Repentance: Does our generation understand what it means?
We have been following the prophet Jonah for the past few weeks and we have seen that for many of us, when we read through the book of Jonah we place assumptions on the text, that aren’t really there. For example, a quick reading of chapter two might lead us to the conclusion that Jonah repents and therefore God has the fish spit him out so he can go to Nineveh. But a closer reading will reveal that Jonah, who should know better, never in fact repents. Now Jonah recognizes that something has gone wrong, and he says he will offer a sacrifice when he gets to dry land – but Jonah never repents. He never repents.
Fascinating. The very person God is sending to a city where God seeks the change of heart of the inhabitants, is unable to have a change of heart. Jonah’s heart has not changed, yet, he is sent to change the hearts of others.
Then here in chapter three, when Jonah – the Godly, righteous, respectable and quite popular prophet, gets to Nineveh with his message – the spiritually ignorant pagans immediately start to repent. The one who has a heart that appears close to God cannot put repentance into action – but the most unlikely people of the time, who quite honestly, shouldn’t have a clue about what repentance is – repent with perfection.
So Jonah, a Godly man who should be our example of repentance is our example of how not to repent, and the Ninevites who shouldn’t know a thing about repentance, become our example of how to repent. How is that?
A few weeks ago I mentioned the seeming inability to say I’m sorry in American culture, which really, for all intents and purposes, is the inability to repent. People feel free to a large extent to explain what happened that MAY have offended people…and then, that is about it. There is a recognition that something went a rye and nothing more. What we do see many times is a denial of sin. There is a denial that they did anything wrong; in fact deep down, for many people, there is an annoyance at the apparent “misunderstanding” which has taken place, but there is no recognition for a need to repent, there is simply a recognition for spin control. We act to place others at ease so we can move on with our lives. We say what needs to be said, smooth things over, settle people down – get back to what we were doing, before the annoyance began.
I call this, almost repentance, and it is a curse in our lives and we pay the cost in a big way. It causes relationships to fall apart; it causes repeated sinful behavior that we are blind to; it causes us to continue to hurt others with our sin; it causes others to fall into sinful behavior by the sinful example of our lives.
Now I have to say that many times we are smart enough to see that an explanation is not sufficient, and so we offer the next level of almost repentance: The excuse. The excuse is like the explanation but more destructive; the explanation explores why things went the way they did, “there was a malfunction in my brakes so I hit the cow in the middle of the road”. But the excuse, the excuse distances the person from any responsibility with what happened. “Officer, I hit the cow with my car because he walked into the road, I couldn’t stop in time, there was nothing I could do about it”. The excuse builds upon the explanation and says I was a victim of circumstances, events spun out of my control, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time; Whatever harm has come your way, it is not connected to me – my body just happened to be in the same vicinity as the event that occurred.
So we talk about it. We explore the situation. We vent our frustrations. We even seek consultation from others in an attempt to procure varied opinions – and after all of this absolutely exhausting work we never darken the doorstep of repentance. In fact we spend so much time working through things by way of explanation and excuse, we fool ourselves into thinking that we have repented, when in fact we have done nothing of the sort. We move on, acting as if we have repented, maybe even having the emotions and feelings of repentance, a sense of completion, a notion that we have done all we could, but not a lick of repentance.
Years ago I was at a Promise Keepers Pastor’s Conference – It was a great conference. I went with pastor friend of mine and to save some cash we went in together on renting a car and a hotel room. So we booked all of this months in advance believing everything would be ready for us when w arrived. Now being guys, we were willing to stay in the same room, but you know, we each wanted our own bed – guys, you know what I mean. Well, we get to our hotel, a well known national chain, and they do in fact have a room for us, but not with two beds, but one king size bed. This was very disturbing. After a lengthy conversation, it turns out that they did have the room we requested, but they had given it away. They promised to fix the situation. Well, it was a week long conference and it became kind of a running joke that each time we would come and go from our room, we would ask if they had a room with two beds as promised – the answer was always the same, “we’re working on it”.
