we come to today's lesson, which is called the pronouncement of judgment. Of course, we know that's coming because way back in chapter 1, we remember God saying, look, Jonah, I've got a mission for you. The sins of Nineveh are extremely wicked, and I've had it up to here with it, and so I want you to go and preach to them and warn them lest judgment comes. And so that's Jonah. And of course, we talked about this. God never changed His mind. Even though Jonah ran the other direction, he was running from God, he was being disobedient. When he finally got things right and turned the other direction, guess what? The mission was still the same. God didn't change his mind. God said, look, I know you had a little distraction there. You were fish food for a while. But guess what? The mission's the same. And I still have the same job for you. We said this, praise the Lord for second chances. Amen. Thank God that he gives us another chance. And so he did. So we see that in the life of Jonah. So we'll see that exactly. Those exact words here, not second chance, but a second time. Let's go ahead and read our scripture this morning. It's Jonah chapter three. verses 1-4, "...and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah..." What? "...the second time." Amen. Second chance. "...came a second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." So that's exactly what the Lord said back in chapter 1. Notice that He tells Jonah, "...preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." It reminds me of Moses when God told Moses, Go to Pharaoh, I'm going to tell you what to say, just say what I tell you to say." And that's exactly what's happening here. Jonah doesn't, we'll hit this later in the lesson, but Jonah didn't have to prepare a message. God gave him the message, he just had to declare it. So he said, you preach the preaching that I bid thee." Then verse 3, So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey. And he cried and said, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Let's pray and we'll begin our lesson. Thank you Lord for our time here this morning. Please bless as we look at this lesson, look at your word, help us to learn practical things that will help us in our Christian walk. And we'll certainly thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the good news is that finally, finally, God has a willing and obedient servant. Back in chapter 1, God said, Go. Jonah said, What? No. He said, no, I'm not going. And he ran and went the other direction. So finally, the Lord has a willing and obedient servant. But the bad news is this. Pay attention to this now. I wonder how many people died and went to hell, Christless hell, while Jonah was messing around in his disobedience. And that's going to be a very important part of the lesson today, is us as Christians in the New Testament age, the church age, understanding that sometimes our disobedience, our goofing around, our messing around, our playing around, our not taking God's work seriously, costs, the cost of that, is the priceless souls of men and women. When I say men, I mean mankind. Men and women. Amen? We must understand that. And understand that God's work is very important. But Jonah was in his selfish disobedience. Didn't want to do what God wanted him to do. And during that period of disobedience, no doubt, people perished. and maybe are in hell. So it's very important that we understand, and that will lead us to our first statement here, our disobedience not only affects others, like the mariners on the ship, remember that one, when Jonah was, when the storm came on the ship and they realized who, what's caused this great storm, this great turmoil, and they found out it was Jonah. He was responsible. So it doesn't only affect others, but it can also produce negative eternal consequences, i.e. the souls of men, eternal souls of men. Amen? So that's a very sobering statement, and it's very important that we understand that. And it's very important that we understand, regardless of where we are today, now tomorrow is January 1st, 2018. But regardless of where we are in our spiritual journey, where we are in our spiritual growth, I mean, as I look across the congregation this morning, there are people at different levels in their spiritual growth. Some have been saved 40, 30, 40 years. Some have been saved 10 or less, and all in between. Regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey or your spiritual growth, you must understand this lesson, and that is this. Don't waste another moment. Serve God. And that's where Jonah has messed up here a little bit. The time that he was running, the time that he was not doing the Lord's will, he wasted valuable time where he could have been serving God and hard to tell, as I mentioned earlier, the folks that ended up in hell or whatever. because of his time of disobedience. And so, it's very important that we make the rest of our life count, regardless of our age, regardless of where we are in our spiritual journey. Make the rest of your life count. Someone, a friend of D.L. Moody, the great D.L. Moody, said to him, asked him one time, how many souls were saved in your morning service? He said, two and a half. And the man said, oh, okay, I get it. Two adults and one child. He said, no, two children and one adult. What he meant was that the adult had already