I'm on church. Today's reading is from Jonah 3. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth.
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey and he called out, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes and he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.
Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said He would do to them and He did not do it.
Thank you, brother. Now some things are so outlandish that you will not believe it unless you see it with your eyes. We have a saying when pigs fly to describe something that is an impossibility. But if I told you, actually, no, no, no, some pigs can't fly, I bet you would not believe me unless you saw it with your own eyes. Now yesterday, a few of us brothers, went to the men's conference in Brisbane, and we had a wonderful time worshipping with about a thousand other Christian men from Brisbane City and just, hearing God's word taught, and I heard this illustration yesterday, and I was actually wrestling with how do I start my sermon, and I heard this yesterday from the preacher Dave Jensen, so I've taken it straight from him, and he talked a little bit about this idea of the black swan.
See, we've got this phrase when pigs fly, but in ancient Europe, they also had a phrase called like a black swan. You see, in Europe, the only species of swan they have are white. So they'd seen thousands and thousands of swans across their continent, and they thought swans must be white. There is no such thing as a black swan. So it became a phrase, a colloquial idiom, if you like, when they used to describe an impossibility, they'd say, oh, yeah, like a black swan, like when pigs fly.
Until later on, as European explorers discovered other lands, some Dutch explorers, came to Australia, and they went up to a river in what we now call the city of Perth, what is now called the Swan River, and they discovered some black swans. And this discovery turned their world upside down. They realised what they thought was impossible was actually possible. Sometimes, some truths are so hard to believe that you need to be shocked with the reality before you will actually grasp it, and that is really what Jonah 3 is like. It is a shocking truth that helps us to grasp the depth of God's grace.
In Jonah 3, we witness reluctant preaching that brings all out revival. It's an incredibly shocking story which teaches us deep truths about God. Truths which we might otherwise have thought are an impossibility until we are shocked with what happens in this chapter. Now if you've just joined us this morning or online, welcome to you. It's great to have you here.
We're in the middle of a series right now in the Old Testament book of Jonah, which we've called the relentless God and the reluctant prophet. We're taking four weeks as a church to look through the four chapters of the book of Jonah. In the first week, we saw this irreverent prophet Jonah. He was meant to be a man of God. He was called by God to go to Nineveh with a message, and he got up and went the opposite direction.
He fled to Tarshish. And while he was on the boat, God sent this incredible storm, which threatened to not only kill him, but all the sailors that he was with, and he didn't seem to care. He fell asleep. The captain woke him up and said, praying. We don't have any evidence that he prayed to God.
God finally revealed who He was through the casting of lots, and He began to reveal who He was and that He was responsible for what was happening, and so we just saw this incredible contrast in chapter 1, this surprising contrast that the pagan sailors that he was with were actually more reverent than the prophet himself. They actually seemed to have a more authentic fear of the Lord and wanting to do what pleased God. So eventually, Jonah was thrown overboard, and he was drowning in the ocean. We picked it up in chapter 2 last week, where we looked at his prayer from the belly of the great fish. He went down to the bottom of the ocean, he was drowning, but God sent this great fish, this sea monster, to swallow up Jonah and to save him, and from the belly of that salvation, Jonah prayed, and it's an eloquent prayer, it's full of Psalms, and yet it was a shallow prayer.
He talks about how he feared for his life, and he's grateful for being rescued, but there's no mention of repentance, there's no contrition. There's no, I'm sorry, God. I was running away. And we get to see how God feels about it by the end of chapter 2 when God tells the fish to vomit Jonah out on dry land, symbolic of how I believe God felt about the prophet's prayer. Now this week, we come to chapter 3, where we are shocked by the depth of God's grace.
Now the truth is we need the shock that Jonah 3 gives our hearts continually, because we continually come up with fresh reasons to doubt God's love and doubt God's grace. Our most natural sinful intuitions convince us that God's grace must have a limit or that certain people or certain sins are outside the bounds of His mercy. But again and again, it's like the Bible takes the defibrillators of grace to our chest and presses shock to awaken us to the reality and the truth of God's inexhaustible grace. This is what Jonah 3 does. It's a jolt of the reality of God's inexhaustible and scandalous mercy.
