Like Dan said, I hope you've
got your Bibles still open there to Jonah chapter 3. I've titled
the message this morning, Who Can Tell? Who can tell what the
Lord will be pleased to do? You know, we have different events
come up in our lives. We wonder, what is this? You know, some events we think
are good, some things happen to us we think are bad, And the
believer invariably will wonder, now I wonder what the Lord is
going to be pleased to accomplish from all of this. What is the
Lord doing? What is his purpose in this?
Well, I answer your question with a question. Who can tell? Wednesday night, without even
knowing where I was intending to preach from this evening,
Brother Earl Wooten made this statement, talking about things
he'd been through in this life. And he said, the only place we
can see what the Lord's doing is in the rear view. That's what
you said, Oral. Well, he's exactly right. The
only way we can know what is it that the Lord's doing here
is wait till he's done. In the past, we can look back
and say, oh, now I see what he was doing. At least we can see
part of it. But you know, we'll never know fully because everything
that God is accomplishing through all the events of our lives,
it doesn't just affect us. It affects so many other places
and so many other people. What God is doing is so far beyond
us, we can never be able to comprehend it. So who can tell? Who can
tell what the Lord may be pleased to do? Well, the same thing is
true about when God shows mercy and grace to sinners. Who can
tell? Now, I do know this. God's going
to show mercy to somebody. He makes that very plain in his
word that God's going to show mercy to somebody. but will God
show mercy to me? Will God show mercy to you? Will
God save me? Who can tell? But I tell you,
there's one way to find out. Go beg God for mercy, and then
wait and see what God's pleased to do. Now all of you know the
story of Jonah. The Lord told Jonah to go to
a Gentile city, Nineveh, a notoriously evil, violent city, And he told
Jonah to cry against it. Now Nineveh was a very large
city. It would take a person three
days to walk across Nineveh. That's 60 miles. The Jews figured
a person could walk 20 miles in a day, so three days journey
is 60 miles. This city was 60 miles wide. The city was surrounded by great
walls. 100 feet high, they say three
chariots could ride abreast on top of that wall. There's a great
city. Many people lived inside those
walls. We know from chapter four, there
are 120,000 babies that live there, not counting adults. So
this is a very large city. Very many people live there.
It was a wicked city. And Jonah didn't want to go there.
Because this is what Jonah knew. If he goes to Nineveh and he
cries against it, the people are going to cry for mercy. and
the Lord won't destroy him. After Jonah spends all this time
preaching God's gonna destroy you, then they're gonna beg for
mercy and God won't destroy him. And rather than be happy that
God wouldn't destroy all those people, Jonah was pouting saying,
that's gonna make me look bad. Look here at chapter four, verse
two. 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, this is why I fled, before into Tarshish,
for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger,
and of great kindness, and repentest thee of evil." Jonah said, I
knew you'd be merciful, and you just make me look bad. So Jonah
tried to go the opposite direction. He tried to go to Tarshish, and
the Lord sent a storm that was so bad. All these experienced
sailors said, this storm is so bad, it's so unique. God sent
this storm. God sent this storm to punish
somebody. There's no other explanation for it. And that someone was
Jonah. And Jonah told him, you're right.
If you'll just throw me overboard, the storm will stop and the ship
and our crew will be safe. But now these are honorable men.
They didn't want to do that. They finally, they hated to do
it, but they had to do it. They had to throw Jonah into
the sea because there was no other choice. There's no other
way for them to be saved. And the Lord had prepared a great
fish to come swallow Jonah whole. And after three days in the belly
of that great fish, I mean three days, can you imagine? Jonah
finally cried out to the Lord and said, salvations of the Lord.
And that fish vomited Jonah out on dry ground. Now that's an
experience. But now, after going through
that, now Jonah's learned something. Now Jonah is ready to go preach
to the people of Nineveh. and his preaching is gonna make
the king ask the question that I want us to look at this morning
in verse nine, who can tell if God will turn and repent and
turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not? Who can tell? Now I wanna answer that question
with five points this morning. Number one is this, if the Lord's
gonna show mercy to me, who can tell if the Lord will show mercy
to me? But if he does, he's gonna make me know what I deserve first. That's what Jonah cried so everybody
could hear. Look at verse three of chapter
three. 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. He walked 20 miles. And as he
walked, he cried and said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah walked a whole day, 20
miles. Crying to everybody that was in earshot, the Lord's gonna
destroy this place in 40 days because of the wickedness of
the city. Jonah's message was this, you're
in trouble. Now that's the cry of every gospel
preacher. We're in trouble because of our
sin. It's our sin that separated us
from our God. It's our sin that demands God's
eternal justice, eternal death from a holy God, it's our sin.
