Well, good evening again. Isn’t it wonderful to see what the Lord does in these lives? My, how that thrills my spirit. At that age, you know, the Lord saves a life as well as a soul. So precious.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is indispensable: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. I hope you never tire of that. Maybe you tire of the way I express it, but I hope God always brings that principle to your heart and mind, whether you come to the Bible by yourself in some private place or whether you come corporately, as we are doing this evening.
The Bible is like our Lord Jesus in that it is human and divine. There are two sides. We cannot neglect the human side. You have got to study. You have got to understand language, background, relationships, and so on. But there is also a spiritual side, and God has ordained that He is the only Teacher of that side. If we are going to get the heart of God, God must teach us.
There are no books; there are no commentaries. It is the Lord—it is the Spirit of God—who shows us His Son in that precious Book. So do not ever neglect to apply that principle. Come to the Lord as a little child and just say, “Lord, You teach me. Open my eye. Show Yourself. Make the Bible live.”
You do not study the Bible merely to know the Bible. You do not study Matthew to know Matthew, or Romans to know Romans. God has given us His Word that we might know Him, that we might know the Lord. He desires that we come to the Bible with hearts that want to know Him, and He honors that every time.
How thankful I am for that principle. I would be a dead man without that principle. The Lord is the only One who can open the Scripture. So let us pray and trust Him together.
Father, thank You so much for Your precious Word. Thank You that You put a Bible Teacher in our heart to live within us, to search the depths of God, and to show us the things of Christ—to instruct us as to who we are in Him, to show us all the wonderful things that have been accomplished for us, to show us what You are doing in our lives, and what we can expect as You conform us to Christ.
Thank You for Your Word. Now we ask You again to give us a living Word. Show us the Savior through the written Word. Thank You for every chapter in the Bible. We know the Bible would be incomplete without each chapter, and we know our lives would be incomplete without Jonah 3. We know that truth is in other places, but we ask You tonight to teach us. Show us Christ from this precious portion of Scripture.
Thank You in advance, and we wait on You now. We pray for Your grace, Your strength, and the attention that is not from man but comes from You. Work in us, and we thank You in advance that You are going to meet with us. We ask again that You would visit us with Your salvation. We ask it in the precious and all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, I do not need to take too much time to review. It is so different when I come here, because we have a concentrated session. When we meet together at home, everything is a week apart, and a big part of my teaching has to do with review and bringing people up to date. But we are looking at this wonderful book of Jonah—the prophet of God whom God, in mercy, transformed and turned into a sign.
That is what we are looking at this weekend. You remember, when the story begins, Jonah is independent and wanting to do his own thing, resisting the Lord. He flees from the presence of the Lord. The commission he had received went contrary to his thinking. He had a non-missionary heart and an anti-missionary heart. God wanted to use him as a missionary channel, but he was not ready. The whole book of Jonah shows us how God made him ready.
Of course, it lays down the great principles of how God always turns His child into a sign. I suggested that there are, wonderfully illustrated in the four chapters of Jonah, four changes that God works in our hearts as He turns us into a sign. We have already looked at a couple of those.
In Jonah 1, we saw God pursue—chase down—His independent child by every means. He hurled a storm into his life and brought certain people into his life, people with less light than he had. By His mercy, He used even Jonah in his condition, until finally God chased him to the place where he was willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of others.
Jonah 1:12:
“Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea;
so shall the sea be calm unto you:
for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.”
So he was finally willing to be thrown overboard. Still, there was a lot of Jonah in Jonah even at this point in his life. It was a noble thing, on the level of the Phoenician mariners, to see. It was brave; it was courageous. They were thankful that he was willing to sacrifice his life for them.
But as we tried to show, as wonderful as that is, and as important as it is as a first step—to be willing to lay down your own comforts and your life for the sake of others—others do not need your life. They need His life. So the work must go on.
It is an important step to surrender all. But having surrendered all, God begins to work His deeper work. What He did not accomplish through the storm, He then begins, in a deeper way, to accomplish through the fish.
