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what God wants

Jonah 3:1-10

Jonah 3:1 Yahveh’s word happened to Jonah a second time:
Jonah 3:2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.”
Jonah 3:3 Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to Yahveh’s command. Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk.
Jonah 3:4 Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and yelled, “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!”
Jonah 3:5 Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They declared a fast and dressed in sackcloth — from the greatest of them to the least.
Jonah 3:6 When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
Jonah 3:7 Then he issued a decree in Nineveh: 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.
Jonah 3:8 Furthermore, 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.
Jonah 3:9 Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so we will not perish.
Jonah 3:10 God saw their actions — that they had turned from their evil ways — so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.

what God wants

God did not want to destroy Nineveh. He wanted to rescue them. He wanted to avoid the punishment Jonah warned them about.

God does not want to destroy Delco either. We owe it to our neighbors to let them know that God will punish those who rebel against him. But we also need to tell them that it doesn’t have to be that way.

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him” (John 3:17 NET).

The purpose of God is not revenge, it’s rescue. If people refuse to repent, they will be destroyed. Make no mistake about that. But for thousands of years, our commission has been to declare the good news to the nations. The good news is that we can avoid Gehenna.

The full sermon is here.

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