Now, if we preach the gospel right, we've got to declare sin. All men are lost in sin. You're lost in sin, I'm lost
in sin. That's our nature. But that's
an ugly truth. It's a disturbing truth, but
it's the truth. We must declare that all men
are lost in sin. We're under the judgment of God
because of our sin, and you and I can't fix our problem. Now,
we're in trouble, but we can't fix this problem. Because everything
that we do, all the religious activity, all the moral activity,
all the activity we do trying to clean up our act and turn
over a new leaf, all the activity that we do just adds to our sin
debt. See, all we can do is sin. Everything
we do trying to put away our sin just adds to our debt. We're
just committing more sin. We're just making the problem
worse. We need a Savior. We don't need
somebody that can just fix us up. We need a savior from our
sin. The well don't need a physician,
do they? And then what the Lord told the
Pharisees is that the well don't need a physician. Just pick any
time of day, any day of the week, and go down to the emergency
room there at King's Daughters. You're not gonna find a bunch
of well people. You're gonna find a bunch of sick folks, because that's
who goes to the emergency room. You look at who it is that comes
to Christ. They're sinners. They're sinners. That's who comes
to Christ. And before God saves us, now, is God gonna save us?
Will he save us? Who can tell? But I do know this. Before God saves us, first thing
he's got to do is get us lost. You got to be lost before you
can be found. You got to be a sinner before
you can be saved. God has to show us that we're
lost and in need of mercy from God. That's our need because
of our great sin. That's what Jonah was crying. All right, number two, will the
Lord be merciful? Who can tell? But if the Lord
is going to show mercy to me, I'm gonna have to hear the gospel
preached. Look at verse one of chapter three. And the word of
the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go
into Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching
that I bid thee. Now, the Lord tells Jonah, you
go preach what I bid you to preach. Jonah, don't you go and preach
your own message now. Don't you just make this up as
you go. You preach what I give you to preach to the people.
And I'm very thankful that the Lord did that, because from what
we can gather about Jonah, I mean, he's a pretty negative guy. I
mean, he's just one of those guys, you see him coming, man,
he's gonna drag you down. He's just negative about everything,
isn't he? So Jonah went and preached what Jonah wanted to preach.
His message would be hellfire and brimstone, buddy. Don't you
reckon? I mean, this guy, he'd just be
all doom and gloom. So the Lord tells Jonah, you
go preach what I give you to preach, what I command you to
preach. And that's all any true preacher
can do. The only message we have to preach is the message that
Almighty God gives us to preach. And this is the message. There's
grace and mercy and salvation found in Christ. The message
God's given us to preach is it's all Christ. It's all Christ. He's our righteousness. He's
our justification. He's our wisdom. He's our all. He's our prophet, our priest
and king. He's everything you need. Christ is all. That's the
message God's given us to preach. Now you look to him and you trust.
He's all. He's everything you need. Now
you trust him. That's the message God's given us to preach. We
can't do anything to save ourselves, and Christ has already completely
and utterly and freely saved his people from all of their
sin. Now, everything Jonah preached can't be recorded here. I know
it's not all, everything he said is not recorded here. Now I know,
because it says so, Jonah told the city, you're under the judgment
of God. God's gonna destroy this place. But Jonah, at some point,
had to tell folks about the character of God. That's what preaching
is, it's telling people about the character of God, who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. Jonah must have told the people,
they must have come asking, are you sure God's gonna destroy
this place? And he said, yes, God's gonna destroy this place.
God's holy, God's just, God must punish sin, he must, that's the
character of God. But Jonah must have also told
the people what he said there in chapter four, verse two about
God, that God is a gracious God. He's merciful and slow to anger
of great kindness. He repents of the evil that he
said he was gonna do. God is gracious to all that call
upon him. Jonah must have told them that.
You see, Jonah went through this whole experience in the whale's
belly. So this is fresh on his mind. The Lord taught him yet
again, God is merciful to sinners. All that call upon him, God's
merciful, God's gracious. You see, you have to experience
mercy yourself before you can tell other folks about God's
mercy. You have to need God's grace
first, your own self, before you can tell other folks, oh,
God's gracious. See, now Jonah can preach that again. Now Jonah
can preach God's merciful to sinners. God delivers sinners.
God is gracious to everyone that calls upon him. David said, this
poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out
of all his troubles. Now you cry. See, I can tell
you, you cry. Because I'm going to say like
David, this poor man cried. The Lord heard him. You cry.
