And change is the order of the day. President Obama ran under the banner of Change, promising to bring a new dawn to American politics and a new dawn to the American way of life. He toured throughout the country promising change – change in an unpopular foreign policy, change in a failed economic policy, change in environmental policy, and change in a strictly partisan approach to politics. President Obama has promised to bring that change and through his policies to bring an end to the bickering and infighting and deliver a new dawn of unity and hope in the United States of America.
President Obama is not the first to preach the message of change.
Jonah, the prophet of the Lord spent only three days walking through Nineveh, a major city of the Assyrian Empire with a similar sort of message. Jonah called for change. God called Jonah, and commanded him to go to the City of Nineveh.
We all know Jonah. He is most famous for his three night's lodging in the belly of a large fish. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. Jonah knew God was merciful and he knew that if he went to preach to them and they repented God might spare them. Jonah wanted them to perish. So he went off in the opposite direction. He tried to get away from the Lord by stowing away on a ship. But, as we know, God caused the storm to blow up, the sailors discovered Jonah was the cause of the storm. Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by the fish and then vomited out of the fish's mouth after 3 days and 3 nights onto the shores of the Assyrian empire.
Jonah repented of his sin and made his way to Nineveh to preach the message that God gave him to preach.
God sent Jonah to Nineveh. There are a few important things for us to know about the city of Nineveh. The first time God spoke to Jonah he said this: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me."
According to God's own description, Nineveh was a “great city”.
Nineveh was large. It took Jonah 3 days to make it all the way through the city.
History and archeology teach us that Nineveh was a magnificent city, with palaces and gardens, and city squares, carvings and statues.
Nineveh was a beautiful city. It's beauty was the result of their wealth, their success in military exploits, in commerce and trade and all of these things were gifts given by God. (Although during the time of Jonah, Nineveh had experienced some economic hardship) But, had it not been for God's blessing, had it not been for the fact that God is a good God who gives good gifts even to the wicked, Nineveh would have never achieved the greatness that is acknowledge here even by God in the book of Jonah.
But not only was Nineveh a great city. Nineveh was an evil city. They had committed a great many sins. Sins that were so great that their evil stood out before God.
Nineveh was known for its worship of false gods, especially the goddess Ishtar. The worship of Ishtar involved all kinds of sexual perversion and her temples employed prostitutes.
Nineveh was known for its violence. The Old Testament Prophet Nahum condemns Nineveh for its violence, claiming that Nineveh has piled up the bodies of her dead and so that they stumbled over them in the streets. Nineveh, in her lust for power and wealth, lost her conscience, she lost her regard for human life as a good and sacred gift of God. And Nineveh became exceptionally evil.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Are there any modern day parallels that compare to the “great city” of Nineveh? Can you see rampant sexual perversion and a careless disrespect of human life accompanied by great God-given prosperity and success anywhere in today's world?
This past week, while the nation was looking ahead to the presidency of Barack Obama, there were also those who were looking back to that fateful day in 1973 when the US Supreme Court decided in favor of legalizing abortion in the famous court case Roe vs. Wade. Since the court decided in favor of abortion, there have been over 50 million abortions in the United States alone, with an average of about 3,000 abortions occurring every day. The United States, a modern day “great city” is guilty of killing her children, her babies are being murdered at alarming rates. If God was angered and outraged at the sins of the people of Nineveh for piling up the bodies of their dead and treating them with shame and contempt by running over them in the streets, we have treated our own children at least as badly if not worse!. Every day, thousands of baby boys and girls are dying. They are being killed, treated like trash; their little hands and feet are dumped into paper buckets and they are thrown into the dumpster.
The stench of Nineveh's evil had risen up before God and he was angry. This city and these people had committed this horrible sin against people He had created and against people He loved. In His justice he could have destroyed them right then and there. But He did not. God is a merciful God and He loved even the people of Nineveh, in spite of their violence and their crimes against humanity. God in His mercy called His prophet Jonah and sent him to Nineveh to preach to that people so that they turn away from their sin, so that they repent, so that they stop their violence and their sin and so that they turn and receive God's forgiveness.
And so Jonah, in spite of his reluctance, in spite of the fact that he did all he could to run away from God and to run away from Nineveh found himself making his way through that great and grand city, through that violent and evil city.
Just like Jonah, Christians today have been given that same duty. Just like Nineveh was a great city that had been blessed and beloved by God we live in a great city. The United States of America is great. There is no mistaking that fact. God has given our nation great power, great wealth. Our nation, our cities are beautiful. Our people are resourceful, hard working, possessing great ingenuity and a will to “get the job done”. But we are also a wicked nation, an evil nation. We have tolerated and condoned great evil. We have committed great sins and we have piled up the bodies of our dead, even the bodies of our own children. The Church today must proclaim the message of repentance. We must urge our leaders to stop this evil and barbaric practice.
The theme of today's orators has been “change”. We have heard that sermon preached to us over and over again. America needs change. Whether the answer was “Change we can believe in” or the “Change America needs”. we were told that America needed to change.
That same theme was preached by Jonah. If you go to Barack Obama's website, you will see the top banner reads “Change is coming”. That was the same message preached by Jonah. The message God gave to Jonah as he made his way throughout the city of Nineveh was by no means complicated or complex, it was really quite simple - “Yet 40 days and Nineveh is about to be changed.” If you check your text, you will notice that the ESV reads that Nineveh will be “overthrown”. That is only half the intended meaning. But the Lord had a double meaning in mind when he gave this sermon – Nineveh will be changed.
