Jonah 3:5-7

of Jonah chapter three I’m going to read chapter three our focus is going on be on the verses five six and seven in particular of Jonah chapter three but let me read the chapter as we begin our study and the word of the Lord came under Jonah the second time saying arise go on to Nineveh that great city preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah rose and went under Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Nineveh was an exceeding great city, a three days journey. Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey and he cried and said, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Ninevehenev, believe God, proclaimed to fast, put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them, even to the least of them. For the word came under the king of Nineveh, and he rose 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 Ninevehah by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water. But let man and beasts be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God, yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not. God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil that he said that he would do unto them, and he did it not. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. Harvard astronomers have doused in outer space. They’re listening for an answer. They have an ear. It’s 85 feet in diameter. It’s a receiving dish that’s located near Austin. According to a column in the USA Today, this endeavor is the most extensive, probably the most expensive too, research ever conducted for intelligent life and outer space. Supposedly they are listening to 128,000 frequencies. all at once 24 hours a day. Listening for an intelligent message from the heavens doesn’t require such a sophisticated equipment. All we need is the scriptures, and we have the message that comes from God. We don’t need a radio receiver, a computer hardword, a hardware, or anything else. God has given us his word. Jonah has received a message from heaven for the first part of this chapter tells us that the word of the Lord came to, Jonah. And we see that it’s a heaven-set message that he was given and it startled the people of Nineveh. Yet 40 days and Nineveh is going to be overthrown as we see from verse four. As we said last week, as we began to look at this text, we talked about God sending a spiritual awakening. And how he goes about it. There’s nothing actually compared to this particular situation in the Old Testament. We have individuals among the Gentiles who were converted, but we never have like a whole city that turns to the Lord, as we see in this particular chapter. And we see that this is, of course, a foretaste of what’s going to happen when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and the Lord Jesus Christ comes. the great commission goes forth and the Gentiles are brought into the kingdom of God. But what should interest us, I think, is how God brought about this spiritual awakening so that we can gain benefit for ourselves today. Now, we said there were two things last week that we should focus on. And one was this. You must hear God’s preaching of judgment against sin for a spiritual awakening. We talked about this from verse four, that they had to know that God’s judgment was going to fall. Yet 40 days, Nineveh shall be overthrown. Secondly, we said you have to embrace by the Holy Spirit the message of God for a spiritual awakening to be seen. And we read in verse 5, so the people of Ninevea believed God. They had, they accepted the message. They believed it came from God. But we have to consider some other vital principles as well. Now let me ask you this. What does the response of the Ninevites show an indication of here in verse 5? How did they respond? And what does this indicate to us? Russell. What did they do, though? And what is that an indication of? Mournings, sorrow for sin? Yeah, patents. So the Ninevites, and we’re told from the richest to the, the poorest here, the most rich, the most noble, down to the poor beggar on the streets, the fast was for everybody. Even the animals had to have sackcloth and ashes, or had to have the ashes on their head and so forth. And so there’s a deep sorrow that swept over the hearts of these people. Now, let me ask you this. Why is humility and mourning over sin more important than just conviction of sin. What’s the distinction here? Yeah. Right. We need the person to actually be sorry, mourn the sin that they’ve committed. Not just be convicted of it. Yeah, they need to realize how offensive it is in the eyes of God and loathe their sins. You know, fasting is a sign of humility. Isaiah 58, 5, and 6 tells us fasting is a day for a man to afflict his soul to bow down his head as a bull rush. You know, those big bull rushes that they’re heavy, top-heavy, so they can, they tilt over. To loose the bands of wickedness. So the use of sackcloth and ashes speaks of this grief and mourning over sin. You remember when Esther’s, in the story of Esther, when the king’s commandment, the Cree went out that they were going to be able to slaughter all the Jews and confiscate all their possessions. What did they do? The Jews all fasted, as we’re told. It was a time of mourning. There was great mourning among the Jews fasting and weeping and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus speaks in Matthew 11, 21, of repenting in sackcloth in ashes. You can never have spiritual awakening without a true humility and mourning over the sin that has been committed. There is another aspect of spiritual awakening. It’s not nice and comforting, and that’s self-abasement. That doesn’t always sit well with people. Today, you know, we thrive on classes that teach self-esteem, to have a high view of yourself. With the scripture, would have us look in the very opposite way at ourselves. I pour myself and repent in dust and ashes, as Job 42-6 indicates. While people may