Jonah 3
The nature of repentance
On the day of Pentecost, after the Spirit comes, the disciples are shaken by the sound of a rushing wind, tongues of fire appear on their heads, they head out on to the street praising God and speaking in tongues. Peter explains to the crowds what is happening. He explains the Gospel, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
38Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call." (Acts 2:37-39)
All through Scripture we are told that for the forgiveness of the things that we do wrong in our lives, we need to repent. But “repent is not as word that gets used outside of Church very often. Which is why many of us don’t always know what it means, and some Christians worry that they have not truly repented for their sins, while others assume that they have when it appears to me that they have a different definition of repentance from the Bible.
Jonah 3 gives us 2 great examples of repentance; first in Jonah the prophet and then in the Ninevites that he is prophesying to.
1) Repentance is taking a U-turn
We will come back to this, but the basic meaning of the word “repent” is to turn from doing something wrong to doing something right. This is important because there are a lot of things that get mistaken for repentance that do not include actually stopping our bad behavior.
2) What repentance looks like
- Confession (8b)
Repentance begins with an awareness that what we have done is wrong. They say that recognizing your problem is the first step in solving it.
Jonah, somewhere between Chapter 1, verse 3 and Chapter 3 verse one, realizes that he was wrong. Jonah was called by God to go and preach to the people of Nineveh that God was going to destroy the city because of its wickedness. Nineveh is wicked, and powerful, so Jonah is afraid for his life. Instead of taking the next camel train to Nineveh, he jumps on a ship and heads for Tarshish, which is at the exact opposite end of the then known world. He is running from God, but God runs after him with a huge storm that threatens to break up the ship. The sailors figure out that Jonah is the problem, they ask him what they should do, and he says that they must throw him overboard into the raging sea. They don’t want to do it, but the storm is so bad that they finally throw him over. The storm stops as Jonah sinks to the bottom. God doesn’t let him drown, but sends a fish to come and swallow him. Jonah is three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. While he is there he prays, and admits his wrong.
The fish spits him up on to dry land, where God calls him again to go to Nineveh. This time he obeys, and he goes and preaches to them.
It would have taken about three days to cover the city, on the first day Jonah begins his task, and prophesies God’s message to them. Jonah may have said more, but all we are told that he said was “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” He may have shouted as he walked, or he may have said it to individuals as he passed them, he may have mumbled it under his breath for all we know. What we do know is that he is only one day into his three-day preaching stint and the people repent.
The people of Nineveh did not need to repent. They were a powerful, arrogant, violent, wicked people. Jonah was this little guy from a weak nation at the edge of their soon to be empire. They could have strung him up from dising their fine city. But they don’t – they listen to him. Mind you, it might be easier to listen to a prophet of doom when he just spent the last three days in the belly of a fish. His skin and hair are bleached white from the digestive juices, his clothes are half digested, there is a dried up piece of kelp hanging off his left ear. – I might listen to a guy like that: “Repent, or God will do to you what he did to me!”
Whether Jonah showed up like that, or he cleaned himself up a little before arriving, the people hear his message and believe it. They recognize that they have been doing great evil and they express it.
The king himself recognizes the evil of the city when he says, “let them give up their evil ways and their violence.” in verse 8.
The confession that is the beginning of repentance is not just a recognition of a mistake, but it is an understanding that we have offended God with our action or inaction. Verse 5 points to this when it says that the Ninevites believed God.
Jesus tells the story of son who takes his inheritance from his father and runs away. He spends his money on parties and prostitutes, but when the money runs out (and so do his friends), he comes to himself and returns to his father where he says “Father I have sinned against heaven and against you.” His offence was not just against his family, but also against God. The confession that is the beginning of repentance is not just recognizing that our bad behavior hurts other people, or hurts ourselves; it is a recognition that our bad behavior hurts God.
That recognition leads to regret, or conviction.
