JONAH 3 - REDEMPTION FROM A MERCIFUL GOD
Jonah 3
In chapter 3 of Jonah we find a chastened Jonah, who having been freed from the belly of the fish is prepared to go where he is sent. And God instructs him to, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
In the city of Nineveh we see the powerful effect of God’s redemptive heart and the story of the Gospel. We so often picture God like a traffic cop, desperately seeking to catch us in the trap of our sin. But that is not what the Bible shows. In the Bible we see a God who is always first in seeking to show grace, first in coming after the lost, first in offering mercy and providing a way of escape from the judgement we have so rightly earned. The people of Nineveh were strangers to God and were guilty, as we learned in Chapter 1, of evil.
And yet God provided both a messenger and a means of escape.
What was the message Jonah was to deliver to Nineveh? It was the message of mercy. Note: “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”. God did not send Jonah to simply deliver destruction but to give a warning and a reasonable time to comply. Having observed the evil of the city he still gave them 40 more days to repent. The patience and compassion of our God is without measure.
And this is what Jesus tells us was God’s plan for all mankind. In the most famous passage in the Bible, Jesus shows us that Jonah’s visitation to Nineveh was a prototype of Jesus’ visitation to earth. A messenger of God, Jesus (who came willingly, unlike Jonah), was sent to a people (all of us) who were enemies of God, with a message of forgiveness and redemption.
John 3:16-18 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Our response needs to be that of the people of Nineveh. For Jonah had only begun one day into a three day journey across the city when word began to spread faster than he could travel. More importantly we are told the people believed God and took action. The people began to repent: fasting and mourning over their sin, as seen by their sitting in sackcloth. These actions were taken by the people even before the king had heard the news. But we are told that after the news reached the king, he too repented and proclaimed a nation-wide fast.
That we would all so readily repent when God sends messengers into our lives and challenges the sin in our life.
Because the results of such a heart is to stir the heart of our overly abundantly merciful God. God responded to their repentance and “relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” As enemies of God we too are slated for disaster. And that disaster can be prevented if we too will believe God’s messenger, respond in faith to that message with repentance and receive the mercy of God.