Nineveh, The City Of Sin
Jonah preached eight words. An entire city repented.
Jonah finally went to Nineveh — and preached the most reluctant sermon in the Bible. Eight words. And the entire city repented, from the king on his throne to the livestock in the fields. The revival in Jonah 3 is the most dramatic response to preaching in the entire Old Testament, and it raises the question that hangs over the whole book: why was the prophet so determined that this would not happen? In this sermon on Jonah 3, Dr. Toby Holt examines what genuine repentance looked like in Nineveh, why God relented from the judgment He had threatened, and what this episode reveals about the reach of divine mercy toward the people Israel most despised.
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Questions This Sermon Answers
Jonah 3:1–2 repeats almost word for word the command of Jonah 1:1–2: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you." God does not change His mission because His prophet failed. The call is reinstated in full. This is characteristic of God's dealing with His servants — failure does not disqualify, it disciplines. Moses, Elijah, Peter, and Paul all experienced restoration after failure and returned to their calling.
Jonah's recorded sermon in Jonah 3:4 is five Hebrew words — rendered in English as "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" It is the shortest sermon in Scripture. Yet it produced the greatest recorded revival. This underscores that the power of preaching does not lie in the eloquence or length of the sermon, but in the Spirit of God accompanying the word. Reformed theology has always located the efficacy of preaching in divine sovereignty — God opens hearts (Acts 16:14).
The repentance is immediate, total, and structured. The people believed God, fasted, and put on sackcloth — from the greatest to the least (Jonah 3:5). The king issued a formal decree commanding fasting, sackcloth, crying out to God, and turning from violence and evil (Jonah 3:8). The king himself hopes God may relent. This is the external marks of genuine repentance — turning from sin, turning toward God, accompanied by visible signs of humility. God's response in verse 10 confirms He saw that they "turned from their evil way."
No. "God relented from the disaster" (Jonah 3:10) is anthropomorphic language — it describes God's response from a human perspective. It does not mean God's eternal plan changed or that He was wrong. Reformed theology distinguishes between God's decretive will (what He has eternally ordained) and His revealed or preceptive will (what He commands and responds to in history). The pattern "if you repent, I will relent" is itself part of God's revealed character (Jeremiah 18:7–8). Nineveh's repentance fulfilled the condition, and God's relenting was the consistent expression of His mercy — as He always intended.
Nineveh was a Gentile city — Israel's fiercest enemy. God sending a prophet to preach there, and the resulting revival, demonstrates that His saving purposes were never limited to ethnic Israel. This prefigures the Gentile mission of the New Testament and the eschatological gathering of all nations to God (Isaiah 49:6, Revelation 7:9). The book of Jonah is the Old Testament's most explicit statement that God's compassion extends to pagan nations who repent.
"Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?" The king does not presume on God's mercy. He does not claim entitlement. He simply cries out in hope, acknowledging that God is not obligated to show mercy — but He might. This is the posture of genuine repentance: no bargaining, no presumption, only humble appeal to God's character. It echoes the publican of Luke 18:13: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
The command that even the cattle wear sackcloth and cry out (Jonah 3:7–8) is often read as hyperbolic or absurd. But it underscores the totality of the city's response. Nothing and no one was exempt from the mourning. It also reflects the ancient Near Eastern understanding that human sin has consequences for the created order — a concept consistent with Paul's teaching in Romans 8:20–22 that creation groans under the weight of human rebellion.
Eight words. An entire city. This is the most dramatic demonstration in Scripture that the effectiveness of proclamation lies not in the messenger or the method, but in God. The Reformed tradition has always insisted that preaching is God's primary appointed means for salvation — and that its power is entirely derived from His sovereign pleasure to work through it. As the Westminster Confession 1.6 notes, it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.1. Why did the whole city of Nineveh repent at Jonah's preaching?
1. The Sovereignty of God in Conversion
Nineveh repented because God opened their hearts. The same word was preached by Jonah that could have fallen on deaf ears — but it didn't. Acts 16:14 says God "opened" Lydia's heart to pay attention to Paul. Ephesians 2:1 says the unsaved are "dead in trespasses and sins" — dead people do not respond to preaching on their own. The Nineveh revival is a display of irresistible grace on a city-wide scale. WCF 10.1: "Those whom God has predestinated unto life, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call."
