Jonah 3:1-3a

All right, Jonah chapter 3, we want to read the first two verses in the first part of verse 3. In the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh, according. To the word of the Lord. God bless to us His sacred and holy word this morning. Several years ago, there was an angry man that rushed into the Rijiks Museum in Amsterdam. Until he reached Rembrandt’s painting, his famous painting, Nightwatch, and he took out a knife and slashed the painting of pieces. A short while later, a distraught hostile man slipped into St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome with a hammer, and he began to smash Michelangelo’s beautiful sculpture of the Pietta. Two works of art that were cherished were severely damaged. But what did the officials do? Did they take these works of art and throw them out on the rubbish heap? Absolutely not. They’re using the best experts they could find in the greatest care. They made every effort to restore. These are our treasures. We’re not told what was on Jonah’s mind when he found himself lying on the beach after being spewn out of the fish’s mouth. He had looked death in the face and he had lived to tell about it. and by God’s grace, he was given a new lease on life. It was like a new beginning. Why did God choose to spare Jonah? Why was he given a second life, so to speak? Well, as we shall see, Jonah is restored here to service to God. This vomit-covered piece of human jetson. lying on the beach is restored as a prophet of the Lord. You as a Christian are God’s work, and even though sin at times marrs us, God does not throw us away, cast away his treasures, but he does restore them. And we see that here, and I think in our story. this morning. Now, the beginning of this section here, as we look at chapter 3 in verse 1, it says, and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah. What does this phrase the word of the Lord mean? What is implied by this? How does the word of the Lord come to someone? Any thoughts on that? What does it mean that the word of the Lord? the Lord came to Jonah. Now, we know what the word of the Lord is because we see it in verse 2. And it is something that was from the past, but what do you think this means when it says it came the second time? He’s not thinking about what had happened before. It’s like something new, because it comes the second time. Any thoughts? This formula is often used in scripture to convey the, they convey the act of God communicating to his people. Now, the question is how does he communicate? And the answer to that is sometimes he speaks directly to people. Sometimes he speaks through a dream or a vision to people, at least in the past he’s done this. And sometimes he speaks to them through his word. that’s already been written and provided for us. So sometimes people hear an audible voice. Now, when did this occur? Can you think of what happened to Samuel? What about Samuel’s story? How did the Word of the Lord come to Samuel? The Lord of the Lord was rare in those days, the Bible tells us, but he heard something. Well, he was sleeping. Right. He communicated what he was going to do with the sons of Eli and so forth. Yes, and what was going to happen to the house of Eli to Samuel. To Samuel. It was a little, it was just a boy at that time. We don’t know exact age, but he was just a young boy, it seems, at that time. But that was an audible voice that he actually heard and mistakenly thought it was the high priest, Eli, call it. him. Abraham also had the word of the Lord spoken to him. In Genesis chapter 151, we read, The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. This is after he rescued Lot. And he had defeated those five kings, I believe he defeated. Well, perhaps someone was going to retaliate. Maybe he was afraid of what was going to have, the repercussions of what he had done. But in the long run, we see here God’s speaking to him, but he does it through a vision in this particular case. And evidently, he saw the Lord or he saw someone speaking to him in some type of vision. So there are ways in the Bible where God speaks in an audible voice. and sometimes his actual presence seems to be there. Whatever method God used here, it seems, you know, he communicated to Jonah a message, and he made it known what he should do. Now, today, we don’t have the visions and the dreams and things of this nature, but God still communicates with us, and he communicates his word through his word, or the scriptures to us, his written word, so that we have the word of the Lord coming to us. As you read it personally, or as you hear it preached, we can say that as God’s voice to us, and we should recognize that God speaks through his word today. So the script Torah is a word. our only source of truth. It’s not a subjective experience where, you know, the Holy Spirit told me to do this or that directly or something of that nature. But he speaks to you through his word. Look at me at Hebrews, if you would. Chapter 3 and beginning with verse 7. It says, wherefore, as the Holy Ghost said, today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation of the day of temptation. in the wilderness. When your father’s tempted me, proved me, saw my works 40 years, wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said they do always err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest. Take