Speaking for the help of the
Lord, I direct your prayerful attention to the book of Jonah. Jonah chapter 3, and reading
for our text, the second verse. Arise, go into Nineveh, that
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Jonah chapter 3 and verse 2,
preaching that God bids seen in the case of Jonah. Though a minister, when he preaches,
he does not preach himself, that is, setting forth himself, but
He preaches the gospel, he preaches Christ, he lifts up Christ on
the pole of the everlasting gospel. But nevertheless, the preacher
is part of the message. Let me explain what I mean by
that. The Lord has seen fit to not
send angels to preach the gospel. If we'd have read earlier on,
In the passage in Acts, we would have read how Cornelius the centurion
had an angel appear to him and bid him to go and send for Peter
to come and preach to them. God has ordained that sinners
save sinners, preach to sinners. And those that preach a way of
salvation, a way of deliverance from the wrath to come, have
themselves received that deliverance, tasted of it, and are witnesses
of it. And so in that, they are not
detached from the message that they bring. They're not speaking
about something that does not concern them. It does. and they're
not speaking about something of which they have no experience
of the power of either, because they do know the power of the
gospel. We think of the case of the Apostle
Paul. Paul was Saul, as his name was
first, hated the Lord Jesus Christ. He persecuted all that called
on his name. And he thought he was doing God's
service. He's walking in a path that was
of a great persecution to the church of God. And then the Lord
appeared to him and revealed himself to him on the Damascus
Road. And his life did not continue
on in the same way. It changed. That's what repentance
is. He changed. He turned. The Apostle
says that they heard that he that once persecuted the Church
of God and wasted it, now preacheth the faith that he once destroyed. And that change was very well
known, and wherever Paul was preaching the Gospel, he himself
was a living example of that. In fact, he refers to that when
he writes to Timothy, that the mercy had been shown him first. And it was that none should despair. He turns himself the chief of
sinners. So alongside the message that
he was bringing, he was an example, an example of one that had been
saved. There were those times that the
apostles were preaching and they had been given, as apostles,
the same power as the Lord, or through the Lord, to work miracles. And when they preached the gospel
and preached the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that they
were his ministers, then they had standing next to them the
one that had the miracle wrought on him. And so people could see
the evidence of the word of God or the evidence of the power
of the Lord Jesus Christ. So God's servants are part of
the message. Certainly if you look back to
the prophets, many of the prophets were asked by God to do some
things that we think were the most strange things that they
had to do. It was to provoke the people
to ask, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And then
it gave them the opening to bring the message. And they were very
much part of the message themselves. And God's servants, they are
prepared for the work that he gives them to do, just the same
as what Moses was prepared to lead the children of Israel through
the wilderness. He had 80 years preparation,
40 years in the household of Pharaoh, and 40 years in the
desert feeding the sheep of his father-in-law, learning desert
survival, if you like, or what it was to live in the desert,
and the same time to know what it was to be in Pharaoh's court. And so when the Lord would send
Moses, and Moses had or manner of excuse that he wanted the
Lord to send someone else. No, Moses was the only one because
he had been prepared and he was for that place. And we need to
remember that a minister that is prepared for one congregation
or one ministry and amongst one circle of churches or people,
God has prepared that man over maybe many years, or maybe for
a particular message. It has just been in the previous
week. All the things that he has passed
through and experienced, they do affect how he brings that
message. What kind of a message would
it be if the preacher himself was well known to be a very immoral
character and lived an unholy, ungodly life? What kind of a
message would that be? It would undermine his message.
But if it was known that he used to live such a life, but now
under the gospel he had changed and he was a different character,
that would reinforce the message that he was bringing. And so
we have the case here with Jonah. We are told, and we're told by
the Lord himself, that Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites
in the Gospel according to Luke 11. And in verse 30, or if we
read verse 29 first, the people were gathered thick together.
He began to say, this is an evil generation. They seek a sign,
and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonas the
prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto
the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man be to this generation."
