5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
10 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.
The events described in the book of Jonah occurred some 2700 years ago, and Biblical commentators agree that no other revival in the history of the church has come close to the magnitude of the revival of Nineveh. Hugh Martin, in his commentary of Jonah wrote, “A great and proud city suddenly smitten into the most profound humiliation, from the greatest of its inhabitants unto the least of them - from the king on the throne to the meanest citizen - is a spectacle to which, I suppose, history affords no parallel. Cities, and countries, and communities have oftentimes, with not a little unanimity, given themselves to humiliation and fasting. But there is no event on record that can at all be compared with the fast and the repentance of Nineveh.”
What makes the revival at Nineveh even more remarkable is that it happened as a direct result of the preaching of just one man - a man who had done everything in his power to avoid doing what God commanded him to do.
As always with revivals when the Spirit of God moves in the hearts of repentant sinners, the events in Nineveh began with the obedience (albeit reluctant in this case), of the messenger. Having studied the long and painful journey Jonah took to finally obey the Lord, it is obvious that what happened in Nineveh as a result of Jonah’s preaching was a mighty act of God. This was not the work of Jonah, but the work of the Lord. Any time sinners turn in repentance and faith to God, it is because He has been at work in their hearts, and He is the one who receives the glory.
Jesus said in Luke 11:30-32, “As Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
This means the repentance of the Ninevites should actually be overshadowed by repentance today, because we stand on this side of the cross. The “something greater than Solomon and something greater than Jonah” which is here, is Jesus Himself and the Gospel message He has entrusted to His church, but how obedient have we been to His Great Commission to take this message into the world? Gordon Keddie wrote of the revival in Nineveh, “This event stands through all history as a sign and witness against both the poverty of our obedience to the Lord and our low expectations for the success of the Gospel in our own time.”
Jonah obeyed God’s call to preach in Nineveh, crying throughout the city, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4)
And incredibly, the wicked citizens of Nineveh didn’t respond with violence against Jonah, nor even with a mocking indifference to his preaching. Instead, in Nineveh we have a classic example of corporate repentance. An entire society turned from their sin and turned to God.
Nineveh’s repentance was genuine, and we know this because it fulfilled the Biblical definition of repentance. It included at least three vital elements, each of which we see in Nineveh’s case.
The first is a sorrowful mourning over sin. Verse 5 says “They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.”
False repentance grieves only over the consequences of sin. These are people who are not sorry they have sinned, but instead they are sorry they have been caught. True repentance grieves over the sin itself, which is what we see in Nineveh.
They called for a fast. Fasting has several Biblical purposes, one of which is a public expression of repentance. In fact, in Nineveh, the king decreed that even the animals of Nineveh were required to fast. Verse 7: “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water.” This might seem rather extreme, and animal rights activists would be up in arms today, but these were very different times. The intention was probably to signify their total repentance.
They also wore sackcloth, and verse 5 tells us this included everyone, without exception. Sackcloth, as the name suggests, was a coarse and rough cloth used for making sacks, which only the poorest wore. Like fasting, the wearing of sackcloth was an expression of grief over sin.
Then the king of Nineveh expressed his grief over his own sin by sitting in ashes. By removing his elaborate and costly clothing and wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes, he humbled himself publicly and identified with the rest of the common people.
The question is often asked if fasting and the wearing of sackcloth and ashes are appropriate today. The answer really depends on the circumstances. If we had a city-wide or even country-wide revival, a corporate display of grieving over sins would certainly be appropriate, but Jesus does warn against hypocrisy when it comes to publicly displaying repentance in Matthew 6:16-18. “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Fasting in particular, is a useful means of focusing on prayer or spending time studying the Word, but there needs to be an inward reality which corresponds with the outward sign. John Calvin wrote about the practice of fasting, “We must bear in mind that these things are set before us as the outward signs of repentance, which, when not genuine, do nothing else but provoke the wrath of God.”
