All right, amen. My message tonight is titled Arise and Go. I'm gonna be reading in Jonah chapter three. I'm gonna start and just gonna read the whole thing, I believe. Verse one to 10. It says, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. 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. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed, and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. and God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not. Father God, Lord, we thank You for bringing us together tonight, God, to hear Your Word, Lord. I pray You would be with me as I preach Your Word tonight, God, that You would bless Your Word, Father, open our ears to hear Your Word, God, to listen to Your Spirit, God, as You speak to us through the Word. And Father, I just pray you'd keep me from error, Lord. Pray you'd bless our service tonight. Bless those that are not with us, God. Keep them safe, Lord, and bring them back to us, God. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So Jonah had been commanded by the Lord to go and preach to Nineveh. And he decided to take a boat to Tarshish instead. And God sent a mighty tempest to hinder Jonah on his journey. You recall that the men on the ship cried out to their gods for deliverance. And they cast lots to find out which of them was the reason for the storm that they were caught up in. And the lot fell on Jonah. And Jonah confessed that he was indeed the man that had brought this curse upon them by disobeying God and running off to Tarshish instead of going to preach in Nineveh, as he was told. And Jonah told the men that in order to save themselves, they would have to cast him into the sea. They tried hard to get the boat to shore, but they couldn't do anything against the wind and the waves that threatened to sink their ship. So they finally did as Jonah had said to them. We'll recap some of this in Jonah 1. It says, So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. God spared the ship and those men, and they feared the Lord exceedingly, it says. Seeing God's work in the storm had convinced them that God was a God to be feared, and they offered a sacrifice and made vows. It's good that they feared God and were stirred to this act of worship, We don't know anything of their lives after this moment, but I hope that they never forgot what God did that day, nor forgot the vows that they vowed to him. Ecclesiastes 5 says, When thou vowest to vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. By his admission to them of his own guilt, Jonah was giving these men a living example of what could befall a man who defers to pay his vow unto God. I think it is often the case that when men find themselves in dire situations, they may make promises to God with their lips that after a time they conveniently forget. But Jonah had not forgotten his duty, but he had deliberately run from the presence of God because of his desire that the people of Nineveh not be given a chance to repent and thus be spared by God who he knows to be merciful to those who do repent. Verse 17 said, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me. Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hast cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods can pass me all about. All thy billows and thy waves pass over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters can pass me about, even to the soul. The depth closed me round about. The weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth, with her bars, was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.' And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." Jonah was afflicted through this experience with the fish. I can't even imagine the terror of being thrown into a raging sea than being swallowed by a fish. But Jonah's affliction didn't stop there. I believe Jonah's life was gone out of his body, and Jonah found himself in hell before he turned back towards God and cried out for mercy. Jonah said that he would pay his vow, and God had mercy on him and brought up his life from corruption, and that fish spat him back out onto dry land. In Psalm 119, David said, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept thy word. When we go astray, God will afflict us in order to bring us to repentance. Because God is wanting to keep us from a greater punishment if we don't repent. David was guilty of some serious sins. He had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. And when she became pregnant, he orchestrated the death of Uriah through his man Joab. His faithful servant Uriah, he had him left on the battlefield by himself to be killed. So God sent Nathan the prophet to David to rebuke him and cause him to repent. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. David's sin was worthy of death, but God had mercy on him and put away his sin, but his sin was not without consequences. His son that was born from the sinful act did die, even though David fasted and prayed, and his house was continually troubled. We should recognize that while God's mercy is great and that we can come before him and confess our sins and receive forgiveness, that doesn't mean that we may not still be afflicted because of our sin or reap consequences in this life. It is better to not go astray in the first place, but we all will have sins in our lives that we will need mercy for. Isaiah 55 says, 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, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Jonah found this mercy and recommitted himself to pay his vow to God. So God once again has given Jonah the command to go to Nineveh and deliver his warning to them of their coming judgment. And this time Jonah went. said, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. 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. The Bible told us in chapter one that Nineveh was a great city. Now it reiterates this fact and gives a little more information. It says, Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. Doubtless, Nineveh was one of the largest cities, if not the largest city in the world at this time. But it's hard to put a fine point on exactly how large Nineveh might have been in light of this verse, or I guess how exactly to interpret the meaning of this statement that Nineveh was a city of three days' journey. You could take this as saying that it would take three days to walk across the whole city from one side to the other. Commentators seem to agree with the idea that three days' journey would equal about 60 miles, given that a man could walk about 20 miles in a day. I don't think that anyone is of the opinion that Nineveh was ever nearly that large, that it would have taken three days to walk across the breadth of 60 miles, even with outlying suburbs. The more common interpretation is that