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Jonah 1-4 · Providence Baptist Church - Sermons

• 0:00
  Verse 2 says, and he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
• 0:06
  That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.
• 0:19
  Jonah recognizes that God is this type of God, a merciful God, and we'll see in some measure why he didn't want this to be the case for the Ninevites.
• 0:33
  But he just doesn't want to join God in his merciful work in the world.
• 0:38
  Verse 3 of chapter 4 says, therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
• 0:49
  We do not want to be like Jonah in this way.
• 0:55
  Now, because of the length of the narrative, I don't have an outline for you this morning.
• 0:59
  We're just going to simply read through it in its entirety, and I'm going to make comments to you as we read,
• 1:05
  and then we'll have some concluding points and some application questions for you.
• 1:10
  So, we're going to look at the entire book of Jonah this morning.
• 1:13
  Before I begin reading, let me remind you, beloved, that this is God's word to us.
• 1:16
  It was written for his glory and our good.
• 1:20
  So, we would all do well this morning to listen to it in order to believe its promises and obey its commands.
• 1:28
  Jonah chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.
• 1:30
  Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying,
• 1:37
  Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
• 1:45
  But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
• 1:49
  He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
• 1:52
  So, he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
• 2:01
  Right, so initially, we get the whole scene set up for us.
• 2:03
  God calls to Jonah to be a means of his mercy, to go to this wicked city, right?
• 2:10
  The evil has come up before God.
• 2:13
  Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria.
• 2:16
  There's lots of Old Testament talk and prophecy about the wickedness of the Assyrians.
• 2:21
  They would be used by God for the punishment of Israel, but then they would also end up being punished for their wickedness, right?
• 2:30
  This is what's playing in Jonah's mind in this day.
• 2:35
  In fact, in his day, they were paying tribute to the Assyrians.
• 2:40
  They were keeping the Assyrians at bay with money that they wouldn't come and attack them, right?
• 2:46
  The Ninevites, the Assyrians, were the enemies of God's people.
• 2:54
  And so, Jonah is reluctant.
• 2:55
  We don't find this out at the very beginning.
• 2:57
  We're not exactly sure, if you have never read the narrative before, why it is that verse 3 says,
• 3:03
  But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
• 3:08
  But we find out later in the book, it's because he did not want God to be merciful to these people.
• 3:16
  Now, Tarshish was a coastal city of Spain.
• 3:20
  Jonah travels to Joppa, the opposite direction of Nineveh.
• 3:25
  And he gets on a boat to go, in his mind, out of the presence of the Lord, to the very end of the known world.
• 3:33
  This was like as far as he could sail away from Nineveh.
• 3:39
  He is fleeing away, and again, in his thinking from the presence of God.
• 3:44
  He wants with all of himself not to be obedient to what God has asked him to do.
• 3:51
  Verse 4.
• 3:51
  Note here that the fear of the mariners, right?
• 4:19
  They are very aware that they are at danger, and they call out to each of their various gods, right?
• 4:27
  These are not God-fearing, Yahweh-fearing men, but they're crying out to the various idols that they worship at.
• 4:34
  But they are afraid, and rightly so.
• 4:38
  They begin to throw the livelihood of this ship overboard, right?
• 4:41
  To make it lighter in the water, that it might not be destroyed.
• 4:46
  And note that juxtaposition to the seeming carelessness of Jonah, right?
• 4:53
  He all throughout the text, you're going to see he's just ready for his life to be over, right?
• 4:57
  God has put a call on him, and he finds himself in the midst of a storm, caring not in the belly of this ship.
• 5:06
  Verse 6.
• 5:08
  So the captain came and said to him,
• 5:10
  What do you mean, you sleeper?
• 5:13
  Arise, call out to your God.
• 5:15
  Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.
• 5:20
  And they said to one another,
• 5:21
  Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.
• 5:26
  So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
• 5:29
  Then they said to him,
• 5:31
  Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us.
• 5:34
  What is your occupation, and where do you come from?