So in the Ninevites grieving over their sin and the expressions of their grief of fasting, wearing of sackcloth and sitting in ashes, we have the the first sign of true, Biblical repentance.
They expressed their sorrow for sin, but repentance also requires an actual turning from sin, which is the second sign. J. I. Packer writes, “Repentance is a change of mind issuing in a change of life.” We see this in the king’s proclamation in verse 8. “Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.”
Nineveh was notoriously violent, so here the king acknowledges the evil of their ways and calls the people to turn away from it.
But there is a third step involved. Repentance is not just turning away from sin, but a turning to God as well. The king, also in verse 8, said, “Let them call out mightily to God.” This is the third Biblical sign of true repentance.
The king was calling them to pray to God for mercy. Throughout the Bible we have accounts of sinners who repent, turn to God in prayer and then receive His grace in reply.
When Solomon dedicated the temple he built, in his prayer he referred to this principle of God showing mercy when we cry out to Him. “If they sin against you - for there is no one who does not sin - and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near, yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them.” (1 Kings 8:47-50)
2 Chronicles 7:12-14 records the Lord’s answer to Solomon’s prayer. “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Solomon lived some 200 years before the Ninevite revival, but being a pagan nation, they had probably never heard about Solomon or his prayer of dedication, which was a prayer specifically from God’s covenant people, as was His reply to Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7, but the Ninevites understood enough to repent, having heard Jonah’s warning of judgment.
The challenge to us, all these years later is, how much more should Christians, knowing more than the Ninevites and even more than Jonah, because we are living on this side of the cross - how much more should we eagerly and frequently turn in repentance to God for His mercy?
As 1 John 1:9 reminds us, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That is an amazing promise we have in Scripture, but how often do we turn to God in true repentance?
One of the many blessings we receive through repentance is the unmerited grace of God.
As we’ve seen, the repentance of Nineveh was a remarkable event, but how did this happen?
The first answer is found in Jonah 3:5: “The people of Nineveh believed God.” This shows us that repentance is comes firstly by believing the Word of God. They repented because they believed the message Jonah preached. It’s reasonable to assume that Jonah’s message contained more than what is recorded in verse 4: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
Jonah would have proclaimed the reasons for their coming judgment and the holiness of the God who threatened them, and believing this message was the key for the repentance that followed.
But it went further than that. They repented not only because they believed the word of judgment against them, but they also believed that God might have mercy if they turned from their sin. We know this from what the king said in verse 9. “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
This hope of mercy was essential to their change of heart, and this is so important for us to understand as we share the Gospel with others. True repentance is always grounded not merely in the law of God but also in the hope of the Gospel.
When we share the Gospel, we need to tell not only the bad news of God’s wrath at and judgment of sin, but also the good news of His grace, His mercy and His salvation.
People need to know they have offended a holy God, but they also need to hear about the hope of salvation offered to them through the death of Jesus Christ.
John Calvin wrote, “No one can willingly submit to God, except he has previously known His goodness, and entertained a hope of salvation; for he who is touched only with fear avoids God’s presence; and then despair prevails, and perverseness follows.”
I want to repeat what I said last week: The warnings of God’s impending judgment are in themselves messages of hope and grace. When we are warned and when we warn others of the perils that await those who die outside of Christ, those warnings are evidence of God’s mercy and grace which saves us from the wrath of God.
The grace of the Gospel begins with warnings of God’s wrath at and judgment against sin. This is what Jonah did in Nineveh, and the result was a revival, the likes of which we have not seen since.
The Bible is full of promises of both the wrath and the mercy of God, and this principle should shape how we share the message of the Bible. Paul wrote in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death,” but in the very same verse he adds, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Jonah himself would have been a powerful witness to the grace of God as he arrived in Nineveh. There’s an important detail about Jonah in what Jesus said in Luke 11:30. “Jonah became a sign to the people.” There has been some speculation that spending three days in the belly of the fish might have disfigured Jonah in some way. Others have suggested that the powerful gastric juices in the fish’s stomach may have discoloured his skin or dissolved all his hair.
