My name is Dandy Kam. I'm one of the elders here. My wife and Mona and I pretty much all grew up in Prosper. We were gone for 20 years, but we've been back for the last five. We've been, thankfully, still here. This morning's scripture reading is Jonah 3. It's on page 921 in your few Bible. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. 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 breath. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, Yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. ' And the people of Nineveh believe God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, 'Let neither man nor beast, hard nor flock, taste anything.

Let them not feed or drink water, 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. Who knows God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they had did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Thus is the word of the Lord.

Introduction

After the American Civil War, many expected harsh punishments to be handed down for Confederate soldiers and leaders. But Abraham Lincoln repeatedly chose mercy. One man sentenced to death for desertion, had a sentence overturned by Lincoln, who said, I'm unwilling for any boy to die who sincerely wants to live rightly. He showed leniency on thousands hoping to heal the country. But his critics hated this. The people in the north cried out that these people don't deserve this, that they were traitors. Lincoln's mercy to them seemed unjust, as mercy often does. But that That's the same question that Jonah will wrestle with in this passage. How can God forgive people like them? Can mercy be just? And that's our big question for today. Is mercy just? Is the act of giving mercy a justified thing? In Jonah, God is showing us what his heart is like. He's showing and exposing Jona's heart and ours. The question is, do we pursue God's or just his benefits? Is the act of mercy an okay thing to do, or is it somehow wrong? Does forgiving people lead to more societal harm? You might think, why in the world would that be a question we'd ask?

But It's an important question in our world and our country right now. Justice and mercy seem to be opposed. Those two words are important for us to understand. Justice is getting the thing that we deserve, where mercy is getting something good that we don't. Critics of this will say that giving mercy avoids accountability for offenders. It allows people who have done wrong, leniency, or to walk free from wrongs that they've committed. In America, this is a big thing, whether you're a Democrat or Republican. And it seems to be that certain offenses matter more to which side of the political aisle you're on. We forgive in the way that we vote. There are certain things that each party holds that we can't forgive and certain things that we see that we should forgive. When it comes to legal ramifications, hundreds of articles have been written about this. The idea that mercy or forgiveness is not a good thing for our justice system. An article titled The Limits of Forgiveness. There's a quote that says, There has to be a limit. There has to be a balance between between mercy and justice. What happens when we separate the two of those things?

In the Book of Jonah, we see and we understand that the Ninevites are bad people. There's no excusing what they've done. They are evil people. So how can mercy be just? How is it right that God would forgive these people, that he would let them off?

Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So if you would keep your Bibles open with me to Jonah Chapter 3. Let's see what this has to offer. We'll see these three points.

Outline

1. Jonah responds

2. Nineveh repents

3. God relents

Context

For context, chapters one and two, what we saw is that Jonah gets the word from God, and he revolts against it. He not only flees God, he flees from the presence of God. He gets into a boat and is thrown overboard and is saved by being swallowed by a fish. In chapter 2, Jonah, in the belly of the fish, praise to God, and rustles as he thanks him and still is prideful that he's being saved or that he's being forced to do this. Jonah seems to repent and thanks God for it. And that leads us to this chapter.

In this chapter, we will see God, in his sovereign mercy, brings Nineveh to repentance through his word and withheld the judgment that they deserved.

Jonah responds

Let's look at this first section as Jonah responds, verses one through four. Notice this section starts with familiar language. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. This is how the book starts, how chapter one starts. Again, God sends his word to Jonah. And after realizing that God is the one who saved him, Jonah now does what he was supposed to do in chapter one. It's at this moment in the story that Jonah realizes that he's getting a second chance. He's getting something he doesn't deserve. He's getting God's mercy. Verses three through four, Jonah then goes into this great city. The Hebrew word for this great city is that it was an exceedingly great city. It was a city so big, it was preposterous to God. Some people have been critical of this passage saying that this is why the Bible isn't true, because a city that's three days in journey long, there's no records of finding one this big in the ancient near east. But the word that we understand as journey in this passage is important. Really, it doesn't mean if you started a stopwatch today and stopped it on Tuesday and you kept walking the entire time, that's how long the city was.

