God Relented: Jonah 3 | When Repentance Meets Mercy

Watch This Sermon: “God Relented”

Jonah delivers God’s warning to the people of Nineveh—and what happens next is nothing short of astonishing. From the king to the commoner, the people respond with heartfelt repentance. Sackcloth and ashes cover the city, even the animals, as the people urgently call out to God. This sermon unpacks how genuine repentance, even from the most unlikely people, moves the heart of a merciful God.

In Jonah 3, we see not only a city transformed but a deeper glimpse into the nature of God—gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. As we reflect on Nineveh’s dramatic turnaround, we are invited to examine our own hearts and discover the joy of repentance and the hope of mercy found in Christ alone.

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Throughout the whole testimony of scripture, God shows himself to be a God who brings his people to repentance. And then he brings them into service for him. As we look back at the stories throughout our Bible, Abraham, he doubted that God would keep his promise to bring the promise through Sarah, but the promise was still kept through the birth of Isaac.

Moses, well he was a murderer. We know the story. He fled into the wilderness to avoid being punished for his offense, people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. And David Oh, David. David committed adultery. He plotted to commit murder. But yet through the prophet Nathan, God brought David to repentance. And when we see David spoken of in scripture, he's known as a man after God's own heart.

Then in the New Testament, we have Peter. Peter denied Jesus three times, but then Jesus restored him and he used him to build his church. And we could use numerous, numerous examples of how God brings his people to repentance. But for the sake of time, I'm just gonna stick to the highlights and focus on this truth, that God calls his people to repentance and he gives them a second chance.

And now, while I hit the greatest hits there, I left out the man who is maybe one of the greatest hits in second chances. The man whose name is the title of the book we are working through right now, Jonah. He is arguably one of the best known examples of how God offers someone a second chance. And it was through God's radical, radical pursuing of Jonah that he came to realize his need for grace and mercy from God.

Denying the people of Nineveh by not going to them. By refusing to go to Nineveh, he was denying the people there the opportunity to repent. And he received precisely what he was unwilling to offer to the people of Nineveh. As you know, and as we have seen over the last two weeks, Jonah has come first full circle. Repentance and faith, and God spares his life.

Now, there have been a lot of people who in a bad situation have made an oath to God. Right? In a time of crisis, they agree to do something for God if they can just get out of it. In fact, I think back to an episode of MASH, where a young man comes into the hospital and asked to speak with father Mulcahy. And he informs the priest that when he was in the foxhole, when his life was on the line, he cried out to God and said, if I make it through this, I'll become a priest.

And he confesses to the high pitched voice father Mulcahy. He has no desire to do this. He's not cut out to be a priest. And he asked the priest for his opinion on this. And his response is this, that if everyone who ever made an oath in a foxhole became a priest, there would be way too many priests.

In fact, the reason the reformer Martin Luther, the reason he became a monk was because in the middle of a terrible lightning storm, he made an oath that if Saint Anne would get him home safely through the storm, he would become a monk. And the rest is history. This monk revolutionized the church and restored the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone.

So these promises in the midst of trouble are common. But in the case of Jonah, God is not gonna let him off the hook. No way. No, Jonah. You're going to Nineveh. After the trauma of being swallowed and vomited by a very large fish, maybe God would understand what great personal trauma this had given to Jonah, that the idea of going to Nineveh was not really for him. From God. And so maybe God would let someone else go.

But that's not the case. That's not what God does. And we don't know how long it took for the word of the Lord to come to Jonah again. But here the text implies that it's pretty quick, doesn't it? We get the idea that God did not give Jonah much of a vacation. And we see that what he expects Jonah to do has not changed.

In fact, we can see the similarity with the first call of Jonah here in these first few verses of chapter three. In fact, in the original language, the first part of chapter three is almost word for word the same. It is identical. Arise. Go to Nineveh, that great city and call out against it.

And even though Jonah one and three start in similar ways, Jonah's reaction is different. This time, he rises to go to Nineveh. He doesn't rise to go to Joppa and buy a ticket on a ship. He actually rises and he heads down the road to the very place that he was unbelievably committed to avoiding just two chapters back.