2. Genuine Repentance — Marks and Fruit
The Westminster Larger Catechism Q76 describes repentance as arising from a sense of one's sin, grief and hatred of it, and turning from it with a full purpose of endeavouring after new obedience. Nineveh's repentance hits every mark: they believed (knowledge and assent), they mourned (grief), they fasted and wore sackcloth (humility), and the king commanded them to turn from their evil way and violence (new obedience). Outward ceremony without inward turning is not repentance — but Jonah 3:10 says God "saw their works" — the external was evidence of the internal.
3. God's Compassion for the Nations
Jonah 3 is the Old Testament's most explicit display of God's saving mercy toward a Gentile city. This is the prophetic seed of the New Testament mission. Acts 1:8 — "to the ends of the earth" — and Revelation 5:9 — "out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation" — represent the full flowering of what Jonah 3 previews. The God of the Old Testament is not a tribal deity. He is the God of all nations who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23).
4. The Text: Jonah 3:4–5, 10 (NKJV)
"And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them… Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it."
Continue studying: explore the full Book of Jonah sermon series, or browse the complete Reformed Sermon Archive.
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online, Westminster Confessional theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. In this expository sermon on Jonah 3, Dr. Toby Holt of New Geneva Theological Seminary teaches that God's sovereign grace, not human worthiness, is the cause of repentance: when Jonah preached an eight-word message of judgment to Nineveh, the most wicked pagan city of its day, the entire city repented from the greatest to the least because God had ordained and enabled their repentance. Holt shows from a Reformed perspective that salvation is of the Lord, that God's warnings of judgment are means He uses to call sinners to repentance, and that when Scripture says God 'relented' it speaks anthropomorphically of a God who enfolds our turning into a divine decree set before we were born.
Jonah the Reluctant Prophet: Understanding His Resistance
You know, one of the nicknames that history has given our friend Jonah here is to call him the reluctant prophet. Jonah, the reluctant prophet. Now, as nicknames go, that's kind of bad. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to be known as something different.
Perhaps the faithful prophet, the humble prophet, the patient prophet, the kind prophet. Maybe he tried really, really hard prophet. Anything but this. Jonah, the reluctant prophet.
Who wants the history books to look back on you and say you were this reluctant, apathetic, lazy guy who wouldn't go when God had called you? Now, I never met Jonah. We only get four chapters to work with here. Maybe he was just wonderful in other aspects of his life.
I don't know. But in this window, in this four chapter window, what we see here does not reflect well upon this man or his job performance. In fact, it would appear that Jonah earned every part of that nickname. Well, that said, this morning, as we begin, we need to try to figure out what makes Jonah tick here.
Why is he doing the things that he's doing? All of history, all of Christendom has frowned on this guy. So let's do him the courtesy of at least trying to understand. If Jonah was so reluctant, then why?
Why was he reluctant? What was his problem with the Ninevites? What was it about Nineveh that prompted him to get on a boat and go to such lengths to avoid taking God's message to them.
Continue reading the full transcript 31-minute read · 14 sections · every section links back to the audio
The Wickedness of Nineveh and the Cruelty of Assyria
Well, in order to understand what's going on in Jonah's head, let's understand something more about the Ninevites, the people that he was sent to talk to. It's helpful to remember that Nineveh was not a nation per se. It was a large city within a nation. Does anyone know what the nation itself was?
Assyria. So you have Nineveh, large capital city, primary city within the greater nation of Assyria. Now, when you think of the Assyrians, do you think of them as this lovable, cuddly bunch? Is that what history records about the Assyrians?
This wonderful, wonderful group of individuals? Well, no, that's not what we see. In fact, all of history, even secular history, says that these guys were rough. These guys were mean.
These guys were unpleasant. See, Nineveh — in a world filled with pagan cities, Nineveh in some special way was so bad, was so wicked, was so pagan, was so mean that among all the cities on the face of the earth, the wickedness of Nineveh rose up like a foul stench to the nostrils of God, which is what He said in chapter one.
Nineveh, its wickedness exceeded the wickedness of its even most wicked contemporaries. Nineveh was a bad place. Now, what did they do that was so bad? Well, Nineveh was famous or infamous for their cruelty.
The cruelty of the Assyrians, the cruelty of Nineveh was what they were most famous for. Now, what sort of cruelty was that? Well, in an effort to keep this PG-rated sermon, there's only so much I can honestly say. The Assyrians, as you might be aware, you know, they conquered other nations, but when other nations conquered one another, typically what they would do is that they leave people alive, and then they'd put up a garrison there, and they'd use those people to farm the land, and the garrison would watch over things.
