Greetings, friends, and welcome
to another broadcast of the Old School Primitive Baptist with
Elder Don Martin, Sr. Stay tuned for another Gospel
message of God's free and sovereign grace. So people try to take
in, and they put God in a parameter, and they say he can't not do
such and so. And they say that there is no
message that is proclaimed outside of what is the sovereign grace
message that has any influence or is used of God. Now I beg
to differ. I beg to say that if a man stand
up, in a gathering of people, and he takes the third chapter
of John, and he reads the account in there where Jesus said to
Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he shall not see, nor
enter into the kingdom of God. And it goes on to talk about
how one must be born of the Spirit and of the flesh naturally. You've got to be born naturally
before you can be born spiritually. You need a second birth in order
to be prepared for heaven and have your sins forgiven and have
eternal life as your hope. If a man read that gospel scripture
text, I don't care who it is, He could be a Catholic clergyman,
and if he reads that text of Scripture, and there'd be one
of God's little elect children sitting there amongst that group,
that God has been so pleased to cause to hear that message
from the Holy Writ of God, that it can be used for the divine
purpose of causing that little one to see their need for an
all-sacrificing Savior. And so, therefore, I don't limit
God, and I don't put Him in parameters and say, He's only got the truth,
only is proclaimed among the primitive Baptists or among those
who give lip service to the sovereignty of God. Now, I will say this
much, that because the sovereignty of God is true, and God is an
absolute, almighty God, unlimited in every way, That there is where
I want to be because that is what God has revealed to me is
the absolute truth of the matter. But I'm not going to cast everybody
else away that would take and preach about a Christ that alone
paid the price for sin on the cross of Calvary, and that whosoever
believeth on him shall never perish but have everlasting life,
and throw that verse away and say that can't be used by anybody
but by sovereign, grace-primitive Baptists. I can't do that, because
God is unlimited. He can take stones and cause
them to cry out. He can take and cause Balaam's
ass to speak a prophetical word to Balaam, and speak audibly
to where he understood everything he said. He can cause a missionary
Baptist to preach enough of Christ the Word and elect the God shall
hear enough of it and long to be in the presence of Christ
as Savior and Lord and Master. But the blessed thing about it
is, is when one is brought to that awareness and is awakened
to those things, and then is regenerated and born again to
the Spirit of God, they'll never hunger for another, for Jesus
is all-sufficient. But what they will desire to
do is the desire to know more of Him. And that's where I believe
that God has got a remnant of people in this time world that
have been blessed to see the almighty unlimited God of the
Bible as the sovereign God who alone seeks and saves sinners
and brings them into a relationship with Jesus Christ that no man
nor means or inventions can assist with or help do. God alone saves
sinners, he quickens them by his Holy Spirit, and they alone
are able to come to a saving knowledge of Christ through the
operation of the free grace of God, the unmerited favor of God. Now, I started out with a mindset
to speak about Jonah. That's where I intend to go. And the message was kind of centered
around a rebellious preacher. And the reason why is because
we talk and think of people being rebellious in the realm of God
as just nominal Christians or professing believers that become
rebellious, or as some would say, they backslide. I don't
believe in backsliding. You can't be unborn if you've
been born again. Now you can fall into sin. You can fall into the pride of
the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh. But
you are not going to backslide out of salvation. Salvation has
already been determined and paid for once and for all on the cross
of Calvary. You can't get unsaved. Now, you
can be a rebellious child of God. And in God's purpose, you
can be running away from God in certain circumstances, but
let me tell you one thing and assure you, according to the
authority of the Word of God, you will not run far, and you
will not run long in the realm of the time of eternity, that
God in his loving mercy will come and chasten you with a rod
of reproof and turn you from your wicked way, arrest you in
your mad pursuit of sin and lust, and turn you around and point
you to Christ and you'll focus again upon He who loves you with
an everlasting love. Yes, we may rebel against God,
but God has never rebelled against us, nor does he ever leave us,
