Nineveh

[00:00:06] Let's pray. [00:00:08] Our gracious God and Savior, how we thank youk that yout have provided the righteousness that we so desperately need, that yout have solved the problem of our sin in its guilt, in its punishment, and even in its power in our hearts. [00:00:28] O Lord our God, we thank you that you have exalted our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that you have given him the name which is above every name. That he, as the God man, bears the name of Jehovah God, that He is exalted and that he is accepted and glorified and in your presence forevermore. [00:00:57] And so we can know for certain that as you have united us to your Son, that as we receive him by faith and you dwell in us by your spirit, and we abide in you, that we too will be accepted and received and will dwell in your presence forever. [00:01:21] We thank you that this hope of eternal life that we have is not a mere wish, but is certain and sure, and that all who trust in you will receive it. [00:01:33] O Lord our God, we ask this morning that you would let out a little bit more of your grace and your goodness and your mercy to us, that as we read your word together and meditate on it, and as you you speak to us in your word, that our hearts might see more of Jesus, more of his love, that we might be drawn to him in faith and in repentance, and that you would cause the power of sin and the grip that this world has on us to lessen yet a little more, that more of us might be devoted to you, that we might serve you, and that we might be a blessing to one another. O Lord our God, we long for the fullness of sanctification, of holiness, and of all the blessings of salvation. We long for it, and we ask that you would give us yet more of it this morning, and that as we are changed and remade more and more into your image, into one new man, one body of Christ united to Jesus our head, that we would show forth more of your mercy and more of your power and more of your glory to the end, that your name would be yet more exalted and that you would be glorified in Jesus name we ask. Amen. [00:02:56] We're going to read God's Word now from the prophet Jonah. The Old Testament prophet Jonah. [00:03:03] We're going to read chapter three together. [00:03:12] Over the last couple months, we've looked at the first two chapters where Jonah is sent to Nineveh. He runs from God. God chases him down into the storm, into the ocean, into the Belly of the fish. [00:03:24] And there Jonah repents and is spat back out. [00:03:28] And we pick up that story as he comes now to Nineveh. [00:03:34] Hear God's word, Jonah 3. I remind you that these aren't my words. They aren't even ultimately Jonah's words, but they're the inspired words of the living God. [00:03:45] So as they are read, God is speaking to you, his people. So listen. [00:03:50] 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. [00:04:03] So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. [00:04:08] Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. [00:04:12] Three days journey in breath, Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. [00:04:27] And the people of Nineveh believed in God. [00:04:31] They called for a fast and put on sackcloth. From the greatest of them to the least of them. [00:04:37] The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. [00:04:51] And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything. [00:05:05] Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. [00:05:19] Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. [00:05:25] Who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. [00:05:35] When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. [00:05:44] And he did not do it. [00:05:47] Please be seated. [00:06:13] Seek the Lord while he may be found. [00:06:17] Call upon him while he is near. [00:06:22] Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. [00:06:28] Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon the words of Isaiah or of God through Isaiah. [00:06:45] In Isaiah, chapter 55, verse 6 and 7 provide a summary of the message of Jonah. Chapter 2. [00:06:55] God is a great Savior. [00:06:58] We are great sinners, but God is a great Savior. [00:07:04] Now is the time to turn from your sins and seek God when he may be found. [00:07:11] We'll look with you at this great salvation that God offers to sinners. [00:07:18] First, as we look at the great city Nineveh. [00:07:23] Secondly, at that city's great repentance and thirdly, as we look together at God, the great Savior, the great city, the great repentance and the great Savior. [00:07:42] First, the great city. [00:07:44] God sends Jonah. Again we saw God's mercy and grace to Jonah, his patience with Jonah, his pursuit of Jonah. Jonah experienced God's compassion and mercy. [00:07:58] He repented, he turned, God forgave him. [00:08:03] And God raises him up and sends him out again on his mission. [00:08:08] And his mission is to go and cry against the great city, Nineveh. [00:08:14] God calls it a great city twice over. [00:08:20] Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, he