Repentance and Conversion of the Ninevites

Introduction: God's Universal Saving Designs and the Ninevites' Repentance

0:03 In Isaiah 45 and verse 22, the living God says through the mouth of his prophet Isaiah, Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved, for I am God, and there is none else. Surely it was this great truth that God is the God of the ends of the earth that the nation of Israel was all too prone to forget, and it is that truth, perhaps above all others, which this fascinating book of the prophet Jonah is calculated to set before our minds with unusual vividness and power,

0:48 the great truth that God is the God of the ends of the earth, that his saving designs were never limited, even in the days of Israel, to just that nation. In the course of our study of the book, of the prophet Jonah, we come this evening to consider that section in chapter 3, beginning with verse 5 and concluding with verse 9, that we may, in the light of the New Testament, entitle the record of the repentance and conversion of the Ninevites. Now, whenever the New Testament gives us a comment upon the Old, we must always read the Old

1:32 in the light of the New Testament, We must never read the Old in its own light, but we must read it in the light of the age of fulfillment. And in the twelfth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, our Lord says in verse 41, the men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, And behold a greater than Jonah is here. And here our Lord himself puts his imprimatur,

2:13 puts his stamp of approval upon the work of repentance wrought in the hearts and lives of the Ninevites. Now, remember the setting of this portion that will form the basis of our meditation this evening. The disobedient prophet who originally had no intention a cuanto marco di Andrew, onto a opsist whom he thinks was rough Caetano mor stellen. The disobedient prophet who originally had no intention of going and preaching to Nineveh has been turned from his course of disobedience into a path of explicit obedience to the will of God. The record of that renewed obedience

2:48 is given to us in the first four verses of the third chapter. He makes his way to Nineveh. He enters a day's journey. Now here again the commentators have quite a time precisely or seeking precisely to identify the sense in which according to verse four he entered a day's journey. Did he go on a straight line? Are they speaking about the length of

The Astonishing Rapidity of Nineveh's Response

3:14 a day's journey as he wound through the streets? Well as far as I'm concerned such detail is of little importance. The Holy Spirit has recorded this matter of a day's journey to underscore the amazing rapidity of the response of the Ninevites to the procession of the preaching of Jonah. Try to feel something of the magnitude of this work in so brief a period of time. One morning everything begins in Nineveh as usual. Merchants take their

3:48 wares and go to the marketplace. Farmers go out to their place where they work their fields. Mothers go to knead their bread and to prepare the staple foods of the day. The sun rises.

4:02 Any observer would say everything in Nineveh this day is business as usual. Then early in that day a strange looking man, perhaps bearing in his very physical appearance the reminders of that ordeal of a symbolic death and resurrection, a man who has spent three days and nights in the belly of a great fish and has been thrown up upon the land and has now made his journey and is no doubt unkempt and dead. Dusty and bearing in his physical body the marks of the arduous journey as well as that rigorous ordeal. This strange man who from his dress and countenance and bearing is obviously

4:47 a foreigner begins to preach and he preaches a message saying 40 days in Nineveh shall be utterly overthrown. One of the words used to describe the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. This was no minor or. Partial overthrow. This was a pronouncement of a total destruction of everything that

5:08 marked Nineveh as a city. And this strange man comes in the morning and begins to preach and whether he makes a straight line to the center of the town or winds his way through the streets is immaterial. The thing that should cause us a sense of amazement is that when we come to verse 5 in which we have a summary statement of the influence of that day's preaching. And then to verses 6 through 9 which give us the details of which verse 5 is the summary.

5:41 By sundown of that day if you were to come you would find an amazing sight. Everywhere you would go throughout the entire city of Nineveh you would find people sitting upon ashes. You would find them with hair cloth over their backs. You would find them not sitting about their tables. The food that perhaps earlier had been prepared was sitting

6:09 uneaten and uncared for. You would find even a strange noise coming up from the city as animals were denied their normal food at that time of the day. The entire city from the king down to the lowest citizen is found in this state of mourning, of fasting and of crying mightily. So the next poem of the movement is to a man who is now carded with his life in his hands.

6:39 It takes place in the town of Nineveh where he is being held captive for years and years in a building that is still lying free from the Ao to do with the powers of the evil spirit. So he decides that he can to gather his body and not to hurt the soldiers of the great god that he claims to who controls the world of the world, but he has no immunity. And that is the reason why he is told that Jesus was there. And he was dead.

6:51 And Jesus seems to be alive. He was alive. The word enemies in the book. In the book, it goes, He is alive.

6:57 He is alive. He is alive. He is alive. He is alive.

7:01 He is alive. He is alive. He is alive. He is alive.

