Revival in Nineveh

Introduction

In October of 1909, Vancouver, Canada purchased its first ambulance. The city spend many months petitioning and purchased the best on the market at a whopping $4,000 dollars. The first person who was transported by the ambulance was someone that it ran over.

A tool mean for life quickly became an instrument of death.

In Jonah, we see that God has given Him this great message. And Jonah goes to proclaim the message not as a tool of grace but as a tool of destruction.

In this passage today, we see a revival breakout that has rarely if ever been seen before or since. The capital city of the greatest empire of the time, known for intense and unwavering cruelty and injustice, hears the message of a prophet from Israel, and repents sitting in sackcloth and ash.

This prophet has just been vomited from a large fish. Due to the gastric juices of the fish, Jonah was most likely bleached stark white with portions of his skin eaten off from the stomach acid.

As this prophet shares the Word of God, something miraculous happens. These people repent and trust in God.

God’s mercy is wide in its reach of the Ninevites. It is also deep and complex. Jonah did not want the salvation of the Ninevites. Yet, God’s love was steadily reaching Him too.

Read Jonah 3.

Explanation

Jonah 3:1–2 “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.””

The similarity in the cadence the first verse in Chapter 3 to Chapter 1 are meant to be noticed. God gives the same command to Jonah in Chapters 3 and 1 - “Arise and go to Nineveh.”

God’s Word doesn’t change nor will His commands on your life change. And God makes no apologies for the difficulty of the task. Jonah is called to something difficult, yet God has called Him to it nonetheless.

If you are trying to wait God out on something He wants you to do, just know that it won’t change.

God doesn’t change his mind based upon your stubbornness.

Jonah is back in the place he started. A message from the Lord to go to Nineveh and cry out agains them.

C. S. Lewis once said, “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the man who has made the most progress. There is no progress in being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”

Some of you need to go back to the place you strayed and say, “God, here I am. Where will you have me go?”

Jonah 3:3–4 “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 began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!””

Jonah’s message was extremely brief. Jonah only shared the basic message. No embellishment. No additions. We don’t know his motivations for his shortness - it could have been that it wanted to stay on the script that God gave Him OR it could have been that he really didn’t want to be there. Kinda like professional athletes at press conferences, “I have to be here, but I don’t want to be here, so this is the best you are going to get.”

Either way, we can learn something about effectiveness in ministry from these few words. First, short sermons are effective too! And everyone said, “Amen.”

Jonah’s heart didn’t save Nineveh. (In the next chapter, we see that Jonah didn’t want them to be saved. He was the captive prophet - preaching to a people he despised.)

Jonah’s eloquence didn’t save Nineveh.

Jonah’s robust argument didn’t save Nineveh. (Jonah isn’t Paul on Mars Hill in this moment)

Jonah’s love for the people didn’t save Nineveh. Nineveh didn’t save

The Spirit and the Word saved Nineveh.

Your ministry to your neighbors, your friends, your family and your coworkers relies less on your perfect execution than on your obedience.

I am not saying that you should not study your Bible intently. I am not saying that you shouldn’t speak well or articulate adeptly concerning Jesus. I am saying that your lack of ability to do so is not an excuse for your disobedience to refrain from going.

I am saying that the Lord would rather have your seemingly ignorant obedience over your educated dissension.

Jonah 3:5-7 “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 word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 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,”

God’s Mercy = The Sinner’s Repentance

Nineveh shows true remorse over their sin.

Sackcloth and ash were outward expressions of inner destitution. “Let my outward life reflect the spiritual bankruptcy that I feel internally.”

They fasted - no food or drink. Fasting is a seeking after the Lord while abstaining from seeking even the most

They called out to God.

They refrained from violence and evil ways.

Jonah was preaching a message of justice.

I think that the greatest solve for the evil in the world is the message of the gospel.

They even put their cows in sackcloth and ash. I have to think that the Lord smiled on their imperfect desires to please Him. We see so in the last verse of the last chapter.

God has grace and mercy for the worse of sinners. The closest equivalent for the people of Nineveh would be ISIS today.

What if the Lord called you to take the message of Jesus to Isis? Or Nazi Germany? Or the Cambodian Khmer Rouge?

Jonah 3:8–9 “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. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.””

There are three key elements to these few verses: Jonah’s cry for justice, Nineveh’s appropriate response to Jonah’s cry, and Jonah’s heart against the Ninevites.

Jonah’s cry for justice.

Jonah preached a message of justice. Let me make this incredibly clear. To love Jesus and follow Jesus is to work towards justice around us.

Jonah was telling the people of Nineveh, God sees your sinful living, especially your violence. And to repent means to stop this violence.

Nineveh’s appropriate response to Jonah’s cry

They repented. Don’t miss the miracle of the text. These people heard about their wickedness, their sin, and the absolutely abhorrent nature of their violence, and they turned from their sins to God and were saved.

Jonah’s heart against the Ninevites

What is so interesting the Ninevites repentance is that Jonah HATES it.

Jonah 4:2 “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, because Jonah did not want them to be saved. John Piper - “Jonah didn’t want Nineveh’s repentance. Jonah wanted Nineveh’s doom.”

What is that sin? When you harbor a hatred for a ethnic group of people… it’s racism.

Here’s how I know this is the case. Jonah, knowing that God was rich in mercy, could have preached heartily knowing that the Ninevites would have repented - and that they alongside their nations they had reacted violently to, would be saved.

Donald Whitney // “I think the seriousness of evangelism is the main reason it frightens us. We realize that in talking to someone about Christ, heaven and hell are at stake. The eternal destiny of the person looms before us. And even when we rightly believe that the results of this encounter rest in God’s hands and we bear no accountability for the persons response to the gospel, we still sense a solemn duty to communicate the message faithfully, as well as the holy dread of saying or doing anything that might rise as a stumbling block to this persons salvation.”

Jonah’s reluctance to see the people of Nineveh saved and changed actually makes him complicit in the actions that he hated them for. Had he gone earlier, their sin would not have tarried. Who knows the atrocities committed as Jonah was on the boat to Tarshish and in the belly of the fish.

Jonah 3:10 “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.”

We are called to the Great Commission - to “Go, Therefore!”

Your qualms about going - whether to your next door neighbor, across the state of Kentucky, or to the farthest reaches of the world - are abdicate your responsibility.

In the church at large, we always look back at the generations before us and we ponder the decisions that they made, whether good or bad - expecially the bad. And we wish we could ask “Why didn’t you do that?” or “Why in the world did you do that?”

You know what I think future generations are going to look back on the 21st century American church and ask?

Why were people so reluctant to share the message of Christ with others?

You had the most resources of any people at any time in human history. You can fly anywhere in the world in barely over a day. You have more books, sermons, and podcasts at your disposal than ever? How did you become one of the more ineffective missional generations to ever live?

There will be no good excuse. “I was too busy” won’t be a good excuse. “I worry about people rejecting me”

Invitation

There is mercy for Nineveh - a violent, bloodthirsty, cruel people. But there is also mercy for Jonah, the racist prophet who would have condemned a people to death rather than go with the certain grace of God.

I take much comfort, and I believe it is much the intended thrust of the book, that if God can love Jonah and the Ninevites the way he does, then Jonah can love me and you.

I hear all the time. God is a God of second chances. If God was only a God of second chances, Jonah would be through. Jonah didn’t get it right the second time either. And neither do we. No, our God is a God of a billions upon billions of chances.