Repent

I am glad that you are with us tonight as we dive into Jonah 3. What we are going to see tonight is one of the most remarkable missionary movements to ever happen on the face of the earth. What we are going to read in Jonah 3 is practically unrivaled when it comes to successful evangelism. While unrivaled for its time, the missionary success was only a glimpse of what God would do in the sending of His Son. Last night we read of Jonah’s great prayer in the belly of the fish and the chapter ended with the Lord speaking to the fish and the fish vomits up poor Jonah onto dry land. When we get to chapter 3, God has really hit the reset button. In fact, verses 1-2 of chapter 3 line up practically word for word, not exactly word for word, with Jonah 1:1-2. There’s so much that happens in this chapter and what’s amazing is that it only takes up 10 verses. The greatest evangelistic outreach before the time of Christ takes up only 10 verses. I remember back in June as I was starting to prepare these lessons and when I got to chapter 3, I really just sat at my desk in awe for a few minutes because there is just so much going on in this chapter that I wish we had 4 weeks instead of 1 to go through this book, we could spend a week in chapter 3 alone. There is just so much richness in this chapter and there is just so much grace. Every verse drips the kindness and the grace of God. From Jonah’s second chance, to God’s message, to Nineveh’s response, this is a grace filled chapter in a mercy-filled book. And as I was re-reading this chapter, it really got me thinking about my own life and I’m hoping that as we look at it tonight, you’ll take a look at your life as well. You and I are no more deserving of grace and forgiveness than anyone else. The grace and mercy that is shown to Nineveh is a picture of the grace and mercy that is shown to every single sinner that has ever come to Christ. Totally unworthy, totally undeserving, yet freely given. When we see the mercy shown to Nineveh, we can think of the mercy that has been shown to us. John Calvin said, “Every instance in which the mercy of God occurs to our remembrance, ought to be embraced by us as an occasion of ascribing glory to God.” To give you a map of where we are going tonight, we are going to look at 4 truths or 4 elements of salvation: 1. God’s Message of Salvation. 2. The Need for Salvation. 3. God’s Work in Salvation. 4. God’s Peace Through Salvation. Let’s pray and then we will read Jonah 3

Jonah 3 ESV

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 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. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” 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, and he did not do it.

God’s Message of Salvation

Let’s dive into God’s message of salvation. Verse 2 practically repeats what God told Jonah back in Jonah 1:2. “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” And then in verse 4 we see what that message is: It is a message of judgement. “Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” While that may not have been all of what Jonah preached, it was what was recorded. It very well could have been the entire message. I remember hearing Charles Spurgeon tell a story of when he was testing out the acoustics of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London that he stood at the pulpit and simply said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” That simple message so stirred the heart of one of the men doing construction that he went home totally convicted by what he heard, read his Bible, came to church and was saved. God can do a lot more in 4 words than we can do in 400. Jonah’s message did not have to be a 45 minute- 5 point sermon to get to the heart of the listeners. When we look at Jonah’s message to Nineveh, we notice that it is not a message that goes under the disguise of, “God loves you just the way you are.” Instead it gets to the crux of the matter and we need more of this in our Gospel messages. We need to be confronted with the truth and that is what happens to Nineveh. Jonah doesn’t allow them to see through rose-colored glasses but he tells them how it really is. In order for you to really grasp salvation, you need to understand that there is something that you need to be saved from. Gospel preaching in order for it to be a salvation message must address sin and sinners. If you go up to someone and say, “God loves you as you are, He wants you to be in Heaven and He has a wonderful plan for your life” you are failing to deliver the saving message of the Gospel. You’re giving a pep talk where man is the hero and God is passively rooting them on. No, salvation must always confront sinfulness. We need to know what we are being saved from which we will get to in just a moment. Salvation messages need to address that which one must be saved from. Jonah’s message really gets to the thing that is most important. God’s message of salvation always addresses man’s sinfulness. Francis Schaeffer, a great theologian and apologist in the mid 1900’s was once asked how he would share the Gospel with someone if he only had 1 hour to do so and he said that he would spend the first 45-50 minutes on the bad news before he got to the good news. He said that he would spend those first 45 minutes talking about the state of man, about their sinfulness and the holiness of God, and how we are destined for hell unless our sins are atoned for and he put this first and foremost because man needs to be made aware of their most pressing problem. Sinful mankind lies guilty before the eyes of a holy and righteous God. Sinful mankind will spend an eternity in hell but praise the Lord their is a Redeemer. There is no being made right with God without repentance. You cannot hold onto your sin and your savior with the same hands. Your sin must be paid for by Christ or it shall be paid in full by you in hell. There are only two that can pay for sin: It must be paid by your or it must be paid by Christ. Jonah’s message doesn’t dance around the subject, it gets to the heart of the matter. What we see in these first few verses is that God’s message of salvation is a message of second chances. It is a message that restarts and revives the man and we see this specifically in the person of Jonah. Jonah receives his second chance and Nineveh is offered a second chance. Let’s turn now to the need for salvation.

