Well, good evening. It's good to be here, and I'm thankful to the Lord for the blessing of being able to preach the gospel one more time. It's a great privilege, and we're thankful For you folk, thank the Lord for the grace that he's poured out upon you all here in the Dalles. And we so often take these things for granted, but they're glorious things and things that we should rejoice in continually. So I'm thankful to the Lord that he brought us here, and if you would, turn back to Jonah, the book of Jonah. And I should have prefaced last night that the message was just part one of one message. And so it didn't stand alone. We'll continue with part two with Trust tonight and we'll see how it goes. Maybe it'll be part two and then three tomorrow morning. But turn there to the Book of Jonah and let's continue there. And as you do that, let's be reminded again of what the message of the prophet Jonah is. And like we saw, it's not hard to see because Christ himself tells us. He says, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so also shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And so with that, we're able to look back and interpret the revelation that God has given us in this book of Jonah. And You know, I was thinking about that earlier today, that of course that makes it specific and clear and is so helpful as we look at the book of Jonah, but I think we'll see, and you have seen, I have no doubt, but I think we'll see again that even if the Lord hadn't said that, it really is so clear. It's so clear that Jonah and what happened to him in the Lord's providence presents a type of Christ. And it's remarkable, I think. But as part of that, I want to stress again that what is one of the most important things that the Lord is bringing out in the course of this narrative. And it's unmistakable that it's what Jonah says at the end, as you know, when he sees the wonderful work of grace of God pouring out his mercy upon the people of Nineveh. And his statement to God is, I know, I know you are a God of mercy and grace, abounding in loving kindness. Well, that's one of the most important things for us to take away as we consider these things. And, you know, again, I say God is not like us, because this is not who we are, but it's who God is, and how marvelous that is to just think about. But, Anyway, we finished up there right at the end of the first chapter. And as we saw from all appearances, the Prophet Jonah died. As far as the mariners were concerned, Jonah had perished in the deep. And it would have seemed that the hope of salvation for the people of Nineveh had perished with the Prophet. But the exact opposite was true. What will it take for the Lord's purpose of salvation for the people of Nineveh to be secured? It'll take the death Burial and resurrection of the prophet Jonah, and that's what we would like to look at tonight So in verse let's pick up there in the end of chapter 1 verse 17 and as Jonah He's thrown into the ocean in the midst of this violent tempest that is pounding the ship that he's in he's thrown in the waves go over his head and We read now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly and said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction. And he answered me, out of the belly of shale I cried, and you heard my voice, for you cast me into the deep. into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. The waters surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth, with its bars, closed behind me forever. Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you in your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." Well, we read this and it's, it's, As I said, it's a strange story, isn't it? The whole story of Jonah. It's a strange story. It's a peculiar story. And here he is. He's in the belly that Lord sent. He's thrown into the waters to certain death, it would seem. And here he is in the belly of this great fish and he makes this prayer to God. And it's a great prayer. It's a great prayer. And certainly if it weren't for the miraculous preservation of the Lord, Jonah would certainly have perished. He disappeared from the face of the earth for three days and three nights. Think of what Jonah experienced. He was thrown into the sea in the midst of this mighty tempest. A tempest that caused the mariners to Be terribly afraid. It's so great, the ship that he's in was breaking up. They think there's a certainty that it's gonna sink. They cast all the cargo overboard in an effort to save their lives. Thunderous waves crash as he's cast into the ocean. This is what he's experiencing. He's cast into the ocean. These thunderous waves crash over his head. He sinks. under the waves, seemingly to perish with the horrific death of drowning. And he's swallowed by this great fish. He's taken down into the depths, into the heart of the seas, down to the moorings of the mountains, is the word of God, as his prayer says. He's taken down into the depths of the ocean, where there's just blackness of the deep. And in his prayer, there's all this powerful imagery, isn't there? Has any man returned from this place? No man could survive this. Jonah is in the deep, in the belly of Shale for three days and three nights in utter darkness. Think about that. He's in the belly of this great fish in the deeps of the ocean. Not one twinkle of light for an instant for three days and three nights and he's supernaturally preserved. His body doesn't see corruption. Think of the reality of the situation Jonah was experiencing. Imagine the terror, the emotional exhaustion that he must have been experiencing at this point, the encroaching despair, the enormous physical suffering, and the overwhelming psychological turmoil. He's in the belly of a great fish. This isn't some enjoyable little child story, you know, where you're flipping the pages and here's the big fish and here's Jonah sitting at a table with a candle on it, you know. Think of the reality. This was a terrible, terrible trial for any man to experience. How does... What does Jonah say? My soul fainted within me. You know, we see a person