 Nineveh's Repentance In the previous video I did, we looked at the unrepentant cities in Matthew chapter 11, and I demonstrated that when Jesus upbraided those cities for not repenting, it was because they rejected the gospel and anybody who preached it, whether it was Jesus, or John the Baptist, or the disciples. It wasn't because they did believe, but would not turn from all of their sins. That's nonsensical. We saw that. People might then point me to the next chapter in Matthew, where Jesus mentions Nineveh's repentance, and he condemns the current generation because they refuse to repent. And if we look at Jonah chapter 3, where Nineveh repents, they are repenting of evil deeds, okay, or turning from sin in other words. They're not repenting of unbelief or not trusting in the Lord. So let's take a look at what Jesus said. In Matthew 12, 38 to 42, it says then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered saying, Master, we would see a sign from you. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the Wales belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. Now, as I very often do, this would be the part of the video where I point to the verse and say, look, it doesn't actually say, of their sins. But then somebody will point out that if we read the book of Jonah, sin is the context of their repentance, so it looks like I'm not getting away with it this time. So let's read Jonah chapter 3 where this repentance is referenced from. It says in Jonah chapter 3 verses 9 and 10, 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 he would do unto them, and he did it not. Now there are a couple of observations we can make from the passage at hand. We see in the passage itself that God repented, and we know that God has no sin, so repentance does not automatically mean turn from sin. It uses the verb turned, rather than repented, to describe the repenting of sin. You wouldn't automatically add the words of sin every time the word turn is used, so we shouldn't do it with repent either. But nevertheless, most Christians would agree that when Jesus said, Nun never repented at the preaching of Jonah, this was in reference to their turning from their evil way, and if it's not then we might struggle to figure out what this is in reference to. Now it would take too long for a short video to go into all the verses of Jonah, but we only really need to focus on chapter 3 anyway. But if we take the book of Jonah as a whole, we notice some very interesting observations. The first observation is that when God initially commanded Jonah in chapter 1 verse 2 to cry against Nunnevere, he said, Their wickedness has come up before me, but we have no description of this wickedness. Were they drunkards? Were they fornicators? Were they idolaters? Were they adulterers? We don't know. The book of Jonah does not directly describe the wicked doings of the Ninevites. The specific wickedness of the Ninevites is so unimportant to the story that Jonah's book does not bother to mention it. If turning from sin was such an important salvation instruction, one might have hoped for more substantial context. The second observation then is that following observation 1, Nineveh's works and repentance are not the main focus of the book of Jonah. Jonah's own actions and experiences and dialogues with God are the focus of the book of Jonah. Likewise, when Jesus points to Jonah in Matthew 12, he details the sign of Jonah being in the Wales belly more than Nineveh's repentance itself. Nineveh's repentance only occupies Chapter 3. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 of Jonah are occupied by Jonah's own story and his conversations with God. Jonah's exchanges with God are simply far more emphasized and more important to the story than Nineveh's repentance. Why is this important, you ask? You know, why do these observations matter? Well, just as the emphasis in Jonah was more on Jonah himself rather than the Ninevites, likewise in Matthew 12, the emphasis is on Jesus and the sign of Jonah being in the Wales belly. That's the focus. Nineveh's repentance or wickedness and repenting of that is not the main focal point when Jesus is referencing it. Jesus uses the sign of Jonah in reference to himself, and he's greater than Jonah, hence why he says, a greater than Jonas is here. But the group that Jesus is speaking to won't repent at his greatness and this sign being manifest. So just like when we looked at calling sinners to repentance in Video 7 or the joy over one sinner that repents in Video 8, your own repentance and your own turning is not the focus of Jesus' words. They're more of a symptom or a reflection of what Jesus is doing because Jesus himself is the key person that's in focus that once again, as we saw in those two videos, repentance for salvation is about what Christ does. It's not about what you do. Let's go back to Jonah 3 and get some more information about Nineveh's repentance. It says that God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. So the Bible does not say God saw their faith, or God saw how they believed him, or God saw how they trusted him, or God saw the fruits of their repentance, or God saw the works their faith produced. The Bible does say God saw their works. So the conclusion so far is that if you use the repentance of Nineveh's wickedness as a salvific passage, you are basically proclaiming a workspace salvation. This first proves that turning from wickedness is your works, not your faith. Now there are various ways in which people try to argue against this or respond to this. For example, they'll say, well, the word works just means their actions in this passage, but that's not directly applicable to what Paul means when Paul talks about salvation without works. You're just incorrectly applying that to Paul's arguments. But this isn't the only Bible verse that defines turning from wickedness as works. It's just the clearest one to remember off the cuff. But there are other supporting verses, for example, in James 4 17 it says therefore to him that knows to do good, but does it not? To him it is sin. Now that's an important verse because when a lot of people think about turning from your sins, they just think stop doing the bad stuff, like stop drinking, stop