You remember we looked at that. For three days and three nights, God used that experience to put Jonah in the shoes of the heathen. His attitude was, “I do not want to bring the message to them. They do not deserve it. They deserve judgment.” God brought him to the place where he learned that he also deserved the judgment of God and did not deserve the mercy of God.
God put him on level ground with everyone. We all need the mercy of the Lord. There is no difference. There is no difference. Someone might express their need in a greater way and be involved and entangled in things from which others have been delivered, but we all need the mercy of the Lord.
Finally, in that fish, Jonah understood how much he needed God’s mercy, and he cried out in Jonah 2:9:
“Salvation is of the Lord.”
That is the lesson he learned in the fish. We saw him, in the fish, turn his heart toward the temple and toward the Lord again. He had run from God’s presence, but now he had tasted what it was like to be in the shoes of the heathen. Then, when he said that, God said in Jonah 2:10:
“And the Lord spake unto the fish,
and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”
God surprised Jonah with resurrection. He was not expecting that. He thought it was over when he went sailing through the air and hit the water. “That is the end. That was my dedication. That is my life. I give my life.” But God had a great surprise for him.
Now he stands again on God’s good earth with a life that is not his own—a supernatural life, a miracle life. A new man and a new creation. Here he is the recipient of the undeserved mercy of God. He stands as a man raised from the dead.
This evening, I would like to take us to that next step: Jonah 3. After God brings us to the place of surrender, and after God takes us to the place where we are able to embrace the pure grace of God—“Salvation is of the Lord”—He turns and transforms Jonah into a sign. That is what I would like us to look at this evening: resurrection life.
I would like to read again the word that our Lord Jesus recorded in Luke 11, just two verses—Luke 11:29-30:
“And when the people were gathered thick together, He began to say,
This is an evil generation:
they seek a sign;
and there shall no sign be given it,
but the sign of Jonas the prophet.For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites,
so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.”
Jesus not only said that Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, and that this was the persuasive cause of their repentance, but He also said that the sign of Jonah would be the only sign He would ever give to a wicked, sign-seeking generation.
Not only to Nineveh, but our Lord Jesus said there will never be another sign—only one sign, the sign of Jonah. That is why it is so important in my heart this weekend that we all lay hold of the truth: God wants to make you a sign. God wants to make you a sign. That is mission.
We are going to see it illustrated in this marvelous book. Thousands of Christians are in process. God is working that in them, and they are still in the storm process, the fish process, and so on. But the Lord is faithful.
Before we look at Jonah 3, there are a couple of things I want to sweep away. Jonah 3 raises two questions that, in some minds, have caused theological difficulty. I have only met one person in my life who thought one of these problems was a legitimate hang-up. That does not mean there are not others, but I have only met one.
There are some theological problems here, but they are not real hang-ups to most Christians. It is a curiosity, perhaps, but not really a hang-up. For that reason, I do not want to take precious, hospitable time to look at these particular problems. Let me just mention them to you.
The first has to do with Jonah 3:10, where the King James Version says God repented, or God relented, concerning the calamity. Some would say, “Now that looks like a contradiction in the Bible. God repented. God changed. God turned around.” Yet 1 Samuel 15:29 says that He is not a man that He should repent, and Malachi 3:6 says:
“For I am the Lord, I change not.”
So they think there is a conflict. I do not. If you have a legitimate hang-up on that, then see one of the elders, and they will straighten you out.
By the way, if you want to study the doctrine of repentance, do not neglect Jonah. In seed form, you have the full teaching of repentance in the book of Jonah, because Nineveh repented, Jonah repented, and God repented. When you see all the principles involved there, you will have the full teaching in seed form on repentance. But I do not want to deal with that now.
The other problem is introduced because of Matthew 12:40:
“For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly;
so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Some people think that is a problem because Jesus died on Friday and rose on Sunday morning. How are you going to get three days and three nights out of that? Some people claim they are hung up on that. All of these things are easily answered, but I do not want to take time now. If you have a legitimate hang-up, see one of the elders. They will straighten you out on that.
