It is like our Lord Jesus in that there is a human side and there is a divine side. If all you see is the human side, like many did in the New Testament, you miss Jesus. They just saw the human side.
Then they come to the Bible, and all they see is the human side. They become theologians, the academics. We want the Lord to deliver us from that—deliver us from flesh and blood in all its subtle forms.
We have come to see Him, and He is delighted to reveal Himself to us. He said that if we would come as children, with our mouths open wide, He would fill them.
Jeremiah 31:25. I love these words:
I satisfy the weary ones
And refresh everyone who languishes.
I do not know if you came here weary and languishing, but there is a word in the Word that promises that He would refresh His inheritance when it got parched. If there are any here of His inheritance who are parched, He wants to refresh us.
So let us commit our time to Him.
Heavenly Father, again we thank You that You have promised every word that goes out of Your mouth would not return void. Lord, we own that the words that go out of Your mind—you did not promise to bless anything that comes out of my mind. But the words that come out of Your mouth and speak to our hearts, to refresh the weary and the languishing, those that may be parched, we ask You to meet with us tonight, to unveil the Lord Jesus to us in a fresh way, in a living way.
We know it is Your pleasure to do that. You want to do that far more than we want to receive it. So we just look to You now and ask You to meet us where we are and to take us where You have us.
To each one, give light so that they might walk in the revelation of Christ that You give to them. We ask in Jesus’ name.
I am used to teaching every week, and so review is big for me. I love to review. I know you probably do not need as much review because it is so close together, but I would feel unblessed if I did not review a little bit.
So we have come down to Jonah 3. Let me just sort of run over what we have been looking at and pick up where we left off.
The book of Jonah is Jonah’s testimony. The Lord did a wonderful work in his life, in his heart, and then the Holy Spirit laid it on his heart to share that as a sermon with me and you and us and the world. And so we have it in the Bible.
When the book of Jonah begins, Jonah was not a sign. He was a servant of the Lord. He was a prophet of the Lord, but he was not a sign.
The Lord Jesus, in my understanding at this present light, gave us the key to the book. It is recorded in Luke 11, and in Matthew as well. As the crowds were increasing, He began to say:
This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will 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 will not read the verse from Luke 11:32, but it is the same idea.
When the book begins, Jonah is not a sign, but the Lord is going to make him into a sign and use that sign in a mighty way. The sign of Jonah, according to the Lord Jesus, is the only sign He will give for this wicked, adulterous generation.
Jonah’s testimony begins—now, he is writing it after the fact, so he knows all about what God did. But as we read it, we have to go through it in order to see the full story.
It looks like, as you begin the testimony, that Jonah had a problem. Jonah 1:1-2 says:
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.
And Jonah refused. Jonah ran from the presence of the Lord. He went in a different direction. So it looks like he has a problem.
Why is he disobeying the Lord? Maybe, as some suggest, he was already having a successful ministry in the north, up in Israel. Maybe he had that skewed view of God, and he saw only His love and not His justice. Maybe he thought God would always forgive and never judge—that He was weak on sin.
Maybe that was the reason. Or maybe he had his own prophetic integrity to protect, and he did not want to be a false prophet, knowing God would forgive them.
Anyway, as we pointed out, going through that testimony, we learned that Jonah did not have a problem. He may have had problems in his mind and in his heart, but that is not the crisis of the book.
Thinking about Nineveh and their wickedness, and the threat they were to God’s people Israel and all that, he did not have a problem with his will. God was not trying to make Jonah into a person who simply obeyed because he was forced to obey. That is not what God wanted.
In fact, real obedience is not merely obedience. Real obedience is delighting to do the will of God. You can fake obedience; you cannot fake this delight. God has to put that in you.
I promise you, that is a miracle of God—to lick your chops to do the will of God, to delight to obey it.
Well, he ran from the will of God, and in his testimony—I will word it a little stronger than he did—he said, “The Lord pursued me. He was out to kill me, to put an end to the Jonah life, to put an end to the flesh, to self.”
There are always two lives. That is all it is about. That is how it was when you got saved, and that is how it is going to be until you go to Heaven. It is your life or His.
The Lord gave me a wonderful prayer when we took in my stepfather. He became quite ornery and told my grandchildren that I was leading them astray, that the Bible was not true. Every time I went into his room, I would come out ready to pull my hair out or choke him or something.
And the Lord gave me a simple prayer: “Thy life for mine in this.”
Before I went into the room, I would pray it. I would pray aloud, so much so that the kids picked it up and they began to pray that prayer. There was a qualitative difference when I came out of that room.
When I said, “Thy life for mine in this,” if I went in as Ed Miller, you would not believe who came out. It was Ed Miller, and I was not a picture of a Christian.
But if I said, “Thy life for mine in this,” and meant it, he said the same things. He was just as crude. He did awful things. My wife served him dinner; he swept it onto the floor and said, “Give that to the dogs.”
It was hard. It was not hard; it was impossible, living with this man.
At the end, he trusted the Lord. He called my wife in and said, “We’ve got to pray.” Amazing.
Anyway, I did not want to get into all of that. What I am saying is that there are always two lives. It is your life or His. It is my life or His.
It is Jonah 1:3. Jonah arose to flee from the presence of the Lord. That was his testimony, and he chose his life over against the life of God.
God had to take him to the end of the Jonah life so that he could experience a life not his own, a risen life, resurrected from the dead.
All through Jonah 1 and 2, we saw the pursuing heart of God—how God went after him and chased him down. Jonah may run.
In another connection, we read Psalm 139:7-12:
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.
You cannot run from the Lord. He is on your trail. He is going to get you. Someday, someway, you are going to be shocked, and you are going to learn.
So, His life or my life—one must be denied. His life or my life—one must be rejected. His life or my life—one cannot be saved.
No brainer. It is His life. We want His life.
It is a wonderful record of how God chased him down, using circumstances, using the storm, using the heathen, and using the conviction he got from how much damage he had done to other people, and so on.
At the end of Jonah 1, as we discussed, it looked like Jonah had come to the end of self. Call it what you want: self, ego, pride, old Adam, the old sin nature. You all know what we are talking about.
He had to come to the end of that. So he said in 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.
Then Jonah 1:15 says:
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from its raging.
It looks like, at the end of Jonah 1, if you did not know the whole testimony, Jonah died to himself. Very noble: “I will save the heathen. I will give my life for the heathen. I will die for the heathen. Throw me into the sea.”
But as we suggested, nobody can surrender themselves dead to self. Flesh will never die to flesh. It cannot.
That which is flesh is flesh and will always be flesh. It will never be spirit. That which is spirit is spirit.
No matter how many times you surrender, dedicate, rededicate, or consecrate; no matter how many cards you sign, hands you raise, or times you come forward on what used to be called the sawdust trail—it is not going to work.
To see the end of Jonah, we have to see that deeper work which we discussed in Jonah 2, where, as a type, as a symbol, Jonah identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
What was hyperbole, description, and poetry for Jonah as he described his experience was literal for Messiah, for the Lord Jesus, for the One with whom he was identifying.
Matthew 12:40 says:
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.
So I suggested that he did not die to self at the end of Jonah 1, but he died at the end of Jonah 2.
Romans 6:11 says:
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
He reckoned himself dead at the end, and the very next verse says that God spoke to the fish and it vomited him up.
It takes some Christians many tedious years to begin to learn the simple truth of identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They spend so many hours trying to be a good Christian, trying to surrender, trying to give it all to the Lord; then they go out and fail again.
They come back like a ping-pong ball—up and down, up and down—repentance and confession, coming back and living for a moment, then falling, getting up, and confession. That was my life for year after year after year.
I am so glad God gave me the verse in John 10, that the true Christian is not up and down, but in and out:
I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture.
I praise God for that.
I suggested that 1 Corinthians 13 might describe the surrender Jonah tried to give. Verse 3 says:
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love is the fruit of the Spirit, the work of God. Without it, it profits nothing.
This evening, I want to begin where we left off: Jonah 2:9-10.
