Jonah 3:1-10 - God's Grace and Nineveh's Repentance

Intro: Well, good morning Embassy church. Thank you all so much for gathering this morning here. It’s good to see all of you, again. We’ve been going through the book of Jonah, and today, we’ll be walking through Jonah 3.

*previously in the book of Jonah

1) God calls the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh and call out against it. Jonah flees to Tarshish, the opposite direction. He gets on a boat, and God hurls a wind that causes a sea storm. The sailors are terrified, and they discover that the problem is Jonah. Jonah tells them who his God is and then to hurl him into the sea to stop the storm. So they hurl him off the ship, the storm stops, and Jonah 1 ends with the sailors converting and worshipping YHWH.

2) Jonah is sinking in the water and is swallowed by a great fish. In the fish, Jonah says a prayer, but we as readers have a hard time determining what he’s really saying. Does he want to live or die? Is he lying and being deceitful or is he genuine and sincere but delusional? In Jonah 1, Jonah paid money to take a vehicle out to the sea. In Jonah 2, God appointed another vehicle to take Jonah back to dry land, free of charge. That’s how chapter 2 ends. The fish vomits Jonah out onto the land. Between chapters 2 and 3, we have no idea where Jonah is. He’s definitely back on dry land, but that’s all we know. So that’s where we pick up in chapter 3.

*read Jonah 3. Page 727 in black pew Bibles.

Because the word of God transforms us, we repent, and God relents.

Something to keep in the back of your minds is the contrast between Jonah and the Ninevites. We saw this back in chapter 1, the contrast between Jonah’s actions and the pagan sailors’ actions. Here in chapter 3, as we work through it verse by verse, I want you all to pay attention to the amount of effort Jonah shows in his actions, and the amount of effort the pagan Ninevites show in their actions. The chapter begins and ends with God’s actions.

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1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, (STOP)

2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

How many of you are having a déjà vu moment right now? Jonah 3 and 1 start almost the exact same way. The first verses are the same except this introduction includes the word “second” or “a second time”. In the OT, when you see this word “second” in the prophetic introductory formula (which isn’t common), the author does that to further explain or clarify the preceding prophecy. The reason this is interesting to us is number one, we haven’t heard the actual prophecy yet and number two, the word of God in verse 2 isn’t further explained or clarified, but it’s repeated. God repeats His commands.

Ch. 1: arise, go to Nineveh, and call out / Ch. 3: arise, go to Nineveh, and call out

God repeating Himself here is important and here’s why. Did God change Jonah’s mission? Did any of Jonah’s thoughts or actions in chapters 1 and 2 convince God to change His plans for him?

IL: Let’s say you’re a cop in the Palatine area. You’re sitting in your police vehicle in a 20mph zone, and in the 20mph zone, you see a car zoom by going 60 mph. This person is driving 40 over. You drive and pull him over. You walk up, and you ask, “Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?” And he says to you, “Yeah I think I was going a little over the speed limit, but you know officer, I think the speed limit should really be 35.” Aside from the fact that he was really going 60 and not 35, did this man convince you? Because he thinks the speed limit should be over 20 and because he choseto speed over 20, did the speed limit change?

RE: Do you think any of your thoughts or actions in the chapters of your life can convince God to change His plans for you? God’s talking to Jonah but He’s talking to us, too. What’s God telling us? What’s His plan for believers? God calls all of us into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus which causes us to love Him and trust Him and as a natural result of your love for God and God’s love for you, you love and serve others. It’s on thisfoundation that we make more specific decisions for ourselves using the discernment that God has gifted us with, things like who to date, or what job to pursue, or where you should live.

You know, those things are important, but God calls all of us on a more important mission. An actual mission. And I believe it’s captured well in our church’s mission statement. Did you know that our church has a mission statement? The mission of Embassy Church is to glorify Christ by making disciples of all nations. How many of us are doing that? How many times do we let our opinions get in the way of us spreading the gospel and discipling one another?

