Now shall we open our Bibles and once again turn to that great little book of Jonah, that wonderful little prophecy or that little story in a way, that little narrative of Jonah. But before we seek to open up God's Word, let's entrust ourselves afresh to him, shall we? Our merciful God and Heavenly Father, we come before you and we stand before the open Word. And Father, we pray now that your Spirit would take ownership of it and speak to us, O Lord, that we might have ears to hear what the Spirit of the living God would seek to communicate to us this evening. O Father, open our hearts, we pray, to receive. Father, we pray that your spirit would give that unction to the speaker. Lord, that he wouldn't speak in his own power, but that he would be animated by the spirit of the living God. For your honor, your glory, and edification of the body of believers. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, the apostle, the prophet Jonah, He wasn't just a prophet, he was also a very, very strong patriot. He loved his country. He was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and unlike most other prophets, this man was successful. Whenever he opened his mouth, it happened. He succeeded. The first time we read about the prophet Jonah, actually, is not in the book of Jonah. It's in the book of 2nd Kings, if you turn briefly to the book of 2nd Kings, chapter 14. 2nd Kings, in chapter 14, and the 25th verse. In 2nd Kings, chapter 14, and verse 25, there's actually a reference to Jonah and his successful ministry. And the verse reads, he, and the he refers to a king. It refers to King Jeroboam II of the Northern Kingdom. And King Jeroboam II would prove to be a very successful, in human terms, a very successful king. He didn't love God, he didn't love Jehovah, but he certainly was used to stimulate, to begin a kind of a cultural renaissance and a political renaissance for that kingdom for a generation. And so he, Jeroboam II, he was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebohama to the Sea of the Arabah. in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Heber. And so Jonah had the joy of telling his king, early in his reign, at the beginning of his reign, that his, in terms of human political terms, would be a successful reign. He would restore Israel's borders to what they had been previously. But this strong nationalist prophet is probably best known for his reluctant mission trip to Assyria. He went to Assyria soon after the reign of a very powerful Assyrian king. That man's name was Adad-Nirari III. And Adad-Nirari III had basically wiped out the kingdom of Syria around Damascus. That was the buffer kingdom between Israel and Assyria. And then this man died and Assyria went into a kind of a funk, into a steep decline for about 40 years. And it was during that period, during that interim period, that Jonah, that the Lord sent Jonah to Assyria. Now the prophets, the Old Testament prophets, they were generally remarkably well informed about the political affairs of the Middle East. kind of the international affairs of the region in which their country found itself. And Jonah, he was no different. And he undoubtedly realized that it would only be a matter of time before Assyria would regroup and once again become the superpower of the region. It had been the sole superpower of the area. And should it regroup, then Israel would be left to face Assyria all by itself. And that, he knew, was something that had to be avoided at all costs if the prophecy which he had prophesied to his king were to be ongoing. He didn't want Israel to be left facing an Assyrian juggernaut by itself. More than anything else, Jonah wanted Assyria to collapse so that Israel his country could continue to flourish, and he knew that if he went to Assyria and pronounced judgment, if Assyria were to respond positively to the message of God, God would relent. Should Assyria repent, God would relent. He knew that, and he didn't want that to happen. Assyria was the enemy How about us? How comfortable are we when God blesses or seeks to bless our enemies? Yes, we know He's a holy God and He's a righteous God, but He's also a merciful God. He's a God who seeks to reach out to the world. He's a God who seeks to draw people into a right relationship with Himself. He's a God who reaches out to all kinds of people. We're missionaries to Muslims, as you well know. And God is a God who seeks to reach out to Muslims and draw them into a right relationship with himself through Jesus Christ. And he's a God who's reaching out to Buddhists and to Hindus and to Africans and to Chinese and to gangsters and to crooks and to bankers. Yes, them too even. and politicians and teachers and factory workers, all kinds of people God is reaching out to. God is seeking to draw into a right relationship with Himself. 2 Peter 3.9 says, He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. I think one of the most difficult things that I've ever been asked to do is to pray for my enemy. that my enemy would come into a right relationship with God. That is so difficult, that goes so against the grain. And yet that's what we're asked to do, isn't it? Jesus, he wept over the city of Jerusalem, the city that would kill him, the city that rejected him. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, he cried out. You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together. as a hen gathers her chicks under its wings. But you weren't willing, he said. And Jonah knew this to be true. He knew that this is the nature of God. But he couldn't rejoice in it. He couldn't rejoice in the truth of a merciful and loving God because his agenda was different from God's agenda. And so he found his assignment so odious, so unappealing that he tried to evade it. He tried to run away from it. And off he went to Joppa. That's the city of Haifa today. And he paid his fare and he got on a boat to Tarshish. Where's Tarshish? A little bit of debate, but generally it's thought to be a Phoenician mining town in Spain, like right on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. As far from Nineveh as a Jew of that day could possibly conceptualize. Off he went. modern Christians, the idea of physically trying to run away from God seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Like many Jews of his day, Jonah seemed to have been influenced by an idea that was common in the ancient world, among pagans in particular. And that was the idea that local deities ruled over different geographical areas and over different ethnic groups. In other words, if Jehovah God was the God of the Jews, then Dagon was the God of the Philistines. And Baal was the God of the Phoenicians. And each God's sovereignty reached as far as the people group that worshipped it. In other words, for a god to exile its people, for instance, would be for that god to commit suicide. It was almost an incomprehensible thing. Well, if that's what Jonah thought, then before he was fit to do anything, before he was fit to serve God, the Lord had to disabuse him of that notion. You see, before we're fit, To serve God rightly, we must believe great things of Him. We cannot put God in a box, in a box of our own creation. What we believe about God really matters. If you have a small God, you'll respond to Him in small and silly ways like Jonah was doing here. But if you have a great, big, huge, sovereign God, Then you respond to him in big and bold and even radical ways. How big is your God? We believe in God. Are we prepared to trust God? What risks are we prepared to take for God? Now, God was about to prove that He truly was the sovereign Lord of all. Sovereign, yes, over Israel. Sovereign over the nations of the world. Sovereign over the elements of nature as well, over the natural world. It hadn't been long at sea, and what happened? The Lord sent such a violent storm that the boat threatened to break up. Even those hardy pagans, they feared for their lives. Jonah, emotionally drained by his willful disobedience, had gone below deck, fallen into such a deep sleep that not even the wild swaying of the boat could wake him. The captain went downstairs, woke him up. How can you sleep through a storm like this, the man cried out. Come up and pray to your God. Maybe he will listen to us and save us. Jonah stumbled onto deck after the captain. The sailor said, let's cast lots. And she was responsible for this storm. They recognized this was no natural storm. There was a supernatural element to this. They cast lots. The lot fell on Jonah. Who are you? What's your nationality? What have you done to bring this disaster on us? They asked him. straightened up, must have hung on to a mast or something, and he said, I am a Hebrew. I worship Jehovah, the God who made the land and the sea. However, I'm trying to get away from Him. He must have realized at that time that which he had known all along, that Jehovah wasn't some local deity who just ruled over Israel. No, he was a great sovereign one who sovereignly had no bounds in terms of geography or ethnicity. Jonah's words terrified those superstitious tailors. What happened? They shouted at him. What should we do that your God would calm the sea for us? I am indeed the reason for this storm, he affirmed. If you throw me overboard, the sea will become calm, he said. You know, these men, worldly men, they were basically a decent lot. They didn't want to take that drastic step. So they renewed their efforts at the oars and tried to roll that boat back to land to get Jonah onto dry ground. But it was all in vain. But isn't it interesting that The reluctance of those pagan sailors stood in stark contrast to Jonah's desire to be rid of pagans, of the pagan Assyrians. You know, sometimes the people of this world, subject to God's common grace, can be more heroic, can be more gracious, can be more gentlemanly even, than the people of God. We of all people should be the ones who not only believe great things of God and seek to attempt great things for God, but we should be a people who do so graciously and kindly and gentlemanly. However, their gallant attempts were of no avail, were they? The sea grew wilder yet. The boat was about to be swamped, taking them all to the bottom of the sea. Finally, the men gave in. Oh, Jehovah, Lord, they cried to Jonah's God. Don't hold us responsible for killing an innocent man, for you have done as you pleased. They took hold of Jonah and they threw him over the gunwales and into the sea. And there was one final wave that took him down. And suddenly the sea was like glass. As far as those sailors knew, their action had appeased Jonah's angry God. And great awe and great fear dripped their hearts, and together they made sacrifices to this great and sovereign Lord. As for Jonah, that