Okay, if you can turn to Jonah, chapter 3. Jonah, whose name means dove, we sang about that just a moment ago. But first the dove took off in the wrong direction, and now he's gone back in the right direction. Though we did the first five verses or so, we're going to read all of chapter 3 for context this morning. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breath. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 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. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth and ashes. 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, 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. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. 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. Let's pray. Father, grass withers, flowers fade, but your word stands forever. Thank you for this enduring and reliable word. As we examine it this morning, let us not forget that by it you continue to examine us. May the Spirit come to illuminate the Word that we may understand it, that we may believe and live according to your will and purpose that's found here. We ask this in the name of the living Word who took on flesh, Jesus the Son. Amen. It was during the Great Awakening in the 1740s that Jonathan Edwards preached what was perhaps his most famous sermon. It's the one that you read if you take English or American, actually, literature classes. It's probably his most frightening sermon. It's a sermon on Deuteronomy 32-34, and you've probably heard the name, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Not an encouraging sermon, to say the least. He preached it initially in Enfield, Connecticut, and yet it was received well because people repented. in that he details the reality of judgment that was coming in Deuteronomy 32. And it was an instrumental sermon through the course of this revival that took place in New England in those days. One of the things that he said in that sermon was this, there is nothing that keeps Lost my spot. There's nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. And so, while it was not a sermon that was typical of his, which he often spoke of the sweetness and excellency of Christ, there is hope in the gospel of seeing the mercy of God. And it is about that mercy this morning that we have to do as we consider Jonah chapter 3. Our big idea this morning is that God relents when people repent. And I'm sorry for the alliteration and rhyme. I could not resist, so to speak. Perhaps I should repent of that. But God does relent when people repent. First off, we should recognize that faith is revealed in actions. that would people say i believe that is often noticeable that we have it is there are is evidence for the fact that they believe so we see of course jonah has gone he's he's born witness according to god's instruction to him and sort of like the sermons sinners in the hands of an angry god it was not the most encouraging of messages that we have summarized here and jonah chapter three forty days and the city will be overthrown. Now, isn't that going to prompt blessing? Isn't that going to bring about mercy? That's a very harsh message in many ways. There's nothing in that message, that summary of the message that would lead people to believe that God is in fact merciful. And yet, how do the people of Nineveh respond? We see that despite the message of Jonah, the people of Nineveh believed God. It's not simply that they believed Jonah, but that they believed God. That there was, in fact, a judgment that was going to come and that they were going to experience They believed the message to be true, that the message came from God, not just this guy who they may or may not have known to have been swallowed by the great fish. Now, the author of Jonah does not stop right there, but he describes what they did by faith. and some ways we could think of this similar to Hebrews chapter 11 where you go through the Great Hall of Faith it doesn't just say Abraham believed God Isaac believed God Jacob believed God but the formula that we find in Hebrews 11 is Abraham believed God and The idea that because he believed God, he then did certain things. Whether it was Noah building the ark or Abraham trusting in God's promise of a seed and then later trusting that God would keep his son alive as he brought him to the mountain. Changes in belief will necessarily produce changes in life. And we heard of that from Acts chapter 16 this morning, because we heard about Paul, on the way to Damascus, authorized by the chief priests to persecute the Church of Christ. And there, on the way, he stopped short by this heavenly vision of Jesus. What does Paul do? Not only does Paul stop his mission to destroy the church, but Paul now becomes one who builds the church. He is sent to the Gentiles, people he didn't like, sort of just like Jonah, to bring them out of darkness and into light, out of the grasp of Satan and into the loving hands of Christ. And so faith revealed itself in that one phrase that Paul says before King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. And so these people because they believed God, they did certain things that manifested this faith. What is significant is that they did not rely on the normal methods for a Syrian religion, all kinds of rituals and sacrifices, but we see, first off, that faith is revealed by humbling yourself. That's the first thing that we see is they stopped blaming themselves. They stopped blaming other people. They stopped blaming other things and began to accept responsibility for their own actions. And so we see that they called for a fast and they put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. This is a physical manifestation of their humility, of their brokenness over the reality that disaster is coming upon them. They were not just to tear their garments, but if we look at similar passages like Joel chapter 2, we see, even now declares the Lord, return to Me with all your heart with fasting. with weeping and with mourning, that humiliation, that brokenness over sin is there. But He says, rend your hearts and not your garments, or not just your garments. return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and