Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Jonah 3:1-10, emphasizing God's mercy and the importance of obedience in sharing the gospel. He highlights how Jonah, after initially running from God's command, ultimately obeys and proclaims a message of impending judgment to Nineveh, leading to the city's repentance. The sermon encourages believers to actively share their faith and trust in God's power to transform lives, reminding them that true belief must be accompanied by action.
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And so that's where we'll be at this morning, Jonah chapter 3. If you have your Bibles, we'll turn and read to that, and we'll stand in honor of God's Word this morning. This morning, here we go. The Bible says,
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you. Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command. And now Jonah was extremely,
now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk. And Jonah set out the first day of his walk to the city to proclaim, In 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished. Then the people of Nineveh believed God.
They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth from a greatest of them to the least.
When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a decree in Nineveh, By the order of the king and his nobles, no person or animal,
herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water.
Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God.
Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoings. And he asked this question, Who knows? God may turn and relent.
He may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish. And God saw their actions and he turned from their, that they turned from their evil ways.
And so God relented from the disaster that he had threatened them with. And he did not do it. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for your blessings today. God, I pray that you would be with the service this morning, the sermon that you've given me as we've been looking through this passage, Lord, that you would give me the words to say, give me the thoughts this morning as we open your word.
In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
Just to recap a little bit, that God has called Jonah to go and warn this pagan city of Nineveh about the judgment that was going to happen. He was wanting Jonah to give them compassion and Jonah refused to go and runs away.
God sends a storm to prevent Jonah from running. He used Jonah to bring the pagan sailors to worship the one true God.
Jonah's Rescue and Obedience
And he sent a great fish to rescue Jonah from the sea. Jonah trusted God to save him from the depths of the sea and from the death that the fish was in where he was at. The fish vomits him to safety.
And yet Jonah at this point has not yet fully realized that God wants to save pagans, that God wants to save people for a great purpose.
As I was processing and thinking through the opening part of this message this past week, my mind went to, did any of you ever watch the Brady Bunch as a kid? For a young person growing up? All right.
I was hoping that a couple of you have seen it. And one of our shows, that was one of our go-to shows, Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, things like that is what I grew up watching, Gunsmoke, and some of the old classics that our parents made us watch.
And this came to my mind, just a couple of years ago, one of my kids had to stay at my mom's house and they had all the black and white shows on. I'm sure y'all have never seen a black and white show before.
And it was either Brody or Jade came home and said, Mom, Dad, can we just watch something in color? All we've watched is black and white. Like there's color out there. Let's watch it. And so I just, I thought that was funny.
But I was thinking back on an episode, as I was thinking through this, of the Brady Bunch, where the three boys were up in the room and they were playing basketball and they said, well, let's just, I know we've got to pack, but let's just play ball for a little bit.
And one of the boys goes, no, Mom said we shouldn't play ball in the house.
And the boy backs up and he goes to shoot a three-pointer and he fades away. And as he does, the ball misses the trash can and goes down the stairs and hits Mom's favorite vase. The vase falls off and it breaks.
Dad's about to come home, so what do the kids do? They panic. They figure out a way to fix it themselves
and they try to glue it back together and then Mom wants to use that vase and they put the flowers in, the water's leaking out. And if you've seen the episode, the kids are panicking because all they could have done was just admit that they did wrong
and Mom and Dad would have offered forgiveness and they could have moved on, but yet they made things a lot worse because they tried covering it up themselves. Oftentimes, I think of this as us.
We mess up, we do something wrong and the story of Jonah, this is where he's at. He messed up, he broke things and he's back on the shore and I found it so interesting that he didn't immediately run as fast as he could to Nineveh.
God came to him again on the shore and he's just sitting there.
Doesn't say that he's in a hurry to get there, it says that Jonah came to him a second time. Get up and go to the city of Nineveh. What are you doing, you knucklehead? You're just sitting there.
Like I gave you a mission. And to compare this, and I don't have the time for it today, but to compare this to the very first time where God came to Jonah and told him to get up and go to the great city of Nineveh.
Now he's coming and he's saying, get up and go to the great city of Nineveh again.
God's Call to Jonah
I believe that Jonah is emulating us again in the story of how often God has to tell us multiple times to do things. How God has to come to us and say, I need you to listen. I'm commissioning you again to go to this city.
And oftentimes we fail the first time, the second, the fourth, the 25th time that God comes to us.
But yet God's a God of mercy that continues to come and prod us in the right way as a father would do to his son. And so as we begin to break this passage down, these 10 verses down, the first thing we see is that God requires obedience.
Verses one through three, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. He told him to go.
And now in verse three, Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command.
Nineveh was an extremely great city. It was a three-day walk to get there. And the second time the Lord came, Jonah began to get up and go.
This time Jonah didn't go and do his own thing. Jonah had the opportunity to do what he wanted to do, but yet he did not want his life to be turned upside down again. So he chose to follow the Lord.
And the second time we see this is a reminder again for us to go into all the world, to go and to preach to the world, the nations all around us, what God has called us to do. I'm reminded in one of our old Psalms that Luther wrote,
Martin Luther, one of the great reformers, wrote a song, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. I want to read just the first verse to us. I want you just to listen to the words.
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper, he amid the flood of our mortal ills prevailing, for still our ancient foe, does seek to work us woe.
His craft and power are great, and he armed us with cruel hate. Our earth is not our equal. Fail him. That the word above all the earth's powers, no thanks to them a bidding that the spirit gives us, though through him that we with would slideth,
though that this mortal life also, that the body that they may kill, God's truth is abiding, that still his kingdom is forevermore. A mighty fortress is our God.
And when we begin to think of how mighty a fortress is our God, we begin to think of who God is in our life. Jonah is reminded how great God is and how powerful God is in his life. And I'm reminded of Paul in Romans 15, verse 20.
Preparing for the Mission Trip
It's a verse that's been on my mind as I've been praying about this mission trip, as I've been praying about our team that's going. This verse has continued to come to my mind. My aim is to preach the gospel where Christ has never been heard so that I will not build something on someone else's foundation, but on God's foundation.
Church, this is the mantra. This should be our mantra as a church going out into the world that I want to go and I want to preach the world where Christ has yet to be named, where I want to go and I want to tell someone about Christ.
As our young people are about to go back to school, our teachers are about to go back to school, as we've heard all morning. This is the mantra of those students as I taught this morning in our Sunday school class.
You're going to come in contact with people that you've never come in contact with before. New students in your school this year.
And instead of always complaining about things, go and tell them about the love of Jesus.
Tell them about what Christ has done for you. How Christ came into this world to die for our sins so that we could live forever for him through the redemption of salvation. And this is what God is calling Jonah to do, to call upon others to have this forgiveness of sins.
And if we go out and we share this forgiveness with others, we see what the Lord did through Jonah. A commentator wrote it like this, God forgets and never holds the thing against you.
Think of how wonderful the implications are of the fact of your life that God will simply not hold grudges against people who humble themselves and ask for forgiveness through Christ Jesus.
Christ is there for forgiveness. And when we as Christians live this way of forgiveness, it'll radically transform the lives of those that are around us.
I met with someone this week that, I don't think they would mind me sharing this, that had some problems in work and were struggling with their boss and their administration.
And through all of this, and she works in a Christian environment, through all of this, she looked at her administrator, her boss, and she said this, she said, Christ gives us forgiveness. Why would I not give forgiveness as well?
And as I began to think through that, I began to process, even through this message of the God that gives forgiveness expects us to share hard truth and forgiveness with others.
The hard truth is that we're all sinners and we need forgiveness forgiveness and we need to humble ourselves and come before God and offer that forgiveness to others.
Proclaiming the Gospel
And we see that Jonah begins this process of obeying the Lord. Jonah proceeds to do one great thing because God expects proclamation. Jonah begins to go out and to proclaim the gospel.
The good news of Jesus that there was going to be judgment here on this earth.
There was going to be judgment here in Nineveh. And I want you to imagine for a moment, we've all been to a doctor before. We've all went in and we've had tests done. We've had things that are done.
We've had our bodies prodded and blood pressure tests taken and strep tests taken and all these things.
You go into a doctor and I want you to imagine you're sitting there on the doctor's table. There's something severely wrong with you.
And the doctor comes in and the doctor says, you know, I've got some bad news. This week was the worst week of golf I've ever had.
I don't know how I'm going to recover. My handicap's up. I'm just not going to be able to golf in my favorite golf club anymore.
I broke my favorite nine iron and he goes on and on and on about his golf experience that day and says, all right, well, I hope you have a good day and he shuts the door and walks out. And there's something severely wrong with you.
You're paying this doctor to come and tell you what's wrong with you and all he has is to tell him about how bad things are in his life. And yet, oftentimes, this is how our life is when we come in contact with other people.
We have the greatest news ever of Christ and what he's done for us and yet we fail to share the hope of the gospel.
