I want us to begin this morning
and this afternoon and cover chapter 1. Let's go through this
book together. I've preached through this book
before. I'm not going to look at my notes. I'm going to study
it for myself again and look at it from a little different
direction probably. But I want us to begin a study
this morning and this afternoon on this book. A wonderful book. Such information. It's just packed. Packed with information and comfort
and instruction. Instructions on how you and I
are to live in our Christian life. Instruction on salvation.
It's just a wonderful little book. So I'm looking forward
to it, somewhat anxious myself to share with you this morning.
So let's begin reading in Jonah chapter 1 and verse 1. Let's
read the whole chapter together. Now the word of the Lord came
unto Jonah the son of Amittiah. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great
city, and cry against it. for their wickedness is come
up before me. And Jonah rose up to flee unto
Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa,
and he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare
thereof, and went down unto it to go with them unto Tarshish
from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great
wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea.
so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners,
the sailors, were afraid, and cried every man unto his God,
and cast forth the wares that were in the ship unto the sea,
to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down unto
the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. So the
shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou,
O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if
so be that God will thank upon us that we perish not. And they
said every one to his fellow, Come and let us cast lots, that
we may know, for whose cause this evil is come upon us. So
they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto
him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is come
upon us. What is your occupation? From
whence comest thou? What is thy country, and of what
people art thou? And he said unto them, I am in
Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which made
the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceeding afraid,
and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that
he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he told them.
Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the
sea may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought, and was
tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me
up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm
unto you. For I know that for my sake this
great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rode hard
to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought
and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the
Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, Let
us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent
blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee." So
they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea
ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord
exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great
fish to swallow up Jonah, And Jonah was in the belly of the
fish three days and three nights. The Lord Jesus referred to this
book. You remember that when he learned
Matthew chapter 12? As Jonah was three days and three
nights. Did that two times he referred
to this book. I love it when you can go, especially
to the Gospels, and you find where the Lord referred to some
of these passages. Larry brought it out this morning
where He referred to David and the priest there in the temple.
And what He does by doing that, He tells us that this book is
legitimate. This book is really inspired.
This really happened. We call this the story of Jonah,
and it is, but it's a true story. And our Lord said it was. So
it's another proof that we have that this book really happened. This book is inspired of the
Lord. Now somebody may say, Bruce,
I don't need any more proof. Well, God bless you. I'm glad.
I'm glad that when the Scripture said all Scripture is given by
inspiration of God, you believe it. And I thank God for you.
But listen, I'll take all the evidence and all the proof He's
pleased to give, won't you? And if the Lord is pleased to
say, listen, this has really happened. This is no fairy tale. This is not just types or pictures
of something. This really happened. I say,
Lord, thank you for that. Thank you for that. So we have
that, first of all, in this book here. It really happened. And
then secondly, we like this book because of what I referred to
just a minute ago. It has a beautiful picture. of
the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It furnishes us in chapter 2 with that beautiful picture. The burial
of Jesus Christ. You say, Bruce, where do you
get that at? Well, Matthew chapter 12 and verse 39 through verse
41 tells us that. The Lord Jesus says, as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, So must
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of this earth. And just as the whale spit out
Jonah, this earth is going to let me go. It's going to release
me. And I heard a fellow talking.
He said, you're telling me that I'm to believe this strange story
really happened. You're telling me I have to believe
that? Well, listen. If you don't believe this strange
story, that this could actually happen, you're really going to
have trouble with a man coming down from heaven. If you have
trouble with this fish swallowing a man for three days and three
nights. You're really going to think
it's strange that a man came down from heaven, the Son of
God, and took our humanity and suffered for sins. And they put
him in the grave for three days and three nights. And then he
arose again. That's really going to be strange,
isn't it? That one should leave his home on high and come for
sinful man to die? You count that strange? So once
did I before I knew the Savior. But this happened, didn't it?
It really happened. And if nothing else, to show
us the death and the burial and the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Brother Donnie Bell said this.
I often think of him when I read the book of Jonah. He said, I
have no problem believing that a whale swallowed Jonah. And
he was down there in the belly of that whale for three days
and three nights. He says, as a matter of fact, if the Lord
says that Jonah swallowed the whale, I'd believe it. If the
Lord said it, and we would, wouldn't we? We would. We have no problem
believing that this man was in the belly of this whale three
days and three nights. Something else we learn from
this book, and the Lord Jesus mentioned this in Matthew chapter
12 also. Something else, and it has to
do not only with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, but
it has to do something with the power of preaching the Gospel. Remember what the Lord Jesus
said, the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of
Jonah. Boy, he put his sign and seal
upon preaching. Jonah didn't do a miracle, did
he? He just preached and had a very short message. I bet some
of you wish I was more of a Jonah, don't you? My wife told me, she
said, you preached a long time last Sunday morning. I said,
I remember that, 52 minutes. I remember that. Jonah had it
probably about What, a ten second message? Forty days and none
of us shall be overthrown. But you know what? The Holy Spirit
took that message and went home to their hearts and the Lord
said they repented. What does the Lord tell us? That He uses preaching. He's
pleased by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. If He's going to save anybody
here this morning, or at any time, you know what He's going
to do? He's going to call an old man, teach him the gospel,
and send him to preach the gospel to other people. And they're
going to hear it and believe it just like Nineveh did. And
they're going to be saved. Now something else this book
teaches us too, and that's the resurrection. The Lord Jesus
said the men of Nineveh shall rise. The men of Nineveh shall rise. When? In the judgment at the
last day. Now this is absolutely amazing,
isn't it? Those men now are what, 2,500
years old? I mean, they've been dead a long
time, haven't they? There's not even any hair left
of those people. Their nails are rotted. There's
nothing but dust. And the Lord Jesus said, They
shall rise. All of those men are going to
rise and come up to judgment. Now that's amazing. all the people
in the Old Testament, all the people in the New Testament,
there is a resurrection where men will arise and stand before
the judge of all the earth. And he said those Ninevites that
repented at the preaching of Jonah, they are going to condemn
the men of my generation because they repented at the preaching
of Jonah. And a greater than Jonah is here.
a greater than Jonah is here. We'll get to it when we get to
chapter 3. But you know, they didn't have
much in the message of Jonah to bring them to repentance,
did they? All he said was, 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And you know what they began
to think in their hearts? If the Lord has sent this preacher
to warn us, then maybe he'd be merciful to us. And they put
on sackcloth and set masters and began to repent of their
sin. But all they had to go by was this, who can tell? That's
what they said, who can tell? Is there mercy? Who can tell?
Will the Lord forgive us? Who can tell? But they took that
and they repented. Look what those Jews had in Christ's
name. They had Him preaching mercy to them. I've not come
to solicit a sacrifice from you, He said. I've come to show you
mercy. I've come to forgive sins and
life eternal. And look at all the miracles
He did. And they didn't repent. And He said those men of Nineveh
are going to rise and condemn you at the judgment. Because
they repented. No more light than they had,
they repented. And you've got like me. You listen
to me and you won't repent. Men will be judged by the light
they had. Only the Lord Himself will be
able to judge men on the Day of Judgment because they will
be judged in such a just manner that when He's finished judging
them, they'll say Amen to their own damnation because He'll judge
them according to the light that they have. We learn that from
this book here. Something else we learn from
this book here, and you'll remember this in John chapter, maybe it's
John chapter 7, I can't remember exactly where this is found.
But remember when Nicodemus was, he was a member of the Sanhedrin
and he was arguing, he was defending the Lord Jesus. They were condemning
Christ and he said, does our law condemn a man before hearing?
And they looked at him and they said, are you from Galilee? The
Bible says nothing about a prophet coming out of Galilee, but it
does. It does. You know where Jonah
was from? He was from a place called Gath-Heper. It was about three or four miles
northeast of Nazareth in Galilee where our Lord was raised up.
And they said, Jonah, search the Scriptures. No prophet ever
come out of there. I bet you Jonah went home and
searched the Scriptures. And he said, every one of you
guys are lying. You don't know what you're talking
about. Jonah came out of Galilee where our Lord Himself lived.
Now let's look at these first maybe three or four verses. See
how far we can go without wearying this morning. First of all, here
in verses 1 through verse 3, I thought this was very interesting.
I want to look at it like this. Not so much to warn us, but look
at this to encourage us. How the best of men can err. How the best of men can err and
that you and I must never put our trust in our own strength
in our own abilities, even in our own knowledge or our desires,
we must never do that to accomplish God's will. Verse 1 here says,
The Word of the Lord came to Jonah. And when the Word of the
Lord came to Jonah, it left Jonah no doubt as to what the Lord
desired him to do, commanded him to do. Go preach to these
Ninevites. People have asked before, how
do you know God's will? How do you know God's will? How
do you know the truth? How can you have assurance? People
have asked that all along. Well, this is the way we know
God's will. The Word of the Lord. If you're seeking the Lord's
will, that's where you'll find it, in His Word. Not an audible voice, but He
speaks to the conscience. One thing about the Word of God
that's like no other book, it don't just come to the audible
ears. Really and honestly, most of
the time, it just don't come to the audible ears. It comes
to the spirit. It comes to the heart. There's
no other book like this Word. The Lord Jesus said, the Word
that I speak unto you, what is it? It's Spirit. It's Spirit
and it's life. When He speaks it, it enters
into your heart. And people want to know, how
can you be so convinced of the truth? Well, the Word convinces
you. Men can't convince you. If I
get up here and I try to reason these things out and I try to
look at them in a logical way, you may go out here and you say,
man, I'm convinced of that truth. But go out here until somebody
else catches you and they reason just a little bit better than
I can and they'll reason you right out of what I taught you.
But boy, when the Word of the Lord comes to your heart, I mean,
it can bring light It comes in convincing power and there will
be no doubt about it. He can give you light. He can
give you understanding. He can give you assurance. And
it comes from His Word. I remember the letter that Paul
wrote to Thessalonians church. He had went among them. The Lord
had saved them. And he went off and wrote them a letter back.
And he said, Our Gospel came not to you in Word only. He came
in word, but not word only, but in power and in the Holy Ghost
and in much assurance. You see that here. There was
no doubt in Jonah's mind that when the Lord spoke to him, what
he was to do. And that shows us when the Lord
speaks, he leaves no doubt about it. It's plain and it's certain. Hebrews chapter 4 says this,
the Word of God, listen to this, it's quick. That means it's living. It's living. People have looked
at Hebrews chapter 4 and tried their best to figure out if that's
Christ, the incarnate Word, or the written Word. The Word is
quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It
pierces even to the dividing of sunder of the soul and spirit. Now, I have tried for years to
determine the difference and get at this thing to dividing
the soul and spirit. I can't do it. I can't do it. It's like the marrow and the
bone. They're right there together.
How do you divide the marrow from the bone? That's how united
they are. But the Word is so quick and
powerful and discerning, it can divide the soul from the spirit. And when it comes to you, it's
life-giving. It's powerful. It discerns your
thought in the very intensity of your heart. And the Scripture
says there is no creature that's not made manifest in His sight. All things are naked and open.
Is that talking about Christ? Or is that talking about the
written Word? Both of them. It's just both of them, isn't
it? But that shows how powerful the Word of the Lord is. And
it came here, it came to this man, and it came with so much
power and authority, he knew exactly what the Lord had commanded
him to do. But here was Jonah's problem.
Here was Jonah's problem, and here is what I want us to get
at just for a minute this morning. It came to him to instruct him,
but it didn't bring grace with it to do what he was commanded
to do, to obey, to obey. When the Word comes to instruct
us, it must also bring grace with it to help us to do what
God commands us to do. Now that's so important and that
tells us that the Word by itself is not enough. I can come to
you this morning and I can say God commands you to repent. God
commands you to believe and He does. But you're not going to
be able to do it apart from grace. You can't do it apart from His
blessed Holy Spirit. Jonah knew what he must do. And
he was responsible to do it and to neglect to do it was sin on
his part. But he needed more than just
knowledge. He needed grace to do what the
Lord demanded him to do. The smallest duty can become
impossible without grace. And the most difficult command
that God could give can be easy and done with joy when He gives
grace. I want to show you a passage.
Oh Jonah, and I want you to look over to your left in the book
of Isaiah. Here I think is a good example. Isaiah chapter 50. This
is speaking of the Lord Jesus Himself. And look in Isaiah chapter
50 and look in verse 4. Look in verse 4. Isaiah chapter 50 and look in
verse 4. This is the Lord Jesus speaking. The Lord God hath given
me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak
a word in season to him that is weary, He awakeneth morning
by morning, he awakeneth my ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious. Well, Jonah was, wasn't he? Christ
said, I'm not. Neither turned back away. And verse 6 tells us what God
commanded of him. Look at the duty God laid upon
his son. I gave my back to the smiters,
and my cheek to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face
from shame and spitting." Now that was what God told him to
do. He said, I've received a commandment from my father, and I do it. But my goodness, what was that
commandment? My son, you see your back, your
pretty back, your healthy back, I want you to give it to the
whip. You see the hair on your face? I want you to give your
face to those who pluck off your beard. I want you to suffer,
my son. I'm sending you to suffer. And
you know what? He did it with such joy, did
he not? Lo, I come to do your will, O
my God, your law is within my heart. How could he possibly
have did that with such delight in his heart? He tells us in
verse 7, look at it. For the Lord God will help me,
therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I set my face
like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed." How
could he have done what the Father commanded him to do? Even though
to us it seemed unbearable because the Father helped. The reason I say that, because
I see it in myself. And if you've been on the way
very long, you see it in yourself. It's not enough just to read
in the Bible what you should do. You need grace to do it. There was a man who came to the
Lord's disciples, and he had a little boy, and the devil had
possessed this little boy, and he was tempting that little kid
to commit suicide. He was casting him into the fire
and then he cast him into the water to try to drown him. And
this man brought this little boy to his disciples and said,
Can you cast this devil out of my son? And they tried it and
couldn't do it. And he brought him to the Lord
Jesus and he said, Lord, if you can do anything, help me. Help
me. And the Lord Jesus said, If you
can believe, all things are possible to him that believes. And that
fellow said, Lord, I believe. And then he realized he didn't.
And then he realized he couldn't. So what did he say? Lord, help
me. Lord, help me. Isn't that what
he said? Lord, help my unbelief. When the Lord calls you to come
to Himself, you'll probably wind up praying just like a lot of
other people pray. Lord, help me to come. Show me how to come. You demand me to believe. Grant
me help to believe. Give me grace to forsake myself
and my sins. Give me grace to come to You,
Lord. We can't do a thing without grace, without the aid of His
Holy Spirit. You and I see this all through
the Scriptures, the Old Testament and the New Testament. There's
example after example scattered all through the Scriptures of
these good men Good men err in the error. And I think the Lord
does that to teach us. If I just let my people alone
and I'm not constantly working in them to will and to do and
hold them up and keep them on the way, then they'll go astray.
But Lord, didn't You tell them how to live? Didn't You tell
them what to do? Well, sure He does. But that's
not enough, is it? You know Noah. How old was Noah? Was he 600-something years old
after the flood? I forgot how old he was. He was
old. And you know that old man got
drunk. Can you imagine that? That's what happens, isn't it?
That's what happens when the Lord just leaves us alone and
lets us go in our own strength and wisdom. I'm going to tell
you what to do and then I'm going to let you do it. Look at David. Look at Lot. Look at Solomon. Look at Peter. Holy men of old
that were godly men. But I tell you what, when the
Lord leaves us to ourselves to do what we know is right, and
if He ceases to work in us to will and to do, we'll do just
what this man here do. Will we not? Jonah's example is to teach us
that if we're going to live the Christian life, if we're going
to do those things that's pleasing to God and do them in the right
motives, and do them for His glory and do them with joy in
our hearts, then we're going to have to have grace to do it. And don't you thank God that
He has a throne of grace to come to? That's why He put the throne
of grace there, because He knew that we needed it. And tells
us to come boldly to the throne of grace. that we may obtain
mercy and find grace to help us. You can't live the Christian
life without coming to the throne of grace. You can't do it. People
that's been on the way for a long time and they don't pray, they've
never got on the way. They missed the gate. It begins
with us seeing our need of grace and crying out for it, and it
continues that way. God has arranged it that way.
Jonah, go down to Nineveh, and you preach what I tell you to
preach. And Jonah said, I know exactly
what I ought to do, but I ain't going to do it. I ain't going
to do it. You know he did it finally, didn't he? He finally
did it. In Chapter 3, he went and preached
to them. And you know why he didn't do
it in Chapter 1? He didn't have the grace to do it. He didn't
have the grace to do it. If he'd had the grace in chapter
1 that he'd had in chapter 3, he'd have went. Ain't blaming
the Lord. Not blaming anybody but Jonah.
But I'm just telling you this is the truth. That it doesn't
matter what the Lord tells us in His Word. If He don't give
us grace, we ain't going to do it. I was reading, I think it
was that arch heretic, I can't even think of his name, he's
over in Ohio. But he took a text, he took for
his text, and he's got a whole sermon on it, I read his sermon,
where the Lord said, make you a new heart and a new spirit. And he began from the preface
was, if the Lord told us, He commanded us to do this, then
He must believe that we can do it. Make you a new heart. Well, try
it. Try it. Probably better, again, first
we try to make you a new appendix, you know, or some little thing.
Make you some hair on your head. When you've done the little things,
then make you a new heart and a new spirit. The Lord tells
us these things that we may know. I can't, Lord. I can't. Lord, help me. Help me. Why didn't Jonah want to go?
Why didn't he want to go? We don't have to speculate. We
could speculate a lot about it. He tells us here in chapter 4.
Look in Jonah chapter 4. Here's exactly why he didn't
want to go. Look in chapter 4 in verse 1. This is after Jonah had preached
to them and they began to repent. The Lord had mercy upon him in
verse 1 of chapter 4. But it displeased John exceedingly.
And he was very angry. And he prayed unto the people
and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I
was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto
Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful,
and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee
of the evil." He said, I knew that you were going to have mercy
on them. If they humbled themselves and repented, I knew what you
would do. Now let's sympathize with this
man just a little bit. We're told here in chapter one
in my text that this city of Nineveh was a great city. And it's gone now. They've dug portions of it up,
but they found a lot of libraries in this place, got a lot of information
on it, have a lot of history on this place. It was a huge
place. It was a great city. The best they can estimate it
was about 60 miles around it. That's a big city for that day
and time. They said they estimated somewhere
around 750,000 people that lived in this city. The wall was about 100 foot high
all the way around it, and it was so wide you could ride three
chariots abreast around that wall. It was a great city. A great city. And they were a
wicked, ungodly people. Here, the Lord said, their sin
has come up before me. It's got so great. That's what
He said about Sodom and Gomorrah. Their sin has come up before
me. This city, Nineveh, was the capital
of Assyria. Now here's why you see this man
hate these people so much. You remember there was a marine
came here for a while. He was in the service. He went
over to Mosul. You remember Mosul. That's where
our soldiers, so many of them died there, retaken the city
of Mosul there in Iraq. Well, Nineveh was just across
the river from Mosul. And they had men in this city. The army was sort of like the
ISIS of our day. They cut your head off. They
had a great king by the name of Shemashareth. He probably
lived here in Nineveh. He came down in the northern
part of Israel and came down and invaded that country, came
right into Jonah's hometown, killed men, raped women, ripped
them up with their children and slammed their little infants
against stone, carried many of them captive. And history said
that they would pile heads up in a huge pyramid at the beginning
of the city, the gates of the city, just to intimidate people. Do you see now why he didn't
want to go? If the Lord told me to go over
and preach to those ISIS people that are beheading people, do
you think I'd want to go? I tell you what this man felt
and I felt it and you felt it. I would rather see you destroy
those bunch of heathens than to have mercy upon them. I'm
waiting until you destroy them. I want to see it on the news.
I want to read it in the paper. I don't want you to have mercy
upon them. Can you relate to that? I can relate to that. You let ISIS invade this country.
And you let them come to your neighborhood. And you watch while
they cut your wife's head off. Or some of your children's head
off. And laugh about it. And see if you feel like going
and preaching to them. That's what this man was feeling
in his own heart. And I imagine he thought too,
if I go preach to them and say, in 40 days, none of us are going
to be overthrown. and the Lord don't overthrow
them, then I'm going to be like a false prophet. Boy, he just
didn't want to go. Didn't want to go. A clash of
cultures, wasn't it? A clash of nationalities. He
was a Jew. He was a Hebrew. They were heathens,
ungodly. He was a godly man, and they
were wicked, vile people. They're not like me at all, he
said. I don't have anything to do with it. We're like that, aren't we? We
are like that. If you don't have the American
culture, if you're not a patriot, you're just way down here on
the ring of the ladder. If you're not an American, don't
we think that sometimes? Jean-Claude Souillot, he's a
Frenchman, he comes over from France, and he came over here
in 2005 and 2006, during that time when we didn't think too
highly of France. And Jean-Claude came over, and
everywhere he went, they kept ribbing him about being a socialist. You're a socialist. You're a
socialist, Jean-Claude. You live under a socialist government.
