Turn with me in your copies of God's word to Jonah chapter three, beginning in verse one. We'll be reading the whole text of Jonah three tonight. If you're using the Pew Bible, you can find that on page 774 as we continue in this evening's sermon series through the book of Jonah. So give your attention now to the reading of the word of God. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce angers so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did and they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them and he did not do it. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we pray that you would fill us with your spirit now, the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of you, that we may see you, our great God, and give glory to your name through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. How do you feel when you can tell that you've been talking to someone and talking and talking, and they're just not listening to you? Maybe you go to the doctor and you're trying to tell them what's going on and all you get is the blank face, flipping through the charts, doodling around on the iPad, whatever it is that doctors do on their iPads. Or maybe it's the classic scenario, the unfortunately too classic scenario of a husband whose wife is talking to him but nothing seems to be getting through. and we're off thinking about something else, you probably don't feel too good in those moments. You just want someone to listen to you, to really hear what you're saying. What's even worse is when that person then says or does something later that only proves exactly what you were suspicious of, that they didn't process a single thing you were saying. It was all just white noise. We hate that feeling of someone not listening to us, and yet how often do we treat God that exact same way? In fact, from the moment that God created Adam, over and over again, he has been giving us his word, telling us who he is, what he does, what he's like. And yet over and over again, we fail to listen. His word becomes white noise and we're like the inattentive husband or the doctor who's off thinking about their own life or sports or not paying attention really at all and just kind of filling in with whatever we want God to say. Now, it's not a new problem that we encounter in our day. It's a problem that God's people have always had. It's interesting with Jonah that there's actually two places in scripture that mention this prophet. Of course, it's the book that bears his name, but there's one other place in scripture where we find Jonah that's relevant to this sort of problem. In the book of 2 Kings, Chapter 14, verse 25, we read about the reign of Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom of Israel. And 2 Kings 14.25 says of Jeroboam II that he restored the border of Israel from Lebohemoth as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who is from Gath-Hephirt. What's happening in Jonah's day is that this northern king is restoring the land. Israel at this time was in constant territorial warfare, especially with their northern neighbors. And what happens under Jeroboam II is that they begin pushing the enemies back, or getting back to the good old days, back to the glorious boundaries of the kingdom when Solomon was king. And if you read other prophets who are contemporaries of Jonah, prophets like Amos, you'll find that the Northern Kingdom was really prosperous, and it was a time of great excitement and great national pride. We're the Northern Kingdom. We're pushing the enemies back. God's blessing us, his covenant people. But in all of their excitement, in all of their fervor, they seem to have forgotten something. They seem to have forgotten the true nature of the mercy of God. It's a problem that we're all prone to, all throughout church history, to forget what God truly is like, what he's trying to say to us, and what we see here in Jonah 3 is the true nature of the mercy of our God. And we'll see that in three points tonight. First of all is the origin of God's mercy. Second of all, the objects of God's mercy. And then lastly, the outcome of God's mercy. Now to the first point, the origins of God's mercy, where God's mercy comes from, we could also maybe rephrase that in the form of a question to ask, well, why is God merciful? Why does he show mercy? Why is it that God relents from wrath? Why is it that God saves sinners? Why is it that God spares his rebellious creatures? To begin answering that question, we need to pay attention to a theme in the book of Jonah. It's a theme that runs all throughout the book, and maybe you've even picked up on this theme in the last couple of sermons that we've done in the book of Jonah. If you'll recall, back in chapter one, God sends his word to Jonah. He's told, go preach to the Ninevites, go give them this word of warning. And what does Jonah do? Three times over, it says in chapter one, he flees from the presence of the Lord. But as he's fleeing and as he hires a ship to go off to Tarshish, verse 4 of chapter 1 says that despite his fleeing, the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea. Still there, still following Jonah, he sends a storm. And then in verse 15 of chapter 1, God calms that same storm that he sent. Verse 17 of chapter 1, something interesting happens. There's a fish. The famous fish of the book of Jonah. This isn't just any fish. It's not as if some great fish happened to be swimming along and then saw