What he's talking about is the city was three. It was so big, it took three days to properly get through it. Another way to say it would be, it was so big, it required Jonas to spend three days in it, proclaiming what God had told him to say. So what does Jonas say? Jonas says, Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. I don't know about you guys, but the first time I read this, I thought, this has got to be the worst gospel presentation ever. I mean, essentially, he's saying, 40 days and you're all going to die. No hope, nothing, right? I mean, that's not what I want to hear from the Pope. I like some hope. It seems like this is at least what he's saying. But the truth is that this is communicating what God wanted him to communicate. Biblical prophecy often works this way, warning people about judgment intending to usher them into repentance. If people repent, then God will relent. And that's laid out in Jeremiah 18. It says this, This is God speaking, If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it.

And if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. Now, this isn't God's conditional grace. This isn't God making his grace conditional. But it's like a loving father coming to his child and saying, If you don't stop doing this, I will have to stop you myself. Nineveh understood this and repented. Jonah's sermon to them is short, but it works because the power isn't in the prophet, but in the word of God. Jonah obeys, but he doesn't yet share God's heart. You can do the right thing outwardly and still resist God inwardly. And that's what we see in this next section as Nineveh repents, verses 5 through 9. The people believe the word from God, from God's messenger, and they fast and repent. And then it gets to the king, and he repents. And then he issues a decree or a law that the entire city would have had to follow, that everything must repent, not just people, but the birds, the animals, everything, because the king knows what he's done. Look at verse 8 with me. The king says, Let everyone turn from his evil way, his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hand.

Nineveh was an evil nation, an evil city. They knew what was wrong. And now they're being convicted of it. It's like if you have a friend tell you something that you already knew that was maybe going wrong in your life. Or if you go to the doctor, right, and you hear you got a bad diet or you don't exercise enough, and you're sitting there and you go, Yeah, I know that already, but it's nice to Now that a doctor tells me, I have to follow it or whatever lie we tell in our brains, right? Speaking of bad diet, why would they fast? Why would these people fast? Fasting in the Old Testament is often more than just a physical expression. It is a physical expression associated with mourning over sin. It's a desire for reconciliation with God. Joel, the Prophet Joel, writes this down writing down God's words. He says, Yet even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relents over disaster.

This act of fasting that Nineveh does is an act of mourning and submitting to God, mourning over sin. See, fasting isn't a piece of some magic formula that we have in Christianity. We are not some voodoo where if we do the right rituals and we say the right things, then God will have to act in a certain way. No, fasting isn't the thing that God loves. God doesn't love the fact that we're hungry. That's not where he gets his satisfaction from. What God loves is true repentance. We fast not to make God happy. We fast because we hate the sin we once loved, and we love the God we once hated. Nineveh's fasting isn't about earning mercy. It's about expressing real repentance. And that's exactly what God wanted Noah to see. This moment isn't about Nineveh's sin, it's about God's mercy. This chapter shows us something deeper. It's not a story of a people or a city repenting or being saved or being changed. It's a story of a prophet being confronted. That's why this chapter is in this book. This chapter almost seems like a diversion from the overall story. The overall story is God is redeeming.

He's bringing his prophet back to himself, changing his heart so that way he can see the heart of God, that he would desire to pursue his heart. Why do we have this story? It seems like this weird story that almost takes away from that narrative, right? Why do we have a story where it seems like the moral of the story is to be more like Nineveh because they repented? No. This chapter is to contrast Jonah. How many times did Jonah have to hear a word from the Lord? How many times did Nineveh? It would be easy at this point to make this passage, this sermon, about be like the Ninevites. They were the good ones. They heard the word of the Lord and repented. That's not why this story was written down for us. The story isn't to put ourselves anywhere in scripture, to put ourselves in the seat of someone who was obedient. Now, we are the Jonah in this story. We're the righteous ones. We're the ones who sit in church, who think that we're good. This isn't a call to be better. This isn't a call to be like Nineveh. It's a call to be like Jonah, to realize that we have some stuff in our own heart.