It is interesting, though, that when we gather at a weekend like this, you do not want—I hope you do not want—to deal with the technicalities of cold theology. I surely would not want to give you that, and I am sure you do not want it. So, bless God, you elders are safe.
I have another observation that is a little closer to the heart of God. It is not quite Jonah 3, but it is suggested at the beginning of Jonah 3. It is this glorious truth in verse 1:
“And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying.”
I love that verse. That ought to be a plaque on a wall, because it is the truth of restoration. Isn’t this a precious thing? You know the story of Jonah, and I do not know a more precious truth for the Christian: Jonah received the word of the Lord a second time.
After what he had done, after he had left the presence of the Lord—talk about the undeserved mercy of the Lord. God does not discard His child. He will take him through death and resurrection, and then, after He does His work, the word of the Lord comes a second time unto him.
One reason I want to call attention to that is because, when I was a new Christian, we were taught the exact opposite. They put us on a tremendous guilt trip and told us that if we ever backslid, we were done. God would put us on a shelf, and He would never use us again.
What a terrible thing that was in my early Christian life, because I did not know anything and I was messing up all the time. I kept feeling like God was going to put me on the shelf. It is a great joy for me to stand here in front of you and declare, without clearing my throat, in an unqualified way: God has no shelf.
It is a glorious thing. They used to quote us this little poem and say, “The bird with the broken wing never rises so high again.” That is good poetry, but it is horrible theology.
I will tell you, it is a glorious thing to know that the word of the Lord came a second time. Second implies third, and third implies fourth. It does not say, as with the last Adam, “second Adam.” He did not say “second Adam,” because second would imply third, and there is no third Adam. He is the last Adam.
But it did not say the word came for the last time. It came for the second time, implying a third time, a fourth time, and so on. I tell you this: God is never done with you. God is never done with me. God is never finished with His people.
Over and over and over again, the word of the Lord is going to come to them. If He has to cast you down in a grave and raise you up again, He will do it. Then the word of the Lord will come to you again.
Elijah knew that truth. David knew that truth. Peter knew that truth. John Mark knew that truth. Go through your Bible and look at those to whom the word of the Lord came again.
The reality is that when He raises you up, He raises you up to greater usefulness, not less usefulness. But that is a subject all its own.
Are you familiar with Howard Hendricks from Dallas Theological Seminary? I heard him preaching one time on Elijah. He has a humorous way of presenting the truth. He was picturing this discouraged prophet, and the prophet went to the Lord out in the field and said, “I quit.”
God said, “What did you say?”
He said, “I resign.”
God said, “Spell it.”
He said, “R-E-S-I-G-N. I resign.”
And the word came out, “Sounds like re-sign to Me.”
Well, it is a great truth that the word of the Lord came to him again. God, in His grace, called him again. Rebelling and running, God did not cast him off. It is just a wonderful truth.
Our brothers got me into Psalm 23 here, and I love to relate some of these things to Psalm 23:
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He restoreth my soul.”
With a perfect restoration, He restoreth my soul.
That is introduction. Let us look, please, at Jonah 3:
“And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city,
and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh,
according to the word of the Lord.
Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey,
and he cried, and said,
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.So the people of Nineveh believed God,
and proclaimed a fast,
and put on sackcloth,
from the greatest of them even to the least of them.For word came unto the king of Nineveh,
and he arose from his throne,
and he laid his robe from him,
and covered him with sackcloth,
and sat in ashes.And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh
by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,
Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing:
let them not feed, nor drink water:But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
and cry mightily unto God:
yea, let them turn every one from his evil way,
and from the violence that is in their hands.Who can tell if God will turn and repent,
and turn away from His fierce anger,
that we perish not?And God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way;
and God repented of the evil,
that He had said that He would do unto them;
and He did it not.”
I told you in the introductory lesson that I thought one of the greatest moral miracles of all time was recorded in this chapter: this great turning of half a million or more people to the Lord. One stranger comes in one day and speaks, from the record, one sentence. What a sentence! And they repent.
