Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Jonah 1:17

Sermon text is the book of Jonah chapter 1 verse 17. Please rise. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, God, we thank you for this prefigurement of the burial of our Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection. We thank you that our savior points us to Jonah as a type of him. We pray you would bless us, Lord God, as we think of the book of Jonah and its relevance to the day of resurrection, the celebration, the feast of what our savior has accomplished.

We thank you, Lord God, that we stand before you because of your grace and compassion. Bless us now then in your character that we may be transformed by the hearing of your word and prepared to go into this world as more than conquerors through Jesus our savior. In his name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

So we read in the book of Matthew this reference by Jesus to the sign of Jonah. And so we’re encouraged as we read the Gospel of Matthew and we think of the coming death and resurrection of our savior in that gospel. Our savior points us to Jonah to help us understand his death and resurrection. So that’s what we’re going to do today is look at Jonah and see the relevance of this.

We actually read this connection in Matthew 12:39 and following. He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

So they were seeking a sign, and I don’t want to get into what that might have reference to, but I want to focus upon what our Savior points us to. Jonah’s death and resurrection, so to speak, as a type of Christ and Jesus being in the earth three days, three nights, and coming back to life much as Jonah was spewed up by the whale or great fish.

Verse 41 of that text says this, “The men of Nineveh will rise up to the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” So again, our savior calls us to know, to think about and meditate on Jonah and the salvation of Nineveh.

And so we’ll talk about that as we go through today’s sermon.

The book of Jonah is really kind of late. It’s four chapters. The first three chapters are somewhat kayastic in that chapter 1, all the men on the ship that Jonah was sailing with are converted. They begin by crying out to their gods and by the end of chapter 1, they’re praising Yahweh. They’re fearing Yahweh and they’re crying out to Yahweh.

So there’s a conversion of the men on the ship through what happens of them going through the distress and then Jonah being tossed into the ocean. The second chapter is about Jonah’s personal salvation, and we’ll look at that in a couple of minutes. And then chapter three is about the salvation of the entire city of Nineveh.

And remember, it’s Nineveh. Remember when we were preaching on sermons on cities a couple of sermons on cities earlier in the season of Lent, we saw that Nineveh is sort of the last or a significant expression of the original pagan city of Enoch and then the tower of Babel. So we have city of Enoch, Cain, we have the tower of Babel and the city Babylon and then we have Nineveh as the expression of all those things. So they kind of form a triad of fallen man in his cities.

And so Nineveh is a great city so-called in the text itself of the book of Jonah. So the conversion of Nineveh really represents I think and I’ll make this point again later the conversion of the whole world the discipling of the nations. If that original line of pagan cities can be converted totally converted then what should we hope for as the preaching of the gospel of the resurrection of our savior goes out just like it did with Jonah.

So you’ve got, you know, plural conversions, you know, group conversions, individual salvation of Jonah, his conversion, we could say, and then another group conversion. So that’s Jonah 1, 2, and 3. Jonah 4 is kind of what happens afterwards. You know, it’s the dialogue back and forth between God and Jonah. And so it’s a contemplation on the significance and importance of those first three chapters.

So what I’m going to do in today’s sermon is to start with the Easter message of personal salvation. And so we’ll look at chapter 2 first and then after that we’ll look at the Easter message as a representation of the salvation of the world being the significance of what we rejoice in today. And then finally we’ll meditate on the motivations of both Jonah and God that brought these things to pass.

So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll start with chapter 2, go to chapters 1 and three, and then conclude with chapter four and a contemplation of the motivation of God. We’re told at the end of the book what God’s motive was for how he had Jonah do what he did. So that’s what we’ll work our way through here.

One other thing: Jonah means dove and dove is used a number of times in the Old Testament. And as we move into a discussion of personal salvation through the life of Jonah and his being tossed into the sea and into the belly of the great fish, we should remember that dove, the same term that Jonah is taken from. Doves were part of both the sin offering and the ascension offering.

So Jonah is kind of a reminder that the sacrifice, the coming sacrifice of the one, the one sacrifice of Jesus would affect both the forgiveness of our sins, the sin offering, and it would also accomplish our transformation and conversion as men and women, the resurrection or ascension rather or the whole for an offering. Ascension of course is what occurs as a result of the resurrection of the savior.

