We look first in Matthew chapter
16, beginning in verse 1. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees
came, and, tempting, desired Him that He would show them a
sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them,
When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the
sky is red. And in the morning it will be
foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye
hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but ye cannot
discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it
but the sign of the prophet Jonas, and he left them and departed." I'm so thankful the Lord didn't
give us a book that we couldn't understand. We didn't have eyes
to see and we didn't have hearts to understand, and He departed
from us. What a horrible thing. But because
He said this, all you'll be given is the sign of Jonah. Do we throw
away the rest of the Scriptures and only read Jonah? We don't
do that, do we? Of course not. The sign of Jonah,
that word sign means the indication, the token, it's the picture of
Jonah. It's the same in Ruth. It's the
same in Job. It's the same in Esther. Adam's
race has offended the holy God of eternity. Judgment and wrath
is what we've earned. That's what we have coming to
us. And our only hope is that God would show mercy to sinners. That mercy is found in His Son.
That's the message. That's the sign. The Lord has
to give us a heart to understand that. He has to give us a new
nature and give us ears. He has to perform a miracle for
us to discern that sign. Thanks be to God that He delights
in mercy. He crossed our mercy seed, our
propitiation. He stood in our place. He bore
the wrath and the condemnation that His sheep deserve, that
we, being made one with our Master, us being made one with Him, we
are justly given His perfect seed, His incorruptible seed,
His holy nature. Let's turn back to Jonathan.
The sign of Jonah. I thought, too, that here's these
Sadducees, Pharisees, or some of those floating around this
country this year, and they said, all you get is the sign of Jonah.
Four little chapters. That's it. In Jonah 1, we saw the disobedient
servant, that first Adam, that brought judgment down on everyone
in that same boat. he was with. All of mankind fell
in Adam. But on our own, we all purchased
a ticket to Tarsus. We were confident in our decisions.
We were comfortable in the path we chose, and we were heading
directly to an eternity of hell, unknowingly, but God. He sent
a trial. He sent a great storm on that
boat. And God sent a messenger. It
wasn't just a trial. God had a messenger on that boat
with those mariners. And John had preached to those
sailors on that boat, tell them we've crossed our substitute,
and that he was able to swallow that cup of wrath that we deserved. One must die that many may live. And the Lord saved those men.
they worship God. In John 2, we see Christ enduring
those waves and those billows of the Father's divine, holy
judgment for His elect, with steadfastness, determination,
His keeping of the moral law of God, all while being forsaken
of the Father, the whole time looking to Him, trusting Him
thoroughly. I thought the other day, what
manliness! Consider that. Christ the God-man
is what a true man should be. We don't know nothing about manliness.
I don't. In thought, in word, and in action,
He set His face like a flint for the work set before Him.
What holiness! What might! Bearing our sin and
shame, having God turn His back on Him, and satisfying eternal
justice of the Father, the Lord spoke to the fish. when it was
finished, when it was done, and it vomited him out upon dry ground. It had to release him with force. It could not contain him. Then
we get to Jonah chapter 3. Let's read our text here. Jonah
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 into Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding
great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter the
city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty 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 word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose
from his throne, and he laid down his robe from him, and covered
him with sackcloth and satin 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."
Now there's a good outline here in this chapter for Jonah being
a type of the Holy Spirit, that great comforter being sent after
the resurrection of Christ. When he went to his father, he
sent a comforter to us. And it goes one-third way into
that sinful city. He comes one-third into us, to
our heart, and speaks to us, convicting of sin, convicting
of Christ's righteousness, convicting us that judgment's been satisfied.
There's a good outline to preach here in our text of Jonah as
the law. A stern, unbending schoolmaster. He was to point us to Christ.
Yet forty days and none of us shall be overthrown. Forty days. I pray today we can see Jonah
as the Lord's messenger. The title of this message is
One Man, One Message. I had to put this in my shoes
first. How does this affect me? That's
what I hope the Lord showed me and I can tell you. We see there
in Jonah 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. Now we saw what
happened to Jonah, this disobedient servant. The Lord had to correct
him with a severe trial, a harsh trial. Was Jonah the only servant
that the Lord had to use in that day? This is it. It's all he's got. He has to
use this one. No. But Jonah was the least likely,
wasn't he? He was the least likely to be used, wouldn't you think?