So, our last night at the conference we arrive late at the hotel, about 1:00 a.m. after saying long good byes to friends. We go to our room and our key doesn’t work. It was one of those credit card kind of keys. We tried again and again. Nothing. We drag ourselves back to the front desk and the night clerk says, “oh, no problem, I’ll just make a couple of new keys”. We get our new credit card keys and head to our room.
The door poops open, just like that, AND SOME GUY IS SLEEPING IN THE BED! He wakes up screaming bloody murder yelling, “What are you doing in my room?”, “What are YOU doing in our bed?” And then it hit us: Our luggage wasn’t in the room. We apologized and ran down to the front desk.
It turns out, the hotel had a room come available so they, moved all of our stuff to the new room – but neglected to tell anyone, including us.
The next morning we had a little talk with the hotel manager. She gave us various explanations; she gave us an armload of excuses, but she never got around to saying, “I’m sorry”.
Repentance is not about being a good person. Repentance is not about being a nice person. Repentance is not even about being a faithful person. Repentance is literally: Stop, go no further, turn around and go the other way. Anyone can do it.
In 1989 the SF Bay Area suffered a great earthquake. Katie and I were living there at the time. Growing up there, I had experienced many, many earthquakes – this was the first earthquake where I was truly frightened. After the earthquake I heard many stories about different people’s experiences. One experience that always stuck with me was the experience of a friend who was a frozen food delivery truck driver. Todd was on the Bay Bridge when the quake occurred, as many of you know, it can be difficult to feel the full effects of an earthquake while driving. As he was driving, up ahead on the bridge he saw about a dozen people on the bridge running toward traffic waving their hands wildly and shouting. Todd didn’t stop immediately, but slowed down, turned off his radio and rolled down his window to hear what these kooks were saying. They were shouting: Stop. The bridge is out. Stop. There is a big hole in the bridge. Todd stopped. A well dressed man driving a gold sedan wove around his truck, around several stopped vehicles, and skirted passed the people shouting warnings and drove ahead. Everyone was getting out of their cars. Todd got out of his truck and walked a short distance on the bridge to the point where a portion of the bridge was indeed missing. It was an amazing sight, this fifty foot hole in the bridge. As he was standing on the edge of this precipice marveling at the fact that there was this gapping hole in the bridge when it hit him, of all the cars he walked passed the gold sedan wasn’t there among them. He became obsessed with finding this gold car, searching among the scattered cars between the hole and his truck. There was not a single gold car to be found.
Stop what you are doing. Don’t worry about giving an explanation, drop the excuses, turn around, head in the other direction.
This is exactly what the Ninevites do. They dispense with the preliminaries and repent. Looking at verse 5 we see that the Ninevites understood that they still had a chance and called for corporate fasting. I love that first sentence - The Ninevites believed God. Note they don’t believe Jonah, they are not moved by an argument, there are no debates about the relevance of the message; there is no checking of what everyone else thinks, they – boom – just believe God. Zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds.
The Ninevites are not believers, but they are very religious and God sends Jonah to subvert their religion – doubts are insinuated, their faith is called into question, they are faced with the end of the road. Jonah unfolds the road map of their lives and shows them where they are headed, and the bridge is out – repentance gives them another route to take.
What would make the king open to Jonah? We talked about this a little bit already, life was falling apart for the empire. Parts of the empire had already fallen to the Urartains. They were losing the regions of Commagene, Melitene and Carchemish. A total solar eclipse happened about the time that Jonah would have been in Nineveh, occurring in the tenth year of the reign of Assur-dan III. The Enuma Anu Enlil, which are Ninevite omen scrolls, predicted the following may be expected after a solar eclipse: The king will be killed and a worthless fellow with seize the throne; The king will die, rain from heaven will flood the land; There will be famine; the city walls will be destroyed; A deity will strike the king and fire will consume the land.
