One Man's Perogative

My wife Debbie and I just recently finished watching...we actually binge-watched it...a Netflix series called The Crown. Some of you may have watched that, recently released and on. It is a biography of Queen Elizabeth II and the first season that we watched deals with her becoming the queen and the early years of her reign and of her marriage.

One of the things that stands out in any study of Queen Elizabeth II is her devotion to her duty as the queen. The promise that she made to her people, even when she was a princess, that she would devote her life to the duty that she knew one day could likely devolve upon her, which it did with her father's untimely death.

She has been very faithful to that duty. That comes along with a great number of privileges. The Crown has a lot of privileges, but it has a lot of duty. Certainly, there is a mission and a purpose to the British Crown. That is, interestingly, woven into the narrative of the story. I can highly recommend it to you to watch. It reminded me of the concept of privilege, duty, and mission. Especially that of mission. You and I have mission as well. We have a duty. We have certain privileges as a result of that. One of the privileges, or prerogatives, if you want to look at it this way, that we have with our calling is the choice that we make.

The engagement, the devotion, the dedication, and the commitment that we have. Mr. Myers was talking about that in terms of just what one person, the difference one person can make in that choice and commitment to our duty and our mission that we have and the calling that we have in the Church. Just this past week, I did a Bible study at the office that was part of our Beyond Today Bible study series.

We're going through the books of the minor prophets, and I drew one of them being the book of Jonah. And in going through the book of Jonah, I had not done such a depth for quite a long period of time, I have to admit. We all know the story of Jonah, but to dig into it, as I did, brought out a lot of different things. And in a roughly a 50-minute to an hour Bible study, it's hard to get through one book like that and cover it all. So I guess you could consider today's sermon my effort, my taking my opportunity to draw up a few, draw together a few loose ends that I didn't get accomplished the other night. In that, you can watch the Bible study if you like and pick it up from this particular point. But the story of Jonah is a story of one man's prerogative, one man's prerogative, and what he did with that. Because he also had a duty and a privilege and a mission. And we all know what Jonah did. Let me review quickly that story, which we all know, and we'll look at just a few of the verses. I don't intend to focus on the entire book today, but I do want to focus on chapter 4 of Jonah. But before we get there, let's kind of do a very quick run-through of the story of Jonah with our DVR. Okay? We all know how we can use our DVR to zap through commercials, stop where we want to on a particular program, watch, rewind it, and then move forward.

If you look at the first chapter of the book of Jonah, chapter 1 and verse 1, and I'm reading from the New Living Translation today, we see what we already know about Jonah, that the Lord gave this message to Jonah, the son of Amati. And here's the message. Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, announce my judgment against it, because I have seen how wicked its people are. Now, that was Jonah's mission. That was his duty. He was a prophet. He had already functioned in the role of a prophet by making certain other pronouncements earlier that we find in other places in Scripture. But that was his mission now, was to get up and go to the city of Nineveh, which was quite a ways from where he was, but it was also a very dangerous neighborhood to wander into. In the Middle East then, and in the Middle East today, it still is. The area which Nineveh existed is the area where ISIS has its capital in the center of its jihadist caliphate today. And just as we know from the stories that we hear about ISIS, they are very brutal people. The Assyrians were very brutal people in their day. And I think, as I was mentioning, Jonah's decision to go the other way was because of the people that he knew were there and the reception that he could have received. He could have been beheaded. He could have had his skin flailed alive while he was alive because of what he did to a very violent and a very war-mongering people, the ancient Assyrians. And so, as we know, Jonah got on a boat and went and tried to go as far away as he could from Nineveh by going way out to the western edge of the Mediterranean to the area of Tarshish, around Spain, Gibraltar today. But we know what happened. He didn't get there. God prepared a big fish. After he had also prepared a great storm that came up over the boat that he got on. And the sailors that he was with didn't know what was going on. They didn't know what they had done. They immediately attributed the great storm that came up to God. Which is a very interesting lesson in itself as to what happened. They made offerings. They cried out to God as they did. And they finally found Jonah asleep in the bottom of the boat. And they got him up and questioned him, found out who he was, asked him to implore his God. And to no end, the storm kept raging. And finally, they threw Jonah overboard. After they'd thrown a lot of other matters overboard, and God prepared a fish. And you know what happened. Now that's the primary part, it seems, of the story that we normally remember about Jonah. And as it is told, and as we even tell it as a story, even in our Sabbath schools and through the years, where we go back all the way back to the YES lessons that we used to have back in the church and in those days. Or other lessons, Bible story lessons that we've picked up from other groups over the years. Jonah's always a very popular one, and it always centers upon the fish. And of course that creates all kinds of questions, but to me the questions are always answered by Jesus Christ himself. Because Christ said that his sign of being a Messiah would be that he would be in the tomb for three days and three nights. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, and that was the sign he gave that he was the Messiah.

