Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...35

The Spirit of God lead Jesus into the wilderness. While there He fasts forty days. We have been looking at other pericopes in which forty days are involved. Today we look at a group that received revelation that God was going to judge them at the end of forty days. In response they fasted as a sign of repentance. They were the people of Nineveh to whom Jonah reluctantly preached.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time (Jonah 3 NIV. )He was to warn the inhabitants of Nineveh in forty days their city would be overthrown as a judgement on their cruelty and wickedness from God Almighty. The capital city of Assyria, Nineveh indeed housed the leadership of a barbaric, powerful army known for its enslavement, mistreatment and torture of defeated peoples. Jonah literally ran from this assignment because he knew God's mercy would be offered to the hated enemy of his beloved Israel.

When they heard the clear message of doom, they believed God and declared a fast. They stopped normal commerce and living. They sat in sackcloth, the Mediterranian symbol for sorrow, repented and called out for mercy. From the king to the streetcleaner, from the young to the old, human to animal every living thing fasted and hoped God would not allow the overthrow to be carried out.

The text of Jonah 3 does not express, but does imply, that the fast continued until the fortieth day, the day of judgement, passed uneventful. Jonah, we are told, delivers the message then sets up a make-shift camp east of the city and waits to see what would happen. East of the city, perhaps so he could see the overthrow by the first beams of the rising sun on the fortieth morning. When the day of doom broke bright, clear, cloudless and overthrow-less, Jonah saw God's mercy and he wept. He had so hoped for the overthrow.

Jesus Himself pointed to a connection with Jonah. First, Jesus said Jonah's three-day experience in the fish serves as a forshadowing of His three-day experience in the tomb. He would come out of what seemed a certain end just as Jonah had (Matthew 12.40 NIV.)

Secondly Jesus said the people of Nineveh, who heard the warning of God and repented, would stand in stark, condemning contrast to the listeners in Jesus day. They would not repent in response to God's warning through Jesus (Matthew 12.41 NIV.) Knowing God's revelation dims in comparison to acting according to what we know of God's revelation. Action not assent honors the God who give us fair warning.

Jesus said in Luke 11:30, "For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will be the Son of Man to this generation." Jonah served the Ninevites as a sign of mercy in the face of deserved judgement. He signalled God's willingness to forgive and avert destruction. He was a sign of God's nature in relation to humanity's broken nature. He was a second chance calling others to their second chance. In all this Jonah was a reluctant revelator and a disappointed observer of Divine mercy. Jesus actively, longingly sought to show the mercy of God and to reconcile us to the Father. He wept over a city, Jerusalem, because they did not heed the call of God to repent and enter the mercy provided.

Like the Ninevites, we fast and wait for the mercy of God. Rather than a deadline for doom, our forty days move us to the "line that's been drawn through the ages...on Golgotha's hill" (Gather, "It Is Finished.) We await Jesus condemning sin in His body on the cross and the release of overwhelming grace and mercy. May our forty days be filled with grateful anticipation because in Jesus we find something greater than Jonah (Matthew 12.41 NIV.)