The Ninevites' Repentance

Matthew 12:41—“The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here.”

Our Lord never lost patience with an audience, and never brought railing accusation against any man: his rebuke was well deserved.

Nineveh under Jonah was indeed a reproof to the Jerusalem of our Lord’s day, for the Jews, though favored with his divine ministry, did not repent, but wickedly crucified the Messenger of peace.

Might not our Lord rebuke the unbelievers of our day in the same way? Is not Nineveh a reproach to England?

Let us see.

The men of Nineveh repented, and turned to God; and yet—

I. THEIR CALLS TO REPENTANCE WERE NOT MANY.

Many unbelievers have been warned and entreated times without number, and yet they remain impenitent; but—

Nineveh enjoyed no privileges: it was in heathen darkness.

Nineveh heard but one prophet; and he was none of the greatest, or most affectionate.

Nineveh heard that prophet only once; and that was an open-air sermon, very short, and very monotonous.

Nineveh had heard no word of good tidings; she heard the thunder of the law, but nothing else.

Yet the obedience to the warning was immediate, universal, practical, and acceptable, so that the city was spared.

II. THE MESSAGE OF THE PROPHET WAS NOT ENCOURAGING.

1. He proclaimed no promise of pardon.

2. He did not even mention repentance; and consequently he held out no hope to the penitent.

3. He foretold a crushing and final doom: “Nineveh shall be overthrown.” His message began and ended with threatening.

4. He mentioned a speedy day: “yet forty days.”

   • Yet out of this dreadful message the people made a gospel, and so acted as on it to find deliverance; while to many of us the rich, free, sure promise of the Lord has been of no force through our unbelief.
   • Those who heard the teaching of Jesus were, like ourselves, highly favored, for “never man spoke like this Man”; and, like us, they were grievously guilty in that they repented not.

III. THE PROPHET HIMSELF WAS NO HELPER TO THEIR HOPE.

Jonah was no loving, tender pastor, anxious to gather the lost sheep.

1. He disliked the ministry in which he was engaged, and no doubt discharged it in a hard, harsh manner.

2. He uttered no word of sympathetic love, for he had none in his heart. He was of the school of Elijah, and knew not the love which burned in the heart of Jesus.

3. He offered no prayer of loving pity.

4. He was even displeased that the city was spared.

   • Yet these people obeyed his voice, and obtained mercy through hearkening to his warnings. Does not this rebuke many who have been favored with tender and loving admonitions? Certainly it rebuked those who lived in our Lord’s day, for no two persons could afford a more singular contrast than Jonah and our Lord.
   • Indeed, a “greater”, better, tenderer than Jonah was there.

IV. THE HOPE TO WHICH THE NINEVITES COULD REACH WAS SLENDER. It was no more than,—“Who can tell?”

1. They had no revelation of the character of the God of Israel.

2. They knew nothing of an atoning sacrifice.

3. They had received no invitation to seek the Lord, not even a command to repent.

4. Their argument was mainly negative.

   • Nothing was said against their repenting.
   • They could not be the worse for repenting.

5. The positive argument was slender.

   • The mission of the prophet was a warning: even a warning implies a degree of mercy: they ventured upon that bare hope, saying, “Who can tell?”
   • Have we not all at least this much of hope?
   • Have we not far more in the gospel?
   • Will we not venture upon it?

Monitions

I saw a cannon shot off. The men at whom it was leveled fell flat on the ground, and so escaped the bullet. Against such blows, falling is all the fencing, and prostration all the armor of proof. But that which gave them notice to fall down was their perceiving of the fire before the ordnance was discharged. Oh! the mercy of that fire, which, as it were, repenting of the mischief it had done, and the murder it might make, ran a race, and out-stripped the bullet, that men (at the sight thereof) might be provided, when they could not resist to prevent it! Thus every murdering-piece is also a warning-piece against itself.

God, in like manner, warns before he wounds; frights before he fights. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Oh, let us fall down before the Lord our Maker! Then shall his anger be pleased to make in us a daily pass-over, and his bullets leveled at us must fly above us.—Thomas Fuller.

“I have heard,” says Mr. Daniel Wilson, in a sermon of his, “of a certain person whose name I could mention, who was tempted to conclude his day over, and himself lost; that, therefore, it was his best course to put an end to his life, which, if continued, would but serve to increase his sin, and consequently his misery, from which there was no escape; and seeing he must be in Hell, the sooner he was there the sooner he should know the worst; which was preferable to his being worn away with the tormenting expectation of what was to come. Under the influence of such suggestions as these, he went to a river, with a design to throw himself in; but as he was about to do it, he seemed to hear a voice saying to him, ‘Who can tell?’ as if the words had been audibly delivered. By this, therefore, he was brought to a stand; his thoughts were arrested, and thus began to work on the passage mentioned: ‘Who can tell? (Jonah 3:9) namely, What God can do when he will proclaim his grace glorious. Who can tell but such an one as I may find mercy? or what will be the issue of humble prayer to Heaven for it? Who can tell what purposes God will serve in my recovery?’ By such thoughts as these, being so far influenced as to resolve to try, it pleased God graciously to enable him, through all his doubts and fears, to throw himself by faith on Jesus Christ, as able to save to the uttermost all that come to God by him, humbly desiring and expecting mercy for his sake, to his own soul. In this he was not disappointed; but afterwards became an eminent Christian and minister: and, from his own experience of the riches of grace, was greatly useful to the conversion and comfort of others.”—Religious and Moral Anecdotes.