So without anything else needing to be delved into to try to rationalize this great event, for me, as I look at the Scriptures, I would think that for you, that would be the matter as well. One of the things that Jonah did here is the actual thought that he could run from the presence of God.

That he could shirk the duty that he had and the mission that God had given to him by getting on a boat and actually running away. Again, it's an irrational thought and decision, especially we would think for a man who was a prophet like Jonah, that he could get away from the presence of God. We can play our games in our own lives as well, and human nature is not that much different.

We might not get on a ship and try to run to the other end of the region away from God. But we, in our own minds, can rationalize a lot of things thinking God might not know, God might not see, or that God might understand in our own life that can create certain difficulties in our own lives. And we have to be very, very careful about that because in reality we cannot run from the presence of God. There's no place that we can go today in our own lives, any part of our house, any part of our community, in any way to escape God knowing all that there is to know about us in our hearts, in our thoughts, in our minds, and especially our actions. We are an open book before God. But Jonah thought that he could run away from God and indulge his approach at that particular time. When you look at the reaction that the seamen had about the storm and they began to make sacrifices to their gods, and then they got Jonah to come and confess as to who he was, it tells us something about how the mindset of these people, even people in the ancient world, and certainly pagans who did have a very superstitious bent. But after they were confronted with Jonah and he explained a bit of who he was and who he did serve, they still attributed what happened after they threw Jonah off into the sea to the power of God. If you look at verse 15 of chapter 1, the sailors picked up Jonah, threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stomped at once. Now, that was a tremendous witness for these sailors as God instantly stopped it, just as it had quickly been brought up and they recognized that there was something that their gods, in their mind at that time, was telling them. But it says that they, in verse 16, were awestruck by the Lord's great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him. This really is the first example of repentance in the story of Jonah that is here. This group of sailors on this boat had a momentary acknowledgment, I think is the best way to describe it, of the great power of God as the storm was now abated.

You know, there are a lot of events that take place in our world today from great storms, hurricanes, and awesome tornadoes that come about to major events at various times and in interesting ways. Someone sent me a link recently about the number of different natural catastrophes and significant global events in politics and among nations that have happened in recent years in connection with America and even the world, but particularly America's treatment of the state of Israel. And I felt that the author maybe extrapolated a little bit too far, but there are, I do believe, personally, that there are a connection to certain events that do take place according and within the plan of God throughout history. That's an interesting study in and of itself. The development of America, the English-speaking peoples, and certain key events that are, frankly, the divine hand of God we're involved with, I think are very self-evident when you study the historical record. We are living in some very interesting times today. And to be able to discern the hand of God in the world, I think, is a very critical thing. And I think this example here points us to the reality that, hey, maybe even these Gentile sailors can teach us, remind us of something, that events don't happen in a vacuum in today's world.

And that a major natural catastrophe or a significant global shaping event can be at the hand of God and be a part of what God is doing along the chain fulfilling His purpose and His divine will, because God is still acting. And whether it's on the individual level here or on certain other levels, for us to be able to discern that, I think, is in the spirit of what Jesus said to His disciples, to discern the times and to be able to even, as He said to the Jews at one time, you look at the sky, you can tell if it's going to rain or if it's going to storm, but you can't tell the times of your life. These sailors could, and they leave us a lesson here. Jonah spends his time in the belly of the fish. He prays, which is what chapter 2 talks about. And it's a very devout prayer, it's a very heartfelt prayer that goes out from the belly of the fish. And after the prayer, and after three days of swimming around in the gastric juices of this great fish, getting all wrinkled and bleached probably from all the chemicals or whatever, God says at the end of chapter 2 in verse 10, ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach, or to vomit him out back up on the beach. And so, Jonah's still alive. And in chapter 3, it says, verse 1, that the Lord spoke to Jonah a second time.

Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and deliver the message that I have given you. Jonah gets a second chance. You know, there's something about America that loves to give people a second chance. You could go down the list of any number of personalities, political or otherwise, of people who have had failures.

And then, after a period of years, they make a comeback. President Richard Nixon has won. He lost the 1960 presidential race. Two years later, he lost the gubernatorial race in California, and in a sense, kind of just walked off and ate worms for several years.

But then, in 1968, he was elected President of the United States. He got a second chance. He had a second act. He had a second chance in your life. Second chances don't always come, I've noticed, in different ways. Sometimes we only get one chance to make the right decision, one chance to seize an opportunity, whatever it might be, one chance to do the right thing.

