Please turn to Jonah chapter one. Love to read the whole book because the story is hard to break it up. But I'm going to read all of chapter one. Here are the word of God. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners were afraid and every man cried out to his God and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said to him, What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, Please tell us, for whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? So he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, Why have you done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us? For the sea was growing more tempestuous. And he said to them, pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to return to land, but they could not for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried out to the Lord and said, We pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Amen. Father, I pray that you would bless not only this reading, but the preaching of your word May that Word sink deep into our hearts, bless us, cause us to grow in You, and to appreciate even more the incredible redemption that we have in Christ Jesus. And it's in His name that I pray, amen. Well, this is the second book in a row that has as one of its themes bitterness. Now obviously there are a lot of other major themes as well, such as the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only answer to bitterness, and God's incredible missionary heart to Jews and Gentiles to abused and abusers alike, and we're going to delve into those themes. But because Jonah has been so frequently slandered, in my opinion, slandered, I want to begin by countering two very common misrepresentations of him. First misrepresentation, and you see this everywhere, is that Jonah was a racist who hated God and his fellow men. They look at his sin, and yes, it was a serious sin, they look at that sin, but then they way overgeneralize and they blow it out of proportion. Let me read some of the sample quotes from evangelical publications. Jonah was a racist, a hyper-nationalist, a rebel. Jonah was a hateful, selfish, racist man bent on disobeying God. Jonah was a Jewish supremacist. The Bible Project says, Jonah is the subversive story of a rebellious prophet who hates God for loving his enemies. And similar misrepresentations could be multiplied many times over. Now, I take a quite different approach to this. I believe he was a godly man who had allowed the sin of bitterness to creep into his heart, and it was bitterness at the Assyrian empire that had caused so much death and destruction and no doubt had caused a great deal of pain and suffering and anguish in his own family. He is a prime example of what happens to a godly person when bitterness is allowed to take root in our hearts. No matter how reasonable that bitterness may appear to us to be. It poisoned him, as Hebrews guarantees bitterness will always do. And as I've pointed out in another sermon, that bitterness brought him into deep depression. Bitterness. It is an ugly sin that needs to be cleansed away by the grace of God. It is a sin that needs to be replaced with a supernatural grace of compassion. He did not have at least compassion on his enemies at this point. It had poisoned him. He did not hate God, as the Bible Project claims, and he was not a racist. And just proof positive is the Phoenicians were a different race than he was, and yet he preached the gospel to them. And he could have just said, well, I don't care about the Phoenicians. I want to die anyway. I'm going to go down and let them go down with me in this ship. But he sacrificed his life so that he could spare theirs. And a lot of people overlook that. He was not a racist per se. Instead, Jonah was a man who had suffered abuse at the hands of the Assyrians, and they made him so bitter, he was unable to extend any grace towards them. Now, in many ways, what Jonah experienced at the cruel hands of the Assyrians was experienced by Mez McConnell, who is the author of this book here, The Creaking on the Stairs, Finding Faith in God Through Childhood Abuse. And actually, Biblical Blueprints has bought a copy of this for every family in the congregation, just as a thank you for sharing me with them and letting me, through Biblical Blueprints, minister to a hurting world out there. I bought 60 copies of this, so there should be enough for each family, plus any 20-year-olds and above who want to read this. So, it's in a box back there by the last pillar. You can pull it out. But Rosaria Butterfield said that this is the most disturbing book I have ever read I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a book that takes the Jonah's of this world and gently ministers God's healing grace to them and Now, he doesn't reference Jonah in this book. I think he should have, because I just see the parallels all over the place. But Mez is a Reformed minister in the Acts 29 movement in Scotland. And yet, even as a pastor, he initially struggled to put off the turmoil of his feelings against his stepmother, a woman who had tortured, starved, and humiliated both him and his sister. She had allowed him to be sexually abused. She forced him to eat his feces. She brought daily exquisite psychological pain into his life. And if you have ever gone through that, you will be a little bit more ready to sympathize with Jonah while disagreeing with Jonah. Yes, we should disagree with Jonah, and while helping the Jonas of this world to get over their problems and to find healing and change. In any case, Jonah illustrates how bitterness can make even believers somewhat irrational. There's a lot of irrationality in the book of Jonah. It is irrational for a prophet who should know better to try to flee from the presence of the Lord as he's doing in the first verses of chapter one. It is irrational for Jonah to be asleep while the ship is going down and to almost not care what is happening around him. It is irrational to be angry when Nineveh repents. We should desire repentance, and it was irrational to still want God to judge them after they had repented. It is irrational to be angry over a plant