Chapter 1, verse number 1. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it off them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. Then down to verse number 12 of chapter 1, And he, that is Jonah, and he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea. So shall the sea be come unto you, for I know that for my sake This great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore, they cried unto the Lord and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let not us perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from a raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. 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. And we know that God will bless this familiar reading of his precious word tonight to all of our hearts for his own sake and for his own glory. The little book of Jonah is one of the most maligned books in the word of God. Those who would try to disprove the credibility of Scripture and undermine the fact that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God very often will point to the book of Jonah above all other books and cite some of the incidents in this book as being completely inaccurate, unfactual, and certainly difficult for us to believe. But we do believe that the word of God tonight is inspired, and so we accept the Book of Jonah as being a factual account. I remember hearing a story about an old saint of God who was well-stricken in years and troubled with ill health. And during her absence at church over a number of years, she was shut under her home. The old pastor had left, and another man had taken the pulpit who, sadly, was liberal in his thinking. And he came to visit this old Saint of God on one occasion as she was bedridden, and sat and spoke to her, talked about all sorts of different things, and then noticed beside her bed was an old authorized version of the Scriptures, well-worn and feathered and dog-eared and well-marked, and it was evident that this lady had had this Bible for quite some time and read it often. And he began challenging her about the reading of God's word and talking to her about it. And it was evident that she spoke that she believed the word of God in its entirety. And so the young liberal preacher said to her, well, you know, you shouldn't just take all of God's word literally. Some of it's just speaking figuratively. And there are stories that are recorded in the Bible that were not to take too literally. Daniel in the lion's den, and the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, and of course the story of Jonah. And she says, well, I believe the Bible from cover to cover. She says, if the Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would still believe it if that's what the word of God said. And so he says, well, how will you ever be sure whether or not the book of Jonah is true? She says, well, whenever I get to heaven and I meet Jonah, I'll ask him to tell me what it was like to be swallowed by a whale. And then he thought he was one step ahead of her and he says, well, what happens if Jonah isn't in heaven? Who will speak to Jonah then? And she says, well, then you can speak to Jonah for yourself. And you can just see where she was going. She believed the word of God implicitly. And there are still men like that in the world tonight that would doubt or deny the story of Jonah. But even history itself records instances of real life Jonas. For example, in February of 1891, there was a wheeling vessel known as the Star of the East. that was fishing off the coast of the Falkland Islands. It, along with another ship, went out with harpoons to spear a sperm whale. They had spotted it with their telescopes, and they went after it, and they traveled after it. And in the course of trying to harpoon this sperm whale, the whale capsized one of the ships, one of the vessels, and one man immediately drowned. And another man that was on the whaling vessel, a sailor by the name of James Bartley, disappeared and they just didn't know where he had gone. They couldn't retrieve him from the water. All things being equal, they got the boat turned over again, got things cleaned up, and later on they saw the whale again. They successfully harpooned it, and they began to extract its blubber. The next day, they took out its stomach and brought it onto the deck of one of the ships, and they opened up the stomach, and there they found the sailor that had been capsized the morning before. He was unconscious, but he still was breathing and still had a pulse, and they nursed him back to health. And after a couple of weeks, he was up and about and alive and well and hardly had believed what had happened. He had fallen conscious within a few hours of being swallowed by that whale and testified for those hours that he hadn't a clue what had happened. And his skin, we are told, and his hands and feet and face was bleached white by the stomach acid in the whale. And so there are stories, like the story that we've read in Jonah tonight, that are true as well. But whether or not we can go to history and find men like Jonah is really irrelevant. Because our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12, verses 39 to 41, verified the story of Jonah. And the Bible says in Jonah chapter 1 and verse number 17, now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And God can do whatever he likes. The sperm whale is well able to swallow man as would be the blue whale. The blue whale can grow up to 98 feet in length, weigh up to 180 metric tons. In fact, the very tongue of the blue whale inside its mouth can weigh up to 2.7 metric tons. That's 2,700 kilograms. And with a tongue that size, it could certainly swallow a man. Maybe you know somebody who's got a tongue almost as big as the blue whale, but that's irrelevant as well. But at any rate, Jonah was a man who was a prophet to Nineveh, and Nineveh was a godless city, and Jonah was their prophet. and the prophecy of Jonah has much to teach us today. I think sometime we'll maybe come back to this prophecy and do a detailed study in it because there are many wonderful texts of scripture and truths to behold, and yet tonight we're just going to give a simple overview of the prophet Jonah. First thing, as week's gone by, we'll consider very briefly the man. The man, Jonah. It has to be said that Jonah is probably the most familiar MP or minor prophet due to the fascinating nature of this story. It's one of the most interesting, one of the most exciting and readable books in all the Bible. Just four chapters. and a child that can understand English can read the book of Jonah and there's really nothing in the book that we can't understand. We might find it difficult to understand the application of it to our day and generation, but by and large it's a very simple and straightforward and easy to understand book. Jonah came from Israel, the northern kingdom. Verse number 1 says he was the son of a man called Amittai, or Amittai. And this fact is also recorded for us in 2 Kings chapter 14 and verse number 25. And the name Amittai means true. According to 2 Kings 14.25, Jonah came from a little town called Gath Hefer in the tribal district of Zebulun, about three miles northeast of Nazareth. And Gath Heifer is a town that is mentioned very, very rarely or occasionally in scripture, and we know very little about it. It seems it was just like some of the towns that other minor prophets came from. A small, backward, backwater town where nothing ever of note or excitement really happened, and yet that's where God raised up this prophet, Jonah. Gathif remains the wine press of the well. And so we know there was at least a well there and a wine press as well. And it was a very uneventful place. And yet it was out of such a place that God raised up Jonah. And sometimes it's in the secret and quiet and mundane place that God raises up his servants. God trained Moses in the backside of the desert. God raised up Amos as he was working in the farm. God trained David out in the wilderness, tending to his father's flocks. And God raised up Jonah in this obscure town. The name Jonah, literally in the Hebrew tongue, means dove. And in scripture, the dove is symbolic of the anointing of the Spirit of God. Whenever our Lord and Savior was baptized in the River Jordan, We have a lovely picture of the Trinity all coming together, the Son of God being baptized, God the Father speaking from heaven, and then God the Holy Spirit coming down and lighting or abiding upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And as John saw that, he said he descended in bodily fashion like a dove. and anointed our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so the dove speaks of the anointing of the Spirit of God. And that is something that every servant or child of God needs, the anointing and the infilling of the Holy Ghost. Now, as you study the book of Jonah, and I encourage you to read it again for yourself, you'll notice that many of Jonah's character traits were not commendable. He was disobedient in the first place to God. He had very little love in his heart for those outside of his own little group. And he was also prone to take tantrums and huff whenever things didn't go his way. But nevertheless, he was a man that God used. The man. Then secondly, the ministry. Jonah ministered about 770 years before the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. And many of God's people might be surprised to note that Jonah, while it is not mentioned in the prophecy of Jonah, was first of all a prophet to Israel. before God called him to be a prophet to Nineveh. 2 Kings chapter 14 verse number 23 records the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam the son of Jehosh to be king of Israel. And Jeroboam the second here reigned for 41 years. Verse 24 of second Kings 14 says, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin. He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath onto the sea of the plain according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he speak by the hand off his servant Jonah. the son of Amittai the prophet, which was of Gathifer. So there you have Jonah's ministry introduced and it wasn't first and foremost to Nineveh, he was a prophet to Israel during the evil reign of King Jeroboam. It seems that from that that Elisha The successor of Elijah was Jonah's predecessor and minister just