- God the Giver of 2nd chance v.1
- The recipients
- Jonah
- Ninevites vv.2-3
- The Medium
- The Gospel
- The HS
- Jonah v.4
- The Results
- salvation v.5
- Change life vv.6-9
- Glory to God v.10
1 God the Giver of 2nd chance
:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time…
1.The one that got my attention had to do with 2nd chances
He is the God of the second chance.
God always give us 2nd chance, 3rd ,4th 5th,…until He thinks our time is up or that is enough
Ex.
(I have my share of failures in my life), in my marriage, in rearing up my 3 boys (esp. in disciplining them, loving them)
In work , In my studies- failed, repeat subjects again…thank God , He & them gave me 2nd, 3rd etc
In Jonah’s context, doing God’s will.
He knows God wants him to… but went… but thank God, he gave him another chance.
How about you?....Is there something that God wants you to do but you keep on delaying, postponing, or ignoring it.
2. Can you think of any biblical characters who were given a 2nd chance & were restored to a godly living?
1.Moses(killed a man & fled from Egypt);
2.God gave David a second Chance-plotted to kill 1 of his soldier & succeeded. Committed adultery...
3.Of course there is Peter(denied the Lord 3 times)…
Somehow, you & I where like Jonah, modern"Jonah’s”
1: Who here can say that they responded to the message of the gospel the very first time they heard it?
- For most of us it was yrs of hearing and rejecting hearing and rejecting
– putting off . Finding reasons why we didn’t need to turn our lives over to Jesus.
But where would we be if God said – I am going to give you ONE CHANCE –
- Most of us would be lost
2. Or how many of us have been used/ blessed by the Lord even after we have been disobedient ?
Reality all of us have been recipients of 2nd and 3rd and 4th and ……. Chances by God
And we live on 2nd chances – that is what grace is all about.
God still is doing that today: He is the God of the 2nd Chance.
George H. Morrison said, “The Victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings.”
Thank God, He doesn’t only gives us a second chance but sometimes….3rd ,4th ,5th etc.
Each day is …New Day in the Lord – another chance
It is seen in the wife that takes back a wayward husband
Parent- welcoming back a wayward son or daughter
Friend who forgives when his trust has been betrayed.
Another opportunity after a failed ministry.
Another chance to work after being unemployed,
Another chance to passed after a failure in an exam….
LESSON: THANK GOD FOR 2ND CHANCE
2 The recipients- aside from a) Jonah (v.1) are the b) Ninevites
:2 "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you."
:3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent.
Nineveh was a large city for that day. It would take three days to walk around it, about 60 miles in circumference.
- a sprawling metropolis w/perhaps 600,000 people in it. {this covered outside the city proper}
* Archeological photos today show parts of the once massive walls still standing
Walls were 100’ high, 3 chariots could run abreast on top of the wall.
It was a very sinful city – read Nahum 3:1-4 (ruthless, cruel, violent city)
There are pictures of the Assyrians leading their captives with hooks through their noses, and their bodies mutilated.
Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria and its center of military, economic, political and religious power.
It was an overwhelming city in terms of its importance, a world-class city.
It’s like looking at El Dorado Hills towards Sacramento City as far west, north, south as you could see, there was city sprawling in every direction. This is a very beautiful area, populated with millions of people, the vast majority of whom had no relationship with the Savior and were captives of sinful choices, living in blindness.
Jonah wants us to understand that God cares a lot about this city and the people who live there.
That is the sort of perspective that God has for the city of Nineveh: it is a big, important city filled with lost people.
In chapter 4 verse 11, "And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left?" His words are a picture of people who don't know right from wrong, like babies who have not yet developed any moral or ethical sense.
Nineveh is going to be destroyed as a consequence of its sinfulness. That is really the heart of the message. And sin is always going to be judged in the life of an individual, a community, or a nation; that message is very consistent in the Scriptures.
LESSON: GOD WANTS them to have a 2nd chance. To be saved physically & spiritually.
3 The medium( means, agency) a) The Gospel b)Jonah c) The HS
:4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said,
"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
a) The Gospel
Look at his message.
1. It was very simple, "Forty days and comes destruction." Only 5 words in the Hebrew text. (yet, 5 words stir an entire nation!)
2. No fancy illustrations to draw the people's attention. No jokes.
3. No suggestion of hope. . No promise of God's mercy.
– Only a one line sermon…but it had a “whale of an impact!”
4. No call to repentance. He doesn’t even invite them to turn to God. Simple, to the point, and frightening. He doesn’t even tell the people what to do. He could have added more but have to travel around so his preaching is really limited in content.
