Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ.
Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church located in Kernersville North Carolina. Today I'm going to give you the points as we go through the verses instead of reading the whole thing first. Number one, I want you to notice the second call.
The second call. Dear friend, aren't you glad God gave you another chance? I love this and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
Number two, this morning I want you to see the sacred challenge. This is what he challenges Jonah to do. Now Jonah, I'm going to come to you once again and let's just say a lot of water's been under the bridge since the first time. Let's just say Jonah's been through a few things since the word of the Lord came to him the first time. And let's just say not only have a lot of things changed and not only have a lot of circumstances changed, but the man of God has changed too. He's a little more willing to hear now, isn't he?
Dear friend, I guess you've been in the ministry long enough now, many of you have been in church long enough, it's amazing to see individuals that as you try to advise and meet with them and beg and plead to do such and such with their life and to get away from such and such in their life, they have no interest in hearing what you have to say. But it's amazing how when God takes over and arranges some things in their lives, it's amazing how willing they are to hear now. So he says this in verse two, he gives him a sacred challenge. He says, all right, Jonah, this is what I want you to do. He says, I want you to go into that great city Nineveh. That's exactly what he asked him to do the first time and Jonah ran from it. But he said, Jonah, I want you to go to the great city Nineveh, but here's what I want you to do.
I want you to preach unto it, the city Nineveh. He said, I want you to preach unto it, listen closely, the preaching that I bid thee. Now, let me just say this, until you have experienced God's might, you are not going to be passionate about God's message. Do you know, dear friend, it is our job to preach what God wants preached?
Now listen to me. I believe that the Bible says that we are to declare the whole counsel of God. And if you have a man of God or a preacher that will not get up and be honest about sin until you what sin is and what sin will do to you. I don't care how positive their message is. They are not preaching the preaching that God bid them to preach. And dear friend, you better get your family and get your little children and get your little wife and you get your big old strong husband and you get into a church that is not afraid to preach what God has to say about certain things.
Look at me. Jonah could have walked into Nineveh and been positive and made everybody feel wonderful about who they were. But that wasn't what God needed done in Nineveh. And it's not what God needs done in America either. What God said is for this to have any chance and for there to be any impact on Nineveh, Jonah, you're going to have to go preach the preaching that I bid thee, not the preaching that you want to preach.
This was a sacred challenge because it is still the same challenge today. If you're going to go speak to somebody and you're going to witness to somebody and you're going to do anything for God, you're going to have to preach or share what God says to share. We've got to be honest with people, folks.
We've got to be honest. It's our job to preach what God wants preached. He said, Jonah, if you go preach what you want to preach, nothing's going to happen in Nineveh.
We've got to get God's word straight and plain. Notice for number three, if you will, look at verse three. So Jonah arose and went into Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.
Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. By the way, I can imagine during these three days how life was very different for Jonah now than it had been maybe just a week earlier. He said, Jonah, you're not going to be used again. And dear friend, that might not mean a whole lot to you, but you let God take that away from you and you let God put you on the shelf for a little bit because of some things that you've done. Let me tell you something, when God takes you back down off that shelf and God gives you a chance to be used again and He puts you right back on that potter's will, let me tell you something, you're thankful for that and you're appreciative of that. And you say, God, whatever you want me to do, if it's cleaning toilets, if it's vacuuming carpet, it doesn't matter.
There's no job too little for me now. Lord, I'll do whatever because I'm going to be glad to be used again. This was a great city and it was a great journey, but I'm sure that Jonah was awfully excited about it. Look at verse four. Jonah began to enter into a city a day's journey. He's in a hurry to get there.
He's excited. It might take three days to get there, but bless God, I'm serving God now. Just a few days ago I was sitting in that belly of that whale and I thought I was dead.
I thought God was done with me. God, nobody has to tell you to work hard. Nobody has to beg you to come to church. Nobody has to beg you to come to revival. Nobody has to beg and like, hey, would you come?
Would you help this? Let me tell you something, this guy made a one day journey out of a three day journey because he was excited to get there and do what God wanted him to do. Oh God, give us a church that will make a three day journey into a one day journey. Hey, let me tell you something, we might get to the point that we have to build a building here in about 20 years, but God give us some people that want to do it in five. Don't you love to see God's house grow?
