Latest / HBCWestminster / 7.3.22 Jonah 3:1-10 Pastor Danny Gardner

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7.3.22 Jonah 3:1-10 Pastor Danny Gardner · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  I've titled this morning's sermon, A Nation on Its Knees, and it cannot be coincidence that the Lord would have us to go through Jonah chapter 3 and what is, at least in Scripture's recording, the greatest national revival of all time on July 4th weekend as our attention is turned toward the celebrating of the nation in which we get to live and as our hearts both celebrate our freedoms but also break over the moral decline and disintegration.
• 0:30
  The godlessness that is growing so bold in our nation. And really what we're going to answer this morning is the question, can God rescue an entire nation? Can God do it? And what if that nation has completely rejected him? In fact, what if that nation is running headlong away from him? Is that nation beyond all hope?
• 0:56
  the question we will answer this morning and so allow me to read our text jonah chapter 3 and verse 1 if you're able to stand in honor of god's word as i do let's read about what is really probably the worst sermon ever preached followed by the greatest national revival of all time jonah chapter 3 and verse 1 says this then the word of the lord came to jonah the second time saying arise go to nineveh that great city and call out against it the message that i tell you
• 1:26
  So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
• 1:58
  And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. And let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.
• 2:25
  When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. You pray with me. Father God, your word is our delight. It illumines our paths. It provides warmth in a cold and dismal world. And Lord Jesus, your blood is our peace. Your righteousness is our strength. Your condemnation is our freedom. And your name is our message.
• 3:00
  And Spirit of God, give us understanding as we open your word now. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, church. We concluded last Sunday with this encouragement. No matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter what you smell like, the Lord will hear and will not abandon you. Jonah 3 represents the high watermark in the book. However miraculous the story has been to this point, nothing so far.
• 3:34
  surpasses the miracle that we are about to read about. Forget the fish, forget the storm, forget the storm ceasing as soon as Jonah is thrown overboard. All of those are miracles. They are supernatural events, but all of them pale in comparison to chapter 3 and verse 5, where it says that the Ninevites believed. Nineveh was a nation known for its brutality, for its pagan and idolatrous practices. They were known for their
• 4:02
  low value that they placed on human life. Human lives in their minds were expendable. I remarked at the beginning of our study that the book of Jonah records the greatest national revival of all time, following what was the shortest and least eloquent sermon. This particular revival began in the most unlikely way. It was the repeated call of God to a prophet who had not only resigned,
• 4:31
  but who had really seemingly disqualified himself from future service. This prophet quit and ran away. Now you may remember that the call of God had already come to Jonah once. You would have expected that a prophet of God, having heard the call of God, would have been delighted. But no, Jonah decided instead that he would rather die than preach the good news to the pagans.
• 4:58
  And we read in chapter 3 that rather than destroy Jonah, God decided to restore him, to renew his call, which resulted in the entire nation being saved. This morning, we look at a national revival, and we ask ourselves, sitting here on July 3rd, our 246th birthday as a nation, we ask ourselves, what are the elements of national revivals?
• 5:29
  You notice first, beginning in verse 1, that revivals begin with the God of second chances. The revivals begin with the God of second chances. And verse 1 says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah the what? Second time. Do you guys all see that? The second time. Saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of...
• 5:57
  Now this is exactly how the book should have begun. The first two chapters, all of the disobedience and the storm and the fish and the suffering and the prayer were all completely unnecessary if Jonah had just obeyed the first time. But we see that revivals begin with second chances. In fact, revivals, by definition, depend upon second chances. That's what the word revival means.
• 6:26
  means new life, a second life. If we did not serve a God of second chances, there would be no revivals. Revivals depend upon the God of second chances not to get two veggie tails on it. In fact, second chances are a repeated theme in the scriptures. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs of the faith, all received second chances. Moses, Aaron, Joshua.
• 6:58
  all received second chances david and solomon peter and paul james and john all received second chances in fact william banks has said this we are moved to speak of jonah's god as the god of second chances but honest sober reflection compels the saint to speak of him as the god of the 999th chance can i get an amen who in here needed a second chance
• 7:26
  Well, I did. What about a third and a fourth and a fifth and a tenth and a thousandth chance? The reality is, if you will just reflect with sobriety, William Banks is saying, we would recognize that it's a thousand chances, not a second chance. But the Lord came to David, we read, a second time, and to Moses a second time, and to Abraham a second time, and now we read in chapter 3 of verse 1 that he came to Jonah a second time, and to you and I a second time, and a third time.
