Would you open your Bibles with
me to the book of Jonah? Jonah. This little book of four chapters
is so rich with the Lord Jesus Christ. If there was ever any
question about the message and the meaning of the story of Jonah,
the Lord removed all doubt when he rebuked those Pharisees for
insisting on a sign. And the Lord said to them, this
is a wicked and adulterous generation
that seeketh after a sign. No sign will be given unto it
except for the sign of Jonah, who spent three days and three
nights in the belly of the whale, and so shall the Son of Man spend
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." The
Lord in that statement clearly tells
us that this, like all of Scripture, But in such a wonderful way, this book is a sign, a sign. Now, we're not interested in
just studying the sign. The purpose of a sign is to point
to a destination. And so as we look at this book
over the next several Wednesday nights, if the Lord enables,
I want to try to bring at least four messages from the book of
Jonah, and we'll be in chapter one tonight. But the Lord remind
us that this story points to the Lord Jesus, who himself is
our substitute. Jonah is a picture of Christ
as a substitute. And the Lord Jesus also is the
one who satisfied the demands of God's justice and conquered
death. And Jonah is a picture of that.
And so as we look at these verses, Pray the Lord will enable us
to look beyond the sign and follow the picture of the sign to the
destination of the Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is I need a
substitute. I need one to take my place before
God, one who is willing to die in my place as Jonah was cast
from this ship And in the casting of Jonah from the ship, the turbulent
sea of God's wrath and justice was laid bare, it was calm. And so sinners are in need of a substitute. We are in need of one who conquered
death, one who rose from the dead, one who is able to bring
life and immortality from the grave. And surely, Jonah's a
picture of that. He reminds us of what the Lord
Jesus did when he put away our sin and conquered death, our
last enemy. our final enemy, and the older
we get, the more we realize that this is the most formidable enemy,
and the one that must be, must be conquered, and the Lord Jesus
is the only one that can do that. Daniel put it like this, the
Lord Jesus made reconciliation for iniquity and brought in an
everlasting righteousness. We need Christ to stand in our
stead before a holy God. We need him to make reconciliation
for our sin, for our iniquity, and we need him to bring an everlasting
righteousness. Also, we are reminded tonight
that all scripture has been given by inspiration of God. And this book of Jonah is certainly
part of God's inspired word. All scripture is profitable.
It is profitable for doctrine. It is profitable for reproof.
We are corrected by scripture. We're taught by scripture. That's
what doctrine is. Doctrine teaches us. Reproof
corrects us. It is profitable for instruction
in righteousness, all of God's word. points us to Christ and
reminds us of our need for Him as our righteousness. And the
last part of that verse says that the man of God, and that's
all believers, might be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. The Lord makes His people zealous
for good works. We want to honor the Lord. And it is by the means of His
word that he does that for us. So wherever in God's word we
go, we're looking for doctrine, we're looking for reproof, we're
looking for instruction in righteousness, we're looking for that which would thoroughly furnish
us. And all of that is found in Christ. It's all that's found in Christ.
So I've titled this message, the sign of Jonah, the sign of
Jonah. That's what the Lord said. No
other sign will be given except for the sign of Jonah. And he was speaking of his own
death and resurrection. And that is our sign. We have We have the revelation
of Christ conquering death for us. And we know in order for
him to do that, he had to put away sin because the wages of
sin is death. You have your Bibles open to
Jonah. Let's look at verse one in chapter one. Now the word
of the Lord came. That's always our hope, isn't
it? That the word of the Lord would come. That the spirit of
God would speak to our hearts by his written word, revealing
the Lord Jesus, who is the living word of God. He's the one. He is our life, and he's the
one we look to, and he's the one we find our hope in. He's
the one that speaks peace to our hearts. He's the one who
who conquers death and brings us across the Jordan safely into
the promised land. He's the only one that can do
that. And so, when we go to God's word, we're praying, Lord, might
your word come to me like it came to the men of old. Like
you spoke to these prophets, Lord, I need you to speak to
me. Came to Jonah, the son of Amittai,
saying, now, 2 Kings chapter 14, I think it's around verse
25, tells us very specifically where Jonah was from. He was
from a small town just right beside Nazareth, where our Lord
grew up and lived for 30 years. And you know that Nazareth is
in Galilee. Now, if you'll think with me
for just a moment about what the Pharisees said when Nicodemus was meeting with the
Sanhedrin and he was trying to defend the Lord Jesus. He had already met with the Lord
by night. And they all turned against him. And they said to
him, are you one of them also? And then they said this, no prophet
ever came out of Galilee. Now they knew that wasn't true.
