Renewed Commission of the Prophet

Introduction: The Fascinating Book of Jonah and its Purpose

0:03 I trust you will have your Bibles open before you to the passage read in our hearing by Mr. Williams. We come this evening to the seventh in our series of studies in this portion of the Word of God, which, as far as I'm concerned, can be described simply by no better word than the word fascinating. For when one picks up this book and begins to read it, for what it is, that is, straight historical narrative, a record of facts pertaining to God's dealings with a strange man named Jonah and his strange providential dealings in the life of that man, surely the word fascinating and words even stronger only begin to describe what is herein given to us. Accepting the historicity of the book, we have considered from the first chapter the overall purpose of the book, the initial commission of Jonah, the disobedience of the prophet, and then on into chapter two, the restoration of the backslidden prophet. In our study last week, that subplot in chapter one, the conversion of the pagan sailors, which so eloquently underscores the purpose of the book, the largeness of God's work, to the pagans, in which God shows that large heart,

1:33 using as his pulpit the angry sea and the disobedient prophet to bring those pagan sailors to faith and repentance. Now this evening, we come to chapter three, and perhaps we should back up to verse ten of chapter two.

Jonah's Release and Bewilderment

1:55 The prophet has prayed and God has heard his prayer, and we read, and we read in verse ten, the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Now the first four verses of chapter three. And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to 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 Jehovah.

2:27 Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city, a 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.

2:46 It is a great help to read one's Bible with a measure of sanctified imagination. And I wonder if you've ever paused to make at least an effort to feel what Jonah must have felt between verse ten of chapter two and verse one of chapter three. For a period of time that probably only later by direct revelation could he calculate his three days and nights. For how does one calculate time in the pitch black, dark dampness of a whale's belly?

3:22 No sundial will work. He had no timex.

3:27 And so probably by direct revelation subsequent to the experience, God revealed the time period of his intuition, the time period of Jonah's entombment in the belly of the whale. But for what probably seemed like an eternity, Jonah has been conscious that he is alive, but alive, as it were, in this living tomb of the whale's belly. And suddenly he feels something of the violent wrenching of that entombment, and he feels himself hurled out upon the dry land. And when he comes to his senses, no doubt, he blinks back.

4:04 And he says, because he's been in that darkness for those three days and nights. And he squints out through eyes and probably a face, shriveled from the continual dampness of the whale's belly. And he begins to try to get his bearings. Where am I?

4:22 What am I doing? And he begins to reflect. And he reflects upon the unusual providence that has brought him alive, there upon the shore of a strange place, a strange piece of real estate. His mind goes back over God's dealings with him in past days.

4:41 The last sight he saw before he awakes, as it were, to see this new world on the dry land was the heaving billows of that angry sea. And now as his mind is filled, no doubt, with a thousand thoughts about the events of the past hours, God's powerful dealings with him, God's strange providence in preserving him, and as no doubt he's wondering, Where am I? Where shall I go? What shall I do?

The Renewed Commission: Its Sovereignty

5:09 In that situation we read the words of verse 1 in chapter 3, And the word of Jehovah came unto him the second time. And so in these words that are before us, we have the first division of chapter 3, what I am calling the renewed commission of the prophet, verses 1 and 2. And then in verses 3 and 4, we have the response of the prophet. And then in verses 5 through 9, the repentance of the city.

5:42 And in verse 10, the reaction of the Lord to that repentance. Tonight we shall consider just the first four verses, these two divisions, the renewed commission of the prophet Jonah, and the response of the prophet to that commission. Notice first of all, as we consider this renewed commission, three elements in that commission. And the first element is its sheer sovereignty.

6:11 Look at the language of the text. And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah. Jonah stands no doubt bewildered upon this strange shore, upon which he has been cast by a strange providence. He is afraid, if he knows what his bearings are, to go back to Israel.

6:35 For God has nowhere rescinded the original commission. And yet in the light of his disobedience and the strange judgment of God, in which he became, as we saw last week, a veritable sacrifice to the sea, although preserved in the providence of God, it would be presumptuous for him to think that he was still God's appointed prophet, having been so blatantly disobedient, having come under this unusual judgment. On the one hand, he dare not go back to Israel. On the other hand, he dare not go ahead to Nineveh.