The Need for Salvation

The message that Jonah brings is a message of judgement. There is a great need for salvation but not everyone realizes that. Why do we need to be saved? The only reason that we need to be saved is if there is something that we cannot save ourselves from. There must be something that is so extreme that salvation must be necessary. So, what I want to do quickly as we address the need of salvation is address it from two angles: 1. What are we saved from? 2. What are we saved for?

What are we saved from?

What are we saved from? What does salvation through Christ rescue us from? I want to give you two verses that I think may be most beneficial for this question. The first verse is John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” We are saved so that we will not perish. Now this does not mean that we will not physically die. Unless Christ returns before that time, we will all face death. What does Jesus mean when He says this then? He means that not only will He give us eternal life; He will also save us from eternal death. We will not perish eternally but we will live eternally. Christ saves us from hell. He saves us from our sins that only brings death. We die because we are sinners and sin has entered into the world. If we die in our sins, we will be in a state worse than perishing forever. Hell and its suffering will never die out. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,” Thomas Watson said of the sinners punishment in hell: “The wicked in hell shall be always dying but never dead. The smoke of the furnace ascends forever and ever. Oh, who can endure thus to be ever upon the rack? The word “ever” breaks the heart.” The lost in hell will be in a state of eternal perishing and after experiencing pain and punishment far worse than any that could be brought on in this lifetime, after experiencing it for ten thousands of years, they will not be a single second closer to any relief. They will be in a place of such torment that even a drop of cold water on the tip of their tongue would feel like a relief that is beyond compare but they will never receive that. The sinner will spend an eternity in a place that is full of weeping and gnashing of teeth in a place that is reserved for the devil and his angels. In hell the sinner will beg for all the ailments of their earthly lifetime because the suffering in this world will not come close to compare to the wrath that is to come. The sinner will experience the very wrath of God and will feel the weight of God’s holiness. The sinner will beg to die but no relief will ever come. The sinner will either weep or curse God in hell but this will accomplish nothing. Yes, we are saved from eternal death and eternal dying but perhaps most importantly, we are saved from the wrath of God. Paul writes in Romans 5:9-10

Romans 5:9–10 (ESV)

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Something that is not talked about enough in the church today is the wrath of God. God is not tolerant of sin and sinners, God is angry at sinners. God loathes sin and all unrighteousness and He is far too holy, far too righteous simply to allow sin to run rampant. The time is coming when God’s holy and perfect wrath will be poured out on sin and sinner. All that are not saved by God will be condemned by God. God’s wrath may be one single sin away from erupting and once it begins to flow, it will not stop until it accomplishes all that God desires. God’s wrath will be poured out on you and you will experience the eternal torture of that punishment and this is why we need Jesus Christ because on our own, we can do nothing to avert God’s wrath. We cannot make a single payment towards God’s wrath. If you are not a Christian, understand that these are not empty words. The Bible talks so much of hell for it to just be an image of something. Even if the words in regards to hell are just a metaphor, what could they represent? A day at the beach? A hot and humid day? Hell is so wicked and so full of God’s wrath that to spend a single millisecond there would totally undo the most hard-hearted of sinners. R.C. Sproul said, “Many believe in a god who has no wrath, but if God has no wrath, there is no need for Christ. Unbelievers say, ‘That’s fine for you, but I do not need Jesus,’ yet there is nothing in heaven or on earth they need more than Jesus. As long as people are unconcerned about the wrath of God, they feel no need to come to Jesus. If God is real, so is His wrath, and the Biblical view of salvation is rescue from wrath.” The sinner is not being rescued from the devil, He is being rescued from God by God. We need Jesus because He takes on the wrath that we deserve. All wrath that was to be intended to you in hell has been paid in full through the death of the Son of God. This is why Paul can say in 1 Thessalonians, that whatever may come to the Christian, it is not wrath because Christ stood in our place and took the wrath that we deserved. Have you been saved by faith in Jesus Christ?

What are we saved for?

That is what we are saved from but now, what are we saved for? We’re not saved so that we can keep on sinning. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that one of the things that persuaded him the most to leave his thriving medical career was that he was helping sinners get better just so they could go back out and sin again. He wanted to do something where real life change actually happened. What are we saved for then? We are saved for the glory of God. We are saved to honor the One that saved us. We are saved so that we can do the things that bring glory to God. We are saved to worship, we are saved to praise His name, we are saved to do His work. Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are not saved by our good works but we are saved for good works. William Kline wrote in his commentary on Ephesians, “God predetermined to refashion Christians so they can do what pleases Him. God has accomplished the preparation that enables his people to perform good works. Our good works owe to God’s work in us, not to our own efforts to be good.” It all comes down to this really, we are saved by God, for God, through what God has done. When we speak of eternal life, that word eternal means more than just duration. It means that our lives are totally overtaken by He that is eternal. It means that God Himself lives within the soul of man. It means that as God lives forever, He will live with us forever and be in us forever. It is the life of God within the soul of man. Let’s turn back and look at God’s work in salvation.