Disobedient servant. What a condescension it is for
the Lord to use any man to preach His Word. More especially those that slighted
him. that ran from him, that neglected
the work put in their hands. A poor, weak, lowly sinner. Just like the one standing in
front of you today. What condescension. The Lord used Jonah. And it says
there, the Lord came unto Jonah a second time. You that know
the Lord, aren't you glad He comes the second time? Aren't
you glad He comes the 200th time? Aren't you glad He comes the
2,000,000th time? We haven't been forsaken, have we? We forsake
Him. He hasn't forsaken us. Verse
2 says, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto
it the preaching that I bid thee. Now Nineveh, I've told you before,
is a picture of the body of Christ. This is His elect, the church
throughout time. But what was Nineveh physically?
It was the capital of Assyria. That's just north of Iraq now.
It was a wretched city, nothing but godless heathens filled that
city, filled full of sin and corruption. They were the enemy
of Israel. You can read a whole lot about
how they chastised Israel, how they tortured them, how they
repeatedly did horrible things to them. That's probably what
was in Jonah's mind when he headed to Tarshish. He said, I don't
want to go there. It's a city full of my enemies. Now, in the
end of it, by nature, isn't that us? Aren't we enemies against
God and his people? That's what the scriptures tell
us. But for this certain city, when God spoke to Jonah, what
does the Lord call it? That great city. It's a great
city. It's big and it's mine. It's
lovely. That city full of sinners saved
by God's grace who were yet unaware. They didn't know it yet. Put
in Christ before time began, loved with an everlasting love. And he was going to send his
messengers to tell them. What mercy, what love. It says
in verse 2, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto
it the preaching that I bid thee. True preachers send to the Lord,
weak and feeble as they are, they preach unto the Lord's people
that what the Lord bids. That's a good definition of preaching.
Ambassadors, they don't tell what they think, they speak the
word of the one that sent them. what they bid them. And they
go where they're sent and they preach what is given to them
to preach. It says in verse 3, 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. It wasn't three days away from
where Jonah was, it was about 60 miles wide. A day's journey
is about 20 miles. And some say it's 60 miles across,
and some said it was 60 miles around. And either way, that's
a big city. Whichever way it is, it's a large
city with a multitude of people in it. And we'll read in chapter
4, there's 120,000 infants, young children, didn't know they're
left from their right. A couple million people, and all of them
hated Israel. That was their enemy. Now imagine
being sent to preach in a massive town of your enemies. They'd
cut your head off if they could. They hate you and they hate your
God. The Lord says, go preach to them.
I thought, what if I was sent to Tehran or I was sent to Pyongyang? How would that work? I'd go walking
halfway through that city preaching at the top of my lungs. What
would keep them from chopping my head off? The Lord would have
to hedge me about, wouldn't He? What preserved Jonah in that
city? Preaching those people hated
him. The Lord kept him. He kept him. Verse 4, 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. He's saying judgment's coming. Imagine that. Forty days left. If we were told today, you got
40 days left on this earth, we may not have 40 hours. 40 days
and judgment will be here. Would we wait? Would we plug
our ears and say, well, I'll worry about this tomorrow. I'll
still have 39 days left. You think they slept that night?
Any of them. If they were convicted, Lord
put that in their hearts. 40 days until judgment came. What would we do? There are several
of the old writers that say that this was the message of Jonah.
These eight words, yet forty days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.
That that's all he said. It could be. Jonah was a hard
egg. He was probably not the funnest man to be in a room with.
But after all that takes place in this chapter, Jonah goes up
on a hill and he builds a little hut to watch Nineveh be destroyed.
Doesn't he? Can you imagine him Coming up
that hill, we're down to 38 days, Jonah, what do we do? And he
just screamed, 40 days. Back down the hill. Fire and
brimstone is not a good way of preaching. You can incite a lot
of fear in somebody, and I can incite fear by saying earthquakes
are coming too. But this was likely the title
of Jonah's message. 40 days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown. Here, verse 5, it says, Jonah
3, 5, So the people of Nineveh believed God. It doesn't say
that they believed Jonah. They believed God. They weren't
just afraid. Judgment's coming in 40 days.
What are we going to do? I'm scared. They believed God. They believed the message that
Jonah preached. They didn't believe God before.
But they do now. Look back at chapter 1, verse
1. Jonah chapter 1, verse 1. 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. I can only imagine that while
Jonah walked through this city preaching, that he quoted Genesis
6 to him. Genesis 6, 5, and the God, God
saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That's us. That's me. Every imagination
of my heart, wickedness. Lord said that town was wicked
to him. And what did the people that heard Jonah preaching do?
They believe God. That's what God's Word says,
doesn't it? Must be true. I believe Him. I want to believe God. Do you?
I want to be like these Ninevites and believe God's testimony concerning
me, concerning my evil way. That's the truth. I want to be
convicted of it. be made to beg mercy. Look down at verse 8.