I talked about an introductory formula back in Jonah 1. Do you all remember that? In the same way we have things like “dear so and so” to introduce letters or “once upon a time…” to introduce fairytales, verses 1 and 2 act as an introduction to a very long prophetic message by an obedient prophet. We didn’t see either of those things at the beginning of the story but because we see the introductory formula again in chapter 3, I think the readers still somewhat expect this amazing prophecy for Nineveh at some point. Remember the two components of the prophetic literature genre: long prophetic message from God and an obedient prophet of God. Keep that in mind as we read verse 3.

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3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.

Jonah is obeying God? Jonah is obeying God! It seems that Jonah is now an obedient prophet! He’s doing it. He’s finally doing it! God said arise, Jonah arose. God said go, Jonah go’ed. Go’ed isn’t a real word. Jonah went, but it’s the same word. God said to call out. Jonah calls out in verse 4. Jonah is finally doing what a prophet is supposed to do! What changed? What changed between chapters 2 and 3 that caused Jonah to finally agree to fulfill his divine calling? It seems so far that Jonah had a heart change. I say it like that on purpose.

The text doesn’t explicitly give us the why behind the change in Jonah’s action, but I have my own personal conclusion for the why. I’ll tell you all later, but for now, we can see that God’s persistent and gracious and powerful pursuit had something to do with Jonah’s change in action.

This idea of God chasing Jonah around, some of you might think of this as a bit excessive. God demonstrates relentless pursuit. But once you see God as a father, then it makes sense. I argue that this is what a loving parent does. This is what a loving father does for a son or daughter that chooses to run away. Don’t forget this Embassy. The reason God chases you when you run away from home is because He loves you more than the world does. He loves you more than you love yourself.

We’re still in verse 3; I want you all to look at the last part of the verse. Three days journey. What does that mean? Nineveh being a three days journey? It could mean several things but most likely, it means it would take three days from the outside to walk into the center of the city. The author is telling us that if Jonah wants to be as effective and influential as he can be, he needs to journey three days. Remember: Jonah needs three-days to journey. Keep that in mind as we look at verse 4.

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4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

The text says it’s a three day journey. How many days does Jonah journey? One. Jonah only goes one day’s worth before proclaiming the prophecy. Here, the author is hinting that although it seemed like Jonah is this completely heart-changed obedient prophet back in verse 3, it’s very possible that Jonah actually hasn’t changed much. I’m calling it a hint but every OT scholar I know who has studied the book of Jonah sees the narrator’s hint as way too obvious. You really see this hint in the entire verse.

Remember the two typical components of prophetic OT books: obedient prophet and long message. If God is consistent with how He provides prophetic messages based on the others prophetic books, God gave Jonah a very thorough, comprehensive prophecy. The prophecy would include like all the others, mention of God, how the people have sinned, how God is about to punish them, how the people must repent, and how God will forgive them. God’s long prophetic message to Jonah would provide the full context of the prophecy, which makes Jonah’s prophecy in the second half of verse 4 really weird. Here’s Jonah’s entire prophecy: Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. That’s it? That’s it. How many words is that? In the English, in the ESV, Jonah says 8 words. In the Hebrew, it’s worse. Jonah says 5 words.

IL: Let’s say, there is someone in your life that you don’t like. Hypothetically. And this person is an atheist. You really don’t want to, but you know God wants you to share the gospel of Jesus with this person. It could be a bully at school or a convicted murderer behind bars. It doesn’t matter. So, you meet this person, and you prepare to proclaim the gospel message. In your mind, you already know what you should say, and this is how you’ve prepped it.

“Hey friend, there is a God, and He loves us and wants us to trust and obey Him. He’s holy and perfect, but we choose to not trust and obey Him. And because we are evil and we do evil things, God in His righteousness, separates us from Him. We choose ourselves over God. We don’t choose heaven, but we choose hell. Because of our sins, I am going to hell. You are going to hell. / But God the Father sent His son Jesus Christ to come into this world as a man. Jesus was crucified on the cross for our sins in our place, and after being buried, on the third day, he came back to life, and ascended into heaven! Sinners like you and me who are saved by Jesus are made righteous through his righteousness and reunited to God. So, we must repent of our sins and ask God for forgiveness. Today, do you want to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

That is the full gospel message you know to say. But you choose to only say a part of the gospel. You look at this person right in the eyes, and you say, “you are going to hell.” 5 words. That’s all you say. That’s your gospel presentation.

