True Repentance - A sample and a summons

Jonah three, let me read our sermon text for us.

We're going to jump in with a few things. Jonah

Chapter three.

The verse right.

Before chapter three says this, And the Lord spoke to

the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

How dignified.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the

second time, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,

and call out against it the message that I tell you.

So.

Jonah arose and went to Ninevah. According to the word

of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city.

Three days journey and breath. Jonah began to go into

the city, going a day's journey, so just one, and

he called out, yet forty days in Ninevah 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,

covered himself with sackcloth and satin ashes, and he issued

a proclamation and published through throughout Nineveh. By decree of

the king and his nobles, neither man nor beast heard,

nor flock taste anything.

Let him not feed or drink. 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

When I was a younger teenager, I was a tennis player,

and I had a good friend named Adrian. We were

about the same age, young teenagers, and we were also

about on the same level in terms of tennis skill,

which is to say, pretty good but not yet the most.

Advanced group in the town.

And at some point Adrian says something to me along

the lines of Josh, this time next year, I am

going to be in the advanced training group.

And I just my eyes kind of got big, and

I'm like, well, I mean that'd be awesome.

I don't know, and he just sort of rolled his

eyes at me. He gave me a gentle scoff, and

he said along these lines, dude, if if I can

do it, how can you not?

Now? What he meant by that was.

I had all kinds of advantages that Adrian didn't have.

You see that advanced training group that Adrian wanted to

get into and I wanted to get into pretty badly

as well.

That group was coached by my dad.

My dad is a professional tennis coach. All the lessons

that Adrian's parents had to pay for I got for free.

I could get a.

Lesson with a professional tennis coach anytime I wanted, you know,

to hit on the ball machine. To go train on

the ball machine was like forty dollars in like nineteen

eighties dollars, not for me free. My family got free

tennis rackets, all that stuff. And Adrian is like, you

have no idea the advantages that you have. His gentle

scoff was actually a summons to me. What he was

saying is, if I can do it, how can you not?

How can you with all of your advantages not do

what I am about to go do. When we read

Jonah chapter three, I think you would have to admit

that the story this account is pretty plain vanilla. It's

about as exciting as a bowl of tomato soup. There's

just not there's just not any tension in the story.

I mean, will Jonah go and preach, Yes he does.

Will the Ninovites repent, Yes they do. Will God show

forgiveness and mercy, Yes he does.

Awesome.

It's about as exciting a meal as a Frida egg. Now,

there are a couple of areas of tension just outside

chapter three, if you noted the next verse, the verse

so that starts chapter one says, but it displeased Jodah exceedingly,

and he was angry. Okay, now we have a story.

We're getting to a punchline there. But that is not

the only area of tension that Jonah three provokes. The

other area of tension that Jonah three provokes is.

In its readers.

This is written to Israel. This is written to Israel,

who is often living unrepentant and wickedly, and following unrepentant

and wicked kings. Even though they have knowledge of the

living God, they have his promises, they have experience of

his power, they have the scriptures, they have warnings from him.

And here in chapter three of Jonah. They get the

example of the people of Nineveh as a summons to them, saying,

if they can live in true repentance, how can you,

with all of your advantages, how can you not? There's

a story in there, after all, And this morning, the

same question comes to us in a similar way. That is,

in this example of true repentance, do we see it

as a summons to us? Do we realize that if

they can live in true repentance, how can we, with

all of our advantages, how can we not? So this

morning sermon I've titled though that title will appear nowhere.

It's not on the it's not on the screen, is

not in your bullets, And here's the title. So you're

just gonna have to catch it this one time. True

repentance a sample and a summons. True repentance a sample

and a summons. And that's how we'll take this in

two pieces, two basic pieces. First, the sample of true

repentance that the people of Ninavah, the people of Ninevah

provide for us, and then the summons that that is.

For us as well.

So let's look into it as a sample. First, true

repentance as a sample, let's analyze this by making just

three observations. The sample of true repentance that we see

from the people of Ninevah in three observations.

Here's the first. They believed God.