admit their sinners, somehow or other, they don’t want to gravel at the feet, a grovel at the feet of God for mercy. They don’t want to cast themselves upon the Lord for salvation. They want something that’s easy. and so they can hide behind their self-righteousness and not look at themselves as God actually sees them. But we have to understand what miserable people we are in the eyes of God. And there needs to be the same spirit in everyone, not that you have to put sackcloth and ashes on, but the spirit of grief over sin is important, I think. Blessed are they that mourn Jesus sin? For they’re the ones that are comforted. Now, they’re the ones that are comforted. Now, there are thousands of people that may admit that they’re sinners. But they’ve never mourned the fact. When Pharaoh had the plagues fall upon him, and he just, you know, hardened his heart and the Bible said he wouldn’t let Israel go. At one point, he said, I have sinned against the Lord. But did he repent? No, he still wouldn’t let Israel go. But he, he, he, but he he had done wrong. That wasn’t enough. Conviction that he had done something wrong wasn’t enough. Perhaps the question after do you acknowledge you are a sinner should be, does it bother you that you’ve sinned against the Lord? Does it trouble you? Do you have a sense of shame over this? The publican in Luke 18 smote his breast, remember? Wouldn’t even look up to heaven. Didn’t think worthy to to do that, but said God, be merciful to me a sinner. He felt the plague of his own heart. There’s a sense of guilt and foulness that he had. Would bring men to humility. That’s an important state that he brings men to in order to bring them to salvation. Remember a name and the leper when he studied the life of Elisha, the leper. The leper, is a, you know, we said it was a type of the center and so forth. And he comes to know the Lord, but he was a proud man. He was upset because the prophet didn’t come down to just wave his hand over him and heal him, and off he goes. You know, he had to dip seven times in the Jordan and the muddy Jordan, he wasn’t happy about it. He was steamed about it. He says, I’ve got better rivers at home than I could dip into. But God was teaching him humility. God was teaching him in order to be healed, you’re going to have to do what I tell you to do. There’s no easy, comfortable way to enter the kingdom of God. There’s a sense in which God must humble us. And he does this. We can’t bypass humility and mourning of our sin. It’s not a matter of just walking an hour on the church and signing a car or something like that. There has to be you coming to grips with your own sin. As someone who sees himself in the eyes of God as deserving of going to hell and throwing yourself on the mercy of the Lord. I wonder if that’s what Christ pressed into it on the sinner. I think there’s two aspects to it. In Christ’s day, remember the scribes and the Pharisees were opposing. They were trying to hinder people. from going into the kingdom. As Matthew 23 indicates to us, they were putting up obstacles and so that was one thing to fight through. And then your own flesh to battle that issue. And you recall in Pilgrim’s Progress, trying to think it was a valiant for truth? Who was the guy that was, no, maybe it was that was in Christianity? There was a guy that fights his way in. You have to, you know, fight his way in to get his name written down, remember? And he has to use his sword and fight his way. And that’s the idea of the opposition that there is to this. Yes. Maybe that’s what it was. Okay. And this was a lesson to learn at the time. And so this is important, I think, when we’re dealing with people, that we address this issue. You know, okay, you say you’re a sinner, you admit that, well, what about that? I don’t know if they understand the implications of that fully, and that’s something that we have to make sure that they understand. So we have this idea, you must have sorrow over sin for a spiritual awakening to be seen. And we see this happening. We see something else here. Verse 8, the latter part of verse 8, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence in their hands. In verse 10, God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. According to verse 8 here in verse 10, what does true repentance produce? Right, an actual change in the life of people. And so this is important too here. This city underwent a striking reformation here. And God said he saw them turning from their sin. We said that repentance is a change of mind. We could talk about a change of mind, but a change of mind, if it’s a true change in mind, leads to a change of behavior. You bring forth fruit, meat, suitable, for repentance, the Bible says. And so, is there salvation if there’s no turning from your evil ways? Why or why not? Someone, you know, you know, you could walk someone through the four spiritual laws or whatever they use today. A lot of people use different things, but, you know, whatever they use. You could walk through the four spiritual walls. You could get people to pray a certain prayer. When I was in seminary, there was the, I was in the dorm. I was single at the time. And the dormant would go out with one of the students, and they were winning like 22 people. were weak, supposedly to Christ. And I’m sitting there eating and this young guy that had gone out with the dorm parent is telling me how about all these people. I said, well, did they come to church on Sunday? Well, no. I said, well, if they were truly converted, do you think they wouldn’t want to be where the word of God is taught? I said, something’s wrong if they’re not showing up. Boy, did I get into trouble. The dorm parent was happy with me at all. But I’m thinking this doesn’t make any sense that there wouldn’t be a change. That they just, you mean to tell me they’re saved, but they’re just living, just like they always did. No change. Not even come to church. But