What does Jonah 3 teach us in Nineveh, the City of Sin?

In this expository sermon on Jonah 3, Dr. Toby Holt of New Geneva Theological Seminary teaches that God's sovereign grace, not human worthiness, is the cause of repentance: when Jonah preached an eight-word message of judgment to Nineveh, the most wicked pagan city of its day, the entire city repented from the greatest to the least because God had ordained and enabled their repentance. Holt shows from a Reformed perspective that salvation is of the Lord, that God's warnings of judgment are means He uses to call sinners to repentance, and that when Scripture says God 'relented' it speaks anthropomorphically of a God who enfolds our turning into a divine decree set before we were born.

Questions this sermon answers:

1. What is the main issue in this passage? In this expository sermon on Jonah 3, Dr.

2. How does this text point us to Christ? It shows the need for God's grace and the hope fulfilled in the gospel.

3. How should Christians respond? With faith, repentance, and renewed trust in the Lord's Word.

"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." - Jonah 3:1-2 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.