no matter how we react. Now I want to prove it to you
because the Bible says, in a number of places, that especially the
Old Testament is written, the Bible says, and preserved for
our example. Example of what? Example of how
God has dealt with his people, Israel, over the period of centuries. and how that God has preserved
the Old Covenant, Old Testament, that we might profit by it and
learn what God accepts and what God rejects. And the record that
we have of the account of God's dealing with his prophets and
with his preachers and with his ministers in the Old Testament
is a perfect example of what God will and can do even to us
of the New Testament, New Covenant. They're still, just because we're
born of the Spirit and we've been given that love for Christ
does not mean that we're sinless and that we are perfect in our
behavior and all that we do. Because we're not! We still have
a sinful flesh, a sinful body. We still have a mind that's prone
to wander and to leave the Lord I love, but we cannot. It's just
like Brother Buddy and I were talking about people coming to
church. And the bottom line is this,
a person who is really given a love for the Lord Jesus Christ,
a love for the true gospel of God's almighty, sovereign, free
grace, and a love for his people, to whom have experienced the
same experience of being born of the Spirit, you can't keep
them away from church. Now, they're going to come to
church because they want to be there. They're not coming there
because it's just a nice thing, a good thing, at least I hope
not. But to those that do come and those that are here today,
you're not here by chance or coincidence, but you're here
by the divine appointment of God. And those that are not here,
they're not here by the divine appointment of God. Now, it's
just as simple as that. You say, God has appointed such
and such and such not to be here? Yes, He has, because if He hadn't,
they would have been here. It's like a woman told me one
time in a meeting when I said that God is almighty and could
you have been anywhere else this morning other than sitting here
in this meeting this morning? I was in a meeting in Ocala preaching
at a conditionless church. Yeah, they let me up there, buddy.
Usually once. And I said, you could not be
anywhere but here this morning in this church. And this woman
took me to task arm at lunchtime. She says, brother, you mentioned
that we couldn't be anywhere but here this morning when you
was up there and was speaking. I said, yes, ma'am. And she said,
you mean I couldn't have went to Walmart or something else?
And I said, why wasn't you at Walmart? She said, well, I wanted
to be here. I said, does that answer your
question? Well, I just don't believe that
God has control over things such as events like this and where
we go. I said, oh, you don't? I said,
why are you here this morning? Well, because I wanted to be
here. Why do you have a want to be here? God has given you
the want to be here, and you couldn't be anywhere else. She
said, well, I just can't go along with this hard-shelledism, absolutism,
she calls it. I said, well, I regret that you
can't go along with it, because I believe in an absolute God.
And I believe that this book, if it teaches and preaches from
all of its ministers that had been compiled in its letter,
that it is of an almighty, unlimited God. And so there's what you
contend with. Now when I say conditionalist
primitive Baptist church, I don't know whether you all know what
I mean by that, but a conditionless primitive Baptist church puts
conditions on the blessings of God's people as they walk in
this time world as believers. Now what I mean by that, It's
just like it says in the book of Isaiah, if ye be willing and
obedient ye shall taste of the good of the land. Now that's
a promise to God's people, Israel. But it's not a promise to the
people of God in the New Covenant, New Testament. The promise of
the New Testament is that Jesus Christ came to pay it all. and
that all of our sins are forgiven us, and that we shall live now
by the might of the power of God in us, causing us to will
and to do of his good pleasure. It's not as that of the old covenant
any longer, it's the new covenant. And the new covenant, new promises,
are that Jesus came to live in a people, causing them to will
and to do, and he that has begun a good work is going to perform
it to the day of Jesus Christ. And so the conditioners say,
well, you have to be willing and obedient. Well, how do you
become willing and obedient? Somebody please tell me. I have
asked these people and these preachers that preach this, how
do you become willing and obedient? Well, you just have to be, you
have to just, you have to come to the point of where you make
living for Christ your duty, and that you are obligated as
a believer to do that. I said, what do you mean a duty?