it would take three days to walk around the outside of the city. And they cite particularly a description of Nineveh given by one, Diodorus, that would make the outer perimeter of the walled city to be about 60 miles. So they say that the three days journey is how long it would take to walk around the outside of the city. Others say perhaps the size of the city was such that it would take three days to walk up and down all the streets, preaching to everyone in the city. Matthew Henry covers both of these ideas. He says, the greatness of Nineveh consisted chiefly in the extent of it. It was much larger than Babylon, such a city, says Diodorus Siculus, as no man ever after built. It was 150 furlongs long and 90 broad and 480 in compass, the walls 100 feet high and so thick that three chariots might go abreast upon them. On them were 1,500 towers, each of them 200 feet high. It is here said to be of three days' journey. For the compass of the walls, as some relate, was 480 furlongs, which allowing eight furlongs to a mile makes 60 miles, which may well be reckoned three days' journey for a footman, 20 miles a day. Or, walking slowly and gravely as Jonah must when he went about preaching, it would take him up at least three days to go through all the principal streets and lanes of the city to proclaim his message, that all might have notice of it. Other accounts of the size of Nineveh, as well as archaeological reconstruction, seem to indicate that Nineveh may have been quite a bit smaller than Diodorus' estimate. So of those two interpretations, I would probably tend to lean toward the second. But I do have to acknowledge another interpretation, which is that the statement of Nineveh being a city of three days' journey might be somewhat figurative. There was a man named Charles Halton who wrote an article, How Big Was Nineveh? Literal versus Figurative Interpretation of City Size. And he just says at the top of his article, he says, this article examines the incongruity between most modern translations of Jonah 3.3 and ancient textual and archaeological evidence concerning the size of Nineveh. Every modern solution intended to reconcile the literal rendering of the description in Jonah 3.3 with ancient evidence fails. However, reading Jonah 3.3 as a figure of speech perfectly conveys the author's intention of representing Nineveh as a very large city. But I don't wanna get bogged down in this. It's just an interesting subject, I think, to study on. Nineveh, as we can say, is a big city. But as to how exactly to interpret the idea that it was a three-day's journey, I'm not sure. Something we could talk about, I think would be interesting. But Jonah 3.4 says, and Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey. And he cried and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. To cry means to utter a loud voice, to speak, call or exclaim with vehemence in a very general sense. Jonah was told to rise, go to Nineveh and to that great city and preach into it the preaching that I bid thee. And in chapter one, he had told him, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me." So Jonah was called to go and preach to Nineveh, which meant he was to cry against it and warn them of the judgment coming due to their wickedness. Preaching is a public communication or exhortation based on the word of God. And preaching outdoors in a city means Jonah had to be loud. I imagine that Jonah must have had a voice that thundered to get the attention of the people of Nineveh. The message that God sent him to preach was, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. It isn't stated, but it seems to be implied that this is an ultimatum. God says it is going to happen, but Jonah knows that God is giving the Ninevites space to repent of their wickedness. Unless they repent, the city is going to be overthrown. To overthrow would mean to turn upside down, as his wife overthrew the table. I think Webster might have played board games with his wife. It says to throw down, to ruin, to demolish, to defeat, to conquer, to vanquish, as to overthrow an army or an enemy. There are many ways that God could cause the downfall of the city. Most likely Nineveh would have been overthrown by another nation as the city eventually was destroyed by Babylonians. But the people of the city heard Jonah's preaching and believed his word. So in verse 5 we read, So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, And he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water. Even the king of Nineveh himself believed the word of God in Jonah's preaching. He rose up out of his throne and humbled himself, putting off his royal garments and putting on sackcloth. and he sat down in ashes." This idea of humbling yourself before God through fasting and putting on of sackcloth and ashes is found throughout the Bible. Sackcloth is exactly what it sounds like. It's just coarse, rough cloth that you would use to make sacks. Often it's seen in conjunction with mourning or times of great distress, and it's accompanied by the rending of their clothes. as in Genesis 37 where it says, God does desire this humbling of ourselves when we are afflicted and seeking mercy from him. But he doesn't just want an outward show. He wants true repentance from the heart. And Joel 2, it says, Our king of Nineveh not only fasted and clothed himself in sackcloth, but he commanded the entire city to observe this fast. Even the animals were covered in sackcloth and were not allowed to eat or drink water. He said, But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not? This is what God wanted for Nineveh to recognize their wickedness and turn from it, and turn toward God in hope of His mercy. The Ninevites didn't know the Lord, but even in their natural wicked state, they understood that a good God would have a sense of compassion that could be appealed to. And what did they have to lose? This is in stark contrast to the response God witnessed from Jerusalem in Isaiah 22. Verse 12 says, Do you want judgment? Because this is how you get judgment. When God calls you to weeping and mourning and putting on sackcloth, you should have a barbecue and then God will do the things that he has said that he will do. But if we want to find mercy from God, when we find that we have gone astray and God has given us a warning, we need to learn how to humble ourselves before God. Again in Joel 2, therefore also now saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning. and rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. Who knoweth if He will return and repent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the Lord your God? Matthew 12 says, The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonas. And behold, a greater than Jonas is here." They repented, but before they could repent, they