we’re going to mark them down as some, you know, we saved this person this week. This is the kind of thing. I grew up with this, and it really bothered me because I could see the results of it. I saw it in the church that I grew up in. It was a fundamental Baptist church. and what happened was you had so many unsaved people in the church. You had all kinds of problems that came out of it because of that. You know, it’s hard enough to evaluate people as they come in. We can’t read hearts. We can only go by their profession of faith and whether they show any outward signs of any type of spiritual life. But I can’t read their hearts. It’s hard enough because you’re going to have some that are going to creep in, unawares. But to just deliberately, you know, just go through the motions and bring people in, it’s not going to solve your problem. It’s going to create all kinds of problems for you in the long run. Now, you may mark, it might be nice to mark it down on the chalkboard and say, you had, you know, 100 conversions this year, but if they’re not really converted, all you had is some type of profession. It didn’t have any reality behind it. So we have to be careful here about this. But there’s an about face here in the lives of the Ninovites. Let there be no mistake about this. This is important that we see this. If there’s no change, then there’s something wrong. We talked about if this person’s a new creature in Christ, something has to change in the way they live. He can’t be a new creature and be the same old person. Can you? The Bible says, let everyone, or everyone who nameth the name of Christ Christ apart from iniquity. 2.19. You know, we’ve developed a whole new concept of this. We call it the carnal Christian theory. You know, the answer would be, well, they’re just carnal Christians. They need encouragement. They need, you know, they need, just because they don’t come to church and they don’t do this, or they don’t show any interest in the things of God, well, that doesn’t mean they’re not converted. Because they pray to prayer, they must be converted. I would say, but, you know, if they’re not showing any signs, something’s wrong. It’s not good to take a person as a publican who, you know, knows that they’re sinful, and make them into a Pharisee who have a religious veneer, but there’s never been a change of heart. That’s the worst thing you can do, because now they have this false security about their eternal state, whereas the truth of the matter is, they need to have a true regeneration that takes place in their life. And that’s the danger that I see. When they were a publican, right. But now you can become self-righteous, and, well, I go to church, and now I do all these things, I’ll be accepted, and so forth. And not that they shouldn’t come to church, it’s just that you don’t want to get into the situation where they’re all focused on what they’re doing, and then I’ve cast themselves upon Christ for the salvation of their souls. Well, I think this is important that we see that there was a ceasing to do evil and a learning to do well, as Isaiah talks about here. Now, what does this phrase here in verse 10, or verse 8, let them turn. turn everyone from his evil ways imply. His evil ways, or his evil way. What does that mean? What about the issue of repentance too? Is it particular sins that we should be repounding of? His own sin. Let everybody, whatever sin you’re guilty of here, and evidently there are some that are mentioned here, like violence that are mentioned, and we can see that there is a need for people to turn from whatever evil they have committed in particular. So God would have us repent. I mean, when we repent, we really ought to repent of our particular sins, whatever they are, whether it be sexual indulgence or pride or selfishness or laziness or materialism or unbelief or whatever the case may be. or, and they don’t repent, they didn’t repent in vague terms, but particular sins, it seems to me, that they focused upon. You know, when the woman was taken in adultery and brought before Christ, Christ forgave her of her sin, and then he demanded something of her as a saved sinner. Before she left his presence, what did he say to her? No one sin no more. Don’t keep, in other words, don’t go back to this. You know, put this behind you now and go on and don’t be caught doing this again. Don’t be going back to your adulterous ways. And so this is the idea I think we find throughout Scripture. The drunk has to give up his boozing ways. The prostitute cannot pursue a living in this defiled manner anymore. The person who stole, Paul says, steal no more. But work with your hand so you can give the people that are in need. The liar has to begin speaking the complete truth in love. The homosexual must denounce his lifestyle. The wrathful man must temper his anger. And on and on we could go, right? The covetous person must learn to be content with what he or she has. The lazy man must begin to diligently work. So we see that you must turn from specific sin for spiritual awakening to be seen. Now, let’s look at verse 8A and verse 9 here also. Let every man and beasts be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. And then verse 10, God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them and he did it not. I don’t have time this morning to deal with this idea of God repenting. We will deal with that at another time here in our study. But let me focus on this issue here. What hope did the Nineveites have that God would show them repentance? Or God would show them mercy when they repented? We’re not told all that Jonas said. We’re probably, you know, we have the main thrust of it. In 40 days here, Nilema’s going to be overthrown. I don’t know what else he said to them here. I don’t know if they coaxed any more out of him, like ask him questions about God or anything of this nature. We’re not told any of this. But evidently being