• 5:37
  What is your country, and of what people are you?
• 5:41
  And he said to them,
• 5:42
  I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
• 5:48
  Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him,
• 5:51
  What is this that you have done?
• 5:53
  For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
• 5:57
  Then they said to him,
• 5:59
  What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?
• 6:03
  For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.
• 6:06
  He said to them,
• 6:08
  Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.
• 6:10
  Then the sea will quiet down for you.
• 6:12
  For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.
• 6:16
  Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land,
• 6:19
  but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
• 6:24
  Therefore they called out to the Lord,
• 6:27
  O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life,
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  and lay not on us innocent blood.
• 6:32
  For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.
• 6:36
  So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea,
• 6:38
  and the sea ceased from its raging.
• 6:42
  Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly,
• 6:45
  and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
• 6:49
  Again, notice this juxtaposition between the mariners and Jonah.
• 6:54
  I think the author of Jonah really intentionally is laying this out for us.
• 7:00
  Verse 5, as I mentioned previously,
• 7:02
  they each cried out to their God.
• 7:04
  They knew that they were at the mercy of something.
• 7:08
  Verse 13,
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  Jonah has said to them,
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  Hurl me into the sea,
• 7:14
  but they nevertheless rode hard, right?
• 7:18
  They aren't quick to cast the life of this man into the sea,
• 7:22
  but they recognize there's some measure of morality in the world,
• 7:27
  and they don't want to transgress
• 7:28
  whichever God may have told them not to murder in their hearts.
• 7:35
  Verse 14, we see that they call out to whom?
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  One of their gods?
• 7:40
  No, to the Lord.
• 7:44
  Asked that he would spare them of guilt of the life
• 7:47
  they're going to throw into the sea.
• 7:50
  And then we see in verse 16
• 7:51
  that the men feared the Lord exceedingly.
• 7:55
  And what do we find them doing now?
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  Not offering to their vain idols,
• 7:59
  but offering a sacrifice to the Lord
• 8:02
  and making vows.
• 8:04
  So here you have these men, right?
• 8:07
  Not followers of the Lord,
• 8:09
  but possibly in some measure converts
• 8:12
  at the end of chapter 1.
• 8:16
  Verse 17,
• 8:18
  And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
• 8:22
  And Jonah was in the belly of the fish
• 8:24
  three days and three nights.
• 8:27
  God appoints, right?
• 8:29
  As Jonah is thrown overboard, right?
• 8:31
  The providence of God on display here
• 8:34
  that a great fish is there just at this time,
• 8:38
  and it swallows him whole.
• 8:41
  And we have absolutely no way to be sure
• 8:42
  if it was a fish or a whale.
• 8:44
  We won't spend much or any time on this at all.
• 8:47
  The best guesses are whale shark or sperm whale.
• 8:50
  My money's on sperm whale
• 8:51
  because around the turn of the century,
• 8:54
  turn of the 20th century,
• 8:55
  a man named James Bartley survived for 15 hours
• 8:58
  in the belly of a sperm whale,
• 9:00
  which I think is fascinating.
• 9:01
  And so that's where my money's at.
• 9:03
  But it doesn't matter, right?
• 9:06
  It happened in fact, right?
• 9:08
  The Lord sent this great fish,
• 9:11
  this creature of the deep.
• 9:13
  It swallowed Jonah up,
• 9:14
  and the Lord preserved his life
• 9:17
  in the belly of this fish for three days.
• 9:21
  As I previously stated,
• 9:24
  the theme of the book of Jonah
• 9:25
  is the great mercy of God to all peoples.
• 9:31
  And we should not miss that this includes Jonah.
• 9:37
  Jonah is in the midst of a great disobedience, right?
• 9:41
  The Lord has come and said to him, right?
• 9:43
  And he is doing the opposite, right?
• 9:46
  He is setting himself against God.
• 9:50
  Jonah thought he could flee
• 9:51
  from the presence of God.
