I have a couple of questions for us today. Question #1: What do the following have in common: Ghost Busters 2, Blues Brothers 2, Aladdin 2, Gone With The Wind 2, Lion King 1 ½? They are all movie sequels; they are for the most part either not very good or not very popular movie sequels. Last week we spoke about Jonah Part 1: Everything Is Under Control. This week we will look at the sequel, Jonah Part 2: Get Rid of Your Enemies. Hopefully it will be better received than was the first Star Wars prequel.
Question 2: I’ve got another list for us today. You have seen those ‘top ten’ lists before. This is a ‘bottom 5’ list: let’s see if you can tell me what this is a ‘bottom 5’ list of? What do these professions have in common?
5. Telemarketers
4. Lawyers
3. Mechanics
2. Politicians
1. Used car salesmen
This is a list of the least trusted professions in this country. There are many different lists of these least trusted professions actually. They contain many of the same jobs. 1 and 2 often swap places on the lists that I was looking at. Now, we certainly don’t want to further any negative stereotypes of any profession or any person represented on this list or otherwise; however, if Jonah had a ‘top ten’ or a ‘bottom five list’ of least-trusted people, the Ninevites would have been number 1 on his list. Jonah hates the Ninevites more than a Toronto Maple Leafs fan hates the Montreal Canadiens and vice versa. Jonah hates the Ninevites so much that rather than obey God and point them to salvation, he runs in the opposite direction (Jonah 1:1-3). Jonah hates the Ninevites so much that when the opportunity presents itself, he decides that he would rather die by drowning, than obey God by pointing them to salvation (Jonah 1:12). Jonah does not want to preach to the Ninevites because he knows they will be saved (Jonah 4:2); he hates them so much that he wants them destroyed (Jonah 4:3). He wants no part of their salvation.
Can we ever identify with this? Do we ever hate a person or political party or a hockey team or a country or a leader or a neighbour or a family member or a boss or a colleague or a… so much that we wish that they just didn’t exist or that they would just be wiped off the face of the earth? Jonah feels that way about Nineveh.
Now Jonah is an Israelite. We know what is an Israelite, right? An Israelite was a citizen of the ancient country of Israel. We know that at this point in history, when Jonah’s story is taking place, it is many years since Israel’s civil war had ended and that the country had split into two new countries (1 Kings 12, 2 Chronicles 10): Judah and the Jews in the south and Israel and the Israelites in the north. The Jews and the Israelites were off again and on again allies and enemies. Jonah was an Israelite.[1]
Nineveh, the city that Jonah hated, was not a Jewish city. It was an Assyrian city. Do we know what role Nineveh and Assyria would later play in the history of Israel? Nineveh was the capital city of the country that would eventually destroy the northern kingdom of Israel (721 BCE; cf. 2 Kings 17). Sargon II (722/21–705/4) writes[2]:
At the beginning of my royal rule … I besieged and conquered [Israel’s capital city of] Samaria, led away as booty 27,290 inhabitants of it. I formed from among them a contingent of 50 chariots and made remaining (inhabitants) assume their (social) positions. I installed over them an officer of mine and imposed upon them the tribute of the former king.
About Ninevah and Assyria, J. Robert Vannoy tells us:[3]
The brutal Assyrian style of warfare relied on massive armies, superbly equipped with the world’s first great siege machines…
Psychological terror, however, was Assyria’s most effective weapon. It was ruthlessly applied, with corpses impaled on stakes, severed heads stacked in heaps, and captives skinned alive.
King Esarhaddon of Assyria, to show his power, even hung the captured King of Sidon’s decapitated head around the neck of one of his nobles and then paraded him through the streets of Nineveh with singers playing on harps leading the way.[4]
From the Bible, the prophet Isaiah attributes to the Assyrian King, the following. The Ninevite King boasts (Isaiah 10:13,14; cf. Nahum 2:12):
By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their kings.
As one reaches into a nest, so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations; as men gather abandoned eggs, so I gathered all the countries; not one flapped a wing, or opened its mouth to chirp.
The prophet Nahum says of Nineveh: “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” (Nahum 3:1; cf. Nahum 2:12) Nineveh rose up to be a Superpower as brutal, as prideful, and as terrible as Superpowers tend to be and Nineveh was to unleash that terror on their enemies.[5] Israel was their enemy. Jonah was their enemy.[6]
Tolstoy said, “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.” The Bible says, “… Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you,” Luke 6:27-28; Matthew 5:44: “… Love your enemies, [bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you] and pray for those who persecute you…” Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
We know this and Jonah knows this too (cf. also Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Jeremiah 15:15; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:1-3; Psalms 86:15,103:8,145:8; and Nehemiah 9:17).[7] Jonah 4:2:
He prayed to the Lord, “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
You and I here today, we know that we are supposed to reflect God and we know that, as Jonah says, God is compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. We know that, as Matthew said, if we do not forgive people, God will not forgive us. We know that, as Tolstoy said, “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.”
