Would you kindly turn again in the word
of scripture to the book of the prophet
Jonah and to the third chapter that awaits
our meditation this morning, God's second call.
Now those of you who have been with
us over the last few Sunday mornings will
remember that we've seen a number of things
already from this passage from this book of
Jonah.
In particular, of course, we have noticed how
Jonah positively despised and rejected God's original call
to him to be the divine mouthpiece to
declare a word of judgment to the distant
city of Nineveh.
In consequence, Jonah found a very convenient way
to move in the opposite direction.
There was a ship in the harbor at
Joppa going toward Tarshish and he got on
board, got his ticket and moved in the
opposite direction of the will of the Lord.
Now that act of disobedience, that act of
sheer rebellion resulted in God's chastisement of his
runaway servant.
That is described in the rest of chapter
one and it is reflected, do notice this,
it's reflected also very much in the prayer
of Jonah which occupies the bulk of chapter
two.
What we have in the latter two-thirds
of chapter one and right on into chapter
two is a reflection of the way in
which God took his rebellious servant in hand.
In order to deal with him in such
a way that he could bring him back
again into his will, into the center of
his purposes, that Jonah the runaway should become
Jonah the repentant.
Jonah who would listen and hear the voice
of God again and in due course fulfill
the original purpose of God for him.
This is part of the wonder of God's
grace.
He doesn't easily let his people go.
He chastises his servants, his people, but it
is always in order that we should occupy
that place in his will and purpose which
he had in mind from all eternity.
He will thrash us to within an inch
of death to get us there.
But the very thrashings of God are means
of grace.
They're not meant simply to hurt, they're not
meant simply, certainly not to drive us to
despair, but they are meant specifically to bring
us into the large purpose in his will
and in his plan that he originally intended
for us.
Now chapter two concludes with a statement that
God commanded the fish which had snatched the
runaway prophet from floundering in the deep.
God commanded the great fish to eject its
human passenger onto dry land.
The fish has done its job well and
the fish hears God's last command and Jonah
is ejected and Jonah's feet are on terra
firma once again.
Now the question is what next?
Where do we go from here?
When the chastisements of God are over and
Jonah has made his renewed vow with God
in the belly of the fish, what next?
That brings us to chapter three.
Now the first thing I want you to
notice is the renewal of God's call to
Jonah and its acceptance by him.
This is a most thrilling chapter and I
hope there will not be a solitary soul
in our service this morning who will miss
something of the glory on it.
God called Jonah again and I have no
doubt whatsoever in my mind but that the
same gracious God will be calling some runaway
saint, some runaway servant here in our morning
worship today.
Know that the Lord will give that person
the kind of grace that was given to
Jonah not only to hear but this time
to obey.
Now look at verses one to four.
I'll read them again.
Then the word of the Lord came to
Jonah a second time.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and
proclaim to it the message I give you.
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and
went to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh was a very large city.
It took three days to go all through
it.
Jonah started into the city going a day's
journey and he proclaimed and here he's preaching
the very word that God has given him.
Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.
That Jonah should have been saved from the
threatening waters and brought back safely to land
again was in itself a token of supernatural
power as well as of divine grace.
Who else deals with rebels and disobedient people
as our God does?
Even so one vital question must have haunted
Jonah now that he's back on dry land.
It must have really harassed him as he
thought of his future.
Has God disowned me from his service?
I've made my vow to him.
I will pay my sacrifice with thanksgiving.
I will obey.
I will do what I have promised to
do.
I will do it but where am I
now in the purpose of God?
Forgiven me he has.
Had mercy on me he has.
He's brought me right back from the depths.
Even there is one word here the word
Sheol and there are some people who believe
that Jonah was virtually dead.
I don't think that may be literally true
but he was very near drowning in the
bottom of the Mediterranean when the fish came
and rescued him and was at one and
the same time a means of judgment and
of mercy.
God brought him back but where does he
stand as far as his place in the
will of God is concerned?
Can you trust a man like this again?
Can the almighty God give his message to
Jonah to go to Nineveh and declare it
again?
Can God trust a man like this now?
Will he ever be trusted as the spokesman
of heaven again?
Oh let these words with blessed music in
them be heard by every year here this
morning.
Then the word of the Lord came to
Jonah a second time.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and
proclaim to it the message I have given
you.
I can hear the bells ringing in his
soul.
God will have him again.
God has not cast away his servant.