So Jesus in pointing us back to Jonah wants us to make these connections. I think that dove was a representation of the Lord Jesus Christ who would not only forgive our sins purification offering but would also be the transformation who we are linked to the ascension of the savior. So those two aspects of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ are called to mind for us as we contemplate what our savior says we should contemplate at least sometimes in relationship to the Good Friday and then Easter Sunday services his burial and resurrection.

All right so let’s begin with talking about personal salvation and of course we celebrate this we just celebrated it in song in several of the songs we just sang and in the text of Jonah. The center of the actual narrative of Jonah and his work considering chapter 4 is kind of a wrap up or thinking back on it. The center of that is Jonah’s personal conversion we could say or his death, burial and resurrection that we read of in chapter 2.

And we actually begin in chapter 1 verse 17. So this is what it says. It says now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So that’s the pointer back that Jesus was referring to in the Gospels.

And so of course you know what happens in chapter 1. You get a great storm at sea to ease that Jonah says, “I’m the guy asleep at the bottom of the ship not doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m running from God.” And so God is angry with me. And as a result, he’s also angry at you or at least you suffer the effects of that. They throw Jonah into the sea and the sea becomes calm and all those sailors are converted.

So that’s what happens just prior to all this. So Jonah has been tossed into the sea and then we read as I said in verse 17 that God had prepared this great fish. And so what’s going to happen in the rest of chapter 2 is a description of Jonah’s burial and then his resurrection.

Now we read in the beginning of chapter 2 then that Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly. So, in the context of his being in the belly of the fish, Jonah prays.

Jonah said, “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me out of the belly of Sheol. I cried and you heard my voice.” Jonah confesses that what he was in was not just the belly of the fish, but really the belly of Sheol. So being in that belly is a representation of death. Sheol was the place of the dead. That’s where the dead went in what the Old Testament, how the Old Testament describes the afterlife. So Jonah here is saying that it’s not just being in a fish, but actually it’s being in Sheol. He cries out from Sheol.

So we see again the burial of Jonah linking up to the burial of our savior. Jonah then describes all the afflictions. But it’s important to see here that as he begins to do that, he talks about it all as Sheol. It’s all death. It’s all death. And we can’t appreciate Easter morning. We can’t appreciate the resurrection of our savior if we don’t in some way contemplate Good Friday.

You may not want to come to a service, but if we don’t understand the death state we are in prior to Jesus redeeming us and being and raising us up to life, you really don’t have the joy of Easter fully understood. It’s only when you understand your sin that your sin merits death that your state you know without the work of Jesus is you’re going to Sheol you’re going to the place of the dead you’ll never get out of there and it’s your fault that’s an affliction and it’s your fault.

Now I think that we can think of Jonah’s trials and tribulations in broader ways right we can apply the message of the book of Jonah and the hope of Easter of the resurrection. Well, we go through all kinds of afflictions and difficulties, but what Jonah is pointing out here is he’s dead and he knows that he deserves that death. And so, the resurrection the account of the resurrection is tremendously praiseworthy and should usher forth in great thanks on our part only if we fully understand that our sins merited death. That’s our condition as being part of fallen humanity. And this is what Jonah talks about.

He goes on to say that you cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. So he’s describing, you know, terms that are variously used in the Psalms. And by the way, Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 is really just a bunch of Psalm sections linked together for the most part. So Jonah knew his Bible. He was praying the Psalms in the midst of his distress.

And he’s using terminology here that if we if we were to go back to the Psalms, we would see descriptions of death again of the state in which we’re completely destroyed and dead and cast out of the presence of God. But even there he said, “I have been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look toward your holy temple.” This is a Jesus reference.

Again, in the gospels, what does Jesus say? He said, “Tear down this temple and I will raise it in three days.” And they get all worked up about that. They say, “Hey, you know, it took a long time to raise this temple up or to build it the first time.” But the text explicitly tells us in the gospel that he’s speaking of his body. So, the death and resurrection of the savior is the death and resurrection of the temple. The temple is a representation of the house of God being found in the person of Jesus Christ.

And so, Jonah prays to the temple. But what we want to see in that is that the temple is a representation of the triune God and very specifically tied to the Lord Jesus Christ. So we praise God for the temple and we pray to the temple praying to God the father through the Lord Jesus Christ the temple and that’s just what Jonah did as well.

