My friend Barry served with the Brooklyn, NY, district attorney’s office. Once when I was visiting him, he was prosecuting an interesting case.
Two sweet little ladies had been robbed by a young thug, it was alleged. They had just removed funds from an ATM when he supposedly accosted them and took their money.
My sympathies were with the dear old souls, of course. But then it was discovered that these seniors had been engaged in a craps game the night before they were presumably robbed, and had lost the same amount in the game—to none other than the poor young man accused of robbing them!
Scoundrelly old women! They hadn’t been robbed. They lost their money in a game of chance and made up the theft story to get their money back! My sympathies clearly shifted.
That was until we discovered the young guy had done this before. Victims of his craps game would need to visit a bank to make up the lost funds. He’d lie in wait, rob them, get caught, stand trial, then his lawyer would entrap the victims by exposing their illicit gambling. He got away with his deception before, but this time Barry trapped him in his own duplicity.
I came away from the trial realizing it was about bad guys vs worse guys. And it made me think about two renowned preachers—Jonah and Jesus.
Jesus had been preaching the most amazing Good News and performing one wonderful miracle after another in three towns north of the Sea of Galilee. But the people responded to it all with a yawn.
That’s when Jesus brought up Jonah. “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41)
The men of Nineveh were bad’uns. I won’t go into detail, but they were shockingly violent and cruel, renowned for practicing temple prostitution, child sacrifice, abortion, and infanticide. No wonder Jonah didn’t want to visit.
But he did—after his ill-fated Mediterranean cruise, and unusual fishing expedition—when the fish caught the man!
So Jesus’ point was obvious. The Ninevites had a pathetic preacher with a pathetic attitude and a pathetic message: “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4) But the Ninevites heard some good news in there. Why would God wait forty days? Maybe He was giving them time to repent!
So they DID repent, while the people in Jesus’ day (and some reading this article, I’m afraid) find His call to “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15) like a gnat—bothersome but inconsequential.
This is God’s trial offer. If you do what Jesus says, you’ll never stand trial before the God who knows every wrong you’ve ever done. And no trying to trade good deeds for bad—no court in the world allows that.
Who will stand before Him? Like the Brooklyn court, bad guys and worse guys—there are no good guys. “There is none who does good, no, not one.” (Psalm 14:3)
God’s trial offer has a time limit. If you won’t repent, those Ninevites may be witnesses for the prosecution against you.
He says, “Return to Me, for I have paid the price to set you free.” (Isaiah 44:22, NLT)
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, January 11, 2025.