(Deeper Waters) Session 2 - the Purpose of God — David Ravenhill

Wonderful to be in the presence of God, isn't it? I am one of those individuals that don't have any musical ability. My wife sings, plays the piano, the kids all took piano lessons, but I'm tone deaf.

Somebody heard me singing a number of years ago, and after they heard me, they informed me that I was a prison singer. I made the mistake of asking what a prison singer was, and they said somebody who's behind a few bars is missing the key.

Any other prison singers here? Okay, a few of us, good. I'm glad the Bible says make a joyful noise to the Lord. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I can't wait to get my glorified voice in heaven, sit down at that 1 ,000-foot Steinway, Bosendorf, whatever it is up there, and I've reserved the music room for the first 1 ,000 years to make up for lost time.

You'll hear me spiraling above everybody else, you know, 100 octaves or whatever you're capable of in heaven. It's gonna be wonderful, isn't it? But anyway, in the meantime, I'm glad the Lord looks at the heart and not the vocal ability.

The Purpose of God and the Jigsaw Puzzle of Christian Calling

This morning, we wanna look at the purpose of God. I want you to imagine when you came in at the back door that you were handed a plastic bag, a clear plastic bag, and in that plastic bag, there was a jigsaw puzzle.

Some of you got a 50-piece, some of you got a 100-piece, some of you got a 1 ,000-piece, some of you got 5 ,000-piece, some of you got 20. And you're asked to put that jigsaw puzzle together. The frustration is that you were not given the box.

And so you have all these unrelated little pieces of material, different shapes, different colors. You pick up the red, you don't know if it's blood or some guy's shirt or a Ferrari. You don't know if the blue piece is the sky or the ocean.

You don't know if the brown is the side of a building or somebody's car. And so you've got all these little pieces, and you think, if I only had the cover to this box, I would know exactly what it was supposed to look like and where the blue went in, where the, you know.

And I rather think that's what a lot of Christians are like. They get saved, go to church or some home group or church group, and each week, they get another piece of the puzzle. They come on Sunday morning.

Maybe their pastor's talking about the family, and so they put that piece of the puzzle in their plastic bag, their mind, so to speak. Come the next week, and he's changed, and he's doing a series on the book of Nehemiah.

And so they've got that information. Guest speaker during the week, he's teaching about prayer, and so they've got that piece of the puzzle. Come the following week, somebody's on end-time events. They've got that piece of the puzzle.

And depending how long you've been saved, your jigsaw puzzle varies. Some of you have only got a 20-piece one because you haven't been saved very long. Others have got thousands of pieces because you've been raised in church, and you've been to every conference imaginable, and you've taken notes, and you've got all sorts of facts and figures and so on.

But this morning, we want to try and put the jigsaw puzzle together. I want to give you sort of the big picture as to what is God's purpose, because I'm convinced again, a lot of people go to church without any real understanding of what it's all about.

If I said to you that I belong to the local country club where I live, there is one, I don't belong to it, you would assume that I, number one, I'm rich, number two, that I play golf. Neither of those is true.

If I said I belong to the local vintage car club, you would assume I enjoy vintage cars. If I said I belong to the local rifle club, you'd assume that I enjoy target practice. If I said I belong to the local polo club, you'd assume I enjoy playing polo.

If I said I belong to the local fishing club that I enjoy fishing, if I say I belong to the church club, what does that immediately sort of conjure up in your mind? Most of us sit there and we try and fill in the blank and say, well, well, and yet all of us belong to that club.

We go along faithfully on Sunday morning to that club, we pay our club fees, we sing our club songs, we meet other club members, and yet we really don't know what that club is really all about. Now, you would never do that with any other sort of club.

You would not ascend four flights of stairs somewhere in the middle of town and meet with a group of people, sing songs, and pay your dues without having some sort of understanding why you were there.

In other words, you would never walk into some organization and say, what's this all about? The guy says, you know, I really don't know, but my parents started coming to this place when I was a kid and I've been coming ever since, and well, yeah, but what's the purpose of this club?

And well, come to think of it, I don't know. I mean, we'd never do that, and yet we do that with church. You ask the average person what it's all about and they sort of stare at you blankly like, I guess I never really thought of it.

