Good morning, brothers and sisters. Such a joy to be back with you. God spared us all for another visitation of Himself, and we are so thankful to the Lord.
Please open your Bibles to the book of Jonah.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that we call the indispensable principle—absolutely indispensable.
Lord willing, we are going to study this wonderful book of Jonah throughout the weekend. In this book, we have a wonderful illustration of the indispensable principle. Jonah is mentioned twice in the New Testament: once in Matthew 12 and once in Luke 11. Both times, He is mentioned by the lips of our Lord Jesus.
In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus explained the book of Jonah. What I am suggesting is that because Jesus explains it, we can study it. There is no possibility of understanding the book of Jonah if all you had was the book of Jonah.
Jesus gave us the key. Jesus unveiled the book. Jesus told us how to understand the book of Jonah.
I call attention to that because that is the indispensable principle: only Jesus can unlock any portion of this Book. He is the One who opens our eyes, takes the veil away, and reveals Himself.
With that as preparation, I will ask you to bow with me, please. Let us trust the Lord together.
Our Father, we do thank You so much that You have given us this wonderful book of Jonah, and that You Yourself have given us the understanding—the key—that we might study this book in a way that would unveil the Lord Jesus Christ.
We would ask You this morning, and throughout this weekend, that You would show us in a way we have never seen before Your missionary heart; that You would transform us, each one and all together, that we might have Your heart.
We know, Lord, that this is a great thing to ask. But as we sang, You are an awesome God. You are able to do great and impossible things. And so we ask You to meet with each one of us and to meet with us corporately, and unveil the Lord Jesus transformingly to our spirits.
We claim it in the matchless name of Christ. Amen.
Well, for some time you have known that we are going to look at this wonderful book together. It is my earnest prayer that you have sought the Lord in preparation by going through this book.
It is not my purpose to come here and try to be novel, or to give you some insight that you might not have thought about. I hope you have studied to know the Lord. That is how I have studied. I study to know the Lord. I want to see the Lord.
It is my prayer that together we will be able to see Him. I am convinced that the Lord will manifest Himself to us, and more so in proportion to those who have diligently and humbly prepared to see the Lord.
Lord willing, we will have five opportunities this weekend. Of course, the Lord could interrupt that at any time—His any-moment return or our any-moment departure. Either way, He can interrupt it. But, Lord willing, all things being equal, we will have the precious privilege of five sessions together.
What I would like to do this morning is introduce this wonderful book to your heart. I am quite sure that you are familiar with the facts of the book. In an introductory lesson, we sort of fly over the whole book. We try to get a sense of the book and pick up general observations.
Every book raises questions such as these:
The bottom line, of course, is that we have come to Jonah not to know about Jonah, and not merely to know about the book of Jonah, but to see the Lord Jesus Christ. How does this book reveal Him?
Now, before we get into the introduction, I am going to ask your patience with me. Sometimes, in an introductory lesson, the temptation is to roll up our sleeves, wade in, tell the Jonah story, begin at chapter 1, verse 1, and move along. Well, we will get to the Jonah story.
But the book of Jonah is so full, so rich, and its history is so pregnant with wonderful truth. There is so much packed into these chapters that it is not possible, in five sessions, to look at everything.
I might jump over things that have blessed your heart. I might not have seen things that have blessed your heart. I know I have to jump over things that have blessed my heart. I have been chewing my tongue to a stump, trying to decide what to leave out. There is so much in this wonderful book.
But I have intentionally selected, under the guidance, I pray, of the Holy Spirit, the facts that are the shortest route to Jesus. That is why we have gathered to study this book.
We will not simply begin with chapter 1, verse 1, and work our way mechanically through the book. I want to give you a feel for the book. I want us to see the whole book—hold it up one way, turn it another way, and let God’s light shine on it from different angles—so that we can get the sense of the book.
My purpose in calling attention to these general observations is to home in on what I believe is the great message, the single message, the theme of the book.
For those who like logical connection, I am going to give three general observations about the book as a whole. Then I will discuss each one, and Lord willing, we will see the Lord together.
