Well, good evening, brothers.
As we prepare to look in the Word, I’d like to share a couple of verses. This is not on the sheet. It is Proverbs 4:23:
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
God is very interested in our hearts, because out of our hearts flow the springs of life—everything out of our hearts. And the Lord, He does not chop off weeds at the surface. He digs deep.
That verse in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God”—the Hebrew is actually, “Dig deep, O God.” We have been praying that the Lord would do that this weekend: out of our hearts, the springs of life.
I have this confidence also, Matthew 15:13:
Every plant which the heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.
So, you are safe. If I say anything that is flesh and blood, that just comes from me, I am trusting God to root it up and cast it away. We want to hear from the Lord. That is why we are gathered.
As we come to look in God’s Word, there is a principle that is absolutely indispensable: total reliance on God’s Holy Spirit. It is His Book. He gave it, and He must illumine it. Only God can reveal God. There is no other possibility.
And He has promised that if we would come as little babes, and come with our mouths open wide, that He would make us and He would fill us. We trust Him to unveil Himself.
So, with those thoughts in mind, let us bow together and commit our time to the Lord.
Heavenly Father, thank You. Thank You for every man that You have gathered in this place. We just pray, Lord, as we meet together, that we might behold the Lord Jesus in a fresh way, in a living way.
We know, Lord, that we do not deserve it, but Jesus deserves it. We ask You, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to meet with us this weekend. We thank You in advance that You are doing it now, and You are going to continue to do it in a rising tide of blessing. We just commit this weekend unto You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Before we begin, let me—I heard someone say one time, “Before I speak, let me say something.” So, before I speak, I just want to make a couple of comments.
First, let me explain the notes that you have. Our brother puts all the verses up on the screen, so you do not really need the notes. Those notes are in the order in which the verses will be quoted. Sometimes that helps. Some people make little jottings next to them. If it does not help, just scrap it. We want to just be with the Lord, and I thought that might be helpful for some.
So, that is what those notes are: pretty much in the order. I might skip one or two, and so on.
In the back, there are books on the table, and they are free for the taking, as far as they go. If you see some that have been taken and you want them, just let us know, and we will make sure that you get them. There is no charge for that.
But if you want some sent to you, please remind me. Seventy-nine years of memory—it is full, you know what I am saying? I keep forgetting a lot of stuff. So, write down what you would like and give your address, and then we will make sure that you get that.
Now, we have come to be blessed by the Lord, but we want to bless Him. We have come to bless the Lord. He enjoys our gathering together, and so we want to be here to bless the Lord.
We welcome all of you. Some of you I have not seen in quite a few years, and it is such a joy to be able to see you again and fellowship with you again. Some of you I have never met, I think—or I forgot already.
But anyway, much of the blessing of this weekend is going to be the fellowship. You know, in Malachi, it says that God’s people got together and just spoke, and the Lord took heed and wrote it down.
So precious, when all you do is speak to one another and God writes it in His diary—a book of remembrance. It is so precious to the Lord. So, make this a time of fellowship.
You might be shy and say, “Well, I do not know so-and-so.” There are no strangers here. There are a lot of strange people, but there are no strangers. We are all strange, but let us just enjoy each other and enjoy the Lord.
Just a special word: I am happy to have young people here. Praise the Lord for that. Do not be intimidated. You have Christ in you. Share Christ with us as we get together.
Do not just sit back and say, “I am going to wait for some adult and some super-duper spiritual guy to share something.” We are all brothers in Christ, and we are all toddlers, and we are all knowing the Lord. We need to just share with one another, and that is going to be a big part of our getting together.
So, I welcome you. You are probably saying, “Who is this guy? He does not even have a Bible.” I have bad eyesight, and all of the verses are very large on this page. So, I have my Bible here. I just did not want you to think that.
I welcome you to our little meditation on the Lord Jesus from the book of Jonah. I do not want to call it a book. I am going to keep calling it a book, but it is the testimony of Jonah. Jonah is giving his testimony.
