Jonah's Mission and Sign, Preaching and Repentence

[0:00] in Matthew 12 what the key to the sign of Jonah was, and it is in our text today. We have today Jonah's professional fulfillment of his call. I say professional because this was his job, and it's taken three chapters for him to get there because of his rebellion. His personal job isn't done. That's why chapter 4 sits there. We'll get to that next week. But he has completed what he was. We find today he's completed what he was called to go do, call out against Nineveh.

[0:42] And there is true revival. There is true belief from everyone. We have, scholars will say, the greatest revival in history before us today. It is complete. It is from king to peasant.

[1:03] And you could say beasts are even involved. And it's one simple message. Just one. We have Pentecost where at least 3,000 souls, or it says scripture about 3,000 souls were saved, maybe not including others. Could have been a little higher. But it was a lengthy message that Peter had to get out to the Jews and go through their history and why they crucified Christ. And they were cut to the heart when the Spirit was poured out. Acts 4, 4,000 were saved. Not much details given there. But there was also great resentment from the Sadducees and Pharisees.

[1:50] Edwards, Whitefield, the second, the first and great, the second great awakenings. Nothing compares to at least from our scriptures when we get to chapter 4, we see that Nineveh Jonah has at least 120,000 people. 120,000 people. The largest stadiums in our country can barely fit that many people.

[2:13] And all of them repent. So today, I'm going to outline three things. First, what did Jonah do? What did the people respond with?

[2:26] And then what does God, how does God respond? And with that message, it's the signs of Christ. What are the signs of Christ?

[2:37] How is Christ relevant to us today with the same warning, the same message that's applied throughout eternity? First, what does Jonah do?

[2:49] He preaches the wrath of God. Preaching the wrath of God is God's normative means for converting souls.

[3:03] He said, he is to call out against Nineveh, our scripture says. For their evil has come up before me. We saw that in chapter 1. We got the repeat message this time.

[3:15] And again, that evil is still before him. Call out against it. With the message that I give you, you are to say exactly what I am to tell you. This call out, kara, this is a Hebrew word to call out, recite, proclaim.

[3:30] It can just be call. It can just be call like we would call somebody. But this call out against is very specific with regards to preaching. How does he do this?

[3:44] Well, let's unpack a little bit. There's a couple of phrases in here that we should talk through. Verse 3 says, it's an exceedingly great city. Three days journey.

[3:56] What does that mean? We know it takes two to three months to get from probably where he was spit up by the fish on the beaches of the Mediterranean. By caravan, it takes two to three months to get through the Fertile Crescent all the way over to Nineveh.

[4:11] They wouldn't have gone straight as the crow flies. They would have gone kind of through Damascus and up around. So the three days across isn't his journey to Nineveh. That would be miraculous. It's three days through the city.

[4:23] Some believe the exceedingly great and the three days describes the vastness of the city. Others believe exceedingly great, again, as we talked about in chapter 1, the first message, because it was preached then too, that it's an important city to me.

[4:42] God has an interest, an exceedingly great and important city. Critical to his plans for some reason. And that the three days actually involves the protocol of the day.

[4:58] If you were to journey in the Middle East to go from one land to another and there was some kind of a business associated, some kind of political or professional work, you would have a day to journey and you would have a day of recoupment and watering your animals in the caravan and getting settled and figure out where you're staying.

[5:16] And the second day would have been the day of meeting. And the third day would have been, okay, now we're getting ready to pack up and go and get the camels, make sure they got their water, whatever it is. I lean towards this latter view primarily because it says Jonah was just a day's journey into the city and he is preaching.

[5:42] And it's the word of the Lord that reached the king through probably the peoples that he had already contacted. And the king is now proclaiming what he proclaims.

[5:52] The important part of this is just to say, one, the normative means that God uses is preaching the word. We have the word in written form and we can read it and that is a great blessing.

[6:08] But the spirit also has throughout time accompanied the preaching of the word of God as a way to reach souls.

[6:18] Exodus 9. For this purpose I have raised you up to show my power so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

[6:31] This is God convincing Moses, no, you need to be my voice. You need to be my mouthpiece. Psalms. Psalm 2. I will tell of the decree.

[6:43] The Lord said to me, you are my son today I have begotten you. That great and lengthy but worshipful Psalm 119 going through the glories of the word of the Lord.

[6:58] You get to verse 13. The psalmist says, with my lips I have declared all the judgments from your mouth. It's from the New King James.

[7:08] It could be ordinances or judgments. Ecclesiastes, the book of wisdom, Solomon. He throughout his book states, I the preacher.

[7:23] Yes, he is the author of many wisdom writings but he refers to himself in this not as the king but as the preacher. What about our prophets, our major prophets?

[7:36] How did they view the heralding, the proclaiming of the word? Isaiah 61. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

[7:51] He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives. My emphasis obviously there is on proclaim. Jeremiah 23.

[8:02] Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream. Let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. Ezekiel, son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem.

[8:18] And preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy against the land of Israel. So, this is pervasive throughout the Old Testament. And we can understand why.

[8:28] Your specific references are in your bulletin if you want to go back and look at the specific verses. But the people didn't have scriptures in the Old Testament like we did.

[8:40] So, there was a good reason why he used a mouthpiece. What about the New Testament? Scrolls were written. There were scrolls within the synagogues. Still, they weren't pervasive.

[8:54] They weren't everywhere. Everybody didn't have a copy. But the primacy of the word of God, even in the New Testament, was on the hearing of the word. Even these apostles who knew their words were being recorded.

[9:07] And that somehow, I believe, spiritually, they knew this was going to be canonized scripture. The word of the Lord himself, Christ, at a famous passage.

[9:19] Well, let's take a look at theNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNINGNING