Repentance is of the Lord

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Preacher: Greg Magazu Scripture: Jonah 3:1-10

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All right, there we go. Well, good morning again. So this morning we will be picking back up in Jonah chapter 3.
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The title of my sermon this morning is Repentance is of the Lord. It's been a couple of months since we've been in Jonah, so let's recap what we've seen so far.
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God called Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach judgment against them because of their wickedness. Jonah and disobedience runs from God's command in the opposite direction.
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His attempt to escape results not just in personal crisis but in danger to those around him and is a reminder that our choices impact others.
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God uses a storm and pagan sailors to show Jonah that he is sovereign over all creation and all people and that he works even through unexpected means.
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The sailors ultimately come to fear and worship God, highlighting that God's purposes are often bigger than our own understanding.
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Running from God brings consequences, but God's pursuit is a sign of love, not punishment.
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When God leaves us to ourselves, that is the greatest judgment. When Jonah was in the belly of the fish, he finally prays from a place of utter darkness and helplessness.
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His prayer is both a cry for help and acknowledgement of God's faithfulness. Jonah realizes that God is the only source of salvation, not just for him but for all people.
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Salvation is of the Lord. This chapter shows that God meets us in our lowest places, not to destroy us but to sanctify us.
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Jonah's deliverance is a picture of grace after repentance that even when we've hit rock bottom,
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God is ready to restore us when we turn back to him. We left Jonah back on land having been released from the fish's belly, likely in need of a shower but no worse for the wear.
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He has been humbled and at the very least sees how futile it is to resist God's will.
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Let's go to our text. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.
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So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days journey in extent, and Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk.
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Then he cried out and said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed
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God, proclaimed to fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
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Then word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
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And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.
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Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God.
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Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish?
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Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
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Jonah 3 begins with a remarkable line, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.
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A powerful reminder that failure does not disqualify us from God's plans when we return to him in repentance and faith.
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Right, we see this theme all over the Bible. Peter denied Christ before becoming the leader of the apostles.
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Moses was a murderer and then spent 40 years in the wilderness before he was called to lead
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Israel out. Jacob was a deceiver and became Israel after striving with God.
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Paul persecuted the early church but then became the apostle to the Gentiles. One of my favorite modern examples of this is the story of Adoniram Judson.
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Besides his excellent name, Judson was raised in a devout Christian home, but during college he abandoned his faith under the influence of a skeptical friend named
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Jacob Imes. He became a deist and lived a self -focused rebellious life, rejecting
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Christianity entirely. But the turning point for him was one night he stopped in at an inn, and while he was in his room, he heard a man dying in the room next door to him, crying out, even cursing
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God. The next morning he asked the innkeeper who that man was. He found out that it was his friend
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Jacob Imes. He had died in the night. This experience shattered him, and he returned to Christ in deep repentance.
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He and his wife were among the first American missionaries sent overseas in 1812. They originally sailed for India but were redirected to Burma.
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For six years they saw no conversions. He lost several children to illness, was imprisoned and tortured for two years, and eventually lost his wife
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Anne, who he dearly loved, and their third child. In deep grief, Judson wrote,
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God is to me the great unknown. I believe in him, but I find him not.
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However, after years of perseverance, conversions began, and the first Burmese church was established.
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Judson translated the entire Bible into Burmese and compiled the first Burmese -English dictionary, both of which are still in use today.
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By the time of his death, he left 100 plus churches and 8 ,000 believers in Burma, and a legacy that shaped modern missions.
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The point of all this? God gives second chances, and our failures are used to prepare us for God's purposes.
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So let's look at Jonah's obedience now. We've spent time looking at his disobedience. In the third verse of chapter 3, we see, so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the
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Lord. No hesitations, no excuses, no please, Lord, let me go home, I need to get some things in order first.
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This is a gold star on Jonah's report card, and we should take a moment to consider the type of obedience we should all have towards God's word.
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Samuel says to Saul, behold, to obey is better than sacrifice. Abraham was praised for his faith, but also for his obedience.
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God himself confessing, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.
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Children are called to obey their parents, which is well -pleasing in the Lord. Peter says wives are to obey their husbands.
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Paul says bond servants who obey their masters. And Paul also says that damnation and salvation revolve around obedience.
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For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.
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How important is obedience? It is of the highest importance. Now we are a bunch of good
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Christians here. We would never so brashly disobey God as Jonah did. If you're anything like me, you struggle with obedience in more subtle ways.