The waters surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. So Jonah, this is a picture of eternal death. And it’s interesting because we usually think of Jonah suffering in Sheol in the belly of the great fish. But that’s not the description here, is it? This is about Jonah being cast out of the boat, sinking down to the bottom of the sea, getting wrapped around with seaweed or some sort of water weed being dragged down and then death, the heaviness of the sea, the wrapping around of his body with seaweed, he’s pulled down, down, down, and he’s going to be down there forever in torment.

So, this is a representation of again our state prior to the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ being applied to us in our own natural state. That’s where we are at. We are walking dead men. And so this is a reflection again on our humanity and on our fallen state.

But it’s also a reflection then if Jonah is a representation of type of Christ. It’s a representation in some way in some symbolic way at least of what Jesus took upon himself for our salvation. I mean Jonah is a representation of fallen humanity. He’s a disobedient guy in the first few chapters etc. He doesn’t have compassion. He didn’t want the nine saved by the end. He’s fallen humanity, but he’s also a type, as Jesus makes quite clear, of him.

And so, when we see these things, we can identify with our fallen state, and then we can identify with the sufferings of our savior that he accomplished for our salvation. This is him as it were. This also shows us that the fish is not the problem for Jonah. You know, the problem is he’s drowning and he’s sinking to the bottom of the sea. Now, the fish is sort of a representation of that. He says, is the belly of Sheol. So he draws a relationship between the fish and death. But the fish is salvation, too, right?

I mean, the fish is the one that’s going to vomit him up after three days and three nights. He’s going to be salvation to Jonah. The fish is the mechanism that God gives to save Jonah from all his sins and misery. So the fish is that. And so it’s a representation of both things.

Now, this being closed in upon, right? And the things closed in on me. The bars sealed up over me. He’s stuck. And now the whale or the fish rather is a good representation of that. It’s being pressed in. Hell is claustrophobia forever. That’s one way to look at it.

It’s interesting because in the Old Testament over and over and over again, salvation is described as being brought into a broad place. So if salvation is being in a broad place, Then it means the lack of salvation, damnation is claustrophobia. It’s being in a tight place and being three days in the belly of that fish. You know, that’s kind of like a living hell, right?

And again, that’s what we’ve been saved from. The reason we rejoice this morning is because Jesus took our place in that claustrophobia, we could say, in that state of trial, tribulation, great distress, and he accomplished our salvation. So, through his resurrection, him raising himself back up, rebuilding his temple, the temple of his body, so to speak, the transformed body. Jesus Christ has delivered us from those pains.

And that’s why we give praise to God on resurrection Sunday. That’s why we shout forth his praises. He rescued us by becoming the greater Jonah, accomplishing our taking upon himself our just judgments and then bringing us to life through the resurrection.

And Jonah moves to that resurrection. In the next phrase, he said, “The bars closed behind me for over me rather or behind me forever. Yet you have brought me up. You have brought up my life rather from the pit, oh Lord my God.” The pit’s another place of death or hell.

The pit, oh Lord my God. So God has resurrected him up as a type of Jesus and a type of who we are, united to the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.

When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Now, you just heard me say temple just before this, right? And so, he prays to God into his temple and here you brought me up into your holy temple.

Between this are the verses I just read. And I think one way to characterize those verses that broadens the application of this Christ story in the Old Testament out is hopelessness. At the end of the day, the greatest difficulty for Jonah is when he falls into a totally hopeless state. The bars closed over me forever. And this is really, I think, if I was to show you the structure of the second chapter, that’s the very center of the chapter is the complete loss of hope.

And that’s what God has saved us from as well is the complete loss of hope. So the hope of Easter is in contrast to the hopelessness that we have as we contemplate our eternal destination, hopelessness. And so the transition of the Lord Jesus Christ taking upon himself the judgments for our sin, being buried in the earth three days, the transition then is from hopelessness to great positive absolute certainty of hope.

And again, an application of this story of Christ from the Old Testament is that we go through the same hopelessness, right? We experience little bits of death and hell here on this earth. It’s easy to think of this as purgatory because there’s so much suffering in the context of our lives and that suffering can reach at various points in our lives to hopelessness. I know that you know what I’m talking about.

