Jonah 1:1-2 Number 1

THE FIRST COMMISSION OF JONAH

JONAH 1:1-2

Number 1

INTRODUCTION

PRAY

This week we were shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of Beth’s mum and the sadness that it bought on all the Smith clan.

I was talking to Danny the next day and he was telling me how grandmother passed:

- He was telling me her day started just like any other day: she was given an early morning cup of tea in her bedroom.

- But then failed to show up after that in the dining room a little time later.

- Staff went to see how she was doing

- They found she had passed away.

My own mother-in-law passed away in a very similar way. She too was in a rest home:

- And it was organized to take some of the residence for a short afternoon drive.

- They stopped their van to get some fresh air.

- Mum sat down in her wheelchair and said to the caregiver, “Isn’t the sun lovely and warm…”

- And with that she breathed her last.

I don’t’ know about you, but these things remind me of just how close eternity is to the ‘here and now’; to this present life:

- Life seems to be going on as normal.

- We make our plans and have our expectations for the week.

- Suddenly we are no more on earth, but we find ourselves in either heaven or hell.

- There is no time gap whatsoever between the two eternal realities.

What comfort there is for the Christian!!!!

Psalm 116:15 says:

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.”

Doesn’t that speak of:

- God’s tenderness towards those who love Him?

- His own child is precious; treasured; special in His sight!

- These are the ones He chose before the foundation of the world to give to His son as a gift and reward for His work of redemption.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.”

But oh what terror there is for those living away from God and living outside His Kingdom!

Heb 10:31 reminds us:

“It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Well today we are going to start a serious of sermons in the book of Jonah, Lord willing.

And we find in that book God acting sovereignly: calling to account a whole nation that had been living in sin and acting very wickedly.

- For them life had been the same for yrs.

- They were continuing in their normal ways: godlessness, violence, arrogance and general wickedness.

- UNTIL one day, we read in todays passage “their wickedness came up before God”!

And unlike so many, this nation was given one last opportunity to repent and submit to God ORthey would fall into the hands of an angry God and face eternal judgement for their unrepentance.

Please turn to me to Jonah 1 and we will read verses 1 and 2 – the text for this morning.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

This book is one of the shortest books in the OT; it is amongst those prophesies we often refer to as one of the Minor Prophets:

- That does not mean it is an unimportant book compared with the Major Prophets.

- It simply refers to the length of the prophesy.

- At the end of the day, “All Scripture is [h]inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for [i]training in righteousness;”… .and that includes the minor prophets.

When I started to prepare for this series, I was staggered at how many interpretations there are and how differently commentators and preachers view Jonah:

- One viewed him as a rogue prophet that deserved to be expelled from the school of prophesy.

- Others go on about him being a racist because he did not want to preach to the Ninevites? He just hated them and had no time for them. And the last thing he wanted was for them to be saved?

- That’s another view.

- Or is he a man of God who simply made a mistake? Who was disobedient to God’s commandment and end up losing his way with what God wanted him to do?

- Or was something more going on behind the text that is less obvious?

Well, we are going to look at some of the issues behind the story, as well as the facts we know so well.

This morning we are going to look at two things in verses 1 & 2:

1. The man

2. The mission

And the next time, Lord willing, we will go on to look at:

3. The mutiny – Jonah’s mutiny against the Lord and against his mission.

1. The Man

What do we know about the man?

Let me state at the outset:

- I regard this book and this man as part of real history.

- It is not a parable; or allegory; or a fable – as so many scholars and commentators assert.

- Jonah is a real person, who lived in history.

Why do I say that?

Well, for the simple reason that the Bible itself treats him as a real man in real history. He is referred to outside this book in BOTH the OT and the NT – and I’m sure it wouldn’t do that if this was just a parable or a story.

What’s more, we are told in verse 1 who this man was: he was “Jonah the son of Amittai”.

That suggests, does it not, that he is a real person with his own family lineage. If he lived today his DNA could be traced from the family of Amittai.

And that fact is confirmed when you look at the ONLY other OT reference to this man which is found in 2 Kings 14:23-25.

This is what we read about him there:

23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria andreigned forty-one years. 24 He did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin. 25 [So Jeroboam II was as bad as Jeroboam I, but we read…] He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke [i]through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.