I said, the duty comes with the Old Testament. Obligations came
with the Old Testament. It was under the law and the
statutes and ordinances of the law and commandments God gave
Israel. He didn't give it to New Testament
covenant believers. I said, it ain't depending upon
my duty and my obligation that God blesses me. Let me tell you
something, brethren and sisters, it is the blessing of God that
we obey Him. It is by grace we obey God, not
of any duty or works or obligations. God blesses us to obey Him, period. But they cannot see that because
they have to get something added to it to make man some way be
accountable for living the Christian life. That's conditionalism. And that's what most primitive
Baptists have become. This church is not a conditionalist
church. And I won't pastor a conditionless
church. I'll preach Him, and I'll preach
the truth as I've just said before you, but I will hardly ever be
asked to preach twice, because they can't handle that strong
doctrine of an Almighty God that is unlimited, that has no parameters
that men can limit Him to. So therefore, we are not conditionalists. There's no conditional on our
God. He's unlimited, almighty. He's absolute. This book is absolutely
true. It's not partially true. There's
not parts of it that is good and parts of it that's better.
It's all good. Now, I was going to start preaching
about Jonah, and I wanted to emphasize The fact about man
being rebellious. We've got a rebellious preacher
in the Word of God. And we're going to read about
him. If you've got a Bible with you, turn with me to the Book
of Jonah. The Book of Jonah is one of the smaller prophetical
books in the latter part of the As a matter of fact, it's two
books before Matthew. Well, no, it's not either. It's
before Micah. It's in the latter part of the
Old Testament, about three or four books before Matthew. But
Jonah is only four chapters long. Jonah was a rebellious preacher. And he was a preacher. He was
a messenger. He was a prophet of God. The
Bible says so. And the Bible says, and has the
hymn recorded in here, has the inspired record of Jonah and
God's dealing with him. And what I want to do is set
before you the record of Jonah and his rebellion. And I want
you to consider with me, as we look at Jonah, what part Jonah plays in his
situation As a minister of God, what part does Jonah play in
being blessed of God in this record that we're going to read
about? Now you just keep that in mind.
What part is Jonah going to play in this? Other than being a rebel,
which man is by nature. Now I'm going to start reading,
because there's only four chapters and they're pretty short. I'm
going to start reading at verse 1. And then as we go along, I'm
going to make some comments. Jonah chapter 1, verse 1. Now
the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying,
Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it,
that their wickedness has come up before me. Now, first of all,
let me stop here and say this. Do you know or have any idea
where Nineveh was located at in the ancient location geographically
of that area of Asia? Nineveh was almost exactly where
Baghdad, Iraq is at today. Geographically, within, I don't
know, maybe a hundred miles, Nineveh was there, in that location. The same group that's there today
was there then, they were non-Jews, they were later called Arabs,
they were Babylonian, they were Assyrian, and later called Arabs,
and now they're all Muslims. But that's who was there. Jonah
didn't like those folks over there, because they wasn't number
one Jews or Hebrews. They didn't believe in the Lord
God Jehovah that had revealed himself to the Hebrew Jews in
Israel. And so he didn't want to go there.
Now listen to this. Listen to the scriptures. Arise
and go over to Nineveh, that great city. It was a great city.
It wasn't just a few hundred people. It was a big metropolis.
And it says, go over there and cry out against it that the wickedness
has come up before me. The wickedness of Nineveh has
come up before God Almighty in the way that they were living
and in the idolatry that they were involved in, in idols and
gods of different types. He did not want to go. So what
happens? Look at verse 3. But Jonah rose
up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. and
went down to Joppa, which was a sea city, a sea coast, and
he found a ship going to Tarsus, so he paid the fare thereof,
and went and paid the fare, and went down into it, and to go
with them to Tarsus from the presence of the Lord. God says,
I want you. I want you to go to Nineveh and
preach to these people. What did Jonah do? He turns right
around, goes down to Joppa, a seacoast. He pays a fare and gets on a
boat going the opposite direction. Now that's rebellion. He was
a rebellious preacher. That's what God called preacher.