before Jonah came onto the scene. And if you know anything about Elisha, you'll know that Elisha had a school of prophets, an Old Testament Bible college, if you like, where he raised up young men to take up the prophetic ministry and preach the word of God to their generation. And so it is very likely that Jonah was trained in Elisha's school of the prophets. He was a student of delicious. But in the prophecy of Jonah itself, Jonah was called by the Lord to minister to the city of Nineveh. Jonah chapter 1 verse 2, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. Nineveh was the famed capital of the Assyrian Empire, one of the great enemies of Israel, along with Babylon, and ultimately a nation that would bring the Israelites again in generations to come into captivity. But down through the history of the Ninevite people, they were always anti-Semitic. They always despised Israel. They despised the Jewish people. They despised the God of Israel. And they were a city that were fully and completely and wholesale given over to idolatry and to sin. They treated the people of God with contempt. Some historians tell us that the city of Nineveh, which is a large and walled city, three or four chariots could ride abreast side by side around the top of its walls. And God's people were often persecuted by the Ninevites, skinned alive and boiled in oil and all sorts of different things, sawn in half and thrown to the animals. And so we can understand why Jonah didn't really have much of a love or concern in his heart for these people. But yet God called him to minister to them, drew him out from Israel, his home nation, and called him to go to Nineveh, that great and godless city, and cry against it. And then as we move on, we see the message that Jonah was called to preach. Verse 2 again of chapter 1. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. And the message that Jonah was called to preach in part was to go to that city and speak to the inhabitants thereof about their sin. That was the message that he was called to preach. And in verse two of chapter one, you have very simply God's commission to Jonah to preach such a message. And you'll notice there that this commission was very, very clear. God said to him, arise, go, arise, go. God made it clear. And for Jonah to do something for God, it would mean for him to get up and then to go and to do something. And so it is in this land of ours, this nation of ours that so desperately, desperately needs the Lord and the Republic of Ireland as well and Great Britain and in fact the whole world is being a mission field. It is the commission of God that men and women and young people would rise up go. Because unless we rise up and go then nobody will ever be reached. And unless somebody like Jonah was willing to obey the Lord and to rise up and go, the people of Nineveh would perish in their sins and never ever be converted. Maybe God has been challenging you in recent days. Arise and go. Maybe locally or nationally or internationally, maybe in the local church, maybe outside of it. And God has been challenging you about rising up and engaging in some form of service or work for the Lord. And for Jonah, the call was clear and the call was unmistakable. It was to go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. Jonah would be no use to God anywhere else unless it was in the city of Nineveh. And we will never be of any use or value to God in service unless we are absolutely sure that we're in the place that God has called us to be. You'll be no use for God anywhere outside of the center of God's will for your life. And he was called to go to Nineveh, the great city, and to cry against it, to speak about their sin, and to challenge them about the way they're living, and to present to them the claims of the God of Israel. God said to the prophet Isaiah, cry aloud, spare not, show my people their sins. And the man who goes out at the call of God will often have to stand up and say things that aren't popular. And maybe that's another reason why Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh. If I go and speak to these people about their sin, given how they've treated the people of Israel in the past, I'm taking my life into my own hands, or maybe even putting my life out of my own hands and into theirs, and certainly they'll kill me. Who am I to go and challenge these people about their sin? They'll certainly not take kindly to that. And Jonah was filled with fear. And it is certainly a fearful thing to stand up before a people at any time and open the word of God and seek to speak. And especially whenever it's to denounce sin and speak about wickedness and speak about judgment and challenge idolatry or whatever it might be. And maybe whenever you're thinking about witnessing to somebody, one of the things that holds you back is, I don't want to challenge this person too much in case they get offended or they get annoyed. and they accused me of being judgmental and Jonah I'm sure could have applied all of those things to his own life and ministry but the call was clear and the call was unmistakable and the call certainly was urgent because it says in verse number three that as soon as