Mature and get excited and see God doing things. That was a free one. All right, number four, verse four. Jonah began to enter the city a day's journey and he cried and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Let me just stop right there and say this. That was not a real popular message. You're walking into a town that does not want you there. You're walking into a town that doesn't want God there.
You're walking into a very large city that has no use for you, for God, for anything about it, and you walk in and let them know you're going to die in 40 days unless you get right with God. Well, let's just put that in how to win friends and influence people. Let's just devote a whole chapter to that one. Notice verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed God. Number three, I want you to see the Spirit's conviction. I find it very obvious here in this phrase.
I want you to get this. The Bible does not say, and the people believed Jonah. The Bible says that the people believed God.
Now, I got a lot to say about this. First off, I want you to notice this, that as Jonah went to these people that he was so afraid of, affected by, intimidated by, look at me, God had already done a work in the hearts of those people. It's what we call conviction, folks. And you know, when God asks us, you and I, to reach people and witness to people and talk to people about the Lord, you and I, I know we're very intimidated and I know we're very scared, but you've got to understand, God never says that everybody is going to turn to Christ when you come talk to them. And does a work in the hearts of individuals.
He prepares the ground. Now, they will either say no to the Holy Spirit or they will say yes to the Holy Spirit. But look at me, dear friend, when you go witness to somebody and they get saved, they didn't say yes to you. They said yes to him. And when they reject, they didn't say no to you. They said no to him.
Now, listen to me, I'm going somewhere with this. It wasn't Jonah's job to save them. And it wasn't Jonah's job to convict them.
It wasn't even Jonah's job to change the world. You're intimidated because you think, I don't know how to convince people about the Lord, dear friend. You don't have to convince people about the Lord. The Lord will convince people about himself. The Bible says if you lift him up, all men will be drawn unto him.
They believed God, not Jonah. Now listen to me. All over America today, now don't get this wrong and you think I'm trying to be critical.
I'm not. But all over America today, there are a lot of preachers, and I'm no better than any of them. But there are a lot of preachers that have worked very hard this week, how they could come up with something this morning that would make people believe them. If they have to change it, if they have to water it down, if there's a few things they have to leave out so it doesn't offend anybody. But they want people to believe them. And when people believe an individual, that doesn't change them one iota. Our job is to keep God's word pure enough so that when they believe, they're believing God, not how we have changed what God said. All over America, there are individuals that think they're believing God, but they're believing a man because what he told them did not come out of there. And all the way back here, we see what is important, and that's for people to believe God, not a man. So much more I want to say about that, and I might say some more later, but let's go on, if you will, look at verse six. Let me finish verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
That was every person. Do you find it amazing that he went in and literally preached a very hard message and an entire heathen city responded to it? That ought to show us something nowadays, folks. The gospel is not out of style. Preaching is not out of style. All this little different experience in church. Listen, everybody has different preferences, but look at me. Preaching God's word, knocking on doors, letting folks know about the gospel still works.
The reason it doesn't work nowadays is we're not doing it. I want you to notice in verse eight, we see next the sinners cry. The sinners cry.
The entire city believed what Jonah had said, and they all feared because Jonah told them the truth. Forty days from now, you will be destroyed if you don't repent and turn to God. And they believed God, and that produced an immediate result. They began to be humbled. They began to repent. They began to fast. They began to sit in ashes. They began to beg and plead for the mercy. Look at verse eight. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God.
Now listen to me. First thing I noticed about this was this. They responded a whole bunch quicker than Jonah did. Here's a bunch of heathens had nothing to do with God. And as soon as they heard the truth of God's word, they responded. And here's a man of God who'd been saved, you know, we would call it, and who'd already been serving God, already been preaching the word of God, and God comes and asks him to go to Nineveh, and he runs. Here's a bunch of heathens responding quicker to God than a Christian, than a man of God. And you know what I have found over the years?