withering and being angry when he had really no right to that plant. When God says in chapter 4, verse 9, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? It was irrational for Jonah to say, it is right for me to be angry, even to death. He was just an emotional basket case. And God's ways of bringing him out of his depression and out of his bitterness, I think, are very instructive. Those who have dealt with the victims of abuse know that getting past the negative feelings takes time and it takes God's supernatural, powerful grace. Many of them struggle much more than Jonah did even. Let me read you the obituary of one sibling group that sadly had failed to appropriate God's grace and did not, they responded pretty much the same way that Jonah responded. And this was to their mom's death. This obituary was published in the September 10, 2013 edition of the Reno Gazette Journal. It reads, Marianne Teresa Johnson Reddick, born January 4, 1935, and died alone on September 30, 2013. She is survived by six of her eight children, whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults, she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child, was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit. On behalf of her children, who she so abrasively exposed to her evil and violent life, we celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the afterlife, reliving every gesture of violence, cruelty, and shame that she delivered on her children. Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure. Jonah had a similar desire. He really wanted the Assyrians to burn in hell forever. He was very bitter at the Assyrians. And he was hugely conflicted when they were forgiven by God. Now while I will grant that Jonah did not handle his pain and his depression in a godly way at all, I would encourage us not to be too hard on Jonah. There are literally thousands of abuse victims out there in the world who have responded very similarly to Jonah, and Mez McConnell's book here gently and respectfully takes them past that into having compassion. Well, God's going to do the same in Jonah's life. God will take him past his bitterness by having him come face to face with the power of undeserved redemption. And even though I've long held to this interpretation of the book of Jonah, it's not a majority interpretation, and I have held to it because I've been comparing Scripture with Scripture in the last year and a half, there's archaeological discoveries that have come up that I believe have vindicated that interpretation. And maybe we'll get into that archaeology later. A second way that this book has been misrepresented is by treating it as an allegory. And it's not just liberals who do this. Obviously the liberals do not believe that this is real history and they don't believe in the the miracles. They want people to buy their books, and so they try to sound spiritual. They turn it into an allegory, like Pilgrim's Progress. And there's so many cool things that we can learn from this book. And then they have the audacity to say that Jesus was a good man. Well, Jesus is calling them liars, basically. You know, He's contradicting them, because Jesus is quite clear that He was a literal man. This is literal history. And Jesus affirms the accuracy of the fact that the city of Nineveh completely repented and became a believing city for a period of time. I believe it was for at least 45 years. And we'll talk about the evidence on that. Now, at least one modern scholar has produced some archaeological evidence that 27 other cities joined with Nineveh. But whether that's true or not, Jesus is inspired. And let me read one of the times that Jesus spoke about Jonah. It's Matthew 12. 39 through 42. An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And indeed, a greater than Jonah is here. It is crystal clear in this passage and the three others that I've put into your outline that Jesus treated Jonah as first of all a historical person, his three days and three nights in the belly of the fish as having actually happened. and the conversion of Nineveh as having actually happened. And I believe that he was dead the whole time that he was in the belly of the fish. I'll prove that in a bit. But the point is Christ is making this point that he is using Jonah's death descent into Sheol and resurrection as a type of his own death, descent into Sheol and his resurrection. So if you deny the one, you deny Jonah, you've got to consistently deny the other. So contrary to some books that you might have read, we must treat this as real history. And Because some of you have pointed out you've got commentaries that are from kind of a strange perspective on this, I do want to give a warning out there. Even evangelical commentaries are beginning to be infected by liberalism, and they explain away the miraculous in this book. One commentary claimed that Jonah's—this is just a dream. Jonah was in a ship, yes, but he had a dream while he was sleeping there, and he thinks that he was swallowed in the dream. But he was not really swallowed. Well, Jesus calls that commentator a liar. Another commentator says that Jonah took a ship to Tarshish and the storm wrecked the ship. Well, the text doesn't say anything about that, but it says the storm wrecked the ship. He's floating around in the water and he gets pulled out of the water by another ship that has a fish as its masthead. as its figurehead, and so symbolically it's a fish that swallowed him when the ship picked him up. No, no. Another bizarre theory says that a dead and decomposing whale was floating around, and Jonah, who had been floating on the water, climbed into that carcass in order to survive. No, the story we're going to see, Jonah's dead, and the fish is very much alive. But I give these illustrations just to warn you that compromise is creeping into evangelical circles. You see these kinds of things on the web, and you've got to be very cautious. So who was Jonah? I'm going to give a little bit of background, and I'm going to start with 2 Kings 14, verse 25. This is an inspired background information on Jonah that I think is absolutely imperative if we're going to interpret this book right. 