Jonah, in the depths of the fish, after having tasted the grace of the Lord, sees himself helpless. He is in the shoes of the heathen. He deserves to stay there and never see life again. Yet he cries out:
Salvation is of the Lord.
That is praise. That is, “God does it. There is no other way. It is the Lord.”
As soon as he said that, he found himself on the land.
I would like to suggest a little outline, sort of an outline, of how we are going to look at this wonderful chapter. I want to begin by suggesting that I think he was raised as a sign. But did he know it?
What went through the mind of Jonah after all of this? Then, as the Lord assists, I want to try to show you exactly what I mean by a sign.
There is no other sign to be given. What exactly—not vaguely, not generally, not just platitudes—does it mean to be a sign? I want to try to answer that question as it is illustrated here.
Finally, Luke 11:30 says:
For even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
What did they see? They saw something, and they repented. What did they see?
Only the Holy Spirit can show us. I can give you my ideas, which I know you do not want, and they would not help anyone. But the truth—the Lord wants to show us these things.
Before we begin, I want to solve three controversies. I am not going to take a lot of time to solve them, but they are suggested in Jonah 3, so I thought I would mention them just to let you know that at least I considered them.
I am not going to spend any time trying to identify what kind of sea creature that was. There are pages and pages and chapters in commentaries saying it was this, it was that, it was the other thing.
I am not going to try to reconcile three days and three nights with seventy-two hours. Jesus died on Friday and rose on Easter morning—where do you get three days and three nights?
And I am not going to deal with Jonah 3:10:
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which He said He would do unto them; and He did it not.
What does it mean that God repents, or changes His mind?
Having satisfied myself fully with mentioning those three things, let us move on. Two of them are easily answered, but I resist.
Jonah, by a mighty miracle of God, has been delivered. The great fish, I remind you again, was not chastening. The great fish was salvation. It was his deliverance. It was what God used as He pursued him.
He is becoming now a sign, and that was his salvation. As soon as he said, “Salvation is of the Lord,” Jonah 2:10 says:
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
Now let me attempt to meditate. We call this a conference. I said, “Why do they call it a conference? Nobody confers.” It is not really a conference; it is a convocation. Or I like to call it a flock. So here we are in a flocking.
What did Jonah know? Did he ever know that he was identifying with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus? Did he know someday his testimony would become part of Holy Scripture, and that forever he would be mentioned in terms of that?
Here is what I think he knew. Number one, I think he knew he was alive. These are deep things I am sharing with you.
I think he knew he was alive, and I think that was a shock to him. I do not think he expected to be alive. I do not think he ever expected to stand on God’s earth and breathe God’s air again.
He knew who he was now. This was undeserved mercy.
He is alive, and you have to read between the lines. I think he was quite a mess. I do not know how I would be after three days in a smelly fish, but I do not think you would smell that good.
He knew he was alive, and he knew he did not smell that great. It was dark down there. I can imagine him squinting in the sunlight. He has come up; he is alive; he is a mess; and he stinks.
I know he was wet. It was probably cold, I would guess. Somewhere in that heart of his, he was also pretty thankful. I think he was pretty appreciative.
We do not know what was going through all his mind. He does not record that. But I know an experience like he had is not easily forgotten.
I am sure he was meditating on some things. I do not think I am violating what is written by suggesting that I think he rose confused.
As I look back in my own life, when the Lord first discovered to me this wonderful truth of the risen life, I did not know anything. I was as lost as lost could be.
Jonah was humbled. He was grateful. But in his mind, as he lay there on the shore—smelly, squinting, cold, and wet—I wonder what he thought the future was.
“Where do I go from here? God raised me up. Now what? What is next?”
I think he was bewildered. I think everything was confusing to him. He was perplexed. He was confounded.
Ask God to help you enter into this scene. He has been raised by the mighty power of God, by a life not his own. In a moment of time, he lies on the shore, a man alive, raised from the dead, with no clue what he is going to do next.
Where is he going to go? What is going on? How is he going to live? Things are different.
I do not think he stood up and said, “Behold, I am a sign.” He did not know that. He had no clue that he was this.