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For example, during my job search I have struggled with the temptation to make more of my experience than it is, to say that I've been involved in projects
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I was only aware of. That is disobedience to God's ways and word. How about obeying
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God when it comes to redeeming our time? How many of us waste time doom -scrolling social media or just spend too much time on social media, period?
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How many of us neglect family worship or hospitality or private devotions or evangelism?
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So often our obedience or lack of obedience is in things we know we should be doing but neglect.
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Spurgeon said, alas, there are some here present, some to whom we have preached now for years, who have not obeyed.
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Oh sirs, some of you do not require more knowledge. You need far more to put in practice what you know.
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Now let's look at Jonah's journey. The journey that Jonah went on was a long one.
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Often in God's words, he says things so concisely that you miss details, right?
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It reads like Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and the next day he entered Nineveh. Assuming that the fish deposited
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Jonah somewhere in the vicinity of Joppa where he had originally departed from, the journey to Nineveh would have been approximately 685 miles.
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From modern -day Tel Aviv to Mosul in northern Iraq. Now the text doesn't say how he traveled but it's very likely that he walked.
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Just to give you a sense of that distance, that would be like the next time Ben and Rachel go to visit
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Rachel's parents, they decide to walk. From this building in Barry, Mass to Youngsville, North Carolina is 678 miles.
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At the average walking pace, this journey likely took Jonah 30 to 40 days. Hi mom,
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Ben and I are leaving now, see you in September. I'm not going to speculate on what that journey was like for Jonah, but he had plenty of time to think of his experience so far.
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This is a long journey where at the end of it, he must face what could be, as far as he knows at this point, a very hostile reception.
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But the Lord has brought him to a place where he obeys without question. At this point in our story,
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Jonah's starting to look pretty good. Now we get to Nineveh.
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Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days journey in extent. Nineveh was at one time believed to be the largest city in the world.
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It occupied approximately three to four square miles within the city walls, but most believe it was much larger outside them.
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The walls were in some places a hundred feet high and wide enough for three chariots to ride side by side.
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They went all the way around the city and were seven miles long. And I can't remember the number of towers that it had, but there was a lot of them.
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Now by today's standards, these measurements are not super impressive, right? The largest city today by population is
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Tokyo, Japan with 37 million people. America doesn't even have a city that makes the top 50 anymore, with New York having a measly 8 million people in it.
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In Nineveh's day, the world population was between 50 to 100 million. So when you start to adjust the population figures, you find that yes, it was an exceedingly great city for its time.
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Many commentators talk about the three -day journey and what that means for the size of the city. Some believe it refers to the region and a connection with three other major Assyrian cities, and it was three days to connect between those cities.
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Some say that just means that to see the whole city with all its streets and roads would have taken three days to walk through them.
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Ultimately, we know Nineveh was big and Jonah walked a day's journey into it and began to preach.
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Now let's look at Jonah's message. And he began to enter the city on the first day's walk, and then he cried out and said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.
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Imagine that message today. What if God called one of us to head into Boston and to stand on a box beneath the statue of Samuel Adams at Faneuil Hall and cry out, yet 40 days in Boston shall be overthrown.
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Would that be our whole message? Once again, Scripture tells stories succinctly, but sometimes we need to think about what is behind the statement.
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God said go to Nineveh and preach to it the message that I tell you. Was the whole message yet 40 days?
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I think it is much more than that. Jonah was preaching judgment. In chapter one,
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God said, for their wickedness has come up before me. Preaching that brings repentance must first begin with judgment.
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If we don't know that we have done wrong, what need is there to turn from it? I would imagine that Jonah spoke of the wickedness of the
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Ninevites and named it before them. He probably also spoke about who God is and that he is a judge who will not tolerate wickedness forever.
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Let's look at a few different sermons that touch on different aspects of what Jonah likely preached to the Ninevites. We look at Peter's preaching at Pentecost.
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We all remember this. The Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles and those gathered. It is a great and mighty wind, almost like a hurricane or a tornado that causes the whole city to come running over and find out what is going on.
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They find all these men and women prophesying and they are hearing them in their own language. Some are amazed and some mock.
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Then Peter stands up and he says, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which
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God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands and have crucified and put to death, whom
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God's raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be helped by them.
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Then Peter goes on and he quotes David from the Old Testament to show that Jesus' resurrection was a fulfillment of prophecy.
