 Today we're going to be looking at Jonah chapter 2 and 3, and I chose to basically just entitle this the obvious, Jonah's second chance. And we'll be looking at that today as we go through chapters 2 and 3 here in the book of Jonah. So let's begin reading at verse 1, and I'll read to verse 10, I'll just read the chapter and we'll get into our study. Jonah chapter 2, beginning at verse 1, reading to verse 10, then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly, and he said, let me out, no, he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me, all your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I've been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The waters encompassed me, even to my soul, the deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought me, brought up my life from the pit, oh Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed, salvation is of the Lord. So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto tri-land. Jonah's second chance. I'll say it up front, because I chose to call this Jonah's second chance, and I'll say it up front, you know, we have a God of the second chance. But beyond that, we have the God of the third, and the fourth, and the fifth chance, don't we? We have a merciful God. When you read your Bible, very often you realize that in the Old Testament you really have a description of the children of Israel under the law of Moses. The New Testament tells us that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is filled with obviously the law of God and the things that pertain to the law. So often we don't consider or think in terms of the grace of God being exhibited, and yet you see God's grace from the beginning of the Old Testament to the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Melancholy. You see God's grace being spoken of in a variety of ways. His covenantal love, which is the Hebrew word has said. You see that God shows grace, mercy, and compassion on the children of Israel, and he turns his attention to those who repent and all. But we have a tendency of emphasizing the grace of God, because we see it most clearly expressed to us through Jesus Christ, who is the grace of God incarnate. Here in chapter two in the Book of Jonah, we have an opportunity of seeing God's mercy and grace extended to a reluctant prophet. Now as we look at this, let me give you an introduction, and I'm going to rehearse some of the things that we've already seen, and then move into his song that he sings, his prayer really that he sings. And we'll begin again by reminding ourselves that this man Jonah was a prophet, and he served the Lord some eight centuries before the Lord Jesus Christ. He's called very often the disobedient or the reluctant prophet. And that's because as we saw in chapter one, that after his initial call, he chose to flee rather than fulfill the commission. And God had a message that he was given to this ancient capital of Assyria, a city by the name of Nineveh. In chapter one verse two, we saw the message. It was simple. It was simply a message of impending judgment. Now when we look at this, I pointed out to you something that I thought was interesting. One, is that God was going to judge Nineveh, but two, we'll see it more clearly as Jonah had been questioned by the sailors and all on that ship. But what we saw in chapter one is that God is not simply what would be called a tribal God. In the Old Testament, very often you'll see this evidence of what was referred to as tribal gods. The people, the Assyrians, a variety of people had their own God. It was the God of that nation or the God of that people. And so they had what were called tribal gods, but the tribal gods normally would be gods that they worshiped. And so very often when one people would go in opposition to another, were they to have one God and the other have a different God, then what you would see was not just a battle of the people, but you would see also a battle between the tribal gods. And so in the Old Testament you'll see that there are people and their gods that are mentioned in connection to them, which demonstrates to us that they actually had their own personalized theological system. In 2 Kings chapter 17 verses 29 through 31, we have evidence of that. It says, every nation continued to make gods of its own and put them in the shrines on the high places which the Samaritans had made. Every nation in the cities where they dwelt. The men of Babylon made Sakat Benath, the men of Kuth made Nurgal, the men of Hamat made Hashimah, and the Avites made Nipaz and Tartak. The Sepharvites burned their children in fire to a Dramalek and a Namalek, the gods of the Sepharvaim. Now, I didn't pronounce any of that right, but you did see that there were different gods associated with those people. So as we looked in chapter one, the God of Israel is declaring himself to be the God not just of the Jew, and that's an important point. God presents himself as the God of the whole earth, the whole earth. He is what is called the God of gods. He is the God over all. You see that throughout the Old Testament. You saw it in Jonah chapter one. But in Psalm 97.5 it says, the mountains mount like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. Psalm 47.2, the Lord most high is awesome. He is a great king over all the earth. Isaiah 54.5, your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth. And so in chapter one, we see evidence that God is the God of the whole earth. Jonah makes reference to that. Now when Jonah received his marching orders, he fled from the presence of God. Rather than going to Nineveh, he actually went in the opposite direction. He went to Spain. And the reason is he hated the Ninevites. And as I demonstrated to you last week, it's because they were violent, and they were cruel. Now when he fled, we read concerning what