Jonah, thought, oh, that's a good snack. I'll take this guy and then go about his merry way. No. It says the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And then at the end of chapter 2, verse 10, the Lord speaks to the fish and tells the fish to vomit Jonah back up onto dry land. And then here in chapter 3, God once again sends Jonah to the city of Nineveh, and this time Jonah obeys. And if we jump ahead a little bit into chapter 4, we see the same kind of thing happening. Verse 6, God appoints a plant. to shade Jonah. Verse 7 of chapter 4, he appoints a worm to eat the plant. Verse 8 of chapter 4, he appoints, like he did in chapter 1, a wind, but this time a scorching east wind. One of the main themes of the book of Jonah that we see over and over and over again is simply this, that God is sovereign. over all creation, every part of this world under His sovereign rule. God is sovereign both inside Israel and outside Israel. He's sovereign on the land and on the sea. He's sovereign over man, and He's sovereign over animals, and He's sovereign over plants. He is sovereign in the wilderness, and He's sovereign in the city. He's sovereign over his covenant people, and he's sovereign over the most pagan, unbelieving, rebellious sinner that any Israelite of the northern kingdom could have possibly imagined, an Assyrian of the city of Nineveh. No matter who you are, no matter where you go, no matter what happens, God is sovereign. All of it is under his control. It's ironic, one of the great ironies of the book of Jonah, that God's own prophet doesn't seem to understand this. Either he doesn't get it or he knows it and he forgets about it and he acts like it isn't true. The people who truly understand the sovereignty of God are the Ninevites. Verse nine, when the people are coming to repent and the king is speaking for the people, he says, who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Not, all right, we did our part, now we know, we've twisted God's arm, he's gotta do what we want him to do. No, that's not what the king in Nineveh says. He says, who knows? Acknowledging that God is sovereign, that he owes them nothing, that he doesn't owe anybody anything. God can do as he pleases. Now this isn't to say that God is some kind of arbitrary God who will do one thing one day and then flip around and change and do a 180, do a different thing the next day. That's not what this is saying. God is sovereign, but he is a God of sovereign mercies. He's a merciful God, not some arbitrary, capricious God. But he is a God of sovereign mercy. And he does as he pleases. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 9, verse 15, God says, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Nobody can twist God's arm. You cannot manipulate God. You cannot force his hands. because his mercy is a sovereign mercy that he will give as he sees fit. Sometimes we think of God as if he's this cosmic vending machine. You put in the right coins, press the right button, follow that formula, boom, out comes exactly what you want. Say the right prayer, do the right things, go to church the right number of times, boom, out comes God's mercy, out comes his blessing. But that's not how God works. There's no formula you can follow, no words you can say, no prayer you can pray, no good work that you can do that can earn God's mercy, that can put Him into your debt. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen. He's the sovereign Lord over all creation. So what does that mean that we can do? It means that we come to him humbly. When we come to God, we don't come cocky. No, we come bowing the knee, not trying to snatch his mercies out of his hands, but holding up our own empty hands, the hand of faith that says, God, nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. humbly asking for the mercies of a sovereign God. We do that not out of a last-ditch effort, as if, well, this is the only thing we've got left to do, so we'll just come to God in desperation. That's not it at all. We come to God in this way, not just because we're desperate and don't know what else to do, but because we listen to Him in His Word and what He's told us. And what He's told us in His Word is that there are people whom he will give his mercies. God's mercies, which come from his own freedom, are given, promised, to certain objects of mercy. Who are the objects of God's mercy? The objects of his mercies are repentant peoples, people who will repent and believe in God. Verse four, Jonah finally makes it to Nineveh, the thing that we've all been waiting for since chapter one. He finally obeys, and it says, verse four, Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And then what happens? The people of Nineveh believed God. In other words, they had faith. They didn't hear Jonah's words and take time to deliberate and say, well, can you do us a sign? Can you prove it to us that this is really true? Or, well, maybe we need to really think this through and we'll go to our gods and see what they say. No, the people believe just like that. It says here in particular that Nineveh would have taken a three days journey in order to go about the city and truly reach one end of the city to the other to give a proper visit. But what does it say here, though, in verse four? It says that Jonah only began to go into the city. In other words, he hasn't even had time to really walk around and go to every little district where he needs to preach. He