Verse 2 calls it the great city—a wicked city. I told you previously that I take the reference to 120,000 as referring to infants. If you multiply that by four or five, that is where you get over half a million people. Half a million people turning to the Lord.
I know this part is not in the Bible, but I have read some descriptions of what Nineveh was like at that time. I do not know if you are familiar with Dr. Charles Feinberg from Talbot Seminary, but he has some wonderful commentaries. He gives some of the background and says this was an amazing city at that time.
It was one of the largest and most developed cities in the entire world at that time. There is another Dr. Pusey who has a wonderful commentary on this particular book—indeed, on all the Minor Prophets. He says that, on the level of earth, there was never a city like this. It was unassailable.
They did not have one wall around it, as Jericho had—well, actually Jericho had two walls. They had five walls around the city, five walls with great space and moats in between. Each wall, he said, was one hundred feet high. On the top of each wall was enough space to run three chariots side by side.
This was an unusual city. It was fortified. It was a tremendous city—remarkable. Some of the things they dug up in the sciences and all that kind of thing are astonishing.
Do you know where Nineveh is geographically? It is Iraq. It is Iraq. That is where it was—the capital of Assyria. Even as there are today, there were then many palaces all through the city of Assyria, even in that day.
According to the records, there were fifteen gates to the city, and all around the outside wall there were fifteen hundred towers. Each tower was two hundred feet high. Inside those walls, in that magnificent city, was a wicked, wicked people—a violent people.
I will not shock you with some of the descriptions I read of their sin. Perhaps you already know. They were just a terrible, terrible people. That is the city that turned to the Lord in a day—half a million people.
Glance, if you would, at Jonah 3:5:
“So the people of Nineveh believed God,
and proclaimed a fast,
and put on sackcloth,
from the greatest of them even to the least of them.”
Glance again at verses 5 through 8. I will not take time to read it again, but look at this repentance—from the bum and the beggar in the street all the way up to the throne. As Rick was sharing with us the other day, the king came down, took off his robe, and sat in the ashes.
They even put the animals in sackcloth. Can you picture sheep, cows, and goats in sackcloth? The animals were not allowed to eat. It is one thing for a man to fast, but how are you going to get these animals to stop eating? This was a tremendous, uncontrived turning.
I read one commentator who said that their repentance was unreal. Unreal! He said it was all formal because it was a heathen repentance. There was no temple, no altar, no lamb, no blood, and no priest. It was a heathen repentance, and so it was unreal.
Well, I know this: you cannot fool God. The Bible says God said it was real. You might be able to fool Jonah. You can sure pull something over on me. But you cannot fool God. You cannot fool the Lord.
Jonah 3:10 says:
“And God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way;
and God repented of the evil,
that He had said that He would do unto them;
and He did it not.”
You cannot fool Jesus, who is God. In Matthew 12, He said they repented at the preaching of Jonah. It was a real repentance. Half a million people, in reality, turned to the Lord. What a moral miracle that is.
Well, the question begs to be answered: What happened? How in the world did that happen, that these wicked people—half a million of them—turned around?
Someone says it was Jonah’s preaching, his powerful sermon. Jonah 3:2 says:
“Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city,
and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.”
It looks as though Jonah was very restricted by God in what he said and was allowed to say. It reminded me very much of God’s word to Moses when he had to build the tabernacle. You will see why as we go through this chapter: “Do not add to it. Do not subtract from it, because I am planning to use this as a picture down the road.”
Jonah was under strict orders. According to Jonah 3:3, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. He obeyed the Lord, and he lined up with God’s restrictions.
You say, “Well, what did he bring?” The record we have is in Jonah 3:4:
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
I used to think that meant, “You have forty days to repent, and if you do not repent by forty days, on the forty-first day you are going to get incinerated.” That is what I thought it meant. But the Hebrew language will not allow that. That is not at all what it means.
After forty days, it will be overthrown. What it literally says is this: “By the fortieth day, it is over.” By the fortieth day, it is already overthrown and in ashes. In other words, they had no clue when the fire would fall. All they knew for sure was that by the fortieth day, the whole city would have been finally destroyed.