There’s a memorial service today, right? And you know when you have the death of a loved one, you lose hope forever, so to speak. That’s how you feel when you go through difficult ailments, financial or physical status. You can come to a point of hopelessness when you try to build relationships and it never seems to work out or frequently doesn’t. We come to a position of hopelessness before God.

When we have financial difficulties and woes, we can come to a position of hopelessness and many other things we could describe, but the root of all those things is loss, and a loss that is significant enough as it was in the case of Jonah to see all is lost. Right? The loss of hope is the last thing. If you have hope, you can continue to work your way along, trust in God. But when you lose hope, see, then all is lost.

So that’s the kind of thing that Easter is the answer to. Easter gives us the certainty of hope that God will bring us to his holy temple. He has saved us. So in the midst of our particular trial, thousand afflictions, by the way, which I’m going to talk about next Lord’s Day, God willing, the loss of hope. And it happens to be, I think, the central thing that’s going on in Romans 8, the proof of our sonship at times are the losses that we endure, but we endure them with hope.

And Jonah’s story, the Easter story, the narrative of the central hinge of the entire history of the world, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is about the restoration of hope and it’s what we want to remember when we feel like Jonah that the weeds are around us that we’re falling down in that there’s no way out depression can create that kind of hopelessness and we want to call out to God because we remember the story of Jonah and his resurrection and remember that’s a forerunner or a foretaste of the death and resurrection of our savior so that we may have Easter hope Easter joy and Easter celebration.

So he goes on to say, “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord.” There it is. When my soul fainted within me, remember the Lord. And we’ll talk in a little bit. The character of the Lord is really the theme of this book. And when we remember the Lord, it means to call upon a knowledge of our his character as reflected in the scriptures and that is reflected in the grand history of the human race.

We remember the Lord. Lord, my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. And that’s what we just saw right in Psalm 22. Jesus clearly Psalm 22 again is one of those psalms that point quite clearly and directly to the suffering of the savior and the agonies leading up to the death on the cross.

And what happens that hinge point was the thing we all read together. You have answered my prayer and that’s what this is again. So this is the theme of the really the entire scriptures: the hopelessness of men. But then remembering to God, calling out to him, and he answers our prayers. Not the way we expect, not the way we would like sometimes, but he gives us the most significant answer, which is that he is for us, which is that we can hope in him. We can trust in his compassion, his mercy, and his love. Easter is about that.

Setting us up to live our lives with Easter hope and particularly in the times of struggle, trials, tribulations, and the loss of hope.

Those who regard vain idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. That’s the conclusion of Jonah’s prayer.

Salvation is of the Lord. Well, that’s right. Salvation is of resurrection Sunday. Salvation is of the Lord sovereignly taking upon himself the death the agonies described by Jonah in his prayer throughout the Psalms. You know, salvation is of the Lord. He takes those things on and raises us up out of the depth of hopelessness and eternal damnation into newness of life through what he’s done. Salvation is of the Lord. And that salvation is the message of Easter Sunday.

So the Lord spoke to the whale and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land. There it is. Let’s be significant about that. It tells us that this prayer was not after he’d been delivered. The prayer and the hope that he has remembering God, praying really to Jesus, to the temple, to the father through Jesus, all that is happening when he’s in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights. It’s the sort of thing that you’d think would have been prayed after he got out, but of course, it’s significant because at the center of his resurrection is his prayers, his answered prayers to God as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But again, there’s a very practical message for us here, right? We pray those prayers. We remember God’s character. We come out of hopelessness. We persevere not after the struggles, but in the midst of the struggles. We’re still claustrophobic. We’re still in this belly of this fish. We don’t know if we’re ever going to get out.

I suppose there were no lanterns in there like Japetto and Pinocchio had, you know, and whatever. Monstro was it? I don’t remember. It wasn’t what it was like. No chairs. He’s closed in. And so that’s the way we feel. And the Easter message is carried into our lives by committing to pray the way Jonah prayed, Jonah prayed rather in the midst of our struggles and our trials. Trusting not in external circumstances, but trusting rather in the character of God and that salvation is indeed of the Lord.

Then God of course calls him out and he calls him out into obedience. Then he tells Jonah, “Arise, go to Nineveh and he comes out again.” Very important message. We rejoice today in our personal salvation. But to what end has God saved us? Well, he has saved us to an end. And it’s not just to be thankful for salvation. That’s important. But he’s called you to be He’s called me to be his emissary into the world.

