Repentance and Revival
Jonah 3:5-10
Introduction: As we have been going through this little book of Jonah, we
have been seeing some big lessons about human rebellion and divine sovereignty.
We’ve been learning about God, and also about ourselves. As I considered the lessons
here about fallen humanity, the opening lines from the second psalm came to
mind,
Why do the
nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take
counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, 3 "Let us burst their bonds
apart and cast away their cords from us."
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in
derision. 5 Then he will
speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury… (Psalm 2:1-5).
Yahweh, the God the Bible, Creator and Sustainer of the
universe, is LORD, and He has spoken. Even so, humans, since the fall of Adam,
resist His rule! We know that is true of the Ninevites, as the second verse of
the book tells us that their evil had come up before God. We know it is true of
Jonah, since initially, when God said “Go!” Jonah said, “No!” And,
if we are honest, we know it can be true too often and too easily in our own
lives – when we choose our own will instead of submitting to what we know to be
the will of God. Do we really grasp the holiness of God? How then can we rebel
against Him, this Jesus [who] bore our sins in his body on the cross!
Most seem oblivious to the seriousness of sin… GOD is of purer eyes than to
look upon iniquity.
The “Good News”
of the Gospel is seen most clearly in the light of some very bad news for those
who are unsaved… It is the position described by Paul in Ephesians 2:3, “…we
all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the
body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest
of mankind.” The wrath referred to is God’s wrath against sin. Had
we continued in our rebellion, we were indeed destined to be, “Sinners in the
hands of an angry God…” (to borrow the title of Jonathan Edward’s famous
sermon). Thank God for the truth expressed in the next verse of Ephesians, “But
God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us…”
Rejoice in God’s amazing grace! Thank you Jesus! By the way, it seems that
Jonah understood that aspect of God’s character. We’ll see in Jonah 4:2 the
prophet says, “…I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” He
understood that in God’s announcement of impending judgment there was an
implicit call to repentance – and, though Jonah was grateful for God’s mercy in
his own life, Jonah wasn’t happy about the prospect of God showing mercy
on the Ninevites! He was the elder son in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son! (More
on that next week). As for the Ninevites, they knew their own sin, and they
knew they needed mercy.
“Faith” and “repentance” are best
understood as two sides of the same coin… We’ll see here in our text today that
the Ninevites believed God, and as their sin was exposed they were convicted to
turned from the wicked ways. The principles related in God’s promise to Israel
are reflected in his dealings with Nineveh and with all people:
…if my people who are called by my name humble
themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I
will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land… (2 Chron 7:14; cf. Jer 18:7,8).).
The BIG Idea: If we believe God, and trust in His mercy and grace, we
will turn from the idolatrous and sinful ways of our past life. Three
attitudes follow that new direction, 1) Humility, 2) A Heart change, and 3)
Hope… First,
I. Humility: Authentic faith and repentance is accompanied with God breaking
our pride and will be accompanied by genuine sorrow for our sin (5,6).
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.
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.
Let’s back up to
v.5 and reflect on that statement again, “And the people of Nineveh believed
God…” This is the language that is normally used for a faithful Israelite. The
Ninevites, “believed in God.” Their faith is demonstrated by their
actions. They together call for a fast, indicating a time for serious
reflection and prayer. Putting on sackcloth represented sorrow for sin and
repentance. The merism in v.5, “from the greatest to the least” is meant
to indicate everyone responded! The whole city responded. V.6 confirms
that, “the word reached the king.” The message of Jonah, the Word of the
Lord, was shared among the people, and the king himself heard it, believed it,
and responded to it. Would to God that our leaders would hear and respond to
God’s Word! We are called to pray for those in authority and not only the ones
we like!
Notice that
genuine faith always results in action: trust and obey. The king believed
God, he took God at His word. His action of getting off the throne, removing
his royal robe and putting on sackcloth seems to indicate a humble recognition
that he is not the ultimate Sovereign. By the way, in the context of talking
about the voluntary self-humiliation of Christ, Paul told the Philippians what
would one day happen:
9 Therefore God
has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every
name, 10 so that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, 11 and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father... (Phil 2:9-11).
