Bible Reading Thursday 10 July 25 from Keswick at Portstewart

 

KESWICK AT PORTSTEWART 2025 – BIBLE READING THURSDAY 10 JULY 2025 

JONAH CHAPTER 3 – MR SAM ALLBERRY

We love the story of a good come back. The come back story we most long for is a come back where it comes in the spirit of the gospel. How we long to see a spiritual come back in our day, for God to deeply reshape our community. We long for it in our own day, in our own context. To see people turning to God, to see society more humane, more hopeful, more joyful. It has not often been our experience in the Western world – biblical spirituality is in retreat today but it is why we need passages like Jonah 3. Jonah finally gets to Ninevah. He brings the word of God to Ninevah. We see city wide repentance. Imagine that. It can happen. Jesus himself referenced it in Matthew 12 He is seeking a lack of repentance in his own day. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” Jonah preached and the city repented. So evidently we can learn a lot about our own repentance from this passage.

There are 4 features in this text we can apply to our own context and our own longing for a spiritual comeback. 4 particular ingredients.

We have an obedient servant. Jonah has had the most exhausting season of his life. He had originally received that call that had turned his life upside down and he couldn’t cope with it in chapter 1. He had fled, got on a boat to Spain, a storm blew up, he was nearly shipwrecked, thrown into the water, swallowed by a giant fish, 3 days in the digestive system of that great fish, thrown up back onto dry land and very much needing a shower. He may still be getting himself cleaned up when he hears the call of God – chapter 3 verse 1. It is an almost exact repetition of that call received in chapter 1.  Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.” Notice what this said about Nineveh – as in chapter 1 “a great city”. A very big city in terms of the ancient world. Influential city in Assyria empire, a royal city as evidenced by the presence of the king. It would go to be the official capital of Assyria. It was a deeply pagan city. They did not know the God of Israel but he knew them and they mattered to him. Nineveh may not know the God, they cannot see God but God knows them and he sees them. They matter to him. Think about what this calling says about Jonah himself. If God’s only concern was that Nineveh hear the word of the Lord he could have sent anyone else. There were other prophets in Israel available. There would have been others who had been nearer. God waits for Jonah to be the one who goes. This mission is not just about Nineveh. There is something in this mission for Jonah in particular. He is not just going for the city’s sake, he is going for his sake. Think about what this calling says about God. God is a God of second chances. In chapter 1 when Jonah was first called he freaked out, he threw in the towel, he ran in the opposite direction, not prepared to fulfil this commission. He was dramatically disobedient. He is now given a second chance. Let’s start again. Jonah was given another chance. He is a God of second chances, and the third and fourth … Maybe as you look back on the past year you are conscious of various ways in which you messed up spiritually. There may be a voice saying ‘you have blown it, you are just too far gone now.’ God is the God of new beginnings, of fresh starts. There is no reason not to come back to him even today. Maybe we need to say I have messed up, maybe we look back and we see a pile of regrets. We can come back. We can have a new start. John 1 verse 16 “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” It does not say we will receive grace, one allocation of it and that it is. We receive grace upon grace because we find ourselves being people with need upon need, sin upon sin, failure upon failure. God has an inexhaustible supply because it is from his fulness that we receive grace upon grace. You will not wear down Jesus Christ, you will not exhaust him. “Jesus is not tired and he is not tired of you.” Think of the endless succession of waves that are breaking upon the shore – it is like that with God’s grace. The ocean will run out of waves before God runs out of grace. No matter how often it has been we can come back to him. Jonah is called and we might be a little nervous because we know what happened the last time. “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh.” He is obedient – “according to the word of the Lord.” There are no ifs or buts, no negotiation, no push back. He has learnt something from 2 chapters back. If he tries to go against God again he is not going to win. God has reminded him of his authority. Here is the word of the Lord and I would like you to take it to Nineveh. He is told what to say. I will make it easy for you. He is fully briefed. Jonah is an obedient servant. We have not received the particular calling Jonah received. We have all received a calling from jesus, to make disciples of all nations. We need to be people who are obedient to him. We need to recognise the various demographics, peoples, nationalities and races and ethnicities, matter to God. That God is seeking followers from all over the world. We need to pray for people who do not yet know the Lord – maybe people we don’t like who don’t yet know the Lord. We need to be faithful stewards of the message we have been given to proclaim. We don’t get to make up the message. Just as with Jonah, we are to take the message God has given us. We are to go according to the word of the Lord. We go with confidence and assurance that even 1 obedient servant of the Lord can have an outside impact. This is the Lord’s work. Who knows what impact it could have – that one conversation we have, that one prayer that we pray.

