Deliverance by Preaching of God’s Word

Jonah 3:1-10 

Jonah Preaches at Nineveh

1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you." 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. 4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

The People of Nineveh Believe

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. 6 Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. 7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,

Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?

10 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.

Jonah preached deliverance by means of God’s word.  His first command to the prophet was to go to Nineveh to cry out against their wickedness that had been so great as to reach to heaven and stirred up the call of judgment for her.  This second word of the LORD came after Jonah stopped running from that calling through affliction as of death for three days with life given when he repented and glorified God in heartfelt worship and prayer.  He realized that salvation, deliverance from God’s just wrath due on sin against Him, was from Him alone and not earned by man’s righteousness or kept from man by sin alone.  The seeds of the gospel of grace of forgiveness through God’s work were planted here for us to find (Luke 24:27).  The messenger preached the word of God to call the Ninevites to repentance as they heard the bad news of their impending judgment dooming them all for their sin.  He walked for a long time through that immense city with this warning until the inhabitants heard and believed God.  Their sincere repentance moved them to fast and pray with sackcloth to demonstrate their lack of being able to do anything able to earn God’s favor.  They were spiritually destitute and acknowledged that with confession of their sins and entreaties for forgiveness and mercy.  Even the king joined in by tossing aside his royal robes of position and power to confess he had nothing before God Almighty to be worthy of anything but the judgment of divine justice.  All was as ashes that they all possessed and had relied on, burnt and blown away as dust of chaff in the wind and dirty rags past making clean again (2 Peter 3:10, Psalm 1:4, Isaiah 64:6).  The king commanded the fast and mourning of repentance with a turning away from their wicked ways and violence against each other.  He prayed that God would see and hear them and turn from destroying them as they deserved.  The hope was that just maybe the LORD would relent of His just wrath and pardon them by keeping them from perishing at His divine hand of justice.  God saw their works out of truly penitent hearts and He relented from their sentence of death.  This is a shadow as a protogospel with the elements of hearing the bed news, active turning from sin to Him with a true heart, and finding the good news of grace’s forgiveness from the LORD as a gift unearned and saving the hearers who receive God’s work on their behalf from the destruction of a certain judgment.  We are all born in sin, not good as some liars tell us, and deserve only a certain judgment of divine anger on our rebellious sin against God and His word which we reject by disobedience.  Yes, only the unearned gift of God’s grace can deliver us to from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10) as He did for those of repentant Nineveh.  The bad news of our certain judgment is healed only with the eternally healing balm of the good news of God’s work (John 6:29) which we hear by the preaching of God’s word and believe through faith and repentance to life.  Hear, turn, trust, and receive Him!  That is the message Gods brings to us by His messenger and Son, Jesus Christ. This is the good news as soul-healing balm to answer the bad news of the certain judgment we are all born into in our sin.