The king left his throne and knelt before God! Sitting in
ashes was an indication of mourning and repentance. The Ninevite king is confessing the God of
Jonah, Yahweh, as the true sovereign, King of kings, the one to whom all
authorities, even the king of the superpower of the day, must bow! For the
believer in Jesus, humility is seeing ourselves rightly, in relation to the majesty
of God. It is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. I
like Andrew Murray’s definition of a response of authentic humility:
“Humility
is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing
that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when
nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed
home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father
in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and
above is trouble.”
Humility is recognizing that God is God, we are not! We are His
creatures. Enough said? After all, as Paul told the Corinthians, “What do
you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as
if you did not receive it?” (I Cor 4:7). Genuine faith and repentance will expose
our hearts, break our pride, and be accompanied by sorrow for our sin. We see
that here. And we will see that if we believe God, and trust in His mercy and
grace. We will turn from the idolatrous and sinful ways of our past life.
II. Heart Change: Genuine faith and repentance will be accompanied by a
changed heart, as we confess and turn from our sins (7,8). Consider the king of
Nineveh…
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.
The call to the people is to repent, and to do the things
that demonstrate repentance. The Assyrians, and Nineveh was the principal city,
were an idolatrous, corrupt, and violent people. They would humiliate and
mutilate their defeated enemies. Allegedly there were piles of human skulls at
the gates of the city, a warning to any foreigner or would be invader. Foreigners,
like Jonah, were at risk, but inter-personal violence was also rampant among
the Ninevites themselves – it was survival of the fittest. It was to these
people that Jonah went and preached the impending judgment of God! That would
have taken some faith, trusting that God was there with him.
Then the word
reached the king, and amazingly, he believed it! He sent out a proclamation, a
call to “turn from their evil ways.” And the people got the
message! That word, “evil” recalls the word of the Lord to Jonah in 1:2,
“their evil has come up before me.” The wickedness of the people
and the nation was such that as far as we know, Jonah never even mentioned it,
he didn’t need to. The king called the people to “turn” from evil
and “the violence in their hands.” That word “turn” [shuv]
is the Hebrew word used to express the idea of repentance. By specifically
mention their “hands,” the indication is that a change in heart must lead to a
change in actions. The Ninevites knew what they were doing, and it seems
along with the word of the Lord came a deep conviction for their sin, and a
desire to turn from their evil ways.
Note that the
people were to express their repentance by dressing in sackcloth, along with
their animals, and they were to fast, and to “call out mightily to God.”
Remember what the captain on the boat had said in the midst of the storm? He,
though a pagan idolater, confronted the sleeping Jonah and said in 1:6, "What
do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god!” The pagan
captain had called on Jonah to pray, and he didn’t, at least not
immediately. Here, a pagan king calls on the people to fast and pray,
and to put on sack cloth and sit in ashes as a sign of repentance and mourning,
and they do it! The king, like the captain, seems to have more spiritual
sensitivity than the prodigal prophet, Jonah had shown.
Have you known
people who you would consider models of authentic Christianity, people who
consistently have spoken of their God, people who “talked the talk,” and who
also “walked the walk,” that is, they lived out their faith day to day? I
remember someone asking me early in my Christian life, “If you were arrested
for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence for a conviction?” I hoped
so, but I wasn’t so sure! I hope it is truer today than it was then. That’s the
BIG Idea: If we believe God, and trust in His mercy and grace, we will
turn from the idolatrous and sinful ways of our past life.
III. Hope: Genuine faith and repentance finds hope in the mercy and
grace of God (9-10). “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.
The king expresses the same hope that the captain on the ship
had shown in 1:6 when he had called on Jonah to pray, “…Perhaps the god will
give a thought to us, that we may not perish." The language is not
just wishful thinking, a shot in the dark when there is nothing else to try or
do. It is actually an expression of hope, looking to the Great God for mercy.