God has not turned his back upon him
after forgiving him but God is here coming
to the man the rebel penitent.
If we may daringly bring those two words
together.
The man who was rebellious now has become
penitent.
God comes to him again.
Jonah we're right back where we started.
I want you to go to Nineveh and
I want you to tell the people of
Nineveh exactly what I have to tell them.
Now there are two things I want us
to notice here and they are the main
part of the message on my heart this
morning.
We shall look at the response of Nineveh
but I want to dwell particularly on on
these first four verses because they're so crucial
and I believe so very relevant and applicable
to maybe very many of us here today.
Two things here.
First I want us to notice the revelation
of God as that is reflected in his
second call to his previously rebellious prophet.
I want you to see the picture of
God which comes through here.
We can sometimes get so wrapped up with
the words and with individual statements that we
don't see the picture of God behind the
words.
Now this is what I want us to
see.
May the spirit of God help us.
Let's see the God that we are dealing
with here.
The God of Jonah and I think you'll
have to conclude that he is exactly the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
and therefore in Christ your God and mine
if we trust the Savior.
The first indication that we have here concerning
God is the obvious.
He is a God of great grace.
Our God is a God of grace.
Let me remind you grace means this that
he the lofty and eternal God deals with
rebels and sinners who repent of their sins
in a manner which is wholly out of
alignment with what they really deserve.
He deals mercifully with those who simply do
not deserve one indication of mercy.
He stoops to come down and make use
of a man like this again who has
already disqualified himself from the service of God.
Now reference was clearly made to this when
in considering God's rescue of his servant from
the threatening waters of the Mediterranean we saw
that it was also utterly undeserved and so
it was that deliverance however great as it
was fell far short of the total grace
now envisaged in God's calling him back again
into his work into his service to be
an ambassador for the almighty God into a
land and to a city that knows him
not.
Our God is a God of grace.
You see what that means is this that
God's forgiveness is so total that he doesn't
bear a grudge afterwards.
When God forgives God forgets.
Now that's not my word God says so.
Your sins and iniquities I will remember no
more.
I heard of two people who had quarreled
and the one said to the other well
okay he said I'm prepared to bury the
hatchet but I'll remember where I buried it
and so many of our acts of forgiveness
are just like that.
We say we bury the hatchet and we
don't go on fighting but we remember where
we buried it.
And listen my friend the Lord of the
universe forgives and he forgives so completely he
comes to the man who had rebelled against
him and gone in the opposite direction of
his will and he says all right Jonah
I'll have you again as if there were
no one else in the world that he
could choose when the world was full of
men and women too if God deigned in
his wisdom and in his mercy to call
them to do this work.
But he chose Jonah that's grace.
Nor is this an example that has no
rival.
I think one ought to hasten to say
that this is not just something that we
come across in the book of Jonah and
we don't find anywhere else.
This is true of the whole biblical representation
of God.
Let me illustrate very hurriedly.
Think of King David.
I never like talking about the sins of
the saints especially when their virtues were far
beyond their sins.
Carnally we remember their sins when we forget
their virtues.
Nevertheless for the purpose of my illustration this
morning I must remind you of David's multiple
transgressions.
David sinned grievously morally and then he murdered
someone or caused someone to be murdered and
then he lied.
And you can see how the sins of
David accumulate one after another.
One breeds the other.
Sin is like that.
It breeds children far far too often.
And what began as one sin leads to
a whole multiple series of sins.
Was that the end of it?
Well you read Psalms 32 and 51.
David will tell you how under the burden
of the guilt of it all he became
like a dry parched land.
He says my soul was like a barren
parched land.
My tongue was dry.
My mouth was dry.
I was panting for my life.
I didn't know what to do.
But then I confessed my sin and I
acknowledged my transgressions and the Lord forgave the
iniquity of my sins.
Is that the end?
Not at all.
Some of the most precious Psalms of David
were born after that.
Some of the most mighty feats in the
life of David were performed after God had
forgiven him.
That's the point I want to get at.
See God's forgiveness is a real forgiveness.
Your sins and iniquities will I remember no
more.
And when you've been reconciled to me by
the blood of my Son, I will treat
you not as an enemy that used to
be, but as a child, an obedient child
in Christ.
Of course Peter is the classical New Testament
illustration of this.
Following his most tragic of all lapses, when
having denied knowledge of his Lord, you remember
in the closing hours of our Lord's earthly
life, he sealed his hideous lies with foul
oaths of a separation.