And you have to wonder here, right? You have to wonder what his attitude was. Was he excited about packing his bags and heading to Assyria? I mean, the guy was still probably cleaning some stomach acid of the great fish from his pockets and grumbling as he journeyed. Let's be honest, he probably wasn't in a good place. I kind of imagine him shuffling his feet. Send me to Nineveh, I don't want to go. But he went.

But he went. We obviously can't know what he did, but my point here is that he is happy to be alive, but yet he still has to go to that place that he didn't wanna go. He didn't want to go to Nineveh. There's unclean Gentiles there. Why would I proclaim a message of repentance there? They won't believe. They won't repent.

And he gets there. And we see that this city of Nineveh is no small berg. This is a great city, and God has great concern for it. And I have trouble imagining an ancient city being this big. The archaeological discoveries have actually found that Nineveh was roughly seven to eight miles in circumference. That's a big city. That's a lot of space. That's a lot of people.

Imagine how many people would be in that much space today. A lot. But yet, we have what? We have big homes. We have big yards. Now imagine an ancient city with houses right up against each other. It likely would have been hundreds of thousands of people living within this city. And that's why the visit required three days.

There was a certain diplomatic protocol in this day in the ancient Near East, for how long you had to be in a certain city based upon how big it was. And so when the Bible says it was a three day journey, it wasn't that it took him three days to walk. It wasn't that Jonah was a really slow walker, and it took him three days to walk seven miles. Now, it was how much time it took for him to carry this important message to the people of Nineveh.

And like I mentioned, there was this protocol for how the foreign ambassadors would approach a city based upon its size, based upon its influence. And in this time, prophets were seen as ambassadors. And so, that's why we see Jonah going in for this amount of time. And what did he do? He goes in and says forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned. He just walks into the city and declares this message.

Now, I don't recommend you try this strategy. I just don't think it would go over very well in our modern day. You would probably be completely ignored by people or you'd be carted off. Regardless of how it would be perceived in our day, it was natural in his day. It would have been very ordinary. There weren't daily newspapers. There weren't blogs. There weren't satellite linked news trucks to report this. You had to step in the middle of the city and herald it to the people.

Message that Jonah proclaims. And this is an unexpected turn of events. Here are these gentiles, these people in Nineveh repenting. They put on sackcloth. This is what was used in the ancient Near East when you were moving to a posture of mourning.

The repentance of Nineveh, we see the stark contrast with Israel. Here in pagan Assyria, in the great city of Nineveh, we find the people not only saying that they will try to stop their sin, but they are actually mourning over their sin. At this time in Israel, there would have been very little concern for the law of God. The people of Israel need to repent too, but they weren't doing it. They've rejected God's call to repentance.

But what do we see in Jonah? Gentiles, the unclean, they're willing to repent. In fact, they mourn. They mourn over their sin. And as I reflect on this, I'm convicted. Well, I regret and feel sorry over my sin. When was the last time I mourned over it? When was the last time it brought me to mourn?

Have I ever, have we ever taken the conviction that the Holy Spirit brings to us and mourned over our rebellion against a holy God? Or are we complacent to our sin? Are we too used to it? This makes me think of, reminds me of being in the middle of a Minnesota winter. I'm sure you remember that there was a stretch back at the beginning of 02/2018, where we had several days where it didn't get above zero.

Now I don't remember how many days it was, how long it was, but it was a good stretch. And one morning, I was at the post office and I ran into somebody. It may have been one of you. And we had a little quick conversation and it turned to the weather and we decided that it was a pretty good day. It was nice to have a good day. Nice to have some better temperatures.

And so I walked out the door of the post office and turned towards my car, and I was slapped in the face by reality. The temperature on the bank clock was zero. And I was talking about how warm it was. I was so used to miserably cold days, that I legitimately thought sin is a big deal in a world that's full of it?

How quickly can I become accustomed to sin in a world filled with immorality and unbelief? How quickly can we start thinking that our sin isn't a big deal because it's either all around us or at least we aren't as sinful as so many other people. So the question that the repentance of the Ninevites brings to mind is do we mourn over our sin or are we complacent?

We are called as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness? And the response of the people of Nineveh should be a reminder to us of our need for God's mercy and grace, and create in us a desire to turn from our sin.

If these ancient pagans fear God and turn from their sin, how much more so should we, as God's people, turn from our sin? And in Nineveh, they did turn from their sin. And the repentance was seen in the greatest to the least. It was even seen in the king.

