Sugar Land Bible Church

Andy Woods: Check. Okay, there it is. Can we take our Bibles and turn to the book of Jonah, please? Jonah chapter three and verse one. It's great to be with you again. Before I forget, let's pray. Let's give our time to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you for the people of God. We thank you for your word. And I pray, Lord, that you would quicken and sharpen and open our hearts and our minds to your word, that we may be trained in it, that we may love it, that we may live by it. And it's in your son's name we pray. And God's people said, "Amen."

So if I remember correctly, the last time we were in the book of Jonah was around mid-August 2025. Yeah. And so I will forgo a review of Jonah's introductory matters, like who wrote the book, when was it written, the purpose of the book, things like that for the sake of time. However, I will always recommend to go back to our sermon archives to either get familiar with the series on Jonah or to catch up on it if you haven't already. Instead, I'd like to pick it up where we left off, and that was in Jonah chapter three, verse one.

As you can see from our outline there, we will be using once again for this morning. In our last session together, we covered only verse one of chapter three. In that verse, we argued by way of logical deduction or reasoning that God is demonstrating his attributes in verse one, particularly in the attributes of grace, mercy, and his compassion. We also saw that we could spend days in verse one talking about those things.

In fact, in Jonah, in this book, Jonah describes God with these exact attributes. And by using that verse and other similar verses and Chafer's book on grace, we also discovered that these attributes originate deep within God. Part of the definition was the bowels, the belly of God. It's always active. Beyond that, God's grace itself has magnificent characteristics as well, and we learned that last time of his grace.

When God interacts with his creation, he does so actively, he does so in perfect proportions, he never acts in spite of our sin debt, nor does he require a debt after he has bestowed his grace upon his creation. And as such, God is a God of second chances. Amen? Jonah chapter three and verse one says, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time," which proved to be a good thing from a heavenly perspective, but a terrible one from Jonah's part.

And why did God's grace and his mercy have to come a second time? Because Jonah was found in dereliction of his prophetic duties. Chapters one and chapter two bear this out. In fact, Jonah's disobedience literally brought himself to death's doorstep. With, of course, God's sovereign discipline using a great fish, if you recall. Jonah's prayer in chapter two, he cried out these words: "For you had cast me into the deep, Lord. You have expelled me from your sight, God. The water encompassed me to the point of death."

But, Jonah said, "You, God, have brought up my life from the pit, oh Lord my God." So after getting Jonah's attention and Jonah coming to his senses, even to the point of Jonah recommitting perhaps his prophetic duties or vows to the Lord, Jonah said, "I will repay" in chapter two, verse ten. And then it says, "Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah up onto dry land."

So in verse one of chapter three, we saw the grace of God, the mercy of God, the compassion of God on Jonah's life. By the way, Jonah did not deserve that because of his disobedience. Yet, as gracious, merciful, and compassionate as God is, God called Jonah a second time. And thank God for that, right? The God of second chances. Amen?

So let's pick it up from here where we left off. And I've entitled this sermon, "Proclaim What?". So as we think about chapter three, we must remember that we can break this chapter into little bite-sized portions. We have Jonah's recommission in verses one and two. Jonah's sermon to the Ninevites, verses three and four. Nineveh's response, verses five through nine. And lastly, God's response in verse ten.

So notice what chapter three, verses one and two say. It says, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you'." I want us to notice the choice of words used by God, the instructions to Jonah. It says, "Arise, go to Nineveh" to do what? What's the verb there? To proclaim, right?

Now, that's a very interesting word. That's the Hebrew word qara—you have to get the throat involved—which means proclaim, or get this, to recite. Jonah was called to preach or recite a message. And what was that message? Notice the text, "the proclamation which I am going to tell you." In other words, there must be a recitation, a repeating of sorts or a duplication, if you will, on what God was going to disclose to Jonah.

Now the idea of reciting or preaching exactly what God has disclosed runs throughout the Bible. He told Moses this after God revealed the Ten Commandments along with the 613-some pieces of legislation that make up what Israel knew as the Mosaic law. Exodus 24, verses two through three, it says, "Moses alone, however, shall come near to the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor shall the people come up with me."

Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances. And all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do." So God instructed Moses, a leader, to recount all that God had said. He told his prophets the same thing. For example, he told Jeremiah the prophet in chapter one and verse 17, "Now gird up your loins and arise and speak to them all which I command you."

He told this to Ezekiel: "But you shall speak my words to them," he said. God told Ezekiel again in chapter three, verse 17, "Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, warn them from me." Do you remember Ezra? Israel, after years of captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, was allowed by Ezra the priest to return under the Persian King Cyrus to return to the land of Israel.

And in Nehemiah eight, verse eight, it says this: "They," that would be Ezra and the other Levite priests and teachers, "they read from the book, from the law of God, translating," that's the Hebrew word parash, which means to explain, clarify, or be made clear, to give the sense so that they understood the reading. Now, this whole idea of preaching or reciting exactly what God has disclosed, this is what we would call exegetical preaching or teaching, coming from the word exegesis, which basically means an exposition or an explaining of.

An explaining of what? Of what God has already disclosed. Exegesis, as you may well know, is a Greek compound word. The preposition ek, which means "out of" or "out from." You'll recall Jesus said this before you take the splinter out of, ek, of someone's eye, remember that? You should first take the log out of, ek, your eye. And then there's the root that follows this preposition, which is the word exegeomai, which means to lead out or explain.

So exegesis literally means to explain out of a passage of scripture, for example. The opposite of exegesis or exposition is, of course, eisegesis, meaning "into" or explaining something into the passage. Does that make sense? The idea of exegesis is found all over the Bible. In particular, places like John 1:18, which says, "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He," that's Jesus, "has explained Him." There's our word exegeomai. To explain or to expound.

And if you didn't notice yet, you are in a Bible church that teaches expositionally or exegetically. SLBC labors to explain or expound what God has already proclaimed in all 66 books of the Bible. Another way you could phrase this is that we, SLBC, we are a verse-by-verse teaching church. Sure, we may do a topical sermon from time to time on special occasions—Resurrection Sunday, Christmas—but topical preaching is not the norm here, as you've probably noticed by now.

You are sitting in a church that believes the Bible advocates the expositional method of teaching, evidenced from verses like these, like the ones I just mentioned. Many of the churches that I've been to personally before SLBC, the teaching norm from the leadership there was a topical approach. I would venture to say that the topical approach is probably the dominant method of preaching and teaching in most American churches.

In fact, many churches out there would strongly disagree with our expositional model or approach. And there could be many reasons why that is the case. But many times pastors in those churches are not trained in the way of that kind of teaching. I'd say the biggest reason for churches to prefer the topical approach is because leaders in those churches have been influenced either by culture, their own agenda, politics, wealthy donors—we don't want to lose them—many times heavily influenced by their own congregations.

You may have heard of the seeker-friendly movement, the church movement where churches take an approach that ultimately satisfies the congregation's immediate felt needs, right? What can you do for me now? What can you do for my marriage now, my business, my relationships now? And there's really nothing wrong with topical preaching. But you have to understand when the topical approach is taken, the preacher is in control.

The preacher is in control of what is being taught, and he dictates what the congregation is grazing on. When the verse-by-verse approach is taken, God is in control of what is being taught. He dictates the intake of his sheep. If the preacher is a verse-by-verse teacher, he is forced to teach what the text says all the way through the book. Did you notice that God never instructed Jonah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel, "Proclaim what you think they need to hear"?

I cannot find in scripture where God instructs "Proclaim what the popular pastors are saying today," or messages that may be hip or relevant or socially or politically aware. Let's keep it gender sensitive, shall we? No, the text is clear. They were to teach or proclaim, notice Jonah 3:2 again, "Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you."

Now, I'm probably going to get some hate mail for this, but because of the topical method, many Christians in churches today are horrifically anemic. They're starving. They're biblically and theologically illiterate. So much so that certain pockets of denominations and their leadership structures have fallen away. They're apostate. I mean, I wouldn't even categorize them as churches anymore.