As hard as it is for that doctor to come in and tell you the truth and tell you what's wrong with your body and tell you what you need to do to change and maybe it's a surgery, maybe
it's something hard, but at least you know the truth now and you can make the decision for yourself.
God says, I'm not going to not give you a diagnosis. I'm not going to not give you a treatment. I'm not going to not give you hope. I'm going to give you those things through my son.
And Jonah takes this message that God gives him. It's one of the shortest messages in the entire Bible. In 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished. Seven simple words. And he preaches to the entire city as he walks around.
I'm almost imagining there's seaweed still wrapped around his head. He jumped off the shore. He made it to Nineveh. He smells like fish.
He looks like someone who had just vomited up. His skin would have been white and pasty and pale. And he walks through this city and he says, in 40 days, Nineveh, in 40 days, you're going to be demolished.
And I can almost imagine someone stopping him and saying, hey, what are you talking about, Jonah? Are you just some crazy lunatic? And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I ran from the Lord.
And I was swallowed by a fish and a storm came and I don't want that to happen to you. I don't want what happened in my life to happen here in Nineveh. As hard as that is to say, I don't want it to happen. I don't want this to happen.
And word began to spread that this crazy guy is going through town and he's got seven words and he's talking about God and he's talking about the craziness of religion and they're thinking, man, we kill these people.
Why don't we just take him up to the top of the hill and put him down that slide and kill him?
And as he begins to continue to preach, judgment is coming. Judgment is coming. I'm coming to proclaim that judgment is coming. The entire city responds to this message. Most scholars say that this city of Nineveh was about 120,000 people
that heard the message and it said the entire city all the way up to the king of Nineveh turned from their wicked ways.
And you may ask, how is it that everyone did this, Pastor James? How is it that everyone in this town came to know Jesus because the gospel in Romans 1.16 says the gospel is the power unto salvation. So Jonah 6.9,
Jonah makes this proclamation. He says, salvation belongs to the Lord when he was in the belly of the whale. He understood that the message of salvation is the power that we had. He didn't come in with a polished message that he had prepared for a week.
He didn't come in dressed with a three-piece suit and a tie on. His hair wasn't perfectly right. He didn't have the right cologne on. He just got up and he preached the truth of the gospel. And he said, there's salvation in the Lord.
He came and smelled like a fish and he began to preach the message that we are charged to preach to the world around us. You see, there's no perfect moment. There's no perfect timing of when we share the gospel.
It's when the Lord lays it on our heart to share it with the person in front of us. It may be at a gas station.
It may be at a restaurant. It may be the waitress that comes to you at lunch today that's just got a tear in her eye that doesn't know what to do that has no hope and you begin to look at them and you say,
is there something I can pray with you for? More times than I can imagine just that question at a lunchtime or a dinnertime table where I'll ask the waitress or waiter, can I pray with you about something? I don't know how many times that waitress or waiter will say, I'm so glad you asked that.
My mom died just yesterday but I gotta come and I gotta serve people today. My grandpa just passed away.
My mom just got the diagnosis of cancer and I don't know what I'm gonna do and I get to share the gospel of hope with them and say,
God loves you and I love you and there's a God who's a great big God and he loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you and I'll give just a short gospel presentation and I'll pray with them
and I don't know how many times a waitress or a waiter will say, I needed that today. Thank you for doing that.
You see, it's not that we have to go out into the city streets and go out on Facebook and go out on social media and make some big video.
It's just simply obedience to the command that's in front of us to go to the person in front of us and say, there is a hope in Jesus Christ if only we'll believe. It's proclaiming that today is the day of salvation to those that are around us
and then trusting in the Lord ultimately, number three, to God give the increase.
Verses six to ten, we see that the message of salvation, we will never know who hears it and how they respond.
Again, as my mind is thinking through mission trips, before I go on any mission trip, I try to remember back to the different trips and how the Lord worked in different ways and this week, I tried to find
a picture but I couldn't find it on my hard drive. There's a picture where I was in my very first mission trip. I was 18 years old.
I had some money saved up from graduation gifts and there was a mission trip to Peru and I said, you know, I want to go on that mission trip.
I want to go and I want to see what happens and so I took all my savings, all that I had that I had saved up for the college, high school graduation going to college and I gave it
and I went on the trip and we're down there and we're walking down the street.
People are everywhere going back and forth and the pastor walks over beside me and I just surrendered to preach about a month before and he goes, hey James, I want you to preach at the next corner.
