Please turn to 2 Timothy 2 where I will begin reading in verse 23. We read in 2 Timothy 2:23-26:
But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
This is the passage that I wanted to look at today.
Let me read 2 Timothy 2:23 again:
But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
Have you ever heard someone say, “There is no such thing as a dumb question”? Maybe this is true, but God says that there certainly are such things as “foolish and unlearned questions.” He also tells us what to do if we are faced with “foolish and unlearned questions.” We are to avoid them.
I was trying to think of a foolish question as an example to give for what God says here. I think that I have heard this and that you have also probably heard this recently, but someone will come to me and say, “Show me where in the Bible it says that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day.”
It is not foolish if what they mean is, “Show me the Biblical evidence.” However, what some people try to do is to say, “Show me a verse where it is written very plainly in the Bible that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day.”
Of course, we cannot show them a verse like this because the verse does not exist. But, you see, they know this. They know that there is no verse that definitely states outright that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day.
So we try to explain to them that we need to compare “spiritual things with spiritual,” that God has sealed up His Word “till the time of the end,” and that He has placed in the Bible a Biblical calendar of history, which is very exact. We go on to explain that when we put all of these things together, we find that the Bible is teaching that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day.
Of course, most of the time, all of this just goes in one ear and out the other. Then they say, “You have yet to show me in the Bible where it says that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. You have not done this yet.”
So this is a foolish question because they really do not want an answer. They just want to present something that is favorable to their point of view and their own understanding of the Bible. They want this desperately not to be true, and so they will ask a question like this knowing that it cannot be answered.
This is similar to when we were having discussions with the Muslims. They would ask a question like, “Show me in the Bible where Jesus very directly says that He is God.” Yet in the Bible, we know that Jesus says this all over the place. He says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The Bible states that He is “the Creator.” The Bible says that He was “the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and that “the Word was made flesh.” It is just all over the Bible that Jesus is God. In Isaiah, it says of the Son that His name shall be “The everlasting Father” and “The mighty God.” But because Jesus did not specifically say this, they fail to understand that Christ is the Word and that He wrote the whole Bible.
So you can point out many of these verses. You can point out that when Thomas saw Jesus after His resurrection and Jesus said, “Reach hither thy finger,” and so forth, that Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.” Christ did not correct him as He definitely should have if He were not God. Instead, He said, “Thomas…thou hast believed,” which confirmed that this was an absolute truth. Christ is God. Christ is eternal God.
So the Muslims frame the question this way, “Show me where Jesus says this in the Bible,” for example, a made up verse like John 15:80—I do not think that there is an 80th verse in John 15—which states, “By the way, I am eternal God.” But no, God does not make this kind of a statement.
So when someone says, “Show me,” it is a foolish question because they really do not want to know. They want to ask a question that they know cannot be answered. It is not a seeking after the truth with these types of questions, but it is a seeking after their own point of view and their own understanding of what the Bible says because they do not want to hear the truth. They do not want to hear the information from the Bible that proves this. No, “Just show me the verse.”
So God tells us that if we are faced with this kind of a question, avoid it. This word for “avoid” is also translated as “refuse” and “reject.” Therefore, it does not necessarily mean that you cannot respond to the person; but at some point you are going to have to say, “I am sorry. I cannot keep this conversation going with you because you are not listening. You are not listening to the Bible,” and then you just move on.
This happens a lot when you are handing out tracts, too. You are handing out tracts when someone comes up and wants to get into a conversation with you about something in the Bible and maybe it this question of, “Where in the Bible does it say May 21.” Then after a couple of minutes, you realize that this is not very productive. It is not fruitful. People are passing you by who are not getting tracts because you are standing there having a conversation with a person who does not even want to hear the answers from the Bible, and so we just politely say, “Excuse me,” and then we turn our attention back to the people who are coming and going. We avoid the question.
As far as “unlearned questions” are concerned, the word “unlearned” is made up of two Greek words. One is a negative particle that just means “no.” The other word that is attached to this word is a word that means “taught” or “learned,” and so it means “not taught” or “not learned.”
Referring to the Bible itself, if someone is asking a question that is not something that is wholesome or good or not something that the Bible would teach, remember that “avoid” can also mean “refuse” and “reject.” It does not only mean to go away from it or to turn away from it.
What is an example of an unlearned question? An unlearned question is when people say, “What are you going to do on May 22nd when this does not happen? What are you going to do then?”
We answer them just as we have heard Mr. Camping answer them in a good way. He says, “Well, what am I going to do if God is not the Saviour?” I do not think that Mr. Camping has said what I am adding to this, but he could say, “What am I going to do if the Bible is not the Word of God?”
