Learn Repentance From The Ninevites

by | Jun 17, 2018

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

  1. By Wickedness, Destruction is Decreed
  2. By Repentance, Destruction is Averted
SERMON TEXT:  Jonah 3:1-10

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Get up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh just as the word of the LORD had commanded. Now Nineveh was a great city to God. It required a three-day walk. Jonah walked through the city for a day, and he called out, “Forty more days and Nineveh is going to be overthrown!” The men of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his leading officials: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything. Do not let them eat food or drink water. Instead let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call fervently to God. Let them turn from their evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent. He may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish. When God saw their actions, that they had turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster which he said he would bring on them, and he did not carry it out.

Bible Readings

FIRST LESSON:  Jonah 3:1-10

See Sermon Text

SECOND LESSON:  Colossians 1:3-8

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope that is stored up for you in heaven. You have already heard about this in the word of truth, the gospel that is present with you now. The gospel is bearing fruit and growing in the entire world, just as it also has been doing among you from the day you heard it and came to know the grace of God in truth. You learned this from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. He is the one who told us about your love in the Spirit.

VERSE OF THE DAY:  Psalms 132:9

May your priests be clothed with righteousness; may your saints sing for joy.

GOSPEL: Mark 4:26-34

He said, “The kingdom of God is like this: A man scatters seed on the ground, and while he sleeps and rises, night and day the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. The ground produces fruit on its own: first the blade, then the head, then the full grain in the head. When the crop is ready, he swings the sickle without delay, because the harvest has come.” Then he said, “To what should we compare the kingdom of God? Or with what parable may we picture it? It is like a mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is one of the smallest of all the seeds planted in the ground. Yet when it is planted, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the sky can nest under its shade.” With many similar parables he continued to speak the word to them, as much as they were able to hear. He did not speak to them without a parable. But when he was alone with his disciples, he explained everything to them.