wasted half his life, got saved later in life. And so he only has half a life to serve God. Where the children who got saved at a young age have the rest of their life to serve the Lord. And so it's very important that we not waste another moment. that we make the rest of our lives count for Jesus, amen? As I approach that 60th birthday, February 2nd, I marked that down, don't forget. As I approach that birthday, I keep reflecting on, man, I'm praying the Lord will give me 20, 25 more years, I don't know. Pardon? Groundhog Day, exactly right. Every year growing up, my grandmother would say the same thing every year. Kelly, are you going to see your shadow this year? Of course, if you know about Punxsutawney Field and all that, that's over in Pennsylvania. I mean, how could that groundhog not see its shadow? They had come out with camera crews and shown the light down the hole, the groundhog hole, you know. But if he saw his shadow, I guess it was six more weeks of bad weather. But, you know, I pray, Lord, give me a lot of years left. I want to serve you. I want to make the rest of my life count. I want to do something for you. And so, very important. Let's move on here. We look at point one of our lesson is an urgent matter. Urgent matter. If we look at the Scripture again, we see that... Let's see where we are. I lost my place. Yeah, chapter 3, verse 3, it says, So Jonah arose, as the Lord told him to go. So he arose, he went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. And verse 4, he began to enter into the city a day's journey. He didn't waste any time. Jonah had some urgency about him now, which he didn't have before, obviously, but now he does. And, you know, let me say to you this morning that there ought to be in our lives, folks, a level of urgency when it comes to the souls of men, when it comes to thinking about the work of God, by the way, the work of God is the most important work in all the world. God's work, God's business is the most important business in all the world. I know President Trump has lots of important things to do this morning, no doubt, but there's nothing as important as what's taking place at this very moment, the declaring, the preaching of God's word. That's the most important thing. It's the thing that helps us the most. I thank God that we're going to get a tax break or whatever, but you know what? I need preaching more than I need that. I need God's Word. I need that relationship that I have with Him. And I need to spend time with Him on a daily... I need that more than anything. And so do you. And when it comes to God's work and serving Him, we need to have an urgency about it. And so thankfully, Jonah got this urgency. I can see now we're going to be in trouble in time here. I'm not even past point one. But it doesn't matter. We're going to just keep moving along. When it comes to the work of God, there needs to be a level of urgency. And this is in my notes. I didn't put it on your sheet. If you want to write it down, that's fine. But I put this because your statement ends with a period. Mine ends with a comma or has a comma and goes on to say, which I believe the modern church has lost to some degree. Many churches in America, maybe even around the world, play church. They've lost the urgency. They've lost the idea that Jesus could come at any moment. And so a lot of places are playing church. They're not really working the work that God wants him to do. So, we have to have this urgency. Let me show you a couple verses here. 1 Samuel 21 8, David said unto Himalek, and is there not here under thine hand spear or sword? For I have neither brought my sword nor my weapons with me, because, get this phrase, the king's business required haste. It was important. This is a familiar passage to Romans 13, "...and that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand." And of course, Ephesians 5.16, "...redeeming the time, making good use of the time, because the days are evil." So it's an urgent matter and under that we're going to see this. Preaching is God's answer. We kind of touched on this in an earlier lesson, so we won't spend a lot of time here. But yeah, preaching is the answer. Preaching has the answer. It is the answer. God's command to Jonah that we see in verse number two was to preach. He was to go to Nineveh and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Jonah, I want you to go there. I want you to preach. I want you to preach what I tell you to say. And preaching was God's answer. God's answer is not a seminar. It's not a consortium. It's not a therapy session. It's not even hypnosis. It's preaching. That's God's answer for problems. It's preaching. And the very thing that the world thinks is foolishness, absolute foolishness, is what God uses to change lives. You ever think about that? You know, the world, folks that are sitting out in their warm homes this morning with the fireplace going or whatever, watching television, having a cup of coffee. They know we're here. They think about, well, those people are nuts to go out and Sunday after Sunday go to church, Wednesday night, you know, and to pay good money for people to scream at you and call you names and tell you you're a sinner and kick at you and scream at you and fuss with you. And you actually pay money to get that. How about that? And they think we're crazy, but