• 7:55
  and a fourth time and praise god for his truly abounding grace amen revivals begin with the god of second chances but notice second revivals depend upon the truth communicated clearly and unapologetically they depend upon the truth being communicated clearly and unapologetically we pick up in the middle of verse three now nineveh it says
• 8:24
  was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah's sermon was a mere eight words in English. In the original Hebrew, it's only five words long. A five-word sermon. And when you read it, you'll notice it's not even very nice. Now we assume...
• 8:55
  that the message probably included some sort of explanation of the God to whom they should turn because of their response in verse 5, that they believed God, but the grace that Jonah received in the belly of that fish. And did he not, church, receive grace in the belly of that fish? He did. That grace that he received in the belly of the fish never even comes up in his sermon. That grace...
• 9:21
  that our faith is founded upon is never even articulated in his message to the Ninevites. If I were teaching a preaching class, a class on homiletics, how to preach, Jonah's eight-word sermon is not the model I would use. When young men come to me, and this happens frequently, come to me and ask me to teach them how to preach, I will usually boil a good sermon down to four elements. I will tell them your sermon.
• 9:51
  has to have some kind of a hook. You got to have something that's going to draw people's interest in. In the first two minutes, you have to tell them why they should listen to you for the next 30. If you cannot draw them in, then it's pointless for the remainder of the 30. And that hook can have something along the lines of a question asked, can God rescue an entire nation? That was the hook this morning, right?
• 10:16
  It can be a joke. It can be an illustration. It could be something serious. It could be something funny. But what you're doing in the first two minutes is establishing your credibility and legitimacy. Here's why you woke up this morning and decided to attend church. After the hook, you got to go to the book, open God's word and read from it.
• 10:35
  Once you've read from God's word, then take a look. Explain it to them. Expose it to them. That is expository preaching. Explain the word of God. And then at the end, give them something to take home. Some kind of an application to take away. Hook, look. Nope. Hook, book, look, took. Those are the four elements, in my opinion, of a decent sermon. But Jonah's sermon had no introduction. There was nothing. It had no outline. Its points were not alliterated.
• 11:04
  No easy pneumonic devices to help people remember it. There were no illustrations. There's nothing good to say about it. But for one thing, he told the truth. He told the truth. It wasn't watered down. It was uncompromising. I am a man who loves junk food. I would eat it all the time. There is nothing better than ice cream. I love big bowls of popcorn with candy sprinkled in.
• 11:36
  There is nothing as refreshing as an Otter Pop on a hot day. Something about being on a road trip makes me want chips. Something about being on vacation makes me want chocolate cake. The older I've gotten, the more I understand that classic mom saying of don't spoil your dinner. All of those sweets will actually fill you up. Junk food is appropriately named. It is food, but it's junk. It gives you the feeling of being full.
• 12:07
  but with no nutritional value whatsoever. You feel full, but you haven't gotten what your body needs. Walter Kaiser has said this, it's no secret that Christ's church is not at all in good health. She has been languishing because she has been fed junk food, all kinds of artificial preservatives, all sorts of unnatural substitutes. In other words, he says, the church feels full,
• 12:38
  but is not receiving the nutritional elements that it needs. We have, as maybe a national church, become like the people of Amos' time, who refused to hear the word of God. In Amos 8 and verse 11, the Lord says, Behold, the days are coming when I will send a famine on the land, and not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
• 13:06
  There is a time coming, the Lord says, when people will shut their ears off and they won't hear the words of God anymore. Pastor Stephen Davey has said this, unfortunately, the average church is serving up deep fried sermons. There's little spiritual nutrition. And the solution is a change of diet to a return to teaching, not just the word of God in general, but to teaching every word of God.
• 13:35
  The average ministry, he says, is expounding on life and then illustrating with Scripture. Did you catch that? The sermon is about life, and now let's insert some Bible, he says. Rather, we must return to expounding Scripture and illustrating with life. There is a word that has been making the rounds the last several years. It was a word that I rarely heard.
• 14:04
  Even three years ago, but now it's a word I hear almost daily. It's the word nuanced. Nuanced. I even hear it from many believers' mouths that the church must take a more nuanced approach. It is said that way every single time. The church must take a nuanced approach to evangelism, to apologetics, to preaching, to showing compassion.
• 14:32
  to speaking out on social issues. Now, my assumption is that sometimes people don't know the meanings of the words they often employ. It's probably a good assumption that people will use words they don't know what they actually mean. I think based on the way they use it, people assume the word nuanced means sensitive or caring. And if that were the case, I would agree. I do think the church needs to be sensitive. I think we need to be caring, but that's not what the word nuanced means.