They knew what 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 25 said about Jonah. leads me to think that perhaps,
like people today who claim to believe the Bible, I mean, you
run into people all the time, oh, I believe all the Bible,
I believe it's the inspired word of God from cover to cover, and
then you point out verses to them or whole passages or chapters
like Ephesians 1 or Romans 9, and they don't believe it. It's
easy to say you believe the Bible, until you hear what the Bible
means. I wonder if those Pharisees had
sort of in their own mind written off Jonah as a prophet and it's the only prophet there's
other prophets that ministered in Galilee and there's other
prophets that came out of tribes in Galilee but this is the only
one that specifically says the town that he was from in Galilee and they knew it but it would
be interesting if these Pharisees had written off the prophecy
of Jonah because of the clarity that it gives to the person of
Christ. And that the Lord quoted that
passage when he said, there's no other sign that will be given
except for the sign of Jonah. The very prophet that you don't
believe is the one who gives the sign as to who I am and what
I will accomplish. as the sinner, as the savior
of sinners. The other thing about Jonah,
the reason why they would not have, not have believed this
book is because of the mercy that God showed toward the Syrians. bitter enemies of Israel. And rather than believe that
God is a God of mercy, they perhaps just wrote this book off altogether. The word of the Lord came unto
Jonah. Now Jonah's name translated means
dove, the bird of peace. And the dove in the Bible represents
the Holy Spirit. We see that at the baptism of
our Lord, when the Spirit of God came down in the form of
a dove. The dove represents the church. In the Song of Solomon,
Solomon refers to the bride of Christ as a beautiful dove. And in the Psalms, David refers
to the church being carried on the wings of a dove. This dove is pictured in the
story of Noah. When the waters were on the earth
and Noah sent out the raven and the raven was able to feed off
of the the dead flesh of carcasses of dead animals, but the dove
had to come back to the ark. She had to come back to the ark.
So this dove represents Christ, it represents the Holy Spirit,
it represents the church. But in our story, we're gonna
see all of those things with Jonah. And then he's referred to as
the son of Amittai. You see that in verse 1? Now, Amittai's name translated
means truth. It means truth. And here's what
the Lord said to Pilate. They that are of the truth, for
this purpose came I into the world, to bear witness unto the
truth. And you remember Pilate said,
what is truth? But the Lord had already said, They that are of
the truth will hear my voice and they will follow me. How
do I know that I'm of the truth? I'm looking to Christ. I've got
all my eggs in one basket, if you will. I've got all my hope
on him. And I know that the words that
he speaks, wherever it is in the scripture, that's why I don't,
particularly like red letter editions of the Bible, because
it kind of gives men the impression that, well, these are the words
of Jesus. No, it's all the word of God. Every word of it is the
word of God, and whatever he speaks, it speaks truth. The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit, and they are life. If the written word of God comes
to us like it came to Jonah, it will lead us to the living
word of God. It'll cause us to look to Christ.
That's how we know if the word of the Lord has come to us, we
have found ourselves in need of a savior. And we have found
our hope and our comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
substitute and successful savior of sinners. To whom shall we go? You alone
have the words of eternal life. We know and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the son of the living God. This is how we know
that the word of the Lord has come to us. Look at verse two. Arise and
go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their
wickedness has come up before me. Now, you know Jonah's going to
disobey God's call, and he's gonna go to Tarshish and get
on a boat, and he's going up in the belly of the whale. But when in chapter four, He's
angry that the Lord showed mercy toward Nineveh. And he says to
the Lord, he said, that's the reason I want to go. Because
I knew that you were a God of mercy. I knew that you would
be gracious to them. And they are our bitter enemies. The Lord sends a message of salvation
to a wicked world. The Lord Jesus came into this
world. And the scripture says, God sent not his son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might
be saved. There was one time when James
and John, the sons of thunder, the sons of Zebedee, when they
were going through Samaria and they stopped at this village
for for nourishment and support and rest. And the village, when
the villagers saw that the Lord's face was set towards Jerusalem,
they refused to receive them into the village. And James and
John went to the Lord and said, Lord, do you want us to do like
Elijah and call down fire from heaven on these people? Let's
just do that. And the Lord Jesus said, You have a wrong spirit. For
the Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lives, but to save
them. We have a glorious picture of
our God's mercy here in this story. This is the Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital city
of Syria. Syria was was a pagan nation
that was only interested, we see it in the news today. Hey,
Syria, where's Mosul? Is that not Iraq? Iraq is Mosul,
right? So that's where Nineveh was. Nineveh is modern day Mosul in
Iraq. But we see the bitter hatred
going on still this day between the Iranians and the Iraqis and
the Jews. And it wasn't any different during
the days of Jonah. And God said, I want you to go
to Nineveh, and I want you to tell them that the God of Israel
is going to destroy them if they don't repent. And Jonah doesn't
want to do it because of his hatred toward these people. Turn
with me to Ezekiel chapter 33, Ezekiel 33. The Lord tells us something about
his character in a verse of Ezekiel 33, verse 11. Say unto them, as I live, saith
the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Now we know that God has a particular
people that he has chosen before the foundation of the world.