tossing wave dragged him down. He too cried to the Lord. And later in chapter 2, it's well worth reading, He describes in poetic and very emotional terms the depth of emotions that swept through him. And then that fish swallowed him whole. And when he came to and he realized he wasn't in Sheol, he wasn't in the land of the dead, but he was inside this great moving Leviathan, this great moving beast. Sometimes people ask, is it possible for someone to survive inside a big fish like that? Was this a miracle in the sense that it required the suspension of the laws of nature? Or was it a divinely orchestrated sequence of events, each individual unit of which is theoretically possible? Well, I don't know. Whatever happened, Jonah lived to describe in the most graphic terms all he went through. during that three-day ordeal, the hopelessness he felt in his situation as the deep surrounded him from all sides. He describes how the seaweed was wrapped around his head. He describes how the fish dove to the roots of the mountains. And he describes how he prayed to Jehovah God during this ordeal. It's remarkable, actually. He realized that even in this dire situation, his position was different from that of the pagan mariners back on the surface of the water. If you look at chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, we read, and this is him in the belly of the fish, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. He recognized That salvation only comes from Jehovah God, who in mercy had already saved him from drowning. You see, no matter how bad things get for the people of God, they're always better than they are for those who don't know God. Because those people, they don't have God working to draw the good from the evil. That's the big difference between you and everybody else out there. I heard a quote recently and I really liked it. It says, God's hand is sure to be in the action of the sin, but never in the sin of the action. That's biblical theology. God's hand is sure to be in the action of the sin. but never in the sin of the action. That's the testimony of Job, and that's the testimony of Joseph, and that's the testimony of Jonah. That's the testimony of Christ when he talked about Judas. Romans 8, 28. All things work together for good for those who love him, called according to his purposes. Well, we read in the text that Jonah vowed to make good whatever the Lord asked of him. And at that, the Lord directed that dyspeptic fish to vomit Jonah somewhere on the shores of Palestine. And once Jonah was back on dry ground and he'd collected his wits around him and he'd drawn the necessary lessons from his ordeal, the word of the Lord came to him a second time. And in unequivocal terms, go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim there my message. Go! That's a command of God that has rung across the ages, hasn't it? Abraham was told to go to a country that I will show you. And the people in Egypt, they were told to go to the promised land. And Jonah here is told to go. And of course, the church In the Great Commission statements it's told to go to every tongue and tribe and people and nation baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are called to go. That is the great message. Going to the ends of the world to preach that great and good news of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Now, if Jonah hadn't realized it before, He had learned the hard way that Jehovah God was no local deity. There was no escaping his presence. Not in Tarsus, not in the bottom of the sea, nowhere. He really was the sovereign Lord who commands the forces that govern creation. And with that lesson etched on his mind, he dutifully, if unhappily, set off for Nineveh. Nineveh. one of the great cities of the ancient world. Its history goes all the way back to Genesis 10, when this mysterious individual called Nimrod founded the city of Nineveh, located on the eastern shore of the Tigris River between the Mediterranean and India. It was right in the middle of the great trade route between the Mediterranean Basin and India, and became one of the great cities of its time. In time, it would become the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the era that we're in now. It was a king, Shalmaneser III, who lived about 80 years before Jonah's trip, who started a great big huge building campaign that his successors continued. And when Jonah arrived in the city, as we read in the text, it had about 120,000 souls, which in modern terms isn't that large. But back then it was huge. Remember, they couldn't import their food from great distances. So to be able to sustain a city like that was a huge thing back in those days. And it took three days to walk through that city, through the greater Nineveh area, which included a couple of satellite towns, Kala, Rezin, others. Jonah began to walk and preach. Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed. Forty more days and this city will be destroyed. That's interesting, isn't it? Other prophets had preached sermons of doom. But they weren't listened to. Jeremiah, for starters. Others as well. But in Jonah's case, something remarkable happened. His message spread like wildfire among those pagans. He was taken seriously. The people of Nineveh believed him. They declared a fast and put on sackcloth and ashes. And when news of his message reached the king, he too rose from his throne, took off his robes, put on sackcloth, sat in the dust and issued this decree stating that every man and woman and child and animal even was to refrain from eating and drinking, that people were to turn from their evil ways, call on God in the hope that he would relent from the coming judgment and deal compassionately with the people. How do you explain such a remarkable response? There must have been something about Jonah. The prophetic urgency with which he spoke, his fixed bearing, the demeanor with which he proclaimed his message, maybe his looks, that vicious gastric juices must have done terrible things to his body. He was living proof that God would carry through that which he had determined. He was a walking parable. The message of imminent destruction at that particular time in Assyria's history wasn't all that improbable. During that unstable period at that time, after the death of Adad-Nirari III, and before Tiglath-Pileser II came to the throne about 38 years later. You see, at that time, Assyria faced a major invasion from the north, from what's now eastern Turkey. The invaders, in fact, came within 100 kilometers of Nineveh. And the fact that the city might be destroyed really wasn't all that unlikely. It was a probability, a high probability that the lines wouldn't hold and that the city would indeed be destroyed. You see, when God moves in powerful ways, He often prepares the ground in advance. He had shaken the people of Nineveh to the core. And there was a great responsiveness to spiritual things. And we see that today too, don't we? I'm a missionary in the Middle East, and we've seen this tremendous shaking in the Middle East. And we live with great expectation. Indeed, we see it in certain parts of the world, in Algeria, in Northern Iraq, to a lesser degree in some of the other countries, where there's a turning to Christ taking place in unprecedented terms, in Iran. Yes, God will do what it takes. We read the newspapers. We read about the economic meltdown in Greece and Spain and southern European countries there. I say, Lord, what are you doing? Shaking people's self-sufficiency in order to bring them into a place of need. Need that only God can meet in Jesus Christ. I read the newspapers. I always ask the question, what are you doing behind the scenes? I know I don't always have the answer. One day I will. All these people that came to faith because of this or that calamitous event. What did God do when he saw them? God relented. He spared the city. Sometimes the Bible uses words like God relented or sometimes it even says God repented, doesn't it? Strange terminology, isn't it, to use of God. It's called an anthropomorphism. What does that mean? Well, basically it describes divine action from a human perspective. From a human perspective, God appeared to change his mind in response to their repentance, as a result of which the city was spared for over a century. Of course God knew that the Ninevites would respond. with repentance, and of course he knew how he would respond in grace. But from a human perspective, it appeared as if God was responding to the Ninevites. Now, one might have expected that the story would end right there at the end of chapter 3, wouldn't it? There we have the greatest city in the world humbled before Jehovah God, repentant before Jehovah God. What else is there to say? But the story goes on. The narrative switches back to the incorrigible Jonah. Jonah was angry with God, and he's not afraid to say so either. I knew this would happen when I was still back at home, he complains. That's why I tried to run away. I knew you're a gracious God and I knew you're a compassionate God and I know that you're a God who's slow to anger and who abounds in love. And there he is complaining about the character of God as it really is. Jonah knew from Israel's history that divine punishment can be averted by sincere contrition. He knew that even if people don't fully understand everything and don't have all the right doctrines concerning God, yet if they approach Him with heartfelt sorrow and approach Him with repentance, it will draw out His mercy and His grace. Furthermore, Jonah must have been deeply ashamed as well. And one of the worst things that can happen to a Middle Easterner is to be shamed. Death is better than shaming. That's why you have honor killings and all this other stuff in the Middle East. Take away my life, he said. I prefer to be dead than to live with this. Why would he be so ashamed? Oh, when he set out for Nineveh from Israel, where are you going? No Jonah? I'm going off to Nineveh. What are you doing there? God told me to preach that in 40 days that city would be destroyed. Oh, everybody wanted to hear that. They had a sending-off party for him. This was great news, and they knew that this man's word would come true. They'd seen it positively in their own king. And now he had to go back to his own country, to his people who desperately wanted to see that city overturned. They said, oh man, this is not good. In fact, according to Deuteronomy 18, he would be perceived as a false prophet. He'd be stoned. I can't live with this. I'd sooner be dead. Are you ever angry with God? Why does this have to happen to me? Why do the unrighteous thrive and flourish? Psalm 73. It's a very great verse that the Lord has often spoken to me about. And it's Luke 7, 23, where we