Well, it's good to see everyone
this morning again. I'd like for you to take your Bibles,
if you would, and turn with me to the Book of Jonah. Book of
Jonah. Jonah, if you go to the Book
of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then count five books toward the New
Testament, you'll find the Book of Jonah. Jonah chapter one, right after the book of Obadah. Before I begin to read, This
first verse, let me back up a minute. I want to look at a scripture
in Matthew chapter 12. You can turn there, or I'll just
read it to you. Matthew chapter 12, verses 38,
39, and 40. The scripture says, then certain
of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, talking
to our Lord, we would like to see a sign from thee. but he
answered and said unto them, an evil and adulterous generation
seeking after a sign. And there shall be no sign be
given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall
the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth. Here the Lord tells us that the
book of Jonah is about himself, is entirely about himself. It was a sign. And I don't mean
to get sidetracked, but as I was reading this, I got to thinking. Jonah lived 800 years before
the Lord ever came to this earth. There was an 800 year period
from the time Jonah was born. till the Lord was born. And that
was the only sign the Lord said was given. But yet we live in
a generation that's full of wanting signs. Everybody wants to see
some. You go to Israel and they have
all those sepulchers of this and that, and people flood in
there and pay money. You see these churches on television,
you see them They have people that supposedly talk in tongues. It's just gibberish, but they
talk in tongues. They have these faith healers
that are always healing supposedly people. These are all signs. Man by nature looks for signs. That is our nature. Show us a
sign. But here, the Lord, you see the
Lord's thinking on it. 800 years, there was no sign
of him is what he's saying. So we know what the Lord's thinking
is as far as sign goes. The gospel, the gospel is not
a gospel of signs. It is the power of God, it says
in Roman one, unto salvation. And the gospel is to be proclaimed
and it alone, no signs. Now Jonah is mentioned in the
book of Kings. He lived roughly 200 years after
King Solomon. So he's a recent prophet of the
Lord. And he is, or he was, a prophet
of the Lord. Now in Jonah, chapter one, verse
one, it says, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the
son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,
and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before
me. The Lord says it was a great
city. Later on in the text, it's 120,000
people, and the scripture says it took Jonah three days to go
through that city. But unfortunately, he wasn't
inclined to do so. Look at verse three. to flee unto Tarshish from the
presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a
ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof and
went down." So the question comes to our mind, first off, the scripture
doesn't tell us why he fled, but the natural question is,
why did he flee? Well, you think about it, here
was a lowly Jewish prophet, sent to the nation of Israel. And
we know that Israel killed the prophets. They had nothing to
do, they wanted nothing to do with the prophecies. So Jonah
was unaccepted even in his own country. Now all of a sudden,
God is asking him to go to this Assyrian capital, this great
city, powerful city. Scripture says it was high walled.
It was a big city. and he was gonna preach to these
heathens, and there was certain fear in him, obviously. They're
not gonna listen to me. My own people, he says, won't
listen to me. So these people aren't gonna
listen to me. These are heathens, and they're gonna look at me
as this little lowly Jewish prophet, and they may even kill me. So
he had, in his own mind, worked up all these thoughts of why
he shouldn't go, And finally, I guess he decided, well, it's
better to fall on the grace of God than go down there and do
this. I don't know what he was thinking,
whether he thought, well, God would maybe show mercy on him,
but he decided that he was gonna disobey God, and he took this
ship and went down to Tarshish. Now in verse four, it says, And
this is after he got aboard the ship. 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 up. And in the first part of verse
five, it says, then the mariners were afraid. These were experienced
seamen. They had been through many seas,
many rough seas, but here, this was something a little bit different.
They were scared to death of this terrible storm. This is
a storm like they've never seen before. In verse five it says,
then the mariners were afraid and cried every man unto his
God. And they got so scared it says they cast forth their wares,
the goods on the ship that were in the ship into the sea to lighten
it of them. But where's old Jonah and all
this? They're praying to their God. It's obviously their God's
not here because it's not letting up. But Jonah, it says in verse
five, was going down to the sides of the ship, and he lay and was
fast asleep. Amidst all this turmoil, all
this going on, this ship, Jonah was fast asleep. And I'm reminded,
you know, this is the way of the world. Look about us, look
how this world, look at the shape this world is in right now. Look
at the trouble that's going on. Everybody's concerned about this
going on, that going on, but nobody's concerned about their
souls. They are not concerned about their souls. Their sleep,
we're all asleep. Even believers, we don't really
fully see What is going on in this life? And certainly these
people on board ship didn't, especially Jonah. Jonah was fast
asleep, a believer. Here was a prophet of God. He
was fast asleep. Is that possible? Obviously.