We make these kinds of statements because we know that the Bible teaches that Christ is the Saviour, and we know that the Bible teaches that the Bible is the Word of God, and we know that the Bible teaches that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. So it is right and it is correct, according to 2 Timothy 2:23, to avoid this question because they are not really interested in all of this information from the Bible that proves this date, with all of the confirmations that God has given, such as 2011 being the 7,000th year from the flood and May 21 being the 8400th day of the 23-year Great Tribulation period. Also on that very day, in the Hebrew calendar, this is the 17th day of the 2nd month, which fits in perfectly with the day that God shut the door on Noah’s ark. After a warning of “yet seven days,” God shut the door on the ark and He secured the safety of Noah and his family. In the same act, He also made it impossible for anyone else to get into the ark because what God “shutteth…no man openeth.” Yet people want to keep bringing this up, “What are you going to do?”
I like to think of Noah when God said to him, “Yet seven days,” which was the 10th day of the 2nd month of Noah’s 600th year. Noah had one week, and Noah being a “preacher of righteousness” would have sent forth this information as far and as wide as he could have for the remaining time that he had left. He would have told everyone that the judgment of God and the wrath of God through a flood was just a certain number of days away. He had just a very short period of time left and it is very possible that Noah would have had neighbors and people who were concerned who would have come to him and said, “Noah, you are saying that this is going to be on the 17th day of the 2nd month. What are you going to do on the 18th day? What are you going to do on that 18th day when this does not happen?”
Would this have been a wise question for someone to have asked Noah? Or would this have been an unlearned question, since God had told this to Noah directly? This information of when the flood would be came to Noah right from the mouth of God, and so Noah would have said to others, “God told me. God is the one.” Yet since others do not want to accept this and believe this and since doubt is in their mind, they would say to someone like Noah, “What about the 18th day?”
Noah would not have entertained this question because it would have been pointless. Noah would have most likely said, “God told me that in seven days, the flood is coming. So I am not going to think about the 18th day. You should not either because on the 18th day, the waters are going to rise and you are going to be in serious trouble, along with everyone else in the world. Here you are wasting time, precious time, valuable time. There is nothing but a few days remaining until this day of judgment, and yet you are all concerned about foolish and unlearned questions.” Noah could have also said to them, “Do you not think that it is time for you to just believe God and act upon this?”
The Ninevites heard a message concerning “time and judgment” when Jonah warned, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Period. He said nothing more, nothing additional, no “signs and wonders,” no miracles. He was a foreigner who just came into their city and declared a bold and outlandish thing when he said, “The great city of Nineveh is going to be destroyed.” They had no evidence that we know of to believe him, and yet they did believe what he said. They did not pester him with “foolish and unlearned questions,” which anyone can do. They did not say to Jonah, “How do we know that God said this? We do not know you. We do not know anything about you. Our religious people do not know anything about this forty days. Why do we not know?” and just go on and on and on.
If someone wants to respond in a contrary way to what God has said, they are free to do so. They can do this in a thousand different ways; and yet all the while that they are doing this, time is elapsing, time is passing, time is fleeting away. This is not helpful to them in any way, and so God tells us to avoid these kinds of questions.
Jesus also avoided them. If we go to Matthew 21:23-27, we read:
And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
They asked a foolish question. Actually, when the scribes and Pharisees would often come to Him, their questions were of such a character that they wanted to trap Jesus. They were “foolish and unlearned questions,” and so not every question is a good question. Many questions are raised in order to promote the viewpoint of the one who is raising them.
When we read of these leaders of Israel faced with a question, is it not sad to see them huddle up and get together and say, “If we say this, He will say that; if we say this other thing, He will say that other thing”? Are they seeking truth? Are they seeking truth or are they seeking some kind of political maneuver that they can get out of the question that they are asking?
Is this not a keen insight into the churches and congregations of our day and the spiritual leaders within the church? Are they really interested in truth? Are they really seeking truth concerning Judgment Day being next year on May 21? Or do they just want an answer that is going to preserve their church? The Bible teaches that the church age is over, so do they just want an answer that is going to preserve the people who are in their congregation and protect their whole system of worship? Are they really going to the Bible as Bereans, nobly and honorably, searching the Scriptures to see “whether those things were so”?
No, they are not. They are not investigating the Bible. They think that they can just say, “No man knows the day or hour,” and that this statement will just make this all go away. They think that it causes this to just disappear and that there will be no more threat of judgment.