7:04 the least of them. From the king on the throne to the meanest citizen, it is a spectacle to which I suppose history affords no parallel. Cities and countries and communities have oft times, with not a little unanimity, given themselves to humiliation and fasting, but there is no event on record that can at all be compared with the fast and the repentance of Nineveh. Do you feel something of the amazement of this incident? As we stand on

The Essential Ingredients of Ninevite Repentance: An Overview

7:37 the threshold of our examination of its details, may it be with a sense of wonder as we are reading a record of one of the most amazing works of grace that God has ever wrought in the hearts and lives of any people throughout the entire course of human history. As we come to our examination of the fact that God has ever wrought in the hearts and lives of the souls of any people throughout the entire course of human history, as we come to our of this portion of the Word of God, what I propose to do tonight is simply to open up from the passage what I have entitled, The Essential Ingredients of the Repentance of the Ninevites. Then in a subsequent message we shall deal with some of the circumstantial

8:20 attendance of the repentance of the Ninevites. And so if you're filled with curiosity about some of the details and you sense that I'm sliding over them, may I urge you to be patient for some of the details that are merely circumstantial. They are the mere attendance of the real essence of the repentance of the Ninevites. I will deliberately pass over tonight that we might come to grips with those things that form the essential ingredients of their repentance, having seen what they are.

Ingredient 1: A Believing Reception of God's Message

8:58 I shall then seek to demonstrate that we are given in those details the precise elements that are always present whenever any sinner is brought to true and saving repentance. The first essential ingredient, then, of the repentance of the Ninevites is very explicitly stated in verse 5, And the people of Nineveh believed God. And everything else that follows, with their fasting, their sackcloth, and then the greater details given of the activity of the king and his nobles down to the lowest citizens,

9:42 and even that activity which involved the brute beasts, everything flows out of this first statement, And the people of Nineveh believed God. The first essential ingredient of the repentance of the Ninevites is the fact that the people of Nineveh believed God. The first essential ingredient of the repentance of the Ninevites was a believing reception of the message of God. A believing reception of the message of God. Who has come to the

10:14 borders of their city, or within the borders of their city? A strange man with a strange tale. A man who comes with a frightening message. Forty days, and your city has had it completely. He performs no miracles. He has no time to establish credibility. There

10:43 is no record that he points to any existing power or situation that could be the means of the overthrow of this mighty city. And yet, on the basis of that testimony that this man bears, the text says that the people of Nineveh believed God. The first essential ingredient of the repentance of the brute beasts. And the people of Nineveh believed God. In other words, they credited the message of Jonah as being nothing less than a divine

11:17 message. They saw beyond the strange man with the strange tale of his strange deliverance. They saw beyond the man who came to them unannounced, unintroduced. And they even saw beyond what seemed to be the highest and most untrue, for the synonymous, unmanifest, and the most 겨veled, the most unwritten message. And they even saw beyond the man who came to them

11:36 unannounced, unintroduced. And they even saw beyond what seemed to be the highest and improbability of his message. Here was warlike Assyria, not only able to defend itself, but to be an aggressive city, part of an aggressive nation. And yet this man dares to say, in forty days you have had it. The answer, they believed the message. And in believing the

12:02 message, they immediately had dealings with someone beyond the prophet. It does not say they believed the message of Jonah, or that they believed Jonah, both of which were true. They believed God. In other words, they saw in Jonah's message those fundamental realities which form the basis of a man's awareness of his true circumstance as a sinner in God's universe. When Jonah preached, forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown, as we established

12:40 in a previous message. There was no doubt an indictment of their specific sins. He gave them a rationale for that pronouncement that their sins were an affront to God. He no doubt named their specific sins. He called upon them to recognize that which their own consciences attested, that

13:01 they were God's creatures, accountable to God. And when the text says that the people of Nineveh believed God, they believed that they were God's creatures. They believed that they were God's creatures. Notice how this comes out very clearly in verse 9.

13:27 Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9.

13:31 Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9.

13:35 Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9. Verse 9.

13:39 Verse 9. Verse 9. of the holiness of God, the reality of their accountability to God in terms of His law, the reality of the anger and wrath of God against all who go on impenitent in their sins. And I say this is an amazing thing.

14:00 We have recorded in the Old Testament another incident that in many ways is very parallel, but is in stark contrast to this passage. There was another time in human history when the sudden dramatic overthrow of a city, really two cities, was announced by God. In that passage to which Mr. Garlington made reference this morning in the adult class in Genesis 19, it is angels who come and announce to Lot that Sodom and Gomorrah will be overthrown, that God is about to destroy them.

14:40 Lot then goes to his sons. He goes to his sons-in-law to bear this message, and we read in Genesis 19, 14, And Lot went out and spake unto his sons-in-law, who married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city. But he seemed unto his sons-in-law as one that mocked.