• 15:03
  The word nuanced means having subtle shades of meaning. So the problem, they think, is that the church is not being subtle enough. I would disagree. I think the problem is that the church is being so subtle that the gospel has all but disappeared. The problem is that the church has become so nuanced that the truth has been lost.
• 15:34
  and oh that we would just even from the pulpit that america's pastors would just tell the truth just preach the word the god of the scriptures has become so nuanced that even if our nation wanted to repent they wouldn't know which god to turn to second timothy chapter 4 and verse 1 says this i charge you in the presence of god and of christ jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom anybody know the next three words preach the word
• 16:09
  Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. They will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Preach the word, Paul tells.
• 16:37
  timothy and let me ask you church when did pastors decide they needed to be original you know that command from paul to timothy is actually commanding him to become unoriginal timothy there are no options you don't get to decide which book you're going to teach from he says preach the word stick to the script when did pastors decide what the church really needs is novelty or creativity or new and inspiring methods brothers and sisters we are not called to be original
• 17:07
  If nothing else can be said regarding our preaching, may it be said that our message is true. Perhaps our city would say of Highlanders, you know, they're not very funny and they're certainly not very good looking. They're completely unoriginal and uninspiring, but at least they tell the truth. At least they tell the truth. If nothing else good can be said of Jonah's sermon, and there is very little good to be said of Jonah's sermon, at least he told the truth.
• 17:41
  And no doubt one of the greatest revivals in history was the Protestant Reformation of 1517, sparked by Martin Luther. When asked about his role in the Reformation, Luther said plainly, I simply taught, I preached, I wrote God's Word. I did nothing. The Word did everything. And church, if our nation would experience a revival, we must also clearly...
• 18:11
  communicate and unapologetically communicate the truth we notice third that revivals depend upon the god who saves revivals depend upon the god who saves look at verse five it says and the people of nineveh believed god here is the greatest miracle in the book the ninevites believed real forgiveness is only offered to those who genuinely believe
• 18:42
  We said that there was nothing nuanced in Jonah's preaching, but there was also nothing nuanced in the people's belief either. They recognized that Jonah's words were not Jonah's words, but rather the words of God. They forsook their sin, they knew their need, and they cried out to the one who could forgive and restore them. And don't miss who they believed. Look at verse 5 again.
• 19:13
  The people of Nineveh believed who? God. It does not say they believed Jonah. It says they believed God himself. James Montgomery Boyce has said, Faith should never rest in the messenger, but in God who gives the message. It was Jonah's voice, but they were God's words that the people heard. It causes me to wonder whose voice is heard when I speak.
• 19:44
  For many years, I think the one book that you could count on gracing every believer's bookshelf was Matthew Henry's single volume commentary. It seems like about a generation ago, every bookshelf in America of a Christian household had that one single volume commentary, Matthew Henry's commentary. It was said of Matthew Henry when he lived that he knew scripture so well and spoke scripture so often that if you pricked his skin, Bible verses would flow out instead of blood.
• 20:15
  May we be like Matthew Henry, who are so acquainted with the Scriptures that we begin to speak the very words of God, that it would be our voice, but His words that they hear. May we become like Apollos, who in Acts 17 is described as mighty in the Scriptures. If we would experience a revival, we must believe in the God who saves. Notice fourth, revivals depend upon genuine repentance from sin.
• 20:45
  motivated by godly guilt over sin let me say that again revivals depend upon genuine repentance from sin motivated by godly guilt over sin genuine repentance motivated by godly
• 21:01
  guilt look at the end of verse 5 they called for a fast they put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them the word reached the king of nineveh and he arose from his throne removed his robe covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes
• 21:16
  And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. And who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. What a glorious pain.
• 21:46
  The sensation of guilt is perhaps the greatest gift of God. To sinful and cursed humanity is the feeling of guilt. You say, well, why? That's a weird thing to say. I've never heard anybody say that guilt is good news. How can it be good? Because the pain of guilt demands action. It reminds us that something has gone wrong.
• 22:15
  Have you ever wondered where we would be as a species if we never felt guilty? You know, there's a medical condition where people can't feel pain. This is from the National Library of Medicine. Congenital insensitivity to pain and anhidrosis, SIPA, C-I-P-A, is a very rare and extremely dangerous condition, they say. People with SIPA cannot feel pain.