This is part of the king's decree that went out to all the people.
It said, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and
cry mightily unto God, yea, let him turn everyone from his evil
way and from the violence that is in their hands. That's the
hardest thing that we could be told, even in this day. Most
people will say, Well, I'm not perfect. Most people say that. Many people say, well, I'm kind
of bad sometimes. Many will say that. Some may
say, well, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner, but evil. Boy, that stings, doesn't it? Call somebody evil and see how
fast they reject it. Well, I'm not evil. We don't
have to know what that word means. We don't have to define it. Evil. Forty days. That couldn't be
me. Ain't that bad. That's what the
Lord says we are. Says we're evil. Here's the beginning
of the message. Man is evil only continually. Always. Forty days. Judgment's
coming for that evil. Verse 5, So the people of Nineveh
believed God. They believed Him. and proclaimed
a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to
the least of them." Every one of the people in this city believed
the Word of God. They stopped eating their dead
works. They dropped their robes of righteousness,
every one of them from the greatest to the least. That's the first
thing that will happen. If the Lord truly convicts us, of sin,
of what we are. If the Holy Spirit comes to us
and does a hard work in us, that robe of our filthy rags, what
we think is the robe of righteousness, it falls immediately. You'll
throw down your guns and quit fighting. There was a great revival in
this city. It says every one of them. That's
a couple million people probably, at least a million. I always
thought that revival, I don't like using that word, but context
of the folks here, Lord saved a whole bunch of people at one
time. That day at Pentecost was probably the greatest mass of
people ever come into knowledge of Christ in one day. This is
a whole city. Millions of people at once. Could you imagine? Why
did they do that? Why did they believe God? Why
did they turn from their works, turn from their righteousness,
set in sackcloth and ashes, and believe God? Look in verse 6. They did this because, for word
came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne,
and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth
and set in ashes." Here's why it's hard for me. I'm doing the
best I can. I'm getting more time as the
year goes on. I'm trying to shorten my messages
some. I was talking to another pastor
the other day. I wish we didn't have TV. Back
in the 1800s and stuff, those men would preach for five or
six hours. That was their entertainment for the week. People sit there
and stay awake and pay attention. There's so much to cover here
in this book. So many different pictures. There's
plenty of signs here in Jonah. Look here, 4, Word came unto
the king of Nineveh. And he arose from his throne
and he laid down his robe from him and covered him with sackcloth
and sat in ashes. Across our king, the head of
his body, the head of his church, he received word from God the
Father. He entered into an eternal covenant
of grace with God the Father. He arose from his throne, became
uncomely. unattractive, unremarkable. He laid down His glorious robe
of righteousness and became a man, born of a woman, swaddled in
baby's clothes, humbling Himself to the lowest of the kingdom,
facing judgment on our behalf to give us His holiness. The preacher's synagogue comes
to the Lord's people crying, all flesh is grass. Repent and
believe. Look to Christ. Why does Christ's
sheep hear that message? Because Christ our King speaks
to the heart of His people. He who did it first, the firstborn,
speaks to the heart of His people. Look there in verse 7. And He,
the King, and He caused it to be proclaimed and published through
Nineveh by the decree of the King and His nobles. We have
the Old Testament, all the prophets, all the nobles. declaring the
same message, saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock,
taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water. Don't drink iniquity and don't
eat your good works. It won't happen. It's a decree.
The Lord's people won't. But let every 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 hand. God's divine decree comes to
the heart of His sheep through the preaching of the Word, and
it demands repentance, demands turning from our evil thoughts
and our evil ways and our wicked, violent hands and bowing before
the Holy God. It's His decree, the decree of
the King. Is that really how sinners are
converted? Is that really how the Lord does it? Look here in
verse 5. So the people of Nineveh believed
God. The king heard. The king put
a decree out and the people believed. They believed God. Why? Because the king made himself
low and he notified the people of it. If Christ our king bows
to the Lord, if he submits himself to Almighty God, how much more
should we bow? How much more should we be humbled?
And I mean, all day, every day, walk through this earth submitting
to God. Lord, your will be done. You
stump your toe and you say, thank you, Lord, amen. It's right. What you do is right. Verse eight,
but let every 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. We see
what we are. We see our evil way and our violence. And we see that there is hope
of salvation in Christ our substitute, being cast to our deserved billows
of death, those waves of destruction, all of that wrath. And we beg
for mercy. We cry unto the Lord, cry mightily
unto God. There in verse 9, it says, who
can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his
fierce anger that we perished on? My friend, Brother Don, used
to say with the internet and things to this day that you've
got a plumber that thinks he's a doctor, you've got a dishwasher
that thinks he's a politician, and you've got a truck driver
that thinks he's a theologian. what dangers. I've had so many
people say, see the Lord turned, He repented. He felt bad for
what He did. That is not what this word means.