had to hear the preaching. It was Jonas' preaching that caused them to fear God and to turn from their wickedness and humble themselves. There's a whole world out there full of people who are dead in their sins who need to hear a preacher to warn them of the judgment that's coming. to tell them about the Savior that died on the cross for their sins. Romans 10, 14 says, God sends preachers to those lost souls to deliver His gospel. Those preachers are us, or it should be us. We know that God has called us to be the light of the world, and Jesus gave us His great commission. In Mark 16, He says, And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. We all have a responsibility to preach the gospel to this lost world, to let them know about the free gift of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. Without a preacher, would any of us be here today? If someone hadn't told us about the Savior, could we say that we would have believed on Him anyway? So many souls are dying every day, and we should feel the need to do something for them, to lead them to the Lord, if we can. How can we sit by knowing that there is an eternal lake of fire waiting to swallow them up if they don't turn to the Lord and trust Him for their salvation? We have to preach the gospel. We owe it to the Lord for what He did for us. God used one man to bring the entire city of Nineveh to repentance. I'm sure that many people would say that Nineveh was foolish to just believe this man that wandered into town and started yelling at them. If you've been out preaching in public much, you've probably been told how foolish you are to be standing on a street corner trying to tell people about Jesus. That you're doing it wrong. That isn't what Jesus would do. In Matthew 10, Jesus said, What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light. and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." Preaching is the method that God has ordained for reaching the lost. That doesn't mean that God doesn't use tracts. He does. I think tracts are just another way to preach. If someone is deaf, they won't hear my voice, but they can hear the Word of God on a tract and believe. But someone had to get that tract into their hand, and that someone is a preacher. If he hands out tracts, places them in places where people will pick them up, I think you can call that preaching. But the plain old meaning of the word preach is still the man standing and declaring out loud the Word of God. God sends preachers to wake people up, to shake them, and tell them that the judgment is coming. 1 Corinthians 1 says, For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish 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 will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For 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. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. What the world calls foolishness is wiser than their wisdom, and what the world calls weakness is stronger than their strength. Most people would look at a man preaching on the street and see a fool, but one man preaching can change the lives of many people. You may not immediately see the fruit from your labor, but God sees it. God is watching over His workers and knows every one of them, and He is faithful to reward us for our work if it's done in His name and for His glory. And when we preach, we may be planting a seed that will be watered by someone else. And that fruit may come somewhere down the road. God knows who is working in His fields. 1 Corinthians 3 says, But we are in the last days, and it's not going to always be easy to reach people. People are going to be hardened against the gospel, against the Word of God. But we have to preach to them even more. They have to be warned for no other reason than to show that God is good and God is a just God. No one should be able to say that they weren't told the truth, that God's preachers didn't do their job. 2 Timothy 4 says, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. In John 3 it said, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Moses had that snake on a stick when they got bit. He said, look at that snake and you'll be saved. Jesus, for us, is the cure for the sin, the snake of sin that bit every one of us. We look to him and believe on him. We'll be saved. He said he loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. We should love the world like God loved the world. In 1 John it says, "...love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." You know, if we love the world, we won't love the people in the world that God loved, that God sent His Son to die for. We need to love those people like God loved those people and tell them the truth about the Savior that died for them. We need to do like God told Jonah. We need to arise and go. Amen. I'm gonna sing this hymn real quick here. There's a call comes ringing o'er the restless waves, send the light, send the light. There are souls to rescue, there are souls to save, send the light, send the light. Send the light, the blessed gospel light, let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light, let it shine forevermore. We have heard the Macedonian call today, send the light, send the light. and the golden offering at the cross we lay. Send the light, send the light, send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine forevermore. Let us pray that grace may everywhere be found. Send the light, send the light. And a Christ-like spirit everywhere be found. Send the light, send the light. Send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light, let it shine forevermore. Let us not grow weary in the work of love, send the light, send the light. Let us gather jewels for a crown above, send the light, send the light. Send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine forevermore. Amen. So we need to get busy. We need to get out and preach the word. The time is short. There's people dying every day. People that we need to get out and reach. Father God, Lord, we thank you, God, for the story of Jonah, God. And we thank you, Lord, for giving us an opportunity to be able to go out and preach to folks, Lord, that need to hear your gospel, God. We pray you would help us, Lord. Give us power, Lord, to preach with boldness, Father. Give us the faith, Lord, to know that your word will not return void, God. Lord, we know that there's fruit to be had, Father, if we will go out and just do the work, Lord, that you'll provide the increase, God. Lord, we just pray that you would bless the rest of our evening, God. Thank you again for bringing us together to hear your word, Lord. And I thank you for these people that suffer to hear me preach, God. And Lord, I ask that you would bless the rest of our night, bless our fellowship, in Jesus' name, amen.