only goes a day's journey, not even getting to the center of the city. and already the people repent and believe. He just starts his way in, gives the message, and they believe. The objects of God's mercy are a people who will believe. Not those who demand signs like the Jews in Jesus's day. Not those who want to do their own work and contribute their part. No, the objects of God's mercies are a people who will believe. Put aside their own works and place their trust in a sovereign God who gives his mercies as he sees fit. But it doesn't stop there. The people believe. And verse 5 goes on and says, so what do they do? They called for a fast and they put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them, a national repentance going about everywhere. Nobody is outside of this repentance, from the least of them to the greatest of them. And then in verse 8, when the king is declaring a national repentance, And he says, we're all gonna turn from our evil ways. He says on the second half of verse eight, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. And how does God evaluate their repentance? Verse 10 says, God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way. Sackcloth, ashes, fasting, these are signs of national mourning that would have been very common in the ancient Near East in this day and age. And here, it's a mourning not just over some national tragedy, like war or famine, but the greatest human tragedy of all, the tragedy of human sin. They hear the judgment of God, they hear the message, and they act on it. They don't just believe it, but they act, and it bears the fruits of repentance. They turn away from their evil. and toward obedience to the one true God. If you want to know what true repentance looks like, you can always look for at least two signs, sorrow over sin and change of somebody's ways. We've all seen the press conferences, usually a politician or an athlete who gets caught doing something, and the news picks up on it, and it's all over the news media, so what do they do? They go behind the mic, and they begin to give this apology, and you hear them saying it in a monotone voice that really communicates nothing but, I'm really annoyed that I have to be here right now, and then nothing changes afterward. You see that kind of thing, and you know that's not true repentance. You're just sorry that you got caught. What is true repentance? True repentance looks like genuine sorrow over sin and turning to God, changing your ways. God has mercy on repentant peoples, but it goes even farther than that. It's not just repentant peoples that Jonah 3 is communicating to us are the objects of God's mercy. It's all repentant peoples. And this is really the heart of chapter three, and at the very heart of the book of Jonah, that God's mercy goes to not just one kind of people, but to all peoples who will repent and believe. And this is where we see where the people in Jonah's day, the people of Israel, had forgotten something that God had been telling them for centuries upon centuries upon centuries, something that they were not listening to. All the way back in Genesis 12, when God established a covenant with Abraham and began through this family to form a covenant people for himself, he promised to Abraham that through him he would bless not just Abraham and the people of Abraham and the family of Abraham, but all nations. All nations through Abraham and his seed would be blessed. And all nations means all nations. The book of Revelation gives us a vision of every tribe, tongue, and people worshiping at the throne of the Lamb who was slain, but who is now standing at the right hand of the Father. And yet, and yet, We are so prone to forget this. If you were an Israelite reading this as it was originally delivered, this would be shocking to see these kinds of people repenting. Nineveh was not just a friendly neighbor. Nineveh was not the annoying neighbor who's on the other side of the fence and is a bit of a nuisance, but you can get along well. No, Nineveh was an enemy. Nineveh was a constant military threat against the nation of Israel. Nineveh is one of the great cities of Assyria and the Assyrian Empire, the empire that would one day destroy the Northern Kingdom, conquer the Northern Kingdom, take them into exile. The way the Assyrians treated exiles were violent. Suffice it to say, you don't want me to describe from this pulpit the kinds of things that Assyrians would do to the peoples that they conquered and then carried away into captivity. You can look it up later on your own time. And when you read Nineveh, as an ancient Israelite living in Jonah's day, you don't get warm fuzzy feelings. You hear enemy. You feel anger, hatred, those who are outside the covenant community. And even the Ninevites can receive the mercies of God. What God is telling Jonah, what God is showing him, what he is showing us, is that his mercies are not restricted to one group of people to one nation, to one class, to one part of the world. No, His mercies are too grand for that. They must go to every corner of the earth, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. All who repent and believe will receive the mercies of God. Is there some way in which you are limiting the mercies of God tonight? Maybe you're thinking to yourself, well, yes, These kinds of people can be saved, but I'm not so sure about them. Maybe you're limiting God's mercies because, well, they have the wrong social class, economic