- So Jonah is from Gath-Hepher: a small town in Galilee; about 2 miles NE of Nazareth.

- He was a real person with a real family, in the real history of Israel

- He lived in the territory allotted to the tribe of Zebulun (and you can read about that in Josh 19).

- It was one of the smaller, insignificant tribes.

- And he was from a small and insignificant place.

- But we are also told in 2 Kings 14 that Jonah was a “servant of Yahweh and a prophet in Israel”.

And we are told that Jonah ministered during the reign of Jeroboam II and he reigned from 793 – 753 BC. He was:

- A wicked king, who reigned over Israel at a time of spiritual decline and darkness.

- Yet, miraculously and graciously God gave Jeroboam success in extending Israel’s northern border all the way to the Syro-Hittite city of Hamath

- That extension was one of the greatest extensions since the time of King Solomon.

- And who predicted this great extension to Israel? None other than Jonah!!

The point that I’m trying to make is:

- Jonah was a faithful servant of God

- He predicted that the borders would be enlarged even though that seemed unlikely…

- And his prophesy came true.

- It would have been a welcome message.

- It was good news in Israel.

- All this happened “according to the Word of Yahweh, the God of Israel, which he spoke by the hand of His servant Jonah the son of Amittai the prophet.”

What I want you to see is what high terms the scriptures speak of Jonah in 2 Kings 14.

There is no hint of being wayward or disobedient. He loved the Lord and faithfully discharged his calling as a prophet.

He is called Yahweh’s servant and addressed with the formal title: “prophet”.

And both those things go together in a faithful prophet do they not?

What was a prophet in the OT economy?

i) He was first and foremost a God-fearing believer.

- God called men to Himself first and foremost, BEFORE giving them a task to do.

- He had to deal with them personally before fitting them for ministry.

- He caused them to first become His “servant” before calling them to be a prophet.

You can think of many examples to show that.

Think of the prophet Isaiah:

- God had to deal with him personally before he was sent to a rebellious and hard-hearted people who would not listen.

- Isaiah had to have that vision of the Lord high and lifted up, clothed in utterly holiness. In fact Isaiah 6 says He is Holy to the third degree: holy, holy, holy.

- And that vision caused Isaiah see himself cursed in comparison:

“Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

- God was dealing with him personally.

- And you will recall how the Lord sent an angel to cleanse him of his sin by taking a burning coal from the altar to cauterize his lips – to remove the impurities.

- All this was preparatory to the work God had in store for him to do.

- Isaiah and Jonah first had to become God’s servants before they could do His work.

My friends, the same is true for you and me. God must first deal with us as individuals before He sends us on any missions:

- He must change our hearts.

- He must bring us under conviction for our sins;

- And then drive us to Christ for cleaning; -

- Only then can He employ you in His kingdom.

I so I want to ask you up front: Have you come to this place?

Have you humbled yourself before Him and looked up to the cross in weakness and fear and trembling?

Have you seen His utter holiness and your complete sinfulness?

Have you come to an end of yourself, or do you still think of yourself as basically a good person that God can use?

My friends, God must deal with our pride and our sin and attitude, before He can call us and use us in His service.

Jonah was, first and foremost, God’s servant – that’s what 2 Kings 14 tells us.

But then he was called to be a prophet!

What was the calling of a prophet?

ii) The prophet was appointed by God to be His messenger or ambassador, to take a message from Himself to other people.

The prophet is different to a mediator. The mediator stood between God and men. He spoke on behalf of men to God; he represents the people of God before God’s throne. The prophet, however, primarily speaks from God to people.

And what was the content of all prophesy?

Well we need to be clear that it wasn’t always about telling the future. (That is the way we often think of prophesy, isn’t it?)

a) Sometimes the prophet was to foretellwhat was going to happen in the future.

Very often that prophesy focused on coming judgement or sometimes on the future coming of the Messiah.

b) But other times, and actually more commonly, the prophet would simply be forthtellingthe word of God.

Applying the Word of God to the people; reiterating what God had already set forth in His covenant with His people.

God used the prophet to do both: to foretell and to forth-tell His Word.