So that's how conquering and pillaging usually worked. You didn't kill everybody. You left some people alive. You left the peasants and people alive to till the fields, and then you just ruled over them.
Assyria — that was not the approach of the Assyrians. When the Assyrians came to town, they did not come to put in garrisons and to govern some locals. No, their approach was to kill everyone. When the Assyrians rolled in the town, they didn't leave a man, a woman, or a child alive.
Furthermore, after they had killed the local population, on the ruins of the walls of the cities around, they would take the flayed skin, the heads, the parts of those that they had defeated, and put them in places of visibility so that the world would know — the travelers, sojourners, people who passed by would know the fierceness of the Assyrians.
In a world that was already filled with evil people, these were especially evil people. These were hardcore sadists. If you want more details than that, consult your local library. With that said, in chapter one, that's why we read that the wickedness of Nineveh had arisen up before God in some special way.
God's Mercy Versus Jonah's Desire for Judgment
God saw these people, saw what they were doing, saw the way they treated their fellow image bearers, and it offended Him. God had problems with the Ninevites. Well, so did Jonah. So did Jonah, this prophet of God living in the smaller nation of Israel, which was not terribly far away from the northern country of Assyria.
Jonah had problems with the Assyrians. He knew their reputation. He knew the way they conducted themselves. He knew how wicked and pagan they were.
And so, of course, Jonah didn't like them. Honestly, if you and I were alive in that time, we wouldn't have liked the Ninevites either. With that said, even though God and Jonah both had issues with Nineveh, where they differed was in what to do about it. You see, in Jonah's view, the right response is that God would go and search throughout heaven, pick up the heaviest boulder He could find, and hurl it down upon them.
To Jonah, the Ninevites were the right target, the right people, the perfect candidate for some good old-fashioned fire and brimstone. And yet, what makes the book of Jonah so fascinating is that even though Jonah was right, these were terrible sinners who deserved every ton of that boulder. Even though Jonah was right, what makes the book of Jonah so fascinating is that God doesn't do that.
He doesn't send them a boulder. He doesn't send them fire and brimstone. Rather, He sends them a man with a message. Specifically, He sent Jonah, the son of Amittai.
An Eight-Word Sermon to the Most Wicked People
“Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.”
— Jonah 3:1-2 (NKJV)
In a moment, and I'm going to reread verses one through four, but let me offer one more introductory observation. Given how weak Jonah is, and we've talked about his weakness in the previous chapters, but given how weak he was, given how wicked Nineveh was, you would think if you're standing back and you said, wait a second, God, God, God, Nineveh's really tough and really mean and really rough around the edges.
And Jonah is the most flawed prophet we got. You're going to send that guy there and expect something to happen? God, I'm sorry, but this is a low-probability mission. The man himself didn't want to go.
It's not just that he was weak and flawed. He didn't even want to be there. And the Ninevites surely didn't want him to arrive. You had no human party that was invested in a good outcome here.
And yet what we're going to see in this text is that the response of the Ninevites to this one man's words was that the entire city came to repentance, from the smallest to the greatest. What we're going to see in today's text is that one sermon that constituted eight words had a greater effect than any sermon ever preached on this globe — given and preached by a man who didn't even want to be there, to the most wicked pagan people of his day.
The most effective revival, the most effective awakening, whatever you want to call it, took place here through one sermon constituting eight words that we have before us. Let's see what those words were. Let's look at verses one through four. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.
So Jonah arose and he went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out, and listen to what he said.
He says, in yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. All right. As you remember from chapter one, it was only a couple of weeks ago, so I trust you still got it.
The Unchanging Will of God: You Cannot Outrun His Calling
But as you might remember in chapter 1, chapter 1, the very first words began this way: The word of the Lord came to Jonah. Well, guess what? Chapter 3 begins the same way: The word of the Lord came to Jonah. In both places, chapter 1 and in chapter 3, God's telling Jonah the exact same thing.
And what that suggests is that all the hardships that Jonah had faced in between chapters or in the in-between time, all those things that he suffered from being swallowed by the whale and going down to the waters — all this was unnecessary, probably could have been avoided if he had just done what God had told him to back in chapter one.
God told him to arise, go to that great city in chapter one, and tells him again, chapter three. All the drama, all the pain, all the anxiety, all the hardship, being swallowed by a whale — all of that you would think could have been avoided if he had just done what God told him to do from jump street, from the very beginning here.
