About Face!

Midweek Lenten Service
March 24, 2010
Jonah 3:5-10

“The Sign of Jonah: About Face!”

It’s a familiar scene: a couple is driving in a car with the husband at the wheel. His wife tells him to turn right at the next intersection, but instead he turns left. After realizing what has happened, he says to his wife, “Sorry, I went the wrong way.” Well, maybe that – or maybe something like, “I know where I’m going, and I don’t need to stop and ask for directions.” If all he says is “Sorry,” that doesn’t get them any closer to where they want to be. It isn’t even stopping them from going further down the wrong road in the wrong direction. What is needed is to stop the car, turn it around, and go back to the correct road that they needed to take in the first place. That turning around and going in a new direction is what Scripture calls repentance. It is an about-face! And it is what we see the people of Nineveh doing in response to Jonah’s message to them.

During these midweek Lenten services, we’ve traveled with Jonah in that car going down the wrong road, trying to get as far as he could away from God and away from what God had called him to do. We’ve traveled with Jonah into the belly of the great big fish, and there prayed with Jonah for forgiveness and deliverance. Jonah himself was led to do an about-face in his own life. He repented of his sins, and entrusted himself into the Lord’s mercy. And now the people of Nineveh do the same.

The people of Nineveh were a powerful, arrogant, violent and wicked people. Jonah was just a little guy from a weak nation that would soon become part of the Assyrian Empire. Why should they listen to him? But listen they did. Maybe it was because this guy preaching to them had just spent three days in the gut of a huge fish. Maybe it was because his skin and hair were bleached white from the digestive juices there inside that fish. Maybe it was because of the dried up seaweed and kelp still clinging to his tattered clothes. Maybe the people of Nineveh listened to this weird looking man because he told them, “Repent, or God will do to you what he did to me!”

The people of Nineveh demonstrate one of the greatest examples of corporate repentance found anywhere in Scripture. They hear Jonah and take to heart his words. They respond in faith. They declare a fast, removing their clothing and putting on scratchy, itchy sackcloth as a sign of mourning. They put ashes on their heads as a sign of their grief. And not just some, but everyone is part of this, from the least to the greatest. Everyone is mourning for their sins. Have we ever done that? Even the king himself, one of the most powerful people in the world of his day, repents in contrite and public humility. What would be our reaction if a world leader would do that today? Even the animals and all the livestock are brought into the act, and required to fast. Now, I grew up on a farm and when animals get hungry they start making noise – lots of noise. All those cows and sheep and camels and whatever else bleating and mooing! What a racket! What a racket of repentance! God gives to the people of Nineveh a change of heart, and not only this, but a change of behavior. The king doesn’t just call the people to fast and mourn, he calls them to stop doing evil and start doing good: “Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands” (Jonah 3:8).

What an irony there is here! Jonah, prophet of the Most High God, turned tail and ran. The godless people of Nineveh turned from their sin and run to the Lord! That change of behavior that comes about through repentance is what makes the repentance real and genuine. It is written that during the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Welsh revivals of the nineteenth century  that people repented and did all they could to confess their wrong-doing and make restitution. It created some unexpected problems for the shipyards along the coast of Wales. Over the years workers had stolen all kinds of things from wheelbarrows to hammers. As people repented, they began to return what they had taken, with the result that soon the shipyards of Wales were overwhelmed with returned property. There were such huge piles of returned tools that several of the shipyards put up signs that read: “If you have been led by God to return what you have stolen, please know that the management forgives you and wishes you to keep what you have taken.” Can you imagine if that type of repentance came upon our land today? What a mighty witness and sign that would be for people, with unimagined effects upon the economy!

Nineveh’s change evoked the Lord’s change. The verdict of the Lord changed from “guilty” to “innocent” for the people of Nineveh: “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” (Jonah 3:10). Our God’s verdict upon us was “guilty,” and rightly so for the evil we have done and the good we have failed to do. Only in Christ Jesus is that verdict changed and the sentence of death commuted. “For our sake God him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Through the cleansing blood of Jesus, we are declared “not guilty.” This does not mean that we do not need to repent – far from it! Because of what Jesus has done for us – taking our sin upon him and shedding his blood upon the cross – we are moved all the more to daily repent of our sin and return to the Lord with all our heart. There is only peace and joy in knowing that through Jesus the past is forgiven and the future is full of promise and hope. And so, my friends, about face! Amen.