We have to know when to know it, discern it, and do it. Sometimes it passes us by, and then sometimes we get a second chance. Jonah got a second chance. By the grace and the mercy of God, he had to go through the trial, but he said, go, now do it. And this time, Jonah did. And we know what chapter 3 tells us, as we kind of fast forward through this. He obeyed this time. He obeyed God's command. Jonah's prerogative now, again, was still to decide for himself, but this time he chose wisely, not poorly. And he went to Nineveh.

And he walked into that city, and he preached a very, what must have been a very powerful message, that unless this city, and by extension the Assyrian people, turned around from their wicked, warlike, evil ways, that within 40 days they would be destroyed. Now, the historians with the knowledge of this particular period of Assyrian history know that Assyria was kind of in a decline. They were in a slump at this point. And they were getting pressure from some of their neighboring countries that they had previously warred with and not been very nice with.

And they were vulnerable for any number of reasons. And they knew that they could have been destroyed. And with this message, the timing was perfect. They responded to it. And the king made the decree, called a fast, even the animals fasted. And he commanded that everyone would turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. And who can tell? Perhaps even God will change his mind and hold back his anger from destroying us. Which is what happened. Because of their accepting of the very powerful, strong message that Jonah gave.

Now, we don't know all the details of how long, how many days Jonah preached. I subscribe to the idea that the three days journey refers to the three days of walking within the city and through the various neighborhoods and environs of the actual walled city of Nineveh. And as he went, he no doubt gave his message and every opportunity that he found to him in the public markets and places, maybe in front of the temples.

And other than telling them to repent and to stop their ways, we don't have a lot of the details of what must have been an effectively given message that turned this very powerful, very pagan, entrenched nation with severe war-like tendencies of brutal people to get them to turn around and to listen to this foreign man whom they did not know and to his message. The details of what Jonah gave to them that brought them to this repentance, we do not have all of that.

But it is every minister's dream to have that type of response like Jonah had, I'll tell you. Just even with his congregation, much less a few thousand people to get people to respond. On Beyond Today, we would love to have the kind of response that Jonah got here. The church would have a hard time handling the response of that size of numbers, but sometimes I think about that, and all I can say is, God, bring it on. We'll work out the details as we go along. Well, that brings us to chapter 4.

Now, chapter 4 is the interesting chapter. Jonah had preached a message that brought about a response. In verse 1 of chapter 4, and again I'm reading from the New Living Translation, because I think it puts this historical account quite well, this change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. Not your typical expected response to such a response that he got from his work. He became angry. So he complained to the Lord about it. He didn't just stop there. His anger welled up, and he said, Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord?

That is why I ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You're eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord. Just kill me. Now, this is where we're given the details of whatever conversation Jonah had with the Lord before he got on the boat. But there's reasonable speculation that Jonah knew that Assyria could be used by God to punish his own people, Israel, which they eventually did. And that was a reason he didn't want them to repent.

He wanted them to get it while they could get it. And in hopes, perhaps, of vain hope, that there wouldn't be a great power around to punish his own people for their sins, which were very grave indeed, just as the Assyrians' sin is sin. That's a reasonable assumption as well as part of the reason for Jonah being angry here. But it still doesn't justify the anger. He let that anger fester for a long period of time, and he basically said, just kill me now, Lord. Kill me. I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen. Now, that's pretty dark. I call chapter 4 the Dark Jonah.

And it really is. It's pretty brutal, but God's very honest with us in terms of the prophet's reaction. I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted didn't happen. And he got angry that people turned around their lives to whatever degree they did and wanted something more, perhaps.

And then God replied to him, Is it right for you to be angry about this? I love God's dialogue in this particular chapter. He questions Jonah in such a way that he kind of deflects his anger. He doesn't really pay a lot of attention to all that is going on with Jonah. Is it right for you to be angry about this?

And then the next verse tells us what Jonah did. He went out to the east side of the city. And he made a shelter to set under as he waited to see what would happen to the city. He still wanted them to be destroyed. He thought, well, give them a few days, maybe a few weeks. They'll go back to their ways and God will bring about the punishment. It seems to be what he's thinking. And so he's sitting out there on the edge of the city.

And the Lord God arranged for a leafy plant to grow there. And it soon spread its broad leaves over Jonah's head, shading it from the sun. This eased his discomfort and Jonah was grateful for the plant. But God also arranged for a worm. The next morning at dawn, the worm ate through the stem of the plant so that it withered away. God gives and God takes away.

