2001 Shepherds Conference, Wednesday
Evening General Session, Steve Lawson. I want you to be taking
your Bibles and finding the book of Jonah. Jonah chapter 3. And if I was to put a title on
this message tonight, it would very simply be this, One Man,
One Message, One Method. Jonah chapter 3, I want to begin
reading in verse 1. I want to set this text before
us, and then tonight we will consider what it has to say.
The Word of God says, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah
the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city,
and proclaim to it the proclamation which I'm going to tell you.
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the
Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. Then Jonah began to go through
the city one day's walk and he cried out and said, yet forty
days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Then the people of Nineveh believed
in God. And they called a fast and put
on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. When the
word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid
aside his road from him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat
on the ashes. He issued a proclamation, and
it said, In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, do
not let man, beast, herd, or flock. taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink
water, but both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth.
And let men call on God earnestly, that each may turn from his wicked
way and from the violence which is in his hands." Who knows? God may turn and relent and withdraw
his burning anger so that we shall not perish. When God saw
their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God
relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would
bring upon them. And He did not do it. If we learn
anything from this passage of Scripture, it is that we see
what God can do through one man. But more than that, we learn
what God can do through one man, preaching. I think we would have
to agree that preaching has fallen on hard times in these days.
Modern preaching has been described as a mild-mannered man standing
before a mild-mannered people, urging them to be more mild. But preaching such as we see
here with Jonah seems to be something we would have to admit that has
been relegated to the ancient past, at least preaching that
comes with such urgency and with such authority. What is so amazing
to me about Jonah chapter 3 is that Jonah went into a strange
town not known for its receptivity to the Word of God. Without bells
and whistles, without smoke and mirrors, without high-tech equipment,
without entertainment and amusement, without drama, without marketing
schemes, without advertising campaign. To the contrary, Jonah
was armed simply with the Word of God, and he went forth and
preached and heralded the Word of God, And God moved upon this
town in ways that are unprecedented in biblical history. Here is
the account of one man, Jonah, armed with one message, repent,
committed to one method, preaching. And he saw God work more powerfully
and on a grander scale, as I said, than any other place in redemptive
history. I have a firm conviction. that
you ought to be able to parachute one man into any town armed simply
with a MacArthur study Bible. And to be able to turn that city
upside down for Jesus Christ. Yet today, rather than preaching
with renewed fervor, so many are preoccupied with secondary
strategies, pursuing the latest church growth techniques. alternate
worship styles, and corporate marketing plans to build their
churches. While some of these augmentations
may have a place, and I underscore may have a place, the crying
need of the hour is to restore power to the evangelical pulpit. I have a great concern, I have
a great burden that we have drifted away from the primacy and the
centrality of expository preaching and preaching the Word of God.
We have drifted away from our confidence in the sufficiency
of the Word of God preached to carry out its eternal work. And
so tonight, I want us to look at this chapter. And I trust
that God will encourage your heart and put steel in your convictions
that you will be all the more resolved to be a man of the ministry
of the Word of God. Now as we look at this chapter,
I want to begin in verse 1. And I want you to note with me
first the call he received. As this chapter begins, it starts
with the call of God. And men, That's where ministry
always begins. It begins with God. All things
are from Him and through Him and to Him. It starts with the
call of God upon Jonah's life, a call that was issued to him
a second time. And this is where every ministry
must begin. And as we consider the call he
received, I want you to notice first, it was issued to a specific
person. Look at verse 1. Now the word
of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. God singled out
this one man to be his instrument to preach the word. God always
issues his call specifically to individuals. God's call was
not issued indiscriminately to whosoever will may preach. God
drew a circle around Jonah's name and said, you shall be my
messenger. God's call to preach has always
been selective to chosen individuals. It was that way with the prophets.
