Jonah chapter 3 and reading from
verse 1. The word of the Lord came unto
Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that
great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding
great city of three days' journey, and Jonah began to enter into
the city a day's journey. And he cried and said, Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 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. Amen. May the Lord bless
to us this reading from his word. I am of the opinion that the
believing and repenting and fasting spoken of in these verses today
indicate a genuine work of God the Holy Spirit in the lives
of the men and women of Nineveh. A genuine work of conversion
under Jonah's preaching. And as such, it is a miracle
of God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. Now I know that there
are some who suggest that the repentance spoken of here was
only a moral reformation rather than a spiritual regeneration. And those people might argue
that there is no record, for example, of Christ being preached
or mention of blood sacrifice, merely a threat of judgment that
produced a troubled conscience and a response of fear. The same people might also say
that there's no evidence of any long-term effect of true conversion
such as might have been expected. However, I have no doubt that
more was said by Jonah in his preaching than is recorded in
the text of these verses. We're told that Jonah cried,
yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. But I'm sure he
said more than that. I don't think for a moment he
went through the city merely reciting those few words, merely
shouting at the top of his voice, merely crying in some strange,
affected way. Yet 40 days and none of thee
shall be overthrown. I say that because the people
are not said to believe Jonah. but to believe God. If Jonah had only said, yet 40
days and Nineveh shall be overthrown, what did that mean? Where did
that come from? Who was telling them that? So
I'm sure, I feel certain that they must have known Jonah to
be a prophet of the God of the Hebrews. Nor indeed did they counter with
their own gods. Rather, they humbled themselves.
They believed what God said by Jonah, his prophet, regarding
the impending judgment, regarding the overthrowing of their city
and their lives and their souls. And they humbled themselves in
sackcloth and ashes, and they fasted, and these are evidences
of them believing Jonah's message, that God was offended at them. They were brought under conviction
of sin, and they repented of their sin. But my main reason for believing
as I do that this is a genuine spiritual conversion, and as
such an astonishing example of divine mercy and sovereign grace,
is the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter 12 and verse
41. There he says, the men of Nineveh
shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn
it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas." Now,
I doubt very much whether you could construe that single statement
of Jonah as being preaching. So here the Lord is suggesting
that there was more to Jonah's message than simply those words
that we've rehearsed again today. Jonah preached to the Ninevites
and they repented when they heard his preaching. While the Jewish
leaders of Christ's day generally did not repent, here in Galilee,
in Judah, and in Jerusalem, with them, with the scribes, with
the Pharisees, with the leaders of the children of Israel, and
with many of the Jews of that day, was a far greater messenger
than Jonah. There, at that time, by the incarnation
God, was with man. The Living Word, the Son of God,
the King of Glory, was there in the world. And yet, amazing
to say, these Jews did not and would not hear or believe the
words of Christ. The men of Nineveh These very
men to whom Jonah now spoke in the days following his deliverance
from the fish's belly, these very men will have a role to
fulfil in the judgment. I like that. I thought about
that as I was doing some preparation on this passage. It's as though
the Lord will say, this is for you folk who didn't believe in
Jonah and the whale. These men from Nineveh will actually
have a part to play in the judgment. And all those who laughed and
mocked at the idea that a fish could take a man and carry him
through the ocean. will also stand in the presence
of the men of Nineveh with Christ. And they will certainly censure
the hard hearts of the Jewish unbelievers to whom so much was
given and from whom so little was returned. But it will also
be a suitable admonition to all unbelievers. who refused to believe
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ because the men of Nineveh believed
Jonah and yet a greater than Jonah has been denied. Their repentance, the Ninevites,
the repentance of the Ninevites will condemn those who did not
believe. though God himself, the eternal
word, preached the gospel to them. My point is this. There's no need for us to think
that the greatest miracle recorded in the book of Jonah has anything
to do with a whale. By far, a much greater miracle
is the salvation of so many, many sinners. And Assyrian Gentiles
at that. And the deliverance of their
city out from under the judgment of God by the simple preaching
