Jonah 3: Second Chances
Welcome to Grace Outpost, glad to have you
join me this week! This is the third
week of our study through Jonah. Last
week we covered chapter 2, which covers the part of Jonah that everyone
knows. Jonah was swallowed by a fish and
cried out to God for forgiveness for his disobedience. We ended with Jonah being expelled from the
fish on dry land.
I don’t know about you, but I have screwed up at a job
before. I will share one of those
examples with you today. A while ago I
had a job with a security company, if you have never worked security you may
not understand how it works. When you
are new, you float from work site to work site until a permanent position opens
up. I was still fairly new and was
offered a job doing overnight security on a short term project covering some
nighttime construction work. I am
typically a night owl so I snagged it right up.
Now this was one of our normal sites which we provided executive
security to, so we work a suit and worked a security desk, our detail was
brought in to watch the executive areas during construction overnight. So two of the posts were at the security
lobby desks which had computers and internet access, which we were allowed to
use to entertain ourselves during the shift.
The last post was out on the loading docks, which was just a table and a
folding chair… it was the dreaded post as there was no computer and the only
light was a small desk light on the table.
So the construction crew would come in at 7pm and work until around 3
AM, our shift ran 7 PM to 7 AM. So there
was roughly 4 hours with nothing to do.
One night I found myself stuck out on the loading docks and I was
exceptionally tired that night.
Throughout the weeks of being on this detail I had made a great
impression with the security site supervisor.
I had been warned that the Chief Operations Officer of the client had a
horrible temper and had gotten many people fired over things as simple as
having the newspapers on his desk out of his preferred order. So here I am doing everything I can think of
to stay awake in this dark empty loading dock.
I am doing push ups, I am pacing around the room, slapping my face, if I
could think of it I was doing it. Around
4:30 AM I sat down for a minute in the chair and my body betrayed me and I fell
asleep. I woke up to pounding on the
exterior door from the dock and I look up in horror to see the COO’s beat red
face peering through the window at me. I
jumped to my feet and opened the door, he walked past me without a word and
went into the building. Now I am the
furthest from sleepy at this point, my mind is reeling and I just know that I
am going to get fired. I snatch up the
phone and call the dispatch who is sitting in the main security control room
two buildings over and tell them that the COO is on premises and didn’t badge
in. At this point it was 5:30 and I
finished out my shift without any other interaction with anyone.
I drove home which was an hour away, the longest hour I can
remember. I called my boss at the site,
Lester, who should have been in his office at the time. Lester didn’t answer, so I left a
voicemail. In it I explained to him what
had happened, I didn’t make excuses and I told him that I was very sorry and
would be awaiting his call. I finally
heard back from Lester around noon. He told
me that he was shocked to hear that I had dropped the ball, but he told me that
he was equally shocked that I called him unprompted to let him know. He said he had spent the last hour talking
with the COO who found the whole thing hilarious and then he offered me a
permanent job at the site. It was
completely the opposite of what I was expecting, I was sure that not only would
I be removed from the site, but that I would also be fired completely. Instead, I was given a second chance. Not
unlike Jonah, which we will see today in our look at Chapter 3.
Jonah
3
1
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go
to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell
you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.
Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. 4
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet
forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh
believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of
them to the least of them.
The
People of Nineveh Repent
6
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his
robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a
proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his
nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not
feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let
them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the
violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn
from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
10
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented
of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
So we see that Jonah is laying here on the ground and God
tells him to go to Nineveh and preach against it (Jonah 3:1-2). Now given a second chance, Jonah gets up and
goes to preach to Nineveh and warn them of impending judgment (Jonah
3:3-4). Nineveh was a huge city for the
time and it was part of the pagan nation of Assyria, which was the rising power
in the area. If there was a place that
it would make sense to send a prophet to pronounce coming judgment to. The people of Nineveh believed the message,
they feared the coming judgment (Jonah 3:5).
I imagine that this message went viral through the streets, the city was
abuzz, how do we know this, because verse 6 tells us that word of this message
reached the king of Nineveh. We see that
he leaves his throne, takes off his robe and put on sackcloth and ashes. We see that the king steps out of his
authority, he leaves the throne, he discards his clothes of authority, and
shares in the morning with everyone else.
We also see that this goes from individuals responding to the whole city
repenting, with the king leading the charge (Jonah 3:6-9). And the most amazing part of the story is
that God sees their repentance and accepts it (Jonah 3:10). What?!
The pagan city who was just put on notice, gets a pass? Yep. They
believed in God, they recognized their sin, and responded in repentance.
This stands in stark contrast of what will soon take place
in Israel at the time. Throughout the period
of the kings we see Israel decline more and more, morally and in
influence. Here are God’s chosen people
whom the prophets come to time and time again and yet we have this example of a
pagan city who doesn’t know God and they repent upon hearing the coming
judgment.
If you are here today and you are not a Christian, make no
mistake you have the opportunity to hear the warning. The warning to Nineveh reveals God’s love for
all people, warning someone of the danger ahead is compassionate. The Bible is very clear, all people are
sinners, no one can earn their way to heaven by “being good”. We have the advantage of knowing that Jesus
came as the predicted Messiah, he died a death on the cross for your sin, and
rose again three days later. If you
believe that, if you know that Jesus, the Son of God, wants you to know the new
life he has for you, you have the opportunity to repent of your sins and make
that choice today. What does repent of
my sins mean, 1) you acknowledge that you are a sinner, confess them in prayer,
2) you have remorse for the choices you have made, 3) you go forward intending
to avoid them in the future. The word
repent means to turn around, to go in a different direction, so literally go
turn away from your sins.
For those of us who are Christians, we are not immune to
failing to obey God. Jonah had justified
to himself why he would disobey God. Let
us not fail to recognize that we do this too, we need to constantly examine
ourselves and evaluate how we are following Jesus. When we fail, when we are wayward, when we
disobey, we need to come humbly on our knees before God and ask for the same
blessed forgiveness. God will grant us
the second chance we desire, he is patient and loving. Throughout Jonah, we have seen God leading
Jonah along, using Jonah, but teaching Jonah as well. He does the same for us today.
I leave you with Psalm 51:17
17 The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.