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THE KING,’S BUSINESS
that is.in their hands.” Tidings of Jonah’s teaching at last penetrated even the palace and the king also believed. As mighty a king as he was he recognized the fact that there was a still greater King, God. Some day all the monarchs of the earth will rec ognize that in spite of all their proud boasts of power, there is a mightier King than they and one and all they will have to bow down before Jehovah.. If all kings had already recognized this, we would have been spared the present war, with its frightful calam ities and sacrifices. Three elements of true repentance were set forth in the royal de cree: Humiliation of self, prayer, turning away from sin. The prayer was to be in tense; they must “cry mightily unto God;” that is the only kind of prayer that really counts with God (Jer. 29:13; Acts 12 :S, R. V.; Rom. 15:30; Col. 4:12, 13, R. V.). We have today too much of the prayer that has little heart in it, is very calm, very quiet and utterly lacking in earnestness. But they did not consider, it enough to merely humble themselves and cry to God: They were to “Turn every one from his evil way.” Mere humiliation of self and prayer will effect absolutely nothing if there is not a merciless dealing with sin; the very essence of repentance is turning away from sin (Isaiah 55:6, 7). The definite form of sin that is especially mentioned is “violence,” because this was the prevailing sin in Nineveh (cf. Nahum 3:1, 3), It is also the prevailing sin in some of the lands of Eu rope today. The sin from which we today must especially turn if our repentance is to be acceptable to God is the sin of rejecting Jesus Christ (Acts 2:36-38; 3:14, 15, 19). v. 9. "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from-his fierce anger, that, we perish not?” The king of Nineveh was not sure that God would turn from his anger if the people turned from their sin, but he hoped that He might. But we may know without a single doubt that God will turn from his judgment pronounced upon us if we will turn frofri our sin (Isaiah 55: 7; Acts 2:38; Joel 2:14; Acts 3:19; Luke 15:7, 10).
v. 10. "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 " The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it (Luke 11:13). They repented upon the very brief preaching of Jonah and upon the bare hope that God would forgive, but to day, under the much plainer preaching of the Gospel, backed by that wonderful revela tion which God has given of Himself in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord, men continue in their, sins. One fact gave Jonah’s preaching much power, the fact that he was practically a man who had come back from the dead, and the fact of Christ’s resurrection from the dead takes away all excuse for our rejecting Him. The purpose of Nineveh’s repentance had been to induce God, if possible, to repent and turn away from His fierce anger that they might not perish, and God did as they hoped He might. While the men of Nineveh had merely a bare hope that God might repent and turn from. His anger, nevertheless the men of Nineveh would have been great fools if they had not acted on .the bare hope. How much greater fool any man is today who does not vact on the absolute certainty that God will, if he repents, turn His anger. What God looked at especially in “their repentance” was the fact “that they turned from their evil way.” When the men of Nineveh turned from their evil way, God turned from the punishment that He was about to visit upon them. God repented of the evil that He had purposed to do in judgment upon their sin because He is an unchangeable God. As God is unchangeable in character He must change His conduct toward men as they change from the attitude that is hateful to Him to the attitude that is acceptable to Him. It is because God does not repent in His mind or purpose; that is, does not change in His immutable wisdom and pur pose, that He does repent in His conduct as men repent. It may be said that Jonah’s prophecy that in forty days Njneveh would
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