happens when we are disobedient. In chapter one, verse four, God sent a storm after the fleeing prophet demonstrating again his sovereignty because God has the ability to control the ocean. Psalm 107, 25 and 26 says, he commands and raises a stormy wind which lifts up the waves of the sea. They mount up to the heavens. They go down again to the depths. Their soul melts because of trouble. So the sailors, when this was happening, knew that their ship was going to sink and the response was to pray. They prayed and they cried out for help. Somebody once said, non-Christians never look better than when compared to some Christians. Because while they were crying out for help, Jonah was busy fleeing from the presence of God, asleep below. Well, as this was taking place, they awakened him. They said, why are you sleeping? Call upon your God. He began to share why this was taking place. He knew that it was because of him. And he confessed that he said, the reason for the storm is me. So they did what needed to be done. They threw him overboard. After seeing the great power of God, the God that Jonah served though, they were not anxious to anger him, anger God. And they did toss him overboard. Now Jonah demonstrated a conscience under conviction. The sailors were converted, and we can even see the steps that led to this. If you look with me, and I'll show you this very, very quickly. If you look at verse five, it says in verse five that the mariners were afraid. Every man cried out to his God. Verse five tells us that they were afraid of the storm. In verse 10, it says again, the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, why have you done this? In verse 10, it says they feared that he was a Hebrew who had fled from the Lord. Verse 16 says the men feared the Lord exceedingly. So verse 16 closes by saying that they finally feared the Lord. First they feared the storm. Then they feared that he was a Hebrew who had fled from the Lord. But verse 16 closes by saying they feared the Lord. So instead of continuing praying to their own gods, they offered to Jehovah praise and thanksgiving after they are delivered from the storm. So verse 17 tells us in chapter one, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So God had arranged for this fish to be there at that time. God has a way of orchestrating events to fulfill his purposes. It's like when Jesus told Peter, cast your net and catch a fish that will have a gold coin in its mouth. When Jesus said cast your net on the other side of the boat that you might catch a great catch of fish. God has a way of orchestrating things so that his will is accomplished. And in this particular case, he prepared a fish. And one of the things that I find interesting is animals are more often obedient than humans because here goes this fish going exactly where he's being directed. And Jonah is going in the direction he's not supposed to go. And they were connected. Now, what would you do if you were thrown overboard? Well, we see what Jonah did while in the fish's belly, he prayed. Now, I want to point something out to you. This prayer seems to be a prayer of thanks for deliverance and not a request for deliverance. But it says, Jonah prayed to the Lord as God from the fish's belly. And he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction. And he answered me out of the belly of Sheol. I cried and you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. I said, I've been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. And so he begins to pray. Now, after three days of obstinate rejection of the Lord, he finally begins to praise him. God dealt with him. And I want you to see what he did. God dealt with him. He allowed him to fear. He allowed him to come to the end of himself. And then at that point, he genuinely repented and remembered the great God that he served. Now, the prophets expected death didn't occur. He was in danger, but God delivered him. And he's very grateful for this. Notice what he says in verse three. You cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas. So he knew that God had chastened him and he responded to the spanking. There are people who get chastened by the Lord and they don't know that God's chastening them. I can tell you this for a fact. God is chastening them and they don't even see the hand of God as he's spanking them. They don't. They get mad. They say, my goodness, you know, why is my life going so poorly? How come things aren't going the way they used to go? How come things aren't the way they used to be? And the question really has to ask, are you the same person that was enjoying the blessings of God when things were going the way that they used to go and things were the way they used to be? Or have you changed? Is there something in your life that needs to be dealt with? There are quite a number of Christians who get mad at God because it seems that God is not blessing them. But when they begin to consider it, the fact is, is they're no longer serving the Lord with all of their heart. They're no longer following God the way that they once did. Sometimes they're involved in heavy sin and still wondering why the life is not being blessed. God has a way, and this is important, God has a way of bringing us to an awareness of who he is and sometimes he uses chastening. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, often he uses affliction in our life. He does. You know, Psalm 119, verse 67 says it like this, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Before I was afflicted, before I went through the things that I went through, the tribulations and the various pressures that I endured, before that I had a tendency of going my own way. But you afflicted me. You have brought discipline into my life and you have taught me to stay very close to you. In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5, it says, you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. God loves you, and therefore God will chasten you. And he chastens you because he loves you. The writer of Hebrews says, if God did not chasten you, then you really wouldn't be his son or his daughter. There were these two kids that were getting in a fight on a playground, and a man came and broke up, two kids from the fight, and he took one of them and swatted them on the bottom, and told the other one, go play someplace else. And there was a guy watching this as it took place, and he approached the man who had broken up the fight and hit one on the bottom. And he says, I got to ask you a question. He says, you know, it's a good thing that you broke up that fight. It wasn't good that those kids were fighting, but I got to ask you, why did you hit one and you didn't hit the other one? And the man says, simple, the other one's not my son. This one is. God has a way of disciplining his kids, and he does it because he's your father. Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord. He was forsaking his calling as a prophet, disobedient, and moving in the opposite direction. And the Lord took extreme measures to reach out to this reluctant prophet, to the degree that it caused this man who was extremely obstinate to finally return to the calling that God gave to him, and he prays about it. He says in verse five, I said I've been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. So what happened is he went to the bottom of the sea. The water pressure began to encompass him. He was wrapped up in seaweed. And what he was saying is I feared that you forsook me. And in that fear, he's saying to the Lord, I repented. In verse six, he says I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought up my life from the pit, oh Lord my God. Now it's interesting how he says that. I want you to notice verse six, how he began. I went down to the moorings. When you looked in chapter one and combine that with chapter two, you'll notice that the word down is used a variety of times. He went down to Joppa. He went down into the boat. He went down into the lowest part of the ship. Now he went down to the bottom of the sea. So that's where running from the Lord will always take you. Down. He went down. And here's another thing. He had to sink down to the bottom before he could look up to be rescued. I've used this story before, but it makes the point. Man was walking near the edge of a lake and he came around and turned. There's a woman standing on the lip of the lake and she was screaming. And the man rushes to her and says, what's wrong? She says, my son fell into the lake. It's deep here. He can't swim. Save him. I can't swim. And the man stands at the edge of the lake looking at this young man and he folds his arms and just keeps looking. And the woman begins to panic and screams and says, why aren't you going in there? You need to save him. He's going to die. The man just stands there and the young boy's flailing and flailing. He can't move forward. He's actually moving away. And finally he loses his strength. It takes some time. The woman's screaming all this time. The man's just got his arms full to standing there. And the boy finally just starts settling in the water. And then at that point, the man dove in, took the boy, dragged him out of the water, brought him onto the shore and the boy was saved. When everything settles down, the woman looks to the man and says, I can't believe you waited that long. Why didn't you jump in and why didn't you save him when I started asking you to? Why did you wait so long? And the man said, as long as that boy had strength in his body, if I'd have gone in to save him, he had drowned me along with him. I had to wait till he had no more strength to save himself. So that I could save him. And you have to understand, we have to understand that as long as we think we can take care of ourselves and save ourselves, we're not gonna call on the one who can save us. The Lord has a way of allowing us to get to the end of ourselves so that the only thing we can do is look up. And that's what took place with Jonah. Jonah's there finally at the very bottom, realizing that the only way he could go is up and he needs God's help and he repents there as he's in that condition. Verse seven, my soul fainted within me. I remembered the Lord. My prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. And so he repented. How do we know that this is true repentance? Well, one, and notice this, he acknowledged that all that had occurred was his own fault. It was his own fault, his own fault. He did this to himself. He's the one who got himself in this situation. And so I was put in this situation because of what I have done and therefore it is my fault. It is what I have done. And so he acknowledged that what occurred was his own fault. Again, I've been saying this recently as we've been going through the Beatitudes for those of you who've been with us on Sunday, that I find it easy to blame other people but as long as I continue to blame other people for my own spiritual condition, then I have no hope to be saved. But if I finally come to realize that it's my fault, my own fault, and God forgive me a sinner, I can be saved. And so he acknowledged that all that occurred was his fault. Second, he wasn't asking anything from God. He was not asking, he had no hidden motives. He was simply saying, God, be merciful to me because I have done something wrong. He wasn't trying to bargain with God. And also he came to realize that God was a God of mercy who would forgive him. And so he prayed and asked for help. He actually learns a lesson in verse eight when he says those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. I know that God is the one who is going to save me. And if I rely on the power of anything