01/24/2024
Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany; January 21, 2023
Jonah 3:1-10 Repent and believe the gospel
Pastor Tylan Dalrymple
The beginning of today’s gospel lesson spells out word for word what happened in
Nineveh. It is what needs to happen in every city. It needs to happen in every home. It needs
to happen in every heart. Today’s gospel lesson begins with these words, “Now after John was
arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)
Almost every Christian witness is centered on belief. What about the part that comes
before that? Can we believe without owning our sin? What purpose is there for a Savior among
prideful hearts who don’t believe they really need salvation? Once we have justified ourselves,
what room is left for the justification by faith? The men of Nineveh repented at the (not very
seeker friendly) words God gave Jonah to proclaim. This is why Jesus said, “The men of Nineveh
will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the
preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41)
What happened in Nineveh represents a pattern. Even those who seem farthest away
from the Lord may change direction. That is literally what repentance is. A change in the
direction of your thinking. Those whose thoughts are on everything except God may change
and find their thoughts fixed on Him. Those whose every thought (all the time) is on self may
change the direction of their thoughts and consequently the direction of their life. What
happened in Nineveh was affirmed by Jesus in His time on earth. It needs to be affirmed on our
day as well!
1Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2“Arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah arose and
went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great
city,a three days’ journey in breadth.b 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey.
And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5And the people of
Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to
the least of them.” (Jonah 3:1-5)
We don’t put on sackcloth to show repentance anymore. Of course sometimes what
people do to show repentance is only a show. Yet, have we become so cynical as a culture that
every act of humility is judged fake or false? The only things we are left with is power and
pride. Does this mean sin goes away? Does personal pride make failure to meet the mark go
away? We obviously need repentance just as much as those poor violent wretches who lived in
Nineveh. (If you want to find out more about it I can send you other sermons I’ve given detailing
the history and culture of that place.)
What is the obstacle to repentance in our time? Why did Jesus bring up repentance that took
place so long ago in Nineveh? When your currency is power and your god is ego there is only
one way left to account for sin. C.S. Lewis explains what’s left better than I ever could. What's
left is excuses. I am going to share a part of an essay he wrote on forgiveness and consequently
repentance. The two always go together.
“Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God's forgiveness of our sins and
about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people's sins. Take it first about God's
forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I
watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to
forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and
excusing. Forgiveness says, "Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never
hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before." If one was
not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are
almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one
man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what at first seemed to be the sins
turns out to be really nobody's fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had
a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness,
then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness"
very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is
the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances." We
are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget
the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don't cover, the bit
which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away
imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that
we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too
easily satisfied about ourselves.”
How much time do you spend complaining about other people and what they have done? How
many problems in your life are really due to the school you went to (or didn’t go to)? How
much is the government at fault for what transpires in your daily life? How much of it is the
president’s fault? How much of it is the church’s fault? How much blame do you place on your
boss or coworkers? How big of an impact do the people on facebook really have on your
personal problems? If the right political party were in office would all of our country's problems
suddenly go away overnight? We may even think about the abortion debate. Is murder any
less or more wrong if the people above you in government say it’s okay?
Here is the pattern when it comes to excuses and blame. The more separated we are from God
in our mind the more likely we are to blame others for our actions. Blame is almost always
pointed up a line of authority because those in authority carry a measure of responsibility as
Lewis maintains. A problem arises when this blame hierarchy removes so much of our personal
responsibility that we’re no longer really humans capable of discerning anything for
ourselves. This is where we arrive at the account of Cain and Abel.
If all our problems are the result of “those in power” then inevitably we end up blaming God
Himself. He is the man at the top of the blame chain for every unrepentant soul. It may take
years for some souls to get that far, but every unrepentant soul arrives at the same place with
bitterness and gnashing of teeth against their Lord. The account of Cain and Abel manifests this
reality.
We turn to Genesis chapter 4,”Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the
ground. 3In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground,
4and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had
regard for Abel and his offering, 5but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was
very angry, and his face fell. 6The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your
face fallen? 7If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching
at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
There is an obvious question here? How can Cain or any of us rule over sin? The answer is
obvious. So long as we continue to walk in the direction of pride or vengeance we can’t and
won’t. So long as we go our own direction we walk alone. Repentance is a change in
direction. Those who truly repent are never alone. When we turn from ourselves we walk with
God. This is the place where we arrive at belief.
The result of repentance in Nineveh is clear. Jonah 3:10 tells us, “When God saw what they did,
how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do
to them, and he did not do it.” Sin is a disaster for every soul enslaved to it. Last week we
spoke about the enslaving nature of sexual immorality. Slavery to a collection of things is no
less tragic in the end. Disaster of the souls awaits. Yet, God is merciful and forgiving to the
repentant. God walks with sinners and eats with tax collectors who have found themselves on
the path of repentance.
The next chapter in Jonah is about that man’s anger and God’s compassion. Jonah needed a
lesson in forgiveness. The Ninevites were not his people. They were not his tribe. He didn’t
really want them to be forgiven. He wanted disaster to befall them all! God asked him a simple
question, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4)
It seems Lewis was in line with God’s Word perfectly when he said, “we are all too easily
satisfied about ourselves.” Such was the case for Jonah. Yet, we are all in need of forgiveness
for so many things which we have absolutely no excuse for. It is right there in our Creed. I
believe in the forgiveness of sins. On the topic of the Creed I again refer to Mr. Lewis in closing:
“"If one is a Christian," I thought " of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes
without saying." But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part
of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have
begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins
is not so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don't
keep on polishing it up.”
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