15:08 They gave no credibility to his message. He seemed unto them as one that mocked. In both instances, the announcement of judgment was a divine message. In the case of Lot's sons-in-law, he seemed to them as a mocker.

15:26 They gave no credence to the message. In the case of the Ninevites, they believed God.

Ingredient 2: A Thorough Dealing with Sins Against God

15:36 Well, then, let's consider in the second place the second essential ingredient of their repentance. The foundational element of their repentance is this belief. This believing reception of the message from God. Secondly, there is seen in the text the account of a thorough dealing with their sins against God.

15:59 A thorough dealing with their sins against God. This is underscored both as to the inward disposition of dealing with sin, and then the outward expressions of that dealing. That this repentance...

16:17 That this repentance was first of all and primarily inward is seen in verses 8 and following. Let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily unto God. You see, the emphasis of the king does not fall upon mere externals. His decree goes out commanding and urging that men cry to the living, that is, that they engage themselves in earnest heart dealings with God.

16:54 He didn't say, let them all say prayers. Let them all repeat fifty Hail Marys, or a hundred Our Fathers. Let them all find the nearest prayer wheel and spin it and thong through their beads. No, let them cry mightily to God.

17:12 You see, he's putting the emphasis upon the dealings of the heart. Furthermore, look at the language. And turn away, I'm sorry, let them cry mightily to God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way.

17:30 You see, the emphasis falls upon a thorough dealing with sin as a pattern of life. He acknowledges that the overall way of their existence was in direct opposition to the way of righteousness and the way of holiness. And so he calls...

17:48 He calls upon them not only to have heart dealings with God in prayer, but to have thorough dealings with the whole course of a sinful life. And then he descends to the particulars and from the violence that is in his hands. That is, every individual sinner and the peculiar expressions of his own sin and rebellion against God. Let him deal not only with his way in general, but with the specific sins.

18:18 That are in his hands. Then that thorough dealing with sin that is manifested in inward heart experience is manifested in the outward way. We see it in the previous verses. We have the summary statement in verse 5.

18:37 They proclaimed the fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them. What was this? Some would suggest that this was just kind of a...

18:48 a surface, external repentance with a lot of surface and external paraphernalia. No, no, my friends. The fasting and the sackcloth were simply a concretizing of the reality of the inward repentance. It was expressing in concrete, visible, external ways the disposition and state of the heart.

19:13 You see, God is not platonic in his view of his own creatures. God made us. God is a body, soul, entity. God made us so that we are inextricably interacting continually with the world about us.

19:28 We eat and we drink and we live of the very earth on which we stand. And when we have dealings with God, it is not in terms of disembodied spirits, but whole men and women who are in this way bound up with the creation around us. And therefore, if our dealings with God are general, they will offer...

19:49 they will often manifest themselves in this way. For the fasting is something to which God calls his people in the book of Joel. He says, turn unto me with fasting and with weeping and with mourning. Now he does not call to fasting as a mere external act.

20:08 He condemns that. For in that same passage in Joel 2, he says, rend your heart and not your garment. But he's saying, let there be such a deep, powerful inward judgment. Eternity, the heart, the soul, having never been so full.

20:18 Eternity, the soul, having never been so full, having never been so full. genuine dealing with sin, that even your interaction with the outer world will be influenced. So powerful and real will be this matter of your crying to God, your turning from your evil way and from the violence in your hands, that even normal and legitimate physical appetites for a time will pale into insignificance. There are matters of higher importance that now occupy the mind.

20:47 And where it is proper for us to appear as attractive as possible to do the best with what we've got, there are times when the state of the soul is such that even the external physical appearance will reflect the inward disposition as men see themselves as sinners. They see themselves to be what God declares them to be, potential faggots for the fires of hell. The humiliators. The humiliation of that realization often causes men to desire somehow externally to express it, particularly in this cultural setting where we see the great principle again

21:31 that grace does no violence to nature. And in a culture where these expressions of grief were common, when they would mourn for relatives and even shaving the hair off the animals, when a great personage died, Herodotus, one of the great Greek historians, a man called the father of history, records such instances in secular pagan life when a great man would die and a whole nation or whole segments of a nation would manifest their grief not only by sitting in sackcloth and ashes themselves, but by shaving the animals and taking from them all of their normal ornaments if they were such animals as horses and others who were adorned by men.

22:16 No. No. This is no mere externalism. This is the record of a deep breaking off of sin, a thorough dealing with sins, inwardly in crying mightily to God, turning from their evil way, turning from the violence in their hands, and then outwardly concretizing the state of the soul in the very externals of life.

22:48 And we know, we know that this turning was true because verse 10 says, and it's not my purpose to expound it tonight, God saw their works that they sat in sackcloth and ashes. No. God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. That which God beheld was a deep and a thorough dealing with sin.