• 22:46
  Pain-sensing nerves in these patients are not properly connected in the parts of the brain that receive pain messages. SIPA is extremely dangerous. In most cases, the patient doesn't live over the age of 25. Although some of them can live a fairly normal life, they must constantly check themselves for cuts, for bruises, for self-mutilations, other possible unfelt injuries. Accidental self-mutilation.
• 23:15
  is an almost invariable feature of this disorder, most often involving the teeth, the lips, the tongue, the ears, the eyes, the nose, the fingers, all of your extremities. You will set your hand down on a hot stove and you won't realize it. And imagine the damage you're causing. You just don't even feel it. For people with SIPA, physical pain is a gift. The ability to feel pain is a gift.
• 23:44
  And the spiritual parallel, the spiritual version of physical pain is guilt. Now, I understand that parents do things different ways. I am not advocating here for one method of parenting over another. I'm not telling you that the only godly method of parenting involves spanking. But I will tell you this, Hallie and I spanked our boys when they willfully disobeyed. We wanted to instill in them a sense of pain.
• 24:15
  associated with disobedience. Disobeying hurts. That's the lesson we wanted them to learn. It was always done privately. It was only done once we were confident that our sons understood why it was being done. It was never done in confusion. I'm not talking about beating. I'm not talking about abusing. I'm talking about spanking. Done appropriately and motivated by love draws your child
• 24:45
  to you rather than pushing them away and church it is the weirdest thing i can't fully explain how it worked but i'm telling you every time i spanked one of my sons immediately following they clung to me they didn't retract from me they wanted a hug from me the man who just spanked their little bottoms
• 25:10
  I always waited until my emotions were in check. When they disobeyed, I would tell them, you need to go to the bathroom upstairs and wait for me. And sometimes that took a long time. Many minutes would go by. Sometimes an hour would go by.
• 25:26
  I wanted to wait until I was no longer angry. I understood. I wasn't going to lash out in emotion or in rage. I wanted to make sure that everything was done appropriately and in check. And I would go to Hallie and I would ask her, what do you think about what he did? What does this deserve? Does it even deserve a spanking? There were some times when we'd just come upstairs and have a talk and pray and that was it. But if we felt like, Hallie and I together felt like, no, this...
• 25:53
  This needs a spanking. Then I would make sure that my emotions were in check. I even recalibrated our little whacker. We had this little strip of cloth thing that we used to spank their bottoms. I would recalibrate every time where I would sit down and whack my own leg first. I wanted to know how hard do I need to hit, right? I don't want to leave any marks. I don't want to injure them. And so it was always done with calibration, using it on myself first. And every time, I'm telling you, church, every single time they were spanked, they drew close to us.
• 26:23
  and they wanted to be held. They found comfort in our hugs and in our kisses. They knew, and this is why I would advocate even for it, they knew that once the spank was over, they no longer needed to feel guilty. It was done. So once we got done with our hugs and our kisses and our prayer, asking the Lord for help, and we released them, man, it was immediately back to having fun. It's over. It's done. No more.
• 26:55
  Guilt, and I'm telling you, our sense of pain, understanding what caused that pain, and then knowing where to turn for comfort is a great gift. And we see that here lived out in the lives of the Ninevites. They understood the pain. They heard the truth. We will be overturned. Our nation will be flipped upside down. That's what that word overturned means. We are about to become chaos.
• 27:23
  The Lord is going to stamp us out. They knew to whom to return for help. And they were comforted. Look at verse 10. Revivals culminate in God's compassion poured out. Verse 10 says, when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. And he did not do it. They received mercy. God showed them mercy. In fact, we don't have time to go through here a whole
• 27:55
  theology of mercy i will just tell you this that according to the old testament god delights in showing mercy he's even eager to do it well church can god rescue an entire nation yes he's done it before he delights in doing it but not before bringing that nation to its knees
• 28:23
  Jonah 3 gives us a picture of what is possible for any nation if the Word of God is clearly preached. If we are willing to humble ourselves before the God of the Scriptures, revival is possible. But that revival depends upon the clear and unapologetic preaching of God's Word. It depends upon genuine repentance from sin, motivated by genuine guilt over sin, and if we do these things, yes, our God would delight.
• 28:52
  in saving our entire nation. And Lord, I pray for that very thing. Lord, we are grateful for the nation in which we live. We are thankful for the men and women who have gone before us, who have fought for the freedoms that we enjoy. And Lord, may we not take them for granted. And Lord, we ask for a massive national spiritual revival. We ask God that through the clear and unapologetic
• 29:25
  communication of the truth from your church that people would fall on their knees, would plead for forgiveness and be saved. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.