Matthew's Gospel chapter 12 and verse 41. And then Jonah
chapter 3. The men of Nineveh shall rise
in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because
they repented at the preaching of Jonah And behold, a greater
than Jonah is here. Now turn over to Jonah chapter
3. And I want us to read chapter
3 because the Lord Jesus is referring here to the preaching of Jonah. And we find his preaching here
in chapter 3 of that book. Jonah chapter 3. And he says
in verse 1, the Word of the Lord came again unto Jonah the second
time. And it said, Rise, 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
sackcloths from the greatest of them, even to the least of
them. 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 set in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and
his noble saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock,
taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water,
but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily
unto God. Yea, let them turn everyone from
his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can
tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from His fierce
anger that we perish not? And God saw their works that
they turned from their evil way. And God repented of the evil
that He said that He would do unto them, and He did it not. The men of Nineveh repented at
the preaching of Jonah. I would imagine the Lord Jesus
read this book. I would imagine that when he
was in this world, he probably read the scrolls, the Old Testament
scriptures, but you know he didn't have to. He didn't have to read the book
of Jonah to know the men of Nineveh repented because he was there. And this is the God they were
crying unto. Sometimes we get it in our foolish
noggins that Jesus wasn't back in the Old Testament. And it's
difficult sometimes to look at the God of the Old Testament,
especially when He threatened wrath, and look at Jesus in the
New Testament. It's sometimes difficult in our
minds to bring these two together, but they're one and the same.
When it says here, they cry mightily unto God, that was Jesus Christ. He is God. God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. But it was God's purpose here,
and we know this all along, to bring Nineveh to repentance.
Jonah knew it, and we know it from the writings of Jonah. To
turn Nineveh from their evil ways, He said here, and the violence
that was in their hands. But you know God's going to do
it in such a way that He's going to get all the glory for it.
He's going to turn these men from their evil ways and their
violence, and He's going to do it in such a way that it's not
after the wisdom of man. We're going to see in this tonight,
in the preaching of Jonah, that God's thoughts are not our thoughts,
and man's ways are not God's ways. It's been calculated that
there was probably somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 people
that lived here in Nineveh. If there was 120,000 infants,
which there seemed to be in the last chapter of Jonah, that didn't
know the right hand from the left, and they were one-fifth
of the population, then that would have made the population
of this city around 600,000. A massive city for that day. If the civil authorities had
been called in to turn this city from its evil ways and the violence
that was in its hand. How in the world could that have
happened? Can you imagine if some army had invaded this place
and they said, we're going to set up a government and we're
going to turn these people from their evil ways and violence
that were in their hand? What would they have to do to
accomplish such a task? Even morally speaking? Well,
they'd have had to go to the politicians. Brother Larry was
just talking about it. They would have to debate the
bill. They would have to have a vote
on it to bring it to law and make a law. Then they'd have
to say we need so many police officers and we need to build
some rehab centers. We need some prisons. We need
to set up a committee to let them know when they can leave
prison. We've got to debate this whole thing about evil. What
is evil? Can you see them spending six
months on that? What is evil anyway? How much
violence can we tolerate? And then they've got it all set
up. And the 40 days are past and the city is destroyed. But
call on the church to do it. Can you imagine the Lord calling
upon you and me to conquer this city? To turn it from the violence
that's in its hands and its evil ways? How would we go about doing
it? I'd have to get a hold of a bunch of preachers. Can you
pastors spare about 40 days? We've got to get a hold of some
missionaries that are used to going into places like this.
And we've got to get some newspaper articles written up. We've got
to set up some Bible conferences around the city. We've got to
start preaching to people, maybe get one-on-one witnesses to them. I wonder how long that would
take us to do that. How would you have conquered
this city? How would you and I have turned
this city from the violence that is in its hands? Well, we'd go there and walk
around those massive walls. It would have took us about three
or four days to walk around the city. We'd look it up at some
of those walls a hundred feet high. We'd be counting the towers
that was built on the walls. And then we'd go inside the city
and we'd hear all the vulgar, ungodly language. We'd see the
plots to do one another harm. And we'd be so intimidated, we'd
be afraid to enter that city with them. How would we do it
if God told the church to go in there and turn this city from
its evil ways and from the violence that was in His hands? I guarantee
you, brothers and sisters, the 40 days will have passed before
we accomplish such a task. How does God do it? How does
God do it? How does He turn them from their
evil ways and the violence that is in their hands? He does it
by one man. He does it by a foreigner at
that. One who had himself just recently
been sobbing to repentance with tears. A man who was probably
still somewhat astonished that he himself was delivered from
a watery grave. This man hasn't come here to
marvel at these walls. He's not come here to count the
towers. He's not come here to consult
with the wisdom of flesh. When he enters the gate, he's
not impressed and he's not intimidated. He's come straight from God.