We’re talking about the size of what Jonah proclaimed. Let’s talk about the content of what Jonah proclaimed. What is Jonah’s prophecy? It’s discouraging, it’s vague, it seems incomplete. What does Jonah’s prophecy not contain? Everything else you would expect in God’s prophecy: The nation’s wrongdoing. That’s the reason for upcoming punishment: sin. That’s missing. God’s call for the people to repent. That’s missing. That’s the solution. To turn from their sins, their idol worship, their violence. That’s missing. The promise of forgiveness. That’s missing. Where is God’s name in Jonah’s prophecy? Jonah doesn’t even mention God. God’s name is missing. It’s as if Jonah cherrypicked one sentence from God’s word, out of its context and applied it to the situation. Does that remind you of something he did in chapter 2? Maybe Jonah hasn’t changed. Or at least his heart.

I want us to spend some time on this word overthrown. This word overthrown is significant. It’s significant because this word is ambiguous, and God chose this word on purpose. Overthrown means destruction, annihilation, obliteration, gloom and doom. Overthrown can also mean change, overturn, reformation, transformation. The text shows us that Jonah/Nineveh interpret the word the first way. Destruction.

Earlier, I mentioned that I have my own assessment of what caused Jonah’s obedience in chapter 3, his change in action. Back in verse 2, God tells Jonah to call out “the message that I tell you.” So between verses 2 and 3, God tells Jonah the message, He tells him everything. Jonah hears the entire prophecy, and hearing the whole prophecy, he also hears that one clause, “Nineveh shall be overthrown.” This idea of Jonah hating the Ninevites, how he wants to see all of them killed is hinted in chapters 1 and 2 and here in 3. I’m not going to talk about chapter 4 because I don’t want to spoil it but this idea of Jonah hating Nineveh is implied all throughout the first three chapters of Jonah.

So when he hears “overthrown” he takes the natural interpretation and thinks, “Oh, God changed His mind. He will overthrow them, He will destroy all of them in forty days. Yeah God is gracious and merciful, but He is also a just God. Finally! Justice!” And so he doesn’t pass up the opportunity to tell Israel’s enemies that God is going to destroy them.

We see a one-day journey. We see a 5 word prophecy. Yes, you could say that Jonah is finally obeying God but he’s doing the absolute bare minimum.

RE: Most of you in this room are believers. How many of you feel like you are doing the absolute bare minimum? Not the bare minimum to retain your salvation, but the bare minimum to express your salvation. If you were put on trial for being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Jonah’s minimal actions in verse 4 makes verse 5 shocking.

(READ) 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. (STOP)

They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

Remember the illustration I shared earlier. You tell this nonbeliever you don’t like, you are going to hell. The person looks at you with tears in the eyes, and says, “oh no, I need to believe in Jesus.” How shocked and disappointed would you be? People would never believe you if you told them what happened, but this did happen before, and not just to one person, but an entire city.

Jonah does the bare minimum. But God takes the bare minimum of Jonah, and fully maximizes it. The results of Jonah’s bare minimum work are shockingly effective. The outcome is unbelievable.

Maybe for Nineveh, overthrown doesn’t mean destruction. Maybe for Nineveh, overthrown means transformation. This is where you see the first half of our main idea this morning. God’s word transforms us. We have been transformed by the word of God. We see people fasting which people did in the OT to seek God’s mercy, and we see also people putting on sackcloth which is a symbol of repentance.

Greatest of them to the least of them. Who’s the narrator talking about? Everybody. Lotti dotti everybody. Every single person experienced the mercy of God and participated in the fast. Speaking of greatest, who could be considered the greatest person in Nineveh, in Assyria? Well, that would be the king.

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6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, (STOP)

and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Everything going on in verse 6 is chronological. Look at the sequence. The word of God reaches the king of Nineveh first. Then, the king rises from the throne, then he takes off his royal robes, then he puts on sackcloth (symbol of repentance), and then lastly, he sits down in the ashes, in the dust.

This pagan man is the most powerful and authoritative person in the entire city, possibly the entire nation of Assyria and his movements in verse 6 demonstrate amazing humility. What if the political candidate you support did this on live television? What if our president of the United States did this on an international stage? How would that look to the world?