class, the wrong background, the wrong education, the wrong nationality. Is there some group that you're saying, really in your heart of hearts, I'm not so sure God's mercy can reach them? Maybe God can save nice people who do bad things, but is there maybe a level of sin that you just think that's irredeemable? Yeah, sure, God can save my mean neighbor who just doesn't really go to church like he should, but there's no way he could save someone like an abuser or an abortionist or a racist. or someone flaunting sexual sin in their lives as so many do today. No, God's mercies can reach all who repent and believe. Maybe you can affirm that in theory. You say, sure, God can save all those people, I agree with that. Well, what about the people who've sinned against you? What about the people who've hurt you? Who've betrayed you? Who've truly, deeply wronged you? Can God save those people? Yes. God's mercies go to all who will repent and believe. That is the mercy of our God. His mercies come from his own freedom. It goes out to all who will repent and believe. And lastly here, we see the outcome of God's mercies. Verse 10. When God saw what they did, now they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Now what's going on here? Didn't Jonah just say in verse four of this chapter that yet 40 days and none of us shall be overthrown? Was Jonah lying? Was God lying? Absolutely not. That's not the way that God's warnings of judgment work. One of those questions. that you hear people raise all the time about the Old Testament is a question about judgment. Well, why is there so much judgment in the Old Testament? I read all these prophets, and all they want to talk about is God judging people, and this judgment's gonna come on this people, and that judgment's gonna come on that people, and God's punishing this person there, and he's talking about judgment there. Why all of this judgment? And it's a fair observation. There really is, especially in the prophets, a lot of words of judgment. But what we fail to see is why those words of judgment are there. They're not there because God is some evil dictator in the sky ready to strike us down at the best possible opportunity. No, God's words of judgment Always have following them, either explicitly or implied in them, a message that there is a way out, if you will only repent and believe. Anytime you see a word of judgment in the Bible, you can put a little invisible asterisk next to it, follow it down to the bottom of the page, and you'll see, unless you repent and believe. The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans chapter 2 verse 4 that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. God is patient and kind and merciful. He warns us not because he despises us. No, he warns us because he is giving us opportunity to repent. If you ever wonder to yourself, why is it that God lets the world keep going on the way it is? Why doesn't Jesus come back already? There's a number of answers to that question, but one of the most basic answers is that God is giving opportunity for people everywhere who hear the gospel to repent and believe. We all need to hear this. We all need to be reminded of this, even as those who have truly repented and believed. We need to remember what God does when he has mercy upon a people. The Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 2 verse 3 that we all by nature are children of wrath like the rest of mankind. by nature. We're born into wrath. We live under wrath. We deserve the wrath of God. There's not a single human being who's ever been born save the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who did not deserve, justly deserve, hell and torment, the fire that is never quenched, the worm that never dies, We all ought to have the wrath of God poured out upon us, and yet God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. What happens when somebody repents and believes? That cloud of wrath that was hanging over them from the moment they were born, that should have broken over their head, breaks over the head of Jesus Christ, so that wrath is no longer ours, but taken in our stead by the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, something even better happens. Something even better. Behind the cloud of wrath that moves away, we see In the full sunshine, the glorious face of a loving heavenly father who sent his son so that the cloud of his wrath would move away from us, break over him, and we would enjoy the mercies of a loving heavenly father. God doesn't spare his wrath just so we get a get out of hell free card. No, he does it so that he can turn us to himself. It's exactly what the Ninevites do here. Verse 5, they believed God. Verse 8, they called out to God. Verse 9, they obeyed God. Verse 10, they were seen by God. The Ninevites turned to God. Why does God give us his mercies? He gives us his mercy so that we would no longer follow our own ways, flee from the face of God, plunge ourselves into the depths of sin and misery and suffering and death, but turn toward him, climb back the mountain to the presence of our great God and enjoy he who is merciful. God has told us who he is and how his mercy works. Will you listen? Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we pray that you would remind us always of your sovereign mercies, which are ours by faith in Jesus Christ. Would you lift our hearts to worship for this glorious reality? We ask in the name of Christ. Amen.