JONAH THE FIERY EVANGELIST FOR NINEVEH. JONAH 3

Jonah’s evangelistic campaign in the tough city of Nineveh should have a prayer basis. It did. No man had a more unusual prayer cell than Jonah,cramped in the gastric area of the sea monster. It was a 72 hour vigil. There was no intermission, rest or sleep. Chapter 2 tells how Jonah knew the 14 Psalms from which he quoted, and several references from Job and Deuteronomy. In crisis moments we recall Scripture we have memorised, and so pray acceptably to our heavenly Father.

Twenty five years ago, we were called to a night of prayer in Papua New Guinea when a young wife was dangerously ill with amoebic Encephalitis. We prayed through Psalm 116 verse by verse until we read " precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints". We knew Lois was with her Lord. I spent days with the grieving husband, tearful but radiant with heaven’s glory. So Jonah wrestled in prayer with God.

The sea monster turned tail with its special evangelist cargo, retracing the route for 72 hours, which God had directed. It may have covered 720 miles or 1100 kilometres at a leisurely pace. We believed God’s Word, which true science affirmed, although sceptics rejected it.

‘ The Lord spoke unto the fish, and it vomited Jonah on the dry ground’, of which Jonah had spoken when questioned by the sailors. (2:10) When God commanded a lesser creature, it obeyed Him. In the great upheaval, Jonah was disgorged from the fish’s stomach. No more sea-sickness ,middle ear condition, or the diver’s nightmare, ‘the bends’ as he welcomed the ‘dry ground’.

Chapter 3 tells of God’s mercy in commanding Jonah a second time. The ‘word of the Lord ‘ tells how God briefed His servant. Nineveh received mercy from God as Jonah fulfilled His original plan. (V2)God clearly directed Jonah to ‘ arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid you.’ 350 miles ( or six hundred kilometres ) from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean across desert, mountain, and the River Tigris, Jonah trudged to obey the successive command of His God.

The Bible did not tell many details of Jonah’s experience, except that He obeyed. Nineveh was a vast city as verse 3 shows, ‘ It was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey’. Sceptics had long challenged its size and the accuracy of God’s Word, until archeologists uncovered a city of eight miles ( 13 kilometres ) circumference and later a suburban extension between 50 and 80 miles in extent.

The Word of the Lord stands.

Jonah faced an immense task to reach such a vast city, but he had prepared in prayer, just as the early Christian church also faced .such a challenge when persecution drove them from Jerusalem. Jonah had no public address system to warn the people. " Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey". (V4) He ‘cried ‘ or preached a specific message to a specific people for a specific purpose. He spoke with the conviction of a man, who had been rescued from drowning, a watery grave, and raised from the dead.

He thundered a fiery word, ‘ Yet 40 days, Nineveh shall be overthrown’,

Jonah knew that Noah’s flood had lasted 40 days, and that Moses had spent such a time on the mount when God had given the law, and that the spies were in the land of Canaan for the same period. He recalled how Goliath had brashly insulted Israel for forty days. He knew that God’s timing was trustworthy. Later our Lord was tempted of the Devil for this testing time, in which He also appeared after His resurrection. After childbirth, reproductive organs require such time to return to normal.

Sodom and Gomorrah were centres of homosexuality, which the Judge of all the earth reduced to cities of salt. God had swamped Pharoah’s power troops, hot in pursuit of the fleeing Israelites, as He released the waters of the Red Sea. Jerusalem had been razed to the ground before the 70 years’ captivity in Babylon. 860 years afterwards, Jerusalem rejected her Lord, and was destroyed forty years later, so that not one stone was left upon another. God warned that what He had done previously, He would repeat, where His creatures disobeyed Him. Jonah was deadly earnest.

C H Spurgeon told how Jonah’s preaching was coldly clinical. He offered no promise of God’s forgiveness or pardon. He gave no hope of a Mediator or Redeemer as we have in our great Lord Jesus. The time limit of ‘ forty days’ showed the urgency of the cry, while ‘ Nineveh shall be overthrown ‘ the desperate plight of the entire city if God’s Word should be disregarded. We recall that for forty days our Lord was tested of the Devil, and for that same period He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection. It speaks of trial and testing and probation.

Jonah waited to see how God would impress this city. He waited to see whether the judgment of a holy God would obliterate Nineveh. Hie heart was not right, even though he preached this fiery word