It is our hope that, in an introduction study, we can get a flavor for the book—sort of get the idea of the message. It is only four chapters. It is a short little book. But what is the message? What is the revelation of Christ?
If God took Jonah out of your Bible, what revelation of Christ would you miss that no other book gives in the same way? Every book has a special revelation of the Lord, and we are praying that God would open this book for us.
Now, we are not going to start with Chapter 1, Verse 1, and do five verses—that kind of thing. We are sort of going to fly over the whole book to get the message of the book. It is just sort of a flyover.
We are not even going to start in Jonah. We are going to take off in 2 Kings, and then we are going to fly over the book of Jonah, and then we are going to go all the way to the New Testament. In other words, I just want you to get a broad idea until we home in on the heart of God.
What does He want us to know this weekend from this book, this testimony?
I have found that one of the easiest ways to get to the heart of God, studying any book of the Bible, is just to make general observations about the book as a whole. You read it over and over and over, and after a while, certain things begin to come out.
My first observation has to do with two passages in the New Testament that mention Jonah. Follow along, please: Matthew 12:38–41.
Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, Teacher, we would see a sign from Thee.
But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah the prophet:
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.
And then in Luke 11:29:
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.
The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.
Now, those two passages in the New Testament, in my understanding, provide the key that unlocks the message of the book of Jonah.
What I am saying is this: if all you had was the Old Testament—if all you had was those four chapters, the testimony of Jonah—and you heard what he said and how he explained it, I do not think you would get to the heart of God. You need what Jesus said in the New Testament.
It is a great illustration of the indispensable principle: only God can reveal God. He has got to be the Teacher, and Jesus certainly was the Teacher on the book of Jonah. He gave us the key.
Notice Luke 11:30:
For even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
That little expression, “Jonah became a sign”—Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. They repented because they saw a sign. They saw a sign in Jonah. That is essential. That is a key.
Jesus said of His own generation—and actually, every generation—there will never be another sign given to an adulterous generation. Jonah is the only sign.
That is true today, in our generation. That will be true tomorrow, if the Lord does not return. Every generation has only one sign: it is Jonah. If you do not understand that sign, you are going to miss the heart of God.
The first mention of Jonah in the Bible is not in his testimony. It is not in Jonah Chapter 1, 2, 3, or 4. It is in 2 Kings 14:25:
He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spake by His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.
In that passage, quite apart from the political intrigue in 2 Kings—what was going on—that is not what I am calling attention to. I am calling attention to this: the Bible calls Jonah a servant of the Lord. The Bible calls Jonah a prophet of the Lord.
He was a servant. He was a prophet. But he was not a sign.
You can be a prophet and a servant of the Lord, and not be a sign. He was a servant and a prophet before he became a sign.
Now, let me ask. It did not happen this way; this is just my imagination. You know how the book reads. I am sure you are familiar with the story of Jonah, and how he resisted and ran from the presence of the Lord. But what if Jonah did not run from the presence of the Lord? What if he obeyed right away?
Jonah 1:2 says:
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me.
What if he did not run away? What if he went to Nineveh and obeyed the Lord? He is a prophet. He is a servant of the Lord. Would Nineveh have repented?
The answer is: Nineveh would not have repented. They repented when they saw the sign, and without that, they would not have repented.
Jonah only prophesied twice in the testimony of Jonah. One of them came to pass; the other one did not.
The one that came to pass is in Jonah 1:12:
Pick me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you.
That is a prophecy, and it happened.
The other one that did not come to pass is Jonah 3:4:
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
That did not happen. That did not happen, even though Jonah was a servant of the Lord, even though Jonah was a prophet of the Lord.
If he were not a sign, he could not have fulfilled God’s purpose for Nineveh’s repentance.
I want to be very earnest with you, brothers, because our Lord Jesus said no other sign will ever be given to any generation.
