Sermons
Then God Relented
Series: Man Overboard: Jonah In JeopardyTHEN GOD RELENTED
Pt#9 / Man Overboard: Jonah In Jeopardy
Sermon Outline By Terry Siverd
Cortland Church of Christ / March 20, 2016
“Blessing Of The Fleet”.
We want to have a prayer with our L2L group regarding their upcoming convention.
The theme of this year’s convention is Mt.6:21 / for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
What an important subject for our youth and for all of us to dwell upon.
Brian Alfred preached a sermon, Where Is Your Treasure?, a few weeks back on January 31st.
As I mentioned in today’s FamilyMatters, next Sunday we will deviate from our current series
to present special Easter Sunday message entitled, Risen!.
Open your Bible to the book of Jonah.
Since this is the 9th sermon in this series, your Bible will very likely fall open to this section of Scripture.
Read from Jonah 3:7-10
The particular text that we want to focus upon this morning is Jonah 3:10.
When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, THEN GOD RELENTED
concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.
I want to begin this message with a brief Introduction to Theology - - Theology 101.
When serious Bible students attempt to describe the nature of God (His essence and attributes)
they usually translate this broad topic into two categories: Non-moral attributes and Moral Attributes.
Regarding the latter, one would speak of God’s holiness … righteousness & justice …goodness … and truth.
His non-moral attributes are quite often addressed and expressed by using four specific words:
omnipresence … omniscience … omnipotence … and immutability.
It is this last word, immutability, that we want to think on a bit this morning.
The word immutability is probably not in most of our working vocabularies. Other than in discussing theology,
it’s not a word that comes to mind very often. It looks a little intimidating but it’s really not hard to dissect.
The root word of immutability is the verb, mutate - - which means to change.
So he meaning of big word immutability is simply: “not subject to change”, “unchanging” or “changeless”.
Many of you have memorized Heb.13:8, which reads, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.
What is true of Jesus as the Son of God, is also true of God the Father.
Js.1:17 states, Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.
In speaking for God, Malachi the prophet declares (Mal.3:6), For I, the Lord, do not change…
In Heb.12:11 the writer quotes from Ps.102:26-27 - - They will perish, but Thou dost endure;
All of them will wear out like a garment …but Thou art the same, and Thy years will not come to an end.
Isa.46:10 speaks of God as One who engages in declaring the end from the beginning.
Related to this, Paul proclaims in Rom.11:29, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
What is true of God’s purposes, is also true of His promises.
(1Kgs.8:56 Solomon tells the people / not one word has failed of all of His good promises - - cf. 2Cor.1:20).
Likewise for His love and mercy (Ps.103:17 / the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting).
And His justice (Gen.18:25 / Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?).
Some have struggled with the language of Scripture wondering if there is a contradiction.
Num.23:19 states rather emphatically, God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent;
Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
1 Sam. 15:29 echoes this truth, The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind;
for He is not a man that He should change His mind.
As does Ps.110:4 / the Lord has sworn and will not change His mind…
ON THE SURFACE THESE CITATIONS MAY APPEAR TO BE AT ODDS WITH OTHER SCRIPTURES.
In Gen.6:6, after the fall and the prior to the flood, we read: And the Lord was sorry that He had made man…
In Ex.32:14, after the children of Israel worshiped the golden calf in the wilderness wanderings,
God said to Moses, Let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them.
But Moses, with earnest praying, entreated the Lord and vs.14 states,
So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.
In 2Sam.24:15-16, after David numbered the people of Israel (as if to gauge their human strength),
The Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning unto the appointed time; and seventy thousand
men of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem
to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity, and said to the angel, ‘It is enough! Now relax your hand.’.
Now we have come full circle to the text that is before us from Jonah3:10.
God had commanded Jonah to preach: yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown (Jonah 3:4).
But here in vs.10 we read, when God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way,
then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.
So how do we explain these alleged discrepancies?
It’s really not that difficult. The purposes and promises of God never change. His love and mercy is changeless.
But God sometimes gives conditional declarations.
This truth is encapsulated in Jer.18:7-10 - -
At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it;
If that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.
Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it;
If it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good which I have promised to bless it.
We also read this basic truth in Joel 2:12-13 - - ‘Yet even now’, declares the Lord, ‘Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping, and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and relenting of evil.
What we have read thus far in the book of Jonah is truly astonishing.
Jonah runs from God, but like the prodigal son in Lk.15, he comes to his senses and in doing so he is saved by God.
What should have been a certain death in the belly of the whale becomes a new beginning for Jonah.
God sent the storm and God appointed the great fish, but God relented and caused the whale to vomit up Jonah.
Nineveh and the Assyrian nation were so very wicked.
God stood all that He could stand and finally sent Jonah to warn them that, “God had have enough!”.
But the wicked citizens of Nineveh, from the greatest to the least, repented.
It was not subterfuge. Their weeping did not consists of “crocodile tears”.
They did not feign a change of heart, THEY TRULY REPENTED.
Jesus declared precisely that in Lk.11:32 - - they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
If we closed out our sermon at this juncture, I suppose we could derive some good from it.
We’d have learned some important truths about God’s nature in general, and about His immutability in particular.
But the purpose of preaching is not just to tell a historical story about a by-gone era.
And neither is it just to teach us new words.
If our lives are to be pleasing to God, and if we desire to be the best that we can be,
then we must ACT UPON the words of Scripture. James refers to this as being “DOERS OF THE WORD” (Js.1:22).
No matter what we have done in the past, God is changeless in His mercy.
Js.4:9 states, He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
In 1Cor.6:9f, Paul enumerates a number of sins - - things like fornication … idolatry …
thievery … covetousness … drunkenness … swindlers … and other sins.
And then in vs.11, he states, And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified,
but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
There is no sin too awful for God to forgive.
They only barrier that stands between us and God is an unwillingness to repent on our part.
The Ninevites learned this first hand.
The destruction that God had planned for them, “He did not do it!” (Jonah 3:10b).
God relented from the punishment that He intended to inflict upon them and granted them grace & mercy instead.
He saw their sackcloth & ashes and their fasting and He heard their prayers.
From His heavenly throne, God witnessed the genuine desires of their heart to turn from their wicked ways.
You cannot repent too soon, because you do not know how soon it may be too late.
There is a great danger in delay. Tomorrow might be too late.
Let me close with one more Scripture (Heb.3:15 & 4:7)
Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…
