Category: Jonah

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The Repentance of God, Part 2

Let me prove this point from the Scriptures:

Daniel 4:35: All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”

In Daniel, God does what He pleases in heaven and on earth.

We see in that long chapter in Lamentations 3 that good and bad things come from the Lord.

Proverbs 16:1 The plans of the heart belong to man,
but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

In Proverbs, God controls the steps of man.

In Ephesians 1, God is the author of salvation. He calls and elects us according to His good pleasure. And even Jonah admits this in the end of his prayer in 2:9: Salvation is of the Lord.

James 1 says that God is unchanging. Whatever He decrees He performs.

But… in the Bible we find another set of passages, which seem to be in tension.[1]

The Bible uses terms like “repent,” “relent,” “regretted,” “grieved” to refer to God’s actions towards a particular situation. So, which is it? Is He sovereign or is He a mutable/changing/limited God?

At this point, let me give you an important principle of interpretation. The principle is that when either/or seems to do injustice to the Bible, consider both/and.

Ask yourself the question: “Would a both/and approach harmonize the Bible better than an either/or?” Do not feel that you always have to choose one position or the other? Sometimes both sides are complementary rather than antithetical. For instance, God is only a God of love! No, God is a God of love and a God of wrath. He is loving when He deems divinely appropriate to be loving and He is wrathful when He deems appropriate to be wrathful.

Sometimes two different ideas may be two sides of the same coin.[2]

Let give you an example from I Samuel 15:

The chapter begins with God telling Samuel to anoint Saul as king. God tells Saul to destroy everything in the city of Amalek. Saul is not to spare anything or anyone; women and children included. Saul destroys the city of Amalek, but then asks that they spare Agag, the sheep, lambs and so on. Then a few verses later, God says in verses 11: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” In a matter of verses God regrets having made Saul King. Then the last verse of the chapter stresses this point again: And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. Continue reading “The Repentance of God, Part 2”

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The Repentance of God, Part 1

Jonah 3:9-10 – Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

According to verse 9 in Jonah, the one who is hopeful of God’s repentance is the King of Nineveh. This is not coming from a prophet of God, though the prophets do affirm this truth elsewhere. The King of Nineveh is defending a view of God that is compatible with the prophet Jeremiah.

In fact, let us read Jeremiah 18: 7-10:

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.

These verses provide a framework for the Biblical view of God’s repentance. This is the clearest passage in the Bible about the relationship of God with nations and kingdoms.

I want to come back to this point, but first I want to lay groundwork for the Biblical position of divine repentance.

First, let me first explain that the idea of “repentance” has a two-fold significance. The Greek word for repentance is the word metanoia and the Hebrew word here used is nacham {naw-kham’}. Both ideas are identical. They speak of turning from one thing to another. It can also be translated as to be “moved to compassion or moved to pity.” When we speak of human repentance, we are speaking of turning from sin. This is not what we are talking about when we speak of divine repentance, because God cannot sin. What we are talking about is a change of mind. However you parse the word “repentance or relent,” we are still left with the Biblical idea that God changed His mind.

Secondly, let me defend the Biblical view of God’s sovereignty, because that ought to be first and foremost in our minds when we consider the question of God relenting.

You cannot read the Bible, no matter what tradition you come from, and deny the sovereignty of God in some sense. I want to emphasize the sovereignty of God in every sense. To echo one of my heroes Abraham Kuyper: “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!'”

The Bible simply affirms this truth.

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Jonah 3:1-10, Third Sunday of Epiphany: A Light Unto the Gentiles

Providence Church (CREC)

Third Sunday After Epiphany, January 25th, 2009.

Third Official Sermon

Jonah 3:1-5,10.

Audio for the sermon.

Prayer: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and the boldness to proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may see the glory of His marvelous works. This is our prayer, O Lord. Amen.

When Queen Esther feared going to the Persian King to intercede for the Jews, her uncle Mordecai said to her: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”[1]

Esther, convicted of her task, asked the Jews to hold a fast on her behalf. Then her noble response was: “Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” [2] As a result, the mercy of God poured on Israel. Israel was delivered, her arch enemy, Haman was hung, Esther was exalted and her people had light and gladness and joy and honor and they shouted and rejoiced.[3]

Now consider another narrative. The narrative of a prophet called Jonah. In chapter 1 Jonah is called by God to arise and go to Nineveh that great city and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

Nineveh was the great capital of the Assyrian empire. The prophet Nahum describes Nineveh as the “embodiment of evil and cruelty.”[4] Some have referred to it as the “Assyrian war machine,” [5] because of its atrocities. Instead of seeking the peace and repentance of the city of Nineveh, Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. Jonah forgot that even if he fled to Sheol, God would also be there. [6] Anyone with a vague familiarity of the Jonah narrative knows that when Jonah fled he went on a downward journey. First, he went down to Joppa, then down into the tumultuous sea, then into the depths of the fish. Indeed Jonah went to the belly of Sheol only to find out that God was there. And in Jonah chapter 2, he cries a psalm of repentance.[7] Jonah concludes his prayer by declaring that salvation belongs to the Lord.[8] But if salvation belongs to the Lord, then He gives mercy to whom He wills and elects whom He will. Jonah is thinking in nationalistic terms. He believes that the gospel ought to remain with God’s chosen people. Jonah’s problem is a theological problem. Jonah is not thinking as a Biblical Theologian. Jonah is not thinking of the promise of the Abrahamic covenant; Jonah is not thinking about the promise of Genesis 3:15; Jonah is not thinking of God’s plans in redemptive history.