LESSON: People need to hear the gospel, the truth in order to change, to have another chance in life.
b)Jonah- a repentant/ 2nd chance person
1. If we were going to plan and strategize on how to reach Nineveh, imagine all the planning and devising.
2. We must get a large stadium, and spend thousands of dollars in advertising.
3. We must gather a great team of highly qualified men, and send them ahead to train follow up leadership.
4. A city of this size would take a budget of over a million dollars before we could even consider a campaign there.
5. If someone should suggest that we send just one man to walk the streets yelling, "You are going to be destroyed in 40 days," we would be thought crazy by the planning committee.
No matter what the plan, we need Jonah (people) to communicate the gospel.
c) The HS
Nineveh will be over thrown
A)The word overthrown here literally means to turn something upside down.
B)But to really capture the idea here you have to think of a plate full of food being tossed up in the air and then landing upside down.
C) That’s what this word meant: In other words,
1)this great city of Nineveh was about to be thrown up in the air and splattered all over the place.
D) A good cross reference here is that this is the same word that was used when God said that He was going to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah. Even now, we can’t find these cities.
Now, I’m sure that there were many people that heard this and thought, IMPOSSIBLE
A)Nineveh, overthrown, can’t happen. Nineveh is far to substantial to be turned upside down by anyone.”
B)And yet from God’s perspective, it was just forty days away from falling apart at the seams.cf Nahum
LESSON: NOTHING too HARD FOR (HS)
4 The results a)salvation b) Changed life c)Glory to God
:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
a)salvation
1.The people of N took these words of imminent divine judgment seriously.
We are told, “They believed in God” (3:5), which focuses on the faith of these Gentiles in the God of Israel, and not just their fear of judgment.
It is clear in the Scriptures that faith is a gift only God can give; it is not a human achievement.
2) They were broken: the Ninevites didn't just believe cognitively
A)Seen in the fact that they put on sackcloth.
B) There was a Humility/ fasting that was apparent in their repentance.
3.The response was unanimous, from the lower to the upper classes.
This revival seems to have begun from “the bottom up,” rather than being imposed from “the top down.”
The entire city responds in sincerity; includes young and old, rich and poor, powerful and weak--every stratum of society.
LESSON: the Gospel presentation of Jonah along w/ the SWEEPING work OF THE Holy Spirit RESULTS IN salvation from the least to the greatest .
b) Changed life
:6 Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.
By the time word reached the king, the city’s repentance was already well under way, but because the king also believed Jonah’s warning, he began by personally repenting.
Suddenly things like positions / power and appearances meant nothing
1) Even the King – put on sackcloth- To put on that sackcloth covering acknowledges that one deserves God's judgment and affliction. It symbolizes grieving over one's own sin.
And sat on ashes- means he leaves his seat of authority and humiliates himself.
He prostrates himself before God in repentance.
A picture of total abandonment of Self image- forsaking of positions, power & appearances.
A)That is always a true mark of repentance: when a person is no longer worried about how they are perceived.
No longer worried about what others are thinking of them –
All that matters is that they are right w/ God
LESSON; Quite frankly that is the thing that holds some people back from true repentance:
They are way to concerned about what others are thinking about them.
:7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water.
When the king issues this royal decree, it does add official sanction and impetus to what is already going on.
Some interpreters have seen humor in the king's edict requiring that even the animals have sackcloth put on them and that they fast along with their owners. But it speaks of the seriousness of it all that the animals along with the humans with whom their lives are totally intertwined must symbolically represent the heart of the whole population, like visual aids, so that everybody sees, wherever they turn, humans and animals alike prostrating themselves before God, grieving over their own sin and the judgment it is bringing upon them.
2) There was a denial of the flesh.
A)They proclaimed a fast!
B)Fasting is simply not eating or drinking.
1) But what it points to here is this idea of denying self, or denying the flesh.
C) They were used to being driven by the flesh .Catering to their fleshly appetites
LESSON; But now they were willing to deny the flesh in order to seek God. Purpose of FASTING
A)Food fast – a Day for Prayer: A meal – lunch , dinner
B) Others: TV Fast – No TV for a week – News paper fast – Gym Fast:
That is the purpose of Fasting! – to seek God
:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.
LESSON 1; In verse 8 there are three important phrases in what the king asks the people to do.
He says 1st of all to "cry mightily to God." That refers to wholehearted prayers of repentance, physically using one's whole being to cry out to God.
There was a sense of urgency. V.8 Cry mightily Energy & Passion intensity.
LESSON: 2nd, he talks about the fruit of repentance, or the evidence that there has been genuine "turning from their evil way." The phrase "evil way" is a description of a general lifestyle of immorality and disregard for the Lord.