What a remarkable thing to happen.
Simon Peter, one of the three most privileged
of the twelve, with foul oaths and cursing
said, I do not know him.
That's the end of it.
Don't argue with me.
Jesus goes to his cross and he lays
down his life and he rises again from
the dead and you know one of the
first things he did, hallelujah.
The women were the first at the tomb
and he had sent an angel to tell
them, quickly he says, go tell my disciples
and Peter.
But I'm on my way to Galilee to
keep my rendezvous with them just as I
promised.
And Peter, I haven't forgotten Peter, and John
21 shows us how the Lord dealt with
Peter in order to convince Peter himself that
he had a place in the divine purpose
once forgiveness is complete.
Oh my good brother or sister, you've wondered.
You run away and heaven only knows where
you are this morning.
I don't.
I don't pretend to know.
I hope you don't think that I know.
I don't.
I don't want to know.
But when you turn back to God as
Jonah did in the fish's belly, I mean
in soul and in heart and in mind
and in repentance, God forgives the sin of
the penitent and he will commission you again.
Now that's grace in all glory.
There is no God who deals like this
with his rebellious followers.
There is no man, there is no government.
They don't deal with people like this in
Iran or in Egypt or anywhere else or
in Canada for all that.
But God deals like this with his rebellious
subjects who repent and come back.
The passage bespeaks then, and I have dwelt
for some time on this, because it's so
important.
It bespeaks of the grace, the infinite grace
of God.
The passage also reveals the wisdom of God.
It was necessary to mention this.
It is necessary to mention this because it
might well be wrongly concluded that when Jonah
proved such a disappointment in running away from
God's original call, God must have made a
bad choice.
Did you ever think like that?
And if God made a bad choice the
first time, surely it's the height of madness
to be calling Jonah again and sending Jonah
to Nineveh.
Yeah, but wait a moment.
I can't come to it now, but you
wait till we come to chapter 4.
Indeed, we have the indications of it at
the end of chapter 3.
Wait till we come to the end of
this chapter and you will see that Jonah,
corrected by the chastisements of God, had something
new and was better qualified than he ever
was before he sinned.
So that when Jonah went to Nineveh, God's
will for Nineveh was accomplished.
And probably Jonah was the one man who
could accomplish that particular mission at that particular
time.
God's wisdom.
God never makes a mistake.
But we must add to that God's sovereignty
is reflected here.
God's sovereignty is very clearly expressed here and
in many ways.
In particular, do we see it reflected in
his capacity to take all the circumstances in
the rebellion of a man, Jonah going in
the opposite direction.
Then the boat, God takes charge of the
boat and the sailors and the sea and
the fish and he takes charge of everything.
And he uses this man's experience in the
belly of the fish.
He uses every aspect of the total experience
to make Jonah a better minister of his
word to Nineveh than he could ever have
been before.
Now to me, there's something to smile about
here.
There's something humorous.
See, Jonah didn't want to go to preach
to Nineveh because Nineveh was pagan.
Nineveh was Gentile.
He was a good Jew and a very,
very Orthodox Jew and a very, very nationalistic
Jew.
And Jonah's concept of grace didn't extend beyond
the bounds of his own people.
And one of the reasons why he didn't
want to go to Nineveh was this, he
was afraid that God would forgive them and
not carry out the judgment that Jonah was
given to declare.
Now had Jonah gone in the first place,
well, we don't know what would have happened.
But when Jonah was raised from the dead
as it were, as he came back from
the belly of the fish from the depths
of the sea, Jonah, with this experience, Jonah
went into Nineveh and the Ninevites recognized him
not as an oddity, a religious oddity, a
queer who wanted to thunder judgment upon anybody
that crosses him.
But they knew that this man was in
the hand of the living God.
And so distant Nineveh, proud and arrogant and
sophisticated as it was, recognized in this man
with this experience, a servant of the living
God.
You see what's happening?
God has sovereignly taken all the circumstances to
make Jonah, what the New Testament calls, a
sign to Nineveh.
What Jesus said, a sign to Nineveh.
That presupposes that they knew what had happened
to Jonah in the water, that he was
beyond all hope, that he was a rebel
against God.
Yet God saved him in mercy and brought
him back to life again.
And a God who can do that is
not an idol that you bow down to.
This put God, you see, on an entirely
different, in an entirely different category.
And that means this.
