Please read Jonah 3
To understand the story and message of Jonah we have to understand the world in which Jonah lived. Jonah lived and prophesied in the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BC during the reign of Jeroboam II. Nineveh, the city to which God sent Jonah, was the capital of Assyria, the most powerful, most feared and most hated nation of the time. A century after Jonah, the prophet Nahum described Nineveh as a ‘city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims’ and charged it with being responsible for causing ‘many casualties, piles of dead, people stumbling over corpses’ (see Nahum 3:1-4). Nineveh's reputation for violence was well-earned. Assyria was a brutal and bloodthirsty nation and it was to this cruel and callous people that God sent Jonah to warn them of the coming wrath of God.
We may learn three lessons about God from this chapter. Let us learn, first, that the word of our God is a powerful word. ‘Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh . . . The Ninevites believed God’ (Jonah 3:3 and 5). The Bible does not say that the people of Nineveh believed Jonah but that they believed God. It was not the eloquence or passion of Jonah’s preaching but the power of God’s word that changed their hearts. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the sixteenth century, once said: ‘I only urged, preached, and declared God’s word, nothing else. And yet while I was asleep, or drinking Wittenberg beer with Philip and Amsdorf, the word inflicted greater injury on popery than any prince or emperor ever did. I did nothing, the word did everything.’
Luther's confidence in the power of God's word, echoed that of the Apostle Paul fifteen hundred years earlier: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes’ (Romans 1:16). It is God who changes human hearts by his word and his Spirit; we are only God’s agents. We are weak and our words are feeble, but God is powerful and his word can melt hearts of stone. Let us never be ashamed of God’s word; if it changed us, it can change anyone.
Let us learn, secondly, that our God is a compassionate God. Jonah’s message reached the king of Nineveh and he issued a decree commanding a national fast. The closing words of his decree are remarkable: “Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:8-9). Where did the king get the idea that the God of Jonah is a compassionate God? Not from his own concept of God, for the gods of the Assyrians, like the Assyrians themselves, were brutal and cruel. Not from his own treatment of people, for the kings of Assyria cut off the noses of those they conquered and sometimes even skinned them alive.
Where, then, did this pagan king get the idea of a compassionate God? He could only have got it from Jonah. A preacher cannot warn of God’s judgment without calling for repentance, and he cannot call for repentance without promising forgiveness, and he cannot promise forgiveness without speaking of God’s compassion. Even Jonah’s presence in Nineveh spoke of God’s compassion. Here was a man who had deliberately and determinately defied God; who had received a definite command from God and decided to do the opposite. Yet, God had had mercy upon him, forgiven him, and restored him. If God had shown compassion to Jonah, might he not also show compassion to Nineveh. If there was salvation for Jonah, perhaps there was salvation also for Nineveh. And, if there was hope for Nineveh, there is hope for everyone.
Let us learn, thirdly, that it is to the repentant that God shows compassion. God did indeed have compassion on the people of Nineveh, but only after they had repented. Compassion is shown to the repentant, but the defiant receive judgment. To continue to defy God, to despise his authority, to ignore his law, to blaspheme his Son, and to neglect his command to repent, is to invite not compassion, but destruction. It was when Jonah repented, that God rescued him and restored him to service. It was when Nineveh repented that God relented and spared the city. And God now gives this command to repent to all the nations of the world: ‘The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has a fixed day on which he will judge the world in righteousness’ (Acts 17.30-31).
Jonah’s is a great story but we are sent to tell a much greater story about one much greater than Jonah. Our story is about one who suffered not for his own sin but for the sins of the world, who spent three days not in the belly of a fish but in the bowels of the earth, and who rose again not to preach judgment to Nineveh but to purchase salvation for all nations. Like Jonah, we are sent to warn people in rebellion against God that the wrath of God is to come. Like Jonah, we are sent to call people to repent of their sin and return to God. And, like Jonah, we are sent to tell people about the compassion of God for repentant sinners. But, unlike Jonah, we are sent not just to Nineveh but to all the nations of the world. What a great and glorious mission God has given us!
QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION
- Why am I sometimes ashamed of the gospel? How can I overcome my fear?
- Does my life as well as my message proclaim the compassion and forgiveness of God?
Copyright © 2010 Ronald Nugent
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