He was sinning. He ran from God. He was disobeying
God. And I thought of, When I was
reading this, I thought of David and his great sin of taking another
man's wife. Do you not suppose that he knew
that he was doing wrong? Sure he did. He was a man after
God's own heart, the scripture says, but he did it anyway. He
went ahead and did it, just willfully sinned against God. And this
is what Jonah did. And he's fast asleep. He don't
care that things are going on. But in verse six it says, the
ship master came to him and said to him, what meanest thou, O
sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God. If so be that God will think
upon us that we perish not. Now here they've been praying
to their God, now they're asking Jonah to pray to his God. We've
all got gods, isn't that the world today? We've all got gods.
This religion over here, this faith over here has this God,
we believe this way. But the whole thing is we're
all going to the same place. We're all working to go to the
same place. What's the scripture say? God is a spirit, and those
that worship him must, must, that word must, worship him in
spirit and in truth. There is but one truth, and that
is the truth of the gospel as it's revealed in these scriptures. But here he's asking, Call upon
your God, maybe your God will hear. I mean, a light bulb ought
to come on in their heart, in that man's heart when he asked
that, but it didn't. Your God is no better than our
God, but you might call on him, maybe he's causing this. We still
have our God. This is universal religion. Everybody's
religion is right. We're all worshiping. There's
thousands upon thousands, millions. worshiping this morning a God. You know what I like to call
it? This religion of doing and seeing. It's all going on. I mean, they
do all these things. Like I said, you have all these
sites over in Israel that people go over there and they visit.
Oh, we're gonna get close to God. We pay money to see these
things. We got these people that speak in tongues. I like to call
it the show-and-tell religion. It's show-and-tell religion.
If they don't have anything to show, they don't have anything
to tell. That's what it amounts to. If we can't show you, what
else are we gonna tell you? That's what they say. Totally
devoid of gospel preaching. In verse seven it says, and they
said to everyone to his fellow, come, let us cast lots that we
may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast
lots and the lot fell upon Jonah. Now here's something unusual. These were all sinners, all men
are sinners, but none of them had the grace of God to say,
well, is it I? Are we being afflicted because
of what I'm done? Oh, no, no, no. Remember, that's
what the disciples said. When the Lord said, one of you
is going to betray me, they said, is it I? Is it I? These men didn't
do that. No, it couldn't be me. I'm a
sinner, but it couldn't be me. It has to be somebody else worse
than me. Let's cast lots. Well, the Lord
in his grace used that to the best advantage. In verse eight it says, and they
said unto them, tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil
is upon us. They're talking to Jonah. What is thine occupation and
whence comest thou? What is thy country, and of what
people art thou? And he said unto them, I am Hebrew,
and I fear the Lord. Oh, here he was running from
the Lord. Now he's making excuses. Well,
I fear the Lord. He's changing his tune. He's
actually telling a lie. He didn't fear the Lord. He ran
from him. He disobeyed him. I fear the Lord and God of heaven,
which hath made the sea and the dry land. He spoke the truth
there. Then in verse 10, Then the men were exceedingly afraid. Then were the men exceedingly
afraid. This tempest was terrible, like they'd never seen. Like
I said, these were seafaring men that had dealt with all kinds
of terrible weather and seas, but they'd never ran into something
like this. And he says, why hast thou done
this? For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of
the Lord, because he had told them. Then they asked him, then
they said unto him, what shall we do unto thee that the sea
may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought and was tempestuous. And Jonah said unto them, take
me up and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be
calm unto you, for I know that for my sake this great tempest
is upon you. Here's a picture, brothers and
sisters, of our Lord Jesus Christ before the foundation of the
world in that eternal covenant with the Father. Who shall go? That was the question. The world
is dying in sin. Who shall go for us? Lord Jesus
said, I will go. Cast me into the sea. The sea
in scripture is often represented as the human race, unsaved men,
the human being as a whole, the whole of the world, cast me into
the sea, and that's exactly what was done. He was cast out into
the world, into this sinful, sinful world by that great covenant
with the Father before the world ever began. Then in verse 13, Nevertheless, the men rode hard
to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought
and was tempestuous against them. Men by nature don't like to see
other men persecuted and hurt. That's in all of us. When one
person hurts, another person hurts. I mean, that's the normal
practice. We don't like to see people afflicted.