of God's prophet. And a sinful one at that. The
great theme of these few verses before us today is God's mercy. And here are a few lessons from
this passage for us today. First one I'm going to draw your
attention to is the mercy of a second chance. Secondly, I
want us to think about the mercy of a divine warning. Thirdly,
we have the mercy of enabling grace and finally the mercy of
our Lord Jesus Christ. So let us take these four headings
and move through them together. The first one then is the mercy
of a second chance. The right place for us to begin
today is with God's mercy to Jonah himself. Now we've already
spent time thinking about God delivering Jonah first into and
then out of the fish's belly. And I don't want what I'm about
to say to make it appear I'm in any way dismissive of that. But here's the thing. the whale
or the great fish was just, was merely a physical, though I grant
a surprising, a physical method used by God to accomplish his
purpose. The end of the process, however,
the goal of why God did that was of greater moment and greater
significance. That goal was the return of Jonah
to the job that he'd originally been given. That purpose was to compel Jonah
to fulfil his task. Now, if we are right that God
had a vast number of men and women in Nineveh who were his
elect people from before the foundation of the world, then
there was no way they were not going to hear the gospel. There's
no way they were not going to receive the message of judgment
and obtain repentance and faith. Now certainly God could have
sent another prophet. There were other prophets in
Israel at that time. Certainly God could have sent
another prophet, another preacher. But here's the wonder of God's
ways. In showing mercy to thousands
and tens of thousands, listen, maybe hundreds of thousands in
Nineveh, God first showed mercy to one. He spoke a second time
to Jonah. Because God loved Jonah, he would
not let him go. He would not allow him to shipwreck
his faith, abandon his calling, or desert his post. And here
we see the perfect arrangement of God's providence. There was
no doubt the city of Nineveh would be saved in the sovereign
purpose of God's grace. But every single one of those
elect Assyrians and all the other nationalities that were there
in Nineveh. Nineveh was, Nineveh, again,
my research tells me that Nineveh was, for a certain period of
time, the biggest city in the world and a centre of trade,
a centre of activity. And all of those Assyrians and
all of those tradesmen and women and all of those inhabitants
were involved in this miracle. But they would have to wait until
the Lord had sorted out Jonah's problem first. The storm, the
fish, the humbling, the prayer for forgiveness brought Jonah
to his senses. Like the prodigal son, brought
him to his senses. And it brought him back to God.
God restored his prophet. and then he recommissioned him,
he sent him back, he sent him again to Nineveh. The Lord came a second time to
Jonah, having brought him through an amazing, chastening experience,
and he made Jonah willing in the day of his power. Jonah was
a sinner, but not a castaway. And the Lord will not lose his
wandering sheep. He will never lose one of his
elect, no matter how far we might run from his presence. Let me get personal. Have you
been places that you ought not to have been? Have you done things
that you ought not to have done? Have you turned your back on
the Lord and fled from his presence? Have you spent time in a whale's
belly and been vomited up on the shore? Maybe not literally,
but the Lord will do whatever it takes to bring his wandering
sheep home. And friend, I want you to know
about the mercy of a second chance. The Lord spoke again to Jonah
and he will speak again to you. Don't let your pride stand in
the way of returning to the Lord. Don't misconstrue your trials
as punishments when they're corrections designed to bring you back to
him. And don't neglect to hear the
Lord now if he is speaking to your heart a second time. There is mercy with the Lord,
but only for those who need it. Do you need his mercy? Jonah
found God to be faithful despite his faithlessness. He found God
willing to Receive him back despite his own waywardness. He was blessed
to be recovered, restored, though he didn't deserve it. And you
can be too. Mercy begins with M-E. It's personal. It's private and
it's precious. God gave Jonah a second chance,
spoke to him a second time. If Jonah obtained mercy, then
why not me and why not you? The second thing I want to draw
your attention to is the mercy of a divine warning. Jonah was instructed again to
go and speak, preach to Nineveh. And the Lord said to him, preach
unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Why was God so insistent? that Jonah go to Nineveh and
preach the preaching that he had been bidden to preach. Why
so insistent? If God was going to destroy Nineveh
for its sin, why did they need to be warned? Other cities, many cities, have
been wiped away by tsunamis. flattened by earthquakes, entombed
in lava, destroyed by their enemies and razed to the ground. So why
did Nineveh get a warning? Jonah's message was that in 40
days, or at the end of 40 days, the city would be overthrown.