2 Kings 14, verse 25. It says of Jeroboam II, who was the king of Israel, He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he had spoken through his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hefer. For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, and whether bond or free, there was no helper for Israel. And the Lord did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash." Now, there are five facts here that are very important to understand. First, Jonah was an actual person. He was a prophet. He was not simply an allegory. Second, he was a prophet who spoke the inspired word of God. And the text says, that word came to pass. Third, he came from the town of Gath-Hephir, which was two and a half miles from Nazareth in the region of Galilee. And so he is a type of Christ himself, but even the place where he is born, right close to Nazareth, but definitely in Galilee, is a beautiful foreshadowing of Jesus. And it also shows that the Pharisees were dead wrong when they told Nicodemus, are you also from Galilee? Search and look for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee. Wrong. Jonah was a prophet who arose out of Galilee as a prophetic type of the despised Jesus. Fourth, he prophesied near the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam II. That's a very important clue. This book, I believe, must be dated to 825 B.C. for the conversion of Nineveh to make sense. Fifth, as a result of Jonah's ministry, Israel had relief from great affliction. So they had been going through some horribly tough times, and anybody who has read the background of the Syrian wars and their torture knows exactly what they are talking about. It was bitter, bitter suffering. And this suffering helps to explain why Jonah was bitter over the treatment of Nineveh. Now, Floyd Nolan Jones, who I think is a genius chronologist, points out that placing Jonah in this historical context of 825 BC beautifully solves a huge mystery that has puzzled secular Assyriologists, those who studied the Assyrian culture in the past. Modern Assyriologists, they've just ignored this troubling data. But the mystery is missing kings. in the Assyrian list. It's as if the kings were embarrassed, later kings were embarrassed by the kings who ruled during this 45-year period, and they expunged their memory from the record. Why on earth would they do that? Well, Jonah tells us exactly why they would be motivated to do that. Jonah 3, 7 through 10 says that every man, woman, and child converted to God on one day. That's an astounding display of God's sovereign grace. And Jesus says in Matthew 12, it was a genuine conversion. Well, since everyone in Nineveh was converted, we would assume that the heir to the throne, along with the father, king, and his son, were both converted as well. So it's no wonder that there is a 45-year period in which Assyria is no danger to Israel. Later Assyrian kings who reverted back to Assyria's earlier very bloodthirsty religion and did so with a vengeance, they may well have been embarrassed by this 45-year hiatus in which the kings obeyed the laws of Israel's God and served Yehovah. So their record was expunged. Now another scholar claims that because there was a split in the empire at that time, only 27 cities that went along with Nineveh in this, these kings may not have been recognized as legitimate emperors. And that's why this is called, he's called the King of Nineveh, not called the King of Assyria. So anyway, there's a lot of little clues like that that we don't have time to get into. But Floyd Nolan Jones also shows that when you take this evidence into account, there's suddenly no contradiction whatsoever between the biblical account and some of the other ancient chronologies like Josephus has a longer chronology than the modern Assyrian one. But you take into account this gap, beautifully resolves. The same with the Egyptian and the 800 A.D. chronology of Georgios Synchilus. And so this means that far from being an embarrassment like the liberals treat it, this is actually a key. It's an absolutely important key to understanding that history. So Jonah prophesies Nineveh gets converted, then what happens? Well, it appears that Jonah stayed there to instruct this new believing city in the laws of God, and this in turn explains why Jews, Christians, and Muslims have held that the tomb of Jonah was in Assyria, not in Israel. Why did he not return back to Israel? Well, I can't absolutely prove it. But the only explanation that makes sense to me is that once the entire city converted, Jonah apparently had a change of heart, and he stayed to instruct the city in God's laws. And that's certainly what Jewish tradition says that he did. In terms of recent archaeology, What appears to be very likely is that when he died the Assyrian royalty honored his body with a tomb right on the grounds of their palace. If that's the case it's obvious that the Assyrian royalty loved Jonah. Now this is all archeological evidence it's only come to light in the last two years, you won't find this in the older books. And Jonah's tomb remained in the region of Nineveh until just recently. Nineveh is now called Mosul. You probably remember back in 2014, ISIS took over Mosul and blew up the tomb of Jonah, and they destroyed about 100 other major buildings and artifacts, much to the chagrin of the international community. Now, prior to them blowing up this tomb, nobody had dared to dig underneath to see what was underneath this tomb, because they felt it might destabilize the whole building. Well, these ISIS fighters, they didn't have any qualms about that, so they were digging extensive tunnel work underneath in order to loot the artwork and the treasures, which they did. You've probably seen some of their artwork sold all over the world. Then the Iraqis took over, kicked the ISIS insurgents out. And so they were not able to rob everything. And ironically, their tunnels have opened up for the first time new evidence that we have never seen before. It's never seen the day of light. So we're living in exciting times. So that's some of the background. Let's dig into the text, give an overview of this book. Verses 1 through 2. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now everybody in the ancient world of that time feared Assyria and loathed their cruelty. The only culture that was more perverse than Assyria was the Canaanite culture that Joshua conquered. But of all the ancient peoples, at least that we have clear evidence of today, Assyria was the most barbaric, the most cruel, and the most feared. Now, I've tried over the years to keep up with the archaeological discoveries every year, and it's astonishing how many times I read in these magazines, oh, here's some new things that have been found, and what a large percentage of them deal with torture. It was a barbaric culture. They've even found scores and scores of toys that picture pretend torture for their kids. That is beyond weird, giving tortured toys to three-year-olds and older. So you would expect, like in one of the living rooms that they saw in there, they had frescoes of all kinds of torture being depicted. And you would think people eating in that room would be sick to their stomach looking at a picture of a man being skinned alive, which I didn't put into your bulletins. There is another picture there that I did put in there of a guy having his tongue pulled out, another one having his eyes, and I won't even get into some of the perverted torturers that were on that fresco. But this is the kind of culture that Assyria was all about. Assyria was noted for its cruelty, and what I have described is bad enough, I won't get into the worst stuff. And you would think that Jonah would consider it a great privilege to go to Nineveh and to give God's what for to them, to pronounce his judgments upon them. But what we find in chapter four is Jonah being a prophet already suspected that God's purpose was not to condemn them to hell. His purpose was to convert them. That's why he was sending him to Nineveh. And he was conflicted, horribly conflicted. It did not seem fair. And we need to realize that grace is not fair, at least not fair to us. Burning in hell would be fair. And Jonah wants the Assyrians to get fairness, not grace. And so he flees in verse 3. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. God sent him to Nineveh. He goes the exact opposite direction. If you look at your map, you'll see he's going about as far away. he could get from there. Why would he do this? Well, he knows as a prophet he does not have control over his prophecy. When God comes upon him, he has to prophesy. Since he doesn't want to convert Ninevites, he feels the only option he has is to get out of there. Here's the problem. God follows him wherever he goes, and he prophesies wherever he goes. And his prophecy leads to the conversion of the Phoenicians on that ship. And as such, that was the first typology of Christ's kingdom going to the ends of the earth. The whole book is a prophetic typology of the New Covenant times. Let's read verses four through five. Now this is one of the symptoms of depressive behavior. And because I've preached an entire sermon on Jonah's depression, I'm not going to bring it up today. But in verse 6, the captain calls on him to cry out to his God. In verse 7, they cast lots. God's in control. He makes sure that the lot falls right on Jonah. In verse 8, they start grilling him with questions. Verses 9 through 10, they find out he's a prophet of the God who made the earth, who made the sea. and that He is running from His call. This scares them. They ask Him what they should do to avert death. Verse 12, Jonah says, These two are prophetic words. He knows the solution. Now, they don't want to do that. They don't want to have His blood on their hands, so they try their hardest to row to land, but God makes sure they have no choice. And then comes the amazing conversion of these sailors in verses 14 through 16. Therefore, they cried out, and I'm going to read all capital letters, LORD. It's the name Yehovah, because it is significant. Therefore, they cried out to Yehovah and said, We pray, O Yehovah, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood, for you, O Yehovah, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared Yehovah exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to Yehovah and took vows. Their use of Yehovah throughout, which was not a name used or known by the pagans, Their use of Yehovah, the covenant name throughout, shows that they had switched gods, had converted, and entered into covenant with the Lord. And this sets up the typology of the New Covenant kingdom converting the Gentiles. God sovereignly allows Jonah to flee so that Jonah would stand as a type of the New Testament church. You're probably thinking, wait a minute, you just said he was a type of Jesus. Yeah, he's a type of Jesus, but Jesus is connected to his body, and he is also a type of the church as a whole. For example, Romans 6 and Colossians 2 say that when Jesus was crucified, we were crucified. When he died, we died. When he was buried, we were buried. When he rose again, we rose again. When he ascended to the heavens, we ascended with him. We're seated with him in the heavenlies. It says in Ephesians 2.6, "...and raised us up together, made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." So we are queens and kings on the throne of Christ. We have authority. Revelation 2 says we're even wielding the same iron rod that Jesus wields when we engage in spiritual warfare as we ought to. So it's awesome, awesome privileges. Well, Jonah is a type of the New Covenant kingdom as a whole. His reluctance to go to the Gentiles represents the church's reluctance to go to the Gentiles in the Book of Acts. But since that church was marked indelibly with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection power, God guarantees that the church will eventually reach its Nineveh and convert it through its preaching. Indeed, the book of Jonah as a whole, I think, is a marvelous testimony to God's missionary heart to the Gentiles. It is not just Israel that God loved in the Old Testament, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jonah