fornicating, stop, you know, they miss that and the other. But they like to maybe not ignore it, but often overlook the part where we actually have to do good as well. And failing to do that good is just as much of a sin as failing to not do evil as well. In Romans chapter two, Paul opens in verse one saying that you are inexcusable, oh man, whosoever you are that judges, for wearing you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you that judge does the same things. And he goes on to explain later in verse 13, for not the hearers of the law or just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. Doing the law isn't just about doing good works that the law commands you to do, like love your neighbor, but it's also about not doing the evil things contained in the law, you know, do not do this, do not do that, especially when you judge other people for doing that thing, such as Romans two is explaining. But the Bible doesn't distinguish one from another in a legal standing. In other words, it doesn't say doing good is works, but turning from sin is faith and not doing evil works. They both come under the category of doing the law, works of the law. So if you're going to tell somebody that they have to turn from sins for salvation, you can't just tell them to stop fornicating and stop drinking, you have to tell them to start doing the deeds for salvation as well. So it's always coming back to man and his works. Now another counter argument that people might use is that they'll say, well, okay, this does show that turning from sin is works. So therefore, you have to do works for salvation. So, you know, the sinless perfectionists and those who say that you can lose salvation, they'll make that kind of an argument. Well, all we have to do is to see what Nineveh's repentance or their turning from wicked ways actually brought. In Jonah's warning in verse four, Jonah did not mention Hellfire. He only mentioned the overthrowing of the city as the outcome of his warnings that yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. It then goes on to say in verse five that 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. So obviously, this is where people will point and say, well, see, they believed God, that proves it's a salvation passage right there. What is it about God that they believed? They believe God, okay, but believe God what? The Bible does not say they believe the Lord Jesus Christ, obviously because it's an Old Testament passage. The Bible does not say they believed the testimony of how God brought the Israelites out of the wilderness and parted the Red Sea, which is perhaps the Old Testament equivalent of the Gospel. The Bible does say, yet 40 days Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God. So that's what the people believed. They believed that God would overthrow the city in 40 days and that he sent his messenger to warn them. And so that's what fueled the repentance from their wicked ways. Now, this is obviously a very interesting story because a repetitive theme in the Bible is that when the prophets did warn about the judgment of the cities, they often didn't listen. And yet here amazingly enough, we have a city that did listen. So how did God respond to the Ninevites believing God? What did God do? What was the outcome of their turning from their wickedness? It says in verse 10 that God repented of the evil that he said he would do unto them and he did it not. So the Bible does not say they all got saved onto everlasting life. It does not say that God removed their sins as far as the east is from the west. The Bible does not say that their eyes saw the great salvation of the Lord their God. The Bible does say that God repented and we know that God has no sins, so repentance doesn't automatically mean to turn from sin. And he repented of the evil that he said he would do and he did it not. So ultimately, we see that their turning from wickedness didn't result in salvation unto everlasting life. It resulted in their city being spared from being destroyed. That's the context. That's the outcome of their repentance from sin. It's got nothing to do with being saved from hell. Now, you can't know whether every single person in Nineveh, down to every last man, woman and child, suddenly got saved and got everlasting life and is now sitting in heaven because of that one event. Okay, first of all, you don't even know if they got all this out of their life. You don't know what kind of life they lived after this event. There's no evidence that they trusted God for their eternal life. You can't just add your own narrative and write your own stories and stick them in the Bible. It doesn't work like that. So let's go back to Matthew 12 and see how Jesus is referencing Jonah's signs and Nineveh's repentance and see how he applies it to the Pharisees and scribes that he's talking to. When we read Matthew 12-38 earlier, we saw that the Pharisees are demanding to see a sign from Jesus. Now, why are they asking this? What kind of sign are they looking for? What is this sign supposed to prove? The verse starts with the then and they answered Jesus. So this verse does not start a new conversation. It carries on the context from earlier in the chapter. So we need to rewind a little bit. If we wind back far enough, chapter 11 was what we covered in the previous video, and we saw that Jesus and his disciples had been out breaching the gospel in various cities. We didn't cover the ending of Matthew 11, but Jesus ends the chapter with those very well-known words, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And for the sake of time, we can't cover it in detail in this video. But in the first half of the chapter, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and the Pharisees tried to accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath to destroy him, even though they couldn't deny the healings and miracles that Jesus did. The crucial point is that the passage is about Jesus. It's not about you and your repentance. That's the crucial thing. Now, in verses 22-23 of Matthew 12, we see that Jesus healed someone, and it says that the people were amazed. And we can see that they recognize that this must be the son of David. In the next verse, the Pharisees, on the