Nineveh believed God. Nineveh believed God. That's the title of the message
this morning, and that one statement is a testament to the sovereign,
irresistible grace of God, that Nineveh believed God. It was a great city. It was a three days journey to get across
the city. It was surrounded by great walls.
You could run three chariots abreast on top of the walls that
surrounded it. It had a great river on one side
and mountains on the other side. All along the towers it had bulwarks
with armed guards to protect it. And that's all together a
picture of you and me in our natural state. With all our defenses,
with all the protection that we put our trust in, thinking
we're safe and secure. And yet, by God's grace, none
of us believe God. It was a Gentile nation. Paul
said in Ephesians 2, the Gentiles were without Christ. That's what
Nineveh was. It was a place where the inhabitants
were without Christ. They were aliens from the common
wealth of Christ, who is Israel. They were aliens from the common
wealth. that all His people enjoy in
Him. They were aliens from it. They
were strangers from the covenants of God's promise because all
God's covenant promises are yea and amen in Christ. And they
were strangers from Him. They had no hope because our
hope is Christ. And they didn't have Christ.
They had no hope. and they were without God in
the world. That's a pretty simple description
of every person born in Adam. That's a simple description of folks that are religious, that
don't have Christ. There was plenty of religion
in Nineveh. Man's religious by nature. There
was idolatry. But when we think of idolatry,
don't let yourself think of worshiping statues and stumps and things
of that nature. There's plenty of five-point
Calvinists that are idolaters. It's just as easy to fall at
the feet of a system of doctrine, and because you're able to memorize
it, and give lip service to it, and yet you still put your trust
in your work and what you're doing. That's an idol. Idolatry is what goes on in the
heart. Idolatry is what takes place
before God comes to us and reveals Christ in us. It doesn't matter
if you're in the deepest, most remote jungles, in the most destitute
nation in this world, worshiping the most outlandish of rituals
and ceremonies, or if you're sitting in a Baptist church,
or a Methodist church, or a Presbyterian church. What it is, is what we
are in our hearts. And unless God removes us from
our idolatry, turns us from it, and turns us to the true and
living God, we'll go on in our idolatry, calling it righteousness. And we'll have plenty of defenses,
just like Nineveh had. But as we'll see, none of them
will stand. And the amazing thing is, is they did not stand because
God sent a simple man who was a sinner just like them. He sent
a man, and all he did was preach a message. That's all he did. He didn't use any other tactics.
He just set forth what God told him to say. And by that, God
destroyed all their defenses, all their idolatry, turned them
from themselves to Him and made them bow. All because one man
was determined, like Paul, to be void of offense to God and
men. When a man stands up and stands
for the truth and preaches the truth, sentimentality hypocritical love
Love that's really no love at all Will call him dogmatic It'll
call him a bigot. It'll call him All manner of
names because he's not bending But they're not calling the odds
man that they're calling God that because God's unbending
True love is to stand and tell people what God says They may hate you. They may rail
on you. But if you want to be without
offense to God and men, you have to stand and tell them the truth.
You don't have to be mean. You don't have to be unkind.
In fact, the kindest thing you could do is stand and tell them
the truth. The truth will be offensive. The truth will be
the offense, because the truth, until God melts the heart, the
stony heart, is offensive to the flesh. But the only thing
that's going to break that stony heart is telling men the truth.
Period. If you ever will take note and
look at this, We were talking about this just now, Jim and
I were just discussing this, is that what the world calls
humility and meekness is humility and meekness toward
one another in compromising, which is boldness and pride and
audacity to God Almighty. But true humility and meekness
is bowing to God and confessing He's true and boldly declaring
the truth to men, to sinners. That's the way this world thinks. We call bitter sweet and sweet
bitter. We call up down and down up.
We're backwards. That's what God said about us.