As Christians, we need this every day, all the time, because our remaining sinful nature tries to convince us otherwise. Now if you're joining us today because you're interested in faith, you're not yet a Christian, you need to know this as well, because you need to know that your darkest secrets and your deepest doubts about God's love cannot actually repel the love of God that He offers to you in Christ Jesus. There's actually nothing that you have done that can disqualify you from God's grace in the gospel and the good news of Jesus. Actually, it's our sinfulness that qualifies us for our need for our saviour. So let's listen in to chapter 3, and we're going to break down the chapter, the story, into three scenes.
And in the first scene of the story, we witness shocking evangelism. Shocking evangelism. So keep your Bible open to chapter 3, because I'm not going to put most of the verses up on the screen. I'm going to be running through them and giving some commentary as we go through, and we see at the beginning of our chapter that the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time, and the command that, the Lord gives to Jonah is almost verbatim to the command that He gives in chapter 1 to Jonah, to get up, go to Nineveh, and proclaim the word that I tell you. Now, if I say to my kids, clean your room, and then I find them outside playing, and I go to them a second time and say, clean your room, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
That's a bad thing. I'm probably a little bit frustrated by then. The fact that I'm repeating it verbatim, it's kind of sending the message, you guys should have done this the first time. I think that's the sense I get here. It's like this bit of divine frustration with Jonah.
See, Jonah's prayer wasn't impressive to God, and so he repeats it again, go and do what I told you to do, Jonah. Go to Nineveh and proclaim my message. And Jonah gets off to a good start. He gets up as God commands. He goes to Nineveh as God commands according to the word of the Lord.
Now, at this point, our chapter takes a little excursus to explain a bit about the city of Nineveh, and it talks about how Nineveh is an exceedingly great city in verse 3. Now, in Hebrew, the original Hebrew this was written in, it's literally a great city to God. But how is Nineveh a great city to God? Remember, if you were with us in week one, I explained to you a little bit about what Nineveh was like. They were a brutal, violent regime.
We looked at archaeological records that are in the British Museum in London that shows how they actually boasted and carved out images of what they did to their victims. They actually had images of how they would skin alive the leaders of enemy people. Brutal. One of the other things I didn't tell you was sometimes when they put a city to siege, or maybe it was all the time, I don't know, but when they put a city to siege and some of the victims fell over the wall, they would impale them on poles outside the city so that the city could see their brothers, their uncle, their friend who'd been killed to intimidate them to surrender. That's Nineveh.
How is Nineveh a great city to God? It's not obviously morally great. It's not a beautiful city. It's a wicked city. Why is it great to God?
Well, I think at the end of chapter 4, it's clarified for us because it says there, God says, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a 120,000 persons? So the reason the city is great to God is not because they're morally great, but because it's numerically great. There are so many image bearers, so many people that bear God's image, no matter how wicked they are, that are God's creatures, and even though they're an evil, violent city, He still cares about them. So God sends Jonah to this city, and it says in our text that it's a three days journey in breadth. Now, a little bit of historical controversy that I need to explain here.
So there's been archaeological digs going on for at least a century on this ancient city of Nineveh. They're located in the modern day city of Mosul in Iraq. Okay? And in those archaeological digs, we've discovered lots, which is wonderful, but one of the things that they can't get their head around is the breadth of the city according to Jonah. It was a big city in ancient terms, but it wouldn't have taken you three days to travel through it.
Furthermore, some of the historians, the best scholars estimate that there was probably about 12,000 people in the city, and yet, Jonah 4 says there was more than a 120,000. So some people are like, oh, well, this is not a real story, it's a fiction and whatnot. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's how the book comes across. There's a couple of options that we have here to deal with these conundrums.
