(Text only, audio did not record properly)
Title: Only One Explanation
Just How impressive of a city was Nineveh?
Johnathan Edwards:
The greatness of Nineveh consisted chiefly in the extent of it; it was much larger than Babylon, such a city, says Diodorus Siculus, as no man ever after built.
It was 150 furlongs long and 90 broad, and 480 in compass; the walls 100 feet high, and so thick that three chariots might go a-breast upon them; on them were 1500 towers, each of them 200 feet high.
It is here said to be of three days’ journey; for the compass of the walls, as some relate, was 480 furlongs, which, allowing eight furlongs to a mile, makes sixty miles, which may well be reckoned three days’ journey for a footman, twenty miles a day. Or, walking slowly and gravely as Jonah must when he went about preaching, it would take him up at least three days to go through all the principal streets and lanes of the city, to proclaim his message, that all might have notice of it.
How long does Jonah take to get started?
He gets to work Immediately!
“As Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk…”
Key: The full content of Jonah’s message was not recorded in his book. That was not the point, as far as Jonah, the author of the book, was concerned. We can safely assume that Jonah’s message was more that just “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
That was the start of the proclamation to be sure, but we can be equally sure that Jonah went into great detail to explain who he was, where he was from, why Yahweh was fed up with Nineveh, and that he was giving them 40 days to turn from their ways of face utter destruction.
Q: So if Jonah’s point was NOT the exact call to repentance, then what was the point?
A: That they did repent!
Think about that. A foreign man, from a hated nation shows up and walks through all the city, shouting a foreboding warning to the people, claiming a foreign God is going to destroy them unless they repent…and they listen!
Q: What is the only reasonable explanation for that?
A: It is a supernatural occurrence. God changed their hearts.
And we have talked exhaustively about the how Jonah serves as a Christ figure, and here we see yet another example of this. Jesus shows up, preaching a message of repentance, almost exclusively to Jews, then, once he ascends, Jesus hands this mission off to the early church and, most notably, Peter and Paul take a message from a foreign God right into the heart of the Roman empire, preaching repentance for all men (Roman, Greek, Samaritan, Ethiopian, and skeptic), and they listen!
What is the only explanation? That God changed the hearts of the non believers!
The Three-Fold Result:
(read v5: 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.)
- They Believed God: This was supernatural. There is no other explanation.
- They Proclaimed a Fast: Fasting was common amongst many religions, and often signified a time a immense prayer, reflection, and discipline to set one’s heart right before God.
- This Result extended “from the greatest to the least of them”. Like all cities, Nineveh had it rich, it’s poor, it social classes, it’s powerful, and it’s slaves. This movement effected each and every one of them, regardless of their standing in society.
(Next week we will see the final social class, the royalty, and how they respond to this message from Jonah.)
Pray/Q&A