And we know that his love is particular toward them. But the
Lord's showing us here that though men will not come to him and
they bear the full responsibility for not coming to him, The Lord
is showing us something of his heart when he says to them, I
don't take pleasure in the destruction of the wicked. I'm not, I'm not,
that's not my desire. They bear the responsibility
of that, for that, for their unbelief. But it's not like,
you know, some people believe in a double predestination, that
God has predestined some to be saved and he's predestined others
to be damned. The only thing that God has to
do for a man to be damned is just leave him to himself. And
the Lord doesn't actively participate in the damnation of the reprobate. He just lets them have their
own way. And here's God's mercy toward us, brethren, that the
Lord would make us to differ, that he would not leave us to
ourselves. that he would call us out of
darkness into his marvelous light. But let us not think that somehow
God is taking some sort of pleasure in destroying men. The Lord Jesus said, I did not
come into the world to destroy the world, I came into the world
to save the world. So the Lord's showing us his mercy and he tells us to
to love our enemies. Jonah is a bad example of that. But we see in this story something
of the character of our God who is showing his mercy to a pagan
nation and how much wickedness there is
in the world today. And how long-suffering God is
in allowing that wickedness to continue. And how patient and loving kindness
the Lord shows toward us in the sin of our lives. that he doesn't
strike us dead when we disobey him or when we're rebellious
toward him or we sin against him. He delights in showing mercy. That's who our God is. He delights
in showing mercy. Let me show you that. Back in
Jonah, Look at verse two in chapter
four. This is after Jonah's angry because
God shows mercy towards Nineveh. And he prayed unto the Lord and
said, I pray thee, O Lord, Was not this my saying when I was
yet in my country? Therefore I fled before you unto
Tarshish, for I knew, I knew that thou wert a gracious God,
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of evil, of evil. Lord, I knew that was your nature. Here's our hope, brethren. I am the Lord. And I change not. Therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consumed. He is a God of mercy. He delights
in showing mercy. And when the wickedness of sin
goes up before him, he sends a man And that message will be
a message of warning. It'll be a message of rebuke.
It'll be a message of correction. It'll be a message of instruction.
It'll be a message of love. It'll be a message of forgiveness.
And in all these things, the Lord uses his word to point us
to Christ. Notice in verse three, but Jonah
rose up to flee unto Tarsus from the presence of the Lord and
went down to Joppa and he found a ship going to Tarsus, so he
paid the fare thereof and went down into it to go with them
unto Tarsus from the presence of the Lord. He's gonna try to
run from God. How foolish. Oh, not what the
guilt of sin does. You know, grace always causes
us to flee to Him and experience His love and His
forgiveness. But fear, fear and the law, due
to us what it did to Jonah, It'll cause us to resist God and run
from God. And one thing we see in this
story is that sin always, always, sin and disobedience, you know
this in your own experience, it always goes from bad to worse. It's always a downhill slide. Jonah was in Galilee. He went
down to Joppa. He went down into the ship. He
went down into the belly of the ship. He fell asleep. He ended
up down in the ocean and down in the belly of a whale. I mean,
you can't go down, down, down any more than that. And let us
be warned by Jonah's experience of the The consequences of sin. The wages of sin is death. For
the unbeliever, that means eternal separation from God. For the
child of God, it could mean the withdrawal, the quenching of
the spirit of God and the withdrawal of his gifts and of his possessions. The awareness of his presence.
It could be the death of a relationship. It could be the death of a marriage.
It could be... Can a believer consent in such a way as to bring
about death to their body? Here's the consequences of sin.
It always leads one down. He paid the fare. You see that?
He paid the fare. We're gonna pay the fare when
we disobey God, aren't we? When we try to run from God and think that we've got a better
idea than God, we're gonna pay the fare. And the Lord in his
mercy will bring us to the same place where he brought Jonah.