God called him and told him to go there. He said, I don't want
to go there. I don't like those people. But the Lord sent out a great
wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea,
and so that the ship was likened to be broken, or like to be broken. It was almost so bad that the
ship was going to be broken apart. And the Bible says in verse 5,
then the mariners afraid cried every man unto his God. In other
words, there were those of different nationalities on the ship that
had different gods. They had different gods for their
idols and so forth. And they cried out to their different
gods and cast forth the wares that were in the ship and to
the sea to lighten it up. In other words, they had cargo
on the ship that was quite heavy, and the ship was laying low in
the water. And so they start throwing stuff
overboard to light the ship up. They got rid of the cargo. They
needed the ship to float high in the water to keep them from
being flooded over and the thing sinking. And the Bible says that
Jonah was gone down to the sides of the ship and he lay and was
fast asleep. He went down inside the ship
and was down there sleeping. And the Bible says in verse 6,
So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, What meanest
thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if
so be that God will thank upon us that we perish not. In other
words, don't you lay here sleeping when the rest of these shipmates
and sailors that are on this ship are calling out to their
God for help in the midst of this storm. Wake up, O sleeper,
and call out to your God that we might find help. And the Bible
says in verse 7, And they said, Every one his fellow came, and
let us cast lots, that we may know for whose causes evil is
come upon us. And they cast lots, and the lots
that fell upon Jonah. Now, casting of lots is interesting. Now, casting of lots is taking,
let's say, three objects, whatever the objects may be.
You've heard of drawing straws, you've heard of taking and casting a lot, and
whatever is determined by what comes out. For instance, flipping
a coin. That's the casting of a lot of
a type. You take a coin and you flip it up, like a football game. They flip the coin up there and
whoever calls the heads or tails, whichever one that comes up,
if it's a head, they have a choice to either receive the ball or
to give it up to the other team in the beginning of the game.
Casting of lots is similar to that. They cast lots to see who
it was that was causing this problem because they trusted
an almighty sovereign to bring out the problem here. Even though they believed in
other gods and stuff, they still believed in a divine result of
the casting of the lot being of a supreme being. And so they
cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. Now isn't that a coincidence? There is no coincidences with
God. There's no coincidences in casting
of lots. How did Matthias become the apostle
that replaced Judas? By the casting of the lots. And Matthias was named the next
apostle after Judas' death. So the casting of lots is a biblical
principle because the outcome is going to be of God, no matter
what it is. And the Bible goes on to say
that it fell upon It fell upon Jonah. And verse 8, Then said
they unto him, Tell us, pray we thee, or pray thee, we pray
thee rather, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is
thine occupation? And whence comest thou? What
is thy country? And what people art thou? Who
are you, Jonah? Where are you from? Who are you
representing? Who do you work for? They ask
all these questions to Jonah. Look at verse 9. He said unto
them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven,
which hath made the sea and the dry land. Whoa! This preacher
Jonah, he knew a sovereign God. And he preached about one, didn't
he? He said, I'm preaching, he said, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear
the Lord God of heaven who's made the sea and the dry land. Look what else he says in verse
10. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and they said unto him,
Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled
from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. He
had told them, he said, look, I'm not going where I'm supposed
to be going. I'm supposed to be going to Nineveh,
but I'm going to Tarshish because I'm fleeing from where the Lord
told me to go. He told them that. It says that
right there in the Bible. In verse 11, Then said they unto
him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm for
us? For the sea wrought and was temptuous. And the Bible says in verse 12,
And he 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. In other words, I have
caused this great tempestuous storm to come upon the sea. And
so you need to get rid of me and you'll get rid of the problem."
Oh, what a sad thing. He was, in a sense, he was more
or less saying, go ahead and kill me. Throw me overboard.
Let me drown and commit suicide. But I'm the problem. And it goes
on to say in verse 13, nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it
to the land, but they could not. They kept rowing. They couldn't
get it. The sea was so tempestuous, the waves so strong, they could
not make the ship move toward land. that says, For the sea
wrought and was temptuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto
the Lord, and they said, We beseech thee, O God, 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, hast done as
it is pleased thee. Oh, they acknowledge the God
that is sovereign and almighty. And it says, so they took up
Jonah, and they cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased
from her raging. Isn't that something? They took
Jonah, and they took and cast him overboard in that ship, and
when he hit that water, the sea calmed down. Point. You recall
in the Gospels, in the New Testament, where Jesus was in a ship, and
they had a raging storm come upon him? The disciples? They
went to the Lord. He lay there asleep as well.
There's a picture of Jonah sleeping there. Christ was there asleep
as well. They said, Lord, Lord, help us
lest we perish. And Jesus called for the winds
to cease and the seas to be at a great calm. And the disciples
were so amazed, they said amongst themselves, For what manner of
man is this that even the sea and the winds obey his voice?