The king and the Assyrian people, who knew the contents of these scrolls, took omens very, very seriously. There is substantial archeological evidence found about these type of events. In some cases a king would abandon his throne and place a substitute upon the throne of Nineveh until the danger had passed. In Jonah’s time things got so bad that Assur-dan III moved to Gozan temporarily. As I have mentioned before, God used these events and circumstances to prepare the population to receive Jonah’s message, and they also prepared the people to act in true repentance, quickly. So it is of no real surprise that in verse 6 “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.”
We see that the king does just as these Assyrian scrolls would recommend: These omen texts do not only mention the king and humans, but also animals and the land as a whole to be under divine wrath. Manu-kio-Assur, governor of Gozan, during the reign of Assur-dan III sent out this decree: “Decree of the king. You and all your people, your land, you meadows will mourn and pray for three days before the god Adad and repent. You will perform the purification rites so that there may be rest.
Understand that the Assyrians were syncretistic. They had their own historical gods, but they were very open to other gods and spirits – taking in whatever works to form their own view of spirituality….sound familiar? Sounds like America. So this king, would have no problem incorporating another “god” into his system of spirituality. He would hardly automatically deny the validity of any god or prophet – he was not monotheistic, but polytheistic. Any of these events mentioned earlier would appear to the people to be evidence of divine wrath and judgment upon a king – Especially a prophet coming out of nowhere (a Cinderella man) speaking doom in conjunction with any of these events.
So the Ninevites, lead by their king are turning all their might to repentance. The king’s declaration ads an urgency to what is already under way in the city, he must take charge and give direction to popular action so he is not to be seen as opposing the population.
The fasting and uncomfortable dress, represent self denial – this shows culturally, the genuiness of their efforts. The decree from the king, Verses 7-9, moreover acknowledges the people’s misbehavior on a general scale as a basis for divine wrath. Short term discomfort, log term reform. Since their response is genuine, God relents.
Animals. That’s kind of weird isn’t it? What do the animals have to do with the sin of the people? Assyrians made animals part of the mourning process. That was just part of their thinking. Until the advent of the automobile here in the USA, animals participated in our mourning here in as they were used to pull the carriage the same way a hearse transports our loved one today. Whatever we think of including the animals in the time of repentance - The Ninevites theology may have been quite inadequate, but their actions show their heart – evidence of true repentance.
The kings decree captures what Jonah has not seen all along: God can forgive anybody.
Jonah is out of the picture at this point. He had seen the beginnings of a mass repentance and he must have heard the kings decree – and it is just as Jonah feared. The king shows Jonah how true repentance is done, let’s look at the clear and simple steps:
One – Believe God. V. 5 (This is when they stop what they are doing)
Two – Show sorrow for your sins from your heart. V. 6 (They take heartfelt action)
Three – Call upon God. V 8
Four – Give up your sin. V. 9
Remember last week how we talked about Elijah and the widow. Elijah asks the widow for the impossible, and when does her stepping out in faith begin? Remember, she stops what she is doing and turns in another direction. The power of the Holy Spirit rains down upon her, because that is when her faith kicks in. Here we see a similar act of faith. The Ninevites stop what they are doing and repent. They stop what they are doing. They stop. There is a hole in the bridge ahead of them, they stop, and there at that moment, the very moment of stopping, the act of faith begins. Yes we have an experience of faith, when we step out to follow God. But we also have a powerful experience of faith when we stop, stop going in the direction we are headed, for we cannot repent, if we do not stop.
God requires an about face. He doesn’t ask the Ninevites for an explanation of why they are acting in sinful ways. He doesn’t want to hear a long list of excuses. He wants them to stop, turn around, walk in the other direction.
Let me end with this encouragement: Don’t worry about what is next, don’t worry about how you are going to deal with sin in your life. Don’t seek to explain the situation or distance yourself from the situation. Stop. Just stop. THAT is a tremendous act of faith. Stop dead in your tracks, express our faith by stopping, and like the Ninevites, the rest will follow.
You know that day on the Bay Bridge, everyone on that span of the bridge had to abandon their vehicles turn and walk back from where they came in order to continue on. The same is true in your spiritual life. That sin you are dealing with, you know what I mean; Go beyond explanations, go beyond excuses – stop, repent, call out to God, give up your sin.