The first one is to recognise that the story, the book, is a little bit cartoonish, like there's a bit of hyperbole and exaggeration in the book, so the fact that the sea monster is just called a great fish, there might be a bit of hyperbole and exaggeration going on here. It's a three day journey in breadth, it's a massive city, but really it was a one day journey or something like that. That's an option. I don't really like it, because I think these verses come across to me like they're literally historically true. They don't come across like poetry and things like that.
So the other option we have is, some scholars have actually looked at the word Nineveh in the bible, and they've shown that Nineveh was associated with a collection of cities, and sometimes in, the ancient world, they referred to this area as Greater Nineveh. God keeps calling it the great city of Nineveh. And his collection of towns or cities would actually make more sense of the three day journey to cover them all, and it would actually make really good sense of the 120,000 people. So I think that's how we resolve that conundrum. If anyone asks you about whether, you know, you can believe that, there's some answers you could use.
But the reason it's in the Bible is to get across Jonah's attitude as he preaches. So it says it's a three days journey in breadth, but notice, it says that Jonah took a day's journey. And Jonah preached a very small sermon, didn't he? Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. That's like, I don't know, eight words in English, you can count them, but it's five words in the original Hebrew.
It's even smaller. So he goes a day's journey into this three day large area and preaches five Hebrew words. See, the idea that we're getting is that though Jonah seems to be obeying at the start, he gets up and he goes, there actually seems to still be a reluctance in his heart. He's trying to obey God's call in surface level way, to do the bare minimum to get God off his back, so to speak. That's what we're getting through this narrative.
It becomes very clear in chapter 4 that Jonah does not want his mission to succeed, and he does not want the Ninevites to repent. So he seems to be engaging in this prophetic self sabotage. It's like he goes to the edge of the city, he's like, yep, forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown, and then runs out. He's saying, okay. I've done what I need to do.
There's no way they'll repent from that, but I've done what you said, God, and it's just this shocking, reality of evangelism. He's like the worst evangelist in history. Notice, his message. When you look at his message, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown, does he mention God at all in that message? Does he mention God's character, that He's merciful and gracious, that He forgives iniquity?
He doesn't hold out any hope. He just preaches a message of judgement. It's like the worst case of evangelism you've ever seen. And so surely, with Jonah's half hearted attempt here, Nineveh cannot possibly repent of this. Right?
This is some of the worst evangelism in history, and yet what happens next is even more shocking than Jonah's reluctance. Let's look at that next under the heading shocking repentance. So we've seen shocking evangelism, and now we're going to look at shocking repentance. So Jonah preaches this five word sermon, a day's journey in on the outskirts of the city, yet forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown, walks out, and then we read in verse 5, and the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.
It's kind of funny. You can imagine Jonah being like, oh, what? I didn't want these people to repent. And all of a sudden, it says they believed God. That's another thing we need to pick up on.
He doesn't mention God in his message, and yet they believe God. This is miraculous. The way that people repent here is absolutely miraculous. This response is so encouraging for us, because as God's people today, we may not be modern day prophets, but we have a message from God called the gospel that we are to deliver to the people around us. And sometimes, we can feel inadequate, or we feel that we aren't eloquent enough, or we fear what people will think of us, or we worry that the person that we might share with, there's just no way.
They're in a gang, or they're into this, or they're into that, or they just go to the pub and watch footy, and they don't care about this sort. We can come up with all sorts of excuses about why they won't repent, but when we look at the example of Jonah, who didn't even want the people to repent, God could use even that to save thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in the city of Nineveh. That's incredibly encouraging. It encourages me as a preacher. It doesn't depend ultimately on me.
God's power to save and to work is ultimately dependent on Him. Now the message matters. We want to try and get that clear. I certainly don't want to misrepresent God, but the power of God does not rely on the messenger. It relies on Him.
And He has given His power to His message, the gospel, and whether we share that with people in an embarrassing way or in a shallow way, we don't do it very well, God can use it. God can use it to save as many people as He wants. God used Jonah's five word mockery. He can use your genuine attempts to communicate the good news of Jesus to others. And as we see the story, it gets even more shocking.
