Many times the Gospel has been
boiled down to something as simple as loving one another. The Law and the
prophets are summed up by Jesus (Matthew 7:12) as “Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you” and (Matthew 22:37-40) “‘Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… Love your neighbour
as yourself.’ But what happens when we don’t? The story of Jonah.
Jonah hates. 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 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.
Are we ever like this? Do we
ever hate a person or group of people so much -a political party, country or
leader, neighbour, family member, boss, colleague… that we wish they just
didn’t exist or that they would just be wiped off the face of the earth? That
is the way Jonah feels that way about Nineveh…
Jonah was an Israelite. An
Israelite was a citizen of ancient Israel. We know that when Jonah’s story was
taking place, it is many years since Israel’s civil war split the nation into
two countries (1 Kings 12, 2 Chronicles 10): Judah in the south and Israel in
the north. Jonah was a northerner, an Israelite.
Nineveh, the city whose
citizens Jonah hated, was the capital of Assyria. Assyria was a country near
modern day Iraq and Assyria would eventually destroy Israel (721 BCE; cf. 2
Ki17). Sargon II, King of Assyria (722/21–705/4) wrote:
At the
beginning of my royal rule … I besieged and conquered [Israel’s capital city,]
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:
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.
Assyria, like all Superpowers
past and present, could be brutal. 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. This is Ninevah.
From the Bible, the prophet
Isaiah reports 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) 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. Israel was their enemy. Jonah was her enemy.
These are the people Jonah was
told to love so much that he would point them to salvation. 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…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.” Psalm 103:
God is compassionate and forgives all our sins.
We know this and Jonah knows this
and he did not want his enemies forgiven – not after what they did. 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 God is compassionate, slow
to anger and abounding in love. We know that, as Jesus 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;” so…
How do we do with that? How do
we do at sharing the gospel and God’s love to see an enemy – or even a friend -
saved for now and eternity? Are we any better than Jonah?
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 both for now – in all his struggles
whatever they may be - and forever?
As God asks you to love your
neighbour and to share the gospel, do you love your neighbour whom you did so
much for over the years and she never even bothered to say ‘thank you’ so much that
you want to tell her about life with Jesus?
As God asks you to love your
neighbour and to share the gospel of salvation, do you love the policeman who
pulled you over 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 person working at Tim
Horton’s who gave you a double double instead of a black coffee for the third
time this week so much that you want to tell them about Jesus so that they can
be saved?
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.” (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.
To Jonah’s story 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); he winds up,
however, on the outside of Nineveh as it is saved: his own hatred is eating him
up just as the worm is eating up the vine (Jonah4:5ff). 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 here, now and
forever. Jonah, on the other hand, is not having a great time as he stays
outside of the wonderful party of Salvation going on inside the city.
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 may not be entirely
accurate: Billy Graham was at a service with his wife, Ruth. The offering plate
was passed around and he put in his money. Later he was looking in his wallet
and he complained to Ruth, “I put a $20 in the plate by accident. I only meant
to put in a five.”
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.” 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 the full blessing, the credit of 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 enough to share with them the peace and joy of the Lord, that indeed, we won’t try to hold anything back from them but that we will experience the joy of our 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 real and imagined enemies 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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