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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from both the Gospel reading and the Old Testament reading. You may be seated.
For those who have dealt with kids, you know that when you ask a child, “What’s wrong? What’s the problem? Why are you upset?” the answer they give you may not necessarily be the real reason why they’re upset. You have to kind of dig a little bit, ask again, and re-clarify. Then maybe they’re able to tell you what it really is that’s upsetting them. And that really comes into play during puberty, doesn’t it? Well, you know what? It’s no different as we grow older. In our marriages or as adults, we’ll ask someone what’s wrong sometimes, and whatever answer we’re given may not, and in fact, nine times out of ten, isn’t the main thing that we’re upset about or they’re upset about. It’s something else that we’ll point to, which really isn’t, and we have to do a lot of digging and a lot of asking again before we finally come to possibly the reason why we’re upset.
But regardless, there is one antidote left for all of those things in our life, and the one antidote that fits all people, all ages, all backgrounds, is the forgiveness of sin. That’s it.
Now, it’s interesting in the call of Jonah in the Old Testament and the call of Peter, James, John, and Andrew in the Gospel reading that God didn’t have any of these apostles take a personality test or a Myers-Briggs test. You know, “What kind of personality are they?” You know, because He didn’t want to get someone who’s introverted or too power-hungry or too forceful. He didn’t ever do that. He just picked the man. Period. Every single one of those men had baggage. Just like you and I have baggage—things that we have done or have been done to us that have shaped us, and we carry that with us as we move forward. It has shaped us. It has made us who we are, both for better and for not so good.
Now, Jonah and Peter are the two we’re going to be looking at this morning closely. Both have the same calling of God, both handled it in two diametrically opposed ways, and yet God resolved the problem both in Jonah’s life and in Peter’s life through the same forgiveness of sins.
So we have Jonah. Jonah is a guy who God says, “Go to preach to the people of Nineveh.” Now, was Jonah one of those guys who had a heart for missions? No, he didn’t want to go to this group of people. Was Jonah a guy who was evangelistically more sensitive? No. He was someone who hated to have to go to this pagan city of Nineveh to preach to them. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have chosen him to be my prophet. And yet God chose him to be His prophet.
Now, how does Jonah handle it? Jonah says, “No way, José!” And he is out of there. He leaves his town, goes to the coast of the Mediterranean, gets on a ship, and sails so far away from Nineveh. And you know what happens. He gets swallowed by the great fish. He dwells in its belly for three long days. He repents. The fish vomits him up on the shore. And we’re at where the scripture reading is this morning. Did you hear what it said? “And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”
What changed Jonah? Forgiveness changed Jonah. What changed him from the man who did not want to have anything to do with Nineveh to the one who was in the belly of the fish to the one now on the land? Forgiveness changed Jonah. He had been received again by God for his stubbornness and his anger and all of his baggage that he carried. He had been forgiven by God. That’s what enabled him then to take on the mantle that God gave him to preach to the people of Nineveh.
He’s different than Peter because Peter, in the Gospel reading, when Peter hears Jesus’ call, “Follow me,” Peter’s like, “Yeah, baby!” He throws down his nets, leaves it, and follows Him. That can sometimes make you and me feel guilty, like, “Man, I don’t always jump forward when God pushes me into a situation or a work that He wants me to be taking care of. I kind of feel slow and not sure to check it out whether or not I want to.” But not Peter; by golly, that guy went.
Good news is this: Peter had a lot of baggage too. We just don’t get to see it at the beginning like we did with Jonah. Jonah’s up front on us right there. Bing, bang, babada, boom, there it is. But Peter comes forward, leaves his nets, jumps into the work of Christ, right? But God, through His great wisdom, allowed something that Peter said to Jesus to be recorded for eternity for you and for me in the Scriptures with Peter’s struggle with leaving his nets.
“You tell me,” honey, this is Peter’s wife, “Are we going to have enough money? You know this is a great mission that you’re doing with Jesus, but honey, we don’t have the income that we once had, and you have to rely upon whomever to give it to you, and sometimes that’s not the same. And honey, what about retirement?” Now, I’m not saying that an actual conversation took place, but if you think she went around piously going, “My husband is an apostle of Jesus Christ; it’s so wonderful,” you’re not in the real world, and you’re not a sinner like he is and she is.
Here’s the words out of Peter’s lips that let you know he struggled with this life that he jumped into. He said to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What will we then have?” That’s as clear as a bell. He is saying, “Lord, I am struggling with this that you called me to do because I’m having to leave everything to follow you, and it’s not always that easy.”
As soon as Peter reveals his true heart, which is a comfort for you and me because we realize we are just like Peter. He’s not any better than us, and we’re just like Jonah. Sometimes we refuse God at the beginning, and then God brings us back by what? Forgiveness. Or we’re like Peter. We jump on board, do it, and then we get scared. And what brings us back? Forgiveness. Forgiveness.
