Well, I am delighted to be here and to have the opportunity to Stand before you and bring God's Word to you I bring greetings from Grace Baptist Church from Founders Ministries and would love to talk To anybody about that ministry the Institute of Public Theology as well. We are grateful for what God's doing in these last several years in helping us to think clearly about some of these cultural issues that are going on around us and how we as God's people should stand firm in the face of that. And there's been a lot of confusion about that over the last four or five years as you well know. And the Southern Baptist Convention has kind of been a hotbed for it. I don't think the Southern Baptist Convention is the most important thing going in the evangelical world, but it matters It matters because it's so large and it's so influential and what happens in the SBC affects other churches and other evangelical groups in the United States.

And so for that reason, God having put our church and kept us in the SBC thus far, it just seems like it's worth fighting for for the sake of the kingdom of Christ, the sake of the honor and glory of our Lord and his gospel and the advance of that gospel throughout not just North America, but throughout the world. America exports Christianity for good and for ill. And so if we desire to see the gospel go to the nations in a healthy way Then we will necessarily need to work hard for reformation here in the United States Well, my notes have escaped me I'm using an iPad and we have a theorem at our church. We call it the Askel Theorem regarding technology. That with every advance you take in using new technology, the potential downside is much worse than the potential upside.

And here's a case in point. So let me see if I can find them again because they've just disappeared and if not then we'll trust God to deal with that and go forward. This is really weird. All right, well, Jonah. Tozer's already been quoted this week, A.W.

Tozer, about the most important thing that comes to a man's mind When he thinks about God, that's what he really is. That's the most important thing about him he goes on to say that there is in the The soul of every man some kind of secret attraction that just seems to draw us toward our thoughts of God that shape the way we view the world. And so what you think about God is the most important thing about you. It will affect the way that you do your job the way that you relate to your spouse The way that you handle tensions the way that you treat blessings as well as the way that you deal with trials that come into your life in one sense we could summarize the gospel as the Lord Jesus Christ comes into the world to save sinners, as Jesus coming on a mission to make God known to us. We see him saying this in John 1 18, "'No one has ever seen God, the only God, "'that is Jesus Christ, who is at the Father's right side He has made him known Jesus came to make God known to us and There's no way you'll know God outside of Jesus Christ.

You have to trust Christ. You have to turn from sin, be reconciled to your creator through faith in the Lord Jesus, if you're going to know God. And if you don't know God, you may know a lot about him, but if you don't know him through faith in Christ, today is the day of salvation for you to turn from your sin and to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And I would just plead with you right now at the beginning of this message to turn from sin, trust Christ, come to know your God through faith in Jesus Christ. But as we come to know Christ, it's not the end, it's not the sum and substance of our life.

We grow in Christ, we grow in the knowledge of God through Christ and we see this in the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter three when he says, I want to know him. I want to know him, not that I've already attained, but I press on toward that high calling that is mine in Christ Jesus. I count everything is done for the sake of knowing Christ. And so the Christian life is an ongoing effort to grow in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. God wants his people to know him.

God calls us to know him. The people who know their God, as we heard at the very outset will do great exploits Others will be led astray in their life's plans and goals But as we come to know God we will live in the way that God will be honored and we will do exploits for him. Well Jonah is a unique book of all of the prophetic books. Jonah doesn't receive from God any great oracle to carry out to people or a series of oracles. Jonah's whole prophetic message is reduced to eight words in our English translations.

The message of Jonah is not so much what God told him to say, but what God did in and to him and through him so that his experience becomes a message to the world. I want to look at the book of Jonah with you this morning and encourage you to find a copy of it and turn in your Bibles to it. It's right after Obadiah and before Micah in the Old Testament, what we call the white pages in our Bibles because they're not so dirty from us having handled those pages as often as the New Testament pages. But If you'll turn over to Jonah, we're gonna look at this book holistically. There's only 48 verses in it, and we're not gonna look at every one of the verses, but we do wanna trace out themes that we find in this book.

So follow along as I just read the first few verses as God reveals to us what he did to get this story of Jonah's life going. Jonah chapter 1 verse 1, now hear the word of the Lord. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying arise and go to Nineveh that great city and call out against it for their evil has come before me but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and he went down into it to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. What we learned from Jonah is that God's dealings with his people are always designed to lead us into a deeper knowledge of him.

