Jonah 3:1-5

The Fish, the Prayer of Jonah, and Salvation Belongs to the Lord

But this great fish swallows up Jonah, and he's in the belly of this fish for three days and three nights. And while he's there, he acknowledges to God. He calls out to God in a prayer that we saw in chapter 2 last week.

He's crying out to God because he knows he's trapped, and he thinks this is his death sentence. He thinks, this is my grave in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean. But at the end of his prayer, Jonah cries out the same thing that King David did back in the Psalms.

And he says this phrase, salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And at that moment, when Jonah acknowledges this truth that God is the one that delivers, that God is the one that saves, that God does the work, that it is completely and solely a work of him, and he chooses when and how and where it's to be given, then God tells the fish to spit him out onto dry land.

This thing that Jonah was convinced probably isn't going to happen. God's not going to deliver me from the belly of this fish. But he does, and he spits him out onto dry land. This leads us into chapter 3.

Jonah's Second Call and the Reading of the Passage

So let's read our passage today, starting in verse 1 of chapter 3. It says, 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.

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. We're going to stop there. This is the reading of God's word, so just as we do every week, let's pause, let's go to him again and ask that he would illuminate our hearts and minds to his truth.

God, we come to you once again, Lord, we desperately need you to speak through your word to us. God, we desire to hear from you this morning, and we know that you only speak to us through your word. But God, sometimes in our frailty and in our brokenness, we have difficulty understanding that truth.

So God, we ask that you would illuminate that truth to us this morning, that you would penetrate our hearts and minds with it. God, I pray that you guard me from error as I speak today. Give me clarity of thought and clarity of speech.

We thank you in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I want us to see three things in this passage today. I've made this a very easy bullet point. Let's walk through and see some very specific things. I'm going to tell you the three things that I want us to see, so that they're right here in the forefront of your mind, and then we'll break them down.

The first one is, I want to see God's commands don't change. God's commands don't change. The second thing is that God's commands will be obeyed. Whether we like it or not, they will be obeyed. And third and last, we're going to see God's commands have power.

God's Commands Do Not Change

There's power in God's word. So let's look at that first one. God's commands do not change. Look at verse 1 there. It says, Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. Praise God for second chances, right?

Praise God for second chances. I've listened to a lot of sermons, and I've read a lot of sermons on the book of Jonah in preparation for this over the past few months. A lot of commentaries. And it's interesting because most pastors, when they get to these few verses, they title this message something along the lines of the God of the second chance.

And while that's not really wrong, I think it misses the point. I think it misses the point of it. I think that it misses the mark of what's happening. Because is Jonah getting a second chance here? Of course Jonah's getting a second chance here.

And God is a God of second chances. I know in my own life God's more than that. God's a God of chance after chance after chance. Because I fail and fail and fail. And most of you in here can attest to that being true.

So that is a truth about God. But we have to acknowledge and we have to know that God does not always give second chances. God is not just a God of second chances. He doesn't just always give second chances.

He doesn't. How do we know that? Well, look at scripture. Look at different parts of different things. Numbers chapter 20. I think that's it. Moses and Aaron. Y 'all familiar with that story? Moses and Aaron have just led the people of Israel out of captivity.

They're in the wilderness. And all of a sudden they find themselves without water. And the people of Israel are freaking out. The Hebrew people are saying, Moses and Aaron, we're going to starve. We're going to die out here.

We're dying of thirst. And so Moses and Aaron go to God. And they say, well, what do we do? Everybody's dying of thirst here. What do we do, God? And God tells them. He says, hey, go to this rock and tell it to bring forth water.

And so they go through the process. They gather the people. They go to this rock that God tells them to. I'm paraphrasing this whole story so we can get through this. So you can see God's not always a God of second chances.

And what does Moses do? Moses and Aaron go and they take that staff that Moses had had. And instead of telling the rock exactly what God had told them to tell the rock to bring forth water and give glory to God, they, in anger, strike the rock.