says in, in chapter one, verse two. [00:08:26] And then again here in chapter three, verse two, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. [00:08:32] And then Jonah, the narrator of the book, says in verse three, now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. [00:08:42] It was a great city. [00:08:46] It was great because it was big. [00:08:49] Three days journey across. Seems to be saying that in order to get from one side of the city to another, it took three days of walking. A man walking all day long, spending the night, getting up the next morning, walking all day long. It took three days of walking to get across the city. Now it's a big city. Even by our standards today, that's a big city. If it takes three days of someone walking all day long to get across it. [00:09:17] It's a massive city and it had a massive population. [00:09:23] God references the size of the population in chapter four, the very last verse, verse 11. [00:09:30] He says, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left. And also much cattle reference to infants who don't yet know right hand from left. [00:09:47] So many little ones and of course many, many more adults and young people. [00:09:55] A massive city with a massive population. [00:09:58] A great city, the greatest city, because it was the capital city of the greatest empire of its day. [00:10:08] Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire, which you can read about in both the biblical history in the Bible and in the secular history. We've dug up the Assyrian annals, archaeologists have dug up all sorts of references and facts about ancient empire of Assyria. And it was a great empire stretching across the Middle East. At its peak, it invaded not just Palestine, Israel, you can read about that in the Bible, the biblical history. In Kings, it reached all the way down invading Egypt. [00:10:46] Modern day Iraq is where Nineveh is. And it reached in its empire, it conquered all the way down into Egypt. That's a big empire. [00:10:57] And this was a great City, the greatest city of the greatest empire of its day. [00:11:05] It wasn't just great, it was exceedingly great. [00:11:09] The word exceeding here is a little interesting because the Hebrew word is what we call an idiom. [00:11:18] It's a word that stands in and means something else. And the word here is before God. [00:11:24] It was great before God. And that phrase before God has the meaning of something being very, very, very. In this case, very exceedingly great. [00:11:35] The city was great, exceedingly great, great before God. [00:11:41] And if you remember, Jonah is to get up and to tell Nineveh the message that God had given him, which includes what he told them. I'm sorry, what God told Jonah back in chapter one, verse two. [00:11:56] Arise, go to Nineveh for that great city and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. [00:12:06] A great city before God. Exceedingly great, but exceedingly great, especially in its evil. [00:12:17] It is the wickedness of Nineveh that is its greatest trait according to God. That is what rises up before God. [00:12:27] And if you read the biblical history, as well as if you go and you read the secular history that you can read about the ancient near east and the kingdom, the empire of Assyria, you will know that Assyria was truly great in its wickedness. It was a brutal military empire. [00:12:48] It sent its armies to march out to conquer and to conquer viciously, brutally. [00:12:58] It was an empire that fed on conquering others. In other words, it was a. You might say a parasitic empire. Its war machine was fed by conquering other nations. [00:13:11] It would go into a region, it would pick a city and it would go and it would terrorize that city. [00:13:20] It would tell that city, you need to surrender or we're going to tear down your walls and we're going to impale you and skin you alive and do all sorts of horrible things to your people. [00:13:33] And of course, they hadn't heard about the Assyrians. They would try to negotiate, and the result is that city would be destroyed and its people treated horrifically. [00:13:42] And then the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian army, would go around to the other cities and the other nations around, and it would say, you remember what we did? Have you heard about what we did to that city? [00:13:53] We're going to do the same to you. [00:13:56] It brutalized and terrorized the places where it went in order to conquer them and to plunder and to carry those resources back to Assyria only so that it could repeat the cycle the following year. [00:14:12] But it isn't just a military wickedness. It isn't just the wickedness of the city as A city and as an empire that God has in view here. [00:14:22] And when Jonah preaches his message, the King hears it and he gets it. It isn't just that we're wicked as a nation because of how we treat the nations around us. [00:14:34] It is wickedness at home. [00:14:37] It is the evil of the hearts of the people that has risen up to God. [00:14:44] Look at what the King says