faint, you've experienced it, possibly yourself, and your physical body just collapses. Well, it's not just... What did he feel? He felt his whole being, the soul, his spirit, fainted. So overwhelming was the situation that he was facing. But in the midst of this, listen, here, here, we find faith. Here is faith triumphing over all the outward realities of his circumstances, over his sense, over his reason. In the face of seemingly everything being against him, Jonah prayed. Jonah prayed, and he prayed in hope. Look there in verse 1. He says, then Jonah prayed to the Lord. What does it say? He prayed to his God. There's where the hope is. He prayed to his God. You remember the mariners. What did they do? Everyone cried out to his God. Here's Jonah praying to the one true God. And what does Jonah know about this God? It's his God. He prays from the belly of the whale to his God. And there is reason for this faith. Why? Because he knows he is the God of heaven and earth. God is his hope and his salvation. And now he's remembering that, isn't he? I cried, what does he say in verse 2? I cried out to the Lord. This is where faith stands. This is where the faith of every believer stands. upon His God, upon the Word of God, upon the gracious promises given to Him in the Word of God. And these things come back to Jonah's mind. It's clear in his prayers. We'll go through it. The Word of God comes back to Jonah and he cries out in faith, thinking of the great promise of God. to his people that we read in Jeremiah. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts. And what? I will be their God and they shall be my people. And what else? And I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. This is why Jonah cries out in faith to his God. Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God. I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction. He goes on further down. I cry out, crying out of the belly of Sheol, I cried. Out of the midst of this great trial. But too, think of this. Jonah's trial was was more than just the trials that most of us experience. His trial was at the hand of his God. How much greater is the trial when the Almighty God himself is against the believer? And Jonah knows the hand of his God is against him. Look in verse 3. Here's the death of Jonah. Picture to us. for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me." Who's brought this upon him? His God. What does he say? You cast me into the deep. Your billows and your waves passed over me. In verse four he says, then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. Verse five, here's the burial of Jonah. The water surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed over me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed over me forever. There's a picture of the burial of Jonah. The death, the burial, the bars. of the earth closing over him forever. And here's the resurrection. Look. Yet, yet, you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. Faith, faith looks beyond everything which is against it and sees the invisible. the spiritual realm, the heavenly places. That's what Jonah is doing. Do you see that? I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. Look at verse seven. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. His prayer went up to the Lord in his holy temple. Why? Why? Why is Jonah looking there? Why is Jonah looking to the spiritual realm, to the Lord in his holy temple? Because in the holy temple, the spiritual temple is the presence of God. In the holy temple is the seat of mercy. In the holy temple is sacrifice for sin. In the Holy Temple is the blood of propitiation. In the Holy Temple is forgiveness of sins. In the Holy Temple is where the soul finds peace with God. That's where faith looks and that's where Jonah's looking. God has brought Jonah to the place he needed to be. Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. He ended up in the deep, in the belly of Shale. And where was the presence of the Lord? Right there with him. Right there with him. When Jonah looked again to the holy temple of the Lord, what did he look for? What did he look for? He looked for what every guilty sinner needs. He looked for mercy. He looked for mercy in the only place it would be found, and that's in this temple, the temple of the Lord, that spiritual temple of the Lord. Look at verse 8. What does he say? Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." The guilty sinner needs mercy. We need mercy. The mercy he needs won't be found with idols. No, no. This is just one of the myriad of reasons that idols are worthless. King David knew what he needed. You know, when he had sinned so grievously against the Lord, he knew what he needed. This is what he cried out in Psalm 51. Lord, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness. according to the multitude of your tender mercies. That's a great phrase, isn't it? It's not just the mercy of the Lord. It's not just his mercies, but David knows that in the Lord is found a multitude of mercies and inexhaustible supply of mercies for sinners. He says, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out, my transgressions." That's the prayer of faith. And he says, salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. You know, apparently, according to the Greek scholars, there's one letter more than usual, the Hebrew scholars, in the Hebrew word for salvation here. giving it a more full sense, indicating that this isn't just talking about singular salvation, but all kinds of salvation. Temporal, spiritual, eternal. And that is certainly true. That's certainly true. That's what's occurring here. And why would the Holy Spirit use this word in this way? this word for salvation indicating many salvations. Why would he use it this way at this time? Because we know that Jonah was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what type of salvation does the Lord bring to us? Just a salvation? No. He brings us a full salvation, a complete salvation, a perfect salvation. Salvation in every sense of the word. And to, you know, in this prayer, we