There are two ways to take it – it could mean what our ESV text says, it could mean that Nineveh will be overthrown. That would certainly be a change. Things would be different. But there is also a gospel based hint of possibility in that message. There is the hint that maybe Nineveh will respond to Jonah's preaching with “real Change”, with the “Change that Nineveh needed”; there was the hint that Nineveh would repent. That she would turn from her great sin and beg the Lord for mercy.
That was the message of Jonah's sermon. Not complicated. Not hard to understand. God has judged Nineveh and she needs to change. One way or another Nineveh will be changed. That is the same message for abortion friendly culture. Murder does not need to be “safe, legal, or rare”. Murder, the murder of our babied needs to be stopped. There needs to be change.
But part of that message, part of that change needs to be God's message of forgiveness.
Allow me to read an expert from a letter written by a woman who had an abortion:
"Let me tell you about that day. I was 17 years old and very scared. My boyfriend and I skipped school and we drove to Chicago. When we got there, the first thing they asked for was money. Then they asked for my name. I was taken to a large room with many other girls and given a gown. A woman stood in the front and told us we would feel some discomfort but `not much more than a female exam'. We were then lined up in single file. I remember feeling like I was a cow being led to a slaughterhouse, but I quashed those feelings.
"Then we were taken, one by one, into a small room where the abortion would take place. The abortionist was cold. Never said a word. Just put me in the position. The sound was horrible, as was the pain. Let me tell you, it was many years before a vacuum cleaner didn't bother me because of this sound. After it was over, I was taken back to the small cubicle where I had left my clothes. I was not told anything about the mental anguish and the physical pain I would feel for so many years.
"Finally we drove home, and on the way I fell asleep (I guess maybe that was my way out). We arrived at my house. My boyfriend awakened me with sort of a slap. He said, `You're home.' That's all he said. My seven-week-old baby was gone.
"Well, time goes on. But as a direct result of this abortion, I have lost five babies through miscarriages. Finally I had a little girl, and she was born with a heart problem. She has since undergone heart surgery and much pain, and, believe you me, I have been suffering more than she, but mine has been guilt. Mine has been pain and shame. And I stand here and say, `Abortion is wrong!'"
Abortion is wrong. It is murder. It is sin. Those who have committed that sin need to repent. But those who have committed that sin also and especially need to know that it is a sin that has been forgiven by God.
This woman knows what she did was wrong. Indeed, most women who have abortions believe that they are wrong, but they go through with the abortion because they feel trapped, they feel there is no way out and then they live with the guilt and the shame of what they have done like this woman here.
This woman needs to hear about Nineveh. The people of Nineveh were just as guilty as she. And more so. They had piled up the corpses of their slain. Yet when they heard God's message of repentance and change – they changed. They had a change of heart. They confessed their sin, they repented in sackcloth and ashes and God had mercy. He did not punish them.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus refers back to this city. Jesus says “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41)
The wicked and murderous people of Nineveh repented of their sin and God forgave them, so that Jesus assures us that they will arise on the last day and that they will receive God's gift of eternal life in heaven. Their sins were washed away when they were changed by the preaching of Jonah.
If the preaching of Jonah changed the hearts of the people of Nineveh, so that they were forgiven, imagine the change that is available for this women and the millions like her through the preaching of Him who is greater than Jonah.
Jesus the Greater Prophet came preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins. And just like Jonah was reluctant to fulfill the destiny laid out for him by the Father, so also was Jesus reluctant. So reluctant that he begged for there to be another way. “Father, if it be your will take this cup of suffering from me.” But the Greater Prophet did not run away. He did not try to escape God's will but He willing went “like a sheep to the slaughter.”
And just as Jonah was in the belly of the beast for three days, Jesus was in hell . For three hours on the cross, Jesus endured hell. He suffered hell even while he was suffering from the nails and the thorns and the spear. And out of his wounds poured the blood that cleanses us from sin – the blood that cleanses us from our shame and our guilt – even the shame, the guilt, the sin of abortion. To those women who are the victims of abortion, to those women who are stained by the blood of their children, we need to proclaim to them that the blood of Jesus has washed away those stains so that there is forgiveness, so that they are set free and released from their guilt.
And what of that change? Jesus, the greater Jonah was also three days away. In the belly of the beast – in the belly of hell, but not as the victim, no longer the victim. The Jesus in hell was Jesus the victor, the Jesus who conquered sin and who was soon to conquer death. He was there to preach his victory to the sinners in hell so that Jesus is Lord every place. That means that Jesus is Lord of heaven. Jesus is Lord of earth. Jesus is Lord even in hell. And yes, Jesus is Lord even where hell seems reigns supreme: even at the abortion clinics, at Planned Parenthood, and at pro choice rallies. Jesus is Lord of Heaven and earth.
And Jesus has called us to call for change, the change America really needs. The change of repentance from the sin of abortion. The change of repentance from the murder of children and babies. But especially the change of heart that can only come through faith in the risen and ascended Lord of heaven and earth who has died to cleanse us from all sin. And that is Change America can believe in.
Amen.
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