So what happens in the interim? The body of Christ becomes anemic, malnourished. They lose their God-given qualities and witnesses of God of being salt and light. They lose their preservation quality, and their light goes out. Their light, shining God's light in a dark world. And doesn't Paul the apostle warn pastors about this? I want us to listen carefully here.

Paul's words in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Paul is speaking to the pastor leader Timothy there. He said, "For the time will come when they," who are they? That's the church congregation, "will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Did you catch that?

Who is calling the shots in this verse? It's the congregation. They want to hear the flowery things of the Bible. They want their immediate desires met. They are selecting and accumulating their own teachers and leaders in accordance to their own desires. And notice they will not endure sound doctrine. What does that mean? What does "endure" mean? It means to bear with, to hold themselves to.

They won't do it. They won't stomach it. They're sick of it because it is antithetical or hostile to their own desires. I refuse to be taught or to be lectured. I refuse to let God's word correct my sinful lifestyle. And notice too, the teachers are giving in. This is why Paul charged Timothy, just a couple of verses before that, these words: "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, I charge you: Preach the word.

Be ready in and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with great patience and instruction." By the way, Paul, when he uses the word "preach the word," he is using theological shorthand. He means the entirety of God's word. In fact, he does this all the time, using the definite article "the": the word, the faith, the doctrine, the truth, etc. It means everything that God, through his son, through his apostles, have disclosed thus far.

And check it out, he said to do it in a sermon in 30 minutes or less. No, he didn't say that. He says with great patience and instruction. Oh, that's why Gabe spent a whole morning in one verse. This is why Andy spends seven years in the book of Genesis. Don't repeat that, by the way. We'll edit that out. So did you know that Paul led by example?

This is the reason Paul was both so adamant about teaching expositionally all that God has disclosed and teaching to his up-and-coming pastors this, Acts 20:26: "Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men." Why are you innocent, Paul? "For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves," he's talking to leaders, pastors, "be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood."

Now notice the phrasing "the whole purpose of God." Other versions of the Bible say "the whole counsel of God." All of it. Now, what does Paul mean when he says there, "I am innocent of the blood of all men"? Paul is actually drawing from the prophet Ezekiel. We just read from him. Ezekiel 33, verses seven through nine says, "Now as for you, son of man, I've appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel.

So you will hear a message from my mouth and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, the wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you on your part warn the wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life."

So Ezekiel, when I speak to you, you should repeat and warn my people. If you don't tell them and they die, I will hold you accountable for their death. But if you do warn them and they still die, then and only then you're off the hook. So do you want to know why SLBC takes the road less traveled in terms of the expositional model of teaching and preaching? It's because of verses like these.

First and foremost, because God told us to do so. And second, your blood is required of us by God from those that are called to preach and teach. We are accountable for what we say and for what we don't say. And this is why I've entitled this sermon "Proclaim What?". Like Paul and like Ezekiel, SLBC is committed to proclaiming the whole counsel of God to you.

And so Jonah had a serious task before him, right? Did he not? So we conclude with Jonah's instructions there in verse two, and now we reach Jonah's obedience. Let's see what happens in verse three. "So Jonah arose," notice verse three, "Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord." So far, so good. "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days' walk." Take note of that.

Praise the Lord! And by the way, this is the first instance of obedience from Jonah in the entire book. Completely opposite of what is found initially in chapter one, verse three. Instead of brazenly rising and fleeing in the opposite direction, Jonah rises and goes to Nineveh. And as I said earlier in previous lessons, this is purposeful language to highlight the contrast of Jonah and God's heart.

Jonah's stubborn mindset, as it were, versus God's sovereign will. And also notice how it says, "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city." Now this is a very challenging verse, even to scholars. There are many ways to understand this verse, and I'll try to talk about this. And you will not see this in the NASB translation, however, it reads exceedingly great city.

In the original Hebrew, it reads this way: "Now Nineveh was a great city to God." And that could be understood in a few ways. And you'd be surprised how many views are out there regarding this single verse. However, a few major ways this could be interpreted: the first, what's in view here is Nineveh's population. This view is reinforced by verses like Jonah 4:11, the very last verse of chapter four, I believe it is, where the population is recorded to be more than 120,000 persons.