7:08 What shall he do? And in that situation, God sovereignly, God unilaterally comes, as He does again and again to His prophets. He comes in terms of His explicit word of commission. The word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time.

7:33 And you will notice that in that word there is no consulting with his subject. The God King of Israel, Jehovah, speaks in regal majesty and in sovereign authority. Jonah, go to Nineveh and preach what I tell you. There is no negotiating with his servant.

7:53 There is no cajoling or pleading. There is nothing but the exercise of the rights and prerogatives of sovereign majesty. And we must never forget that that is the precise relationship which Jehovah sustained to every Israelite. Jehovah was not only the Redeemer but the God King of the nation of Israel.

8:16 And when He laid His hands upon one of the subjects and spoke, it was the speaking of the King to the subject. And so the element of this renewed commission that stands on the very surface of the text is its sovereignty. It is God speaking to the creature and seeking thereby not only to lay before the creature the will of the sovereign but to secure the obedience of His subject. And I want to say just briefly by way of application that though there are elements in this sovereign word of God peculiar to the relationship of a prophet to Jehovah, there is an element that is common to all of the people of God in every age, wherever and whenever the word of God comes to them. This element of unilateral authoritarian directive lies at the heart of all true preaching. We live in a day that doesn't like the element of unilateral sovereign prerogative exercised in preaching. I remember preaching in one place and a young man came to me and at least he was honest and he said, you know, something bothers me about your ministry.

9:33 I said, well, tell me. He said, I'm just not used to this authoritative element. I'm used to dialogue and sharing. I said, well, you may well be.

9:45 But my retort was, what is the concept of preaching set forth in the word of God? And it is a picking up of that element that is so dominant in the ministry of the prophets, thus saith the Lord. And when a prophet came, the prophet did not come and say to his fellow Israelites, I believe by the cultivation of my inner life I've come to an unusual and heightened sense of spiritual sensitivity. Would you come so we can share together something of the fruits of my sensitivity, not on your life.

10:19 The prophet came saying, thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, and you see it is that element of prophetic authority that is present in all true preaching. There is the great difference that no preacher who is worthy of the name will claim direct revelation. He claims to speak as the fruit of careful analysis of the words of God in the context. He concerns himself with grammar and with setting and with culture and all of those things.

10:53 But when he rightly opens up a text of the word of God and announces that text, my friend, it is God himself coming in his word, unilaterally, sovereignly, authoritatively. And when God speaks, let the earth keep silence. In the language of Isaiah 66, the prophet says, to whom will God look? The God who made heaven and earth, he says, I will look to this man, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit.

11:24 And who trembleth at my word. And so we see the renewed commission coming as a word from God, marked, first of all, by its sovereignty. But then in the second place, the renewed commission in the text was not only sovereign, but it was gracious. And the graciousness is underscored in three things that are in the text.

The Renewed Commission: Its Graciousness

11:49 Look at the language. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. That's grace. It came the second time.

11:58 That's grace. And it pertained to Nineveh. That's grace. You see, grace oozes from this renewed commission.

12:07 How so? Well, consider with me. It was the word of the Lord that came to Jonah. Now, who was Jonah?

12:16 Someone who just graduated from the school of sanctification, summa cum laude? No, sir. He's a man that's just been spit up by a whale or of a great fish, into which he had gone as a chastisement from God for his blatant, inexcusable disobedience to the revealed will of God. And yet that same God who sent, or in the language of the text, hurled the mighty wind and tempest upon the sea, who prepared a great fish, who entombs the prophet for three days and nights, it's that God who comes and renews his commission and reinstates him to the role of a prophet. Now, you see, grace is stamped upon the face of such dealings. God does not always display His grace, that undeserved kindness, His goodness to the ill-deserving in so large a measure. It would have been a wonderful display of grace simply to preserve and forgive the prophet, and then to have sent him back to Israel, there forever to stand amazed that he was not dead.

13:36 But the grace that forgave and preserved him is the grace that restored him to his place of usefulness. You see, there's no disparity between the God of the Old and the God of the New Testament. He is the One Jehovah. Do we not have a marvelous picture of this in Jehovah Jesus dealing with another disobedient prophet?

