Word of Salvation – Vol.48 No.38 – October 2003

Judgment is Looming

Sermon by Rev J Haverland

on Jonah 3:1-4

Scripture Readings:  2 Peter 2:4-10; Jonah 3:1-13

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The theme of this sermon is: God commands Jonah to bring a message of judgment to Nineveh. And the purpose of preaching this sermon is to urge all hearers to be prepared for the final judgment that is coming.

All of us are shocked when we hear about senseless acts of violence and destruction inflicted on other people by evil men and women. Think back to the terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City on September 11, 2001. And then, a year and one month later there was that huge bomb blast in a nightclub in Bali. About 200 people were killed and many more were badly injured, many of them suffering terrible burns.

Events like these make us stop and think. They are a terrible testimony to the presence of evil in the world. They remind us that our lives are brief, fleeting, and that we can be taken from this world at any moment. And they prompt us to evaluate our lives and think about the future: What will happen to me when I die? Where am I headed? Where will I spend eternity?

We need to ask questions like these because so often we get caught up in the ordinary detail of our lives. We live life one day at a time. We don't think too far ahead. We live day by day. We are taken up with relatively trivial things - buying clothes, playing sport, planning a holiday, planting a garden. But when disaster strikes in our lives, or in the lives of those close to us, suddenly all these things seem irrelevant; they fade into the background, they lose their sense of importance. Then we begin to think more seriously about our lives and about the future. The September 11 attacks and the Bali bombing are horrible examples of human sin and evil; but they are also reminders that one day all of us are going to die. They are also reminders that one day all of us will face the judgment of God.

This was the message God gave to the Assyrians in Nineveh in the 8th Century BC through the preaching of the prophet Jonah. It is the message He gives to us today through his Word - a message of a judgment that is coming.

Before we consider this message, let's first look at THE MESSENGER - at Jonah.

In chapter 3:1-2 we read that "the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."

The Lord had given him this command before, but he had disobeyed God. He had headed off in the opposite direction. But the Lord had followed him in the storm. God had given him opportunity to re-evaluate his calling and his task during those few days in the belly of the fish. Jonah had repented of his disobedience and had cried out to God with honesty in prayer, with confidence that God heard him, and with thankfulness for saving him. Now he was ready to hear this command once again, a second time. God gave him the same task once more.

This is very reassuring. God did not give up on His servant; He didn't abandon him as someone useless; He didn't discard him or toss him to one side.

The Bible is full of examples of men and women of God who made big mistakes and who were used again. Think of Abraham, Jacob, David and Elijah. Think of Peter who denied the Lord three times and then was re-commissioned. "Feed my sheep", Jesus said. So, too, with Jonah. He was re-commissioned. He had been saved to serve. God did not give up on him.

So God repeated the command to go to Nineveh. And this time Jonah went, a sadder but wiser man. A prophet ready to obey the command of the Lord.

And God will not give up on you or me either. We make mistakes, we sin, we are disobedient. But if we repent of this then God can use us again. He will put you back in service. This is a great comfort.

It is also a challenge. Some people think that after they have repented God is going to let them off the hook. You might think to yourself, "God will forget about that now. I didn't really want to do that job anyway and now I can relax and take it easy - everything will quieten down." Not so! God's command still remains the same. He still has work for us to do.

One of the clearest commands to us is the "great commission" in Matthew 28:18-20. We are to "Go and make disciples of all nations". That is a command addressed to all God's people for all of time. Often we get so caught up in our own lives and families and church that we conveniently forget about this commission, this command. We don't take it seriously. But here is a clear command that must not be ignored.

As we go about this task of making disciples we need to keep in mind THIS MESSAGE that God gave to Jonah - "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."

This message was to be proclaimed. This was the task of the OT prophets. They had to fore-tell what God was going to do - proclaim future events. But they also had to forth-tell God's Word, proclaiming God's Word to the people in their present situation, applying God's Word to contemporary sins and needs. The prophets went to people and said, "Thus says the Lord." They were God's spokesmen, God's messengers, ambassadors for God.

They spoke with a sense of urgency. They were not 'ivory tower' theologians, discussing abstract ideas far removed from people's lives. No they had a message from God and they had to proclaim it. They called on people to respond. The same word for 'proclaim' is used in chapter 2:2, where Jonah says, "In my distress I called to the Lord." He cried to the Lord from the belly of the fish, and it was an urgent, heartfelt cry. Now this same word is used to describe his message to Nineveh - this is how he spoke to them - he cried out to them. The puritan pastor Richard Baxter said that he preached "as a dying man to dying men". In other words, he preached with a sense of urgency! With an awareness of the eternal issues at stake.

Someone has said that preaching is "truth communicated through personality". It is the communication of the truth from God and about God, to those listening, through the preacher's personality and experiences. Sometimes the preacher can get in the way and be a distraction. That is wrong. But often God uses the experiences and temperament and knowledge of the preacher in an effective communication of the message.

No doubt this was true for Jonah. He had been through a great deal. He had learnt a lot. He knew what it was to repent and to cry out to God. Now he was ready to cry out to the people of this city.

This is true for preachers today. A minister of the gospel cannot preach beyond the level of his own knowledge and experience of God with his people. This is why a pastor and preacher must keep on growing and expanding in his awareness of God and his knowledge of God's ways.

It is worth noting that preaching is still the primary method God uses to communicate His truth to people, even today. Sadly, the wider church is busy replacing preaching with all sorts of song and dance routines, with videos and gimmicks and salesmanship. But it is the preaching of the Word that will bring people to a saving faith in Christ.