So here is Jonah the preacher coming to the Ninevites and he
himself is a sign. How was he a sign? What our Lord is saying here,
he's equating it, Jonah was a sign, but the Son of Man, that is the
Lord Jesus Christ, would be to his generation. What was the
Lord Jesus Christ going to do? He was going to be killed, and
three days he would be hidden from view in the grave, and then
he would rise again from the dead, he would appear to his
disciples, And then later when he ascended up into heaven, the
disciples would be doing the same miracles of healing that
he was doing and ascribing them to the power of him that was
no longer dead, but risen and ascended up into heaven. And
so for that generation, that one that they crucified, the
one that they knew had died and was buried, suddenly is alive
again and is, through his servants, preaching. And the word is with
power from heaven. That sign, God hath given assurance
unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. That
was to be the sign, and that is the sign, in the New Testament
day and was a sign to the generation there. that saw our Lord crucified,
slain, and risen again. And so with the Ninevites as
well, Jonah in the ship had told those sailors what he was, what
his occupation was, and he told them that he had fled from the
presence of the Lord. He had acquainted with them.
that he had been told to go and preach to Nineveh and bring that
message to them and he'd run away. He wouldn't go and he wouldn't
preach. And that's why these things had
come. Now, I'm no doubt about this, the same as clear as it
was to those in Christ's day, that the Ninevites knew that
the preacher that was due to come to them had been cast into
the sea and he was dead. And the one that was going to
bring a message of destruction for Nineveh was himself destroyed,
was himself slain. They could not have thought otherwise,
to be cast out in the midst of a raging sea. and to be lost
beneath the waves. It was as Jonah was dead. And then suddenly, the man that
they thought was dead is there in their midst, and he is preaching
the message, the message that he at first had run away from
and wouldn't bring, Now he is bringing it. He is a man that
is alive from the dead. In a way, what a terrifying sight,
what a realisation this was, to have the many witnesses that
have seen him cast into the sea, and now, now here he is. And this message of destruction,
the message that within 40 days the city would be destroyed,
is being proclaimed throughout this city. Jonah was part of
that message. He was assigned to the Ninevites. Now I have heard an account of
a similar thing happened to a whaler that fell off the ship and was
thought to have drowned. And then a day or so later, they
recovered a whale. And as they brought it up on
the whaling ship, they opened it up, they found the man alive
inside it. And it is said that the stomach
juices had turned that man completely white. And he would have looked
quite a sight. Miraculously, he survived it
too. But I don't think that that was
or could have been any part of a sign. Not what Jonah looked
like. It was the fact that he had risen
from the dead. The fact that it was equated
to be the same as our Lord, because our Lord says, as Jonah was three
days and three nights in the fish's belly or the whale's belly,
so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. And the whole Gospel, it centres
around Christ dead and buried and risen again. And so Jonah
coming to the Ninevites I say again, he was part of that message. And we may ask ourselves, those
of us that are ministers, what kind of message do we give, quite
apart from the words that we bring? And those of you that
hear us, do you ever take into account the messenger, the minister? Sometimes we have in our churches,
autobiographies of ministers and we read something of their
lives and how those have affected their ministry. And some of us
in the ministry as well, we do recount some of the things that
we have passed through and it's known. Sometimes it doesn't need
recounting because it is known and it is part of the message. Real men, real sinners, those
that are going to die themselves, those that need a hope themselves,
those that are wrestling and struggling with sin. They preach
to sinners and they preach a way of escape from the wrath to come.
