So if you'd like to turn with
me and your Bibles to the Book of Jonah, we'll be in the Book
of Jonah again in Chapter 3. Let's read this together. We'll read the whole chapter. And the word of the Lord came
unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding
great city of three days journey, and Jonah began to enter into
the city a day's journey. And he cried and said he had
40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of
Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from
the greatest of them even to the least of them. For the word
came unto the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne
and he laid his robe from him and covered him from sackcloth.
and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and
his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock,
taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water, But let
man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto
God, yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the
violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn
and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish
not? And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil
that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not. So I've entitled this message,
Preach Unto It. They're the words of the Lord
to Jonah in verse 2. He says, Preach unto it the preaching
that I bid thee. Today I want to look at the first
five verses of this chapter, but before we look at Jonah 3,
will you turn with me for a moment to Luke 11. We've looked at this before,
but the words of our Lord Jesus Christ here in Luke 11 relate
precisely to what Jonah is doing in chapter 3. Here in Luke chapter
11 the Lord Jesus is speaking to religious men, men who knew
the scriptures but had no idea what God was
saying. They were blinded from the meaning, they were blinded
from recognising Christ. They had religion, they had plenty
of religion, but they had religion without Christ. So our lowly
saviour did not meet their expectation of what the Messiah should be
even though he'd fulfilled every jot and tittle of the scriptures
and he'd fulfilled every prophecy before their very eyes. And in
their unbelief and in their antagonism they constantly pestered for
a sign. They demanded a sign. Give us
a sign. Give us a sign, they said, give us a sign so we can
be the judge of who you are. And we can be the judge of determining
if you're correct in what you say you are, who you say you
are. Imagine that, saying to God, prove to me that you are
God. That is a very dangerous thing
to do. And the Lord said this, in Matthew 10, he said, fear
not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the
soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell. And that was their problem, they
had no fear, no fear of God. And the Lord Jesus in Luke 11
here answers them by referring to the preaching of Jonah. In
verse 29 he says, And when the people were gathered thick together,
he began to say, This is an evil generation. They seek a sign,
and there shall be no sign given unto 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. Jonah the prophet, he was saying,
Jonah the prophet, your prophet was a sign and a type of me.
And the Lord condemns them for their unbelief. And he says to
them in verses 31, The Queen of the South shall rise up in
judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them.
For she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the
wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. Verse 32 the Lord says, The men
of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall
condemn it, even though Assyrian Gentiles stand as testimony against
you. For they repented of the preaching
of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here, and so even
the Queen of Sheba. who traveled with her entourage
thousands of kilometers to hear the wisdom of Solomon. See, it
would be a condemnation to them. Why? Because they're greater
than Solomon is here. And so too with these Assyrian
Gentiles, the Ninevites, they will repent, they will repent. Let's go back to the Book of
Jonah. Jonah recalled in chapter 1 how Jonah was given the command
of the Lord to go preach to the Ninevites. He said, go cry against
it. And Jonah rose up to flee under
Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa
and he found a ship going to Tarshish. And when we sin, isn't
it true that when we sin, we ran from the presence of the
Lord to hide from him. And like Jonah, when he stepped
onto that ship, bound for destruction, he was rebellious to the ways
of the Lord. rebellious and who wanted to
escape the presence of the Lord. That's what we did. We did in
the garden and our only hope is that God would be merciful
and turn us around. That storm then came upon the
ship and it was the storm that the Lord sent. It's the storm
of his wrath against sin. It's his fury, his righteous
judgment against sin. But we're in that ship, aren't
we? We're in that ship with Jonah. And in the next text, in chapter
1 of Jonah, we see him as a type of the Lord Jesus. Jonah says,
take me up and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea
be calm unto you. And that's what we're doing. We're looking to that sacrifice. We're looking to a substitute,
aren't we? And as he sank beneath the water,
we see a picture of death, don't we? When we baptise, we're baptised
into his death. We go beneath the water, we're
baptised into his death. This is a sign of the death. But the Lord God prepared a great
fish to swallow up Jonah, and in chapter 2 we have the cry
of Jonah, from the belly of that fish, from the belly of hell.