listen, preaching, that's God's answer. It certainly is. And I want to show you a couple of verses about that, too. This is probably the most familiar passage, the most famous one concerning this. It says, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, those people who aren't saved, it's foolishness, absolute foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Wherefore is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the dispute of the world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? And then this verse, After that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching. to save them that believe." Now, I found this verse to be interesting. Titus 1.3, "...but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching." Interesting that Titus, or Paul wrote it, I guess. Paul wrote it to Titus, that he puts it so plainly. He said, look, God made known, manifested, revealed, made known His Word. How? by preaching. Preaching is what God uses to declare His Word. I find that very interesting and I find it exciting as well. I love preaching. Do you ever listen to preaching outside of church time? Yeah. I started to put a cassette tape in. That really dates me, doesn't it? No, turn on a sermon, whether it's online or whatever. You've got a sermon. Listen to a sermon while you're driving or maybe in home or something. Play a sermon. It's not Sunday morning. It's not Sunday night. It's not Wednesday night. But you're listening to a sermon. Yeah, preaching is so good for us. And it's God's answer for us. Check out this statement. Charles Spurgeon said this. And I really like it. He said, it is blessed to eat the very soul of the Bible until you come to talk in scriptural language and your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord so that your blood is Bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows through you. Can you say amen? Isn't that good? And I read that, and I come to that word, Biblein. I go, what is that? So I Googled it, right? You don't need a dictionary, just Google. That's no such word. It's a Spurgeon made-up word, but it means, you know how we say the certain epistles are the Pauline epistles, because Paul wrote them? It's kind of like that. Biblein means of the Bible. So it's a made-up word, Biblein, or Biblein, Biblein. Meaning just talking about the Bible or being a Bible person. But I like that statement. It's really powerful. Let's move on. So not only is preaching God's answer, but secondly, promptness is God's advice. Promptness. We touched on this also in an earlier lesson. I just made reference to it, but in verse 3 of our text, it says that Nineveh was a city of three days journey. In other words, it would take you three days to get there under normal circumstances, I guess, walking or whatever, riding. But Jonah, in verse 4, began to get to the city after a day's journey. And so, Not only did he have urgency, but he was very prompt. He wanted to get there. He was anxious now to deliver the message of God after spending that time in the fish's belly. And so he made it there in a single day. He was eager to deliver God's message. And I want you to see this on your lesson. It says, God always speaks His message in the present tense. In other words, when should a person get saved? Now. Right? Today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. And when it comes to serving God, now. Get saved now. Repent now. Make the change now. Turn now. And it's always present tense. And so promptness or hurry, getting the job done was important to Jonah at this point in time. So that was the urgent matter. He had a sense of urgency now. He was very prompt. He didn't delay. He wanted to get the message delivered. He was doing exactly what God wanted him to do. Then we see that he's a useful minister at this point in time. When I wrote that down, you know what came to my mind? Thomas the Tank Engine. I forget the conductor's name, but he always said, Thomas, you're a very useful engine. Top hat, thank you. Top hat. How could I forget? Caleb and I played Thomas the Tank Engine for hours on end when he was little. That was one of his favorite things, toys. We had the track set up all through the house, and I would go, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk And so I thought of that when I wrote this down. He's a useful minister. I don't know if you've ever had the experience in your life. I've been blessed to have this feeling on many occasions to God's glory. But there's something about when you know that you've done something for the Lord. I guess it's a built-in reward. There's a built-in feeling. And I'll call that feeling just this, satisfaction. There's a feeling of satisfaction that comes when you've done something for the Lord. He gets the glory. You're not seeking for a pat on the back. You're just getting it done. The job needs to be done. You're doing it. And you know that God used you to do that job. And you can walk away saying, That felt good. It felt good to do that for Jesus. It felt good to do that for the Lord. And maybe no one even knows I did it. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that should be the way it is sometimes. That way God doesn't get robbed of any glory. But there's a satisfaction that comes with that. And that's our next point here. There's nothing more satisfying in life than being used of God in some way for His glory. You know, whether it's winning a soul to Christ or it's coming in here on this building on a Saturday afternoon and cleaning the church, whatever it is, just doing something for the Lord, there's satisfaction in that. Amen? And I think that maybe God built that in for us, that built-in reward that we can feel that satisfaction by being used. I think of the words of a song, only one life will soon be passed. What's the rest? Only what's done for Christ will last. Amen. And so we want to be useful. We want to be useful ministers in the hands. We want to be useful vessels in the hands of the potter, you might say. Let's move on here. Well, now Jonah. He wasn't very pliable before. He was very rigid. He was very rebellious. He was very selfish as he ran from the message, ran from the will of God. But now, after his little encounter with the fish, the whale, he's a little more pliable now. And pliability, what's another word for pliability? Maybe flexible, being flexible, being Pliability is one of the most important abilities. In fact, we must learn to be flexible and willing to do things God's way. And that's what Jonah is all about now. He certainly wasn't pliable before, but now he's tracking with the Lord, you might say. He's on the same page and doing things God's way. The psalmist said this, I delight to do thy will, O my God. I delight to do thy will. I don't want to do it my way, I want to do it your way, and I delight in doing it your way. In fact, Jesus said it this way, nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt, as he spoke to the Father. So, learning to do things, God's way being flexible, That's pliable, being flexible, being willing to do things the way God wants it done. That's a great trait. So not only is he a pliable messenger, but he has a plagiarized message. Now, don't look. How do you spell plagiarized? Don't look at the screen. That's a toughie, isn't it? I was kind of surprised when I saw an extra letter or two that I might have stuck in there. But that's how you spell it, plagiarized. That means to take credit for someone else's work or someone else's message. Or if someone wrote a book and then you turn around and wrote the same thing and then put your name on it, you'd be plagiarizing because you stole their information. That's what that word means. I think most people might understand that. But you know what? In this case, it wasn't bad because God simply told him, Jonah, you preach what I tell you to preach. And so Jonah didn't even have to write a sermon. He didn't have to study. He just used God's message. I know there's some that believe you just get up to a pulpit, open your mouth, and God will fill it. I don't think it's wise to do it that way necessarily, but here, I guess the point I'm trying to get at, let me get to the next point here. God has a whole book of messages. We just need to use them with people who need to hear them. Now, I'm talking about soul winning, I guess. We don't have to make up a sermon to go talk to somebody at their door, on their couch, in the living room, or whatever. God has it all right here for us. Amen? We just need to tell it to Him. But standing up to preach behind the pulpit here in church is a little bit different. I need to do some study. And I had to study for this lesson, of course. But yeah, he had the message of God and he just had to declare what God told him to declare. Well, that brings us to number three. So we had an urgent matter. Jonah's got some urgency about him now. He's being useful. God is going to use him. In fact, we see him preaching the message. Look at verse 4, because not only we see him preaching it, it tells us what the message is, which is our point here. It was an unsavory message. Look at verse 4 again. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried. He lifted up his voice. He preached and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And so that was the message that God gave him. And that's the message that he's preaching. And his message was that Nineveh would be overthrown in a matter of 40 days. Now, it's not exactly the kind of sermon that wins friends. It doesn't build the attendance necessarily. It doesn't foster for a good offering. It's not really what they wanted to hear. And you know the people in Nineveh may have reacted the same way that the folks in Noah's day reacted. You're nuts. Some nut job of a preacher. You don't know what you're talking about. When Noah said it's going to rain, it's going to be a flood, they laughed at him. And they just kept on living in their sin. And it may have been the same here with Jonah. Some may have reacted that way. Next week we're going to see that the, we'll give you a little preview here. Ready? Verse 5. So the people of Nineveh, what? Believe God. So pretty much the whole city, I'm sure there were some that, there's always some that don't want to listen, don't want to believe. But I wonder if there were folks there that didn't want to hear what Jonah had to say. The message was unsavory, you might say. But the lesson in this is this. We can only control our action, not others' reactions. That's the lesson for us. You know, when the Lord told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel, the go and the preach, that's all we do. That's all we can do. I can go, and when I get