I'll tell you what manner of man he is. He is the almighty
God incarnate in the flesh of man who came to seek and save
sinners and to preach the everlasting gospel of an almighty God. That is who Christ is. He is
powerful over all creation for he had made all things that ever
be made. We find out that as he was cast
over that the sea ceased from its raging. Look at verse 16. Then the men feared the Lord
exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. Now look at verse 17. This is
very interesting. Now, the Lord had prepared a
great fish. Now, I hope that you're here
today and that you have no problem with the word predestination.
Number one, it's a biblical word. Predestinated, predestinate,
and the word prepared is the same word translated. prepare
something is to afford to make it accomplished or to bring it
about. To prepare. God prepared this
fish, this large fish, which has been determined in another
place as a whale. It had to be big enough to swallow
a man. Now you notice that, as we read
here, He swallowed Jonah. He didn't eat Jonah. If he'd
have ate him, he'd have been dead. But he swallowed him. He just swallowed him down whole. And you know, somebody says,
that can't be. That's a fictitious Jewish fable
that comes from some fireside chat from some Israel bunch back
in the early ages that was put together in a story form and
then put in the Bible. Let me tell you something. of a whale that was, I don't
think it was in the 1940s or 30s, that was captured by a whaling
ship off of the Pacific coast of North America that was brought
upon the dock. I don't know how many tons it
was and how long it was, but I know that it was over 150 unusual find that was that big.
And within that whale, when they cut the blubber off of it and
cut through its intestinal area, in that whale was the body of
two sailors. Now they were dead. But they
wasn't digested yet, because they had been swallowed from
a small boat a day or so before. But they were in the belly of
this large whale, and there is pictures of it. So don't tell
me that this can't be a true situation here, because it's
been proven to have happened. And so anyway, God prepared this
great fish And Jonah was in the belly of the face three days
and three nights. Now, you can imagine being in
the belly of a whale that's, say, 200 foot long and weighs
maybe, I don't know, 300 or 400 tons. The belly of this whale
probably could have been maybe 6 or 8 foot in diameter, but
maybe 10 or 15 foot long. And he was inside this dark,
gloomy stomach full of nothing but digesting acids and seaweed
and other stuff in there for three days and three nights,
the Bible says. Now listen in chapter 2, we're
moving on here. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord
God out of the fish's belly. And he said, I cried by reason
of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me. He was put,
listen, he was a rebel against God, and he refused to go to
Nineveh, and he went to, headed towards Tarshish, and look where
he's at now. He's in the belly of a large
fish as God had prepared him to be swallowed by. And he said,
O Lord, I am crying out by reason of my affliction unto my Lord. And he heard me. And out of the
belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst
cast me into the deep and the midst of the seas, and the floods
can pass me about. All thy billows and the waves
passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of
thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. He said,
God has cast me out. God has turned away from me.
God has no longer no use for me. And that's where a sinner
is brought to. That's where a rebellious Christian
is brought to, brother buddy. When they're living wrong, they're
going to be brought to a place where they feel God has got no
use for them and He's not listening to them. And he cried out unto
God. And the Bible says in verse 5,
The waters can pass me about, even to the soul. And the depths
closed to me around about, and the weeds were wrapped about
my head. Remember I told you to see weed in there wrapped
around me? Look at verse 5, the latter part of it. It says, and
then verse 6, I went down into the bottoms of the mountains,
and the earth with her bars was about me forever. Yet thou hast
brought up my life from the corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainteth
within me, I remember the Lord. Oh, let me tell you, you've got
to sometimes be brought down to where you're ready to faint,
to where you can't do nothing else but cry out unto God. That's
where he took this rebel minister. He took him down into the depths
of hell where he felt he was hopeless and helpless without
no way of escape. And the Bible says that when
my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came in
unto thee and to thy holy temple. And they that observe lying vanities
forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee
with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah
said, if there's any help for me, if there's any deliverance
to be found for me, if there's any way that I won't be brought
out of this whale, this large fish, it is going to be by God,
because salvation is of Him. And the word salvation means
deliverance. Deliverance is of the Lord. If he's ever going to be spared,
it's going to be because God is going to have to do it. And
the Bible says in verse 10, And the Lord spake unto the fish,
and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. That large fish,
it moved up towards the shoreline to the point where it regurgitated
Jonah, and poof! Out came Jonah just like pouring
out of a mother's womb. He'd come out, water, stomach
acid, seaweed around his neck and all, bang, up on the beach. There he was. Where was he at? He was a few days' distance from
Nittany. He wasn't going to Tarsus now.