read where Jesus says, Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me, who lets me be me, who lets God be God, and goes on worshipping and trusting and following and obeying. Although Jonah was through with God, God continued to deal gently The text states that sometime later the Lord provided a vine to grow over top of Jonah's booth to increase his level of comfort. This gracious development, greatly pleased at the cantankerous Jonah. The next day, the Lord provided. Same word. It's the same word that's used with respect to the fish. The Lord provided the fish. And then he provided this vine. And then the Lord provided this worm that ate the root of the vine, that caused the vine to die. And then the Lord provided the scorching wind from the eastern desert and this blazing sunshine. The whole little circumstances of life. provided for by the Lord God. The Lord beginning to teach His servant through the circumstances of life. The circumstances of life really are meant to teach us. The circumstances of life, that blazing sun, that difficult co-worker, that difficult family situation that breaks my heart, they really are How we respond to those things really does matter, because that's what develops the fruit of the Spirit in us. How we respond makes a big difference. Well, it must have been a really, really hot day, because midday temperatures in that region can easily get into the 40s. We used to live for three years, not hugely far, on the Turkish side of the border of this region here. And a co-worker of ours, on a very hot summer's day, put a thermometer out on the balcony, right in the direct blazing sun. And it went up to 40, and it went up to 45, 48, it hit 50, 51, 52, and then it burst. It didn't get seriously hot in that part of the world. There he is, in the blazing sun. He's not going to go to Nineveh, of course, because it might be overturned, it might be destroyed. He wasn't going to risk that. There he was in the heat, nearly fainting from heat stroke in that shimmering eastern hot, blazing wind and sun. I wish I were dead. But you want to complain dispiritedly, once again, The Lord addressed him, Jonah, what right do you have to be angry about the vine? I'm angry enough to die, Jonah responded. Not only did his work as a prophet seem meaningless, his one bit of physical comfort, a little bit of greenery, a little bit of shade was gone. You're concerned about a plant which you did nothing to deserve, which came and went in a day. Shall I not be concerned about this great city of over 120,000 people who don't know their right hand from their left hand, who've lost their way, says the Lord with great pathos. And the book ends right there. That's it. It just ended the book. End of story. We don't know how Jonah, certain of his knowledge of God's character, but who didn't care a whit for the fate of non-Jews, who cared only about his own comfort, how he responded. Because it's not in the record. Is that how we are? Caring for our own comfort, well-being, that of our family, but not really caring for the need of the world. If that's true of us, shame on us. Even though Jonah He did the Ninevites. God expressed his love and his care for them. And you know, that's the message that the whole book of Jonah takes us to, isn't it? Takes us right through that last verse. Should I not be concerned about these people? That's the message of the book. You know, the fact that this message wasn't lost on Jonah can be derived from two things. In the first place, he allowed his story to be recorded. He must have gone back to Israel and told his story to whoever had ears to hear. And somebody wrote it down. It's all written in the third person. And the family of believers, the body of believers recognized this as an act of God. As God acting and speaking on behalf of the nations of the world. but recognized as such and incorporated into the canon of Old Testament scripture by the people of God. And secondly, there's an old Jewish tradition that says that at this point, Jonah fell on his face and he cried out to God saying, Oh God, then govern the world according to the measure of your mercy. If that's a true tradition, isn't that a beautiful prayer? Oh God, then govern the world according to the measure of your mercy. Is that message lost on us? How much do we care for the world, for our enemies? In what ways are we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, seeking to reach out in care and in love with the gospel and in service across the road, across the fence, across the state? and across the world. Do you have God's heart for the world? Let's close in prayer. Our merciful God and Heavenly Father, we confess that no, we don't have your heart for the world so often. We have a heart for ourselves and our well-being and even the well-being of our church. But, O Lord, we pray, govern the world according to the measure of your mercy. We pray, Father, that you would break through, Lord, to multitudes of people, that there would be a tremendous spiritual turning to you in the Muslim world, in the Hindu world, in the Buddhist world, in the Chinese Communist world, in our own country. Oh, Lord, we pray that you would do what it takes to draw your own to yourself. And we pray that we would be prepared to do what it takes as well. to be part of what you are doing around the world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.