And as he enters the gate, here is what he begins to cry. Yet
forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. The keeper of
the gate hears and he's astonished. He sits as a dead man, unmoved. Two people on his left are involved
in open and profane lust. Their conscience is suddenly
smitten. There is a group of men engaged
in violence. They drop their weapons. They
fall to their knees and begin to cry for mercy. Can you see
this preacher as he goes down through the streets of this great
city? And suddenly the sidewalks are filled with people. The windows
overhead are thrown open, women and children listening. Before
this preacher there is nothing but violence and evil and behind
him there is nothing but trembling hands and shaky voices crying
out for mercy. How does God conquer this city? Word comes to the king. A man
rushes in to the king on his throne and he says, O king, the
man of God says, 40 days and none of us shall be overthrown.
And what does the king do? He rises up from his throne. He lays aside his royal apparel. He lays his crown aside. He covers
himself with sackcloth. He sets in ashes and he proclaims
that a fast must come about. No water or no food for men or
women or children or beasts. But every man is to turn from
his evil ways and the violence that is in their hands. And that
every man is to cry mightily to God for mercy. God sees their repentance. He
turns from the judgment that He said He would bring. And the
city is spared. That's the way God did it. And
He did it in such a way that He got honor from it. And He
did it in such a way they truly turned from the evil that was
in their hearts and the violence that was in their hands. No one
was conferring with flesh and blood. No one was promoting a
denomination. No one was bragging about the
preacher and his eloquent speech and the wagon of his holy hands
or his obvious education. All they heard was these words,
ìAnd yet forty days, and none of us shall be overthrown.î And
they believed in their heart of hearts that this word fell
from heaven. This came from God. They believed
God. Could God do this to Newcastle,
Indiana? Could He bring Newcastle, Indiana
to repentance? When we think of doing it, what
do we think of? Well, we need to get the churches
together. We need to have unity. We need to put bulletins in our
local newspaper. We need to get on the radio.
We need to get everybody together and begin to pray. And it comes
down to this. We, we, we. Doesn't it? But we never did anything here
in Nineveh. Here was a preacher who went
there that didn't have any beams of love in his eyes for those
that were hearing him. He didn't even want them to obtain
mercy. And he offered no mercy. Who
was it that turned this city? God. And how did He do it? By the preaching of Jonah. By
the preaching of Jonah. God could turn this city right
here to Himself. He could bring this city to repentance
if He is so pleased. I think we should pray to that
end. Let us work to that end. But I am telling you, our labors
will be fruitless if He does not do it. It is Him that must
do it. It's God that must do it. I personally
believe that this revival here in Nineveh, if you want to call
it that, was the greatest revival in the history of the Old Testament
Church. I believe it's the greatest revival
in the history of the Old Testament Church. That's my opinion. But
let me give you some reasons why I say this. When we consider
that this was a Gentile nation, Did you ever see God turn to
the Gentile nation as He did here? When He turned for a revival,
it was always to Israel, never to some ungodly Gentile nation. He usually destroyed them in
one way or another. But here He turned to the Gentiles. when we remember their extreme
wickedness. He says in chapter 1 verse 2
that their wickedness had come up before God. When you read
that that happens, that's bad. That means they tried God's patience
to the end and He's finished and He's ready to bring judgment.
When we remember and consider the very number of those who
were saved in this meeting, If there were 620,000, 500,000 people
were brought to repentance. Can you imagine that? When we
see the diversity of the people who were saved, the king on his
throne and the slave down who lived in the alleys, from the
greatest of them to the least of them. And when we consider
their deep repentance, how deep their repentance was, I bet you
there wasn't a violent act being committed in that whole city.