We have a divine message. Jonah goes to Nineveh and he preaches the word God had given to him. We know from other sources that Nineveh had been going through a lot in the season running up to when Jonah would have been there. They went through famines, plagues, revolts, eclipses – all would have been unsettling and softening the ground for the word Jonah was going to give. But it is very clear that it is the word that is the catalyst for change. It is the word of God that does the work of God. In verse 4 we see the message that Jonah preaches: “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” That is the message. Let’s look at what we are told about this message. It has nothing to do with the fish. You might have thought he would have gone and told them what he had gone through. Jonah does not tell them about what he had experienced. Jonah’s story is compelling and our story are. Something more urgent needs to be shared. Jonah’s message is not complex. In the original Hebrew text it is just 5 words “yet 40 days Ninevah overturned.” The way they respond suggests they know more than what is written here. We might only have a summary here. It is clear, simple, straightforward, no extra packaging. He gets straight to the point. A clarity and a lack of complexity. It is not sugar coated. Jonah is straight to the point – you have 40 days and then God is going to overturn this place. We may discover that he might have enjoyed preaching that way more than a man should do. God had already told us in chapter 1 verse 2 that the evil of Nineveh had come up before him and it was to be preached against. It was a famously brutal city. We are reminded that it matters to God because people matter to him. Our sin matters to him. It is a backhanded compliment – our lives really do matter to him. When God judges us it is because we matter to him. S judgment is not a contradiction of his love, it is an expression of his love. There is a message we have for the world around us. It does not need to be sugar coated. Jesus first public words were “the time has come, the kingdom of God has come, repent and believe the good news of the gospel.” God’s message to the world today is a message of repentance. We must make sure we are calling people to turn from sin and to the living God. All of us by nature, the people around us are living life in the wrong direction and they need to repent. The message of Jesus Christ is we are living our lives in the wrong direction and the rush hour of God’s purpose is about to come upon us. The kingdom of God is at hand. We need to turn, we need to repent. That is part of the divine message we have received. We need to keep applying to our own hearts. We are not finished repenting ourselves. Every day we need to think of how we can repent afresh and turn to the Lord afresh. We need to be faithful and pass it on in our own day.

We have a heartfelt response. We are told Nineveh was a 3 days journey in breadth. Evidently to do it justice you are looking at 3 days to cover it. Jonah does not get that far. In verse 5 we are told “on the first day the people believed God.” They understood behind him was the voice of God. Jesus holds up the Ninevites as an example of what repentance looks like. Maybe we need to look at our own repentance and see what we can learn from it. Firstly it was immediate. Jonah began to go into the city going a days journey. He is just starting out and the people believe God. He does not need the rest of his itinerary. They realising their lives are provoking the just judgement of God we need to repent now. True repentance is immediate respond. Day 1 is the correct day to respond to God. Delayed repentance is unrepentance. Notice also the repentance is universal. Verse 5 “the people of Nineveh believed God.” They called for a fast and put on sackcloth. From the greatest to the least of them. Every part of the social spectrum is involved in this repentance. The king himself in verse 6 when word reaches him he identifies with his people. He covers himself in sackcloth. When it comes to repentance it makes no difference if you are a king. God always put us in the same boat. Even the animals get in on repentance. So total is their repentance. Their repentance is sincere – see from their attitude, they recognise they are facing the judgement of God and deserve it. Coming to terms with the seriousness of sin, they realise the horror of it. Fasting and putting on sackcloth were expressions of grief, of mourning. Not just regretting it but lamenting it. The king calls them to pray verse 7 “let them call out mightly to God.” That energy that had been poured into bloodshed and cruelty is to be poured into pray. To pray with all of their might, in desperation to the Lord. This affects their actions. The kcalls them to change – “let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.” It is not just emotion, a gesture but an actual change. The whole culture of the Ninevites is getting an upgrade from God. They are determined to turn away from their evil and their repentance is humble - verse 9 “who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.” He may, he may not, who knows. The king is recognising they cannot presume on the mercy of God. It is to be freely given, it cannot be demanded, they have no right to it. It is not mere self interest. They are willing to repent even if God does not relent and turn from his anger. The repentance is immediate, universal, sincere, humble and the question we must ask is ‘will the men of the Ninevites arise and condemn us in the age to come? We have heard so much more than they have. Are we willing to repent truly as they did?

A compassionate God – verse 10. He chooses to have mercy as he did in chapter 1 with the sailors, as in chapter 2 when he had mercy on Jonah himself and now in chapter 3 he has mercy on the Ninevites. “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 was not obligated to show compassion, to relent, he chose to show mercy. He had seen the wickedness that had come up before him now he sees their repentance and he relents of the disaster that he would said he would do. It is not as if God is indecisive or fickle. God is not inconsistent or indecisive. He is compassionate. Jeremiah 18 verse 17 “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” He warns them of a coming judgement because he wants them to repent. God didn’t want to destroy Nineveh. He could have decided not to send Jonah if he just wanted to destroy Nineveh. God’s goal was that they might repent. Peter says “God is patient towards us not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance.” In God’s warning we see his kindness. We have a God who is compassionate. A God who longs for us to come to our senses and turn to him. He loves to show grace and mercy to us. The passage gives a hint of how that can be. We see a king leave his throne, take off his royal garb and stand with his distressed mourning people. We are reminded of a God who left the throne of heaven, who has come to stand with his people in their distress. When Jesus first arrived he stepped forward and received with the others a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sin. He was showing that he had come to stand with and in the place of sinners. One day he would hang on a cross with and in the place of sinners. He allowed himself to be overthrown by the wrath of God so that we might have the chance to repent and received mercy and grace from above. “For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross” Hebrews. Jesus loves being your Saviour. He loves to show us mercy and compassion. It is not just for the pagans but for the religious because we need it as well.