In Jeremiah 1, verse 5, you'll recall, God said to Jeremiah,
before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were
born, I consecrated you. I have appointed you a prophet
to the nations. And God did the same with the
Apostle Paul in Galatians 1, verse 15. Scripture says, God
set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His
grace and was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might
preach Him among the Gentiles. Men, the same is true for us
as well. If God has called you to preach,
He has set you apart from your mother's womb. He has drawn a
circle around your name from before time began. You are His
eternal instrument to preach the Word. But not only a specific
person, would you also notice a specific place? In verse 2,
the Scripture says, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city. There
was a specific place on God's map where Jonah was to go and
to carry out his ministry. It was the city of Nineveh, one
of the great cities of the Assyrian Empire. This, as you know, would
be a demanding assignment for Jonah. This was not exactly the
buckle of the Bible belt where Jonah was sent. Nineveh was a
city known far and wide as a place of iniquity and wickedness and
violence and idolatry. It was one of the cruelest people
on the face of the earth. They were known for sacrificing
their children to their pagan deities. They were known for
the cruel way with which they dealt with their enemies, nailing
their enemies to the walls of their cities. They were known
for their ruthless aggression, the way they would prey upon
innocent people. They were a people without a
conscience hardened by sin. Yet this is exactly where God
sent Jonah to preach. And I want to say to us who have
been called, there are no easy places to which we are called
to minister for Jesus Christ. As far as the curse of sin has
gone. So we will find opposition wherever
God sends us to minister. There are no easy assignments
in the kingdom of God. There was not for Jonah. There
will not be for you and me as well. And what encouragement
this is. and how this ought to nail our
feet to the floor where we minister to know that God calls us to
a specific place. But I want you to notice third
about this call. Not only a specific person, Jonah,
and a specific place, Nineveh, but a specific purpose. Continue to look in verse 2.
This was the assignment. and proclaim to it the proclamation
which I am going to tell you." God now tells Jonah what he is
to do. You are to go to Nineveh and
you are to proclaim the proclamation which I am to give to you. In
other words, Both the message and the manner of the delivery
of that message were prescribed by God. The message I will give
to you, but I want you to proclaim it, not share it. Proclaim it. This is a Hebrew
word, kaira. It is a strong word, this word
proclaim. It means to call, to invoke,
to summons, to appeal to. It is a direct word spoken in
a time of critical need. Far more than mere suggestions
or the offering of opinions, the Word of God is to be delivered
with authoritative issuing of a prophetic message. And so God told him to proclaim
the word of the Lord. But also he gave him what he
was to say as well. The message would not originate
with Jonah. God would give him what to say. The proclamation which I am going
to tell you, and this word proclamation, which comes from the same Hebrew
root for proclaim, suggests a formal type of announcement such as
made by an official messenger or designated ambassador who
would be dispatched by a king to issue his royal decree. This is what Jonah was to do. He was to proclaim the proclamation
as an official ambassador of the King of Kings and the Lord
of Lords. Men, I want to tell you, if God
has called you to preach, this is exactly what we are to do. We must preach God's Word, the
proclamation that He gives to us in the 66 books of the canon
of Scripture. We are to preach the full counsel
of God, nothing more, nothing less. And I want to ask you,
are you one of these men of God? Are you one who has been called
by God? Martin Lloyd-Jones has said,
there is no higher, no greater, no grander calling than the call
of God upon a man's life to preach the Word of God. If God has called
you to be his servant, never stoop to be a king. Now second,
not only the call he issued, but I want you to see the commitment
he made. Beginning in verse 3, because
this time in response to God's call. Jonah chose to obey and
to do God's will. Look at verse 3. So Jonah arose
and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. At this point, Jonah is probably
standing on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea or someplace
thereabouts. He has been personally delivered
there by a great fish. He spent the night on a foam
blubber mattress. And he's now ready to preach.
Nineveh is some 550 miles away across rugged terrain. Jonah
has no plane to catch, no car to drive, but I'm sure at this
point, if Jonah had to crawl to Nineveh, he would do that.
