Bible Study
Studies in Jonah by Neil Foster
Lesson 5


    • Jonah 3:4-10
    • Jonah 3:6-9
      • 2 Samuel 12:16-23
      • 2 Peter 3:1-9
      • John 3:16
      • John 3:18
      • Jonah 1:2 & 3:4
    • Jonah 3:10
      • Jeremiah 18:1-17
      • Jeremiah 17:5-10 & 14

"Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away - - - - -"

These words are very similar to David's words concerning his first son by Bathsheba.

Jonah had come into the city. (He had not wanted to, but God had more or less made him come). After traveling about one third of the way into the city, Jonah had started crying out God's message: "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

Why would God send an unwilling messenger to tell a heathen people, a wicked people that they had forty days left?

To torment them? No that is not God's way as revealed to us in the Book. God does not say what is going to happen to people in order to torment them. Then why? In order that they might have one more chance.

Peter is obviously talking about the end times, the time of the second coming of Christ, about events which God said were sure to be and Peter is explaining why this promised and expected event had not already happened. (This, in my opinion, is an indication in human terms of how God looks at time.)

Why had it not already happened? Ever after scoffers come along and said "Where is the promise of His coming (v. 3)", still He delays.

Why? Because God is longsuffering, not willing, not desiring that any should perish. Some men (and women) who are living and have rejected Christ will accept Him before He comes the second time. But when He does come, the unbelievers will perish there will be eternal dead without reprieve. There will be no more chance.

Consider John 3:16.

It says that God gave His only begotten Son. But why? Why would He want to do that? Why did He give His Son????

Because He loved the world so much.

"God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son." This took a lot of love for the world.

Over 800 years before Christ, the time not being yet ready for Christ to come, God sent Jonah to Nineveh.

The main parallel I would like to point out is that in the Gospels and in the book of Jonah it is clearly indicated that the people are condemned already.

As we pointed out last week, when Jonah began to preach the people believed God. (3:5) It does not say they believed Jonah. It says they believed God.

How wonderful it would be today if preachers would preach God's word and the people would believe God instead of believing the preacher.

The preacher preaches and it may or may not be God's word -- mostly the people don't care and they don't try to find out. They had rather believe or disbelieve the preacher and leave God out of it.

The people of Nineveh hear Jonah, but they believed God. From the King down (of from the peasant up, even to the king), they believed God and turned from their evil ways and showed it by their actions.

The word "repent" that is used here is one that can be translated "to be eased" or "comforted" --

". . . and God was comforted or eased, or was released from the evil (bad) that He had said that He would do to them. . ." We might say "He was eased and so could turn away from the bad that His justice required that he must do to them." "And He did it NOT. . ."

We should all be thankful that God does not punish people who are living for what they were, but for what they are.

With man and his law, it is what you have done that you pay for. One pays the penalty for that which he did in the past.

With God, His law is so tempered with love and mercy that it's not what you were, but what you are that God is concerned about.

Let me illustrate -- Let's say a child is grown and is in college and it costs $6,000 a year, and they fail half their subjects the first year and the second and you talk to them and tell them you cannot afford to send them at that rate and in the middle of the year you find they are still fooling around and failing. So all looks hopeless and you go to the child and say "Son (Daughter), when this year is completed you are on your own. No more school. You'll just have to drop out and get a job." And then the child changes and starts to study and pulls his grades up to passing and above.

Would you still make them quit school? I don't think so. Because (most probably) your punishment would never have been intended to be "because of what they had been"

Because of love, your action would generally be based on what the child is --- Not on what he was.

This is always true with God.

God had no desire to destroy Nineveh, but according to what they were at that time, they must be destroyed. But because of what they became, they could be saved.

I think God explains this action of His in the book of Jeremiah. Remember, He does not have to explain anything He does to anybody, but if it will help us, then He does it.

God says, in verse 7, "if a nation whom I say I will destroy turn from their evil then I will 'be eased'" --- This is the same Hebrew word as used in Jonah --- "I will turn from ..."

Nineveh was to be destroyed. God said so. And this was because of what they were. But Nineveh believed God and turned from their evil. In a sense the old Nineveh was destroyed. It was no more, not like it had been. And God was "eased." The people were such that they no longer had to be destroyed.

The people of Nineveh met God's requirements. They did not say, "We are strong and nothing can happen to us." They did not say, "We will fortify our city and build stronger walls." They did not trust in themselves, nor in strange gods, nor in alliances; but instead, they turned to God, believing Him, and that He was their only hope.

Think how wonderful it is that the Book says that God doesn't look at what we have been.

Men will condemn us for what we have been. That is the law.

But God's primary interest is in what we are.

This does not mean that the "after effect" of what we "have been" is removed. That is generally not so. But even in that, God is merciful.

Do you believe in Christ Jesus? If so, what you were doesn't matter. If we are believers right now, that counts for everything. Not just for now. And for forever.

© 1979
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