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And then he finishes with, therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this
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Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. Peter's message is not
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Jesus loves you, but you murdered the Messiah. The result, now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what should we do?
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Then Peter said to them, repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. So we see that Peter did not pull any punches with his audience, and yet the
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Lord blessed it. If we look at Paul preaching in Athens, it's a little bit of a different situation.
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He's preaching to Gentiles, as Jonah is, and so he spends time describing to them who this God is he's preaching about, right?
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Again, setting the stage, he goes to Athens and he's walking around the city and his spirit is provoked within him because the spirit of the city is wholly given over to idols.
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They have shrines to every God you can imagine. They even have a shrine to the unknown God, and so in the course of him beginning to preach, he comes to some philosophers who take him because they want to hear what he has to say, and so we read, and they took him and brought him to the
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Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak, for you are bringing some strange things to our ears.
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Therefore, we want to know what these things mean, for all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.
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So Paul talks to them about God. He uses their own altars. He quotes their poets, but ultimately he tells them who this
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God is that they don't know, and then he says, truly these times of ignorance
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God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained.
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He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. So once again,
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Paul talks about God. He's not quite as cutting as Peter is, but at the same time he talks about this
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God who is all -powerful and is a judge of the world, and that they must repent if they're going to be right with him.
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The result? Some mocked. Some said, meh, we'll hear you again on this. Some men joined him and believed.
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Now let's look at Jonathan Edwards and that sermon that he preached that was one of the things that sparked the
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Great Awakening, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The whole sermon centers around God's wrath and what it will be like.
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He makes four points of application in the sermon. Whose wrath it is is point number one, and he quotes
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Luke 12, and I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more they can do, but I will tell you whom you should fear.
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Fear him whom after he was killed has power to cast into hell. Yes, I say to you, fear him.
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His second point is, he talks about the fierceness of his wrath, and again, quotes
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Revelations 19, he himself treads the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
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So this isn't just run -of -the -mill God's wrath, this is the fierceness of his wrath.
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Then in his third point, I'm going to read what Jonathan Edwards says, and then I'll paraphrase it because his wording is a little weird.
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The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that end that he might show what that wrath of Jehovah is.
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In other words, we know that God's desire in creation and redemption is to show his creatures the full measure of his glory, and how he will most fully show the fullness and glory of his wrath will be upon those who reside in hell.
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So how terrible will that wrath be? It will be a perfect wrath. It will be a glorious wrath.
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It's a wrath I don't want to experience. And then finally, the fourth and to me the most terrifying point, it is an everlasting wrath.
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It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God for one moment, but you must suffer it for all eternity.
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The result of this sermon? It was said that even though Jonathan Edwards was not a dynamic preacher, many in the congregation felt as though the floor of the church was going to open up and they were going to fall into hell that very instant.
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The first great awakening, they say nearly 50 ,000 people came to Christ in just a handful of years, and this was back when the population of the colonies was less than a million people.
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It also laid the foundation for the American Revolution, so we know that its effects lasted for many years afterwards.
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So Jonah's whole message is not recorded, but we can assume that he likely spoke very plainly about the sins of the
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Ninevites. He likely spoke about who this God was who they've offended. He likely spoke about God's ability to bring their destruction, and he also spoke about how terrible it would be and the completeness of it.
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Calvin says of this, we hence gather that the preaching of Jonah was not so concise, but he that he introduced his discourse by declaring that he was
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God's prophet, and that he did not proclaim these commands without authority, and we also gather that Jonah is denounced ruin, that at the same time he showed
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God to be the avenger of sins, that he reproved the Ninevites, and as it were, summoned them to God's tribunal, making known to them their guilt, for had he spoken only of punishment, it could not certainly have been otherwise, than that the
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Ninevites must have rebelled furiously against God. But by showing to them their guilt, he led them to acknowledge that the threatened punishment was just, and thus he prepared them for humility and repentance.
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So now let's look at Nineveh's repentance. Here now we have a great surprise in the book of Jonah.
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Most Israelites would have been reading this story, expecting to hear, knowing who the Ninevites were, and Jonah was stoned to death before the people, and then the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the great city.
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But that's not what happened. What we read is the city repented in dramatic style.
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So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
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Then word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, laid aside his road, covered himself with sackcloth and satin ashes, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout
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Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.
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Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God.
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Yes, let everyone who turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands, who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away his fierce anger so that we may not perish.