this exceeding large city. We spoke about this in our little
note yesterday. It's hard to tell just how big
it was. I think it's possible to construe
that it was almost a million people. The Lord had said that he was
going to destroy that city, overthrow that city, perhaps by natural
disaster. But why was Nineveh warned? Why
were they given these 40 days? because God had an elect people
there whom he would save and bring to repentance and faith. And this was the means that he
used. These individuals would be saved
because the Lord loved them. They would be saved because he
had set them apart in the covenant of grace and predestinated them
to be conformed to the image of Christ. In gathering so many of his children,
his adopted people from amongst the Gentiles at this one time
in such a public fashion, from the greatest city in the world,
or at least from amongst the greatest cities in the world,
would also be a testimony to God's intention to draw people
by faith from all over the world in the time of the apostles and
the Great Commission. So that God was predicting, God
was foretelling his purpose by this account of Jonah going to
Nineveh and recovering these people through the preaching
that God gave him. Jonah was to be like God's angel
in Revelation chapter 14, verse six, where we read, having the
everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth. and to every nation and kindred
and tongue and people, not merely among the Jews, and all of those who were, but
all of those also who were found in Nineveh. And you know, I think
this is very interesting. Because this Nineveh, this Assyrian
town, this was in the same, it was called the Fertile Crescent.
It was the same area as Babylon. And Nineveh and Babylon were
two big cities. And these cities were the place,
it would seem, where all the nations of the world went out
into all the world at the time of the Tower of Babel when the
Lord mixed up their languages. You know what that tells me?
If these cities were still great, it's very likely that every language
was represented in these towns and It would not surprise me
if we discover in eternity that the Lord sent the converted men
and women of Nineveh back out to their own nations, carrying
that very same gospel in anticipation of the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That is a speculation, but what
a glorious idea and concept that is. These 40 days were a space
for repentance, a period granted for the penitence of the Ninevites. Destruction would come except
Nineveh repent. If they repented, the city would
be spared. Otherwise, why any time fixed? Why was there a time fixed? Let
us all take note, the sending of a preacher and the giving
of a warning is an act of mercy on God's part. It is an opportunity
for repentance amongst men and women. The sending of a preacher
and the giving of a warning is an act of mercy on God's part. God could have destroyed Nineveh
without notice and justice would have been served for the wickedness
of that people. He did not because there were
elect souls present for whom the preaching of Jonah, the preaching
of the everlasting gospel, was their door to life. Paul tells
the Corinthians, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day
of salvation. If God has given us a moment,
a moment in time, if God has given us a preacher who preaches
the everlasting gospel, then this is our warning and this
is our opportunity to believe. Now is the accepted time. Now
is the day of salvation. If God sends you a preacher,
let us be attentive to hear him. If he grants us an opportunity
to repent, let us be swift to take it. Let me be clear. If God shows you the way of escape
by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and you neglect so great salvation,
you will dwell in hell. forever ruining the day that
you said no to his mercy. As a preacher, I take great encouragement
from this. My labour is not in vain because
God in sending me to preach is giving the hope of souls yet
to be saved. And I hope yours is amongst them. Years later, When all the Lord's
elect had been called, Nineveh was utterly destroyed by the
Babylonians and it was effectively wiped off the map. It's only
in the past few hundred years that the location of Nineveh
has even been fully verified. And that day of destruction is
coming for the world also. But For now a window of opportunity
is open and the gospel still goes forth for the gathering
of the Lord's people. Here's the third point that I
want to leave with you today. The mercy of enabling grace. The effect of Jonah's preaching
is an astonishing spiritual awakening. in the souls of these wicked,
heathen, idol worshippers. The men and women of Nineveh
believed God. We're going to discover in the
verses that follow that they believed God from the king down,
from the king and his princes down. They put on sackcloth and
they sat in ashes. So taking this verse at face
value implies a great outpouring of mercy upon these Gentile people. Despite all the natural factors
that might militate against any of these people taking heed of
Jonah or responding to his message, the grace of God broke through. And as a preacher, I take great
encouragement from this too. In fact, I think the Book of
Jonah is full of encouragements for preachers. It's full of challenges
and encouragements. No matter what natural hurdles
block the way of access for elect sinners into the presence of
God, God will take them away. It's not up to my skill, it's
not up to my eloquence, it's not up to my passion, not up
to my consistency. If I am faithful to the word
of God, he will take that message and he will wipe away every hurdle
in the soul of the elect sinner and he will bring that little
one to Christ. That's a great comfort for a
preacher of such limited abilities. It would be foolish for me to
even try to begin to list the hurdles that God took away from
these Ninevites. Consider a single man walking
into a hustling, trading, busy, bustling foreign city. I don't
even know if Jonah was speaking the same language as these people. Stopping in the street, and shouting,
you've got 40 days, then destruction is coming. It is the case today that the
preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness,
but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. and it
was no different then. The men and women of Nineveh
were convicted of sin and led to seek forgiveness through the
power of God, not because Jonah was such a great preacher. And
fasting and repentance were acts of faith. Faith is a gift of
God. It is the fruit of divine power
when God the Holy Spirit applies the message of Jesus Christ crucified
for the remission of sins to the hearts of men and women.