Serving God's Purpose in This Generation

And so we want to look at God's purpose. Now, there are many, many scriptures, and I have left purposely my detail notes, and so I've got everything on this little page here, so I won't give you all of them, but my favorite verse concerning the purpose of God is Acts 13, verse 36, and it says, David served the purpose of God in his generation, and afterwards he slept.

I like it, it's got my name in it. But David understood what God was doing in his generation. David served the purpose of God in his generation. You are not responsible for the last generation, you're not responsible for the next generation, apart from raising your kids in a godly way, but you are responsible for this generation, and you need to find out what is God doing in our generation, and how can I serve the purpose of God in my generation?

If we don't do that, we waste our life. I picked up a book many, many years ago by J. Sidlow Baxter, one of his devotional books, called Awake My Heart, and in one of his devotionals, he makes the statement, you can have a saved soul, but a lost life.

You can have a saved soul, but a lost life. In other words, you can know that you're born again of the Spirit of God, but at the end of your life, if you live for 40, 60, 80, 100 years, whatever it may be, your life has been wasted because it has not counted for the sake of God's kingdom.

And I think there's nothing more tragic than a wasted life, not being involved again in the purpose of God. The Bible says we are to be laborers together with him. In other words, God is active, he's laboring, he's doing something, and he is looking again for vessels, vehicles, through which he can fulfill his purpose, and there are many, many scriptures about the purpose of God.

Paul says he has saved us, and he has called us according to his purpose. If I said how many of you are saved here, chances are that we'd have 100 hands that would go up. If I said how many of you are called, you'd look around and say, you know, is this sort of some trick question or whatever?

Well, if you're saved, you're called, very simply. You need to know, of course, what you're called to, what specific part of God's purpose you're called to. We're a many-membered body. We all have different capacities, different functions, but all of us have a calling upon our life.

It is a holy calling, the Bible says it is a high calling, and I would hate to miss that calling. Hebrews talks about the unchangeableness of God's purpose. In other words, God's purpose never changes, but the instruments do, as somebody said.

The reason the instruments change, number one, because we don't live forever, number two, because there's disobedience and sin, and so God is always raising up new instruments, but his purpose never changes.

If my purpose in life is to build myself a house, at least for the next year, let's say, and in the process of building that house, I'm gonna use a variety of instruments. Let's say I'm using a hammer.

The shaft of that hammer breaks, and so that hammer has failed, and therefore I have to replace it with another hammer, but my purpose remains the same. God, I believe, has called many, many people. They have not responded to that call, and so he's reached down into the life of somebody else and given them the calling that maybe you could have had, but you were busy fulfilling your own calling, your own destiny.

There's a verse in Revelation that talks about, we beware lest any man take your crown. What a frightening thought that is that one day we will stand before God only to find out that somebody else has got the reward that we could have had if we'd have been obedient to the voice of God.

In other words, God called you, maybe in a meeting like this or last night. You refused, maybe a few months later, because God is incredibly patient. Some missionary comes and gives a plead for people to respond and get involved in the things of God.

Again, you disobey, and over a period of time, there's consistent disobedience. Finally, God reaches into the life of somebody else. They do respond, and they get, one day, the crown that you could have had.

They get your prize. That's gonna be embarrassing, isn't it, to say the least? And so we need to understand, again, God's purpose. Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good. To those that love God, to those that are called according to his purpose.

And so I could give you many, many scriptures just with that one little phrase in it, the purpose of God, or God's purpose. God has a purpose to which he is working towards. Now, the problem with most of us is we become so engrossed in the subject matter of Christianity, we lose sight of the object.

Let me illustrate that by, let me introduce an imaginary man here. Here he is, we'll call him Charlie Brown. But Charlie Brown is 100 years of age, and he is the world's leading expert in medicine. He has studied every facet of medicine that is imaginable.

He knows all about the heart, all about the brain, all about the digestive system. He knows all about the skeleton structure of the Bible. I mean, he knows every Bible, of the body, every single facet of medicine he is an expert in.

And you ask this man, you say, I understand you know everything about the body, yes. You've been in school now for 80 years of solid training, yes. Have you ever delivered a baby? No. Have you ever performed an operation?