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I want to look at this in four parts. The people believed God, verse 5. The people humbled themselves, verse 6 and 7.
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The people turned from their evil ways, verse 8, and the people accepted God's will, verse 9.
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What we have in the third chapter of Jonah is a great example of true repentance, and as we will see, it is initiated by God.
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It involves believing God, humility, a real turning and going in another direction, and a submission to God's will.
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These things are true of original repentance unto salvation, as well as the repentance we are to exhibit as Christians throughout our walk in this life.
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In verse 5, so the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
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R .C. Sproul says of repentance, the word repentance comes from a Greek word, metanoia.
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The prefix meta can mean with, besides, or after. The root noia is the verb form of the noun that we find frequently in the
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Bible as nos. This is simply the Greek word for mind. It is in its simplest form, the term metanoia has to do with the mind afterwards, or as we might say, an afterthought.
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In the Greek language, it came to mean a significant changing of one's mind. Now, what prompts a change of mind in someone, but that they first believe something different?
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Jonah preached judgment to the Ninevites, and they believed God. It doesn't say they believe Jonah, but at the preaching of Jonah, he preached to them of the
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God whom they had offended, and who was going to judge them, and they believed what God said through their prophet, through his prophet.
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In Mark, it says, John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.
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Then all the land of Judea and those from the Jerusalem went out to him, and were all baptized by him in the
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Jordan River, confessing their sins. Why did the people go to be baptized? It was because they believed what he prophesied.
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If they did not trust what John was saying, and just thought he was a crazy guy in camel's hair who ate bugs, they would have either have ignored him or walked him up.
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Belief always precedes any change we make, and conversely, unbelief is what causes us to do nothing.
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One of my favorite examples of this is if I were to stand up here, I could spend the whole day trying to convince you that McDonald's food was good for you.
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I could quote studies, and I could tell you I have professionals who will back me up, but will any of you believe me?
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Probably not. I don't think anyone will go up and get a Whopper after this. Well, a Big Mac, not a Whopper, but you just wouldn't believe me, and if you don't believe me, there will be no change in behavior.
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The people believed God, our text says, and that leads to action. Before I was a
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Christian, I would occasionally pass a person on the streets of Boston holding one of those sandwich boards with something to the effect of, the end is coming, and I would pass them by and not give them another thought.
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I didn't believe them, and so I would just think, that's just another nut, and pay no more mind to it.
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Conversely, immediately after Melanie and I were saved, we would get to the end of our day and say things to each other like, hey,
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I read something in the Bible today, can you believe it says that? Or, I had no idea that God cares about that.
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We used to say to each other, we need to redo every conversation we have ever had. The reason was because our fundamental belief about reality had changed.
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Melanie, from one of God exists but doesn't care about me, and me, from one that God didn't exist to the fact that he did.
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To a belief that God exists, cares, is involved, is all -powerful, has declared himself to mankind, will hold us accountable for what we do in this life, and has declared what right and wrong is, we had to change everything because of these changes in beliefs.
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I mean, Melanie and I used to be liberals, and I mean bright blue liberals. Some of you here prior to being saved were at least conservative in some of your ways, not us.
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I have told some of you I remember taking a picture of my voting ballot from 2008 when
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I voted for President Obama. I thought the country was finally moving in a good direction. When my beliefs changed about the fundamental foundation of reality, everything it was based on had to change as well.
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Another example is, many of you know that Melanie and I had an abortion early in our relationship, but it wasn't until I came to know the
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Lord that I repented of that horrible thing we did. You see, I felt guilty before I was saved only because of how it affected
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Melanie. I had no guilt whatsoever over the fact that I had murdered my child. It wasn't until I came to know my creator and what he said about these things that my beliefs changed, and so I felt the guilt and had to repent of what
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I had done. Now the people humbled themselves, verses six and seven.
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So they believed God, and his message started to be talked about throughout the city. And the word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne.
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The people, from the king down to the lowest servant, even the animals repented in sackcloth and ashes.
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Now, since I'm bringing up the king of Nineveh, even though Ryan is not here, as a quick aside, he pointed out to me that this king of Nineveh is likely not the king of the
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Assyrian Empire, because at this time, Nineveh was not the capital city of Assyria.
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It was actually Kala to the south. Nineveh did not become the capital of the Assyrian Empire until 705
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BC. But as he corrected me on that after my first sermon, I wanted to make sure that I corrected that mistake.
