As we begin looking toward our mission conference next month, I want to share some thoughts with you from the book of Jonah – a prophet who ran from God to avoid carrying a divine warning to the people of Nineveh.
Jonah undoubtedly feared the bloodthirsty Ninevites, but in Jonah 4:2 he plainly tells God that he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want them to repent and find mercy – he wanted God to zap them and eliminate Israel’s enemies.
So he boarded a ship and fled in the opposite direction. But he didn’t get far before God sent a storm to intercept him. Jonah told the mariners they’d have to throw him overboard to stop the storm. When they did, the storm miraculously ceased, and the sailors became Jonah’s first Gentile converts as they worshipped the God Who had spared their lives.
Meanwhile, God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and God miraculously kept him alive for three days and nights during the world’s first submarine voyage. Centuries later, Jesus said that Jonah’s experience in the fish’s belly was a picture of Christ’s burial for three days and nights in the tomb.
We left off last week with Jonah having finally repented. The fish spat him out, most likely somewhere near his point of departure, where a greatly humbled Jonah, for the first time in the story, finally began moving in the direction God had for him.
1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.
4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for being the God of second chances – and third and fourth and fifth – and for 70 times 7 chances! We thank you for your boundless mercy toward those who repent and trust in Your amazing grace!
May we have the grace to share Your mercy with those around us – may we have a better spirit about it than Jonah did – may we be less reluctant about it than he was – may we be diligent in serving you with our lives – and may we love You more than to need being told twice!
And we ask You to draw any who are yet facing Your judgment to repentance and faith in the resurrection power of Your Son, Jesus Christ – in Whose name we pray, Amen!
Jonah’s last words that led into this chapter were back in 2:9 – Salvation is of the Lord. That statement of faith bridged his previous prayer of repentance and his deliverance which immediately followed. How sincere was that repentance and faith? We’re about to find out here in chapter 3:
And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
Jonah might well have wondered if, having forsaken the Lord’s will once, would God condescend to call him again? The Israelites who refused to cross Jordan and face the giants were barred from ever entering.
But for them, that was the end of a long and hardened pattern of rejection.
No doubt, Jonah was relieved to find that the Lord is a God of second chances.
Like the Apostle Peter who denied his Lord was later forgiven and recommissioned, so Jonah is called once again to serve his Savior.
Someone has said, “If you are not dead, then God is not done.” By all rights, Jonah should have been dead – but God still had a work for him to do.
And that same God still has something for you to do as well. It would be a lot better if you didn’t make Him have to tell you twice!
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, and now verse 2 tells us what the word of the Lord said:
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
If that sounds vaguely familiar to you, there’s a good reason. It’s the same thing God told him to do in the first place back in Jonah 1:2. It’s not too late for Jonah to jump right back into the will of God at the very place where he left it.
That’s not always the case. Sometimes the window of opportunity closes sooner than others. Sometimes lost opportunities in the past are exactly that – they’re in the past, and they’re lost. In those cases, you have to follow the path God has for you from wherever you are.
When John Mark abandoned the apostles on that first missionary journey in Acts 13:13, that ended his ministry with the apostle Paul. But God continued to use him with Barnabas, and he even ended up writing the Gospel of Mark. So sometimes God’s second chance is with a Plan B in life because A is gone forever.
But in Jonah’s case, God chastened him radically, and he repented quickly. As we’ll see in a couple of verses, the situation was urgent. Hundreds of thousands of lives were in the balance.
And whatever God calls any of us to is always high drama, whether it seems so to our limited perspective or not.
While Moses was watching sheep on the backside of the wilderness for 40 years, how many times do you suppose he thought his life was over? He believed that God had wanted him to deliver the Israelites from bondage, and he had failed. He had slain an Egyptian, but the Jews refused to follow him, and now here he was, a fugitive from Pharaoh, hiding in the wilderness of Midian, watching sheep.