The mystery of the old Jonah being buried in the depths of the sea, and the new Jonah being raised by the mighty power of God to a life not his own—there he is on the shore. That had to be baffling to him.
Clearly, he had a new standing before the Lord. That is clear. We discover that he had a new standing before the world. That is going to be clear too.
Let me share a little part of my testimony at this point.
I think I shared that 1958 is when I first knowingly trusted in the Lord. For seven years after that, it was all Ed Miller life. I just tried my best to be the great Christian and so on.
I was a servant of the Lord. I saw the Lord do a lot of things. But I was ignorant of His life.
I knew He died in my place, but nobody ever told me He wanted to live in my place. I knew He was a substitute on the cross, but I did not know He wanted to be a substitute in my heart, in my life, and live in place of me.
Many times, like Jonah, I tried to surrender myself. I am going to make a long story short by telling you: I crashed.
In 1965, married, a student at Columbia Bible College, I learned the truth of identification with Christ: when He died, I died; when He rose, I rose. I heard all of that, and it brought me to the place where I had to cry, “Salvation is of the Lord.”
I remember that day. I do not know the date. I know the year, but I do not know the day.
I remember I was filled with joy and confusion because I honestly thought, because I was a hypocrite and Lillian had married a lie, that the duty I would have now was to set her free and leave my wife.
It was a hard time, and we had to go through it. God was so good to me.
I knew I was rescued. I knew I was alive. I knew I was thankful. I knew I was happy. I knew I was quite embarrassed.
The president of Columbia Bible College, Dr. Allan Fleece, told me I had to make my confession in front of a thousand or more students. He said, “Your confession must be made within the circle of your sin.”
I got into Moody Bible Institute because I lied about my testimony. Oh, I looked like a gang leader—give me a break. That is what I wrote. That is how I got in. There were other things about the lie, but I am not going to go into all of that.
If you had asked me after my resurrection, “What is next?” I would have said, “Well, I know I am going to Heaven. The mercy of the Lord has been so good. He rescued me. I am going to Heaven.”
But I quit. My ministry was gone. Any old possibility, after the way I had messed up—after what I did to His name, after what I did to His testimony, after the people I hurt, after the shame I brought on the cause of Christ—I think I must have felt like Peter felt when he denied the Lord.
It is over. I love the Lord. I will go to Heaven. But ministry is all done.
The Bible is silent about the days, or weeks, or months, or years between the resurrection of Jonah and the recommission of Jonah. It does not tell us how much time elapsed.
We assume he went home because of Jonah 3:1-2:
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.
He had to arise from someplace, and I just assume he went home. I do not know. God gives us no hint.
We only know that he was raised to be a sign—the only sign God ever has for any wicked generation.
But I honestly think, because Jonah was there on the shore, that he knew he did not expect ever to be alive. I am quite sure he thought it was over and that he would never get a recommission.
What would God do with him after the way he ran from the Lord and messed up? I think he felt, even though he was a sign now and did not know it, so disqualified, so unworthy.
“God could never use anybody like me. I messed up so badly.”
As he testifies, one day he got a recommission. He got a word from the Lord. “I never thought this possible. I got a recommission.”
Jonah 3:1-2:
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.
Do not read that la-la-la, brothers. A recommission after such a mess.
I want to place a great truth before your heart before we look a little deeper into that commission.
For those who have been identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, who have been by His mercy brought to the end of self, made to realize, “When He died, I died,” and reckoned themselves dead, I have good news for you.
God has no shelf.
You know what I mean by that. When I was a young Christian, I was taught that if you mess up, God will put you on His shelf. He does not need you. He can use anybody. If you mess up, you are going on a shelf.
And if He ever takes you off the shelf, it is to discover His second best.
God has no shelf, and He has no second best. He only has a will.
According to Romans 12:2:
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Good, acceptable, perfect—that does not sound like second best.
It is true, before a person by the mercy of God has been made to die to self, He might set you aside temporarily, chastening you, dealing with you, disciplining you, exposing you, discovering you, frustrating you, embarrassing you.
But for those who have reckoned themselves dead, there is no self to exchange life.