14:01 One whose mouth was set apart to speak for his Lord, but from that very mouth there came foul oaths and cursing under pressure, saying, I know not the man. And you have that tender scene in John's Gospel where the Lord singles out Peter, reinstates him, and then He says, feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my lambs. Oh, how gracious is the God of Jonah who is the God of Peter, who is our God. And although we perhaps have not been as dramatic in our disobedience as was Jonah, surely again and again we have had words from God as explicit as was the word to Jonah, go to Nineveh. We have had a word from God. That is an area of duty and responsibility clearly delineated in Scripture, and we have gone 180 degrees in the other direction. And God has come to us as we considered this morning again and again in grace, not only forgiving, not only cleansing, not only reinstating us to communion with Himself, but even reinstating us to a place of function and usefulness in His Kingdom.

15:27 This is the God who is spoken of in Hosea, where backsliding Israel is encouraged to take words and return unto the Lord, and then we have the wonderful promise, I will love them freely. What a wonderful thing to know that the gracious God who dealt so tenderly with Jonah is the God whom we serve. But then notice further, it was gracious not only because it came to Jonah, and came the second time, but it came concerning Nineveh. Arise and go to Nineveh, that city that is great, not only in size, but great in wickedness.

16:11 Remember the description of chapter 1 and verse 2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. Here is a city, part of a nation, which has no covenant engagements with God. God never entered into formal covenant commitments to this nation of Assyria and to the city of Nineveh.

16:37 He did so with Israel at Mount Sinai. God becomes husband as well as the king of His people. These people could not point to any covenant engagements on their behalf. Here is a city that abounds in wickedness, and yet you see what God is saying?

16:54 He is so determined to be gracious to this city that He takes the messenger upon whom He has laid His hand and says in essence, Do what you will, Jonah. I will yet make you My mouthpiece to that city. And so God must bring His prophet through that ordeal of His watery grave and the strange events of the three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, causing the fish to vomit Him out, recommission Him, and take Him to that city because God is determined to show grace to those poor pagan Ninevites. And He is saying in essence, Nothing will hinder Me.

17:39 I could only think of John 10 in verse 16 as I meditated upon this. The Lord Jesus said, Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring. And you get little hints of that in the Old Testament. It was this very fact, you see, that irritated the Jews of our Lord's day in His own hometown when He spoke of the Spirit being upon Him to proclaim light to Gentiles.

18:08 And He reminds them that there were many widows in the days of the prophet, but unto none of the kosher widows was the prophet sent. He was sent to a Gentile dog widow. Many lepers in the days of the prophet, but to no kosher lepers. But to no kosher leper was the prophet sent.

18:29 Naaman the Syrian. You see, God has manifested that Spirit that is brought to its full expression in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in the breaking down of the barrier between Jew and Gentile and the sending of the Gospel to all the nations. And so this renewed commission is not only sovereign, it is in every sense, a gracious commission.

18:59 What claim does Nineveh have upon Jehovah? Nineveh says in essence by its lifestyle denying even the screaming of its own native natural conscience, we'll do our own thing, we'll have our own lifestyle, we're a law to ourselves, we're accountable to no one. And God says in grace, I will bear down upon your conscience with the reality that you are accountable to someone. And the prophet will come saying, Jehovah, the God of the Israelites knows your conduct.

19:35 That God is offended with your conduct. That God will bring judgment upon you. And if any man says, wait a minute, we never entered into any arrangements with Jehovah. We never asked to be engaged to Him and have any responsibility to Him.

19:50 It didn't matter a hill of beans. They were God's creatures and God has His rights over all His creatures in the earth. You may sit there as an unconverted man or woman, boy or girl, and say, look, I never made any arrangements to have anything to do with God. I didn't ask to be born in a Christian home and have parents who tried to frame my life by Christian standards.

20:14 God never gave you life and breath to do... He gave you life and breath to live to the praise of your Creator.

20:43 And wonder of wonders, though you have sinned, turned your back upon Him, and that God has not relinquished His rights over you as the sovereign judge of the universe and could justly damn you. What does He do? His heart is so moved with pity to sinners that He continually sends His Jonas. He overcomes all of the barriers within and without that would keep true preaching from ever existing on the face of the earth.