And yet, every day for 40 years that he was leading sheep, the God of second chances was reeducating him, deconstructing his first 40 years of Egyptian leadership training, preparing him for 40 years of following God and leading his people to the Promised Land.
High drama, epic destiny, holy calling – it all began with watching sheep! Be faithful in small things and God will use you to do great things.
And if you can still hop back on board with what God wanted you to do in the first place, then run for it! That’s what Jonah does right now in verse 3.
So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.
Jonah arose and went – what a contrast to his first calling when he arose and fled. Jonah is a classic example of the son whom his father told to go work in his vineyard, and said, “I go not”, but then repented and did the will of his father.
We cannot always control the circumstances that come into our lives. Jonah did not anticipate the unpleasant command that God would give him nor the even more unpleasant measures by which God would insist that Jonah obey.
But we can control our response to the circumstances that God orders for us. And how we respond today makes a world of difference in the circumstances of tomorrow – both for ourselves and for those whom we influence.
Jonah, the prophet from Israel, went to preach unto Nineveh, the capital of the Gentile world – completely contrary to what Jonah and the Jews of his time thought about God’s attitude toward the Gentiles. But Paul would later say in Romans 3:29, Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also! Jonah is learning that. He could have learned it the easy way – but he’s learning it nonetheless!
Every year as we lead into our missions conference, it’s good to remind ourselves that there is no kindred or people or tongue or tribe on earth that God does not love – that Christ did not die for – that the Holy Spirit cannot reach – that we are not responsible to get the gospel to.
Nineveh is called an exceeding great city. When ancient historians, such as Diodorus Siculus and Eustathius, speak of Nineveh’s exceeding greatness, they say it was the largest city of its time – larger even than Babylon. They speak of its 100-foot walls that three chariots could ride abreast on. They speak of its 1,500 towers and 60-mile circumference.
But when God speaks of its greatness in the final verse of this book, He calls it that great city wherein are more than 120,000 children too young to discern between their right hand and their left. It is not for the walls and the towers, but for the people’s sakes that He sends Jonah to warn of the coming doom.
Because there was one other thing about Nineveh that was great – and that was its sin which had reached unto heaven and called for the great judgment that Jonah now starts to reveal.
4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
We’ve said that Jonah is a picture of Christ, and we can see that in multiple ways. They were both from Galilee, only about five miles apart.
Jonah’s “baptism by fish” pictured Christ’s three-day baptism in the earth.
Jonah’s message caused a sensational turning to God among the Gentiles – first the mariners in chapter 1, and then the Ninevites in chapter 3. And the gospel of Christ has primarily reached the Gentiles of this world.
And here we see another similarity. Just as Jesus spent 40 days teaching and preaching to His followers after His resurrection, so the resurrected Jonah spent 40 days preaching to the sinners of Nineveh.
Jonah was certainly a good one to warn of judgment and repentance since he’s just experienced both. What he’s doing is definitely gutsy, and one can understand it taking the terrifying miracle he’s just been through to motivate him to it. He has entered unprotected and unknown into the heart of the enemy capital. The prophet Nahum in 2:11 describes Nineveh as the dwelling of the lions (meaning the kind of people who lived there), and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion’s whelp, and none made them afraid.
But in the next couple of verses we’ll see that Jonah’s preaching actually made them terrified! It appears that he marched a day’s journey into the city repeating his awful cry, and word of mouth spreads the warning to every soul in the city by that first nightfall. Knowing Jonah as this book presents him, the message must have greatly suited him – he was preaching the imminent destruction that was exactly what he wanted to see come upon these Assyrian savages!
What Jonah would’ve found in the Nineveh of 8th Century BC, would’ve been shrines and temples, astrological signs and terrifying gods who looked more like demons – and you can probably guess why! Gods whom they tried to appease with many sacrifices. But what all of this meant was that the Ninevites were very “religious” people. They were very concerned about their souls and the spirit world.