Matthew 28:19, that Doug started with today or Matthew 28:19 and following leads up to of course then as they worship Jesus, we have the great commission. We’re saved to give great joy and thanksgiving to God. But then God calls us to be his emissaries into the world.

And so a proper appreciation of the mercy of God leads to obedience leads to the obedience of Jonah becoming obedient to go to go into Nineveh and proclaim the gospel there.

Now so and that leads us as a transition into the next chapter where this personal salvation becomes seen then that God salvation is of the Lord and it’s not just for each one of us personally. There’s a comprehensiveness to where God is bringing all the nations of the world to be disciples of him. God saving the world. Jesus took away the sin of the world. And around the personal salvation narrative of Jonah and our personal salvation narratives is a call to see that the even greater glory and joy of Easter is that the message of the resurrection is that all the world will be saved.

We were having a discussion with Gordon Murray last Monday night about the imminent return and do we believe in that or not? And you know it seems like if we expect the discipling of all the nations that this could go on for a thousand 2,000 years. Who knows? But then if you look at the story of Nineveh didn’t take them long, you know, doesn’t say exactly when they repented.

Then in a pretty short period of time after hearing the message of judgment against them, the entire city, 160,000 souls at least, maybe a lot more, but that great city converted. This world could be changed in, you know, hours. We don’t know. And then Jesus may return. But the point here is that the hope and the joy of Easter is nothing short than the anticipation and sure hope that all the world will be converted.

And we have this hope in the midst of what seems like a ramping up of the persecution of Christians certainly at the hands of barbarous Islamic Muslims but also state sanctioned persecution in this country growing and increasing in number against Christian people as well. So In the midst of all of that, we’re to remember the great hope that we have in this distressing time that God has shown us first with the sailors on the ship and then secondly with Nineveh that these difficulties, trials, and tribulations are to the end that God is saving the world.

You know, I won’t take time to read the narrative, but again, what I said earlier, if you read chapter 1 and see who these sailors were, right? And when the problems all start to happen, they start sacrificing to their gods and it makes it quite clear this is a reference to pagan gods that different ones worshiped in different ways but by the end of the narrative by the end of the troubled sea by the end of the great winds by the end of all the difficulty that they went through they’re all now giving or fearing Yahweh and offering sacrifices and vows to Yahweh so surely the ship is an illustration of the world on the sea and the world comes to salvation through the events involving even a disobedient member of the church Jonah.

What we have is that it’s really kind of a mirroring of Jonah’s personal salvation and the corporate salvation of the men on the ship. Because you’ll notice that as we read through chapter 2, he says people that you know call out to foreign gods, they’re not going to be helped. But he pays he pays sacrifices to God and he vows to Yahweh. So in the bottom of the sea, Jonah under the judgment of God comes to the place of making proper sacrifice and vowing to God.

And above Jonah on the at the top of the sea, the upper layer up here, you got a whole ship full of people doing the same thing who have transitioned away from calling on their false gods. And now are fearful, properly fearful, reverential, praying, sacrificing and vowing to Yahweh. So our personal salvation is a picture of the broader salvation of the ship as a representation of the world and the salvation that’s coming to it.

And then of course the other side of that is then his journey to Nineveh. And as I said, you know, the call goes out in 40 days you’ll be destroyed. That’s the gospel. Doesn’t sound like gospel, does it? Talk about that in a couple of minutes. But that’s the gospel. And so the personal salvation of Jonah leads then directly, even though he doesn’t have the right motivation or attitude toward the thing, but it leads directly to the salvation of Nineveh.

Nineveh, the first ungodly city of Cain and Enoch and Lamech, those bad guys kind of re resurrected in the tower of Babel and Babylon. And just like Babylon Nineveh is built by Nimrod, not a good guy. And so Nineveh is this great development of the city of man and the kind of selfish, violent motivations that go on there. And that the city representing the culture of fallen man is saved. That’s what gets converted.

I mean, it’s not just some city gets converted. It’s Nineveh. Because Nineveh is the representation of fallen humanity and the sort of cities that they build. And so God is again, it the picture is a conversion of the whole world. That’s what Nineveh is a representation of.