21:15 Though He does not deal seriously so dramatically as He did with Jonah, I tell you He deals powerfully to help any man look you straight in the eye and say to you, Almighty, God has rights over you. You have offended Him by your sin and unless you repent, you'll perish. No man in his right mind naturally wants to bring such a message of doom. Who am I, a fellow creature, to say to you, for you'll be overthrown?

21:48 There's been an operation of a power upon my heart greater than my own native reluctance to herald such a message. And the same Spirit who prevailed in the heart of Jonah prevails in the hearts of His lesser Jonas, His servants, who announce to you in the name of the God of heaven, whether you like it or not, you're God's preacher, accountable, as it were, our patience of God. There comes a time when the warnings will cease and grace will give way to judgment. Oh, my friends, some of you who this very day resent the fact that there's plain preaching in this place, when will you come to the realization it's the most gracious thing for your mom and dad to plead for your salvation, to give you Sunday school teachers and friends and pastors and elders? Think of all the cities of that day and God biting them and they sank down into hell. Well, for their sins,

23:15 and no overture of grace in terms of the preaching of Jehovah ever came to them. My friend, you could have been bypassed, reared in a pagan home where the name of God was never reverently upon the lips of praying mother and father, reared in a pagan home where the Bible was never opened. You could have sunk into hell! And some of you are so duped by sin you sit there tonight even whispering in your mind, I wish it were so!

23:46 Oh, the insanity of sin! You could sit in the churches in which multitudes have sat today and heard the pious lies, do a little good, be sweet, be nice, chuck yourself under the chin and all will be well. And the same preacher will stand by your lifeless form at a funeral and talk you into heaven. But, my friends, his words won't get you there.

24:14 God has already made an account of it. He made an accounting with your soul and you'll be in hell. Oh, how gracious that the word of the Lord would come the second time to Jonah. Gracious because it comes to Jonah who doesn't deserve to be reinstated.

24:32 It comes the second time. Gracious because it comes concerning Nineveh, a city of wickedness that deserves no mercy. Well, that renewed commission was sovereign. The renewed commission was gracious.

The Renewed Commission: Its Explicitness

24:49 But thirdly, and I touch upon this just briefly, it was explicit. Look at the language of the text. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Arise, Jonah.

25:05 Don't sit there blinking. Don't sit there pinching yourself or watching your shriveled skin. Jonah, don't sit there merely reflecting on my past dealings with you. Jonah, get up.

25:18 Secondly, Jonah, having got up, go to Nineveh. Don't go back to Israel. Don't go to Tarshish again. Don't go ship hunting.

25:26 Go to Nineveh. And when you get to Nineveh, you don't do your own thing. You don't enter into dialogue. You preach what I tell you to preach.

The Prophet's Response: Unquestioned Obedience

25:37 There was an explicit recommissioning of the prophet of God. And once again, as in the initial commission, a disposition of believing, a disposition to God, could result in but one thing. And thank God we find it now in verses 3 and 4, the response of the prophet. And what we have in verses 3 and 4 is a summary statement of the first part of verse 3.

26:01 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. That's the summary statement. Then you have a detailed description of what happened in verses 3b and verse 4. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city on a three days journey.

26:20 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. Let's look then very briefly at this response of the prophet, the capsule statement 3a, and then the detailed description 3b and verse 4. And the thing that stands out on the very surface of this capsule description was that Jonah rendered that unquestioned, detailed, implicit obedience, which was bound up in the explicit nature of the commission.

26:55 In the previous response, the only thing he did that God told him to do was rise up. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, 1, 1, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. Verse 3, But Jonah rose up, and from that point on was disobedience. Now he rose up, he went to Nineveh, and he preached.

27:16 He preached what God commanded him to preach. Here is a military-like conformity to high orders. He arises, goes to Nineveh, and in every detail, the text says, his actions accorded with the word of Jehovah. Now you see, what happened before, there was no lack of knowledge concerning the will of God.

27:41 The word of Jehovah had come very clearly to his mind and to his understanding. But that word had been smothered by the word of his own carnal reasonings, his own fears and his own apprehensions. But now he could say with David, I made haste and delayed not to keep thy commandments. And you see, this is ultimately the indispensable evidence of any supposed return from spiritual declension.