He relents over disaster." And so Joel, the prophet, was telling Israel that they were to repent, they were to not just feel bad for their sin, but they were to rend their hearts, they were to return to the Lord their God with this idea that God might relent of the destruction that He has declared for them. And so in a similar fashion we see the Ninevites humbling themselves through their fasting and their saw cloth. We see that no one was exempt and we see the king doing this. Imagine that for a moment. While he was not a strong king as far as the Assyrian kings went, he was still far more powerful than any other king in the area. He was still the king of a rather large empire. And yet we see he removes his robes. and he puts on sackcloth, he joins the hoi polloi, he joins the average guy in removing all the signs of his royalty and his dignity, his majesty and his honor and humbles himself with sackcloth and ashes. It was not unheard of amongst the Israelite kings. We see that King Hezetiah, when he hears about what was going on with the later Assyrians outside the door, outside the walls, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and then went into the house of the Lord. And so this king goes a little bit farther than the people, and then he also declares this fasting and the sackcloth but he also says livestock sounds strange to us and what we might touch on that a little bit extended not just to people but to the animals that they were not to eat or drink of anything for a time this king Israel's suzerain lord, because remember Israel at this time was a vassal of Assyria. He is the one who removes his clothes and puts on sackcloth. And so we see, let's go back to Edwards. great awakening. We see that amongst the people in the preaching, not just of this sermon, but many other sermons, there were physical manifestations of people broken by sin. People who were expressing humility over the great message that had been proclaimed by Edwards and by others. So it's not something that's, oh, that's Old Testament-y, but that is something that God still produces by the work of the Holy Spirit when people bear witness at times. And so faith is revealed by humbling yourself. Faith is also revealed by turning from sin. In other words, repentance. If you believe that God punishes sin, you then turn away from the sin that you commit. And so we see this within this text as the king declares, going beyond, again, beyond just the sackcloth and ashes and the fasting that the people had wanted, but he says, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. this king who was, whose reign was sort of weakened by the realities of famine and insurrection, earthquakes and eclipses, and for you and me, earthquakes and eclipses are not a huge deal aside from the damage they might create. We, people were excited about the eclipse that just happened and some of you drove up north to see it better, you know, to be kind of right in the reality of the eclipse. But for them, this was a bad omen. This is a sign of judgment, earthquakes and eclipses. And so, this message that comes is they see the reality of it. They feel the burden of it because these things that are going on within their culture and within their time. So, don't just put on clothes. Take off sin, is essentially what he's saying. their wickedness, their ruthlessness, because remember, they had built their empire through war. And when they defeated other nations, they had a reputation as the most brutal oppressors. And so, part of their wickedness was this brutality and this violence, this injustice that built their empire and upon which it was maintained. They had gotten away with this wickedness until now, and now they hear word that their wickedness is bringing destruction upon them. They're learning something about the wages of sin being death. and johnson edwards account of the revival that took place in northampton he talks about how after his grandfather had died he was the previous pastor of the church there in northampton that amongst particularly the young people uh... there was great promiscuity that began to break out there was uh... also a lot of fighting within families violence within families as children younger teenagers and young adults were throwing off, not just religion, but throwing off, in a sense, the authority and responsibility of their parents. We know as well that many within Northampton had kept slaves. And so, in many ways, this is Romans 1, written in 18th century New England. And these were the things that, when the awakening came, began to be put aside. Now, unfortunately, not all of them were put aside. There were still blind spots, things that needed to be repented of, but yet we see repentance was there. There was a turning away from many of the sins that had plagued Northampton and Massachusetts and the rest of New England and the other colonies. But I want you to note that violence is singled out. This violence which was likely tied to the social injustice that was there. We must remember God hates violence. And God hates injustice that is perpetuated or committed by that violence. and it's impossible for us to look at American culture and not shrink back, because we have a culture that is filled with violence. We entertain ourselves on violence, just like the Romans did, except we don't go down to the Colosseum, but we go to the movie screen or the TV and we see this. Not simply the portrayal of violence, but the celebration of violence is what I'm getting at. It's impossible to watch the news without seeing the acts of violence that continually occur because people in our country can no longer resolve conflict without violence. And it's not just violence with guns, we see it with protests. People can't protest. They have to do also riot, it seems. We think that violence is the solution to our problem instead of being a problem within itself. And so this king called his people to turn away from their violence. We recognize That there's a difference, as we see in 2 Corinthians 7, between sorrow, worldly sorrow, and godly sorrow. And the main difference between those two is that godly sorrow turns away from the sin that produces the