I heard this saying: “The bird with the broken wing will never soar as high again.” That is good poetry, but that is bad theology. It is a bad deal.
He restores your soul with a perfect restoration, regardless of how ugly, how repulsive your past may have been.
At any moment in your life, you can be in the center of the circle of the perfect will of God. And so can I. He wants us to know that, and it is illustrated with Jonah.
When God restores, He restores to higher usefulness. You are going to fly higher than you have ever flown before. His restoration is so great.
He not only puts the fire out; He rebuilds the house. He not only forgives; He wants to restore the years the locusts have eaten.
He not only makes things right, but He undoes all the damage that has ever been done. That is swallowed-up victory. It is the kind of victory He gives.
It reaches all the way back, as it did when He died on the cross. That victory went all the way back to Adam, and He did everything.
All those great truths we have in Christ—the death to self, that is it. The risen life, that is just the beginning. That is just the start. That is what Jonah is testifying.
As I said earlier, I am quite certain Jonah never expected a recommission, let alone a commission that would give him a fruitful ministry to lead thousands and thousands to Christ.
Peter was restored to greater usefulness. John Mark was restored to greater usefulness. They were not put on a shelf. They did not get second best.
I once heard Howard Hendricks. Anybody hear of Howard Hendricks? He was a teacher at Dallas Theological Seminary. He was quite a speaker because he was able to blend humor in a way that was not silly but took home the truth of God.
I was at a conference once where he was speaking, and he was talking about Elijah.
He was at the place where Elijah was so discouraged that he prayed to die: “Take my life.” In his inimitable way, Howard Hendricks pictured Elijah looking up to God and yelling, “I resign!”
Then Howard Hendricks said he heard a voice from God: “What was that?”
“I resign.”
“How do you spell that? R-E-S-I-G-N? Sounds like re-sign to Me.”
When God goes, He gives a new commission. Jonah 3:1 says, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.”
It is so thrilling to hear those words. He did not give up on me. He still has a use for me. That truth does not encourage rebellion, but it should fire up your hope—wonderful hope.
The Lord has restored this one. Jonah 3:1-2, let me read it again:
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.
I want you to notice, brothers, there is a difference between the first commission and the recommission.
In some ways it is the same. It is the same person: a call to Jonah. It is the same destination: a call to go to Nineveh.
Notice how quickly he responds. Jonah 3:3:
So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.
Why did he respond so quickly? You say, “Well, he did not want that fish again.” That might have been part of his thinking, but I do not think that was the reason.
You see, that recommission is different because it was a call to faith. Let me show you how.
In Jonah 1:2, the first commission was:
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me.
But the recommission says:
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
He did not even know what he was going to say when he got there. He was called now to go out by faith. Jonah did not know what God was going to call him to say.
He knew little about, or nothing about, the risen life. But now instinctively, you see the difference: God calls and he just obeys. It is part of the miracle life. That is one of the things that happens when you rise from the dead.
It reminds me of God’s call to Abraham. Genesis 12:1:
Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee.
He did not know where he was going. He went out, and God had to show him along the way.
The old Jonah ran away from a clear word. Now this new Jonah is going forth with an uncertain word, knowing that God will make it clear.
I think it is intuitive. I still think he does not know that he is a sign.
What did God reveal to Jonah along the way? We do not know. All we have is Jonah’s testimony.
According to Matthew 12:41, they repented at the preaching of Jonah. What did he preach? Just that sentence? That one little sentence in Jonah 3:4?
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Is that all he said? I wonder if, on the way, he gave his personal testimony. I am going to pick that up again in a couple of minutes.
Just know for now that he was recommissioned by the Lord, by the mercy of the Lord. He responded in faith, and he went out to trust the Lord. He did not know what was ahead.
I want us to try to get a grasp on what Jesus meant when He said, “The sign of Jonah,” in Matthew 12:39-40.
What was the sign of Jonah? Brothers, pray in your heart as we look at this. This is something so important. I do not want anybody to miss this.
What was the sign? Was the sign of Jonah Jonah risen from the dead? In one sense, maybe. But that is not the complete answer.