This is the work, this is the cross work that the father gave
the son to do. It was the surety of his people. He pledged to do it, he pledged
to save them. and to endure the punishment
of our sin. And in Jonah chapter 2 verse
2, he says, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord,
and he heard me. Out of the belly of hell cried
I, and thou heardest my voice. The affliction of our Lord is
beyond our comprehension, isn't it? Our sin was made His sin. This
is the chastisement that fell upon Him for all the sins of
all God's people. All the sins of all God's people
were truly made His sins, such that our Lord describes them
as His own. In Psalm 40, and we read that
a few weeks back, Psalm 40, we hear His cry. Listen to this
cry. He says, mine iniquities have
taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up. They are
more than the hairs of mine head. How thankful ought we be that
our Saviour endured hell that we don't have to. But even in
his great suffering he raises his voice then in thanksgiving
and he utters those marvellous words we saw in chapter 2 verse
9 which we considered in the previous message. He says, Salvation
is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. What a wonderful declaration
that is. Every aspect of it, every condition
of it, every work required, all of salvation is of the Lord and
only of the Lord. And in chapter two, verse 10,
we read, the Lord spake unto that fish. and had vomited out
Jonah upon the dry land. What a wonderful picture of the
resurrection. That fish, that fish couldn't
contain Jonah. It had to spit him out. Just
as the grave couldn't contain our savior, it had to spit him
out. I have so much enjoyed studying this book. It's so full of pictures,
pictures of redemption, pictures of substitution, pictures of
salvation. And every time it seems I open
these chapters up, I see another picture there. There are so many. And the experiences of Jano are
remarkable, aren't they, by any measure? Naturally, because of
the story of the fish. Carnal men with unbelieving minds
would count it as a myth. But our Lord testified of it
and we have it written in Holy Scripture. There is no doubt
at all that this account actually happened and happened exactly
as written. The Lord himself said, For as
Jonas was three days, says Matthew 12, 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. Jonah was raised up for this
very purpose, to display the work of our Saviour who was to
come. But Jonah the man, I don't know if you've noticed, he's
not perfect. Far from it. His waywardness
and his disobedience is not hidden. There's no attempt in the scriptures
here to hide his bad behavior. He was disobedient. He was petulant. He acted like a little child
at times. Traits we're going to see more
in Chapter 4. And yet Jonah's life clearly
depicts our Saviour in so many ways. And the Lord used the preaching
of this broken vessel to bring about the repentance of a great
number of people. And perhaps like me, you've asked,
how is it that a prophet like this, called of God, would do
such a thing? What was it that made Jonah flee,
flee from the presence of the Lord? What's going on? What's
going on here? And most likely the reason was
found in the Ninevites themselves. Nineveh was notorious, notorious
for all manner of things. You name it, idol worship, witchcraft,
murders, all kinds of immorality. Can you imagine a messenger preaching
repentance in that place might not be welcome. Let me give you
a few details about Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of the
Assyrian Empire, and Jonah was a Hebrew. He was a Hebrew, and
the Assyrians were very powerful, had a very, very powerful army,
and their kings were bent on conquest. And God used the Assyrians,
the Assyrian kings, to chastise his people, to chastise Israel
for their disobedience. And you can read about those
accounts in Kings and Chronicles and other places. But the Assyrians
were known particularly for their military might and their brutality. And using that might, they would
go to these nations, they'd march on them, and they sought tribute
from them, like a tax, if you like, to keep them from invading.