It is not enough to be a Christian. It is not enough to be a servant of the Lord. It is not enough to be a prophet. You have got to be a sign.
The book of Jonah is a personal testimony by a man who was a servant and a prophet, and he said, “Let me tell you how God turned me into a sign.” That is the book. That is what he is talking about.
The one who has been made a sign gives his testimony.
The book of Jonah poses this question to every earnest Christian, everyone who studies the Bible: Are you a sign?
The sign of Jonah—not any sign. You have got to know what the sign of Jonah is. But are you a sign?
At the close of the weekend, it is my prayer that every brother here can give an honest answer to that question. I think that is what the Lord has on His heart.
He is not going to ask you if you are a servant of the Lord. He is not going to ask you if you are a Bible teacher. He is not going to ask you if you are a pastor. He is not going to ask you if you are a missionary. He is not going to ask you if you are a Christian artist. He is not going to ask you if you are a financial supporter of missions.
He is not even going to ask if you are a dedicated Christian, if you are faithful. He is not going to ask that.
The question for this weekend—and may God help us—is: Are you a sign? Are you the sign of Jonah?
That is what this book is about. Though I will speak, it is Jonah’s testimony. I want to give you Jonah’s testimony.
The book of Jonah is what many commentators call one of the minor prophets. You know, theologians have divided the prophets into two groups: the major prophets and the minor prophets.
The major prophets are not called major because they have a major message and the other prophets have a minor message. That is not why.
There are four major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. They are called major for this reason only: they are long. That is why they are major. They have more chapters. That is the only reason they are major.
The minor prophets—the twelve minor prophets—have shorter chapters.
In fact, in the Hebrew Bible, there is no such division. They just throw all the prophets together. Strangely enough, not Daniel. They did not consider Daniel a prophet. I am not going to get into that. It is interesting, though.
In addition to the major and minor prophets, there were other prophets who never wrote anything. They were oral prophets. For example, Elijah never wrote a book, and Elisha never wrote a book. Samuel, Iddo, Jehu, Gad—there are people who were prophets who never wrote a book.
Then there are others that we assume are prophets. They are just called the man of God, the seer, the messenger of the Lord, and so on. There were prophetesses as well. There is Deborah, Huldah, Miriam, and the daughters of Philip, and so on.
There are hundreds of prophets. Remember in Elijah’s day, when Obadiah said, “I secretly fed a hundred prophets in a cave”? A lot of prophets.
The reason I am bringing that up is to underscore this principle. Once again, it is going to help us get to the heart of God. That is what we want. We want to know why God recorded this. It is inspired in our Bible. Why?
Every prophet—whether major, whether minor, whether an oral prophet, whether an unnamed prophet—every time there was a prophet, God came to them and gave them a word to address a crisis.
Usually it was a political crisis. Usually God came and said, “You need to talk to the people because Syria is going to invade, or Babylon is going to invade, or Israel is entering an unholy alliance with Egypt or with Edom.” There is always a crisis, and He raises up a prophet.
Sometimes it is a moral crisis. People are turning to idolatry, and God raises up a prophet and says, “Deal with that.” Sometimes they are turning to materialism, and that is a crisis, and God sends a prophet and says, “Deal with that particular issue.”
Sometimes the entire government is oppressive and corrupt, and the priesthood is corrupt. He raises up a prophet to deal with that. Sometimes the prophets were corrupt, and they said, “God says this,” and He calls them lying prophets.
That is why, when you turn to one of the prophets, it begins something like this: “And the word of the Lord came to Isaiah in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.” Why did He tell you that?
He wants you to study the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. It is in the Bible. You study that and find the crisis, because the prophets addressed a crisis.
In Ezekiel, the word of the Lord came on the fifth day of the fourth month, in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s reign, in the land of the Chaldeans, by the river Chebar. Why does He tell you that?