but God, I cannot be saved. I'm forsaking the mercy that could actually save me, is what he's saying. So when fleeing from God's call to preach, he had forsaken God's mercy for him. But he finally in verse nine gets to the point where he says, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay you what I have vowed. In Psalm 50 verses 14 and 15, it simply says this, offer to God thanksgiving, pay your vows to the most high, call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you will glorify me. I will keep my promise. How many times have you ever promised something to God and then when everything worked out okay, you forgot your promise? I was 16 or so, 15, 16, I was in the ocean. Not far in the ocean, just off the shore really. But I was swimming out. Huntington at that time, there were actually two sets you had inside and outside waves. And I was going to the outside rather than the shoreline waves. And when that happened, I got a cramp in my leg. Oh, that hurts. I got a cramp in my leg. And I'm not the best swimmer in the world. I get, you know, so I rolled over onto my back and I started doing a backstroke because I couldn't use my leg. And my other one was cramping at the same time. And I knew I was going to drown. I knew it. And I began to cry out to God. Now I was not a religious boy, I'll be honest with you. But I had been taught to pray and I started praying. God help me, God help me. I still remember when I finally got to the end of my song. I said, I can't go another stroke, I let myself go. And I was, I dropped about two inches and I'm on the shoreline. I just, oh God, you promise you'll do almost anything. You promise that? Anything, you know? But then you're safe. You say, well, thanks a lot. And off you go, right? And I did that many, many, many times. And Jonah was not doing that. Jonah came to the end of himself, realized what he had done, learned his spiritual lesson. And so a man who had fled is now ready to fulfill. And so what happens? He's going to go off and he's going to preach. Now in verse 10, the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah on to dry land. That kind of tells you what happens when you forsake the Lord. You end up vomited somewhere. Let me add one thing. Then we'll get into the second portion of our study, chapter three. Is this a true event or is this just a story? Is this a true event or is this just a story? There are those who will say it's an allegory. It's just a story. There's a spiritual lesson couched in human illustration. They say, no, there's no way that this man ever was really inside of this giant fish and all. And there've been arguments about this for many years. So the question has to be asked at this point. Did this really happen? Is this a true event or simply a story? And the answer to that was this. Jesus made it clear that this is an actual event. In Matthew 12, verse 40, Jesus said this, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the valley of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus spoke of it as an actual event. In Luke 11, verse 30, as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation. Jesus uses this as an actual event. There are those when I was in Bible college, our professors pointed out that there were theologians who will say that Jesus was simply wrong about this. And when asked, the theologians had been asked, are you smarter than Jesus? Their answer was, yes. Yeah, I know, huh? And of course, they're idiots. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. So he's chastened. And God now allows this fish to vomit him on the shore. He must have looked very interesting at this point, wouldn't you think? Can you imagine that? We have to put ourselves in that place for just a moment. He's been inside the belly of a great fish. It's been three days. I'm gonna assume that the digestive fluids of that animal probably has done something to his skin. I'm gonna assume that his hair is probably not combed. I'm gonna assume he smells. And he may have bits of food, seaweed, yeah, all over him. And the fish, there you go Jonah. And he goes to preach. Think about that. He goes off to preach. Just the sight of this man would have made me one God. Verse one, chapter three. The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach to it the message I tell you. Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three day journey and extent. Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. He cried out and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. It was a huge city. Now he realized that he was greatly loved and he also knew he had been greatly chastened. Again, the purpose of chastening was to make him useful for the work of the Lord. I had mentioned this earlier, Hebrews 12, 11. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening. It is painful. But afterward there will be a quiet harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. And that's what happened with Jonah. You see the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. He receives his second chance. Now this is something by the way I'll say this briefly that you see fairly often in scripture. God had spoken to a man named Moses and Moses was 40 years of age at that time. And God was gonna use a man, I should say, God was gonna use a man by the name of Moses. And when Moses was 40 years at that time, he chose to deliver, he thought deliver or give a message to the children of Israel through rising up in opposition to the Egyptians. And in doing so, what he did is he rose up and he slew an Egyptian taskmaster. Now, when you study your Bible, here's something for you that perhaps you may not be aware of. When you think of Moses slaying the taskmaster and you look at the story there, it's interesting because the scripture says that Moses looked to the left and he looked to the right. He