The first observation is this: the theme of the book of Jonah revolves around a crisis. It was very much alive in the prophet’s heart. There was something going on in Jonah’s heart.
Let me put that in perspective with the other prophets. God made a promise, and Amos spells it out in Amos 3:7:
Surely the Lord God will do nothing,
But He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.
In other words, God said that He would not act without first telling the prophet. Every time God did something, He told the prophet, and then the prophet told the people. The prophets represented God before the people.
In every case, a crisis would arise, and God would address that crisis. He would say, “I am planning to do something about that.” Then He would tell the prophet, and the prophet would tell the people.
There has to be a crisis. If you want to understand the prophets, find the crisis. If you find the crisis, you will understand the message of that particular prophet. There is always a crisis, God addresses the crisis, and then He does something about it.
That is why most of the prophets begin with some historical reference.
For example, Isaiah 1:1:
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
If you are going to understand Isaiah, you had better understand the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. That is why he told you that. He is not simply giving information or trying to make you smart about Bible history. He is saying, “Something is going on.”
Study those days. That is why God gave you Kings and Chronicles. As we study those days, we see Babylon coming on the scene and the invasion that was to come. Then we come to Isaiah, and it begins to make sense. We have learned what the crisis was.
The same is true in Ezekiel 1. Why does Ezekiel give all those details about dates, exile, King Jehoiachin, the land of the Chaldeans, and the river Chebar? There is a crisis. Find the crisis, and the book will explode.
There is always a crisis. Either the Assyrians are attacking, the Babylonians are threatening, the Edomites are coming, the Philistines are there, or the Persians or Syrians are involved. Find the crisis. Understand the problem.
Now, among all the prophets, major and minor, there are two who are unique: the prophet Habakkuk and the prophet Jonah.
Jonah is so different that people wonder why he is even called a prophet. Why is his book among the prophets? It reads like history. It might seem as though it should be near Ezra and Nehemiah, or perhaps Esther. It does not read like a prophecy.
We know Jonah was a prophet because the first time he is mentioned in the Bible, in 2 Kings 14, he is called a prophet. In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus spoke of “the sign of Jonah the prophet.”
The book of Jonah itself does not directly call him a prophet. The hint we receive is that the word of the Lord came to him. He made only two prophecies in the book: one came to pass, and one did not.
The prophecy that did not come to pass was, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The other was, “Throw me overboard, and the storm will stop.” That one came to pass.
Jonah was a prophet not merely because of what he said. His book is history, yes, but that history is itself prophecy. His whole testimony is a prophecy of the Lord Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Do not be fooled by where Jonah’s book appears in your Bible. You might get the idea that he was a late prophet because his book appears farther down the road. No—he was an early prophet, very early. According to 2 Kings, he was likely the first prophet to write a book.
There is a good chance he was contemporary with Elisha, in the days of Jeroboam II. We know that he was contemporary with Hosea, who prophesied to the ten tribes in the north.
Jonah’s uniqueness is not simply that he does not look like a prophet, though his whole experience was prophetic. Jonah and Habakkuk are unique because of the crisis.
No crisis, no prophecy. You have to find the crisis. God was about to act. God was about to do something. He said, in effect, “I cannot act until I tell a prophet. I have to tell somebody.”
When you look at Jonah, you ask, “What is the crisis?” The book does not say that the word of the Lord came to Jonah in the days of a particular king. Why not?
Because the crisis is not out there. The crisis is not political. It does not have to do with Assyria, Babylon, the Philistines, Egypt, or some political circumstance such as those in Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Zechariah.
We are at a loss to find the crisis if we look out there.
What Habakkuk and Jonah have in common is this: there is a crisis, all right, but it is in their hearts. There is a personal crisis in the heart of Habakkuk, and there is a personal crisis in the heart of Jonah.
The message from heaven in the book of Jonah is not addressed to Judah. God did not say, “Go tell Judah.” He did not say, “Go tell Israel.” He is not warning Israel concerning a particular sin, calling them away from idolatry, or warning them against an unholy alliance with a heathen nation.