But it's important to notice that the turning from sin started with the people. Yes, we see here the king issued a decree to turn from sin and mourn. But the repentance started with the people. It didn't start with the King. And we can't assume that true sorrow for sin and repentance will come with a decree from the top. Repentance starts with us.

And the news of the repentance will reach the ears of those in authority when it is true heartfelt repentance. God given repentance. This is what happened in Nineveh. The people repented and it went all the way from the bottom to the top and the king humbled himself in repentance.

The king was not able but was the king was not even above being in sackcloth and ashes. And we are shown his humility in the visual image that we see in this text. What does it say? It says that he sits down in the dust. The one who people are normally bowing before, the one who people get in the dust in front of to bow before, is now assuming that posture of humility before God.

Decree to all people to fast and put on sackcloth, but he also says that the beast should fast and put on sackcloth. Now this seems really strange to us. Actually, not a little bit strange. This seems a lot of strange to us. Because if you were to stop by a friend's farm this week, and they let you know that their cows were fasting and being covered in sackcloth and ashes, you'd be very concerned for them.

You'd probably have your ears checked to make sure you were hearing them right or you would call the doctor. But in Persian culture, this would have meant that their repentance was total and all encompassing. It was that their repentance was genuine and thorough repentance.

In fact, in Persian culture, it was even customary to have the domestic animals involved in mourning rituals when people died. It was to show that the whole household, everybody, everything was in mourning. And so we are meant to see that everyone is in mourning with this imagery of the animals being in sackcloth and ashes.

And this information, while a little bit strange for us, is in this passage to let us know that this repentance is the real thing. And we see this in the edict of the king, that they not only mean it, but we also see what they are repenting from. They are to turn from evil ways and violence.

And in biblical times, physical violence and social injustice were what the Assyrian Empire was known for. They were killing people. They were taking over countries and destroying them. And so this repentance is not just to be a time where they feel sorry for being bad people. They're called to actually do something. They're called to actually stop their evil, to stop their painful pattern of violence.

And this is what true repentance involves. We not only acknowledge that what we are doing is sinful, but we stop our sinful behavior and desire to align our lives to God's law. Repentance is hard. It is hard. As much as we would like to think that we can just stop our sinful behavior, it isn't that easy, is it?

Changing a sinful behavior is difficult. In fact, it's painful. And we must remember that moving away from their evil and violent lives could have been very, very hard for the people of Nineveh. The first thing that they had to do was acknowledge that what they were doing was wrong. No one likes to do that.

Whatever our favorite or pet sin is, we like to come up with all kinds of excuses for why it isn't a big deal for us to do it. We just away justify away all kinds of immorality pretty easily. And that's why it's so important to have a change of mind and a change of heart about our sin like the people of Nineveh.

Then, in order to repent, we have to not only realize and agree with God that what we do is sinful, but we also have to stop doing it. We actually have to stop. And we are creatures who get into all kinds of sin, and it shapes the patterns of our lives.

And so we need God, through the spirit, to reshape how we think and how we approach our lives, that we might turn away from sin and unbelief. And we should not think for a second that the repentance of the Ninevites was any easier than it would Anguish than it would be for us. Don't think for a second that there wasn't a moment of temptation for these people to go back to their old way of thinking.

It had to have been hard, but they did it. And with the help of God and his word and spirit, we too can repent and turn from our sins. Our repentance can be full and complete. Our repentance can have us turning from sin and instead turn towards God.

Hear the word of the Lord, repent and believe by faith that God will grant you the gift of repentance. This is something that we do daily. We deny ourselves. We take up our cross and follow Jesus, instead of seeking after our own desires.

And as we consider repentance, it is important that we look at how our passage from Jonah three ends. God sees the repentance of the people of Nineveh and he stays his wrath. He did not bring on the destruction that he had threatened. The people turned from their evil ways, and they received mercy. Their evil and violence was forgotten, and God showed them compassion.

As we look at what happened in Nineveh, it would be easy for us to walk away from this and think that somehow God didn't know what was gonna happen. That he was on the edge of his seat wondering if he was gonna have to drop the hammer on Nineveh. Repent? But that's not the case.