the call came Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish and it was so urgent for him to get away from the call of God and that would indicate to me that as God called Jonah, the call was immediate and the call was urgent and God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh there and then and not to defer and not to delay, not to hold back and God's call is always urgent. Whenever God asks us to do something, and it's clear, and it's unmistakable, and it's in the Word of God, because it was the Word of God that came to Jonah, and God has spoken to us about something in His Word, and it's clear, and it's unmistakable, it becomes a matter of urgency. Because delayed obedience is not really obedience at all, it's disobedience. Not until we obey the Lord as best as we can can we claim to be obedient servants of the Lord. We often say to the Lord, wait. Lord, I know you're speaking to me about that, but Lord, just wait. I'll deal with that at some other time. I'll sort that out again. I'll go and speak to that person again. And very often it's whenever the Spirit of God prompts you to go and speak to somebody about the Lord or put something right or go and do something for the Lord. It's then and there that God wants us to do it. And these people that lived in Nineveh, all known to Jonah, God was working in their hearts and preparing their hearts that they might respond to the call of God. And all the while Jonah disobeyed the Lord, souls were hanging in the balance. And the people of Nineveh were still in the broad road that leads to hell. So God gave Jonah a commission to preach a message. And we know that God wanted Jonah to go, and sadly, Jonah was disobedient to the Lord in going to preach that message. Verse 3 says that Jonah did arise, but it wasn't to go to Nineveh. In fact, he went the opposite direction completely. Instead of going east, Jonah went west, went the opposite direction entirely. We maybe ask ourselves tonight, well why? Why did Jonah disobey the Lord immediately? We've already mentioned the spirit of fear that probably pervaded Jonah's heart. But as you read on in the prophecy of Jonah, and you come to the end of the book, you'll realize and discover that Jonah didn't want to obey the Lord and go to Nineveh because he had a lack of love for these people. It says at the end of the book, in chapter number four, that Jonah realized that God was going to be merciful. Verse two of chapter four, the second part of the verse, he says, this is the reason I fled unto Tarshish, for I knew, I knew that thou wert a gracious God. and merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repent as thee of the evil. Now Jonah could have applied that to himself. I can get away with disobeying God here, and I don't really want to do what God's told me to do, and because God is gracious and merciful and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and forgives sin or repents of evil, therefore it's okay for me to do what I want to do, and disobey God, but really the application here is to the people of Nineveh. I knew God that you were willing and able to save them and forgive them and to cleanse them, but because I've got no love in my heart for them, I didn't want that to happen. Nineveh's cruelty to the Israelite people in the past had really got a grip in Jonah's life. And the gall and the root of bitterness was springing up within him. And he looked back into the history of his nation, and he thought, this is how these people have treated my people down through the centuries and generations, and I would like nothing more than for God to judge them as he judged Sodom and Gomorrah. Certainly didn't have a love in his heart for them. And it would be so easy for us to point to people in our community and in our land as well. Maybe they even are holding a whip in government and say, well, it'd be lovely if God just judged them and removed them and did this, that and the other, but that's not the spirit of God. James and John wanted to pray down far from heaven to destroy the people in that city of Samaria. And the Lord rebuked them and says, you don't even know what manner of spirit you're of. You think that I came to destroy men's lives? I didn't come to destroy them, but I came to save them. And therefore it's important that we in our lives have a love for those who are enemies of the cross and enemies of the gospel. And then maybe even in our workplace or our home or our family or some other place there's somebody out there that's wronged us. And we harbor bitterness and resentment in our heart against that person. And Jonah was being eaten up all the while with this bitterness and this resentment because he felt that these Ninevites have wronged me and therefore I've got a just case to harbor bitterness in my heart. But at any rate, he had no real love for the souls of the people of Nineveh. What an indictment that is for a man of God. A lack of love. Also, I believe there was a lack of faith. Because it does take faith to believe that the will of God can really satisfy us. Remember whatever it says in Romans chapter 12, the first two verses, Paul speaking to believers and