It's a call to be honest, to ask ourselves, do we pursue God's heart or just his benefits? How many times do we need to hear God's word? We must be people who pursue God's heart. What's striking about the response to this, what's striking about the response to this is the King's attitude towards this message as he repents. Look at verse nine with me. This is what the king says. Who knows God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Nineveh decides to repent, not knowing for sure whether or not God's going to destroy them or not. God knew what he was going to do. Jonah knew what God was going to do, but Nineveh seemingly didn't know what was going to happen next. Nineveh wanted to do the right thing without knowing what God would do next. Too many of us need sure outcomes before we step out in faith. We say to God, God, I'll only go through this suffering if you get my tax situation better or you get us out of debt, or God, you help me with these relationships that seem to be broken, or you fix our family issues, or you fix my marriage.

But if you can't do that, then I don't want to go through this. I'll only be faithful if you can promise something better for me. We take passages like this, like Jeremiah 29: 11. We take this and we apply it to ourselves. We read, For I know the plans I have for you, individual, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and hope. This is a lie that we believe from Satan that everything is going to turn out good for us. You might be sitting here thinking, whoa, this is God's word. How can you say that this is a lie from Satan? Well, I'd ask you this. Has Satan never distorted scripture before in tempting people? That's what we see in the garden. That's what we see with Jesus in the wilderness, Satan using God's word and just manipulating it. This passage is a beautiful passage, but intended for the people of Israel. I can't go too far on this, but this passage was intended for the whole nation of Israel, not an individual person. This passage today should be applied to us as the church, as the global church.

God is going to give the church plans for welfare, not for evil, a hope in a future. Future. But for us to read this passage as an individual and to say that God's going to make my life better as long as I'm faithful. That's not always true. We can see that in the Bible. Look at Stephen, the apostle Stephen. What happens to him? Did God have plans for welfare, not for evil, to give him a hope in a future? Stephen was stoned to death. I think his plans were for good for him, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be what we see as good. Our suffering might have good outcomes for us, but it might not. We might end up like Stephen. But regardless of that, it glorifies God. We can't be Christians who only pursue God when it's convenient for us or when the benefits align for us, when the outcomes are sure and it looks good for us. Our faith isn't It's not about what we get out of it. It's not about what I want. It's not about my hearts and desires. It's about pursuing God's heart. Nineveh doesn't know how God will respond, but they turn anyway.

That's faith or that's repentance, driven by faith, not driven by outcomes. We don't repent to get heaven. We don't repent to get anything from God. We repent Because we know that our savior, our God, the one who has redeemed us, sin is the opposite of him. The thing that he hates, the one we love most, hates, and we must repent of it. That's why we repent, not because we're promised anything. That's what we see in this last section in verse 10, the pinnacle of this chapter. This is the climax. This is the most important part of this chapter. It's not about the people repenting, but God relenting. We see what God sees. God sees true repentance from the Ninevites and relents. And it might seem for a second on the surface that God told a fib or wasn't telling you the truth. But the truth is that this prophecy was given as a prompt to repent. This was never This was never a sure thing that they were going to be destroyed. This was, again, a loving Father saying, I'm going to put an end to this evil one way or another. See, God eliminates evil in one of two ways.

The traditional way that we think about it is Sodom and Gomorrah, God putting an end to destroying his enemies. The other way that God eliminates his enemies is by turning them into friends. Romans 5 says this, But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Here's the important part. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more shall we be reconciled by his life? When scripture says that God relented, it doesn't mean that he changed his character. It means that he acted in accordance with his mercy. See, mercy and justice are never in conflict for God. They perfectly meet in his heart. And because of this, God relents. When God relents, Jonah will be furious because Jonah wants a God who will only destroy his enemies and not one who delights in mercy. That's the tension of the book. Will Jonah align with the heart of God, or will he align with his own sense of justice?