You must remember that. I want to then look this evening
with the Lord's help at three points. Firstly, Jonas preaching. and the preaching of the gospel
today. Secondly, God's blessing upon
the preaching. The people repented. And thirdly,
God's blessing upon the people that he, that is God, repented
and gave them life from the dead. But firstly, Jonah's preaching
and the preaching of the Gospel today. How wonderfully this chapter
begins, such a contrast to the first chapter. The word of the
Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go into
Nineveh, unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the
preaching that I bid thee." And we read this, that Jonah arose,
no more fleeing away, he went unto Nineveh according to the
word of the Lord and then he begins to enter into it and he
preaches and he cries and he says, yet forty days and Nineveh
shall be overthrown. A very short summary of Jonah's
preaching, wasn't it? A declaration that in 40 days'
time that city would be overthrown. A message of destruction, a message
that in the message itself didn't seem to hold out any ray of hope. No repentance preached, no way
of escape, but a certain destruction was coming. And Jonah did exactly what the
Lord told him to do. The inspired, infallible Word
of God tells us that he did. And that he preached these very
words, he set forth these words, a declaration from God as God's
ambassador. Jonas Creechie. And you might
say, well, where is the hope? What gave these people to ever
enter into their head that it may be that by repenting the
Lord would not destroy them? What made them think that? Will we come back to Jonah? Jonah
was a living example. Jonah had been rebellious, disobedient,
fled from the Lord, provoked the Lord to anger. Jonah had
seemingly been destroyed and killed, and yet Jonah was alive. If the Lord could spare Jonah,
then why not us? If he could raise him, as it
were, from the dead, though the message is so dire for none of
them, maybe we can have life as well as Jonah. And another
thing, it wasn't the city shall be instantly destroyed. There was a time, 40, 40 is Often
it is a testing time, the 40 years in the wilderness, 40 days,
the Lord tempted by Satan in the desert. 40 is a testing time, the time
that our Lord, from the time that He rose from the dead and
ascended up into heaven, it was 40. And there's many instances
through the Word of God, it is a time of test. But wherever the Lord gives time,
there is hope. Where there is life, there is
hope. Have you ever thought when God said to our first parents,
in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, that when
they did eat of the forbidden fruit, that God would have been
just to cut them right off, that they died Physically and spiritually
and the whole human race finished right there. But it didn't. God gave them time. And where there is time, where
there is life, there is hope. We read in the Psalms, Psalm
90, that teaches to number our days and apply them unto wisdom. How do we spend our days, those
days, those hours allotted to us? Do we fritter them away? Do we waste them away? Or do
we realise that they are given us as days of hope, days when
the gospel is proclaimed, days in which mercy is to be found,
in which salvation is to be found. I believe the Ninevites, they
saw in that giving of time also a ray of hope. And so then they
had this word, who can tell? Who can tell? They didn't have a certainty
even, but who can tell? If God will turn and repent and
turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not. And so there
they are, they are repenting. But what a message Jonas was. But what is the message that
is given in the gospel day? What is the message given to
us today? Well, if we look at the commissions
that we have, especially at the end of the Gospels, we have with
Matthew, Matthew chapter 28, we have the Lord's commission
to his servants. Go ye therefore and teach all
nations. baptising them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo,
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." So the
commission with Matthew, the emphasis is on a teaching ministry
which really was very much the ministry of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, to instruct and to teach in the ways of God,
in the way of salvation. What then was the message when
we come to the Gospel according to Luke? And at the end of that
gospel, we have there in verse 47, if we go back a bit, verse
46, he said unto them, thus it is written, thus it behove Christ
to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. So that is what
is to be set forth there. Instead of destruction, the message
of the gospel, the law sends destruction. The law of God,
the law as given by Moses is very clear that The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. And the law was given that all
the world might be brought in guilty before God. Whosoever
continueth not in all points of the law to do it, there is
a curse. Whoso offendeth in one point
is guilty of all. We are under condemnation. We
are under as much as the same as what the Ninevites were. We,
mankind, is under the sentence of death. But the gospel is not
the law, and the gospel should not be made to sound like the
law either. And so what is here, our Lord
says, repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name, in his name. We sung a beautiful hymn, William
Gadsby, on repentance. And it is that the Lord Jesus
Christ is exalted to give repentance and remission of sins unto Israel. That's a spiritual Israel. The
apostles declared that in Acts 5. It's not saying in the way of
the law, do this, repent, believe. It is saying without repentance
and without believing, We shall be destroyed, we shall be lost
forever. But the gospel says the Lord
Jesus Christ himself is the giver of repentance. And it is Christ
that makes a believer and gives him his crown. And the message
of the gospel is to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as not one
that is there unable to save and needs poor man to do his
part in salvation. It is the Lord exalted that poor
sinners that feel their condemnation, that feel their sin, that feel
the need of repentance but can't repent, that feel such a hard
heart and so unable to bend and to turn and to to separate from
their sins and their idols, they have lifted up this blessed gift
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is exalted to give that blessing. And this is the gospel. This
is the good news of salvation, is not making the gospel like
the law with a great big stick and saying, if you don't repent,
you'll perish. If you don't believe, you'll
perish. And if you hear the gospel, you don't respond to the gospel,
then your condemnation will be so much more. And in one sense,
it is true. It is a solemn thing to hear
the word of God and to be unmoved by it and to reject it as we
do by nature. But God has seen fit as he did. And we look at this in a moment.