Had Jonah gone the first, in the first
place, at his first command to Nineveh, he'd
probably not have been as successful as he
was when he went the second time.
The nationalist was confounded by his rebellion because
God has used his rebellion to make him
a better missionary.
And his experience of salvation from the fish
and from the water is such as will
make the Ninevites amazed at the glory of
God and turn to him in penitence and
in faith.
The God who is revealed here is a
God of grace, he's a God of wisdom,
and he's a God who is sovereign over
everything.
And I must say a word about the
other side of the story.
The transformation of Jonah from the man he
was when God first called him, in order
to become the person he now appears to
be.
The obvious thing to do if you, you
can do this at your leisure, but let
me just point to it.
I'd like you to contrast Jonah 1, chapter
1, verses 1 to 3, with Jonah 3,
verses 1 to 3.
I'll just read them quickly.
In chapter 1, verses 1 to 3, we
read these words.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah,
son of Amittai.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and
preach against it, because its wickedness has come
up before me.
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and
headed for Tarshish.
He went down to Joppa.
There he found a ship bound for that
port.
After paying the fare, he went aboard and
sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
Now that's chapter 1, verses 1 to 3.
Now listen to chapter 3.
Then the word of the Lord came to
Jonah a second time.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and
proclaim to it the message I give you.
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and
went to Nineveh.
The contrast is too glaring to need any
comment.
The one who was quick to disobey in
chapter 1 is now equally quick to obey.
And that means this, you see.
In the meantime, there's been a miracle of
grace wrought in Jonah's heart.
He's died to his own self-will, his
own self-will.
Have you?
See, it's strange.
We come into this world and we grow
up in our civilization and we grow up
with whatever knowledge and understanding and qualifications we
have.
We grow up in such a manner that
each one of us has an idea and
an ideal for ourselves of what we would
like to be.
And it's not always in alignment with the
will and purpose of God.
And the New Testament tells us that sooner
or later the man or the woman who's
going to fit into the purpose of God,
he or she has got to die to
his own self-will or her self-will.
And Jonah had to die.
And he died in that sense in the
in the fish's belly.
Or when he was down in the bottom
of the sea with the seaweed around his
head, as he tells us.
But somewhere in the depths, Jonah died.
And when he got up again, he was
a new man.
He was resurrected.
And you see, this is the purpose of
some of the troubles that we get in
life.
They are opportunities for us to repent and
to change our mind that God may change
us and we may die to ourselves.
There may well be a city of Nineveh
that awaits some of us this morning.
But before we'll ever get there, before our
eyes will turn in that direction, something in
us has got to die.
Self-will has got to die.
Jonah is a new man.
Not only that, not only was Jonah quick
to accept God's second call, but he was
careless as to the cost which obedience would
now involve.
A man whom God had so signally delivered
from the elements and from the fish at
last, was now a fearless man, knowing that
he could trust his God anywhere.
Now, why do I say that?
For this reason.
Nineveh had a reputation.
Some of you historians know this much better
than I do.
But Nineveh had a reputation of being the
cruelest city in the ancient world and to
represent the cruelest political regime in that entire
era of history.
It has been claimed rightly or wrongly that
the atrocities of Assyria and of Nineveh itself
ranked alongside and in some cases went even
beyond the kind of things that you and
I associate with Nazi Germany during the last
war.
The prophet Nahum called Nineveh that bloody city.
Now prophets don't often speak like that.
That bloody city.
And he did so partly at any rate
on account of its long history of warfare
and partly because of the proverbial bestiality with
which the city dealt with those whom it
vanquished.
And I couldn't from this pulpit rehearse the
details of this situation.
It would make some of you sick.
Kings of Nineveh took great delight when prisoners
of war were brought home.
First of all to saw their hands off
and then their feet and then to gouge
their eyes out.
And I will go as far as to
remind you of this if you don't know
it.
That in certain places in the city of
Nineveh there were special sites for visitors.
Mounds of human skeletons and of human eyes.
Tokens of the might and of the brutality
of this regime.
And Jonah was sent to Nineveh.
And he went.
And listen my friend.
He went alone.
There was no one with him.
He didn't have a wife.
He didn't have a partner.
He didn't have a missionary society that was
going to send him some letters occasionally and
keep in touch with him.
Not at all.
He went alone.
And listen.
I want to say to you that Nineveh
was the kind of place from which you
couldn't escape if you wanted to.
That is if the Ninevites turned against you.
But Jonah's been in a situation like that
before you see.