That's God given. We have concern one for another. Somebody's sick, somebody dies.
We have a heart for it. We don't like to see it. And
these men were no different. Even though they had their strange
gods, they had something within them and said, you know, we're
not going to do this. Jonah says, cast me into the
sea. Oh, we can't do this. That's a terrible thing to do.
14 says, wherefore they cried unto the Lord and said, we beseech
thee, O Lord, we beseech thee. Let us not perish for this man's
life and lay not upon us innocent blood. For thou, O Lord, has
done as it please thee. Here they begin to recognize
that this was at the hand of the true and living God, the
God of Jonah, the one and only God. They saw that, they knew. Their gods couldn't do anything,
but they knew that this God of Jonah, the God of heaven and
earth, could. And so, it says in verse 15,
so they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the
sea seized from her raging. They did no wrong. They saw that
this was at the hand of God. They saw that this was the purpose
of God. They were merely carrying out
the purpose of God, and God so ordained that, that they carry
out his purpose in casting Jonah into the sea. So they took up
Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and listen to what happens,
and the sea seized from her raging immediately. My oh my. When Christ, our Lord,
hung on the cross, the world in itself was turned upside down. It was turned upside down spiritually,
and it was turned upside down physically. If you read the history
books, and I've read a little bit about it, there was a great
change in the wars and the hatred and all the trouble that the
earth experienced. The preaching of the gospel brought
peace. Remember what the angel sang
when the Lord came and was born in a manger? It said, glory to
God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. And that's what happened. But
the goodwill, the great goodwill, was in the salvation of God's
people. He brought salvation. to each
one of us, and oh, how we ought to be thankful this morning.
I know I'm not thankful as I should be, and I think about that a
lot. Lord, open my understanding. Let me see what you have done,
because it's been a great work. The coming of Jesus Christ brought
in an everlasting peace to the world, both spiritually and physically. In verse 17, Let's see, verse
16, let me go back here. And the men feared the Lord exceedingly. All of a sudden they changed
their mind. They weren't praying to their gods. They feared the
God of Jonah exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the
Lord and made vows. In verse 17, now the Lord had
prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. It doesn't mean that
he made a fish right then and there, but he prepared that fish.
That fish come, that fish happened to be right there at the right
time, prepared of the Lord to swallow of Jonah. And it says
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of that fish. There's been conjecture about
what type of fish As you read it, and the scripture doesn't
tell us, we don't speculate. Some say it was whales, some
say it was this type of fish, some say it's another. Only thing
we do know is it was a big, a big fish that was able to swallow
him. And now we get into chapter two,
and here we get into what the Lord, here this is about our
Lord Jesus Christ. This is what he was talking about
over in Matthew, the sign that's given to you. of Jonah being
in the belly of the whale three days and three nights. Chapter
2, verse 1 says, then Jonah prayed unto the Lord, his God, out of
the fish's belly. Up to this time, he hadn't prayed.
At this time, he was running from God. But oh, what a predicament
he was in. He was in a fish's belly, totally
black. Can you put yourself in that
position this morning? I thought about that. If I was
in that fish's belly, totally black, in amongst all
the mess that's in that fish's belly that he's been eating,
and it wasn't a minute, it was a nightmare that was minute
by minute, and it was very stressful beyond what we can imagine. We've
all probably at one time or another, and I know I have, you'll have
a nightmare in the middle of the night. It'll just bring you
out of bed, almost screaming. It scares you to death, but it's
only for a second. But you imagine Jonah, minute
by minute by minute. And he don't know how long he's
gonna be there, but there goes a minute, and there goes another
minute, and no relief, no relief from this terrible distress that
he is in. And here is Christ. Here is a
great mystery. The Lord, as he hung on the cross, he cried,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God forsook him. And the question comes to my
mind, and I'm sure your minds, what occurred in those three
nights three days and three nights that he was in the belly of the
earth. Scripture doesn't tell us, and we dare not speculate,
but here in Jonah is a picture of it, and he was in great distress. Can you imagine, I mean, just
how long am I gonna be here? A little bit later he says, The
bars of the earth was about him forever. He had no place to go. What's he gonna do? Well, it
says he prayed unto the Lord, his God, out of the fish's belly. Didn't pray before. Oh no, he
was sleeping. Here is the blessing of God.