Ingredient 3: A Hopeful Pleading for Mercy from God

23:15 And then in the third place, the third essential ingredient, the third ingredient of their repentance, is found in this prayer that I have called a hopeful pleading for mercy from God. You see the progression? Not only a believing reception of the message from God, a thorough dealing with their sins before God, but a hopeful pleading for mercy from God. Look at verses 8 and 9.

23:46 The king's decree goes out, let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily to God, yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Why? Who knoweth whether God will not turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not? You see, involved in this crying to God, involved in this turning from the evil way, involved in this turning from the evil way, involved in this turning from the evil way, and from the violence in their hands, is this glimmer of hope that God may yet be merciful.

24:29 Now, there is no record that they had any pronouncement from Jonah's lips explicitly declaring that God was a God of mercy. The record says that Jonah preached forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. We have inferred from the context that he no doubt specified the significance of the sins which were leading to that overthrow. We learn from Luke 11.30

24:56 that since Jonah himself was a sign, it is strongly inferred, if not explicitly stated, he gave them a record of God's dealings with him. But beyond that, we cannot go. There is no record that Jonah said, if you will repent, the judgment will be averted. Yet, when they come to pray, there is a hopeful pleading that God will not turn away from them.

25:21 God might yet be merciful.

25:28 As one writer has said inaccurately, the total absence of any hope that God will pardon sin makes true repentance impossible. The absence of hope excludes the possibility of repentance. Despair seals and quickens the sinner's enmity and hatred of God. And it would have done so eminently eminently in the case of the Ninevites, had they viewed their doom as utterly inevitable, they would have been either paralyzed or infuriated. If you don't believe that,

26:06 if you read through the book of the Revelation this week, which I hope you'll do, you'll see that. When the judgments of God are poured out without any hope of mercy, we read in two or three occasions in the book of the Revelation, they curse the God of their pains and they repented not. When God begins to pour out his fury without any offer of mercy, men never come to repentance. They are hardened in their impenitence and hatred to God. In some ways, that's why the day of judgment

26:39 will be the most frightening scene ever enacted upon God's moral universe. When God in the full fury of wrath confronts sin, but sink, they shall and they must. Well, you see, there was another that had entered their thinking. There would never have been true repentance apart from this

27:19 hopeful pleading for mercy. Now, where did they ever get the idea that God might be merciful? They didn't have a certain promise that they could plead. The language is, who knoweth? There is a

27:33 hope. There is a little glimmer of light. Let's follow it as we do. It may open up into a full blazing manifestation of divine mercy.

27:42 From whence did that glimmer of light come? May I suggest it came from two sources. Number one, the content of the message, and number two, the condition of the messenger. First of all, it came from the content of the message. Notice the language, verse four. Jonah came and said,

28:00 yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. If the message could spread through the entire city in a day, why did God come with a message saying, forty days? And you see, they caught a little glimmer of hope. Why does God say, yet forty days?

28:31 If he is the God of heaven and earth, why does not judgment fall the moment the messenger hurls the message in our teeth and gets outside the city walls, and then the heaven opens up with hailstones or with fire and with brimstone? It was the content of the message that gave them a ray of hope. If God has come announcing forty days, and we shall be overthrown, and the rationale for that pronouncement is that we have sinned, and our sins have come, as it were, to the full measure, to the point where the God of heaven is now determined to deal with us in wrath, can it be

29:11 that if between now and the forty days the cause of the provocation of his anger is dealt with, the anger itself may be turned away? I say this hopeful pleading for mercy was born, first of all, out of that which they saw in the content of the message, and secondly, from the condition of the messenger. As we saw in a previous study, and to which I have already alluded tonight, Luke 11.30, Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. A sign is a divinely given supernatural attestation of the God of heaven,

29:52 of the validity of the messenger. The sign is God's amen to the messenger and his message. And this strongly suggests that Jonah did include in his preaching something of the story of his call, something of the account of his disobedience and his preservation in the belly of the great fish, his subsequent obedience. And in that story, Jonah would no doubt read many of the attributes of God, as the pagan sailors did. In Jonah's being

30:31 thrown into the sea and the sea becoming still, they would learn of God as an angry God who is yet a God that can be appeased in the appointed way. The God who would pardon his disobedient servant and recommission him. The God who was so determined to bring this message to the of Nineveh, that He would bring His servant through that entire ordeal. Surely they read in all of this the condition of the very messenger before them, that God is a God who shows mercy.

31:08 He forgives disobedient Israelites. He deals in mercy with prophets who turn aside from His revealed will. Surely then, if He's that kind of a God, and the monument of His mercy is standing before us preaching, and if He's the God of heaven and earth who changes not, who knoweth whether He will repent and turn away His fierce anger from us? So you see, there was this hopeful pleading for mercy, a hope based upon the scanty evidence that was there in the content of the message and in the condition of the messenger, but which was enough for their faith.

