Jonah 3: God's Grace Goes Beyond Our Borders

Introduction

At the Église Protestante Évangélique de Marcinelle, Pastor Yves continues the series he began in the book of Jonah. This Sunday he reaches chapter 3, with a title that sums up the whole message: "Divine grace beyond human borders."

Jonah ran away, God caught up with him in the storm, then saved him from drowning. Here he finally is at the gates of Nineveh, the capital of a people everyone feared and hated. He preaches five words there, reluctantly. And against all expectations, the whole city humbles itself before God.

The pastor does not just tell the story. He asks a question that disturbs: "Who are our own Ninevites?" And how does God's grace push us to see them and treat them differently?

Message Outline

1. A Prophet Facing His People's Enemy

Jonah is a Jew from the northern kingdom, in the 8th century before Jesus Christ. It is an unstable era: peoples tremble before the "unstoppable and merciless" advance of the Assyrians.
Their policy is a reign of terror: burned cities, plundering, massacres of civilians. Everyone fears them and everyone hates them: "fear and contempt."
God sends Jonah to Nineveh, the capital of this empire, to warn its inhabitants: if they do not turn from their sins, they will be wiped out. But Jonah quickly understands that God does not want to destroy his enemies, he wants to save them.
Jonah is "disgusted to realize that God loves his enemies too." His "diplomatic solution": do not warn them, let them all die and let there be peace.
The pastor sees us in this: when we wish harm on those who have harmed us, we forget that we are sinners too. "If God treated us the way we would like to see our enemies treated, we probably would not be here to talk about it."
God is patient, with the Ninevites as with Jonah. He wants to rebuild his image in us and "educate us in grace." Jesus says it: bless your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, "that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:44-45).
A reminder of chapters 1 and 2: God says "go east," Jonah goes west. God catches up with him through a storm and a fish, because his gifts and his calling are irrevocable. At the bottom of the sea, Jonah learns the lesson of the whole book: "Salvation belongs to the LORD" (Jonah 2:9).

2. Back to Square One

Chapter 3 opens almost word for word like chapter 1: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city." The pastor compares this to board games: "Go back to start." In short, God says: "Let's pick up where we were right before you messed up."
"God will always take the road again with us, precisely where we had left him aside." That is wonderful: as long as we breathe, we can start over with God. There is nothing God cannot forgive. "He lifts up, he restores, he heals, he delivers."
But it is also tragic. Some lose months, years, sometimes a whole lifetime before coming back. Thinking of God at the end of one's life is "good to do," but what wasted time and lost opportunities.
Some consequences remain. Lost money can be earned back, lost time cannot. "If I have killed someone, he will not come back to life." God can forgive and lift up, but some mistakes will never be made up for here below.
"When you climb out of the hole, you are not miraculously teleported 10 km down the road, you pick up the road at the foot of the hole." Hence Christ's call to the church in Ephesus: "Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works" (Revelation 2:5).
Many can testify to it: going back to the church pews long neglected, finally opening the old dusty Bible received as a gift, remembering believing grandparents who prayed. "Coming to God or coming back to God will always be the best choice."

3. Nineveh, a Great City to God

Every time God speaks of Nineveh, he calls it "the great city" (Jonah 1:2; 3:2; 4:11). Verse 3 insists: it is immense.
Today only ruins and excavations remain. But archaeologists testify to a magnificent city: a wall 18 km long, 30 m high and 15 m wide, with parks, water gardens, fountains and waterfalls. "A little bit better than the citadel of Namur."
The pastor compares it with Charleroi: you can walk around the small ring road in a day, but to go around greater Charleroi and its surrounding towns, it takes several days.
Yet Nineveh's greatness was measured neither by its size, nor by its wealth, nor by its 120,000 inhabitants. It was measured "by the attention God gave it."
In verse 3, the Hebrew text says Nineveh was a great city "to God." The pastor points out that the Nouvelle Bible Segond renders this detail better. The great sinners of this great city could receive a forgiveness just as great.
For Jonah, God's grace was great, but for Israel only. The book of Jonah overturned its first readers' idea of grace: a pagan, sinful and cruel city, great in God's eyes.

4. The Borders We Build

We sometimes act like Jonah. Shocked by the lives of those who do not know the Lord, we reject them. The life of our churches then becomes "more about exclusion than openness," about tradition rather than Scripture, about pride rather than humility.
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for not entering themselves and for keeping others from entering (Matthew 23:13). "Today, in our churches, there are modern Pharisees too" who say: God for us, only for us, and above all our way.
The apostle Paul, a Jew like Jonah, becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. "If Jonah had known, he would have turned over inside the fish." In spite of himself, Jonah was a prophet to the Gentiles in the Old Testament.
In Corinth, a city known for its loose morals, Paul meets a lot of opposition. The Lord tells him: "Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, for I am with you," and adds: "speak, for I have many people in this city" (Acts 18:9-10).
God does not turn a blind eye to sin. But above all he sees "the spiritual distress, the state of the soul" of those who live far below what they are meant to be in Jesus Christ. He sends us to reach them where they are, without putting up barriers "in the name of a purity to be preserved."
"There was a time when people said no piercings, no tattoos," no such style of music, no sinners. "If that were the case in the church, the pews would be empty. Starting with me." Nobody was perfect on day one, and nobody here is perfect.
The Son of God left his throne of glory to become a man among sinners, even being born in a manger. Paul will say: "I have become all things to all people" (1 Corinthians 9:22). The church is not a place of barriers, but a place of welcome and service.