We're backwards. Gone away backwards. Well, let's
look here and see what happened. Jonah 3, 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. God's grace is not the fickle,
wavering thing that a man's heart is. It's unchanging. It's irresistible. It's not based
on men. They're good or they're bad.
And therefore you find here, the Word of the Lord came to
Jonah the second time. The second time. After everything
Jonah had done, the Word of the Lord came to him the second time.
God's grace didn't change. And notice here, Jonah wasn't
left to declare a message that seemed best to him to declare.
If he'd have done what seemed best to him, he never would have
went to Nineveh in the first place. But he's bid to go and
preach unto Nineveh the preaching that I bid thee, saith the Lord. So verse 3 says, Jonah arose
and he went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Jonah
discovered that you can't escape the command of the Lord. And
it took some hard lessons to learn that. There's
an article in the back of your bulletin this morning called,
The Hard School of Painful Experience. If you get a chance, read it
at your leisure. But Jonah had experienced this training in
his rebellion. And the Lord's word never returns
to him void, it accomplishes the thing for which he sends
it. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Verse 3 says, 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. The Word of the Lord must be
preached. It has to be preached. Jonah
went straight to the work to which God sent him to. He didn't
wait around. He went straight to Nineveh and
went there preaching. the Word God sent him to preach.
The message that salvation is of the Lord is one of urgency. It's one that we have to hear
right now. Yet forty days and none of us
shall be overthrown. That message, I read a lot on this and a lot
of the different commentaries say, well, this wasn't all that
Jonah preached. It probably wasn't all Jonah
preached. It probably wasn't. But if you just look at just
this statement right here, yet 40 days and none of us shall
be overthrown. That declares everything you
need to know. God's going to overthrow this
nation. God's going to break down all
your defenses. God's going to destroy you. Everything
that you've put your trust in, everything you've put your hope
in, everything you put your confidence in, is coming to nothing. God's
going to destroy every bit of it. And He's going to do it in
40 days. In a very short time. If you knew, if you knew this
morning that God was going to destroy the place where you live
in 40 days, would you straighten up and listen and pay attention
and heed God's word? What is your life? It is even
a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Behold, thou hast made my days
as a handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily,
every man at his best state is altogether vanity." You young
ones, you young folks, hold your hand up and look at
it. You see how wide your hand is? That's how long your life is.
That's pretty short, isn't it? The word that came to Nineveh
was, in 40 days, God's destroying it all. Gonna destroy it all. Well, what kind of response did
that have? What did the people do? The people
of Nineveh believed God. I want you to notice something
here, too. This city, it says, is three days, a three days journey
to go from one side to the other of it. But Jonah only went a
day's journey, crying this message from God. And within one day's
journey, it says the people of Nineveh believed God. The whole
city, from the least of them to the greatest of them. How could that happen? Well,
let's see what happened. Verse 5. It says, 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. This is
God making His Word effectual. Here's what happens. I want you
to see two things here. From the greatest to the least,
there was a need for repentance. The message that said, in 40
days, the Lord is going to destroy this place, was the message that
said, if this place and everything
in it, and you included, is going to be destroyed, and the Lord
is the one that is going to destroy it, your only hope is to turn
to the Lord. Is to turn from ourselves to
the Lord. That's what the message is all
about. In ourselves, we can't do anything. We're wretched. We're vile. We're sinners in
ourselves. We cannot do anything to save
ourselves. That's the message. I'm going
to destroy self. Everything that was there in
Nineveh, everything that existed, was built by the hand of men. All the walls were built by men.
All the buildings were built by men. All of the grand structures
that stood there were built by man's hands. And the message
is, no matter how you've worked, what you've built, what you've
established, no matter how carefully you've built it and what a foundation
you've built it on, the Lord said, it shall not stand. In 40 days, I'm wiping it off
the face of the map. Notice the power of God exhibited
in that all believed God, from the greatest of them even to
the least of them. When God speaks, when He tells
a man to turn from his way, from his will, from his self, from
his works, from his righteousness, from everything, from his thoughts,
from his understanding, that man's turning. When God says
it, he's turning. I can say it to you and you can
go on and think what you think of me and do what you want to
do and nothing will happen. But when God speaks it, we turn. We turn. He's mighty to save. Our God is mighty to save. He's
not trying to do something. He does that which He pleases. He does it in heaven. He does
it on the earth. He does it in all deep places.