To give you an idea of how large Nineveh was, currently Houston alone has a population of 2.3, almost 2.4 million people. Sugar Land, on the other hand—this is on their Sugar Land website, this is from a 2020 census—has a population of 111,000 people. Just 9,000 souls shy of Nineveh. Now, compared to Houston, that would be a very small population. But you must remember that number is actually considered humongous in ancient times. By ancient standards.

Another view taken is that Jonah may be referring to just the men of the city, as ancient Near Eastern literature typically did that. And I won't get into the weeds with that. Another view taken argues that Jonah was referring to just the adults. Yet another view is that the author is referring to adults and children. Now, this view is actually contextually convincing for me because what it says in 3:5, chapter three, verse five: "from the greatest to the least of them." That's very convincing.

One Houston scholar, his name is Craig Davis, wrote about the population of Nineveh I found very interesting. He said an ancient Assyrian inscription indicates that the city Calah, Assyria, a neighboring city to Nineveh, which was not as large as Nineveh, had 69,574 inhabitants in 879 BC. This would mean that Jonah 4:11, the population of Nineveh 120,000, 100 years later is right in the ballpark.

Another way the phrase "great city to God" could be interpreted is Nineveh's geographical size, as the NASB appears to read this way. And with the supporting verses like the three days' walk—in fact, one of our missionaries that we support, Titus Kennedy, suggests that, he's an archaeologist by the way, suggests that Nineveh could have been approximately 2.9 square miles. And in our previous sermon, we used this map—if you can see that—that's the real estate of Assyria, Nineveh being in the red there, the little red circle being its capital.

Another way to take this, that the great city of God could be referring to the city's importance, its value. Now you really can get into the weeds of this. But wouldn't Nineveh's value mean something to God, right? Because this would fit nicely with God's overall message in Jonah, right? Namely to showcase and reveal the universal love and plan of redemption of not only Israel but to the Gentile nations.

To showcase his universal love towards all nations. And so because this is a very significant in the study, we can make a reasonable conclusion that maybe Jonah is making a general statement. All that to say, he's making a general statement here regarding the great city, which may include all these factors: its population, its size, and its importance. And by the way, he makes mention to these references in the book.

So I would take that view. So I see no violation or added tension to the book's overall interpretation, especially if it doesn't take away from the message that how God is trying to reveal himself. And so biblical scholarship does not have a consensus on this verse, neither should we. We shouldn't be dogmatic about it is what I'm trying to say.

Moving to verse four, we move into Jonah's sermon. Notice what it says. It says, "Then Jonah began to go through the city one day's walk." How big was Nineveh? Three days' walk. "Jonah began to go through the city one day's walk, and he cried out and said, 'Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown'." So like this verse, verse three, verse 4a can also produce many interpretations.

For example, Jonah traveled a whole day before he began preaching. That's one interpretation. A second is that Jonah covers one third of Nineveh and that's it, rather than a three days' walk through Nineveh. And if this is true, which I think it is, then he does not go through Nineveh in its entirety. That's what I'm trying to say. In other words, he is doing the bare minimum in hopes that his bare minimum does not bring about God's mercy.

Are you following? And the reason I lean this way, and you should too, is because of Jonah's track record. Please read carefully chapters one and chapter two as well as chapter four. And because we have chapter four, Jonah's ethnocentric attitude is on full display. He does not want the Ninevites to be saved. But by giving Jonah credit where credit is due, he does obey and begins to preach. He cries out and delivers God's message. A message that consists of eight words in the English, but five words in the Hebrew.

Jonah cried out, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown." In other words, a time frame—God gave a time frame of 40 days decreed by God for the purpose of eliciting a response, an appropriate response. Then after 40 days, of course, Nineveh will be overthrown. And according to the text, that is all that is conveyed by Jonah. What Jonah records is very, very short.

Now 40 days. 40 days typically in scripture usually was given for a testing, a change, a reform, maybe to refine a people or a person. God calls rain to fall for 40 days. Moses stayed on the mountain with God for 40 days. Jesus was tempted for 40 days. You get the picture. The Hebrew word for overthrown is to overturn or cause to experience a downfall.

