[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters! I would like to pick up where we left off a good month ago, as you may remember. This next part of the story is full of encouragement, full of encouragement. When I read this passage, I cannot help but marvel at the greatness of God's grace. I would like to summarise the message of this story in three lines of thought, and proclaim to you the greatness and wonder of God's grace in a way that is an encouragement and an encouragement to us all. I do not know how much you sense the wonderful grace reflected in these very first words, as the story begins. I can imagine Jonah's utter amazement when the word of the Lord "came to him" the second time. It must have been something like this that Jonah felt: 'How? After all this, God is still speaking to me, and not only is God speaking to me, but God is sending me? Does God want to use me, can God use me, who have so badly failed in his cause? I who have fled from the ministry, and have turned my back on God with such cowardice and cowardice? I think, brethren, that Jonah would not have wondered if the word of the Lord, when he "came to him" the second time, had said to him something like this: "Now, you disobedient prophet, you can go wherever you like! I can't use you anymore. I can send someone to Nineveh who is more worthy and better qualified for this service than you. I can no longer trust you, you have been unfaithful, you are unfit for this service! It would have been natural if the Spirit of prophecy, which Jonah had resisted, had left the prophet and never returned to him. For if ever there was a man unfit and unworthy to serve the cause of God, this prophet Jonah was truly unfit and unworthy; and yet it was not what would have been natural, but something quite different. From this, brethren, we see how full and how perfect is the forgiving grace of God! And that if a penitent man truly accepts this pardoning grace of God in his heart, God will forget all his unworthiness as if it had never happened. He will receive him into His confidence again, put him to work again, and again give him a new purpose, a new task, and a new content to his life.I said before of Jonah that he was unfit and unworthy to serve the cause of God. And yet... You know, brethren, this "yet", this is the great grace that I cannot fail to admire in the heart of God towards us. That if there is anyone who knows very well what the words "unfit" and "unworthy" mean, believe it, brethren, that we, the robed preachers of God's Word, are he. We really know! Sometimes the knowledge of our own inadequacy and unworthiness is such a crushing burden that if it were not for that "nevertheless", if it were not for the unspeakable grace of God encouraging and encouraging us, we would never dare to stand here, in front of you, in this pulpit! That is why I say that I cannot fail to marvel at the greatness of God's grace, the wonder of God who, in spite of our inability and unworthiness, yet always speaks again, and yet always sends again. And not a second time, as Jonah did, but oh, who knows how many times!
One of God's most wonderful works, one of his most wonderful attributes, is that he is always willing to start over with a person. To start again as if nothing had happened before: to start all over again, all over again. Take from this that there is a way back to God for everyone! Wherever he has wandered off to, whatever has happened to him, there is a way back to God. For behold, the grace of God is wonderful. Whatever you have done, yet, yet there is grace for you too. I said that you are unfit and unworthy to serve the Lord. Now brethren, tell me, who is not unfit and unworthy to carry the message of God to men? To take the call of God out into this world? - Well, everyone is unfit and everyone is unworthy! And yet God uses people, such unfit and unworthy people, for this ministry.
It was about fifty years ago in Kecskemét that a little boy in his seventh year, a very poor tailor's son, a scrawny, weak little boy, told another little boy in his seventh year, a classmate, what he had heard the day before in Sunday school about Jesus. And the following Sunday he led this other little boy, who was in his seventh year, by the hand to Sunday school. And that other little boy there in that Sunday School received the kind of prompting that has resulted in him standing here in this pulpit preaching the Word to you. I will never forget, brothers and sisters, that little prophet of God, that little child prophet, who then spoke to me in such a simple, childlike way about what he had heard about Jesus. See, if this little boy, who was only seven years old, and if the apostle Peter, who denied Jesus, and Paul, who persecuted Jesus, and Jonah, who deserted, and I, in spite of our own unworthiness and inadequacy, can be ambassadors and servants of God - then you can be, and you can be, and you can be, and you can be, and you can be, all of you! For God does not need our skill or our ability or our competence, but our obedience alone and only. So we read, 'The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time'. This is not the first time the word of the Lord has come to you, is it?! Understand from this, brother, that God has not given up on your being his ambassador in this world. He has not given up that you too, as His messenger, should go about the great city of Budapest with His message. And the countryside, and your circle of friends, and your family. To be a prophet and apostle in your own place, among the people you come in contact with. That you too, in His service, may proclaim with your words and your life what you have experienced of God's love.