In the fish's belly.
I have no doubt that he tried to
elbow his way out.
Don't let me use my imagination.
It may be far too fertile here.
But I'm quite sure that Jonah tried to
get out of there.
But he couldn't.
Until God's time.
Nineveh was such a massive place.
It was like greater London to be distinguished
from the city of London itself.
And you took three whole days to walk
across it.
And this man was to declare to the
whole city of Nineveh.
Forty days more and the judgment of Jehovah
will be upon you.
And we're told that man single-handed without
anybody with him went one day into Nineveh.
It's like walking into another large fish to
swallow him.
But he goes and he goes alone and
he goes with the word of God.
Why?
Oh it's the mighty change in Jonah.
He's got to know his God.
The God that can save him from the
depths of the sea and the belly of
a whale can look after him in the
hinterland of Nineveh if needs be.
Thus did Jonah act in accordance with his
vow.
As he says as he said in two
nine.
I he says with a song of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you.
And I believe that every step that Jonah
took towards Nineveh and into the interior of
the city every step was a step of
sacrifice.
He was saying in effect, Lord if I'm
caught here I'm at your mercy.
My life is yours.
Do with me what you will.
Here I am but I'm willing to die.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah
the second time.
Can you see what it tells us about
God?
Can you see what it tells us about
Jonah's transformation?
Now he's ready.
Now God can use him.
Now he can bring glory to his God
as alone he goes with a word of
the Lord into the heart of that pagan
and cruel city.
Now just a couple of words and I'm
through.
The response of Nineveh to God's word through
Jonah.
It couldn't be the end of it could
it?
We couldn't end just where we are.
A man thus prepared by a God who
is a God of wisdom and a God
of grace and a sovereign God.
A man going at his behest has to
accomplish something.
Sooner or later something must happen.
Verses five to nine.
The Ninevites believed God.
They declared a fast and all of them
from the greatest to the least put on
sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh
he rose from his throne, took off his
royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth.
The king Markyu covered himself with sackcloth and
sat down in dust.
The king in dust.
And in the dust he issued a proclamation
in Nineveh by the decree of the king
and his nobles.
Do not let any man or beast, herd
or flock, taste anything.
No food, no drink, nothing.
Do not let them eat or drink but
let man and beast be covered with sackcloth.
Let everyone call urgently on God.
Let them give up their evil ways and
their violence.
Who knows, he says, who knows, says the
king.
God may yet relent and with compassion turn
from his fierce anger so that we will
not perish.
Now can I mention two things.
One, the response of Nineveh was deep rather
than superficial.
I want you to notice three key statements
there.
I have no time to really expound them.
The Ninevites believed God, that's the first.
The Ninevites believed God, verse 5.
Now what does that mean?
Well obviously they believed the message that was
brought by Jonah.
So really they believed Jonah.
No, they recognized Jonah
as the mouthpiece of God.
So that when they believed the word of
Jonah, they believed God.
That's the point.
Paul tells the Thessalonians that they received his
word not as the words of man but
as it veritably is the word of God.
Brothers and sisters this will be a new
day in the history of the church when
the word of the gospel and the word
of the Bible is received not as the
word of a preacher, not as the word
of a church or of a denomination, but
as the word of God.
And because it is the word of God
and the Ninevites believed God.
That's a text for some preacher here this
morning.
The second phrase I want to refer to
is this.
It's coming from the lips of the king
at the beginning of verse 8.
Let everyone call urgently on God.
I'm quoting of course from the NIV.
It's very accurate.
Here is a pagan king.
He hasn't known anything about God until Jonah
came there and told his story.
And here is the pagan king calling upon
everybody to call urgently upon God.
When last did you hear urgency in a
prayer offered to God?
And the third reference I want to bring
out is at the end of the same
verse, verse 8.
Let them give up their evil ways and
their violence.
Is this Jonah preaching?
No it isn't.
This is the king of Nineveh.
What's happening here?
Oh well I'll tell you.
It's the sovereign God.
It's the God of grace.
It's the God of the fish.
It's the God of the sea.
It's the God of life.
It's the God of death.
It's the God of salvation.
The only miracle in the book of Jonah
is not the formation of a fish large
enough to swallow this man and carry him
for three days and three nights.
That's a miracle but that's not the only
one.
Here's another one.
That a pagan king has come to know
the voice of God and declares to his
people give up your evil ways and your
violence.