may have tried to run from his calling to prophesy to the Gentiles, but he could not. Even his being cast into the sea was a prophetic typology of Jesus being our substitute. Verse 17 says, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. And that he was dead inside that belly can be seen if you just read through this chapter in detail. Let me just point out a few points here. First, verse 10 shows that this prayer was made just before Jonah was vomited out of the fish and onto the dry land. As a result of the prayer, boom, he gets vomited out. So you've got to reconcile that with the rest of the prayer. Second, the second sentence of verse 2 says, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. His soul was in Sheol, the subterranean place of the dead that is in the heart of the earth. Sheol is not in the ocean. Sheol is under the earth. And he is rescued up from Sheol while he is still in that fish. Okay, so it's not talking about being vomited out of the fish. He was brought up while still in the fish. In verse 5, he remembers his body sinking and his life ebbing away as his body settled to the bottom of the ocean. The water surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. See, he was not swallowed immediately by that fish. He sank all the way to the bottom and apparently drowned before the fish even ate him. He was dead. Then after he died, verse 6 shows that he went down below the ocean floor. So we're definitely not talking about his body here. He says, I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. That language parallels language elsewhere of Sheol. In the Old Testament, now we go instantly to heaven. But in the Old Testament, they went to paradise in the heart of the earth. Okay. One of the synonyms for Sheol is used in the next phrase of verse 6, Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. Now, if he was in the pit, he was clearly dead. But where is he when he prays this? Not on the dry land. He was in the fish and God resurrected him, brought up his life from the pit when he was still in the fish. So Jonah's dead body was in the fish for three days and three nights, just like Christ's body was dead for three days and three nights. It is a perfect picture. Now, not to get gross, but I'm sure some of you are probably wondering, why did he not get digested? Because when sharks or whales or anything eat stuff, it tends to get digested very quickly. Well, it appears that this fish was sick. God made sure he was sick. He vomited, right? So he was sick. His digestive juices were probably not working adequately. That frequently happens. Your gastric juices get shut down. Or, as some commentators say, maybe he was partly digested, again, to be a prophetic sign to the Ninevites. In any case, verse 10 says, So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Now, there have been people who have just absolutely questioned whether this could happen. There have been unverified examples of people being swallowed by What do they call them, whale sharks, shark whales? Anyway, there's different big creatures that there have been reports of people being swallowed by them, but they've never been verified. Historian Edward Davis debunked the James Bartley story, which sadly I've referred to in the past. I thought it was a legit story. Apparently it's not. There's a lot of contradictions, and even the wife of the sea captain says, no, that never, That never happened. It was sea yarn that came about. Anyway, Davis says he thinks it would be impossible. He would have drowned or suffocated in the stomach of the fish. Well, no problem. He's already dead before the fish ate him. This is a miracle that we're talking about. He was resurrected. And it was only just before he gets spit out that God resurrected him into the body. In any case, we don't explain miracles by the non-miraculous. It's a miracle. And God says it happened. We believe it. because Jesus treats it as a historical fact. Then in chapter 3, we start the second half of the book where God begins all over again with almost the same words. And you can see in your outline there is a parallelism of the two halves of the book. Jonah 3, verse 1, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. His attitudes may not be completely right yet, but at least he obeys. Now prophecy, which is what he's going to be giving, has a powerful effect. It can either harden or it can convert. Okay. Jonah perhaps hopes that there will be no repentance, but he preaches and repentance happens on the first day, just one third of the way into the city, beginning at verse four. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh, And he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it. Now in Matthew 12, I've already mentioned, Jesus said this was a genuine conversion and that Nineveh would rise in judgment against Israel in that generation. Something that happened in AD 70 within the span of that generation. So the 40 days appears to not only prophesy the literal time from the festival of first fruits to the day of Pentecost when people from every nation under heaven get converted, But it appears to foreshadow the judgment on Israel 40 years later. And tongues were given at Pentecost as a sign of judging Israel and going to the nations. And what a marvelous sign it was. Paul appeals to the Assyrian foreign language that Israel was about to experience in captivity when talking about tongues in 1 Corinthians 14. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 21 through 22. In the law it is written, and then he quotes from Isaiah 28, With men of other tongues and other lips I will speak to this people, and yet for all that they will not hear me, says the Lord. Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. But prophesying is not for unbelievers, but for those who believe. In any case, when Jesus puts Nineveh's salvation and Israel's judgment together, he is making exactly the same theological point or argument that Paul was. Jesus was alluding to Deuteronomy 32, as many commentators point out, a passage that says the same thing as Isaiah 28. Hey, Israel, if you continue to revolt and rebel against me, I'm going to cast you out into exile. and you're going to be in a nation whose language you do not understand. It happened to the prophetic type as Israel was cast out into Assyria and later into Babylon. It happened to the anti-type as God called the Jewish church to be like Jonah, to preach to the Gentiles, and they were less than enthusiastic in doing it. They were sort of like, it took them a long time. It took a lot of pressure from God to get the Jews to be preaching to the Gentiles. But the Gentiles enthusiastically embraced the gospel. And of course, the final casting of Israel among the nations happened in 1870. Okay, so much for that. I won't get into the eschatology anymore. None of this seemed fair to Jonah. It just didn't seem right that a murdering, fornicating, raping, torturing, and abusive nation like Assyria should be saved. Chapter 4 begins, But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the Lord and said, Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish, for I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. It's just amazing that he would complain about how loving, kind, God's loving kindness and his relenting from disaster because that was the only basis for his own salvation. But this is the way many times abused people think. Anyway, God does not let this go. He gently pushes him. Verse four, then the Lord said, is it right for you to be angry? Now, this was Mez McConnell's attitude in this book towards sex offenders who became Christians. He worked at a mission and he noticed one person he pretty much suspected it was a sex offender who had become a Christian. And he was mean to that person, basically chased him away, told him he was not welcome there. The pastor told him, look, Mez, God saves sex offenders as well. And that enraged mess. It was almost like a personal assault upon him that God would save his abuser and forgive those horrendous sins. Okay, the thought seemed scandalous to him, even though he had been a Christian already for two years. Now, by that time, he had discovered the doctrine of hell when reading through the Gospels, and he was excited about the doctrine of hell. He regularly prayed that his torturers and there were many, would spend eternity suffering in hell for their crimes. And God's forgiveness, he came to realize eventually, is scandalous for everyone, for absolutely everyone. That is, unless Christ took the justice we deserved. So Mez began to understand that academically, but it took years before he felt true compassion, in other words, supernatural compassion, spirit-given compassion, for people like the Assyrians. It's a question we need to ask ourselves when we are judgmental of other people. Is it right for you to be angry? And the right answer is no. We don't have rights. Christ has purchased all of our rights, but Jonah doesn't answer. He theologically knows he can't answer God, but he's still wrestling with his emotions as he contemplates this scandalous grace. What God's going to do in chapter 4 is to show Jonah that just as his being cast into the sea saved the Phoenicians, what John Calvin actually calls a picture of Christ's substitutionary atonement, Jonah's death and resurrection and prophetic preaching would save the unworthy Assyrians, and that all of us are worthy of hell, and that every one of us is guilty of torture. Torturing Christ, abusing Christ on that cross with our sins is also the message of this book. But verse 5 shows that Jonah is still struggling. So Jonah went out of the city, sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. He was still hoping for judgment to fall. Now, of course, he knows this is not the way prophecy works. I want you to turn with me to Jeremiah 18, where God gives the conditional nature of all such prophecies of judgment, such as Jonah's prophecy of judgment. Liberals claim Jonah's prophecy failed, he's a false prophet. No, this is not the way God's prophecies of judgment happened. And I'm going to actually read the whole thing in context. Jeremiah 18, beginning to read at verse 1. The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter, says the Lord? Look, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel." So this is speaking about God's sovereignty in our salvation. He can predestine some to hell. He can predestine some to heaven. He is a potter. He can do with the clay as he pleases, and we, the clay, cannot complain. But notice the gracious, conditional nature of these prophecies of judgment beginning to read at verse 7. If that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it, if it does evil in my sight, so that it does not obey my voice, then I will relent from the good with which I said I would benefit it. Now, therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now everyone from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. No one deserves salvation. But when we repent and turn to the Lord, He washes us clean and He begins the process of developing a new life in us. And this is true whether you are the bitter, abused person being cleansed of his bitterness or whether you are the evil abuser being cleansed of his evil. And God did that to Assyria, producing a nation that appears to have remained true to God for approximately 45 years, after which a king hostile to God changed it back. In any case, in Jonah 4, 6-9, God uses an illustration to try to break through to Jonah's heart. that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened when the sun arose that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself and said, it is better for me to die than to live. Then God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And he said, it is right for me to be angry, even to death. And here comes the punchline that breaks through to Jonah's heart, much like Nathan's story about the sheep broke through to King David's heart. God gets him to empathize with the plant, and then he shows him his inconsistency. But the Lord said, you have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock? There were 120,000 infants and toddlers, which means that that was a massive, massive city, much bigger than a lot of