Politically, this doesn’t look good. You don’t want your public leaders to do things like this. You want them to be proud and strong and dominant. Our God has the power to bring the most powerful man on the planet to his knees. God here doesn’t display power by His wrath, but He displays power by His mercy. You can see a great contrast between the king of Nineveh and Jonah in chapter 1. Jonah arose and fled, the king arose and sat down. And after the king sits down, he makes a proclamation in verses 7-9.

(DON’T READ) 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

Before you look at 7-9, remember, verse 5 talks about how Nineveh believed God and how they began fasting. In verse 6, the king receives the word and then responds to the word. If you see verses 5 and 6 as sequential, then the king actually intensifies the fast. When fasting, people fasted from food, but they still drank water. And when wearing a sackcloth, only humans wore the sackcloth.

In verses 7-9, the king issues a city-wide policy. You don’t just fast from food, you fast from water. And this policy doesn’t only apply to humans. The animals in the city can’t eat or drink either, and they have to wear sackcloth too. Imagine if you saw your friend’s dog wearing human clothes. You ask them why and your friend says, he’s repenting.

In verses 7-8, why does the king require animals to fast and wear sackcloth? Can animals repent of their sins? Can animals sin at all? Biblical fasting demonstrates a complete dependence on God and a request for His intervention in our lives. Even ancient Jews reading this would think, woah, the animals are fasting?

Imagine yourselves around the city or in the city of Nineveh. You see people wearing sackcloth, praying, and not eating. You not only seewhat’s going on but you hear it. You hear crying, sobbing, begging, confessing, repenting to God. And all the hungry and thirsty cattle and livestock are mooing, moaning, bellowing. Imagine how the city sounded that night. Hundreds of thousands of people along with all the animals spanning 7.5 miles across, you hear everything.

RE: When was the last time you prayed like that? When was the last time our church collectively prayed like that? Think back. When was the last time you broke down sobbing, crying out to God to lift the burden of your sins off your shoulders? When was the last time you begged Him for your life? Not your physical life, you’re spiritual one. Later on, we’re going to see that Jesus himself compares these repenting Ninevites to self-proclaiming believers like us.

Their repentance is surprising, but what’s even more surprising is they make all the animals do what they’re doing. This city-wide policy is intense. You have to understand this. The text’s primary role isn’t to reflect the intensity of the city-wide policy, but to reflect the intensity of God’s powerful mercy that fuels Nineveh’s repentance. The intensity isn’t the policy, it’s the powerful mercy of God.

The author is presenting to us what the totality of repentance looks like. God’s grace and mercy swept through the entire city. God’s grace and mercy did what all the other foreign enemy nations could not do up to this point in history which is to penetrate the city and overthrow it. Assyria was too powerful, but God proved Himself to be even more powerful.

The entire city demonstrates repentance, even things incapable of repenting, like animals. Here, in chapter 3, animals who cannot repent because they don’t have souls, because they can’t sin, because they’re not made in the image of God, participate in an act that proclaims repentance. Repentance to God is intense and all-encompassing. God’s mercy in your life is intense and all-encompassing.

Believers, as you go through your mundane, boring, regular, normal, day-to-day kind of life, do not underestimate, in your life, the wickedness of your sins, and do not underestimate, in your life, the power of God’s mercy and as a result, the power of your repentance. You have many sins. God has more mercy. You will be shocked by what God can do through your repentance. The Ninevites experience this first hand in verse 10.

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10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Isn’t that amazing? The prophecy has been fulfilled. Nineveh was overthrown. The people of Nineveh turned from their evil ways and God turned from, in the words of the king, “his fierce anger.”

There is intentional wordplay going on here. That word “turn” is the same word for our word “repent.” But in verse 9, the king hopes that God turns or that God repents. This raises an issue for us since God doesn’t sin and therefore doesn’t repent of His sin.

To address the issue, we must know that the word literally means “to turn.” So when we turn, we turn from our sins and turn to God. When God turns, he turns from His wrath and turns to His compassion, His forgiveness. That’s the difference. You also see the word relent; relent is a different word. Relent means to sympathize or be moved with compassion. It’s not until you get here to the end of the chapter that the main idea this morning makes sense.

