South Woods Baptist Church

Tuesday morning was just another day for 2000 students at Columbine High School. The semester end was only a few weeks away. Students busied themselves with classes and closing assignments. At 11:30, everything changed. Two fellow-students began to systematically kill their classmates. Targeted were athletes, minorities, and Christians. The anger and hatred which filled their hearts spilled over into a bloody rampage which shocked our nation. 

How could these teenagers commit such horrendous acts? Efforts will be made, as has been done in other school massacres, to sort through the whys and the hows of motive. Fingers will be pointed in many directions. But the one thing our society has not come to grips with is that we have a radical problem common to every human heart: we are sinners. And unless God intervenes in sovereign mercy, we will only plunge deeper into the wickedness of human nature.

Tom Ascol, Baptist pastor and editor of The Founders Journal, has written an article that addresses the current problem. After pointing out the recurring epidemic of school shootings and society's inability to pinpoint its origin, he writes,

But as helpful as the insights from sociology, psychology and biology might be, none of them can probe the real depths of the problem. The whole history of man's inhumanity to man forces us finally to admit that there is a fundamental flaw in human nature.

The Bible calls this flaw, sin, which is rebellion against our Creator. Sin separates us from God. And the further an individual or a society goes in sin, the more marginalized God becomes until finally it is as if he does not exist at all.

As Dostoyevsky wrote, anything is permissible if there is no God. What we are witnessing in our society is life without God. The two boys who murdered their classmates in Littleton were acting out the logical consequences of such a life. They were not demons. They were sinners. Just like all of us are. The very same sinful nature which led them to commit this heinous crime exists within every man, woman and child.

Man's heart is so dark, so filled with hatred for God, so numbed by his own love for sin, that he ignores the restraint of God's law. He does not hear the life-changing message of Christ which is proclaimed all around him. His interest is that of going his own way. In that vein, man continues to reap the consequence of a life without God. He has failed to hear the voice of God speaking through Scripture, revealing the only hope for sinful men.

But hearing a biblical message is not simply a matter of the physical ability to hear. Throughout biblical history to the present day, multitudes have heard the message of the gospel proclaimed, but relatively few have responded. Mere physical ability is not enough to grasp even the simplest message of divine judgment against sinners and the gracious offer of redemption through Christ.  A divine intervention must take place for sin-deadened men to respond to the gospel.

Something happened in Nineveh which cannot be explained in terms of Jonah's ability or the receptivity of the citizens. The wind of God swept through the city, awakening the lifeless souls of men to the reality of divine judgment. Pleas for mercy came because these sinful men recognized that God had spoken to them through the voice of the prophet.        

Has the message of divine judgment and redemption through Christ dawned upon your own soul? How can you recognize when God has spoken to your soul? Consider the response of the Ninevites to the message of Jonah, as we seek to understand the reality of God speaking to the soul through the biblical message.

I. Awakening message (cf. April 18, 1999 sermon)  

1. Content: "Jonah's preaching applied the law of God to the actions of the Ninevites. They saw that their sin demanded a divine response."

2. Intent: "The fact that the message was delivered was an evidence of the divine intent to show mercy. "       

3. Urgency: "The urgency of the message awakened the senses of the people to see that  they could not presume upon God."

II. Awakening response

Action took place when Jonah began preaching in Nineveh. The text reminds us that Jonah had only gone one days journey into the city--about 16 miles--before there was such a movement of turning to God and repenting of sin, that it can only be described as an awakening. Man does not work up an awakening. Yes, men can create a stir of emotions and evoke an outward response in multitudes. But the effect is temporal, as is evident in much of what took place in the 19th century efforts of revivalism. But an awakening brings the dead to life! Those who are dead in sin come to the terrifying awareness of their condition before the Eternal God. They cry for mercy, realizing that they have nothing to offer God in order to be justified from their sinful condition.        

The term often used to describe "awakenings" is the word "revival." I agree with John Armstrong when he wrote, "Many people have become skeptical of the very concept of revival because they associate the word with some kind of emotional disturbance that will have little lasting spiritual and doctrinal benefit" [When God Moves, 15]. The earlier uses of the word, particularly in the 18th century, was synonymous with the concept of awakening, with the exception that awakenings were generally focused upon the unbeliever while revival pointed to the enlivening of the saints. Typically, in those periods, both happened.        

An extraordinary awakening shook Nineveh. Jonah preached and in response, "Then the people of Nineveh believed in God...." They had not prepared for it nor solicited it nor advertised that it might happen. God sovereignly invaded the metropolitan area of Nineveh with mighty, saving power. The whole moral climate of the city changed. Those who were idolaters cast aside their idols and began to serve the living God. In reality, what happened in Nineveh is a macrocosm of what happens on a regular basis among the people of God.