Nobody can stop Him. Nobody can question Him. Nobody
can say it's unfair for Him to do what He does. Because we have
all together become unprofitable. We have all together died spiritually
in our first father Adam. And by his corrupt seed, we come
forth speaking lies. We come forth sinners, transgressing. I'm not saying speaking lies.
I don't mean just against one another and lying to one another
and our mothers and our fathers. I'm talking about lying to God.
Saying we're righteous and expecting the almighty omniscient God all
seeing eye of God To believe that we're righteous We lie But this one when he speaks
he turns liars into honest folks he makes liars take sides with
him against themselves and He makes sinful sinners turn. They quit worrying about trying
to reform everybody else's life and correcting everybody else
in the world, and they fall down before God Almighty and say,
this thing's between me and you, God. I'm the one that sinned. I'm the one that's committed
iniquity against you. They asked a question. When he
walked into Jerusalem, the people saw these men throwing palm branches
down before him when he rode into Jerusalem. And it said the
whole city was moved. And they said, Who is this? Who
is this man? Who could affect such a change
in people? Who could cause such a radical
turning in people? Isaiah 63, 1. Look over there
with me. I want to read more than just
what I have written down here. Isaiah 63, 1. Here's who He is and here's why
He does what He does. Who is this that cometh from
Edom with dyed garments from Basra? This that is glorious
in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength,
I that speak in righteousness, mighty to say. That's who this
one is. Wherefore art thou red in thy
apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine
fat. If you make wine, you have to take grapes. And used to,
people actually got into a vat of grapes and tread in that vat
of grapes to crush those berries, to break that juice out of that
wine and to bring forth that juice. And when you did it, all
your garments would get stained with the red of that grape from
crushing those berries. And they ask, who is this that
comes whose red in his apparel and his garments are like him
that treadeth in the wine vat? And he answers, I've trodden
the winepress alone. He himself went before God's
wrath and was crushed beneath the wrath of God. And the red
that's on his garments is his own blood. And there wasn't anybody
with him. Nobody helped him he did it alone
and of the people there was none with me for I'll tread them in
mine anger and trample them in my fury and their blood shall
be sprinkled upon my garments and I'll stain all my arraignment
for the day of vengeance is in mine heart and the year of my
redeemed is come I Looked and there was none to help. I wondered
that there was none to uphold Therefore mine own arm brought
salvation under me and my fury it upheld me I'll tread down
the people in mine anger, and I'll make them drunk in my fury,
and I'll bring down their strength to the earth." That's who this
one is. That's who this one is that came,
that said, that Nineveh was sent to give the cry. He said, this is who's coming
to the city. He's coming to this city for
His redeemed ones. And the rest, He's going to trample
them under His feet. That's the message of the Gospel.
What happens when the Lord makes His Word effectual in the hearts
of His people? Look at verse 6, back in Jonah
chapter 3. For the Word came unto the king
of Nineveh. Here's how this Word spread out
throughout Nineveh. The Lord works in mysterious
ways. He said he didn't call many noble
not many mighty not many noble are called But some are there's
a few and he starts here with the king of Nineveh But look
here what we see in this King This King's a representation
of every sinner saved by grace. I thought I was a king once I
I sat upon my self-exalted throne once. I was supreme over my kingdom,
I thought. But when the word came unto the
king, what was the result? Verse 6 says, And he arose from
his throne. The Lord God takes sinners from
their lofty position. When we hear with the heart of
him who is the true king, then we who once thought ourselves
king are dethroned. We find out who the true King
is. One of the first things God does for sinners is He stops
us in our tracks and He causes us to give up all authority to
Him who is Lord over all. I read an article this week by
Brother Todd Nyberg. I'll put it in our bulletin.