to bless such preaching. And we need to see how the apostles
set this forth. They set the need of repentance
very, very clearly. We had it in the reading that
we read in Acts 10. This was the preaching of Peter,
preaching of Peter to the Gentiles. the first time to the Gentiles,
those 10 years after Pentecost, the same preacher, Peter, and
sees the same effect upon the preaching. But we're told the
words that he preached. He says, that word I say, which
was published, and it is preaching peace by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. That is what
the Gospel is, peace by Jesus Christ. And again, what is set
before them here is Christ's death and resurrection. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission. It is Christ that died, yea,
rather than is risen again, that appeareth in the presence of
God for us. The whole secret of how God can
have mercy upon a sinner and how he can save a sinner is that
the debt is paid, that the debt is accepted, an empty tomb and
Christ in heaven. This is what is declared and
set forth what Christ has done. As if the whole world must know
here is the payment made, accepted, Here is God's way of salvation. Here is what Christ has done. And now he is exalted to give
to undeserving, hell-deserving sinners a heart to turn, a new
heart to repent, to bow, to be sorry for their sins, to believe
in him. And this, the Lord is exalted. He's lifted up. He's blessed
in this. proclamation. We have the Apostle
setting forth this in Acts 17, as he speaks to those on Mars
Hill. And he proclaims the word to
them, them that worshipped or had an altar to an unknown God. They had altars to all sorts
of gods. And he then declared to them
that God that they ignorantly worshipped, and set forth them
that this gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ was given, that
they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after
him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of
us. For in him we live and move and have our being, As certain
also of your own prophets, he tells them, have said, for we
are his offspring. And he says how that up to this
time, God in effect has winked at it. He's just let them go,
let the nations go with their idols. But now, now the gospel
is to be sent forth, not just to Jews, but Gentiles as well. He commands all men everywhere
to repent. Preaching of repentance is to
be proclaimed everywhere and set forth to every man and the
Lord Jesus Christ exalted before every man to give repentance
and remission of sins. Why? Because he hath appointed
a day in which he would judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath ordained. Ralph, he hath given assurance
unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. And again, the assurances in
what the Lord has done, what the Lord has done. How we must
be so careful in this, we need to, and I want to make this very
clear, we all are by nature under condemnation. If we go on unchanged,
And in the course that we have entered upon as we came in this
world, we shall perish eternally. We shall die and then after death
a judgment and eternal hellfire. If we are never brought to change
our course, to repent, to be sorry for our sins, to turn away
from those sins, then we shall perish. Our Lord was very clear,
except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. But I want to
be very clear as well, where the blessing of repentance comes
from, and that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. We desperately
need it, it is absolutely vital, and the Lord Jesus Christ has
that to sovereignly give, and we must be clear on that. We don't make the gospel like
the law and say to men, you must of your own selves and by your
own power do what is the work of God. Vital it is and really
in one sense, in a natural sense, all men do have an obligation
and a duty to believe all that God has revealed and all that
he's set forth from his throne. and to walk in his ways. But
in an evangelical, in a saving way, it is vital that it comes
as a gift from heaven that touches the heart, changes the heart,
renews the will and turns the feet to Zion's hill. And that
is God's work, as much as it is Christ's work and God's work
to die and rise again. So it is to give repentance and
give a blessing. So the preaching of Jonah, Jonah,
he preached a certain destruction and if the people had not repented,
if they had not turned, then Nineveh would have been destroyed. And he preached that, certainly
so. And with the preaching of the
Gospel, we really have the same message, but a message that is
very, very clear now, positive message, so that it is not almost
as a who can tell, it is an absolute certainty. If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You know, the Queen Esther, when
there was a sentence of death over all of the Jews, then she
didn't want to go into the king because if someone went in that
was not called and he didn't hold out the golden scepter,
then they would be killed. But Mordecai said, if you hold
your peace at this time, then deliverance will appear from
another quarter. But who knoweth that thou had
come to the kingdom for such a time as this? And she said,
then you, for three days, you fast, pray, and then I'll go
into the king. If I perish, I perish. She ventured and the law was
not on her side. And yet the king held out the
golden scepter, but in the gospel, The gospel is on the sinner's
side, and even the law is, as it is fulfilled by the Lord Jesus
Christ. It has no claim against a believer. The Lord came to fulfill the
law and make it honourable, and to satisfy the justice of God,