It's a whole lot easier to get some person that is down in the bottom. Someone ruined their life with alcohol, drugs, whatever, and they come find out that God loves them. They can't wait to give their heart to Christ. They will respond to God's word, but you get up and preach to a bunch of people that have been saved for 50 years.
You can't get a grunt out of them. And he had texted me and he was just, he said, you wouldn't believe the service we had. He said, you walk in and here's all these guys, obviously many of them former drunks, some of them are drunks now.
And some of them, you just come into the rescue mission, some have been in there for a while, whatever, and you come in. And he said, man, they're all just singing and they're just happy. And he said, when you get up and preach, they're just listening to God's word.
You know why? Because their life had already gone down to a point that they were about as low as they could go. And they're excited about turning to the Lord.
Man, it's just great. And you know what, and I'm not trying to criticize because I would be the same way, I'm sure, but you let us get saved for a little while and our clothes are nice and God's been good to us and he's dumped some blessings on us and we've gotten used to it and accustomed to it. And now it's, you know, now it's like if the pastor goes over past noon, I find that these heathens responded to God immediately, but the man of God didn't. I noticed how they responded. They responded with fasting, with humility. The Bible says they turned, if you'll notice in these verses that I read, they turned from evil and they turned from violence.
Now, let me go through this process with you and I'll go to the next point, but you've got to get this. The Bible says that God told Jonah, you preach what I tell you to preach. I tell you what God said to preach and the people believed God and when they believed God, it produced an immediate response and change in their lives. So what's going wrong today? Let me tell you what's going wrong today. People don't believe God's word.
That's it. You see, when you believe God and you know what God has to say, then you immediately want to respond and get that right. But people nowadays, they don't really believe. Oh, there's a hell?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Oh, you say you're God's love. Oh, but he's going to send all these people to hell. You get these bunch of idiots on CNN and these little funny programs, these little comedians and they get up and they make fun of God and rip God apart, make fun of Christianity and talk about how stupid we are and how dumb we are and how much sense that really makes and look at Christians and they just roll their eyes. Oh, yeah, those bunch of people.
And you go through all that and you go on and do all that. But let me tell you something. The day's going to come, they're going to be sorry for that. And the reason they're not responding to God now isn't because God isn't right and it isn't because God isn't true. It's because they don't believe it. But when you believe God, it changes everything. And oh, dear friend, if we could just pray for our nation that once again they would believe God. Now listen to me. We need to get the Bible out more and the gospel out more.
I know that. But when we get it out and they don't believe it, it doesn't do anything. There's got to come a point that they have to believe it. Now you say, well, when's that going to happen, preacher?
Now you look at me. When that trumpet sounds and you take a few million people off this planet that quick, they'll believe then. That'll be too late. See, preacher, I just don't think that's going to happen. You can think all you want to. You can think Abraham Lincoln never existed.
It doesn't change the fact that he did. The sinners cry. Now notice this.
I want you to notice before I go on to the next thing and I'm almost done. The Bible says in verse eight that they cried mightily unto God. What does that word mightily change in this phrase?
It literally changes everything. It proves that there was a level of sincerity. To their cry. And dear friend, look at me. You and I can fake it all we want to, but God knows when we mean business. God knows when we just feel bad we got caught or when we feel bad for what we did. God knows the difference.
Now notice fifthly, I think this is very interesting. Look at verse eight. But let a man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Look at verse nine. This is what their leader says to them. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not?
Now before I go any further, that sounds really familiar to me. And I know some of you have got to know this passage of scripture. The Bible talks about a gentleman named David who was a man after God's own heart. And David went and slept with a woman while her husband was in battle where the king should have been.
We all know the story. He gets her pregnant. Then he brings the man home and tries to tell him to go spend the night at his house so that everybody would think that that was his child not David's and nobody would know.
But he didn't even go into the house to his wife. He sat outside David's door and guarded him all night long because he was a good soldier. And now that meant David had to come up with some other plan and David purposely put him in the front of the battlefields and had him killed. And when he did that, the Bible says that the man of God came to him and he said David you're going to restore that fourfold.
And we find one thing after another that happened. Amnon raped his own half-sister. Then Absalom, David's older son, got mad that his brother had raped his sister and his brother had him killed.