How do we do with that? How do we do at sharing the gospel and God’s love to see an enemy saved? Are we any better than Jonah? In Swift Current here, if God asked you to go and preach to Graham James so that he would be freed from eternal consequences for what he had done, would you want to do it or would you –like Jonah- head to the coast to catch the first ferry off the continent?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel with everyone you meet, do you love your neighbour’s child that insulted your child or grandchild so much that you want to tell him about Jesus so that he may be saved from hell (cf. TSA docs 6&11)?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbour who borrowed that thing from you last year and never gave it back so much that you want to tell him about Jesus so that he may be saved from hell?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbour whom you did so much for and but she never even bothered to say ‘thank you’ so much that you want to tell her about Jesus so that she may be saved?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your landlord who evicted you for no apparent reason so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they may be saved?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbours who made derogatory remarks about your family, your culture, your heritage, and your very own identity so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they can be saved?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love the policeman that pulled you over on your way home so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they can be saved?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbours working at Tim Horton’s who gave you a double double instead of a coffee with a single cream for the third time this week so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they can be saved?
As God asks you to love your neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbour who is a Montreal Canadiens or a Toronto Maple Leafs fan so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they can be saved? Some of these are examples are silly; some of them are not but you get the point, don’t you?
God is compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. God says “… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44). “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
Tolstoy, reflecting God’s sentiments said, “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.” It is my hope that none of us here would have any enemies.
In Jonah’s story too there is an interesting ending. Jonah is introduced at the beginning of this story as being on the inside of God’s blessing as a prophet of God (Jonah 1:1 cf. 2 Kings 14:25); he winds up, however, on the outside as Nineveh is saved: stewing in his own juices; his own hatred is eating him up as the worm devours the vine (Jonah 4:5ff). The Ninevites, whom Jonah feels perfectly justified in not wanting saved, are worshipping God and presumably having a great time as they live out their salvation. Jonah, on the other hand, is not having a great time as he stays outside of the wonderful party for Salvation going on inside the city.[8]
Let me tell you one more story. This is actually a paraphrase that I couldn’t readily corroborate but you’ll understand the sentiment even if the details or denominations may not be entirely accurate: Billy Graham was in church or at a crusade with his wife, Ruth, at some time. The offering plate was passed around and he put in his money. Later he was looking through his pockets and he complains to Ruth saying, “I put a twenty dollar bill in the plate by accident. I only meant to put in a five.”
To which his wife, Ruth replies, “Now that you’re complaining about it, not only are you out the twenty but you’ll only get credit for the five that you were trying to give.” God received His twenty dollars from Billy Graham but Billy did not receive the full credit or the full blessing of that offering.
Jonah delivered God’s news of salvation to the Ninevites but he did not get from it the blessing, the credit of the eternal joy. Billy Graham gave God the twenty but only got credit for five. Today it is my hope and our prayer that as God asks each of us to love our neighbours and lead them to salvation, that indeed, we won’t try to hold anything back but instead we will experience the joy of salvation as even our worst enemies come to the Lord because, as Tolstoy wrote, “To get rid of an enemy one must love him;” so then when we see them in paradise, what a day of rejoicing that should be. And if God can forgive even Nineveh when they repent, and if God can forgive even our own personal Ninevehs when they repent, then -when we repent- God can forgive even us; and then, like the hymn says, when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.
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[1] Cf, Josephus, Antiquities 9.206–214 (Heinemann, 1937), pp. 109–111; cited in Donald J. Wiseman; T. Desmond Alexander, and Bruce K Waltke: Obadiah, Jonah and Micah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 26), S. 82
[2] ANET, pp. 284–285. Cited from Donald J. Wiseman; T. Desmond Alexander, and Bruce K Waltke: Obadiah, Jonah and Micah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 26), S. 88
[3] J. Robert Vannoy, ‘Assyrian Campaigns against Israel and Judah', in NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 550.
[4] James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), 291.
[5] Cf. Ralph L. Smith, Micah-Malachi, (Word Biblical Themes: Dallas, Texas, USA: Word Publishing, 1960), 28.
[6] H. L. Ellison, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Jonah/Exposition of Jonah/I. The Disobedient Prophet (1:1-2:10)/A. Jonah's Flight (1:1-3), Book Version: 4.0.2
[7] Mary Donovan Turner, “Jonah 3:10-4:11.” Interpretation 52, no. 4 (October 1, 1998): 411-414. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed May 10, 2012).
[8] Cf. Mary Donovan Turner, “Jonah 3:10-4:11.” Interpretation 52, no. 4 (October 1, 1998): 411-414. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed May 10, 2012).
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