see a powerful prefiguring of the sufferings of Christ. Think of this. Here, how many generations back before Christ ever came to the world, and here is a prophet, a type prefiguring the sufferings of Christ in his death and his burial and his resurrection. Let's just look at a few passages in the Psalms which illustrate this. Turn back to Psalm 18. Let's just look at a couple passages. Psalm 18, let's start there. Psalm 18, and this we know is a messianic psalm. He's given to David, speaking of, from David's standpoint, of a time that he was facing great trial. But above all, these are the words of Christ. Psalm 18, let's just look there beginning in verse 4, and you can hear the harmony, the parallels, they're unmistakable. Let's begin there in verse 4. The pangs of death surrounded me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of shale surrounded me. The snares of death confronted me, but in my distress I called upon the Lord and cried out to my God. He heard my voice from his temple, and my cry came up before him, even to his ears." This psalm is the voice of Christ, and it prefigures his sufferings as he cries out of the darkness, out of the pain, out of the depths, out of the anguish, as he suffers the unspeakable horror of our floods of ungodliness that he's speaking about here. Our floods of ungodliness! This is why it's so important that he has this immeasurable mercy because of our floods of ungodliness. He suffers all we could not suffer. He bears all that we could not bear. And he pays the price we could never pay. You know, it's hard for us to comprehend the sufferings of Jonah. It's impossible to put ourselves in the place of Jonah and understand what he was really going through. But what is that? What is that to the infinite sufferings of our Savior, bearing the last drop of the storm of God's wrath for the sins of his people? What is that? This psalm is brought forth. Now think of this. This psalm is brought forth from the heart of Christ from eternity. This is his word. He knew what he would face when he came. Think of that. When he came into the world, he knew what he came in to accomplish. He knew what faced him. But when he was sent, he came anyway. He came freely. willingly in obedience to his father. Look at verse 16. He sent from above. He took me. He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He also brought me out into a broad place. Now listen, He delivered me because He delighted in me. In His life, in His death, in His burial, in His resurrection, the Lord kept His vows in obedience to the Father and brought in an everlasting righteousness for His people. And this was the declaration of his father. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Here is the one in whom the father delights. Here is the substitute sufficient to satisfy the tempest of divine justice, sufficient to seal the salvation of his people. Here is the one greater than Jonah. Not a disobedient prophet, but an obedient son, an obedient servant, a willing savior. This is the one in whom the father delights. Look at verse 20. The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness. What man What man can say that? What man can say that? According to the cleanness of my hands, he has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments were before me and I did not put away his statutes from me. I was also blameless before him and I kept myself from my iniquity. What man can say this? Well, We know only one man, only one man, and this one who is greater than Jonah. Therefore, verse 24, therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. Now there's a substitute. There's a perfect substitute. Turn back to Psalm 16. Just look at one more portion there, Psalm 16. And, you know, we read that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. He fled from the presence of the Lord, but how about the one greater than Jonah? What did he do? Look at verse 8. I have set the Lord always before my face. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad, my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope. Why? For you will not leave my soul in shale, nor allow your Holy One to see corruption." Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Greater than Jonah is here. We'll turn back to Jonah. Let's continue there. in verse 10, look there in verse 10. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. And you know, for me, the more I look at Jonah, the more I see that the entire book really is presenting a type of Christ. It's presenting the gospel. Figuratively speaking, It's unmistakable, isn't it? This is a picture of the resurrection of Jonah. Here he is in the deep. The bars of the earth have closed over him forever. And what happens? Here, the ship brings him up, vomits him up onto dry land after three days and three nights. We could say the Lord did not allow Jonah to perish, did not allow his body to see corruption, but he brought him up, up from the grave. And for what purpose? For what purpose? Why did God do this work? Why did God bring Jonah through this trial in the deep, bring his life up from the grave? What was the purpose? That through him, God would give life to a multitude of sinners in the city of Nineveh. Look at verse 1 of chapter 3. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you. So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Let's think for a minute. By whose will and purpose will the souls of this great city of Nineveh be saved? What has been presented to us from the beginning up until now? Well, it's not by Jonah's will. When the Lord said, Arise, go to Nineveh, Jonah fled from his presence. It's not by the will of the wicked people of Nineveh. They don't even have any knowledge of the true God. Every action to bring about the salvation of these people is entirely driven by God. It's unmistakable. Just think, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. That was the beginning. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. The Lord gave Jonah a message. The Lord sent him to preach to Nineveh. The Lord sent out a mighty tempest on the sea. The Lord, yes, the sailors cast him into the sea, but Jonah knows, yeah, no, it wasn't the sailors. He says, you cast me into the sea. The Lord cast him into the deep. And the Lord prepared a great fish to come and swallow Jonah. The Lord brought his life up from the deep. Up from the pit, as Jonah says. And the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited him on dry ground. How could anyone think that salvation is not of the Lord? Salvation is of the Lord. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I shall give you. Well, Jonah might be a disobedient, reluctant, recalcitrant prophet, but when the Lord speaks a second time, he goes. Salvation, the salvation of the Lord, will come to the people that God has purposed to save. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. And repeated emphasis is placed on this throughout the book. The book begins with this. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. And in the very last verse of the book of Jonah, the Lord says to Jonah, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left? If we take that to be children under a year old, using typical population age distributions, that would make Nineveh to be a city of many millions of people. It was a great city. And Jonah entered the city and cried out and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. He cried out. Jonah cried out against the city. Nineveh. For their wickedness, as we're told at the beginning, their wickedness had come up before the Lord. And Jonah was to cry out against them for their wickedness in the coming judgment of the Lord upon them as a consequence. In 40 days, in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown. But was this the entirety of the message? given to him by God. You notice when God sends him, he says, go and preach the message that I shall give you. Is this the only message? No. No, it's not. No, it's not. Let me give you two reasons why we know this is only part of the message. The overthrow, the judgment of God is only part of the message given by God to Jonah. And the first is the people of Nineveh were saved through a genuine work of God's grace, granting them repentance unto life. A genuine work. This was not a temporal repentance. You know, a lot of people repent of sin. When they get in trouble, they get afraid. They repent of their sin and straighten up their lives. And we've all witnessed that, no doubt. Maybe you've done that. at some point in time in your life. No, how do we know that this was a genuine work of God's saving grace? Because what did Christ say? Listen, Christ himself says to the unbelieving scribes and Pharisees, he says, the men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented of the preaching of Jonah and indeed greater than Jonah is here. When is this judgment that Christ is speaking about? He's speaking about the judgment at the end of the age. And who will rise up? Who will rise up in judgment with Christ? What does the Word of God tell us? He says to the Corinthians, do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? This is what Christ is saying. that these saints from Nineveh in that last day will rise up in judgment against these unbelieving Jews, these scribes and the Pharisees, and condemn them and say, look, we believed and repented at the preaching of the type. Jonah came, and we believed and repented in his preaching, and now a greater than Jonah is here. The fulfillment of everything that Jonah represented is here preaching to you, living before you, and you repented not at his preaching. That's what Christ is saying. These were the people of Nineveh were a genuine work of God's grace was wrought in their hearts. Now we know from the Word of God that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation. Isn't that true? The Gospel is the power of God. The power of God isn't repent or you'll be destroyed in 40 days. That's not the power of God to salvation. That's an important message, the judgment of God, but the power of God to salvation is the Gospel to everyone who believes. Now we can say the same of the gospel as Peter said of Jesus, where he says, nor is there salvation in any other, and I'll change it, for there is no other message under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. That's equally true. No other message under heaven, no other Jesus under heaven given among men by which men might be saved. So we know that the gospel, the promise of a Savior through whom all the world would be blessed, was preached by Jonah to these Ninevites. Then secondly, Christ said, for as Jonah became a sign to who? To the Ninevites. He became a sign to the Ninevites. He says, as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. Well, what is the sign of the prophet Jonah? For as Jonah was three days and three nights, the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So Jesus is telling us that the Ninevites knew of the miraculous deliverance of Jonah. Picturing the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. because Jonah was assigned to them. Do you see that? To the Ninevites. He's not assigned to us. It's not like we're reading Jonah and we see these things. No, he was assigned to the Ninevites, Jesus says. So they knew of all that transpired in terms of Jonah being delivered by the Lord out of the belly of the deep, out of the belly of that great fish and miraculously preserving his life. And so Jonah came. What can we infer from this? Jonah preached of his own sin. He told him of the circumstances that the Lord brought upon him. He preached of God's righteous judgment, of his repentance. of his death and burial into the deep, of God's forgiveness to him, of his mercy and of his grace in giving him life. We could say, what did Jonah preach? He preached exactly what the greater than Jonah preached when he came. Where we read at the beginning of Christ's ministry, the Lord Jesus came preaching, repent and believe the gospel. That's what Jonah preached for all intents and purposes. Verse 5, let's look at that quickly and we'll finish up, Lord willing. So the people of Nineveh