sorrow. It's not just, I'm sorry I got caught, but I'm sorry I did it. Most of our apologies on TV today are the former, worldly sorrow, people who are afraid or ashamed they got caught for doing things. And there's a lot of that these days. So we see that faith is revealed by humbling yourself. It's revealed by turning from sin. But we also see that faith looks for mercy. You see, faith flees to God Himself from the wrath of God. The king tells them to call out mightily to God. And so he sounds an awful lot like the helmsman or the captain of the ship back in chapter 1. And so they were to use those 40 days to petition God for mercy. They were not fatalists. God has declared destruction is coming, therefore run for the hills. Rather it was, let us repent and cry out to this God that we don't yet know. This God from one of our vassal states, let us cry out for mercy. For the King declares, God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger so that we may not perish. What is significant here is that Nineveh, the brutal Assyrian Empire, Nineveh, is responding to God's Word through the prophet, while God's own people Israel are continually rejecting the words of the prophets. Because contemporaneous with Jonah, you have a number of those other minor prophets, because they're small books. But they're crying out at the same time Jonah is, but they're crying out to Israel, and their cries are falling on deaf ears. Nineveh is more responsive to the Word of God than his own people are. That's part of why this was written. To encourage the people of God to repent, just as the Ninevites would, so that God would relent, just as we're about to see He does here. That's part of the sign of Jonah that Jesus talks about. Because He goes on, after the three days in the belly of the whale, and the three days and three nights I'll be in the heart of the earth. Jesus also says, the people of Nineveh will rise up against you as witnesses, He says to the people of His own day. Israel. Because they were not responding to the One who is greater than Jonah, but were disregarding His teaching. They were not responsive. But here we also see this notion that God is merciful. There's a hope for mercy because they're crying out to Him. A. W. Tozer notes that as long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne, every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation. As long as one of my friends, Lenny Spital, used to say, Christ is on His throne, all is good. We can be distraught by things that we see, but we should recognize that every day is a day of salvation as long as Christ is indeed on His throne as the mediator between God and man. And so this one greater than Jonah has come We have far greater reason to believe in the mercies of God because we have Christ crucified, Christ resurrected, Christ ascended. And we see the sign of Jonah. Gentiles coming to faith in order to provoke the Jews to faith, as Paul talks about in Romans 10, 9, 10, and 11. And so the Gospel calls people to faith and repentance in order to receive the mercy of God in Christ. Secondly, we see that God gives grace to those who believe, and again, within that context of, whose faith is revealed in what they do. It's the faith that matters. But real faith produces evidence. So 40 days, time's ticking. Fortunately, the author does not drag this thing out. with anticipation, but he kind of jumps quickly over the 40 days as to what would happen. Would God turn and would God relent? Would he no longer bring the disaster upon them? And we see in fact in this very short statement that God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways. There's an element here of God lisping because God doesn't see, right? Not like you see. or don't see with your eyes. But speaking in a way that we understand, in a way that we grasp. God saw or perceived the ways that their faith were made visible because it specifically says how they turned from their evil way. God saw the repentance. God recognized the repentance. God recognized the humiliation that they undertook. We remember from 1 Peter 5 and James 4 that God gives grace to the humble but opposes the proud. And so here, the proud that God was opposing have humbled themselves and so they receive grace. clarifies, God relented of the disaster he had said he would do to them. And here we have more of this lisping, this baby talk that John Calvin mentions. It appears like God has changed his mind. It appears that perhaps some might say, some cynics might say, that God lied 40 days earlier. It might appear to us upon first perusal that Jonah is in fact a false prophet based upon Deuteronomy 18 because what he said would happen didn't necessarily happen. Part of what we must recognize is that Jonah's message was God's declaration of what could happen. It was not God's decree of what absolutely would happen. We have to remember that God brings about the fulfillment of His eternal decrees through these declarations. So, God's eternal decree would be that the Ninevites repented. How are the Ninevites going to repent? By the proclamation of the Declaration. Judgment is coming. And so, God's providence is the working out of those eternal decrees through the use of various means. So God ordained that the means of His relenting was their repentance, and the means of their repentance was Jonah's proclamation or declaration to them. It's similar to when we see people coming to faith in Jesus Christ. They experience salvation because of the instrumental means, their faith in Jesus Christ. How did they come to faith in Jesus Christ? They heard about Jesus Christ. How did they hear about Jesus Christ? Someone told them about Jesus Christ. You cannot separate the end from the process that God has ordained. Don't just hope your child comes to faith in Jesus Christ. Tell your child about Jesus Christ and call them to faith. And the same goes for your neighbor. But there's more even going on than this difference between declaration and decree. That's why we read from Jeremiah 18 this morning. We see that conditionality was built into the declarations of God unless God does certain things, like swearing by Himself. So Richard Pratt, whom many of you