Who is your Nineveh?
This was one of three questions posed during the sermon today, and the one that hit me the hardest. We’re doing a series on the minor prophets (which I highly recommend, Joel especially has been helpful during covid) and the past two weeks have been on Jonah.
Jonah’s refusal to go to Nineveh has two parts to it. The first is that he fled because he was scared of Nineveh (which was fair, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria which was known to be brutal by even ancient standards). But there’s more to it, which I didn’t really know. Jonah fled not only from fear of the Assyrians, but because he knew that if they repented, God would forgive them.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly,1 and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:1-3).
Jonah, God’s servant, was so mad that God would have compassion on his enemy that he tried to flee to literally the opposite side of the Mediterranean (Tarshish is placed on the Iberian Peninsula, aka modern day Spain/Portugal). And when he is brought to Nineveh and successfully causes the citizens to repent, he was so angry he wanted to die. He caused a population of 120 THOUSAND people to repent and honor God, a feat many modern missionaries would die to accomplish half of. Yet he’s so furious that this hated enemy gets to enjoy God’s grace and forgiveness that he himself wants to die.
Everyone has their Nineveh. The person or group of people that we hate so much we don’t want them to receive the grace and forgiveness that God offers to all. In the political sphere, it’s led to such polarization that much of both sides are unwilling to work with the other, believing them to be irredeemable. For me it’d probably be the porn industry. If God told me he was going to send me into the headquarters of Mindgeek, Pornhub and many other porn companies’ boss, and tell them to repent of their sins, I’d probably go in there with a 9mm and extra mags incase the board of directors had more scumbags than I thought. What they made me addicted to and what they’ve done to millions of men woman and children is abhorrent and reprehensible. But they are just as eligible for God’s forgiveness as the Assyrians who impaled people on stakes and covered a column with the skin of men who revolted against them. They’re just as eligible as Jonah who fled from God’s command, and just as eligible as I am for being deaf for ten years and continuing to struggle in my sin. That is the Glory of God. “Whoever believes in him” is not just limited to the theoretical sinless person.
We don’t know what happens to Jonah after the plant shading him dies. It’s theorized this was done to make the reader consider what might be a Nineveh in their own life. But the speaker brought up a Tim Keller theory that makes a lot of sense. What we learn about Jonah in the belly of the whale couldn’t have been told by a bystanders, whales after all don’t speak human languages. Jonah had to have spoken to someone afterward and told his story. Told it as a warning when encountering Ninevehs in your life. To not be the fool he was and flee when told to go to the unforgivable enemy and extend a hand.
