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Bro. Bill Nichols
Good morning. This morning we're going to continue our study of Jonah.
It's good to have people in the audience. We've come through a time of stress and turmoil and people wandering around everywhere, but now we're beginning to meet together regularly as in -life people at church, and that is always a treat.
Before we begin, let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for everything that you have done for us.
Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for giving us the time and the place where we can come together and meet with you.
Thank you for giving us a country that we can still meet in safety and not be worried about anyone breaking in or intruding upon us.
Thank you for giving us your living word, your son, the Redeemer. And thank you for giving us your written word, your
Holy Scripture. And thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit, the illuminator of the
Holy Scripture. We also thank you for your love for us. We know that your love for us is not dependent upon anything that we do.
It's only dependent upon you. We thank you for your mercy, generously given not only to those who believe, but even to those that don't believe.
They're given some mercy. And thank you for your grace, the unmerited favor that you have given to us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, we're going to find
Jonah deposited on dry land. I believe in Joppa, the very same place he found a ship to flee from the
Lord. Now, all of you know Brother Otis Fisher. I actually have a longer association with Brother Otis than even
Brother David does. In fact, it was Brother Otis that brought me in contact with Brother David.
And so, Brother Otis and I go back a long way, and we've talked about it. It was Otis that told me first about the fact that Jonah was not a fish story.
There were lessons in Jonah, and we agreed with almost everything except this very one thing.
Otis thought that Jonah's skin had been bleached white from his stay in the fish's stomach.
And that when Jonah then went into Nineveh, he was a ghastly white person with bleached out hair and bleached out skin, screaming out to the citizens, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed.
And that had some effect on the people of Nineveh.
Now, actually, I don't think that's the case at all. I believe that Jonah was at the same place and in the same condition as when he received his second call as he was when he ran away from his first call.
Remember when he got his first call, he went down to Joppa, and he jumped a ship, bought patches to a ship, and left going away from Nineveh.
And all the things that happened in chapters one and two.
And now we're to chapter three. Jonah is back in Joppa.
I believe in the same place, in the same condition as when he left.
And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.
This demonstrates the amazing love that God has for his children. Even though Jonah did everything he could to resist his first call,
God called him again. Now, God was in no obligation to call him again.
But he did it. He did it anyhow. God called him a second time. Why? To show his love, his mercy, and his grace.
And I believe he will do the same thing for us. If you refuse the call of God, you didn't really refuse it.
You didn't really even postpone it. You didn't even do something that God didn't know you would do.
And he will continue to call you until you do what he called you to do.
I believe that. I believe he'll do the same thing for us today as he did for Jonah in his time.
So, and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the bidding that I bid you, that I bid thee.
And preach unto it the bidding, I'm having a hard time, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
So he is going to tell Jonah what to say. Charles Spurgeon had this to say, and I thought this was interesting.
God was determined to do the work through Jonah. So he did not give up on the reluctant prophet.
And I would add, he won't give up on you either. If he's called you to do something and you haven't done it yet, don't worry, he'll call you again.
Now, maybe he should worry because of the things that will happen in the meantime. Jonah probably should have worried if he had known he was going to be spending the days and nights that he did in the fish's belly, he probably would have worried.
In any case, God is often just this committed to doing his work through a man.
Suppose, this is Spurgeon, suppose that the problem had been given to us to solve.
How shall this city be moved to repentance? Okay, suppose you were given that task.
How shall its vice be forsaken and the God of Israel worshiped by all the inhabitants from the highest to the lowest?
If we had not been paralyzed with despair, which is the most probable, we should nevertheless have sat down carefully to consider our plan.
We should have parceled out into missionary districts. We should have needed at least several hundreds, if not thousands of able ministers all at once.
Expenses would have to be incurred and we should have considered ourselves bound to contemplate the erection of innumerable structures in which the
Word of God might be preached. Our machinery would necessarily become cumbrous.
We should find that we, unless we had full resources of an empire, could not even begin this work.
But what saith the Lord concerning this? Putting aside the judgments of reason and all the plans and schemes which flesh and blood so naturally do follow, he raises up one man.
And by a singular province, he qualifies that one man for his mission.
He didn't need an army of missionaries. He didn't need buildings. He only needed one man.
He only needed Jonah. And Jonah was given by God a second chance.
God is indeed the God of second chances. But you might notice a slight and subtle difference between the first and second calling to Jonah.
I'm going to read the first calling again. This is verse 1 of chapter 1 of Jonah.
