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Bro. Bill Nichols
I'm going to tell you the subject of this morning's study in a moment, but first I'd like to pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for the time and the place that You've given us to come together to worship You.
Thank You for the Word of God, both the living Word, Jesus, the Redeemer, and the written Word, the Holy Scripture, the Revealer. And finally, we thank You for the Holy Spirit, the Illuminator, to illuminate the Scripture so that we, Your children, might be able to receive the lessons that You have for us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So I'm going to begin with... This is not the topic of the lesson, but I'm going to begin with 2 Timothy 3 .16. So go there. We're going to read and then we're going to talk about it a little bit and then we're going to finish reading it.
2 Timothy 3 .16. It's almost become like John 3 .16. I can actually find it and remember the name of it. And it begins, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. That's the King James translation.
The English Standard Version, the translation is this, All Scripture is breathed out of God. All Scripture is breathed out of God or out by God. Breathed from the mouth of God. And that's how we get to know the Word of God.
And that's the only way we get to know the Word of God with just exactly one exception. And we talked about this yesterday. The original Ten Commandments. That made such an impact upon me that I wanted to kind of share it with you.
So how were the original Ten Commandments revealed? First to Moses and then to us. How were they revealed? Exodus 31 .18 tells us. This is at the end of a long list of topics that the Lord talked to Moses about.
And in that list of things that he talked to them about, he actually did describe the Ten Commandments. But here's how he gave them to Moses. And he gave them to Moses when he had made an end of the communing with him.
The communing telling the Ten Commandments and what they should do to worship in the tabernacle that they should build. And all the things exactly how to build them. A whole set of blueprints. Someone once said when Moses came down from the mountain, he should have been carrying the tablets of stone under one arm and the blueprint for the tabernacle under the other.
Because that's all the things that were given to him while he was up there. And maybe he did. We don't know that. And he gave them to Moses when he had made an end of communing with him up on the mountain.
Two tables of testimony. Tables of stone written with the finger of God. That's how Moses got the original Ten Commandments. God wrote them in stone and handed them to him. But that table's gone. That table of stone was destroyed by the time Moses got to the bottom of the mountain the first time.
So the Lord commissioned Moses to carve a set of stones to make up for the ones that he broke when he saw the children of Israel worshiping the golden calf. Well, that stone was lost. It was carried around by the Israelites for years and years in the Ark of the Covenant.
But we don't know where the Ark of the Covenant is now. And we don't know, I don't think we know, whether the tables of stone are in there or not. But if they are, it doesn't matter because we don't know where the Ark is.
All we have remaining is the Scripture. The Scripture that was breathed from the mouth of God and recorded by the hand of Moses into the Holy Scriptures. That just was amazing to me. That of everything that we know about the Word of God, the only thing that was not communicated to us by the mouth of God through a man was the table of stones.
And we don't even know where the replacement copy is. All we know is what is recorded in the Holy Scripture. So let's go back to Timothy again. 2 Timothy 3 .16. Now, about this time I was tempted to once again change my lesson plan.
Like I did a couple of weeks ago or several weeks ago when we began our study of Philippians. But this time I resisted the temptation and went back to what I was going to do four or five weeks ago. We're not there yet.
Matthew 12 .36. Go ahead and turn there if you would. Matthew 12 .36. And I'll pick up partway in the verse. I don't think I left that much, but I wanted to start so that the sentence made more sense without a prefix.
I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Then certain scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall be no sign given it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
And the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and condemn it. Because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. That was 14. Let's go down to Matthew 16 and we'll begin at verse 1.
And we see the Pharisees again. This time along with the Sadducees. You all know the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They didn't believe and so they got their name.
They were sad, you see. I stole that from some place and I forgot exactly how to set it up. But the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is one believed in resurrection and the other one didn't.
You'd wonder why they would even be bothering if they didn't believe in it, but who knows. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, tempting or trying to test God, Jesus, desiring Him that He would show them a sign from heaven.
And He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair, for the sky is red. And in the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.
So I got a question for you. Why could they not discern the signs of the time? Their eyes were blinded and that's the real thing. The signs were there. The sky was red and they understood that meant fair weather if it's in the evening.
And if the red sky was in the morning they saw that and they understood that that was foul weather. But the signs of the time that they were given, the signs were there. The signs were revealed to them.
But they couldn't understand them. The signs were not illuminated. Yes, sir. They weren't in the Word enough. But even had they been in the Word enough, I personally don't believe they would have understood because as long as the Word was not illuminated, as long as the Word was not illuminated, it was only revealed they could read the Word, but they didn't understand the meaning.