God afflicted him and he had no place to go but to the Lord
because he knew the Lord had put him there. He knew the Lord.
have put him there. And so it was with Christ. He was made sin by God the Father. Scripture says there was no sin.
He didn't have any sin, but he was made sin. Here he is in the
belly of hell with the very weight of sin on him. What a distressful, who can imagine? It's no wonder that in a garden
of Gethsemane before his death, he sweat great drops of blood. That is distress beyond my imagination. I don't know if anybody's ever
done that. I haven't, and I'm sure you haven't either. Verse
two of chapter two, he says, and said, I cried by reason of
my affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me. Out of the belly
of hell, cried I, and thou heardst my voice. The Lord heard him. The Lord heard him. One of the
great mysteries, and like I said, we're not made privy to what
Christ our Lord suffered under the wrath of God at this time.
The scripture doesn't tell us, but let me give you a thought
here that I thought about this morning. The Lord hung on that
cross. He said, my God, my God, why
has thou forsaken me? Listen to this, he looks over
at that man next to him hanging there. The repentant sinner,
he says, today thou shalt be with me in paradise. Where was
he? We don't know. We can't even
conjecture as to what took place on the cross and in three days
and a night, but we believe it. We're not told to understand
it, we're told to believe it. That's it, believe God. Abraham believed God and it was
counted to him for righteousness, the scripture says. But this
is our Lord speaking. I cry by reason of my affliction.
Here was a man. This was a man. This was a man. And as I talked last Sunday about
it, we must be careful that we don't take away from the Lord
Jesus Christ, his manhood, because it was a man, as a man, that
he had to die. He had to die as a man, 100%
man. And he was afflicted. To what extent? It was obviously very bad for
a man. It was awful. Something that
the only people that are really going to know anything about
it are the people in hell. Because he suffered the same
thing. I often think, well, how did that happen in three days?
I don't know. He suffered. He suffered the
eternity of hell for his sheep. How did that be? I can't tell
you. I don't know. I don't have answers. Simply
because God has not sought to reveal those things. The scripture
says the secret things belong to God. But those things that
are revealed are for us and our children. We don't go beyond
scripture, brothers and sisters. We never, ever, ever go beyond
what the scripture says. We don't conjecture. We don't
make up ideas. We don't say, well, this must
have happened, and that's what the world's religion does. They've
got all kind of fancy ideas, men's commandments and everything
else, and they're all wrong. Psalm 3-4 says this. The Lord
says, I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out
of his holy hill. God heard that perfect man, that
sinless man, with all that sin on him. It's no wonder he suffered. He had sin on him. He had your
sin on him. He had my sin on him. He had
all these people's sin on him. What a burden. What a burden
that would be for a righteous man, a man who has no sin in
him. That is a great burden. Psalm
18, six. He says, in my distress, Here's a man in distress again.
In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his
temple and my cry came before him even into his ears. Here's
the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ amidst all his afflictions, his
whole life amidst all his afflictions, his faith in God never failed. When he said, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? He says, my God, my God, you
are my God. He owned him. His faith owned
God the Father. Psalm 120 verse one says, in
my distress I cried unto the Lord and he heard me. Psalm 130
verse one, out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. He was sunk under the weight
of sin. He was sunk under the weight of my sin and your sin. And yet the sad part about it
is we don't see the fullness of that weight because we don't
truly see what sin is in ourselves. We call ourselves sinners. But
what is the depth of that sin that God is going to put men
in hell forever? Think about that. Why? What is
the depth of that sin that God is going to put men in hell forever? ever and ever and ever. Isn't that a terrible thought?