• 9:55
  But God loved him enough
• 9:57
  to send a storm,
• 9:59
  to have mariners pitch him overboard,
• 10:03
  and to have a great fish swallow him.
• 10:07
  God pursued Jonah on his way to Tarshish.
• 10:13
  It does not matter how great your sin,
• 10:18
  how dead level you are against God.
• 10:23
  Our God is a merciful God.
• 10:25
  And if you will repent,
• 10:27
  he will save your soul.
• 10:29
  You may find yourself this morning
• 10:32
  thinking that you're outside the mercy of God.
• 10:37
  I would plead with you to pay attention
• 10:39
  to the sign of Jonah.
• 10:43
  Jesus in Matthew chapter 12, verse 38 and following,
• 10:48
  answers some scribes and Pharisees
• 10:50
  who said to him,
• 10:51
  Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.
• 10:55
  They wanted something special.
• 10:57
  They wanted something miraculous to speak to them.
• 11:02
  But he answered them,
• 11:04
  An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign,
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  but no sign will be given to it
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  except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
• 11:16
  So, here's your sign.
• 11:19
  For just as Jonah was three days and three nights
• 11:22
  in the belly of the great fish,
• 11:24
  so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights
• 11:28
  in the heart of the earth.
• 11:32
  Jonah, this man, is a type for Christ.
• 11:36
  Christ is the anti-type.
• 11:37
  I talked to you again a couple of weeks ago
• 11:39
  about how the Old Testament does this again and again and again.
• 11:42
  Eastern logic often says,
• 11:43
  not this, not this, not this, but this.
• 11:46
  And in some cases, in the case of typology,
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  says,
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  like this, but not this.
• 11:54
  So what does Jonah do?
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  We'll see.
• 11:57
  He comes out and he preaches repentance.
• 11:59
  He speaks of the mercy of God.
• 12:03
  And this is what Christ now does
• 12:06
  through the story of Jonah for you.
• 12:12
  Verse 41, Matthew chapter 12.
• 12:14
  Jesus says,
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  The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment
• 12:18
  with this generation and condemn it,
• 12:21
  for they repented at the preaching of Jonah,
• 12:24
  and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
• 12:29
  The Lord Jesus Christ, right?
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  Preaching repentance to all who will believe.
• 12:35
  Chapter 2 and verse 1.
• 12:38
  Then Jonah, and I am always astounded
• 12:40
  that it took three days in the belly of a fish,
• 12:43
  then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God
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  from the belly of the fish, saying,
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  I called out to the Lord out of my distress,
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  and he answered me.
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  Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
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  and he heard my voice.
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  For you cast me into the deep
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  and the heart of the seas,
• 13:00
  and the flood surrounded me.
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  All your waves and your billows passed over me.
• 13:07
  Then I said,
• 13:07
  I am driven away from your sight,
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  yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
• 13:12
  The waters closed in over me to take my life.
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  The deep surrounded me.
• 13:17
  Weeds were wrapped around my head
• 13:19
  at the roots of the mountains.
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  I went down to the land
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  whose bars closed upon me forever.
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  Yet you brought up my life from the pit,
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  O Lord, my God.
• 13:30
  When my life was fainting away,
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  I remembered the Lord,
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  and my prayer came to you
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  into your holy temple.
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  Those who pay regard to vain idols
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  forsake their hope of steadfast love.
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  But I, with the voice of thanksgiving,
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  will sacrifice to you
• 13:46
  what I have vowed I will pay.
• 13:49
  Salvation belongs to the Lord.
• 13:52
  And the Lord spoke to the fish,
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  and it vomited Jonah out
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  upon the Jai land.
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  So after all of this suffering
• 14:02
  in the belly of this fish,
• 14:04
  Jonah remembers the Lord.
• 14:07
  He remembers God's steadfast love for him.
• 14:11
  He turns his heart back to God.
• 14:14
  He desires his presence.
• 14:18
  He's been fleeing from the presence of God,
• 14:20
  but here, look at verse 4.