You hear you do. Jonah could tell that now, because
in that belly of that great fish, of that whale, this is what the
Lord taught Jonah. Salvation's of the Lord. It's
of the Lord's purpose. It's of the Lord's grace. It's
of the Lord's application. Salvation is of the Lord. He
saved sinners. After that experience, now Jonah's
got a message to preach. And it's not something he learned
in a book. He learned it by experience. In the belly of that great fish.
Jonah can tell by experience, God's merciful to sinners. And
he can preach that message from his heart to the heart of other
miserable sinners. Oh, I got good news for you.
God's merciful to sinners. God's merciful to the miserable. Preaching is one of the most complicated, weighty matters that there is
for a man to do. But it's also very simple. It's
simple in this way. We got one point. We got one
message. We got one place to look. One
of the best definitions I ever heard of preaching is this. Preaching
is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.
Now God's not going to have to make you a beggar before He's
going to make you a preacher. He's going to have to make you
a beggar and show you by His mercy and grace where the bread is.
The Lord's got to send somebody to come preach the message of
grace to me or I'll never hear of Christ the Savior. I'll never
find the bread of life. I'm a beggar. I mean, I'm a beggar,
but I will never find the bread of life until somebody tells
me who he is. I have to hear that I'm a sinner
and that Christ is the Savior of sinners, or I'll never have
any interest in Christ. I'm gonna die without ever knowing
who I am, who and what I am, unless somebody comes and tells
me I'm a sinner. That's where they gotta start.
You're a sinner. And I'm gonna die without knowing
who God is, without knowing how God saves sinners, unless somebody
tells me who Christ is. Here's God's salvation. Here's
how God saves sinners. That's what God's gotta send
a preacher to tell me. That's why what we do here is
so vitally important. Vitally important. Because if
God's gonna save anybody, he's gonna do it through the preaching
of Christ. through the preaching of the gospel. So it's so important
what we do here. You know, Frank, why do you keep
at this? Why do you keep preaching and
preaching and preaching, saying the same thing over and over
and over again? Because who can tell? Who can tell who the Lord
might be pleased to save? Who can tell which one of God's
children He may be pleased to bless and comfort and encourage?
Who can tell? Whatever God's gonna gonna do
and speak to his people and speak to their hearts just through
the preaching of the word. I've got to hear preaching. All right,
number three. Now who can tell? If God's gonna
be merciful, who can tell? But if God's gonna show mercy
to me, tell you how he's gonna do it. He's gonna do it by giving
me faith in Christ. He's gonna make me believe him.
Verse five in our text says, so the people of Nineveh believed
God. They heard what Jonah said and they believed God. and proclaimed
a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to
the least of them. Now here's what happens when
the gospel's preached. Sinners believe God. Whether
it's the first time or the 10,000th time when the gospel's preached,
sinners believe God. These great sinners heard the
gospel and they believed. These great sinners, you think
of these Gentiles, this great city known for its wickedness
and its violence, These great sinners were saved the very same
way our father Abraham was saved, by faith. This is what scripture
has to say about Abraham, he believed God. This is what scripture
has to say about the people of Nineveh, they believed God. I
don't care who you are, I don't care where you come from, I don't
care what your background is, if God's gonna save you, you're
gonna believe God, he's gonna make you believe God. You know, I was thinking about
this this week. Our gospel is a great leveler, isn't it? You
know, human beings, we like to put ourselves in classes and
we always try to find a way to see how we're, you know, we're
higher up on the ladder, better off than somebody else, you know.
But the gospel's a great leveler. The gospel puts every one of
us on the same level at the very, very bottom of the barrel. We're
all sinners, all of us. We're all completely undone because
of our sin. There's nothing good in us. There's no hope in us. There's
no hope in anything about us. There's no hope in anything we
can do. That is true of every single son of Adam. We're all
on the same level, the bottom of the barrel. The folks of Nineveh
learned that. Look at verse six. For word came unto the king of
Nineveh, and he rose from his throne, and he laid his robe
from him, and covered him with sackcloth and satin ashes. And
he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout all
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, all of
them, be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea,
let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence
that's in their hands. Now, I believe the record that
God has given us. All men are lost in sin, and
that means me. I'm the worst of them. That's
true of the king on the throne, all the way down to the beggar
sitting on the dunghill. That's true of the king's nobles,
all the way down to the stable boy that's shoveling the manure
from the king's horse. We're all equally sinful. We're all equally lost. We're
all equally in need of mercy. And if any of us low down sinners
are going to be saved, God's going to have to give us faith
to believe Christ. You know, we're all so low down,
but here is the demonstration of the deadness of our nature.