The Genuineness of Ninevite Repentance and Its Application

31:53 And they took hold of that, and it says they cried mightily to God. These three ingredients are described by our Lord Himself as a repentance that is going to stand them in good stead

32:14 in the day of judgment. And that's enough for me. Had they simply gone through an external repentance and not truly repented, I cannot see how they could stand in the day of judgment and condemn the hearers of our God. That is the question I have. So today I want to try

32:28 hearers of our Lord, for they would have been apostates then who turned from great privilege and great opportunity and would have become those dogs whose latter end is worse than the beginning, having returned to their vomit. No, I believe our Lord has placed his own approval not upon the genuine conversion of every single individual Ninevite, no, but in saying that in general this turning was not simply a sociological activity, it was a spiritual activity wrought by the mighty Spirit of God. Now having opened up from the text the three essential ingredients of the repentance of

33:10 the Ninevites, I want to go back now and take up each of those threads and apply them to each one of you who sit here tonight. For my friend, listen, if you are ever to be found standing in the last day, with the converted Ninevites, sharing in the judgment of the world with the great Judge Himself, even the Lord Jesus, you too must come, not in the same details, but essentially to the same spiritual realities, or you will never be found with joy at the last day.

Application 1: Believing Reception of God's Message (for the Unconverted)

33:52 If you are ever to be a Christian, if you are ever to be a child of God, there must first of all be on your part, as with them, a believing reception of the message of God. What message? Not a message, forty days and you will be overthrown, but a message that many of you have heard times without number. A message that has come to you in the name of the God of heaven, extracted directly from this book, the Bible,

34:28 a message which has told you that you are God's creature, made in His image, fallen in Adam, accountable to the God who made you. You are a sinner who has taken your life into your own hands to do your own thing.

34:47 But in living in self-centeredness and willful rebellion against the God of heaven, you are under divine wrath and condemnation. You stand guilty before God. You have a nature that is polluted and defiled, and unless you are born of the Spirit, you'll never see nor enter the kingdom. Unless you repent, you'll perish.

35:10 My friend, there is only one reason why all too many of you sit here in the condition you are in tonight, either not convinced that you are what God says you are, a sinner, guilty and polluted, under condemnation and helpless, or if you believe that part of the message, you don't believe what God has said concerning the message of the only way of deliverance, that it's Christ in His glorious person, Christ in His work, dying, rising from the dead, Christ in the virtue of His blood and righteousness, who is the only Savior.

35:53 My friend, there is one reason why you sit here in that condition tonight, and you know what it is? It is wicked. It is wicked. It is cursed, blinding, damning, crippling unbelief, unbelief, unbelief, unbelief.

36:15 I quote again from Hugh Martin, however sad the conclusion, it is evident that the negligent and the prayerless sinner is to all practical ends an atheist. Do you hear that? The negligent and prayerless sinner is to all practical ends an atheist. The negligent and prayerless sinner is to all practical ends an atheist.

36:41 He is practically living in a state of infidelity and atheism. And however much he may revolt from admitting this, it is impossible for him to refute it by his conduct. Listen to me tonight. You sit here under the wrath of God.

37:04 You've not been born of the spirit. You've not repented. not embrace Christ. You may deny you're a sinner, or you may be one who admits you're a sinner, but you deny that Christ is the only Savior. You may admit you're a sinner

37:17 and accept that Christ is the only Savior, but you will not believe. You will not embrace the offered salvation. My friend, you Martins' words are right. You are practically an atheist.

37:31 What is your problem? You will not believe the message of God. You are like Lot's sons-in-law. We who preach to you seek to preach biblically. We seek to preach earnestly. We seek to preach

37:48 tenderly. We seek to preach closely to your conscience. We are ones who mock in your ears. Why? Because of your wicked, crippling, cursed, damning sin of unbelief. It has never been

38:09 said of you and the people of Nineveh. Believe. You remember what the Apostle Paul said to the Thessalonians in his second chapter of the first letter. He said this, God be thanked that when you received the word of the message, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually works in those that believe the message. Just a fellow mortal

38:49 of Tarsus made Paul the Apostle. He came into the synagogue at Thessalonica. He opened up the scriptures. He demonstrated the simple facts concerning Christ, concerning man in sin, concerning the Redeemer and his salvation, the necessity of repentance and faith. And in three

39:09 weeks time he was run out of town. But he can write back later as a church has been formed and he says, thank God, when you received the message from us, you received the word of God. You received it not as the word of a fellow mortal, but as it is in truth the word of the living God. My friend, let me ask you, oh let me press the question upon your conscience.