There is one other thing we should remember about the prophet in the OT.

God laid down some principles for His people so that they might judge whether the prophet was a true prophet or a false prophet.

Do you remember the test?

The primary test was whether or not the Word of the Lord was fulfilled.

Listen to what it says in Deut 18:21,22:

21 [n]You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ 22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

The false prophet’s message did not come to fulfilment. The true prophet was known to be such, by fulfilment of the words of his prophecy.

Well, this is all very important when you consider Jonah, the man.

- It appears he was a godly man.

- He loved Yahweh.

- He loved Israel.

- He is described as “a servant” of Yahweh.

- AND he was appointed formally to the office of prophet according to 2 Kings 14.

- He was privileged to be given a message from God for God’s people and he faithfully declared it.

- And his status as a true prophet was proven when the message he gave actually came to fulfillment.

Now I’ll just mention something else about Jonah, the man – something which we ought not to read too much into, but I thought was very interesting:

- Jonah’s name means “dove”.

- And the first mention of a dove in the Scriptures of course relates to the dove that Noah sent out from the Ark to see if the flood had passed; to see if there was dry land. Do you remember that? Gen 8

- The first time it was sent out it was an aborted mission – the dove returned to Noah not finding anywhere to land.

- But Noah commissioned the dove a second time and only then did it find that judgement was finished, and peace was established in the earth.

Does that not seem like a picture of what would happen to Jonah in this small book?

- He was sent out on a mission to Nineveh but he did not complete that mission – his judgement was only just beginning.

- God had to send this “dove” out a second time, and only then did Nineveh come to salvation and judgement was averted.

Like I say, we shouldn’t read too much into such detail, but the Scriptures are a seamless garment, and nothing is written by accident or chance.

But the reason why I have told you this is that Jonah stands in the middle of that great picture of salvation that spans the pages of Scripture;

A picture that starts in the imagery of salvation of Noah and his family after the judgement of the earth …

And that ends in the picture of Christ’s death and resurrection…

- Because Matthew tells us that Jesus said the only sign He would give that generation would be “the sign of Jonah”.

- Jonah who was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth – a type of Christ’s resurrection after His three days in the heart of the earth.

All this is to say this makes Jonah a very significant prophet, albeit in a small book.

So let me summarize what we have learnt about this man so far:

- Jonah is one of the minor prophets

- On the surface he appears insignificant

- He comes from one of the least tribes of Israel.

- He comes from one of the smallest of places.

- But he is a faithful servant of God and had a track record of delivering the message that God gave him.

- And he is a true prophet of God.

- And he ends up playing a central part in the history of our salvation, for Jesus Himself uses Jonah as a type of Himself.

I want to put it to you that this should be a great encouragement to us this morning, dear friends:

God can take the small, seemingly insignificant people; uneducated people, and send them to do a great work and allow them to play a significant role in the salvation of His elect.

Think of who God has chosen in the past:

- He chose Jacob, the grabber, the younger twin, not the older brother Esau who had the birthright (which he despised).

- He called Moses, even though he killed a man in defense of God’s people and felt he was unskilled in tongue and lacked eloquence.

- He used Rahab, the prostitute, to secure the first victory in the promised land.

- He took David, the shepherd boy who was keeping sheep whilst the bothers all lined up looking great and mighty hoping they might be chosen to be king by the prophet.

So often, in God’s economy, He takes the small things, the despised things; and makes the first last, and the last first.

1 Cor 1:26-29 puts it like this:

26 For [r]consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to [s]the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 29 so that no [t]man may boast before God.”

God deliberately choses the small, insignificant ones to carry out His great work, so that He gets all the glory!

My friend, if you feel God is calling you to a work or a task: never think that God cannot use you because you are too simple or don’t have enough education or aren’t eloquent or fail to have the gifts that you see in others.

There is only one thing God can’t use and that is the person who is full of themselves and their achievements. Because that person takes away from God receiving all the glory and praise.

Well, that’s Jonah “The Man”.

We are not told much more about him. But what we are told outside the book of Jonah is all good.

And therefore, we ought to give Jonah the benefit of the doubt when we read the book of Jonah rather than reaching for harsh judgements against him as so many seem to do.