You can find it if you look it up, but I'll try to print it
for you. But he was talking about how
Judas, out of all the people, when the Lord said, somebody
betrayed me, they answered and asked the question, Lord, is
it I? Judas said, Master, is it I? And he revealed what he thought
of Christ in his heart, because he didn't call Him Lord. He called
him a teacher. A teacher. Brother Todd quoted
Ralph Barnard. He said, Ralph Barnard used to
say, don't tell me who your Savior is, tell me who your Lord is,
and then I'll know who your Savior is. We've got to be taken down off
our throne, and we've got to see that God is King. Christ
is Lord. And then look what He did, verse
6, and He laid His robe from Him. The Lord God is going to
strip sinners of all our righteousnesses. This was that robe that the King
loved to be seen in. I watch these little effeminate
so-called preachers on TV and all their robes and all their
stuff that they wear, you know. Love to be seen in it. That's
a robe of self-righteousness. That's what this king had on.
He thought he was a king, but he took that robe off. He had
to be stripped of that robe before God's going to put His robe on
him. And it says here, "...and He
covered him with sackcloth and set in ashes." The Lord God is going to reveal
to us what we are in ourselves. He's going to take us off our
throne, and He's going to take our robe of righteousness, our
robe of self-righteousness off of us, and He's going to reveal
to us what we are. Sackcloth and ashes. Sackcloth was a coarse, rough
cloth that wasn't worth a dime. It wasn't worth two cents. And
it symbolizes man's natural robe of sin and vileness before God. That's what we are. And ashes
is what remains when something is consumed. You and I, by nature,
are consumed in sin. There's no righteousness about
us. We're just ashes. We're just worthless sackcloth. Every sinner is this way. And
let me give you a few illustrations of it. Ashes. There was a time
there when Moses and Aaron were commanded by the Lord when they
were in Egypt. And the Lord told them to take
ashes from the furnace and scatter them up into the air. And when
they scattered those ashes up into the air and they came back
down on the people, the people broke out into boils. God's teaching them teaching
us that's what we are. We're boils. God calls it abomination,
open wounds, not worth anything. The sackcloth. Jacob was the
first recorded in Scripture to put on sackcloth. When they came
to him and they told him that Joseph was killed, and he thought
his son Joseph had died, he put on sackcloth. Whenever King David
heard that Abner was killed, he put on sackcloth. When King
Hezekiah went before the king of Assyria, or when the king
of Assyria came up strong against him to defeat Jerusalem, King
Hezekiah put on sackcloth. In Scripture, you'll find when
a man or a woman went to an earthly king asking for mercy, they put
sackcloth on. They put on this cloth, this
sackcloth. And so, these two outward things,
sackcloth and ashes, showed that they were worthless, that they
didn't deserve anything. And that's what we see here,
that a sinner has to be brought to that confession that he's
not worth anything. inwardly or outwardly. He's but
sackcloth and ashes. We have to beseech God for mercy,
but we can't ask Him for mercy if we think we don't need mercy. God won't give mercy to people
that don't think they need mercy. God won't be righteous, won't
show grace to somebody that's not been made to see they need
His grace. He doesn't save anybody who's
not been brought to see they need a Savior. And then look what happened.
Verse 7, 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. Who caused it to be proclaimed?
It said He caused it to be proclaimed. Who caused it to be proclaimed?