God’s Work in Salvation

When we look at the story of Jonah, we see God is the one that brings salvation. This is true through the entire Bible. It is true in salvation through Christ. It is God-given! It is God that saves Jonah from the sea, from the fish, from himself! It is God’s message through God’s prophet that saves Nineveh from God’s wrath. We see God move the heart of the sinner through His message. The message itself never changes but the delivery can. The message of the Gospel must always be centered on the true Gospel. We must understand that God’s way of salvation is in Scripture alone, by faith alone, through grace alone, through Christ alone, for the glory of God alone. If you get these 5 things right, it almost doesn’t matter what else you get wrong. But if you miss one of these 5, it does not matter what else you might get right. God’s work in salvation attacks the very heart of the sinner. Look at the way that the people of Nineveh respond. It is true repentance of the heart. You can fake a lot of emotion but you cannot fake true heart change when it happens. God’s message hits the very core of the sinner and when the Holy Spirit grabs hold, there is no letting go. To turn from sin and trust in Christ is to put all in the hands of God. When we turn to God for salvation, just as He relents from the punishment due to the Ninevites, He turns from the punishment that was reserved for the sinner. What we also see in this chapter is the great reminder that all need salvation. Salvation is not just for the weak but for the strong, not just the poor but the rich. It seems that salvation started at the very heart of the most powerful man of the nation. The kings of this world need Christ as much as the next person. What we also see in this is that God’s salvation is offered to the world. You do not have to be a Jew to be saved. God’s salvation comes to the chief of sinners. Remember what Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15 “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” If someone like Paul can be saved, you can be saved. If someone like the King of Nineveh can have his heart so penetrated with the message of salvation and be saved, who are you to limit what God can and cannot do with those that He desires to be saved. Now look at it through this lens: If God can save someone like Paul, He can save someone like you. If God can save Nineveh, the poster child of sin and violence, He can save that person in your life that you want to see come to a saving knowledge of the truth. Is God’s salvation at work in you? God’s desire to save is greater than our desire to be saved. His willingness to save is greater than our willingness to be saved. What does all of this end up with? As we see in Jonah 3:10, it all leads to God’s peace through salvation.

God’s Peace Through Salvation

We read in Jonah 3:10 “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, and he did not do it.” God relented of the disaster that He said He would do to them. As we come to faith in Christ, all the punishment that we deserved is replaced with God’s perfect peace. When God looked at what Nineveh did at the end of Jonah 3, He did not see the Nineveh that He threatened to destroy, He saw a place that was brought to repentance and salvation. I love this quote by Hugh Martin: “It was wicked, violent, unrighteous, atheistical, proud, and luxurious Nineveh which God had threatened to destroy. A city sitting in sackcloth and ashes, humbled in the depths of self-abasement, and appealing as lowly suppliants to His commiseration- a Nineveh like that- that Nineveh, He had never threatened. That Nineveh He visited not with ruin. He had never said that He would. The Nineveh which God threatened to destroy passed away; it became totally another city- far more so, in virtue of this change in moral state, than if it had been translated from its olden geographical position, and wholly transformed in its architectural appearance. Surely its great moral change has made it more truly another place- a kind of new creature, old things having passed away, and all things become new- than any alteration in its physical aspect could have done.” If you think about it, the old Nineveh was destroyed but it was replaced by something totally better. Something redeemed and something new. Where the old Nineveh stood, condemned before God, now stood a new Nineveh redeemed before God. Thus we see what happens in the life of every saved sinner. Where there was once the old Nineveh, now stands the new. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” When the old passes away, when the new has come, that is when we have the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. Paul says in Romans 5:1-2

Romans 5:1–2 (ESV)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

The greatest need that you and I have is to be at peace with and reconciled to God. How does that happen? It happens nowhere outside of Jesus Christ. If you get that wrong, it does not matter what else you get right. Until you have made peace with God, until you repent of your sins and cast all your hopes on faith in Jesus Christ, you will be lost in your sin. You will never know true peace until peace has been made between you and the Lord but once that happens, nothing else can touch you in this world that will ever remove you from that peace. Don’t understand it? It’s beyond comprehension that God would have such mercy towards us! Philippians 4:7 says, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Jesus Himself says in John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” We need this peace and we cannot find this peace outside of Christ. Steven Lawson wrote, “This peace does not come from this world or anything in it. Instead, it comes down from above, like a surging river into troubled hearts, and such peace is found exclusively in Christ Jesus. There is not a drop of genuine peace outside of him, nor a moment of relief apart from resting in him. All peace and all comfort are found in Christ, and in him alone.” Have you experienced this peace? If it is possible for a nation like Nineveh to experience it, what is stopping someone like you from experiencing it? As we close this time in worship, you need to search your heart. You need to ask if you have really been made right with the God that you have so often sinned against and if you cannot answer positively, what’s stopping you from doing it this very moment? The wrath of God is real, hell is real, pain is real, and judgement is coming. Make peace with God today by repenting of your sin, remove the robe that is your pride and glory and put sackcloth on its place knowing that as you do that and turn to Christ your old robe of sin and self-righteousness is replaced with a robe of pure whiteness which is the righteousness of Christ. Have you been made right with this God? Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.