One of the most well-known sermons ever delivered was entitled“Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. Given in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741, it played a part in what was called the“Great Awakening”, an international revival in those days. It is my understanding that it was read word for word from his notes in his monotone style with his notes to his face so he could see them which covered his face from view.
(Monotone) Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35 “In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God's visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God's wonderful works towards them, remained void of counsel, having no understanding in them. “
Imagine that continuing for what might have been an hour. How bored would you have been? What would you say when you left church that day? “Man, that preacher is horrible.” Right? Well, I say it might have taken an hour. By looking at his notes, that would be my guess for how long it would take to read the whole thing. But it probably took longer since it is said that he was interrupted many times by screams and people crying out, “What must I do to be saved!?”
Edwards only looked up from reading when he realized that people all over the congregation were crying and literally rolling in the aisle of the church begging God for forgiveness and to come into their hearts and save them. Now what do you say about that preacher? Would you say he was a great preacher? Or would you say like I do that…truth is enough! It doesn’t matter how “good” the preacher is or how well he speaks or looks. And for that I’m grateful.
There is power in the word that God gives you. And when God gives you a word to say, that word is truth. And truth is enough to change lives no matter how it is delivered. Now we all know that there is wisdom in oftentimes keeping your mouth shut. President Calvin Coolidge once said, “I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say.” And that may be true for him but we see in the life of Jonah that when he kept his mouth shut and didn’t say what God wanted him to say that it caused big problems.
And then in chapter 3 of Jonah, where we are today, we see that just saying what God wanted him to say; just one sentence, changed the lives of thousands of people. And Jonah didn’t have to be a great orator. His delivery wasn’t flashy. He didn’t even have 3 points and a poem like we all know is correct for a sermon. J God gave Jonah one job; one message; literally one sentence to say to Nineveh. And as far as we know that is all he said. But that one sentence was truth and truth is enough!
The book of Jonah is between Obadiah and Micah in the Old Testament. We have seen so far that God told Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites but Jonah ran the other way, got intercepted by a God-ordained fish where he promptly changed his mind and realized that it would be in his own best interests if he just did what God said to do.
In chapter 2, Jonah prays a beautiful and heart-felt prayer declaring, even while still in the belly of the fish, that salvation is from the Lord. God then provides that salvation, at least physical salvation, for Jonah by causing the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land. What we don’t see in between chapters 2 and 3 is how Jonah felt, what he looked like and smelled like after being inside that fish for 3 days. And now in chapter 3 God calls him again and Jonah has to travel about 500 miles just to get there. But he goes. Let’s pick up the action in Jonah chapter 3.
Then the word of the Lordcame to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
What a great preacher, huh? One sentence spoken by a man who was recently fish bait and probably still smelled like it and thousands of people from least to most, slave to king, rich and poor had their eternities changed. Not exactly Billy Graham, was he? And yet, Billy couldn’t have gotten better results because, once again, it is not about the messenger. It is about the message.
And when that message is the truth of God, given by God, to the glory of God, then God is in charge of the results! Amen. Thank you for coming. I’ll see you tonight at 6. I mean, what else do we need to know? When God puts something on our heart to say or to do or to go, our job does not include worrying about how it is going to be seen or received by others. Our job is just to do it and let God be in charge of what happens afterward.
Jonah had a problem with that from the beginning of the book to the very end but at least he did what he was supposed to do and went to Nineveh and said his one sentence. And with that one sentence; that one act of obedience we see a chain reaction of events that ends with thousands of people having their eternities changed. In this chapter of Jonah we see that truth leads to repentance. And repentance leads to compassion.
So, let’s look at this chapter closer by looking to see what those 3 things really are. What does truth, repentance and compassionreally look like and how do we know when we have them? Let’s start with truth. What is truth and how do we know when we have it? For Jonah, and ultimately for the Ninevites, the truth was that in 40 days they would be overturned. That was Jonah’s whole message. In 40 days Nineveh will be overturned.
That word “overturned” literally means to be turned upside down. That what is now up will be down and what is now down will be up. Everything they know, everything they have, and everything that they are will be lost or changed completely. Nineveh was powerful, rich, cultured…and on a path to destruction. They were lovers of themselves. They were selfish, greedy and very violent. They had no love or respect for God, only love for themselves. They found their“truth” wherever they wanted to find it.
I have said before that those who do not follow God’s truth are like the sailors in years past that were in the ocean at night and the clouds rolled in and they could no longer navigate by the stars and they couldn’t see the lighthouse and they needed something by which to navigate. And so they put a lantern on the bow of the boat and charted their course by that light and couldn’t understand why they never got where they needed to go.
In this country’s Declaration of Independence, it is said that we as citizens have certain God-given, unalienable rights. The founding fathers understood that our rights are based on the truth that God gives, not on something that seems to make sense at the time or that will help us achieve what we want to at a certain time. Truth is not necessarily what the majority says or what the majority wants it to be. Truth only comes from God. So, how do we know when we have found truth?