It says that by the decree of the King and His nobles. It's
not talking about the King caused it to be proclaimed. Who caused
this to be proclaimed? The Lord caused the Gospel to
be proclaimed. He did it first through Jonah,
who declared the Gospel to the King. And secondly, the Lord
used the king and his nobles to proclaim and publish the gospel
throughout Nineveh. But it's God who did it. It's
the Lord who did it. And then the decree was that
a fast be observed. What's a fast? What is that? Well, the king said this. Now this was the word that went
forth. That nobody in Nineveh could eat. Neither man nor beast, herd nor
flock, could taste anything. Don't let them feed or drink
water, but let every one of them, man and beast, be covered with
sackcloth. All of them. This was declaring that every
person in Nineveh was in the same condition. They are all
sinners in need of God's mercy. What the king declared when he
came off his throne and took off his robe and put on sackcloth
and ashes and set forth the word for everybody else to put on
sackcloth and ashes and nobody to eat a thing or drink anything,
he declared like Isaiah did, I'm a man of unclean lips and
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Wouldn't it
be a marvelous thing if the president of the United States, if God
did for the president of the United States what he did for
the king of Nineveh and caused him to say, to hell with political
correctness, I'm going to preach the gospel and stand up and preach
the gospel. That'd be an amazing thing, wouldn't
it? That's what this king did by God's grace throughout that
whole city. And a few things to notice about
this fast. They didn't work. They didn't
feed themselves. And here was the confession.
We don't have any ability to obtain salvation by our works. Our total dependency is upon
Christ the life, the bread from heaven. We can't do anything
to feed ourselves. That's what a fast is. That's
a true fast. Do you believe God? Do you believe
yourself totally, utterly helpless to feed yourself, to clothe yourself,
that you're in sackcloth and ashes, and that all your dependence
is on the bread from heaven? You're fasting. You're fasting. And he said this to them, and
cry mightily unto God, verse 8. Yea, let them turn every one
from his evil way and from the violence that's in their hands. A true fast is accompanied by
crying mightily unto God. Let me show you an illustration
of it. Look at Daniel. In Daniel chapter 9, here's the spirit of a true fast
and the crying of a true fast. This is not just some little
emotional sinner's prayer. Listen to this right here. Verse
3. I set my face unto the Lord God
to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and
ashes. And I prayed unto the Lord my
God and made my confession and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful
God, Keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him and
to them that keep his commandments We have sinned and have committed
iniquity and have done wickedly and have rebelled even by departing
from thy precepts and from thy judgments Neither have we hearkened
unto thy servants the prophets which spake in thy name to our
kings our princes our fathers and to all the people of the
land O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion
of faces, as at this day to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem and unto all Israel that are near and that are far
off through all the countries whither thou hast driven them
because of their trespass that they have trespassed against
thee. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face. to our kings,
to our princes, to our fathers, because we've sinned against
Thee. And look down here at verse 18.
Verse 18. Here you go. Here's you crying
mightily unto God. Oh my God! Incline thine ear
and hear. Open thine eyes and behold our
desolations and the city which is called by thy name For we
do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses,
but for thy great mercies That's what being a mercy beggar is
It's not coming to God and saying we come before you because of
our righteousnesses It's saying we come before you for thy great
mercies. I Lord here Oh Lord forgive Oh
Lord hearken and do defer not for thine own sake Oh my God
for thy city and our people are called by thy name It's beseeching
God based on his own covenant promise It's beseeching God that
we're sinners. We're undone. We've transgressed
against you and we're totally Crying out to you for mercy That's
the fast that was decreed throughout this city turning from our evil
way, from the violence of our own hands, which we call righteousness,
and turning to God in total dependence upon Him to feed us and clothe
us with the Lord our righteousness, the bread from heaven. Verse 9 And it's not demanding of God
anything. Look here, verse 9. Who can tell
if God will turn and repent and turn away from His fierce anger
that we perish not? Who can tell? Those are the words honest words by a sinner who's
been brought to be honest before God. He poured out his confession