about the wickedness of his own people, his own city, in chapter three, verse eight. [00:14:52] Let everyone call out mightily to God, and let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. [00:15:03] Not everyone repent of our brutal military campaigns, but everyone repent of his own evil, his own sin committed by his own hands. [00:15:17] The wickedness of the city of Nineveh that rose up before God was the wickedness not just corporately, as a city, as a people, but the wickedness of the individual members of that city. Every person, man, woman and child, from the greatest to the least of them. Their sin had risen up before God. [00:15:39] They were great, exceedingly great, because they were exceedingly wicked. [00:15:47] And as great as that city and its wickedness was, it would appear that God's judgment was greater. [00:15:56] That's Jonah's message. [00:15:59] You are a great and wicked city, so great that God has taken notice of it. [00:16:04] And in 40 days, God is going to overthrow your city. God is going to destroy your city. That was his message. [00:16:13] God has seen your sin and its great wickedness. [00:16:17] And in 40 days you're going to be gone. [00:16:24] You celebrate your greatness. You can go and search on Google now and you can see the grand monuments that the Assyrian kings set up testifying to their wickedness, their brutal behavior as they went around terrorizing cities, their engraving, stone engravings of the horrible things that they did to people they glorified. In their greatness and in their might, they celebrated their greatness. [00:16:59] But God comes and says, even as you are great and you see yourself as great, you make great monuments to your greatness. [00:17:10] God has seen your great wickedness. [00:17:13] And God is sending a greater judgment so great that you will be destroyed. [00:17:19] As great as you see yourselves. [00:17:22] Your greatness cannot overcome. It cannot save you from the judgment that is at hand. [00:17:31] This was Jonah's message, a message of a greater judgment, far greater than the city and its might. [00:17:41] And we ask ourselves, what does this have to do with us? [00:17:47] Well, you could draw parallels, no doubt, if you were to look at the history of our own nation and to think of the war machines that we send on the sea in the sky and the warriors that we send out to protect our own imperial interests. [00:18:09] You could begin to see the parallels. Empires are the same all through history. We do the same kinds of things, often with the same kinds of wickedness and viciousness. [00:18:21] Yes, our sin is corporately great out there, but it's also great at home. We just read from Romans chapter 3. [00:18:31] All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. [00:18:37] All have sinned. Was Nineveh a great city in its wickedness? [00:18:43] We are a great people. I and you are great sinners in your wickedness. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Our sin is great and we are not a great city. [00:18:58] We are just lonely sinners who stand before a holy God and His greatness. [00:19:05] And that's the message of the Bible. [00:19:09] We've sinned. [00:19:11] God is great. And because of his greatness, because his greatness is so much greater than us, his greatness and his holiness demands that sin be judged. [00:19:25] God sent Jonah with a message. Yet 40 days he fixed the day of judgment. [00:19:34] God has appointed the day of our judgment. [00:19:38] First our death. It's appointed for man once to die. [00:19:42] Then comes the judgment. [00:19:45] And God has shown that he has appointed the day, the judgment day when he will raise all mankind from the graves and they will all see stand before Almighty God and He will judge them all. [00:19:59] He's shown that he's set the day of that because he's appointed the judge. And how do you know that he's appointed the judge? Acts 17. [00:20:07] Paul says he's shown who that judge is because he raised him from the dead. [00:20:14] Jesus is the judge. He's the one who's going to come on the clouds of God's judgment. [00:20:19] Coming on the clouds. He will set up his great white throne. [00:20:25] And all the nations will be gathered before him and he will judge them. [00:20:31] So much for the great city. There's a greater judge coming, the great city. [00:20:40] But we also said we would look at the great repentance. [00:20:44] As soon as the people hear Jonah's preaching that the judgment of God is coming to their great city. Yet 40 days and I will overthrow your city. [00:20:57] As soon as they hear his word, they begin to believe. [00:21:03] Jonah gets one day in. He has one day of preaching ministry. One day in to a city that's three days across. He doesn't even get the whole way across the city to to preach to all of the people. By the end of his first day, the people are believing, they are repenting. They are calling for a fast. And the news of this ripples through the city. And it gets carried right up to the king. [00:21:29] And as soon as he hears the message of God's judgment against the sins of his