I think that's what I interrupted Marianne about to say. Was that it? They did not have eyes to see. The signs were revealed. The signs were there. But they were not illuminated. He goes on to say, this is Jesus talking, as Brother David said the other day, yesterday.
This is the red letters. This is the ones you've got to believe. If you believe some is good and some is less good, these are the ones you've got to believe. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonas.
And he left them and departed. They had the sign. They simply could not understand it. Even after Jesus pointed out the sign to them, they couldn't understand it. I've got two more questions. Did you ever wonder why this particular sign was so hard for the Pharisees to see or to understand?
They didn't want to see it. And why didn't they want to see it? Okay, they didn't like it. But why didn't they like it? I'm sorry? It was not the sign they wanted, and the sign didn't tell them what they wanted to hear.
They didn't like what the sign would have told them had they been able to understand it. You know what the sign told them? You're not the only ones. The Pharisees wanted to believe they were the only ones.
John, they would refer to you as a dog. They would refer to you as something less than an animal, something less than a lamb or a goat, the worst of all animals that they could see, the dog. Something not worthy of this greater thing that they had.
They didn't want that. They didn't want that sign. And that's why they failed to even recognize Jonah as a prophet. Did you know that? Do you know where the Scripture tells us that the Pharisees didn't believe that Jonah was a disciple?
Not a disciple, a prophet? Look at John 7, verse 50. Jesus has just finished telling them some things they didn't want to hear as well. And some of the people that heard what He said began to ask if He were a prophet.
And others disputed that. So there was this contention. As it worked its way out, the Pharisees are discussing whether or not Jesus is a prophet. Okay? And Nicodemus said unto them, and just in case you don't remember, the Scripture places this in a sentence, He that came to Jesus by night being one of them.
Okay, so Nicodemus was a Pharisee. But he was not a Pharisee like the other Pharisees. He was the one that came to see Jesus by night and he knew that Jesus was the Christ. He was a Pharisee. And he says this, Doth our law judge any man before it hear him?
And know what he doeth? And they answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? That was an insult enough. They asked Nicodemus, the master of the Jews, the master teacher of the Jews in Jerusalem, they asked him, What are you?
Are you a Galilean? And then they follow up by saying this, Search and look. For out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. Well they were wrong. There were at least two. Jonah and Jesus. Now Jesus wasn't born in Galilee.
Jonah was. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. As He had to be born in Bethlehem because the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem. Jonah didn't. But where did Jesus spend His life? In Galilee in Nazareth. Okay, so we're going to do a fish story today.
Everybody knows the story. Jonah was called. Jonah refused to go. The Lord pursued Jonah. The Lord preserved Jonah. The Lord took him back to where he left from. And Jonah went. Complaining all the way.
Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittiah, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it. For the wickedness is come up before me. Remember any other city that the wickedness came up before God?
Sodom and Gomorrah? What happened to them? They were destroyed. Did God send them a message? Well, He sent angels to the city to extract His people. That's what He did. Moses, not Moses, Abraham pled for the city to be preserved for the sake of Lot.
And the Lord said, Well, if you find even five, even ten, we'll save it. Well, He couldn't find ten. Jonah was told three things. He was told to arise. He was told to go to Nineveh. And he was told to cry out against it.
Now you might notice that God did not tell Jonah the fourth thing. He didn't tell Jonah to call on them to repent. And as a matter of fact, Jonah never called on the people of Nineveh to repent. He never once asked them to repent.
God sent Jonah to Nineveh because He saw that the wickedness of Nineveh had risen to the point that it deserved a specific warning and judgment. Well, did they get the warning? They got the warning finally.
Finally, reluctantly, Jonah delivered the warning. Did they get the judgment? They didn't get the judgment. And why? Because they repented. They repented without even being asked to. They repented on the off chance that maybe the Lord would spare them.
That is instructive in itself. Other prophets prophesied against Gentiles. That was done all the time. This is the only case that I know of in which a prophet was actually sent to a foreign nation to deliver God's message against them.
Isaiah prophesied against Jeremiah. All of the prophets prophesied to some extent against Gentile nations. But this is the only one sent to the Gentile nations. Now the purpose that the Lord had, I believe, was for the salvation of the city.
He knew that they were going to repent even if Jonah didn't ask them to. And I think that is... I pointed that out a while ago. That is instructive. Those that the Lord want to repent, they'll repent.
