, why he went west instead of east. It’s interesting that this statement of God’s grace that we find in Exodus 34 comes right after the fact, the event of the golden calf, when the people worshipped, went into idolatry
against the command of the Lord. And God was gracious to Israel. See, Jonah has no problem with God showing grace to Israel, but he has a problem with God showing grace to the Assyrians. As I mentioned before in the introduction of the sermon, when Jonah was prophesying to King Jeroboam II, who was a wicked king, Jonah had no problem announcing under God’s direction the expansion of this king’s kingdom. And this king was a well-known sinner, a well-known idolater, a renegade. But when Jonah had to preach to Nineveh with the knowledge that God is a compassionate God, he did not want to give the enemies of Israel even the smallest chance to come to their senses. You see, Jonah’s kingdom look was too small. His view was only the kingdom of Israel instead of the kingdom of God. What is our viewpoint? What do we consider our ministry territory?
Is it our own life? Is it our family’s life? Is it just the church family’s life? Is it Portland’s? Or do you look at it from God’s point of view, and do you have God’s kingdom in view? Jonah had forgotten that Israel was chosen not because they were better, not because they were more numerous, not because they were special, not to the detriment of the whole world, but to the benefit of the whole world so that through them the grace of God could be displayed when the seed of Abram would come so that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. And the church of God is also established on earth for such a blessing as Paul writes in Ephesians, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We should think highly of God’s grace and God’s patience because we only stand here before him because of his grace and mercy and patience displayed fully in the finished work of Christ as he died for our sins. Fundamentally, Jonah had a problem with the compassion of God. It reminds me of a discussion I had with a cousin of mine in Belgium some years back and she thought it was completely unfair that the criminal who was hanging beside Christ on the cross would be allowed to be with him in paradise after a last minute confession, conversion, and recognition of his lordship. And I told her, yes, it is not fair. It isn’t fair. But I don’t want fairness. I don’t want fairness. I want mercy and grace. It wasn’t fairness that got us free from our sin. It was grace. It wasn’t fairness that caused Jesus to come down from heaven and live among us and go
to the cross. It was grace. It wasn’t fairness that caused God not to punish us for our sins. It was mercy. It wasn’t fairness that caused God to place our sins upon his son and declare us righteous. It was grace. We do not want fairness because with fairness, we all end up in hell. But through mercy and grace, we are made children of God through the work of Christ because he took our penalty upon himself and paid that penalty through the death on the cross. Mercy is that we’re not given what we deserve. And grace is that we’re given what we don’t deserve. So Jonah was angry, and he thought he was right to be angry because he did not think Nineveh deserved the mercy of God. Well, nobody deserves the mercy. What he failed to realize was that God is not just the God of Israel, but as Jonah himself
declared, he is the God of the sea and the dry land, which means the whole world. When God announces at times messages of punishment, of doom, they are not punitive but restorative. Many of these messages, these prophecies of judgment are conditional so that if the culprit repents, then God will relent from carrying out his judgments. So if you’re ignorant of who the Lord is, I invite you to come and learn of who he is. If you’re a believer and are disobedient, come to the Lord and submit yourself again to him. If you’re a rebel who defies the Lord’s teaching, who has despised the Lord’s offer, turn to him and repent. If one does not repent, if one does not turn to Christ and surrenders one’s life to him, then on the judgment day, as Jesus declares in Matthew 12, 41, the men of Nineveh will
rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and Jesus is far greater than Jonah. Jonah expressed that he was sad, upset unto death about the whole affair, and he thought he was righteous in his feeling. But compare this with Jesus’ attitude, who was facing death on the cross while taking our sins upon him, and the night before he was sad, as Matthew 26, 38 says, he indicated, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death, and he turns to his disciples and says, remain here and watch with me. And although he was sad, he said, not my will, but your will be done. Jonah’s audience repented, Jesus’ audience did not, but Jesus remained faithful to the end, to the end, to the death on the cross. He accepted death, not to escape the misery that he was in, as Jonah wanted to do, but
to save the whole world. Remember, we have received mercy and grace through Jesus Christ. How is our life a reflection of this? Do we truly fear God? Is the Lord indeed the God of our salvation? Will you be an instrument of God’s grace and reach out to your Ninevites? Or will you limit God’s grace and mercy? There’s this great example of grace and mercy in the life of this 19th century painter, British painter, Edwin Landseer, he painted for the royal family, even gave drawing lessons to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. And he was very famous for his Scottish Highland paintings and life paintings. One day he was visiting a family in Scotland, and one of the servants spilled soda water and it spilled on the wall and it left a great stain, and the family was away that day, and the servant was in great agony and distress, wondering, what will happen to me if the family
comes back and sees this awful stain on the wall? And Landseer, who was staying there, had mercy upon the guy and decided to do something. So he took some charcoal and he started to incorporate the stain into a beautiful drawing. And so when the family came back, they found a picture of a waterfall surrounded by trees and animals. So he used his skill to make something beautiful out of what was really an unsightly mess. And this is how God works in our lives. What is ugly and stained, he uses to bring glory to his name. He brings us sinners into his kingdom and then uses us with our weaknesses, with our faults, with our handicaps, through his grace, so that they actually become our strength. He uses them, these things, to bring glory to himself. The mercy and grace of God are seen over and over in the Bible and find their fullest
expression in the person and work of Christ. And our relationship with the Lord could not exist without them. Mercy and grace present themselves at both characteristics and actions of God, and we should be forever thankful that he shares them with us, because without them, we have no hope, because salvation belongs to the Lord. I want to end with a short poem, it’s not the full poem, by Matthew Fletcher. It’s a pastor who wrote a poem on the whole book of Jonah. But I want to end with the ending of the poem. And it goes like this. And on this note, the story ends. What difference will it make, my friends? In our own lives, as we think through the lessons here for me and you, when God commands, will we obey or will we run the other way? Is mercy just for you and me, for me and you, and not for other peoples too?
The sign of Jonah points today to Jesus Christ, the living way. He died and rose to save the lost. Let’s spread the news, whatever the cost. Let’s pray. Father, whenever we read the book of Jonah, or other stories where your grace and mercy is so fully on display, we cannot but reflect upon our own lives. We have received your mercy and grace, and we have to ask ourselves, Lord, what are we doing with this? Are we the ambassadors that you have called us to be? Are we proclaiming your message to whomever we can in faithfulness, Lord? Because only you have salvation. Only salvation belongs to you, Lord. So Father, I pray that as we reflect upon this, you will help us to examine our own lives and see how we can be true ambassadors of you, to proclaim the good news wherever we are, to magnify your name, to make your name great.
I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.