Now, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for the wickedness is come up before me.
And we spent a lot of time studying that a couple of Sundays ago. Now, in his first call,
Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and cry out against it. However, if he were told what to say, the scripture does not relay that to us.
The scripture does not tell us what he was told to say the first time. Now, in his second call,
God again tells Jonah to go to Nineveh. But this time, we will be told the message that Jonah is to deliver.
So let's continue. So Jonah arose and went unto
Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now, you see, that's a great improvement on Jonah's part.
At least this time, he heads toward Nineveh. Having learned the lesson that resisting the will of God is both futile and counterproductive, he now obeys the call, and he goes to Nineveh.
And as we discussed last week, he goes but not happily.
He goes reluctantly. And the rest of that verse is, Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city of three days journey.
I want to make clear, that doesn't mean it takes him three days to get from Joppa to Nineveh.
Nineveh was about 500 miles from Joppa. That is about the same distance as the distance from Corsicana to Memphis, Tennessee.
You guys have made that trip recently, right? Maybe not. A walk in an average of 25 miles a day, that would be walking eight hours at the average walking speed of three miles an hour.
That only be 24 miles. It would take 20 days to get from Corsicana to Memphis.
Not the three days mentioned here. What's referred to here is the amount of time it would take to walk around Nineveh.
If it takes three days to walk around it, or another way to say that is it would take one day to walk through it.
Because you know how the circumference of a circle tells us that about three times the diameter is the circumference.
Assuming he had no obstructions or traffic problems along the way.
Verse four. Now Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey.
Now he's just walked 500 miles. I think maybe he slowed down a little bit.
I think that he begins to call out to the citizens of Nineveh when he's about halfway through the city, about midtown.
He should be about the middle of the city when he starts calling out, but that's neither here nor there. And he cries out and says, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Well that's his message. At least we know that's his message the second time. Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Certainly this is the message given to Jonah to deliver to the people of Nineveh the second time he was called.
It might very well have been the same message that he'd be given the first time.
We simply don't know that. But this time, Jonah delivered the message and he delivered it with relish.
After all, it is a message that mirrors his attitude toward Nineveh.
Did Jonah want Nineveh to be spared? No. Jonah wanted
Nineveh to be destroyed. Nineveh was a threat to Judah, to Israel.
Nineveh was a threat. He wanted Nineveh done away with. So a question, why didn't he go the first time he was called?
He didn't know the message. If he knew it, he may not have told him that.
He may have just said cry out against it. But if that was the message, why didn't he go the first time?
Anybody have any ideas? He didn't want to give them a chance to repent because if when he cries out against them, they may have repented.
I think maybe deep down inside he thought that God, being a loving and merciful
God, might not follow through on the statement.
Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. So what happens?
Five. So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Okay, much to the chagrin of Jonah, the people of Nineveh believed.
Everyone in the city believed. They believed
God, though not necessarily Jonah. What was Jonah's message? What did
Jonah tell them? Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
That's what he said. You can just imagine the man walking through the middle of the city of Nineveh shouting out at the top of his voice, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
But what was God's message delivered through Jonah to the
Ninevites? They're doomed if they're not careful.
That may have been the message. That's not the word that I chose.
I chose a one. No, I chose a single word.
What single word was God's message to them? Repent.
Jonah said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. What did they hear? Repent. How do we know that was
God's message? Because that's what they did. They repented.
Jonah is shouting, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. They're hearing that, but the
Holy Spirit announced to them, is telling us, telling them, maybe you better repent.
And so they did. They repented. Now repentance begins with believing what
God tells us. Then as we believe Him and His word, we're given the power to transform our lives, but only as He wills.
You can do many other things associated with repentance, but if they do not begin with believing and trusting
God, then they're all useless works of the flesh.
Now one of the things we're going to deal with is the number of times it will come into play as we go through the book of Jonah.
The difference between God's work through you and your work undertaken upon your own devices.
There's a difference between God's work through you and your work with God's help.
In any case, when repentance comes, something has to change. Repentance means to turn away.
Turn away from what? Turn away from what you were doing. One of the things that the people of Nineveh were doing was taking care of the creature comforts.
They wanted nice clothes, and they wanted comfort, and they wanted all of these good things.
And they also wanted, and they also did evil things. When we get later on, we'll find out that Nineveh is a very, very, very vile and evil city.
So what's changed? In the case of the people of Nineveh, they took off their normal clothes and put on sackcloth.
Does anybody know what sackcloth is? The closest thing we have to it here in this is a burlap bag.