• 14:22
  Then I said,
• 14:23
  I am driven away from your sight,
• 14:25
  yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
• 14:31
  He repents of his disobedience
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  and turns back to God.
• 14:37
  Chapter 3 and verse 1.
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  Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah
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  the second time, saying,
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  Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,
• 14:47
  and call out against it the message
• 14:49
  that I tell you.
• 14:51
  So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh
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  according to the word of the Lord.
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  Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city,
• 14:58
  three days journey in breadth.
• 15:01
  Jonah began to go into the city,
• 15:02
  going a day's journey,
• 15:04
  and he called out,
• 15:06
  yet 40 days,
• 15:07
  and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
• 15:11
  So here we see Jonah gets a second opportunity,
• 15:14
  and this time he is obedient.
• 15:19
  Chapter 3, verses 1 through 4,
• 15:21
  is the center of the chiastic structure.
• 15:25
  of Jonah.
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  This is the middle of it,
• 15:27
  where the whole thing folds in over on itself.
• 15:31
  Right?
• 15:31
  This is the place we want to pay extra careful attention.
• 15:36
  Right?
• 15:37
  God says to Jonah again,
• 15:39
  right,
• 15:39
  go to Nineveh,
• 15:41
  and what does Jonah do?
• 15:43
  He goes,
• 15:45
  this is what the author is trying to draw our attention to.
• 15:50
  Right?
• 15:50
  This merciful God has a message for Nineveh,
• 15:53
  and Jonah joins him in sharing that message.
• 15:57
  Right?
• 15:57
  We're going to see wonderful repentance here,
• 15:59
  and some few verses,
• 16:00
  and then the horrible end in chapter 4.
• 16:04
  Jonah's downcast disposition towards what the Lord did.
• 16:09
  But right here in these first four verses of chapter 3,
• 16:11
  Jonah repents,
• 16:12
  he's recommissioned,
• 16:14
  and he preaches in obedience.
• 16:18
  Verse 5.
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  And the people of Nineveh believed God.
• 16:23
  It's a wonderful sentence.
• 16:26
  And the people of Nineveh believed God.
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  They called for a fast and put on sackcloth,
• 16:31
  from the greatest of them to the least of them.
• 16:35
  The word reached the king of Nineveh,
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  and he arose from his throne,
• 16:38
  removed his robe,
• 16:39
  covered himself with sackcloth,
• 16:41
  and sat in ashes.
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  These are outward expressions of repentance.
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  And he issued a proclamation,
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  and published through Nineveh,
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  by the decree of the king and his nobles,
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  let neither man nor beast,
• 16:53
  herd nor flock,
• 16:54
  taste anything.
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  Let them not feed or drink water.
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  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
• 17:00
  and let them call out mightily to God.
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  Let everyone turn from his evil way,
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  and from the violence that is in his hands.
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  Who knows?
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  God may turn and relent,
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  and turn from his fierce anger,
• 17:13
  so that we may not perish.
• 17:17
  A city-wide repentance happens at the preaching.
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  Of Jonah.
• 17:24
  We can know roughly when Jonah traveled to Nineveh,
• 17:26
  because of some evidence from the book of 2 Kings.
• 17:30
  Based on Assyrian records,
• 17:33
  Jonah would likely have arrived within months,
• 17:35
  or possibly a couple of years,
• 17:38
  from a complete solar eclipse,
• 17:40
  that was soon followed by floods and famine.
• 17:44
  There had been some signs happening of tragedy,
• 17:47
  impending doom.
• 17:49
  And so it is very likely that God had prepared the hearts of the Ninevites
• 17:54
  for the preaching of Jonah.
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  That this was a harvest ready to be yielded.
• 18:01
  We've got this man Jonah, right,
• 18:03
  who's resistant to preach to begin with.
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  It seems that he has a heart turned back to God.
• 18:08
  The only record of his preaching is something very brief, right?
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  Yet 40 days, right?
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  And Nineveh shall be overthrown.
• 18:17
  I'd like to think there was more to the message than that,
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  but maybe not.