Many times, people we assume will be hostile to the gospel are very open to a respectful conversation about God and where they’re going and how they can change things that are wrong in their lives.
Forty days is often used as a time of testing in the Bible.
Jonah’s message does not include any hope of mercy. In the next chapter, we’ll see that offering them any hope of rescue was the last thing on Jonah’s mind. He really didn’t want any mercy for them!
But in the Bible, the idea of mercy is generally understood for those who repent – as Jonah will complain about before this story is over.
Jeremiah 18:8 says, If that nation against whom I have pronounced judgment turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
Of course, there are some cases where God announces that their iniquity is full and destruction cannot be averted. This would be for a reprobate nation that was hardened against any repentance. But otherwise, repentance on the part of man will normally result in repentance on the part of God.
But what does the Bible mean by saying that God repents of the evil He does? Surely it cannot mean that God Himself does evil – He’s perfectly good, isn’t He?
Well, the answer is yes, God is perfectly good – it’s the word “evil” that people sometimes misunderstand. The word “evil” is very generic. Depending on context, it can mean moral evil, such as the Ninevites are guilty of, or it can mean catastrophic destruction such as God is threatening them with.
There’s nothing morally wrong with God raining judgment down upon the heads of the wicked. In fact, the victims of the wicked would be the first to question God’s morality if He did not judge their oppressors. But if the wicked repent of their wickedness, then God will turn from the doom He would have brought upon them. And “turn from” is exactly what the word “repent” means. Men repent, or rethink and turn from, their moral evil because they are smitten by guilt and fear of God’s wrath. God repents, or turns from, His righteous judgment upon the penitent out of gladness, for He never relishes unleashing His wrath.
Jonah’s one-line message warns that Nineveh shall be overthrown. That’s the same word used of Sodom and Gomorrah that were overthrown by fire from heaven in a single night. While Jonah nowhere specifies exactly what form this doom will take, it’s clear that he means an overwhelming destruction as swift and complete as what happened to Sodom. And what is the result of such bold preaching?
Well, we’re going to go into that in more depth next week when we look at this amazing revival, but I do want you to get a preview of it right here beginning in the next verse.
5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Harsh as the message was, it was the Word that God had for Nineveh, and the word of God is always what brings genuine repentance and genuine salvation.
And what was it whereby the people of Nineveh were saved? The beginning of this verse says that the people of Nineveh believed God. That is always how people in the Bible were saved – by the grace of God through faith in His mercy.
Hebrews 11 says, by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice.
The word grace first appears in Gen. 6, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
In Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
Hebrews 4:2 says that the gospel of faith was preached to the Israelites who followed Moses the same as it’s preached to us today.
And all through the Old Testament, everyone who was ever saved came by faith to the God of Israel trusting in the promised Messiah Who was foretold to come.
And the rest of this verse shows how they repented. They fasted in sackcloth, a rough burlap cloth that was uncomfortable and showed remorse and a penitent heart. Our faith is in a merciful God who forgives those who repent.
Jesus said in Matthew 12:41 that the men of Nineveh would rise in judgment with His generation... and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas.
There is a strange teaching going around nowadays that people can be saved without being sorry for their sins one bit – that repentance is completely irrelevant – that adding repentance is actually adding works to the gospel of faith alone.
But that’s just as absurd as saying that adding faith is adding works to the gospel of repentance alone!
Look, being saved from your sin is a defining element of the gospel. In I Corinthians 15:3-4, Paul defines the gospel as how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Right up at the very beginning of that definition, he makes clear that it was for our sins that all of this was done. You can’t take repentance from sin out of the gospel!
Now listen, all salvation means is turning from your sin to your Savior – from your sin, to your Savior.
Repentance is a word that describes turning from your sin. It’s not turning from your mistakes or missteps, from your diseases or your neuroses – it’s turning from your rebellion against God, your disobedience to His word.
Here in Jonah 3, what does the end of verse 8 tell every man to turn from? His evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. They turned from their sins.
