The Love of God for Your Enemies
A Sermon by Pastor R. D. Johnson
Preached at the Ann Arbor, MI Free Methodist Church
Scripture Text:
Jonah
October 11, 2009
Sermon #0176
Dagon was a god of the Philistines. Half fish, half man. Surely, Nineveh, another city who
depended on industries of the sea, would have heard of this god and possibly worshipped it.
786-746 B.C.E.
(about 150 years before the Babylonian captivity)
Nineveh was an important junction for commercial routes crossing the Tigris. Occupying a
central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean,
thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it
became one of the greatest of all the region's ancient cities.
The Babylonians had a myth that a being emerged from the Erythraean Sea who was part
man and part fish and thus adopted the deity into their culture in their earliest days in history.
Their have also been discoveries of the fish-god in the sculptures found in Nineveh, Assyria.
Parallels between Jonah and Jesus
Go preach against Nineveh
Jonah goes the other way
Jonah found guilty
God sends fish to kill Jonah
God releases Jonah 3 days
Jonah preaches to Nineveh
Nineveh repents
Jonah upset
Jonah taught lesson
- Jesus preaches against sin and offers grace
- People are sinful and most reject Jesus
- Jesus takes on the sins of the world
- Jewish Rulers and Rome crucify Jesus
- Jesus resurrected 3 days
- Jesus sends Disciples
- So many become Christian, they overtake Rome
- Constantine introduces “kill your enemy”
- Love Your Enemies
Jonah became Dagon to them
- Jesus is represented be the fish (ichthys)
Point: God Loves those you hate and calls you to take the gospel to them!