Introduction:
1. This morning we look at the third chapter of Jonah. I’ve reviewed the basic outline of the book with you at the beginning of each sermon because by the time we finish the book I want you to be able to think through Jonah and have a basic understanding of what the book is about. Remember? Chapter 1, "Jonah Running from God." Chapter 2, "Jonah Running to God." Chapter 3, where we are today, "Jonah Running for God, Chapter 4, "Jonah Trying to Run God."
2. This week my Aunt Sue, who lives in Steeleville sent me a really cute e-mail that I want to share with you. In fact, I thought it was rather amazing. I’m not enough of a mathematician to understand how it works, but this little exercise does work with any phone number.
Cell #1—
1) I want to take the prefix of our church phone number (pause) 846
2) Let’s multiply that by 80, (pause) 67,680
3) Then, add 1 (pause) 67,681
4) Multiply by 250 (pause) 16,920,250
5) Add the last 4 digits of our phone number 8511 (pause) 16,928,761
6) Now, add our phone number again (pause) 16,937,272
7) Then, subtract 250 (pause) 16,937,022
8) Finally, let’s divide by 2 (pause) 846-8511
3. That’s right, you end up with whatever phone number you started with. I thought the little trick was one of the best I’ve seen. That fact leads me to introduce you this morning to the best, chapter of Jonah. I didn’t realize how true that was until I was studying it this week. Everything that has happened up to this point has been leading to what takes place here. The story in chapter 3 is nothing short of a miracle. Most people see the miracle in chapter 1 where God sends the storm and then sends the fish for Jonah when he’s thrown overboard. In chapter 2, it’s a miracle when Jonah spends three days in the fishes belly and then is vomited up on dry ground. These are all miracles, but they aren’t the greatest miracles in the book. In Jonah chapter 3 we see an entire heathen city humble itself before the Almighty when God’s preacher came to town. The fact that unfaithful Jonah was doing the preaching makes the miracle of Nineveh’s response even more dramatic. God could have disqualified Jonah. But He didn’t, instead He chose to use Him.
Cell #2—
The fact that God uses people who have let Him down isn’t surpassing, because He uses us.
4. It’s true that Jonah had taken quite a detour from where he was supposed to go, but God wasn’t finished with him. He still had an appointment in Nineveh. Come to think of it, so do we this morning. Let’s read the passage together.
Cell #3—
Jonah 3:1-10
1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying,
2 "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you."
3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk.
4 Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown."
5 Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
6 When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes.
7 He issued a proclamation and it said, "In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water.
8 "But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.
9 "Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish."
10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it. (NAS updated)
Let’s Pray.
Cell #4—
I. Jonah’s Second Chance 1-3
1. There is special significance to the statement that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, "the second time." This would have little significance to us if we didn’t understand all that happened to Jonah when the word of the Lord came to him the first time and he said, "no".
2. There’s something else going on here that’s easy to miss, but I it is significant because it speaks of God’s incredible forgiveness.
Cell #5—
God didn’t say anything about Jonah’s previous disobedience. He simply reissued the command for Jonah to go.
3. God’s not about to allow our hard hearted nature to keep Him from getting His work done. When God forgives, He refuses to bring up the failures of the past.
4. That doesn’t mean nothing changes when we disobey, because it does. Sometimes the changes are subtle, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Let me show you in the text what I’m talking about. The first time, the Lord told Jonah to preach against Nineveh because its great wickedness has come up before Him. The second time the Lord’s directions to Jonah were not as detailed. The implication was that Jonah was to go & God would tell him what he was to say either as he went, or when he arrived. His obedience was the significant issue.
1) The fact that this was God’s message is demonstrated by the fact that the, "I" in, "I am going to tell you," is emphatic. God was supplying the message, in a sense, Jonah was just the delivery boy.
2) There is no way to know what Jonah was thinking as he made the long trip to Nineveh. It was a journey of about 600 miles and would have required at least 25 days of travel. Whatever it was, he had plenty of time to think and perhaps mull over the details of what God wanted him to say when he arrived in Nineveh. Perhaps God informed him on the trip, or he might have waited until Jonah arrived to emphasize to the wayward prophet that it was God’s message.
Cell #6—
Nineveh was a very significant city in power, culture and size. It was the final capital of Assyria, which was the largest world power at the time. Nineveh may have had as many as 500,000 people in it.
5. No wonder the city was called, "great." When you take a close look at the phrase which comes after the statement about Nineveh’s greatness, you discover something else about the city. It was, "a three day walk." Some have suggested that it would take 3 days to walk around the outside of the wall. Archeologists have found the wall was only about 8 miles around so that doesn’t make much sense. Most likely the three days was the time Jonah needed to the go to each section of the city. It was the time he needed to get God’s message to the people.
Cell #7—
II. God’s Severe Message 4
1. Some have suggested that Jonah didn’t immediately begin sharing his message when he arrived. His clothes probably made him stand out. His skin was likely bleached white from the acid in the fishes belly. Listen to what scholars John Walvoord and Roy Zuck suggest might have happened. "There was something about Jonah, the way he carried himself, his clothes, or something else, as he strode toward the center of the city, looking neither to the right nor to the left, that drew many after him. When he finally stood and shouted, ’Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed,’ the news spread like wildfire."
2. But God used more than Jonah to get his message out. He prepared the people to be ready to listen. Consider this...
Cell #8—
At this time Nineveh was in a national crises.