There is a different kind of crisis.
The emergency, the problem, the crisis, the spiritual struggle going on is in the heart of Jonah. That is my first observation.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if we cannot identify that crisis, we will not understand the book of Jonah. We may be able to tell the story. We may know all the facts about the fish. But if we do not grasp the heart crisis, we will not receive the revelation of Christ.
So, what is the crisis?
There is a whole group of commentators who say that Jonah’s heart problem was how he felt about the heathen: bigotry, prejudice, Jewish exclusivism. Jonah was a full-blooded Jew.
Even in John 7, when the Pharisees were mocking the Lord Jesus, they said, “Search, and see: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” They should have searched the Scriptures, because Jonah was from Galilee. There was a prophet who came out of Galilee.
Some think Jonah’s problem was his Jewish exclusivism. Consider Jonah 1:1–2:
Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it;
For their wickedness is come up before Me.
That was a non-Jewish commission.
Never before Jonah, and never after Jonah, was a prophet called to go to a heathen land with a message. He is the only prophet in the Word of God specifically called to bring a message to a foreign people.
I am not saying that God never reached out to the heathen. Certainly He did: through Moses, He reached out to Egypt; through the ark of God, to the Philistines; through Elisha, to the Syrians; and through Daniel, to Babylon and Persia. But Jonah was the only prophet directly commanded, “I want you to go and bring this message to that foreign people.”
Some think that was his heart problem: how he felt about the heathen. He had strong national feelings. He was a patriot. He was a Jew, not a Gentile.
They explain Jonah’s reluctance to see mercy shown to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, in these terms. Remember what Assyria was. Isaiah says that, from their own perspective, they existed only to cut off nations. Nahum calls Nineveh “the bloody city.” They were cruel, violent terrorists.
They would take the heads of their victims and line them up on poles for a great distance before one entered the city. It was their calling card: “You had better get out of our way. You had better do what we want.”
Their guns were pointed at Israel, and now God says to Jonah, “I want you to go to Nineveh.”
Perhaps Jonah thought that God’s tenderness to Nineveh would mean the destruction of his own people. Some explain his flight as a Jewish sacrifice: “I am willing to sacrifice myself for my people. If they repent, we are dead. It is our ruin.”
You can see where they get that. Jonah 1:3 says that he fled from the presence of the Lord. He wanted nothing to do with going to Nineveh. Then, in Jonah 3:4, when he finally went, his only message was:
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
And when God did not judge them, Jonah 4:1 says:
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
You know, on our T-shirts we have, “God’s missionary heart.” God is reaching out somehow to the heathen in this book.
It is an amazing book. Acts may be the exception in its fully developed form, but Jonah is probably one of the most missionary books in the Bible. This is a missionary book.
Would you not think that a missionary book might be about a man who had a missionary heart? Here is a missionary, Jonah: “Go to the heathen.”
But he did not say, “Turn or burn.” He just said, “Burn.”
I have never seen a more non-missionary heart than Jonah’s. It is not only non-missionary; it is anti-missionary. He wanted them to go to hell. He not only did not want them saved; he wanted them judged.
God said, “Now here is a missionary book for you.”
In a sense, we are studying missions this weekend. Yet here is a man with a non-missionary heart and an anti-missionary heart.
I love reading Christian biographies, especially missionary biographies. When I read about David Brainerd, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and others, I do not see someone fleeing from the presence of the Lord and wanting the mission field to be cursed.
When you read about Dr. Olson, you see his vision for Bangladesh. When you read about John Paton, you see that he loved the sinners in the South Sea Islands.
They prayed, fasted, sacrificed, and gave because they loved sinners and wanted them to come to the Lord. But Jonah was the opposite. When God showed mercy, he was sad, angry, pouting, depressed, and wanting to die—because God had mercy on sinners.
That is certainly a problem. But I am suggesting to you that it is not the crisis. The crisis is not merely how he felt about the heathen.
Perhaps God will indeed give us a burden for souls and change our attitudes toward the heathen. But that is not the crisis of the book. The problem is deeper than that.