heed, brother, lest there be in any of you, an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast under the end. While it is said, today, if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, for some, when they heard, did provoke, albeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grinned? grieved forty years, was it not with them that had sinned whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believe not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us, therefore, fear, lest the promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto us. to them. But the word preach did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Now you’ll notice here that he talks about God’s voice, and his voice to them and to us is through preaching. For unto us was the gospel preach as well as unto them. But the word preach did not profit them. not being mixed with faith in them that hurt. So through the preaching of the word or the word itself, we find a voice from God speaking. That’s what he’s saying. In other words, listen to the word of God here and don’t turn away from the faith. So much then depends on how we receive the word of God. How do we look at the word of God? We should look at the word of God. at it as the word of the Lord coming unto us. Not in the sense of a voice, as in the Old Testament of audible voice, or in the sense of some type of vision or something of this nature, but a communication through his written word is God’s voice to us. So we receive the preaching of the word, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, it’s the word of God to us. Whenever God’s word is faithfully taught, God speaks. And that’s how we should receive it. So the question is, when the word of God comes to you, how do you receive it? We’re like Samuel, we’re willing to say, speak, Lord, for thy servant hears. Are we willing to ask the Lord to give us ears to hear? Because the word of God indeed comes. For the word is, nigh or near thee, Romans 1018 says. How is the word near you? Well, Paul goes on to explain that is the word of faith which we preach. That’s how the word of the Lord comes to you. So God communicates his will to you through his word. And here we have an audible word to Jonah, it seems, or at least we’re not told. it could have come through a vision, but whatever way it came in that time, it was a communication from God. Now notice here that the word of the Lord came under Jonah this second time. What lesson can you learn from the fact that God reinstated Jonah as a prophet? Imagine if you were in God’s shoes here. If you were in God’s place and you were confronted with this situation, and would you have reinstated Jonah? Maybe you would recall that Jonah was a man who was called to be a prophet, had been given special knowledge and understanding of spiritual things, had a full and useful ministry in Israel, and you gave him this tremendous opportunity to preach to Ninevehub. And he didn’t obey. He disobeyed you, and he refused to go, and he had this bigoted attitude. And he stubbornly fled. Israel and headed for Tarshis, as you remember. And you might think, why should I give him a second chance? But God reinstates here. God’s gracious to him. Instead of allowing him to die, he saves his life by getting him swallowed by the great fish. God brought him to a place of repentance. God got him out of the fish’s belly, back onto the dry land. Who would blame us if we said, you know, John, I’m sorry, I can’t use you any longer. That might be. the common response. Jonah, maybe you should go door to door and sell copies of the law or the Psalms or something of that nature. Maybe you could peddle life insurance, Jerusalem life or something. Maybe you could be a travel agent set up Joppa tours and sea cruises. We’re specializing a new career. You know, Jonas, believe it or not, uh, roadshow. Look what happened to me. But that’s not usually God’s way. We see here, instead of, disregarding Jonah as useless. God recommissions you. So now, with that in mind, what does that teach us? What encouragement should you take from this? Well, hopefully we would see that forgiveness often allows a fresh start, that God often gives his people after they’ve sent a second chance. Now, can you think of an occasion where Moses was given a second. You remember Moses was born at the time when the Egyptians were killing all the male Israelites. It’s put in the ark, a little war rushes and hidden, you know, by the river, on the river there. And Pharaoh’s daughter goes to get a bay, get a bath, and finds Moses. Moses means drawn out. He was drawn out of the river. It was in the ark. And she adopts Moses as her son. And then Moses grows up, you know, with all the prestige and the honor of being one of the king’s sons. But he reaches a certain age, and he realizes that his people are enslaved in Egypt. but he wants to do something to help him. And what did he do one day? Yes. And buried him in the sin, remember? And what does the scripture tell us about this? He thought his own people would understand that the Lord had raised him up to be a deliverer. But it didn’t work out that way. When he tried to break up a dispute the next day, it seemed, between two of his Hebrew brethren. They said, are you going to kill us like you killed the Egyptian yesterday? And