God is ruling and overruling in the affairs of every one of his children so that we grow to know him more and more. Jonah was an early 8th century prophet in the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel. We learn from 2 Kings chapter 14, that he had had a very successful prophetic ministry before this book that bears his name was written. He had prophesied the expansion of the northern kingdom and indeed that had come to pass under the reign of King Jeroboam II. The story of Jonah I think was the first Bible story that our kids came to learn and love and it's a story that is widely known in any kind of circles of Christians and that's easy to understand because it's very memorable it's very dramatic I can still remember my firstborn when she was just two years old retelling the story of Jonah and she loved to blow the big the big waves and the big storm that came upon the sea and and the big fish that swallowed up that man.

And it's a it's a memorable story. But there's a subplot that runs through Jonah that is actually far more significant than all of the events that we read about in his life. God sends Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah refuses to go and gets on a boat and thinks he is leaving the presence of God. God causes a storm to nearly destroy that ship.

Jonah gets thrown overboard. God prepares a big fish that swallows Jonah. After three days, the fish spits him out. Then he goes to Nineveh and completes the mission God gave him originally the people of Nineveh repent and then some people don't know this part of the story after Jonah has another successful ministry as a prophet he sees the repentance of the Ninevites and he goes and starts pouting. The pouting prophet because he knew that's what would happen if he preached God's Word to these pagan people.

He knew that God would be merciful. What a sight is given to us in this book about one of God's prophets. He starts off running away from God. Second chapter, he's praying to God. The third chapter, he finally is prophesying for God.

In the fourth chapter, he's pouting as if there is no God. There's all kinds of attributes of God that are found in the Book of Jonah. Certainly we see his long suffering, we see his kindness and his mercies, we see his wisdom, we see his power on display. What I want to do though is look at some of those attributes of God under three broad headings, all of which extend from the sovereignty of God. Because in this book we see very clearly God's sovereign hand at every step.

Specifically, what I want to do is to think with you about the sovereign awareness of God, God's omniscience, God's omnipresence that are put on display in this book. And then secondly, his sovereign providence, his authority that is displayed in this book. And then finally, his sovereign grace, which is really the point of the whole book. So let's look at God's sovereign awareness in this book. God is omniscient.

It's one of those omni words that comes from the Latin and it just simply means all knowing. God knows everything. He knows everything perfectly. He knows everything absolutely. He knows everything that can be known he knows all possibilities and probabilities and eventualities God knows everything So we ask our kids.

I don't know children. Maybe you get this in your catechism structure as well What does God The question is not what does God know, what is the question? Does God know all things? Yes, he knows all his holy will. Can anything be hidden from God?

No. God knows all things. He sees everything. He is omniscient. This knowledge that God has is evident throughout the book of Jonah.

He knew where Jonah was when he went to commission him to go preach and so he found him and he said to him Go preach to the people of Nineveh. He knew where Jonah was when he began to run away from him. He saw him. He knew him on the ship. He saw him in the sea.

He saw Jonah and was aware of Jonah in the presence of that big fish in chapter two. He knew where the fish vomited Jonah up in verse 10 of chapter two. He knew when Jonah was sinfully angry after he had successfully preached to the Ninevites in Chapter 4. Jonah surely knew all of this about God. He knew before he tried to run from God that God was all knowing because he had been taught this in the Hebrew worship times in Psalm 139.

Listen to Psalm 139, what the Psalmist tells us here. In verse one, "'O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my line down and you're acquainted with all my ways.

Even before word is on my tongue. Behold, oh Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me." So does God know all things? Yes, of course he knows all things because nothing can be hidden from God. He tells this to the prophet Jeremiah, before you were ever born, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

What a comforting thought that is for Christians, for those of us who've been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. God knows us. Sometimes we can't even sort out our own thoughts, but God knows our thoughts. When we don't have the words to pray, God knows. God understands.

Don't you ever have those times in your life when you wish that somebody understood? You can't explain what you're going through. You can't explain what you're thinking, what you're seeing. And you just wish somebody could come and relate to you. Brothers and sisters, God knows.

He's full of understanding and wisdom. The Lord Jesus tells us that even the hairs on our head are numbered by our God. We're known intimately, we are known lovingly. It was God's sovereign awareness and omniscience that comforted David when the Philistines came against him and tried to seize him in Gath. And so we read in Psalm number 56 Verse 8, you count my tossings, you put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your book? Jesus tells us, your Father sees in secret. I mean, you've wept private tears. You've had those moments when you just can't let your heart be known to any other living human being. And the scriptures tell us that God knows and None of those tears are escaping his sovereign knowledge and awareness and love.

He keeps them in a bottle. He saves them. He cares for us. We should make no mistake, brothers and sisters, God loves his people with a knowledge that is complete and perfect. So consequently, how should we live?

If we're always living before the face of God, If there's nothing that's hidden from God, why in the world should we have pretenses in how we live? Why should we pretend to be something we're not? Why should we deny the realities that are in our weaknesses and our discrepancies and the things we lack? God knows. I love what the Puritan Thomas Watson said.

He said, be what you seem. Be what you seem to be. Men judge your outward actions or judge your heart by the outward actions But God judges your outward actions by your heart. You trust in Christ, you love Christ, your actions are weak. They're not what you wish they were, you know they fall short.

God looks at the disposition of your heart as one who is following after Christ, and he accepts your actions in him. Well, God had perfect knowledge of his prophet. We also see in this story that he had perfect knowledge of the sailors as well as the Ninevites. So on the sea, when the sailors become terrified, God was very much aware of that. Jonah had made sure that they knew that he was running from the presence of God and that his God was the God of land and sea, the God of the heavens, the God of storms.

And they were terrified. He knew they would throw Jonah overboard. And so he prepared a big fish to come and swallow Jonah up. Look at verse 17. It says, the Lord appointed, and that verb could be rendered, had appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights and then you look at the second chapter the third chapter where Jonah goes to Nineveh and we see clearly that God understood, he was aware of what was going on among the Ninevites.

He knew that they were an evil people. In verse two of chapter one, he says, go to Nineveh, that great city, call out against it for their evil has come up against me. The Ninevites were known as a peculiarly cruel and bloodthirsty people, even their king in chapter three with the decree that he sets forth, acknowledges their violence, their wickedness. Look at verse eight. Part of the king of Nineveh's decree says, "'Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.'" God knew also his purpose to use Assyria, the Assyrians, including this great city of Ninevite to destroy the northern kingdom of Israel in the future.

And it's as if he's determined not to let their wickedness be filled up so he would wipe them off the face of the map before time. So he sends his prophet to them in order to bring them to repentance, to stave off his impending judgment so that they would be instrumental in his hands to bring discipline upon the Northern Kingdom, which indeed they did when they overthrew it in 722 BC. So the omniscience of God is seen in this book. Jonah experienced it. Brothers and sisters, we by faith experience it as well.

God always is watching us. While that thought is a terrifying thought to those that are outside of Jesus Christ, never been reconciled to God through Christ, it is an incredibly comforting thought for those of us who have heard Him say to us, You're my child, I'm your God, I'm your Father. He knows. Psalm 33 verse 13 and 14 and 15 says this, The Lord looks down from heaven, he sees all the children of man from where he sits enthroned. He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth.

He who fashions the hearts of them, he observes all their deeds." Hebrews 4.13 says, There's no creature on earth that is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. This doctrine is foundational for us as we cry out for justice in this world. We see this given to us in Psalm number 94. In Psalm 94, the Psalmist says this, "'O Lord God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth, rise up, O judge of the earth, repay the proud what they deserve. O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?' They pour out their arrogant words all the evildoers boast they crush your people o lord and afflict your heritage They kill the widow and the sojourner and murder the fatherless.

And they say, the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. That's the day in which we live, where people think there's no God, and if there's a God He doesn't see, He doesn't care. But listen, listen. Understand, O dullest of the peoples, fools, when will you be wise?

He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? Brothers and sisters, God knows. God sees. He understands there is not anything in his creation that escapes his review.

Well, we see God's sovereign awareness in his omniscience. We also see it in this book of Jonah in his omnipotence. God is omnipotent. What does that mean? Well, I'm sorry, omnipresent.