Because without that, you will not know the message. You have got to know the crisis. Find the crisis; you find the message.
Now, there are two books among the prophets that are different. One is the prophet Habakkuk, and one is the prophet we are going to be thinking about: Jonah.
What is the crisis? What is the crisis in the book of Habakkuk? What is the crisis in the book of Jonah? Is it a political crisis? Is there some threat of an invasion from another country? Is there an unholy alliance? Is there corruption? What is the crisis?
Because if you do not find the crisis, you will not find the message.
You see, with Habakkuk and with Jonah, it was not a political crisis. It was very personal. It did not involve Israel. It did not involve Judah. It was not about some other nation, some unholy alliance. No date is given, no historical background.
We know Jonah was an early prophet because of the reference in 2 Kings, which puts him in the days of Elisha. So, he was an early prophet, but that is all we know. That is not even mentioned in his testimony.
What Habakkuk and Jonah have in common is that God is addressing a crisis in their heart. They had a crisis in their heart, and God had to deal with that.
If you miss that, you are going to miss, as I said, the heart of God. The emergency, the need, the crisis was in Jonah’s heart. It was a soul crisis, a heart crisis, a spiritual crisis—an issue between him and the Lord that needed to be dealt with.
When God dealt with it, Jonah said, “Let me write my testimony. You have got to hear how God met me in this crisis. It is tremendous.” Jonah then begins to give this marvelous book.
What was Jonah’s problem? What was his crisis? We need to look at that.
Now, in this introduction lesson, here is what I want to do. It is sort of a little outline, so you know where I am going from here.
I want to identify the problem, the crisis. We have got to know what the crisis is. Then I want to show you the method that God uses to deal with a crisis like that.
I am not going to tell you the solution. We are going to get into that. We will see how God solved it. But the only thing I want to do tonight is identify the crisis and give you the method that God will always use when that is the problem. Okay? So that is where we are, and Lord willing, that is where we are going.
It is interesting to see how commentators go through this. I probably have fifty commentaries on the book of Jonah. It is amazing to go through them and see how they look at these things.
Most of them—many of them—make the problem a matter of his mind: the way Jonah was thinking, the way he was rationalizing, the way he was trying to figure things out. They say he has a theology problem. He has a weak view of God. He thinks God is weak on sin and that God is just going to let people get away.
Jonah 1:3 says:
But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord; and he went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Now, if he was a prophet—and he was—I am sure he knew you cannot flee from an omnipresent God.
Psalm 139 says:
Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall Thy hand lead me,
And Thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,
And the light about me shall be night;
Even the darkness hideth not from Thee,
But the night shineth as the day.
Jonah 4:2 says:
I pray Thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I made haste to flee unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness, and repentest Thee of the evil.
So they say the problem is up here. He has bad theology. And then, Nineveh—that is the capital of Assyria, and they already had a reputation. They were a terrorist nation. They had already been warned that Israel was going to be threatened by Assyria. Now God says, “I want you to go to Nineveh.”
Isaiah 10:7, speaking of Assyria, says:
Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few.
That is Nineveh. They are out to kill, out to destroy.
Isaiah 10:14 records Assyria speaking:
And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples; and as one gathereth eggs that are forsaken, have I gathered all the earth: and there was none that moved the wing, or that opened the mouth, or chirped.
Assyria said it was as easy for them to wipe out a nation as it would be to reach into a bird’s nest and take the eggs from a nest. That was Assyria. They were terrorists.
Extra-biblical sources tell you some of the terrible things that they did. I will not get into that. Nahum, of course, was like a hundred years later, but he describes the same thing. They call it the bloody city and the devastators.
Some suggest that it did not seem logical for God to have mercy on a wicked nation like Nineveh. The commission did not make any sense. They are a threat to God’s people.
Bible commentators also say, “Maybe the problem was not up there. Maybe it is how he felt.” He was a Jewish prophet, and here these are Gentiles. They say his problem was emotional.