they did not receive him. And so Pharaoh finds out, and he has to flee for his life. And he goes pretty far away, what we would call Jordan today, that area. On the backside of the desert, way across, way away from Egypt. And what does he do? He shepherds for 40 years on the backside of the desert. And then what happens? We have the burning bush, right? And then what does God say? Now, go down to Egypt and deliver them. It seems like Moses was jumping the gun on the situation. But we see that he is going to be delivered. But he had 40 years went by before he gets recommissioned. sense to go and deliver Israel. He had the right idea, but the timing wasn’t right. It wasn’t God’s time, evidently. But he seemed to understand why God had brought him into this position. So he gets, in a sense, a second chance to be the deliverer. What about Peter? What can you tell me about him? How did he get a second chance? Any thoughts? Go ahead, Mark. Okay? He asked first three times, remember, do you love me? Yeah. Sort of making him say each time, yes, I do, to sort of counteract the three denials. And then he tells him each time, you know, feed my shoe. You’re still going to be useful to my church. What about John Mark? We talked about this when we went through the second. And Colossians, at the end of Colossians, we talked about John Mark. What happened? What happened with him? Did he got a second chance? What did he do the first time? Yeah, he went on. Paul and Barnabas. Yeah. He left them. Yeah, he deserted him. And then when, after Paul and Bartavis went on and finished the missionary work and came back, we find that, They wanted to go out again to see how things were going with the churches they established. and Barnabas says, well, let’s take John Mark, and Paul didn’t want to take him. They got into this big dispute. And Barnabas took John Mark with him and went to the island of Cyprus and continued to the ministry there. And Paul took Silas and went up. into Asia and looked at the churches that were up there. But later on, you recall, that evidently John Mark had proved himself to be faithful in working with Barnabas. And so later on, Paul says, you know, I have need of him, you know, and can use him. So he gets the second chance, too. Now, there’s a sense in which you and I can be Jonas and do the wrong thing. Thankfully, God gives second chances, sometimes third, fourth, fifth, six chances, and continues to use us. And that shows us the greatness of God’s mercy. God is the God of the second time. And we should thank the Lord for that. Now the third thing we see here is the message. And that’s found in verse two. Arise, go on to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it, the preaching that I bid be. What do you learn from the fact that God told Jonah the gave him like the exact same command as he gave him before? What can we draw from that? So not only is he reinstated as the prophet, but he’s given the exact same command. God’s not going to change, is he? He still has to do exactly what God commands him to do, what he was commanded to do the first time. Did you have something to add to that? This isn’t the exact same command. Here we have almost like the school teacher who turns back a paper to the student and says, rewrite this paper and do it properly this time, you know? And so we know from the future of the story here that Jonah still wasn’t happy about going to the end of it. He really, it wasn’t in his heart to do this. But Jonah is told to do as God says. And God is not going to relent on what he commands here. We see here that the revealed will of God is non-negotiable. You know, when God tells you, this is what I want. This is what he wants, you know, and he’s not going to change it. You can’t pick and choose, you know, like a little child eating a salad and say, well, I don’t want to eat the tomato and I don’t want to eat the cucumber. I don’t want to eat the pepper. God says, here it is. You can’t alter it. it, you got to do what I command you to do. Now, children, at times, are rebellious, and they don’t want to do what their parents do. They may have a conyption fit. They may have their little tantrum or whatever it is. And they’re hoping to get their parents to change their mind. But if you’re a good parent, you’re not going to change your mind. You’re going to say, no, you’re going to do it. And because the child has to learn to do what he’s been commanded to do. Sometimes spiritually, you know, people have their temper tantrums about what God has commanded, but ultimately at the end, God is still saying, this is what I want you to do. And he’s not going to change it. Maybe after you’ve had your tantrum and you’ve had your spanking, God comes to you and says, now, do what I commanded you to do. We can’t plead with God and say, well, God, I’ll do anything you want, but please, don’t ask me to do that. We can’t wiggle up. out of it. You know, Jonah has learned his lesson. Do we ever learn, you know, we learned the same lesson? God’s not going to be able, you can’t change the mind in this. He’s given us, you can’t be manipulating God. He’s going to tell you to do what he wants you to do, and we can’t, you know, we can’t change that. The fourth thing here is the message. He says here, preach under it, the preaching that I, bid the. Now, what can we learn from