We can’t know for sure, and the Bible is silent on this, but Jesus would not have said that Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites if it were not important, so whatever He meant, we can assume that somehow the Ninevites had learned about Jonah’s amazing story. They knew that he had disobeyed God and that his flight from God’s presence led to him almost dying while at sea.
They also would have learned that Jonah was miraculously saved by the mercy of God, so the sight of such a redeemed sinner as Jonah must have encouraged the king that God could have mercy for his people as well.
So if Jonah’s rescue from the great fish encouraged the Ninevites to repentance, how much more should we be encouraged by the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
As Jesus said in Matthew 12:41, “Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
Jonah went into the grave of the fish’s stomach for his own sin, but Jesus went to His grave not for His sins, but ours. His resurrection offers us hope and salvation, if we learn to recognise our need of grace and in so doing, trust in Him and repent.
The resurrection of Jesus proclaims to us God’s acceptance of His atoning death on our behalf. This is what assures us of God’s mercy for sinners who humbly seek forgiveness.
So Nineveh’s repentance had its roots in their belief in God and the message of His servant. Because of this, they experienced the wonder of the grace of God.
The mass repentance of the most wicked city of the time was undoubtedly the result of God’s supernatural work. Nothing else can explain such a miracle. Every time God saves one of His own it is a miraculous act of mercy, and this truth would certainly have applied in Nineveh, the centre of violent and wicked paganism.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:4-9, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Our repentance and coming to faith in Jesus Christ is exclusively by the grace of God. Repentance does not come naturally to us, which is why we must constantly be praying for God to show mercy to those we love who have yet to repent and turn to Christ.
And when it comes to our own repentance, we should humble ourselves before Him and ask God to do the work in us which our sinful nature is at war against. As David wrote in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” God will answer those prayers when we trust in Him. Repentance, like salvation, is by grace and through faith. All we need to do is honestly and faithfully trust in Him, and He will hear and answer.
We don’t know the king of Nineveh’s name, but he is one of many true heroes of the faith. Those who are given authority in society, the church or the home have no higher duty than to lead their people in sincere repentance. This is why it is so important for us to obey the Bible’s command to pray for those in authority over us.
By setting an example of true humility as he covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes, the king of Nineveh became a true leader of his people. These are the leaders we need and should be praying for.
Jonah chapter 3 ends with the strongest encouragement for us to repent, because it tells us how God responded to Nineveh’s repentance. Verse 10 says, “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.”
God saw how they turned from their evil ways. He saw true repentance - not mere lip service.
It wasn’t because of the outward signs of fasting, sackcloth and ashes that God relented. It was because they repented, as they turned away from their wickedness.
And this is what God wants from us too. We might come to church and worship Him. We might pray the prayers, sing the hymns, learn the doctrines and provide for the financial needs of the church. All of these things are important, in that they are a means of expressing our gratitude to Him for saving us, but the greatest thing God desires from us is repentance - a sincere turning from our sins and a turning to Him, because we have believed the message of both His law and His Gospel.
We need to be a people who have truly grieved over the wickedness of our sins and have fled to Jesus Christ for God’s mercy. What was Jesus’ call right at the beginning of His public ministry? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)
When Nineveh truly repented, God relented of His judgment. This shows that God will forgive anybody who believes and repents. John Calvin again wrote, “We hence learn for what purposes God daily urges us to repentance, and that is, because He desires to be reconciled to us, and that we should be reconciled to Him.”
This brings us to an important point we need to consider. Does prayer change the mind or the will of God?
Most modern translations of the Bible say in Jonah 3:10 that God relented of His judgment, while some older translations, including the KJV say that God repented of His judgment. The original Hebrew text uses a different word when the Old Testament speaks of human repentance, but it still kind of jumps off the page when you read it in English, even if we used relent instead of repent.
This question of whether or not our repentance can cause God to change His mind has led some to question the omniscience of God, as if He had previously made an error. Some bring up the immutability of God - His changelessness - because in the case of Nineveh, it appears that He has changed His mind.
