Jonah 3:1-10 – God’s Persistent Grace – 23rd May 2021

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We’ve been following Jonah through chapters 1 and 2

We remember how when the Lord commanded him to go to Nineveh

Jonah fled to the opposite direction

This evening we see him / he’s wet / he’s slime-covered

skin bleached by the gastric juice of the fish / But he’s chastened / he’s repented

And the Lord recommisions him:

Verse 1 says: “The the word of God came to Jonah a second time”

Jonah is given a second chance / Jonah repents / God takes him back

I want for us to pause here / and take note of what is God’s persistent grace

We’ve seen God’s persistent grace / a number of times before in the Bible

He showed it to Samson / showed him grace when he went wayward

He showed it to Peter / Peter betrayed Jesus yet Jesus restored him

Many Christians have confessed – only because the Word of God

came to them a second time that they’re where they are today

If we care to admit / we will confess / that the fact that we are here

this evening in church / because God’s Word came to us

a second / a third / a fourth / an unpteenth time

Someone has said-: “I’m a living proof / God is God of persistent grace”

Sinclair Ferguson: “It is because we have a God of persistence grace

that we are serving Him today”

In this sense most of us are Jonah

Point: God is able to make his name a renown and praise to the nations

even in the midst of our diffidence and rebellion and unfaithfulness

Nothing is going to stop God displaying His glory and renown

He will use even the devil / as He did in Job’s life / to bring glory to his name

Where sin abounds, grace superabounds / Rom 5:20

Such is the pursuing grace of God / on us all

So Jonah has a second shot at his calling / He’s to go to Nineveh

Nineveh was an impressive and magnificent city – the capital of Assyria

Nineveh stood on the banks of the Tigris River / 500 miles N.E. of Israel

It was a huge metropolis

Now / it is easy to think of Jonah as one lone man with an unknown God

pitted against the indomitable forces of wealth and power of Assyria

And in a sense / by going to Nineveh / he’s putting his life at grave risk

I think it was Keller who said / his call to go to Nineveh

would be like God appearing to a Jewish rabbi in 1942

and saying to him “Go to Berlin / enter the city square

and there call on the Germans to repent of their violent sins.”

I mean how long will that Jewish rabbi last!

Jonah faced a bleak prospect of ever coming back alive from ferocious Assyrians

– could’ve been arrested / he could’ve been charged with political sedition

– the way he probably looked / wet / dishevelled / bleached

he could have been taken for a lunatic and committed to an asylum

All the odds were stacked against him

And the odds that Nineveh would repent was almost zilch !

But nevertheless / Jonah obeys this time / and he goes to Nineveh

But notice a slight change in the wording of the new commission

The first time the Word of God came to Jonah in chapter 1 / it says:

1:2 “Arise, go to Nineveh / that great city / and call out against it,

for their evil has come up before me.”

Now in this second call / this re-commissioning / the text says:

3:2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,

and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

There’s an added emphasis here / Jonah is not to preach whatever he likes

He is to preach / specifically / the message that God gives him

He is to preach God’s Word / not his own

If the Ninevites are to come to God / they’ve got to hear God’s Word preached

Rom 10:17: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

1 Peter 1:23: We are, “born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,

through the living and abiding word of God.”

So Jonah preached the Word of God / His message was concise yet pungent

Scripture records his short message / In English / it contains eight words

“Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

In the Hebrew / it is even shorter – just five words!!

He tells them that in just 40 days / Nineveh shall be “overthrown”

The Hebrew word for “overthrown” is the same word

used in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:21)

In short Jonah tells the Ninevites that they’re about to face extinction

God is about to repay the city for its evil

His message may be short but it cut deep

because he spoke by divine credential

He spoke / not the words of mere man / but the Words of God

You’ll remember Belshazzar / God used four words on him

Just four words and he saw the writing on the wall

And those four words struck terror into his heart

And it says here “the people of Nineveh believed God”

Now that’s hundreds of thousands of people in Nineveh turning to God

Liberal scholars have tried to explain it away

They say “That’s not big deal / Historically the nation have been battered

by a number of recent military defeats! That put the people on edge

and so fearing any further disaster / whether real or perceived

they’ll believe anything” / Other liberal writers explained the miracle

away by suggesting that recent incidents of earthquakes and eclipses

have so terrified they people they were vulnerable to believing anything

I know that it sounds like I’m begging the question / but for now

Let me just say / that there are no natural explanations for this revival

It was a supernatural act on the part of God

God in his sovereign desire was willing and set to save a wicked city

and that / was just what He did

Now you might not have noticed it but once Jonah delivered his message to N.

his name is mentioned no more in the rest of this chapter

Jonah isn’t the important person

Scripture does not say “And the people believed Jonah”

Rather it says: “They believed God” / v.5

Faith should never rest on the messenger but on the God who gave the message

It is the responsibility of every preacher to project God and not himself

God must be promoted / the preacher himself remains shrouded

It is the constant temptation of every preacher to project himself / instead of God

The Scottish preacher James Denney once said

“No man can try to appear clever and glorify God at the same time”

There’s so much ego attached to preaching / it is pathetic!