slew this man and buried him in the sand. You know the story. You saw the movie. Did you know two things? One, the taskmasters were amongst the most brutal and powerful of the Egyptians who ruled over the Jewish slaves. They were very fierce. They were very powerful. They were frightening. They didn't have very small men guarding the slaves. They had rough men. They had vicious men. But you also need to read that Moses was learned in all the knowledge of the Egyptians. Moses was being raised to be the son of Pharaoh, possibly to ascend the throne of Egypt. Moses, in other words, was not a delicate youth at all. He was a martial artist. You didn't know that possibly, but he was a martial artist. He knew all the ways of war. And so that's why when he saw this taskmaster, he didn't even give him a second thought. He just looked to the left to see if anybody's looking, looked to the right. Nobody's looking and took care of him, buried him. This is a man who apparently believed that through a force of strength, he could demonstrate that he was to deliver the nation of Israel. But the result of that, as we know the story, is that he was banished for 40 years. So at the age of 40 in his prime, he is actually taken out of the picture until he's 80. And then once again, God uses him because by the time he's 80, God has taught him many lessons that he did not know at the age of 40. God gave him another chance. And that's what the Lord does. You look at the apostle Peter. The apostle Peter is an individual who says to Jesus Christ, if everybody were to deny you, I never will. I would even go so far as to say that I would die for you. And yet we know his great failure. And yet later on, what do we see? The restoration of the apostle Peter. Why? Because the Lord has a tendency of giving us another opportunity. There was a young man that some of us know by the name of John Mark. We know him really by the name of Mark because he's the one who was used by God to write the gospel of Mark. John Mark was the cousin of a man by the name of Barnabas. And as a young man, John Mark went on ministry on a ministry trip with the apostle Paul. But he deserted them on that ministry trip and decided to go home. And so later on, when Barnabas, his cousin, and Paul are gonna go off and check on the condition of the church. See how they are? Barnabas decides that he wants to take John Mark with him and Paul says, no, we're not bringing him because this man, he deserted us on our last mission. I'm not taking him. So what happens? Well, Paul ends up taking a man named Silas and Barnabas ends up ministering to a young man named John Mark. What's interesting is if you only had Acts 15 to give us evidence concerning the things of Mark and all, you might conclude that his life didn't end up well and yet in second Timothy chapter four, the apostle Paul speaks of Mark and says he's profitable in ministry. God has a way guys of picking you up after you failed. I'm not saying go out and fail and just see if God will pick you up. What I am saying is he is the God of the second chance. He's the God of the third chance. He's the God of the fourth chance because he gives us more and more grace because we need more and more grace. Jonah wanted to leave. He fled the presence of the Lord. He wanted to walk away from his calling. The Lord says, no, I'm not letting you go that easily. I'm gonna chase in you. You're gonna go through something that very few human beings will ever experience. And once you've gone through that, you're gonna be my boy. You're gonna do what I told you to do. And that's exactly what's taking place with him. There may be some in this room right now that are running from the calling that God has placed on your heart. I have a question for you. How long are you willing to remain in a fish's belly? How long? How long until the Lord gets your attention? My dad didn't spank me very often. There are several reasons why he was afraid he'd kill me, but he just didn't like to. But one of the things, one of the reasons why he didn't spank me very often as a little boy, it's very, very easy to say is this, because he really didn't have to, because I didn't want to get spanked by my dad. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't something I wanted. So I tried at an early age to begin to learn the lessons the first time. So I didn't have to repeat the same lesson over and over again. I brought that into my spiritual life. If the Lord wants to teach me a lesson, over the years I've tried to learn it the first time because I don't want to go back to learn it a second. And I'm not 100% successful in that, but the Lord has taught me, listen the first time I speak. Joan is learning that. Joan is learning that. Now, here we go in verse two. Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, preach to it the message I tell you. Jonah arose, went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three day journey in extent. Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. He cried out and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. He had a very short message, guys, eight words. Eight words. You have 40 days and you're dust. It's all over. Now, it's interesting. Everything is still pretty much the same, isn't it? The same prophet, same city, same basic message. So there is one exception. Jonah's been changed. Before he was disobedient, now he's obedient and he's following the command of the Lord. Jonah, you're to go and you're to preach. You're to preach the message that I give to you. I want you to notice something. I'll say it briefly, but it's worth saying. He doesn't create the message. He gives the message God gave to him. Listen, you can't improve on the message of repentance that leads to salvation. We as Christians are simply commanded to preach what God gives to us, even if it makes no sense to