God's Glory in Salvation

I used to read the book of Jonah, placing the emphasis on Jonah and how God dealt with his prophet's remarkable instances of human infirmity, Jonah's great disobedience toward God, Jonah's great prejudice against others who were not Hebrews as he was, his great insensitiveness to the souls of men, and I would stare at my Bible and wonder, and wonder how God could use such a complexity of human infirmities in this man called Jonah. Then I began to read the book of Jonah, with God being the main protagonist, with all his divine attributes so wonderfully displayed in this brief little book, and I began to wonder about myself and how God could use such a person as I in all my human infirmities, and God surfaced regally in the pages of Jonah as the great whale surfaced in all his might in the deliverance of this man Jonah, and I realized, friends, that this book is not a fishtail of a prophet's disobedience or a story of a nation's repentance and subsequent deliverance, but it is a revelation of the heart of God in his pity and mercy and concern over the souls of men, that God considers the worth of a soul a great matter. It's for us to consider that God is the author of salvation as declared in Jonah 2.9, salvation is of the Lord, that God takes great displeasure in the wicked who are under his constant notice, for God is angry with the wicked every day, yet this same provoked God is a God of great compassion and mercy in forgiveness of sin, that a soul is vastly important to him, and thus the souls of men must then be vastly important to us as well, if we call ourselves followers of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, friends, that's my introduction to my message today on the glory of God as seen in the book of Jonah, and that's the title of my message today, friends, God's Glory in Salvation. Have you ever wondered why your loved ones aren't saved, why the co-workers and neighbors that you've long prayed for have not come to Christ? Have you ever added up the hours of your intercessory prayers to God for their salvation? Some of us can look to long nights of desperate prayer for the lost, some of us can shrink in shame for a lack of prayer for the lost, but when you change the way you pray for the lost, you will see a change in the ones whom you pray for. If you change the way you pray for your loved ones that they may be saved for the glory of God, that God will receive glory in their salvation, you will begin to see a change in them.

If salvation is of the Lord, which I believe it is because my Bible tells me so, then God himself receives glory in our salvation through the death of his blessed son, that blood redemption is real and offered to those who come to Christ for forgiveness of sin, that God takes delight as the angels in heaven over one sinner who repents. We see so clearly in Luke's Gospel of the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. How can we as Christians be so indifferent to the destiny of perishing souls? How can we who claim to be saved by Christ be so apathetic toward the souls of man? Our apathy and indifference looms much larger than Jonah's anger at the Ninevites being spared.

How this little story of a prophet and a people should stir and shake us to our very core. How it should shame us for our own lack of witness to a dying world that knows nothing about the Christ of the Bible. I want us to look today, friends, at several aspects from this historical record, for it is not a parable or mere fishtail as some modernists would have us believe, but it is a two-fold record.

Jesus claimed it was a historical account, and I side with him. It is also a picture and prophecy of Christ in the ground three days before his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father, where he now sits in all authority, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Look at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 1. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Midtai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wakeness has come up before me.