That's the scariest thought that can cross my mind. And do I deserve
it? Yes, I do. I do. Every believer
will say, well, that's me. I deserve that. God's righteous
in all he does. In verse three, chapter two,
the Lord says, for thou hast cast me into the deep. in the
midst of the seas." And again, it's casting out into this sinful
world. From the time he was born till
the time he died, he was in distress. He was a man of sorrows, the
scripture says in Isaiah 53, and acquainted with grief. He was despised, he was afflicted
for his whole life. And he says, in my distress I
cried, no, It says, for thou hast cast me
into the deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed
me about, that sin, that sin, that wrath of God. God's wrath
was upon him. God's wrath was upon the Lord
Jesus Christ, because sin deserves God's wrath. Every man outside
of Christ deserves the wrath of God, and every man in Christ
deserves the wrath of God, but Christ bore that wrath for them. In Psalm 42, 70 says, deep calleth
unto deep at the noise of the water spouts, all thy waves and
thy billows are gone over me. All the afflictions of God affected
him. Day in and day out, man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief. Often heard people say, did the
Lord ever laugh? Scripture doesn't say anything
about it. It does say he was a man of sorrows. It does say
it's better to go to the house of mourning than to the house
of laughter. Our Lord suffered, brothers and
sisters, more than we know and more than we'll know in this
life. We never will understand it until we cross over Psalm
88, seven says, thy wrath lieth hard upon me, God's wrath, and
thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves, all the afflictions
he suffered. Verse four of chapter two, he
says, then I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet will I
look again toward thy holy temple. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? But here we have his faith, here's
we have the faith of Christ. His faith never wavered. I'm cast out of your sight, you've
forsaken me, but I'll look to thy holy temple. What faith,
what faith? Oh, that God would give us such
faith. Verse five, it says, the waters
compassed me about, even to the soul. The depth closed me round
about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. And here he's talking about,
Jonah's talking about him being in that fish's belly, but this
is also about the Lord and his suffering for sin, the weeds,
the sin, the sin, your sin, My sin was wrapped around him. He took it upon himself, willingly. What mercy and what grace? Verse six, it says, I went down
to the bottoms of the mountains. Here's a man, distressed. He was on the mountain once.
with the Father in heaven. He was on the mountain and it
took him, he took upon himself to come down to this lowly earth. And he went down to the bottoms
of the mountains. He was in the deepest valleys
like no other man has ever gone. We think about all our troubles.
We don't have troubles. We don't have troubles. This
man had troubles. I have no place to lay my head.
He depended on others to feed him. As I went down to the bottom
of the mountains, the earth with her bars was about me forever.
You imagine, I think about old Jonah being Aaron. And like I
said earlier, minute by minute, he lived every second of that
affliction, every second. Never went away. And he didn't
know how long he was going to be there. One hour went by, he
was still there two hours. It got no better. It got worse.
It got worse. And it was as though the earth
was with her bars. He was in prison, bound. He was
bound in that fish. And foolish men, this is something
I should have said a little bit earlier. Foolish men say, well,
this can't be. This is an impossibility. that
a man could live inside of a fish. Well, I've got news for him.
If God can put three men in a hot furnace under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar,
and they can come out without any smell of smoke on them, he
can certainly keep Jonah alive in that whale. And that's what
he did. He said he prepared him. I went down to the bottom of
the mountains, the earth with her bars was about me forever,
yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption. Remember what it says in Psalm
1610, for thou will not leave my soul in hell. Neither wilt thou suffer thine
holy one to see corruption. There was no rotting of his body.
That's what he means. But this thing of hell and Christ's
suffering in hell, Jonah is just a mere picture. It just gives
us a slight picture of what the Lord suffered. We will never
know in this life how much he suffered. We will then when we
seem face to face, but we won't in this life, but this suffering,
it's beyond our comprehension. And that said, that tells us
just how corrupt we are, that we're blind spiritually. We are
totally and spiritually blind if it wasn't for the grace of
God. Without God, we see nothing spiritually. Verse seven, chapter two, when
my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came
in unto thee and to thine holy temple. What a lesson for all
of us. When we're low, when we think we're right at the bottom,
remember the Lord, remember what he's done. Remember that this
life is not forever, it's just a short Dream, it's just like
smoke, the scripture says. It's a vapor. It's gonna be here
and gone. Remember the Lord in affliction.
