We turn this morning to the Book of
Jonah.
We're going to skip over that, and we're
just going to look at a more familiar
book this morning, that's the Book of Jonah.
And tomorrow in the will of God, we'll
pick up Malachi, and then I will have
told you all I know.
The Book of Jonah.
The outline of this book is easy, it
just goes according to the chapters.
It almost stares at you from the very
pages.
Chapter one has to do with the disobedience
of the prophet, the disobedience of the prophet,
chapter one.
Chapter two has to do with the deliverance
of the prophet, the deliverance of the prophet,
chapter two.
Chapter three, the declaration of God's message by
the prophet, the declaration of God's message by
the prophet.
And then, chapter four, the displeasure of the
prophet.
Let's turn to chapter one and just read
a portion of this wonderful chapter.
Chapter one, verse one.
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 has come up before
me.
But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish
from the presence of the Lord, and went
down to Joppa.
He 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.
But the Lord sent out a great wind
into the sea, and there was a mighty
tempest in the sea, so that the ship
was like to be broken.
Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every
one unto his God, and cast forth the
wares that were in the ship unto the
sea, to lighten it of them.
But Jonah was gone down into the sides
of the ship, and he lay and was
fast asleep.
So the shipmaster came to him and said
unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper?
Arise, call upon thy God, if so be,
that God will think upon us, that we
perish not.
They said, Every one whose fellow come, let
us cast lots, that we may know, for
he who causes evil is upon us.
So they cast lots, and the lots fell
upon Jonah.
Then said they unto him, Tell us, we
pray thee, for whose cause this evil is
upon us.
What is thine occupation?
And whence comest thou?
What is thy country?
And of what people art thou?
And he said unto them, I am in
Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God
of heaven, which hath made the sea and
the dry land.
Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said
unto him, Why hast thou done this?
For the men knew that he fled from
the presence of the Lord, because he had
told them.
Then said they unto him, What shall we
do unto thee, that the sea may be
calm unto us?
For the sea wrought and was contemptuous.
He said unto them, 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.
Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it
to the land, but they could not, for
the sea wrought and was contemptuous against them.
Therefore they cried unto the Lord, and said,
We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee,
let us not perish for this man's life,
and lay not upon it innocent blood, for
thou, O Lord, hast done a deceiving thing.
So they took up Jonah, and cast him
forth into the sea, and the sea ceased
from her racing.
Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and
offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made
vows.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish
to swallow up Jonah.
Jonah was in the belly of the fish
three days and three nights.
Jonah's name means dove, d-o-v-e,
the dove.
And he lived in the time when Israel
was menaced by Assyria.
And of course the capital of Assyria, and
you really would get the picture perhaps a
little more clearer if you thought of, and
God telling him to go to Moscow and
he repented to the Russians.
Jonah was intensely nationalistic, he was intensely loyal,
and there was one thing he didn't want
to happen, and that was if anything good
should come to it.
He pretended to Nineveh.
He knew that if the Ninevites repented, God
would prophet.
In fact, from all the prophets, there's a
difference about this.
From now on, the prophecy in Jonah is
not so much as in what happened to
you, but what you said that he did
prophesy, that he did, happened
to him.
For instance, in the New Testament, we learn
that he gave pain to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and he gave him a sign
from heaven, that there shall be no sorrow.
In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke
to you, and this
was to be the consummation.
Of course we know that in spite of
that sign, he was headed up in that
particular hour.
Now people have some difficulty with that subject
of three days and three nights.
Any part of an owner was counted as
an owner.
In other words, any part of three days,
of a day and a night, and
three nights, people
themselves.
And this is brought up very clearly in
this book.
You know, God originally taught sin
and iniquity, as it were.
Before the Jews, I told everyone that the
Gentiles couldn't reach God and expect God to
be different from all the rest of them.
They were
a witness to the Gentile Jesus, God,
and Testament.
Of course, when you have it in the
book of Jonah, to Nineveh, we went to
the Lord Christ, as it were.
And then you have, before I go on,
but it's an interesting thing to me, in
that when I talk to Jewish people today,
they always make a great point to emphasize
to me that a Jew will never seek
to convert a Gentile to Judaism.
They boast about this.
No Jew will ever seek to convert a
Gentile to Judaism.
If you want to become a Jew, you
can.
That's the insight, and we ask the question,
and if you decide you will use any
evangelistic deal to get you to become a
Jew.
And what a striking fulfillment that is.
Well, then you have God's punishment upon the
Jewish people for their failure to be a
testimony to him, and you have that typical
sea invariably.
He swallowed by miracles, of course, and the
world has now been dispersed and assimilated by
the Gentile nation.
It's no different than any other people on
the earth.
So people are
Jews, and photographs will come, and you'll find
the Jews, they talk with a strapped accent,
but they're still Jews.
And all over the world, the same is
true in China and in Japan.
As far as you
look into the future, this is how.
Good news to the city of Nineveh, the
people of Israel, and in
the New Testament, it's in keeping with the
Book of Mormon.
God so
loved the world, and
finally went to Noah,
and blessings, unparalleled blessings, will flow through this
channel.
...verse 6...
...be the record...
...that life...
...he...
...nation...
...to a great...
...to Jonah...
...traveling...
...journey...
...to a...
...and so that's a picture of millennial glory
when, in a coming day, the Gentiles...
...study the Word of God...
...over...
...never stop...
...last few days...
...and I'd like to just speak for a
little while this morning on this verse, and
then some other...
...day unto him...
...tell us these phrases...
...for he...
...caught...
And George went in and said, What's the
matter?
And there this fellow cries, and Lord, you
know I can't give it up, you know
I can't give it up.
And he said, Well, what's the matter, fellow?
He said, Are you afraid of a blessing?
And that's what John was afraid of.
He was afraid of a blessing.
And Marjoram, the incomparable privilege that he had
of going to Nineveh and really doing of
God and the salvation of that city, and
God spared that city for a hundred and
sixty years after none of his evangelistic crusades.
And did he do it?
I don't know.
It's possible that God has been speaking to
some of us here at the conference.
You know, nobody else would know, but maybe
you know that God has been speaking very
loudly, and there's something he wants you to
do, and there's a holding back.
There's a seemingly nothing to go on with
it.
But I don't know, but maybe the Lord
would save you from the Book of Jonah
this morning.
What's the matter?
You afraid of a blessing?
God never asks us to do anything, but
what he has on this blessing in store
for us is to do it.
And then just one final thought, in connection
with the Book of Jonah, and that is
that I really shouldn't be too high on
Jonah, because he lived on the other side
of the cross.
He really did.
And we have a motive that he didn't
add to the thing he said.
What is it?
Calvary.
The love of Christ that is the frame
of us, because we thus said that if
one died for all, then we are all
dead, and that he died for all that
they which live should not live, but unto
him which died for them and rose again.
Jonah might have been grimly, and this is
the greatest of all motives.