the unsaved. The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 118, I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God. And the most powerful thing, you can keep this in mind, marketing your heart if not on your Bible or in your notes. The most powerful thing you can do is be faithful to the message. Just be faithful to the message. Point people to Jesus Christ. Today we're trying to water down the message. We're trying to make it appealing to people. We're trying to make God appealing to people. We're trying to make Christianity appealing to people. But we can't, we have to just give what God gives. And sometimes God may speak a word of grace that is so beautiful because there are those who need to hear the grace of God. And then there are times that God may have a word of warning. And the word of warning has to be spoken. You cannot give just one message, you have to give the full counsel. And that is very important because today, in our day, there are those who are so concerned with having people show up and remain in their churches that they water the message down. But when you give sermonettes, you create Christianettes. You cannot be giving a watered down message because it does not develop a strong faith. You have to understand that. You have to understand that. You know, my intensity, and I'll say this briefly, is of such nature that some people think, he's just too rough, he just, you know, it's too direct. But I would hope that's not the case. I would hope that what I'm trying to do is from the heart of love for me and you. I'll be honest with you, I don't want to do the right things before God also. That we together would say, I just need the truth. What is, you know, as Pontius Pilate asked the Lord Jesus Christ, when Jesus said, those who are of the truth will hear my voice, Pontius Pilate said, what is truth? This generation's doing the same thing. The people that we live around, the people perhaps even in our own house or we work with or go to school with, the people in our neighborhoods, the people in restaurants around us are at the show that we went to see or whatever. Nobody's speaking truth to them. Very few people are. You're not going to get truth if you go on and watch it on the news. You're not going to see the truth there, are you? You're not. You're not going to find truth in any other source outside of the word of God. And that's why we should just speak the truth. And when God says, this is my message, our responsibility is simply to give God's message. And so what happens? He says, 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Now he's walking in this city. He's looking for places undoubtedly that he might share. But as he's walking, he's crying this out. People are beginning to hear this as he's walking through the city, this message. 40 days, Nineveh shall be overthrown. What happens? Well, verse five, the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth from the greatest of the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh. He arose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his noble saint. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything, do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Cry mightily to God, yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Incredible response, an entire city repents. It's interesting, it says they believe God. They believed what the prophet communicated. They knew that this message was not originating from some angry Jewish man. They knew it was something deeper than that. It's like what it says in First Thessalonians 2.13, where Paul said, we will never stop thanking God that when we preached his message to you, you didn't think of the words we spoke as being just our own. You accepted what we said as the very word of God, which of course it was. This word continues to work in you who believe. You didn't receive it as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the very word of God. The entire city repents of their evil. They don't want to be judged and they exhibited what would be called the fruit of repentance. Repentance, I've been sharing with you about this lately. Let me say again that repentance is literally a change of mind. It speaks of a change of view, especially in regards to who you are in comparison to who God is. And what happens when you're truly repenting is you recognize sin for what it is. It's the sin against God. It's not a mistake only and it's not an error in judgment. Against you and you only have I sinned and done this thing. Along with repentance will be the fruit of repentance. There can be a genuine sorrow over sin. There'll be a response. You see the response here of the people of Nineveh and the king. They fasted, they put on sackcloth, put on ashes. All of these are outward signs of sorrow over sin. The king himself calls on the entire land to repent. He says, turn from your evil way, turn from your violence. And as this is taking place, it says in verse 10, God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them and he did not do it. We pray for the nation that we live in that God would begin to work in the hearts of his people. When you begin to look and I'm not gonna go into deep detail about this, this is just something from my heart as I'm rolling to a conclusion really but I'll share it like this. When you look at the history, the early history of the United States, you see that this is a nation that initially had come with the expectation of actually having the freedom to worship God and the laws and a variety of things that have taken place in the history of this nation has been really fundamentally based on the Judeo, what they call the Judeo-Christian faith. We know that, that's a fact you can't obliterate from history. And the nation at one time actually had a sensitivity to the things that actually pertain