Sermon Resources - Dr. Toby Holt
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.
0:00 — Jonah's second divine commission the same call given again without excuse
3:30 — Jonah enters the great city Nineveh, a city three days' journey across
7:45 — The most reluctant sermon in Scripture "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
12:00 — The startling immediate repentance the people of Nineveh believed God and mourned
16:30 — The king's sweeping royal decree fasting, sackcloth, ashes, and turning from violence
21:00 — "Who can tell if God will relent?" — the genuine hope embedded in authentic repentance
25:15 — God relents from the disaster one of the most dramatic divine reversals in all Scripture
Questions This Sermon Answers:
1. What was the second commissioning of Jonah and how did it differ from the first?
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.
2. How long was Jonah's sermon and why does that matter?
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).
3. What does Nineveh's repentance look like and is it genuine?
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."
4. Does God "changing His mind" in Jonah 3:10 mean God can be surprised or wrong?
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.
5. Why is the Nineveh revival significant for understanding God's purposes for the nations?
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.
6. What does the king's decree in Jonah 3:9 reveal about his theology?
"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."
7. What does the cattle fasting tell us about the king's decree?
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.
8. What does Jonah 3 teach about the power of preaching and the sovereignty of God?
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.
Key Theological Points:
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.
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