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Weekly Message

Meditation of the week: Psalms 91: 1-16

Text: Matthew 12: 33-41

Word Title: The men of Nineveh shall condemn this generation in judgment 

         After about a thousand years after Adam, God saw that the thoughts and imaginations of the hearts of all the people in the world continued to be evil, and chose one Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord God at that time, and asked him to build a Ark for 120 years.

       As he had built the Ark for so long periods of time, he preached  for repentance saying, God would judge them by the flood, but no one repented from evil thoughts, and imaginations of their hearts.

         God sent two angels to judge Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone, giving a message of judgment to Lot, the only righteous man at that time, saying that God would bring down the whole city, but no one listened to repent,  to him,    eventually the cities became ash and collapsed totally.

         Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees who were hypocrites  not believing  in him.  The Lord Jesus spoke unto them in a  parables of  their hypocrites within them:

” O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

35A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

36But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

37For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.“(Matt. 12: 34-37)

         In Noah’s day, God saw that people’s thoughts and imaginations of their hearts were continued to be only evil, and God, who judged them all; now he became a man as the Son of man, and said the same message unto to the evil hypocrites. He said that all their evil deeds came out of their evil hearts. God is still see not only the acts of man, but he sees the acts if the acts are out of good hearts or from evil hearts.

          For an  example, even if man speaks harshly to someone else, if it comes from a good conscience in that person’s heart, God will see it as good, but even though he speaks politely, if it comes from an evil heart. In that case, God sees it as evil.

         Hypocrites who came to the Lord seem to want to learn something by calling Jesus as a teacher, saying, “Master, we would see a sign from thee.” Lord Jesus immediately answered back tothem:

“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

40For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

41The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.. “(Matthew 12: 39-41)

          The Lord is telling them that Jonah, who cried repentance to the Ninevites hundreds of years ago, was the sign unto the Ninevites. The Bible testifies how Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites at that time:

” So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.

4And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.“(Jonah 3: 3-4)

          Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. for 300 years, from B.C. from 900 B.C. For 600 years, the Assyrian Empire expanded, conquered and ruled the Middle East, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and parts of today’s Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Since around 1250 B.C., the Assyrians had started using war chariots and iron weapons, which were far superior to bronze weapons. These tools and tactics made Assyrian army the most powerful military force of its time, both doctrinally and technologically advanced.

           During the reign of King Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.), Assyrians welded the empire into an even greater force: he conquered the provinces in Anatolia, Judah, and Israel, and even sacking Jerusalem. As written in the book of second King, in the time of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib sent his general to devastate the city of Jerusalem, God sent a the angel of the LORD, and killed 18500 of Assyrians in a night. The king, Sennacherib relocated their capital city to Nineveh. Assyrian Empire terrified other kingdoms only hearing its name not comparable much more beyond America nowadays.

          Now the word of God testifies what kind repentance Assyrians showed unto the LORD God upon receiving one sentence of the word of God saying,  “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” preached by a prophet without name:

” So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

6For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

7And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

9Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?“(Jon 3: 5-9)

         God, seeing that their repentance  sincerely from their whole heart, accepted their true repentance:

“ And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. (John 3:10)

       Before God spoke to them through Jonah, he did not send any kind of famines, earthquakes, or plagues to give them as warning, but gave just a simple word of warning, and the people of all the nations repented to God with one heart. But nowadays, even in the last days when Jews, Gentiles, and even most churches are apostatizing to God, the Lord has warned the world by sending many kinds of warning messages, famines, earthquakes, and plagues, as well as through the book of Revelation, the message of judgment in the day of great tribulation. Those who live in this generation, even though they have been given the words of extreme judgment, we have to think before God with miserable hearts whether they are doing repentance of  their sins as the people of Nineveh.

         Just as the prophet Jonah became a sign uno the people of Nineveh at that time, the Lord Jesus Christ, much greater than Jonah, true sign unto this generation of the world has been driven out of the church, knocking on the door in suffering patience.

        And reminding of  Job’s desperate repentance before God , let us seriously think about ourselves. Even though Job was man of righteousness and upright even recognized by God, passing through extreme suffering under the permission of God, finally he found out his own righteousness deeply rooted in his heart. The Holy Spirit must have thrown him out to kneel down in the ashes to repent finding himself just comforting himself with his honorable actions manifested from his own righteousness in the heart. Once again, we must take into consideration of  the words of the Lord had spoken to the hypocrites at that time:

“The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” (Matthew 12:41).

Amen! Hallelujah!