So the personal salvation of Jonah is directly linked to a hope for us personally in Easter Sunday. But then it’s linked beyond that. That our hope is not just that we’ll be okay as we go through the trials and troubles, but that the trials and troubles are actually God’s mechanisms for saving the world. For saving the world.

So when we rejoice today throughout the rest of this day, Today, may we include great thanksgiving and praise to God that the death and resurrection and ascension of our savior means that all of humanity, all the nations will indeed be discipled, will be brought into the broad place that at least 8 10 maybe 12 verses in the Old Testament, salvation is pictured as that broad place. So, societal salvation is talked about as well here.

And then the third aspect of the text. And let me skip forward real quickly through my notes is the motivation story or the interesting meditative contemplative part of Jonah is that last chapter 4. And this is really what sort of captured my imagination and led me to preach this sermon on the day of resurrection.

I would encourage you to read Psalm 107 verses 23-32 later. It’s quite an interesting narrative of God’s providence with the storm. I know we see it directly in Jonah, but let me just read a little bit of this.

Psalm 107 begin at 23. Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For he commands and raises the stormy wind which lifts up the waves of the sea. They mount up to the heavens. They go down again to the depths. Their soul melts, that is ones that are in the ships because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end. Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble. And he brings them out of the distressed sea. He calms the storm so that its waves are still. Then they are glad because they are quiet. So he guides them to their desired haven. He guides them to their desired haven.

That’s this is the story of Jonah. This is what God is doing in this book. He is sovereign. Salvation is of the Lord which begins with the Lord calling for the great winds, calling for the great trouble, calling for the distress that leads men through their distress, trials, and tribulations to cry out to God and God saves them. That’s the wondrous works of God in the deeps, in sailing ships. And it’s a picture of the wondrous work of God throughout all of our events and histories.

It tells us that all the trials and tribulations, all the claustrophobia, all the loss of control, all those things you know, are really of God and they’re of God’s compassion and love to us that he does these things because they lead us to repent of our self-reliance and to cry out to him and to turn to him. And as a result of that, as a result of the troubles, the trials, God’s sovereignty and bringing these trials upon us, as a result of our claustrophobia and all the panic that we have over particular events in our lives, the result of the panic attacks is that God is using those very things to bring us to our desired haven.

Where we want to go is good. Our way of accomplishing it is a disaster. And God’s way of accomplishing it frequently, very frequently, involves tremendous difficulties, trials, and tribulations that we curse God for. The very things we curse God for, at least in our hearts, if not on our tongues, are the very things that he’s doing to save us.

What fascinated me about this last section in Chapter 4 is, you know, there’s a lot of things going on. We could talk about it for at least a month or two of Sundays. But what God tells Jonah is that you don’t have compassion for the great city of Nineveh in which are 120,000 160,000 souls which don’t know their right hand from their left.

I made these people. God is saying you have compassion on this plant that you didn’t make and then when I send something to destroy it, it shows to me that you’ve got compassion, but you don’t have compassion for the people, the image bearers of God, for the culture of Portland, for the people in Portland. You don’t have compassion for those people. And when they saved them out of my compassion, you get upset.

Now, I think Jonah’s motivation in that story is that he knew his Bible. And in Deuteronomy 32, it says, you know, when my people are evil and bad and provoke me to jealousy by other gods, I’m going to provoke them to jealousy by other peoples, other nations, foreign nations. I think that Jonah knew that the conversion of Nineveh was a precursor, and Deuteronomy points this out, a precursor of what’s going to happen next in Israel.

And what happens next in Israel, God is destroying it. God’s taken him into captivity. Great judgments are coming forth. And you know, like a good Trailblazer fan, he likes the Blazers. Like a good Portlander, he loves Portland. Like a good a relative, you know, a good family member. He loves his family. He doesn’t want to see him, you know, taken into captivity, goes through the vile degradations of Nineveh after it goes south from its original salvation.

Nineveh is saved and become prosperous. Then they go south. They become evil and God uses their evilness to punish Israel. So Jonah knew when Nineveh converted, he says, “I knew you would do this. I know your nature. You’re compassionate. You’re merciful. You’re loving. I knew you would do this. You’d save these people. And why do we why would he say that? Because he knows the next step is great trial against people that he loved.