You know there wasn't. If you lived there, you didn't
have to lock your doors now. There was nobody seeking to break
your house down. There was not one foolish thought
in a single mind that it was repented of. The dirt streets
were dampened with tears. There was not a dry cheek. There
was not a home, but you could hear the voice of mourners confessing
their sins. You won't find a filthy magazine
hid under any mattress. You won't see an idol standing
in the street now. A godly sorrow had filled their
hearts. What carefulness was wrought
in these people, what clearing of themselves, what indignation
against their former sins, what resolve to fully turn from their
iniquity. And when we remember this, it
took place in a matter of just a few days. All of this came
suddenly, and this shows us this was a great revival, and it was
God's doing. And it was done in such a way
that he got all the glory from it. All the glory from it. That's why he says such things
as, Not by power nor might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. Well, we need a revival in our
day, don't we? And if it comes, it's not going to come by our
eloquent preaching. It's not going to come because
we got all our doctrine just so precise. I tell you why it'll
come if it comes. God sent it. God sent it. That's what happened here. They
repented at the preaching of Jonah, but Jonah never went and
preached until God sent him. We're living in a day when so
many are despising preaching. They want group discussions.
There's people that would come here for our Sunday school class
if we'd have group discussion. They like little stories. They
like motivational speeches. They like to hear about their
systems of theology. If we begin a study on Revelations
and advertise it, we may get a few more people. They like
things like that. But don't bother preaching to
me. Don't preach to me. But that's
the way God is ordained to save and to strengthen and to establish. I don't care. Don't preach to
me. But God saved a half a million
people. I don't care. Don't preach to
me. Don't you hear that? A few years
ago, one of our presidents, I forgot, maybe it was Roosevelt, started
the Farside Chats. Remember those? I don't remember
them, but I've read about them. The Farside Chats. That's what
the church wants now. A little Farside Chat. But don't
open the Bible. And tell me what God says. Don't
do it. Don't preach in such a way the
holiness of God is discovered. Don't preach in such a way that
the exceeding sinfulness of sin is revealed. Don't measure on this point of
repentance being a necessity. that a heart must believe in
the Son of God, that a new birth is necessary, and a life lived,
a new life lived, by faith alone. Don't tell me that. Listen, brothers
and sisters, it's not the loudness of the preacher, or his eloquence,
or his ability to explain. I don't discredit any of these
things. I appreciate them. But preaching
comes down to this. It comes down to this. When the
truth of what's being preached from the Word of God comes home
to the heart in converting power. That's what we need. When the
truth of what's being preached from the Word of God comes home
to our heart in converting power. That's the preaching we need.
But that will only come when God sends it. Because it's the
blessed Holy Spirit that must send this message home to the
heart. And the preacher, though God
uses him, I think Jonah demonstrates to us, it's the Holy Spirit that
takes the Word and brings it with power to the heart. And
if he don't do it, man, we can get loud. We can use all of our
illustrations and have a little bit of eloquence. One fellow
said we can wax an elephant. But what good will it do? It
won't do a bit of good, will it? Oh, how we need the blessed
Holy Spirit. How many times in the New Testament
do we read concerning the preacher, we read these words, when they
heard this. When they heard this. They were going on living their
daily lives. Living in sins, unconcerned.
Nobody could reach the heart. And then suddenly they said unto
the preacher, and it was said, When they heard this, they were
pricked in their hearts, and cried out, Men and brethren,
what shall we do? When they heard this, they glorified
the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal
life believed. When they heard this, they said,
This is a hard saying, Who can hear it? Boy, that's what we
need, isn't it? We need to preach and we need
to teach and have the blessed Holy Spirit open men's hearts. You know, that's the way God
saves, isn't it? Sometimes that's the way He makes people mad.
People said before, you either get mad or glad. But what bothers
us sometimes is when we get no reaction. No reaction. There is a passage in Acts chapter
10 and it runs over into Acts chapter 11 where the angel told
Cornelius the Gentile centurion to send for Peter. You remember
this. And he said, this is what he will tell you. You send for
that preacher and he is going to come over and tell thee words
whereby thou and thy house shall be saved. What is preaching?