We're so low down, we're at the bottom of the barrel. We cannot
look down on anyone because nobody's worse than us. Yet we still believe
I can do something to make myself better. I can do something to
make God save me. And God's got to give us faith
in Christ so that I trust Christ, not myself. I've got to trust
Him. Now, I don't care who you are.
I don't care what you've done in the past. Let's not even talk
about what we've all done in the past. Let's not talk about
what we're thinking about doing right now or thinking about doing
this afternoon, what we could do this afternoon or what we
will do tomorrow. I don't care who you are. If you believe God,
you're saved. Not you will be saved. If you
believe God, you are saved. You have eternal life if you
believe God. If you believe God, it's because
God's given you faith in Christ. The people of Nineveh believed
God. They believed God. You know how
I know they believed God? They begged for mercy. They begged
for mercy. If you beg God for mercy, if
you believe God, you're going to beg Him for mercy the very
same way that the people of Nineveh did. You know, this is the record
that God has given us. Salvation's in His Son. Salvation's
in His Son. It's not in me because I'm a
sinner. Salvation's in His Son. If I believe God, if I believe
that record, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to beg
God for mercy for Christ's sake. These people, They believed God,
so they repented. They turned to God from their
idols. They quit trusting in what they used to trust in. Now,
they turned from their sin, yes, but more importantly, they quit
trusting what they used to trust in, because now they trusted
God. Now they believe God. Now they trusted Christ. You
know, seeking mercy from God and repentance, turning to Christ
to trust Him, do you know those things always go hand in hand?
I mean, they just, they're always in lockstep with one another.
Look over at Matthew chapter 12. The reaction to Nineveh, the
preaching of Jonah, is a good example of repentance. And I
know that's so because the Lord said so. Matthew chapter 12,
verse 41. The men of Nineveh shall rise
in judgment with this generation and they shall condemn it because
they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, a greater
than Jonah is here. The men and women of Nineveh,
they repented because they heard Jonah. The Lord tells them there's
one greater than Jonah here and you're not repenting, you're
not believing, you're not trusting. So the men of Nineveh are gonna
judge you. But this, What the people of Nineveh did, this is
held up to us as an example of repentance. You think, well,
you know, today we're so civilized, we're not as violent as those
people, we're not as uneducated as the people of Nineveh. But
I'll tell you this, if you don't already know, remember, we're
at the bottom of the barrel. We're on the same level as them.
And if any of us are gonna be saved, it's gonna be the same
way they were. It's by repentance, by quit trusting, whatever it
is that we're trusting in, and trusting Christ, turning to him
as God to be by God given faith. Trusting Christ. All right, and
number four, if God's gonna show mercy to me, now, who can tell
if he will? But if God's gonna show mercy
to me, he's gonna teach me something. God doesn't have to show mercy
to me. God's not obligated to me in
any way. Verse nine. Who can tell, the king says,
if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger,
that we perish not. You notice the king wasn't saying,
wait a minute, John, we don't deserve this. We're not all that
bad. No, the king says, let's beg God for mercy. I don't deserve
it, but who can tell if God will show me mercy anyway? And I said
it before and I'll say it again. There's one way to find out.
Beg God for mercy. There's one way to find out.
See, here's what I know. If I just keep on doing what
I'm doing, if I keep on in my religion, if I keep on trusting
in myself, hoping that I'll somehow, you know, end up doing more good
than bad, if I keep doing what I'm doing, if I keep trying to
establish my own righteousness by my own deeds, I'm gonna die
in my sin. And I know that. But I could
go beg the Lord for mercy. Now, if I go beg the Lord for
mercy, if I come to Him, He could damn me. It'd be only right if
He did, because that's what I deserve because of my sin. He could send
me to hell. But you know, if I beg the Lord
for mercy, He just might be pleased to show me mercy. He just might. It'd be just like Him if He did,
wouldn't it? Now, God doesn't have to show
me mercy. But he could, he could. Who can tell? Who can tell if
the Lord will be merciful to me or not? I don't deserve it,
but I'm gonna go beg him for mercy. Because he just might
be pleased to give it. And here's what gives me hope.