And you know, go through that before you condemn him for it. It was wrong. Clearly, God condemned him. But you know, his sin is common to all men as all sins are.

Anyway, so that’s Jonah’s motivation. But God’s motivation that Jonah identifies and then God himself clearly identifies by the final question of the chapter. Why don’t you have compassion on Nineveh. What God is doing in Nineveh, like what God did in the troubling of the sea and the fear shot into the hearts of all those sailors, God is doing that out of compassion, out of love, out of his seeking the best of those people.

So often we as Christians today are told not to say message. So what how does God’s compassion manifest itself as Jonah takes God message to Nineveh? In 40 days, you’ll be destroyed. Repent. That’s the gospel. You see, to have good news, you need bad news that you’ve got to be saved from, right? And the bad news is you’re headed to hell.

Now, when we stop telling people that they’re headed to hell and that their actions are repugnant in God’s sight, okay, we stop preaching the gospel. That’s what it implies. At least to me, it does. We got Q&A today. You can push back. But it seems to me this is a central concern that I have in what’s going on in Christendom throughout this country and that is that messages that have any difficulty to them that call on people to repent or that say you’re in trouble those messages are seen as unloving when in reality with the correct attitude with God’s heart attitude toward people that we say those things to they are the picture of love.

We had this discussion I probably mentioned this to some of you before about a measure 36 when we changed the constitution to make it one man, one woman. And we were meeting with a major evangelistic leader in Portland because we were concerned about how he was being quoted in the papers as kind of critical of our attempts and the political people I’m linked up with to give rights to or not rights but to let Christians exercise their Christian responsibilities by refusing to do things they see as overtly sinful.

So, we were talking about the whole, you know, same-sex thing going on. And Georgin told her story that when we worked hard years ago to pass Measure 36, Georgin Rice was this speaker for us. And she would go around and she gave a talk once downstate somewhere. And a lesbian woman there just violently attacked her with her words. She didn’t think she’d make it to her car correctly. And many Christians would say, “See, Georgin, you’ve got that hateful thing going on. You need to love these people.” By which they mean you need to overtly say it’s okay. What you’re doing is okay.

Georgin was she’s not there’s not a vindictive bone in her body, not a hateful bone in her body. Georgin’s a great Christian woman of faith. And what Georgin said was that night she got to her car, okay, and got out of there. But a couple years later, this same woman comes up to her at a Fred Meyer or someplace up here where she was shopping.

The woman said, “Are you Georgin Rice?” “Yeah, I am.” And Georgin thought she was going to get it. Right. Oh, I’m going to get the tongue lashing again. But the woman said just the opposite. She said, “I wanted to thank you so much for speaking truthfully and you know, yet not being hateful, but speaking truthfully to my sin and I’ve turned away from that sin. I’ve recommitted my life to Jesus Christ. I’m reading my Bible and all that happened because you are willing to tell me that what I was doing was just wrong.”

Now, that’s love. And that’s what we’re losing as Christians today, I think, is whenever we’re seeing is critical, judgmental, whatever. Now, in the kind of culture we’re in now, when RCC now, you know, conducts an excommunication, you know, people think we’re the most unloving goofball church that there is. There are probably people in this church that believe that. What we really need to do is just be nice to everybody. Don’t call follow.

But we don’t excommunicate people because we hate them. You know, we don’t follow folks who have left our church and haven’t yet come to transfer their membership. We don’t go after those people because we want to be mean. We go after those people because we’re their shepherds. We’re trying to help them. Love is our motivation every time we do an excommunication. And you know, if you want to understand that, just look at this message here of God’s character. His character is compassion, love, and mercy.

And in that compassion, love, and mercy, he brings to people to salvation by declaring you are wickedly sinful in 40 days you’re going to be destroyed. That’s the love of God. The gospel has that element or axiomatic component to it.

Now, I’m not justifying and I don’t want you to justify being hateful or vindictive or being homophobic. I’ve seen lots of guys over the last 30 years that I’ve worked with political and not some of them, a handful of them are homophobic. There’s no doubt about it, for all kinds of reasons. That’s not who we are.

But we are people who are going to have to tell, you know, people directly, look, that’s wrong. You’ve just got to turn away from that or you’re going to be down at the bottom of the sea, sea cords wrapped around your neck, the bars are going to close over you and you’re going to be in permanent claustrophobia land. If we don’t tell people that, how can we claim to be loving? If we leave people to go to hell or to wander around without pastoral involvement of any type and just say, “Well, go your way.” I don’t see how that’s loving.

