0232. Nineveh Repents

Nineveh Repents

"So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even unto the least of them" (Jon_3:5).

1. We can easily imagine the scene before us. Jonah wending his way through the crowded streets of the great city, and crying: "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed."

Just now we need prophets to cry out a similar message, for the days of coming judgment, the judgments that shall precede the return of our Lord to this earth, are already upon us. Let us cry aloud, and spare not. Let us sound the alarm. Let us warn the people that the time of Jacob’s trouble is at hand.

2. Nineveh repents. There are four steps that might well be stressed. (1) They believed God. But the people of today do not believe the fact of coming judgments. (2) They put on sackcloth, and fasted. The people of today are putting on festal robes; they are reveling in pastimes. (3) They turned from their evil ways. The people of today are pressing on, headlong in their sins. (4) "They cried mightily unto God." The people of today are making no prayer for mercy.

What then is our conclusion? Simply this: "They repented at the preaching of Jonah and a greater than Jonah is here." Also this: "It shall be more tolerable for Nineveh in the day of judgment" than for the people of this enlightened day. And also this: "The men of Nineveh shall rise up and condemn this generation."

3. "And God repented of the evil that He said He would do unto them! and He did it not." When Nineveh turned, God turned. When Nineveh repented of her sins, God repented of His curse. How else could the God, Who changeth not, act? Had God cursed a repentant city, God had become no more a "gracious God;" thus it was that Nineveh’s change of living made necessary God’s change of action.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR