Jonah 3

0:00 40 days from now, the United States will be overthrown. Okay, I'm not really doing that to you. But what if I did? And what if right about the time I did that, there was an earthquake? Or a total solar eclipse that you didn't know was coming.

0:31 That might affect you. You might actually be calling out to me as I was walking out the door. No, Greg, wait. Give us one of those 55-minute sermons. We need to know more. Don't just leave us with 40 days from now the United States of America is going to be overthrown. We need to know more. How is that going to happen? Why is it going to happen? Is there anything we can do to stop it? Why are you leaving us hanging like that?

1:04 Think about all the words that we have said and sung and prayed this morning. Those are good words, aren't they? You may not even be thinking about it. You may be taking them for granted. But every one of those words, the Nicene Creed and the songs and the scripture reading and the prayers, all of it, it's words that we can have confidence in. It's things that we know to be true. But imagine if all you got was just a few words. Forty days from now, the United States of America will be overthrown.

1:38 Full stop. You'd have a lot of questions. And not much confidence. It's good, isn't it? It's very good that God has told us more about himself than just that. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today as we continue our series through the book of Jonah. Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn to the minor prophet of Jonah in the Old Testament. So you can find him, if you're using one of the Red Pew Bibles in front of you, his book starts on page 774.

2:10 While you're turning there, it's been a couple of weeks since we've been in the book of Jonah, so let me bring you up to speed a little bit. We've been spending a lot of time with Douglas preaching to us last week in Obadiah. We've been spending quite a bit of time in the minor prophets. So let me kind of get you up to speed. At the end of the Old Testament, there's a collection of 12 smaller books that are known as the Minor Prophets. They're called Minor because they're smaller. The Major Prophets are the longer ones. It has nothing to do with the minerness of their message. Jonah, in particular, we don't know exactly when this book was written, but the events it describes took place sometime in the mid-8th century B.C.

2:44 So if you do the math, we're talking something like 760 years or so before the birth of Jesus, almost 2800 years from where we sit now in 2024. The book tells the story of a prophet named Jonah who prophesied in the northern kingdom and other than what this book itself tells us that's really about all we know about the prophet Jonah. The only other place he's mentioned in the Bible or in any historical references in fact is a really brief reference to him in 2nd Kings where it's said that he prophesied that the northern kingdom of Israel in a kind of minor series of battles was going to take back some land that had been taken from them by their enemies. And that's kind of all we know.

3:26 I mean, that prophecy itself, hey, Israel, you're going to get back some land, a little bit of land that was taken from you by your enemies, you're going to take that back. That's not all that interesting, right? So if that's all we knew about Jonah, if that's all we had, he'd be a very minor prophetic character in the Bible. You wouldn't care much about him. You might not have even heard about him any more than you've heard about, say, Gad. You ever heard of the prophet Gad? Minor character in the Bible. You've probably never heard of him. That's the status Jonah would have if it weren't for this book right here that we're studying. But this book has turned Jonah, I think, into one of the best known characters in the entire Bible. And it's because people for 2,800 years now have been fascinated by this story of what happens to him. The book just blows people's minds. It draws attention. Books and even libraries have been written trying to interpret and understand this book. And I think that's for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's just a riveting story.

4:27 I mean, it's one of those stories that you can tell over and over again and you kind of never get tired of it. You've got this prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel who's called by God to travel some 600 miles or so to this wicked city of Nineveh, the capital of what was going to become the Assyrian empire and Jonah arises and instead of going to Nineveh he hops a ship going in exactly the opposite direction. He doesn't want to go preach to Nineveh even though the message that he's going to preach is one of judgment and the whole question of the book is why doesn't he want to go? Like if he's a prophet of Israel why wouldn't he want to go preach destruction to the people of Nineveh? That's exactly what he ought to want to do and yet he flees in the opposite direction. Well, a storm comes up because Jonah is disobeying God. Eventually, the sailors throw him overboard, and Jonah is snapped up and swallowed by a giant fish. Jonah spends three days in the belly of that fish composing a song, and then the fish spits him up on land, really pukes him up, vomits him up, the word carries all those connotations, and Jonah goes, ah, okay, given that, I think I'll

5:31 go to Nineveh and preach. And that's where we've brought the story up to so far. That's one reason. It's just a fascinating story. It's just a well-told story about what happened to Jonah. Second, though, the second reason that the book is so fascinating and draws attention like this is because it's not at all easy to figure out what the point of the book of Jonah is. It's just not easy to figure it out. I mean, sometimes the Bible is very straightforward about what the point of a book is. And you remember the Gospel of John, right? I'm writing these things so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, and in so believing, you'll have eternal life. I mean, John is just straightforward. This is the point of my book.

6:15 This is why I'm doing it. Well, not this one. This one is just full of ambiguity and questions and details that seem tailor-made to make you think one thing as you read it the first time, but then you look back and start thinking about the details and asking questions of the text, and all of a sudden you think, ah, maybe this story is not saying what I thought it was saying on the first reading. Okay, so for example, is Jonah in this story a hero? I mean, he runs, right?

6:50 He disobeys God, but as the story unfolds, he gets swallowed by the fish, and he learns his lesson, and he goes and preaches, and the whole city of Nineveh repents. Sounds pretty heroic, doesn't it? And that's how we tell children's stories about Jonah, right? It's just, he looks like a hero when we tell it to the children. The problem is when we tell that story to the children, we generally cut the book off at the end of chapter 3. We don't go on and tell the kids about chapter 4 because that's too complicated. In fact, I think most people, maybe even most people who call themselves Christians, if you said, hey, tell me the story of Jonah, would probably end it at the end of chapter 3.

7:25 Now, they might say something about the vine and the wind and the worm and all the rest, but they're not going to know that in near as much detail as they do chapters 1, 2, and 3. Well, what about this song of Jonah in chapter 2 that we studied two weeks ago? You read that for the first time, and you think, wow, that's a pretty straightforward, kind of evocative, kind of beautiful song of thanksgiving that Jonah is singing to God for saving his life. But then you start looking at some of the details, and you start to think, ah, I don't know.

7:59 I don't know about this. I mean, Jonah definitely seems thankful that God has saved his life, but I don't really see a whole lot in this song of his that speaks to his repentance. And in some ways, he just seems flat self-deceived. Like that part where he says, I have been driven out of your presence, oh God. No, you weren't Jonah. You ran from the presence of God. Repentance would mean acknowledging that and fixing it. And then you got this just weird exclamation point at the end of that song where the fish is puking Jonah up onto the land.

8:34 And you're kind of left wondering, wow, am I supposed to feel as sick about that song of Jonah as the fish obviously feels? Maybe it's rancid, and I just thought it was good. There are questions, there are details that have fascinated people for almost 3,000 years. Well, now we come to chapter 3. Jonah's been vomited up by the fish, and the question is, what is he going to do now? That's where we pick up chapter 3, verse 1. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

9:11 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. Three days journey in bread. Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey. And he called out, yet forty days. And Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The Lord reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed the robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh.

9:43 By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. And let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them.

10:14 And he did not do it. Okay, so that's it. I mean, really simple, really straightforward story, isn't it? Jonah gets a second chance. He goes to preach to the people of Nineveh. The people repent of their wickedness, and God relents from bringing disaster on them. It's just that straightforward, isn't it? Well, no, and you've already been primed by this book to know that the answer to it is, no, it's not quite that straightforward. As with this whole book, there's more to this story, more to this chapter than meets the eye right on the surface. I mean, obviously the big twist, the thing that really throws the book into the category of super interesting is going to come in chapter 4, where it turns out that Jonah has this great success in preaching, and then he's furious about it. He didn't want to be, he's like the only preacher in the world who didn't want to see God bless his preaching. He's furious about it.

11:01 That's the big twist, and we're going to start talking about that next week. But even here in chapter 3 there are little details and bits and pieces that tell us that everything is not quite what it seems there are clues that even here in chapter 3 Jonah is not happy with this assignment he does not want to be doing it he does not want to be there in Nineveh God has put the collar around his neck and pretty much dragged him there but he's not going to do it and so he's carrying it out in the most halfway petulant way possible it's also worth asking some questions of the Ninevites repentance which we'll do later on but but here's the thing we're going to look at a lot of the details of this story today we're going to try to piece together what's going on but even as we're doing that looking at the story looking at the details tracing through it I don't want you to lose sight of the the main idea of what I think is being contrasted here and that's this It is unspeakably good that we know God and we know what he wants.

12:02 Do not waste that knowledge. It is unspeakably good. And you, me, our country, our world has taken this for granted. But it is unspeakably good that we know God and we know what he wants. So don't waste that knowledge. All right, we're going to do things a little differently today. Normally what I'll do is take a narrative, a story like this, break it into two or three parts, and then the points of the sermon will sort of map onto those various sections of the story.

12:35 We're not going to do that today. Today, instead, we're going to just walk through the entire story, try to get our minds around it, understand some of the details, answer some of the questions, and then see what kind of things we can learn from it after we've gone through the whole thing. So I'm not going to give you an outline to the sermon. There's really not one except this. It's going to be story, application, application, application. That's your outline. There's a little bit more to the applications, but I don't want to steal my own thunder, so I'll give those to you later on. Well, my hope is that through this, maybe a few things will happen.

13:08 My prayer is that a few things will happen, perhaps, in your heart. Maybe you'll be induced by studying the book of Jonah to rejoice again at some things that you have taken for granted for a long time. I hope that happens. I hope also that maybe you'll decide to act in some ways that you know you need to act that you've put on the back burner. And above all, my hope and prayer for this whole thing is that our hearts, all of us who are here, our hearts are filled with wonder and gratitude that our God is who he is and not some other kind of God like the Ninevites had.

13:44 And rejoice that he's revealed himself to us and not left us in the dark. All right, so let's dive in. I suppose you could call this point zero, the story. Point zero, the story. When we left Jonah two weeks ago, he'd just been vomited up on the shore by this fish that swallowed him. It's a jarring moment, like we've noticed, because it comes immediately on the heels of this, frankly, beautiful song of thanksgiving that he seems. But again, that leaves us wondering about Jonah's heart. Is he just thankful that God has done a good thing for him in saving his life, or is he genuinely repentant?

14:15 And chapter three is going to answer that question for us. So chapter 3 opens with an almost verbatim repetition of the words that opened the book. So look back at 1.1, chapter 1, verse 1. Chapter 1, verse 1. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. Now look at 3.1.

14:49 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. Now there's some little differences in that. So he's not called the son of Amittai here. Instead, you've got that phrase, the second time. There's not much difference though between the two. And the point is basically that Jonah is being given a new start. He's being given a new opportunity to obey God, to do what God told him to do in the first place. I think one just sort of side application before we even get to the applications.

15:23 Just one thing worth noticing is that if you're fighting against God in any way, you are simply not going to win. If you're fighting against God in any way whatsoever, you are simply not going to win. So some people have even looked at this and they've looked at 3.1 and they've said, Yeah, I don't know if it's exactly right to talk about it as a kind of new beginning in that sense. It's not like, you know, the sun is now shining and the slate is wiped clean. And God says, I'm giving you a new start, Jonah.

15:55 I'm going to say the words the same as I did before. And now you've got an opportunity to obey. It doesn't seem to be it. It's more like a toddler who keeps touching something that they're not supposed to touch. And you keep putting their hand down and saying, don't touch. Don't touch. Don't touch. Right? you're driving the lesson into their hearts that might be more what's going on here that God is saying okay once you've you know wiped the fish juice off of you go arise and speak to Nineveh like a toddler who's not doing what he's supposed to if you're fighting with God you're not going to win I promise there is one change for all the sort of verbatim repetition of one one and two and 3-1. There is one change though that is worth noticing and it turns out to be really important, I think. So if you look at 3-2, do you see that word against there? Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and call out against it. The word against is not really there. It is there in chapter one.

17:07 God very clearly in chapter one says call out against the city. It's a very particular Hebrew word. Call out against it. It's there in chapter one. Here though it's a different word and the Hebrew word that's used here just means call out to Nineveh. Not against it, not down upon it, but call out to Nineveh. Now that's a subtle change, but it is very important. Because there's a huge difference, and any of you who have kids or have ever been a kid know that there's a huge difference between call out against someone and call out to someone. Right? I mean, there are times when my kids were little when I have to call out against them. Stop that. You know, it's a judgment.

17:51 Call out against something. To call out to someone, though, is an invitation. It's a subtle change, but it's important. So hold on to it, and I'll show you why later. Well, in verse 3, Jonah does exactly what he's told. Arise and go, God said. So Jonah arose and went, right? It's very different from chapter 1 because the same words are used. Arise and go Jonah so Jonah arose and fled and off to the races we go right here he does exactly what he's supposed to do God says arise and go so Jonah arose and go'd right he did then you get this sort of parenthetical remark about the size of the city of Nineveh in verse 3 so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city three days journey in breadth.

18:41 So there's been a ton of conversation through the last three millennia about what exactly is meant by a journey of three days here. Your ESV is kind of over translating it. It doesn't actually say three days journey in breadth. It just says three days journey. I mean literally it's, now Nineveh was a great to God city. That's what it says. And that phrase great to God doesn't mean that God had some particular love for Nineveh. It's a Hebrew idiom that just means like great by God, right?

19:15 That's what it means. Like hugely great, which is why ESV translates it exceedingly. So there are other places in the Bible where a hunter, for example, will be called mighty by God, right? And what that means is he's really, really mighty. So this is a really, really exceedingly great city. And then there's just this phrase, a three days journey. That's what it means. Now that doesn't, we know for sure that it doesn't mean a three days journey for Jonah, like to get there from Joppa, where probably the fish spit him out. All of this happened near land, right? So the fish drops him off at Joppa, and it's like 600 miles to get to Nineveh.

19:51 So that's not a three days journey for Jonah. It can't be that. It's more like 20 days or something, 10, 15, 20 days, depending on how you're traveling. So that's not what it means. And the fact is, you read all the books and you read all the articles and all the rest of it, over 3,000 years, we have really no idea what the three days journey means. We don't know what that idiom actually means. Though people have given a lot of guesses. So some people have said that it would take three days to walk around the walls of the city, but we know where Nineveh's walls are and it wouldn't take you three days to walk around it. It's eight miles.

20:22 Like you could walk that in a few hours. Eight mile circumference of the city. So it's not that. Others have said that three days must be a reference to the city being a royal capital. So to go into the city and do official business would take you three days. So you had to arrive at the city, go to the city gate, get your credentials, talk about who you wanted to meet. The next day you would actually do the business that you'd come to do. And then on the third day you'd wrap up whatever you needed to wrap up and you'd leave. It would take three days. Maybe. I mean, that's very speculative. And there's nowhere else in the Bible or ancient literature that sort of lays that out for us.

20:56 That's just a guess. I think the best guess, though, is that the ESV, even though it over translates it, is right. It's talking about not just Nineveh proper, the part within the city walls, but a region around the capital of Nineveh, which would have included other towns too. Now, why do I think that? Well, I don't want to bore you. I'm probably right on the edge of doing that already with this whole thing. But two reasons that I think it's talking about a region of Nineveh and not just Nineveh proper.

21:30 And it boils down basically to cows and Genesis. That's what it boils down to. So those reasons. Number one, the cows. You don't keep cows in the city walls. You just don't. They're in the surrounding fields and stuff. And so when this word goes out, it's going out also, you look at the rest of the story, kind of to the cows. And the response is done by the cows. It was done by the people to the cows, I should say that. It was done by the people to the cows. So this message is going out to a much bigger area than just the city walls. That's a weak reason for thinking this.

22:03 Second reason is much stronger, and that's Genesis. You see that phrase there in 2? Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city. You see that phrase there? It's also used in Genesis 10 about Nineveh, and it defines what it means. So in Genesis 10, the great city phrase is used to refer to a region that includes Nineveh and four other cities that were founded at the same time. So that great city seems to be referring to a region of which Nineveh is the capital and the center.

22:39 And it might be saying something like greater Nineveh, right? Like we talk about cities, like you've got Louisville proper and then you've got greater Louisville, so to speak, right? Tokyo proper and greater Tokyo. That seems to be what it's doing. And if you include all of those other four cities from Genesis chapter 10 and you make it a region, then it's not that hard at all to think that it would have taken Jonah three days to traverse the entire breadth of that region, right? All you need is like, you know, 45 miles, 60 miles or something of width of greater Nineveh in order for it to take three days.

23:13 Anyway, however you slice it, however you want to think about that, it's a big city. And in verse 3, Jonah goes to preach there, just like God has told him to. But then it's in verse 4 that the questions start to come up. So let's look at them and talk about it. Verse 4. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.

23:45 I mean, those verses are just extraordinary, if you think about that. They are just absolutely extraordinary. This right here in verse 4 is the whole message that Jonah preaches. It's all that's recorded here, and it's all recorded in five Hebrew words. That's it. It's five Hebrew words. It's all that Jonah preaches, and the response is incredible. The whole city, the whole region hears him and repents. Jonah is wildly successful in a way that nobody else in the Bible is. Luther, Martin Luther wrote this just kind of in shock at this. He says, in view of the repentance of Nineveh, I am tempted to say that no apostle or prophet not even Christ himself performed and accomplished with a single sermon the great thing that Jonah did.

24:38 Which makes it all the more hilarious that in chapter 4 he's furious about it. He hates that his sermon, so to speak, has been so successful. But there are questions even other than that. I mean, the big questions come in chapter 4, but right here in 3, there are questions that are kind of lurking just under the surface. So here's one. What does the text mean there by saying that Jonah went one day's journey into the city when we've just been told it's a three-day journey across it.

25:16 I mean, it could all just be unremarkable information, I guess. But the Bible doesn't tend to do that. I mean, one way or another, we've just been told that a visit takes three days to get across the region. Jonah only goes one day in and preaches his five-word message. I mean, I don't know about you, but I look at that and I start to scratch my head and I think, I wonder if we're not dealing with a kind of bare minimum obedience here.

25:49 I mean, if you look down in verse 6, it's really clear right there that he didn't even preach the word at the palace. The word had to be reported to the king by hearsay. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, et cetera, et cetera. You start to wonder if it was something more like this. Jonah knows that it's a three days journey. So he walks one day in, basically just barely into the outskirts of the city. And he says, 40 days from now, Nineveh will be overthrown.

26:21 And that's it. You start to wonder if it was a kind of halfway obedience. If that's how it went, then the response of the people is all the more remarkable. When you look to it, that message that he calls out. That message is super interesting. I mean, is that all he said? I mean, some people have said, oh, of course not. The Bible will often take longer sermons and summarize them, right? And it does, you know. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was probably more than just those few words.

26:53 It doesn't take that long to read that. It was probably a longer sermon than that. The Bible will often summarize a longer speech. But if you're going to summarize, you say the main points. This is just so bare minimum. It's just 40 days and then destruction. If you were going to summarize a call to repentance, for example, or introducing Yahweh to the people and giving them hope in Yahweh, surely you would write that down.

27:25 But the summary is just 40 days and then destruction. So if that's all he said, even if he said that message in a few different ways, if all he said to the people of Nineveh was this message of judgment, then the question becomes, well, was that all he was supposed to say? Was the message that God gave him really just a message of judgment, full stop? Or was Jonah also supposed to give them a message of hope and repentance? And if so, did he? Well, here's what I think.

27:58 I think Jonah was supposed to give them a message of repentance and I think he didn't do it. I think he was supposed to preach to them a message of judgment and repentance and I think he didn't do it. Okay, so why do I think he didn't do it? Well, look down at what the king and his nobles say in verse 9. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. They have absolutely no idea if repenting will do anything to stop the destruction.

28:36 I mean, if Jonah had told them, if his message was 40 days and Nineveh is going to be overthrown unless you repent to God, surely they wouldn't have said something like, well, who knows? We'll give this a shot. No, if they believed him about the destruction, they would have believed him in the second part, too. it doesn't look like he told them. Okay, well, why do I think that he was supposed to preach repentance? Well, it's a little weaker, but mostly it's because of that word change in chapter 3, verse 2, from call out against to call out to.

29:12 I think Jonah was supposed to give them an invitation. It implies that God didn't just want to thunder judgment on the city through Jonah. It implies that he wanted to implore the city to repent from its wickedness so that they wouldn't be destroyed. Also, look down through the story of Nineveh's repentance, starting in verse 5. Up until now in Jonah, with one exception in the mouths of these uneducated sailors, God is called Yahweh, the covenant name for himself, right? He's called Yahweh.

29:44 Starting in verse 5, it's just God, God, God. It's sort of the generic name for God. The people of Nineveh believed God. Verse 8, let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let them call out mightily to God. It's just God, God, God, God, God. Jonah didn't introduce them to the covenant Lord, Yahweh. He just told them about this supreme being. So you may think differently.

30:15 As we've seen over and over in this book, the language is deliberately ambiguous. But I think we're dealing with a Jonah here whose heart is not really changed at all. He does the bare minimum of what he's supposed to do. Okay, God, you want me to call out to them? Okay, I'll do it. I'll walk one third of the way into the city. I'll find the first people that I see and I'll say one sentence of judgment of what I hope happens to them and then I'll be done. And I will have bare bones obeyed you.

30:50 I think that's what we've got. And yet, despite Jonah's best efforts to make sure his preaching fails, he manages to do what no other prophet in the Bible manages to do. He is wildly successful. The entire city repents. They do what's typical of those in the ancient Near East. They put on sackcloth. That's a garment that's made out of goat's hair. It's very, very rough. And so when you put it on, it's very uncomfortable. And it's a symbol of humility before the gods. like all kinds of cultures throughout the ancient Near East would don this sackcloth to make themselves uncomfortable and symbolize their humility before the gods.

31:26 They do that, and they also fast, which was a very common sort of religious thing to do. The king and the nobles there, starting in verse 7, the king and the nobles issue a decree. They call everyone in the city to do these things. They put sackcloth on the animals even. I mean, which some people have said, ah, that just doesn't happen, that's fiction. You know, people don't put sackcloth on animals. It's just a silly objection to the story, though, because did any of you see or watch any of, say, the queen's funeral a couple of years ago? Did you watch that? They put those horses in mourning outfits.

32:00 I mean, we humans tend to do that to our animals. We bring them into whatever experience we as human beings are having. And it's not weird at all that the king would clothe the animals also in a citywide repentance. In verse 9 there, you get the kind of same logic as the sailors. Who knows? God might turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not perish. Maybe God will do that. And then in 10, he does. Look at verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them.

32:33 And he did not do it. So by the end of chapter 3, when you finish verse 10 of chapter 3, This book is the story of an unmitigated, glorious triumph. In fact, if the book ended there, if you just cut it off at chapter 3 and that's what we've had for the last 4,000 years or 3,000 years, it's just a wonderful, warm, fuzzy story of a guy who disobeys God, then learns his lesson, then obeys God, and the results are great.

33:05 It doesn't end there, though. And in chapter 4, the whole thing is going to take another dark turn, and it's in that chapter that we're going to encounter the deepest lessons of the book. But for now, it's worth staring for a few minutes at chapter 3 just all by itself and seeing what we can learn from it. So let me give you three observations, three points of application that I see in this story. If you spend a little time with it, I'm sure you could come up with more. It might be a great lunch conversation to say, what other points of application can we find in this story? But let me give you three.

33:37 Number one, number one, don't assume that you will get a second chance like Jonah. Don't assume that you will get a second chance like Jonah did. It's really remarkable to me in verse one that the text is so determined to point out that this is the word of the Lord coming to Jonah a second time. I mean, it's as if the author, whoever it is, maybe it was Jonah, maybe it was somebody else, But it's as if the author wants us to mark that, to see that this is the second time and realize that this is a particular mercy to Jonah.

34:13 It didn't have to be this way. God did not have to give him a second chance. He did not have to appoint that fish to be there to swallow Jonah and save his life. He didn't have to do it. This is mercy to Jonah. Friends, that is a critical thing to realize and to take to heart. God doesn't owe you anything. He doesn't owe anyone anything. The God of the universe sits enthroned above the cosmos and we are all rebels against that God. What we deserve, what we are owed from God is death.

34:47 That's it. I think sometimes people just assume because they sat through Sunday school and they heard the stories. They just assume that it's God's job to show us mercy as human beings. to give us second chances. But friends, it's not. It's not his job to show us mercy. And if it were just his job, if it were required of the God of the universe by someone else, that it be just his job to show mercy, it wouldn't be mercy at all.

35:21 It wouldn't be grace in the first place if it were owed to you. No, when God offers you a second chance, a third chance, a hundredth chance, That's not because he owes it to you. It's because he's chosen to show you grace. Let me put a fine point on it like this. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, how many times have you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ preached, maybe from this pulpit, and yet turned away from it?

35:58 How many times so far have you heard the truth that you're a sinner, that you're a rebel against God and you deserve to die, but Jesus, the Son of God, came and died the death that you ought to have died so that you could be forgiven of your sins as he stands as your substitute? How many times have you heard that gospel and yet said, not today, not today? Look, it's obvious right now that God is not done with you.

36:32 That he's not turned away from you. It's obvious because you're here right now hearing this gospel again. But how do you know that this right here today isn't the last time God will give you to hear it? Friends, that's why the Bible says again and again that today is the day of salvation. It means that the door is open right now. The king's arms are wide open saying, come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden.

37:05 I'll give you rest. I'll give you forgiveness. I'll give you peace and joy and heaven. I'll give it all to you. But they won't be open forever. There's going to come a day. There's going to come a day for you individually and then there's going to come a day for the world. When the doors close and the Savior's arms are folded. And the day of salvation will be over. But praise God, that's not this day. At least so far. Today is the day of salvation. Don't let it pass.

37:38 Because you are not owed a second chance. Believe in Christ. And put your faith in him. What about if you're a Christian? What if you're already a believer in Christ? I think here's the question for you. What do you know for a fact that God wants you to obey him in? And you're not doing it because you assume there will be another chance to do it later. I mean, you realize, don't you?

38:09 You do realize that God did not have to give Jonah a second chance to obey him. He didn't have to send that fish. And Christian, God doesn't have to give you a second chance either. Don't presume on the mercy of God. Obey. you may not get another shot at it. Don't assume you'll get a second chance. That's the first thing. Second thing, it is so good to know God and to know what God wants. It is so good just to know God and to know what God wants.

38:44 I mean, if you wrote down the main idea of the sermon a little while ago, you probably recognize that application point as the main point. Well, I think it is. I think it's the most important application point here. So people have always wondered why the Ninevites believed Jonah's word so quickly. Why they responded so immediately. And, you know, you can chalk it up to just a miracle of God's grace, right? The preaching of the word was just enormously fruitful, right? You can say that. Other people have given other guesses. Some people have guessed that maybe it was something physical about Jonah that clued them in that this is a serious deal.

39:18 Some people have said that his skin must have been, you know, messed up by the belly juices of the fish and something like that. I mean, maybe, but all of that is speculation. I think, actually, the best explanation is that it had to do with Assyrian religion. It had to do with the way the Assyrians were just primed to respond to any and every god all the time. See, the Assyrians were polytheists, which means they had a lot of gods. So, theists, that means they believed in God. Pali means many, so polytheists.

39:49 They had a lot of gods. And the thing was, when something happened, you could never really be sure why your so-called gods were doing it to you, or even which god it might be that's doing it. So the theology of the Assyrians, if it even deserves that name, became that the gods are just utterly unknowable. They're completely inscrutable. They're even capricious and mean sometimes. Sometimes they just do things to you, and there's nothing you can do about it, and they just did it out of the evil of their hearts.

40:23 So all you can do if something bad happens to you is just do some things that maybe look like repentance, humble yourself before all the gods, and hope for the best. So I think that's most likely. Assyrians, see this guy? He's come from a long way away. He's calling out about the overthrow of Nineveh. Maybe you couple that, who knows, with an eclipse or maybe God caused an earthquake. Who knows? The text doesn't tell us. But something just caused them to be very attuned to, oh, God is going to judge us.

40:54 What do we need to do? We need to repent. We need to humble ourselves. Get down, get down, get down, get down. And who knows, the king says, maybe this will cause whatever God this is to relent and not carry out this disaster on us. That is just a terrifying and heart-rending way to live, isn't it? I mean, it's just awful to not know in any way the gods who hold your life in their hands. To not know what those gods want you to do when they send down some thunderbolt against you.

41:30 And all you can do is just get on the dirt, get on the dirt, get on the dirt. You know, we actually have a prayer. It's not in the Bible. But it's a prayer that was written by some unknown Assyrian. He didn't put his name on it. It was an Assyrian guy right about this time. It's been dated to the mid-7th century, right about when Jonah was preaching. And I want to read some of it to you because I think it captures this abject desperation and ultimately despair that resulted from all of this about the gods.

42:01 So before I read you a little bit about it, it's written by someone who's obviously in a great deal of pain. Something has happened in his life. As far as he knows, some thunderbolt has come out of heaven from some God. And he's broken by it. You can almost just see the tear stains in the words. But he doesn't know why it's happened. He has no idea. And he doesn't even know who to turn to for help. So he writes this desperate prayer that he titles, In Desperation, a prayer to every God.

42:36 It's heartbreaking. Listen to some of it. Here's how it starts. Oh, may the wrath of the heart of my God be pacified. May the God who is unknown to me be pacified. May the goddess who is unknown to me be pacified. May the known and unknown gods be pacified. May the known and unknown goddesses be pacified. You hear the desperation of that? I need help. And I have no idea who to turn to.

43:07 he goes on the sin which i have committed i know not the iniquity which i have done i know not the transgression i have done i know not the lord hath looked upon me the god hath visited me the goddess hath become angry with me the known or unknown god hath straightened me the A known or unknown goddess hath brought affliction upon me. He's utterly lost. And yet his heart's broken.

43:41 And then he says this, and this just makes you want to weep. He says, although I am constantly looking for help, none of them takes me by the hand. When I weep, they do not come to my side. I utter laments, but no one hears me. I am troubled. I am overwhelmed. I cannot see. And then he ends it with this, just utter despair.

44:14 Man is ignorant. He knows nothing. Mankind, everyone that exists, what does he know? Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know. I mean, have you ever read much of anything that's more heartbreaking than that? He needs help. There's nobody to take his hand. Can you imagine living like that?