• 18:22
  Maybe these people had been so struck down
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  that they were so ready to hear something of a God
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  that they could place some measure of hope in.
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  Regardless, we see this whole city turning their hearts towards God.
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  We see in verse 10,
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  when God saw what they did,
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  how they turned from their evil way,
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  God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them,
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  and he did not do it.
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  So the city is spared because of their repentance.
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  So God shows great mercy to this people when they repent.
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  Again, the theme of the book of Jonah
• 19:07
  is the great mercy of God to all peoples, right?
• 19:11
  These are not Israelites that God has shown this mercy to, right?
• 19:16
  They are Assyrians, right?
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  Our God is a missionary God.
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  From the very beginning,
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  Genesis chapter 12,
• 19:28
  verse three verses.
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  Now the Lord said to Abram,
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  Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house
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  to the land that I will show you.
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  And I will make of you a great nation,
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  and I will bless you and make your name great.
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  Why?
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  So that you will be a blessing.
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  I will bless those who bless you,
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  and him who dishonors you I will curse.
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  And in you,
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  all the families of the earth
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  shall be blessed.
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  God calls a man, right?
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  Out of his idolatry.
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  Sets his blessing on him
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  so that a blessing will go to all peoples.
• 20:09
  We see this work itself out
• 20:10
  in the Old Testament narrative in temporal ways.
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  We know, as New Testament believers,
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  that it is accomplished in eternal ways
• 20:18
  through the person and work
• 20:20
  of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
• 20:22
  The gospel message is meant to go to all peoples.
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  And you see this again and again and again and again
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  in the Old Testament narrative.
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  I'm just going to give you one example from a psalm.
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  I was really tempted to walk through the text this morning,
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  but we don't have time for that today.
• 20:40
  So let me just give you one example.
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  This is Psalm 96,
• 20:42
  the first four verses.
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  Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.
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  Sing to the Lord all the earth.
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  Sing to the Lord.
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  Bless his name.
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  Tell of his salvation from day to day.
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  Declare his glory among the nations.
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  His marvelous works among all the peoples.
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  For great is the Lord
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  and greatly to be praised.
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  He is to be feared above all gods.
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  So Jonah and we as God's people
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  are meant to be about the work that God is about, right?
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  Sharing his glory,
• 21:19
  being a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.
• 21:23
  Our God is a missionary God
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  and therefore we ought to be missionary people.
• 21:29
  Great is the Lord
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  and greatly to be praised.
• 21:33
  Our God is a merciful God
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  and therefore we ought to be people of mercy.
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  Chapter four, verse one.
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  But it displeased Jonah exceedingly
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  and he was angry.
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  There's been this citywide repentance.
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  I hope that any one of us
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  would have just been rejoicing after such a thing.
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  I came and preached a message in obedience to God
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  and look at what he accomplished.
• 22:06
  Jonah is angry, right?
• 22:09
  And as we'll see,
• 22:09
  he goes out of the city to pout, essentially.
• 22:14
  And he prayed to the Lord and said,
• 22:15
  O Lord, is this not what I said
• 22:17
  when I was yet in my country?
• 22:19
  That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish,
• 22:21
  for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful,
• 22:23
  slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love
• 22:25
  and relenting from disaster.
• 22:27
  Therefore now, O Lord,
• 22:29
  please take my life for me,
• 22:30
  for it is better for me to die than to live.
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  For he is not happy about what has happened.
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  And the Lord said,
• 22:41
  Do you do well to be angry?
• 22:44
  The answer is no.
• 22:45
  It's a rhetorical question.
• 22:47
  You do not.
• 22:49
  Verse five.
• 22:49
  Jonah went out of the city
• 22:50
  and sat to the east of the city
• 22:52
  and made a booth for himself,
• 22:53
  or a tent, you could think.
• 22:55
  He sat under it in the shade
• 22:57
  until he should see what should become of the city.
• 23:01
  He's still holding out hope
• 23:03
  that God's going to destroy the Ninevites.