He was a patriot, a full-blooded Jew. You know, it must have been shocking for Jonah to get a commission like that:
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.
Do you realize this? I told you there are major prophets, minor prophets, unnamed prophets—hundreds of prophets. No prophet, none, before Jonah or after Jonah, was ever called to go to a heathen nation. None. Only Jonah.
I am not saying God’s heart was not a worldwide heart. It always is a worldwide heart. Through Moses, He was reaching out to the Egyptians. We know that. With the ark of the covenant, He was reaching out to the Philistines. We know that. Through Joshua, He was reaching the Canaanites. We know that. Through Elisha, He was reaching into Syria. We know that. Through Daniel, He was reaching out to Babylon.
God has a worldwide heart. But He never, ever commissioned any Jewish prophet to go to a heathen nation. So some say that is the crisis: Jewish exclusivism. “I am a Jew. I cannot go there.”
Is that the problem?
Some think he was trying to protect God’s people. “I am going to run away because I do not want Assyria to be forgiven, and then they will come in.” Some say he was trying to protect God. He knew God’s heart—God is loving, forgiving. “I am going to go out and say, ‘God said you are done in forty days,’ and then it does not happen. What are they going to think about God?”
He might have been trying to save his own skin. He gives a prophecy that does not come to pass. Remember, he is to be killed—that prophet. That is how you know a real prophet. If it does not come to pass, then he is not a true prophet.
What was his problem? Was it in his mind? Was it his emotions—how he felt about God, how he felt about Israel? Was it his passion, his strong feelings? Did he hate Nineveh that much?
Jonah 1:2–3 says:
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.
But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Maybe that was the problem. God said, “Go.” Jonah said, “No.”
It was a problem of his will. Who cares what he thought if he disobeys? Who cares how he felt if he disobeys? Maybe that is the problem. God has to get a rebellious prophet to stop disobeying.
Here is an interesting thing: almost everybody who touches this precious book calls it a missionary book. Amazing.
One of the greatest missionary miracles that ever took place on planet Earth took place in this book. Nineveh trusted the Lord. Missionary book.
Let us deal with a man who has a non-missionary heart. There is no question that Jonah had a non-missionary heart.
Some interpret Verse 3 of Chapter 1—“He rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord”—not as though he is trying to get away from an omnipresent God, but more likely, they say, “I quit. I quit my job. I do not want to be a prophet anymore.”
They get that from a verse like 1 Kings 17:1:
And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord, the God of Israel, liveth, before whom I stand—
A prophet was standing in the presence of the Lord. Jonah said, “I am leaving the presence of the Lord.” So they think he is just quitting. He is saying, “I do not want to be a prophet anymore. I do not like this commission. I do not want to deal with Nineveh. I want my people safe,” and so on.
Jonah not only has a non-missionary heart, but he has an anti-missionary heart. He does not even say, “Turn or burn.” He just says, “Burn.” He is not giving them an option.
When I read about David Brainerd or Adoniram Judson, I read about missionaries who had a burden for the people that they were sent to. Hudson Taylor longed for the Chinese. He had a burden for them.
Ross Olson had a burden for Bangladesh. And Jim Elliot, for the Auca Indians in New Guinea. There was a burden. They prayed, they fasted, they sacrificed. John Paton loved the sinners in the South Sea Islands. That is what a missionary is.
Then I come to Jonah, the great missionary book. He has an anti-missionary heart. He has a non-missionary heart.
Clearly, there is a problem. He is confused. There is a problem somewhere. It is either in his head, or it is in his emotions, or it is in his will.
Brothers, all those things I mentioned—his mind, his emotions, his will—that is not his problem. Those are symptoms. That is not the crisis.
The fact is, and we will see as we go through, God was not even calling Jonah to go to Nineveh. God wanted to go to Nineveh. He wanted to use Jonah. He wanted to go in Jonah.