God turned him around and put him in a fishing valley and headed
him another direction, didn't he? All right, let's go on. All
right, we're going to... Let's look at chapter 3. The
word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise
and go into the great city and preach to them. And it says, to preach unto it
the preaching that I bid thee. Alright. He says to Jonah now,
he says, You go to Nineveh and do what I first told you to do.
You go there and you preach to them people. And you preach to
them what I have taught you and told you to do. And the Bible
says, So Jonah rose and went into Nineveh according to the
word of the Lord. And now Nineveh was exceedingly
a great city, a three days journey. He had to walk three days from
where he was cast up on the shore of the large fish. He walked
three days to get to Nineveh. And the Bible says, 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.
And the people of Nineveh believed God." Now, isn't that something? And the people of Nineveh believed
God. They believed the message that
Jonah was given to be sent there to those people. So it was with
Lydia in the book of Acts. God prepared her heart that she
would attend the things that was preached unto her. So it
is with every one of God's children. He prepares our heart to attend
to the truth of the gospel. He prepared those in Nineveh
to hear the preaching of Jonah, even though Jonah didn't like
them. He didn't want to go there, but
he went because God had turned him there and caused him to go
there. Now God is the first cause of
all things, and here's another proof of it. You say, wait a
minute, what do you mean the first cause? Did God cause Jonah
to rebel? Yes, he did. Why? So that the
Bible would record that God was going to take and change him
and make him do his will in the end result. That's the bottom
line of it. God is going to have his way.
There is no parameters with him. He is unlimited and almighty. The Bible says, for the people
of Nineveh, they believed God and proclaimed the fast and put
on the sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of
them. For the word of God unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose
from his throne and he laid his robe from him and covered him
with sackcloth and he sat in ashes. The king took off his
throne jacket, his throne robe, and even threw it aside and said,
I'm relenting and relinquishing my authority as king because
of the Lord God Almighty of whom you have come to bring us this
good news about. I believe upon him. Listen, when
the message of the gospel changes kings' hearts, as the Bible says
that only God can do. He can change the hearts of kings
and even alter the routes of rivers. The Bible says that the
word of God came unto the king and he ended up sitting there
in sackcloth and he sat in ashes. He sat there in mourning and
in remorse and he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout
Nineveh by the decrees of the king and his nobles saying, let
neither man nor beast heard nor flock, taste anything, let them
not feed nor drink of water, but let man and beast be covered
with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God." He said, don't let
the animals do any eating and having their own way, even cover
them with sackcloth. and ashes, that they may revere
and honor the Lord God that Jonah came to preach about. And the
Bible says, yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and
from the violence that is in their hands. And who can tell
if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger
that we perish not? In other words, oh that God might
have mercy upon us, we who are of Nineveh. Keep in mind, these
weren't Arabs. These are these people that are
there in Iraq even today. These are the non-Hebrew, non-Israeli
people that Jodah hated. But he went there with a message
to them that transformed hearts and caused revival to be spread
out there. God had prepared their hearts
to receive that message. And the Bible said, and God saw
that their works that they had 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. He said He was going to destroy
them. I'm going to take this jacket off. I'm getting hot.
He said, I'm going to destroy them and all that happens over
there. I need a preacher to go over there and preach to them
that they might repent. And let me tell you something,
the preacher didn't want to go, but he ended up there anyway,
didn't he? God sent him over there to preach, and when he
sent him over there to preach, he went there. Now, in the conclusion,
in the fourth chapter, I told you it was a small book. But
it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. Now look,
Jonah did what God told him to do. He went there and preached
of a sovereign God, an almighty God, that alone could spare them,
and alone could forgive them, and alone would have mercy upon
them. But he was not happy with the
results of them, because he did not like those folks. And the
Bible says that 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, Lord. In other words, I fled
before and to Tarshish. For I knew that thou art a gracious
God and merciful and slow to anger and great kindness and
repentance of evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take I
beseech thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die
than to live." In other words, he says, look, he says, God,
God, I know. that you had called me to go
over here to preach to these people. And yet I headed to Tarshish. But yet I know that, O God, that
you had spared me and caused me to go there to preach to these
people." And he says, but now, O Lord, he says, take my life
from me. He says, just kill me. Kill me,
Lord, for I don't like these people, and I accomplished your
will in preaching what you sent me to preach. Now just kill me.
