Have You Been To Nineveh Lately?

Have you been to Nineveh lately?  Now that is a funny question isn't it?  Especially seeing as Nineveh is not a place anyone can go to anymore.  Or can they?                                                       Our church is currently doing a study on Redemption stories.  Today's lesson was on Jonah.  It was an interesting lesson.  Most of you have either read or heard the story of Jonah.  Probably more than once.  We'd all heard about how Jonah didn't want to go there because their reputation was known.  They were not nice people.  As a matter of fact, they were pretty evil, hence the reason God wanted Jonah to go there.  But Jonah wasn't having it.  He was not only afraid of them, I mean, who wouldn't be?  I know that it would intimidate me.  But he also hated them.  He was a bit prejudiced against them.  They were the Assyrians and they were far from Godly.             In his opinion, if they weren't from Israel, so they did not deserve to hear about God, or from God.  They especially did not deserve to reap the benefits of Gods mercy.  He didn't want to have anything to do with them.  He became defiant!                                                                                  He probably couldn't believe that God would actually ask him to do such a thing as to put himself in danger by going to the city of Nineveh, where they hung the hides of their enemies on the walls, impaled, them on stakes or even buried them alive in their walls.  They were evil like I said.  He probably wondered why God would want one of His prophets to be subjected to this.  He probably thought it over in his head and thought surely this was a death sentence.  God wanted him to die at the hands of people that he despised.                                                                 But he was a prophet of God!  He had always been obedient to the Lord.  He always spoke when and to whomever the Lord God told him to.   Well, as long as they looked like him and spoke like him and were not different in any way.  He was prejudiced!                                                              So, he did what any man of God would do in that situation.  He bought a ticket on a boat in the other direction!                                                                                                                                     Now we all know that God got his attention, you know, the big fish and all, and he finally went to Nineveh!  Just because he went there did not necessarily mean he was happy about it!  He'd had 3 days to stew in the decisions he had made.                                                                           He cried out to God when the realization came to him that he wasn’t actually dead.  He hadn’t drowned but had been rescued. He praised God for saving him out the pits.                            Jonah says after 3 days in the pit of this “Big Fish” that God spoke to the fish and had him vomit, not open his mouth and let him walk out, but vomit him onto dry land.                                    Now, I know there are a lot of fishermen that might read this so you will understand what I am talking about.                                                                                                                              When Jonah came out of that big fish, I am reminded of Martha’s words when she was talking to Jesus about her brother Lazarus at the tomb when she said, “Surely he stinketh!”                           I am sure that Jonah surely stinkethed!                                                                                       Also, let’s get a mental picture here.                                                                                              He had been in the stomach of a big fish for 3 days.  I would imagine that all those stomach acids had done a number on his skin.                                                                                                      So, he stinkethed and he looked like, well, fish vomit.                                                                Then the Lord spoke to Jonah again.                                                                                        Paraphrase:                                                                                                                                 “Now that I have your attention son, I would like you to go to Nineveh!  I want you to tell them this message.  “In forty-days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”                                                           It took him three days to walk from one end of Nineveh to the other.  Some believe that it was 60 miles wide.  The Bible says there were more than 120,000 people there.                                         I am sure like Martha, many of them thought, surely he stinketh, and I am sure they thought he looked awfully strange.                                                                                                                  But God got their attention.  Just like he had gotten Jonah’s.                                                      After delivering the message Jonah went and sat on a hill and waited for the mass destruction,      And he waited and waited and waited.                                                                                          But God had got ahold of their hearts.                                                                                          The king and the people repented and turned from their evil ways and God in His infinite mercy spared the great city of Nineveh and all of its inhabitants!  For God is a God of Justice as well as a God of mercy!                                                                                                                              But Jonah did not see it that way.                                                                                                    He was wanting the Justice side of God to reign down.  Forgetting the mercy that God had just shown him.                                                                                                                                       In the end while Jonah was wanting to know why God had not destroyed them like He said He would, God reminded him that He was a God of love.                                                                Now as we all know, John 3:16 had not been written yet.  That would come along several hundreds of year later, wherein that time Nineveh was destroyed because they had turned away from God.                                                                                                                                       But at this moment, at this point of time, we have the message that was needed.                        For God so loved the World!  Not just Israel.  The Whole World!                                               The message of salvation was not just for Israel.  It was for the whole world.                         Now, if I was Jonah, I would have kept my mouth shut about this ordeal.  I would not want my friends or family or anyone for that matter to know that I had been disobedient to God and that I had become fish vomit before He could get my attention.  I would not want them to know that I had waited on the side of a hill for God to destroy over 120,000 people just because I hated them.                                                                                                                                              But Jonah, well, God must have really got through to him.                                                           He told the story.                                                                                                                            He told how he thought that he could hide from God!  Hide from His very presence.                 But again, I am reminded of a chapter in the Bible.  It is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.                                                                                                                                          Psalm 139 reminds us that there is no place we can go that He doesn’t know it.  No place we can hide.                                                                                                                                              God knew all along where Jonah was.  God had a mission for Jonah.                                         God prepared a way for Jonah to do as He had asked.                                                                Even though it took drastic measures, Jonah finally did what the Lord asked of him and because of it many were saved.                                                                                                                 Now to get back to my original question.                                                                                  Have you been to Nineveh lately?                                                                                                    Is there someone that God is compelling you to tell of God’s undying love for them?  Someone that maybe just rubs you the wrong way?  Someone that you don’t think is deserving of Gods redeeming love and perfect salvation?  Maybe you are thinking, “I don’t want to be a missionary,” or “I just don’t think I would know what to say,” or “ANY OTHER EXCUSE YOU CAN THINK OF!”                                                                                                                     Jonah didn’t know what to say either.  God gave him the words to speak and that was the message!                                                                                                                                      What is it going take for you to realize the world, the whole world, not just the ones in the world that you like or love, not just the ones that you think deserve it, but the Whole World, needs Jesus!                                                                                                                                           Have you been to Nineveh lately?                                                                                                The whole world is our mission field!  Your next door neighbor!  Your hair dresser!  Your doctor!  Your best friend!  Your banker!  Your cashier where you shop!                                      You don’t have to go to Nineveh.  You are already there.                                                            “For God so loved the WHOLE WORLD that He gave His only Son.  That whosoever (in the WHOLE WORLD) believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life!”                  There is the message, and here is the command!                                                                        Mark 16:15-16  “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.  He that believeth shall be saved.  He that doesn’t shall be damned.”                                                       God didn’t tell Jonah to make them repent, He just told him to give them the message.              We are not told to make people repent.  We are just to give them the message!                          God will take care of the rest.                                                                                                         He always has and He always will.                                                                                               So, who is up for a trip to Nineveh?