What does it look like for a nation to embrace repentance and what happens to those nations that don't? There are two examples in Scripture that I would like to direct our attention to in the next couple articles. We've looked at the need to confess and repent of our sins and some examples in Scripture that describe this happening on the individual level. This has helped us to grasp what confession and repentance mean and to show us how God extends mercy and pardons those who do so. So, what does it look like for this to take place on a national level?
The first example is that of Jonah and the Assyrians. We're all probably familiar with the story of Jonah, so we'll skip over the part about the big fish. The message that God gives Jonah to deliver to his arch-enemies is one of imminent judgment: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (Jonah 3:4). Nineveh was the capitol of Assyria, so this message was delivered at the political and cultural center of the nation. The Assyrians were at the height of their game, having conquered most of Mesopotamia. So, there was really no reason for them to fear. Who would be able to overthrow them? The shocking thing is that they responded to Jonah's message. Here's what the text says: "The people of Nineveh believed God" (3:5). This message even reached the king and he decreed that all the people (and animals!) join him in repentance by fasting, wearing sackcloth, and covering themselves with ashes. Amazingly, the people did this and "God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, [and he] relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it" (3:10). The people repented and God relented. As for the way they showed their repentance, here's how one author describes it. "Dressing in sackcloth, sitting with ashes poured over one's head, forgoing the strength and satisfaction of food—these humble actions picture a pliant agreement with the accuser and an earnest desire to be forgiven."
This account of national repentance is incredible for a number of reasons. It is incredible that the Assyrians repented. Like I said above, there was really no reason for the Assyrians to respond this way. They had nothing to fear, especially the word of a single prophet from a tiny country they basically already conquered. Second, it is incredible that the Assyrians' knew that they should respond in repentance, especially since Jonah's message did not actually make this condition explicit. Jonah simply pronounced an imminent judgment. But, implicit in the pronouncement and the forty-day warning was a call to repent (see Jeremiah 18:7-8). Third, it is incredible that God showed mercy to the Assyrians. This is what Jonah feared all along. He did not want God to deliver his enemies. He wanted them to be destroyed! The Assyrians were brutal warriors and idolaters who deserved God's judgment, but God is a "gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster" (4:2; cf. Exodus 34:6-7). When they turned from their sins, God turned from the disaster he said he would bring upon them.
We may think that this is just a nice story from a long time ago in a land far, far away, but did you know that our country has a history of national days of repentance? Read and think about these words that President Lincoln wrote as he declared April 30, 1863, a national day of repentance: "Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.
"And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
"And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
"Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
"All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace" (emphasis mine).
I'm struck by how prophetic Lincoln's words are. What if our leaders would proclaim such a day and what if the church responded in leading the way? As the king of Nineveh asks, "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish" (Jonah 3:9).
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