I told you several times, repentance has five different meanings in
the scriptures. It says, who can tell if the
Lord will turn and repent? The word repent there means sigh.
Take pity to console. What we call that nowadays? Mercy.
The Lord may turn and take mercy and turn away from His fierce
anger that we perish not. He says, who can tell? Who knows? We're dying anyway. Forty days. None of it is going to be destroyed.
Destruction is coming. Judgment is coming. If we're
convicted of sin, if we know what we are, that this death
is coming, what we truly deserve, beg for mercy. Well, if He says
no, we're dying anyway, Beg for mercy. That's true conviction
of sin. That's not, well, I'm not that
good. That's saying I'm evil. Beg for
mercy. Who knows? Who can tell if God
may turn? David cried until his son died,
didn't he? He went and conceived a child
with Bathsheba and the Lord said, I'm going to kill that boy. And
David put on sackcloth and ashes, and he wept, and he prayed, and
he cried, and he said, who could tell, maybe the Lord won't kill
him. And he begged, pleaded, and the Lord killed him. And
David got up, and he washed his face, and he went on. They said,
what's wrong with you? You're going on like nothing ever happened.
And they said, well, the Lord might have saved him, but he
didn't. Blessed be the Lord. God's sovereign. Everything in
this world is decreed by Him. It's by His will and His purpose
and His prerogative. Everything that happens. But
do you know what's going to happen? I don't know what's going to
happen. I don't know who He may save. I don't know what He may
do. Who can tell the mind of the Lord? Who knows it? We don't. So we pray and we beg for mercy. And we pray that He repents.
That He will sigh He will take pity on us and turn from His
fierce anger that we deserve that we perish not, so we don't
die. Eternal judgment that we deserve. Now, how can God remain
just and turn from His fierce anger, His holy anger that's
right, and have pity, have mercy on hell-deserving sinners? Christ
must bear it. Just as those mariners were in
that boat, we must pick Him up and cast Him to the waves. He
must suffer and die for us, for His people. We cannot pay the
price. Only He can. He must bear it
for us. He must perform the work of salvation. Salvation must be of the Lord.
Look there in verse 10. And God saw their works. See, man had to do something.
What work did the Lord see? the decree of the king. What
did all those people in Nineveh do? Exactly what their king told
them. They believed God, they called
to the Lord for mercy, and they obeyed their king. God saw their
works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented
of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he
did it not. What was this evil? that the
Lord sighed and had mercy on. The Lord can't do evil. He's
holy. The word evil there means affliction, great calamity and
misery, justice. Evil for evil. Misery for my
evil. It's what I deserve. And God
repented of it. He sighed, had mercy, and He
said that He would not do unto them, and He did it not. That justice was satisfied. That's
what we saw in chapter 2. Christ died for our sins. God
came to this world to take away the sins of His people. He shall
save His people. It was laid on Him. But for you
and I, those that Christ died for, the Lord did not do it. Our justice that we deserved,
the wrath we deserved, was not accounted for us. There's no
condemnation for them that are in Christ. Every saint of God
saved the exact same way. Going about our lives blissfully
thinking that everything's fine. Drinking wine, being merry, giving
away in marriage, taking in marriage, having babies, making plans for
tomorrow. God's preacher comes saying 40 days. Judgment's coming. Man's evil, the word of the Lord
is forever. Christ came to save sinners. And the Lord, as He's pleased,
does a work in their heart, and He saves them. Gives them repentance
to cry unto Him for mercy. And everyone that cries unto
Him for mercy, He doesn't cast away. He saves every one of them. I pray we can be made to turn
from our evil way and cry unto the Lord. Because who can tell?
Who can tell? Cry unto Him. Pray to Him. Now, if we only had Jonah. If this was the only sign that
we had, the only book that we had, what a blessing. What a
blessing that'd be. If we only had a warning of 40
days, judgments coming, if that was the message, what a blessing. What a blessing to have the warning.
But we have more than just a warning of 40 days. We have more than
that. We have the Word of God. given
to us. He delights to show mercy. He's
reserved mercy for thousands. Christ has finished the work.
This is all preserved for us, expounded for us. What a blessing
it is that He's given this to His people, to His Nineveh. I
pray the Lord will bless it to our hearts too. Amen. Let's pray
together.