When we read prophecies of judgment in the Bible, how do we view God?  God’s judgment against an evil city or an evil nation is nothing more than the sort of judgment that Achan Leon or I here give to someone who has broken the rules.  The loving nature of God does not mean that he is so tender hearted that he refuses to punish.  Rather, God judges and punishes human societies because He is just, and to us sometimes he might seem a bit strict the way He talks in the Bible about judging people for their sins.  It is a matter we do not like to think about often, because if we are wise we are aware of how much we fall short of God’s biblical standard.

Nonetheless, let us talk about God’s judgment and mercy today as they relate to the subject of prophecy.  Specifically, let us look at two examples of God’s judgment and mercy and ask ourselves what it means for our own personal life.  Are there general principles in prophecy that we can understand for our own benefit in our own troublesome times?  Let us discuss these matters recognizing that the prophecies we discuss were not written only for a long time ago, but for our benefit as well.

Yet Forty Days And Nineveh Will Be Destroyed

Was Jonah a false prophet?  He pronounced judgment on the heathen city of Nineveh, the capital of the brutal and once-mighty Assyrian Empire, and that judgment did not come to pass.  Was Jonah therefore not a genuine prophet of God?  What do you think?  After some initial reluctance on Jonah’s side, we read of the message of Jonah to the wicked Assyrians and their response to God’s judgment in Jonah 3:1-10.   Jonah 3:1-10 reads as follows:  “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.”  So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.  Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent.  And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk.  Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.  Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.  And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water.  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.  Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish.  Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had aid He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”

So, was Jonah a false prophet?  No.  He was certainly a reluctant prophet.  He may have stated a bit too gleefully in his preaching that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days, but he was not a false prophet.  Even though his message from God had no qualifications, the response of Nineveh to repent of their violence and wickedness and to fast and humiliate themselves before God, seeking His mercy, was enough for God to withhold judgment against them.  That is His right—He has decided that if a nation has judgment pronounced against it for its sins, and it repents of its wicked ways, that judgment is suspended.  It is entirely within the rights of an authority to withhold punishment if there is the proper spirit of repentance.  I grant mercy to those who show repentance, regardless of how strict I am, and the same is true for God.  What this means is that there is a chance to avoid the severest of punishment so long as one has a repentant attitude.

But still, Jonah pronounced judgment against Nineveh for its sins.  And Nineveh did not fall in the 8^th century BC when Jonah preached against it.  Nineveh later lapsed from their repentant spirit and continued in their mass murders, their raping and pillaging of cities, and their brutal conquest of other nations.  Was Nineveh warned again of judgment?  Indeed it was.  We read of that warning in the book of Nahum.  Let us turn to Nahum 3:1-7 and read a small part of that warning message against Nineveh given around 640BC, a little more than 100 years after the time of Jonah.  Nahum 3:1-7 reads as follows:  “Woe to the bloody city!  It is all full of lies and robbery.  Its victim never departs.  The noise of a whip and the noise of rattling wheels, of galloping horses, of clattering chariots!  Horsemen charge with bight sword and glittering spear.  There is a multitude of slain, a great number of bodies, countless corpses—they stumble over the corpses—because of the multitude of harlotries of the seductive harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations through her harlotries, and families through her sorceries.  “Behold, I am against you,” says the Lord of hosts; “I will lift up your skirts over your face, I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame.  I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.  It shall come to pass that all who look upon you will flee from you, and say, ‘Nineveh is laid waste!  Who will bemoan her?  Where shall I seek comforters for you?’ ”

Did Nineveh repent at the warning of Nahum?  No.  At this time the king of Assyria was a fierce scholar by the name of Asshurbanipal.  He and his empire were fighting a desperate and brutal warfare on four fronts, against the Egyptians in the southwest, against the Babylonians in the southeast, against the Medes in east, and against the Scythians in the north.  Within a generation Nineveh itself would fall to the armies of the Medes and Babylonians, and the city would be so completely destroyed by a flooding river directed into its walls that historians for centuries thought that Nineveh was a lie of the Bible and that neither it nor the Assyrian Empire ever existed.  That was until 1840, when the explorer Sir Austen Henry Layard found the ruins of Nineveh in what is now northern Iraq.  There are still a few Assyrian villages in the area of what once was Nineveh.  One of my roommates as a college student was an Assyrian.  They are still around today in this world.  You would think that this dramatic proof of God’s judgment in history would encourage historians to believe in the reality of God’s judgment.  But, sadly, that is not the case.  But the ruins are still there to this day for those who want to brave Iraqi Kurdistan to find them, even if many of Assyria’s treasures were stolen by the Germans for their museums.