believed God. What a wonder! What a wonder! The people of Nineveh believed God. The repentance of Nineveh is one of the most striking events in human history. And when I was studying this recently, it just, for some reason, I'd never realized that. This exceedingly great city, a Gentile nation, brought to repentance, turning from its evil way, crying out to God for mercy, humbled under the mighty hand of God, the people of Nineveh believed God. What did they believe? Well, they believed the message preached to them. They believed that God was a righteous God, a just God. They believed that, yes, His condemnation of them was true, that they were a wicked people. They were sinners. They'd sinned against God. And they believed that they were deserving of His wrath and punishment that was proclaimed against them. They believed, too, that God was a God of grace and mercy. Listen to what they said. Who can tell? Who can tell? They knew they didn't deserve anything, but who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Let me Continue reading there. So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth and ashes from the greatest to the least of them. Then the word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Then God saw their works, that they had turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it." These Ninevites, yes, they had regarded their worthless idols, but no more. No, no. The salvation of the Lord has come, and they will not forsake their own mercy. Here it is. Here it is. The scriptures indicate that this was a very broad and deep work of grace and that an exceedingly great number of sinners were saved. We witness the power of the work of the Holy Spirit influencing the hearts and minds of wicked, this wicked Gentile city, saving a multitude of people. The people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth and ashes, from the greatest to the least of them, from the throne of the king to the beggar in the street. What a day of mercy. What a day of grace to these people. There literally is no parallel in history. What a glorious foreshadowing this is of the mystery of the Gospel, spoken of in the New Testament. Paul writes of this mystery, you know, in Ephesians 3. Listen, he says, Which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, fellow heirs with Israel. Well, for the Israel, how can that be? We're the special people. We're God's chosen nation. But no, no, the Gentiles are going to be fellow heirs and not, here's, Here's the inheritance for Israel, and here's another inheritance for the Gentiles. No. The Gentiles should be fellow heirs of what? Of the same body. And partakers of His promise in Christ through the Gospel. This was a pre-figuring of this, wasn't it? Turn to Isaiah 49 for a moment. Isaiah 49. And in verse five, what do we read there? Now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant. Here is the one greater than Jonah speaking. Who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel is gathered to him. For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord and my God shall be my strength. Indeed he says, now listen, It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved ones of Israel. You see? What does God think? That's not sufficient for his son. To restore just the preserved ones of Israel? The nation of Israel? No, that's too small a thing for my son. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Truly a greater than Jonah is here. We'll turn back to Jonah and we'll just finish with these last two verses beginning in chapter 4. says, but it begins with a startling statement. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the Lord and said, ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish, for I know that you are a gracious and merciful God. Slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness. Jonah witnesses the exceedingly great grace of God to the city of Nineveh. His marvelous mercy to these repentant sinners, his long-suffering towards the wicked, the power of his word, he witnesses the glorious display of salvation. Jonah sees all this and it displeased him exceedingly. And when we read this, it seems, no, no, it is so discordant. It's shocking that Jonah would say this. But when you think about it, you realize we're a lot more like Jonah than we'd like to think. There are a number of reasons at work here, but at its root, Jonah just didn't care about those people. He just didn't care. They're not Israelites. Lord, send me to the tribes of Jacob. I'm ready and willing, but not to these Ninevites, not to these Gentile heathen. He just didn't care. And naturally, we're not gracious. We're not merciful. We're not like God. You remember when Christ set his face to go toward Jerusalem, to die on the cross, and he came to the village of the Samaritans, and they didn't receive him. Remember that? And when his disciples James and John saw this, John of all people, the apostle of love, When James and John saw this, what did they say? Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them just like Elijah did? Listen to Christ's response. But he turned and rebuked them and said, you do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." How different is the One who is greater than Jonah? How different? You know, we read in Matthew 9 when says that Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, listen, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then, Then he said to his disciples, the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." You know, there's so much that could be said about this, but let me close with, again, with the wonderful statement of the disobedient prophet. about God. For I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness. Amen. Turn to number 165 in the green book, please. 165. 165. I bless the Christ, the God, I rest on the divine, And with unfaltering lip and heart I call His Savior mine. I praise the God of grace, I trust His truth and might. He calls me His, I call Him mine, my Lord, my Lord, my light. Round Him with many crowns, the Lamb of God is crowned. Lord, out of heaven,