- Regret (conviction)
- On the outside
While we see just a little regret in Jonah for his disobedience and running from God in his request to be thrown overboard and his prayer in the belly of the fish, the Ninevites demonstrate the greatest example of corporate regret that we find in the Bible. They hear Jonah and spontaneously respond immediately. They declare a fast, they remove their fancy clothes, put on sackcloth on their bodies and ashes on their heads and go about mourning.
This fast of regret and mourning is complete in that from the least person in the city, to the greatest, they all fast.
Even the King, when he hears the news of their impending doom, gets off his throne, removes his royal robes puts on sackcloth and sits down in the dust. In all humility and contrition, he trades his robes for rags and his throne for the dirt
He sets a royal decree that wasn’t needed – he just told the people to do what they were already doing – to fast and wear rags. He extends the fast to not just people, but the animals as well. Nineveh goes from this powerful, arrogant, wicked city to become a city of massive mourning. You couldn’t hear yourself think in Nineveh in these days! Have you ever heard an hungry cow? All of Nineveh’s cows and sheep and horses would have been complaining loudly, the people would have been sitting in the streets calling out to God to forgive them, babies would have been crying for their mothers to feed them.
We don’t know how long the fast continues, Jonah prophesied that destruction would come in 40 days: you can’t go without water for forty days, but the fast may have lasted that long.
Nineveh teaches us about regret for our sins. We are the “instant society,” and we have become used to the grace of God. The moment we feel the slightest discomfort with our sin, we run off to the altar to be forgiven and have it removed. I think that if we recognized the offence that our sins cause God, we too might learn to fast and mourn.
In our “repentance” we can often times be concerned more with stopping feeling bad, rather than understanding the offence of our sins. Nicky Gumbel tells us of a man who sent a check to the government for back taxes with a note attached that said, “I felt so guilty for cheating on my taxes I had to send you this check. If I don’t feel any better, I’ll send you the rest.”
Psalm 32 speaks of the weight that our sins can have on us:
The psalmist says “when I didn’t confess my sins…
When I kept silent,
My bones wasted away
Trough my groaning all day long
For day and night
Your hand was heavy upon me;
My strength was sapped.
As in the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
And did not cover up my iniquity
I said, “I will confess
My transgressions to the Lord” –
And you forgave
The guilt of my sin.
When revival came to the Orkney Islands off Scotland, The Spirit of repentance was so strong that sailors sailing past found that they had to put into port and find a church to confess because the weight of their sin was so great.
On the inside
But fasting and mourning are not the be all and end all in regards to repentance. In Isaiah 58 the people of Israel fast and mourn and then they get mad that God doesn’t answer them.
1 "Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
3 ’Why have we fasted,’ they say,
’and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
"Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness [1] will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
We can fake tears, we can enter into fasting and mourning with selfish motives, but what God wants is a broken and contrite spirit. (Psalm 51:17)
2 Cor. 7:10
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
God wants a change of heart, and he wants a change in behavior
- Change in behavior (8)
The king doesn’t just call the people to fast and mourn, he calls for a change in behavior. He says in 8: “Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.”
One of the problems with the Israelites’ fast bin Isaiah 58 is that even during the fast, they continued to quarrel and fight with each other and to exploit their workers!
God requires an about-face.
Think of a husband and wife in a car, the wife tells her husband to turn right at the next junction and by mistake, he turns left. When he realizes what he has done, he says to his wife “I’m sorry love, I went the wrong way.” But if that is all he does, it isn’t enough. His saying sorry isn’t getting them any closer to where they want to be; it isn’t even stopping them getting further away. To get where they want to be, he needs to stop the car, turn it around and go back on to the correct road that his wife told him to take in the first place. That is repentance.
When the Pharisees come to John the Baptist he challenges them and says “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Matthew 3:8)
Paul describes his preaching ministry in this way. Acts 26:20
First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
Nicky Gumbel, in the Alpha course, calls people to accept Jesus buy confessing your sins to God, accepting his forgiveness and to stop doing anything that you know is wrong.