says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now, if you stop there, you look at what God is asking us to do. What, Lord, give my body to you? My hands, my feet, my eyes, my ears, my lips, everything? and then to live a life that's holy? And you say that God this is reasonable and not to be conformed to this world? Well God says well if you do that you'll prove that God's will is good, acceptable, and perfect. And if only Jonah had gone in the right spirit to Nineveh, knowing and believing that this is something that God has called me to do, and for me it's good, it's acceptable, it's perfect. Jonah would have been so much more happier, but he didn't have the faith to believe that the will of God for his life was good, acceptable, and perfect, and so he brought matters into his own hands, and all that resulted in him was bitterness, and anger, and disappointment. Do we really believe tonight that the will of God is good, acceptable, and perfect? And whenever God challenges us or asks us to do something that goes completely against our own desires and our own wills and against the flesh, do we have the faith to believe that in spite of what we think, that that thing that God has planned for us and purposed for us is good, acceptable, and perfect? I don't believe that Jonah had really the faith to believe that. There was maybe also a lack of faith that God could preserve him in the midst of such a godless people. And maybe something that holds us back is a lack of faith to believe that God can save such people. We know that Jonah didn't have that lack of faith. He knew that God could save them. But maybe the thing that holds us back from witnessing to the lost and going out and doing something for the Lord is, well, I don't know if God could save that person. that drunkard or that drug addict or that person that's so antagonistic against the gospel and mocks and laughs and scoffs and they're so apathetic, maybe they're indifferent or maybe they're from a different part of the community and they've been brought up in a different religion and be convinced themselves that they just don't want the gospel and they'll never listen and the lack of faith that God can save them is something that holds us back. But at any rate, Jonah disobeyed the Lord, and it says in verse number three that he went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the further off and went down into it to go with them from Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now I learned from that that we have to be very, very careful in our Christian lives about looking for signs to try to discern God's will. does have its place, mind you, but the first and foremost thing is the word of God. And God's word to Jonah was abundantly clear. Go to Nineveh. But rather than looking at the word of God and listening to the word of God, Jonah went down to Tarshish, and it seems that all of the green lights were telling him that that's where he should be. Here's a ship in Tarshish, in Joppa, and there's a space, there's a space on this ship. It's going to the place that I want it to go, and I've got just the right amount of money in my pocket to pay the fare. So I've got to drop us safely. There's no hindrances getting onto the ship. In fact, there's a place on the ship for me. It's going to the city that I want to go to, and I've got the right amount of money in my pocket, and these are all green lights for me, right? Wrong. Just because a door is open. It doesn't mean that of necessity we go through it if the Word of God is abundantly clear. Otherwise, for example, some people say, I have prayed about marrying this person or dating this person. I'm a Christian and they're not, but I have prayed about it. And I've prayed, I've heard people saying things like this, I've prayed that if it's not God's will, he'll take my feelings away, and he hasn't done that. And I've prayed that if it's not God's will, they'll have no interest in me, and he hasn't done that. And I've prayed that if I ask them out and it's not God's will, they'll say no, and that hasn't happened, and so all of the lights are in place, and it's a green light to date this person, or to do this thing, or get involved in this, that, or the other. But if the Word of God is clear, the Spirit of God will never lead a person contrary to the Word of God. And then you see the consequences. Again, look at verse 3, it says, He found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof. He paid the price. And as you study the rest of the book of Jonah, those words seem to haunt Jonah for the rest of the book. He paid the fare, he paid the price thereof. You'll notice what it really cost Jonah in his life of disobedience. We always pay a price for disobedience to the clear call of God in our lives. You'll notice that there was no prayer about this at all. And in fact Jonah was running now, wittingly or unwittingly, from the presence of the Lord. He was edging God's blessing out of his life. And the further he got away from Nineveh, and the closer he got to Tarshish, all the while he was getting further and further away from the presence of God. And there's always consequences for sin. There were consequences for other people. For the people of Nineveh, there were consequences because all the while Jonah was running from God, the people of Nineveh were still left without a witness. And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And sadly, the preacher was running in the other direction. And also, there were also consequences for those in Jonah's immediate company. Look at verse number four. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid. Now these men hadn't asked Jonah to step outside of the will of God. They hadn't pleaded with Jonah to get onto their ship. Jonah had found the ship, found a space, asked to get on, paid the further off, and as soon as Jonah, the man of God, outside of the will of God, gets onto their ship, it's nothing but heartache for these mariners. In fact, their very business is about to be destroyed because it says the ship was like to be broken. And not only that, but they were filled with fear as well, and so they were caught up in Jonah's disobedience and it began to affect them also. Whenever we get outside of the will of God and get like Jonah and have no desire to do what God wants us to do, it's very easy for our actions and our attitudes and our articulation to affect others. Nobody backslides alone. Whenever Peter said to the disciples, I go fishing, they immediately says, well, we'll go with you. He didn't invite them to come, but they says, well, we'll come. And how many of our loved ones, our children, our brothers, our sisters, our parents perhaps, our workmates, our neighbors, the unconverted people in our community or in our church or our Sunday school classes could even be affected by us being outside of the will of God in our thinking, in our speech, our attitudes and our actions. That's why there are so many people that just don't want anything to do with Christ and Christianity and the Gospel and the Word of God, because they look around and they've seen Christians who have let them down. And sadly Jonah was in that same situation as well. In fact, Jonah was sleeping. As everybody else was working to save this ship from going down, and crying on to their gods, God help these people and bless these people. They're doing what they can in their heathendom, and in their false religion, they're praying on to their gods. And there's one man in the boat who knows the true and living God. And sadly, according to verse 5, he had gone down. And you see that Jonah is ever going down in this book, going down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. And the big ship master comes in in verse 6, and awakes him and says, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise and call upon my God, if so be that God will think upon us that we perish not. You could paraphrase that verse in this way, and you can picture the scene. There's Jonah, quite contempt outside of the will of God for his life, and this big angry mariner, the sea master, comes down into the cabin and wakens Jonah up and says, what are you doing? Why don't you pray to your God and pray that God will come and God will have mercy upon us and that God will save us. In other words, you've got the pagan rebuking the prophet. The heathen rebuking the Hebrew. The godless man rebuking the man who is supposed to be godly. And he's very simply asking the question, why aren't you praying? And does the world ever look at us? Look at us? Look at the church? I'm sure it does sometimes. And think, well, if your God is so great, and so big and so mighty, and you're saying there's nothing our God cannot do, why don't you pray to him? Why don't you call upon your God and ask him to come and rescue this land and this nation of ours? And if you're so burdened and so concerned and you know there's a heaven and you know there's a hell, why are you sleeping? What a rebuke this was to the heart of Jonah. I remember once many, many years ago on a Monday night, it was prayer meeting night in our church in Lisbon. I came home from work, it was a long, hard day at work. I think it was in the winter time, and I used to start work at about seven, and it was heavy work. And I remember just coming home this night late, and came home, got a shower, got something to eat, and was just really tired. And I just sat down in front of the television. Eight o'clock came, and mom came in the room and says, you're not away to the prayer meeting tonight. And it wasn't a rebuke, and I says, no, I just, I feel really tired. And she says, it's not like you to miss. And I just felt, you know, there was no real reason for not being there other than just feeling a little bit tired. And I just thought to myself, you know, there's people out there that need to be prayed for. And I'm sitting in front of the box because it's maybe just a wee bit of an inconvenience for me tonight. You see, people do notice whenever we're not on praying ground. People do notice, ungodly people do notice whenever the church is asleep and whenever Christians are sleeping, and they're not doing the things that the ungodly know that they should be doing. People out there, and we sometimes think, you know, they don't really know what a Christian is, but they know a lot more oftentimes than we think. And it consequences also