This is the same word used in Lamentations to describe Sodom, which was overthrown, right? Could Jonah have just recorded in chapter three, verse four a truncated version, a brief version of what God instructed him to recite? Perhaps. However, I think it is recorded this way on purpose. I've said that before. Everything in Jonah is written very purposefully and concisely. Five words in the Hebrew. Five.

I mean, if I preached that message, I think Andy would fire me. And I would hope that Jonah had at least the courage or the compassion to preach a little more, right? Than what is recorded. And the only thing that is preventing me from thinking that is the context of this book. Jonah has already proved to be a rebellious prophet who refuses to be the vessel through which God's grace comes to the nation of Nineveh.

Now I'm not the only one who feels this way. This is what Nagolski—am I saying that right?—Nagolski observed in his commentary of Jonah. In the NICOT, I think this is very insightful. He observes, this is what he said: "When one reads this sermon with a broader context of Jonah's flight, that's chapter one, and his chagrin at Yahweh's mercy, chapter four, especially in the light of the statement indicating that Yahweh's mercy was the reason Jonah fled in the first place, it becomes painfully obvious that Jonah's lucid brevity should not be interpreted positively."

"Jonah is not acting out a sense of conviction that the delivery of the message will cause the Ninevites to change their ways. Rather, Jonah's actions should be understood as those of a child forced to do something the child does not want to do. Jonah does just enough to fulfill his commission. He was expected to deliver a message of impending judgment and that is precisely what he does. That and nothing more."

"Did you notice a solution offered, a call to faith, not even a call to forsake their wicked ways? He did not want the Ninevites to change. He wants them to ignore his message so that Yahweh would be forced to follow through with the judgment as promised." Now, if what Nagolski says is true, which I think it is, this puts the character and attributes of God in an even more outstanding light: granting Jonah even more patience, more chances, and more grace and compassion.

Can you imagine the audacity of Jonah to give his bare minimum after God's gracious treatment towards him? But God, right? He was not—but God was not only faithful, he was able to use Jonah's meager and bare-minimum effort to save the most wicked people on planet Earth known to man. And we've already labored in previous sermons to uncover the Ninevite history, the Assyrian history, and the wickedness of that people, so we won't go into that here.

So following Jonah's sermon, although very brief, it worked. Praise the Lord! We now reach verse five, which we find Nineveh's response. Beyond Jonah's wildest imagination, it worked. And it didn't just reach some Ninevites. It didn't just reach a third of the city. What does verse 5a say? "Then the people of Nineveh believed God." It was everyone. Hold the phones. Notice what the text says: they believed.

That means they were saved, right? And this is the big debate. Were the Ninevites saved physically, temporally—that is saved from being overthrown—or were they saved eternally? This is the big debate in Jonah. I believe the answer is yes. They were saved physically and spiritually. And why am I confident in saying this? Let's look at the context first.

They were saved physically because in 3:10, if we look at 3:10, it explicitly says God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared, right? They're saved physically, temporally. We are not yet there, however, there's a preview. The word relented in Hebrew can mean have compassion, repent from his judgment or calamity. Also in context, if you look at chapter four, verse two, we see Jonah bitterly complaining that God is the God who relents concerning calamity. Jonah 4:10, you can also conclude that Nineveh was saved physically by way of deduction.

Beyond that, if you study the book of Nahum, written about 150 years after the prophet Jonah, God told Nahum to prophesy against the city of Nineveh and its complete destruction by fire, that is. And God gave zero days to think about it, to repent. And obviously, you need to be in existence in order for God to destroy you, right? So Jonah wishes he was in Nahum's sandals during that.

Beyond that, if you read ancient records of Babylonian chronicles—what do they call it, the cuneiforms?—you will find explicit information or record of conquest and total destruction of Nineveh. In fact, modern excavations of Nineveh uncovered burnt layers exactly as God said it would happen in Nahum. In addition to being saved physically or temporally, the Ninevites were saved spiritually.