By the end of chapter two, Jonah's gonna cry, salvation's of the
Lord. Lord, I'm sorry. Sometimes we have to pay the
fare in order for God to bring us to that place where we're
broken before him, whether it be paying the fare in our hearts
or in our lives and in our circumstances and in God's providence. But the Lord. You see that in
verse 4? Here's God's mercy. Oh, when we sin, brethren, God
is always merciful. But the Lord. When the unbeliever
uses the word but, you know, it's usually not a good thing. Well, yeah, I see what you're
saying, but. And goats are always butting,
aren't they? I said that one time, and there was a brother
in a congregation that used to raise sheep, and he said, yeah,
sheep butt too. They do. So, you know, it's what happens. But when God says butt, here's
a word of grace. Here's a word of hope. Here's
a word of mercy. Here's the Lord correcting His
children and bringing them back to Himself. But the Lord sent
out a great wind into the sea. The Lord would stir up a mighty
tempest in our hearts, a need for Him, a crying out of our
hearts, O Lord, save me. It's the wind of his spirit that
does that. It's expedient for you that I
go away, for if I go not away, the comforter will not come.
But when he comes, what's he gonna do? He's going to reprove
the world. And that's not talking about
the whole world, that's talking about believers. He's gonna reprove, he's gonna
correct for their sin because of their unbelief. How much unbelief
exists in our lives? How often times we, like Jonah,
think we've got a better way of doing something than the way
God says to do it. And it's the Spirit of God that
blows this storm that's going to come for Jonah. And it's going
to threaten the lives of everyone on the ship. It's a mercy that God would blow
his spirit in our hearts and reprove us of our sin because
of unbelief. Correct us. But the Lord sent out a great
wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea,
so the ship was like to be broken. Oh, how oftentimes we feel that
way. Oh, my ship's about to be broken.
Lord, I'm going down. You're going to have to deliver
me. And that's why I wanted to read
Isaiah 43, brethren, because the Lord tells us in that wonderful
passage, when you pass through the waters, they will not overflow
thee. Not going to happen. Through the fire, it's not going
to burn you. No. Like Jonah, the Lord Jesus
was cast into the sea, into the belly of the whale, and he came
out victorious. And so he stirs up the sea sometimes,
and the way of the Lord is through the sea, and there's storms that
the Lord sends. They're always for the purpose
of getting us to do what he did for Peter, causing us to look
to him and cry, Lord save me. Lord save me, how oftentimes
we find ourselves in that place. The sign of Jonah. It's a sign,
isn't it? This whole story is a wonderful
sign that just points us again and again to Christ. No wonder
the Pharisees had no regard for Jonah. Listen, those Pharisees
knew Second Kings 1425. They knew what it said about
Jonah and where he was from. And they all agree that there
was never a prophet that came out of Galilee. A mighty tempest. You know, we want our children
to be happy and we want them to be prosperous. And yet, if they're on a path
of self-destruction and they're not believers, the worst
thing for them is to be happy and prosperous. If a man is able to live in rebellion
against God and be happy and prosperous, that's the worst
thing for him. If he can do that, what is that
an indication of? It's an indication that God's
left his hand off of him. And one of the blessed hopes
that the believer experiences is that I can't be happy and
prosperous when I'm in rebellion against God, when I'm not believing
God, When I'm not looking to Christ, I just can't be happy
and prosperous. I try, but I can't get it, I
can't be there. That's God's mercy, that he would
stir us up, that he would send the storm. Verse four, but the Lord sent
out a great wind into the sea and there was a mighty tempest
in the sea so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners
were afraid and cried every man unto his God and cast forth the
wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them.
But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship and lay
and was fast asleep. God's going to use the captain
of the ship to rebuke Jonah and wake him up. You know in the
Bible that a ship, these boats, are pictures of the church. And
the captain of this boat, I can't help but to think of myself,
and now the Lord would use the voice of the captain to speak
a word of of truth and gospel blessings. And for many, it will
be a rebuke. I'm not here to rebuke people.
But if I'm faithful in preaching the gospel, I'm confident that
if there's somebody that needs to be rebuked, God will do it.
He'll do it. So the ship master, verse six,
came to him and said unto him, what meanest thou, O sleeper?