But what did God command him to do?

Let’s look in the second place at:

2. The Mission

Look at Verse 2:

“Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

I want to put it to you that Jonah’s mission was a two-edged sword that made it very difficult for God’s servant:

- On the one hand, it is obvious that the message was directed primarily at Nineveh. That was the explicit mission of Jonah if you like – and that wasn’t going to be easy as we will see.

- But there is also an implied message for another nation: that of his own beloved nation of Israel.

What I’m suggesting is that neither of these audiences were likely to react well.

i) What do we know, in the first place, about Nineveh – the explicit recipients of this message of judgement?

Two things are mentioned in verse 2 – it was great city, and it was a wickard city.

It was a great city:

- We know it was the last capital city of the great Assyrian Empire. The greatest political and military power in the world at that time.

- It was located in that part of the world that we call Iraq today – way off in the east, in the dessert area, near the Tigris River.

- And it was an exceedingly large metropolis – Jonah chapt 4 says there were 120,000 infants in it and that suggests the population was at least 600,000 but probably much bigger.

- It had been built originally by a man named Nimrod – a name you might remember from Genesis 10 and 11. He was the great-grandson of Noah.

And do you remember what he was famous for?

He built the tower of Babel – when men were trying to make a name for themselves instead of giving glory to God. And Nineveh continued in that tradition.

- Nineveh had a colossal wall around it with 1400, 200 foot, towers as lookouts.

- The wall was so deep that they could run 3 chariots around it side by side along the top.

- God said it was a great city and it was!!!

But Nineveh was as wicked as it was impressive:

o The Assyrians were brutal, vicious; and often massacred their enemies

o They mutilated their captives and were known to dismember and decapitate and burn people alive.

o Indescribable forms of torture marked their behavior to their enemies.

And their foremost enemy was Israel!

o Assyria posed a clear and present danger to the national security of Israel.

o In the future they would become a devastating enemy that God would use to remove the 10 tribes of northern Israel and pretty much bring them to an end.

And what was Jonah’s mission according to verse 2?

“Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

“Jonah, I have called you to preach My Word, not to Israel, but to one of the worst and most pagan peoples on the face of the earth. I am sending you to preach to the traditional enemies of your own homeland.”

- Jonah was not called to a pleasant task.

- Not called to go to Queenstown and enjoy the sun and do a bit of evangelism on the lakeside.

- He was called to cry against a great city and a wicked city.

- And the message was one of judgement –call them out for their wickedness has been noted!

- My eyes have seen their evil and I will no longer tolerate their wicked ways!

The mission was to deliver a message of judgement against Nineveh!

ii) But as I said earlier, not only was there a direct, explicit, message to the people of Nineveh, but there was implied message for Israelwhich would have been equally unpopular.

Perhaps I can explain the effect on Israel in this way.

Imagine a father with two teenage sons.

Imagine the younger one had done something wrong and so his father exhorts him to change and repent and even promises him privileges that previously belonged to the older son.

But unbeknown to the father, the older son was eavesdropping on the conversation.

- he hears the promises going to his younger brother which used to belong to him.

- He wonders why his father is treating his brother so well and himself so poorly.

- His father’s message impacts on both sons at the same time.

Well, that is something like what is going on here between Nineveh and Israel.

Jonah is sent to Nineveh, but Israel is overhearing what is going on. And that impacts upon them!

So what is that implied message?

What would have Jonah’s mission to Nineveh have meant for his own nation of Israel?

There are two factors to consider:

On the one side was the fact that Nineveh was a gentile pagan nation. That would have caused no small stir.

Jonah himself probably expected to keep ministering in Israel until he retired. The last thing he would have considered was going to a pagan gentile nation and preaching there.

Of course, Proselytes were welcome in Israel. The law allowed for that. But the law focused on individuals, not nations, being admitted to their covenant community. Gentiles were regarded as outside the covenant.

Paul reminds us of that in Eph 2:11 - 13:

11 Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, [i]excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off [j]have been brought near [k]by the blood of Christ.

Paul acknowledges that the sphere of God’s grace was primarily to the Jews and not to the Gentles until after the time of Christ who died for both!