They hit it with the staff. Not once, but twice. This doesn't seem like a big deal, does it? So they struck the rock. Now God, in His good grace, if you read that passage, you realize that God went ahead and gave them water out of the rock, even though they disobeyed God's actual command.

But what happened? God came to Moses and Aaron and said, hey, because you did not honor me, because you disobeyed my word, you are not going to get to see the promised land. There's a consequence for disobedience to God.

And Moses and Aaron, in that situation, they didn't get the privilege that Jonah got. They didn't have some desert animal, some oversized camel or something, come up and swallow them whole so they can marinate in the belly of a camel for three days and three nights while they come to their senses.

That's not what happened. No, God said, nope, that's it. God wasn't a God of second chances there, was He? Think of Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament. We may think, well, He was the Old Testament God back then.

He didn't want to give chances to Moses and Aaron. Think about Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. These two people, they go and they sell a piece of land and they come up with this idea. The whole church and the apostles will really, really respect us because we're going to say we sold this land for this much.

And then we're going to give only that much and we'll keep some of the rest back and they'll never know. And so Ananias goes before Peter and the apostles and says, this is what we're giving. They want to get all the glory there for that.

But the Holy Spirit reveals it to Peter, doesn't it? And what does Peter say? Peter calls him out on it. And what happened to Ananias? Most of you in here probably know that story. Ananias drops dead on the spot.

God takes his life from him for a white lie. Takes his life from him. Not only Ananias, but what happened to Sapphira? She comes in three hours later not knowing what happened.

They ask her.

She confirms the lie again and she drops dead on the spot. God's not always a God of second chances, is He? We have to be aware of that. So for me to come in here and preach a sermon this morning on the first few verses of chapter 3 and say, the God of second chances.

Well, that's not always the case. That's not always the case. But God, His commands that we're to obey, they don't change, do they? So we have to be careful. Can't read this story in Jonah and think, well, God's just going to give me another chance.

That's presuming upon God. And I think we have a tendency to do that. I love to read these passages.

I'm like, oh, good.

That means I don't have to totally submit to God right now because He's just going to keep giving me second chances. That's not the case. So what does God say to Jonah the second time when He actually does give him a second chance?

What does He say to him? Look at verse 2. He says, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. You know, I find this interesting because there's a lot of correlation between the beginning of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 1.

These are very similar. God's message didn't change even the slightest. It's the exact same message back in chapter 1. What did He tell him to do there at the very beginning when He first came to Jonah?

He told him to arise, He told him to go, and He told him to call out. This is the exact same thing. He says, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it. It's the same message. And then He adds something on here.

There's something that Jonah added in his writing. He says that God says here in chapter 3 the message that I tell you. Now some scholars believe that maybe God added to what He wanted Jonah to say to the Ninevites.

I don't believe that to be true because everything else about the message was identical. It was identical. Now we don't know if what He meant was there was some specifics that He was going to tell Jonah once He gets to Nineveh.

But His command didn't change. Nothing changed here. Nothing about God's message that He was wanting Jonah to carry out there with the Ninevites changed in the slightest because God's commands don't change.

God doesn't change. Why do His commands not change? Because He doesn't change. He's the same forever. Think of Malachi 3 .6. It says, For I, the Lord, do not change. That's as cut and dry as we can get it, right?

He doesn't change. Hebrews 13 .8. Hebrews, we've been studying through that. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. God never changes. There is nothing in Him, in His nature, to change even in the slightest.

And so His message, His commands, His will, nothing in God changes. And God will never give us a command and then us disobey it, which we do at times, right? God gives us commands all the time and we disobey them.

But He's never going to give us a command, we disobey it, and then adjust His command to something more palatable for us. He's just not going to do it. God is unyielding in His commands. We oftentimes want Him to bend His will a little bit, don't we?