No. Have you ever given anybody sort of a chiropractic adjustment? No. Have you ever set a broken bone? No. Have you ever treated somebody for this disease or that disease? No, no, no. And every question you ask him, he says, note it.

Again, he's become so engrossed in the subject matter, he's lost sight of the object. He's never even put on a Band-Aid, and yet he knows everything about medicine. Now, there's a lot of Christians like that.

They've got notebooks full of facts and figures, and you can ask them almost any question, and they can answer it. You know, they can tell you who the antichrist is going to be and who he's going to marry.

You know, they can tell you the significance of the third tassel on Aaron's robe and so on and so forth. They know everything because they've studied everything, and yet you say to them, listen, have you ever led anybody to Christ?

No. Ever been on a mission strip? No. Ever counseled anybody? No. Ever prayed for anybody? No. And they reply, no, no, no, to everything, and again, they become so engrossed in the subject matter of Christianity, they've lost sight of the object.

And that's one of the great tragedies, I think, in the house of God, in the church of Jesus Christ, that we are not doing the job that we should be doing. And so God has a purpose. Now, God's purpose initially, of course, was to have a vast family of sons and daughters, all in his image, all in his likeness.

When he said to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply, he was just not talking about physical reproduction, but he was talking about reproducing his image. God's ultimate goal is the whole earth is gonna be filled with the glory of God.

And of course, he created man in his image, in his glory. Man sinned and came short of the glory of God, and so God's purpose, if you like, was thwarted. But he begins again in Genesis chapter 12, and that's where I want to begin.

Abraham, the Covenant, and Blessing the Nations

And he begins with this wonderful man by the name of Abraham. Abraham, as you know, is referred to in the Bible as the father of all those that believe. In other words, here's the role model, here's the prototype, here's the example.

Fathers have a profound impact on our life for either good or bad, don't they? If your father was a kind, loving, generous sort of a man, then chances are you have taken on some of those characteristics and qualities.

If your father was an alcoholic and cursed and swore all the time, chances are you've battled that in your own life, and so on. If your father was a doctor, chances are you know all sorts of medical terms.

If your father was a lawyer, chances are you know all sorts of legal terms. If your father was a mechanic, chances are you can tinker around with your car. If your father was a plumber, chances are you can fix the pipes when something goes wrong because we learn from our father.

Abraham is the father of all those that believe. He is the first disciple in the Bible because discipleship is not just something in the New Testament, it was there contained in the Old Testament, the essence of it.

What was the first thing God said to Abraham? Forsake father, mother, brother, and sister. Oh, he put it a little differently. Get out of your father's house, away from your relatives and your kindred, and so on.

Take up your cross and follow me, in essence. And so much of what you see in Abraham's life, God will take you through the sort of same processes, if you like. But anyway, God comes to this man Abraham, a Gentile who became a Jew, not through natural birth, but through the spiritual birth.

And God says to him, go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I'll make you a great nation, I'll bless you, I'll make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I'll bless those that bless you, the one that curses you, I will curse, and in you, all the families of the nations of the earth shall be blessed. What we call here the Abrahamic covenant. God's promise to bless this man, to make his name great, to provide for him, to protect him, and so on, but ultimately, that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

Now, God comes to Abraham on three separate occasions with this identical message, if you like. In other words, God is sort of drumming it in to Abraham. Now, what is happening here, God is beginning to raise up a people for himself.

And in the very DNA, the very genetic code of this nation that is gonna be formed, he is putting in that spiritual DNA, his intention, his purpose, that this people are going to ultimately impact the nations of the earth.

So he comes to Abraham three times. Abraham has a son by the name of Isaac. God comes to Isaac with the same message. Isaac has a son by the name of Jacob. God comes to Jacob with the same message. In you or through you, all the nations of the earth are gonna be blessed.

Through your seed, he says, all the nations of the earth are gonna be blessed. Now, turn with me to Galatians chapter three. Well, you don't have to turn to these, but at least let me give you the reference.

Galatians three in verse eight. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying all the nations shall be blessed in you. So what God was doing way back there at the very beginning, Genesis 12, he was looking for a people that would take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

He was trying to raise up people that shared his heart, his compassion, his love, his kindness, his mercy for the wayward, for the lost, for those that have been abused, again, as far as the world is concerned.