• 23:06
  It seems that he's going to stay there for 40 days
• 23:09
  to see what will happen to them.
• 23:12
  Verse six.
• 23:13
  Now, the Lord God appointed a plant
• 23:15
  and made it come up over Jonah
• 23:16
  that it might be a shade over his head
• 23:19
  to save him from his discomfort.
• 23:21
  Now, my assumption here is that his booth
• 23:23
  is not quite doing the job.
• 23:25
  It's providing a little shade,
• 23:26
  but not quite enough shade.
• 23:28
  We all know light shade and deep shade
• 23:30
  is much more cool.
• 23:33
  So Jonah was exceedingly glad
• 23:35
  because of the plant.
• 23:37
  But when dawn came upon the next day,
• 23:40
  God appointed a worm that attacked the plant
• 23:42
  so that it withered.
• 23:44
  When the sun rose,
• 23:45
  God appointed a scorching east wind
• 23:47
  and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah
• 23:49
  so that he was faint.
• 23:50
  And he asked that he might die and said,
• 23:53
  it is better for me to die than to live.
• 23:57
  But God said to Jonah,
• 23:59
  do you do well to be angry for the plant?
• 24:03
  And he said, yes, I do well to be angry,
• 24:06
  angry enough to die.
• 24:08
  And the Lord said,
• 24:10
  you pity the plant for which you did not labor,
• 24:13
  nor did you make it grow,
• 24:14
  which came into being in a night
• 24:16
  and perished in a night.
• 24:18
  And should not I pity Nineveh,
• 24:20
  that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons
• 24:25
  who do not know their right hand from their left
• 24:28
  and also much cattle?
• 24:32
  So he teaches here, Jonah, a lesson.
• 24:34
  And the text just hangs at that point.
• 24:37
  And I believe it hangs at that point
• 24:39
  because the Israelites and now we
• 24:41
  are meant to think of ourselves in this situation.
• 24:45
  What is left for Jonah to do?
• 24:47
  To repent again, right?
• 24:49
  But it stops at that place
• 24:52
  and leaves us, I think,
• 24:54
  with the thought of repentance
• 24:56
  for our part,
• 24:58
  not being agents of mercy for others.
• 25:02
  So why does God show Nineveh this great mercy?
• 25:07
  First, because of the worm.
• 25:11
  He uses this example.
• 25:12
  This plant sprouts up quickly.
• 25:14
  It's appointed by God.
• 25:16
  Then the worm is appointed by God.
• 25:18
  Verse 7, when the dawn came on the next day,
• 25:20
  God appointed a worm.
• 25:22
  It attacks the plant
• 25:23
  so that it withers.
• 25:26
  And I believe what God's trying to communicate
• 25:27
  is that there has been a worm
• 25:29
  in the city of Nineveh,
• 25:30
  the work of Satan,
• 25:32
  deceiving those people.
• 25:34
  Jonah feels sad for the plant
• 25:38
  because of the worm.
• 25:40
  And he should have felt sad for Nineveh
• 25:43
  because of Satan,
• 25:45
  because of that thing that's coming in
• 25:47
  to cause the Ninevites to wither.
• 25:52
  He also shows Nineveh mercy
• 25:54
  because of his labor for Nineveh.
• 25:58
  First part of verse 6,
• 25:59
  now the Lord God appointed this plant, right?
• 26:01
  He makes it come up over Jonah, right?
• 26:03
  He brings it about in a day
• 26:05
  and he brings it to end in a day.
• 26:08
  But yet he had been working in Nineveh
• 26:10
  for much, much longer.
• 26:14
  The Ninevites were image bearers of God.
• 26:18
  They were not worshipers of God,
• 26:19
  but they had built a great city.
• 26:22
  This was a magnificent city.
• 26:26
  He had labored over these people.
• 26:30
  They were his.
• 26:32
  He also shows the Ninevites mercy
• 26:35
  because of their moral confusion.