Paul details what this behavior change might look like in Ephesians 4:
25Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26"In your anger do not sin"[4] : Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27and do not give the devil a foothold. 28He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
29Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
J. Edwin Orr, a professor of Church history has described the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Welsh Revivals of the nineteenth century. As people sought to be filled with the Spirit, they did all they could to confess their wrong doing and to make restitution. But it unexpectedly created serious problems for the shipyards along the coast of Wales. Over the years workers had stolen all kinds of things, from wheelbarrows to hammers. However, as people sought to be right with God they started to return what they had taken, with the result that soon the shipyards of Wales were overwhelmed with returned property. There were such huge piles of returned tools that several of the yards put up signs that read, "If you have been led by God To return what you have stolen, Please know that the management forgives you and wishes you to keep what you have taken."
Can you imagine if that type of repentance came upon Canada – it might do a number on our economic system!
- Repentance doesn’t demand a response from God (9)
The king of Nineveh understands that they do not deserve to be forgiven. He says in 9 after calling for repentance “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
Repentance is not a way of twisting God’s arm so that he must forgive us. As if when we say the right words, and do the right actions God must obey us and forgive us. No, we can rely on his promise that when we repent, he forgives, but true repentance does not demand it.
- Repentance is a move of the Spirit
The repentance that we see in Nineveh is nothing short of a miracle. It is impossible even to imagine that Nineveh would repent at the sound of this reluctant prophet’s voice. It would be like Bin Laden and Alkeda repenting at the word of Jimmy Carter while the Taliban were still in power. It would be a miracle – but not impossible for God. In the same way, when we repent of our wrong doing, it is a miracle in our hearts that we have heard the word of God and responded positively.
This is what Jesus says about the work of the Holy Spirit in John 16:
5"Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ’Where are you going?’ 6Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. 7But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt[1] in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:”
Paul writes the Thessalonians “The gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
Without the work of the Spirit in our lives, we would never repent.
3) The fruit of repentance – God’s mercy
- On Jonah
After Jonah repents, and determines to fulfill his vows to God, God sets him on Terra Firma and comes to him again. He doesn’t say, “I’m glad you repented, but you are finished prophesying, I’m going to send my word through someone else.” No, the words at the beginning of Chapter three are a mirror image of the words at the beginning of chapter one. God gives him a second chance to be obedient and blessed.
When we repent of our wrong ways, God allows us to return where we should have been if we had never gone down the road of running from God in the first place.
God’s Mercy
- On the Ninevites
This chapter is bracketed by God’s mercy: Verse one is God’s mercy on Jonah, verse 10 is God’s mercy on the Ninevites.
“When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”
God sends Jonah to warn them of the destruction to come, but he is just waiting for them to repent.
Limited time offer
Receiving mercy because of repentance is a limited time offer – Nineveh had forty days, and then it was over. God is extremely patient with us, much more patient that I would ever be, but even his patience runs out. If we fail to heed the word of God and continue in our wrong ways, the consequences of our actions will eventually catch up to us.
Luke 13
6Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. 7So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ’For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’
8" ’Sir,’ the man replied, ’leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ "
Revelations 3 has this image of Jesus knocking on the door of a church in Laodicea.
This is what Gary Moyer says about that passage:
"We can be thankful that Jesus still loves Laodicea and is still knocking. In fact, He has been knocking on some of our hearts so long that his knuckles must be calloused. I think he’s worn impressions of his knuckles on our heart’s doors! How many times has God been knocking on our doors, pleading with us to open up to Him, and the only response he sees to his knocking is the shades going down, and blinds closing. Isn’t it time we get zealous and repent? He promises that if we will simply open the door, he will come in.
No mater how far we run from God, Jesus continues to knock at the door of our heart, to be let in. He doesn’t stop knocking, but we can stop hearing the knock – just like I don’t even notice the bumps and groans this old building makes when the heat comes on anymore. My brain tells my ears that it is not an important sound and I take no notice of it. The longer we ignore the knock, the harder it is for us to respond to it.
Is Jesus knocking on the door of your heart?
Is there something in your life that you need to repent of?
Confess your wrong doings, demonstrate your regret, and stop doing the things that you used to do. We have God’s promise that when we repent, that he will forgive us and bless us with his Spirit.