In Jonah 1:14, in the face of the worsening storm and the word from the prophet
that casting him into the see would bring deliverance, the sailors pray to the
God of Jonah, "O LORD, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay
not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you." They
pray to the God who is!
Seeing our desperate need, we look to God for
mercy (9). The only way to escape God’s wrath against sin is to run to
Him, not away from Him! We need to see our desperate need, and realize, as
Jonah expresses in the next chapter, that He is “…a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster…”
(Jonah 4:2). The fact that God does not immediately judge us in our sin
indicates, as Peter wrote, that God “…is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that
all should reach repentance… (2 Pet 3:9).
God had
demonstrated His mercy toward Jonah in sparing Him from certain death in the
storm and the sea. Miraculously He kept Him alive as His “Uber-fish” brought
him to land, giving him time to think and pray. And now, we see again in his
dealing with the Ninevites, that He is rich in mercy toward those who look to
Him and trust Him: Genuine faith and repentance will lead to being saved
from the wrath of God (10).
By the way, we
need to be reminded here of the need for ongoing teaching of the Bible, and the
need to be diligent about teaching our children. We spoke about this a little
on Wednesday night. Have you noticed how often the Bible exhorts the people of
God to teach the next generation, and to raise them up in the way of the Lord? The
message of grace is always only one generation away from extinction. We
have the example of Israel to show us that “revival” can be fleeting. Certainly,
the time of the judges shows us that. It begins by saying that in those days
there was no king in Israel, and “every man did that which was right in his
own eyes.” As the people fell into sin and idolatry, God allowed pagan
nations to oppress them. Then the people looked up and cried out to God. God
raised up a judge and deliverer, he rescued them, and for awhile they walked
with God… until they didn’t. Rinse and repeat! Here, Nineveh repents, and
it has the markings of a spiritual awakening. But a generation later the
God-fearers seemingly die off, and with them the fear of the Lord. It seems they
failed to teach their children about the true God. And they attack and decimate
the northern kingdom, and surround Jerusalem in the south, and would have
destroyed it had God not intervened.
Every generation
is responsible to teach the truth about God to the next, and to live in such a
way that they will see and understand that God is real and has spoken. God
has no grandchildren, only children! Let’s be diligent to teach the Gospel
of grace, by word and example, to our kids. Parents this is your
mission, and church, we also are responsible, with our diversity of gifts, to
assist them in that mission!
What is God saying to me in this passage? Have you recognized your need,
turned from your sin, and trusted Christ as your only hope for forgiveness and
life? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me, I give to them eternal life and they shall never perish…” If we
believe God, and trust in His mercy and grace, we will are His, and we will turn
from the sinful ways of our past life. Has God changed you?
What would God have me to do in response to this
passage? Just as
“faith” is something that is ongoing in the life of a believer (the just
shall live by faith), “repentance” is not something that is done only once,
at the beginning of the Christian life. As the Word of God exposes areas of our
life that are contrary to God’s will, we should mourn our sin, because it
grieves God, and we should confess it and turn from it. As we do, the promise
of Scripture is that “…as we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I John
1:9). That is amazing grace, and incredibly good news! How then should we live?
By faith…
1. Trust, and
obey. The Ninevites heard the Word of God and believed it. We need to be in the
word, “Let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you…” Read the Bible!
2. We need to
live in conscious recognition of God’s presence with us and in us: “I am
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me…”
(Gal 2:20).
3. We need to
embrace the mission: share the Good News with those around us, always ready to
give a reason for the hope that is in us!
Remember, every
day is a new chance to obey, a new opportunity to examine our walk, and to
determine to live for Him. We are all a work in progress. Let’s pray and seek
His face, confessing our sin… inviting the Holy Spirit to expose any dark
corners of our hearts, and receiving the cleansing that is ours by grace
through faith in Him… Amen.
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