The Preaching of Jonah

Surveying the Bible teaching landscape, there are some things that I hear that make me, as people say nowadays, “cringe”. These are things said by people who are often in other areas very good and faithful teachers of the Word of God, but in these areas are just plain wrong.

I have heard it several times in the past few weeks teaching to the effect that Jonah preached Christ to the Ninevites, and they were saved. I would like to see something from the Bible to back this up. Jonah chapter 3 gives us what the Bible says that Jonah preached to the Ninevites. It is short, so here it is in its entirety:

Jonah 3:1–10 — “And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

“So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

“And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”

So the total of what the Bible says that Jonah preached to Nineveh was this:

“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.“

That is a far cry from preaching Christ or preaching the Gospel. Jonah preached to Nineveh the message that God told him. Not salvation, not even repentance, but that of coming sure judgment, in the form of overthrowing the city.

There was no preaching of salvation through Christ as a coming redeemer as many, if not most, assume. I suppose that the justification for this comes from this in Luke’s gospel:

Luke 11:32 — “The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

The men of Nineveh did repent at the preaching of Jonah, as also the text of Jonah chapter 3 says. It was a last resort, “maybe we have a chance” type of repentance. The LORD turned from His wrath against them, as we learn in the last verse of Jonah 3.

The Lord Jesus point here in speaking of the preaching of Jonah and that the men of Nineveh repented is not that they were saved as we understand salvation, with eternal life through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross, but that they would be evidence in God’s courtroom against that generation in Israel who were there for the preaching and teaching of the Son of God manifest in human flesh, who should have and could have believed but refused to do so.

The men of Israel in Christ’s day among them heard a call to repentance from John the Baptist that they refused. Yes, it was not all but many. As John pointed his disciples to the Lord saying, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30), many in Israel believed, but the majority, and especially those holding the reins of leadership, refused.

The later preaching of the apostles after Christ rose from the dead was also refused. This is why Paul, addressing the house of Israel, said this:

Hebrews 2:1–4 — “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?”

Jonah, as a real prophet who went on a real mission to Nineveh to preach its destruction was also an illustration to Israel that God could and would show mercy to the most wicked if they would repent. As with all of the prophets, the message was one to bring them to repentance. Jonah was an illustration of what the LORD would explicitly say through the prophet Jeremiah years later:

Jeremiah 18:5–11 — “Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.

“Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.”

I bring these things up because it is important to teach what the Bible actually says, not what we want it to say, even when our motives are to reach the lost with the gospel. The truth of the gospel will have much more power when we speak what the Bible actually says, not the things that we make up thinking what it should say, or what we should read between the lines.

We will not exhaust the resources of the Gospel of Christ, “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” (Romans 1:16).

The gospel of Christ as Paul delivered it will save the sinner and establish the saint.

Romans 16:25–27 —“Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.”