LESSON 3 And he further tells them to turn from "the violence which is in your hands," which is always used in the Old Testament to denote social injustice or taking advantage of other people because of one's superior position.
This king is not calling the people to some sort of simple, short-term reform. He is talking about a radical lifestyle change for himself, one hundred twenty thousand adults, and their children.
Let me ask you, as you think about evil kings or people who are in positions of political authority over us collectively, how you view your responsibility toward them, especially political leaders that we have named as the spiritual enemy, leaders whose influence we fear and oppose. Who is bold enough to walk into the king's chamber to bring truth, to tell him what God is doing in his land?
LESSON; Too often Repentance in the Church today is lacking of these traits:
Let me ask you, as you think about evil kings or people who are in positions of political authority over us collectively, how you view your responsibility toward them, especially political leaders that we have named as the spiritual enemy, leaders whose influence we fear and oppose. Who is bold enough to walk into the king's chamber to bring truth, to tell him what God is doing in his land?
LESSON; Too often Repentance in the Church today is lacking of these traits:
A)There is a prayer and tears and a promise.
B)But there is no forsaking of position and power, there is no change in priorities,
1) there is no move away from sin, there is no move towards righteousness,
C)And then we wonder why there is so much sin in the Church.
A lot of it comes back to this. We have forgotten what it means to repent.
:9 Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?
If the Ninevites had but 40 days left, why would they cease sinning? One would think that they might be inclined to act in accordance with the expression, “Eat, drink, and make merry, for tomorrow (or 40 days) we may die.” Nineveh’s motivation for putting off the wickedness of the city is described in verse 9
LESSON:
Q: What view of God did the Ninevites express in vs.9? (mercy)
Q: Doesn’t our view of God affect our willingness to turn away from our sins & turn toward God? {Yes, Our need to get “re-focused’ on HIM!}
We need to understand here that God's plans and purposes for humanity never change.
He himself is immutable; he does not change.
He is always committed to judging evil wherever he finds it.
But he is also always committed to forgiving anyone who repents of evil.
We need to understand here that God's plans and purposes for humanity never change.
He himself is immutable; he does not change.
He is always committed to judging evil wherever he finds it.
But he is also always committed to forgiving anyone who repents of evil.
Change in their perspective of God.
c)Glory to God
:10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
God relented. – it was simply God’s response to mans change of heart.
(God is utterly consistent w/himself! – It only appears like he is changing his mind
Actually the sinner has repented, for GOD always extends mercy to those who turn to CHRIST.)
Q: Was their repentance real? V .10 Then God saw their works – he saw their repentance and forgave them.
Jonah’s heart was nowhere in this 4:1! – Yet, God blessed His Word!
God sovereignly moves in the hearts of the Ninevites
Just as a note, you want to remember, this is the greatest revival in the Old Testament. It's the greatest revival in redemptive history that I know about. . It is a common colloquialism which refers to a deep conviction of sin and a turning to GOD.
The whole place repented.., the estimation of 600 thousand people.
The day of Pentecost, only 3,000 came to believeThere is no record of anything like it.
Even the great Apostle Paul never experienced anything comparable to what Jonah saw.
Jonah had the experience of seeing an entire city repent and turn to GOD.
Nineveh, the center and capital of the world power of that day, the fear and dread of the ancient world.
The total conversion of this wicked and brutal city had repercussions over the then-known world. Multitudes elsewhere must have heard the news and followed the lead of Nineveh.
Let us not minimize the world-shaking message of Jonah.
This is breath-taking because it was a GOD breathed time of heart-searching which brought about a turning to GOD.
God was glorified in their salvation & changed lives
LESSON:
Q: If a genuine turning to God were to occur in our country, what results would you expect to see? Holiness; Fruit of the Spirit; Moral & Ethical changes;
People more focused on the eternal rather than on the temporal;
People w/a Christian World View! Glory & presence of God seen everywhere!
LESSON: And it's such a wonderful thing to know that God can take a vessel like a Jonah who was so disobedient and so self-willed and so obstinate and so prejudiced, put him through a tremendous cathartic experience, wash him back out of that, send him to preach and use him to bring redemption to an entire population.
And who is glorified here? GOD!
A. What a miracle of God's sovereign grace.
B. Next time if we are prone to think that our success has come from our charming, winsome ways, think again.
C. Next time people respond to the invitation you give them to accept Christ and it resulted from your brilliant rhetoric, think again.
D. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not suggesting that we be boRING and rude, just don't think more highly of ourself than we ought.
God Gets the Glory!
1 God the Giver of 2nd chance
2 The recipients- a) Jonah b) Ninevites
3 The medium a) The Gospel b) The HS c)Jonah
4 The results a)salvation b) Change life c)Glory to God
No comments:
Post a Comment