The Lord said he delights to show mercy to sinners. He delights
in it, he delights in it. God delights to show mercy to
sinners because that glorifies His Son, who earned and purchased
redemption for His people. The one and only hope I have
is that God will show me mercy. Now, I may not be the sharpest
tool in the box, but I can tell you this, if the Lord's my only
hope, I'm going to go begging for mercy. I'm going to go begging
for mercy. If I'm going to perish, I'm going
to perish at the feet of Christ begging for mercy. If I'm going
to perish, I'll tell you how I'm going to perish, like that
poor woman we looked at in the lesson this morning, I'm going
to perish at His feet. I'm not just trying to reach out and
touch the hem of His garment by hanging on to His feet for
all I'm worth. If I'm going to perish, I'm going to perish at
the feet of Christ, begging Him for mercy. Now, like I told you
a couple of weeks ago, I remember Brother Henry saying that so
many times when I was a little fellow, you know, and I asked
Janet about it. She said, yeah, I remember that too. and it seemed
kind of scary. Because here's what I didn't
understand when I was hearing that when I was a little boy.
If I'm going to perish, I'm going to perish at the feet of Christ.
That's a hypothetical statement. You can't perish at the feet
of Christ. You cannot perish begging Him for mercy. You cannot. Because the Lord delights to
show mercy. But if the Lord's going to show
mercy to me, He's going to show me I don't have to. I don't have
to. Yeah, he shows mercy to everybody
that begs him for it. All right, here's the fifth thing.
If God's gonna show me mercy, who can tell if he will or not?
But if he does, it will be for Christ's sake. It won't be on
account of me. It'll be on account of the Savior.
Verse 10, 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 here the Lord spared
that great city. Scripture says when he saw their
works, when he saw their works. Now, what does that mean? The
Lord delivered them when he saw their works. Well, here's what
I know it does not mean. I know it does not mean because
of their works, the Lord did not destroy them. That can't
be so. You know, if you ever want to know what one scripture
means, you got to compare it with other scriptures to find
out what it means. If you think two verses, are
telling you contradictory things, the meaning of one of them is
wrong. All scripture agrees with other scripture. The Lord could
not have delivered them because of their works. Because Titus
said in chapter three, verse five, not by works of righteousness
which we've done. Not, not by works of righteousness
which we've done. Not according to our works, but
according to his mercy he saved us. It's by God's mercy, not
our works. Paul said in Ephesians 2 verse
8, for by grace, by grace, undeserved, unearned, unmerited grace are
you saved through faith. You're gonna receive it through
faith. Not because of your faith, but through faith. Not of yourselves. Not of yourselves. Salvation's
a gift of God. Not of works. Not of works, lest
any man should boast. So God didn't deliver these people
because of their works. He's not telling us here, you
start doing some good works and God will save you. Salvation
by mercy. Salvation by grace. Salvations
of the Lord. Here's why the Lord spared that
whole city. Their works were what the Lord made them do. Their
works were the result of what God put in their heart to do.
God gave them grace in their heart. He gave them a gift of
grace. He gave them the gift of faith to trust Christ. He
gave them the gift of repentance to turn from their idols and
turn to Christ and trust Him. God makes all of His people do
these works, the works of repentance, the works of begging for mercy,
the works of faith in Christ and trust in Christ. God puts
it in us and makes us do those things. By His will, by His power,
He makes us do those things and then He blesses us for doing
them. But it's all because of what God has done for us and
in us. It's always for Christ's sake.
It's never because of our works. It's always for Christ's sake.
Because of what He's done for us. And what He's done in us. Well, will God do that for me?
I mean, this sounds good, doesn't it? This thing of salvation in
Christ. This thing of salvation is free by the grace of Christ.
That sounds mighty good. You reckon God would do that
for me? Do you reckon God the holy triune God would do something
so great for somebody as low down and miserable as me, do
you reckon? Could he? Who can tell? Who can tell? If I tell you this, I'm gonna
beg him to do it. And I hope you will too. I hope
this, that passage of scripture gives us mighty good motivation
to beg God to have mercy on us. All right, let's bow together. Our Father, oh, how we thank
you for your mercy and your grace to your people. How we thank
you for your character. The salvation is not ever dependent
upon our sinful, dead natures, but it's all dependent upon the
character of God, the doing and dying of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How we thank you that salvation is a free gift, a gift that you
freely give your people because Christ paid the price. that he
put away the sin of his people and that we're accepted in the
beloved, not in what we do, but in the beloved because of him.
Father, I pray that your gospel, the glory of your son will be
clearly set forth in the eyes of your people here this morning
and that you'd cause each one of us to run to Christ begging
for mercy. We never Rise out of the dust
and rise past the station of being at your feet, begging for
mercy. God, would you cause us to beg
you for mercy and then be pleased to show it to us? Father, it's
not because of us, because of who we are or anything we've
done, but for Christ's sake, would you be pleased to be merciful
to us for Christ's sake? Father, it's in his name, for
his glory we pray. All right, ready?