5. A Five-Word Sermon

Jonah does not walk through the whole city, he makes a day's journey. The Bible often records great speeches: Moses' solemn reading of the law, Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple, the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the Sermon on the Mount, the apostles' sermons in Acts.
Then comes Jonah's sermon: "In 40 days, Nineveh will be overthrown." Six words in French, five in Hebrew. "Can you imagine Sunday morning, I preach five words to you and say let's pray?" By the second or third Sunday, someone would suggest changing pastors.
At the Bible institute in Brussels, Jonah would have gotten "0 out of 10" in preaching class: no introduction, no explanation, no illustration. On Billy Graham's team, he would have been fired.
Jonah was not incompetent. He was a genuine prophet, clothed with the Spirit. But he was unwilling. The exact opposite of Jesus, moved with compassion before crowds "like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). Jonah, for his part, says to himself: "Serves them right."
He does the bare minimum, like a child who rushes through homework to go play. Let's not throw stones at him: we too know that a brother, a sister, a neighbor needs a helping hand, and we do not do it, or we do it "halfway, in a hurry."
God is not unjust to forget the work of our love (Hebrews 6:10). But he will not forget our neglect either when it is time to give an account. "God is not mocked."
And yet, even a sloppy sermon does not stop God from working. "If God could use Jonah's sloppy sermon in spite of his bad faith, then God can multiply the little we can do with a sincere heart." Like the five loaves and the two fish.

6. A Whole City Humbles Itself

The small and the great, the rich and the poor, the king and his court: everyone humbles themselves before the LORD. The pastor imagines Jonah: "There, I'm done." The people stay silent, then, little by little, some fall to their knees and weep. And Jonah says to himself: "Darn! They're converting."
He imagines soldiers beating their chests as they think of their crimes and of the horrified faces of their victims. They know they can never redeem themselves. All they have left is their guilt, their shame "and the grace of God."
The king decrees a fast for people and animals. But he hesitates: "Who knows whether God will not relent?" (Jonah 3:9). Like the sailors in chapter 1, he reasons the way pagans do, whose gods are capricious: "sometimes it's yes, sometimes it's no."
The God of the Bible is not like those false gods. "His yes is yes, his no is no." He is a God of grace. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13), whatever the number and seriousness of the sins.
"Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more" (Romans 5:20). "God is greater than our faults. His forgiveness is greater."
At the same time, in the southern kingdom, the prophet Isaiah writes: "Therefore the LORD will wait, that he may be gracious to you" (Isaiah 30:18). "He is just waiting for the moment to show grace. That is our God."

7. God's Grace Is Free of Our Borders

To Jonah's great dismay, God spares the city (Jonah 3:10). In the book of Jonah, God teaches through irony: the one who saved the sailors from the storm and the prophet from drowning now saves Nineveh from its sins. The worst sinners of the region are saved through "the worst of prophets."
"God's grace goes beyond the border of our prejudices, the border of our hatreds, our conflicts and our indifference." Without this, we would not know the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace is not only a gift to receive. It is a power that changes us from the inside and pushes us to see others as God sees them. "Cursing your enemies, everyone does that. Loving your enemies, that is supernatural. That is the grace of God."
Grace is not limited to our abilities: it makes us able to serve God despite our modest means.
It is also a warning. Jesus will say, 700 years later: "The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and see, one greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:41).
"May we never be found lacking in grace toward God and toward our neighbor."

Key Takeaways

God takes the road again with us where we had left him. Returning to him is always the best choice, and the sooner the better.
Nineveh was great in God's eyes, not because of its walls, but because of the love he had for its people.
The church is not a place of barriers against grace, but a place of welcome and service: nobody walked in perfect.
Even sloppy service does not stop God from working, but God deserves our whole heart. He multiplies the little offered sincerely.
God's grace goes beyond our prejudices, our hatreds and our indifference, and it makes us able to love our enemies.

Personal Application

Who are your Ninevites: the people you would struggle to see receive God's grace?
Is there an area where you need to go back to "square one" with God? What is holding you back from doing it now?
What barriers, in your attitude or in your church, might discourage someone from approaching Jesus?
In your service or in the help you give others, is there anything you do "halfway, in a hurry"?
For which person who has hurt you can you begin to pray and ask for God's blessing this week?

Cited Verses

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does God send Jonah to Nineveh a second time?

At the start of Jonah 3, God repeats almost word for word the call of chapter 1: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city." Jonah is back to square one. For Pastor Yves, God always takes the road again with us, right where we had left him aside. That is good news, but lost time stays lost: the sooner we return to God, the better.

What does "Nineveh was a great city to God" mean?

In verse 3, the Hebrew text says that Nineveh was a great city to God, or before God. Its greatness was measured neither by its walls nor by its wealth, but by the attention God gave to its people. The great sinners of this great city could receive a forgiveness just as great.

Why is Jonah's sermon so short?

"Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown": six words in French, five in Hebrew. Jonah was not incompetent; he was unwilling and hated the Ninevites. Yet the whole city humbled itself before God. Pastor Yves sees this as an encouragement: if God could use a sloppy sermon, he can multiply the little we do with a sincere heart.