Every preachers faces the temptation to promote himself / it’s pride

That’s the pitfall of preaching! / Pride / And it’s a deadly trap

And never think that when you’re over seventy / you’ll be weaned

Don’t bet on it * It’s something we need to repent of / and

* It is only by preaching the gospel to yourself / continually that you can keep it in check!

Nicolaus Zinzendorf may have put it in an extreme way but there’s truth

Zinzendorf: “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten”

John the Baptist “He must increase / I must decrease!”

So v. 5 should humble those of us who preach

It does not say “And the people believed Jonah”

Rather it says: “They believed God” / v.5

And after Jonah preached / the city of Nineveh repented and turned to God

This is second group people that came to salvation after an encounter with Jonah

First / was the group of sailors / and now the entire city of Nineveh

There’s been comparisons made

between the nature of the salvation of sailors / the salvation of Ninevites

Many have taken the view / and I think rightly that the sailors on the boat

came into a living relationship / with the One true God / Yahweh

Their salvation is described in clear categorical terms

The text says that 1) they feared the LORD exceedingly

2) they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and 3) they made vows

In short / they clearly came into a covenant relationship with Yahweh

But here / when the text describes the salvation of these Ninevites

we don’t sense them coming into a covenant relationship with Yahweh

as you see in the experience of the sailors

Instead what you see is a kind of an en-mass / corporate repentance

* a turning away from the impending judgement

* you see no evidence

of them coming into a covenantal relationship with Yahweh

* the word for God here in v.8,9, twice in v.10 is quite telling It’s the word Elohim

Whereas the sailors called God Yahweh / Name of Israel’s God

the Ninevites called God Elohim

The Ninevites came to fear God ONLY as a universal Supreme Being

They didn’t come to fear Yahweh / the covenant keeping God of Israel

But God will choose to be merciful / even to the non-elect

if they would turn “from their evil ways”

if they repent and live submissively to natural divine law

Back to our story / We see a conversion of an entire city

By any standard what happened in Nineveh was a mighty work of God

This is the greatest conversion story in all of Holy Scripture

Nowhere else both in the Old and New is there anything like it.

God’s Word pierced their hearts

* they became convicted of their sins and the punishment they deserved

* they realised they were under wrath.

Finally / God’s word reached the palace / the king upon hearing the message

got up from his throne / tore off his magnificent robes / put on the rough

sackcloth of mourning / covered his head with ashes of humiliation

took his place with the mourners and repented of his own sins.

This Assyrian king had conquered many enemies / by his valour

but now he dethrones himself / abdicates his power

and surrenders to the Almighty God.

Whatever else this king had accomplish in the past

this / was the moment of his true greatness.

Here was an oriental despot who could wield all the power he wanted

But he put all that power away / for God has spoken

You have no glory of your own / when God becomes real to you

And that day / the Nineveh that was so proud

of its military prowess & invincibility / ceased to be Nineveh

It was a nation in repentance / humbling itself.

If the miracle of the fish is great / here we see a far greater miracle

One strange looking man / in a strange land / among an arrogant people

preaching by divine credential

bringing about such a radical change of heart.

We see proof of the reality of their repentance / in verse 8:

The king issued a decree saying: “Let every person turn from his evil way

and from the violence that is in their hands”

There’s a word in that verse / that is hugely significant:

It’s the word “violence”

And the word for violence here is the word “hamas”

Rings a bell / Yes the Hamas of today / fighting against Israel.

In the OT the word “hamas” speaks of the sin of extreme wickedness

It is violence that is committed for the sole pleasure of seeing people suffer

It is the same word in Gen 6:11 describing the days of Noah when the earth

was “corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with hamas”.

And because “hamas” is living without regard for God

and because people are made in God’s image

hamas / unwittingly is aimed at God

So the one who commits hamas / invites God’s judgment.

So when God’s Word came / this king knew

that their hands were soiled with the blood of violence.

See / THAT the Assyrians / were one of cruelest race / is an indisputable fact

They glamorised violence / Historical inscriptions bear this out

We have ample historical evidence that Assyrian kingdom

was built on violence / cruelty / bloodshed.

Tigalath-Pelaser – inspired fear upon other nations

King Sennacharib who surrounded Jerusalem in 701 BC said:

“Like fat steers . . . I speedily cut them down . . . I cut their throats

like lambs . . I cut off their lives as one cuts a string”

King Ashurbanipal: “With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool”

I captured many troops alive: from some I cut off their arms . . .

from others I cut off their noses, ears / I gouged out the eyes of many

I cut off the heads of their fighters . . . I hung their heads on trees around the city . . .

I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.”

Remember there was no Geneva Conventions of warfare in those days

Now / considering all this / the king’s call to repent / cannot be explained

by any other reason other than a supernatural act of God.

Now / I don’t want to dwell too much on the subject of social justice here

but I need to point out this crucial fact:

that God is both a God of social reform as well as a God of judgment

Amos and Jonah / must be taught together.

People on the right spectrum of politics would insist – God as a God of wrath

but they soft-pedal on the teaching of social justice.