• 26:38
  He says in the first part of verse 11,
• 26:40
  should I not pity Nineveh,
• 26:41
  that great city in which there are more
• 26:43
  than 120,000 persons
• 26:45
  who do not know their right hand
• 26:47
  from their left?
• 26:48
  Now some think this is a,
• 26:50
  I would say an odd reference to children
• 26:52
  that he's numbering out
• 26:54
  how many people there are in Nineveh.
• 26:56
  But this phrase is not used
• 26:58
  anywhere else in the scripture
• 26:59
  to speak of children,
• 27:00
  to designate persons as children
• 27:02
  by talking about not knowing
• 27:04
  their right hand from their left.
• 27:07
  I think, along with others,
• 27:09
  that it's more likely
• 27:10
  that God is referencing
• 27:12
  how very confused these people are.
• 27:15
  in need of mercy,
• 27:19
  utterly sinful,
• 27:20
  at fault for their wickedness,
• 27:23
  but morally confused.
• 27:26
  God chooses to show them mercy.
• 27:30
  And also he shows them mercy for,
• 27:33
  that's the word that ends the text,
• 27:36
  the many cattle.
• 27:39
  Doesn't that seem like an odd way
• 27:41
  in the text,
• 27:42
  and also much cattle?
• 27:46
  And I suppose that what the Lord is saying
• 27:48
  is that there is also things
• 27:50
  in this city, right?
• 27:52
  It's a mark of their wealth.
• 27:54
  Things that are meant to be used
• 27:57
  for God's purposes
• 27:58
  would also be destroyed
• 28:00
  in the destruction of this city.
• 28:04
  God loves people.
• 28:06
  God loves cities.
• 28:08
  God is merciful to all peoples.
• 28:13
  This is the theme of the book of Jonah.
• 28:18
  So have you experienced the mercy of God?
• 28:22
  Have you been forgiven for your sins?
• 28:27
  I hope that you identify
• 28:28
  with Jonah being shown favor in this text
• 28:32
  and the Ninevites being shown favor.
• 28:36
  If you have,
• 28:37
  do you now think of God as merciful?
• 28:41
  When you sin,
• 28:43
  do you throw yourself on the mercy of God
• 28:45
  found at the cross of Christ?
• 28:48
  Do you find yourself running to Zion?
• 28:51
  Or do you find yourself running back to Sinai?
• 28:56
  Oh, God is going to be so displeased with me.
• 28:59
  I deserve punishment.
• 29:01
  Or are you in Christ,
• 29:02
  having been shown the mercy of God,
• 29:03
  do you rely on His continued mercy
• 29:06
  on your behalf?
• 29:08
  The law of God is meant to drive us to Christ
• 29:14
  and then to show us,
• 29:16
  once we're in Jesus,
• 29:17
  how we can walk in Him.
• 29:21
  Our recitation this morning
• 29:22
  asked the question,
• 29:23
  since no one can keep the law,
• 29:24
  what is its purpose?
• 29:27
  That we may know the holy nature
• 29:29
  and will of God
• 29:29
  and the sinful nature
• 29:30
  and disobedience of our hearts
• 29:32
  and thus our need of a Savior.
• 29:36
  The law also teaches
• 29:37
  and exhorts us to live a life
• 29:39
  worthy of our Savior.
• 29:42
  So, if you have experienced the mercy of God,
• 29:45
  do you think now of God as merciful?
• 29:49
  Do you expect our God
• 29:51
  to be merciful to all peoples?
• 29:53
  People not like you?
• 29:55
  People who make you uncomfortable?
• 29:58
  And are you willing
• 30:00
  to be used by our God
• 30:03
  as an agent of His mercy?
• 30:06
  To be ministers
• 30:07
  of the reconciliation
• 30:09
  that He means to bring to people
• 30:11
  who will repent
• 30:13
  and place their faith in Him?
• 30:16
  I hope that you can answer yes,
• 30:18
  a resounding yes
• 30:19
  to every one of those questions.
• 30:23
  Let's pray to that end.