39:32 Have you ever come to grips with that simple fundamental issue that when this word is expounded and applied, you're not dealing with the preacher. You're not dealing with the preacher. You could see a mirror. My friend, listen, that logic was long before now propagated. A man

40:01 Man in hell said, oh, give my brothers a miracle, then they'll believe. Jesus said, they have Moses and the prophets. If they will not believe what is written, neither will they believe the one rise from the dead. My friend, what more do you want?

40:19 Almighty God has sent you a credited message.

40:24 Jesus Christ has died and risen from the dead. The greater than Jonah has come. And you will never be converted until there is a believing reception of the message of God.

Application 2: Thorough Dealing with Sins (for the Unconverted)

40:40 But then in the second place, there's got to be this second essential element of thorough dealing with your sins. Not some kind of external adjustment. We saw from the text that the appeal was to cry mightily to God. Turn everyone from his evil way.

41:02 And from the violence in his... You see, this was no surface dealing with sin.

41:09 It was dealing with sin roots. And my friend, you'll never be a Christian until you're prepared in a believing response to the message of God to deal thoroughly with your sins. For it's your sins that bring you under the wrath of God. The wages of sin is death.

41:32 Now notice I did not say just be prepared to get rid of some of the fruits of your sins. You don't like your lack of peace. You don't like that you don't have it all together. You don't like that life has no meaning and life has no purpose.

41:45 And you'd love to get rid of some of the fruit of your sin. No, no, my friend. You've got to deal with the root.

41:53 Why has life no meaning? Because you've got the wrong center.

42:00 Because you've got the wrong center. You've got a wrong standard by which you live. You've got wrong goals. As well as wrong means to attain those goals.

42:14 And the scripture says, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. If you want mercy from the God of heaven, you've got to be prepared to get honest about your whole lifestyle, rock and barrel, the whole shebang.

42:37 We don't play games with God. You start crying mightily to God. Not just saying little prayers. Not mouthing little ditties that the personal worker puts in your mouth in the inquiry room and then pats you on the shoulder in 32 seconds.

42:48 And says, you're all fixed up.

42:52 No, no. You start crying mightily to God. You start getting honest about your sins. The patterns of dishonesty.

43:02 The patterns of pride. The patterns of lust. The patterns of selfishness. The patterns of taking advantage of others.

43:11 The patterns of unholy speech. The patterns of unholy social relationships and social conduct. You see, God's law, which is every part of your life, outward and inward, and true repentance in principle, is dealing with God in terms of the total spectrum of the demands of His law.

43:35 My friend, you'll never be prepared to stand with these Ninevites in the last day until you with them not only have a believing reception of the message of God, but engage in a thorough dealing with your sins.

43:52 Some of you perhaps already thought of Isaiah 55, in this connection. Isn't there a wonderful parallel between Jonah 3? The prophet Isaiah said, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Let them cry mightily to God.

44:06 Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord. For he will have mercy upon him and to our God.

44:22 For he will abundantly pardon. You see, God isn't in the business of just taking off a few of the hair shirts that your sin has produced. You don't like this feeling of not having it all together. You don't like this feeling of a lack of purpose.

44:38 So you're going to go to God and whimper a little bit and hope He'll take that off and give you a new dimension for life. No, no. He's not in the business of giving a new little wrinkle to your life. He's in the business of making new creatures.

44:52 You'll be like a person raised from the dead. He'll give you a whole new center to your life. He'll give you a whole new set of standards, a whole new set of goals, a whole new set of friends. Everything's new.

45:03 If any man be in Christ, new creation. The old is past. The new has come. That's Christianity.

45:09 Anything else is a cheap imitation.

45:13 Are you prepared to deal with your sins?

45:16 My friend, there's no sin you've committed that God's grace cannot forgive. Not a sin. Oh, but you say, Mr. Martin, you don't know how I've sinned.

45:24 I don't care what your sin has been. My Bible says, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. But you say, Mr. Martin, you don't know what I've been.

45:36 I've lied to my own mom and dad hundreds of times. I've cheated on my wife. I've cheated on my husband. I've been immoral.

45:46 I've been down with anything that would pull the sheets up with me.

45:51 My friend, I don't care what you've been.

45:55 The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all sin. Oh, but you don't know what I've been, Mr. Martin. I've heard the gospel for 30 years and I haven't believed it.

46:07 I've been paralyzed by my unbelief. I care not. My Bible says, he that believeth on the Son hath life. No matter how long unbelief has prevailed, the moment you believe, you're in Christ.

46:20 And all of that is gloriously and wonderfully true. But my friend, it'll never be effectual in you if you hope to have that while you cling to your sins. I don't care what that sin may be.

46:33 When that woman at the well says, oh, this is, wonderful, living water. I never have to thirst again. Whoopee! Lord, give me some of that.

46:41 I'll buy it. The Lord says, call your husband.