Scratchy, itchy, ugly. It was made of, it was a coarse cloth normally made of goat's hair, and wearing it displayed the rejection of earthly comforts and pleasures.
And as I said just before, as we proceed with our study of Jonah, we will continually come face to face with the contrast between God's works and man's work.
God's work through man, and man's work on his own. Okay, verse six.
For word came unto the king of Nineveh. Okay, what word? Well, one thing that came to him was
Jonah's message. Jonah's message? Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
That word came to the king, and the second thing that came to the king was the people's reaction to that word.
What did the people all do? They put on sackcloth and ashes, and sat in ashes, and mourned.
For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he lay his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, like all the other people of Nineveh had already done that he did.
But he also added a proclamation. Number seven, verse seven.
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water.
They were in a state of mourning. Mourning, yes, indeed.
But they were also to repent and turn away from their evil doers.
He continues his decree. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto
God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.
So the king calls on the people to repent. And they do.
Every last one of them. Not that Jonah, nor in fact that any other man told the king to repent.
I think maybe he was told by God to repent. In any case, the king told his subjects.
Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.
And now look at verse four, verse nine. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce angle?
Angle. That's the math in me. Anger that we perish not.
I'm gonna read that again. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce angle that we perish not?
Did I say angle again? I'm not gonna try it again.
Fierce anger. Now I'm beginning to get a fierce anger.
The Ninevites had no assurance that God would turn from his anger. But they repented anyway.
Relying only on God's mercy and faith. And brother David, what faith did they have?
Whatever faith the Lord had and he gave them. That is, if it's real, it came from the
Lord. They had the Lord's faith. Brother David is in one of his many of his lessons lately has talked about the difference between faith in and faith of.
And faith in the Lord is not the same as faith of the Lord. If it's real, it's the faith of the
Lord. If it's yours, it might be faith in the Lord. But if it's real, it's faith.
The faith of the Lord. It's the faith of the Lord that he gave to you for this occasion.
Now it's interesting. They didn't yet know God. But God knew them.
When did God begin to know the Ninevites that repented? When did
God first learn of the Ninevites that repented?
Before time began. They were his from the very beginning. He knew them. He knew that they were there.
And he knew he was going to send Jonah. And Jonah was going to refuse. And Jonah was going to spend three days and three nights in the belly of the fish after he was thrown up into the ocean and drowned.
And spend three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. He's going to be thrown up. He's going to reluctantly go to Nineveh. He's going to tell the
Ninevites, yet 40 days and your world will end. And they're going to hear, maybe you ought to repent.
So they repented. And God gave them the faith that they needed to repent.
All of that is really interesting. Even before he knew them, they knew him.
In fact, in Ephesians 2, 4, it says, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love, for with he loved us, who's the us?
Those that belong to him. For with he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, we couldn't do a thing.
We didn't know a thing. He hath quickened us. He brought us to life. And together with Christ by grace are you saved.
Well, we got one more verse in about 30 more minutes.
Why? Well, did God turn away from his fierce anger? Well, no question to that.
Just read one more verse. And that's the last verse in this chapter.
And God saw their works that they had turned from their evil way. And God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them.
And he did it not. Now, brother Otis would say right now, did
God change his mind? And I would say, no,
God never changes his mind. And he would say, that's good,
Bill. Yeah.
What? Yeah. Okay. I've got the King James version and yours is a little bit different.
But repented is a stronger word, isn't it? You grant me that repented is a stronger word than relented.
Well, and we tend to do that. We kind of read through it and we just describe it to maybe us changing our mind.
But God changed his mind. That's what brother Otis would say. Did God change his mind?
Okay. A couple of more questions and then we'll wrap it up. But these will be long questions.
Well, that's what brother Otis. Well, the question remains, how do we process this statement?
Can we rely on God to be consistent with his word? I'm going to tell you what the
Holy Scripture says about that. This is God speaking through Jeremiah. Jeremiah 18, verse 7.
And I'm going to read this. And I would like for you, if you can get to it quickly to find it and read it as well.
Jeremiah 18, 7. I need for you to do that because I often misread. At what instant shall
I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up and to pull down and to destroy it?
This is God talking through Jeremiah. If that nation against whom
I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
This is God speaking. And at what instance shall I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it?
If they do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then
I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them. Now, this is me.
God always says what he means, and he always means what he says.
However, as we read the scripture, we need to be aware of the fact that sometimes what he says is conditional.
