Opening illustration: God awakened me when I went to work in the Middle East. Till then I was just a lukewarm and laidback Christian. I saw the great need for the Gospel of Christ to be proclaimed to the so many lost souls there. They had no idea that they were perishing and there was only one way out – Jesus. Someone had to give them the word. In complete reluctance, I said I am here, I will go. Are you awakened?
Introduction: Now, what do we mean by a “spiritual awakening”? Well, the word “awakening” refers to being woken up. What is it like to be asleep? You are oblivious to what is going on around you. You are in your own little dream world. World War III may be taking place, but when you are asleep, you know nothing about it. It doesn’t affect you. A spiritual awakening is what happens when people are suddenly woken up to see and hear and feel spiritual realities, and then they begin to live as though they are real. They realize there is a God, and that we are His creatures and must give an account to Him. They realize that there is a day of judgment, at which time this great God will either cast us into eternal hell or receive us into His eternal glory. We realize there is only one way of escape: through the perfect life, substitutionary death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. They realize there is only one way of benefiting from the finished work of Christ: repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They realize the absolute necessity of the new birth to prepare them for eternal glory. They also realize the absolute necessity of good works and holiness, not in order to get saved, but as evidences that they have been saved.
What is the Route to Great Awakening?
1. The Agent of this Awakening: 3:1,10
Who produced the awakening? God!
The word of the Lord came to Jonah: Notice how this chapter begins with God (the word of the Lord came) and ends with God (He did not do it). God is the one who is taking the initiative to bring the awakening. God speaks to Jonah. Jonah runs away. God hunted him down, brought him to repentance, and then gave the command a 2nd time. This wasn’t Jonah’s idea! Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh, and in fact, is going to be angry when he does go and they all repent. This isn’t the Ninevites idea. The Ninevites didn’t even believe in Jehovah. They had a whole slew of gods, Jehovah not being one of them. The Ninevites weren’t seeking the Lord. They had no use for him. However, God was seeking the Ninevites. What is about to take place in Nineveh is so great that it could never have taken place through the power of man. Only the power of God could ever do something so incredible as to bring a giant metropolis filled with vicious, cruel, wicked pagans to their knees in genuine repentance, all at the same time! God is about to pour out His sovereign mercy. Why do I refer to it as “sovereign” mercy? Because this mercy is going to be dispensed according to God’s will alone. No one is manipulating Him or twisting His arm, or has a gun to His head. God is doing exactly as He pleases here.
God is doing this for His own glory! If this is God’s idea; if this is accomplished by God’s strength and power, then God is the One who should receive all the glory. Incidentally, this is why God does not allow the sinner to have any contribution in his salvation. We are all “saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of our works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). God chooses to save the foolish, the weak, the base, and the despised so that no man may boast before God, and that the one who boasts would boast only in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).
In the 1800’s a man by the name of Charles Finney began to teach something new. Up until this time, God’s people believed that revivals took place according to the sovereign will of God. Finney began to teach that if God’s people would just use certain means they could have a revival any time they wanted. Finney’s thoughts have been largely followed today. That’s why you may drive by a church building and see a big banner that says, “Revival – September 28-30, 2017”. The problem with that is that no one can predict when we will have a revival, because only God can bring one, and He hasn’t told us when He’s going to do it. Sometimes when a celebrity evangelist visits a city, people call it a revival not really understanding that it is not him who brings it but God alone and in His own timing.
2. The Instrument of this Awakening: 3:2-4
Whom Did God Use in this Awakening? Jonah. Jonah was the instrument of God. It was Jonah that obeyed the voice of God, arose and went to the Ninevites. It was Jonah that cried out from one quarter of the city to the other, “Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Usually there will be human instruments God will use in a spiritual awakening. He used Edwards and Whitefield in the 1st Great Awakening. He used Asahel Nettleton and Finney in the 2nd Great Awakening. He used Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee in the Jesus Movement.