other hand, they heard it and accused Jesus of doing this miracle by the power of Satan. And a few verses later, this is essentially what Jesus meant by blaspheming the Holy Spirit, that the people saw an amazing thing that the Holy Spirit did, revealing the son of David in doing so, and yet the Pharisees attributed this to the power of Satan. So we're starting to see the theme here. Jesus is doing amazing miracles in this chapter. Many people are amazed, but the Pharisees are not. They detest what Jesus is doing, even though what he's doing is a good thing. Now, although we don't get it so much from this chapter in Matthew, we do say occasionally throughout the Gospels, particularly in John, that the goal of Jesus doing his miracles and doing his works is that people would see those works and they would believe on him. For example, in John 10, 37 and 38, Jesus said, If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you believe me not, believe the works that you may know and believe, that the Father is in me and I in him. In John 5.20 it says that the Father loves the Son and shows him all things that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these that you may marvel. And that's essentially what happened in Matthew 12. The people saw his works and were amazed, but not the Pharisees. In the next chapter of Matthew, Jesus actually couldn't do works because people wouldn't believe. And of course, in the previous video, we looked at the cities that did not repent and the cities that would have repented, and we saw in context that it meant to believe in the Christ that was being preached, and that context has led us to doing the current video. Now, what Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 12 is very important here in completely demolishing the repent of your sins gospel. He says in verse 33, either make the tree good, or his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt, for the tree is known by his fruit. Now ironically, this is the verse where they will say, well, so you have to repent of your sins because you have your corrupt sinful tree, you have to turn from all your sins and make a better tree. But let me just illustrate to you why this is so stupid. Okay. Almost universally, anybody who is not free grace, has some form of works, will define fruit in passages such as this as works. This is incorrect, but let's hold on to such an idea for the sake of this illustration. So if you are full of sins, or have a sinful lifestyle, they will say that the fruit, the works are corrupt, so you need to repent and produce good fruit. However, repenting of sins, correcting your behavior, stop producing rotten fruit, stop producing good fruit, is trying to correct the tree by changing the fruit on it. And although this wouldn't apply to sinless perfectionism, those who are on the Lordship Spectrum Disorder will acknowledge that a saved Christian may stumble and sin, so they have a tree that simultaneously produces good and bad fruit. But Jesus makes it very clear that fruit is not the problem, the tree itself is the problem, and there is a dichotomy presented here. Either the tree is made good, and therefore the fruit is good, or the tree is made corrupt, therefore the fruit is corrupt. There is no diagnosis for a tree that produces good and bad fruit, you either fit in one category or the other. So what does it mean then that a good tree produces good fruit? What does that look like? Well, the next verse tells us, O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment. So we see what this means, it's about what we speak, it's about what we say, and this makes perfect sense because the Pharisees said that Jesus cast out devils by Beelzebub. Jesus didn't accuse them of blaspheming the Holy Spirit because they were just drinking too much and going around sleeping with women and all their evil works in their sins. It's because of what they said that's how they blaspheme the Spirit. And what they said is a reflection of what's in their heart because that's how we identify a good tree concerning the Gospel, for example. In Romans 10, 10 it says that for with the heart, man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So let's start to bring things to an end and see how we tie all this in with Jesus' reference to Nineveh's repentance. So the Pharisees and scribes demanded to see a sign from Jesus, and Jesus calls them an evil and adulterous generation, and there shall be no sign given other than the sign of the prophet Jonah. Now earlier I handpicked just a few verses out of many more actually to suggest that Jesus' miracles and signs and works were to get people to recognize that he is the Christ. So why would he say this? Why is it evil and adulterous to seek for a sign if Jesus came to do signs to show that he's the Christ? Well there's a few things going on here. The Pharisees that Jesus is speaking to here have already seen a sign and they attributed it to the work of Satan. Why are they then asking for another sign? What sort of sign do they need? Will they not just attribute any other signs to that of Satan? We can't speak too much about this now but like in my experience false prophets and work salvation idiots do this constantly, like you show them something and then they question you about it as if you never showed them. Right? Like for example you know I really released that repent of your sins documentary, right? And it talks about repentance. It goes on for two hours and I still get comments by people saying the Bible told people to repent. John preached repentance. It's like yes I know that's what the documentary was about. If you'd only watched it before you'd comment you'd know that that's what it's talking about. So then why are they commenting as if I don't know that the Bible says that when that's the very premise of the documentary? Or what they'll do is they'll like quote a bunch of other verses that I didn't include in the documentary and say absolutely nothing about the ones that were mentioned because they want to deflect your attention away to some other verses somewhere. It's called what about or is what it's called. And there's a very similar thing going on here. You know the Pharisees are demanding a sign when they've already seen one and