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But still, this was probably more think of a governor of a city, but he had the title of a king.
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The people believed that it must have spread like wildfire. These are days before media and social media, so no one could snap a picture of Jonah with hashtag
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God's judgment and expect it to get around. People must have heard and then started to talk to others.
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And we read at some point it got to the king. It says, then word came to the king. So it wasn't that he was walking by while Jonah was preaching.
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He was simply told about this and was also convicted, so much so that he repented in sackcloth and ashes and sent out a proclamation to all of his citizens.
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Again, going to R .C. Sproul's for help. Generally speaking, metanoia has to do with the changing of one's mind with respect to one's behavior.
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It contains the idea of rueing. To rue something means to regret a particular action.
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It carries with it not only an intellectual assessment, but also an emotional and visceral response.
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The feeling most often associated with repentance in scripture is that of remorse, regret, and a sense of sorrow for having acted in a particular way.
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Thus, repentance involves sorrow for a previous form of behavior. He goes on to say that in ancient cultures, fasting, sackcloth, and sitting in ashes were physical ways to show sorrow and regret over one's actions.
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It involves humbling oneself before God. Job said, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
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Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Daniel repented and confessed the national sins of Israel.
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Then I set my face towards the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplication with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.
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And I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession. Daniel 9. In Esther, when
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Mordecai learns of the plot of Haman to exterminate the Jews, we read, when Mordecai learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and cried out with a loud and bitter cry.
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And finally, Jesus said, then he rebuked, he began to rebuke the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.
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Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
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This is how a nation would humble themselves in biblical times. Humbling ourselves is part of repentance.
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No prideful person has ever repented of anything. If we don't believe we have done wrong, why would we repent?
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In Matthew 18, we have Jesus' instructions on dealing with a sinning brother. First, we go to our brother, and if he doesn't hear us, we bring witnesses.
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And if he doesn't hear, we tell it to the church. And if he refuses even to hear the church, we treat them as an unbeliever.
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What is the cause of one refusing to hear all of these people? They are refusing to hear because they don't believe they are wrong.
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And if we go through all of these layers and they still don't hear, it is because in addition to whatever they've done, they're full of pride.
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In 2 Chronicles 7 14, God says, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.
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Humility and repentance are closely linked. Consider David's repentance in Psalm 51.
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David owns his sin. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. David sees he is a born sinner.
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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. David sees he cannot cleanse himself and begs
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God to do it. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
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And finally, David confesses the humility that God is looking for. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.
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These, oh God, you will not despise. This is the humility that leads to true repentance.
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And true repentance leads to works. The people turn from their evil ways.
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But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil ways and from the violence that is in his hands.
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Repentance always leads to works. And let me put out my quick disclaimer. Repentance is not a work, but it does lead to works.
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I don't want anyone saying that salvation is in any way dependent on our works. Here the king's decree is a command for people to turn from their evil ways and from the violence in their hands.
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But those who do that are those who fear God and recognize they will face judgment if they don't.
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That change of mind and repentance then leads us to live according to it. For a
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Christian, this is most clear in salvation because we go through such a huge change of mind.
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But this is true in anything that leads us to change course. If you don't worry about wearing a seatbelt, but then you get in a minor car accident and get badly injured, you'll likely change your mind about seatbelts and become a faithful wearer of them going forward.
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Just as faith without works is dead, so repentance without works is dead. According to James, our faith leads us to do certain things and so when we have faith, we will also have works.
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It is the same with true repentance. When we have true changing of our minds about something, it will produce works in accordance with that.
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Let me ask you, have you ever asked God for forgiveness for something you knew you were going to do again? Do you have repentance over that sin?
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It is a tough question, isn't it? I would ask you, what works did your repentance produce?
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Let's say, for example, you struggle with sinful anger and you repent and ask God for forgiveness for blowing up at your family or at your wife.
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You may do that knowing that likely it will happen again. So how do you know you've repented? Let me ask you some questions.
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Did your repentance produce a greater hatred of that sin? Did it produce a desire to make a change?
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And did you make the change? Did it produce a desire to expose it more through accountability?
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Did it produce a fervency in prayer against that sin? Did it produce a searching of God's word for wisdom on how to mortify it?
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These are all works of repentance in the life of a Christian. And then in verse 9, we have the acceptance of God's will.
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The end of the king's decree was, who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish?