It is just simply telling you words. Words. He shall tell thee words. But
those words will tell you something that you won't find anywhere
else in the universe. Words of salvation. And Peter
came down to preach to them, and he was preaching about the
Lord Jesus being crucified by wicked hands, and God raised
Him from the dead. And he said, Through this man
is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin, and all that believe
shall receive remission of their sin. And the Scripture says,
While he yet spake these words. See, that's all he's doing. That's
all preaching is. telling men the words that God
tells the preacher to speak. You preaching to them the preaching
that I bid thee. And Peter went down and preached
peace through Jesus Christ. And while he spake these words,
something marvelous happened. Something amazing happened. The
Holy Ghost fell on all of those who believed. Wouldn't you have
loved to have been there? All of them that heard and believed
the Word, the Holy Ghost came in power and assurance. And for the first time in their
lives, I bet, they said, Oh, I've got a saving interest in
Jesus Christ. All my sins are gone. Did you hear what Jesus said
to me? They're all taken away. And how
did this assurance come? How did this salvation come?
By Peter preaching words. Paul asked a good question in
Galatians chapter 3. He said, This only would I learn
of you. Did you receive the Spirit by
the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Well, the obvious
question is, the right question is, by hearing of faith. I heard
the gospel. I heard the preacher. I heard
God's voice in it. So repentance comes. Faith comes. Faith is established. Faith is
increased. The believer is delivered from
snares. He escapes the bands and power
of sin. He experiences joy and heaven
at last. All of this through the preaching
of God's Word. Jonah just went out crying 40
days and none of us shall be overthrown and a half a million
people were saved. Now isn't that amazing? They
repented at the preaching of Jonah. Look at this right quickly. The
effects Jonah's short message had on this city just a few words. We're not told that he said anything
else or spoke in private to anybody. As far as we know, this is all
that he said, and it has to do with repentance. But three things that dawned
upon their minds by hearing this message. One was this, they saw the true
character of their sins. They saw the true character of
their sins. Now here's what preaching will do. It still does this to
me. Preaching, there's nothing like
preaching. It stirs up every emotion of
a man's soul. Did you ever have preaching to
do that? When I'm sitting here sometimes under these brethren
while they're teaching, I'm telling you the emotions that stirred
in my heart amazes me. When Wayne was talking this morning
about the exceeding sinfulness of sin, that went home again
to my heart. And these men of Nineveh, they
were exceedingly great sinners, this town was. But you know something?
They didn't know it. We're told in chapter 1, verse
2, at the very beginning of this, that their sins were so wicked,
it had come up before God. But they weren't aware of it,
and probably didn't even care. But boy, as soon as Jonah began
to preach, they said, now things have changed. Boy, it's changed
now. And one of the changes was their
opinion of their sin. That had changed. Boy, the king,
he laid his robe aside and sent out a message, and here's what
he said. Let them turn everyone from their evil way and the violence
that is in their hands. See what he calls sin? When people
start identifying sin by a proper definition, and instead of calling
it a little slip or a little mistake, they call it evil and
violence, Well, you can know then that
somebody's got some light in their conscience. I think one of the maddest I
ever got at anybody, a fella, right after the Lord saved me,
he came up to me and he said, well, Bruce, you never was that
bad a fella. And I almost showed him. I was
like, Larry, I almost showed him. I almost got my... I'll
show you! You rascal, you! You may have thought I was a
nice guy. And other people may have thought I wasn't a bad guy,
but God knew, and He showed me what a bad fellow I was. And
sin wasn't a trifling thing to me. Then, I saw it as God saw
it. That sin wasn't an exceeding
sinful thing. And you know why men don't seek
a Savior. You know why men don't seek forgiveness.
They think their sins are so trifling that God Himself can
look over them. Or because they can't see sin
in them, God can't see them, as if God was as blind as they
are. But boy, when Jonah began to
preach, they said, Oh no, we're in trouble. These little trifling
things, these little white lies, these little sins, these are
evil things. And God is angry. God is angry. God's wrath is upon us, folks.
We're in trouble. Let's turn from this evil. It's
what they call it that shows that they really saw the true
nature of sin. Sin may never reach the members,
but God sees it as soon as it's committed in the heart. A man
may be moral, or he may be open and profane. But when God discovers
the true nature of sin to that man, here is what He'll say with
the Apostle Paul, that sin by the commandment might become
exceedingly sinful, indescribably sinful. One thought of foolishness
is sin in God's sight, isn't it? One thought of lust is what?