God's will for you doesn't change just because you run from it. God's will for you doesn't change just because you try to go the exact opposite direction. He will get you where you need to be. You can take that to the bank, and this is proof positive.
If God has a desire for your life, He'll get you there. The only question for you and I is how beat up will you be by the time you arrive? You see, if the will of God is like a stream you swim in, then the question for you and I is how much time do we live out that voyage, beating ourselves up against the rocks?
If the will of God is a stream and He tells us what to do and where to go, how much time do we spend trying to swim upstream, going the opposite direction, beating ourselves up against the rocks so that by the time we finally arrived there, we're all bloody and beaten up? You and I spend far too much time trying to go against the will of God or hitting the shoals rather than simply hearing and obeying.
If Jonah had done what God had told him to do in chapter one, he would not have suffered so needlessly. With that said, the suffering was evidently something that he was committed to undergoing based on his desire to flee from the hand of God. So God allowed him to do it, but He still brought him to where he needed to be by the time we get to verse one in chapter three.
So verse one, God tells Jonah, go to Nineveh, same thing He had told him before. Now at this point, who knows what's going on in Jonah's mind? You know, God tells him the same thing. But this time he responds.
This time Jonah says, okay, God, I get it. He may have been worried about what was going to swallow him next if he didn't, but he obeys.
The Message of Judgment Proclaimed in the Great City
And he says, all right, I'll go and I'll head north. Now you notice that verse four refers to a three-day journey. Now this is not referring to the time it took for him to get from the beach to Nineveh. There's no beach in the world that's three days from the city.
Instead, it's a reference to how long it took to walk around the city itself. This was a truly great metropolis for its day. Now let's say you're Jonah. So you've dried off and then he gets going and heads towards Nineveh.
Probably took him a couple of weeks at least to get there. But here's the thing. As he starts getting closer to Nineveh, he starts seeing some of the hallmarks of these people. These are the sort of people that would put the heads of their enemies up on pikes around the region in order to enforce this idea of their cruelty and their reign and their power and the like.
So Jonah, he's traveling to Nineveh, but the closer he gets, undoubtedly the more creeped out he gets. Undoubtedly the more he understands just by approaching Nineveh, the wickedness of the city. So what did he do upon arrival? Did he slink in unnoticed?
Well, it doesn't appear that he did that. Whatever God had done in his heart and mind at this point, it still didn't make him love Nineveh. He still wanted to see them judged, but he did have some bravery at this point. So verse four says that as soon as he enters the city on the first day, he began to proclaim a very simple message, a message of judgment.
The message says the people had done wrong and God was watching. The message that people had done wickedly and a holy God was going to bring judgment upon them. Specifically, he said eight words in English, five words in Hebrew. He says, in 40 days, the city of Nineveh will be overthrown.
Now, what sort of reaction would you expect? Again, remember, this is a guy who doesn't even want to be there, preaching to people who don't want him there. So what would you expect? What sort of response would he get?
How would the people respond to his words?
The Unexpected Repentance of Nineveh, from Greatest to Least
“So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.”
— Jonah 3:5 (NKJV)
Well, let's look at their response in verses five through seven. So the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast. They put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
Then the word came to the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne. He laid aside his robe. He covered himself with sackcloth. He sat in ashes and he caused to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and the nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast nor herd nor flock taste anything.
Don't let them eat or drink water. Now, earlier in today's sermon, we came to two readily obvious conclusions. Number one, Jonah is a pretty mediocre prophet. Number two, Nineveh was a strong and terrifying city.
Again, if we were just betting men, watching what was unfolding there, I don't think we would have liked Jonah's odds. That the weakest prophet in scripture would go to one of the wickedest cities of all time, we would not have bet that their response would be what we see in verses 5 through 7.
We would not have bet that the entire city would repent. If ever there was a hard-hearted, hard-headed culture, if ever there was a city that should have been unresponsive to this sort of warning, it would have been Nineveh. If ever across the pages and annals of human history you were to find one city, one place, and one era, one time that you would have thought would be the most resistant to hearing the word of God, you would have said it would be Nineveh.
And if ever there was a prophet that would be the most unlikely to be used to effect repentance, it would have been Jonah. When Jonah walks into town, at best, at best, you thought they might have laughed him out. That's the best possible outcome you might have bet upon. At worst, you would have thought it would take two seconds and his head would be on a pike outside the city walls with all the other ones.