44:48 Can you imagine living with that kind of ignorance, that kind of confusion, that kind of bewilderment? I'm constantly looking for help, but no one takes my hand. When I weep, they don't come to my side. I mean contrast that contrast that with what David says in Psalm 51 have mercy on me oh God according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions my sin is ever before me against you you only have I sinned and done what's evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

45:35 Hide my face, hide your face from my sins. Blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach other transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from guilt, O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. You feel the difference there? He knows his God.

46:08 There's no confusion. God has told him who he is. He's told him what he wants. David knows he's broken the Lord's law and he knows where to go for help. You ever thought about that? Or do you just take it for granted? Of course God has spoken to us. Of course God's told us who he is and what he wants. But have you ever thought about the difference between you as a Christian and that poor Assyrian man 3,000 years ago? Our God is good and gracious and loving.

46:40 And we owe him our worship and praise simply because he has not left us in the dark. He has revealed himself to us. Friend, rejoice in that and do not take it for granted. Number three, it is good to have a God who relents. It is good to have a God who relents. So this repentance of the Ninevites, is it genuine?

47:15 Is it a genuine repentance? I mean, it seems to have been. And the great evidence is not so much in what they said or what they did. It's that God, you know, verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, he relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Seems to have been genuine. We also know for a fact that it was fairly shallow and short-lived. I mean, shallow because they're not turning their entire lives over to the worship of Yahweh, the covenant God.

47:47 They're not doing that. Short-lived because we know for a fact that within 50 years, The Assyrian Empire would be cutting off people's heads and stacking them up in front of the city in order to terrify the city. We know what they did to the northern kingdom of Israel. We know that whatever repentance they gave of their wickedness didn't last a generation before they were back doing the same things. And yet, it seems to have been genuine, at least in the moment. An older generation would have called us to rejoice here in God's uncovenanted mercies to people.

48:23 uncovenanted mercies. In other words, God is kind often even to people with whom he is not in covenant. If God is kind to the United States of America in the coming years, despite all of this nation's rush toward wickedness, it will be an uncovenanted mercy. God is not in covenant in any way whatsoever with the United States of America. And if he's kind, it will be an uncovenanted kindness? Some people have been confused by the fact that God, in fact, relents from destroying Nineveh. They say, well, he went back on his word, and the message was 40 days from now, Nineveh is going to be overthrown, and he went back on his word. I think that's a pretty shallow objection to this. I don't think you have to think about it that hard to see that it's It's not that confusing.

49:19 Often in the Bible, God will give warnings of what is coming if people or nations continue on their sinful path. And then when they repent due to that warning, the thing that was warned about doesn't come to pass. It's a very common thing for God to do. In Jeremiah, he even tells us that that's what he does. He says this, it's like he has to spell it out for us so we're not confused. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it and if it does evil in my sight not listening to my voice then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it and then he goes on with the corollary if I tell some nation that I'm going to do an evil to it and if they repent I will relent and not do the evil that I had intended to do so it seems to me that that's what's happening here pretty simply but here's what i want you to see i want you to see here not just the bare fact that our god is a god who relents i want you to see here how incredibly good it is that our god is a god who relents

50:23 from judgment they see that right the whole the whole of our hope in the christian gospel rests on the fact that our god is a god who in fact relents because because the judgment that fell on every single one of us was you deserve to die all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death but in Christ God relents in Christ he relents it's that whole nevertheless it's that whole and yet that we talked about last week you're going to live in eternity you're going to be with Jesus for eternity because God relents friends some of you need God to relent toward you today because right now the only thing hanging over your life the only thing hanging over your eternity is ascendance of judgment and you need that taken away there's only one way to do that there's only one way in the universe

51:28 that that happens and it's not by wearing sackcloth and fasting it's by turning to the one person who can save sinners and that's Jesus Christ. He's the one who lived the life you ought to have lived and died the death that you deserved for your sin. And he's the one now that stands with his arms wide open saying, come to me and I will give you salvation. Our God relents. Praise God. Let's pray.

52:04 Our Lord God, we thank you this morning that you are a God of great mercy. That you are a God whose heart is filled with compassion for people. And we thank you, O Lord, that you have done everything to give your people salvation. Our Father, we pray this morning that if there's anyone here today who doesn't know you as Lord and Savior, who doesn't yet know you, that this would be the day of salvation for them. Lord, we pray that every time they, for the rest of their lives, for the rest of eternity, every time they read the book of Jonah, they'd be able to recall the day when you saved them from sin and from death and from hell.

52:42 Lord, we pray all of this in the name of Jesus, our Savior and our Lord. Amen.