When Jonah rose from the dead and preached, and they responded, God did not give him some special gift of teaching. He did not suddenly rise and say, “Now I know Greek. I know the original languages.”
He did not rise from the dead and graduate from that fish with some theological degree.
He did not arrive in Nineveh with letters of recommendation: “I ministered with Elijah, and now he has given me a letter of recommendation.” He did not get a board behind his back.
He was simply living by a life that was not his own—a miracle life—and he was saying what God told him to say.
You have to remember where he was going. He went in there fearlessly. It was a wicked nation. They were a violent nation. He went into a terrible place. He went in by faith.
So I am saying that the sign is not Jonah by himself.
You say, “Well, of course not. The sign is Jesus. It has got to be Jesus.”
He said, “I am not going to give another sign to this wicked generation.” So whatever the sign is, it is for unbelievers.
Ask this question: when Jesus rose from the dead, did He ever appear to unbelievers? Ever?
My natural heart wishes He had. If I speak as a fool, if I were Jesus rising from the dead, I would be knocking at Annas’s door, saying, “Hey, do you remember Me?”
I would be going to Pilate’s palace: “Your hands clean yet?”
I think I would go to the Roman barracks and see the soldiers. “Hey, remember that day when you tied a blindfold around Me? There was a big circle of soldiers, and every time I went by, they kept throwing Me to the next one. You would smack Me and say, ‘Tell us who hit You, if You are Messiah. You can see through that blindfold.’”
Well, I did see through the blindfold. I know you by your name.
You see, I would have gone to the unbelievers if I were the Lord Jesus. But after His resurrection, He never once appeared to any unsaved person, as far as the record goes.
So we read that Jonah was a sign for the world, and Jesus would rise as a sign: “As Jonah became a sign, so the Son of Man will be a sign.”
I am telling you that the sign is not Jonah, and the sign is not Jesus.
What is the sign? It is not Jonah by himself. It is not Jesus by Himself. The only sign that God will ever give is Jonah in union with Jesus—Jesus in Jonah.
That is the only sign He will ever give to the world. Not Jonah alone, not Jesus alone.
I cannot do it by myself, and He will not do it by Himself. He has ordained that He wants to do it, but He wants to live in you and live in me and become that sign.
When they heard the preaching of Jonah, the record says they believed God.
Put it together. It is Jesus in Jonah. It is the preaching of Jonah. It is the presence of God.
Brothers, it is a precious thing that we have—that we know. This group pretty much knows that Christ lives in you in the person of the Holy Spirit. You are indwelt by God. I am indwelt by God.
You do not just have a portion of Him. Each one of us has one hundred percent of God living inside of us. Amen.
Jonah stood before Nineveh with a life not his own, and Jonah became Christ to them. Jonah became Christ to them. They heard his message, and they believed in the Lord.
Jonah was the only sign that they had. In the person of Jonah, they had the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They had the risen Christ, a life not his own.
He represented Christ. They looked at him; they saw Christ. To Nineveh, that was their only hope of mercy.
Jonah did not go through the streets of Nineveh working miracles as credentials to prove that he was sent from God. He did not work any miracles. He was the miracle.
Jonah was the miracle. Nineveh saw an almighty miracle of God: a man risen from the dead. That is the sign—when the world sees Christ in you.
That is the testimony. Luke 11:32 says:
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.
Jonah 3:5 says:
And the people of Nineveh believed God.
Not Jonah alone, not Jesus alone, but Jesus in Jonah.
I want to turn attention to the Ninevites. Somehow, when you read the record of Jonah’s own testimony, they entertained hope. Where did they get that?
Jonah 3:9 says:
Who knoweth whether God will not turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?
There are several possibilities. I do not know. I can only go as far as his testimony goes.
We do not know what the mariners saw. When they threw him into the sea, did they see that big fish come up and grab him? We do not know.
Jonah 1:15 says:
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from its raging.
I think that was an immediate calm—stop the train.
Yet, when Jonah is in the fish, here is part of his testimony, Jonah 2:3:
For Thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas;
And the flood was round about me;
All Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me.