This was deep.
This was not superficial.
I tell you there is much evangelism taking
place in North America today that doesn't go
as deep as this.
And there are people who make a response
in our enlightened community that rarely goes deep
But the response was as extensive as it
was deep.
It was general.
The Ninevites believed God.
That's the comment of scripture.
They declared a fast and all of them
from the greatest to the least put on
sackcloth.
And it was official.
We've referred to this before but let's underline
it.
It's a remarkable thing to see the king
and his nobles sitting in ashes wearing sackcloth
indicating repentance.
Royalty in repentance.
Royalty in sackcloth.
You see there must be something deep here.
And the response of Nineveh was both humble
and hopeful.
Humble because of the sackcloth they wore and
because they sat in ashes and because they
prayed with urgency.
But it was hopeful.
I like the way in which this king
tells his people.
You remember how he puts it?
Who knows he says.
God may yet relent and with compassion turn
from his fierce anger so that we will
not perish.
Now he hasn't got much to build on
because there was no word about grace in
the text of Jonah as far as I
know.
It was fundamentally a message of judgment.
And therefore we are probably right in concluding
that this was a surmise.
This was a kind of conclusion he came
to himself.
If God is sending us due notice that
40 days hence we are going to be
judged on account of our sins.
Surely there's no point in giving us a
warning unless he's going to do something different
if we turn from our sins and acknowledge
our wrongs and repent.
Do you know the man was right?
Because this is exactly what God had in
mind.
And he surmised dare I say of course
I must say by the spirit of God.
He surmised rightly that God had no delight
in the death of the wicked but God
was seeking the salvation of Nineveh.
And their response was hopeful who knows he
says but that God will do this who
knows.
Now see this is where this touches us
and perhaps is a little bit prickly in
some of our consciences.
There are may well be people here this
morning who've heard the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ over and over again and yet
you've not trusted the Savior.
And yet you've not repented of your sin.
You've not turned from your idols.
You've not given up your evil way.
This man this king of Nineveh commanded his
people to turn from their sins and it
was all on a surmise that God would
be grace gracious.
But look what we've got.
We have the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ his son who was a friend of
publicans and sinners.
Who said that he had come to seek
and to save that which was lost.
Who went to the cross bearing the sins
of wicked men and who said at the
end of it when he instituted the Lord's
Supper this is the new covenant in my
blood.
I covenant to forgive the sins of those
who trust in me and who commissioned his
disciples to go and make disciples of all
nations baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.
We have a string of pearls of promises
and a covenant of grace and of redemption
and yet there are men and women here
this morning who will not come.
I tell you my friend Nineveh will stand
in judgment and testify against your hearts of
wickedness and of stone.
If you and I cannot trust the Savior
on the basis of his promises and of
his pleadings and of his grace and of
his covenant do you think we can escape?
My last word must be this.
I return where I started and apply it
to the servants of the Lord.
Is there someone here running away?
I want the word to get through to
you this morning.
I have a sense in my bones that
this may be the beginning of a new
day for some people here.
You've left your Sunday school class because you
couldn't undertake the discipline.
You've abandoned the choir because you couldn't give
the time.
You had something more important.
Was it more important?
You've left the station where God had put
you and it may well be that you've
turned back from a distant Nineveh far more
distant than the choir box or the choir
stall or whatever.
But the fact of the matter is this.
You've abandoned your station.
You've turned back.
You've rebelled.
Will you return that you may hear the
voice of God again recommissioning you that you
may start living according to his purpose and
see the fruit of his ministry through you
in the most difficult place even though it
be a Sunday school class or whatever.
Let us pray.
Our God and our Father we thank you
for this day.
This is the Lord's day.
True there have been clouds in the sky.
True it's been raining and it hasn't been
a very bright morning on the outside.
But we thank you our Father that the
sunshine of your grace blazes in upon us
here this morning bringing us the knowledge that
you're a God of grace and you will
restore to men the years that the locusts
have eaten and you can enable us to
start again when we return like the prodigal
of old in penitence.
Almighty God hear us as in our hearts
we seek to do just that.
Oh receive the returning wanderers to your arms
and assure us you reinstated Jonah.
Reinstate them into the very heart and center
of your purpose that they too may see
something of the miracle of a life lived
in fellowship with you even though it be
in the hinterland of a Babylon or a
Nineveh or whatever.
Hear us our God and follow us with
your word of mercy in Jesus name.
Amen.