That means that he's everywhere present at once. He's always fully present everywhere. Because he's infinite, there's nowhere that God is not. Jonah tried to flee the presence of the Lord." Do you see that in these first verses that I read earlier? He wanted to go to Tarshish to flee from the presence of the Lord, verse 3 of chapter 1 says.

He told the sailors, that's what he was doing in verse 10. He says, I'm fleeing the presence of the Lord. He told them that. Imagine what a conversation that must have been. Who's your God?

Well, He's the God of the heavens, the God of the earth, the God who sends winds, the God who rules over all nature, and I'm running away from him. I'm escaping his presence. He wasn't successful. God was with him before he got on the ship. God was with him on the ship.

God was with him in the belly of the great fish. God was with him when he got vomited out. God was with him in Nineveh. God was with him outside the city of Nineveh. This book teaches us all of this.

If you look at chapter two, as Jonah finally begins to pray, Verse one says he prayed from the belly of the fish saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress. And he answered me out of the belly of Sheol, I cried. And you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The floods surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me.

In chapter three, when he goes to preach to Nineveh, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah. God is with Jonah in that prophetic utterance that he gives to those people. In verse 4, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Chapter 4, when he goes and starts pouting because God indeed was merciful, He speaks to the Lord, the Lord speaks to him. Why?

Because he's present with Jonah. God was always with Jonah. Omnipresence is hard for us to conceive because we're creatures of space and time. We might wish we could be omnipresent, but we cannot be omnipresent. Yet God is everywhere.

And he's everywhere, not in the sense of gas or oxygen or air, which dissipates into a variety of places. We can say air is everywhere on earth. But you can't say that a molecule of oxygen is everywhere on Earth. And God is fully himself everywhere. This is mind-boggling, but it's true.

Again, if you go back to Psalm 139 that Jonah would have known and would have been sung among the people of God, Verse seven of Psalm 139 says, where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed and shield, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, Even the darkness is not dark to you.

The night is bright as day, for darkness is as light with you. Sometimes we, like Jonah, try to run away from God. We just don't want to be in the presence of God. Well, it's impossible not to be. But other times, we're more like Job.

We want to know God's presence, but we have no sense of his presence. God seems far away, And like Job, who found himself in that situation, cried out to God in verse 23, Oh, I knew that I might find Him, that I might come even to his seat. I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. Behold, I go forward, but he's not there, and backwards, but I do not perceive him on the left when he is working. I do not behold him.

He turns to the right hand, but I do not see him." God's presence is not always manifest, but God's presence is always with us. Reminded of the story I heard of an atheistic middle school science teacher that had some Christian students in his class and he just loved to ridicule them. And so one day he writes up on the white board, God is nowhere. And he calls on one of the Christian students to stand up and read the sentence and this young girl stands up and reads, God is now here. That's the way faith always reads circumstances.

When we don't feel the presence of God, when we doubt that he is with us brothers and sisters we must live by the promises that he has given to us that he will never leave us he will never forsake us well not only do we see God's sovereign awareness in this book of Jonah, we also see God's sovereignty in providence. Now, what do we mean by providence? Well, providence is the power of God to uphold and guide and care for his creation. It is his ability to make sure that everything that he intends to be accomplished is indeed accomplished without any contrary powers overthrowing His purposes. I like the way that the 1689 confession says it in chapter 5 starting in paragraph 1, but you can look at this and the whole section of that 1689 Second London Confession.

It says, God the good creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom, upholds, directs, arranges and governs all things and things from the greatest to the least by his perfectly wise and holy providence to the purpose for which they were created. He governs according to his infallible foreknowledge and the free and unchangeable counsel of his own will. His providence leads to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness and mercy. This is a wonderful expansion upon what the whole Bible teaches, what Paul summarizes in Ephesians 1 11 when he says that God is the God who through Jesus Christ works all things together after the counsel of his own will. God is sovereignly powerful.

He is omnipotent in providence. God's providence is displayed in the events of Jonah's life. We see this at the very beginning in verse four. Look at this, it says, God sent a storm, but the Lord, the ESV says, hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship was threatened to break up. God specifically designed and sent the storm.

The words rightly translated there, he hurled it. It's the same word that's used elsewhere in this book. Look at verse five, the sailors hurled cargo into the sea because of the storm. In verse 12, Jonah says, here's what you gotta do. You gotta hurl me over the side of the ship.