(pause) They were dealing with problems as a result of:
#1) famine, #2) enemy attacks and #3) internal revolts.
(pause) There was even a full solar eclipse in 763 BC. About this time.
(pause) God probably used these things to prepare Nineveh for Jonah’s message.
3. God’s message to the Ninevites was simple, but threatening. He promised that in 40 days Nineveh would be destroyed. There were no words of hope in the message. There wasn’t even a direct call to repentance. However, contained in God’s threat, was a hint of mercy. God wouldn’t tell the city they were about to be destroyed if there was no hope for them to be delivered. You know the story, ultimately the city had hope.
Cell #9—
Jonah’s message wasn’t powerful because of the exact words.
(pause) There were only 5 Hebrew words in the text.
(pause) It was powerful because it was God’s message!
4. The power of God’s message would change everything and bring about one of the biggest miracles in the entire Old Testament.
Cell #10—
III. Nineveh’s Sincere Repentance 5-9
1. Not only did the citizens of Nineveh hear the message but they believed it and responded to it. They accepted, in mass, that Jonah’s message would be carried out unless something changed. All the odds were against the people of Nineveh accepting what God said, but that was just what they did. Think about it, Jonah wasn’t one of them, he probably didn’t speak their everyday language they spoke on a daily basis. That’s where the miracle came from. Let me put it in perspective like this. 5
Cell #11—
J. Baldwin wrote, "When Jeremiah preached a century or more later that Jerusalem would be overthrown, he was arrested and imprisoned for treason although he was well known as a prophet of God." Yet, when Jonah preached a similar message in Nineveh the entire city responded and turned to God. 5
2. The fasting & prayer didn’t begin with the king. He got on board after the people of Nineveh were already doing it. It was a grass roots effort that affected nearly everyone in Nineveh, even before the king got in on it.
Cell #12—
The decree of the king commanded fasting and mourning, but in one sense it wasn’t necessary, because the people were already humiliating themselves throughout the city.
3. The people were overcome with grief. Before this, they had assumed they were greater than anyone else. They were the super power that everyone else had to deal with.
4. While the people of Nineveh responded to God, there is no clear indication that they fully understood what it meant to become God’s people. The message Jonah brought to them was considered true and they accepted that. However, Jonah didn’t give them all the details about God. He merely challenged them with the reality that unless something changed their city would be destroyed in 40 days. The seriousness of the threat can be found in the fact that the word used here for "destroyed" is the same one used when God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah off the world’s map.
5. The people responded to Jonah’s message to repent on at least some level. They appeared to believe God, but not necessarily turn their life over to Him. There was a significant change in the people, but it was not a lasting change. Only 37 years later in 722 BC, the Assyrians would destroy the Northern kingdom of Israel.
Transition: This leads me to the final major point of the sermon . . .
Cell #13—
IV God’s Sovereign Mercy 10
1. God had promised to destroy the "wicked city of Nineveh." He had not promised to destroy a city sitting in sackcloth & ashes, humbled and repentant.
Cell #14—
The Nineveh God threatened with destruction ceased to exist when the people changed their ways & sought His forgiveness.
2. The Assyrian people did all that they knew to make their peace with God. They were very serious about seeking God and He responded to their sincerity.
Cell #15—
The people fasted, wore sackcloth, called on God and turned from evil.
(pause) Only the last thing, "turning from evil" is mentioned as a reason for why God didn’t destroy them.
(pause) Probably because that was the reason He gave at the beginning of the book for judging them.
3. God was touched by the change that took place in their hearts. Why hadn’t He just wiped the city of Nineveh off the face of the world map? He could have done that, but He didn’t. The reason is consistent with what we know about God.
Cell #16—
God does not want to give up on the Ninevehs of the world.
(pause) He is a God of justice, but above all else, He is a God of love!
Conclusion:
1. The story of what happened in Nineveh is one of the greatest miracles in the entire Bible. Imagine, an entire heathen city brought to repentance. You probably remember the last Billy Graham crusade held here in St. Louis. Imagine if during that crusade people were so affected that, the entire city was shut down because people were so concerned about their spiritual condition that they simply forgot about everything else.
2. Don’t you think that God wants those of us who know the truth to be faithful to share His message with those who need to know? The emphasis was on Jonah simply telling others what God had told him to tell them. So I ask you, are you telling others? God had prepared the hearers in Jonah’s day to be ready to hear Jonah’s message. God still prepares people today to hear His message. The result in Jonah was dramatic. However, Jonah still had to be faithful to say what God wanted said.
3. On the other hand, if you are here this morning and don’t know the forgiveness of God, you can. A God who would care about the likes of cruel Nineveh cares about you. Why are you running from Him? It’s time to come home. Will you accept Him this morning? Let’s pray!
1) Cliffton Allen, The Broadman Bible Commentary: Hosea - Malachi, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press) 1972.
2) James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications) 1996.
3) Elizabeth Achtemeier, New International Biblical Commentary: Minor Prophets I, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers) 1996.
4) Cyril Spaude, People’s Bible Commentary: Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, (St. Louis, MO: Concorde Publishing) 1994.
5) Billy Smith, Frank Page, The New American Commentary: Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press) 1995.
6) John Walvoord, Roy Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, (USA: Victor Books) 1985.
7) Frank Gaebelein, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Old Testament, electronic edition, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing Co.)