Now, friends, Nineveh was the metropolis of the Assyrian monarchy, and it was not only great in size, much larger than Babylon, it was greatly populated, and great in power and dominion, and at the time was the chief city in the Gentile world, so it should get our attention. The first aspect I want us to see about this is, number one, the holiness of God and his government over the affairs of mankind. We see in verse two that the wickedness of the people of Nineveh had come up before God, their grievous and provoking sins rises up to his throne room like an interloper coming before him, the very one whose name is Holy, their wickedness rises up like a filthy stench, a nauseating odor to the nostrils, if I may so speak, of a Holy God, like the Christ Sodom rang in his ears, bringing judgments and destruction upon them, the filthy Ninevites fill his royal chamber with the noxious odor of sin, and that's what sin is, friends, it is foul and noxious to a Holy God, we should loathe it and avoid it and be on constant guard against it, but the main prominence here in our text is God and his holiness and his government over the affairs of mankind, don't ever lose sight of that as we read the book of Jonah for all else circles around it, we know the story, many of us have heard it since we were children, what does Jonah do? He flees, he turns tailcoat in rebellion against God's will for us, we too will end up in a mess of trouble, Jonah tries to outrun God as a passenger on a pagan ship, he goes down into the hold of the ship, between the sides to take a nap, and he falls into a deep sleep, much like much of the church today, sleeps on pillows of conformity and compromise, she sleeps the sleep of death, while a pagan society spins out of control in moral chaos, and it only hears the snores of a sleeping self-sufficient church, what happens next to this runaway prophet? Our text tells us in verse 4, but the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken, number 2, we see the providence of God and his purpose in the storm, storms of affliction are meant to fetch us back to God, God's purpose in the storm was to fetch back Jonah, all the while that ship rocked back and forth, atop the rising waves, there was the Lord's dark form below, of a great whale, while it tread water, and waited, it waited for the sovereign voice, the sovereign move of a sovereign God, it knew by nature that, when it saw the figure of a man descended to the depths, it was then time to open its jaws and swallow him, as directed by God, the very God who created it, and the storm-tossed sea, and while Jonah is in the belly of the whale 3 days and 3 nights, we see the glory of the prophetic picture of Christ in this type, for we see our Lord's words in Matthew 12, 40 and 41, for as Jonah was 3 days and 3 nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth, the men of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here, and this, friends, leads us to our next aspect as seen in chapter 3, number 3, we see the mercy of God on a repenting people, Jonah's message was one message, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown, Jonah went up and down the dusty and busy streets of that great metropolis preaching one message, pretty much like George Whitefield went up and down two continents with one basic message, ye must be born again, and as Whitefield saw great sins revival under his preaching, so too Jonah witnesses great sins repentance, as an entire city stands on the brink of eternity, and is in the grip of the grace of a sovereign God, salvation is of the Lord, my Bible declares, the repentance of this Gentile city is a foretaste how God would send his prophet Paul to the Gentile world with the gospel of the grace of God, so the people of Nineveh from the king down to the beasts cover themselves in sack cloth and ashes, as they sit in humility of heart and seek the mercy of a sovereign God, God spares them, this brings us to the fourth and final chapter, and my fourth point as well, friends, we see how God values a soul, and how he receives glory in the salvation of a soul, the self-absorbed prophet Jonah becomes angry over the repentant city, he really believed in his mind that God would overthrow it, he waits for that overthrow to come, but it doesn't come, the people repent and God relents of his judgment upon them, Jonah becomes angry when these wicked and filthy Gentiles who are beneath the Hebrew nation, when he sees them repent and his own people will not, it disturbs his peace and nationality, he has a bone of contention with God over it, and he wants to die, such silliness in this man of God, such prejudice he exhibits to his fellow man, such self-centeredness is displayed by him in his anger over sinners getting saved, here God almighty receives glory in the salvation of souls, by granting the means for repentance and faith, a sovereign grace disturbs many of us church folk today, we are prejudiced against it, we want people to come to Christ our way and by our means, we want to use our own methodology, we are prejudiced as well, we refuse to witness to a Muslim because of our prejudice, we refuse to go to the homosexuals and tell them about Christ because we don't like them or their lifestyle, we refuse to go to the byways and highways and darkened places where the drunken and the prostitutes are because we are biased against them, we don't like the Mormons, we don't like the Jews, we don't like anybody who is not like us, we fail to see ourselves as God sees us, in the same group as all mankind, sinners in need of a sin, how God saved me is a marvel, oh why would he want to save a wretch like me, why would he want to save a wretch like you, perhaps to receive glory to himself and to then put us to work in his harvest field with the proclamation of the gospel of the Son of God, but sadly we are too much like Jonah, we won't go, and the world waits, the lost perish all around us, God gently rebukes Jonah for having pity on a gourd, but one's soul is more valued than a million gourds, and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle, let us pray.