So how would have Jonah’s own people reacted to him being sent to Gentiles?

Well, the response of Israel depended on their spiritual state.

When Israel was close to God, they remembered that they were custodians of the grace of God that one day would be extended to the gentiles.

They remembered, for example, that one of the blessings of the covenant in Gen 12, stated that inIsrael’s seed “all the nations of the earth would be blessed”.

- They remember they were custodians of a cosmic program of salvation.

When they were close to God, we read in the book of Hebrews, that the holy men of old “obtained a good report by faith”.

They had a large view of God’s grace, and they expected the Messiah to rule over a world-wide kingdom.

But when Israel was spiritually away from God and their faith became formal and consisted of an outward show of piety….

They increasingly became filled with self-righteous pride and arrogantly claimed the privileges of the covenant for themselves, boasting: “We have Abraham as our father.”

So Israel’s response to one of their own prophets going to a pagan gentile nation depended on their spiritual state.

And what was that like at the time of Jonah?

Well, we have already noted that it was a time of spiritual decline. That there was much idolatry and that Jeroboam II had led them into much sin.

So, this mission of Jonah’s was likely to be an affront to self-righteous pride.

And that problem was only exasperated when Jonah contemplated why he was reallybeing sent to Nineveh.

- On the face of it the message is just a message of judgement. Go to this great city and cry against it.

- If that is all that would happen, then that would have fitted perfectly with Israel’s desires to judge their enemies.

- But Jonah knew Yahweh.

- Jonah knew God clearly wanted to actually save them and that is why He sent His prophet to preach to them!

- God gave no such warning to Sodom and Gomorrah.

- Why was God warning the people of Nineveh? For no other reason that He intended to save them if they repented.

In the book of Nahum, God condemned Nineveh through his prophet Nahum; another prophet 100 years later who pronounced judgement on Nineveh.

BUT FOR THIS generation, alive in Jonah’s time, God had plans for their salvation – showing the wonder of God’s sovereign grace and mercy and that went right against the grain in Israel.

My friends, should not this be a warning to us to look at our heart’s attitude?

- Isn’t it true that when we become prideful and arrogant, that we often look down on others and put them outside the pail of salvation?

- Isn’t it true that we too often focus on ourselves and how we have it altogether, that we have the truth, we look down on others and judge them for their ignorance?

- But when our hearts are humble, trusting God’s grace and looking to that alone, and to what HE can do, THEN we don’t see any limits to what the power of God can accomplish.

That is why it is so important that we “keep our hearts with all diligence” as Proverbs 4 tells us!

Jonah’s mission was an affront to Israel because he was going to gentiles.That was enough to get their backs up!

But as Joanna Paul say with her terrible adverts: There is more!!!

There’s another side the same coin!...

Another strongly implied message directed at Israel when God sent his prophet to a nation outside of Israel!

To discover this implied message, you have to go back to the book of Deuteronomy:

- Deuteronomy is a covenant renewal ceremony, recapping God’s covenant with His people. And at the end of that book, you will find a list of blessings and curses.

- Blessings if the people of God kept the covenant, and

- curses that would come upon them if they disobeyed the covenant.

- You can read all the curses in Deut 28.

The curses are picked up by Moses again in the song he taught the people to help them remember what God would do.

This is what we read in Deut 32 from verse 20:

“‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be; For they are a perverse generation, Sons in whom is no faithfulness. They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their [e]idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation”

In other words, part of the sanctions against Israel for idolatry and unfaithfulness was that God would make them jealous by those who were not a nation.

- He would give others the covenant blessings

- He would even send His prophets to those they regarded as pagans and beyond God’s grace.

Well do we not have an example of that right here in the book of Jonah?

- Nineveh was going to be given Israel’s blessings.

- Israel’s prophet was being sent to pagan, gentiles.

- Why? To provoke Israel to repentance and to return to the Lord with all their heart.

- God is reminding Israel, that He is enacting the curse provisions of His covenant against them.

Jonah’s mission was as much a mission of judgement on Israel just as much as it was on Nineveh.

My friends, isn’t this the same method God has taken up in dealing with Israel since their rejection of the Messiah?