God is the One who wants to go to the mission field. You are not a missionary. There is only one Missionary: He lives in your heart. There is only one Evangelist: He lives in your heart. There is only one soul winner: He lives in your heart. He is the One who wants to go to the field.
But He has to go through someone who has been made a sign.
That is the crisis of the book. You say, “Jonah had a problem.” Jonah became a sign. Jonah did not have a problem. Jonah was the problem. Jonah was the problem.
The crisis that God addresses is not what he believed, not how he felt, not what he did, not what he did not do. The crisis in the book is who he was.
Jonah was the problem, and God had to bring Jonah to death. The Jonah life had to die, and he had to rise again by a life not his own in order that he could become a sign and God’s instrument of redemption to this heathen nation.
He would never be a missionary after God’s heart until God took him out of the way.
How is God going to deal with a non-missionary heart, with an anti-missionary heart? It needs to be crucified. It has got to be taken out of the way. That is the issue of the book.
God said, “I have no other sign for an adulterous generation except the sign of Jonah.” Jonah says, “Let me tell you what happened to me. You do not even know how anti-missionary I was. You do not know how I hated the people He sent me to. That is my natural heart. That is your natural heart.”
He said, “I want to tell you what God did. He killed me. He took me out of the way—me, out of the way. I thought I had a problem. I tried to figure it out. I had strong emotions about Israel and about Nineveh. It was not a problem.”
He said, “Let me tell you: I was the problem. I want to tell you how God dealt with me and what He did to me. I was a servant. I was a prophet. But I was not a sign. I want to tell you what God did to turn this prophet, this servant, into a sign.”
When I look back and I see what God has done, I have got to tell you my testimony. So that is what the book of Jonah is about. The crisis of the book is Jonah himself, and God takes him out of the way.
Now, at this time, I am not going to tell you yet exactly what the sign is. We are going to get to that. But as we get ready to close, I want to show you God’s method of dealing—not only with Jonah, but with every Christian who is not a sign.
The principle is always the same. As you go through the book of Jonah, you are going to notice that it is a book of miracles—many miracles.
I see three different types of miracles here. One of them was physical: the physical miracles.
Jonah 1:4 says:
But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken up.
We will talk about this later, but did God ever hurl a storm in your life? Picture that. He hurled a storm.
Jonah 1:11 says:
For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.
Jonah 1:13 says:
For the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
Jonah 1:15 says:
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.
Miracle. He initiated the storm. He made it worse. He made it even worse. And He stopped it in a moment of time.
Jonah 1:17 says:
And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
That is a miracle.
To many people, that is all they think about when they think of Jonah: the fish. It is only mentioned twice in the whole book. Once, God appointed a fish; once, God told it to vomit Jonah up. That is it.
They are so busy putting a measuring tape around the fish’s mouth, they should put it around the heart of God. It is a book on the mercy of the Lord, the love of the Lord. They miss the message of Jonah.
If God wanted to, Jonah could have survived without the fish. He could have survived underwater for three days. We have a God of miracles.
Jonah 4:6 says:
So the Lord God prepared a plant, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head.
For the moment, do not worry: was it a gourd? Was it a vine? Was it a cucumber? Was it a mushroom? I do not care about that. It was a miracle. It came up in one day and went down in one day. Miracle.
Then, I am not going to go through all these verses, but in Jonah 4:7, God speaks to a worm. In Jonah 4:8, He speaks to the east wind. In Jonah 4:8, He causes the sun to shine its rays down on Jonah. Even in the beginning, in Jonah 1:7, He controlled their superstition when they cast lots and tried to find out who it was.
My point, brothers, is this: God’s method is miracle.
If you are going to become a sign, you need a mighty miracle God. If I am going to become a sign, if God is going to put an end to the Ed Miller life and let me rise again by a life not my own, it takes a mighty miracle God.
You have got to hear Jonah’s testimony.