Would the fire fall on the second day? Would it fall on the fifteenth day, the twenty-fifth day, or the thirty-ninth day? They did not know. By that method, God was able to preserve the truth: “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” They did not know when it was going to come, and He deliberately left it uncertain.
Jonah 3:4 says that Jonah went one day’s walk, but Jonah 3:3 says it took three days to get through the city. What did he do—quit? How come he did not go all three days and go through the whole city?
I believe part of it has to do with the fact that he was under orders: “Speak exactly what I say. Do not add to it. Do not subtract from it.” What was his message? “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
He could not preach the next day. Do you know why? He would have had to change the message. He would have had to say, “Yet thirty-nine days, and you will be overthrown.” He was not allowed to do that. Then it would be thirty-eight days, and thirty-seven days. So he went one day, waited for a word from God, and there was no word. He was done. He gave the message as God gave it.
The message Jonah preached, you notice, was one hundred percent judgment. There was not a word of mercy in that message—in that sentence. Not a sentence of grace. Not a syllable of hope in what Jonah said.
Jonah was not allowed to say, “If you repent, however…” He did not say that. He did not say, “If you turn to the Lord, if from the king down to the beggar you put yourselves in sackcloth and repent, if you turn from your wicked way…” He gave no ifs. There were no conditions in this message whatsoever.
He did not say God would have mercy. He did not say God would forgive. He just said, “Within forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown.” That is it. Not a word about forgiveness, not a word about salvation, not a word about repentance, not a word about turning.
Do not be too hard on Jonah. You may say, “What a man. He is still anti-missionary and non-missionary. He just wants them judged, and he just wants to preach judgment.” That might be part of it, because God deals with us where we are. But the other part is this: he was under restrictions from heaven, saying, “Only preach what I tell you.”
I am going to show you why it is so important that he could not put grace in that sermon. We will explain that in a couple of minutes.
The Ninevites, according to the record, did repent at the preaching of Jonah. But there had to be something else that would turn half a million people to the Lord. I do not think Jonah could ever stand up and say, “What a sermon I preached that day. You should have heard me preach.”
He did not even have three points and a poem. What kind of a sermon is that? There was no hope in his message. What made thousands of people line the aisles and come forward, to use an expression with which we are familiar? There was nothing in his words at all to comfort—only terror from the Lord.
It was spiritually important for the picture that God was planning. As He planned the tabernacle—the earthly to picture the heavenly—Jonah was a picture. He did not know God was writing a Bible, using him as a pencil. He had no clue God was doing this.
When he went down into the fish, he did not say, “Oh, now it is time to picture Christ in His death.” He did not know God was doing that. Now God says, “I want you to say only this. There is nothing else.” It is important to the message of the book, important to the truth of the sign, and important to the message of the gospel.
Although what Jonah preached was certain, deserved judgment within forty days, when you read the record, you scratch your head because you say, “They did have hope. Where did they get it?”
Look in Jonah 3:9. The king says in his proclamation:
“Who can tell if God will turn and repent,
and turn away from His fierce anger,
that we perish not?”
In those two words, “Who knows?” there is hope. Somehow they said, “Maybe.” Where did they get that? “Perhaps God will; maybe He will not. Who knows?”
I know this: they did not get it from the words that came out of the mouth of Jonah. Wherever they got hope, it was not from his message.
Now, I see a hint of mercy in the second commission. But how would they know about that? In the first commission, Jonah 1:2, God said, “Arise, go to Nineveh, cry against it.” That is judgment. But the second time He did not say, “Cry against it.”
You notice, in the second commission in Jonah 3:2, He said, “Proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.” Changing it from “cry against it” to “proclaim what I tell you,” there might be hope in that. But I do not see how Nineveh would have known about that commission.
Maybe they got it out of his words in verse 4: “Yet forty days.” Maybe they thought something like this: “There is mercy there. God did not have to give us any time at all. He did not have to say forty days.” Maybe the fact that He mentioned forty days is where they found mercy.