You do what? You want me to preach? I just surrendered.
I don't know what I'm going to do and so in the next 30 seconds I thought of John 3.16, the only verse I really had memorized at the time that I could get up and so I preached
John 3.16 and how God loves the world and he sent his son and I may have went like three minutes. I don't really think that the interpreter actually used what I said.
I think he just preached his own message and then I got to the end and I'm like, I don't have anything else to say.
I've said all that I know what to say and so he continued on and one of the people on the trip took a picture of the crowd that had gathered, probably 50 or 75 people and took a picture of me here and the crowd in the background and I was doing something.
I don't know if it was preaching but I was doing something and they bowed their head. He asked the questions.
A couple people raised their hands and we gave Bibles and tracts to those people and we went out from that event and we continued on and it wasn't until
later that week where the missionary came up to me and he said, hey James, I want you to know something about that day when you remember when you preached. I said, yeah, how could I forget? It was like,
it's the first time I'm not ever going to forget it and he said, someone in the crowd
was in that crowd and he's the local principal of the local school that we've been trying to get into for the last three years and he said, every time we call they tell us no. Every time we call to come and help the kids out they tell us no
but he called me this week and he said, can you come and do what you did on the street in the school to every kid in the school?
He said, you better believe it and so we went in and we went to every single classroom and we went to every single room we put Bibles on every single desk we put a track on every single desk and then every single child in that area came out into the courtyard
and we got up and they didn't use me I don't know why they didn't use me at this moment but they got up and they preached a message and they gave the gospel and they gave the gift of salvation to the children and all the administrators heard
and the missionary said it was because of you've been obedient there in the street corner that this principle
came to know Christ and now we have the opportunity to go in and share the gospel every single year because we were obedient we will never know what we will do and how God will use us to reach
someone that's around us to make this bold proclamation as Jonah did that he was going to do these things and God was going to destroy this nation
because of what they were doing you see when the king made this proclamation in Jonah chapter 3
his proclamation was to lose money to lose business to lose everything we're not going to work we're not going to do anything because we are put in charge we are put in in the command that God is going
to judge us and he said for three days we're going to humble ourselves before God and we're going to repent and we're going to see what God can do
Understanding God's Relenting
we're going to revisit that in just a moment as I close but there's one theological term that we have to deal with in this passage where it says that God may turn and relent and then in verse 10
it says that God relented and often times people will say well God can't change how can God relent and so the best way I can illustrate is this
imagine you as a parent or maybe you as a child where your parent comes in and they say you're going to get in trouble for not cleaning your room
and the parent has a choice the kid has a choice at this moment am I going to clean my room or am I going to get in trouble
and if the child goes and cleans their room the parent may say well I want to thank you for cleaning your room and you're not going to get in trouble now
now this is the basic illustration it's a huge theological talk but it's the basic illustration of what God is saying God is basically saying if you repent and turn I'm not going to destroy you but if you continue in this way destruction is going to happen
put a passage up here 1 Samuel 15 29 to help us understand this from another theological perspective furthermore the eternal one of Israel does not lie or change or even change his mind for he is not man who
changes his mind and this is an eternally grateful principle for us because we understand that God doesn't change he has judgment and unless they turn and repent from their ways God was going to destroy that city but yet
they did which leads us into how I'm going to close the message down today in steps for revival how we as a church or we as community can have a revival how we can seek and turn to the
Lord and understand that God has a purpose for us the first step of revival as we look at Jonah's life is simply faithful preaching and hearing of the word
there must be faithful preaching of the word in order for revival to take place but there also must be faithful hearing of the word as well we must be a people that are willing to listen to the word
of God and there is no greater need in America or I would dare say there is no greater need in the world
than for people to hear a clear preaching of the timeless truth of the word of God we have gotten away from preaching good sound doctrine we have gotten away from preaching good sound messages of the gospel that the
world is now seeing church as just a country club the world is seeing church church as just a fun gathering when it should be a place where we come in our hearts are pricked our hearts are on fire
to go out and to tell someone else about Jesus that is the first step of revival if there is not faithful preaching and hearing then there is no hope for revival in America yet in our own heart
the second thing that we must have in a step of revival is belief in God we see in this passage that as soon as they heard they believed in God as soon as these people heard the word of
God they made a decree and they turned from their ways Romans 10 17 I didn't put this on the screen so faith comes from what has been heard and the hearing comes through the message of Christ
