A Humble Response

I’ve told you all before about my guilty pleasure of watching “On Patrol Live” on television.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, let me describe it as a modern version of the old show “Cops,” except that the cameras follow officers from several different police forces and it all happens live.

And in the course of the show, you might see police respond to domestic situations, shootings, robberies, or traffic stops.

You’d be surprised how many taillights are out in America. And you’d be even more surprised at how many of those broken-taillight stops turn into DUIs or drug busts or arrests for outstanding warrants.

But what’s always shocking to me is how many people START their interactions with the police on the wrong foot.

There was a guy on the other night, for instance, who’d been parked in his pickup truck on the side of the road in a neighborhood, drinking a beer in the driver’s seat.

Now, I’m pretty sure that it’s illegal all over the country to have an open container of alcohol within the driver’s reach. And if the police SEE that person is DRINKING the alcohol, then you’re pretty much guaranteed to take part in a field sobriety test.

So, the police pull up behind this truck, notice the driver drinking a beer, get out of their car, and tell him to put his hands out the window where they can see them.

So, what should you do in that situation?

Yeah. PUT YOUR HANDS OUT THE WINDOW.

But this guy hadn’t gotten the memo. And he began arguing with them about every single command they gave him. With lots of colorful language that was bleeped out for television.

And pretty soon, the driver was face-down on the ground, hands behind his head, with an officer’s knee on his back. And he was STILL arguing, still screaming obscenities, still fighting against them.

And it’s absolutely shocking to me how often we see similar reactions to the police on that show.

Now, I understand that not every person’s experience with the police has been a positive one. And I also understand that there are some people on police forces around the country who see the job simply as a way to exert power over others.

But none of that changes the fact that when you’re in an encounter with the police, they ARE the ones with the power. They have the badges to prove it and the weapons to back it up.

So, what do people think they can possibly gain from arguing with them, or fighting them, or cursing them out? Do they really think ANYTHING good will come out of that?

Do they really think the cop’s going to say, “Hey, I’ve never heard that word used as an adverb before; you can go on your merry way.” Or, “Hey, you fought me really well; I’m going to let you off with a warning not to rob any more banks.”

It’s interesting is to note that sometimes, people in traffic stops are allowed to go free with a warning on this show. Can you guess how they’ve interacted with the police?

Right. Respectfully. With humility.

When you’ve been caught breaking the law — whether it’s running a stop sign or robbing a bank — acting out in arrogance and pride will do nothing to ease the process or to reduce your punishment. In fact, it can result in great pain, physical injury, longer sentences, or even death.

Today, as we continue our series in the Book of Jonah, we’re going to see another great irony in this book that’s full of irony.

We’re going to see the brutally violent and pagan people of Nineveh respond to God in humility after hearing the message preached by Jonah, the prophet of God who had to be swallowed by a great fish because he’d been too proud to go where God had told him to go.

It’s yet another negative example from the life of this prophet. Whereas the people of Nineveh — led by their king — humbled themselves before God, Jonah the prophet arrogantly challenges God at nearly every point in this account.

“WHY do I have to put my hands out the window?” “Why do I have to put my hands behind my back?” “I don’t want to get on the ground.” “Hey, that hurts!” “Hey, why are you handcuffing me? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Jonah didn’t say those things exactly, but when we look at his whole account of the events surrounding his visit to Nineveh, what we see is a man who’s angry at God for not getting his way.

A man who thinks God owes him an explanation for his actions. A man who would rather have died than to see his hated enemies in Nineveh repent and be saved from God’s promised destruction.

And so, as we saw last week, even when he was finally obedient to God, Jonah was still arrogantly rationalizing.

Perhaps he could be BARELY obedient and preach a message that was just five words in Hebrew — “Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Maybe he could be barely obedient and STILL get to see Nineveh overthrown.

As it turns out, that’s just what happened. Remember that I told you last week to listen this week for something interesting about the word that’s translated as “overthrown” in that brief message delivered by Jonah?