When God the Holy Spirit imputes righteousness by the free gift
of God, when God the Holy Spirit brings an individual to know
that there is forgiveness with God that he may be feared. So that is the mercy of enabling
grace. God enabled this vast city through
the preaching of his word by God the Holy Spirit working upon
their souls. He removed the natural kernel
hurdles of the natural man and he let the light of the glorious
gospel shine in. Let me finish by speaking about
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've had the mercy of a second
chance. We've had the mercy of a divine
warning. We've had the mercy of enabling
grace. And here is the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ. As I've mentioned already, the
record of this event in scripture revealed God's will to include
the Gentile peoples in his saving purpose. The Jews of the Old
Testament had had no grounds for imagining that God was dealing
only with them. That message had long gone beyond
the borders of Israel. From the beginning of the experience
of Abraham, right up to this present time in Jonah's day,
there had been lots of evidences of Gentiles being converted by
the testimony of God's prophets and the testimony of God's people. And yet, with this single act,
such a city as Nineveh was brought to conversion and faith. The Gentile peoples were always
in God's purpose for salvation. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when
he came, sent his apostles into all the world to preach the gospel. Indeed, this very event is spoken
of by the Lord Jesus on several occasions in the Gospels. When
the Lord tells his hearers in Matthew chapter 12, verse 41,
the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation
and condemn them, he goes on to say, because they repented
at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas
is here. So let me conclude by reminding
us all today of this greater than Jonas. Our Lord Jesus Christ
is the fullness, the embodiment, the personification of God's
mercy. And I feel sure that Jonah, able
preacher that he was, accomplished preacher that he was, was not the reason why these
people were saved. It was because he preached Jesus
Christ to them. And what must it have been like
to sit Mary-like at the feet of Jesus himself as he preached
the everlasting gospel of grace and peace? But it's even greater than that
because Christ himself is the gospel. He is the good news to
sinners that a way of salvation is opened in him and a way of
life is here in him. This is why Christ was greater
than Jonah. Jonah was a mere mouthpiece.
Jonah was a vehicle. Jonah was an ambassador, a channel
of the message. Christ is the message. Christ
is the way of salvation. When the Lord Jesus came to this
world, he came to bear the sins that the men and women of Nineveh
should have borne. He substituted himself for the
men and women of Nineveh. He gave his life's blood to appease
the anger of God and to satisfy the demands of the law. to recover and to reconcile his
people to himself and bring in everlasting peace. And it is
the same for all of God's elect in all ages, in all parts of
the world. He has made us righteous. He has made us holy. He has made
us acceptable and reconciled to God by his death in our place. And he did so as the perfect man. He did what Jonah could not do. Jonah was a sinful man. We have
seen the sin of Jonah, this disobedience. But the Lord Jesus Christ, as
God conceived and instituted the plan of salvation, and as
man came into the world and fulfilled and completed all that was required
in the covenant of peace for his people. He honoured God's
holiness. He honoured God's justice by
his sacrifice and he brought mercy to multitudes who find
repentance for sin and faith in him and receive God's free
gift of grace to their souls. Listen in conclusion to what
Jude tells the church. That's you and me who trust in
Christ for our peace and for eternal life. He says in verse
21 of his little book, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Brothers and
sisters, Let us keep ourselves focused on God's wonderful love
by which we were chosen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us keep
looking to the cross of our Saviour where he revealed God's mercy
to our souls. Let us thank the Lord for all
his goodness and grace and mercy and let us seek opportunity to
serve him, to serve his cause and honour his name. And let
us anticipate with joy the eternal life that he gives and look forward
with confidence to joining Jonah and the Ninevites in heaven.
on that bright morning when the day breaks and the shadows flee
away. Amen. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us today.