Hinge Verses--Jonah 4:6-7
We are returning to finish out the story of Jonah, started in Day 15 "But God.." post. Jonah finally makes it to Nineveh after traveling about 3,000 miles in the wrong direction. After the fish vomited Jonah on to the shore, Jonah was told again "Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you." Jonah gets up and does as he's commanded, walks into the city Day One, and warns the city what will happen if they don't repent "In 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished." So everyone--from the king to the least--believed in God, proclaimed a fast, and dressed in sackcloth. The king additionally removed his royal robe and sat in ashes--a sign of humility and repentance --and decreed:
"By order of the king and his nobles; no person or animal, herd or flock is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing. Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so we will not perish."
And that is exactly what happened. God saw that they had turned from their evil ways, He changed His mind, and He did not demolish Nineveh.
This would be a great ending, except Jonah. He was livid that the Ninevites had turned from their wicked ways. This is what he expected to happen--Jonah would put his reputation on the line by warning Nineveh that they were going to be destroyed; God would come through at their repentance because He is gracious, compassionate, patient, faithful, loving; and then Jonah would look like a fool. That's literally the reason he went in the wrong direction in the first place. Now Jonah would rather die than live. The LORD asks Jonah "Are you right to be angry?" 👀
So Jonah marches off to pout. He works on a handmade shelter and sits in the shade of it to watch what would happen to Nineveh. God goes the extra mile and makes a plant grow to provide shade, to "rescue him from his trouble". Jonah was thrilled. BUT then GOD sent a worm to destroy the plant. Then He sent a scorching east wind. Jonah returns to his thoughts of his own death, and God confronts him again: "Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?" Jonah explodes, "Yes it is right!!! I could DIE of anger." Then God comes in with the knockout punch--Jonah cares about the plant but does not care about Nineveh or its people, nor does he want God to care about Nineveh and it's 20,000 souls. BUT GOD...
John Winthrop was a Puritan born in 1588 in Suffolk, England. He was a devoted religious teenager and, as an adult, he longed for a world where wickedness was replaced by goodness. He was given a chance in 1629 to sail to America with a new company, and plant a colony there. As he sailed to America on the Arabella, he wrote a sermon called "A Model of Christian Charity". He dreamed of a colony in covenant with God and each other, and that they would build a "City on a Hill" in New England, and that all the eyes of the new land would be on them.
"If we deal with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all believers in God; we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, til we are forced out of the new land where we are going." John Winthrop BUT GOD...
Nineveh was built on two prominent mounds. They are potentially a City on a Hill. The whole city-- everyone-- has repented. However, within 150 years, we find them again in the book of Nahum 1 Because of their wickedness, because someone has risen up who plots evil against the LORD, the LORD prophesies their destruction. We find ancient Nineveh in Mosul, Iraq today. So what happened? Jonah missed an opportunity to disciple these new believers and potential followers of the LORD. He was focused on himself, his comfort, his reputation, instead of on the next step that would've helped depend their faith. So the city returned to its original state, their faith like the second seed in Matthew 13:20-21--on rocky ground with little soil, and because it had no root, it quickly fell away as soon as trials came.
What happened to the city on a Hill that John Winthrop dreamed of? Many well-known Americans have quoted this phrase and this sermon. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Mario Cuomo. But they are referencing it more in the bent of the Great American Experiment, and whether America has led the charge in a new government model. And while our country was founded on Christian principles, I'm sad to say that I'm not convinced we are a City on a Hill to the eyes watching us. I think we are more on thorny ground from Matthew 13:22 our love for the LORD choked out by the cares and riches of this world.
We will end with the closing of John Winthrop's sermon--"A Model of Christian Charity"
"And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel,
'Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,' in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other God's, our pleasure and profits and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.
Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed may live,
by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,
for His is our life and our prosperity."
Oh, BUT GOD.
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