God’s selection of Jonah was designed to bring glory to Himself. What was Jonah like? At this point He complains but surly, pouting prophet. He obeys, but His heart is not in his work. He was a proud Israelite who hated Ninevites. He was racist and prejudiced. He was rebellious. He was also angry at God and not afraid to say so, when God saved them. There’s not a whole lot in Jonah to admire, and a lot in him to despise. God didn’t choose the best of the best, the cream of the crop. Jonah’s not the Captain of God’s All-Star Squad. He chose the most ornery, obstinate, rebellious prophet He had. Why would God do that? Because that eliminates all boasting in man! That’s why God chooses the foolish, weak, base and despised. God loves to choose to save those kind of people, because they can’t take any of the credit for their salvation. They know that their salvation is of the Lord, and give all the praise to Him. God was about to do something incredibly amazing, and He didn’t want anyone to rob Him of His glory. Never get the idea that if God uses you in His work, that you are someone great! What brain surgeon will be admired more? The one who uses the latest technology and multi-million-dollar equipment, or the one who uses a can opener and a pair of pliers? God is using a bunch of cracked pots! Broken jars of clay! Oh, how magnificent a God He shows Himself to be!
Notice there was only one human instrument. How in the world is Jonah going to reach all the Ninevites? If we were trying to figure out how to evangelize Nineveh, we would have figured it would be necessary to recruit and train and deploy at least 1,000 preachers. Remember that there was probably a minimum of 600,000 people in Nineveh and likely as many as 1 million. Nineveh had a circumference of 60 miles, a 100' high wall so wide that you could ride 3 chariots abreast on it. It was huge! Vs.2 says it was a great city. Vs.3 says it was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk. It may have been the largest and most powerful city in the ancient world. After training and sending all those preachers, we would deploy them to manageable divisions of the city and commission them to reach their own section. However, that’s not what takes place here. One man goes to one million sinners and reaches all of them! What are the odds? A million to one. However, always remember this, “One with God is a majority!” In other words, God doesn’t need lots and lots of people to do big things. God can do big things with just a few people or even one person. That’s encouraging for us, because we are only a few people. Let’s dream big and believe big.
3. The Recipients of this Awakening: 3:5
Who did God awaken? The Ninevites – all of them! “Then the people of Nineveh believed in God.” What do we know about them? 1:2 says “their wickedness has come up before Me.” These Ninevites are from an entirely different race, from a different culture, and a completely different religious belief system. They are polytheists, worshipping many different gods. In the natural, Jonah should never have come out of Nineveh alive. He should have been captured, slowly tortured, and then mercilessly killed. Remember, these are the sworn enemies of Israel, known for their fiendish brutality and merciless cruelty. The Ninevites loved to torture those they captured by skinning them alive, impaling them on sharp poles, gouging out their eyes, cutting off their ears, or noses, or tongues, or burying them alive. There is absolutely nothing in this story that should give us any hope that something good was going to come out of it!
This also brings God glory. If the Ninevites were really good people, had good hearts, but just needed a little enlightening, their conversion wouldn’t have been much of a miracle. But the fact that they were totally opposed to Jehovah and His people, and then turn around completely and worship Him in repentance shows how great God is who can do such wonders! The Ninevites had done nothing to deserve God’s favor. It wasn’t because of their inherent goodness that God sent them a prophet. It was to glorify His great name!
4. The Preaching of this Awakening:
What means did God use in this awakening? Preaching!
The Style of the preaching. Jonah’s preaching was very simple. Any child could understand it. Jonah didn’t use $40 words like “hypostatic union” or “supralapsarianism”. He spoke in a language they could understand. Jonah didn’t speak so that he would appear well educated or brilliant. Jonah was simply repeating God’s message. His preaching was also serious. “Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The shortest sermon in the history of the church. There is no levity, no clowning around, no attempt to be a comedian. Jonah was serious. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a little humor, but when you try to fill your sermons with jokes don’t expect God’s powerful presence. You can be either a prophet or a jester but you can’t be both. William Sprague in his book on Revival in 1832 says that seriousness over eternal truths always attend a true spiritual awakening, and that levity and jesting must be forsaken if we want to see revival. I do have to hand it to Jonah – his preaching was also fearless. I can’t imagine waltzing into Nineveh and preaching about their destruction and expecting to get out alive! But Jonah obeyed the Lord. The kind of preaching we would expect God to use today should also be the same: simple, serious, and fearless!