He gave shade and comfort from the very hot blazing sun of that region. And then he takes it away from Jonah. And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah.

A Soroco-type wind that came hot and very dry. Just soaking or just taking any bit of moisture out of everything and including Jonah. The sun beat down on his head until he grew faint and he wished to die. Now he really began to feel the physical impact of this and he wished to die. He said, certainly death is certainly better than living like this. And then God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry because the plant died? And he questions him on the anger over the plant, which is another element of anger.

And Jonah retorted, it says, yes, even angry enough to die. Jonah was unrepentant himself in his attitude. I don't know how many of you have experienced anger that might linger for a period of time or kind of go deep inside.

It's not a good thing. There's a reason God said, be angry but don't let the sun go down on your wrath. You don't want anger to linger in your life and in your heart for a period of time. The longer it does, the harder it is to deal with. And the more it leads to other problems, regardless of the cause or how unjust or something might have been to us, anger is not good. And here is Jonah angry over the city's repentance and angry over that God took away this gourd.

There's got to be envy working. There's got to be a lot of other emotion. And so God says to him in verse 10, You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals.

Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? God's compassion stretched all the way even to the animal life of the city. Shouldn't I have such compassion? And the entire book and story ends with a question. Unresolved. Don't you just hate movies that leave you unresolved? I say, why did I spend two hours watching this movie when I see certain ones like that?

I like happy endings. I like all the questions answered, whether it's a drama, murder mystery, whatever it might be. I want everything tidied up so that you know that justice was done or answers were given, whatever it might be. This story doesn't end that way. It ends open-ended. And we are left, then, to draw certain conclusions. In preparing for the study on this and looking at it to try to gain certain understanding, I like to try to find what is it that applies to us today?

What is it that I and the people in teaching need to learn from this that is applicable to our lives today? As I said, this is pretty dark. It's a brutally stark chapter without a conclusive ending and not even an ice ending. We don't know what happens to Jonah. We had no more information about him. Now, I can tell you what happened to the city of Nineveh. They actually continued on to live on the Assyrian people for another 150 years before Nineveh and Assyria were destroyed by the Babylonian Empire.

So they did go on for a period of time. Jonah, we had no knowledge what happened to Jonah, but his people Israel didn't last even that long. Within about 50 years, a little more than a generation, the nation of Israel went captive at the hand of the Assyrians. The people of Jonah, the northern nation of Israel, never went through even a symbolic repentance. Nothing anywhere near even what we read about the Ninevites going through Israel in its history never did. They never had any period to rebound in their worship of God.

And they lasted only about 50 years from this particular point in time. And that's how those elements ended the story that we have before us here. But to bring it back to looking at what Jonah did and a few lessons for us, as we exercise our duty, our mission, the prerogatives that we have as the people of God today and reading a story like this and drawing out lessons for us, what do we learn? There are many.

Far beyond. Not falling overboard in a storm. Certainly, that's important as well. One of the things I look at this, and one of the lessons I draw out about Jonah, and this is what I really have a hard time understanding, he wanted no relationship with these people. He preached, he got a response, and then he walked out to City Gate and went out on the east side of the city and set out on a hill. He wanted no relationship with them. He didn't offer them any follow-up Bible studies.

We don't read about him offering any future... I'm going to start a church over here in the shadow of this pagan temple, and you're welcome to come. I'll be here at 10 o'clock next Sabbath. We don't read about that. He didn't plan to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. He didn't plan any summer camps for their kids. He wanted no relationship with the people.

And he was upset over what had happened. Now, how would we respond to people repenting, to changing? How do we look at people today? You know, as I was looking at this and thinking, we're doing a little bit of reading about the Assyrian Empire, a couple weeks ago, I pulled one of those books off my shelf that I... really, an old book that I picked up at a used library sale recently, and it's one of the famous books about ancient Assyrian history. And one night Debbie asked me, well, what are you reading? She looked over and saw me reading.

I said, oh, I'm reading Rawlinsons ancient history of Assyria. It helps put me to sleep at night. But looking at what Nineveh was and the Assyrian people, you know what? Our people today are closer to Nineveh than they are to anything else. We live in a post-Christian world. We live in an increasingly pagan society. It was this year, as we were in the midst of the Christmas season and looking at some things and reading a few things, it dawned on me something...

I've known this for several years, that people don't care today about Christmas or Easter being pagan. They don't care. Everybody knows that. You can find that in newspapers, on the Internet. Everybody knows it, but they don't care. But what dawned on me this year as to what people really are looking for is hope and joy. Regardless of whatever religious meaning they may yet cling to, people keep, especially Christmas, I think, looking for some hope and joy in their life.