That's the very first sentence we see about any of

the reaction at all from the people of Ninavah. When

it comes to the preaching of Jonah. Jonah shows up,

he does his thing, he says his piece, And this

is what the Bible says about them in verse five.

And the people of Ninevah what believed God? What did

they believe?

Well, they had Jonah's message pretty thin.

One.

They had Jonah's message forty days yet and Ninevah's getting flipped.

Let's play on words. There worth keeping in mind.

Forty eight more days and negets flipped. But then they

also knew a few things about the God of Israel.

They were a people of the Near East. They had heard,

they had heard of the works of the Living God.

They had heard about what had happened in Egypt. They

knew that the God of Israel claimed power for himself

and demonstrated it. And they also knew or had heard rumors,

that this God had given these people a way to

walk in righteousness. That this God called of his people righteousness, integrity, holiness, purity, kindness.

Even so, when they heard from Jonah who offered himself

up as a prophet of the Living God of Israel,

and said this is what God is going to do,

they believed these things about God. They didn't just come

up with a different social plan. Hey, you know what,

I think we can structure our society in a better way.

This is just me thinking off the cuff. I'm just

coming up with a plan for us. I think we

can do better. The essence and foundation of their repentance

was that it was God word. It was God word,

and the same thing is true for us true repentance.

If we're gonna understand biblical repentance. And when I'm not

saying this is the most perfect story of repentance anywhere,

or it's the most complete or anything like, it's just

a sample, but it's a sample of true repentance, and

true repentance, biblically speaking, is a God word matter. It

is first and foundationally, not just a new plan that

you're putting.

Together for yourself. You think you're gonna be able to

make things.

Work out better if you just operate a little bit

more morally, it's God word. They believed God. What did

they believe, Well, here's the second observation. Something about what

they believed. They believed that God cares about and judges wrongdoing.

See what it says in verse eight, let everyone turn

from his evil way and from the violence that is

in his hands. In other words, they believed that what

God had said about righteousness about a way to live

was true, and they came to agree with him quickly.

And that not only did they believe that what he

said about rightousness was true, what he said about judging

unrighteousness was also true. And they turned. They turned, now

they turned from a very very wicked way. You have

to understand this about the Ninovites, Like I was explaining

this to someone the other day, and like, if you

imagine like a criminal underworld, Right, a criminal underworld is

basically a society that is built off of that gets

things done through fear, intimidation, and corruption. Right, this entire

society of Nineveh was built on those things. If if

a powerful Ninovite wanted to get something done, he wanted

to get you and wanted to take advantage of your resources,

Like it was a move like this, he'd go to

your neighbor, take his wife, skin her alive, make you

watch and say your wife's next unless you do what

I say because I'm bigger than you. It's a way

to get things done. It's a way to operate. And

this society operated that way. They operated that way with

each other, and they operated that way with the surrounding nations.

So we can cut Jonah a little bit of a

break when he comes to the reluctance to see these

guys just get off right.

And yet that whole society.

Turned from their evil way. They turned from their evil

way for one hundred and fifty years. It was one

hundred and fifty years later that over time, after this

generation and multiple generations went on, that they began to

this whole society turned back to their old ways. But

I mean one hundred and fifty years, that's a long time.

Like that's the Civil War for us. Can you imagine

if a whole society committed to fear, intimidation, wickedness, corruption,

and violence turned and decided, look, we don't really know

everything about the living God, but we're following his ways

as best we know.

Praise God. That's what they believed.

They believed that they needed to bear fruit in keeping

with repentance. As John the Baptist growled at the Pharisees,

you're coming in here claiming repentance, bear fruit in keeping

with repentance, which is not work's righteousness. Repentance is foundationally

an inward thing, but it has outward fruit. And that's

what they saw true repentance. Who seeks to live a

turned life? What else did they believe? Here's the third observation. Right,

they believed God. Second observation, they believed that that God

cares about and judge is wrongdoing. Third observation, they believe

that God responds in compassion to humble, soft hearted contrition.

God responds in compassion to humble, soft hearted contrition.

Look what they did. They called for a fast. This

is in verse five.

They put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to

the least.

The king of Ninavah.