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True repentance produces an acceptance of God's will. These pagan Ninevites don't know if this
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God that Jonah is proclaiming is a God who delights in mercy. They don't have the hope that a Christian does in Christ that God will complete the work he has begun in us.
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Their reasoning is, well, it's worth a shot. After all, he did send his prophet to us, so perhaps if we change our ways,
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God will relent. Matthew Henry says about this, Jonah had not told them, they had not among them any other prophets to tell them, so that they could not be so confident of finding mercy upon their repentance as we may be who have the promise and oath of God to depend upon, and especially the merit and mediation of Christ to trust to, for pardon upon repentance.
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Yet they had a general notion of the goodness of God's nature, his mercy to man, and his being pleased with the repentance and conversion of sinners, and from this they raised some hopes that he would spare them.
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They dare not presume, but they will not despair. One fruit of repentance is a great acceptance of God's will in our lives.
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When we have that changing of our mind, we see God's ways are better, his judgments are pure, and when we belong to him, we know that even his discipline is for our good.
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The Ninevites did not know what God would do, but they were willing to change their ways in the hope he might turn, which is exactly what he did.
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Then God saw their works, it says they saw their works, he didn't say they saw his repentance, they saw the works that testify to that repentance, and they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
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Of this, Calvin writes, Jonah now says that the Ninevites obtained pardon through their repentance, and this is an example worthy of being observed, for we hence learn for what purpose
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God daily urges us to repentance, and that is because he desires to be reconciled to us, and that we should be reconciled to him.
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The reason then why so many reproofs and threatenings resound in our ears whenever we come to hear the word of God is this, that as God seeks to recover us from destruction, he speaks sharply to us.
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In short, whatever the scripture contains on repentance and the judgment of God ought to be wholly applied for this purpose, to induce us to return into favor with him, for he is ready to be reconciled and is ever prepared to embrace those who without dissimulation turn to him.
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So as we move towards conclusion, I'd like to look at three additional points. The first is the
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Spirit's work in repentance. When we see movements like this, whether it leads to repentance unto salvation, or just a turning from evil, the fingerprints of the
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Spirit of God are all over it. It is not the message preached that leads to repentance, but the
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Spirit working in the person to receive the message. If the Spirit had not gone before Jonah, he likely would have been ignored, or worse, killed for his message.
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Some historians talk about how the circumstances in Nineveh prior to Jonah's arrival might have prepared them for his preaching.
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At this time there had been a famine in the region, a recent plague, several revolts that had happened among the
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Ninevites, and several eclipses which may have been seen as omens of worse things to come and made the
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Ninevites more receptive to a message of judgment. But even those things are from and used by the
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Spirit to make a people like the Ninevites repent in sackcloth and ashes. If we look back at the sermon by Jonathan Edwards we talked about, the first time he preached that message, he preached it in his church in Massachusetts, and it was ignored.
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It wasn't until he preached it in Enfield, Connecticut, that the Spirit moved. So was it the message or the
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Spirit that made the difference? It was the Spirit. In our own lives, do we recognize our need for the
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Spirit to work? Jesus taught his disciples about the Holy Spirit, and when he has come he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and of judgment.
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God tells us through Ezekiel, I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.
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Paul instructs Timothy in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth.
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And finally, God says through Zechariah, and I pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the
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Spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for me as one mourns for his only son and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn.
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The Spirit causes us to see our sins as God sees it. He is the one who convicts us and turns us from our sin to God.
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He does this ultimately in our salvation and progressively through our sanctification. When we grieve the
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Spirit through our sin, we grow hard to the ways of God and put ourselves in a dangerous place. We must pray for greater work of the
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Spirit in our lives and that he would grant us repentance when we struggle with those besetting sins that each of us has and must fight to mortify.
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The second point I'd like to talk about is godly versus worldly repentance. Paul says in 2
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Corinthians 7, for godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
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He goes on to say about godly repentance, for observe this very thing that you sorrowed in a godly manner, what diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication, in all things you proved yourself to be clear in this matter.
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Paul says godly repentance produced in the Corinthians, diligence, desire to clear themselves, indignation against their sin, godly fear, vehement desire for God, zeal and a desire for vindication.
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That's a big one for me. When we are truly repentant, our desire is to be completely open, completely transparent.
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We're willing to tell people what had happened, we're willing to testify of it, and that's one of the truest ways to know true repentance.
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Anyone who says, oh, I've repented, but don't ask me about it, I don't want to talk about it, that's a red flag for me.