Others say that Jonah’s crisis was theological: he had an incomplete view of the Lord. That is not hard to demonstrate either.
Jonah 1:3 says that Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord. Can any prophet be that foolish? Did he think he could run from God’s presence? Did he not understand God’s omnipresence?
Some say that fleeing from the presence of the Lord means that Jonah quit his job as prophet. A prophet ministered in the presence of the Lord, and Jonah was saying, “I quit. I am getting out of the Holy Land, out of earshot, so God will not speak to me.”
That certainly would be an incomplete view of the Lord.
But even if Jonah knew he could not escape God’s omnipresence, look at Jonah 4:1–2:
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray Thee, O Lord,
Was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country?
Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish:
For I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness,
And repentest Thee of the evil.
Jonah’s view of God was that God was soft on sin. God was so compassionate that He became capricious and mutable. Jonah thought that God changed, that He did not follow through on His threats, that He threatened to do one thing but, when it came right down to it, loved people too much to judge them.
God was too merciful, Jonah thought, to judge sin.
Many think that was the reason he fled—a sort of spiritual twist. They say Jonah was trying to defend God: “If He threatens this and does not do it, it makes me look bad because I am His messenger. It also makes Him look bad, because the heathen will think God changes. So I will flee from the Lord to protect His honor.”
Perhaps that was Jonah’s reasoning.
Whether we are mistaken concerning God’s attributes or whether we doubt His integrity as Jonah did, I promise you this: we will always have an incomplete view of God. No matter how far we come, we will have an incomplete view of God.
You can know His fullness, but you cannot know Him fully, because you are finite and He is infinite.
I have no doubt Jonah had faulty theology. He believed strange things. He believed there was inconsistency in God. He believed he could forestall God’s purposes by what he did. He thought he could escape God’s presence.
But I do not think that was the crisis.
You cannot understand Jonah or see the revelation of God unless you find the crisis. God saw the crisis and intended to do something about it.
But the crisis was not primarily changing the way Jonah felt about the heathen. That was not the crisis. Nor was the crisis simply changing Jonah’s theology.
It is amazing that Jonah had these strange views about God, and God never tried to correct them in this book. Not one time did God try to justify Himself. He did not say, “Now, Jonah, what you need to understand is that I have a severe side and a tender side, and here is how it all comes together.” He never did that. He did not justify Himself.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you are going to understand Jonah, you have to find the crisis. The crisis is not how I feel. The crisis is not what I believe.
The crisis is who I am.
Who I am. Who you are.
I am going to tell you what I think the crisis was. Then, by God’s grace, we will take the rest of the weekend to see how God spoke to that crisis and how God met that crisis.
The key, as I suggested, is in the New Testament.
Listen to Matthew 12:39–41:
But He answered and said unto them,
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign;
And there shall no sign be given to it,
But the sign of the prophet Jonah:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster;
So shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation,
And shall condemn it:
Because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
And behold, a greater than Jonah is here.
Jesus said in Matthew 12 that Jonah was a sign—the sign of Jonah.
Now listen to Luke 11:29–30:
And when the multitudes were gathering together unto Him,
He began to say, This generation is an evil generation:
It seeketh after a sign;
And there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah.
For even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites,
So shall also the Son of Man be to this generation.
I believe the key from the lips of the Lord Jesus is this: Jonah became a sign.
It is not how he felt. It is not what he believed. It is what he became.
That is the deep crisis. It has to do with being. It has to do with who you are. Jonah became a sign.
When Jonah was first sent to Nineveh, he was a prophet, but he was not a sign. If he had obeyed God the first time, he would not have been the sign. The issue is not simply obedience or going where God sends you. It is deeper than that.
There is something going on in Jonah’s heart. Here is a man who is a servant and a prophet, but he is not a sign.
God said, “That is a crisis, and I have to deal with it.”
That is the message of Jonah: God must turn this prophet into a sign.
I am not going to tell you just yet what the sign is. We will get into that. But that is what God wants to accomplish this weekend.