Arise, call upon thy God. If so be that God will think
upon us that we perish not. There's a good message. Arise,
O sleeper. How prone, we're like those disciples,
aren't we, in the Garden of Gethsemane when the Lord said, you pray?
and he came back and found him asleep twice? Could you not pray
with me for one hour? Pray, lest you fall into temptation,
the Lord said. You know, this is a, we've, so
much evil and so much sin, so much. Oh, sleeper, arise and call upon
that God. There's a message for me. Maybe God will think upon us
and we perish not. You know, one of the things I
see also in this sin of Jonah, and we lose sight of that often,
but sin often has more effect on others than it does on the
one committing the sin. Joseph's brothers went about
their lives after they sold Joseph into slavery and went back and
told Jacob that he'd been eaten by an animal and they just continued
on. Joseph, on the other hand, ends
up in prison Oh, the trials and troubles that he had. Paul talks
about some that were believers that were now a trouble to him
and that they were professing believers and now that they were
causing him great conflict in the church. Uriah suffered a whole lot more
than David did. And Uriah's men, as a result
of David's disobedience, a child's sin can have a much
greater effect on its mother than on the child itself. And
a father's sin can have a lot more effect on its family than
it does on him. Let us not think that we live
in a bubble. Our lives affect other people. Jonah's sin here is affecting
this whole ship. Scripture tells us that when
the leaders of a nation are doing right, the nation prospers. And
when they're not doing right, the nation suffers. We see that. The sins of The fathers are carried
to the second and third generation. Sin is always that way, isn't
it? What am I saying? Let us be afraid
of ourselves. Let us be afraid of our sin.
Let us be warned by God's word to pray often. Lord, lead us
not into temptation, Because I know if I'm tempted, I'm going
to sin. Deliver me from the evil one.
Lord, I don't have any strength against him. I'm weak. You know, we believers hear us
talking like this and they think, what in the world is he doing?
Child of God, you know what we're talking about, don't you? This
matter of sin is so insidious and it just affects every part of our lives. And verse 7, and they said, one
to his fellow, come and let us cast lots that we may know For
whose cause this evil is upon us? So they cast lots and it
fell upon Jonah. Now here, Jonah is going to become
such a wonderful type of Christ, pointing us to the Lord Jesus
Christ, God in his eternal decree. The Bible says the lot is cast
into the lap, but the full result of it, is of the Lord. And the Lord determined in His
decree that the lot would fall on Christ and that He would bear
the guilt. Jonah's going to, in the rest
of this chapter, Jonah's going to confess what he had done.
He's going to admit that he fears the God of Israel and God had
called him to go to Nineveh and he was running from God and he
takes full responsibility. And though Jonah was guilty in
this story, what a wonderful picture we have of the Lord Jesus
Christ bearing the responsibility of our sin. And these men on
the ship say, what do we do? And here we are in the ship,
what do we do about this sin problem that we have? And Jonah
says, cast me into the sea. cast me into the sea. And reluctantly,
reluctantly, the men took Jonah and cast him into the sea. And
this chapter ends on the last verse by saying that God had
prepared a great fish. And we don't have to wonder what
kind of fish it was because the Lord tells us that it was a whale.
And those things can become monstrous. I guess the blue whale's the
largest living thing in the world. And then there's another whale
right under that. Could have been a small whale. God could
do anything, but you see what I'm... Jonah spends three days
and three nights in the belly of the whale. Let's turn to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. We'll begin reading at verse
1. Save me, O God, for the waters are come in into my soul. I sink in deep mire where there
is no standing. I am come into deep waters where
the floods overflow me. Now this is the experience of
the believer when he's crying out for God's mercy. But this
Psalm is prophetic. It is speaking of the Lord Jesus
Christ. No question about it. I am weary
of my crying, my throat is dried, my eyes fail while I wait for
my God. They that hate me without a cause
are more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy
me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that
which I took not away. That's what the Lord Jesus did.
It was our sin that took away the hope of life. It was our
sin that brought about the condemnation of God's wrath and judgment.
And the Lord Jesus said, I took away what I did not bring. And yet he bears our sin. not only the penalty of it, but
he bears the shame and the sorrow of it. Look what he says. O God,
thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from
thee. Let not them that wait on thee,
O Lord of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek
thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. Because for
thy sake I have borne reproach, shame hath covered my face. I
am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my
mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are
fallen upon me. That's Christ. That's where Jonah finds himself
as a sign, as a type. He willingly says to the rest
of the men on the ship, throw me into the sea. And what the
Lord Jesus suffered to its fullest extent, Jonah
experienced physically. And we will see in chapter two,
if you want to read ahead, Jonah's prayer from the belly of the
whale is so glorious and reminds us of what the Lord Jesus did
in restoring that, restoring that which he took not away. Our heavenly Father, thank you.
Thank you for your word. Lord, might we reflect on this
story and be reminded of the one to whom it points, and find
our rest and hope in Him. For it's in Christ's name we
ask it. Amen. Scott? 127 in the hardback tent. Now
let's stand together, 127.