He gets down off his throne, he takes his robe off,

he puts on a sackcloth. He sits in ashes. He

gets the nobles together. They issue a proclamation, we're all fasting,

We're all repenting, even the cows. Because they had heard

enough about this God to speculate that he would show

compassion to humble, softhearted, repentant sinners. They had heard enough

to speculate, That's what it says in verse nine. Right,

the kings like, let everyone turn from the evil, from

his evil way, from the violence.

That is in his hands. Who knows God may turn.

That's probably not how the King of Nineveh usually talks.

Who knows? And yet they were right in their speculation.

That God is in fact compassionate to humble, soft hearted, contrite,

repentant sinners.

They were right. And in verse ten, the.

Text says when God saw what they did, how they

turned from their evil way.

God relented. God relented. That's a term that.

Sometimes bothers some people, God relenting, because it seems to

suggest that God changes his mind like people do, when

the Bible actually says in one Samuel fifteen, God speaking

of himself, he says, I do not change my mind

like a person does. I'm not like you. This is

not how this works with me. But it's in that

very same chapter where God talks about changing his mind

so to speak about King Saul.

So which one is it? I think what the.

Way to understand this is that This is an example

of the scriptures speaking and here's the term and throw

poormorphically about God.

Right. God is not a person. God is not like

a person, like a human.

And yet the Bible speaks of him as smelling things

with his nostrils or his eyes roaming to and fro

throughout the earth, and speaks of him in this way

as a way for us to understand kind of what's

going on with God, for us to.

Understand what he's calling us.

Two, When the Bible says his eyes roam to and

fro to find those who are devoted to him, what

the Bible is doing is calling us to be.

Devoted to him. It's not really saying something about God's eyes.

Theologically, we can understand this as God both ordaining the

ends and the means. God has ordained to show mercy

to Nineveh, and he has ordained to show mercy to

Ninevah through their repentance. And he has ordained them to

repent according to Jonah's preaching, and he's gonna get Jonah there.

God ordains the ends and the means. And yet, and

yet this anthropomorphic description is actually what is most helpful

for him for us lo and Behold, scripture knows what

it's doing, because the thing we most need help with

is understanding that what is right is a kind of

posture of heart and life that says you are God,

and I am not, and I have lived otherwise. So

I need your com passion, your mercy. I need you

to forgive me and to ask for it, to straight

up ask for it, and to have the experience.

As one might have with a spouse when you look.

Into their eyes and say, would you.

Forgive me, and to get the response yes, I do,

And that that is exactly what the people of Ninevah do.

Verse eight says they call out mightily to God, would

you forgive me? This is an example, a sample of

true repentance.

It's God word.

It believes what God has said about what is right,

and it believes what God has said about his compassion.

So the repentance of Ninevah comes to us as a sample,

but it's more than that, And in fact, the real

edge of this account comes when we realize that God uses.

This as a comparison.

God uses the repentance of Nineveh as a comparison with

the people who should most readily and most deeply live

lives of true repentance.

It is.

Not just a sample. It is a summons. It is

a summons to the readers, the literal holders of scripture,

that if these people can, these people can live lives

of true repentance, how can you not? So let's consider

that we'll move from true repentance a sample, to true

repentance a summons. Let's let's hear it through four comparisons.

Compare how long you have heard Compare how long you

have heard the call to a life of repentance. Look

at verse four, So Nnava is a great city three

days in breadth. Three days is a clue. Jonah began

to go into the city, going a day's journey. He

only got the first day of three, and they repent

day one who took three days. Jonah in the fish

finally gets to this place where he repents sorta and

gets thrown up. And yet some of us, we have

been hearing the call to a life of true repentance

since we were infants. We have been hearing it since

we were in kids ministry. We've seen the posters with

sticky tack on the wall, or maybe you're of another generation,

flannel graphs anyone. And for others of you, maybe less,

maybe you didn't grow up hearing God's call to you

of true belief and true repentance. But I'm going to

go out a limb on a limb and guess this

isn't day one for you? And Peter says, and second

Peter three, God's not slow, but he's patient towards you,

not wishing that you would perish, but rather that you

would come to repentance. Yet Hebrews chapter three. Today, if

you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Consider

how long you have heard the call to a life

of repentance, to a life lived that is turned back

to God. And if they, if they will live lives

like that after day one? How can you not? Let's compare.