And now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. You understand that this means
the outer circumference of the wall of the city took about three
days to walk around that circumference. It's been estimated that it is
about 60 miles in length. No longer running from God's
will, he now pursues it, purposing to go where God wants him to
go and to do what God wants him to do. Leslie Allen, a commentator,
writes an interesting note here. He says, quote, Jonah trudges
for a whole day, and yet he has not reached the heart of this
vast city. He feels small, one man against
a vast metropolis, lost like a needle in a haystack inside
the gigantic vanity fair, this Sodom of a city." And as Jonah now commits himself
to do the will of God, to proclaim the proclamation, that God will
give him. I want you to note four qualities
or four marks about the preaching of Jonah. May God do this in
our hearts. First, I want you to note that
his preaching was courageous. It was courageous, verse 4. Then
Jonah began to go through the city one day's walk, And he cried
out and said, yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Now this was not exactly a seeker-sensitive
message. He was courageous to cry out
the word of the Lord. He did not conduct a door-to-door
survey to determine the felt needs of the pagans in the city
of Nineveh. He did not pull the Ninevites
to discover what they wanted to hear. He did not adapt the
cultic music of Baal worship to convey divine themes. I enjoyed that one. Rather, he opened his mouth and
courageously cried out God's message. He raised his voice
above the commotion of this great city, not mildly bringing up
the subject of God's Word. He threatened them with it. Philip Brooks, in his famous
Yale lectures on preaching in 1877, speaks of this kind of
courage and preaching that we need. Quote, if you're afraid
of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Don't
preach. Go and make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures
which you know are bad, but will suit their bad taste. but do
not keep on all your life preaching sermons which say not what God
has sent you to declare." Be courageous! Jonah was courageous
as he preached the Word of God. John Stott writes in that great
book, Between Two Worlds, there is an urgent need for courageous
preachers in the pulpits of the world today. Neither men-pleasers
nor time-servers ever make good preachers. We are called to the
sacred task of biblical exposition and commissioned to proclaim
what God has said, not what humans want to hear. We have no liberty
to scratch their itch or pander to their likings." Unquote. Where are the courageous preachers
of the Word of God in this hour and in this generation? Second,
I want you to note about his preaching. Not only was it courageous,
but second, the element of conviction. And by this, I mean the conviction
within his own heart. Look at verse 4 again. Then Jonah
began to go through the city one day's walk, And he cried
out. The fact that he cried out, I
think, conveys to us that there was a deep, full conviction within
his own soul of absolute assurance of the reality of the message. It was a fire that was burning
in his bones. Alexander McLaren, the great
Scottish Baptist preacher of the 19th century, has a good
word for us at this point in his comments. Quote, this expression
concerning the fact that Jonah cried out, suggests the manner
befitting those who bear God's message. They should sound it
out loudly, plainly, urgently, with earnestness and marks of
emotion in their voice. Languid whispers will not wake
sleepers. Unless the message is manifestly
in earnest, the message will fall flat." McLaren goes on to
say, "...not with bated breath, as if ashamed of it, nor with
hesitation as if not quite sure of it, nor with coldness as if
it were of little urgency. God's Word is to be peeled in
men's ears." And then McLaren says, the preacher is a crier,
unquote. If you were to ask me what is
the one missing mark in the evangelical pulpit today, apart from a lack
of biblical theology and doctrine, I would answer with one word,
passion. Where are the men of God who
will preach with conviction and passion? It was Richard Baxter
who once said, quote, I preach as never sure to preach again
as a dying man to dying men. Where are such dying men today? Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great
expositor, said, quote, Preaching is theology coming through a
man who is on fire, unquote. Where are such inflamed men today? D.L. Moody, the 19th century
evangelist, said, quote, the best way to revive a church is
to build a fire in the pulpit. Where are such on-fire men in
the pulpit? Joseph Parker said, quote, true
preaching is the sweating of blood, unquote. Where are the
men who will sweat blood in the preaching of the Word of God?
And the greatest of all the churches evangelists George Whitefield
once said, I love those who thunder out the word. The Christian world
is in a deep sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can
awaken them out of it. Unquote. Conviction. Courage. I was visiting recently
with a man who heads up a seminary, and we were talking about great
preachers of yesteryear. And I asked him, where are great
men like? And we walked back through the
ages. I said, what is the one missing
element today that marked those men? And without
even hesitation, he snapped back, gravitas. A sense of gravity in the pulpit.
A sense of weightiness in bringing the message. A sense of earnestness
in communicating the Word of God. He said, we have many communicators. We have many men of levity and
frivolity in pulpits. There is little gravitas. I want you to notice a third
mark. of Jonah's preaching. Not only courage, and not only
conviction, but I think third we can say confrontation. Look at the message again, and
yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. This was unmistakably
a message of the certainty and the severity of the righteous
character of God. Forty days and the judgment of
God will fall like a hammer. This has always been the approach
of God's men down through the ages. Someone has written, Jonah's
message from the steps going up to the ark was not, something
good is going to happen to you today. Amos was not confronted by the
high priest of Israel for proclaiming confession is possession. Jeremiah
was not put into the pit for preaching, I'm okay, you're okay. Daniel was not put into the lion's
den for telling people possibility thinking will move mountains.