Adultery. Is there anybody here this afternoon
that would count it a trifling thing to slip away from your
wives or slip away from your husband and go find some strange
person and lay with him and have sex with him? What do you think
of when you think of doing something? Aren't you horrified? Well, you
know something, in the eyes of man, in our eyes, it may not
seem this bad, but to have the thought of lust is in God's eyes
adultery already. And how many peoples did it?
How many people sets and thinks and imagines, and yet they see
no wrong in it because they physically abstain from it. But the Lord
sees the heart, doesn't He? And boy, that's what these men
began to see. You had some moral men there,
I imagine. And they thought at first, well,
he ain't talking to me until the light come to their conscience.
And then they saw the origin of sin was not the hands. It's not the feet. It's the heart.
It's a manufacturer of iniquity. It's a cesspool of sin. One thought of hate is murder. I tell you, I shudder to think
that I'd shoot somebody or stab somebody and kill somebody. Don't
you shudder to think that you'd be shut up somewhere where you
had to defend yourself or your family and take an individual
life? Hate is murder. One thought of covetousness is
setting up an idol to worship. Stubbornness is as the sin of
witchcraft. And God hates pride. And harmful
rumors are abomination in His sight. Oh, they said, let us
turn from our evil ways. And the violence is in our hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent? and turn away from
His fierce anger that we perish in awe. That's what this preaching
done. You wouldn't think that just
a few words could have stirred this up, but it began to stir
up their thoughts and reveal to them the true character of
sin. Something else was discovered to their minds too, the shortness
of their time. If we could just see people come
into the knowledge of these two things, the exceeding sinfulness
of their sin, and thinking, I've got the maximum, six weeks, and
the minimum, the next moment. Boy, they wouldn't say, well,
give me a month to think about it. They said, man, six weeks
and we're out of here. Six weeks and we're out of here. Went down, I told some of you,
went down home Wednesday and we were gathered there with our
family on Thursday and a call came in and said that my aunt
had died. My dad's sister, dear aunt, I've
known her all my life. We buried my brother on Friday. They buried my aunt today. And
I've known both of those all my life. Both of them was older
than I was. And I know this about both of them. Never did they
expect to die and be buried. I guess they thought they were
going to live forever. I know for a fact that they never imagined
dying when they were younger. But both of them are buried now. When men can go on and procrastinate
and make excuses It shows that God is not dealing with their
hearts in an effectual way to bring them to repentance. When
God is going to bring a man or a city to repentance, I tell
you what He does. He makes him to think and know,
my time is short. Today is the day of salvation
for me. Now is the accepted time for
me. If I'm not saved now, I may never
be saved. These men didn't go to bed planning
for tomorrow. They laid down out of exhaustion
with a prayer upon their lips, Oh God be merciful, forgive our
sins, turn from the fierceness of your anger. Do you remember
when Paul was preaching to that man Felix? I think probably he
was the governor. And Paul was reasoning with him.
about temperance and righteousness. Righteousness that God requires
of you, Felix, and you don't have it. And you can't produce
it. And about the judgment to come.
And the Scripture says that Felix trembled. Man, he was shaken
down in his soul. But he showed. He showed. that God wasn't so much in His
repentance. And I'll tell you how He showed
it. Remember what He said to Paul? Go your way for this time. Boy, these men didn't say that
one Jonah preach, did they? And you won't say it either,
and nobody else will say it either. When God makes them know, you're
walking on thin ice, man. Hell is underneath you, and the
wrath of God is over you, and your sin and unforgiveness is
in you. Go your way for this time. When
I have a more convenient season, I'll call for thee." Boy, these
people here knew the shortness of their time. I remember one
night I was out of my bed. It had been forty-something years
ago. I couldn't sleep. My wife was
in bed. My daughter was in bed. But not
me. Man, I couldn't sleep. I prayed
until I had no more words to pray. I cried until there was
no more tears to flow. And I thought, Lord, if you don't
save me, if you don't forgive my shame, if you don't make yourself
known to me, I'll never sleep again. And that's when He saved
me. That's when He washed me. I never
was so filled with so much joy in all my life. And I got up
and laid down and slept. I know how these fellas felt.