Let's compare how robust a message you've received. Compare how

robust a message you've received. Look at verse four again.

Here's Jonah's sermon, Yet, forty days and none of us

shall be overthrown. It's eight words shorter in Hebrew. I

honestly don't know if this is Jonah just doing the

bare minimum, or if it's God like flexing. Look watch

how I can I'll bring this city to repentance. In

eight words, he offers no reminder of the compassion of God.

He offers no open door of repentance.

And yet they respond.

And you you have heard about God's justice, you have

heard about his mercy. People have written songs for you

to sing that his mercy is more. You have heard

about his ways and received instructions for living according to righteousness.

You've heard about his love.

You have.

The scriptures literally in your pocket, and they have been

proclaimed and explained to you week in and week out,

and you can go on the internet and listen to

them be explained better. You have heard of the gospel

of Jesus Christ, and of true belief and of true repentance.

You've heard of atoning for sin. You've heard of the

adoption of sinners. And if these can live lives of

true repentance in response to so thin a message.

How can you not? Let's compare.

Let's compare how certain you can be of God's mercies.

Compare how certain you can be of God's mercies? And

verse nine. Here is the King of Nineveh. He's heard

rumors of the compassion of God, but he doesn't want

to hold out false hope to his people. He's not

exactly sure, he's not certain. His repentance starts with.

Who knows? But you know you know that he forgives

dying thieves.

You know that he extends grace to denying friends.

You know that.

Second Chronicles is true when it says, the Lord your

God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away

his face.

From you if you return to him. You know.

That First John says, if we confess our sin, he

is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to

cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You know.

That we have a high priest who has passed through

that heavens without sin.

And so let us draw near with confidence the throne

of grace. How certain can you be of his mercies?

You can't say who knows? You have to say, I know.

And so if they so uncertain.

Of his forgiveness and mercy and grace, can live lives

of true repentance? How can How can you not? Let's compare?

Let's compare how great is the one calling you? Compare

how great is the one calling you? I mean, they

got this guy, they got post vomit Jonah, the reluctant,

resentful prophet. I mean, he's a bona fide prophet, but

he hasn't come with any love for these people. There

is no wooing in his heart to see these people

restored and walk in repentance. That truth must have hit

Israel hard. When Israel read the account of Jonah, say

five hundred, four hundred, three hundred BC or so, if

they had any sensitivity to what the Holy Spirit was

doing through the scriptures at all, they had to come

away going. We got instructions from Moses, we got challenges

from Elijah, we got warnings from Isaiah.

Jeremiah cried over us.

Hoseiah told us and put on display the steadfast love

of God towards all who.

Would just return to him.

And then Christ during his earthly ministry, hits another generation

of Israel with this with even more weight, he says

in Matthew chapter twelve, he says, the men of Ninevah

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. And he

stood there.

Not as one whom God had sent, but as God himself,

come to call them to lives of.

True repentance, and they would not come. And now we

have to consider.

Now we have to consider that comparison with even yet

more weight, as Christ calls you to true repentance, not

only as the God who has come, but as the

God who has died for you and has risen for you,

and is at work in lives all around you, the

risen Christ, who is the exact representation of God, the

true expression of his being, who is God of very God.

And you know what he's like.

You know that he is gentle and lowly, that he

comes with a heart to woo you to himself to

be restored to fellowship with him. You know the lengths

that he will go to to see you forgiven and restored.

He has never been harsh, He has never been hasty.

Christ is just the kind that you would even want

to repent to.

He is just the kind who.

Is ready to forgive, who would look back at you

with warmth in his eyes, and when you say, would

you please forgive me, he is so ready to walk

in fellowship with you, so ready to remove your sin

from you. As far as the east is from the west.

Just think how great is the one who calls you

to a life of true repentance, and the certainty you

have of his mercies and the fullness of his message

of love and forgiveness, and the Cross and fellowship with him.

And how long you have heard, how long he has

been calling? And if they can live lives of true repentance,

how can you with all your advantages? How can we

not