We think, well, God knows my circumstances. God knows my weakness over here. God knows my heart. He can bend His will just a little bit here. It's not like we're changing it completely. No, God's unyielding.

And since He doesn't change, neither do His edicts. Neither does His command. You know, as I was thinking about this, I was reminded, there was a guy I was discipling a few years ago that had had an experience as a younger man where he went forward in a church, prayed a prayer.

He went through the process of baptism. I know many of us have gone through that. I went through that at the age of 7, only to find out later when me and him were studying Scripture that he really was never truly saved.

He was never truly a regenerated person. And he believed that he had just recently been saved. But he was struggling. He was struggling because all of his family and all of his friends had come to see him get baptized just years prior.

And now he's fighting this battle of, does God really want me to be baptized again? This side of salvation? I mean, I've already been baptized, and they don't know that I've been changed. They assumed I was saved.

In the eyes of everyone else, everything's okay. And I asked him, do you believe that baptism is prescribed by God as a picture of regeneration, of putting off the old and putting on the new, a change washed by the blood of Christ?

He said, absolutely. I said, so how do you think that you're just going to blatantly disobey one of the easiest, first, small commands of going and being baptized that God has given you, and that God is going to honor your not being obedient?

God's not going to honor that. Why is God going to give you more to be obedient to when you haven't been obedient to the smallest things? Now thank God that individual ended up coming to his senses, and God, through the Holy Spirit, convicting him,.

He did it.

He went forward and was baptized, and God used that mightily. And God used that in his life, and now God has blessed him. He leads a small group. He studies God's Word. God is giving him more things to be obedient about because he was able to do that one thing.

But he wanted to justify in his mind, well, it's not that big a deal, right? In the eyes of everyone else, I've been baptized already.

It's all good.

That's not the point. God's command had never changed. God had commanded him to be baptized this side of salvation. So he had to follow and be obedient to God, but we do that, don't we? We do that in many areas of our life.

We justify. We justify not being obedient to what God has commanded, thinking God will bend the rules for me a little here. We never say that. We just kind of subconsciously assume it. But his commands don't change.

So I ask you, are there some areas in your life right now that are areas of disobedience that you keep hoping God's going to change his mind about? Evaluate. Search. Look. Are there areas we don't want to give up?

We know what the will of God is, but we think he's going to bend that will. Well, I've got news for you. Ain't going to happen. God's not going to bend his will to you. His commands never change. You might as well submit to them now because of our second point.

God's Commands Will Be Obeyed

The second thing I want us to see. You might as well submit to God's will because of number two, God's commands will be obeyed. They will be obeyed. Look at verse three of our passage here.

It says,.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Remember how I said a moment ago there's a great correlation between chapter one, the first three verses, and chapter three here? As a matter of fact, if you've got your Bible, look at chapter one and chapter three back and forth.

You might have to flip a page. Some of them will be on the same area. But look at verse three of chapter one. I want you to see. I think that Jonah wrote it this way on purpose. We see that God's commands didn't change and that they will be obeyed.

In verse three of chapter one, it says, Now I've got it highlighted in mine. I wish I would have put it up on the screen. But you can see it if you look back and forth in your verses. Look back at chapter three, verse three.

It says,.

Well, think of verse three of chapter one. Jonah rose. Same thing. Same language coming here. Chapter three, verse three. And went to Nineveh. But before, when Jonah rose, in chapter one, it says flee to Tarshish.

Remember?

And remember how I said Tarshish is 2 ,200 miles, the opposite direction from Nineveh? Jonah had tried to go the opposite way. God said go here. Jonah says, I'm going to go way over there because I'm going to get away from the presence of the Lord.

And that's what it says in chapter one, verse three, doesn't it? From the presence of the Lord. But now things have changed. Now all of a sudden in chapter three, verse three, he goes according to the word of the Lord.

What in the world has gotten us from verse three of chapter one to verse three of chapter three? This is a completely different scenario. This is a completely different man. Completely same command.

Everything.

