Jonah Chapter 3

  • Barry Keldie
  • Jul 15, 2008
  • Series: Jonah

    After disobeying and running from God, then being disciplined and saved by God, we now find Jonah ready to listen and obey God. We see Jonah hearing the same message, but with new perspective. God tells Jonah almost the exact same thing he told him in the beginning. It’s important to recognize that the message or command of God doesn’t change, just the people who hear it. So the new Jonah, still wet and worn out from his experience, began walking to Nineveh. 

    As Jonah enters the great city of Nineveh he begins to preach a mere eight words, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”(Jonah 3:4) This was the sermon Jonah chose for one of the largest cities in the ancient world. And Jonah’s simple, small and narrow message births a miracle of redemption. The people of Nineveh believed God and repented of their sin.  The contrast of Jonah’s repentance and Nineveh’s repentance must not be overlooked. It took much time and supernatural discipline for Jonah to repent of his sin, and it only took eight words to bring the entire city of Nineveh to repentance.

    Though the words were few, they were the very words of God, and the word of God is always effective. Through the prophet Isaiah God promises the effectiveness of his word like this, “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa. 55:11) When God speaks to a person or a city, listening to that word is the path to life and joy. Remember Jonah’s response to the “word of the Lord,” – he did not listen, ran from God and ended up in the belly of a whale! Contrast his story with the city of Nineveh who heard the word of God, listened and were spared judgment or discipline. 

    God’s word is powerful and uniquely useful to lead us to life and pleasure. Hearing from God is essential to the life of a believer, yet many Christians have no idea how to hear from God. We have the word of God primarily in the form of the Bible. So studying our Bibles and hearing teaching and preaching that illuminates the Bible is foundational to our relationship with God. But hearing, as we see in the story of Jonah, is not enough. We must also, by grace, obey the word of God. James describes hearing but not obeying as a man who looks intently in a mirror and walks away forgetting what he looks like. This is what happens to many believers who do not diligently read and obey the Bible. They desperately want to love and honor God, but simply can’t discern what that looks like.
    Another miracle of Nineveh is that in Jonah’s undisciplined, poorly delivered message, God still worked – and worked greatly. With one of the worst sermons we read in the Bible God saves 500,000 people and changes the culture of an entire city! Many people don’t deliver the message of the gospel to friends and coworkers because they can’t deliver it as well as they’d like. But we’re reminded here that good arguments and clever words don’t save people, the Spirit of God does. As the Apostle Paul said, “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Cor. 2:4-5)

    Questions for Personal Devotion
    1.    How can you personally hear God better?
    2.    In your personal history, what things have you clearly heard from God?
    3.    Where is your Nineveh?  (who should you be sharing your faith with?)