The Outreach of God’s Love

Jonah 3:1-10; 4:10, 11

GOLDEN TEXT: “Salvation is of the Lord.”—Jonah 2:9

NO ONE who has a proper appreciation of the powers of the Almighty would question for an instant the ability of God to prepare a great fish, either at the moment or, foreknowing Jonah’s course, long in advance in order to accomplish the divine purposes in connection with him. The exceptional character of Jonah’s experience constituted him a type of Jesus, who, in death, was swallowed up of the earth, as was Jonah by the fish; and as our Lord was liberated from His prison-house, so was Jonah.

Our special lesson, however, is connected with Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites. Nineveh was a great city outside the pale of Israel and therefore at that time outside the lines of divine favor; for from the giving of the Law until three and a half years after the Cross, God’s favors were exclusively confined to the Jewish nation under the terms of the Law Covenant—Cornelius, the centurion, being the first Gentile to receive evidence of divine favor at the close of the period of Israel’s exclusive favor.

In the case of the Sodomites, Ninevites and Amalekites, divine justice decreed that their iniquity had come to the full, and that for them to live longer would be unwise, and for them to be cut off in death would not only hinder them from further degradation, but also furnish to mankind a general lesson, to the effect that there is a limit to the divine permission of evil. The fact that these people were thus condemned and overthrown did not signify that they had been offered salvation and rejected it. Like all of Adam’s children, these people were under the sentence of death, “Dying thou shalt die”; “As all in Adam die.” They were merely cut off from further life under present conditions. Their opportunity for future life by resurrection from the dead was not interfered with. Neither they nor others had yet been redeemed.

Jonah’s preaching was that within forty days God would destroy Nineveh on account of its wickedness. But the people, impressed by his message, repented of their sinful course and sought divine forgiveness. The King’s proclamation was that “neither man nor beast, herd or flock taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water, but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let them turn every roan from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.” The Lord hearkened to the Ninevites, accepted their repentance, and permitted their national life to continue for a time.

The lesson shows us how much greater is the compassion of the Almighty than that of His imperfect servants of human kind. God was pleased to have the Ninevites turn from their sins to hearty repentance. He was pleased to grant them an extension of earthly life. But Jonah was displeased. Jonah was more interested in himself and his own reputation than in the Ninevites and their interests. The Lord’s people must not he so! Self must be lost sight of; as the great Apostle Paul advises, “Love seeketh not her own”; and again “Christ pleased not Himself.”—I Cor. 13:5; Rom. 15:3

The query arises in some minds, How can God repent and change His mind if He knows the end from the beginning? The answer is that the word repent has a wider than is generally appreciated. Humanity uses it only in respect to a change of purpose. But, as modern dictionaries show, the worst may mean either a change of action or a change of purpose, or both. He never repents of them. But He does change His conduct.

Thus Israel, His favored people for centuries, were cut off and God’s dealings toward them changed. But God’s purposes never changed toward Israel. He foreknew their rejection of Jesus and His rejection of them, and how later on they would be regathered to their own land and be forgiven and blessed by Messiah when He assumed His Messianic office as King of kings and Lord of lords—“the Prince of the kings of earth.” The Lord taught Jonah a lesson respecting his sympathy for a gourd, an inanimate thing, and his lack of sympathy for the Ninevites. So it has been with many professing Christians. They have had sympathy for the flowers, the birds, for the lower animals, for children and, to some extent, for all mankind under the distress of the present time. Nevertheless they have sometimes become angry at the suggestion that God does not intend to roast or torment the Ninevites, Sodomites, Amalekites, or anybody else, to all eternity and that His gracious purposes for the world in general will be manifested in giving all an opportunity to attain to human perfection, a world-wide Eden and everlasting life, if they will hear and obey the Great Messiah—whose Head is Jesus and whose members, the elect Church, have been in process of selection and preparation throughout this Gospel age.

QUESTIONS:

In what way did Jonah’s experiences illustrate those of Jesus?

What practical lesson concerning God can we learn from the manner in. which He dealt with the Ninevites?

Do God’s purposes ever change?

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