the commentators claim. because they're dependent way too heavily upon archaeology. Now, that punchline that God gives must have broken through to Jonah, first of all, because God's the perfect counselor. He knows what He is doing. But also archaeology shows that not only did Jonah stay in Nineveh, but he was honored by the king of Nineveh with a tomb at the place of the palace. That shows an exceeding degree of honor. And he must have stayed long enough, Jewish tradition claims that he stayed long enough, to teach them how to obey God's laws. The very fact that he wrote this embarrassing biography may indicate that Jonah later came to love his enemies and, in doing so, has conquered the hurts that brought on his severe depression. Step by step, God brought Jonah out of the depressed state by making him leave his bitterness behind. And we can't look at all of the steps that God took, but I think the book of Jonah is such an incredible instruction manual for counselors. Let me give you eight hints, just hints, of how this book parallels modern biblical newthetic counseling of people who have true nervous exhaustion or depression. This book illustrates the principle that depressed people frequently need intervention. They often refused to come for help, preferring instead to retreat from their jobs, from their responsibilities, and to just hang out in their room. Jonah wanted to crawl into a hole, but God wouldn't let him. You're doing a depressed person no favors when you leave them alone. Second, Jonah wanted to avoid his pain. God forced him to confront his pain, to deal with his pain with the grace of God. Next, Jonah felt overwhelmed with the task. God took him through it step at a time. Don't look at the whole forest. Let's just chop down the next tree. Fourth, Jonah tried to avoid action. God forced him to take action. Fifth, Jonah sought to excuse his irresponsibility. The God kept reminding him of his responsibility, would not let him off the hook. Now, that could be very frustrating to a depressed person, but I think it's absolutely essential for restoration. Sixth, God asked, is it right for you to be angry? And of course, Jonah responds irrationally, emotionally, Yeah, it is right for me to be angry even to death, which is a ridiculous statement, but it's emotionalism. It's irrational, and you see emotions trumping reason a lot of times in depressed people. Just as Jonah was a challenging case, depressed people are often challenging cases. Jonah saw only the negative. God has to remind him of the positive sides of life, especially in chapter four. God helps Jonah refocus the positive pity He had for a plant to have pity for those whom he hates. And so in many different ways, God showed his love to Jonah by bringing him out of depression and out of the bitterness that led to that depression. And he just did it a little bit at a time. It's a great book for training those who counsel the depressed and those who are guilty of bitterness. Now, I think it ends brilliantly. People would love to know more. Why in the world did he just end up leaving us dangling? Now it gives hints of where it could go, but it doesn't take you there. And that implies there's probably still some tough road ahead for Jonah. We know from ancient history that Jonah did learn to minister lovingly to his former enemies. But we don't know if there was residual pain. Probably was. The book just leaves us dangling, no doubt, because this was not an instant fix. There are no instant fixes in life. That's what we always wish. Pastor, just give me a pill. So now I'm gonna give you some homework. There's no instant fixes in the biblical kingdom. Now I'm gonna end by reading from the introduction to this book by Mez McConnell. He illustrates the new life and thinking that grace can bring. But like Jonah does not mean that even though he's mature much later that there's still not some conflict of soul that previously abused people go through. By the way, we're probably, when you just look at the culture around us, we are probably going to be ministering to more and more abused people like this. We need all the tools we can get to be able to minister to them effectively. Anyway, Mez said, I just heard several hours ago that my stepmother of almost 13 years is dead. Of what and how, I do not know. She was young, I know that. So painful is it to even think of her name, I refer to her as she throughout my autobiography. It's 1.30 a.m. and I can't sleep. I don't know what to think or feel. The above, and that was the obituary that I started with, The above is pretty much what I would like to express to the world. I would like to go to her funeral, stand and let everyone know that this person was truly like and how much damage she did while alive. I want her to get her just desserts, even though I know, thanks to Christ, I will never get my own. I'm a pastor. I should know better. I do know better. I know deep in my soul that Jesus experienced every form of suffering when he was in the world. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Jesus was betrayed and tortured. He is well acquainted with your grief, and He will never leave you. I know, therefore, that perceived wisdom, my own included, demands I forgive this woman who caused me such pain. I know it's the Christian thing to do. I know he who has been forgiven much must or ought to forgive much in return." Luke 7, 47. I know. Yet I want to make public my frustration toward crimes she never paid for. At the same time, I want to be magnanimous in my forgiveness as Christ has been in His for my sin. I feel conflicted. I thought I might dance a little jig or even feel a sense of release and elation at news I long dreamed about and ached for as a kid. This is a woman who drove me to such despair that I attempted to set her on fire in her drunken sleep when I was no more than 10 years old. But there is no jig. There is just a heaviness of heart and the nagging itch of my suffering and her evil never admitted in this life. The problem is I want to feel joy at her passing. I want to rejoice in the belief that she will face the judge of all the earth for her crimes