Romans 10 17 we must tell others and if we don't tell others how are they going to believe and how shall they hear if someone doesn't go and preach the message of the gospel this is not just for
a preacher this is for every single one of us to go out and to tell and to proclaim the gospel of what God has done for us and how will they hear if we don't tell them there must
be belief in God but then there must be action by faith there must be action by faith there is no true belief without corresponding actions you cannot truly believe in something unless you act upon that belief Hebrews 11 says it like this Abel believed and offered a sacrifice
Enoch pleased God by walking with God Noah pleased God and built an ark Noah could have said God I believe you I believe you're going to come and flood the earth and destroy the earth in a couple of years I believe that and so I'm
going to take my belief and I'm just going to sit right here in my house and be happy with it and Noah would have perished with everyone else but because Noah believed he went out and built and had
an action that was associated with it Abraham obeyed God and went into a city that he had never heard Isaac believed by blessing Jacob and Jacob believed by blessing his sons Joseph gave instructions to the next generation Moses
refused and chose in every case of Hebrews 11 we see a brief description of a specific action that was associated when someone believed in God
belief is not just a belief and moving on it is a belief and then action steps from that and as we see here in this story of Jonah where they believed and then the king said to them
turn away from your specific sin which is number four of how we can see revival in our life look at verse nine who knows God may turn to Lent he may turn from his burning anger but in verse
eight it says let each and every one of us cover ourselves with sack life and everyone call out earnestly to God each must turn from your evil ways and to turn from your wrongdoings one version said violence to
Personal Reflection and Action
turn from your violence each and every one of us this morning must take a deep dive evaluation of our lives and ask ourselves what is the evil thing in my life that I need to turn from what is it in my life
that I am holding on to that God is holding on for me and my family to see personal revival
I so believe that revival will never come to the church and revival will never come to this community until each and every family unit in our church sees a personal revival in their family
when dads begin to step up and say we're gonna stop doing these things when moms stand up and say we're gonna start leading our family in the right way that's when our churches will begin to see revival that'll overflow everywhere else the Bible says in Psalms that when our cup runs over
is when other people begin to see those blessings but our cup must be full and running over first of what God has for us so there's very four simple ways of how we can have revival and it's simple
to say but to be able to put these things into action it is a hard truth for us to understand
as Terry comes I've just got a couple of concluding statements this morning for us ways that we can be challenged this morning and we're gonna close the service down a little bit different today as well my first question is where are we at this morning church
where are we at are we like Jonah who's still sitting on the beach after he has been given the command to go to Nineveh and he's still sitting there and God has to come to him again and sort of shake him and say do you not see what you've done over the
last couple of chapters get up and go to Nineveh
are we just gonna sit there and not listen to what the Lord has called us to do
are we ready to see what God can do if we simply give him the increase and we obey him properly and we proclaim the word faithfully to the people that are around us are we ready to see what
God can truly do to a group of believers who are fully sold out to the gospel of Christ where are you at personally this morning
where are you at by saying God I'm going to school tomorrow God I'm going to work tomorrow God I'm going to fill up on gas here in a little bit God use me in a way that only you can be glorified
or maybe we haven't been listening to the faithful preaching of the word and we haven't believed and our actions are not proving that we trust the Lord to turn from a specific sin in our life and begin to
trust the Lord in a personal level that is where it becomes real in our life when we begin to turn and trust in the Lord in a mighty mighty way whatever it may be this morning
what I want to do is I'm going to pray for us corporately to close down the service and then I'm going to as Terry plays ask anyone who's going back to school tomorrow a young person a teacher to come down front and we're going to have a closing moment of prayer
over our young people and teachers as well Lord I thank you for what you've done God I'm humbled every time I get to get up and stand behind this sacred desk and preach I feel so unworthy
I feel like Jonah at times where I've disobeyed you but yet you've still called me to go Lord I feel like the times where I turn my back on you and
Closing Prayer and Thanks
I'm the one that's failed and you still say no no no just stand up and preach just stand up and proclaim the word and let me take care of the rest God I pray that you would
work in our midst today working as only you can Lord I can't manipulate I can't talk someone into coming to know you but maybe there's someone here that's never trusted you Lord I pray that you would help them to come to know you this morning
help us as a church to really get a hold of what true repentance means and true sacrifice means and true forgiveness is and help us to move forward for your grace and for your glory
God help us this morning as we respond in a way that we haven't done this since I've been here God but help us to be with these kids just a little bit they'll be going off to school
Lord we love you we thank you for what you've done in your name we pray Amen let's all stand thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week
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