to endure the wrath of God himself in his own body on the tree,
and to rise again from the dead. in the stead and in the place
of his people. And so we have the preaching
of Jonah and the preaching of the gospel. The gospel then is
seen to be so blessed, such a wonderful message with such assurances
and preached by sinners to each succeeding generation. Each one
generation of ministers rise up and say, I was a hardened
sinner. I was ignorant of the word. The
Lord brought me to repentance. He brought me to turn. He changed
my life. He brought me from a hater of
God to a lover of God. And though we all testify of
our struggles with sin, the body of death that we still have,
the need of God's grace continually and his mercy and his help and
forgiveness daily. But we come and we preach that
word that we hang upon for our eternal peace and happiness in
heaven as well. Well then, if that was Jonah's
preaching and the preaching of the gospel today, In our second
place, what was God's blessing upon the preaching? The preacher, Jonah, preached
what God told him to. Today we are to preach the authoritative
declaration of the word of God and the will of God. And God blessed Jonah's preaching. How did it evidence itself that
his preaching was blessed, was effectual? The people repented. The people turned. And really,
we get hardened to such an account like this, don't we? Those of
us who have known the word maybe from childhood, But to read it
like, this is a Gentile nation that hated Israel, that was a
very violent nation and their great adversary. And what we
read of happening here, could you imagine it today? If someone
started walking through London and saying what Jonah was saying? You'd think, well, the man would
probably be locked up or mobbed. We can easily pass over what
an amazing thing that such an effect was upon this people. Could that be man's work? Could
that be Jonah's persuasion? Was it his eloquence? Was it
just the sign that he was to them? Or was it God working through
them? You know, Jonah says in the next
chapter, because Jonah wasn't happy that
God gave them repentance, he says, I pray thee, O Lord, was
not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore
I fled before unto Tarshish, For I knew that thou art a gracious
God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of the evil." He knew the character of God. He knew if
God sent a preacher, then he would bless that man's ministry. He knew that it was that he intended
to show mercy. In Jonah's case, Quite nice for
him to be able to say, I was proved to be a true prophet.
Forty days after I preached, the Lord destroyed the city.
And I got rid of one of the worst enemies of Israel too at the
same time. But the Lord delighted in mercy,
and Jonah knew it. But let us not pass over the
wonderful, the miraculous, Change in these people. God's blessing,
the power of God. The people repented and God uses
such preaching. God uses especially the preaching
of the gospel and the gift of God. is that
the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted to give repentance and remission
of sins unto Israel. May it be those of you that hear
the word tonight that you have the same word as what the Ninevites
did, who can tell? Who can tell? A ray of hope for you, so that
you seek, so that you desire of the Lord
that help to separate from your idols and your evil way and your
godlessness and carelessness and worldliness and to seek unto
the Lord and to seek his grace and to hear his word and to walk
in his ways Seek ye the Lord while he may
be found, call upon him while he is near. Yet the wicked forsake
his way, the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn
again unto the Lord. Who can tell? May we be like
Esther venturing, venturing upon the Lord with much more certainties,
encouragements than ever the Ninevites had or Esther God's blessing upon the preaching. It changed hearts. It changed
lives. It was evidenced. It could be
seen. You know, Barnabas, they heard
that Antioch had received the Word of God. The Word had been
blessed. And he went up to see. And he
saw the grace of God. He saw the evidence of it. At
Ephesus, those there were burning their idols, stopping buying
them. The silversmiths were all upset
because there was no business for them anymore. It made a change
in their lives. And the Gospel does that. A change
of course, to go the other way. God's blessing upon the preaching brings repentance. Yes, we can think of many other
blessings on the preaching, but may we concentrate mindly on
this that is here, joined with this message of Jonah. But what of then in our third
place, God's blessing upon the people? You might say, well,
isn't the blessing on the ministry, the blessing on the people? In
one sense, it is. But the way I see it is this,
the Lord blessed them with repentance, but then he blessed that repentance
as well. We read at the end of verse 10
here, and God saw their works, that they turned from their evil
way And do we read, God saw their works and said, no, I said I
was going to destroy them, and it doesn't matter what they've
done, it doesn't matter what change has been in their lives,
I'm still going to destroy them. No. And God repented of the evil
that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not. Two things are joined together,
repentance and remission of sins. Both the Lord gives. You know,
we cannot see the forgiveness of sins. There were some in the
Word of God where the Lord said very clearly to them, thy sins
are forgiven thee. The man that was sick with a
palsy, the Lord said to him first that his sins were forgiven.