No; on this issue of the day or hour, just like everything else, we have to search the whole Bible and check it out to see if it is true. We have to check everything out that God has to say. Then we also realize that, of ourselves, we cannot know. However, once God determines to give this information and this knowledge to His people who are alive at the time of the end where we now are, then, of course, we can know. Of course; it is as simple as that. This is how God has worked this out.
Going back to 2 Timothy 2:23, we read:
But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
The word “strifes” is a word that has to do with fighting, as we read in James 4:1:
From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
This word for “fightings” is the same as the word for “strifes.”
So 2 Timothy 2:23 says:
…foolish and unlearned questions…gender strifes.
This word “gender” is also translated as “begat,” like in Matthew 1 where we read that so-and-so begat someone. It is also translated as “begotten” and as “born,” like in John 3 where we read, “Ye must be born again.” It is this same word that is found in many places in the New Testament.
So “foolish and unlearned questions” will give birth to strifes, to fightings, to arguments. If the believer tries to continue having a discussion with a person when this person has already indicated that they have closed their ears and shut their eyes, the only thing that can come of this is strife. In other words, there is no point for someone who is a child of God to get involved with these types of questions that are unprofitable and that will not bring any good at all. It is only something that will develop striving.
Then God says in 2 Timothy 2:24:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive…
We cannot strive. “The servant of the Lord” is anyone whom God has saved. All of us are servants of the Lord, as it says in Ephesians 6:5-7:
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
So we are servants of God. We are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ and we want to do things His way. God reveals His will to us through the Bible. We learn what the Bible says and then we just simply follow it. By God’s grace, we are obedient to God’s commands. And in 2 Timothy 2:24, this is one of God’s commands:
…the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
We are never right about what we are doing if what we are doing gets us into an argument. If we are striving about the Law, the Bible, it is never proper and it is never correct, but it is easy to do.
It is especially easy to do when we are so concerned for our families and we are trying to tell them about May 21 being Judgment Day. We tell them, “This is it. This is going to happen!” As we are sharing this, there is someone in the family who knows us very well and knows how to push our buttons. Before you know it, there is a commotion and there could be striving and there could be fighting and arguing. But God says that this should never happen.
If we are talking to someone on Paltalk or if we are handing out tracts when someone stops and wants to talk to us but rejects the whole idea of anyone knowing the end by claiming, “No man knows the day or hour,” at first we patiently try to explain, “This is how we understand this. Here is why what you are saying does not apply to our day when God has opened up the seals from the Bible and He is teaching us.”
If they do not listen and even more strongly declare, “No man knows the day or hour,” the natural reaction is to raise our voices and say, “Look, you do not know what you are talking about. Let me show you this verse.”
If they still insist, “No man knows the day or hour,” before you know it, you have two people standing on a street corner arguing and possibly shouting at one another in loud voices. This does not glorify God in any way.
…the servant of the Lord must not strive…
We are not to fight. We are to present the Gospel in a kind way and in a gentle way, as God goes on to say in 2 Timothy 2:24:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
So we are gentle with others. This word “gentle” is also used in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 where it says:
But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children:
This would be referring to how a woman takes care of a baby. This is how gentle God is saying that we should be with others. We should be treating them as carefully as a baby’s nurse would treat them as they hold the baby and care for the baby and change its diaper. We should be treating others with this same softness.
We must be gentle and soft and kind with a baby, which is evident when we see a mother saying sweet little nothings to her baby. This is the nature that God is saying the servant of the Lord must have. This is the kind of attitude that we must have. We need to realize that these people are in great danger and that arguing with them is never going to work. This will never convince them, and so God says that we are to treat them as a nurse who cherishes her children.
This word for “cherisheth” is also found in Ephesians 5:29:
For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
How do we take care of ourselves? We normally do pretty well. How does Christ take care of the Church? How does He nourish and cherish the Church? He does so in great kindness and in everlasting love. He is our example that we are to follow, “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again.”
When people came up to Him to tempt Him, He might have avoided the question in one way or another, but He never shot back at them. We never read of Him raising His voice and shouting and yelling, except for when He overturned the tables of the moneychangers, but that was only to teach us something about God overturning the churches and the congregations. Of course, Christ was not subject to serving His own emotions. He was perfect and holy and He perfectly did the will of God.
Returning to 2 Timothy, it says in 2 Timothy 2:25:
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves…
If you turn to Titus 3, there is a similar account. I will start reading in verse 1. Titus 3:1-6 says:
Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes…
I think that this is the word that should be translated “aforetime.”
