Jonah 3:4-5, 10 On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.’ The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth… When God saw what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened”

The message may sound harsh, but if the Lord’s only intent was to destroy the city, no need to send a prophet to warn them. Just let the catastrophe come. Shake the earth. Whip up the storm of the century. Send in the murdering hoards. Just because God did want to spare these people, Jonah had to preach like this.

That still has to happen if preaching is going to do any good. An old commentator was right to note: “A preacher must speak the truth frankly, and not sugar over it and deprive it of its power by ornaments and flattery. One must plainly say to sinners that they are hastening to destruction.”

That the Ninevites needed such a message, and Jonah had good reason to be afraid to deliver it, is more detail than the story in the Bible provides. From history we know that this was a scary people. They had made a name for themselves by their cruelty. On the battlefield they would make walls and towers out of the dead bodies of enemy soldiers. They liked to skin their enemies alive, or impale them alive on stakes and let them slowly die. After a battle they regularly enjoyed cutting body parts off of the local citizens–hands, feet, ears, noses, etc. When they weren’t at war, they entertained themselves at beer halls and brothels.

Those are the kind of people to whom Jonah preached. I suspect we would be just as frightened if God sent us to preach that kind of message in an ISIS camp or an Iranian mosque. You might wonder if you would get out alive. We might have more sympathy for Jonah’s initial response to God’s call: try to run away.

Then the first miracle happened. “The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.” How successful do you think your Christian preaching would be in an ISIS camp or a Taliban hideout? How many converts would you make if you preached Jonah’s way at the headquarters for the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, WI, or in the sex clubs on Bourbon Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter?

Apparently, it might be all of them. The preaching of God’s word was so powerful that it turned the hearts of this wild and wicked city, a city with at least 120,000 people. And the repentance was real. Jesus comments in the book of Matthew, “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s preaching” (12:41).

Then the second miracle happened. God forgave them. “When God saw what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.” I say miracle, not because this is out of character for the Lord. By his own claim he is “the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” I say miracle because only supernatural love and patience can forgive a people like this.            

Today you and I proclaim God’s word to our world. Our fellow citizens may seem like run-of-the-mill sinners compared to the violent and sensuous people of Nineveh. They are less scary, but their need for grace is just as urgent. May God give us the courage to go, and then see his miracle one more time.