In what has become one of my favorite books, Revival and Revivalism, Iain Murray explains revival or spiritual awakenings as times of enlarging what is normal among God's people.

...what happens in revivals is not to be seen as something miraculously different from the regular experience of the church. The difference lies in degree, not in kind. In an 'outpouring of the Spirit' spiritual influence is more widespread, convictions are deeper, and feelings more intense, but all this is only a heightening of normal Christianity. True revivals are 'extraordinary', yet what is experienced at such times is not different in essence from the spiritual experience that belongs to Christians at other times. It is the larger 'earnest' of the same Spirit who abides with all those who believe [p. 23, italics added].

What happens to any unbeliever when he comes to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? He believes in Jesus Christ and his saving work. He turns from his sin and turns to God in obedience. All the while, he does not presume to trust in himself, but pleads with God for mercy upon the merits of Jesus Christ. This is not out of the ordinary for anyone who is a believer. But when it comes to an entire city, then the "degree" of divine work can be called a spiritual awakening or revival. Let us consider these normal elements of an awakened soul who finds rest in Christ.    

1. Believe God 

We are so accustomed to people believing in the Lord when they are brought up under biblical teaching. But this was not the case in Nineveh. The Assyrians were life-long idolaters. As such, it was not unusual for them to embrace numerous gods and worship multiple images. They likely engaged in a variety of rituals in devotion to their gods. I believe it is fair to think that they had heard of Jehovah, due to the expansiveness of Israel under David and the accessibility of merchants to both Israel and ancient Nineveh. But it is also safe to assume that there were no Sunday School campaigns taking place, no in-house Bible studies, and no evangelistic meetings. The living God was not before their eyes or thoughts.

Then the message of God was faithfully delivered by the revived prophet, Jonah. In one day, what had not been accomplished in centuries, took place almost instantaneously. That is the work of an awakening!        

It is notable that the biblical writer expresses the response to Jonah's preaching by beginning with the fact that "then the people of Nineveh believed in God [or 'believed God']; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them." They had heard enough to convince them of the urgency of turning to God for mercy. The message came to them with great power, bringing them to a knowledge of God.        

It is important to notice that the attention of the people of Nineveh was not upon Jonah. So often in our day the talk is of a preacher, so that it almost seems that God is secondary. As Sinclair Ferguson put it, "There are times in days of revival when people believer preachers rather than God, respond in a great wave of enthusiasm, and return to their old godlessness almost as quickly" [Man Overboard!, 90]. We do not see any evidence of this in Nineveh. Instead, "the people believed God."

Just what was their level of belief in God? Some commentators suggest that there was not much spiritual life wrought through this experience, only a heightening of the conscience in a moral sense. While I would agree that the entire city was likely not converted, I think that the experience of Nineveh demonstrates that there were many who had a genuine faith in the Lord, not the least of which was the king himself. Was it mere superstition, as some suggest? Or did they have a genuine--what we call--saving faith?

We normally compare our own level of experience with that of others we are trying to analyze. From a New Testament perspective, we might say that their faith was sorely lacking. They did not understand the whole biblical picture. They may have known nothing of the covenant workings of God or the redemptive work which took place in God delivering his people from the bondage of Egypt. But our text is quite emphatic. "Then they believed in God." Their faith was not merely words, for as we shall see, they took action in response to their faith. They had faith alone but not a faith that is alone, to follow Calvin's dictum.        

Jonathan Edwards did the Christian church a great service in his A Narrative of Surprising Conversions. He analyzes the quality and reality of genuine faith in Christ, helping us to accept those whose experience may not line up precisely with our own; and to discern those who merely give lip-service to the gospel of Christ. During the first great awakening, it was typical for unbelievers who were coming to faith in Christ to be filled with a sense of terror of the judgment of God toward them as sinners before they believed in Christ. Some would cry out in great anguish, while others might agonize for weeks or months with their sinfulness. But Edwards comments that this was not the only way which God worked in saving sinners. He said others came to faith in Christ before knowing the deep conviction which was prevalent in the majority. But he points out that they "have much more of it afterwards." Edwards adds, "God has appeared far from limiting himself to any certain method in his proceedings with sinners under legal convictions. In some instances, it seems easy for our reasoning powers to discern the methods of divine wisdom, in his dealings with the soul under awakenings; in others, his footsteps cannot be traced, and his ways are past finding out." Are they then saved? Edwards responds, "Some who are less distinctly wrought upon, in what is preparatory to grace, appear no less eminent in gracious experiences afterwards" [Jonathan Edwards on Revival, 29-30].