In verse 15, they finally did that. They hurled Jonah overboard. So God wasn't just present in that storm. God orchestrated that storm. God providentially arranged that storm.

And in addition to this, we see God's providence demonstrated in the way the text says four times that he appointed certain things in the experience of Jonah. In verse 17 of chapter 1 we see it and we see it in verses 6, 7 and 8 in chapter 4 and it's the same Hebrew word that is used each time. It's a word that means to prepare, to intentionally choose or to determine. So look at verse 17 of chapter 1. God appointed a fish to swallow Jonah and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

You know, it's just at this point that a lot of people, moderns, like to dismiss the story of Jonah. I grew up with a good friend, one of my best friends who was the son of a pastor. We both were committed to Christ and served in the church and then became adults, gone our own ways, and I don't keep up with him, but three or four years ago he contacted me. He's become a progressive kind of Christian. He's rejected the faith.

And he said, the reason that I've done so is because I just got tired of waking up every morning and having to try to convince myself again that God really created a big fish that was big enough to swallow a man and then three days later that man could come out alive and go do some preaching. He said, I just can't buy that fairytale anymore. Well, people have problems with that. But that's not a problem with Jonah, that's a problem with God. The God who created the world can't create a fish to do exactly what he wants the fish to do.

What I said to my friend is, you know, I get that, but the far bigger problem that I struggle with is that there was a man 2, 000 years ago who was publicly crucified, put into a tomb, and stayed there for three days, came back from the dead, never to die again. He's still alive today, 2, 000 years later. I said, that's a big problem if you don't believe the truth about God. You see, if the historicity of Jonah gives you a problem, then you're not going to be able to sincerely believe the historicity of the crucified, risen Jesus Christ. And apart from believing what God has done in Christ, that he sent his own son into the world to live, to die, to come back from the dead, never to die again, you cannot be a Christian because that's the essence of Christian faith.

God appointed a fish to be at the exact spot where Jonah was thrown overboard. Then God providentially sustained Jonah in that belly of the big fish. After three days, God providentially arranged for that fish to throw Jonah up on dry land in verse 10 of chapter two. Along with that appointment of the fish, God appointed a plant for shade. You see this in chapter four, verse six.

The Lord God appointed a plant, made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head. It's another miraculous event. Verse seven, he appointed a worm to attack the plant so that it withered. Verse eight, he appointed a heat wave to come so that Jonah would begin to feel miserable. If we had been there looking at Jonah, we might have said, man, you're having a string of bad luck here, aren't you?

I mean, just seems like everything is against you, and yet the Bible tells us this isn't luck, this isn't chance, this is God. God ordaining meticulously the details in his prophet's life. Brothers and sisters, we must realize that God is equally, meticulously involved in all of the sorrows and blessings of our lives. Sometimes it's easier to believe in God's providence and talk about it when things are going well. God has providentially been so good, blessed us so much, but God also is providentially working in His people's lives through trials as well.

The sinful attitude and disposition that's revealed in Jonah in chapter 4 verses 1 and 2 had to be rooted out of his life if he was going to honor God and come to know Him as He ought to be known. God dealt with him providentially to bring him low, to teach him that He indeed is God. I love this hymn by John Newton that he wrote about this very point. It goes like this, I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face. Twas he who taught me thus to pray and he I trust has answered prayer but it has been in such a way as almost brought me to despair.

I hope that in some favorite hour at once he'd answer my request and by his love's constraining power subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead of this he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more with his own hand he seemed, intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembling cried.

Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death? Tis in this way, the Lord replied, I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee free and break thy schemes of earthly joy, that thou mayst find thy all in me." Brothers and sisters, could it be that what you're going through right now with so many difficulties and bad medical reports, sleepless nights, disappointments, shattered plans, Could it be that God is doing for you what he was doing for Jonah? To just shatter all of those schemes in order that you might find your all in him? He's with you.

He's sovereign providentially ruling and overruling in the details of your life. Well, before leaving the lesson of providence, there's a caveat that I must give. We must never use God's providence as an excuse to disobey God's Word. We must always be committed to His will revealed, regardless of what providence might be suggesting to us. Again, look at verses 1, 2, and 3 of chapter 1.