Look what happens here. And it says in verse 4, Then
said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? In other words,
Jonah, is it good and is it right and proper for you to be angry
and upset because I have been pleased to bless these people
of Nineveh with the gospel that they would repent and turn from
their wicked ways. And the Bible says, So Jonah
went out of the city, and he sat on the east side of the city.
And there made to him a booth, and he sat under it in the shadow
until he might see what would become of the city. In other
words, he went out there and made himself a little shelter. He
sat down there under it, and he kind of watched from a distance
the city to see what might happen. And the Bible goes on to say
in verse six, and the Lord God prepared, listen to this, here's
that word again. It's used four times in the book
of Jonah, the word prepared. It says here that the Lord God
prepared, that's predestined, that the Lord God prepared a
gourd. Now y'all know what a gourd is,
and you know how big they can get and how hard they become.
The Bible says, and he made it to come up over Jonah, that it
might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. He made this gourd plant to grow
up, and the gourd to hang over his head, that where it would
be a shadow over him, the Bible says, over his head to deliver
him from his grief. In other words, he was sitting
there in the hot sun at this particular time, and the Lord
caused the gourd to grow up over his head, that he might be in
the shade. And so Jonah was exceedingly
glad of the gourd. He was happy that the gourd was
there. Oh, and listen to what happens though. He ain't going
to be so happy here in a moment. The Bible says, but God prepared,
oh, He prepared something else. God prepared a worm! He predestined,
buddy, a worm! And he says, and when the morning
rose the next day, and it smoked the gourd that it withered, the
worm began to eat on the gourd, to eat on the stem of the gourd
to where it withered. And what happened here? And it
came to pass that when the sun did arise, that God, listen,
prepared Again, that word prepared, he predestined a vehement east
wind. Then the sun beat upon the head
of Jonah and he fainted. He just, he got so heat stroke
he fainted brother. It's like out there working out
here in the field and being so overcome with the heat and dehydrated
that you just feel like you're going to pass out. And he did.
He fainted. And he had a heat stroke and
wished in himself to die and said, it's better for me to die
than to live. That's how bad off he was. And
the Bible says, and God said unto Jonah, doest thou well to
be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be
angry even unto death. In other words, I'm sick and
the whole mess just killed me. And the Bible says, Then said
the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd for the which thou
hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in the
night and perished in a night. The Gord accomplished this purpose
that I set it to do, to be grown up to be a shade for you, and
now the shade is removed from you, and you didn't have nothing
to do with any of that. He was saying, I am God Almighty. And listen to what happened here.
And it says here in verse 11, And should not I spare Nineveh,
that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons
that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,
and also much cattle?" He said, I am going to do what I want
to do with whom I want to do it to. And he says, and all of these
people in Nineveh that I've sent you to preach to, which are six
score thousand persons that cannot discern what's between their
right hand and their left hand. They were spiritually blind and
ignorant and dead spiritually before God. They couldn't discern
their right from left hand as far as anything to do with God. But he sent Jonah to preach to
him about the living God, Jehovah, about the God of Israel, the
God that has come that only he has got salvation and deliverance
in, the God that only can spare Nenna from being destroyed as
he did Sodom and Gomorrah. And you say, wow! That was a quick four chapters.
I hope I didn't wear you too much with the reading of all
of it, but it's only four chapters. But do you see the whole concept
there? A rebellious preacher that didn't
want to go where God told him, and he took off another way.