But we always need to remember the Lord controls them like he
does a little lap dog, a dog on a lead. He keeps these enemies in check
and guides them in his purposes. You might recall the name Sennacherib,
Sennacherib. the Assyrian king who marched
against Hezekiah king of Judah and he marched on him with a
huge army and as usual he demanded restitutions and Hezekiah resisted. The story is amazing. You can
read it in 2nd Kings chapter 19. and his assault on Hezekiah. And when he went and assaulted
them, he mocked the true and living God. He mocked them, much
like you remember when Goliath came against Israel and mocked
Israel and David stood against them. But Hezekiah resisted,
and after Hezekiah prayed, the prophet sends a word to the king
from the Lord, and he said, this Assyrian king will be turned
back. not a shield will be raised,
not an arrow will be fired. And that same night, an angel
of the Lord went out to slay them, just one angel. And when
the Assyrians woke up in the morning, the corpses of 185,000
fighting men lay where they slept. And that king, Sennacherib, retreated
immediately back to Nineveh. It is a very, very ancient city. It's one of the first great cities
of the world and located in Iraq. And so Jonah hated, he hated
the idea that God might be merciful to these people, to these Assyrians. These are their enemy. He had
no compassion for them and perhaps also he thought that his reputation,
if he went there and preached and they were saved, that his
reputation might be tarnished. Of course, there is no excuse
for such disobedience, is there? There's never an excuse against
the Lord. And Jonah knew that the Lord
meant it for good, but he didn't like it. Look at me at chapter
4 in verse 1. This is Jonah's prayer. But it
displeased Jonah exceedingly that he had to do this, and he
was very angry. 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 Natashish,
for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger,
and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Jonah knew, didn't he? Jonah
knew that God would be merciful, but he was angry about it. But
he has no right. He has no right to be angry at
all. Why? Because everything God does is right. Everything
God does is right. Everything he purposes is always
for the good of his people. And even now, everything will
be to the praise of his glorious grace. Even the darkest things
we see. So this is a lesson for us, isn't
it? This is a lesson. Despite the unbelief of men,
despite their disobedience, despite the incompetence of men, despite
their obstinance, our God will use the instruments of his choice
to achieve his purposes and he will show mercy to whomever he
wills. And to these Gentile pagan Ninevites,
the Lord was pleased to send them a preacher." Imagine that. Imagine that. What kindness that
is. We've heard what they're like.
We thank God for his kindness to us here, don't we, for sending
us a preacher. What a marvelous act of his grace. Never take that for granted,
aren't we thankful that our God is all those things that Jonah
confessed. This is what he said. He said, the Lord is gracious,
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. Where would
we be as Gentiles? Where would we be without his
kindness, without his grace, without his mercy? There's a
good case to be made that Nineveh is a representation of the church
in this world. Destruction is coming. Judgment
is coming. But right now, our God is saving
a people for himself. He's saving a remnant. He's calling
people out through the act of preaching. And so we are Gentiles, aren't
we? Just like these people of Nineveh.
We're sinners just like them. Ah, but they were really, really,
really bad, weren't they? They were really bad. A sinner
is just a sinner. A sinner is still a sinner. And
the only difference that there ever is in this world is the
difference that grace makes. There's no difference between
us and them. And if you think that we are
better, then you need to go back to the scriptures and read them
again and plead with the Lord. In Luke 13, you might recall
that the Lord spoke of a tower, a great tower that was built
near a place called the Pool of Siloam, where people washed
and paid homage to God, and they hoped to be healed when they
washed in the pool. And this tower fell over. It fell over and it killed 18
people. And the Lord said, do you think
that they were greater sinners above everybody else in Jerusalem?
He said, nay, I tell you, except you repent, ye shall all likewise
perish. How else are we to be saved except
that he be gracious to us? How else are we to be saved except
he be merciful to us? And except he send us a preacher
to preach the person and work of his precious son on our behalf
and grant us repentance. God grants repentance. We don't
conjure it up. God grants men repentance. It's from him. It's a gift. So
one of the interesting things that did come to my attention
when I was studying this book is the fact that Jonah, in his
reluctance, you remember, goes down to a place called Joppa.
to board that ship in order to avoid preaching to these Gentile
Ninevites. And 800 years later, in Acts
chapter 10, in the town of Joppa, Peter was given that vision from
the Lord, confirming that the Gentiles would be brought in.