for himself. He lost the presence of God in his life according to verse number three. He lost fellowship with God. He lost valuable time. He lost usefulness in service. And he also experienced physical, mental, and spiritual suffering because he gets swallowed by a great fish. That's sailor James Bartley. Whenever he got swallowed by that fish, he didn't even know what had happened. He says, I was in the water, and all of a sudden I was engulfed in perfect darkness. And I felt a tightness around my body. And then I found myself in what just seemed like a huge big bag of hot air and liquid. And the stench was foul and disgusting. And whenever he fell unconscious, he came out of it. And he just was almost insane for about two weeks before he fully regained his health and began working on the vessel as well. And Jonah here got swallowed by a fish. I'm sure it wasn't a very nice place to be. I'm sure his appearance, whenever that fish vomited him up onto the land, I'm sure he didn't look all that attractive whenever at last he went down to Nineveh. You know, I was speaking to a Muslim fella a while ago, and I never knew this until I got speaking to him, but we were talking about things, and during the course of the conversation, as I was trying to talk to him about the cross, he said, sure, Jesus never died on a cross. And he, that's what, I didn't know, but that's what Muslims believe. They believe that Jesus went to the cross but didn't die on it. And I said, that's nonsense. All through the Scripture, Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. While we are sinners, Christ died for us. It's plain and simple in Scripture. He says, no. He said, what happened to the Lord Jesus on the cross and in the tomb was the same thing that happened to Jonah in the belly of the whale. And he cited those verses from Matthew chapter 12 where the Lord Jesus Christ said, as Jonas was in three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And he says, God preserved Jesus from death on the cross and then in the tomb. And I'd never heard anything like that in my life. I didn't take it up with them, just quoted the verses I knew that spoke about the death of Christ. But I was speaking to a brother, the Reverend Madole here at the back about this, and he said something I'd never thought about it before. And I think there's warrant for believing it. I think he does. I'm not sure if I do, but we're not debated, but I think there's a lot of warrant in it. that Jonah did die in the belly of that whale. If you look at some of the language that we see in chapter number two, it says in verse two of the second chapter, out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice, for thou hast cast me into the deep. And the floods compass me about, and all thy billows and thy waves are passed over me. And very often the billows and the waves speak about death. And Jonah now is in the belly of this fish, where there are no more waves and billows. And he goes on and he talks about all of these different things. My soul fainted within me. and so on and so forth. And to fulfill the typology that Christ used, it's very possible that even there in the belly of the whale that Jonah actually died. But whether he died or whether God preserved him, there was a lot of suffering in his life for that time because of his disobedience to God. He went down to Joppa and he paid the fare thereof. But at last, whenever he realized in verse number 9, salvation is off the Lord. What is salvation? It's being delivered from a state of death. Whenever he realized that, made his vows and said he would pay his vows. The Lord spake unto the fish and had vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. And what lessons Jonah learned down there in Fish Academy, the first preacher ever to pray and from the bottom of a submarine. And there he's been vomited up and he's on the dry land again. And it says in chapter three, verse one, and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time. You see, God is the God of the second chance. And we can mess up and we can make huge mistakes and we can get away from God's presence and get away from God's plan and get away from God's purposes. And we can even lose our testimony for a season and we can just do all of these different things. Not that this in any way justifies it, but falling into sin is something that is a reality and a possibility for the child of God. But the word of the Lord came onto Jonah the second time. saying, arise, go on to Nineveh, that great city and preach onto it the preaching that I bid thee. Go and preach to it and bring them my message. Jonah, you're not to go to the city of Nineveh and preach your message, but my message. Haggai said he spoke as the Lord's messenger with the Lord's message. And while preaching is vital, And it's through the foolishness of preaching that God has chosen to save them that believe. It always has to be the message that God gives. And Jonah has now realized that there's no point fighting against God. And I have to be obedient to God's word, God's will, God's work. These things are vital. And as Jonah goes and preaches to that city, chapter 3 speaks of the aftermath, as does