And John the Baptist was not forced to preach in the wilderness
and eventually be beheaded because he preached, smile, God loves
you. Instead, the message of these
men was, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The message
of judgment is a forgotten message today, quite frankly, and we
must remember that the good news is never embraced as good news
until they know what the bad news is. Adrian Rogers has written
concerning this kind of confrontation, quote, It is better to be divided
by truth than to be united in error. It is better to speak
the truth that hurts and then heals than falsehood that comforts
and then kills. It is not love and it is not
friendship if we fail to declare the whole counsel of God. It
is better to be hated for telling the truth than to be loved for
telling a lie. It is impossible to find anyone
in the Bible who was a power for God, who did not have enemies
and was not hated. It is better to stand alone with
the truth, Rogers said, than to be wrong with the multitude. There's a fourth element that
I want you to note in verse 4. Not only confrontation and not
only conviction, But I also want you to see compassion. He does
say 40 days in Nineveh will be overthrown. In reality, God's
message was a message with the invitation of grace and with
the hope of salvation. There is a window of time if
you will come to God. If you will come to God on His
terms, you may be delivered from the judgment to come. And Merle
Unger writes, quote, the 40-day delay in the execution of divine
judgment upon Nineveh gave the people time to repent. And Douglas
Stewart, in his commentary, notes, quote, Jonah's message must have
seemed to many Ninevites to be an invitation to repentance,
giving hope that they and their city might not be destroyed. As we preach the Word of God,
not only do we bring with courage a message of confrontation, but
we bring a message of compassion as well as we extend the good
news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are merchants of the hope
of the gospel of Christ. We offer forgiveness of sins.
We offer pardon from iniquity. We offer reconciliation with
God. We offer new life in Christ. We offer heaven forever. We offer propitiation of God's
wrath. We have the greatest, most glorious
news that ever come from the lips of any man in the history
of the world. We are heralds of the good news
of Jesus Christ. So this is the commitment that
he made. He was courageous. He was confident, confrontational, but yet compassionate. Well, I want to ask you, did
God bless this means? I want you to see the conversions
he saw. What follows is the greatest
evangelistic response in the recorded history of the world.
The people actually stopped to listen. The hum of commerce died
down. The buzz in the marketplace quietened. The chatter of the neighborhood
grew silent. A holy hush settled over the
city. Look at verse 5, and I want you
to notice several components here. It was a saving movement
of God. Verse 5, "...then the people
of Nineveh believed in God." How strange! They had no previous
biblical understanding of truth, and yet as the Word of God was
brought as prescribed by God Himself, the God who called Jonah
to preach was also calling the Ninevites to believe. And the
text says that they believed in God. This was a town of some
600,000 people, as Jonah 4,11 says, that there were 120,000
children. This was a massive turning to
God, even if taken in a hyperbolic but they actually responded to
the preaching of God's message and they believed. This Hebrew
word for believed, aman, it means to be firm, it means to be established,
it means to trust, to be supported, to stand firm. This is what happened. And men, this is what I believe
will happen in our ministries as well. God is pleased to honor
the preaching of His Word with conversions of souls. They will
come in due time, but as the rain comes down from heaven and
shall not return without accomplishing the purpose for which it has
come, so the Word of God as it goes forth in the preaching through
His servants will accomplish His eternal purposes. But second,
in verse 5, we see it was also a sobering movement of God's
Spirit. It says, they called to fast
and they put on sackcloth. These were signs of inward contrition
and humiliation. Fasting was an act of self-denial,
symbolic of the self-denial of their own heart as they believed
upon God. And the sackcloth was a symbol
of sorrow and repentance. It was a coarse, dark, crude,
black cloth that was uncomfortable and unfit to wear. The coarseness
of the sackcloth made the wearer miserable. This was symbolic
of their mourning over sin and how they felt on the inside as
the Spirit of God and the Word of God was breaking up their
heart. It was sobering. It was sweeping. Look at the end of verse 5. Top
to bottom, this was a sweeping revival. It says, from the greatest
to the least of them, from the rich to the poor, masters and
servants, upper class, lower class, princes and paupers. A
true work of God through the preaching of the Word knows no
barriers. It is not restricted to a homogeneous