This is who God is. God is a God who relents. Exodus says that God is a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. This is who God is, not fickle, but faithful to his steadfast love. God doesn't want his people to die. He wants them to live. Jonah himself had already experienced the mercy from God when he was evil towards his own behavior. But the question is, will he be delighted when he sees the Ninevites and what they've experienced, that they've experienced the same thing? That question we'll answer next week, so make sure to come back for that. Shameless plug there. Here we go. That leads us into our main idea. Our main idea is this: trust God who sends his word to awake in repentance. Trust God who sends his word to awake in repentance. We trust God's word, not because this book has some magic pages. It's because what's written on them. This is God's word, the very voice of God. We get to see God's heart in and it. We can trust God's word because we can trust God. God's word never lies because God is God who speaks truth.

God's word shows us who God is. God failed to see that the first time. He failed to see that when he received the word of the Lord, that when he was receiving that, he was receiving the very essence of God's heart. But we can trust God and his word. That leads us into our points of application. Our first point is this, Seek God for God and not just the benefits. We cannot be people who worship God, who seek God out of our own selfish gain. We can't be people who build our own kingdom, who seek God in order to add something onto our life. This is why we pray in the Lord's prayer, Lord, your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Building towards anything else, building towards anything else on this Earth is not only biblically foolish, but it won't last. The reality is we are not immortal. We will die. And maybe this is an uncomfortable thing for us to think about. And maybe this feels cold, but I want to drive this home. I want you guys to understand this. Our children, our grandchildren, and if we're lucky, our great grandchildren may remember us.

But after that, most of the time we'll be forgotten. Say you're one of the outliers, right? You're one of the Napoleon's or Julius Caesar's who is remembered throughout history, right? You go down as one of the George Washington. We're going to be saying that name for the rest of history. In a billion years, the sun will expand and destroy the Earth. If all we're building here is our own Kingdom, if all we're doing is using God to make our lives better, the end result is that nothing's going to be remembered anyway. It's all going to be in vain. We absolutely need to do and obey God's word here and obey God. But it's not about getting something back out of it. It's following God because we love the God we know. We must seek God because it's the only thing that will outlast time itself. We don't add God into our life as some another version of a self-help book. It's not like, God, I've got this problem in my life, and if I try sprinkling a little bit of Jesus on it, then that's going to make everything better. God isn't an add-on to our life.

He's either everything or nothing. And that's what we see in this next point of application. It leads us into our next point of application, loving mercy. God is either everything or nothing. If we love him, we have to love everything that he loves. We have to love mercy. Our default for this is that we love mercy for ourselves, and we love justice for everyone else, right? If you talk to a kid, there have been studies that prove this, that children enjoy seeing other children punished, and that might seem like a dark thing. The reality is we don't grow out of this as adults, either. We just get better at masking it. Our default is that we love justice for others, and we love mercy only for ourselves. If we are people who have been set free from sin, we must desire that other people would be set free as well. To pursue God's heart means that we love who he loves, even when that mercy offends our sense of fairness, like it did for Jonah. We must desire that people would be set free from slavery to sin. The reality is that this all sounds so nice.

It's easy to get behind confessionally or to say this out loud. It's easy to say this, right? Yeah, we ought to love mercy. This sounds great. But do it. It's much harder. It's easy to admire mercy. It's another thing to love it. In our Christian circles, in our Christian bubbles, we can talk about loving mercy. We can say it's a good virtue. It's a good thing that we ought to love and to do. But doing it means that we have to rub shoulders with people that aren't like us or that might not act like us. It means that we invite people into our church not saying, in order for you to... It's It's great if you come into our church and you start acting like us and you start doing the things that we do. No, it's hard to invite people into our church and say, It's going to be messy. It might not look the same. We might have to change. We might have to accommodate people. It looks like sharing the gospel with people when it's uncomfortable, when it's someone you know, a family member, someone you've worked with for a long time.