And then Absalom was riding through the trees and his hair got caught up in an oak and then he got killed. And then now David had just gotten word in 2 Samuel. Now he had just gotten word that the baby that was going to be born to the woman that he had gotten pregnant Bathsheba was going to die. And the Bible says that David after all this had happened in the first place.
And he had done wrong and he knew he had done wrong and boy had he paid the price. And while they were waiting to find out if this baby would survive, the Bible says David ripped off all his clothes and sackcloth and ashes as the Bible says. And he went up into a private place to pray. And when the servants came afterwards they said David the child is dead. And then the servants asked him, they said David why did you go up there and pray? Let me read you the verse. So verse 22, and David said, while the child was yet alive I fasted and wept.
For I said, who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the child may live? Here we are in Nineveh, a wicked city. And they realized because they believed God that judgment was coming. And they all turned from their wicked way. They all turned from their violence. They had had humility into their life. They had all been humbled. And now they come and they say we're going to pray and cry out mightily to God.
Why? God already said he was going to judge you. Because who can tell what God might do? Listen to me dear friend, you and I have got to realize prayer works.
And you and I have got to get to the point in our life that just because we think so and so is going to happen. We need to be sincere before God and we need to be sincere before God because you and I have no idea what God might do. I want you to notice this verse nine, a small chance. Who can tell?
Who can tell? Look at verse nine. If God will turn and repent. You see all they had was this small chance that maybe their repenting would stop His judgment. That's the only chance they had.
Look at me dear friend. That was the only chance you had too. It's the only chance any of us had. The only chance you have to avoid the judgment of God and the only chance I have to avoid the judgment of God is through the blood of Jesus Christ. It's the only chance. You might think well you don't know all I've done preacher.
It's a small chance but I would take my chances. You give your heart to Christ today. You come to Him repenting of your sin and you believe that He died on the cross for your sins and receive Him into your life.
Ask Him to come in and live in your life and be your personal Savior. A small chance. It was their only chance. Do you know that it was Jonah's only chance too? In that fish the only chance he had for to survive or to do anything was when he cried out to God. The only chance he had was if God would turn and repent of what He was going to do to Jonah. And dear friend the only chance America has from what I know God is ready to do to America is if America turns to God.
It's the only chance we have. And we all know that. I want you to see this a spiritual change. Now this is very important.
I want you to get this. Look at verse 10. A myth. And the myth is this that you know our works don't mean anything. The Bible says out of the heart are the issues of life. The Bible says that man looks on the outside and God sees the heart. The Bible also does in Matthew chapter 5 it says this let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.
Look at me dear friend I want you to get this. We don't believe in a works based salvation. We don't believe you get saved because you start doing a whole bunch of good things and those works get you salvation.
And we don't believe that anything like that. But you look at me the way God knew that they were sincere in their repentance is He saw their works. The Bible says faith without works is what? The Bible says that once we get saved we're always saved right? So faith without works never was alive.
Dear friend look at me the proof is in the pudding. You can't sit here and say that I'm a follower of Christ and not see something that's different in your life. We didn't make things different so that we could be a child of God. We want to make things different because now we are a child of God. And repentance is a change on the outside.
It says when God saw their works it didn't say that they cried mightily unto God and then He turned and repented it said when He saw their works He repented. Dear friend it is important how you live. And it is important the testimony you give to others.
That's not popular nowadays. But I'm trying that God bid me to preach. God or not.
But it really has nothing to do with me. That's what's great about preaching God's Word in its entirety. You can choose to believe Him or not. But I'm out of the picture.
I've done my job. Dear friend Carwin Baptist Church I want you to know something. God can tell if we're serious about serving Him. I want you to know this. Chapter 4 is a very very different chapter.
But I don't know about you. Chapter 3 I believe is the work chapter. If we're going to do a work for God we've got to know how things go. And God does the work. We do the obeying. He does the bidding. We do the obeying.
Then He does the work. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web at carwinbaptistchurch.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app. Thank you for listening to the Carwin broadcast today. God bless you. .