God said, go. Jonah said, no. Jonah goes down to Joppa, this little seaport. He finds a ship. It requires a ticket with the amount of money he has in his pocket, so he's able to afford it.

The wind's just right. I mean, Jonah could have been thinking, what a wonderful providence. What a wonderful providence. And God's just opened this door for me. And he gets on the ship to go away from what God specifically told him to do.

Perhaps Jonah's beginning part of that journey was filled with pleasantness, thinking that He wasn't really at odds with His Creator because things were going so well for Him. Well, the pathway to backsliding is often paved with ease of convenience. It's very easy when you've determined to ignore what God clearly teaches in His Word, to justify your thoughts and your actions by misunderstanding Providence. Charles Spurgeon tells a story of a schoolmate of his who when he was just a boy was an angry boy and he when he get angry he'd always throw things and Spurgeon said you know I didn't marvel that he got angry. I didn't even marvel that when he got angry, he always threw things.

So what I marveled at is whenever he got angry, there were always things available for him to find and throw. Don't misread Providence and use it to justify your disobedience of what God has clearly revealed to be right, good and true. John Flabel has rightly said that Providence is a book that is best read backwards. As we look back, we see clearly, more clearly, what God was doing. Well, God was not only sovereign in his awareness, sovereign in providence, he's also sovereign in grace, and this is the real point of the whole book.

The grace and compassion of God bleeds through every chapter of this book. God was gracious to the Israelite people. They were His people. He was their God. They had the covenants.

They had the promises. They had the law of God. And now God is extending His grace to a people who are their enemies. The people who are bloodthirsty, the people who are pagans. And it was upsetting to the prophet.

Consider some of the displays of God's grace in the events of this book as we just look at the verses again. And in verses one and two, in the very act of commanding Jonah to go preach, we see God's grace. He's going to preach to a lawless people, a people that have no claims upon God, a people that the Israelites would never have considered to be a part of the saving purposes of God, yet God determined to send his messenger to them. We see God's grace in Jonah's report to the sailors on the ship when he introduces them to the true God. And you read the end of that chapter one, you see that these sailors begin to worship the true God.

They offer up sacrifices to the true God. Wherever God sends his word, it is an act of grace. Wherever God determines to make known his saving revelation in Jesus Christ, It's grace. Brothers and sisters, we've been so blessed with so much ready access to the Word of God, it's easy just to take it for granted. But God has blessed us in this land with so many opportunities to have his word available to us that we forget how incredibly graced we have been.

I think of a congregation this size, and I know all of you are here because it's a Bible conference, but I'd be foolish to think that everybody here actually knows the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus had 12 apostles and one of them was a devil. And so it may be you know a lot about God. And you've had the Bible taught to you. You might be a young person, a child here today and you've heard the Bible, you've heard the gospel all your life.

Do you realize how kind God's been to you to give you the parents he has, the church he has? Do you realize what a blessing it is to even be here this week and to hear the Word of God taught to you again? And here you are. Here you are. God is showing mercy and grace to you.

He's extending grace to you. And in that grace, He calls you to be reconciled to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. Oh, we must never presume upon God's grace, nor can we ever afford to neglect God's grace. We also see God's grace working in the restoration of Jonah. This is chapter 2.

What did God do with His prophet? He told him to go. Jonah says, no. What did God do? Did he write him off?

Did he throw him away? No. He dealt with him in love. Now, it was a pretty severe love, but it was love. It was love.

He pursued him. He wouldn't let him go. That's precisely what God does with his children. We see it in David, man after God's own heart that we heard about, loved God, horrifically rebelled and sinned against God with Bathsheba and Uriah. What did God do with David?

He sent a prophet to him to restore him. We see it with Peter. Peter denied even knowing the Lord Jesus on the night of Jesus's execution. What did Jesus do with Peter? He restored him.

You see, the parable of the prodigal son, God has portrayed for us in that parable as the father who looks at his prodigals and who welcomes his prodigals back with open arms. Brothers, sisters, if you're far from Christ right now, maybe nobody else knows it, but you know inside of you, you have grown cold and indifferent, and the Word of God means nothing to you, and your prayers bounce back from the ceiling, and you feel far away from the Lord, know this. He is a God who welcomes prodigals back. Return to Him. He's full of grace and mercy.