And yet, going about it all wrong in terms of a form of worship toward God. And we would want them to change. We would want them to hear a message. And here and there, we see that people do, and we have people write in and contact us in that way. But there are not large numbers, and certainly nowhere near these very large numbers here. But I was thinking, for people who do come, we want them to find hope through the message that we have. And we want them to find people who are joyful, ready to receive.

And we have people like that. And we always need to be sure that we keep ourselves primed in that way to be able to receive the growth that God will provide, and does as He calls people according to His purpose and His will. We don't certainly want to have the attitude of Jonah. Jonah couldn't accept their repentance, and so he didn't want a relationship with him, and so he walked out on them. And I think that's a very, very big and important lesson for us to have.

God's grace extends to all people. That is one of the big lessons here. And we must always rejoice when God grants repentance, and pray for that. That's extremely important that we have. And be a people filled with God's joy through God's Spirit within us, energized and excited about the hope that we have embodied in the Gospel, of God's coming Kingdom, of the potential that each of us have to share in the glory of God, to become a part of the family of God. That is the hope that fuels us. And we must always live with that, think with that, in every day of our life.

So that the message that we have goes out from us as a corporate entity, but also on an individual level, as we are lights and should be lights, that as people sense that there is something different about us, and that we can have the willingness and the openness to share the hope that we have in an appropriate manner, at the appropriate time and place, so that people know that there is something different. And when they do ask, when they do probe a little deeper, they see the reason for a life that is different, for a life that is grounded in faith, and a life that has hope.

Because I think that that is a precious commodity that people are looking for today, and joy. I don't see a lot of joy at this moment in Jonah's life. Jonah's kind of like what I call a joy sucker. And that's something you put in your mouth. But he's sucking the joy out of anybody and anything around him, had you been around him at that particular time.

He would not have been a very nice person to be around. So, number one lesson, I think, that is a pretty deep one to learn is that God's grace extends to all people. And that is who we endeavor to reach in the church today.

Secondly, as I've already brought out, if you get a second chance, take it. And don't run from God. Jonah tried to run a futile step, and he got brought up short. And he had to turn right around and go right back and do it. Because ultimately, in the end, as the people of God, the elect, the church of God, we have a job and a mission to perform. And God expects us to do it. And he will keep us at that wheel. He will keep it in front of us. He will continue to give us opportunity to represent that, to preach it, to teach it in our lives. We cannot avoid that responsibility, that mission that we have, and our duty to be a part of it in whatever way, in whatever part that God gives. And he will give us, I think he will give us even more than two chances to engage fully as energized people called with a purpose in their life. The third lesson I draw from the book of Jonah is to discern God's hand in this world. These pagan sailors could look at a storm that was throwing them about on the open sea and know that the divinity they worship must be behind it. And they came for a brief glimmer of a moment, at least to understand something about the God that Jonah served, and they even made sacrifice to him for that period of time once they saw the waves calmed. God does act in this world today, and it's incumbent upon us as his people to take a lesson like this and to recognize that things happen for a purpose. We're living in a very dynamic time right now. We have a new president coming in.

I think you all know that. And we don't know what's going to happen. It would have been—changes would have happened either way this election year. But we have a very interesting situation that is beginning to develop, not only in America and its direction, but also in the world scene. We are at a very critical moment in the history of the world, and I think in the purpose and plan of God, as he guides the events of this world. And we should realize that certain things don't happen by accident. Now, we tend to be a little bit more prudent, and should be, to look back and draw certain conclusions rather than trying to make wild predictions in advance, other than the broad themes of prophecy that we have in Scripture. But to try to get down to a lot of the details, it's better for us to look in the past and see, this is God moving in this direction. But we may be getting to a point in the world that things might move rather quickly. And all the more, for us to be girded, to be awake, not sleeping even like Jonah was in the bottom of the boat that he was on, when things were raging around him, he should have been up at least on the deck throwing things off at least, and trying to help calm things down and maybe even repenting even at that point. They found him asleep, and he said, wake up. We should be awake as well, and have our loins girded, and the job and the responsibilities that God has given to us. There's a lot of lessons to be drawn from the story of Jonah. He had a prerogative. He chose poorly and then finally engaged. We have the same prerogative. We have the privilege of choice to fulfill the duty and to engage in the mission that God has given to us in the United Church of God to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. I hope that those of you that have come in for the leadership weekend tomorrow and for all of us here today can reflect upon that. And we'll go into more details about it, about our part and the role that we all have to play. But let's look at a story like Jonah and let's learn certain things that help us to accomplish the prerogatives that we have in a positive, godly way to accomplish the work that God is doing.