And how so? Well, grammatically, the construction of Jonah 3:5a reads the same as the Hebrew construction as Genesis 15:6. This, no matter how you slice it, is linguistically significant. Many of you know our missionaries we support, Jim Myers. He wrote an outstanding article in the book "21 Tough Questions About Grace" talking about salvation of the Ninevites.

Myers wrote, quote, "Faith was the necessary condition for salvation in the Old Testament as well as the New. And the people of Nineveh believed God, and Abraham believed in the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness, Genesis 15:6. This is not a generic faith in the existence of God, but rather a specific faith in the revelation of the true God who is the sole origin of salvation. Salvation belongs to the Lord, Jonah 2:9." That's what he wrote. And an incredible article on how were people saved in the Old Testament.

Another missionary we support, Cody Hughes, wrote this in the "Journal of Dispensational Theology." He wrote, quote, "They believed in God. The Hebrew term 'believe' means to trust, believe, accept as true, or to rely upon. When used as a verb, 'believe' indicates the response of belief or trust in regard to facts, words, or people. Faith also requires an object, and the object of the Ninevites' trust was in God, in the God of the Bible, Yahweh, due to the message of his prophet. As a result, the Ninevites experienced deliverance in every sense of the word: physically and spiritually."

Yeah, but Gabe, there's nothing in Jonah's text that explicitly indicates that Nineveh was saved spiritually. Well, before you draw your dogmatic line in the sand, let's not forget what Jesus said in Matthew 12:40 and 41. He's speaking to unbelieving Pharisees where Christ not only confirmed the historicity of Jonah's account, he connected it to his resurrection in verse 40. That's huge.

Moreover, in verse 41, Jesus confirmed the spiritual status of the Ninevites that heard and heeded Jonah's message. What did he say? He said, "The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because they repented." What is the "it" there? "They will condemn it." If you search the immediate antecedent, Jesus is referring to "this generation." Now if the Ninevites were not saved spiritually, how can the condemned condemn the condemned? It doesn't make sense.

And they will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. By the way, the Greek New Testament word repented means what? Change of mind. It's a synonym for faith. It's a synonym for believed. They repented at the preaching of Jonah. This is a change of mind unto salvation. And why do I say that? Because Christ understood the word repent in both contexts, Jonah and his, in the same manner. A change of mind that the Pharisees were lacking.

And now at the end of the day, do you think it's a better idea to agree with Jesus or with some scholars? I mean, if you take the storm in chapter one of Jonah at face value, the great fish at face value, and Jonah living through that experience to tell the tale at face value, why is it so hard to accept that an entire city was saved spiritually? Jonah 3:5 should be a walk in the park.

And what a beautiful day it must have been for the Ninevites. Amen? A citywide conversion. My goodness! And yet some scholars will go the extra mile, and hats off to them, that's great. They include certain outside factors like Jonah's skin may have been bleached from the stomach acids found in the whale, coupled with the fact that many Assyrians worship the fish god, and so when they saw Jonah, they're like, "Let's believe."

And seeing a man, a man come out of a fish and live to tell the tale. Those are legends, by the way. Did you know that? Ancient secular legend. That's very interesting. That somehow those outside factors assisted in the conversion of the largest city in ancient history, the headquarters of a world power at that time. I think that makes it a bit more believable, they would say.

You may have heard the theory that says there were historical devastation during that time, like plagues recorded in 765 BC, during the time of Jonah, or perhaps famines caused by those plagues also recorded. You probably heard of the total eclipse that was recorded on June 15th, 763 BC, near the time of Jonah, and other subsequent phenomenon. Surely that had to have prepared the hearts of the Ninevites for this citywide conversion.

To attribute the miracle solely to God is just too supernaturally rigid. We can't do that in scholarship—critical scholarship, I should add. But the fact of the matter, to use Andy's statement, is that Jonah, the author of the book, he never mentions these things. Why? And even if it did happen, it's interesting that Jonah left it out, focusing instead on God's work of sovereignty.

And you know, if you think about it, could God have used those things? Sure he could. Could he have saved Nineveh without those things? Absolutely. And how did he save Nineveh? With a sermon. I believe that the city of Nineveh was saved both physically and spiritually. And if you disagree with that, that's fine. We can still continue to fellowship in brotherly love. You can go your way and I will go Christ's way. That's fine.