Either way, Jesus gives this answer to Peter, which He gives to you: “Truly I say to you, everyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or children, or land, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”
Now, lest you think that was the final band-aid placed on the wound of fear on Peter, you remember as well as I that in the garden when the soldiers came, Peter ran just as fast as everyone else. When he was in the courtyard listening to Jesus’ words, when Jesus was in custody, and he was asked, “Are you a part of this?” You also remember he denied Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times.
And what did Jesus do? Say, “You know what? You are a duffel bag drag. Get out of here. I’m not having anything to do with you because you are not faithful.” He did the same thing to Peter that He did to Jonah. He reinstated him with forgiveness. Forgiveness is what He reinstated him with. You and I have been given that same forgiveness.
So what makes Jonah such a great fisher of men in his preaching to Nineveh? Because he’s experienced forgiveness in his reinstatement by God. He knew he was facing death as he went down and down into the water, and God allowed that great fish to swallow him. He could live inside that belly for three days, and he actually lived and then was vomited up. He knew that was God’s hand. He knew forgiveness.
What about Peter? Peter knew forgiveness as well. That’s how he could stand before people and proclaim Jesus. They would say, “Oh yeah, whatever, you denied him three times, if I remember right.” Because Jesus reinstated Peter with forgiveness.
So why did God choose you to be a proclaimer of Jesus? You have drunk deeply at the well that you knew you had not within yourself. It came from outside of you, that forgiveness. You have chewed upon and have found solace in the bone of God’s solace of forgiveness. That’s why God chose you to be a proclaimer of Jesus Christ. And not just a proclaimer of Jesus Christ, but a proclaimer of Jesus’ forgiveness.
I know what my nets are, at least some of my nets, that I need to leave behind. And by God’s grace, through you, and through my beloved bride, and my children, and other people, I’m learning more about my nets that I have that I need to let go of. But you, you know your nets that you need to let go. And it’s scary to let go of those nets. Just like it was scary for Peter. Just like it was scary for Jonah to leave that city and go to some place that had nothing to do with him, was not a part of his culture, did not even possibly speak a similar language. It’s no different with you. And God wants us to leave our nets and trust Him.
Do you know I’ve been here for 14 years? It’s a long time. And I can tell you the very first thing that I was impressed with when I met so many of you was you were friendly. You were friendly to people who hadn’t darkened the door of the church for years, and you were friendly to people who were a brand new face in this midst. You were and have been and will continue to be a friendly and loving congregation. You are what makes St. Paul St. Paul, not me. I could die tomorrow. God could call me away. I am not St. Paul. You are St. Paul and have been St. Paul.
What I have seen is that you have tasted forgiveness. You struggle with forgiveness just like I do at times, but you have tasted forgiveness. You have known forgiveness. It is why you’re here even. But St. Paul needs your involvement. It needs your encouragement. It needs your assistance, your facilitation, your giving of self as we become continually outreaching and outlooking Jesus, as Jonah and Peter were, giving forgiveness as Jonah and Peter did.
Now, you can’t say, “Well, I’m too old.” You can’t say, “I’m too young.” You can’t say, “I’m too shy.” You can’t say, “That’s going to make me uncomfortable.” All of those are ungodly reasons because Peter and Jonah were neither too young nor too old. They were neither too shy nor too outgoing. They were neither too comfortable nor uncomfortable. God called them. They didn’t take a personality quiz. You remember that.
In fact, it’s not about you. Get over you. Get over me. It’s not about us. It’s only about the one whose forgiveness you have tasted and the one who is in you and through whom works in you, through you, to other people—Jesus Christ.
How do we know? Well, if I were to ask you the greatest miracle in the Bible, you would come up with dozens of examples. In fact, you would probably include Jonah being swallowed by the great fish as one of them. That’s not a big miracle. Don’t fool yourself. That is not a big miracle.
The biggest miracle in the book of Jonah and in all of Scripture is that a man who is gripey and grumbly can be used by God with a message that’s so powerfully effective, it can convert not 3,000 like Peter with his sermon on Pentecost, but hundreds of thousands of people—all the same pagan group—in a town called Nineveh, to faith in Jesus Christ. That’s one of the greatest miracles in the Scripture, and that’s really the overarching miracle of Jonah.
And if God has done that, the beautiful statement that He wants to make clear to us in that, that’s in our reading this morning, is this little one sentence: “And the people of Nineveh believed Jonah’s word.” Look at the text: “The people of Nineveh believed God.” It’s not about Jonah. It’s not about whether he was this way or that way, whether he had this personality trait or that personality trait, whether he had all this baggage or hardly any baggage. It’s about the message.
That’s the same with you. It’s not about your background, your baggage, your issues, what’s happened to you, or what you’ve done. It’s about that which you believe in: the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things about forgiveness, blessed are you if you do them, if you do forgiveness to other people by proclaiming it and giving it.”
Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
In the name of Jesus, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