Each one of us must do the work of personal evangelism and witnessing, but as part of that we need to encourage people to come and listen to the preaching of God's Word. This is a primary method God uses to save people. "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Rom 10:14).

Jonah proclaimed the message God gave him. "Proclaim to it the message I give you" (vs 2). In chapter 1:2 God had already told him what the message was going to be: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." This is the message he had to preach - exactly what God had said - not altering it, modifying it or watering it down.

One of the problems in the contemporary church is that theologians and preachers are communicating their own thoughts and ideas rather than giving a message from the Lord. They are being wiser than God. They are preaching the current philosophy and the latest in psychology rather than simply saying, "Thus says the Lord." We are called to communicate and preach the truth God has revealed in his Word - plainly and clearly.

Jonah had to give this message to Nineveh. It was a great city. In 700 BC it was made the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. We know from chapter 4:11 that there were 120,000 people living there. In chapter 3:3 we are told that a visit to the city "required three days". That probably means that it took three days to travel across the city.

He went to Nineveh - one man in a large ancient city; one small individual in a large metropolis. Maybe he felt like Christian and Hopeful in Vanity Fair in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress". But whatever he felt, he didn't stand at the edge of the city and preach at them. Rather, he travelled a day's journey into the city proclaiming the message God had given him. He went right into the city, in the midst of their living and their lives and their activity.

He went there because God was concerned about this city. Let's remember that this little book of the Bible is not so much about Jonah as about God. It is about the character of God - a God of love and mercy and compassion, as well as a God of righteousness, wrath and justice. And the character of God never changes.

Today God still wants his message proclaimed. He "wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4). He wants you and me to communicate this message to the people around us - you in your home, school, place of work, neighbourhood, community - so that people might be saved.

It is not an easy message to proclaim because it is about judgment. The language used is similar to the description of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Its wickedness has come up before me" (1:2). The prophet Nahum had a long list of the sins of the city including cruelty, bloodshed, lust, lies, prostitution, witchcraft and exploitation. And in chapter 3:8 the King of Nineveh acknowledged "their evil ways and their violence".

Jonah warned them that their city would be overturned because of their sin. He didn't describe how this would happen - maybe by a foreign army, or by a direct judgment of God, as happened with Sodom and Gomorrah - but he was clear that it would happen. His message was simple and straightforward. It was uncomplicated. It was clear. There was no possibility of any misunderstanding. You didn't need a university degree to comprehend this message. Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned. God hates your sin and judgment is looming.

We don't hear many messages like this today. One reason for this is that hell and judgment are difficult subjects - they are sobering and terrible. It's not easy to preach about these matters. But others don't preach about hell because they don't believe it. They don't believe that God will judge the world or that there will be eternal punishment for those who do not believe. They think God is full of love and he will not do this. But the Bible is clear about a judgment and about hell. And it is sobering to think about these things.

And this is precisely the point. God wants us to think about this. He wants us to consider the judgment to come. We need to be thinking about the future. This is why God sometimes allows some terrible things to happen. They are not caused by God. God is not the author of evil. But He allows wicked men and women to do these things, partly to remind us that there will be a final judgment for everyone. The Judge is coming.

The Lord Jesus came as the great prophet to tell us about God the Father and salvation and eternal life. One day he will come again and He will judge the world with justice. God the Father has appointed Him to do this task. He will come a second time to bring salvation to all who believe and judgment on all who do not. At that time "we will all stand before the judgment seat of God... each of us will give an account of himself to God" (Rom 14:10,12). Each one of us "is destined to die once, and then face the judgment" (Heb 9:27).

Peter, in his letter, informs us that this judgment will certainly come. God is delaying it at present because He is patient, not wanting anyone to perish but all to come to repentance. We need to be aware of this and live in the light of the eternity that is coming.

Jonah told the people of Nineveh that this would happen in forty days. Forty in the Bible describes a time of waiting and testing. Moses prayed 40 days for Israel after their sin with the golden calf. Israel was 40 years in the wilderness waiting to enter the promised land. Elijah ran from Jezebel for 40 days as he evaluated his ministry. Jesus was in the desert 40 days being tempted by Satan. Forty is a time of testing one's life for truth and reality; a time to sort out our lives and where we are going; a time to consider God's hand in our lives and what will come in the future.

The people of Nineveh had 40 days to do this. We need to do this in our own lives and we need to urge others to do this, too.

No one knows when or where they will die. Death can come slowly and painfully through cancer or some other lingering illness, or it can come suddenly and without warning through a sniper's bullet, a car accident or a bomb blast.

John Blanchard tells the story of a stewardess on an American Airlines flight on the day before the September 11 attacks. She was breaking up ice with a wine bottle. One of the passengers saw what she was doing and was concerned that she might hurt herself and so asked if there was some other way of doing this. She was impressed that he should be so concerned, and after they had talked together for a while he gave her a Christian tract. Later in the flight she told him that it was the sixth tract of this kind that she had been given recently, and asked, "What does God want from me?" The man replied, "God wants your life", and explained her need to be right with God through trusting in Jesus. Less than 24 hours later she was on the first plane to crash into the World Trade Centre.

Each of us must be ready for the day of our death. Don't ignore the Word of God speaking to you through his Word, through believers, through the preaching of the Bible. Believe in the Lord Jesus and then "live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of the Lord and speed its coming" (2 Peter 3:11-12).

Amen.