Jonah

Dr. Jack Hyles

AUTHOR: Jonah. His name means "dove." The dove is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ and His peace. Hence, Jonah is a type of Jesus. This is borne out in Matthew 12:40. Jesus said, "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the So~ of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

THEME: "Jonah's Revival in Nineveh." Nineveh was a wicked, Gentile city. Jonah was a Jew who was called of God to preach a revival in Nineveh and to cry aloud against her iniquities.

I. JONAH'S FIRST CALL.

Jonah 1:2, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry, against it; for their wickedness is come up before me." we see in Jonah 1:3 that he did not obey God's call!

1. He fled to go to Tarshish. Not being willing to accept the call of God to preach in Nineveh, Jonah went to Joppa, which is now near Tel Aviv, and fled to Tarshish. To most Bible scholars, Tarshish is either Spain or England, probably England. To say the least, he got on a ship to get away from God's call.

2. Notice in Jonah 1:3 the words. "from the presence of the LORD." How do you leave God's presence? God's presence is left when God's will is left. God meets you where He wants you to be. Jonah left the will of God.

3. Notice the words "went down." One always goes down when he leaves the will of God.

4. Notice the words. "so he paid the fare." When a person goes into sin, he must pay a price for it. (Teacher, go through the Bible and think of the men who paid a price for sin, men such as Solomon, David, Saul, etc. Teach the pupil'. they must always pay for their sins.)

5. Notice the words. "went down." are mentioned again. He went down, paid the fare, and kept going down. When one goes into sin, he keeps going down.

II. JONAH' S PUNISHMENT

1. The storm came. Jonah 1:4. Storms always come into our lives when we leave the will of God. Jonah is in the tempest, in a storm on the sea.

2. The mariners cast lots. Jonah 1:7. They would cast lots to find Out who the guilty party was by using stones or pieces of wood. They would get several stones, put a mark on one of them, shuffle them up, and pass them out. The person who drew the stone with the mark on it was the one they felt was the guilty one. This is much like what we would call "drawing straws." (Teacher use stones, matches or straws to show the pupils how this is done.)

3. Jonah was cast into the sea. Jonah 1:15.

4. He was in the belly of a whale. Jonah 1:17.

III. JONAH'S SECOND CALL.

Notice in Jonah 3:1, "And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time.... Isn't it wonderful that God calls the second time! Think ho many people in the Bible God called the second time. He is longsuffering an patient. He will not always linger, but He will call the second time.

1. Jonah's hurry. Jonah 3:3, 4. Notice that it was a three days' journey t Nineveh. Then notice that Jonah made it in one day. He was in a hurry to go back in the will of God. (Teacher, stress to the young people that they should get in the will of God in a hurry early in life. They should run to God's will and not linger.)

2. Nineveh's revival. Jonah 3:5-10. What a revival! From the king all the way down to the beasts, they felt revival. This was a huge city. In Jonah 4:11 ~ find that there were 120,000 people in Nineveh who could not tell their rig~ hand from their left. Maybe these were children age three and under, four and under, two and under, or six and under, but whatever was the age, think how many others there must have been. (Teacher, you might want to give some mathematical thought to this. Some say that this means there were 600,000 in Nineveh. Some say there were as many as three or four million people in Nineveh. Perhaps Nineveh was a city as big as Chicago, or at least as big as Philadelphia, Detroit, etc.) Think of a revival breaking out in one of our big cities to the extent that Nineveh felt it. There is no doubt that this was the greatest revival that any one city ever had in the history of mankind.

IV JONAH'S SIN.

Jonah 4. Here is a tragic story. Jonah had preached, revival had come, but then he became sad. He felt that God had forsaken him because he had predicted that God would overthrow Nineveh. When Nineveh repented and God did not overthrow her, Jonah was saddened. He did not have real, sincere compassion. May God give us a compassion for our cities, our country and the people!