Proverbs 29 says that a man who hardens his neck repeatedly will suddenly be reproved without remedy. You do not have to be a Bible scholar to go through your Bible and know that sometimes judgment came without warning. God just came down, and He did not give warning.
Herod was in the middle of a sermon in the book of Acts, and all of a sudden God struck him down. Ananias and Sapphira did not get a warning. So maybe when Jonah said “forty days,” they said, “We have time. We have time.”
Maybe, in verse 2, in the second commission—“Arise, go to Nineveh”—the fact that Jonah showed up at all gave them reason for mercy. They might have said, “If He is planning to incinerate us, why does He go through the trouble of sending us a prophet? Why send a preacher if He is planning just to destroy us?”
What good is it to know that we are going down if there is not a possibility of repentance? So maybe they got mercy out of all that. But here is what we know for sure.
Our Lord Jesus comes out and tells us in clear words what caused them to repent. I have quoted it many times. Let me quote it again—Luke 11:30:
“For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites,
so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.”
It was not only what they heard, but somehow there was in Jonah a sign. That is where they got their hope. A sign points to something. What is a sign? Jonah became a sign.
Perhaps in your study you have read something that greatly disappointed me, especially when I found out some of the respected scholars who hold this position. They said Jonah was a sign because, after three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, the stomach acids of the fish did a job on him and bleached him completely white.
They say that was the sign: he showed up bleached from the stomach acids of the fish. They get that because some people have actually been swallowed alive, rescued, and that is what they look like. So they say, “That is exactly what happened.”
I am disappointed in some of the commentators who hold that. I will not name them, but I think you would be shocked at some of them. I think it militates against what our Lord Jesus was saying in Matthew.
In Matthew, He says, “A wicked generation seeks a sign. I am not going to give you something that will convince you with these eyes.” If Jonah showed up all bleached white, that would have been a call to vision rather than a call and invitation to faith.
So I do not think that is what it means for Jonah to be a sign. Besides, that would tone down the miracle, I think. “Behold, God raised him partially digested.” There is just something about that miracle that does not do it for me.
How was Jonah a sign? You say Jonah was a sign in his testimony. There is no question about that. I think it is pretty obvious, though I cannot tell you how. If you want to know how, come to the elders later and they will tell you how.
But somehow it seems like the Ninevites knew the story of Jonah by the time he got there. I do not know exactly how they knew, but somehow they knew about the whole story.
Someone says, “Well, the mariners told them.” The mariners were Phoenician, and I do not know how they got to Nineveh, but maybe they did tell them in some way. I do not know.
That a man came out alive from this fish is a possibility. Someone says, “We do not have the full record here. We have one sentence. But maybe Jonah also gave his testimony as he spoke.”
I do not incline to that, because I am pretty sure God was very restrictive in what he said. We do not know how they knew. We do not know how much time passed between the first and second commission. Was it six months later? Was it a year later, or a couple of years later?
There is only one time the Bible mentions that trip—the distance from Jerusalem to Iraq. Of course, then it was not Assyria; Babylon would have been involved. But Ezra took that trip, and it took him six months just to make the trip. Of course, he was with others. So we do not know exactly how much time passed.
Then there is that interesting historical reference in 2 Kings 15. It is the same period of time, with Assyria going out on all their campaigns to destroy nations. Assyria attacked Israel. It looks as though it was in between the calls.
God says, “Arise, go to Nineveh,” and then there is the fish and all that. Jonah goes home. We know he went home because the second commission comes again and says, “Arise, go to Nineveh.” He was not in Nineveh. He was at home.
In between the two, it looks as though Assyria actually made a raid on Israel. If Assyria and the soldiers came to Israel, they might have gotten some news about what was happening. Read the record. It is a strange thing: they left awful fast out of Israel. They got paid off. Israel paid them in silver and said, “Do not attack us,” and it worked—they left.
Maybe there they heard the story. I do not know how they knew. Certainly, this is a book of miracles. God could have done a miracle to let them know. He could have done that easily—given them a vision or a dream. I do not know how they knew, but somehow they knew.