have met when he came here, He wrote a paper. He talked to us about this all the time in class. IHC. He liked his acronyms, or his initials, because it's a long phrase. Intervening Historical Contingencies. Doesn't IHC sound better? And the root of this is Jeremiah 18, where God says that the whole idea of the potter, with his wheel and his mess of clay and all of this stuff. And he says, essentially, makes explicit the conditionality that is implicit in most of his decrees. If I say I'm going to bring judgment and people repent, I will relent of the judgment. Similarly, if I decree that I'm going to bring blessing and the people then lapse into sin, I will relent and not bring a blessing. And so, there's an element of conditionality that is meant to be understood in many of the prophets' declarations. Where is there not conditionality? When God says, I swear by myself, X is going to happen. Then you know this is not a declaration. This is a declaration of the decree. They're the same. God's going to do this. There's no hope that repentance will change what's going to happen. And we see that taking place at times within the prophets. where God swears by Himself that He is no longer put off by repentance, but judgment is going to come. I hope I made that simple. It's not easy to make that simple. If you have questions later, talk to me about it. I'll put his paper on our Facebook page. Okay, so what does that mean? How is that intended to play out? First off, there's two areas. When you sin, when you have crossed the line, so to speak, you must trust in the mercy of God in Christ. Don't bank on a previous decision or signing a card or having walked an aisle. In that moment, you lean again, so to speak, and remind yourself of the finished work of Christ that covers that particular sin. You're preaching the gospel to yourself. You're turning from your sin in faith once again. Lord, I've turned back to these evil ways. They're alluring to me, I confess. But right now, I'm turning back to You. And I'm turning away from these sins. Reminding yourself of the obedience and sacrifice of Christ that they are sufficient to save even though you've sinned yet again. But there's also when bearing witness This all comes into play. We are called to help people think that perhaps God will relent. That though you are currently in a state of condemnation because you're under the wrath of God because of your sin, perhaps God will relent. And near the end of Edwards' great sermon, our famous sermon, we see this, Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and flee from the wrath that is to come. And so there Edwards is proclaiming to the people in the pews, who are not in Christ. Wake up! Run to Jesus that you may find mercy from God and not participate in the wrath that is to come. We are to tell them that Christ saves sinners just like us and just like them. As we talk with them about the things that are going on within our society and culture, we address their guilt and their fears with Christ. We help them see that perhaps their hardships may be warnings of the final judgment of God, opportunities for them not to fall into fatalism, but to flee from the wrath of God and to find refuge in Jesus Christ. My hope is that this will encourage you to bear witness to a merciful and faithful God who offers pardon, the God who is just. Don't people in our society want justice? Yes, they do. For other people. The other people do wrong, they want justice. When they do wrong, they want mercy. And so we see it now as Prominent person after prominent person is being accused of sexual abuse. Why is that? Because people want justice. And there's a sense in which they should get it. And God is a just God. And for the unrepentant, there will be justice. But for the repentant, justice has been satisfied in Christ crucified. And so we find mercy. And so we encourage them, just as our assurance of pardon was this morning, Isaiah 55. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near, because this is the day of salvation, as Peter says. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. So while we warn of justice, we also lay out a road to mercy. We are to offer to them a God who teaches us to lead peaceful and godly lives. As Paul prays and encourages Timothy to pray in 1 Timothy 2. Not a God who wants us to lead violent and wicked lives. He's calling us out of the violence and wickedness of our hearts. So, Bearing witness to God's justice and God's mercy is difficult. And if you're like me, you tend to err on one side. Most of us do. But God uses our flawed evangelism to accomplish His great purposes. So don't get lost in thinking you've got to do it perfectly right. When faith does come, there will be humility. There will be repentance. There will be a desire for mercy sought from God Himself. A mercy that is found only in Christ and His work. And so, brothers and sisters, believe these things. Believe that there's mercy in Christ for you And then for those you speak to, bear witness as God permits, thinking that perhaps God will relent if that person repents. And so point people to Jesus who came to save sinners, of whom each of us is the worst we know. Let's pray. Grant, Almighty God, that as we are loaded down with so many vices and so many sins and scandalous crimes break out among us, grant that we may not be hardened against so many exhortations by which you invite us to yourself, but that being made contrite in spirit Whenever you pronounce on us your wrath, we may be really humbled. And so place ourselves before your tribunal that we may, by a true confession and genuine fear, anticipate the judgment which would otherwise have been prepared for us. And that in the meantime, relying on Christ our mediator, we may entertain such a hope of pardon as we may rise up to you and not doubt but that you are ready to embrace us when we shall be moved by a true and real feeling of fear and penitence since it is a proof of your favor when you are pleased to anticipate us and by your spirit testify that you are a father to us and in a word May we be so cast down in ourselves as to rise up in our hope even to heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.