So upon believing, Nineveh believing, notice the results. Verse 5b, "And they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them." And this is another reason I believe the Ninevites were saved. A change of mind ultimately leads to a change of behavior. When faith or belief finds its ultimate object—in Nineveh's case, it was the trust in God and his message—then their faith found an outlet, a physical expression. And what was it? It was the abandonment of their wicked ways.

In scripture, is that not the order in which the process of salvation works? First there is faith, right? Trust or the moment of belief in the Savior, which then triggers God's justification. This is the legal declaration by God of your righteousness. When an unbeliever believes, boom! Then there is sanctification, which is the outward expression of an inward spiritual truth. That expression in good works, growth, maturity, etc.

For some Christians, good works for whatever reason don't come as fast as others. Does that mean they're not saved? Absolutely not. After their belief, verse 5b says that, they called a fast and put on sackcloth. And we know this was immediate. This was an immediate transformation. Genuine repentance flowing from their belief in God.

Because again, if you scroll down to 3:10, what do we see God do? What did God see? He saw them turn from their wicked deeds. Mind you, a corporate repentance began sweeping the city before Jonah's word even reached the king of Nineveh. That's how fast it went. So fasting, what is fasting? To abstain from food for spiritual reasons. Wearing sackcloth. You could also say they were mourning.

We do know that when people donned sackcloth in ancient times, it was a symbol of ritual and deep grief and mourning. The Israelites fasted and wore sackcloth—in fact, they were rooted in this in Israel, this type of practice. In Esther, Mordecai fasted with his nation. Jews did it individually. David did it when his soul was afflicted.

Were the Ninevites suddenly aware of Israelite religious practice of fasting and sackcloth? I doubt it. The text doesn't indicate that they sought Jonah's religious advice on the Mosaic law. None of that. It was more likely that fasting and mourning were a typical or a universal sign of repentance in the ancient Near East. Didn't Job, a non-Jew, wear sackcloth and mourn? He did.

Babylonian and Assyrian rituals in their ancient records refer to royal garments of mourning. Ancient people did it. What's my point? My point is it started with the proclamation. Jonah was instructed to proclaim. Amen? To proclaim what? God told Jonah, "Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you." And what was this message?

It was a message of salvation. "Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown." Jonah obeyed then went, right? And Jonah preached. That was the vehicle he used. Jonah went into a pagan and wicked culture armed with the word of God. And God, faithful as he is, took what seemed like Jonah's meager effort, the bare minimum, and he had the biggest revival in world history.

Converting the world's largest city, the headquarters of a world power at that time, turning them to follow the God of Israel. And guess what? This is also the mission of SLBC. Amen? To preach what God has already declared. The whole counsel of God's word with great patience and instruction, so that your souls may be saved and that you and whoever's listening may grow in God's grace.

God's heart never changed on the matter. The message didn't change. Even the method didn't change because God never changes, right? The same gracious and merciful God we read about in Jonah is the same God we worship at the present. And what will your response be? That's the question.

And so the next time we are together, God willing, we are going to move into Nineveh's response, go on to the king's response and his decree and their corporate prayer and hope that God would relent. So "Proclaim What?". That was the title of our message. We proclaim the gospel in this church: that Christ was crucified, was buried, and rose from the grave proving that he was the Son of God, the one that took the sin of the world.

And what does it take? What is the single condition that we need to exercise, if you will, to obtain that eternal salvation? It's believe. It's faith. It's trust. That's it. That's it. And you change your eternal destiny in a nanosecond. Boom! Theological. Boom! And I encourage you to do that this morning. For those of you listening, do that. Put your faith in the Son of God and his finished work. And that's what seals the deal.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, the book of Jonah. So relevant for us today. And we thank you that we can extract these truths and these marvelous accounts from the book that we may live for you every day. I just pray that we take this message and we run with it. We apply it to our lives. And I thank you for everyone here. And we pray this in Jesus' name. And God's people said, "Amen."