However, you would not have expected what we see in verse 5, that the people believed God. Jonah preached a message, and the people believed that message. The people believed God, and they proclaimed a fast, and they put on sackcloth. This reluctant Jewish prophet preached an eight-word sermon, and it brought about the greatest repentance and response of any sermon we have in recorded history, at least for the scope of those that it immediately reached.
So I ask you, how is that possible? We've just identified they're the worst, the most hard-headed, most least likely to hear his message. And he was no great shakes himself. He was a guy who was poorly equipped to even give this message.
So how, how do we believe that this occurred? You'd be hard pressed to find any other case where a single sermon brought about the sort of reaction that we see in these verses. It's unprecedented.
Why They Repented: The Doctrine of Sovereign Grace
It makes us and wonder why they responded this way and how. Well, let's deal with the question of why first. Why did the Ninevites repent? Well, the short answer is this, because God enabled it.
God not only wanted them to repent, but He enabled their hearts to do so. You see, God has always been in the grace business. God's always been in the mercy business. He's always been in the salvation business.
What did Jonah say in chapter two? He said, salvation is of the Lord. Well, it didn't apply just to one dude under the water. It also applied to others here.
God saves people, even in the places and even to the people that you would think would be the least likely candidates. You know, sometimes we think we can guess who He could save or should save or would save. But the reality is that He does His own good pleasure. And sometimes He determines to sow seeds of repentance and grace in the hearts of people.
You would say, no way. Saul of Tarsus, anyone? King Nebuchadnezzar, the Ninevites here. If you want to know why they repented in Jonah 3, the short answer, the correct answer is because God ordained their repentance.
God used an eight word sermon from a reluctant prophet to help bring repentance and change to their hearts. That's the answer why people repented because God decreed that they would.
God Draws Even Pagans: Ruth, Saul of Tarsus, and the Thief on the Cross
As a side note, that's not unusual. You see, what surprises us here is the scope, how many people, but it's not unusual that He says pagans, is it? What was the book? What book did we study before we studied the book of Jonah?
What were we studying like a month ago? The book of Ruth. And Ruth was from where? Moab.
It's not unusual that God should sow seeds of repentance and draw even pagans to Himself. Just last month, we were talking about this. What stands out to us is how many. And we say, well, yeah, sure.
He could do with one, you know, maybe a group, but it's family or what have you. But then we come to the Ninevites. It's like, oh man, nah, nah, nah. He couldn't do that.
It shocks us numerically. However, the principles shouldn't shock us. God knocks Saul of Tarsus off his horse. He's breathing out threats and murder to the Christians.
God knocks him off his horse, changes his hearts, enables and persuades him to turn to Christ. And that's exactly what He does. The thief on the cross, there was two thieves on the cross. They're both mocking Jesus.
Then God acts, changes the heart of the one to Christ, right? He turns and he trusts in Christ. God is still in the salvation business, and sometimes He chooses the last people you would think he would save.
The King Humbled: Genuine Repentance and Its Outward Marks
Well, that's what happened here. With that said, how was this repentance manifest? Well, when the pagan king of Nineveh heard God's words, through God's grace doing something in his heart — remember God hardened the heart of Pharaoh? Well, it seems here He softens the heart of the king of Nineveh.
And so what does he do? Well, he steps down from his throne. That's not insignificant. He steps down from his throne and he takes off his robe.
And if you know anything about thrones and royal robes, you knew this much. They are used to visually depict your reign and rule and authority of anyone that enters into your chambers. When you're sitting on a throne wearing the royal robe, you're the king; your word goes. Well, here, what does he do?
He takes these things off before God. He recognizes that there is a greater king. He doesn't just take them off and like stand there and kind of look around — hey, what's going on? He puts on the sackcloth, the ashes.
Something happened in this guy's heart, something that you couldn't explain other than it must be the work of God. And so he issues edicts and commands, and he says, you know what, we've done wrong. In fact, he addresses the violence of his own people. Remember what we said?
These were a people that were reviled because of the violent nature of the way they went about their business. One of these verses, he calls out the violence and he says, we have done wrong.
Was Their Repentance Sincere? The Testimony of Christ
Now a question a lot of people ask, and you're maybe thinking it, you say, all right, all right. Was this guy being sincere? If someone came to me and said that they were going to squash me like a bug if I didn't do blank, wouldn't I be inclined to do blank? At least, you know, even if my heart wasn't any different, wouldn't I want to escape judgment by at least feigning some sort of response?