That's why He sent His Son to reconcile us to Himself so that Christ might be everything we need for every moment of our pilgrimage in this world. Listen to the prayer that Jonah prayed in chapter 2 verse 7. It says, When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope and steadfast love. They forsake their own mercy, their covenant love from God.

But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. But we see God's grace also in the content of what Jonah preached. The message of judgment, those eight words, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed. That's a word of grace.

Doesn't sound like a word of grace, does it? There's no hope, there's no offer of mercy, there's no promise of forgiveness. How in the world could it be a word of grace? Because it's a word of warning. An assassin never fires a warning shot.

He has one aim, to take you out. Yet God's words of judgment are extensions of mercy. It is the kindness of God to tell us about His own determination to destroy sin. And the king of Nineveh took it exactly that way. He heard, 40 days?

40 days? We must repent. He called upon a universal fast on the city. Even the animals had to fast. And his rationale is given to us in verse 9 of chapter 3.

Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger so that we may not perish. Those pagan, wicked, violent menovites received God's word of judgment as a word of mercy. And so indeed it was. They turned from sin.

They asked for forgiveness. You know what God says about sin. You know the soul that sins must surely die. You know that no liar will enter into the kingdom of heaven. Are you clinging to your sin?

Are you thinking there's no hope because that word of judgment hangs over you? Friend, brother, sister, listen to this word and hear the word of God's judgment as a word of grace to you. It's a word that calls you to repent while there is still time. We must receive the warnings of God in the Scripture as words of grace and mercy to us. We see in verse 10 of chapter 3, God's grace in granting forgiveness.

Look at that. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said He would do to them. He did not do it. That's precisely what our Jonah feared. So he goes out in the fourth chapter.

See, I knew it. I knew if I went and preached judgment to them. It's just like you to forgive them. To show mercy on them. And I can't stand it.

He was so narrow minded in his own understanding of God's grace, thinking that God was only a tribal God, a God of the Israelites, that God was not genuinely concerned about the nations. Brothers and sisters, God has never been exclusively concerned for just one people group in the world. He's always had, in his vision, he's always had part of his mission to bring the good news of salvation and reconciliation to himself through His Son, all of the nations of the earth. Jonah didn't understand the breadth of God's grace. But God's grace is seen most clearly in the whole story.

The whole story is designed to point to Jesus Christ. Jesus, three times in the New Testament, refers to Jonah. And He makes that very clear in what He says. For example, in Matthew chapter 12, this is what the Lord Jesus says, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold something greater than Jonah is here." What an indictment. Eight words they repented. They didn't have a Bible. They didn't have their own prophet. They didn't have a temple.

They didn't have a synagogue. Eight words and they repented. And Jesus said to the people of his day, the men of Nineveh will rise up in the day of judgment and you'll be condemned by their words. They recognize God's grace that was given to them in a very narrow sliver of a pronouncement of judgment. You have the living Christ set before you.

What will you do on the day of judgment if you've not turned from your sin and entrusted yourself to Christ? You won't be able to say, but I didn't ever know, God, I didn't know. No, you knew you'd been at a conference where you've heard the Word of God preached to you Christ set before you session after session well the men of Nineveh rise up and be a part of your condemnation on that day of judgment eight words you've got a Bible eight words you've got a Bible conference eight words you have a church eight words you have parents you have pastors. If you've never been reconciled to God before, be reconciled now. Turn from your sin and trust yourself to this gracious God who calls you to be reconciled to himself through faith in Jesus Christ.

Oh, what a great, What a glorious God we have. What a glorious God that we can grow to know more and more intimately. What prospects await us in eternity to be brought up into the full knowledge of God forever, to see his great sovereignty and all that he wove together in our lives to make us right with himself. Oh, may God help us as people to learn from Jonah's experience, how he deals with us in our own experience to draw us more and more into a right understanding of Himself. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you for the ways that you reveal yourself in Scripture, and we thank you for Jonah. We ask that you would help us to turn from sin, to recognize your activity in our lives, your sovereignty in being with us, knowing us, orchestrating the events of our lives, and being so good and gracious to us that we would long to know you more. So help us, we pray, for Jesus' sake, Amen.