And he was looking for a people that would be laborers together with him. And so he is raising up a people that we, of course, know now as a nation of Israel, but basically the people of God. And in the spiritual, again, genetics of that nation, he says, through you and through your seed, every nation on the earth is gonna be blessed.

Paul explains that by saying he was preaching the gospel. We use the word blessing in a variety of ways. Somebody sneezes, you turn around and say, bless you. You know, the pastor greets you at the door and shakes your hands, says, bless you, because he can't remember your name, one of the tricks of the trade.

But the real definition of blessing is receiving the gospel. Let me prove that to you in Acts, Acts chapter three, verse 25, you are the sons of the prophets of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways. The ultimate blessing and the greatest blessing is the blessing of forgiveness, the blessing of salvation, the blessing of justification by faith.

That is what the Bible defines as blessing. And through you all, the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. They are gonna have the ability to respond to the gospel, to hear the gospel, to know the greatest blessing, that of being taken out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear son, to have their eyes opened, to be brought again from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.

So that was God's intention. He was raising up again this nation for a purpose. He had a single purpose in store for the nation of Israel. Now let's look at some scriptures, pertaining to God's purpose for Israel.

Israel as a Light to the Nations

Psalm 67, these are just sort of random scriptures that are literally dozens and dozens and dozens. The Psalmist is praying here, God be gracious to us and bless us, cause your face to shine upon us. Now nothing wrong with praying for blessing.

The Psalmist understood that God was a God that longed to bless his people. In fact, it was God that came to Moses on one occasion and he says, Moses, I want you to assemble the camp. When you've got them all together, I want you to raise your hand and say, the Lord bless thee and keep thee, the Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.

In other words, God wants to bless us. We need to understand that. And so the Psalmist is praying, God bless us, cause your face to shine upon us. And then he gives the reason that, thy ways may be known on the earth, thy salvation among all nations.

And you can read that Psalm, let all the people praise thee, let all the nations be glad and sing for joy. Drop down to verse six, the earth has yielded its produce. God, our God has blessed us. God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear him.

In other words, there is a reason behind the blessing that God has placed upon your life. It is to be a testimony of God's goodness and God's faithfulness to those that have not yet received him. And so the Psalmist said, Lord, if you bless us, all the ends of the earth are gonna hear about it.

We've had a wonderful crop harvest this year. The earth has yielded its produce. God, you've blessed us. All the ends of the earth are going to fear you. In other words, what was to happen, and of course, all of this was contingent on Israel's obedience.

But provided they were obedient to the voice of God, this is the way it was supposed to work. The nation of Israel, even though it was a small nation in comparison to other nations, every time they went out to battle, it didn't matter if they had a huge amount of people against them, more numerous than they are, as the Bible says, they would always win, provided they were obedient.

They would not have the same diseases that the other nations had. They would not have the same divorce rate that the other nations had. They would not have the same trouble with their teenagers that the other nations had.

Because if you had a rebellious son in the Old Testament, you rocked him to sleep. Just making sure you're awake. But anyway, but the nations would look on, and they would look at the nation of Israel and say, what is it about you people?

Your crops don't fail. We have had three years of drought, and you've had plenty. Every time you go to battle, you win. You don't have the same divorce rate. You don't have the same drugs. You don't have the same this and that and the other thing.

What is that? I mean, you guys are blessed. I mean, what's going on? And Israel then was to respond and say, it's not us, we're no different than you are, but our God is different than your God. And our God is a God that blesses us.

Our God has given us laws that if we obey those laws, it will go well for us, the laws of liberty and so on. And the nations then would look on and say, is there any chance we could join you guys? Have the blessing that you've got?

And they said, yeah, that's what it's all about. We're not exclusive. What do we have to do? Well, you simply have to give up your gods, turn to the living God and embrace him as your God. And that's basically it.

Oh, the men have got to be circumcised, the women get in free. And I mean, in essence, that was the message that God was wanting to give through the nation of Israel. And there's many, many scriptures concerning this.