For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish…
We, ourselves, were foolish, and so we should be able to relate. We were also:
…disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
It was the kindness and the love of God, our Saviour, that came to us, people who are desperately wicked, foolish, ignorant, rebellious, guilty of all of the same sins as anyone else out there, and yet the way in which God came to us was very kind, gentle, meek and lowly. He brought His Gospel to us and we heard it.
The Word itself is an offense. The Bible tells us that people are often offended at what the Bible says, but God indicates that those who carry the Bible’s message are not to be the offense. We have to keep in mind that we are water bearers. We are servants. We are ambassadors. We are doorkeepers. We are lowly servants. Even if we did everything perfectly, in the end of all things, God says that we could only say that we are “unprofitable servants.”
This is our position. This is our role. We are not the ones who have devised the Gospel and who is teaching all of these things. We are just the ones whom God has revealed this to and made these things known so that we can share this with others.
So we gently carry this message from God to other people. We do not get so wrapped up in doing this that if anyone is opposing the message, we take it as if they are opposing us and respond in a strident way. God says, “No.”
Again, 2 Timothy 2:24-25 says:
And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves…
There is another saying that people have: you are your own worst enemy. How true this is!
Why are people going to perish? Why are they going to be eternally destroyed “from the presence of the Lord”? Whose fault is this? Who bears this responsibility when people are in such a situation in their lives that they do their own thing and go their own way and do not want to go to God on His terms and beseech Him for mercy and cry out that He might save them? They just go on, day after day after day, which is just taking them ever closer to this Day of Judgment. Whose fault is this?
It is not God’s fault. It is the individual’s fault. Man, in his natural state, opposes God—yes—opposes the Bible—yes—but in doing so, he opposes his very own soul, because there is only one way of escape. There is only one deliverance that God has made possible. It is through Christ, through the hearing of His Word.
If people reject this and despise this, if they just do not follow up when they hear the Gospel message, it is because they love their sin. They love this world. In doing so, they are their own worst enemy.
It says in Proverbs 5:22-23:
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
Who is the one who has the cords, the chains of bondage wrapped around him? It is the individual sinner himself. It is his sin. It is his iniquity that is keeping him in bondage, that is keeping him under the snare of the devil and in captivity to sin and to Satan. It is the individual person who bears this responsibility before God, whether adult or child.
So God is telling His people who are carrying the Gospel to the world to understand this. We are to understand this, as God said to Samuel, “for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.” We are to understand why they reject this. It is because they are their own worst enemy. They are the ones who are bringing themselves down to the grave. They are the ones who are bringing themselves into “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.”
This is not something that we are to get angry about with them. This is something that should cause us to have pity and compassion towards them, because we were in the same situation. We ourselves opposed ourselves at one point; and yet due to God’s mercy, He delivered us.
So, too, when we share the Word of God, we need to do so very gently and compassionately. We need to do this without thinking that others are being hostile towards us, because they are not understanding what we are saying. We are to be careful, therefore, to not allow this situation to lead to strife. This should never happen.
It goes on to say in 2 Timothy 2:25:
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
This verse has always had something to do with salvation at any point when the Gospel has gone out into the world, but this verse takes on special significance at this time because 2 Timothy 3:1 says:
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
In this context, look at 2 Timothy 3:7:
Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
God has opened up the Bible. He is revealing truth, and yet there are many who are not coming to the knowledge of the truth. Here, God says that they are “never able.” This is language that God uses, for example, in Hebrews 6 where it speaks of the impossibility of repentance.
This type of language applies to our day when God is finished with the churches and there is no salvation taking place within the congregations. They are still studying the Bible for their own purposes, but they are not coming to the knowledge of the truth. As a matter of fact, they cannot come to the knowledge of the truth in their present situation of being in the church.
This is also found in Hebrews 10:26, which says:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
Again, the only time this verse applies is in our day when there is no salvation in the churches and congregations; and so, for them, there is no more sacrifice for sins. There is no more forgiveness possible. God relates this to them not receiving the knowledge of the truth because they are rejecting it and turning away from it.
The last part of 2 Timothy 2:25 says:
…if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
Repentance is not something that we hear out in the world at all. The world thinks that it can repent of maybe some things that are troubling to them, things that are a problem in their lives with their families, like drinking. Maybe this sin is also developing a problem at work. Yet true repentance has to do with turning away from our own hearts.
We can repent of outward sins, and God is telling us to do this at this time. We are to turn away from drinking. We are to turn away from drugs. We are to turn away from lying. We are to turn away from stealing. We are to turn away from adultery. We are to turn away from this sin and from that sin. If we see it in our lives, repent and turn away from it.