There are couple of ways to try and understand just what is meant here. Firstly, the Word of God is written in such a way that we can understand it. The Bible talks about the heart of God, the mind of God, the hand of God, and so on. This doesn’t mean that God the Father has these physical features. Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit.”
The same principle applies when the Bible speaks about God relenting or repenting. The theologian John Mackay wrote in his commentary on Jonah, “When God is said to change His mind, matters are viewed from our human perspective. It appears to us that there has been a change in God, but what has in fact changed is our human conduct.”
In repenting or relenting of His threatened judgment, God was exposing not His changeableness but rather His unfailing consistency and faithfulness. Hugh Martin helps explain God’s relenting in Nineveh. “It was wicked, violent, unrighteous, atheistical, proud, and luxurious Nineveh which God had threatened to destroy. A city sitting in sackcloth and ashes, humbled in the depths of self-abasement, and appealing as lowly suppliants to His commiseration - a Nineveh like that - that Nineveh, He had never threatened. That Nineveh He visited not with ruin. He had never said He would.”
The judgment which threatened Nineveh was a picture of the final judgment which is coming for all who do not repent. The Bible makes it clear that the wicked will face the eternal wrath of God, but this does not apply to those who repent - to those who belong to God through Jesus Christ. He said in John 10:27-29, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”
It is precisely because God is unchanging that we are encouraged to repent. He is unfailing and unchanging in both His wrath against sin and His mercy toward faithful repentance. God’s hatred of sin will never change, and this is why we are called to repent of our sin. At the same time, God’s delight in receiving sinners who call His name in repentance and faith will never change.
That God would forgive a city as wicked as Nineveh proves that He will forgive anyone, including us.
I mentioned that different Hebrew words are used for human repentance and God’s “repentance” in Jonah 3:10.
Human repentance is the turning from evil to good, but a different word is used to describe God’s repenting or relenting in verse 10, as He has no sin to turn from. The Hebrew word is nacham, which means that God was moved to pity. It speaks about an inward suffering, and this, of course, points us to Calvary.
The answer to how God can forgive sin is found at the cross of Jesus Christ. God literally suffers in relenting from judging our sins, because He suffered at the cross of Jesus Christ.
God, in the person of Jesus Christ, took on Himself the evil of our sin, and He suffered the very suffering which in His perfect justice He should have laid on us. God caused the judgment to fall on Himself. This was the cost of His relenting of the judgment we should have suffered, but which Jesus took instead.
God placed the evil of all those who turn to Him on His own Son, so that we can receive grace instead of wrath.
Jesus offers forgiveness to all who believe, repent, and seek His saving grace. But all who refuse God’s offer of mercy, those who harden their proud hearts to the Gospel of salvation, will suffer the eternal consequences of that foolishness.
The story of Nineveh’s remarkable repentance and the grace they received serves as a reminder of God’s redemptive purposes and the transformative power of repentance. The message to us is clear. We must heed the call to turn from our wicked ways, proclaim the message of salvation, and embrace the wonderful mercy of our gracious God.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Jonah 3:5-10
Biblical scholars have called the repentance of Nineveh the greatest revival in human history.
Discuss some of the details which confirm this truth.
Why do you think the corporate repentance of Nineveh is hardly discussed in the church today, and what are some of the lessons we can learn from it?
In the story of Nineveh, we see 3 clear signs of the authenticity of their repentance: A grieving over sin, a turning from sin, and a turning to God.
How should this model true repentance in our day? What does it mean to “grieve” over our sin?
In verse 10 we read that God relented over His decision to destroy Nineveh (the King James Version uses the word “repent”).
This has led to much discussion over the power of prayer and whether prayer can “change” the mind of God.
Discuss this in your group.
Today’s Hymns:
God Is Good All The Time
If My People Who Are Called By My Name
God Of Grace And God Of Glory
I, The Lord Of Sea And Sky