We can take off other ways, and we do from time to time. We head
another way from where God tells us in his book we need to be
going. But God ain't gonna let us go. are overcoming us with despair
and we become remorseful, we fall upon our face and say, God
have mercy upon me, a sinner. And Lord, salvation is of the
Lord. If there's any deliverance to
be had, it will have to come from you. That is the sinner's
prayer and hope for all of God's people. Yes, God had prepared
a vehement He had prepared a great fish,
he prepared a gourd, he prepared a worm to eat the gourd, and
he prepared again a vehement wind from the east to blow the
gourd down. He prepares all things. He prepares
hearts. to hear the gospel and to believe
it. He prepares minds to receive
with hearing ears. Jesus said, He that hath an ear,
let him hear. And then the Bible says, Jesus
said that they that be of God heareth God's words, and they
that be not of God heareth not the words of God. So you're either
of God or you're not of God. And if you're of God, you're
going to hear the words of God in time. And you're going to
believe them, and you're going to be blessed in them. And you
ain't going to do anything to merit it, or to gain it, or to
earn it. You're going to be blessed to
receive the gospel and be blessed to know Christ as your Savior.
Be blessed to have a home in heaven in the eternal immortal
glory as God has promised those who are blessed to believe. You're
going to be blessed with all these things beyond this temporal
life we live in. And everything we have here,
being a brand new year, 2011, everything we have here is temporal. I mean everything. There's not
a thing in this world that's not temporary. You can have all
the money there is to have, the most beautiful home and as many
cars as a man could ever drive or want. You can have the most
beautiful yachts that's ever been made by man. You can have
all the gold that has ever been mined from the earth, but that
is not salvation. I'll tell you what is mere vanity
of vanities. Solomon said, saith the preacher,
that all is vanity, vanity, vanity, saith the preacher. It's all
vanity. But I'll tell you what, to know
Jesus Christ, to have a hope in Him, to trust in Him, to be
prepared of heart to receive the message of the gospel and
endorse it, believe it, and to be blessed in it is the greatest
thing man can ever experience in this time world. Everything
else is just dung and is mere waste in time. Because God is
going to come back, and when He does, He's going to take and
burn up all the elements of this earth. And the judgment of God
is going to consume all the things that man has ever created. Every
tree that's ever standing out there right now, and every pasture
in the field, every cattle upon a thousand hills will be destroyed
by the fervor of fire of God's judgment. mankind shall be raised
from the dead, and those of the sheep of God shall be put on
the right hand of God's almighty throne. Those are the goats that
God hath determined afore and hath prepared afore, for hell's
damnation shall be brought upon the left hand, and they shall
be told to depart from God forever and eternity into the lake of
fire, the firmament of fire and brimstone. But O for the sheep
of God that God has according to the joys and the
bliss of everlasting life, and the joys and glory with Jesus
Christ for ever and eternity. And all that is the hope of our
calling, and I hope that you have that calling. The Bible
says to make your calling and election How do you do that? You think and consider about
how you perceive God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Is He your
Savior, Master, Lord, Redeemer? Is He your Mediator? Is He the
only sacrifice that you can provide before God for your sin? I hope
so, because if not, you have no help or hope at this time.
So may God bless you. Thank you for your kind patience
as we went through this book of Jonah. And may the Lord bless
his word. Amen. Pray with me. Father God,
in Jesus' glorious and wonderful name, I thank you for this occasion. I pray that, Lord, that what
was set forth may be a profit to the hearts and minds of those
that be here in this little assembly today. I thank you, God, for
this record that you've put in your Holy Writ, that we can see
about how a rebellious preacher can be turned from one direction
to another and go 180 degrees towards the way that he desired
to go with the heart of a rebel. to fulfill that which was of
the Lord God. He went and he preached the message
that God sent him to preach. No matter whether he wanted to
or liked to, God's will was accomplished. For our God is almighty and unlimited
and accomplishes His will. He is in the heavens and He does
whatsoever He pleases, the Bible says. And who is it that can
reply against this God? Who is it that can say unto him,
why doest thou this? Oh, has the potter got power
over the clay? Does he not have the power to
make one a vessel of dishonor and another one fit for eternal
glory? Yes, he does, and God so does
that with his people. He makes us as he pleases him
vessels of glory fit for heaven in that great and wondrous day.
Bless us, I pray, with Thy Word, by Thy Spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you.