The other day I met a doctor I didn't know in a patient's room. This doctor was visiting and treating that patient as a physician, and I was visiting the same patient as a pastor. It struck me that there was something about this doctor's every word and his whole demeanor that somehow radiated "the good smell of Christ" all around him in the room, without a single word about Jesus himself. The patient remarked, "I owe my life to this doctor. And I could tell by his words that he meant not only his healing, but somehow much more. The kind of life that Jesus says "I am Life". And when this doctor left, I stayed there and I really experienced that there was an inexplicable peace, serenity and purity in the room, and a gentle smile on the faces. A modern prophet, a modern man of God. And yet, brothers and sisters, he is no more qualified and no more worthy of this ministry than you or I or any of us. And yet... Well, that "yet" is what you can count on. That's the "nevertheless" I'm counting on. That's the "nevertheless" I live by. You see, such is the grace of God that He can use even a Jonah, even you, even me, in His service.
And then, secondly, the grace of God shines out in a great way in the way in which, of Nineveh, this great, sinful city - whose words in the first part of the passage say that its "wickedness was exalted to heaven" - that of this Nineveh God's Word says that "it was a great city of God". I don't know whether you feel God's grace in him, that Nineveh is thus described as 'a great city of God'. If indeed there was so much wickedness in that great city that it had wickedness crying to heaven, would it not have been more natural for him to so describe it as a great city of Satan? But he does not say it was the city of Satan, but he says, the city of God. But it was a great, wicked city. Again, there is a lot of great comfort and encouragement in this. Just think, dear brothers and sisters, of all the sin that accumulates in a big city, a modern big city. According to statistics, alcohol consumption, for example - to give just a few examples - is increasing at an almost frightening rate year on year. Who can measure how many families are being broken up, how many children are being abandoned and how many crimes are being committed behind these statistics. Or, for example, according to the Hungarian statistical pocketbook, in 1965, here in Hungary, 20,000 marriages, more than 20,000, broke up as a result of divorce. Eight thousand more than 15 years ago, so divorce is on the increase. Or another figure, again according to the statistical yearbook: the number of reported artificial miscarriages in 1965 was 180,000, just over 180,000. 18 thousand more than five years ago. Who, my brothers and sisters, can measure what crimes are behind these cold figures, which 'cry to the heavens'. A year and a half ago, I had in my hand a magazine in West Germany, a newspaper in Frankfurt, the last pages of which were full of advertisements for all kinds of amusements, clubs and bars. One advertisement, for example, lured its guests with the promise of a striptease every ten minutes until four o'clock after midnight. Brothers and sisters, the list of sad examples could go on and on, which would make it really understandable to brand a modern Nineveh as the city of Satan, and yet... Again with the "yet". Yet Nineveh is the city of God!
The millions of its inhabitants, however sunk in the filth of the most varied and terrible sins, are all, to a degree, people created by God for eternity. All Nineveh is the city of God, on which God wants to have mercy with great compassionate love. It is not just a small community, not just a church, not just a congregation of believers, 'for God so loved the world - Nineveh and Jerusalem, Budapest and Tokyo, Balmazújváros and Budakeszi, the Earth, Saturn, the billions of stars of the Andromeda Nebula - that he gave his only begotten Son that it might not perish'. For God has not given up a single Nineveh, nor a single soul. With a great, wide embrace of love God turns to the world. Always think of God in this way, and think of "Nineveh" in this way. Once you truly see your "Nineveh" - the "Nineveh" in which you live, in which you work, in which you dwell - as the city of God, you will not see the prophetic ministry that God is sending you to do as hopeless. For the inhabitants of "Nineveh" are not a "massa perditionis", that is, a mass doomed to be taken away, but a multitude of God's children, perhaps only they do not know him yet! But how good it would be if they knew! - and it is up to you to let them know.