chapter 4. What happened whenever Jonah delivered God's message to the people of Nineveh? Well, chapter 3, there was revival in Nineveh. Chapter 4, there was resentment in Jonah. Jonah's message, according to chapter three and verse number four, was entirely a message of judgment. I do believe that Jonah only preached part of what God wanted him to preach just to cover himself. He went down and he convinced himself, well, God's told me to preach the message. I'll preach some of it. And therefore I will go and I'll be able to come back again and say, well, I told them what God wanted me to say. Maybe he didn't say it all, but I told them most of it. Yet 40 days and this city shall be overthrown. But he didn't tell him that God is merciful and God is slow to anger and God repents of the evil things that he knew. He didn't tell them that part. He just told them that God is a God of judgment and in 40 days the city of Nineveh would be destroyed. And as he preached, and left them with those words God sent the greatest revival I believe in the entire Old Testament maybe even in the entire Bible to that godless city of Nineveh. If you read chapter 3 it says that they from the youngest to the oldest, they covered themselves in sackcloth and ashes, even from the greatest to the least of them. Verse number five, they fasted, they prayed, the word came to the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid his robe before him, covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and they began to pray, and they entreated God to turn away his face and to repent, and they repented, and in verse number 10 of chapter three, God saw their works. that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he said he would do unto them, and he did it not. And there was revival in Nineveh. And God used a far from perfect preacher to bring that revival. And God can do this again and again and again and again. But there was sadly resentment in the heart of Jonah. First verse in chapter four says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, And he was very angry. You would think that such a man would rejoice that God has been pleased to use him. Thousands of souls have been converted under his ministry, but he didn't want them to be saved, he still wanted judgment to come. And he was exceedingly angry. And he went and he sat down in this hill and God says, doest thou well to be angry? And he just tells the Lord how he feels. In fact, he was so embittered by the whole thing that he actually wanted to die in verse three. He says, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. I would rather die, he says, than see these people rejoicing in your mercy. I'd love revival to come, but I wanted to come to Israel and I wanted to come to Judah and I wanted to come to us first. If you revived us, I would rejoice. And would we be the same? God sent revival to the church down the road. God sent revival to the Roman Catholic community, and they turned and embraced Christ, and nothing happened in this church, or nothing happened in this town, and the Republic of Ireland, or England, or Scotland, or Wales, or some other place. Would we rejoice in that, or would we think, why didn't God send it to Israel? To us, to Ulster, Protestants, and evangelicals, and fundamentalists, or would we rejoice with them that rejoiced? And bitterness began to eat up Jonah's heart. And the Lord said to him in verse number four, doest thou well to be so angry. Jonah, is this doing you any good? Sitting up here looking at yourself. Is this really helping you, Jonah? You're bitter against these people and they're rejoicing in what God has done for them. And Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a little booth, and he sat under it, and God prepared a gird, a plant to grow up over him, just to protect him from the sun. And as Jonah sat under that gird, he was exceedingly glad for it. Now God's looking after me. It says that in verse number six. So Jonah was exceedingly glad for the gird. This little shrub that's grown up over his head so quickly. It's a miracle, and there he is, and it's just grown up quickly, and he's sitting under it, and he's happy now because he's getting what he wants. And then just as that happens, God sends a worm, and the worm eats the roots of the thing, and it just withers immediately and dies, and Jonah just gets even more annoyed. And God says to him in verse number 9, Doest thou well to be angry for the guard? And he says, I do well to be angry. even unto death, it's right for me to feel like this. And then the end of the book, God really challenges him. Jonah, you're more concerned about this little shrub, this little gourd, and your comfort and your well-being and how you feel than you are about an entire city of men and women and young people that are dying and perishing and they would have gone to hell. And I wonder tonight, are we more concerned, am I more concerned about my honor, about my will, about my name, about my material possessions, about my little world, about my home comforts, than the will of God, and the work of God, and those who are dying in this world without Christ. May God write his word tonight upon our hearts.