You're not as good as we are. We live under a democracy." And
it made him so upset. It made him so mad. He finally
said, you Americans have got more problems than socialism. But here's the thing about the
Gospel. Here's the thing about the Lord Jesus Christ, brothers
and sisters. It transcends All nationalities. It transcends all cultures, all
sexes, all ages. And it puts all of us, Jew or
Gentile, bond or free, in the same predicament that we are
sinners against God. and in need of a Savior to reconcile
us and save us and give us a new birth. And it doesn't matter
what nationality you are, what your culture is, you need a Savior. You must have
a Savior. And Jesus Christ has been provided
for who? The Jews? For the world. For the world. Men all over the
world. John said he's the propitiation,
not just for the elects among the Jews, but the elect all over
the world. I remember when I first came
to Indiana, we were sort of anti-union down
in Tennessee. When we came to Indiana, I went
to a union shop. Then they convinced me that everybody
that wasn't union was just a scab. Man, they called, we started
to call them all kinds. You union fellows here, you know
how they did, you know. Don't be around them rats, them
scabs. We went downtown and marched
in a day of solidarity and all that. And then, after a while,
I began to see why. You guys got some problems yourself.
Yeah, you're union, you're making good money. You got some problems
yourself. And then I sort of turned anti-union. And then I realized this has
got nothing to do with the gospel. I don't care if you live in a
democracy. I don't care if you live under
a socialistic or some despot. Whether you're union or non-union,
what your culture is, what your skin color is, it don't matter,
does it? Here's the issue. Every one of
us, is under this one head, and that's Jesus Christ. And He's
the only Governor and only Savior. And if He don't save us, we're
going to perish. That's why we don't make an issue
out of these things. Peter went down to Cornelius'
house finally, didn't he? I've always thought this very
strange, that the Lord sent Jonah. to these Gentiles to preach to
them after a lot of struggle and trouble in his own soul.
And then he sends Peter down to the Gentiles to preach to
them, and Peter was the son of Jonah. That was his father's
name, Jonah. I thought that's very strange.
But the Lord sent him down there to preach to Cornelius, and he
said, Lord, I'm not like those fellows. They're a different
nationality. They're a different culture.
They don't eat like me. I just don't want to have anything to
do with them. And the Lord said, Don't you call common or unclean
what I've cleansed. You go preach to them. And remember
the first thing Peter said, one of the first things he said when
he got there, I've come preaching peace by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. Those men over there cutting
each other's heads off, they have a Lord. And it's not Allah. They have a Lord
they're subject to, under whose government and rule they are,
and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. I don't care. Jonah did, but
you and I don't care. What if this country is invaded?
by those rascals. They start cutting our heads
off. Are we going to preach the gospel to them? Are we? Something else here, we'll see
it in verse 3 right quickly. Give me just a few more minutes
here quickly. He said here in verse 3, But
Jonah rose up to flee into Tarshish from the presence of the LORD,
and went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish. He
paid the farrer thereof, and went down to the ship. Boy, it
is something. How we can get this bit, we used
to call it, get the bit in your mouth. And this man did. Boy, you know there is but one
way to look at this. And here was a prophet of God
that just rebelled. There's no other way to look
at it. Old Ralph Barnard, he solved all these problems by
saying, He's lost. He's lost. Every time he found
some prophet that didn't immediately obey, he just said, He's lost.
What's the matter with Job? He's lost. What's the matter
with Lot? He's lost. What's the matter with Jonah?
He's lost. They weren't lost. They're just
like you and just like me. I used to train horses. And boy,
I've had them, they didn't want you on their back. And they'd
get that bit in their mouth and they'd clamp it down so hard
you couldn't stop them, you couldn't guide them. And the only way
to get control was put a little slack in that range and then
jerk it as hard as you could and it felt like they popped
their teeth out of their mouth. But you got control of them again.
That's what Jonah did. Boy, he got the bit in his mouth
and he said, I'm not going. I'm going to Tarshish. I'm going
to Tarshish. To flee from the presence of
the Lord. Isn't it amazing how our understanding
gets so darkened when we rebel? Did he really honestly think
that being down in the hull of a ship headed to another country
would hide him from the presence of the Lord? Listen to what Jeremiah said.