Faith, on the other hand, is a word that describes turning to your Savior. But what Savior are you turning from your sin to? Are you turning from your sin to a therapist? Or a life coach? Are you turning to Buddha or Krishna?
None of those can really deliver you from your sin. The only One Who can do that is the One Who actually paid the death penalty for your sins, entirely erasing your debt, and Who proved it by overcoming death itself. Faith is turning to Jesus!
So repentance, turning from your sin, and faith, turning to your Savior, are both just two sides of the same coin – of salvation – which is the only coin that will buy your entrance into heaven – backed by the priceless blood of Christ Himself.
What does one turn from his sin to? The death, burial and resurrection of Christ! What does one turn to Christ from? His sin!
So the people of Nineveh were saved from divine judgment because they repented of their sins and they believed God – through the preaching of His word at the mouth of His prophet who was sent to them as a sign of the resurrection.
And while Nineveh stands as an exceptional case of revival, it shouldn’t have been. The only reason there weren’t more of them was that God’s people were slack about giving God’s warnings to the lost.
Remember how Jesus had said in Matthew 11:23 that Sodom would have remained until this day had it received the kind of witness that Capernaum had. But Abraham’s nephew Lot was no Jonah – he was no witness to the tragic Sodomites.
Why did Jonah’s message have such a dramatic effect on such consummately wicked people? In Luke 11:30, Jesus says that Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites – like a sign from God or a miracle. In fact, the word for sign is sometimes translated “miracle”. So the miraculous deliverance of Jonah from the whale’s belly was somehow known to the people of Nineveh. Perhaps he had given them some convincing testimony of what he had been through.
It is also possible that news of Jonah’s experience had already preceded him.
Remember the mariners who had thrown him overboard and escaped the storm? No doubt, they made land at the first port they could find to replenish the stores they had cast into the sea. No doubt, they shared with everyone in town the amazing experience they had just survived.
Had they seen Jonah swallowed by the great sea monster? Well, it must’ve happened right after Jonah entered the water before he could drown, and the creature that gulped him would’ve been incredibly large – so, yeah, they probably did see the creature go after Jonah, and either saw him actually swallowed or surmised it. But they could not have known that the great fish spat him out again three days later.
Imagine the amazing story that must’ve circulated around the harbor. A disobedient Jewish prophet named Jonah had fled from Israel’s famous God to avoid warning the mighty city of Nineveh of a coming destruction only to be swallowed whole by a great fish.
Imagine seafarers and traders passing east and west and hearing the tale told and retold. “Nineveh, you say? Why, we’re merchants bound for Nineveh ourselves! Wow – wait till we get there and tell them this!”
Imagine rumors spreading through Nineveh before Jonah ever arrives – people wondering what warning of doom the swallowed prophet had carried to his grave.
But then a few days later, here comes a strange Jewish prophet of that very God walking through their very city boldly crying, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown! Would that have ever been a sensation!
And then as people talk to him, and the spreading rumors surface, Jonah himself confirms that he had indeed been swallowed by such a creature, and yet – here he is alive, as one back from the grave!
What a sign to this people under a divine curse that repentance might save them from the grave as well! No wonder it was such an unprecedented revival!
But you know what? You and I are meant to be signs to our generation. We’re to be walking miracles. People should see the transformation that faith in the gospel of Christ has made in us – how God has rescued us from whatever nightmare was swallowing our lives – how we’ve been restored to life through the power of Christ’s resurrection. And we should be gutsily urging them to flee from the wrath to come – although admittedly with better attitudes than Jonah had!
Have you repented of your sins? Have you trusted in God’s mercy to forgive you? His resurrection power to deliver you?
Are you needing the God of second chances to help you follow some path you’ve fled?
Are you being a better witness to your generation than Jonah was to his?
Are there some people you’re reluctant to give the gospel to because you think they probably wouldn’t listen anyway?