against me. I want to revel in the thought that she is having her own spiritual Nuremberg moment right now, that Father Time has caught up with her and her sins are about to be found out and brought into that terrible perfect light, that the angels in glory will see just what a monster she truly was. But I don't feel the joy that I want to. I just feel sad. Sad for a woman who wasted her life in bitter anger and expressed it through the mental and physical torture of children. Sad for the trail of devastation she left behind. Sad for the family members she hurt and betrayed. Sad that despite these things, people will mourn her passing. There will be tears at her funeral. There will be stories of her good side or of things well done and sad, things I never experienced. Things I can scarcely believe are true. Even now, at 2.30 a.m., as I trawl through online press cuttings and see familiar faces all over the court's pages and obituaries, I feel a deep gratitude for Jesus. Old family and friends imprisoned and or dead at criminally young ages, and I find her photo. She looks like an old woman, even though she wasn't. A lifetime of self-abuse has ravaged her features. That could have been me. That was my own road to self-destruction until Jesus intervened. I live today only because Jesus found me and turned my life around. He gave me hope. He gave me a spiritual family, brothers and sisters who have loved and cared for me. He's used godly people to teach me personal responsibility for my own sins. He's used godly people to teach me how to be a real man, a faithful husband, a loving father, and an average pastor. He is teaching me still. Still, I feel conflicted. I am angry with myself. I feel like my to-ing and fro-ing over forgiveness and the rationalization of my suffering is somehow betraying my childhood self. A spiritual battle rages on. The old man berates the new while the latter fights for peace. The old man wants to take me on a trip down painful memory lane, trawling up old wounds and savage rage long since soothed with the balm of the gospel. Of course, he's popped by from time to time in my Christian life, but it seems like he's pulled up an armchair tonight and is here for an extended visit. The new man is winning, just. Two decades of living for Jesus has evened the odds against two decades of self-loathing, shame, anger, and destruction. It seems that even the sovereign control over her death means I'm able to be conflicted without complete self-implosion. The same Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is helping me draw on my decades of biblical knowledge and personal experience with which to vanquish the devil's poisonous darts. It's 4 a.m., and I'm suddenly reminded, I'm not the person I was 30 years ago. Maybe she did change at the end. Awful thought crosses my mind. What if she like me found the true forgiveness and peace of Christ? No, there was no evidence to suggest it. How would I know? I haven't seen her for 30 years. No, surely not God wouldn't do that to me. He's on my side, right? He wouldn't let me down by saving my chief tormentor. Woody Imagine that that would be the ultimate cheat, wouldn't it? I Pardoned at the death for her heinous crimes against me and who knows how many others I don't like that thought I suddenly realized that if it were true, I'd be like the angry brother in the parable of the prodigal I want God to overlook my sins. I like it when he does that but hers that's a stretch I tell myself I'm a better person than she was is that true? Maybe now But any good in me belongs to the Holy Spirit. I hurt people. I abuse people. I stole. I lied. I murdered in my heart. I, too, have done awful things. I think about Romans 12, 17 through 21. Do not repay any one evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. I don't like that very much. I want to be her judge and jury. Do I trust God to be hard enough on her? Will He let her off on a technicality? Will He forgive her? Maybe He doesn't know the full story and I need to fill Him in on the details. Pathetic, I know. Sinful, arrogant. I want to comfort myself by comparing my innocent suffering to His. Jesus understands me because we have suffered together. But tragic though it is, my pain doesn't really compare to His cosmic distress. My anguish, though real, isn't even a pinprick on the little finger of his nail-pierced hand. My suffering is infinitesimal in light of the cross of Calvary as he took the wrath of God on himself to rescue the poor, the lowly, the proud, the greedy, the arrogant, the child abusers. He died for awful human beings like my stepmother, like me. I roll over and try to sleep, chewing on that awful truth. She doesn't need my forgiveness any more than I need her repentance. We both need the former from Him, and He requires the latter from us. Thankfully, in Jesus, He grants both to all who come. This doesn't tie it all up in a neat little bow, but at least sleep comes, knowing that ultimately the judge of all the earth will do right and act justly. I believe that the story of Jonah is a story of conquering grace. bottom line it's a story of conquering grace. It conquers uncaring, potty-mouthed Phoenician sailors. It conquered Assyrian abusers. It conquered a prophet's bitterness. And it continues to conquer our fleshly outbursts bit by bit and promises that what He has begun in us He will complete until the day of Jesus Christ. So, brothers and sisters, submit your hearts to God's prophetic word and to the healing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Father God, this is a tough book for us to get through. There are exciting dimensions to it, and yet there are parts of it that are difficult as well. And I pray that the Church of Jesus Christ as a whole would grow in an understanding of Your law, of justice, yes, but also of Your profound grace that can go to the uttermost, even to the guttermost, and bring people out of it. Help us to glory in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless this Your people, Father, with increased sanctification, increased appreciation, for all that you have done for us. And we pray this in Jesus' name.