I am the Lord. I am not a Lord at hand and not
a Lord for all. Can any hide himself in secret
places that I cannot see himself the Lord? Why no he can't. Do
not I fill heaven and the earth? Am I not I everywhere? You can't
hide from Him. Where shall I go from Your Spirit,
David said? Where shall I flee from Your
presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I make my bed
in hell, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, even there, Your
hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall uphold me. We cannot
hide from His presence. I am going to flee from the presence
of the Lord. Shaman read it this morning,
the Lord is my light. The Lord is my light. And you
know what happens to us if we tempt Him to turn from us? You
know what happens to us? We go off into darkness. Oh,
we should learn a lesson from this man. Oh, when he tells us
to do something, and when we know what to do to walk and to
please Him, First thing we need to say, Lord give me grace to
do this willfully and with joy in my heart to please you. Because
I'm telling you, if we rebel, we go off into darkness. And
we'll begin to think just like this man. I know a fellow and
his wife wanted rid of him. And she told him the condition. She said, you know, you go live
for yourself. Stay away from other people. She gave him these
conditions he couldn't meet. She wanted rid of him. And he said, the Lord made me
to know. He said, in my heart, let her
go. You follow me. You follow me. Let her go. And
he said, I knew that's what I must do. Let her go and follow the
Lord. But he said, no, I want her. I want her. And he said,
I came to myself. with my handgun, putting bullets
in her back. I came to myself, shooting my
wife, and he's in prison now for it. I'm telling you, it's a dreadful
thing to get this bit in our mouth and say, yes, I'm going
my way. I'm not going there for whatever
reason it is, because he's our light. He is our light. The last thing is this. Providence
seemed to favor Jonah here in his scheme. Jonah said, I'm going
down to Tarshish. I'm going to Joppa. I'm going
to get me a ship and I'm going to Tarshish. And lo and behold,
he got to Joppa. And it just so happened there
was a ship there going to Tarshish. Now isn't that amazing? That's
amazing, isn't it? You would think, well, if the
Lord's going to cut him off, then he's not going to have a
ship available for Tarshish. But you know, brothers and sisters,
it's not good. It's not good to use God's providence
as your rule to walk by. And here's why. He knows what
he's doing in his providence. But we misjudge it, don't we?
Was it in the providence of God that this ship be here? Sure
it was, or it wouldn't have been there. But should Jonah get on
it and say it must be God's will? No. There's a safer rule for
us to walk by, and that's the Word of God, isn't it? What Jonah
should have said, he should have looked at that ship and said,
yes, I can get on that and head towards Joppa, but I know what
God's will is. And it's not for me to get on
that ship that He's made available for me. The Lord drives His people
by providence. You may be out of a job. You
may need a job bad. And you may see an ad that you
can put in an application and get a job. But here's the thing
about it. The job is going to require you
to do things that's unethical. The job is going to require you
to do some things that's not even honest. And if you say,
well, I'll put my application in, and if it's not God's will,
I won't get it. You may get it. You may get it. And bring yourself into a snare. That's what he did. We don't
walk by the rule of God's providence, do we? We thank God for it, and
He knows what He's doing. But we can only trust it when
we're walking according to the rule of His Word. Lot was ready to leave old Abraham,
and he looked at the cities of the plains, He said, Boy, look
at the water and look at the grass. And he said, It must be
God's will because He's made this available to me. Providence
got lot in Sodom. You know something? The truth
would have kept him out of Sodom. Providence arranged for David
to see Bathsheba naked and bathing. But truth would have enabled
him to do as Joseph, to shut his eyes and turn his back and
flee. We have one rule to follow, don't
we? And if we don't follow that rule,
then we're sure to err. But if we'll follow that rule,
God's Word, We won't err. We'll never err. And tonight
we'll begin in verse 4, but I'll tell you, if it wasn't for verse
4, but the Lord sent out a great wind, if it wasn't for His faithfulness,
what would happen to us? What would have happened to this
poor man? If he was no more faithful than you and I, aren't you glad
that he's faithful? Aren't you glad he loves his
people? He won't let them stray. He keeps reeling them back and
wooing them back to Himself. And that's what we'll see tonight.
Lord bless this message. Let's pray.