Brothers and sisters, whoever has experienced for himself what God's mercy means: how much God loves him in spite of his own unworthiness and inability, cannot look on his fellow man in any other way than as an object of God's merciful love, just as I am. So never see people as they are, how sinful and how vile and how wicked they are, but always see people as God sees them: how sick they are and how much they need help! They need the help of the blessed physician. See even the most wicked man as God sees him. That he too bears the image of God, that he too is part of the redemption of Jesus, that for him too the Son of God came and was sacrificed on Calvary. Is not the grace of God wonderful, brothers and sisters! That Nineveh is the city of God?!
And finally, something else shows the grace of God in this story: the result. The result of the prophet's ministry. That is, that ministry in any difficult place, if it is truly in the doing of God's will, is blessed by God. Behold, what a great conversion - one might almost say revival - has arisen there in Nineveh as a result of the prophet's miserable ministry! Everyone from the king to the last man was converted, and everyone turned to God. It is written in this way so that you may feel through it the encouragement, the encouragement. I said before that God does not need our skill and ability, but only our obedience. If the result of the preaching of the word depended on our skill and our cleverness, none of us would dare to come and preach the word. Do you think that I would dare to come up here and teach you, many of whom are wiser and many of whom are more learned than I am?! Not a chance! It is not our cleverness that God needs, but our obedience. "Preach the words which I command you!" - so says the message, so says the command. If a man says what God tells him to say, he can leave the rest to the Lord God. For what is essential, what is life, is not for us to do, not for you or for me. It is for the Lord himself to do, so let us dare to count on the grace of God, brothers and sisters.
Jonah's sermon in Nineveh was really not a great oratorical performance. It consisted of only five words, and the content was really very weak, and one could say that it was poor. Any of us could preach much better off the cuff. And yet what an impact it had! 'Yet' again. Yes, it is the grace of God that the word of obedience, however little and however poor, is richly blessed. Thus Jonah is commanded to "go to Nineveh and preach what I command thee". It is implied in this that an obedient Jonah never goes alone to Nineveh, but always goes with him someone invisible, the one who gives him the command. The one who sends him: the living God himself. So then, do not be afraid if the Lord sends you somewhere, to someone, whether to your spouse, or to your child, or to your boss, or to a sick person; do not be afraid, because he will certainly let you know what you have to say to him, and if you say it, the result will not be delayed, because it will then be a seed that will sprout in that soul at some time and bear fruit. For let this be very well remembered, that the testimony, whether by word or by life, which a man gives or does in obedience to God, is never vain. And let this be a great encouragement especially to parents who wish their children to come to the beauty of following Jesus, and are saddened to find that there is no result. Well, they will, fear not. There will be one day, sometime, you may not live to see it, but there will still be, because sowing seeds is never in vain. That is what this passage encourages us to do.
It is written that the Ninevites believed in God. It is interesting that they did not believe Jonah, who preached the word to them, but it is written "they believed God". Do you know what that says? What it says is that in that five-word sermon that Jonah preached to them, God spoke to them. And if God speaks, then you should not be afraid of the result, because the result never depends on the Jonahites, but always on the Holy Spirit of God. You may be a weak and miserable instrument yourself, but do not be afraid to speak and preach and live the word of the Word! You may only be able to say one sentence to someone, or maybe just one word. That's okay, that's enough! Jonah's sermon was also one sentence. I too have often experienced that sometimes in a sermon that lasted three quarters of an hour, it was one word that struck someone's heart, or perhaps it was a word that I said, perhaps by accident or without emphasis, and yet that one word brought new life into someone's heart. One word, but if it comes from obedience, it is enough. For in it God speaks, and if God speaks, then trust Him with the result, it will have its result one day.
In conclusion, brethren, let me just say that Nineveh repents from king to bastard. They are all fasting and they are all in sackcloth. God's mercy has extended from king to beast. Martin Luther once said, "If the coachman is converted, his horse will be the first to notice. And if a shepherd is converted, it will be noticed first of all by his sheep. The grace of God reaches the animal. How can I not come to us here, now, at this moment?! Is not the grace of God wonderful? What would it be, dear brothers and sisters, if we once began to obey God's word in earnest? I tell you what it would be: it would be that we too would experience the wonder of God's grace in a wonderful way!
Amen.
Date: 9 April 1967.
Lesson
Jón 4