Don't complain. But we're apt to complain. Sometimes
we don't even realize we're complaining. But we need to certainly think
about it, that everything we have and everything that goes
on in our life, the Lord has ordered it. And we need to give
him credit for it. We need to acknowledge him in
everything that we do. No complaining. Complaining is
a very bad thing for a believer because it hardens the heart.
It really does. It hardens the heart. Verse eight. It says, they that observe lying
vanities forsake their own mercy. It means this, if you can do
something to affect your salvation, you're past mercy. You don't
need mercy, and you're not gonna get mercy. Only when you fall
upon the Lord in his mercy, only when, like what Scott used to
say, when you come to the end of self, Think about that term,
come to the end of self. Come to the end of what I think
I can do. I can do nothing. I have no,
I have no, as a believer, and you're no different as a believer,
I have no spiritual ability in me of myself. I can't stir it up, I can't whip
it up because that old man within me, that old nature is dead. God has to do something. God
has to do something. Verse nine says, but I will sacrifice
unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. And here's what old Jonah finally
come to, salvation is of the Lord. We ought, brothers and sisters,
to be thankful for everything we do every day. And I'm talking
about the smallest of things. If God has allowed you to do
something, and I think about this every once in a while, I
get tired going out in long grass. I'm not as young as I used to
be. I'm almost soon be 80 years old. I get tired, but I'm able
to get out and still mo. Thank you, Lord. You've allowed
me to do it one more time. Thank you, Lord, that I'm able
to walk. Thank you. We owe him so much. We owe him
so much. So much thankfulness. and how
easy we forget. How many times do we take things
for granted? And I'm talking about the smallest
of things. Big things, sure, we'll remember
them and think, well, the Lord was good to us. But how about you getting up
this morning? How about me getting up this morning? Did we thank
the Lord for his goodness and mercy and allowing us to get
up and come here and meet together? Do we thank him for our jobs? Do we thank him for our home? Do we thank him for our ability
to move around, that we have an automobile or this and that
and the other? And thankful for brothers and
sisters, people that love us, family, so much. And he calls it a sacrifice.
He's not looking for sacrifices of the Old Testament. He says
in the book of Isaiah, I'm tired of this stuff. I'm tired of your
sacrifices of your animals and stuff. He says this is the sacrifice. Thanksgiving, that's the sacrifice
of the believer. And apparently these men on this
ship, these unbelievers who had their different gods, they come
to see that, the truth of that. They offer sacrifices. of thanksgiving. Psalms 116 17 says I will offer
to the the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of
the Lord. Leviticus 229 says and when ye
will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving unto the Lord, offer it at your
own will. a love for Christ and a love
for God and thankfulness for what he's done for us as believers. Thankful for what he's done for
us has just given us life. David says there in Psalms, he
says, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. You think about this body,
how it gets along, how it walks, how it talks, how we communicate
one with another. Are we thankful for that? We
should be. And then this in Proverbs 3.6,
this kind of sums up what I'm talking about here. He says,
in all thy ways, all, A-L-L, in all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy path. Salvation is of the Lord. And there's so much, so much
thankfulness to be had by us for that salvation. Let's pray. I mean, let's pray
earnestly that God would give us a right heart, that we might
have a thankful heart. I do. Probably not as I should. It's mixed with sin. All my stuff
is mixed with sin. All my prayers, all my worship,
all my singing, it's mixed with sin. But Christ is able to take
it and present it to the father in himself as whole and righteous
and good. And that's a blessing. And then
lastly, I'm not going to go through this. You might want to finish
reading this because Jonah did go to Nineveh. He preached to
these people and they repented. So they were going to just, the
Lord said, I'm going to destroy them in 40 days unless they repent.
He preached to them and they repented. But it says in verse
10, and the Lord spake unto the fish and it vomited out Jonah
upon the dry land. And here we have Christ because
of what he done, because of his perfections and his sacrifice
for sin and his willingness to make sacrifice for sin. The father
raised him from the dead just as he spewed out Jonah upon the
sea. And with that, I'll close. I
pray that that'll help you a little bit. I pray the Lord will bless
the word to our hearts.