Matthew 12:40 says:
“For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly;
so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
The point of the three days and three nights is not merely three days and three nights. The point is: not four, not five, not more than three. It is not only a picture of death; it is a picture of resurrection.
That was his testimony. Somehow they knew it. Here was a man raised from the dead. Here was a man standing before them alive who was as good as dead. Somehow they knew that he was an object lesson of God’s mercy.
They knew the story. They knew that this man standing in front of them, giving them this message, did not deserve to be alive. It was only by the mercy of God that he was standing there.
That is where they got their hope. They said, “Hey, maybe if God had mercy on that scoundrel, maybe He will have mercy on me—on us.” Jonah became a sign.
Jonah’s only hope was God’s salvation, and they thought, “That is our only hope.” Now, the sign is not merely in what Jonah said or what Jonah did. You say, “A sign is the testimony.” Yes, but it is deeper than that. It is deeper than that.
When you look at one of the greatest moral miracles in the history of mankind—half a million people—if you study as I study and try to understand the heart of God and put the Scriptures together, you see that God has given us one of the greatest repentances of all time.
I read the record, and I say, “Where is the gospel? Where is the blood? I hate the idea that half a million people came to Christ, and I do not see the blood. Where is the Lamb of God? Where is the atonement in this great repentance?”
If you read it just with these eyes, in a cursory way, it looks like salvation by works. All you have to do is repent, put on sackcloth and ashes, fast, and then God will forgive you. I know that is not the truth of the Bible.
I read this greatest repentance in the history of the world, and I cannot find Jesus. I cannot find the blood. I cannot find the atonement. I know salvation is not by works. I know it is not by repentance and turning from your sin. That is not salvation.
God is writing a story, and God is giving a sign. I am going to ask you to stand back with me and look again at the same record. But this time, think in a spiritual way: What is God doing?
There are two parts to the gospel, as you know. One part is sadly neglected today among God’s people. That is the side Jonah preached—the judgment side.
People are not talking about hell these days. People are not talking about the wrath of God, God’s holy character, and the stern necessity for God to judge sin. People are not mentioning that.
It used to be said that before you can get a person saved, you have got to get them lost. That is what those old Puritans used to do. They got them lost good and lost. That is where the Quakers came from: they got them so lost that they quaked and were afraid. Then they came along and gave them the gospel—the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, the Ninevites had a full gospel in seed form. They had the wrath of God illustrated in the sermon of Jonah—unmitigated wrath. “You deserve hell. It is coming. God is going to judge.” That is all they knew: the wrath of God.
In the sermon of Jonah, they had part one of the gospel. In the person of Jonah, in the sign, they had part two: the death, the burial, and the resurrection. In seed form, there is the cross. Everything is there.
Jonah became Christ to them. Where they were, that was all they had. They looked over here and said, “We are dead.” They looked at him and said, “Here is our only hope.” Jonah became Jesus for them—a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
They looked at Jonah and saw Christ, their only hope, and they said, “That is our salvation.” What is the sign of Jonah?
The sign of Jonah is Christ. Someone says, “It is his testimony.” It is deeper than that. They say, “It is resurrection life.” That is the doctrine of it. The sign of Jonah is Christ—Jesus.
It is the life of God. It is the life of the Lord. This man was raised from the dead by a life not his own. It is more than his testimony. It is more than some doctrine about resurrection life. It is a man being indwelt by God. That is the testimony.
Why is there such power in a person whom God has raised from the dead? In a person in whom God has done a wonderful work, and Christ is being manifested in his life?
Find some converted drunkard, some converted pervert, or some self-righteous person who has been reduced and has come to the Lord. Someone else stands up with his fancy seminary degree, all his diplomas, and endorsements from famous Christians. Yet this nobody, on whom God has done a work—there is something there.
These kids that go out in the field and just live—somebody comes along and sees Christ. That is the sign. When they see Christ, that is the sign of Jonah: Christ alive.
Jonah did nothing to be made a sign. He did not eat and pray. He did not fast. He did not study. He did not read how-to books. He never ordered a tape from me.