Well, that Hebrew word can mean annihilated, as it does in Genesis 19:25, where Moses writes of Sodom and Gomorrah that God “overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”

When He couldn’t find 10 righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, where the worst perversions of sexual sin were commonplace and celebrated, God rained down fire and brimstone on those cities, overthrowing them — annihilating them.

But this word can also mean “changed.” And that’s exactly what we’ll see happened as we read today’s passage. The people of Nineveh changed their ways as a result of God’s warning.

And because THEY changed — because they repented — God changed the way He was dealing with them. Because of their repentance, He relented from His commitment to destroy them. THEY had changed, so HE would change His approach with them.

And in His omnipotence, He’d chosen a word for Jonah to deliver that could be translated either way. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here.

Let’s take a look together at our passage for this week. And then we’ll see the spiritual growth indicator it reveals to us for followers of Jesus. And we’ll examine some of the other lessons from the passage as we go along.

We’re going to be reading verses 5 through 9 of chapter 3 today.

Jonah 3:5–9 NASB95

5 Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. 6 When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. 7 He issued a proclamation and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. 8 “But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. 9 “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.”

Having heard Jonah’s message of doom, the people believed! They assented or agreed to the facts, and then they took actions that showed evidence that their hearts had been changed. They fasted, they wore sackcloth, they prayed.

This was, quite frankly, the LEAST likely outcome of Jonah’s preaching.

What was far more likely was that the Ninevites would impale this prophet from an enemy nation on a stick — or at least run him out of town with great ridicule. After all, he was a foreign prophet speaking the words of a foreign God in a foreign language.

The prophet Jeremiah, preaching to his own people in Jerusalem a hundred or so years later, gave them the Lord’s word that Jerusalem would be overthrown.

And his own people had him arrested and imprisoned for treason, even though they knew he was a prophet and that he brought them the word of God.

So, from the world’s perspective, Jonah’s was a mission trip with little or no chance of success.

But God isn’t constrained by OUR perspectives. And so, the text tells us that the people of Nineveh believed.

All of them? It’s not necessary to the text that every single Ninevite had repented and turned to God in faith.

But it’s also not impossible. God has already proven in this account that’s He’s divinely sovereign and able to work miracles. Perhaps He did just that in Nineveh.

Indeed, there’s a pretty good chance, based on when we think the book was written, that God had done some pre-evangelizing in Nineveh to soften the hearts of that city’s people.

They’d suffered two plagues, a major flood, and a famine between 765 and 759 B.C., and there was a total eclipse of the sun in 763 B.C. Assyria’s enemies had been pecking away at the nation’s borders for some time.

All of these would’ve been seen as signs of divine judgment on the city and its people. So, a message from the all-powerful God of the Hebrew people on the heels of these cosmic signs might have been more readily received than at some other time.

Regardless, one commentator refers to the salvation of the Ninevites, quite correctly, as the greatest miracle in this book.

As Jonah said in the conclusion to his prayer in the belly of the great fish, “Salvation is from the LORD.”

God can use even reluctant and disobedient prophets who hate their audience and give them the least information possible to STILL bring them to repentance and faith.

Of course, that’s not normative. It’s not the way we’re SUPPOSED to do evangelism. And, significantly, it’s not the way JONAH was supposed to have done what the Lord sent him to do, either.

But God had used even this poor message from this reluctant prophet to bring the Ninevites to some form of faith.

Now, we’re not certain whether the Ninevites came to saving faith in God or simply believed the word of God when Jonah said God was about to overthrow their city.

And one of the things that makes the level of their faith unclear is the fact that they refer to God as elohim throughout this passage. In Hebrew, elohim is the generic word for a god, whether it’s the one true God or a false god. The word means “the strong one.”

We might expect Jonah to have written that the people of Nineveh believed in Yahweh, which is the name by which the people of Israel knew Him, the name God gave for Himself to Moses at the burning bush.

