Jonah 3:1-4: “And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.  So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.  Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.  And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

This overthrow was really going to happen if the Ninevites did not repent.  There is no mention in Jonah’s preaching of possible mercy for the Ninevites.  

Jonah 3:5-9: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.  For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.  And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.  Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?”

It takes labor of the heart to root out sin; to really alienate oneself from it and renounce it wherever it can be known.  Sin has a momentary pleasure to it though that makes such alienation very bitter to experience.  Repenting from sin is no light thing and cannot just be done in a minute.  

Though there had not been any guarantee by Jonah’s preaching, the Ninevites perceived that mercy for them might yet be possible.  They also understood that they had to turn from their sins and cry mightily to God if this was going to happen.  

It is a really good thing that the easy grace preachers who deny Lordship salvation in Christ, who deny the need to turn from one’s sins in order to have an interest in Christ or treat that as a light thing, weren’t in Nineveh.  Those who run people through a “1-2-3 repeat after me” sinner’s prayer and then tell them they are saved and unconditionally eternally secure are proven to be deadly deceivers when placed in the context of Nineveh at its crucial hour.

It is also a good thing that the voices of the types who go around saying that no one is perfect, as if that is an excuse to not turn from one’s sins, didn’t prevail in Nineveh.  Likewise with the voices of those who go around saying “God is love”- as if that negates His authority and causes His threats of judgment on unrepentant sinners to be in vain.  Likewise with the voices of those who go around saying “Don’t judge” and evidently mean that we should not receive nor echo God’s own verdicts set forth in the Bible.

If a preacher/teacher’s message wouldn’t have saved Nineveh, then it surely cannot save you nor anyone else on Judgment Day.  We surely ought to relate the response of the men of Nineveh to Jonah’s preaching to the way we ought to respond to Jesus Christ in order to inherit salvation through Him on Judgment Day.

Matthew 12:38-41: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.  But he (Jesus) answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly (my note- the word in the Greek text could refer to any large predatory sea creature- it could have been a shark); so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

Jonah 3:10 then says: “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”

The evil that God said He would do to the Ninevites is a reference to destruction or calamity; not to moral evil.  God didn’t change by not bringing the calamity on the Ninevites.  The Ninevites rather changed in accordance with what God required of them.  Therefore, God dealt with them differently than He would have had they persisted in their wickedness.  God is not unstable nor a partial respecter of persons.  

There are actually many, many who teach in Christ’s name which say that telling people that they ought to respond to God like the Ninevites did is opposing the mercy and grace of God.  And yet, one of the most notable stories in the Bible of people obtaining mercy and grace from God is that of the Ninevites.  

The Ninevites surely would have been destroyed and sent to the fire of hell in mass if they had not responded with the trembling, turning from their evil way, and crying mightily to God like we see that they did here.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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