What got Jonah here? It's everything we've been talking about since chapter one, since the beginning of chapter one. God's chastening. God chastens those that he loves. And God is chastening Jonah and he's forcing him and he's putting him into situations.

Jonah gets on a boat to get away from the presence of the Lord. God brings a storm. God is going to sink the ship. Jonah wants to run from the presence of the Lord. Jonah wants to get away from God. Jonah says, I'm not going to bend my will.

I don't care how bad this storm is. Sailors, throw me overboard. Assuming I'm going to die. And then a great fish swallows him up and then traps him in the bottom of the sea alive, stuck there. God is chastening him.

God's not going to allow him to disobey. God's commands will be obeyed without question every single time or there will be severe judgment. God will not yield. And that's not what he does here with Jonah.

Jonah is forced. So you might be asking, why did God put this much effort into Jonah finally obeying? But not into Moses and Aaron. Not into Ananias and Sapphira. Why did he only give them the one chance?

And then you're done. No option for redemption here. You're done. Why Jonah? I mean, if you think about it, Jonah's the worst one of this scenario, isn't he? He's the most disobedient. So why another chance?

Why continue to give Jonah more and more chances? Well, ultimately, that's a question for God. We can't know that for certain, but we can assume based on some of the things that we know. Think about Moses and Aaron's situation.

They had already committed the sin. Now, God was faithful to give the Hebrew people water out of that rock, even in their sin. But they had already committed the sin. It's a done deal. It's not like they could go back and redo that scenario.

They can't. They've already disobeyed. And not only that, but God's done using them. He's almost done needing to use them for his purposes. He can raise up other people to do what they do. Ananias and Sapphira, this little white lie, seemingly insignificant.

It's not insignificant. It's a great sin against God, lying to the Holy Spirit. But God can raise up any Ananias and Sapphira to raise money for the church. So why Jonah? I believe it's so that we can see who God is, which we'll get to here in a moment.

I believe he continues to use Jonah. Put a pin in that. I want you to think about that for a second. But I think that's why he's giving this second chance to Jonah, because he has a purpose in it. Just know that in no way, no one, not a single one of these scenarios or any other scenario, no one gets away with disobeying God.

Because if you're a child of God, for those of us in here that are true regenerated believers, he's either going to force you into submission, or he's going to kill you. Those are your two options. He will not allow you to just stay in disobedience.

He will force you into bending the knee and submitting to his will, or he will take your life from you. And far worse than either of those things is if you're not in Christ this morning. Because your disobedience and your rebellion against God will be punished eternally under his judgment.

The judgment that us that are in Christ will never see. But no one gets away with disobeying God. No one. So I ask, is there any area of sin in your life that you're holding on to that you're not wanting to submit?

And maybe you think at times, I seem to be getting away with this. Maybe it's a secret sin. Maybe it's a sin your wife doesn't know about. Maybe it's a sin your husband doesn't know about. Your parents don't know about.

Your boss doesn't know about. Your church doesn't know about. I might be getting away with this. That becomes very enticing, doesn't it? We continue in that sin, and we think, I'm getting away with it.

I got news for you. You're not getting away with it. God is a long-suffering God. God is a patient God. But do not presume upon his long-suffering patience. We say, well, after all, God knows my weakness.

God knows that I'm weak in this area. He's going to sympathize with me here. I can't give that up to him. He knows that. God's going to be patient with me here. Now, I think I have to be clear. I'm not talking about some besetting sin that you're constantly battling in your life.

We all have those. Where that sin keeps popping its ugly head up in your life, and you seek to mortify it. You seek to kill it. You seek to destroy it in your life, and you want to so desperately. And some days are better than others.

And some days you don't fight at all. But the habit of your life is one of fighting that sin. Well, I'm telling you right now, don't think for a second that you're the only one with that. We all have those.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the sin that keeps popping its ugly head up in different areas of your life, and you fight. No, I'm talking about that golden calf. That idol. I'm talking about something that you don't want to destroy.