Because the word of God transforms us, we repent and God relents.

From my study of Jonah and the rest of scripture, I see three components to repentance. At least three components. Repentance is something say, it’s something you do, and it’s something you feel. Repentance is something you say, “I disobeyed you, LORD. These ways are how I disobeyed you, I confess my sins.” Repentance is something you do. You initially fixed your eyes on ungodly things, addictions, evil or self-destructive thoughts, your hateful actions, and then you fix your eyes on God, His holiness, His compassion, His mercy, His forgiveness, His provisions like Scripture and the Embassy church community. And repentance is something you feel. You feel something inside your heart, emotionally, that your sinful life is drastically contradictory to the very God you worship. When you repent, what you feel is true, raw, and genuine. So, those are the three necessary aspects of repentance, all of which you see in Jonah 3.

I want to be clear about something. When we say that God will relent if we repent, if we only focus on how we need to fulfill the three components of repentance, it can sound like everything starts with us. If we do something, then God will do something. Our text addresses this explicitly at least twice. Our text this morning helps us iron this out.

1st: v. 6 doesn’t say the king of Nineveh reached for the word of God. What does it say? It says the word of God reached the king of Nineveh.

2nd: v. 5, the people believed in God but what happened before that? The word of God reached the people first. God’s word came to Nineveh and then they believed.

This is still true for believers today. Believers who want to repent and be reconciled to God. Every single one of you who believe in God believe in God because God’s word came to you first. It was by God’s word that we were saved. Jonah 3 shows us the sequence of our reconciliation with God. First, God overthrows us. Second, we repent. Third, God shows us compassion. That’s the order of how we are reconciled to God.

In the same way that God used Jonah to overthrow Nineveh, / roughly 700 years later, God used a greater Jonah to overthrow the world. But Jonah didn’t live for over 700 years so who’s this greater Jonah?

Using the same language of verse 10 in what God did for us, this is how I contextualize verse 10. When God saw what Jesus Christ did on the cross, how He turned us from our evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said he would do to us, and He did not do it.

God did not do it because Jesus Christ did.

God did not do it to us because Jesus Christ had it done to himself.

In God’s justice, he should have destroyed all of us. Annihilated all of us. Overthrown all of us.

In God’s mercy, Jesus Christ was destroyed and was annihilated in our place. Jesus, the sinless man who was punished as if he was a sinner, was self-sacrificially overthrown. And because he did that for us, all believers in him today are overthrown. Not destroyed, but changed. Not annihilated but transformed. Not obliterated, but loved.

We are only alive today because Jesus became alive after spending three days in the belly of Sheol, the realm of the dead. He resurrected from the dead on the third day, and we experience a supernatural, extraordinary, and real relationship with him from the moment of our existence until forever. The king of Nineveh didn’t know if he was going to perish. By God’s promise to us, His children, we know we will not perish but have everlasting life. Earlier, I said that we are saved by the word of God. The word of God is Jesus Christ. Half of my main idea is that we are transformed by the word of God. The word of God is Jesus Christ.

Just like how Jesus as God the Son saved and forgave the Ninevites, Jesus saves and forgives us, but we are called to do what the Ninevites did. Repent. You have to repent of your sins. Jesus said in Luke 11:32, “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah.” The generation that Jesus is referring to, I think we’re included. Yes, numerous generations have gone by but I see all of us for the last 2,000 years as a multi-generational generation. Jesus is talking about us.

We minimize our sins, we try not to think about it, we try not to do it again later, I won’t tell anyone about this. I’ll just do better next time. If this is how you deal with your sins, your disobedience to God, Jesus is talking about people like you. Embassy, do not underestimate the mercy of God. God’s mercy is as broad and expansive as His sovereignty. God has more mercy than you do your sins.

If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ this morning, I would ask that you reflect on who you are in your life and who God is calling you to be. You live like you’re the king of your life, but maybe like the king of Nineveh, you need to arise from your throne, and sit down in the dust with the rest of us. And experience being raised, a resurrection from your previous dead self and into a new person.

A changed, overturned, reformed, transformed, saved follower and worshipper of the real, true king. Who is he? He’sthe greater Jonah. He’s the greater king.

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

The People of Nineveh Repent

6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.