Isaiah 42, God says to his people here, I am the Lord, verse six, I've called you in righteousness. I'll hold you by the hand and watch over you. I'll appoint you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations, to open blind eyes, to bring prisoners from the dungeon, those who dwell in darkness from the prison.

I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images. Notice God says, I've raised you up as a light to the nations. He's speaking to the whole nation of Israel.

You are to bring understanding to the blind, to open blind eyes. You're to take prisoners from the dungeon, those who dwell in darkness from the prison. Doesn't that sound familiar? Jesus said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.

He's anointed me to preach the gospel, to open the eyes of the blind, to open prison doors, and so on. That is the message that you and I are called to bring forth. Over into Isaiah 49, verse three, he said to me, you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will show my glory.

Verse six, is it too small a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to restore the preserved ones of Israel? I will make you a light to the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

God's longing always has been to bring back his banished ones. As it says there in the Old Testament, he seeks ways to bring back the lost. And God was wanting to raise up a missionary nation, a group of people that shared his concern, his compassion for a lost and a dying world.

That nation was to be the nation of Israel. You are to be a light to the nation, so that my salvation will go to the ends of the world. That's why I've raised you up. One Chronicles, or second Chronicles rather, chapter six.

I want you to see in this chapter the understanding that Solomon had concerning God's purpose and concerning the house of God. This is an amazing portion of scripture to me. This is the opening day of the temple.

As you know, David has died and David's longing was to build God a house that was worthy of him. He thought, God, you've been dwelling in tents and so on. I'm gonna build you a mansion, so to speak. And God says, no, you're a man of war.

You won't do it, but your son Solomon will. And so David in his lifetime prepared everything, you know, and sort of handed Solomon a Lego kit, so to speak, to put together. And Solomon puts it together and here is this magnificent temple.

And this is the opening day. Solomon is praying this prayer of dedication. Notice part of his prayer, verse 32. Also concerning the foreigner, or the unsaved, who is not of thy people, or is not a part of the church, if I can use that analogy.

When he comes from a far country for your great namesake, your mighty hand, your outstretched arm, when he comes and he prays towards this house. In other words, Solomon is anticipating something. Solomon is anticipating the glory of God coming into the house of God in such a powerful way that the nations are gonna hear about it.

God's arm is gonna be laid bare. And foreigners are gonna come from all over the world. And so he says, when they come and they pray towards this house, then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner, or the unsaved, calls to thee, in order that all the people of the earth may know thy name and fear thee.

Now, try and understand here what is going on with Solomon. Solomon is not looking at Israel as some sort of little exclusive nation. He's saying, we have a mandate. That mandate is to reach the nations of the earth.

The way in which we are gonna reach the nations of the earth, of course, is to have such a relationship with God that God is pleased to dwell with us, that he will come down in the house of God in such power and glory and majesty that it's gonna be noised abroad that Jesus is in the house, if I put it in a New Testament setting.

And the foreigners are gonna come in, and they're going to pray. Now, here is the scenario. Somebody is living in a little village, let's say a couple of hundred miles from Jerusalem in some Philistine village, or some Moabite village, or whatever, and they have a baby, this couple, and the baby is born with, say, a clubfoot, cleft palate, and a few other problems, and they go daily to their God, which is made out of a stump of a tree or something, and they pray to that God, crying out for mercy and compassion for their little baby, who is so terribly incapacitated with these problems, and nothing happens.

The weeks go by, the months go by, they bring bigger and bigger bowls of rice, they become more and more fervent in their prayer, and still that little one sees no change. And then they hear that something is happening in Jerusalem, that there is a God in Jerusalem who is doing signs, wonders, miracles, He's stretching out, laying bare His holy arm, and so on, and they are told that this God is the God of all gods.

And so by this time, they're desperate, so they tell their village that they're going to investigate and see if what the rumors they hear about are true. So they make a journey, maybe it takes them a week or more, and they get to this house of God, the temple, and they pray to a God they don't really know.

And they say, God, if you are the true God, the living God, the God that made the heavens and the earth, then prove it by healing this little boy. And suddenly that cleft palate heals, that clubfoot straightens out, the other problems.

Can you imagine when they get back to their village what they will do? You think they'll go to their God that they've made with their own hands and bow down and say, thank you? I don't think so. I think they will tell that village, listen, we've been deceived.

