Sermon Text: Jonah 3:10-4:11
Date: September 24, 2023
Event: Proper 20, Year A [The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost]
Jonah 3:10-4:11 (EHV)
When God saw their actions, that they had turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster which he said he would bring on them, and he did not carry it out.
4:1But to Jonah all this seemed very bad, and he became very angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Lord, wasn’t this exactly what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I previously fled to Tarshish, because I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and you relent from sending disaster. 3So now, Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city. He made a shelter for himself there and sat in the shade under it, waiting to see what would happen in the city.
6Then the Lord God provided a plant and made it grow up over Jonah to provide shade over his head, to relieve him from his discomfort. So Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, and it attacked the plant so that it withered. 8When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, so he said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah said, “I do have a right to be angry—angry enough to die!”
10So the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant. You did not work for it or make it grow. It grew up in one night and perished after one night. 11So should I not be concerned for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left—and also many animals?”
Love Rejoices in Forgiven Sin
Over the last few weeks, we have been focused on how a Christian deals with sin. Two weeks ago, guided by Jesus’ direction to Christians to confront sit personally and in love, we saw how Paul did just that. He confronted Peter, who had pulled away from the Gentile Christians and only focused on the Jewish believers, despite the fact that Jesus’ forgiveness is for all people. Paul noted that this hypocrisy was not only a danger to Peter, but to all the others who saw what he was doing.
Last week, we focused on forgiveness. Jesus assured Peter that there should be no limit to forgiveness from one person to another. We saw that play out in the account of Joseph’s life. Joseph was greatly harmed by his brothers, but not only did God work that harm for good, but Joseph also forgave his brothers and didn’t hold the evil they did against them.
This morning, we kind of take a hop to the other side of forgiveness. What is our response to someone who is forgiven? Have you ever looked at someone who has done something you feel to be particularly awful and see him rejoice in blessings or bask in forgiveness and think to yourself, “He doesn’t deserve those things”? Or perhaps you’ve taken stock of your own life and see blessings that do not coincide with the thoughts, words, and actions that have come from your heart over the years, and yet here the blessings are. What feelings does the thought of a serial killer coming to faith in Jesus just before suffering the death penalty do for you? Does it feel good? Or a touch unfair or unjust?
In our First Reading, we have the end of the account of Jonah. Jonah’s ministry is well known even in pop culture for his time in the belly of a great fish. The way he got there was that God had commanded him to go to the city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, but Jonah refused. He hopped on a boat and went the exact opposite direction from where God had commanded him to go.
So, God sent a great storm to batter the ship. Eventually, it was made clear that the only way to calm this storm—the only way everyone on that boat would survive—was for them to throw Jonah overboard. Eventually, that is what they did, and God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah whole. He was preserved and protected in the belly of the fish and got to reconsider his decisions.
After his time in that digestive tract, Jonah had a change of heart. He thanked God for his mercy and then went to Nineveh to proclaim God’s Word to those Gentiles. And, in a surprising turn of events, the people listened! Jonah proclaimed that there would be 40 days until the city would be destroyed, and the whole city including the king, approached God’s words with respect and faith. They repented and put on sackcloth as a sign of that repentance. And that’s where our First Reading picks up: When God saw their actions, that they had turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster which he said he would bring on them, and he did not carry it out.
Here a city of unbelievers takes God at his word, turns away from evil, and toward God in faith for his forgiveness. These people were known for atrocities across the world, but in repentance, they find forgiveness from God. It’s hard to imagine that there was ever a more impossibly successful mission for God’s Word. Jonah is, perhaps, the man who had the greatest effect on the greatest number of people in one preaching assignment. You would think this would have produced in Jonah the greatest joy that any preacher of God’s Word had ever felt. But that’s essentially the opposite of what happened. To Jonah all this seemed very bad, and he became very angry.
Jonah couldn’t stand the fact that God was showing mercy to people like this. In fact, Jonah tells us directly that he didn’t refuse to go to Nineveh initially because he was scared for felt unworthy. No, he didn’t go because he figured that God would be merciful, and he didn’t want that mercy shown to the people of Nineveh. He frames God’s grace as a bad thing rather than a good thing!
On the one hand, we think, “Jonah, what on earth are you talking about? How could you possibly want bad things to happen to these people?” But, on the other hand, maybe we think like this more often than we like to admit. Do we want good and loving things from God for the person who scammed us out of that money or precious item? Do we want good and loving things from God for the person who hurt or abused us? Do we want good and loving things for the person who violated our trust so fundamentally that it destroyed our marriage? Or, in cases like that, would we prefer that the person “get what’s coming to them”?
If that idea is even flitting around the back of our subconscious, we do well to understand what a lack of forgiveness means. A lack of forgiveness and full responsibility for our sins means hell. It means being eternally cut off from God in a way that no human being has ever experienced in this life, no matter how far away God has felt. If we really understood the ramifications of hell, we wouldn’t wish that on our worst enemy.
And then take it from God’s perspective. He originally made Adam and Eve in his own image—in perfect harmony with him to have a perfect relationship with him. Sin hurt us, yes, but it also hurt God. That’s the point God makes when Jonah is grousing about God being merciful to that city through the vine that briefly provided him shade. Jonah is mad about a vine perishing that he didn’t have anything to do with—he didn’t make it, he didn’t care for it, he didn’t even ask for it. It showed up and then it was gone. And he’s upset that this thing that he had no attachment to other than experiencing a little bit of relief perished, how much more wouldn’t God be concerned with people he dearly loves and cares about being lost in their sin? “You have been concerned about this plant. You did not work for it or make it grow. It grew up in one night and perished after one night. So should I not be concerned for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people…”
Every soul is precious to God, whether they were working at the beginning of the day through the intensity of the sun or if they came into the vineyard at the very twilight of life, whether they were a believing prophet of questionable dedication and ethics, or a city full of unbelievers destined to perish. God cares for everyone. God loves everyone. And Jesus’ life and death bring the complete forgiveness of sins to all people—even the “bad” ones, even you and me.
So, love for other people confronts sins, forgives sin, and rejoices when others come to faith and turn from their sinful nature’s path. God’s love means that he doesn’t treat us fairly. “Fair” would land us in hell, but for Jesus’ sake we will be in heaven. We who are no better than the Ninevites or Jonah are completely forgiven, totally justified, given blessings we had not earned at all because of Jesus’ life and death in our place. We know that we will defeat death because our Savior rose from his grave, defeating any claim our graves have on us.
As you look around here this morning, rejoice that the people sitting around you have been forgiven by their God. And let us go out to take this message of full and free forgiveness to all people, even those people that our gut might tell us don’t “deserve” it or won’t listen to it. Jesus is for all, from the first to the last and from the last to the first.
God, enable us to share this message and to rejoice when people find their complete forgiveness in you! Amen.