The fear of, Man, will they think I'm weird for saying this? Will they think that what I'm saying is It's too churchy or too Christian-y or whatever we think, whatever lie that comes into our heart? There's a difference between admiring mercy and loving it, and the difference is action. As we close, the question I want for us to think about is, why could God relent from destroying Nineveh? Let's look at verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from the evil ways, from their evil ways, God relented the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it. The reason that God could relent from destroying Nineveh wasn't because they repented. It was because on the cross, God saw what Jesus did and how he was innocent of all the evil ways, and yet God delivered him to disaster. He delivered him to destruction. This is why we can trust God. This is Why we can trust God? Because he sent himself to pay the price. In this chapter, he sentiona with his word. Later on, he would send the word made flesh. He proved that we can fully trust him, even when we feel like he's leading us astray.

We all love Psalm 23. If you're here on Friday, you heard it in a beautiful sermon, in a beautiful ceremony, in a beautiful funeral. We love this passage that it says, Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. But who's leading us? Go back to the beginning of that. That psalm, The Lord is my shepherd. It's God who leads us through this valley. Are we willing to follow him? Are we prepared for the reality that God may lead you somewhere that makes feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter? Even when the path is dark, even when obedience costs you everything, we can trust the good shepherd because he is the one who leads you through that valley because he's already went through it himself. So what do we do? We turn, we trust, we stop running from God's heart and we run to it as people who have been redeemed. The Lord who sent his word to Nineveh sends his Holy spirit to you today saying, 'Come to me, turn to me, trust me, for I am gracious and merciful. ' Prosper Church, trust God who sends his word to awaken repentance.

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are, that you are God who is rich mercy. A God who we can trust because you walk before us. God, I pray right now that you would comfort us. Not all of us are in a good place. Not all of us are in an easy season. God, I pray that we can trust you even in the midst of confusion. God, I pray for the Dick family as they've lost a huge pillar in this family. God, I pray that you would be near and tender with each and every one of them. God, as a community, help us to surround them. Help us to relish in the beautiful moments and the stories that we knew of Caroline's life. God, help us to love them like you've loved us. God, as we respond in worship, God, I pray that we would be changed people, not by the words that I've spoken, but the words that you've spoken through your word in scripture. God, we love you. We love to do your will. So help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Would you stand and sing as we respond in worship?

Before the Throne of God above, I have a I know that while in there, there's a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest who's made his love, whoever lives and please for me. My name is proven on his hands, my name is written on his heart. I know that while in every sense, no tongue can bid me then steep art. No tongue can bid me then steep hard. No tongue can bid me then steep hard. When Satan tells me to despair and tells me of the field within. Upward I look and see him there, who made an end of my sin. Because the sinless savior died, my simple soul is mounted free. For God, the justice satisfied, to look on him and pardon me, to look on him and pardon me. Behold him there, the risen land, my perfect Godless righteousness, the great unchangeable I am, the King of glory and of Grace. For with His self I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood. Our life is in with Christ's on high, with Christ my savior and my God. With Christ, my savior and my God.

Hear this blessing. May the Lord, who is rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love, send you out with hearts awakened by his word. Go in the strength of his spirit to the ones he loves, to show mercy and to walk in the freedom of grace. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen.

With the peace of God, our heavenly Father, and the grace of Christ, the risen Son, and the fellowship of God, the spirit, keep our hearts and minds within his call. And to him we praise for his glorious way. From the depths of earth to the heights of hell, we declare the name of the land One slave, Christ eternal, the King of peace. With a peace which has his understanding, and his grace which makes us what we are, and this fellowship of his communion, make us one, spirit and be called. And this fellowship of this communion makes us one in spirit and in heart. And to him we praise for his glorious strength. From the depths of earth to the heights of hell. We declare the name of the land once slain, Christ eternal, the King of He.