So a lot of times folk thinks, well, maybe he was just being insincere. This is just kind of a short-term thing; he's trying to avoid judgment. People say, you know, could anyone's hearts truly have been changed on this day? Well, that is a good question.
And one of the reasons it's a good question is this: because within roughly a hundred years, Nineveh would be destroyed. You see, whatever happened in this particular day in this particular area, evidently it didn't last because the prophecies of another prophet named Nahum would come true for the Assyrians and for Nineveh. Nineveh would be destroyed.
It absolutely would be. Within a hundred years or so of Jonah's visit, God's judgment would come upon the city. Within a hundred years or so, their old habits would return. With that said, how could their repentance have been sincere in the first place if within 100 years they fell apart at the seams?
How could they have been sincere if within 100 years or so God judged them anyway because they were that bad, that wicked at that point? Wasn't the repentance fake or superficial or what have you? Well, no, no. And I don't have all the time to give all the reasons why, but I will give you one very good reason.
Here's what Jesus has to say about the matter in Matthew 12, verse 41. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. He's talking to those who are engaged in their sin, who don't have faith, who hate Him. And He says this.
He says, O Pharisees, the men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed, one greater than Jonah is here. You see what Jesus was doing: in order to address the false religion and the lack of faith and the lack of repentance of the Pharisees, Jesus invokes the legitimate repentance of the Ninevites.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians that in the day yet to come, God's people will rise up in judgment of a wicked world. Well, God's people in Matthew 12 includes those from Nineveh of the age in which Jonah preached. In the eyes of Jesus, there was repentance in Nineveh — repentance that brought salvation to the point that some Ninevites will rise up in the last judgment.
Repentance as a Turning of the Life, Not Only the Lips
“Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”
— Jonah 3:10 (NKJV)
All right, let's look at this repentance a little further. Let's look at verses 8 and 9. Verse 8, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that's in his hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from His fierce anger so that we might not perish. All right, as we see in these two verses, upon hearing God's warning, the king had decreed a course of action that he hoped would forestall God's judgment upon the nations. So the king, something's happened in his heart.
He is now able to recognize that he and his people have sinned, and so he repents, and yet he still isn't sure what's going to happen next. God hasn't made any promises about what's going to happen, other than in 40 days, if there isn't repentance, doom is going to strike. So the king knew that his people had done wrong.
He knew that they loved violence for violence sake. He knew that they'd earned God's wrath. He knew that they deserved destruction. And he hopes that if they turn and repent, utilizing the most extreme forms of repentance, which is self deprivation.
You and I live in a culture and age where we say, I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry. We very seldom, very rarely marry up our repentance to any sort of activity where we refrain from anything in life. Well, here even the pagans saw that the repentance could and should be marked as some sort of outward form that spoke to what was going on in their hearts.
So sitting in sackcloth and ashes, avoiding food and even drink here, at least for a season, this was their response. Now, did that cause God to change His mind? In fact, can God change His mind? Is that the way God works?
Well, let's look at our final verse, verse 10, verse 10. Then God saw their works. He didn't just hear from their lips that they repented. That's not just what it says.
He says that He saw them begin to act differently. Repentance is not just something we do with our lips. It's a turning away from that, which we previously used to do. You know, the old mobster movies, you'd have the mobsters, they'd go into confession and they'd confess all the horrible things that they did, and that would buy them absolution to do what?
To go out and sin again, and then come back and confess and do it all over again. That's not repentance. Repentance is when you confess, and then you turn to a different lifestyle. You do something different.
Well, that's what God sees them doing here. Verse 10, God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways, and so He relented from the disaster that He said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
Does God Change His Mind? Anthropomorphic Language and Divine Decree
You know, the whole Bible, especially the Old Testament, is filled with times when prophets would go and warn the people that they'd done wrong and that God was watching. The Old Testament is filled with times when God warned the people of coming judgment. Now, was that judgment ever avoidable? Well, yes.
God would remind them, here's what's coming. And He even gave them a time frame, in this case, 40 days. He says, look, you're on the tracks. The train is coming through.
With that said, the intention in warning them was to cause them or prompt them to turn from that which they were doing to avoid the fate that God would otherwise bring down. God did this all the time. Just read the prophets. And you see, He does it all the time.