The name Yahweh reminded the people of Israel that God is a covenant-keeping God, but its use wasn’t confined only to the Jews.

The sailors of chapter 1, for instance, are described as praying to Yahweh and making sacrifices and vows to Him after seeing the sea become calm when they’d thrown Jonah overboard.

So, why don’t the Ninevites use Yahweh’s name here, rather than simply the generic term for God?

Perhaps it has to do with the message Jonah gave them. This is speculation, but what if Jonah’s message to the Ninevites was just as short as it’s presented here in chapter 3?

What if he simply gave them the message of God’s impending judgment without telling them anything else ABOUT Him?

If that’s what happened, then we shouldn’t be surprised that the people had an emotional response to this message of salvation. But we also shouldn’t be surprised that their repentance was short-lived.

Assyria would conquer Israel about 37 years later, and the city would be overthrown, along with the Assyrian Empire, about 150 years after Jonah’s visit. So, the turning of the Ninevites from their evil seems short-lived.

This is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of evangelistic messages that are simply an appeal to the emotion of fear.

People need to understand that hell is real and that it’s the eternal home of all who reject Jesus. But telling them ONLY that — or even just making it the foundation of your message — does a great disservice to Jesus, and it’s not an effective way of evangelizing.

Caught up in the emotion of the moment, some people might repent. But their faith will be based on an emotional response, and when the emotion of the moment fades, the faith is likely to fade, as well.

So, what does this tell us about the importance of discipleship?

Imagine if Jonah had stayed in Nineveh and discipled the people he’d led to God. What if he’d shared with them that God is GOOD and MERCIFUL and GRACIOUS, rather than just angry over their sins?

What if he’d taught them that He is the promise-keeping God who promised way back in the Garden of Eden to redeem fallen mankind and give him a way to be released from the bonds of sin and death?

What if he’d told them what it was supposed to look like to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? What if he’d told them that God IS love?

If he had, perhaps Nineveh would have been saved completely. There’s a reason that in the Great Commission, Jesus said to go and make DISCIPLES and not simply to go and make converts. We’re called to be disciples — followers of Jesus — and not just believers.

Nevertheless, despite Jonah’s lousy commitment to discipleship, the people of Nineveh seem to have turned to God in some form of faith and with some level of true repentance.

Their belief was enough to forestall God’s judgment for a time, but not deep enough to be handed down through multiple generations.

That’s what I tend to believe. And I believe it, in part, because of what Jesus says to the Pharisees about the Ninevites in Luke, chapter 11.

Luke 11:32 NASB95

32 “The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

Folks, the only ones who’ll be in a position to condemn anybody at the Great White Throne of judgment in heaven will be those who have turned to Jesus in faith. And we’ll only be condemning others metaphorically, because it is JESUS who will judge them.

But His words here seem to suggest that whatever faith they expressed as a result of Jonah’s message was sufficient for them to be saved.

And one of the hallmarks of such faith is humility.

That’s why Jesus started His Sermon on the Mount with these words:

Matthew 5:3 NASB95

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In this sermon announcing the arrival of and conditions for acceptance into the kingdom of heaven, Jesus begins by talking about humility, the chief characteristic of those who are “poor in spirit.”

He’s talking about the humility required for someone to admit he’s a sinner with nothing to do that could earn him favor before God.

And he’s implicitly contrasting this kind of humility with the religious arrogance of those who believed they DESERVED to be a part of God’s kingdom because of their heritage, their genealogy, or their good works.

The first step for any of us when coming before the God who created the universe with the Word of His mouth is to humble ourselves.

The first step is to recognize that HE Is the one with the power and the authority. And not because of a badge or a gun, but because of WHO He IS.

And that brings us to the eighth of 12 spiritual growth indicators found in the Book of Jonah.

“A life that’s growing spiritually responds to God in humility, not in arrogance and pride.” [Mark Yarbrough, Jonah: Beyond the Tale of a Whale, (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2020), 121.]

