Preachers sometimes delude
themselves that it is their own persuasiveness that leads people to
repent—if they could only set out the message more clearly, with
more feeling and conviction, then multitudes would be saved. This is
not the lesson of Scripture. It is the goodness of God alone that
leads to repentance (see Rom. 2: 4)—and there is no better
illustration of this than the preaching of Jonah.
Jonah went to Nineveh a stranger and his
message was not calculated, humanly speaking, to assure him a
favourable reception: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown!” (Jonah 3: 4). Yet no messenger with such unwelcome
news ever met with the reception that Jonah did! He “began to enter
into the city a day’s journey” (v4), and in that one day his work
was done. The word told on the people, and hearts were bowed. What
caused this remarkable result—a result unparalleled in the history
of mankind? Was it some peculiar personal influence exercised by the
preacher? The prophet had only covered about one third of the city,
and most in it could not as yet have heard him. Was it the
attractiveness of what he said? He announced imminent
destruction—and that without even one flicker of hope. Or perhaps
the Ninevites were struck with the appearance or manner of the
prophet? This seems doubtful, for it was when “the word reached the
King of Nineveh” (v6) that he issued his decree for fasting,
sackcloth and penitence. He heard of the prophet but had not seen
him and yet was still powerfully affected by what Jonah had said.
Everywhere hearts were bowed as reeds before the wind. What had done
it? The prophet was alone when he began to preach, but others soon
joined in passing on the Word. The king heard through one of these
intermediates, and swelled the number of workers in the cause
himself, for “he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him,
and covered himself 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; and let
man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God;
and let them turn everyone from his evil way” (Jonah 3: 6–8).
Humanly speaking, everything was against
Jonah. Who was he? A native of a country that had so recently paid
tribute to Assyria! This fact, unnoticed in Scripture, but recorded
on the famous Black Obelisk, was likely known to the Ninevites. Why
listen to one from such a place? And, as they considered their
“exceeding great city” (v3), how ridiculous his message would seem!
What could that despised foreigner know that they did not? Had they
not their own wise men to forecast the future? Yet despite all this,
Jonah preached the preaching which God had commanded him and the
Ninevites “believed God” (Jonah 3: 5). What more marked illustration
of the simple power of the Word could be conceived? Jonah preached,
consciences were reached, all hearkened.
Never before, and never since, has such
a spectacle been witnessed—a whole city bowed down by the Word, and
all its inhabitants casting themselves on the sovereign mercy of a
God they did not know. Though every circumstance seemed adverse to
success, all were bowed in humiliation and fasting before God! All
signs of merriment vanished, lightness and frivolity fled away—all
were in earnest, for they believed the message. Who, after reading
this, will put a limit to the power of the Word? If the human
instrument is looked at, we might say it was hopeless work—Jonah
himself was an unfaithful and flawed individual. But what limit can
be set to the Word of God? God spoke and a huge city fell prostrate
at His feet! What confidence this should give to those engaged in
the preaching of God’s Word today! Let the preachers therefore put
their confidence, not in their own preaching, but in
God and His Word.