One example, 2 Chronicles 7. God says — He says this to His own people. He says, If My people, which are called by My name, humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways — not just say nice platitudes to make me think that they're sorry, but turn from their wicked ways — then I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land.
Time and time again, both to the Jews and even the pagans, God threatened judgment and then called people to repentance. And if the people repented and turned, then He relented from that judgment. Now, does that mean that God is double-minded? Is God being wishy-washy when He goes from one course of action to another?
Well, of course not. See, whenever scripture uses language like God relented or changed His mind about something, it does so through something we call anthropomorphic language. See, anthropomorphic language is using terms and concepts to describe something about God in a way that we're familiar with. When scripture says that God's eyes look over the globe to see those who are righteous, when scripture talks about His hands or His feet or these sorts of things — this is anthropomorphic language.
It's a way of explaining something God is doing using terminology that we understand. Well, that's what we see here. When it says God relented, it's not like God goes, oh my goodness, what was I thinking? Boy, that was a close one.
I'll do something different, I think. That's not the way it works. Rather, He enfolds our repentance and our turning into a divine decree that began before we were born. That's what we see here.
The idea of relenting is not God sitting around hemming and hawing in heaven about what to do. Rather, in this case, in verse 10, it's an example of God warning the people that they're in danger and then intervening and ordaining a better outcome through His grace. So when the Ninevites turned in verses 6 through 9, it didn't shock God.
God was like, oh my goodness, they repented? Wow. That's not the case. He had set in motion the very sequence of events that had brought about the repentance to begin with.
Grace to the Unlovable and a Warning to Our Own Land
All right. Given the time, let me wrap up with a couple of just brief final thoughts. In Jonah 3, we see that God's grace was extended to some really unlovable people. We see God's grace extended to the people that we would have trouble giving grace to.
And it should be encouraging to us to know that this is the way that God is, because we can be as unlovable as the Ninevites or Jonah in our own ways. We have broken the laws of God just as they have. So it should be encouraging to us that God is willing to extend grace even to the most hard-hearted.
Just like Jonah or the Ninevites, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and yet it's encouraging for us to know that God sends us His grace, His word, and His son to rescue us from judgment. With that said, don't take that for granted. Don't take that for granted. See, the Ninevites didn't deserve this.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking, you know, I'm just so lovable, of course God loves me. Now, you would never say that, but you might think that way. Sometimes we just think, well, yeah, of course, I get it why He loves me. I understand.
I love you, too. You know, we think there's some merit we bring to this equation by which He has given us grace. Well, no, no, no, no. The Ninevites didn't deserve grace; neither do you and I. And as recipients of that grace, we should commit ourselves to sanctification. If God saves a people or a nation, in the case of Nineveh, then they should live accordingly.
With that said, the Ninevites did not live accordingly, at least for an extended period of time. As we said before, although a generation or at least some portion of the people alive at this time may have come to faith, may have been saved due to Jonah 3, within roughly 100 years, the people would forget God once again and the very scary prophecy of another prophet, Nahum, would come to pass.
Nahum 3 says this, speaking to the Ninevites, speaking to the Assyrians: Your shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria; your nobles rest in the dust. Your people are scattered on the mountains and no one is there to gather them. Your injury has no healing. Your wound is severe.
In a very short amount of time, Nineveh would be destroyed. Roughly a hundred years, they would go from revival that we read about this morning to ashes. Roughly a hundred years, they would go from heartfelt repentance to utter destruction. You know, that reality, it scared one commentator, one modern commentator, so much, he said this.
He looked at our own country and he said, the speed with which our own land has apostatized, the speed with which our own land has apostatized and embraced abortion and every perversity under the sun is at least as fast as Nineveh. And in a generation, we've largely followed their path. The question remains, will we escape their fate?
Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. God's judgment's never hypothetical. He will deal with sin. You can take that to the bank.
But the good news, as we see in this chapter, the good news for the people of Jonah's day and the good news for people in our day is that when He deals with sinners, He deals with them graciously. He's slow to anger. He's slow to anger. He's quick to forgive, and He's calling us to repentance even now.
God's still in the salvation business. He's still willing to forgive people's sins. And if God could use one broken, reluctant prophet to reach the whole people in Nineveh — just think, what could He do? If He used one broken, fallen down, reluctant prophet to reach all of Nineveh, what could He accomplish through the collected voices of you and I? Let's pray that we might find out.
More in The Book Of Jonah
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