You may say, “I am a servant of the Lord.” Are you a sign?
“I am a prophet of the Lord. I am a preacher. I am a teacher. I am an elder.” Are you a sign?
Because that is the crisis. God wants to turn us into a sign.
May God help us understand Jonah. How does God transform us into a sign? That is what this book is all about.
When we come to chapter 3, we will spell it out exactly. But brothers and sisters, you would have to be blind not to know that there are thousands of missionaries on the field today who have never become a sign.
There are thousands of elders and pastors in churches shepherding the church of God who do not have a clue what it means to be a sign. There are Christians living ordinary lives, serving the Lord, giving, praying, sharing, testifying, and teaching—yet they are not signs.
That is the crisis.
I have no doubt that God wants to change how we feel about the heathen. He probably wants to turn our theology around too. But that is not the issue. That is not the issue.
Not how you feel—that is a symptom. Not what you believe—that is not the issue. The issue is what you are.
The second observation is this: you cannot read the book of Jonah without recognizing that it is a book of miracles. Everywhere you look in Jonah, there are miracles. The power of God is throughout this book. The sovereignty of God is throughout this book.
The book mentions three kinds of miracles.
First, there are physical miracles—miracles in nature. Consider Jonah 1:4:
But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea,
And there was a mighty tempest in the sea.
I love that: “The Lord sent out a great wind into the sea.”
He not only initiated the storm; according to Jonah 1:11, the sea became increasingly stormy. He controlled it. In verse 13, it became even stormier. He controlled it. Then, in verse 15, they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging.
Who initiates the storm? Who controls the storm? Who determines when the storm ends? The Lord Almighty.
When most people think about Jonah, almost immediately they think about the fish. You can hardly say “Jonah” without thinking about the fish. In fact, that is probably the only thing some people see in the whole book.
They come with a tape measure to measure the size of the fish’s mouth. If you are going to understand Jonah, bring your tape measure—but be prepared to put it around the heart of God, not the fish’s mouth.
Some people say, “There is no fish that big, whether it is a shark, whale, sea monster, or whatever.” But there is no such thing as hard or easy when you are talking about miracles.
It was Jonah in the fish, not God. God did not get swallowed by any fish in this book.
The fish is mentioned only twice in the whole book: God appointed a fish, and God commanded the fish to vomit Jonah out. That is all we know about the fish. But it is a mighty miracle.
God speaks to a storm. God speaks to a fish. I have no doubt that God could have preserved Jonah’s life underwater for three days and three nights without a fish if He had wanted to do so.
This is a book about the mighty miracles of God. God speaks to the storm. God speaks to the fish. Then, in Jonah 4:6, He speaks to a plant:
And the Lord God prepared a plant,
And made it to come up over Jonah,
That it might be a shadow over his head.
Forget for now all the speculation about what kind of plant it was—a gourd, a vine, a cucumber, a mushroom, or whatever. It was a divine plant, raised up by God to provide supernatural shade.
It had a supernatural existence and supernatural growth. That is the power of God.
Then, in Jonah 4:7, God speaks to a worm. In Jonah 4:8, He appoints a scorching east wind. In that same verse, the sun beats down upon Jonah’s head. In Jonah 1:7, God supernaturally directs the lot cast by the heathen sailors.
This is the power of God. You cannot read Jonah and miss the miracles. God speaks to the storm, the fish, the plant, the worm, the east wind, and the sun. He guides the lot. The power of God is throughout the book.
Those miracles are great, but they are not the greatest miracles in this book. A greater miracle is the moral miracle that took place.
Consider Jonah 3:5–10. This is unparalleled in Bible history and human history: a whole city coming to the Lord.
Look at Jonah 4:11:
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
Wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons
That cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand;
And also much cattle?
There are a couple of ways to understand the 120,000 who do not know their right hand from their left.
Some say that was the total population of Nineveh, and that they were morally blind. Another possibility is that it refers to infants—those who had not reached the age of accountability, who were so young that they did not yet know their right hand from their left.