to justice and righteousness. No, we've never been a perfect nation. Yes, we've had terrible sin and yes we've had histories of oppression and injustice and I'm not arguing and saying this is a perfect nation. What I am saying is that there was a fiber, there was something within this nation though that it's from its origin and what is in its origin relates to the Christian faith. Our generation now that is rising up is when, I would say is a generation, the younger generation that is really unique in that it doesn't have a real sense of the value of the word of God, of holiness or any of the things that this nation traditionally is how fast to and regarded as being important. As you look at what's going on around the world right now and you start seeing the spread of radical Islam, you see the reluctance of our elected officials to even state what is the obvious that all of us see that they don't want to admit to. It causes me great concern in the sense that there seems to be a denial or some kind of such a callousness and such a spiritual blindness that they cannot realize what is taking place is not just physical through the movement through ISIS and other groups like that but it's actually spiritual in its heart, spiritual in its origin. When you have England kicking out missionaries and when you have countries that have no go zones where you can't go into certain places in Germany or in England or in France because they are under Muslim domination and so they won't send in non-Muslims as police officers or anything like that and many of the places that are there actually want to have their own legal jurisdiction and that's happening right now. I mean, 20 years ago I was in England and I was in a particular village outside of London and a pastor, a Calvary Chapel pastor in this particular village was telling me that the whole place had been taken over by Muslims. He said, even our school board has been taken over by Muslims. He said, the elected officials here, they were our governmental officials of the city, the city officials, he said, our Muslims, he said, and this entire city is being transformed even now. Well, that was over 20 years ago and so you have what they call no go zones where you could not go into these with safety, especially if there's a problem going on because you couldn't be assaulted and somebody says, oh, that's over there. No, that's in Dearborn, Michigan. That's also here and it's spreading and so what we do is we put our head in the sand and we say, oh, you know, we don't want to be offensive. I don't either, I do not want to be offensive but at the same time, I'm seeing the fruit of this. I'm seeing that if this nation doesn't awaken to the reality of the spiritual warfare that we're going through, that we are gonna find ourselves in a situation not that far in the future, that we're gonna say, how did this happen? How did we get here? So the Lord has ignited in my heart a greater desire to encourage us as a congregation, get in the word of God and be open in your faith. We need to be. It's a time like this that we've been called to shine. That's what God, that's why we're going through Matthew on Sunday, Sunday mornings because I want to get the essentials of the Christian faith. Some people, oh, I'm bored with that man. I've already read that before. Give me something new. Well, there's a book of Mormon, that's new. Or you can have the truth and you can know who Jesus Christ is so we can live for Jesus Christ in these days equipped for works of service so that it's not all about us, it's about him. And it's an awareness that the days that we're living in are dangerous. Perilous times will come in these last days, Paul said. And that's where we're living in right now. And so what we need is we need to understand that God's message is timeless and it has an impact. Even though Jonah was a Jewish prophet preaching a message from the God of Israel, the foreigners heard that message and turned temporarily at least from their wicked ways and were spared. Isaiah 45, 22 says, look to me and be saved all you ends of the earth for I am God, there is no other. In Luke 11, 32, Jesus said, the men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation shall condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. Behold, a greater than Jonah is here. God spared the city because God desires to show mercy to all. Now I sadly say this outward repentance wasn't permanent but it was enough for God to act compassionately. We need to pray for ourselves. We need to pray, those of us who are parents, grandparents, for our children and our grandchildren, that they might be a generation that rises up to honor the Lord because the baton of faith, we are in a relay race. God handed you a baton, the baton of the gospel and you took it and you've been running your leg of the race but the time's gonna come when you have to make a baton exchange. You have to make that exchange and I pray that it's a clean exchange, that I'm able to take that baton of faith and I pray that I've been able to hand it to my kids and that my kids will be able to take that same baton that I received and hand it to their kids until Jesus comes. We are dead serious about our walk with Jesus Christ in these last days. God has compassion and God has mercy and I pray that he has compassion and mercy for this nation but how shall they hear in the somebody is sent and in the somebody preaches and that's why it's important for us to not be as Jonah running off somewhere else but to enter into that battle trusting God to see God do the work that he promises that he'll do, that he will touch the lives of people through a message of repentance and we're gonna see the greatest revival of his day and the response that Jonah had to it because you already know he wasn't happy that they repented. We'll see that next time.