Well, that couldn't be seen. And there were those there that
really argued with that. that who can forgive sins but
God only? So our Lord proved it. He said
that ye might know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to
forgive sins. He said to the sick of the palsy,
take up thy bed and walk. And he did. And that was something
they could see. They could see the power of God.
And so where the Lord works in their hearts, where he gives
saving faith, Then he'll give repentance and it will change
our lives. Come ye out from among them,
touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you. You shall
be my sons and my daughters. Sometimes it will be very marked
like the Apostle Paul, sometimes not so marked. Sometimes there'll be many. worthy
friends that either we will separate from them or they won't want
to be with us. Sometimes it will be things that
we do, our practices, or whether we have been used to swearing,
the swearer stops swearing, the liar stops lying, the blasphemer
stops blaspheming. It will make a change. And it will change those that
we love too. In John 1, we know that we are
passed from death unto life, in that we love the brethren.
So God's blessing upon the people, the people they repented, they
changed. But you know, God saved them
from destruction. And the Lord says in the gospel,
I give unto them eternal life. And they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of mine hand. And the point
I want to make in this last point, we might only see the repentance,
we might only know and realise what effect and how it's changed
our lives. But what we are to know is that
God has brought that about through the preaching, and that God has
joined to that a blessing upon us of giving us eternal life
and he's given us faith in his name, he's given us a new heart,
he's given us eyes to see, ears to hear what the Spirit saith
to the churches. We are to trace the blessings
of God. up to the Lord Jesus Christ and
we are to know that everyone that has those blessings of eternal
life and has the blessings that flow from Calvary are all brought
to repent. Those things are joined together,
not in word, only, but indeed, making a real, real change. We mentioned earlier on of the
message of the Gospel, but there's other works, of course, through
the ministry. We didn't read what we have at
the end of the Gospel according to John, and in that we don't
have the usual commission, but we do have a very clear commission
to Peter, and that was feed my lambs and feed my sheep. And through the ministry of the
Word, not only is the message of salvation, but it is also
to feed and to keep alive those that are quickened into spiritual
life. And that same food is the broken
body and shed blood of the Lord. It all points to Calvary. It all points to the same sign
that Jonah was to the Ninevites. And God's dear people must always
keep that in sight. And so the apostle says, I determined
to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And this is why it's set forth
in baptism, buried with him by baptism. into death and risen
again in newness of life. Why it is set forth, ordained
by the Lord in the Lord's Supper, this do in remembrance of me,
as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth
the Lord's death till he come. It's not a fresh sacrifice, it's
a remembrance, ordinance, for those who have been brought to
repent who have been blessed with faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ and who have their only hope in what the Lord has done
in his death and in his resurrection. Jonah here was a real example
of one brought to repent, to turn, to preach, and one whose
preaching was blessed and the people were blessed. with life
instead of death and destruction. And may that be our blessing
as well. The Lord bless the word and bless
the word preached tonight. Amen.