If that is the case, and it appears to be, those infants were about one fifth of the population. That would mean Nineveh had more than 600,000 people. Throughout the weekend, I will simply say more than half a million.
Do you see the power in that? Half a million people turned to the Lord in one day when one stranger came in with one sentence and left.
That is greater than Pentecost. Even in the days following Pentecost, there were three thousand, five thousand, and then perhaps ten thousand. Here, more than half a million people turned to the Lord.
There has never been a miracle like that before or since. You will not see a pouring out of God’s Spirit like that until the Great Tribulation, which I will not get into now.
When we come to the text, I will show you why God worked that mighty miracle. But for now, recognize what a miracle it was.
Imagine Bridgeville turning to the Lord in one day—the whole city, from the homeless person in the street to the mayor’s office. Everybody turns to the Lord, even the animals in sackcloth and ashes.
That is the kind of miracle we have here. The whole city of Nineveh repented in such dim light. It is one of the greatest moral miracles of all time.
This is a book of miracles: physical miracles, God speaking to the storm, the fish, the plant, the worm, and the east wind. Then there is this moral miracle: a whole heathen city, a wicked city, enemies of God, idolaters, blasphemers, violent and bloodthirsty people—all turning to the Lord in one day.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is not the greatest miracle in this book.
It is a great miracle, no doubt. But you will miss the message of Jonah if you think it is the great miracle. The fish is not the greatest miracle. Half a million people turning to the Lord in one day is a great miracle indeed, but it is not the central miracle of this book.
There is another miracle in this book which I consider to be the heart of the book and the greatest miracle of all: the miracle when God made Jonah a sign.
There would have been no conversion in Nineveh if God had not done that.
This is a book about God dealing with a man—a man with a deep spiritual crisis in his heart, though he did not even know what it was.
Certainly he had bad feelings about people. Certainly he had terrible theology. But God bypassed all of that and said, “There is another problem, and it has to do with who you are.”
God came down because there was a crisis. He spoke. He told His prophet. He worked in Jonah, transformed him into a sign, and told him to write his testimony.
When God can take a non-missionary heart and an anti-missionary heart and transform it into a missionary heart like God’s own heart, there is a miracle of miracles.
By the grace of the Lord, that is what He did, and that is what He wants to do this weekend.
Let me give you a little outline for the book. God wants to make a sign out of a man. I am going to give you an outline, but it will be all blank.
In order to do this, God had to change this man.
In chapter 1, He made that change.
In chapter 2, He made that change.
In chapter 3, He made that change.
In chapter 4, He made that change.
The reason I want you to know that is because every time God makes a sign, He makes that change first. They are in order. He has to do that first. Then, when we have learned that, He says, “I am not done. I have to do this,” and He does it. Then He does this, and He does that.
That is what this book is all about.
We have four lessons, and I would like to speak about that change, that change, that change, and that change. May God help us.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the main enemy of missions is not the devil. The main enemy of missions is not the unsurrendered pocketbook. The main enemy of missions is not false doctrine. The main enemy of missions is not ignorance. The main enemy of missions is not the love of this world or materialism.
The main enemy of missions is that there are Christians who are not signs.
That is the main enemy of missions—who I am, who you are. The greatest miracle in this book is the miracle in which God transforms Jonah into a sign.
Let me give you the final observation, and we will wrap up the introduction lesson.
If you are going to understand Jonah, you need to see the crisis. It is a heart crisis. If you are going to understand Jonah, you cannot bypass the miracles. God needs to do a miracle, and that miracle is to transform Jonah into a sign.
One other observation about the book as a whole: no one who has studied under the guidance of the Holy Spirit can study Jonah without realizing that, from start to finish, this is a book about the undeserved mercy of God.
Everyone who studies this book sees the great mercy of God in it.
You might look at Jonah 4:2 and say, “Yes, this is a great book about mercy—mercy on the Ninevites.” God had mercy on the Ninevites. They were wicked and bloodthirsty, yet God saved them.
Then you look at Jonah 4:11 and say, “Look at the mercy of God on little babies, innocent little children.” God has mercy.