Depends upon what we do. And sometimes it's unconditional. It doesn't depend upon what we do.
And we must know the difference. And how can we know the difference? How can we know the difference between something that God is telling us in his scripture?
How can we know the difference between is it conditional? Does it depend upon us? Or is it unconditional?
Does it not depend upon what we do? How do we know that? We've got to study the scripture. J. Vernon McGee had this to say.
I thought this was really interesting for two reasons. We'll get to the first one first. God said he would destroy
Nineveh, but he did not destroy Nineveh. The only prophecy of Jonah that we have recorded is yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
But it wasn't overthrown. God did not destroy Nineveh. So did
Jonah give a wrong prophecy? This is still J. Vernon McGee.
It's not me. No, it happened to be a right prophecy. And then he asked two questions.
Had God changed his mind? And was God wishy -washy? And then he doesn't answer the question, but tells a story.
This was in a sermon. And you know, that's what happens. They ask questions and they don't answer them. They tell you a story.
But the story will tell you the answer. This is the story. Someone asked that of Dr.
G. Campbell Morgan years ago in England. Dr. Morgan, is
God as changeable as a weather vane? His reply was, you used the wrong illustration.
The weather vane is not changeable. It never changes. It operates according to a law that says it doesn't make any difference which way the wind will blow.
The weather vane always points in the direction the wind is going. It's the wind that does the changing.
Now, applying that to this story, it was not
God that changed. It was the people of Nineveh. Now, that's one point
I wanted to bring up. It wasn't God that changed. It was
Nineveh. Did God know that Nineveh was going to change? Yes. You have a question?
It probably could. Yes. So, you know, if you think about that, because they repented.
So, it is interesting. I think it's fascinating to see God in time versus God outside of time.
So, you see, like the Father, I can't see the Father repenting of anything.
What you're seeing is Jesus, Jehovah, in time with these people.
Uh, that's where you see those types of, like, that kind of orientation.
Because, uh, God in time, uh, I think that's the key, finally, to the thing we're doing.
What we have the Father that's not responding is the call of all areas. The Jesus and the
Holy Spirit, they respond, that is first. Yes, and, and, and, and when he was a youth, he, uh, grew in stature and wisdom.
That was Jesus doing that. So, he learned things. Yes. And the thing that I see, and we see in Scripture, that the only thing about God that does change is
God's feelings. So, whereas anger towards Nineveh and their sin was present, calling them superintendents, now he's changed his feelings by comforting himself in their repentance.
I sit in the back of someone and ask them, God, what change is this? But, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not.
The Father, there is nothing that changes with the Father. Emotion doesn't change.
It's not. It's only the perspective of the person. That's not God. And emotion is the answer.
He calls it in the anger. Jesus and the
Holy Spirit, if they are in time on the earth, in time with us, then they exhibit these things that we do.
I don't see a lot of discussion of that when we get older. But when you look like you've got it, you're with Jesus.
God will make a problem and solve it. Okay? If you read... And he sort of left this discussion out.
Yes. He left it out, right? He won't discuss that. But I have been with Moses for 13 years.
He wouldn't leave anything out. He said, okay, let's talk about it.
He wanted to talk about it. We talked about it for a year and a half before we felt we figured out enough of it to discuss it with the church.
We finally figured out that my understanding of the trinity and nature of God, some of these things.
That's it. Right. Yeah. That's the part of God.
There's the comforting. Yeah. Yeah. And we're most fortunate that when we appear before God to be judged, we have an advocate.
And that advocate is himself. That is weird.
But that is great. Well, one more point to consider about McGee.
The question, was McGee correct when he stated that Nineveh was not destroyed?
You see, Nineveh did... McGee did exactly the opposite of what
Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Eve added something.
McGee left out something. What did he leave out? The 40 years.
He didn't say they were not destroyed. Mm -hmm.
He could do that. A good promise is made to do that. That was his answer. So, in studying how idols go, in Jonah, in that instance, every night at 3 p .m.,
I've studied the same passage that you're in. Notice how long it's taken to finish the book. First, it's the addition.
Secondly, it's God didn't destroy it. He just didn't do it in the 40 days.
And isn't that the way of the world? Well, here's what I said.
He was almost correct. It was destroyed. It was just not destroyed 40 days later.
It took more than 100 years. And then it was not only destroyed, it was destroyed so thoroughly that it was hidden for almost 2 ,500 years.
Now, we're going to peek forward to Nahum, which is the sequel to the book of Jonah.