And humility is at the heart of the Ninevites’ response to God’s warning through Jonah.

Fasting. Sackcloth. Sitting on ashes. These were all signs of humility before the gods of the Ancient Near East. And the king hoped they’d serve a similar purpose for the God of Israel, the One True God.

And the fact that they wore sackcloth is interesting, because this garment, usually made of goat’s hair, was normally worn by slaves and the poor or by people in mourning.

So, the king taking off his beautiful robes and putting on sackcloth was a grand display of humility.

For the people of Nineveh, the sackcloth would represent their spiritual poverty. It would represent their great need for God’s mercy. It would represent the new position they had as slaves to God, having turned to Him in faith. And it would have been a physical manifestation of mourning for their sins against God.

And the king decreed that even the animals of Nineveh were to be clothed in sackcloth to show the completeness of their repentance. Nineveh was ALL IN for not being destroyed by God.

So, having believed and repented, all that remained was to hope and (literally) pray that God would relent.

Now, the Hebrew word that’s translated as “relent” here is nacham. It’s the same word that’s translated as “repent” elsewhere in the Old Testament. It can also mean “to change one’s mind” about something.

So, the king hopes God will repent — nacham, turn from, or relent — from the destruction He’d planned. And next week — spoiler alert — we’ll see God described as relenting — nacham-ing.

And this raised an interesting question about God in one of our Zoom Bible studies recently: Does God ever change His mind?

I’m going to give you the short answer today: God doesn’t change, and He doesn’t change His mind. But He DOES sometimes change the way He deals with people.

When we think of the times in Scripture when God seems to have changed His mind about a situation, it’s always related to a change of heart in the people He’s dealing with, just as it was in Nineveh.

Their repentance was the catalyst for Him to relent from the judgment He’d set before them.

In fact, God makes it clear in the 18th chapter of Jeremiah under what conditions He will relent from His just punishment for rebellion.

Jeremiah 18:7–8 NASB95

7 “At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; 8 if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.

And that’s just what happens in salvation. We who were condemned to physical and spiritual death — in other words, eternal separation from the God who created us to be in fellowship with Him — are saved from destruction by HIs grace, through faith in Jesus Christ.

The sinless Son of God took upon Himself the just punishment we deserve for OUR sins, so that all who repent — all who turn from their sins and follow Jesus in faith —are no longer condemned but welcomed into the Kingdom of God as adopted sons and daughters.

Ironically, Nineveh had changed, and God would change the way He dealt with the Ninevites. Earlier in the account, the sea was changed, and the sailors were changed. Only prideful and arrogant Jonah is unchanged in this account.

Folks, humility is in short supply in our society. We tend to elevate and affirm the braggarts of the world. And we may be shocked, but we’re not really surprised that pride and arrogance are so readily in view, even in the midst of an arrest.

When people define righteousness for themselves, they’re not eager to be challenged on it. And they tend to react viscerally to being told they’re NOT righteous.

But, folks, that’s where we have to start with God. We have to go before Him recognizing not just that He’s the God of the universe, but also that we’re not nearly as good as we think we are. And that even our best goodness is like filthy rags, compared to the holy righteousness of God.

To become a part of the kingdom of God, we must come before Him with a humble admission that we’re guilty sinners who deserve His just punishment and have nothing He needs that would ingratiate ourselves to Him.

To become a part of the kingdom of God — to become the person God MADE you to be — we have to admit that we’re broken and that only He can put us back together again.

We have to confess that we’re sinners and turn to Him through faith that Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection provide the ONLY way to be reconciled to the God who made us to be in a relationship of trust in Him alone.

if you’ve never done that — if you’ve never accepted Christ’s gift of everlasting life the way it was always meant to be — won’t you come up here today and talk to me about how to do it?

The steps you’ll take on the way to this platform might feel like the hardest ones you’ve ever taken. But there is humility in every step you take toward Jesus.