there, get where I'm going, I can open my mouth and use God's message to say what He wants me to say, right? But I can't save the person. I can't make him listen or believe. There are some soul owners that try try to do that. I remember a guy, I was in Bible college, and we went, this guy and I went soul winning, and you know, the door, I'll say this is the threshold of the door here, we're standing at the door, and I was the silent partner, this guy was doing the talking, and the person opened the door, and after the man said we were from blah blah church, you know, he started to say his little spiel, the man said, oh, I'm not interested, he went to close the door, and here's what the soul winner did. put his foot in the door, stop right there, and he said, I'm not finished yet. I was like, oh. And that's not a good way to go somewhere. It's a good way to get shot. Yeah, man. And another time, a guy actually pulled a big knife out, and someone did something similar to that. Boy, do a preacher and I have the stories we could tell about Bible college days. Yeah, you don't win friends that way, but we can't control the reaction to the message we give. Our job is just to control what we're supposed to do, and that's to give the message. Go and give. And so that's the lesson in that little part of the lesson there. This unsavory message talked about the wrath of God. God's judgment was about to fall. God told Jonah, look, I've had it with the wickedness of this city. It's very bad. And it was Jonah's responsibility to give these people one final warning. Now, yes, God is a God of love. We understand that. Preacher touched on this last week. He's also a just and holy God. And I think there's always that line in the sand somewhere. We don't know where it is. God is so merciful, man oh man, does he give us grace and mercy. But it's interesting that, well we'll come to that in a second, let me get ahead of myself here. Man thinks that somehow he will slip into heaven because of God's great love. I'm talking about lost people now. Well, God's a God of love. Surely He won't send people to hell. I know He is love. Doesn't the Bible say God is love? He's such a great God, such a great loving God, that when I die, I just think He'll love me. He'll let me come to heaven. That's a tragic mistake to think that way. You can't get to heaven other than through God's way and God isn't going to allow sin to come to heaven. It must be dealt with through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And so that's a very, very tragic way to think that we can get to heaven because on the merit of God's love, we must accept Jesus Christ as our savior. But letter B then is a window of grace. And I find that interesting in the lesson here because God could have certainly destroyed Nineveh now. But what did He say? He gave them 40 days. I call that a window of grace. And often God gives us windows of grace. You may be living in a window of grace right now. I know of one window of grace that we're all living in, and that is concerning the return of Christ. That window could close at any moment, right? We don't know the hour or the day or the time that Jesus is returning. If you're not saved this morning, that's dangerous. You say, well, I'll get saved later, or I'll do it later. Today's not the day. Well, we already learned about today is the day. Don't play with that type of a thing. I mean, that window could close any moment, and you need to be saved. And so that window of grace, and I already said what the point was, but God could have easily destroyed Nineveh on the spot, but instead he gave them a window of grace of 40 days. God often gives us windows of grace. The most notable window of grace is concerning Christ's return. All right, we are about one minute to go. Perfect. I thought we wouldn't do so good, but we did okay. Let's go over some challenge questions that we get from this lesson here. Number one, do you understand that God has a solution to your problem or problems? We get that from the early part of the lesson. What is God's solution? Preaching. Preaching the Word of God. When the preacher stands up to preach, there's something in it for you. Don't be the kind of Christian that does this. Preaching's coming at you and you're deflecting it there and there. Oh, I hope Doug's hearing this. Oh, I hope Megan heard that. No, say, Oh Lord, you got me. You got me on that one. What's in it for me? So God does have the solution to our problems. And many times it's the preaching. Brother Howells used to say, if people would just listen to my preaching and do what I say from the pulpit, it would eliminate about 90% of my counseling sessions. Because when they come and ask me questions and want counsel, it's things I've already preached. And that's so true. Number two, do you understand the importance of bringing your behavior into sync with your beliefs? All right, we saw that in the life of Jonah. He was running. Now he's getting things in sync. He's doing what God wants him to do. He's got some urgency about him. And he's doing what God wants him to do. Then thirdly, are you willing to use God's word as a powerful weapon in the culture around you? And we certainly see Jonah taking the message of God and declaring it to a sinful people. And it may have not been popular with some, but nonetheless, he declared it. Amen.