And Jonah recounts the postponement of God's promised judgment, while Nahum depicts the latter execution of that judgment.
So, Nineveh was destroyed. And the reason that I chose to revisit these two books, and Ben and I just looked, about two years ago, we did this same series.
But things have changed since then. The reason I chose to revisit these two books is the condition our country is in today.
When God looks down upon us, he must see a country that is very much like Nineveh.
It's my prayer that we, like the Ninevites of Jonah's day, might repent and our judgment might be delayed.
It's not too late for us to repent. It's not too late for our judgment to be delayed. But if we don't, then we will experience the same kind of vengeance that our sovereign
Lord poured out on Nineveh about a hundred years later than Jonah made the first mention of it.
Yes, sir. And you got to think, well, one of the things that we're going to visit next time we get to Nahum, that one of the issues that he specifically mentioned was weak leadership.
Wow. So I'm still hoping that we can repent.
Now, Jonah, I'm sorry, Nineveh, like us, were proud of what they thought was an invulnerable city.
The walls around Nineveh were 100 feet tall. They had a moat 150 feet high.
It was 60 feet deep. But Nahum established the fact that God would bring vengeance upon those who violated his law.
The same God who poured out judgment against evil is also a redemptive
God, bestowing his loving kindness on the Ninevites who repented at the preaching of Jonah.
That relates to your question. It's the same God that judged Nineveh. It's the same
God that judged, that postponed the judgment.
Nahum also said that Nineveh would end with an overflowing flood. And it happened just that way.
The Tigris River overflowed enough of the walls to let the
Babylonians through. Nahum also predicted that the city would be hidden.
And after its destruction in 612 BC, the site was not rediscovered until 1842
AD, hidden from sight almost 2 ,500 years.
Hidden so well that many Bible scholars discounted the fact that Nineveh even existed.
This is not a Bible scholar, but at the time of Jesus and the apostles, there was no physical evidence of Nineveh to be seen.
A Greek writer who lived between 110 and 180 AD, Lucian of Samaseta, said,
Nineveh has perished. No trace of it remains. No one can say where it once existed.
That was the condition of Nineveh to the world between 120
AD and 180 AD. Such a lack of visible remains led some scholars of the 19th century to express skepticism that Nineveh or any part of the
Assyrian Empire even existed. Indeed, the only historical source in those days that verified the existence of the empire was the
Bible, the Book of Jonah, the
Book of Nahum, other books. Matthew, Jesus himself proclaimed that Nineveh existed.
Remember, the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
And behold, a greater than Jonah is here. This is what Jesus told the
Pharisees. Yet these scholars disputed the testimony of Jesus himself.
Now think about that a minute, as well as the prophets.
I took this quote from somebody else, this passage. That is, until one spectacular decade in the middle of the 19th century when
Austin Henry Laird and Paul Emil Botha rediscovered in northern
Iraq the ancient remains of three Assyrian cities, including
Nineveh, and evidence of a wide range of military equipment that had been used to crush all resistance from the
Tigris to the Nile. That is so bizarre.
That's what it took for them to believe that Nineveh existed. Not just scholars, but biblical scholars.
So I thought it might be a good point to add one more thing from me. The difference between knowledge and wisdom.
The essence of knowledge is believing that man can understand and solve all of his problems.
That's knowledge. That's what we got when we studied physics and we studied business and when we thought we had all the answers.
The essence of wisdom is believing only God is able to understand and solve man's problems.
I'm almost done. I've got seven timeless lessons that we have already learned from Jonah.
I'm going to go through them quickly. Number one, we always do what
God wants us to do, whether we like it or not. That's one lesson. Lesson number two, we may try to abandon
God, but he will never abandon us. If we belong to him, he'll never abandon us.
Number three, all problems are too big for us, but no problem is too big for God.
Four, we all have flaws, but God made us that way.
Five, don't worry. God loves us, he loves us anyway.
Six, God's part of the equation. God's part of the equation is to honor and worship.
I'm going to read one passage. This is
David's favorite passage from Charlotte.
He preaches this all the time. He begins by saying, preach not ourselves, but Jesus, Jesus, the
Lord. Say, oh, you're saved. Jesus is saved. God who commanded the light out of the darkness, find me in our heart.
Give me knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And then, favorite verse. But we have an earthen.
Why? Of the power of God.
God. Every side.
Every side. Satan and his. Satan and his.
Satan and his. Satan and his.
Satan and his. Satan and his. Satan and his. Satan and his. Satan and his. Satan and his.