28:11 May I underscore that? This is the ultimate test of any supposed return from spiritual declension. How do we know that what Jonah experienced in the belly of that fish as we studied in his prayer, how do we know that that was genuine spiritual upheaval, bringing him back to a place of renewed obedience, in which he says in his closing part of the prayer, I will pay that which I have vowed. Well, it was not that sitting there on the place where the fish vomited him up.

28:48 Jonah had wonderful tinglys up and down his spine and felt the Lord so precious and broke out in tongues and had a glory, hallelujah experience and ran around to any starfish on the shore, shaking them to enter into his joy of his glory. No, no, no, no, no, no. The ultimate test of any supposed spiritual renewal is right here. Does it result in a return to explicit obedience to the revealed will of God?

29:21 And I don't care how much you weep when you think you're having dealings with God. It matters not how much joy you say you experience if the supposed return does not result in the kind of unquestioned, implicit obedience as is described of Jonah. It is spurious. And I am amazed at how many people leave themselves vulnerable to spiritual deception at this point.

29:52 You see, because their great grief is not that they've really sinned, but because having sinned they feel bad, their spiritual exercises are all over when they feel better. And the devil is a master of imparting spurious feelings. My friend, don't you gauge where you are by a feel-o-meter. You gauge where you are by the extent to which your feet are being planted resolutely and determinately in the revealed will of God.

30:30 Remember when Pastor Fisher preached on Revelation 2? What is the Lord's prescription for the loss of first love? Remember, repent and what? Do the first works.

The Demanding Nature of Jonah's Obedience

30:45 Paul said he preached that men should repent and turn to God and do works meet for, answering to, consistent with repentance. What is true in conversion is true in the restoration of a backslidden Christian. It is dogged, naked obedience, feelings or no feelings, which is the acid test of the validity of the professed experience. Well, let's move from the capsule statement to the detailed description and if the capsule statement emphasizes his obedience as being implicit, this detailed description emphasizes his obedience as being very demanding. Demanding, first of all, because of the greatness of the city. Look at the text. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city, or as you see in the margin of the 1901, a city great unto God of three days, journey.

31:52 Now it doesn't mean great unto God in the sense of moral greatness, but of its physical size and influence. And without going into the many theories as to the precise interpretation of three days journey, suffice it to say that in all probability this is a description of what we would call the greater metropolitan Nineveh area. And if we take a day's journey as being 15 to 20 miles, we are told that the greater metropolitan Nineveh area had a circumference of 60 miles. So we think we live in the greater New York, New Jersey metropolitan area.

32:36 You get some idea of the vastness of this city. And Jonah is commissioned to go to a city that is great before God. It was the seat of the cruel military might and power of all Assyrians. And the Assyrians were known for their heartless cruelty and warfare, for their aggressive militaristic spirit.

33:03 They were, we might say, the Russia and the Red China of that period in world history. And so the demanding nature of Jonah's obedience is underscored first of all by the greatness of the city, but then secondly by the gravity of his message. Look at it. What is he to say to these people?

33:22 Well, if he was to come into the city and say, God loves you all and has a wonderful plan for your life, he might have been welcomed as a hero. But he began to enter into the city a day's journey and he cried. And this is what God told him to cry. Yet forty days and none of them shall be overthrown.

33:45 You talk about demanding obedience. You're going into a city that is known for its warlike aggression. You hear, as it were, the beating of the drums of war drawing closer to your own homeland there in Israel as you see the Assyrian world power gathering strength with each passing year, extending its territory. And you know that sooner or later your own nation that you love, whose history you know, will also be inundated with that power.

34:15 And you've got to face them as an Israelite with no army, no luger at your side, no official recognition whatsoever. And say, listen, fellas, you've had it. If in forty days everything doesn't change around here, everything will be changed by Almighty God. Forty days and none of them shall be overthrown.

34:42 Now, does this mean that he simply parroted those words without any explanation or expansion, just like a broken record walked through the cities and the towns. Forty days, none of them overthrown. No. There is clear evidence in the text and some very clear evidence from the New Testament that there was great expansion upon that.