this? What is this telling us? What does tell us about the message that Jonah is responsible to preach? How would you apply this to ministers? Did you have something? The ministers, people would like to hear. Not cherry-picking. Yeah. It tells us here that Jonah could not make up his own message, right? He’s not, he can’t tailor the message to his liking, but he’s not. told here that he’s responsible. He’s going to be an ambassador for God. He has to tell them what I tell you to tell them. Simply make known my will to them. That is a good message for ministers to hear. If only those words were followed by thousands of ministers in our pulpits across the land, how much better off we would be. People preach, they teach, they speak, but is there a sermon the message that God has bid them to preach? And that is to expound his word faithfully. Is there teaching what God has spoken? Somehow or other, we would like to file down the rough edges of God’s message. Somehow we would like to substitute comforting words for those that are thundering rebukes. people don’t want to give the whole counsel of God because that’s not going to make friends and influence people as far as the world is concerned. Men refuse at times to preach what God bids them to preach in his word. But the true minister has to faithfully proclaim what God says, even when it’s difficult, even when we find it hard to speak those words. God told Jeremiah, thou shalt go to all that I send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. Behold, I have put my words in my mouth. Now, when you think about that, God is saying, I’m putting what I want you to say in your mouth. You’re going to speak my word. Jeremiah was thinking, I’m kind of young. You know, I’m afraid. God says, I’ll make you strong. I’ll put the words in your mouth. But you’re going to speak. You’re going to have to tell them what I bid you to tell them. Not to add to his words or take away from them. We’re not to handle the word of God deceitfully, as the scripture speaks about in 2 Corinthians 4. So here’s the bottom line of all this. The minister has a responsibility to speak the truth. And we witnessed to others. We have a responsibility to speak to the truth. tell them what God says in his word and not come up with a compromised, watered down message that will be more acceptable to the world. Yes. But people would like to tell them that because, like you said, it would be more soothing. It would be, you know, a more pleasant message to tell people. And more compelling, you know, like, we abide for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is the kind of thing you run into with some, or, you know, we have our own way of saving people. You know, we give them, you know, the Roman, you can use the Roman road. But, I mean, if you just go through that and then say, well, pray this prayer and you’re in, as, you know, when I grew up, that was the way it was done. The problem with that is we don’t know if the spirit’s working. We don’t know if they’re really being convicted or sin. We were just, you know, we just got through this routine. and if they follow the routine and then they’re converted. Well, God actually has to save them. You know, he has to actually work in their lives. And so we have to be careful that we do what God commands. Now, verse 3 says, so Jonah arose and went under Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Here we see the last thought here. And this teaches us this, that God expects you to act upon the commands of his word. This time, Jonah does what God commands him to do. The first time he ran away, now he’s determined. This time there are no but Jonas here going down to Joppa and all that stuff. He just complies with it. And isn’t this what God expects of us? He expects us to obey his word. When he gives the command, we should obey it. We see here that chastening had its effect upon Jonah. He had to be chastened severely, but now when he gets the second command here, it’s exactly the same as the first. He does respond as he should and goes to Nineveh. There are times when because of fear or danger or difficulties or maybe just plain stubbornness on our part, we may try to out-maneuver God to out-guess to out-guess. him, if you would, to shirk our duty. But if God commands it, we ought to do it. And Jonah’s obedience here is important. We are to fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. We find in the book of Ecclesiastes and chapter 12, verse 13. Well, just as the art treasures were not tossed away when they were marred or slashed or whatever the case it may be, but were restored. So God restores his people here and gives us often a second chance. Doesn’t change his demands, but he gives us the second chance. And he recommissions us. Now, the best response is to immediate obedience and to do exactly what he has bid us to do. Any other thoughts on this passage? here this morning? All right, why don’t we close with a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity. We have to study your word. May you bless it to us. May you encourage us, Father, from it. That you are a God that forgive sin and accept us in Christ. And we pray, Lord, that we may be thankful that you forgive us and recommission us and give us the second chances. In the name of Christ, we ask these things. with Thanksgiving. Amen.