There is even a larger miracle than the physical miracles. There is the moral miracle in this book. The whole city gets saved—the entire city of Nineveh.
As far as conversions go, I think this is the greatest number at one time that ever came to the Lord. Maybe during the tribulation, depending on your view, there might be a greater evangelistic outreach.
It is spelled out in Jonah 3:5–10. I am not going to read that now. Just listen to Jonah 4:11:
And should not I have regard for 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?
Some translations say “animals.” One hundred and twenty thousand do not know their right from their left. Some people think that is the total population of Nineveh—one hundred and twenty thousand—and they are so dumb, they do not even know the difference between right and wrong.
I suppose that could be true if He is talking about Congress. I did not say that. All right.
But many think that the one hundred and twenty thousand are babies, little infants. They do not know their right from their left. He said, “You want Me to destroy the city? It has one hundred and twenty thousand infants.”
If that is the case, that would be, what, one-fourth or one-fifth of the total population? You might be talking about half a million people. Half a million people getting saved in one day. Moral miracle.
This book is full of miracles—not only the physical miracle, but this moral miracle.
I do not even think—well, I know—there were not even that many at Pentecost, were there? In the days following, I mean, there were thirty-five thousand, you know.
Would not you think a book with so many miracles and a moral miracle like that—you say there cannot be a better miracle than half a million people getting saved in one day?
That is not the main miracle in the book of Jonah. Wonderful as that is, as great as all those physical miracles are, there was a spiritual miracle.
Jonah was turned into a sign. That is the mighty miracle. That is the mighty miracle.
Jonah says, “I cannot wait to give my testimony. I cannot wait to tell you how this happened—how God took a man with a non-missionary heart, an anti-missionary heart, and a hatred for the people He sent me to.”
“He took me out of the way. Then He raised me up with a life not my own—supernatural, risen life. Then, through me, He did a mighty work.” That is what the book is about.
I want to suggest a little outline. This is how we will look at the rest, Lord willing.
Again, the crisis of the book is not what Jonah thought, not what Jonah felt, not what Jonah did, not what Jonah did not do. The crisis of the book is Jonah himself.
God must deal with Jonah life—Ed Miller life. Put your own name in there. Your life. He has got to get you out of the way, put an end to you, so that you can know the life of Christ.
Jonah was able to identify with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ for those three days. We will get into that in the middle of the connection.
Anyway, here is what we are going to look at. The next two chapters, Chapters 1 and 2, are how God took Jonah out of the way. Chapter 3 is how God raised Jonah with a life not his own.
Chapter 4—well, you see, in Jonah’s testimony, here is what he is saying. He divides it into two parts. He said, “I want to tell you what God did for me before I became a sign.”
We would like it to end in Chapter 3: they lived happily ever after. But then we have Chapter 4.
He said, “I want to tell you how God dealt with me and pursued me before I became a sign. Then I want to tell you what God did for me after I became a sign.”
That Chapter 4 is a clincher: how God deals with us before we are a sign and then after we are a sign.
I want to close this introduction lesson. Some of you know this Psalm already, but Psalm 67, in my view, is the great missionary Psalm in the book of Psalms.
I want you to see the terminal points—how it begins and how it ends. 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.
King James says, “God be merciful unto us.” “Have mercy on me.” The American Standard says, “God be gracious unto us.”
Notice the last two verses, Psalm 67:6–7:
The earth hath yielded its increase:
God, even our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us;
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
You see how that is a missionary Psalm? God has to deal with me so that they can hear. God has to deal with you so that they can hear.
It does not start with “God bless us.” It is, “Have mercy on us and bless us. Be gracious to us.” That is Jonah’s testimony: “Let me tell you how God had mercy on me and blessed me so that the ends of the earth could hear.”
This is the book of Jonah. I hope this little overview helps you to get a heart and be in prayer as we look at this, because God is going to describe in this testimony.