Remember that sheet came down with all the unclean things in
it? What a remarkable parable, and what a remarkable parallel,
I should say, and both in Joppa. Now God gets all the glory for
redeeming his people out of every kindred and tongue and people
and nation and that is what he's doing here in Nineveh. God is
taking the most difficult, obstinate prophet we know to declare his
gospel and spare a city. And that city is spared, at least
for a time, at least for that generation. But we know the judgment
of the Lord is not a hollow threat. God never bluffs, does he? He
spoke judgment against this city and he never bluffs. Nineveh
actually does four years later, I think probably about 150 years
later or 180 years later, something like that. And Nahum, the book of Nahum,
who came after Jonah, described the destruction of Nineveh in
amazing detail, about 20 years ahead of the time of its destruction,
as did the prophet Zephaniah. But just turn over a few pages
from Jonah. So you've got Jonah, you've got Micah, and then you've
got Nahum. Nahum. It's good for us to understand
the context and to see it for ourselves. There is a shocking
judgment to come on Nineveh when the Medes and the Babylonians
come against that city. Listen to a small portion of
Nahum's prophecy concerning Nineveh. It's a shocking thing. Chapter
3. First one, woe to the bloody
city. It is all full of lies and robbery. The prey departeth
not. The noise of a whip and the noise
of the rattling of wheels and the prancing of horses and of
the jumping chariots. The horsemen lifted up both the
bright sword and the glittering spear. And there is a multitude
of slain and a great number of carcasses. And there is none
end of their corpses. They stumble upon their corpses,
because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured
harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through
her whoredoms and families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am
come against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will discover
thy skirts upon thy face, and I will show the nations thy nakedness,
and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth
upon thee, and make thee vile, and I will set thee as a gazing-stock. And it shall come to pass, that
all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say,
Nineveh is laid waste, who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek
comforters for thee? If you read through that book,
you'll see the judgment fulfilled in great detail, as I said. Such
was the destruction of Nineveh that almost everything was gone. It was just a few walls and a
few foundations left, and for many years they actually forgot
where it was. But this town, this Nineveh,
is an amazing place. It was an amazing city. And here in the days of Jonah
before the end, the Lord is extending His grace to them. And with that
said, let's make our way to our chapter and see what the Lord
does by this prophet, and let's consider a few things. Jonah
chapter 3, verse 1. And the word of the Lord came
unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding
great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into
the city a day's journey. And he cried and said, Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Nineveh is described as a great
city, an exceeding great city of three days journey. And it
seems the Holy Spirit has meant for us to understand some detail
here, perhaps to admire the scale of what the Lord was about to
do for the Ninevites. It was an exceeding great city
in size and in wealth and in power. It was located in Northern
Iraq. in a place we now call Mosul.
I believe our brother Kevin Thacker has been there and he said that
that's not a place you'd want to go. Historians say the city
itself was about six and a half kilometres long and two and a
half kilometres wide. That's just the city, and the
city was located within a greater province. about 50km long and
about 16km wide. This city rivaled the glory of
Babylon. It was protected by high walls
and rivers. It had a river diverted and flowing
through it. It was the head of the warrior
state of the Assyrians, built on the loot and the treasures
they plundered from other nations. The text says the city was three
days journey, and in Jonah chapter four, sorry, in Jonah verse four, Jonah entered the city, a day's
journey, a day's journey. Perhaps he'd walked through the
province for a day and entered that city. And notice in chapter
four, verse 11, The Lord gives a number of 120,000, but these
are ones that cannot discern between their right hand and
their left hand. What does that mean? It's referring
most likely to children. Likely these are children and
adults, and so the population of Nineveh was likely in the
many hundreds of thousands. Many hundreds of thousands. Some
commentators estimate a million, but definitely within hundreds
of thousands. That's conservative, that figure.
This is a big city with a lot of people. What can one man do? in preaching to a city like that. Can you imagine the enormity
of that task, going into a hostile pagan city with hundreds of thousands
of people, all the enemies of your own people, and declaring
to them that they're unworthy and they're going to face some
judgment? But it's not just Jonah, is it?
