Nineveh

[1] Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: [2] “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” [3] Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. [4] Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” [5] The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah did God’s will and the people repented immediately. They were ready to accept God and to change.
How did Jonah feel about that? Look at the amazing thing God did through him. See him sitting on a hillside all…. not quite happy.

‭Jonah 4:1-3 NIV‬
[1] But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. [2] He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing 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. [3] Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Wow. Thanks God for using me to change these people, now I just want to die. As I said. Jonah hated these people. With just cause. He didn’t want to see them in Heaven! He wanted a plagues of Egypt response. Now he felt like he had been used to help his enemies. Which he had.
But what does God say?

‭Jonah 4:11 NIV‬
[11] And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Today is missions Sunday. For missions Sunday we all like to think about missionaries like David Livingston who was amazing, or like brother Andrew, or like David Wilkerson. We like to think of these incredible people who wanted to go and had a calling from God and a passion in their hearts to serve these people and to love them and to show them Jesus. But Jonah isn’t like that. He had one of the greatest revivals in history under his belt, but he hated it. He hated doing it he hated the good result. We feel like we are going to minister to and preach to and show love to people who are going to be wonderful and Worthy. But in truth at least half of the people you meet in your life will probably kind of suck. People are rotten a lot of the time and it’s because we live in a broken world and those who don’t have Jesus are broken by this world. We feel like if the people we are speaking to or ministering to are awful or cruel or Wicked then it’s probably not God’s will. We feel like if they are people we hate and are disgusted by then we should just leave them all to burn. But that’s not what God says. He says go to Nineveh and preach to those people who have tortured and killed your people Jonah. He says if you run I am going to throw you over the side of the ship and feed you to a big fish. Then he says when you’re angry about their transformation what right do you have to be angry I created these people too. There’s a lot of sinners in this world. People totally sold out to their evil desires. And not all of us want to see these people change. It makes me think of an African lady who was a missionary of sorts who rescued girls out of dangerous parts of Africa. She rescued them from horrible horrible things little girls of 5 to 8 years old. And when she was speaking about what she did the Christian man came to her and asked her please tell us the names of the men who are hurting these girls so we can pray for them to be changed. And she said no I don’t want them to be changed I want them to go to hell. Now that is between her and God. And I bet every last one of us standing here just judged her for saying that. But if we looked closer at ourselves there’s a lot of people we think are so wicked we don’t want them to change because they deserve to suffer for what they did. We think of murderers and child pornographers, we think of people who distort things and mess in the minds of the innocent, I personally think of animal abusers. Do we really want these people to change and come to know Jesus? Or do we deep down really want to see them pay for what they’ve done? That’s the thing with Jesus. When you repent he forgives you there is no more condemnation for that sin. So when these people who do deserve to suffer for what they have done change and become Christians and are set free, it’s easy to have a little feeling of but they’ve never suffered for what they did. And that’s really hard. It’s really hard because in the end Jonah was right. He was right to be angry that God wanted him to help people who had hurt his people severely change so they would not suffer for what they did. He was right in the thinking of people. But if we are living as Christians as representatives of Jesus and we think of him, what did he do? How did he deal with these people who deserved suffering for what they had done? From what I recall he died on a cross for them. The fact is we are all sinners. That statement has been taken and contorted so it is used to make it so people don’t judge sin as Sin. But what it’s supposed to mean is that we have all sinned we all ow Jesus for our lives we have all fallen short we have all deserved to suffer for what we have done, and we were going to suffer for what we did. But God in his mercy and Grace the same mercy and Grace that Jonah condemns him for, he sent his only son to suffer in our place. Does that mean that these people who were living in horrible Wicked Ways who are influencing the world in wickedness, who are causing suffering and confusion and illness of the Mind or pain and and death of the body, does that mean that these people have sinned no more than the rest of us so we should stop judging what they’re doing? No. We should always judge sin as Sin. But we must continue to hope that they will change and will stop living like this and will come to know Jesus. Yes that means they may never suffer or be punished for what they have done, but we will not be punished for what we have done either even if what we have done is nowhere near what they have done, I recall the Bible once said
‭Luke 7:47 NIV‬
[47] Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Perhaps we have been forgiven for only little things. But those who have truly repented and have been forgiven for many, truly awful things, often become the greatest warriors for Christ. Why? Because they have known the devil and they want to see him be destroyed. We forget as did Jonah. The person who is doing this evil, is simply a puppet. The one pulling the strings is the one who needs to suffer. And he never will be forgiven. The devil is to blame. But it’s up to you whether you fight him or not. Jonah may have been miserable the whole time. But he still did God’s will. Let us not judge Jonah. But to instead realize we are all Jonah in some ways and we all run from God’s sending us. We all have people we don’t want to save. And we all must choose whether to follow God anyway and do what we don’t want to do, or to turn and chance being swallowed by a predetermined fish.
Who is your Nineveh?