Those that the Lord wants to spare, He'll spare. Those that are His children, He will find them and He will save them. And those that won't, He won't. So this was not only for the salvation of the city, but also to shame, for the shame and the jealousy of Israel.
But primarily, it was a rebuke to the reluctance of the Jews to bring Gentiles to the true God. They were instructed, in fact, in the commission to Abraham, what did it say? In thee shall my seed be blessed.
It was going to be through the Jews that the nations were blessed. All of them. All of those children of His that were scattered throughout the nations, not just the Jews. But they didn't want to share.
They wanted to keep it all for themselves. They thought they were the only chosen people. They thought they were chosen because they were better than everybody else. And Jesus told them, or God told them, I didn't choose you because you were the greatest of all nations.
In fact, I chose you because you were the least. So it was primarily a rebuke to the reluctance of the Jews to bring the Gentiles to the true God. Now let's look a little bit about Nineveh. Nineveh dates back to the time of Nimrod.
In Genesis 10, 9, it talks about Nimrod. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Akedah, and Calna in the land of Shinar.
And out of that land went forth Asher. A-S-S-H-U-R. That's the Assyrian. And he built Nineveh and the city of Rehoboth and Cali. Nineveh was located on the banks of the Tigris River, about 500 miles northeast of Israel.
It was always one of Assyria's royal cities, and for many years served as the capital. It's thought to derive from the word Ninas, which means residence of Nimrod, or perhaps Nenu, the Akkadian word for fish.
It's hard to know because the Hebrew language didn't have vowels. So if you look at Ninas and Nenu, it'll be the same Hebrew letters. And you can only tell what it is from the context and from inflection.
Now the people of Nineveh worshiped the fish goddess, Nanashe, the daughter of Ea, the goddess of fresh waters. And Dagon, the fish god, who was represented as half-man, half-fish. Have you ever seen the cartoon figures of Neptune?
What does Neptune look like? Half-man, half-fish carrying a trident. Maybe that's where the Romans came up with the visual for, or the Greeks, I guess it was the Romans, for Neptune. Nineveh was great in both size and in power.
It had a significant influence over the Middle East until it was destroyed by Nineveh and was possibly the largest city in the world at that time. According to the historians, walls almost eight miles long enveloped the inner city with the entire city occupying an area with a circumference of about 60 miles.
So it would have taken three days to walk around it, walking 20 miles a day. That'd be a pretty good journey in those days with the kind of roads that they had to travel on. Its population was more than a half a million.
We'll find that out later on in the book. The population of Nineveh at the time of Jonah was more than a half million. Okay, verse 3. But Jonah rose up to flee from Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa.
Joppa is a seaport in Galilee. And he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now I've got a question to ask you.
Who can escape the presence of the Lord? What was in Jonah's mind that thought he could escape from the Lord? He wasn't thinking. No one can escape the presence of the Lord. But we do know this about Jonah, and about Nineveh, and about Tarshish.
Nineveh was east of Joppa, about 500 miles north and east. So which way did Jonah head? Probably west. I kind of think he may have gone southwest. But he headed west. So we can infer that he really did not want to go to Nineveh.
No, I'm not going to Nineveh. But Psalms 139 verse 7 tells us this, Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both a light to thee. You can't hide from Him. You can't run from Him. You can't escape Him. Wherever you go, He is already there.
Noah should have known that. David knew that. But David was probably closer to the Lord than Jonah did. I think I said Daniel, but this is not Daniel at all. This is Jonah. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea.
And there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Now, this is not an ordinary storm. The literal translation of that says the storm was hurled from God. It was thrown into the boat.
Sailors accustomed to storms, usually not afraid of them, were afraid of this one. And it was a fear that served God's purpose. Then the mariners were afraid, and they cried out every man to his God, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them.
But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. One of the commentators that I read said this, What a curious and tragic scene. All of the sailors were religious men, devout in their prayer to their gods.
Yet their gods were really nothing, and could do nothing. There was only one man on board who had a relationship with the true God. One who knew God's Word, and one who worshipped Him. And that man was below deck, sound asleep.
So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God. If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not. Now that must have been ironic to the sailors.
That must have been ironic to Jonah that the sailors demanded that he call on his God. What was his reason for being there? He was hiding from God. His only reason for even being on the ship was to escape God.
And you know what's more? He had already told them that that's why he was there. He had already told the sailors that he was on that ship to run away from his God. And they said, every one to his fellow, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.
So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Was it by accident? Did it just happen to land on Jonah when they rolled the dice or whatever the lot is? Of course not. Well, why do you think it came up on Daniel's number?