These idols that we worship are not really gods at all. There is a living God, a true God, one God, the God that made the heavens and the earth. I mean, this is the thought behind this particular passage of Scripture.

Solomon wants to reach the nations of the earth, and he knows the way in which the nations of the earth are gonna be reached. If the presence of God comes down in the house of God, amongst the people of God in such a way that there is obvious evidence of God's presence, and that's his prayer.

Let me read it again now with that in mind. Also concerning the foreigner, the unsaved, if you like, who is not of thy people Israel, when he comes or they come from a far country for your great namesake and your mighty hand, your outstretched arm, when they come and they pray towards this house, hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place.

Do all that the foreigner calls to thee in order that all the people of the earth may know thy name and fear thee, as do thy people Israel. You see, there were always sort of a remnant all the way through Israel's history that understood the mind of God and the purpose of God concerning the nation, why God had raised them up.

In fact, let me read to you. I've written down here, and I forgot to read it, a quote. This is by G. Campbell Morgan, one of the great expositors of our time. Here's what he says about Israel. It cannot be too often emphasized that it was not the election of a nation from among others in order that God might lavish his love upon that nation while he abandoned the others.

The purpose of God was far wider than the creation of this nation. It was the creation of a testimony through this nation for the sake of the other nations. The divine intention was for a people who under his divine government should reveal in the world the breadth and the beauty and the goodness of that government.

A people who gathered in their national life around his throne and his altar, obeying his commands and worshiping him should reveal to outside nations the meaning of the kingdom of God. It was not the election of a pet, but the creation of a pattern.

That's an incredible summary, if you like, of the nation of Israel. In other words, God looks down on all the nations, let's say every nation in the earth is represented here, Africa and China and so on.

This is Israel, my brother here, and I'm God, and I lavish all my love upon Israel, and I couldn't care less about the rest of you. He said that was never God's intention. What God wanted to do was demonstrate through this brother to the rest of you the goodness of God, the kingdom of God.

It was never, he says, the selection of a pet, but the creation of a pattern. A lot of people in the messianic realm look at Israel almost as, oh, I wish I had at least a few ounces of Jewish blood in me.

I'd be just that little bit better. You know, no. It was not the creation of a pet, but the creation of a pattern. In other words, God wanted to reproduce, he wanted to duplicate in every single nation what he accomplished or was wanting to accomplish through the nation of Israel.

Jonah, Israel's Disobedience, and God's Mission

Now, the great missionary book of the Bible, as you know, is the book of Jonah. And you know the story how God came to Jonah, gave him a mandate. I want you to go to Nineveh, modern-day Iraq. We shouldn't be too hard on Jonah.

That would be like God saying to one of you with an American passport. I happen to have a British one, but it's the same. I want you to go and talk to Saddam Hussein. This is just prior, of course, to the recent war.

You know, you say, hey, God, Americans aren't exactly welcome over there in Iraq, so why don't you send somebody else? I mean, that was the situation. Nineveh, we are told by the historians, they were so brutal that they would literally, when they went to war, they would capture people, skin them alive, and drape human skins over the walls of the city to provoke fear.

I mean, they were the most barbaric nation, most terrible as far as the treatment of their prisoners and so on, and it is little wonder then, of course, that Jonah thought, listen, I'll pass on this one, Lord.

And so he goes in the opposite direction. Now, the story is true, but at the same time, the story has got a parabolic side to it, if you like. In other words, Jonah represented in a microcosm the entire nation.

It was God's purpose that every Jew, every child of God go to the nations of the earth, and so in that sense, he was a representative, if you like, of God's purpose and intention for the entire nation.

Jonah refused to go, and so, of course, he got swallowed by a great fish. Whether it was a whale or not, we don't know, and there he is in the stomach of that thing for three days. There's no way out apart from repentance, and so he repents, and the whale or fish has a Maalox moment, and Jonah comes spewing out.

It's fascinating. If you look at where Nineveh is, I don't know, that whale must have either swum up the Euphrates or had an amazing projectile vomiting from way out there in the Mediterranean, catapulted in a couple of hundred miles, a thousand miles, whatever it is, but anyway, that aside, he goes to Nineveh.