Now, everyone look up here. Do not peek at your Bible. This is a test.
Does anyone know the last word in the book of Jonah?
The last word in the book of Jonah is animals.
What a picture of the mercy of the Lord. God did not want to judge Nineveh because He did not want to destroy animals. God has regard for dogs, cats, cows, sheep, gerbils, pets, and all kinds of creatures.
But, as I have suggested throughout, the great revelation of the mercy of God is not His mercy on Nineveh, babies, or animals.
The great revelation of the mercy of God in this book is His mercy on the prophet Jonah.
You are not going to understand the book if you do not see his heart crisis. You are not going to understand the book if you do not understand the miracle that God performed when He addressed that heart crisis.
You are not going to understand the book if you do not see the great mercy of God as He patiently takes this non-missionary heart, this anti-missionary heart, and works this change, this change, this change, and this change in order to give Jonah a heart like God’s heart.
God has a missionary heart. That is the great mercy of God.
Before God ever shows mercy on the heathen, He has to show mercy on the missionary.
This, my friends, is one of the ways of God. If God wants to reach those around me, He does not first deal with them. He deals with me.
If God wants to reach those around you, He does not first deal with those around you. He deals with you.
Corporately, if God wants to deal with a neighborhood, He does not first deal with the neighborhood. He deals with that corporate body in the neighborhood to turn them into a sign.
Now, I know I said one more thing and we would be done. As Paul said in Philippians, “Finally, my brethren”—finally, finally, finally. He said it three times, so I am only on my second final.
Please turn in your Bibles, and we will close with this. It is a missionary Psalm: Psalm 67.
You may want to do what I did in my Bible. I wrote “Psalm 67” right in the front of the book of Jonah.
This is the Psalm of a Jonah sign.
Psalm 67:1–2:
God be merciful unto us, and bless us;
And cause His face to shine upon us; Selah.
That Thy way may be known upon earth,
Thy salvation among all nations.
I like the King James wording in this case: “God have mercy on us, and bless us.”
God, have mercy on us and bless us, that Your way may be known on all the earth and Your salvation among all nations.
Now look at how the Psalm ends, Psalm 67:6–7:
The earth hath yielded her increase:
God, even our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us;
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
God has mercy on us. It is redemptive mercy. It is not for us; it is for them. God blesses us that they might know.
God deals with Jonah for Nineveh. You are not going to understand Jonah unless you see that.
If I walked up to you and said, “Well, good to see you, Bill. The Lord bless you,” how would you feel about that?
But what if I said, “Phil, the Lord have mercy on you and bless you”? Do you see the difference?
Psalm 67 does not begin, “The Lord bless you.” It begins, “God have mercy on us and bless us.”
We do not deserve the blessing of God. When we do something missionary—when we pray, give, write, or go—we are not doing God a favor. We are not doing the heathen a favor.
We need to press in and see God’s heart in all of this. God wants to turn us into a sign. God has a missionary heart. Yes, He wants to reach out there, but He starts with Jonah.
The crisis of the book is the crisis in Jonah’s heart. He is a prophet. He is a servant. He loves the Lord. He is confused about a few things, but he is open. He loves the Lord, but he is not a sign.
God says, “I have to address that. I have to deal with that. He has to become a sign.”
That is the crisis. How does God deal with it? By a miracle. There is no other way. He has to transform him.
I am suggesting four stages in Jonah’s transformation.
Why does God do it? Because of His great, unbounded mercy. We do not deserve it.
God blesses us. He has mercy on us. He blesses us. He causes His face to shine upon us, that His salvation might be known in all the earth.
May God help us as we go through this marvelous book, and may God do for us what He did for His servant Jonah.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You for this wonderful book, for giving us the key in the New Testament. We pray that, as we study together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, You would indeed repeat Your work and transform us into signs.
Cause Your face to shine upon us, that Your salvation might be known in all the earth. We know this will affect how we think about the heathen. We know this will affect our theology. But do the deeper work.
Change who we are.
We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.