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Is Your City Any Different Than Nineveh ?

 Jon 1:2  Arise, go to Nineveh , that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

Often as people read the bible, they make the mistake of separating the people they read about from the present generation, thinking that they were somehow different.  Is that really so?  When we read in the book of Jonah, we see a city God was about to judge, was it much different than the cities we live in today?

God cared about their city, which is the whole reason He sent Jonah, He didn’t want Nineveh to be judged, but He wanted them to repent.  That is the same for our cities; God cares and wants them to turn from their sin, which is why He sends His people to warn them before it is too late.

The people were ignorant about the things of God.  The bible speaks of 120,000 that can’t discern their right hand from their left, some say he is speaking of children, but it could also refer to their complete ignorance about the things of God.  Is it any different now?  There are thousands who don’t know how to be saved! They are ignorant that all have sinned and that they are heading for a lost eternity.

 God said their wickedness had risen up before His eyes.  The only specific sin that is mentioned is violence.  One of the same words used of the sin that caused God to judge the earth in Noah’s time.  The same sin Jesus speaks of when He said to hate your brother is the equivalent to murder!  If we harbor a grudge or allow anger to reside in our hearts we become guilty of the sin of Nineveh and court the same judgment! Is your city different from theirs?  We can only imagine the other sins of Nineveh !

The very man God sent, didn’t want to go!  He ran the other way, and when God got his attention, he only did a halfway job.  The city was a three day walk, and he walked only one day into it and declared his quick warning and quit.  Are you different from him? Has God called you and you are going the other way?  Are you doing only a half-way job of witnessing for Jesus?

There was a coming judgment.  “Yet 40 days” said Jonah, We don’t know the exact day Christ will return, but we do know we have to stand and give an account of ourselves to Him.

Repentance was the only escape!  They repented from the king down to the servants, and the judgment was turned away.  Today, unless there is repentance, there will be a judgment.  It is the only way to escape. Flee to Jesus! There is no difference between their city and ours!

In Jonah’s time they hearkened to the warning and repented, but about 150 years later, God had to send another prophet, Nahum, and they didn’t repent in his time, the judgment came.  The city was destroyed. Are our cities any different then Nineveh ?  Let us as individuals choose to hear the warning of the Lord and repent and escape the judgment to come.