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Vindication is a big one. This is a picture of what happens with godly repentance. We see
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God in his ways as supreme, and our desire is to turn from our sin to God, and in our hearts our desire is to be right with God and honor him.
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With worldly repentance, our desire is to avoid consequences, or if we are sorrowful, it's because of consequences that we must face and not because we have offended our
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God. This is why when we see someone cry over their sins, that is a good thing, but it does not automatically mean they've experienced godly repentance.
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In Matthew 27, it says, then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that he had been condemned was remorseful, speaking of Jesus.
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That remorse may have come with tears, but they did not mean anything as he later hanged himself. However, in Luke 22, we see that Peter wept bitterly after denying his
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Lord, but we then see the fruit of that repentance when he rushed to Jesus on the beach after Pentecost, I'm sorry, before Pentecost, and we see a great humility that had been formed in him.
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True godly repentance produces works that bring glory to God and humility to the one who is repentant.
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And finally, I want to consider the king came down from his throne. The king of Nineveh rose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself in sackcloth and satin ashes.
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I would be remiss if I preached on Jonah chapter 3 and didn't consider the picture we have here. In one sense, it is a picture of our
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Lord, and another a sense of what we must do. Let's look at it. The king of Nineveh stepped down in humility to identify with the people in repentance.
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He removed his symbols of power, his robes. He took a low place in dust and ashes, showing full surrender to God.
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He led people in this, and they were spared the wrath of God. Jesus, our
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Lord, stepped down from heaven to earth to identify with his people and become one of us.
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He laid aside his glory, which he had with the Father before the world was.
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He became a servant, even washing the feet of his betrayer. He took the wrath of God for his people, so they might be spared.
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And for each one of us who names Christ as our Lord, we must step down from the throne of our life.
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We must lay aside all of our self -sufficiency, all of our righteous acts, and all that we trust in.
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We must take our place as his servant and be willing to serve him.
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And if we do this in faith and repentance, we will be spared from the wrath to come and be able to live forever with our
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Lord in the joy and light of God. I will close with a final quote from R .C.
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Sproul. Are you a converted person? The race of life that you are running follows a definite course.
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Which course is it? Are you running the race of God, or are you following the course of this world?
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Is your heart's delight to please God? Is there evidence that you are being molded, crafted, and shaped by Christ?
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Or do you remain cold of heart towards the things of God and estranged from Christ? Are you one of those people who say, well, you may find something meaningful in the
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Christian religion, and Christ may be a crutch for you, but I don't need Christ. If you're saying that, what you mean is,
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I don't want him, I have no place for him in my life, I want to craft my own soul and carve my own destiny.
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These are the signs of an unconverted person. They are the marks of spiritual death. But there is no greater blessing than to be shaped, molded, and crafted by the gentle working of Christ.
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That is why Augustine prayed the way he did, grant what thou doth command, and command what thou wilt.
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If you know you should repent, but you can't produce feelings of repentance in yourself, pray that God would work repentance in you, because the only one who can produce genuine repentance in your soul is
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God. God convicts us of sin. God awakens us to our guilt.
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If God crushes us in godly sorrow, it is an act of sheer grace. It's his act of mercy to bring us to faith and conversion.
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Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you,
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O God, that you were willing, you were willing to come down from your throne. You were willing,
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O God, to put aside your glory, to save us,
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O Lord, to save a people who were in rebellion to you, a people that were despicable, a people that were running from you, rebelling against you,
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O God. You did this, Father, because it pleased you to do it, because of your abundance of love for us.
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O Lord God, we praise your name. We praise you, O God, for the picture of repentance that we see in Jonah chapter 3.
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Father, the people of Nineveh, whether they came to true repentance unto salvation, or whether they just repented of their evil ways,
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Lord, we know, Father, that you bring all repentance. Father, we pray,
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O God, if there is one here today who has not truly repented of their sins, who has not truly turned to God and recognized that they are a sinner deserving of judgment,
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Father, I pray this day you would grant them repentance. I pray, Father, if there is a Christian here today that is in sin, whether they are hiding it or whatever it is,
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Lord, would you grant them repentance? Would you bring it to light? Would you cause them to turn from this path that they're on back to you,
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Lord? Grant them repentance, we pray, and help them, Father, to come into the light.
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Lord, we thank you for this day. We ask you to bless us as we continue to worship you. In Jesus' name, amen.