You love it.

I've had those in my life. A sin that you love. Because you see, Jonah, Jonah didn't want to give up his sin. And what was Jonah's sin here? Why did Jonah go to such great lengths to get away from the presence of God and disobey His command?

Now, we're going to be talking about this in more detail as we get near the end in chapter 4, but it's because of his deep-seated hatred for the people of Nineveh. See, these people were wicked, and he despised them.

He hated them with everything in his being. And later on, we'll see, we know that God, he acknowledges who God is. He knows God is long-suffering and patient, and God is willing to save. He knows that, and he doesn't want to go because he doesn't want God to save them.

And that is what Jonah doesn't want to let go. Jonah doesn't want to give that up in his life. He doesn't want to give that over to God. He doesn't want to bend the knee. He doesn't want to submit because he wants to hold on to his deep-seated hatred for that people.

Do you have that in your life? Maybe you hate a people. I don't know. But it could be anything. Any sin that you are not willing to lay before God because you don't want God to work in it. You don't want God to do that surgery in your heart and in your mind that he does in his children's lives because you don't want him to take that from you because that's what you have, and you hang on to it, and it's an idol.

God wasn't going to let that rule Jonah, and he isn't going to let it rule you or me. Notice what he does with Jonah. He ultimately forces Jonah to go preach face-to-face to the very idol that he had, the hatred that he had for those people because God's will, God's command, will be obeyed regardless.

And you're either going to obey that sin or you're going to obey God, and you can do it the easy way or the hard way. You can either seek to destroy that sin in your life, submit it to God, submit to God's commands willingly, or God will force you to.

Those are the only two options we got. But when you do submit to God's commands, we get to see just a little glimpse of the power. The power there is to actually change our hearts. That thing we're hanging on to, that hatred for the Ninevites, that idol, that golden calf that we want to hang on to in our lives so desperately, we think, that has such a hold on me that there's nothing in this universe that can strip it from me.

But when we lay it before God, when we go to Him, and we want to submit to His command, we want to submit to His will, we actually see a power that is far more powerful than the hold that that has on us.

God's Commands Have Power

Which leads us to our third and final point. God's commands have power. God's commands have power. And I know we say that and we know that and we can acknowledge it, but I want us to see it. See it in action here.

Look at the last part of verse 3.

It says,.

Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Now, we're not sure if that meant three days walking from one end to the other. I think that that is the case. Because this is the largest city in a huge nation, the Assyrians.

But some think maybe it's in a circle. But I think it's all the way across. That's how large this city is. This is a great city. So let me set the stage for you here. This is probably the greatest city in the most powerful of empires, of one of the most wicked people, and godless cultures in the world in that day.

Nineveh. The Assyrians were known as the most ruthless and brutal of cultures. Just a terribly wicked people. A destructive people. That when they would come in and they would attack the people of Israel, when they would come after God's chosen people, the unspeakable acts that they would do, they seemed inhuman.

Which explains why Jonah hated them so much. All of Israel hated them. But this people, they're so powerful. If there is a people that are unreachable, unsavable, it's the Assyrians there in Nineveh. Have you ever met people like that?

Have you ever seen people in your life? Have you ever had a family member or someone that you go, I don't know that God can save them.

They're pretty hard. They're pretty hardened. They're pretty long gone.

I can't really go to that group of people because that seems impossible for them to turn from their sin. That's the way that Nineveh would have been seen by Jonah and others. Now Jonah knew who God was and we're going to see that.

But if anyone is unsavable people, it's them. So look at verse 4 with me.

It says,.

Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey. So like I said, I think it's three days from one end to the other and Jonah goes a day in. So he doesn't even go halfway in. Jonah doesn't even get halfway in here.

And so here's Jonah, this angry, rebellious Israelite and he just strolls into this massive metropolis of Nineveh of people that hate him just as much as he hates them. But these people hated each other and he just strolls in.