People on the left spectrum of politics passionately promote social justice

but they totally reject any idea of a God of wrath and judgment.

They hear the Bible speak of a God who bears the sword

a God of wrath and vengeance

They will immediately say “That’s primitive / intolerance

that’ll lead to violence / we’ve got to pass that

work for a peaceful world. We need a God Who’s accepting”.

Then along comes Miroslav Volf / a Croatian / raised in the former Yugoslavia

And he has seen some extreme unspeakable evil people were subjected to

He says “It’s very well for you to preach social justice and nonviolence

because that’s all you know

* you inhabit a sanitised world

* you live in the comforts of your quarter-acre suburban home.

Volf gets us to imagine talking to people

whose cities and villages have first been plundered / razed to the ground

whose daughters and sisters have been raped,

whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit.

And you ride your social justice hobby-horse / you lecture them about

how they should not pay back / how they should not retaliate

how that if they did / they’ll be sucked into the cycle of violence.

Volf is saying / that unless you believe in a God of divine vengeance

you will not be able to resist picking up the sword in vengeance

If you don’t do that / you’ll just die in despair.

In other words / he’s saying

if you preach non-violence / you had better believe

that there is / beyond this world

a God who gets angry at injustice / who hates injustice

a God who’s going to settle every account

so nobody gets away with anything

and that there will be divine retribution and vindication.

And Volf who’s seen all that violence and evil perpetrated on the people says:

“The practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance.”

See / bottom line

The salvation Jesus offers / is not just so that our sins may be forgiven

The salvation Jesus offers / so restores us / it conforms us to His image

For a least two reasons:

One / so that we might live as new creations

Two / so that we may have the basis

to treat people justly and lovingly

as people made in the image of God.

And that / is what makes v.8 so significant

The king says “Let everyone turn from his evil way

and from the “hamas” that is in his hands”

Notice the king not only calls on everyone to fast pray repent grieve over sin

he got everyone to forsake their sin / to turn from their evil way:

And that / is what repentance is / by definition

It’ is a turning-around from sin / it is turning towards the Lord.

Of course we ought to be sorry for our sin; we ought to grieve over our sin

But repentance is much more than this / Repentance is

more than feeling guilty

more than just confessing your sins / more than paying penance

more than having sorrow over sin.

Repentance is about forsaking / renouncing sin.

Grudem: “Repentance is a heartfelt sorry for sin, a renouncing of it, and a

sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ.”

To repent is to change / it is to fight sin / it is to pursue holiness

And this / the king did / and he called for all of Nineveh to do so

And they did.

But notice the posture of the king’s heart / notice his humility here.

He says, “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce

anger, so that we may not perish...”

He is so much like the chastised Jonah in the belly of the fish

He’s not bargaining with God / not trying to cut a deal with God.

He does not presume that just because he has turned around

that God therefore is honour-bound to be merciful to them

He does not presume upon God / He said: “Who knows? God may...”

He leaves it to God / to deal sovereignly with them.

He’s throwing himself down at God’s mercy / looking to see what He will do

And / gracious as He always is / on seeing their repentance / the Lord relented

A change of heart in people / will bring about a change of heart in God.

We get this from Jeremiah 18:7-10: “If at any time I declare concerning a

nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and

if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil,

I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time

I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and

if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice,

then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.”

Now how may we tie all this up?

Let me put it this way

You could hardly read through Matthew 12 / and not be struck

by some of the most radical statements Jesus makes about his identity.

He said: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” / Mt 12:6

Then He said: “Behold, something greater than Jonah is here” / Mt 12:41

Then He said: “Behold, something greater than Solomon is here” / Mt 12:42

He dropped the hint that he was greater than King David and the priests

He called himself the “Lord of the Sabbath” / Mt. 12:1–7

In all these verses / He’s saying

that He is the One / to whom all these people and institutions point!

But what is immediately pertinent for us / is when Jesus said:

“Behold, something greater than Jonah is here”

He is greater than Jonah in that

Jonah most begrudgingly preached to the Ninevites

Jesus / not willing that any should perish

showed great compassion / and wept over Jerusalem

brought not only a message of destruction

but a message of the hope of salvation

for all who will put their trust in Him.

Earlier I said that in a sense we’re all Jonahs.

And J.D. Greear tells us / that to this day / at Yom Kippur

after the Book of Jonah is read / the congregation stands and says

in unison: “We are Jonah” / And indeed we are Jonah on several levels.

But Greear takes it further

He says / Not only are we Jonah / “We are Nineveh”

At least we were Nineveh

We were so wicked and violent in our sins

And yet God / in Christ / showed us mercy.

He pursued us / And in His pursuit of us

He cast Himself into the sea of the Father’s wrath

He was plunged into the bowels of death / into the underbelly of hell

for three days / that He might save us.

Today / we live not out of the fear that we might be swallowed by a fish

of God’s wrath

Today / we live joyfully / freely / knowing that God’s love is so great

that He would condescend to have His Son swallowed up by death for us

that we might be delivered from His wrath.

And for this we are deeply grateful.