That happens a lot. It happens a lot when you roll the dice and to ask God to tell you something. Maybe you want to hear something, and you don't hear what you wanted to hear. But God will tell you what you want to hear.
In fact, in Proverbs 16 .33, it says this, The lot is cast in the lap, but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord. So if you roll the lot, whatever happens, the Lord will control it. So it's never by accident.
Then they said unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation, and whence comest thou? And what is thy country, and of what people art thou? They want to know something about him.
Since the lot fell on him, they want to know something about him. Now, I want to pause here a minute and go to 2 Kings 14 .25 where it says that Jonah was a recognized prophet from Gathupper. That's a village in Galilee.
For reference, it's about two miles away from Nazareth. So you couldn't say that Jesus was raised in the town, the same town that Jonah came from, much more than you could say that I live in Corsicana.
In fact, I live eight times as far from Corsicana, even though I say I'm from Corsicana, as Nazareth was from Gathupper. So when the Pharisees that we spoke about earlier, when they said, Search and look for all of Galilee, ariseth no prophet, they apparently hadn't searched the Scripture themselves.
Or if they had, they were being purposely misleading. And when Jonah was asked, What is your occupation? And he answered, Prophet. Then the sailors must have been even more terrified. Let's look at 2 Kings 14.
I wanted to go ahead and put this in because it's instructive in a couple of ways. We're going to see a very evil king. In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years.
And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. So that describes this king, Jeroboam. He that did evil in the sight of the Lord for 41 years. And he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebop, who made Israel to sin.
And yet he restored the coast of Israel from entering of Hamath into the sea of the plain according to the word of God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet.
So right here in 2 Kings, it identifies Jonah as a prophet of God. The prophet which was of Gath-helper. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter. For there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel.
And the Lord said that he would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. But he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, by the word of Jonah, the prophet. Verse 9,. And he said unto them, this is Jonah again, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.
Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them, I'm here on your boat to escape the Lord.
And they're afraid because they say, Why have you done this? They knew that he had fled the presence of his Lord. Then they said unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?
For the sea was wrought and was tempest. And he said unto them, Take me up and cast me into the sea, so that the sea be calm for you, for I know that it is for my sake this great tempest is upon you. So Jonah was unwilling to go to Nineveh and probably feeling guilty.
So he was willing to sacrifice himself in an effort to save the lives of the people on the boat. Apparently, he thought he'd be given a choice. He could choose to die or he could choose to go to Nineveh.
So he chose to die. So he says, Throw me overboard. And I'll drown and the sea will become calm and everybody will be good except me and I will go to where I ought to go, but I won't have to go to Nineveh.
So what did the men do? Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to land. But they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempest against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord and said, We beseech you, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done what pleased thee.
These heathen sailors had more concern for one man in their boat than Jonah had for hundreds of thousands of men in Nineveh. So they take Jonah and cast him forth into the sea. And the sea ceased from her raging.
So what caused the sea to cease from raging? Was it the fact that Jonah was thrown into the sea? Kind of, maybe, but the real reason was why. Because God stopped the sea from raging. It's reminiscent of Jesus in Matthew 8.
Remember that? And when he entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And behold, there was a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with waves, but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him and woke him, saying, Lord, save us, we perish.
And he said unto them, Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. But the men marveled, saying, What matter of many is this, that even the sea and the wind obey him?
Well, this is kind of the situation that these sailors were in. Even this God of Jonah was able to control the sea. They tossed him over, and as soon as they tossed him over, the sea calmed. But the man that they prayed to to spare them calmed the sea just as soon as they threw him in.
Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. The storm, Jonah's word, the lots all indicated to the sailors that the true Lord was involved. And thus they offered sacrifices to him and made vows.
Probably indicating that Jonah had told them more about his God than is recorded here. Now the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Now we're going to find a couple of things next week. We're going to find that Jonah got his wish. He got thrown into the sea, that's right. And he drowned, and he died. And the great fish that the Lord prepared came, took him, took him back near Joppa, spit him up on the land, and he had to go to Nineveh anyhow.
Well, that's the end of chapter 1. We've got the fish ready to rescue, ready to recover, ready to redirect Jonah on his journey. Let us pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, help us to understand that when you give a commission for us, that it is our responsibility to do everything we can do to follow your instructions.
But even if we determine that we're going to ignore your instructions and go our own way, your work will be done. But we will suffer consequences for our action. Bless us and keep us and go forward with us today.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.