God did it all. God chased him down to the place where he would surrender all. God brought him down to the depths where he would say, “It is all by grace.” God raised him up again, where he would stand in a life not his own.
Jonah did not go through the streets of Nineveh working miracle after miracle as some credential that he was divinely sent. He was the miracle. That was the sign.
God raised him up, and Christ was being seen in his life. When they see Christ, that is the sign of Jonah. He said, “I am not going to give another sign. That is the only sign.”
“I will work with a man. I will work with a woman, a young person, and I will conform them and change them until Christ is seen. Once Christ is seen, things begin to happen.” That is when it all started to happen.
The sign is Christ. When He shines in you, when He shines in me, that is the power of the Lord. I told you there is only one missionary in all the universe, and that is the Lord.
The Lord wanted to go to Nineveh, and He finally got to go in His servant Jonah. It was Christ who went to Nineveh. They heard the full gospel. They heard that there was judgment, and they saw hope in this one person—a transformed person radiating Christ.
Jonah was a successful prophet in the north long before he was a sign. He had preached, and things came to pass. But after he was raised from the dead, after Christ began to live in him—if we are going to look at some of that tomorrow—all the fruit was not in what Jonah said or what Jonah did. It was in who he was, what God had made him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is missions: Christ in you.
God’s life wins the world. It does not matter, in the final analysis, how pretty your fancy charts are, how you can answer doctrinal questions, what board is behind your back, or who endorses you.
To the degree Christ lives in you, to that degree you are a sign. To the degree Christ lives in me, to that degree I am a sign. Nineveh saw Christ.
You cannot make up for the lack of life by adding other things or doing other things. If Christ is not there, there is no amount of cleverness, eloquence, Christian experience, genius, organization, resources, or volunteers that can substitute for Christ.
You can have all the programs in the world to reach all the people in the world, and I will tell you, they are going to fall dead. You find somebody—anybody—humble to us, and if somebody sees Christ, there is a change. They look at that, and that is the sign of Jonah.
Tomorrow is very important. How can a man rise from the dead and still have the attitude Jonah had? We need to deal with that, and we are going to look at that tomorrow.
But brothers and sisters in Christ, I think you have come far enough that you already know this. You probably do not need to hear it, but I am going to tell you anyway, just to discharge my burden: Do not go out and try to become a sign.
Do not go out and try to become a sign. How did Jonah become a sign? God worked in him. Let God work in you. Let God deliver you. Let God set you free. Let God raise you from the dead. Let God conform you to Christ, and you are becoming a sign.
Occupy yourself with Christ. Do not worry about the mission field. Occupy yourself with Christ, and God will make the sign. Let God work in you. Then show up.
That is mission. That is the whole story. That is what Jonah did. That is what Lazarus did. It says people flocked because God raised him from the dead. Just let the Lord work in you.
Christ will begin to conform you to Himself. As Christ is seen, you will be amazed—and we are going to look at it tomorrow—you will be amazed how many people, you do not even begin to know how many people, will turn to the Lord just because you are you, and you live, and they can see Christ in you.
You could give testimony. I could get down, and you could come up row after row and testify, “Somebody saw Christ in me, and I came to believe.” These kids, the way they were talking, it was amazing. It was marvelous. It was a tremendous thing to say: “They saw Christ. They saw Christ.”
Oh, that God would give us the sign of Jonah. People scratch their heads and ask, “What is the sign of Jonah? What is the sign of Jonah?” It is Jesus. Of course, you know we are going to end up there. That is why we gathered here: to see Him.
That is the sign of Jonah. May God make us into His sign.
Let us pray together.
Father, thank You so much for this marvelous testimony that You gave. You allowed Jonah to be Christ for the Ninevites, and they turned in the masses to the Lord. Allow us to be Christ for You where we are.
Oh, we praise You, Lord, for this wonderful gospel. You raise us up from the dead and give us a life not our own, and that life is the attraction.
You told us that if You be lifted up, You will draw all men—not just the Greeks, but the whole world—to You. Will You be lifted up in our lives? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.