they've already associated it with Satan. So why ask for another sign? What difference will it make? What's the point? They're just reprobates who are full of debate. They're evil and adulterers. So the one sign that Jesus will give them is reflective of just like Jonah was three days and three nights in the Wales belly the Son of Man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Now there is obviously a debate about whether Jesus went to hell three days and nights or whether he went to heaven or the good side of Hades or whatever. We can't delve into that issue in this video but in any case the Pharisees and their generation they wouldn't see where Jesus went for those three days anyway. They would see his death, burial and resurrection. So that's the sign that Jonah is pointing towards Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. That's the three days. And just as Jesus before the time of Paul uses the sign of Jonah to point towards the three days of his death, burial and resurrection. So does Paul later likewise define this as the very gospel or the good news of salvation itself? He said in 1 Corinthians 15 in the first four verses, moreover brethren I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you which also you have received and wherein you stand by which also you are saved if you keep in memory what I preached unto you unless you have believed in vain for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. So we see in 1 Corinthians 15 the death, burial and resurrection of Christ is the gospel. Your lifestyle change is not the gospel. Okay you are saved if you believe and receive it and assuming that you keep it in memory and this was the first thing Paul delivered on to the Corinthians which is the same gospel he had received. So if we tie in how Paul defines the gospel with what Jesus is saying regarding his three days and nights, this is the repentance Jesus is telling them to do. Seeing his mighty miracles, the Pharisees should have been amazed and should have recognized that he was the son of David. Instead they attributed such to the power of Satan yet demanded another sign. The only sign that would be presented to them would be the death, burial and resurrection of Christ but it is highly likely these Pharisees would not believe in that either especially after having blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Now when we look at Nineveh's repentance they didn't need signs and wonders, they just repented merely at the preaching. It's not in any way evident that the people of Nineveh knew anything about Jonah's ordeal in the belly of a whale in the previous chapter but there's nothing that indicates they knew anything about that. And to further qualify that this isn't about turning from sins, it's about acknowledging the Christ. The next verse goes on to tell us in Matthew 12 that the Queen of the South travelled huge distances just to hear the wisdom of Solomon and the Pharisees are rejecting the Christ who is greater than Solomon. Her travelling to hear wisdom has got nothing to do with her turning from her sinful lifestyle. So if this is all about turning from sins this is a terrible analogy for Jesus to be using. So in conclusion we see that Nineveh was told to repent of their wicked deeds. Now we don't know what those deeds were but that's what Jonah told them and just by hearing the preaching they turned from their wicked ways and consequently God did not destroy the city. The Pharisees were shown Jesus' miracles and were supposed to repent by recognizing that he is the Son of David, the Christ, the Holy One etc. but they rejected him and attributed him to the work of Satan. Consequently blaspheming the Spirit in this way they have no forgiveness in the life to come, i.e. condemned to hell. Nineveh's repentance from sin to save their city from destruction does not then make the literal instruction repent of your sins to escape hell and be saved. Rather it's a carnal illustration of heavenly and spiritual things. The Old Testament contains many carnal references and physical things to represent heavenly things and some of those things teaches about salvation and about the Christ but they're not salvific requirements in and of themselves. For example the Old Testament sacrifices are carnal representations of the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is necessary for salvation but maintaining the sacrifices are not as Hebrews explains. The Old Testament circumcision of the skin is representative of the circumcision of the heart made without hands but circumcision of the skin is not a salvific requirement as Paul explains. Man could not obtain righteousness by the Old Testament law but it pictured the righteousness of Christ who came to fulfill that law. Failing to meet even one law means that we fail the whole law so it cannot save as James explains. Following this then Nineveh's repentance from sin to save their city from destruction is an Old Testament representation of the New Testament repentance from unbelief and dead works etc for salvation but turning from sins is not in of itself a salvific instruction. Nineveh's repentance is a picture of New Testament salvific repentance but it's not the same literal instruction. The literal instruction is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved repent and believe the gospel see his works and confess that he is Lord Jesus Christ the son of David and when I say confess I don't mean pray a prayer or verbally make a point of saying he's Lord he's I mean acknowledge and admit that he's the Lord as opposed to denying him that's what I mean it's in reference to what you believe. Consequently then just as Nineveh repenting of their wicked ways resulted in their city not being destroyed repenting of your unbelief and recognizing that you are dead in sin and turning towards the Christ believing in him will result in your soul not being destroyed in hell. The Pharisees should have repented of unbelief and the Christ but they didn't even after seeing miracles so the Ninevites who repented of sin just because of preaching alone will rise up in judgment against them. This is no nonsense Christianity reminding you that nowhere in the Bible does it say repent of your sins to be saved.