Application: I wonder how often we think in those terms. How often do we think that America is God’s chosen nation and she can do no wrong? The only antidote to this form of unbiblical nationalism is to be a missiological church; a church that is deeply concerned with God’s work among the nations; a church that prays for the persecuted church throughout the world. This is who we are to be!

We come to our text this morning in chapter 3. Jonah has a rare chance to re-consider his mission. The same mission that he had in chapter one is now re-addressed to Jonah. Jonah’s prayer indicates that he has matured. He had a David-like repentance.

“Then the word of the JEHOVAH came to Jonah the second time, saying, rise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”[9]

Jonah now will be restored to his prophetic role if he obeys and calls out against Nineveh. According to verse 3, Jonah arises from his disobedience and goes to Nineveh. He is going to preach to the Ninevites. But he is not going to preach any message from his Jewish sermon collection. According to verse 2, “he is going to preach the message that God tells him.” How crucial this is for the success of Jonah’s mission! Only the authoritative word of the Lord can bring reformation to any land.

This Reformation is to take place in the “exceedingly great city of Nineveh.” Why does the text say that Nineveh is a great city? Is it because it has a great reputation? It may even be great because of its size or significance throughout the known world. All these things are true, but what the text appears to imply is that this city is great because God sees His work of the conversion of Nineveh as great. In other words, this is an exceedingly great city because it will experience an exceedingly great repentance from an exceedingly great God! Continue reading “Jonah 3:1-10, Third Sunday of Epiphany: A Light Unto the Gentiles”

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Jonah and AD 70

The point is often missed, but the 40 days  in Jonah (40 indicates testing, judgment, etc.) is parallel to the Matthew discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem (Mat. 23,24). From the ministry of Christ to the destruction of the temple, we have 40 years. In Matthew the Jews kill the prophets (23:37) and fill the measure of their guilt. Consequently, they are judged by Messiah. In Jonah, the prophet is not killed, but accepted. His message leads to repentance and the Ninevites become the recipients of grace.

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President Obama and the Prophet Jonah

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I wonder if one day my children will ask me: “Daddy, did you really watch President Obama be sworn in?” The country stopped to watch the first black American president. There is no doubt this is a grandiose day.  My younger brother in Brazil kept IM’ing me asking my thoughts on Obama. The entire ceremony was primetime in Brazilian television and undoutedbly in other parts of the world. While the now former president George Bush was mocked as he appeared on the screen, the new president and the chief justice stumbled over a 35 word oath.

Obama’s  speech was a unifying speech in typical American pluralistic language. We are a nation of all faiths and we must all work together: Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Atheists. In unambiguous messianic tone, Obama says, “that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.” Then in covenantal terms he ended, “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end (emphasis mine).” And finally, the unmistakable political benediction: ” God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.” Obama’s speech echoed the same theistic generalities uttered by the previous president in the last eight years. It was, after all,  the “evangelical” Bush who said that Muslim and Christians pray to the same God.

The new president of the United States will probably not bathe his future speeches with evangelical language, but he has started this new phase in American history no different than the previous one. The Psalmist was not speaking about “the God of many understandings,” he was speaking about the nation whose God is the Lord (Psalm 33); that nation will be blessed. There may be a temptation from many evangelicals to simply give up and abandon this political process. But this is not to be the Christian response. God calls first the household of faith to repent of our trespasses and then to call the world to embrace the God of Israel. This was the task of the prophet Jonah, who despite his anti-Gentile disposition, fulfilled God’s  prophetic call. May President Obama hear a Jonah in this land and may he, like the King of Ninevah, decree a fast and put on sackcloth and ashes and humble ourselves before the Trinitarian God.

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True Jews

Rich Lusk observes, “the Ninevites put the Jews to shame proving that they are the true Jews.”  In order to be a seed of Abraham one must be faithful to the covenant demand for repentance, as the book of Jonah makes clear.  Jonah teaches that the Ninevites, by acting on their repentance, prove to be a more faithful theocracy than the disobedient Jewish nation.

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The New Jonah

Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. On the third day, he was vomited into dry land. Christ entered–willingly– the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so that on the third day he might bring his people from the chaos of the sea into dry land. Christ is the obedient Jonah.

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Heading to Louisiana…

I will be heading to Monroe, LA in a few days for the Auburn Avenue Conference. I am looking forward meeting many of my favorite bloggers personally.

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Jonah 1:10

NAU Jonah 1:10 Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, “How could you do this?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.

Smith argues a that the sailors were filled with “holy fear” in light of verse 9 where Jonah states: “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” If this is the case, it is a fascinating contrast with verse 5 when the men were afraid of the storm. Hence, in verse 5 they become afraid due to the nature of the storm and in verse 10 they become afraid with a holy fear, since through Jonah they discovered that it was God who was controlling the sea. It is “holy” because it is outside of the ordinary and it is “fearful” because God is a consuming fire.

  1. Smith, K. Billy, Page, S. Frank. The New American Commentary. Amos, Obadiah, Jonah. Volume 19B. Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1995. Pg. 236.  (back)