This is the theme that the Apostle Paul takes up in Roman 10 and 11. We don’t have time to unpack this fully but let me just touch on it.

In Chapter 10 he is focusing on the Jews, and he says that God sent prophets and preachers. But they did not listen or accept God’s Word by faith.

And that continued right up to the time of the coming of the Messiah.

Our Saviour came first to the lost house of Israel. His ministry was largely focused on them. But they did not accept Him. They despised and rejected Him.

So what did God do with their unbelief and rejection of Jesus?

He opened the door of salvation to Gentiles! He sent the gospel to the four-corners of the earth.

In fact Paul quotes the very curses that we read in Deuteronomy’s in Romans 10:19.

Why send salvation to the Gentiles?

To provoke His own people, Israel, to jealously so that they too might be grafted back in as the natural branches of the true Vine. That’s what Paul goes on to explain in Romans 11.

So when you think about Jonah’s mission:

- it was clearly an afront to the mighty people of Nineveh to be called out for their wickedness. (Even though Jonah understood God really wanted to save them.)

- But there is this implied afront to Israel. Their blessings were being shared with gentiles and the covenant curses of Deut were coming down on their own heads!

My friends, there is a message here for us, is there not?

On the one hand, if we put ourselves in the shoes of the people of Nineveh, we must never forget that our sins are seen and weighed in the divine scales of justice by the living God.

- He saw the wickedness of Nineveh and was so concerned by it He sent His servant Jonah to address it.

- Jonah was sent to cry out against it.

- And when they listened and repented, they were saved.

- But in Nahum when they did not listen or humble themselves, God wiped them out!

We must never think we can hide our sin from God.

- Don’t ever think you can fool Him, or that He doesn’t care or that He will wink at sin.

- One day a day may come when He says: Enough! And the opportunity of salvation is over. Your sin has come up before Me!

- This night your soul is required of you!

My friend, do you realize that? Are you ready for that?

- Have you come to His throne of grace and confessed your sin?

- Or do you think He has not seen?

- My friend I urge you to go to Christ now and confess your sin before it is too late - for now is the acceptable time of the Lord’s favor!

On the other hand, there is another message for us thinking about God’s gracious intentions for Nineveh:

- No one is beyond the grace of God!

- God chose Israel to be a light to the world, and when they ceased to be that He acted sovereignly and sent one of their own to a worst nation on earth with the clear motive to save them.

- And when Jonah finally delivered the message, they would repent and there would be the most amazing revival in all of history.

I wonder who you think is beyond the grace of God?

- Are prostitutes?

- Are homosexuals or lesbians?

- Are gang members?

- Are criminals?

- Are people in your family?

- What about other nations: is Iraq and Iran beyond God’s grace today?

- Are the Muslims beyond redemption?

- Is our own nation beyond the grace of God?

We live in dark and increasingly difficult days, and it is easy to think all is coming to an end.

But my friends God did not give up on wickard Nineveh and in a moment of time bought about a revival that reached from the King who sat upon the throne to peasant in the field with the animals.

We need to be very careful in writing people and nations off because God’s grace and power knows no limits, no bounds!

And if we become proud and sit on judgement on others, like Israel had become, He is quite within His sovereign rights to take the message of salvation from us and give it to those we don’t think are worthy.

In God’s economy, the first is often last and the last is first!

Well, we have looked at Jonah the man, and Jonah’s mission…

Conclusion

Let me just conclude with one final thought.

All we have been considering this morning surely underscores the sovereignty of God.

He is upon the throne, and He can do as He pleases in the heavens and the earth!

The Almighty is the God who raises up nations and brings them down. He changes the course of history by the power of His breath.

He is the God who utters decrees:

- For one nation it is judgement for open evil and wickedness.

- For another nation He is discipling the people whom He loves.

He weaves these decrees together in perfect harmony to accomplish His most holy will – a will that is both just and gracious.

This book, although it is called the book of Jonah, is primarily a book about God.

- About God’s sovereignty

- God’s decrees

- God’s grace and compassion.

33 Oh, the depth of the riches [l]both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counsellor? 35 Or who has first given to Him [m]that it might be paid back to him again? 36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory [n]forever. Amen.

PRAY