Jerusalem Shall Become Heaps Of Ruins

Did God ever relent judgment pronounced against any other nation?  Indeed, He has.  We have at least one other example of this with regards to the people of Judah.  Let us examine what similarities exist between the judgment pronounced against Judah and that we have just read against Nineveh.  In the time of righteous King Hezekiah of Judah, the prophet Micah, from the town of Moresheth, gave a very fierce warning about Jerusalem.  We read of this warning in Micah 3:8-12.  Micah 3:8-12 reads as follows:  “But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.  Now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build up Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity: her heads judge for a bribe, her priests teach for pay, and her prophets divine for money.  Yet the lean on the Lord, and say, “Is not the Lord among us?  No harm can come upon us.”  Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the temple like the bare hills of the forest.”

What was the response of the people of Judah and their leaders to the fierce message of the prophet Micah?  How did they respond to Micah’s call for justice?  They repented.  We read of their repentance in Jeremiah 26:17-19.  Jeremiah 26:17-19 reads:  “Then certain of the elders of the land rose up and spoke to all the assembly of the people, saying, “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts:  “Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the temple like the bare hills of the forest.” ’ “Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah ever put him to death?  Did he not fear the Lord and seek the Lord’s favor?  And the Lord relented concerning the doom which He had pronounced against them.  But we are doing great evil against ourselves.”  So we see that Hezekiah and the people of Judah heard the warning of God and repented, and God refused to destroy them, saving them from the mighty Assyrian Empire.

But what happened when the people of Jerusalem again rejected God’s ways and followed the wicked lusts of their heart.  What did they do when Jeremiah prophesied God’s judgment against them?  Did they repent?  No.  Let us look earlier in Jeremiah 26, in verses one through eight to read of what happened when God intentionally sought to give a warning message to Jerusalem.  Jeremiah 26:1-8 reads as follows:  “In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the Lord, saying, “Thus says the Lord:  ‘Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them.  Do not diminish a word.  Perhaps everyone will listen and turn from his evil way, that I may relent concerning the calamity which I purpose to bring on them because of the evil of their doings.’  And you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, “If you will not listen to Me, to walk in My law which I have set before you, to heed the words of My servants the prophets, whom I sent to you, both rising up early and sending them (but you have not heeded), then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” ’ ”  So the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord.  Now it happened, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, that the priests and the prophets and the people seized him, saying, “You will surely die!”

Why did Judah reject God’s warning through Jeremiah?  Why did the priests and prophets of Judah, those who were supposed to teach Judah about God’s word, wish to kill God’s genuine prophet?  Because instead of teaching the law of God they were themselves corrupt.  They were hardened in their sins, like the Assyrians of the time of Asshurbanipal.  Despite knowing that God would relent in His judgment if they repented, they refused to repent, trying to kill the messenger rather than heed his message.  And so, like the Assyrians, their proud city was laid waste, their temple mount flattened, their treasures stolen.  And then they learned at least part of their lesson, that God will not be mocked forever, but that He is a just and strict and severe God and not only a loving and merciful one.  We need to be aware of both God’s mercy and God’s judgment, lest we despair at our own sins or lest we become hardened in them.

Conclusion

What does this mean for us?  Is there corruption and violence in our societies?  Do we too face divine judgment for having rejected God’s ways?  When God sends a drought or a flood on us, do we repent of our sins and seek the mercy of God, or do we point fingers at each other?  When our economy stumbles, do we try to play kick the can, or kick the cat, so that someone else has to pay the price while we try to win elections on lies and promises that cannot be met?  What kind of leaders do we support, those who tell us harsh and ugly truths or those that tell us pretty lies?  We know that God pronounced judgment for sin against both Nineveh and Jerusalem.  The first time they repented of their sins and God relented and did not condemn them.  The next time they were hardened in their sins, and God judged them, and their fall was great.  Are we prepared to repent, or will we feel the harsh hand of God’s judgment on our own nations, our own families, our own selves.  While there is yet time, may we repent, so that God may relent.  For why should we die like fools, like the Assyrians of Asshurbanipal’s time or the Jews of Jeremiah’s time, cursed for all time in the Bible for our hardness of hearts?