If we think that this is what is happening here, that God is wringing his hands wondering what will happen, we're missing what's going on in the book of Jonah. We're missing the point of the story. And the sea. We see him ordaining a large fish to gobble up Jonah. We see God sustaining Jonah in the belly of the beast. Regurgitate Jonah up on dry land.

You see, in the book of Jonah, it plainly tells us that God is in control, that he is the one who brings salvation. He is not suddenly powerless. He is not suddenly unaware of what the people of Nineveh will do. What we're meant to see here is that God brought about the events of this book in Jonah to fulfill his perfect will, and to will and to teach us about who he is.

Because we see in this story of repentance by these pagan Ninevites three important things. First, we're reminded of that theme statement that Jonah proclaimed from the depth and darkness of the fish. Salvation is from the Lord. Salvation is from the Lord.

Yes, the judgment that was threatened was from God. But he sent a word to the people of Nineveh to save them from himself. They deserved his wrath. Don't forget that. But he also sent them a way of salvation by his sovereign hand.

Second, we see that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in his steadfast love. He shows mercy to his creation. He showed mercy to his prophet Jonah when he disobeyed by bringing him to repentance in the belly of the fish. He showed mercy to the people of Nineveh when he relented from the destruction that he had threatened.

And lastly, we see that God loves even Gentiles. As we have seen, this book shows us that salvation is of the Lord, but in the Old Testament, we see that this love and mercy is shown to the Hebrew people. The Gentiles are outside the covenant of God. They're unclean. Astonishing. He shows mercy and grace to the outsiders.

And this shocking event of the Ninevites repenting is doing something for us. It's pointing us forward. It's pointing us to Jesus. It's pointing us to his mercy and grace that has been shown to you and I, Gentiles. It shows us that Jesus came to save even us.

And for us, this news is so amazing. It's even better. It's even better than the Ninevites hearing that God is relenting from destroying their city. Because not only are we spared from the wrath of God, but as Christians, we are brought into covenant with God.

Even as Gentiles, we are made clean and have peace with God, because of what Jesus has done for us. And the news gets even better. Because while the wrath of God was spared at Nineveh, we know that God's wrath was not spared.

It's good news, because the wrath of God for our sin, the wrath that was not spared, was poured out on another. It was poured out on Jesus for us. And we have received a gift of salvation that is from the Lord. God brought salvation for his people through the blood of Jesus.

And this is good news because we do not need to live in fear of God's wrath, like the people of Nineveh. They feared the wrath of God. But for us, because that wrath has been poured out on Christ, we have a loving father.

And this is the application for this passage for us today. These Assyrian pagans repented because they feared the wrath of God. They were afraid that Almighty God would rain down his fury upon them for their evil and their sin.

But as people who have heard of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we turn from our sin not because we fear the fury of God, but because we have a loving father. A father who did not hold back the wrath for our sin and unbelief, but instead poured it out on Christ.

Just as God ordained the repentance in Nineveh by his sovereign plan, God had a plan for our salvation. God, the Son, took on human flesh to bear the punishment for our sin, and he ordained that we would hear the word, and that the spirit would bring us to repentance.

So the application for us today is repent. If you are here, and you've never before placed your faith and trust in Christ alone for salvation, the message is repent. Turn from your evil ways and trust in the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. Hear and believe the good news.

And for us, who have already heard and believed the good news, the message is the same. Repent. Turn from your sin. You have a gracious and merciful heavenly father who has saved you. And this message of salvation works in us through the Spirit, that we might turn from our sin and live our lives in glory to God.

And this is the message that we need to hear every day. From the youngest believer to those who have trusted in the Lord for decades, we are all called to repentance. And God is good on his promise to give you the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

But repentance is hard. It fights against the old nature in us, that so easily entangles us. Have a God who is so much more powerful. Trust in him. Hear the word, believe by faith that God is daily working in you to make you holy and to conform you to the image of Christ.

Hear and believe that God is at work in you, and continually giving you the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Because the gift of God, the gift of repentance is so much stronger than the tug of sin in our lives. So let us turn to him, trusting in his good gift of repentance, that all glory, honor, and praise might be brought to him alone. Amen.

Looking for more teaching from Jonah?

Explore our Dwell in the Word video devotional series on Jonah for short, rich reflections that complement this sermon series:
👉 Dwell in the Word: Jonah