46:46 And she begins to flush with embarrassment and the color begins to come up behind her neck and her ears until she stutters and says, but I don't have a husband. And the Lord says, that's right, I know all about you. And if you're prepared to get honest about what you really are, I'm prepared to deal with you where you are in my grace. But if you're going to play games, about your sin, no living water.

47:11 Now I say to you men, women, boys and girls, young men and women in this place tonight, mark it well. Jesus said, except you repent, you'll perish. If you cover your sins, you will not prosper. There must be a thorough dealing with sin.

47:27 You've got to turn from your way that general pattern of self-centeredness, self-reliance, self-righteousness. And you must turn from the violence that is in your hands. Your own peculiar darling sins. You must deal with them honestly, straightforwardly.

Application 3: Confident Pleading for Mercy in Christ (for the Unconverted)

47:48 But then thirdly, there must be a confident pleading for the mercy of God grounded in the work of Christ. You see, I've added something that I couldn't preach from the text in Jonah 3. All they had to incite them to pray for mercy was that little glimmer of light that came from the message and from the condition of the messenger. My friend, in urging you to seek the Lord, think of the wonderful, not glimmer of light or little shaft of light.

48:25 It's like a thousand blazing in noonday glory. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Christ has come. And why has He come?

48:44 The Scriptures, it says this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Oh, my friend, you need not go to God saying, Oh, God, I believe the message. I am your creature.

49:08 I have broken your law. I am accountable to you. It is right that wrath should fall upon me. You need not go to God in that disposition saying, but, oh, God, I'm prepared to turn from my way and the violence in my hands.

49:24 Is there any chance that you would be merciful? My friend, you don't need to go that way. You can go saying, Oh, God, I believe the message. And by your grace, I'm prepared to deal with my sins.

49:36 And, oh, God, I would venture upon those broad, buttressed promises of mercy extended in the Lord Jesus. Jesus said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will receive one-tenth of you. My friend, if He said that, I think I would go to my grave pleading that I might be one of the one-tenth. Don't you?

50:03 Wouldn't that be enough? If He said, Come unto me, all ye that labor, and of all who come, one-tenth I'll receive and give them rest. Well, I tell you, my friend, if I know my sin and believe in the reality of hell and judgment, if I had just that much to go on, that'd be enough to set me crying mightily to God. But Jesus said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

50:30 All who come are received. John 6, 37, All that the Father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. You know, when God is most honored by a sinner, when the sinner breaks through all the accusations of conscience, all the accusations of his past, when he breaks through all the natural reasonings of the unreasonableness that God would show mercy based upon the doings and the dying of another, when a sinner breaks through all of that and stands before God saying, O God, I cling to Your beloved Son

51:14 who died for sinners and I stand, take the weight of my never-dying soul upon the doings and the dying of Jesus. My friend, nothing glorifies God more than that. Nothing. Nothing.

51:31 The greatest work is redemption. And when sinners credit His work, no wonder it says there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repented. You see, God's most amazing, God's most mysterious work, the work in which, God has given the fullest display of all the totality of His glorious attributes is the work of redemption in Jesus Christ. You see then, when sinners credit that work and put themselves in the hand of the Savior, they are making the most full confession of their confidence in all that God is and in all that God has revealed of Himself.

52:17 Oh, I speak to some of you dear people who feel, well, it will dishonor God. If I throw myself believingly upon Christ, oh, that will dishonor God. That will be presumption. If I say, believing, I am saved.

52:32 My friend, that's a lie from the... Dishonor God by your groveling on me as my son is able.

52:42 My son is willing. Trust Him. You do not glorify God by doubting His Word. Oh, glorify God by throwing yourself upon His mercy.

52:55 My friend, you'll never come to true repentance until there is that confident resting upon God's mercy in the work of His own beloved Son.

53:12 How thankful we should be for that record in Luke's Gospel,

53:18 chapter 18 and verse 13, where Jesus describes what could well have been an individual Ninevite. In this context, it is a public, a man who is a sinner, and he's so filled with a sense of his sin and unworthiness that he will not so much as even lift up his eyes to heaven, the place of God's dwelling. But the Scripture tells us in Luke's Gospel, chapter 18 and verse 13, that he beat upon his breast, saying, God, be Thou merciful to me, a sinner. He didn't say,

54:03 Oh, God, be merciful to me because I've come to great strength of faith. Oh, God, be merciful to me because I've cleaned up. No, no, no, my friend. You've got it all backwards.

54:13 He took his stance, owning his guilt, but glorifying the God of mercy whose mercy was greater than human guilt. And our Lord says this man went down to his house justified.

Conclusion: The Greater Than Jonah and the Call to Repentance

54:28 I close tonight by bringing you back full circle to where we began in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12. Will you turn there now as we close? Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12 and verse 41. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it.

54:56 Why?

54:58 Because they were more intrinsically holy than the generation to which our Lord preached. No. They were a people so wicked that God was about to blot them off the face of the earth like He did. Sodom and Gomorrah and like He did with the whole human race in the days of the flood sparing only Noah and his family.

55:18 Why then shall the men of Nineveh rise up in the judgment with our Lord's generation and condemn it? The passage tells us they repented at the preaching of Jonah, a disobedient, sinning prophet, a fellow mortal, one who had come through this unusual ordeal that perhaps forever stamped upon them on his face and even his skin the vivid reminders to humble him that he had been a disobedient man. But when that man brought a message from God they believed it and repented. But now our Lord says, Behold, a greater than Jonah is here.

55:58 Jesus Himself, not a mere mortal but God incarnate, not a sinner but holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. He who spake is no man ever, he at whom they wondered when they heard the words of grace falling from his lips. A greater than Jonah stood in that generation and preached and he did not preach just judgment but he preached the very words I've quoted. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden I am come to seek and to save the lost.

56:36 And with God incarnate preaching the gospel and with the full blazing light of that gospel scaring them in the eyes they clung to their sins and would not believe.

56:51 My friend, the greater than Jonah has come.

56:58 His coming, his death, his resurrection are well attested facts.

57:05 And the greater than Jonah is in his church. And the greater than Jonah preaches through his servants who announce his gospel in his name.

57:18 You have behind you the history of hundreds of thousands who believing that message have been transformed. Whole societies feeling the leavening power of that message. The record in Christian biography of thousands who have faced that grim messenger of death and looked him square in the eye and said there's nothing you can do to me but land me on the lap of Jesus. Come death, do your work.

57:57 My friend, what will the day of judgment be for you? I plead, I plead with you this night. I entreat you, I exhort you.

58:11 Take your place with the Ninevites. Believe God.

58:18 Fill with your sin.

58:21 Throw yourself upon his mercy as offered in Christ. And you with the Ninevites will be forgiven,

58:32 joined to Christ, fit to live, fit to die, fit to go to judgment and come off unscathed.

Exhortation to Believers and Final Prayer

58:43 And I say to you who are believers, though the great, great burden of my heart because the natural burden of this passage is to preach to the unconverted. Do you see the amazing grace of God to you? Why did you not treat the message like Lot's sons-in-law? When the message came telling you you're a sinner, God's anger's been provoked.

59:10 Judgment is coming. You must repent. You must believe. Why did you credit that message?

59:15 An almighty energy went forth from the living God. Or you would have been like Lot's sons-in-law and the most earnest messengers of God would have been to you as men who mocked. Oh, may we never cease to be amazed that we have been brought to faith. And being brought to faith, we've been brought into union with Christ.

59:43 And being brought into union with Christ, all that he did for sinners is credited to us. His doings and his dying are our own. Ours. And we stand uncondemned before the God of the universe.

60:03 Do you get bored at hearing these fundamental elements of the Gospel? Do they cease to thrill you? You're in bad shape if they do, my friend. For you and I will grow in grace as we grow in the conscious and ever-increasing appreciation of the wonder of what it means to be a Christian.

60:27 The repentance of the Ninevites and its essential elements, my friend, are those elements in you. If not, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. I confess, as a preacher of the Gospel, that deep sense of pain.

60:54 It's a delight to preach to people who hang upon the Word of God, who come out Sunday night to hear the Word. But my friend, listen, I've not preached just to be flattered by your listening. I've not preached just to be flattered by your listening. I've not preached just to be flattered by your listening.

61:06 If you will not embrace this message from God, then there's a sense in which I go home to my bed of frustrated, grieved, and pained. Why? Because my object has not been realized, even to entreat you to flee from the wrath to come. Oh, may God that the words will be effectual to your repentance, let us pray.

61:46 Our Father, we thank you for this amazing record of your grace to these wicked Ninevites. We confess that it's hard for us to take in what it must've been like to see that entire city mourning its sins and prostrate before you. O Lord, put forth that divine energy in our day. may we live to see multitudes humbled before the God of Heaven.

62:23 Lord, even in this place may there be some who this night cannot pillow their heads until they sit not necessarily in sackcloth in ashes but with an inward disposition that could well be expressed in that form may they sit grieving over their sins seeking mercy at the only place mercy is ever to be found oh god seal the word to the conversion of men and women fellows and girls and ultimately to the honor of your own name and to the glory of your grace we pray for those who

63:06 somehow feel they will dishonor you if they venture upon your grace lord show them what we have tried to show them tonight that they never do begin to honor you until they magnify your grace you in embracing the savior oh lord make your word to be effectual this is our plea hear us in our sense of helplessness and answer our cry for jesus sake amen