Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh…and call…the message that I tell you.”
Jonah 3
Jonah is vomited onto the seashore and God calls to him again. This time Jonah obeys God’s commands and goes to Nineveh to preach repentance to them. In these words, we learn that Nineveh was a very large city, taking 3 days for one to walk across it! After walking in the city for a day, Jonah began to “preach,” warning the citizens and the king that the city will be overthrown unless they ALL repent in sack cloth and ashes, regardless of the citizen’s status in the city. They were given 40 days to repent. When word reached the king, he did as Jonah had preached and, he issued a declaration to all citizens to do the same, including the beasts of the city! The king ended his decree by saying, “God may turn and relent from His fierce anger…” There is no word here of Jonah’s reaction to the citizens’ repenting. We will deal with that later. Can you imagine what Jonah must have been thinking as he preached and he saw the Ninevites turning from their evil ways and doing what God had commanded?! Jonah must have been devastated because he hated the people of Nineveh. He must have been “certain” God was going to destroy them. The Scriptures tell a different story here, “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.” Self-righteous Jonah must have been horrified at God’s relenting of His threat of destruction. But, God was being the Sovereign God He is. The people “believed” God and acted as God had told them to do! God saw their repentance and chose not to destroy the Ninevites at that time. Because God “relented” does not mean the Ninevites were saved spiritually. The Ninevites did not suddenly turn Christian. They did what was commanded to keep from being destroyed! Like the child who is caught with his hand in the cookie jar and begs his parent to not spank him, the Ninevites simply responded to the threat from God and God relented from His threat. There are Christians, today, who say they believe in Jesus but their lives tell the world a different story. They have no faith in Jesus. Yet, these so called Christians act like, talk like and, appear to be true Christians. Without faith in the works of Jesus, in His earthly ministry, and using one’s faith to demonstrate one’s beliefs, there is no salvation.
Source: S C Ball September 20, 2023
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