The experience of the Ninevites may not have equaled that of the typical convert in Israel, but that did not mean it lacked genuineness. I believe the same can be said in our own day. It is much easier for us to have a set criteria for each person to follow in conversion: a certain recognition of their sin, perhaps a certain time-frame for conviction and questioning, the right sort of vocabulary to express it, and then a particular level of joy and excitement over their newly found faith, maybe even mixed with tears. We can look so much at the outward experience that we forget that God works with each person individually in conversion. Our experiences may differ, though our faith is focused in precisely the same direction, upon Jesus Christ and the sufficiency of his death on our behalf.

I believe that some have entered into unhealthy measures of doubting for this very same reason. They have compared their level of experience with that of someone else who may be much more demonstrative. Consequently, they doubt that the Lord has saved them, even though they have consciously trusted in Jesus Christ and him crucified; and even though evidence of new life has begun to arise in their lives. Here is the thing we must see. It is not the level of experience which qualifies a person to be a Christian, it is the reality of their faith set upon Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.        

The thing which produced faith in the Ninevites was their fear of Gods wrath: "Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?" Is this legitimate faith? Some would say that you must see the love of God if you are to believe. But I dare say that some among us came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ when you were gripped by the reality that you were under the dreadful wrath of God. You fled to Jesus Christ and found refuge in his wounds on your behalf. This is faith in Christ alone though it may have been nurtured by a sense of divine fear. Others have been overwhelmed by the love of God in Christ for you. You have had such a comprehension of the infinite love of God revealed at the cross that you rushed to Jesus Christ to rest your eternity in the reality of the revelation of this divine love. For others, you may have been prompted by a genuine grief over the sight of God the Son dying, which propelled you to trust in his sufficiency. You may have recalled the wrath of God which sent Jesus Christ to the cross in order that you might be justified. Realizing this, grief overwhelmed you to think that God's Son would bear such agony on your behalf.

Consequently, you believed [I'm indebted to Hugh Martin, The Prophet Jonah, 263-264, who helped my own thinking in this area].

How you came to the place of trusting in Christ alone is not the issue; rather it is that you, by God's grace, have believed savingly in Jesus Christ alone. How do you know when this faith is genuine? I believe that our text demonstrates it with clarity in the second place....        

2. Turn from sin

Upon believing in Christ, we see an immediate response of turning from sin. "Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them....But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?" The words used in our text sound amazingly like those of the prophet Joel when he exhorted Judah to do the same.

"Yet even now", declares the Lord, "Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping, and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments." Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him (Joel 2:12-14).

And earlier in the book of Joel, we find the prophet addressing the unfaithful priests of Judah, calling upon them to recognize the judgment of God which was focused upon them. It is this same spirit which we see taking place in Nineveh.

Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out for the Lord. Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty (Joel 1:13-15).

These were people who had been steeped in their sin. They were vicious, ruthless destroyers of nations. Even the terms used to describe their sin illustrates the typical behavior of the Ninevites. "The violence which is in his hands," points to the "arbitrary infringement of human rights" which the Ninevites perpetrated on others [Leslie Allen, NICOT, 225]. In other words, they were inhumane in their treatment of others. They thought nothing of social injustice, of enslaving people, of abusing others for their own pleasure.

We see that they were not just repenting of sin in general but of specific sins in their lives. That is a good evidence of the genuineness of faith. As Sinclair Ferguson aptly expressed it, "Repentance which brings life is a fruit of faith rather than its root....That is repentance--not only regretting sin, but abandoning it" [92]. Could they discuss doctrine with you at this point? Or could they explain with clarity even the nature of God? I dare say that their faith was weak and even immature, "but faith nonetheless" [Ferguson, 92]. Its demonstration was in the quality of repentance in their lives.

Is there true faith if there is no repentance? How can we recognize faith without the evidence of repentance, at least in some measure or degree? Take for instance the people who claimed to have faith in Jesus, which John records in both John 2:23-25 and John 6:60-66. In these examples, people claimed to believe in Jesus Christ; but they came short in the evidence of turning to Christ, which is the positive side of repentance. They paid lip-service in their relationship to Jesus Christ, but their was no willingness to follow after him or walk with him. To do so would have called for repentance from their dead works. In contrast you have Paul explaining the genuineness of the faith found in the Thessalonian believers.

For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come (I Thessalonians 1:8-10; emphasis added).

Faith was clearly known by the way these believers turned to God--the positive, obedient side of repentance, from their idolatrous lifestyles.