I couldn't go on planning for retirement. Worried about where
I was going to take my vacation next summer. Thirdly, they discovered the
character of their end. Yet forty days, and none of us
shall be overthrown. And when I'm talking about discovering
the character of their end, the Lord didn't go into detail how
the end was coming, did He? He didn't say, Jonah, you tell
them I'm sending an army against them to kill them. I'm sending
a plague and going to wipe them all out. I'm going to send down
fire and brimstone from heaven like I did upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
He didn't say anything about that. But they knew the character
of their end would be to be overthrown. And they said down here in this
next verse that we perish not. That's the character of our end.
Wouldn't that be good for men to know and contemplate today?
I'm going to die. And after death, it's not over
with. Every time I go to, I've got
to the point where I almost abhor going to funerals. One funeral
director, he was a Christian man, he said, I've been at this
45 years and I've never buried the first person without hope.
Everybody's got a hope now. I mean, live like the devil.
Be a drunk, a liar, a defrauder, what else? But when they put
you in that casket, it seems to change your whole character
and your destiny. He's not suffering anymore. That's
what they said about my poor brother. He's not suffering anymore. And you just want to scream.
How do you know that? If he died outside of Christ,
his suffering has just begun. These men said if we die in our
sins, if we die outside of Christ, here is going to be the true
character of our end. We are going to perish. We are going to perish. known and we're not told in detail
what we'll suffer if we die outside Jesus Christ. We're told about
such things as a bottomless pit and outer darkness, but those
things are just metaphors. And if the Lord don't go into
great detail explaining to us what it means to perish, It's
probably because we could not understand it anyway. God has told us enough of the
joys of heaven and the torments of hell for us to realize the
true character of them both. He's told us enough about it
that we can escape one and lay hold of the other. He's told
us enough, hasn't He? And I tell you, you talk to the
average person, and I bet you their conscience will bear witness
to it. You're outside of Christ. You're
dying your sins. What's going to happen to you?
And you know what the average person will say if you can get
him locked up and shut up? You know what he'll say? It ain't
going to be good. I don't understand how it's going
to be, but I know it ain't going to be good. I don't know how
it's going to be in heaven. I know this much, the half has
never been told, the joys. So we know, don't we? These men
knew in such an ineffectual way that they could not rest until
the Lord had saved them and forgiven all their sins. Oh God, give
us a preacher like this today. And the conclusion, think of
this. This is one of the things that
will torment the minds and souls of those Jews in Christ's day.
He told them this, the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching
of Jonah. They repented at the preaching
of Jonah. Poor, miserable, weak Jonah. They repented at his preaching.
And a greater than Jonah is he. They repented at Jonah's preaching.
They did not repent at the preaching of Jesus Christ. And he said,
that's going to bring you under a greater damnation. They're
going to rise to judge you in that day. Jonah never did a single
miracle to prove that God had sent him. Look how many miracles
Christ did to prove God had sent him. Jonah had no pity and love
beaming from his eyes. But the Son of God wept over
his ears. Not a word of mercy was on Jonah's
lips. But the Son of God said over
and over and over again, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. If any man thirst, let him come
to me and drink. All manner of sin and blasphemy
will be forgiven the sons of men." If Jonah's preaching and their
reaction to it judged the Jews of Christ's day, will it not
judge men and women in our day? They repented. And here, look
at this. They had such a slender hope. that they would be forgiven and
they would receive mercy. All they had to go on was this,
verse 9, Who can tell? Who can tell? Is there mercy
with the Lord? Who can tell? Let us seek Him
and see. Will God forgive us our sins?
Let us humbly ask Him, for who can tell? Is there eternal life
for men like us? Let us cry to Him and see. For
who can tell? What a fender thread of hope! That's all they had to go on,
wasn't it? Who can tell? Who can tell? But boy, they took
that and turned it for the better, didn't they? There's no reason
for anybody to despair of mercy if they'll seek the Lord. We
have too many promises, too many invitations, too many commands
in the Bible. There's no reason to despair
if you'll seek the Lord for mercy. But there's a good reason too
not to be presumptuous. Here these men took that who
can tell and they turned it for their good and they sought the
Lord. But here was a whole generation of men that heard the Son of
God preach, they saw the miracles that He did, and they spurned
it all, and lost their souls. God bless His Word. We'll continue
there next week, the Lord's Will.