Although if someone does, if someone has some success—since it is possible to get away from a sin as attested to by the many people who are involved in Alcoholics Anonymous who were drunkards and who ruined their homes—yet apart from the power of God, they are a not saved individuals. They might have been able to turn from the sin of drinking. Of course, it took a lot for them to do this. They had to get a sponsor and maybe call them up to fives times a night in the early going, which just shows us the power of sin. This just shows us the power of the hold of sin upon a person. But, finally, they were successful and they are no longer drinking, and yet they are still doing a whole lot of other things.
But this is not repentance. If we turn from any outward sin, this is good and this is what God wants us to do, but this is not the end of repentance. There must finally be a turning from our own hearts because sin flows out of the heart. All manner of iniquity flows forth from the heart of man. So to cut off a stream here or there is not dealing with the source of where it is all coming from, which is from the very nature of a person. This is why God is commanding us to repent.
Let us go to Acts 17 to prove this. In Acts 17:29-31, we read:
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at…
This is all history past. These people died and came under the judgment of God. They died and ceased to be, and there will be no further punishment except on May 21 when their bones or whatever is left of them comes up out of the ground. At that point, God will make them a shame, as they are left out under the sun. God will later utterly destroy them with “fervent heat” on October 21, 2011.
This is all part of the judgment. But as far as what the unsaved who have already died will know, they will not experience this. When they come up out of the ground, they will not have conscious existence. They are not going to know anything about this five-month period.
So God is saying that He winked at this. He winked at this all through history. But now, in our day, He is no longer winking at this. As this passage continues, He says:
…but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained…
This appointed day is May 21, 2011. He had always appointed this to be the day. From the very beginning, this has always been Judgment Day and God has known this. Now at the end, He is revealing this to His people. Now that we know the appointed day, we are to repent.
This is what He is saying. He is commanding this. The whole Bible is a Law Book that is full of commands and God is speaking to each and every person: two-year-olds, ten-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, and eighty-year-olds. God is commanding everyone to repent. Every single creature is being given a command from the Creator. We are to repent because He is not going to wink at our sin any longer on this appointed day. For these five months, anyone left behind will experience torment, a time of great sorrow and sadness. It will be an awful thing for anyone to be left behind on this day and to live on this earth for however long they manage into this five-month period. This will not be anything pleasant, and so God is commanding everyone to repent.
So what do we do? A great example is what we find in Jonah 3 when they were given knowledge of an appointed day. When Jonah said, “Yet forty days,” an appointed day of judgment was set for them. They would have known precisely that in forty days, on a particular day, they were going to die and their city was going to be destroyed.
It says in Jonah 3:6-9:
For 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. And 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: But 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. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
Once they heard the time that judgment was set, they had heard both things, “time and judgment,” and then there was repentance. There was repentance from the Ninevites. From the king on down, they sat in sackcloth and ashes and fasted, which is just language that shows us that their lives were interrupted. They did not go on living as they normally did, like the people before the flood who continued “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,” or like those in Sodom and Gomorrah where the Bible says, “they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.”
No, the lives of the Ninevites where interrupted and they realized that repentance was the most important thing. What did it matter if they married and gave in marriage if in forty days they died? What did it matter to be concerned with eating and drinking and the nourishment of their bodies if in forty days they were going to die?
So God is indicating that when an appointed day is known, then it activates this command. Prior to this command, He winked at sin; but now, God commands all men everywhere to repent, to turn, to turn from sin.
Do we put forth effort? Or do we wait for God to move in us? Do we do anything? Well, the Ninevites did something, and so I think it would be a good thing for anyone to throw away the cigarettes, to get away from this sin or that sin, whatever it is that they are doing, and go to the Lord and beseech Him that He might have mercy.
In Jeremiah 31:18-19, it says:
I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art JEHOVAH my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed…
So we can go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I am turning away from this outward sin but I know that this is not going to save me. I know that there has to be a deeper repentance that comes from my inner being, which is something that I cannot do. Just as the Israelites could not circumcise their hearts, I cannot change my heart. I cannot repent from the sins of my heart. I need a new heart.” And so the prayer is, “Lord, turn me. Give me repentance.”
This is what 2 Timothy 2:25 says:
…if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
This is a gift of God, just like all of His others gifts. He gives the gift of faith, as well as the gift of repentance. All the spiritual blessings that God gives His people are gifts. No one can believe unto salvation and no one of themselves can repent unto salvation. This has to be something that God has done.
This is what He will do in the heart of a sinner whom He saves. If He turns us, then we will turn in a very pleasing and satisfying way to God.
We do not have time to get into the next verse, so we will stop here.