And he probably, most historians and theologians believe that he probably looked like a straight crazy person. He had just spent three days and three nights in the belly of a fish. They think his skin was probably bleached from the stomach acid in this fish.

He probably has pale skin. His hair's all weird colored and messed up. He's just traveled hundreds of miles on foot, I guess. That's pretty much how there was to travel. And he's exhausted. He's physically exhausted.

He shows up in this city and I can tell you right now, on top of all that, I'm sure he wasn't able to hide his disdain for them. His hatred for them. I mean, think about it. What if all of a sudden downtown we're all having dinner and some crazy bleached skin, crazy haired lunatic that looks like he's just traveled 4 ,000 miles on foot shows up and starts calling something out?

Are you going to listen to what he has to say? This is crazy. This isn't happening from a human perspective. But there's power. God's commands have power. They carry power. They carry the very power of God himself.

There's a lot of speculation as to where Jonah went. Some people think maybe he must have just gone to some of the religious centers and preached from there.

Maybe.

I tend to think he didn't put that much effort into it knowing how he said. I think Jonah just walked in, found a street corner where there was a lot of people and called out to them. I think that's the way it worked because we see the power of God working in the midst of this.

Look at the next part of the verse there. It says, and he called out, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not what he said, is it? Jonah's not Joel Osteen. That's not what Jonah said.

Jonah comes in, bleached skin, crazy hair, exhausted with hatred on his face, and he says, yet 40 days and none of us shall be overthrown. Mic drop.

I'm out.

I'm going to go find me a nice seat to watch the destruction because in 40 days there's going to be quite a show and you guys are goners and I'm looking forward to it. That's pretty much how Jonah approached this, isn't it?

There doesn't seem to be any persuasive speech with Jonah here. There doesn't seem to be any compassion. And there's definitely no means of escape. Notice he doesn't give them a means of escape. He doesn't even try and give them any hope.

He doesn't even say, hey, if you repent, maybe he'll turn. Maybe he won't destroy you. He doesn't tell them that. He just says, hey, 40 days, you guys are done.

I'm out.

That's quite a message, isn't it?

Why?

Why did God use Jonah? Why this angry, crazy, rebellious prophet to do this? Why in the world? It's because God wanted to show his power. Not Jonah. Not his prophet. God wanted us to see a glimpse of just how much of a God he is when it comes to salvation.

For salvation truly does belong to the Lord. Now I have to say, we have to be careful. I remember hearing this. My dad preached through this book years ago. And I remember hearing it and going, I can just go over to the street corner and call out judgment.

And then God's going to save who he's going to save. This is not a prescription for us. This is not a prescription for us to carry out as we preach the gospel. We should honestly be more like the Apostle Paul, using persuasive speech and meeting people where they're at.

Showing love, because that's what's prescribed for us. But we see this extreme with Jonah so that we can see who God is. We can see that salvation belongs to the Lord. Look at verse 5. What happens? And the people of Nineveh believed Jonah.

I always call him Noah. No, it's not what it says. The people of Nineveh didn't believe Jonah. It says the people of Nineveh believed God.

It was God.

They believed in God. This wasn't a work of Jonah. As a matter of fact, he did everything in his power to stop this. He did not want them to believe. I was reading this. I was studying this. I found a quote by an Old Testament scholar, Dr. Terence Fretheim.

And I wanted to read this quote to you because it really encompassed exactly what was going on here in the heart of Jonah.

He says,.

Jonah had just experienced the unmerited grace and goodness of God in his own life. In his rebellion, God released him from the fish of the belly onto dry land. And he says now, here he is in this situation preaching to the people of Nineveh, now he turns right around and makes it as difficult as possible for the Ninevites to experience God's deliverance.

He delivers a graceless message delivered by one living in the shadow of an experience of grace. Kind of reminds me of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, right? The beauty is God can still use us, even in our brokenness, even in our frailty.