What does that look like? Again, I will start by describing what it is not. Satan is the great counterfeiter. He always wants to give you something that looks like what you need but is, in fact, not real. And he will counterfeit that still, small voice of God that we as Christians hear from the Holy Spirit. Satan is the one whispering in your ear,“It’s ok. Just a little porn is not going to hurt you.” “Don’t worry. You deserve to go get drunk after the week you have had.” Or he will be the voice that says, “You love him and you will marry him soon. It’s ok for you to live together until you can afford it.”
How do you determine that counterfeit voice when it can sound so much like the voice of God? Satan has been doing this a long time and he knows God’s voice and he can imitate it. But he can’t take from or add to God’s holy, written Word. When you hear that voice, if you have that relationship with God through His Son Jesus, a red flag should go up when you hear something like that and it is your responsibility to run that message up against what the Bible says. Because God’s truth that He gives you through that still, small voice will never contradict what He has told us in the Bible.
For Jonah, He knew that the word God had given him was consistent with what the scriptures that he had at the time taught about the justice of God. And so he could preach that message with confidence knowing with everything he was that what he spoke was the truth of God, given by God, for the glory of God. And we can have that same confidence but it is our responsibility to know or find out what the scriptures say about it.
And when we do what we are supposed to do; when we speak the truth that God has given us like Jonah did and that truth is accepted, that truth will always bring about repentance. We see that in verse 5 of our text. It says that the people believed God. Isn’t it interesting that it doesn’t say that the people believed Jonah? They understood that what Jonah said was God’s truth, not Jonah’s opinion, and they believed God. And it changed their lives immediately.
In verse 8 the king says they are to give up or repent of their evil ways and their violence. But what is repentance and how do we know when we have done it? What does true repentance look like? The word “repent” simply means to turn around and go in the other direction. When you give up what you are doing and the path you are on and go in the opposite direction in the way God has shown you, that is true repentance. It will be obvious.
It’s not a slight change of course. It’s not getting a little bit better. It means I was doing one thing this way. Now I am doing another thing the other way. It doesn’t mean a slight change of heart nor is it a gradual process. True repentance happens right now. A minute ago I chose to live in sin but now I have chosen to confess that sin and to repent or turn away from it.
My dad went to Brazil on a mission trip many years ago and was preaching in a revival there. One of the local ladies was saved at that revival and afterward came up to Pop and asked him if he would come to her house and speak to her husband who didn’t know Jesus. So, with the help of an interpreter, he talked to that man and he too was converted. He confessed his sin and repented of it and not just with lip service.
Pop said there was a sheet hanging up in their house that divided their house from the bar that he ran that was the sole source of income for their family. And before Pop could even leave, that man had taken down that sheet, closed the bar and dumped all the alcohol because he didn’t want to be a part of that kind of lifestyle anymore. God had shown him truth and his life was immediately changed by it through his repentance.
Jonah didn’t walk into Nineveh saying, “God loves you and so do I.” Noah didn’t stand in front of the ark telling his scoffing neighbors that they should try to be a little better. Jeremiah wasn’t put into the pit for saying, “I’m ok. You’re ok.” Daniel wasn’t thrown into the lion’s den for telling people how to have their best life now. John the Baptist wasn’t beheaded because he told people to think positive thoughts.
What was the message of all of these men of God? “Repent! Turn away from your sin and go in the way of truth and your life will be immediately changed.” When Jonah told the Ninevites that they had 40 days, they immediately understood, immediately believed, immediately fasted and prayed and confessed of their sin and immediately repented of it. And what happened then?
Look at that last verse again. Verse 10 says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” God had compassion on them. They found truth. That truth led them to repent of their sin. And when they repented, God forgave them and had compassion on them.
Did they deserve it? No. Were they now perfect? No. Was life perfect for them? No. No. No. But they could now live their lives with the hand of compassionate God on them and with the full security that He knew them and loved them and had an eternal place for them in Heaven with Him when they died.
In Luke 15, the prodigal son goes to his father and demands what money he has coming to him. Then he makes the choice to live a wild and wasteful life; a life of which he knew his father would not approve. He lived it up…until he couldn’t afford to any longer.
Then the truth of his situation set in and he realized that what he had done and where he was and how he was living was a disgrace and so in verses 18 and 19 he confesses and repents and immediately goes home. He was living one way but turns around and goes the other way, back home to his father.
And in beautiful verse 20 it says that his father saw him from a long way off and was filled with compassion for him. His father was waiting for him; waiting for him to come home; waiting for him to repent and leave that old life; waiting patiently so he could have compassion on him.
Did he deserve it? Was he perfect? Was life perfect? No, of course not. None of that has anything to do with the compassion of the father. Nor does it have anything to do with our Father’s compassion for us. King David knew that. He wrote in Psalm 86:15, “But you, Lord, are a compassionateand gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” Lamentations 3 says, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
When you find God’s truth and realize who you really are, a sinner who deserves to be in the hands of an angry God, it can be overwhelming. And sin does make God angry and there are definitely consequences for our sin but 1 John 1:9says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” And he does that because he is compassionate towards us.
We don’t deserve it. It doesn’t make us perfect nor will our lives be perfect but truth will lead to repentance and true repentance will lead to God’s compassion. And he is waiting for you today; waiting for you to repent and leave that old life so He can show you compassion in this life and eternal life with Him in Heaven. If you have not done that then today is the day of salvation. And as Jonah says, “Salvation is from the Lord.”
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