What breakers? What billows? I thought the sea was calm. Could that be when the fish swallowed the water and all these breakers came in? I do not know.
Maybe the mariners saw something, and word of mouth—you know how that is—maybe they shared that story. A story like that would spread: “You would not believe it. We saw this big fish.” That would spread.
Or maybe Jonah told his own story, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
Jonah only gives this one sentence, but that does not mean he had not said more. Jonah 3:2 says:
Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
He might have told his own story. He might have said, “You guys are not going to believe this. I hated you. I wanted you judged. God loved you. He wants you saved.”
“I fought against it, and I deserved the judgment of God. God dealt with me, and I went down to the bottom of the sea. I did not deserve mercy. God had mercy on me.”
If they heard something like that, they might have thought, “Well, if God had mercy on a scoundrel like Jonah, maybe—maybe He will have mercy on us.”
As far as the record goes, he only preached one sentence:
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
No mercy is mentioned.
I do not think they were impressed by his sermon. I do not think they were impressed by his homiletics. Maybe they heard it from the mariners. I do not know. Maybe he gave his own testimony. I do not know.
Maybe they found hope in the fact that God even sent the prophet. Why would He send one if He was simply going to judge? He did not have to warn us about this.
Jonah 3:4 says:
And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried out, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
They could have reasoned, “If God is sending someone to warn us, maybe He will relent and have mercy on us.”
They could have been thinking that. Yet forty days.
Proverbs 29:1 says:
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck
Shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
God does not have to give a warning. When Ananias and Sapphira died, they did not get a warning. You read in Acts 12 about Herod: in the middle of a speech, he just dropped over dead. God does not have to give warning.
I do not know Hebrew, and I do not know Greek. I have English writers I trust who know those things. I am told that when you read this, “In forty days, you are done,” that is not exactly what the Hebrew says, according to the scholars.
It says, “By the fortieth day, you will be overthrown.”
Somewhere in those days, we do not know when. Maybe on the fifth day, maybe on the tenth day, maybe on the twenty-ninth.
He did not say, “I am going to give you forty days to think about it.” He said, “Within forty days, you are going to be judged.”
It is sort of like what He does to us. He gives us three score and ten years, but He says, “Today is the day of salvation.” Maybe you have seventy years. People die young. You do not know. You do not know.
Maybe that is what happened. Or God could have told them another way. He could have sent a prophet. He could have given a dream or a vision. I do not know how they knew, but they got hope, and they repented.
He only preached one day. You know how I know that? Because if he preached two days, his message would have had to change. He would have had to say, “Within thirty-nine days.” A few more days, he would have said, “Within thirty-four days, you are going to be destroyed.”
He preached one day, and they repented.
I think that uncertainty of the time may have created an urgency in them to repent.
Anyway, whether they heard it from the mariners, or heard it from the lips of Jonah, or reasoned that God sent the prophet to warn them, or whether God showed them some other way, there is one idea that I absolutely reject.
I cannot even—I will not even—because I do not want to ruin his name, but there is a commentary that I respect which said the sign of Jonah was that Jonah came out of the fish partially digested and bleached white.
They saw this; they had heard the story; and they saw this guy, bleached white and partially digested. The only sign God is going to give to men? I do not think it is a partially digested Christian who is bleached white.
One more thing. After Jonah became a sign—Christ in Jonah—how did God use that?
Well, we have already touched on that. The greatest moral victory of all time. Jonah 4:11 speaks of one hundred and twenty thousand who did not know their right hand from their left. If that means infants, as most think it does, and you have four or five times that population, you have close to half a million, maybe six hundred thousand.
Here is a guy who did not deserve ever to be used again. God has no shelf. God has no second best. He restores to higher usefulness. He restored him.
Tomorrow morning, I am going to ask another question: did he know that he was a sign? Think about this tonight. Did he know that they repented? Is there any record that he even knew they repented?
We will look at that tomorrow. But Charles Feinberg of Talbot Theological Seminary said that at that time Nineveh was the greatest city in the world.
Some have claimed their repentance was not real. Jesus said it was. They believed God. God saw their works, that they repented. They repented at the preaching of Jonah.
I think you can fool Jonah. You can fool a lot of people. You can fool me. You cannot fool God. He said they repented.
Such a life, such a testimony—Christ in me, standing before the world with a life that has no other explanation than the Lord.
Anything in your life that can be explained in any other way than the Lord falls short of God’s high purpose for you. It falls short of God’s high purpose for me.
Our whole life must be interpreted, “Only God could do that.”
I say Jonah—I do not think he knew that he was a sign. He was not supposed to know, though. They knew. That is your point. They see Christ in you; you do not have to know.
I do not think Jonah knew that. He was just out there obeying God by faith, and God was in him. They looked, and they saw Christ in him.
There is a lot of people out beyond these walls who need to hear about the Lord. The world is bad too. It is a bad thing. They are crying out for a sign.
There is no other sign. You are not the sign. I am not the sign. Jonah was not the sign. You say, “Well, Christ is out there.” No, He does not show Himself to the unbeliever except through you.
When the Holy Spirit comes, He comes to you and in you, and He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He will convict of sin because they believe not. They will see you living by faith, and they will be convicted.
They will see you embracing the righteousness of God. They will see the prince of evil, the devil, conquered in your life.
When they see your faith, when they see you standing on the righteousness of Christ, and when they see your victory, that is Christ in you. That is the sign. That is what they are going to see.
Maybe the point is, “How is God using me?” Do not worry about that. We are going to really see that tomorrow in Jonah 4. It is a culture chapter. I love Jonah 4.
You are being watched. You are being watched. Now that Christ is in you, you are being watched—how you live, where you go, what you do.
People are noticing how you react when you get cut off in traffic. People are noticing how you react when you have to stand at the graveside of a friend, loved one, or family member. They watch you if you lose a loved one.
They are also watching you if you lose your keys, or your pen, or your glasses. They are watching. Are they seeing Christ? Because that is the sign. That is the sign.
Part of Jonah’s testimony, looking back, is that God used me so mightily.
I am going to close with this illustration. As far as we are concerned as signs, it never feels like enough.
I think of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus wonderfully takes that little boy’s lunch and divides it up twelve ways. These big old fishermen, with their big old hands, come with their baskets.
How much is one twelfth of a little boy’s lunch in your hand? Then you look out there, and the smallest groups are fifty, with fifties and hundreds, and there are thousands of them. God says, “Here, feed them.”
It does not feel like enough. It just does not feel like enough.
That morsel represents the all-sufficiency of Christ.
When I come up here, I am the most privileged man on the planet when I can address hungry hearts. I prepare. I would be ashamed not to be prepared. I am never ready, but I am always prepared.
But it never feels like I have enough. I do not have enough. I do not feel like I have enough Christ to offer you. You are all different. You are coming from different places. You have different hungers.
God says, “Feed them.” And I say, “Okay.” I give it out, I come back, I get more, give it out, come back and get it.
When you look back, if Peter or Andrew or any of the disciples were required to lift what they had handed out, you would break your backs.
Look back in your life. You say, “Nobody—God does not use me.” You do not have a clue how God is using you. You do not have a clue.
If you look back and God began to show you, you would not be able to lift all the provision that you have given out to people.
God is using you mightily. Do not doubt that for a lonely moment. Christ lives in you, and you are the sign.
Your one responsibility is to live in an unbroken union with Christ so that you can be a sign. Then God will take care of the food.
Now we are going to look tomorrow at God’s pursuing Jonah after he became a sign and found out he was still a jerk.
Then what? Jonah includes that in his testimony. That is what we will look at.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You again for Your wonderful Word. Your heart toward us—how mercifully You have dealt with us, taught us about our identification with Christ, who raised us from the dead.
Use us mightily when we do not even know it.
Lord, You are just so gracious. We look back and we are awestruck with how You used us in the past.
Prepare our hearts for the pleasure tomorrow. Thank You for meeting with us this weekend, and just finish Your work, complete Your work, tie up all loose ends in any heart, so that we might know that we have been with Jesus.
We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.