to God. He poured out his heart to God,
admitting that he's dead. He's a sinner. He's trespassed
against God. He's sackcloth and ashes. He's
stripped of his righteousnesses. He doesn't come presenting any
righteousness. And he doesn't presume that just
because he's come to God, that God's going to be merciful to
him. He said, who can tell? Who can
tell? When David sinned, This was his
prayer, against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this
evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou
speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Even though David cast
himself upon God's mercy, David was saying, who can tell if God
will turn and be merciful to me? That's coming to God in the meekness
that God gives. That's not coming to God looking
to your act of coming to God and saying, there's my salvation. That's coming to God destitute
of anything and taking sides with God that if you speak against
me, And do not justify me. You're justified in doing so. When do we truly understand mercy
and grace? It's when God brings us to have
no other hope but Him. When He brings us to the point
to where we confess our sin before Him and say, who can tell? When
a vile rebel against God realizes what he is, and he's convinced
by God that God's right to save whom he will, when he will, in
his Son alone, then that sinner finds that submission to God
is a most blessed thing. It's a God-wrought thing. Now, here's the conclusion. When God comes in power, We're
going to believe God from the least of His elect to the greatest. We're going to give up our throne
to the King of kings and Lord of lords. We're going to take
off our robe and confess what we are, sackcloth and ashes. We'll stop working to feed ourselves. We're going to cry mightily unto
God for the bread from heaven, for the everlasting water. We're
going to turn from our evil way to the way. We're going to cry
out Who can tell? It's the Lord. Let him do what
seemeth him good. That's the result of the power
of God. That's when he was speaking of
religious folks in his day. This is the power that Paul was
speaking of when he said, they have a form of godliness, but
deny the power thereof. This is the power that's being
denied. If a man tries to straddle the
fence between God's power and man's responsibility, he always
sides with man against God. I've never heard it done otherwise. But if a man preaches and sides
with God, he always shows that it's God alone who has the power
to turn. And when God says, I will and
they shall, that's exactly what He means. I will and they shall. But I can't end there. I've got
to give you one more little word of hope. Verse 10. What happened? What happened
when they turned to God? 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." Let me give you something on that. God, we know, doesn't
change. God can't be turned by men. But you remember when Abraham
was was speaking with God, and God said, I'm going to destroy
Sodom. And Abraham said, well, what if there's 50 men, 40 men,
30 men? He kept bringing it down, lower
and lower and lower. And he said, what if there's
just one man in that city that's yours, that turns to you, that
believes on you, that trusts you, And the Lord said, if there's
but one man in that city, I'm going to bring him out of that
city before I destroy it. That's what's meant here. When
he saw, they believed on him. It's not like he saw something
he didn't know that was going to happen, because he did it.
He turned them, and they turned. And when he saw, they turned.
And they did turn. When God turns a man, he turns. He does turn. But he turns confessing
it's God that turned him. And therefore God said, I got
some people in this city. I'm bringing them out. And then
I'm going to destroy it. He destroyed Nineveh. Nineveh
ended up being destroyed. But not in 40 days. He brought
his people out first. And the men of Edna could say
this. Look over at Psalm 30. Psalm 30. This is the confession. This is the praise that God's
people praise Him with. These are the words that we use
to praise Him when He works this power in our heart. In Psalm
30, verse 11, He says, The psalmist speaking, he said,
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing. Thou hast put off
my sackcloth and girded me with gladness. What's that gladness? That's
Christ, our robe of righteousness. The Lord, our righteousness. You took my sackcloth off of
me and You made me righteous in Your Son. to the end, here's
why I did it, that my glory may sing praise to Thee and not be
silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks
unto Thee forever. That's where a sinner is brought
to. That's where a sinner has to be brought to. If he's not
brought there by God, He can't say, you took my sackcloth
off of me, and you girded me in gladness. And therefore I
sing praises to you. That's all God. That's all God's
work. And if we have a part in it,
then we're going to be singing partly praise to God, partly
praise to self. And that ain't going to happen.
He's going to get all the glory. Alright.