35:02 You will notice in verse 9 that when the king summons the entire city to repentance he does so in terms of certain realities which no doubt were an essential part of Jonah's preaching. He says, let each one turn, verse 8, let each one turn from his evil way, from the violence that is in his hands, indicating that Jonah specified some of the national sins of Assyria, the warlike viciousness of the Assyrian people. Then he goes on to say, who knows whether God will not turn and repent and turn from his fierce anger, indicating that Jonah expounded that it was the anger of Jehovah against sins, sins committed by men who were accountable to him which was provoking his judgment. These, I say, are strong suggestions that Jonah did not simply parrot those words but he expanded and commented upon them. And then Luke 11 in verse 30 in the New Testament gives us an interesting side light. We read in Luke 11, 30, for even as Jonah, the man Jonah, became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this generation.

36:29 Our Lord says that Jonah's person was a sign. In other words, the credentials which lay behind his message and validating it was his own experience. And he no doubt conveyed that experience when he would come to Nineveh. He would declare to them this amazing story of how God had caused him to be cast into a sea because he would not come to Nineveh.

36:59 How God had prepared a great fish and in that fish had prepared him. How God had caused him to be vomited up on the land. How God had commissioned him a second time. And I'll never forget one preacher suggesting, and I only suggest and I cannot at this point assert, could it be, could it be that God even allowed some of the natural juices that were there in the belly of the fish to put some permanent mark upon the very physical appearance of Jonah that would cause everyone to be astounded and say, man, what in the world is wrong with you?

37:35 Why do you have that strange bleached look? And Jonah would say, I come to you out of the womb of a great fish. Almighty God is so determined to bring his message to this city that he's bringing it to you through a man who has a strange history. Jonah himself is a sign and we shall pick up more of that when we see the fulfillment of the typology in Jesus Christ.

38:02 But suffice it to say for now, there was gravity to this message. He comes and surely if any preacher ever felt the language of the apostle, he felt it. Who is sufficient for these things? I come with no army.

38:17 I come with no heralds. I come with no letters of commendation. I come from a strange little nation. I come to announce not that God loves you, not that God is favorable to you.

38:29 I come to announce the God of heaven is angry. The God of heaven will overthrow you. The only credentials he had was the history of God's strange dealings with him. Surely Jonah felt who is sufficient for these things.

The Preacher's Fainting Fit and God's Power

38:47 We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything is from ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. It was demanding obedience, not only because of the greatness of that city, but because of the gravity of his message. And oh, may I say to you who engage in preaching and you who aspire to that awesome work, the most wonderful place in all the world to be as a preacher is to be in the midst of a holy fainting fest. To be in the midst of a holy fainting fest.

39:29 We are not sufficient of ourselves. And when you feel experimentally that reality as Jonah felt it, imagine as he begins to come up over the plains and sees that vast metropolis and ringing in his consciousness is the word of Jehovah, preach unto Nineveh forty days and you've had it. Can you imagine how he must have died a thousand deaths? When he first opened his mouth and said, men, women, boys and girls of Nineveh, I come in the name of Jehovah, God of Israel, and I come to tell you unless you turn from your sins you'll be overthrown.

40:13 If ever a man would feel the foolishness of preaching, he would feel it. What power in my words! I who am a sinner, I who perhaps bear in my very physical appearance the indisputable evidence of my disobedience, my unworthiness, I stand only by grace and I proclaim a message which will only bring upon me the anger of its recipients unless God is pleased to show mercy. That's what I mean by standing in the midst of a fainting fit.

40:47 For when I stand to preach here to you who are yet in your sins, I recognize that your hearts are as adamant against the God whom I preach as were those walled cities against any invaders. And I have no foolish notion that by entreaty and by thunder and by the sweet overtures of mercy there is some way that I can prevail upon you to become a Christian. My friend, I know if God does not attach almighty energy to my words spoken in His name, I may as well speak in Chinese or Hindustani or Bengali. My friend, has God come with His word and impressed upon you? He's got claims upon you. That's my only hope.

The Humbling Power of God's Word

41:47 Dear preacher friend, aspiring preacher, that's your only hope. And then I want to say by a final word of application, and then we're done. Imagine how humbling this was to Nineveh. Who does God send to Nineveh?

42:02 What does God send? God does not send someone riding upon a royal chariot. He sends a man who has the marks of death upon him. And He sends him with one thing, a word from heaven.

42:22 That's all. How humbling to Nineveh. Nineveh impressed with might. Nineveh impressed with power.