So, so this and it writes right into the whole, you know, news story going on with Indiana and all that stuff, you know, and that young baker or pizza shop owner. Clearly she serves homosexuals. This the I don’t remember what I was a baker or something up in Washington State have been serving this homosexual man for years, loving him by her service to him.

It was only when they asked to have a cake made in celebration of a same-sex marriage. The woman said, “I just can’t do it.” Took him by the hands. I love you, but I can’t do that. It’s just it violates my Christian belief that marriage is one man, one woman to participate in that. And now, you know, so why would she do that? Because she knows that part of our responsibility as Christians is to be Christians in every area of our life. What did I preach on vocation for 13 14 weeks for? Because We’re supposed to be Christian in our vocations.

And the world today, politically the political realities in America say you can’t be Christian in your vocation. Years ago, they passed a law where a guy that owns a business can’t, you know, begin the day with prayer with his employees. Can’t speak Christian speech like that. Now, they’re not as consistent. Praise God for their inconsistencies and lack of discipline. But that’s what’s happening. And within the Christian church, there’s all this embarrassment that we’re against things, right?

But if we stop being against things, the only thing we’re for is letting people go to hell. And that’s not what God wants. His compassion, clearly pictured here in the kind of the wrap up of this book in chapter 4, is his motivation for the tough language that he has Jonah, his prophet, preach to in Nineveh.

So Easter is a representation of all of that. It reminds us that the good news is set in the context of the bad news of fallen humanity. And if we’re going to preach the gospel and have the resurrection strength of Jesus, if we’re going to be those who disciple the nations, it involves compassion and love, but a compassion and love that speaks truthfully, not hatefully, but truthfully. And it’s tough to figure out how to do that a lot of times, but truthfully to people that in 40 days are going to be destroyed or fill in your own explanation.

If they die tomorrow, they’re going to hell. They need to know that. And that’s the only representation I think that really does justice to the character and compassion of God. This is throughout the scriptures, of course. What do we read in Ezekiel? We’re watchers on the wall. And if we see people off in a direction that are going to be destroyed and we don’t cry out, the Bible says their blood guiltiness falls upon us.

If we don’t stand on the wall and tell the guy, “Hey, this is really wrong. You know, I’m really trying to help you here. I’m trying to communicate what God wants and he wants you to become a disciple of Jesus.” If we don’t do that, when we have opportunities, Ezekiel says the judgment of God comes against us. Comes against us.

Proverbs says to rescue those who are being dragged off to death. And we use that, you know, for the abortion thing. But if you think of the broad context of Proverbs, the one who is being dragged off to death, for instance, is the young man falling into sexual sin or the older man going and see an adulteress. We’re supposed to love those people enough to rescue them. And if we don’t address sin in the church and in the broader context, we’re not being loving like God. And we’re not going to be effective in bringing to people to salvation.

Hebrews, right? What does it say? Every son that God loves, he disciplines. And if you have no discipline, if there’s no messages, from those who have knowledge to those who don’t. What is how is that characterized in Hebrews? You’re not a son then to people that aren’t hearing disciplinary actions and troubles come to them or warnings or judgments from their parent. It’s because the parents don’t love them enough. That’s what Hebrews tells us, right?

May the Lord God grant us, you know, the hope of the resurrection today, a joy and thanksgiving to God for him bringing us out of the pit. And may we desire other people to be delivered from eternal claustrophobia. And may we have the understanding of God’s love and compassion to communicate clearly to those who are perishing to try to help them not be drawn off to destruction.

May we have the hope today that if we go about things God’s way, there’s lots of different ways in other portions of the scripture, but this one’s included. If we don’t do things God’s way, then we’re not going to be successful. And if we do things the way God tells us to do if we’re resurrected up to new obedience and obedience with God’s motivation. Nothing less of the salvation of the world is what we will see.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your wonderful demonstration of your character and your compassion, your love in the Easter story and the message of Jesus dying for our sins and being raised up, delivering us out of eternal damnation. And not just us, but bringing salvation to our world. We bless your holy name for that great message, that great hope that permeates our celebration today. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.