Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Here we go again!
Jonah’s been spat up onto the dry land after being in the stomach of the fish for three days and nights.
You would think he’d need to go home and rest a bit.
But no! God had other ideas.
Now, we are told, the word of the Lord came to him again saying: “You’ve had a hard life, Jonah, rest and take it easy for you’ve had a whale of a time!”
Well, that’s not what he heard was it?
The problem with prophets is that they cannot switch off the voice they hear.
I am absolutely sure he did not want to hear what he heard.
And that is how it is with us.
I keep saying it but that voice we hear sometimes is God speaking to us through Jesus, for as we have heard in the morning services, that He is our shepherd and His sheep hear His voice.
Sometimes we want to come up with excuses not to do what we have heard God speak because we do not know what the consequences are going to be and fear sets in.
Leave the fallout of whatever you are called to do to God.
He has all those things in mind already.
That isn’t to say that the path will be easy but put your trust in Him.
For Jonah, he knew what would be the consequence of obeying God and he did not like what the outcome was going to be.
That was the whole reason why Jonah tried to go as far the other way as possible, even to Gibraltar.
But now, back on the shoreline he hears that most unmistakable word from the mouth of God: “Go!”
If we don’t do what God told us the first time we may well be told to do it the second and third and fourth until we give in.
God requires obedience.
What does God require Jonah to do but to go to Nineveh.
A gentile city, capital of the Assyrians, a mortal enemy of Israel.
And it was a huge city - 3 days journey - this was either the distance across or the circumference.
Indeed the term here is a great city, just as Jonah is great, the fish was great, the wind was great.
It is a well-used term in this book.
But it was always true and not hyperbole as some claim.
And it was also great in its wickedness and it had come before God.
It was full of pride and violence.
Proud because nothing could make it afraid and because everyone else was afraid of it.
Now comes the message and one of the shortest good news messages you could receive: In forty days time the city will be overthrown!
I don’t know about you but that does not sound like good news to me.
I’m sure Jonah was enthralled to give such a message but it is the message that God gave Jonah to say, nothing more, nothing less.
It seems incredibly hard.
Jonah was not free to add to it, embellish it or soften it in any way, not that he wanted to.
Inevitably Jonah was asked questions that he had to answer.
It is at this point we can conjecture because of the experience of sailors in the past who got swallowed at sea; such as one eaten by a sperm whale in 1891:
James Bartley was discovered when the whale was caught and cut open a couple of days later.
He was pulled from the stomach unconscious but he came round and eventually resumed his life as a whaler.
The significant aspect of the account is that for the rest of his life he was strangely bleached.
Considering he had lain in the gastric acids of the whale’s stomach at temperatures of around 105°F it is hardly surprising.
Now God had prepared the fish before the world began to be of the size that it needed to be to sustain Jonah along the travel.
But God had also prepared Jonah before the world for the task he had set him.
And part of that would have been his appearance!
For being inside that creature for that length of time would have made his skin blanch.
He would have been quite a sight.
People probably asked him about his appearance and received a testimony of how God had saved him.
But most of the queries would have come from those who consciences had been pricked.
Clearly the message that Nineveh would be overthrown was a devastating one.
It was a solemn message of impending judgement and suggested that something cataclysmic would shortly befall them.
What is interesting is in verse 5 it does not say they believed Jonah, though, that was necessary, but that they believed God.
It was God’s message they believed.
God had spoken and they knew it.
This was not mere head knowledge but a belief in God that caused them to cast themselves upon His mercy.
They turned from their ways to the living God.
Has there ever been a revival which swept up a community quite so universally as Nineveh under the preaching of Jonah?
From all quarters of the social spectrum, people were gripped with shame and sorrow for their sin.
Turning from it, they cried out to God.
Nineveh’s reaction to Jonah was all the more remarkable because the message itself seemed so absurd.
One strange-looking foreigner standing in front of a towering wall repeating endlessly that the city would be overturned in forty days invited mockery.
Who could possibly overturn Nineveh?
In any normal circumstances Jonah would, at best, have been laughed out of town or ignored as a mad fool.
At the same time, he could have expected persecution or even execution.
Certainly other prophets had met their death for lesser predictions in less hostile surroundings.
And if the repentance of Nineveh was remarkable because the message appeared far-fetched, it was even more surprising when you consider the messenger—Jonah himself.
Remember, Jonah’s heart was not in it.
He was simply told by God to give them the message He said.
Jonah didn’t care about them and that becomes even more evident in the next chapter.
Either way, the City believed that this man was a man of God and more than that, His prophet.
The revival started among the common people and it was not long before the rulers and none other than the King would hear the message.
He could have imprisoned or killed Jonah but there was something about the message that rang true.
The King responds positively to the message in an amazing way in humility and repentance.
He removes all vestiges of royalty and changes them for a slave, even lower than a slave, from the very top of society to the very bottom, where, in his actions, he says is where he belongs, in dust and ashes.
He then issues a decree requiring everyone in the city to do the same.
Of course, it had already started; they were already dressed in the clothes of repentance.
Yes, they showed outwardly what was going on inwardly.
And the King legitimises the message through his leadership, not that it needed to be but as an example to his people.
The King also knew that since they had been told it is “forty days and it is all over” there was a reason for being told.
It must be because there is a way of escape; that God might not do it if they did something first.
At least, they hoped that God would relent, if only they could demonstrate truly their repentance in renouncing their evil ways.
Maybe, they thought, God will turn from His anger.
And they were not wrong.
A change in the heart of the people and their king wrought a change in the heart of God.
He relented.
When God saw it he had compassion on them and lifted his threat of destruction.
It has been described as the greatest revival in world history for everyone was saved.
But, each generation need to come to faith in God.
Nahum, another prophet 150 years later comes along warning of disaster but this time God was not headed and the Ninevites were destroyed.
Past repentance does not guarantee future safety.
Friends there is always grace and mercy and warnings before judgement.
We, as a nation, have had many let offs over the years, whether it be the Spanish Armada or the Second World War.
By God’s mercy we have withstood tyrants, even at this time of year celebrating the foiling of the plot to kill King James I by Guy Fawkes.
It is to this king we credit, on the whole, having the printed Word of God in the form of the AV, or King James Version.
But time has passed and we, like the Ninevites have abandoned God and returned to violence, wickedness and immorality.
And unless we repent we are getting ripe for judgement.
We are to call on God to have mercy and not send judgement, for shall we escape if we have not sounded the alarm?
We are to give the Good News of Jesus even if it means telling them they are headed for the judgement of hell.
And perhaps, like in this most wonderful account of the Ninevites, God will be merciful and grant true repentance unto salvation and eternal life.
We can certainly hope.
Lord, send revival again!
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