city and his own sins, he turns, he believes, he repents. He takes off his royal robe. [00:21:43] He's about to confess not only his own sins, but the sins that he's committed as a king and that he's led his people in committing both corporate and private sins. [00:21:54] And he begins to lead the city in a day of fasting and repentance. [00:22:00] What did the people believe? [00:22:03] They believed that this God whom Jonah was preaching was real. [00:22:08] First of all, that the God who made heaven and earth in the dry land, the God of Jonah, the God of the Israelites, was also their God and their judge. [00:22:21] And they believed that what Jonah said from the mouth of God was true, that they were wicked and that they deserved God's judgment because of it. [00:22:34] And being convicted of their sin and of God's wrath against them for their sin, they turned in repentance. [00:22:46] These are the two things that are at the heart of what sinners are called to when they hear the message of the gospel. And what is the message of the gospel? The message of the gospel is that Jesus, the king, has come. [00:23:00] He's come and he's bringing his kingdom. [00:23:02] That's what he says when he comes in the Gospels. Right? The kingdom of heaven is at hand. I'm the king. I'm here. And you need to repent and turn from your sin and seek forgiveness and salvation. Because I bring now I come in grace, bringing salvation and forgiveness to sinners. But one day I'm coming and bringing judgment and wrath for those who do not turn to to me. His call then the call of the Gospel message is that the king has come. He set up his kingdom, and you must turn to him and believe in him and throw yourselves on him and repent of your sin and be forgiven for his sake. [00:23:41] The message of the Gospel in the New Testament is repent and believe. The message of Jonah in the Old Testament was the same. Repentance and believe. [00:23:53] Now the king hears this. [00:23:56] You see the message of Jonah rippling through the people. They're passing it along. [00:24:02] You hear the rumble, you might say the noise rolling through the city like a wave ahead of Jonah. People desperate to be freed from their sin and to be forgiven and delivered from coming judgment. [00:24:16] They begin fasting and repenting and praying and calling on God. [00:24:21] This makes it to the king. The king, his heart is changed. He turns to God in faith and repentance. He gathers his nobles together. This is all within the space of a day, this is happening. [00:24:38] You can imagine Jonah, year after year, he'd preach to Israel, and they didn't repent. Here, in less than a day, the king gathers his nobles together. The whole government gathers with him, and they say we must repent of our evil, not just as rulers, but a whole nation. And so they issue a decree. [00:25:00] This is one of those times when you say, wait a minute. [00:25:04] Did the king go and consult his attorney general on what the constitution said about separation of church and state? [00:25:14] Apparently, that wasn't in the Assyrian constitution. [00:25:16] They saw the handwriting on the wall. They heard the truth of the gospel, that they needed to repent of their sin, and that they needed to, as a nation. And so they used their royal office for the right purpose, to point the people to their sin, to call them to repentance and to point them to the mercy and hope that God might forgive them, that he might relent of this coming judgment if they would but throw themselves on him. [00:25:46] No, he did the right thing here. [00:25:51] The king's decree, the decree of a pagan king leads us in the steps of repentance. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are sinners, God. This is what we are called to do, to turn from our sin and to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. What do you see here in these steps of repentance captured in this decree for the people to fast first, you see that they are called to mourn for their sin. And we as sinners, when we hear of God's anger against our sin, when we see how wicked and evil our sin is, we are called to mourn, to grieve our sin. That's what the sackcloth and ashes is about. [00:26:38] They would do this in the ancient world. And as you read the Bible, that's what the people would do when they were grieving something. [00:26:46] A loved one died, there was a loss, some tragedy. They would put on sackcloth, a burlap sack. They would take off nice clothing and put on awful clothing and then sit in actual ashes as an outward sign that they were grieving and mourning. In this case, the tragedy was their sin. [00:27:07] So this is a sorrow over how wicked we are. We need to see our sin for what it is as God sees it, and grieve it. [00:27:19] Secondly, there's sorrow over sin, but there's also a humbling of themselves before God, an affliction of the heart. [00:27:31] The heart is not just to be sorrowful, but to humble itself, to afflict itself to say, God, how awful, how horrible and terrible my sin is. [00:27:45] And you see this in the fast, the denial of food and water. The