unit because it is dependent upon preaching the transcendent
truth of God that overshadows barriers in denominational and
ethnic differences. In verse 6, we see how sweeping
it was. When the Word reached the king
of Nineveh, he arose from his throne. laid aside his robe from
him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on the ashes." sitting
on ashes was also symbolic. It was a sign of helplessness
and despair. It was symbolic of knowing one
deserves to be incinerated and under judgment in hell. It was
symbolic of lowering oneself in the presence of God. And here
even the king himself comes under the deep conviction of the Spirit
of God as the message reaches all the way to the king. And
in verse 7, the king becomes an evangelist. He issued a proclamation
and it said, in Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles,
do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not
let them eat or drink water, but both man and beast must be
covered with sackcloth." So desirous were they that the whole city
would turn to the true and living God that they even involve the
animals representative of Lord. It's all of us. We are turning
to You. We are believing in You. And
then we see at the end of verse 8, it was sanctifying as well.
and let each man call on God earnestly, that each may, watch
this, turn from his wicked way. My friend, this was the real
thing. There was a break from the past, a break from sin. They
were turning from their wicked way and from the violence which
is in His hands. They were not merely professing
with their lips a cheap grace, but with deep sorrow over their
sin and repentance of heart, they turned from their sin under
the preaching of Jonah. Who knows? God may turn and relent. Verse 9, "...and withdraw his
burning anger, so that we shall not perish." And when God saw
their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God
relented concerning the calamity He declared He would bring upon
them. And He did not do it. Here is
the result. of the simple preaching of God's
Word to bring about a saving, sobering, sweeping, sanctifying
revival. This, I believe, is the great
need of the hour for the men of God to take the Word of God
and the power of the Spirit of God and to declare the message
of God. And I believe that God will be
pleased to use it again in this hour as He has in centuries past. If God has called you to preach, for God's sake, preach the Word. We'll let Charles Haddon Spurgeon
have the last word in this. who spoke over 100 years ago. The Prince of Preachers speaks
to us. He said, we want again Luthers,
Calvins, Bunyans, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names
breathe terror in our foeman's ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us?
They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the church, and they will
come in due time. He has power to give us back
again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of mighty ministers
as was the Puritan age. And when the good old truth is
once more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live
coal off the altar, This shall be the instrument in the hand
of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough religion,
revival of religion in the land." Now listen to what he says. I
do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the
simple preaching of the gospel and of the opening of men's ears
to hear it. The moment the church of God
shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been
through the ministry of preaching that the Lord has always been
pleased to revive and bless His churches. Beloved, the need of the hour
is for men of God to take the Word of God and the power of
the Spirit of God and to proclaim the message of God. And I believe God will bring
about a great and thorough awakening in our day as we rise up to preach
the Word. Join me in a word of prayer. Father in heaven, would you stir
our hearts tonight? Rekindle within our own hearts
our call to preach? how You have put Your hand upon
our shoulder and drawn us unto Yourself and have said to us,
proclaim the proclamation which I shall give you. Lord, it's
a high and holy calling that You have given to us. And Father,
I pray that You would nurture within our own hearts a sense
of fear and a sense of awe that You have called us to be heralds
of Your Word. Lord, may we be courageous, not
be men-pleasers. Lord, may we be full of conviction
May we both confront as well as preach with great compassion
as we declare the full counsel of God, both salvation and damnation,
both grace and wrath. And Lord, I pray that You would
be pleased by Your sovereign grace to bring about a saving
sobering, sweeping, sanctifying revival in this day. And Lord,
we do echo the words of our brother, Mr. Spurgeon, that we do not look for any other
means of bringing about this revival apart from the preaching
of Your Word. God, with these men here tonight,
I pray that You would arrest their hearts and stir deeply
within them, ignite the flame within them,
stir up the gift within them, that they would devote themselves
afresh to this high and holy calling. In Jesus' name, amen.