d. But let man and beast… cry mightily to God: Repentance means crying mightily to God. It means coming to God with passion and seriousness about your sin and your need for His mercy and forgiveness.

i. Many modern expressions of repentance, making excuses and justifying reasons for the sin, are really not repentance at all. Often they are only attempts to justify and excuse sin. Nevertheless, you sinned or you didn’t; if you did, there is no excuse, and if you haven’t, there is no need to repent. Repentance and excuses simply don’t belong together.

e. Yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands: Repentance means turning from your evil way and from the violence that is in your hands. Repentance means to change your mind and turn from your previous sinful actions.

i. In the Christian life, repentance does not describe what you must do to turn to God; it describes the very process of turning to God. When we truly turn to Him, we turn away from the things that displease Him.

f. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger: Repentance has hope in the mercy and love of God. It hopes that God will relent and that the repentant people will not perish.

g. Jonah could more effectively preach the message of repentance because he knew his own need to repent and was himself a model of repentance (Jonah 2:8-9). Being a repentant sinner didn’t disqualify Jonah from preaching repentance; it made his preaching all the more effective.

2. (Jonah 3:10) God’s response to the people’s repentance.

Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.

a. God saw their works… and God relented: God honored Nineveh’s repentance, even though their past sin was just reason enough for an outpouring of judgment. The state would never forgive a cold-blooded murderer who vowed to never do it again, but God mercifully relented from judgment against the people of Nineveh.

i. We do not obligate God to forgive us when we repent. Instead, repentance appeals to God’s mercy, not His justice.

b. God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it: Did God’s relenting make Jonah a false prophet, when he prophesied Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown? Not at all, for two good reasons.

i. First, God acted in total consistency with His Word: The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it (Jeremiah 18:7-8). Jonah’s preaching was like all warnings of judgment: it was an invitation to repent and avert the promised judgment. His words had an implied “if you do not repent” in front of them. Remember that we are not told the sum total of Jonah’s preaching; though we should assume that the statement in Jonah 3:5 is the central theme of what Jonah said, we should not assume it was all that he said.

ii. Second, God did judge Nineveh (as recorded in the book of Nahum). Nevertheless, in light of their repentance He delayed the promised judgment another 150 years.

Read More