body is afflicted, humiliated, humbled physically before God as we pray in fasting. [00:27:57] Why? [00:27:58] As an outward sign and as a reminder all day long as you fast that your heart is to be humbled and afflicted before God. Isaiah 58, verse 8. [00:28:13] A fast I have chosen. I'm sorry, is it a fast I have chosen? God is asking his people. He's called them to fast. He's explaining to them what they ought to be doing. They weren't fasting properly. He says, is it a fast I have chosen? It is a day for a man to afflict his soul. [00:28:34] We're to be sorry for our sin, but we're also to humble and humiliate ourselves before God. [00:28:42] The words of Psalm 51 are helpful here. [00:28:45] As he humbles himself before God, repenting of his sin. He says, against you and you only. Have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight? [00:28:57] There's a mourning for sin, a sorrow for sin, a humbling and afflicting of oneself before God. [00:29:05] But it doesn't stop there. [00:29:07] It isn't just that we're sorry and we feel bad because of our sin. [00:29:14] We are called in repentance to actually turn from our sin. Now, you know about this because pretty much all of us have done this to someone else, and we've all experienced it. Also. [00:29:28] You hurt someone's feelings because you were feeling mean. And so you said something rude or you did something nasty to them. You got caught, and you say, well, oh, I'm sorry. [00:29:41] You feel bad maybe because you got caught and you were embarrassed. And so you even say the words, I'm sorry. [00:29:48] But then a few hours later or a couple days later, you go back and you do the very same thing to the very same person. [00:29:58] You know what I'm talking about. And you've had people do it to you, too. And you realize that person didn't really mean that apology. [00:30:06] Here he is coming back and doing it again, right? [00:30:11] No. True repentance involves a turning away from sin, stopping that sin and moving on to do what's right. [00:30:20] It isn't just sorrow and affliction and humbling before God. [00:30:25] It is actually stopping the sin and turning to God and turning to what is right. [00:30:34] Look at verse 8. [00:30:38] Here the king instructs his people in what true repentance looks like. [00:30:44] He says, okay, you mourn, you humble yourselves in fasting and affliction. [00:30:49] And then he says, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. [00:30:55] Don't just go before God and bow yourself and say, God, I'm so sorry I did all of these awful things. And then get up and mistreat your wife and kids and go back to idolatry and all the other evil things that you've been doing. [00:31:09] Stop all of it. [00:31:11] Real repentance involves turning from sin, stopping it and turning to God and committing to serving Him. [00:31:20] But that's not all. [00:31:23] Repentance involves sorrow for sin. [00:31:25] It involves humbling yourself before God, involves turning from that sin and putting it away and not turning back to it. [00:31:34] But it involves also throwing yourself on the mercy of God. [00:31:41] Very important. True repentance involves turning from sin and to God seeking His mercy. It's a complete change of heart. [00:31:54] You see this in the king's decree also. [00:31:58] He says, let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. [00:32:07] He says, turn to God and plead with him with every everything you've got. [00:32:13] For what? [00:32:14] Plead with him that he would forgive you. [00:32:19] You have offended Him. Your great wickedness has offended his great holiness and his great goodness and his great kindness. [00:32:28] It's the good things in God that our sin has offended. [00:32:33] And we need him to be merciful and compassionate and. And forgive us for the greatness of our evil. [00:32:43] That involves turning to God, turning to him with a hope that he will forgive us. [00:32:50] Where did they find that hope? In the preaching of Jonah. [00:32:54] Jonah's message is real short, right? You're wicked, you're evil. God's seen it. And in 40 days he's going to come and destroy this city and all of you with it. [00:33:06] It's that yet 40 days. [00:33:10] This is God's warning today that 40 days from now all of you are going to be gone because of your wickedness. [00:33:19] But a God who warns that judgment is coming against sin in 40 days is a patient God, a holy, just, almighty God, whose goodness has been offended by the greatness of our wickedness, is patient. If he waits 40 days, he gives us 40 days that we would turn from our sin and be forgiven and throw ourselves on his mercy. [00:33:49] They heard the message and they heard it right. [00:33:53] There was a hint of hope that if they would but turn to God, he might relent and forgive them. And the King picked up on that verse 9. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. [00:34:12] Repentance involves turning from Sin and turning and throwing yourself on the mercy of God. That's the other side of repentance. You're turning to God and saying, God, I've sinned. Here are all of my sins. Here's all of my wickedness. Here's how awful it is. [00:34:29] I'm sorry for it. But most of all, forgive me and receive me and turn your anger away from me. [00:34:43] There's one more thing you see here, I think very clearly in the decree as the king leads his people in repentance, sorrow for sin, humbling, turning from sin, turning to God in his mercy and calling out for forgiveness. [00:35:00] But repentance is also wholehearted. [00:35:04] There isn't a little holding on to this sin or that sin, little reservations of the heart. [00:35:10] We must throw ourselves wholly and completely on the mercy of God, leaving wholly and completely behind the evil that God would judge us for. [00:35:24] To do anything else, to hang on a little bit to sin, to turn just a little bit back there and not all the way to God, isn't true repentance. Now, I know we struggle with this because we're still sinners and our hearts turn back to God and we stumble every day, all the time. But in repentance, as we repent, we're turning to God with our whole self and we need to throw ourselves wholly and completely into this. [00:35:54] And that's what he instructs his people to do. He says, I want you doing nothing, nothing but crying out to God all day long in sorrow and in repentance and in seeking his mercy. [00:36:09] Do nothing but mightily call on God and wrestle with him in prayer. Do not eat, do not drink. [00:36:17] Do not get up and go out to the barn and water your animals and put feed in their troughs. [00:36:24] Your animals are going to be crying out in their affliction. [00:36:29] This city was full of noise. [00:36:34] And that noise of the animals was meant to drive the people further into repentance, to throw themselves wholly on God. [00:36:45] You could hear a whole city groaning. [00:36:49] Every man, woman and child, every beast, cattle and herd, everything that lived and breathed in the city was groaning, humbling, afflicted before God. His whole people were to put everything they had into repentance now, not because their repentance saved themselves, but because God was the way of salvation. [00:37:21] Do you know the greatness of your sin? [00:37:27] Do you believe God's word? [00:37:29] Do you believe God at His word when he says that your sin offends Him? [00:37:35] Do you believe him at his word that he says he set a day of judgment? [00:37:43] If you do, then here's your roadmap. [00:37:47] Turn to him. [00:37:48] Turn to him. Don't wait. Give it everything you've got. [00:37:53] Not because you can save yourself, no. But because God wants all of you turned from sin and cast on him and his mercy. [00:38:03] Throw yourself before him, before his mercy, because he is full of mercy and forgiveness. And that's our last point. The great Savior, the great city in its great wickedness, the great repentance and the great Savior. [00:38:24] We have just one verse here, verse 10. [00:38:27] It tells us that God saw the repentance of the Ninevites, this whole city, turning to Him. He forgave them and he relented of his great anger against them. [00:38:40] What you have here is a God who forgives sinners, a God who forgives sinners who turn themselves to him and throw themselves on his mercy. [00:38:52] God is showing Nineveh. [00:38:54] And as the story is told through the prophet Jonah, as he writes his story and then his book is read by the Old Testament Church, the Jews, and then now by us, the New Testament Church, the Christians. [00:39:09] As we read this story, what we're brought face to face with is the compassion and mercy of God, the kindness of God towards sinners. [00:39:22] The God who threatens judgment for sins, as a God who is merciful and compassionate and wants sinners to turn from their sins to him that he might forgive them. Ezekiel 33:11. [00:39:36] I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. [00:39:42] I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God says, but that the wicked would turn from his ways and lie live. [00:39:54] God's desire is that sinners would turn to him and find life. [00:40:02] The New Testament says, this way, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. [00:40:10] That's the God who made heaven and earth, the God with whom you have to do. [00:40:17] Is he angry at the greatness of our wickedness? Yes. [00:40:20] But he offers a way of forgiveness and salvation if we would but turn to Him. [00:40:27] Jonah says it himself. Chapter four, verse two. [00:40:35] For I know that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. [00:40:44] That's who God is. [00:40:47] The Ninevites found out about that God, because when they turned to him, he forgave them and didn't destroy their city. [00:40:54] And it seems it was pretty immediate that this news came to them one day. They all turned and repented. [00:41:03] This is the most successful preaching mission ever. [00:41:08] The greatest city in the world all turned to God and were forgiven. [00:41:13] But the real question here is why? [00:41:17] And the answer is Found for Christians in the New Testament. [00:41:24] You know the verses? [00:41:26] God so loved the world, not just Nineveh, not just Israel. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. [00:41:42] There you see the kindness and mercy of God. He would send his own Son. He would make his own Son to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And how did he cause His Son to become the Lamb of God? He put him on a cross. [00:41:58] And there on the cross, as Jesus blood was poured out, God made His own Son the propitiation for his wrath. [00:42:07] The greatness of our wickedness is matched and exceeded by the greatness of God's wrath. What is to be done for sinners who are deserving of God's wrath? [00:42:19] God's answer, look to my Son. I poured out all my wrath on him on the cross so that if you would but turn to him in belief, you will be saved and my wrath will be turned away. And I will relent. I will forgive your sins because he's taken it all for you. [00:42:42] That is his answer. [00:42:44] He is the great Savior of sinners. [00:42:49] Nineveh's sin is great. [00:42:52] Our sin is just as great. [00:42:55] Nineveh's judgment was great, but it was the judgment of a city. A city to be destroyed at a particular place in time. [00:43:04] The judgment with what you and I have to do is the judgment of the whole world. [00:43:09] It isn't just the judgment of the whole world, but as the whole world is raised from the dead and gathered before the judgment seat of the Lord Jesus Christ. [00:43:21] The judgment with which we have to do is the eternal wrath of God in hell. [00:43:27] It's a greater judgment. [00:43:30] Nineveh as a city received mercy for a time. [00:43:35] Eventually that city rebelled again and was destroyed. [00:43:42] God in his Son Jesus Christ, offers a permanent mercy of forever salvation. He calls it eternal life. [00:43:53] If the one side of the judgment throne of God is eternal wrath, with the goats to be cast in hell forever, the other side on which he gathers his sheep, where Jesus gathers sinners that have turned to him that he's saved through his blood, he offers them forever mercy. Eternal life. [00:44:19] God gave Nineveh 40 days. [00:44:21] I don't know how long God will give you. [00:44:28] He may take you years from now. [00:44:31] He may take you tonight. [00:44:34] He may come again hundreds or thousands of years from now. [00:44:39] Judgment. [00:44:40] Or he may come tonight. [00:44:45] Today. [00:44:47] Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to turn to Jesus Christ and be saved. [00:44:54] Your day of judgment is fixed, but today is the day of salvation. [00:45:01] Nineveh had a little hope, just a little hope, a glimmer of it. They grabbed ahold of it and they turned to God and were saved. [00:45:12] But God gives you a sure and certain hope. He sent his own Son sealed salvation and the covenant of grace with his blood. And to prove that he accepted his Son's sacrifice, he raised him from the dead, so that all who believe in the Lord Jesus have not only his death, taking away sin and judgment, but have his resurrection life so that they might have eternal life and union with God. [00:45:39] You have a much greater hope. [00:45:45] Today is the day. [00:45:47] The Message of Jonah 3 is, Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. [00:45:56] Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him turn to the Lord, for He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Let's pray. [00:46:12] Our God, our Judge and our Savior. [00:46:18] We begin by confessing the great hopelessness of ourselves. [00:46:26] As we look within. We see the things that Jonah preached against. [00:46:31] We see the things that Jesus came and preached against. [00:46:36] We see our unrighteousness, our filth. [00:46:39] And we see a heart that day after day longs for more evil. [00:46:46] But we bless you and praise you, O God, that you are merciful and compassionate, and that your grace and your mercy and your love in Jesus Christ is greater than all our sin. [00:47:00] We ask, O God, that in your kindness you would come and touch each of our hearts and the hearts of our loved ones who do not yet know you, and that you would turn us from sin and turn us to Jesus. [00:47:17] Help us to see him in his compassion and his mercy. Draw us to his love and his kindness. [00:47:24] Save us. Turn us, O Lord, and we will be turned. [00:47:29] O our God, we thank youk, that there is so much to look forward to. [00:47:37] Having come to faith in Christ Jesus, you offer us a life here on earth, set free from sin. We ask that yout would help us to grow in that, that our desires would be evermore towards you, that you would help us to grow in repentance. Oh Lord, we confess even our repentance is incomplete. [00:47:59] As mightily as we strive for it, we know that it also is not enough. [00:48:04] We ask that you would forgive us. [00:48:07] Help us to repent of the failures of our repentance. [00:48:11] Help us to find that mercy is only in you. [00:48:15] O Lord, we praise you for the greatness of your grace. And we ask that you would bless us in every way as we have need. Need. For Jesus sake. Amen.