42:33 Nineveh impressed with the aggregate of human wisdom and human ingenuity, human force. And God sends a man with the marks of death upon him with just a word in his mouth. And my sinner friend, if you're ever to be converted, God will humble you the same way. For if God ever saves you, you know how He's going to save you?

43:01 Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Why do you say if God would do something to impress me? No, my friend. All that He'll do is impress you.

43:11 He's done. In sending the one who came through the jaws of death, the greater than Jonah, who in His last words before He went back to heaven said to those who were His followers, you are to preach repentance in My name unto all the nations. And the Lord Jesus comes in His resurrection power, in the person of His sent servants. And what does He do?

43:39 Does He impress you with something that impinges upon your carnal senses to persuade you and to force you? No, no. He comes with His word and He admonishes, He declares, He entreats, He explains. And He says, all who will be His people will be prevailed upon by that word.

44:07 Listen to His own word. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death unto life. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring. They shall hear My voice.

44:29 There shall be one fold, one shepherd. My sheep hear My voice. Oh, my dear unconverted friend, you Ninevites sitting here tonight, young or old, man or woman, externally wicked and profligate or perhaps quite religious and respectable, but you've never bowed to Jehovah Jesus in repentance and faith. Don't you look for anything more.

44:59 Some of you are waiting for God to zap you, for God to do some extraordinary thing before you will flee from your sins and embrace the offer of mercy. God will give you no such thing. He comes to you in the Gospel and He says, yet forty days, not with that precise limitation, but He does say, except you repent, you'll perish. And why does He come?

45:32 Well, as we shall see in the subsequent study, the very pronouncement of judgment was a wonderful overture of mercy. If God had determined to give it to Him, He would have done it without any word from a prophet. Why forty days? God was saying, there is still a space for repentance.

45:52 Time to repent! Oh, my friend, you're alive. God's kept your mind sane. You're able to listen to the words that come out of my mouth and are picked up by your ears and transmitted by the auditory nerve to the brain and they register conscious, intelligent thought.

46:10 My friend, how long do you think you'll have that sanity? God could take it in a moment! While there is yet sanity, while there is yet rationality, while God in His mercy, through the pressure of parents whose yoke you would fain throw off, and through the grace He's put in the hearts of His servants, the message of judgment comes. But, my friend, woven through that message is the fabric of mercy.

46:44 And we announce to you that God will judge you in your sins to the end that you might flee your sins and find mercy. For the greater than Jonah has come. He has come through the ordeal of three days and nights in the bowels of the earth, and He's come to proclaim light to us Gentiles. Oh, don't despise the overtures of His mercy.

47:07 And if by the grace of God you see yourself as a Ninevite who was made a man by the grace of God and by the grace of the Ninevite who was marked for judgment, but God has graciously sent His Jonas, oh, my friend, do you see the pure graciousness of God's dealings with you? Why did God ever bring a Jonah to you? Or a combination of Jonas who told you the truth about yourself and about God and sin when multitudes sink into the grave and to hell and never hear that truth? Oh, what debtors we are to grace.

Conclusion: Debtors to Grace and the Call to Obedience

47:48 May the realization of the grace of God to us in Christ fire our hearts with new vigor to serve Him, to love Him, to prove the validity of that love by a life of explicit obedience no matter how demanding. For when God made demands upon His prophet, His grace went before Him to enable Him to do what He wanted to do. And then we'll see in the next chapter, the moment God withdraws that grace, Jonah's a poor, messed-up man all over again. This is the most wonderful part of Jonah's life right here.

48:31 We see Jonah acting consistent with the grace of God to him. Oh, my friend, are you acting consistently with the grace of God to you? A life of unquestioned obedience and what that obedience may be is the ultimate test of your appreciation of the grace of God. Let us pray.

49:04 Our Father, we give You praise for the written word of God. Many of us can think of times in our past lives when we had a subtle wish that You would still speak by a direct word of Your desire. Because Your Word says we have a more sure word of prophecy, we bless You for the written Scriptures given by Your own breath, profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness. And we pray that the same Spirit who gave that word will seal it to our hearts so that we may be proud of it. And we pray that Your Word will be accepted in our hearts for our sins and our sins and our sins and our sins and our sins and our sins and our sins increasing obedience, no matter what the cost of that obedience may be.

50:29 Hear our prayer as we offer it in Jesus' name. Amen.