convicted of their sin, being sorrow for their sin, they were resolved to change their ways, and they did cry mightily unto God. So there had to be some hope here that perhaps they could be spared. It would seem that their doom was sealed. In fact, there was a time limit, but perhaps because there was a time limit that might suggest that their disaster could be overthrown. You got 40 days where it’s going to come. Didn’t come suddenly. It didn’t come like on Sodom Gimorrah. Boom. And it’s over. They didn’t have 40 days. Not a strange. idea. If you don’t pay your electric bill, you’re going to receive a notice, and they’re going to say in so many days, we’re going to shut off your electric. Turn your power off, right? They’re going to be repercussions. Penalty and interest is not charged on your credit cards if you pay within 30 days. There is a, you know, there is penalty interest if you don’t pay on time. Why would God warn sinners of hell if there was no escape possible? Isn’t this the reason why they cried mightily to the Lord. Isn’t this what we would encourage people to do? Here’s your hopeless state. God’s wrath hangs over you. Eternal hell awaits you. Cry mightily unto God. You need to seek mercy from the Lord. We talked about how Jonah’s own deliverance as the prophet of the Lord would be a witness to them. Because if he told them his story about what happened to him and how God’s wrath was upon him, and yet God spared him, that might carry some weight also in this situation. And we see that there is hope for the sinner. Perhaps he will find mercy if he appeals to God, if he seeks for God’s help. I mean, the thief that sees Zacchaeus says, hey, God can save thieves. Right? The adjudice, adulterer who sees the woman in John 8 says to herself, hey, there may be hope for me. The profane person sees Isaiah and says God forgave him of his filthy mouth. Perhaps he will forgive me. Seeing what God has done for others is an incentive then to cast yourself upon God’s mercy. So God’s character is a God of mercy, as well as wrath, provides hope for the sinner. It is true that he will show mercy to whom he will show mercy, but who can tell? Maybe I can be one that will receive mercy. Why is the doctrine of election helpful and providing hope for the center? How can the doctrine of election be an evangelistic tool? Have ever thought of it in that way? It’s interesting. If you read like Jonathan E. Edwards or some of the other older writers, they seem to see this in a different light than we see it today. Today, we would say, well, you never tell anybody about election. That’s for people get more mature in the faith. But it seems to me, like some of the older writers were focused on, they didn’t have a problem with preaching on election and things of this nature, the doctrines of grace, because of the point I’m trying to make here. Why is the doctrine and election helpful in providing hope to the sinner? What does it tell us? He’s going to save some people. He’s already proclaimed this to us. He has a purpose to save some people. Perhaps you could be one of them. You know, this is the hope we have, that God does have a people he’s going to save. And therefore, we give out the word of God to people. And even if we touch on the doctrine of election, it’s not, it shouldn’t be a deterrent. It should be something it helps. promote the idea of coming to God. Jesus would speak. Yeah. I had a friend in seminary, and he was a sweet maid of mine, and his father was unsaved. And when we were talking about the doctrines of grace, one of the problems he had, he just did not want to believe the doctrine in election. He said, because my father is unconverted. And when I told him, is that the only hope you have? That God saves sinners. So why would you be a public? to that, that God has already proclaimed he’s going to save people. Paul says he did all his missionary work believing that God’s God’s going to call his elect. It was an incentive to do mission work. It’s an incentive to the sinner to know that God has a people he’s going to save. So instead of being something that’s, you know, we have to hide this, it should be something that we naturally would talk about if this subject comes it’s not something that would deter someone. It should be something that can be used to encourage someone. Yes. How many times Christ said. Right. When we, you know, we talk about God’s sending his only-begotten son to die. Whosoever believes can have eternal life, as the scripture tells us, we know his death isn’t in vain because he has the people he came to save. I lay down my life for my sheep. and so forth. God is determined to save some. And, you know, if Christ’s death was for, didn’t actually save anyone and he just died, then Christ could have died in vain. He could have died and nobody would have been saved. But that’s not the way God purpose. He had people to be saved. And therefore, in our evangelistic work, we’re dealing with people, this is not something we have to hire or worry about. You’d be surprised how many people will ask that kind of question. What about election? Things of this. nature, well, we should use it in a positive way and not be afraid to talk about God’s sovereignty and salvation or God’s holiness and salvation. Because when we talk about God’s sovereignty, we’re telling the sinner, well, look, I don’t know what God’s going to be. Catch yourself on his mercy. See if he won’t save you. He saves people. He has a people, he’s going to save. Throw yourself at his mercy. Remember the leper that came to Jesus and said, if thou wilt, thou can’t make me clean. And I mean, that’s the way to sinner should be. If you will, you could save my soul. You could spare me. Isn’t that what we would tell the sinner to do? Go to the Lord. Pray. Seat mercy from him. Any other thoughts or comments on this passage this morning? We just sort of hit some highlights. Russell, would you close us?