Sermon Tone Analysis

The End is Near

What do you think when you cross this guy in the street?

Okay, maybe not this guy.

How about this guy?

This is my friend Jonah.

Shows up in Nineveh, HUGE city.

What was the last thing we knew about Jonah.

What would you do if you saw this guy?

Maybe you have?

Walk on past?

Avoid eye contact?

Vomited out by a fish.

Hopefully, maybe, he has had a shower since then.

But the he has traveled overland more than a thousand miles to the big city.

Nineveh.

Big enough that it would take 3 days to walk across.

Maybe 120,000 people.

That guy shows up in your city.

Even if he was cleaned up as can be, he is still a nobody from podunk nowhere Israel.

Know-nothing wanna-be prophet of an unknown God.

And that guy starts preaching the worst “pitch” you ever heard.

What is the “message that God told Jonah?”

What is his “gospel presentation?”

Not “get smashed.”

It’s “you’re about to get smote!”

He is a third of the way, near the center, not quite there.

Preaching doom and judgment and condemnation.

You are all going to die.

He doesn’t actually even seem to say “repent...” because that’s not an option in Jonah’s mind.

That’s not part of the message, I am assuming Jonah didn’t cut that part out.

He just says “you are all going to die!”

Hell House

It reminds me of these.

I think I went to one of these here in Colorado back in the late 90s.

But these are still happening today.

It’s the total “scare people into heaven” model.

And it’s easy to mock it.

It’s easy to make fun.

I’m skeptical of this approach.

You can’t scare people into heaven, by the way, but you can scare them away from hell.

And that isn’t the endpoint.

But it is a starting point.

And who else preaches about the judgment of God, the coming end, even fire and damnation?

Just about every prophet, certainly John the Baptist for days and, oh yeah… Jesus.

That guy.

It makes us uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable.

But it is true.

And it is part of the gospel.

Because it is true, and it is true today.

The End is Near.

We live in Nineveh and Nineveh needs to repent!

It isn’t loving to leave that part out.

It’s actually pretty hateful.

I love this quote from Penn.

If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward… how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?

How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

-Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller)

Jonah preaches the classic doomsday message: The End is Near!

To everyone’s absolute shock... it works and the people of Nineveh repent.

Nineveh Repents

The rich people repented.

The poor people repented.

The worst sinners repented.

The not-quite-as-bad sinners repented.

All the way up to the top:

That is what repentance looks like.

I recognize my sin… and the coming consequence of sin.

Judgment is coming...

I will do anything and everything I possibly can do to turn away from that.

Now, does this get them into heaven?

No, that’s going to take some Jesus.

How does God handle that with people born and die before Jesus?

That’s a fun conversation… but he does.

God is creative, He has that all figured out.

This may not be the be-all endzone of faith… but it absolutely the starting point.

The “turning” point...

and God saw it.

One of the most beautiful verses in the Bible.

An answer to what “could have been” in the Flood with Noah, or in Sodom and Gomorrah, or in a thousand other stories of God’s judgment.

God speaks or the prophet speaks that God’s judgment is coming.

Why say anything?

Why send the messenger at all?

This is always and has always been God’s heart, God’s plan, God’s purpose.: that his children in every tribe and nation would turn their hearts to him.

The Israelites, the Jews after them, they got this wrong over and over and over again.

Jonah is going to get this wrong.

Thinking that because they are “special” and “chosen” and “set apart” that they were the only ones God loved and the only ones that could or would be saved.

God always sought to save and rescue and bless all his peoples.

Through Abraham to bless all the nations.

Through the line of David to rescue all the nations.

Through Jesus to save the world.

We saw it in Nahum the leper the prophet Elisha.

And maybe more than anywhere else, we see it here in Nineveh.

No wickedness is “too wicked” for God’s mercy.

You cannot be too far gone for his love and grace.

Does their “ashes and sackcloth” give righteousness?

Does it undo the effects of their sin?

Not even close.

But God is just that eager for his people to turn their face back to Him.

This is a start.