It's not just Jonah. The God of Jonah is much bigger
than Jonah. Is there anything too hard for
the Lord? God kept him. God kept him. And
God gave him passage to go throughout that city and preach that message
without harm. God could make the rocks cry
out, couldn't he? But he chose a man, a man, to preach the message,
broken vessels, preaching a message from God. And they are, for the
most part, aren't they, unimportant men, unimportant men, preaching
the most important message you will ever hear. I've heard preaching
described like this. Preaching is, is a nobody telling
everybody about somebody who can save anybody. Don't you love
that? Preaching is a nobody telling
everybody about somebody who can save anybody. In verse two
we see, preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. That's the golden
rule of preaching is to preach unto it the preaching that I
bid thee. Don't add to it, don't add your
own works, your filthy works are just filthy rags. And don't
subtract from it, don't diminish my glory, Preach it without reservation. Don't pull any punches. And preach
without ambiguity. I don't want you to go away today
wondering what I meant. We try to preach things as clearly
as we possibly can. We don't want Preach unto it the preaching
that I bid thee. Declare it exactly as I have
said. Cry against them, because the
wickedness of that city has come up before the Lord. Tell them
God must judge all unrighteousness. Tell them their offences against
the Holy God. Warn of judgment to come. God
is going to judge this place. It's going to be overthrown.
This world has a great problem, doesn't it? Has a great problem.
It suffers from an ignorance of sin. If God loves everybody,
then why do I need to repent? What's the point of that? If
God loves me now, then I'm okay, aren't I? What do we preach? We preach that all of us were
ruined by the fall. We're dead in trespasses and
sins. and that everything about this
flesh calls for our condemnation. Apart from Christ, there is nothing
we can do. We are blind and poor and naked. Where there is ignorance of sin,
there is no repentance. There is no need. Men don't realise
that they are poor and blind and naked. The Lord said of these
Ninevites, they have repented at the preaching of Jonah. But
like all such things, we know that even repentance is a gift
of God. It's a work of grace in the hearts of needy sinners.
God grants sinners repentance as he wills, and he grants mercy
upon a city as he wills, and he sends them his gospel as he
wills, and he sends them a preacher as he wills. So before there
is repentance, there must be conviction of sin. And as Angus
has been looking at in John, when the spirit comes, what does
he do? He will reprove the world of
sin, and they will repent. Men need to know their offense
towards a holy God, not just feeling sorry about it, not feeling
sorry about it. We ought to feel sorry, don't
we? We ought to feel sorry. And we
ought to feel guilty about our transgressions, and we do, but
you can't feel sorry enough. You cannot feel sorry enough.
Being sorry and being remorseful is not enough. We need a new
understanding. We need a new understanding of
who we are and who God is. of what God says about us and
what God says about himself. And that's what repentance is.
Repentance is a change of mind, a change of mind about who you
are and who God is. What happens when a sinner sees
Christ as he really is? When the glory of God is manifest
to him, all our imaginary goodness, all our imaginary righteousness,
all our imaginary holiness just evaporates. They're things of
God. They're attributes of God. Goodness,
righteousness, holiness. These Ninevites proclaimed a
fast and they put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to
the least of them. Truly there was a change, wasn't there? It's
a change. There was a remorse. There was a regret for their
sins, but there is something more important. And I'll close
here. Look at verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed
God. Lord willing that will be the
topic of another message and I have no doubt, absolutely no
doubt that Jonah preached the Gospel to these people. Jonah
himself was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who was to come. They heard the testimony of God
concerning their wicked ways. And no doubt Jonah would tell
them all that God had done, that salvation is of the Lord and
that there was only one way, one way of salvation. And having
heard his message, they repented and they believed God. God called
a man called Abraham. And interestingly, he was from
the same idolatrous country. He was from Iraq. And in Galatians
3 we read that God preached the gospel to Abraham saying, in
thee shall all nations be blessed. Abraham believed God. Abraham
believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. The
Gospel of God has been preached from the very beginning, preached
from the garden. It was preached by Abel. It was preached by Jonah. It's preached today, albeit it
is not as common as many people think. And what's left for us
to do? What's left for us to do? We
do what these Ninevites do. We believe God. We believe God. May we be caused to simply believe
God. Amen. Thank you for your attention.
Let's have a break and we'll be back.