The Subject Matter of the Preaching. What did Jonah preach? The judgment of God and His certain destruction, with the hint of the possibility of mercy upon repentance. This preaching was not seeker-sensitive neither prosperity. Jonah wasn’t assuring them that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. It was not calculated to please them and lull them into self-deception. It was calculated to slay them, and cause them to cry out in desperation for God’s sovereign mercy. Now, there was a hint of the possibility of mercy. Even the king recognized that because he says in 3:9, “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.” He must have reasoned that if God had intended to destroy them with no possibility of mercy, He wouldn’t have sent them a prophet. He would have just destroyed them. The fact that He had warned them and given them a specific date of their destruction might mean it was possible He would relent if they turned from their wicked ways.
This was also the preaching God honored in the 1st Great Awakening. Notice Jonathan Edwards’ description, the only thing in their view was to get into the kingdom of heaven, and everyone appeared pressing into it. The eagerness of their hearts in this great concern could not be hidden, it appeared in their very countenances. It then was a dreadful thing amongst us to lie out of Christ, in danger every day of dropping into hell; and what persons’ minds were intent upon, was to escape for their lives, and to fly from the wrath to come.
The kind of preaching God will honor is the preaching of the truth! We have to get back to the old gospel of Luther and Calvin, the Puritans, Whitefield and Wesley and Spurgeon. We must not be afraid to call a spade a spade, and tell people of their depravity, that heaven and hell are realities, that repentance is absolutely necessary to escape the wrath of God. However, we can also preach not just a hint of mercy, but the absolute certainty of mercy if they will come, repent and believe on Jesus Christ.
5. The Outcome of this Awakening:
Look at what the Ninevites did. 3:5-9. They believed God, called a fast, and put on sackcloth (rough burlap). Notice who did it? From the greatest to the least of them. Everyone! When the king heard Jonah’s preaching, he did the same thing. Only he made it mandatory for everyone in the city, and all the animals, to fast, cry to God earnestly, and turn from their wicked and violent ways. They weren’t making a bunch of decisions that would last a few weeks before they jumped on the newest fad. This was not a bunch of people who raised their hands in a meeting, or went down to an altar to say a prayer and then were assured by a counsellor that they were saved, and they should never doubt it again. The results of this awakening were faith, earnest prayer, and repentance. Try to understand the magnitude of what is going on here. If every person in our city were to repent and cry to God for mercy on the same day, it would still not be as great as this. The people of our town have heard the gospel and have something of a Christian heritage. Not so with the Ninevites. The greatest miracle in the book of Jonah is not that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and did not die. It was that the entire population of Nineveh repented! Now, when you see a whole community of people believing God, crying to Him earnestly, and turning from their wicked ways, you have a real spiritual awakening. When we see a famous evangelist do a series of meetings resulting in some decisions for Christ, you have an evangelistic crusade. We should never confuse the two.
Look at what God did. 3:10. He relented from the calamity He declared He would bring on them and didn’t do it. In other words, He extended mercy. Mercy is when God “doesn’t give us what we deserve.” What do we deserve? What does Los Angeles deserve? What does Las Vegas deserve? What does San Francisco deserve? We all deserve judgment! If we will repent, God will relent of the judgment that we deserve.
Application: After having studied Jonah chapter 3, the Lord has given me a fresh hunger to intercede for a spiritual awakening here in our city. We’ve decided to set apart this Friday as a day of Fasting and Prayer. I’m asking all of you to spend the day fasting and praying for a sovereign work of God in our city. At 7.00 p.m. we will meet for worship night.
As we wind down our worship service today, we’re going to take some time for corporate prayer, and we’re going to pray for a spiritual awakening on 3 levels: in our own lives, in our church, and in our city. All of us, from time to time, need to be jolted awake. We can go on living as though this world were everything, and there is no eternal world or great God to whom we are accountable. But when Christ returns will each one of us account for your life with joy?