The Ninevites believed God, and with this they believed that he was truly going to unleash his "burning anger" upon them. How do we know this? The evidence of their faith was seen in their turning from sin. For example, if we were walking down the middle of the road and in the distance thought we heard the sound of a truck coming, what would be the evidence that we believed the truck was coming? Obviously, it would not be our merely saying, 'You know, I think that might be a truck heading our way'. Instead, our belief  would be evidenced by our changing the pathway upon which we have been walking. If the truck is coming our way, we are going to move in another direction. When the Ninevites saw that the wrath of God was heading their way, they not only believed that God would do what Jonah declared he would do, but they changed the direction of their lives so that they would not be in the path of divine wrath. This change in direction was evidence that they truly believed God. That is saving faith.        

The Scottish pastor, Hugh Martin, has give a wonderfully clear explanation of true repentance. Let me read it for our edification.        

The principle is this: true repentance is a change of mind, of heart, of disposition: it is the making of a new heart and of a right spirit. It originates in regeneration; in our being born again; in our obtaining a new nature and becoming new creatures in Christ by the Spirit. And it flows forth, in unmistakable manifestations, in a new course of conduct; in a reformed life; a life aiming at new ends, conducted under a new rule, and aspiring to attain to a new standard. Repentance, springing from a true fear of God and a true sight of sin, manifests itself in a dutiful obedience to God's law and a jealous abstinence from sin. True and saving repentance is not a mere shaking off the evil fruit from the tree, and tying on fruit of a better appearance. it is the changing of the trees very nature; and good fruit is then naturally brought forth, and not artificially appended [271].

3. Plea for mercy

The pleas to God in the city of Nineveh came with a sense of urgency. The king's proclamation said, "...and let men call on God earnestly [urgently] that teach may turn from his wicked way....Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?" As we saw in our last study of this text, these people did not presume upon God. They realized that Jehovah would not fit into their neat, little god-mold. He could not be manipulated by their sacrifices or rituals. He was not appeased by their many words. So now, they appealed to the mercy of the Lord God to be shown to them. They believed Him and demonstrated repentance of their wicked ways. Destruction was on its way. Only God, in mercy, could avert the destruction and give them life.

Several hundred years after this spiritual awakening, the Lord sent the prophet Jeremiah down to the potter's house to teach him a lesson. There Jeremiah saw the potter fashioning a vessel on a wheel. It was marred, so that the potter began the process all over again. The word of the Lord then came to Jeremiah in light of this vivid illustration of God's sovereign purposes.

5 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,

6 "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

7 "At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; 

8 if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.

9 "Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; 

10 if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it.

11 "So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, 'Thus says the LORD, "Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds."'

12 "But they will say, 'Its hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.'"  (Jeremiah 18:5-12)

The people of Nineveh had done the very thing which the Lord was telling Judah they were to do. They bent their hearts and wills to the Lord God, casting themselves upon sovereign mercy to do as he pleased.

The text points to the divine response. It is written in anthropopathic terms, that is, the message is communicated in the kind of human, emotional terminology which we can grasp. "When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it." The word "relent" appears to imply that the immutable God is not immutable! The term is different from the Hebrew word for repentance. This term originally conveyed the idea of "breathing deeply," hence a physical display of feelings. In this case, it is a sense of divine compassion being expressed. It implies that God changes his dealings with men according to his sovereign purposes, without in any fashion creating a tension in his immutability. The word to Jeremiah uses the same term and demonstrates in anthropopathic terms the working of God in great mercy toward repentant sinners.

God was not obligated to awaken Nineveh. Jonah came with no promises, but only with the evidence that a God who would warn sinners of his impending wrath, might also show mercy toward them if they turned to him. The Ninevites discovered that God is more merciful than our imagination can fathom. Do you realize this as well? Perhaps you find yourself thinking that something in your life is unforgivable. Or maybe you think that you have delayed so long and neglected your spiritual life for so many years, that there is no choice for you but to meet the wrath of God. If God would show mercy to Nineveh, could he not also show mercy to you?

Conclusion

We are given hope as we read the end of this chapter. When sinners believe that they are certainly facing the wrath of God, so that they believe in the revelation of God in Christ, turning from their sin, we have every assurance to believe that he also will relent of his wrath toward them for the sake of his Son, Jesus Christ. Do you see his wrath one day coming? There was a place where the wrath was averted: the cross of Jesus Christ. For there our Lord bore the full-measure of God's wrath for all who will believe in him. Do you truly believe in Jesus Christ and the sufficiency of his work at the cross and resurrection? May your repentance demonstrate that your faith is real.