So the people that heard Jonah's message repent, but the message is so successful under God's hand that it starts to spread throughout all of Nineveh. It actually reaches the king, so Jonah doesn't preach to the king, it just makes its way to him, obviously, by word-of-mouth, and the king, the leader of this brutal and violent regime, also repents. That's surprising. He gets up from his throne, takes off his royal robe, puts on sackcloth, which was like this itchy clothing that was used to symbolise repentance, and he goes even further than the people before him. He actually sits down in ashes.
Alright? So the king becomes the lead repenter in this wicked nation, and he puts out this proclamation with his nobles to the people to tell them to repent, to turn from their evil way. The Hebrew word shuv is the word to turn around, to turn around, and we see that's actually what the people do here. Jonah never uses the word shuv in his prayer, but we see the word shuv all throughout this passage. The people are called to turn around, to call out mightily to God, to abstain from food and drink.
It was a biblical way of showing your self despair and your contrition, your desire to repent, and they seek God. Now this is kind of a funny, little story as well because the repentance is so widespread that even the animals are included in the repentance. Even Sean the sheep has sackcloth on, and Betty the cow, poor thing, isn't drinking or eating because the people are like, let's repent, we're gonna even make Betty the cow repent with us. Right? It's kind of meant to be a bit hilarious that Jonah reluctantly preaches, and then all of a sudden, there's this massive widespread revival and repentance in the city.
One of the other things I think we're meant to pick up on is some of the parallelism between chapter 1 and chapter 3. So in chapter 1, we have pagan sailors. In chapter 3, we have pagan Ninevites. And both of these characters, in the ancient Jewish mind, they would have expected them to be the worst characters in the story, and yet in the book of Jonah, they're more noble than the prophet, the man of God. In chapter 1, the pagan sailors, the captain wakes up Jonah and says to him, pray to your God and maybe we won't perish.
That's exactly the same words that the king of Nineveh uses at the end of his speech, at the end of his proclamation. He says, maybe we won't perish if we do this. There's parallelism going on, and there's also contrasts going on. So chapter 1, we've already covered the fact that the sailors were contrasted with Jonah, and Jonah claimed to fear Yahweh, the one God of Israel, but was disobeying and running from Yahweh. The sailors hardly knew anything about Yahweh, but they were seeking Him and praying to Him and trying to do what was right and just, and they end up worshipping God by the end of the chapter.
So they show us what true fear looks like. In chapter 3, the pagan Ninevites show us what true repentance looks like. Jonah didn't really repent in his prayer in chapter 2, and he half heartedly obeys God, but these people, they show us what repentance looks like. They're repenting in sackcloth and ashes, and they're fasting, and it's wholehearted, and they're calling out to God, and they're despairing of themselves. It's the pagan Ninevites, these brutal people that show us what it really looks like or God.
This would be to try and get this across, to us what this would have been like for the ancient Jews to read this book, this would be like the Nazis in the middle of World War two as they're ascending to power, and they're enlarging their territories. This would be like a preacher walking into the streets of Berlin, preaching a message that God's judgement is coming, and all of a sudden, the Nazis begin repenting, and it reaches Hitler, even he tears his clothes and repents. It's just unthinkable. It's unimaginable, and yet that's what happens in Jonah 3. It's shocking repentance.
Now Jesus picks up on this story in the gospels. He picks up on it in Matthew's gospel and in Luke's gospel. Let me read about it for you in Luke 11. It says, when the crowds were increasing in Jesus' day, Jesus began to say, this generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
Now notice there, the very offensive thing that Jesus does, He calls this generation evil. And that original Greek word, if you look at the Greek Old Testament and you look at the book of Jonah in the Greek Old Testament, that word for evil comes up only in chapter 3 and only with reference to the Ninevites' wickedness. So because Jesus is mentioning Jonah and He does go on to mention the Ninevites, and He calls His own generation evil, it's as if He's lumping in His own generation of religious Jews with the brutal, violent Ninevites. He said, you're just as evil as them in a sense. The Jews that Jesus is speaking to, they weren't some oppressive regime though.
They were conquered by the Romans. So what's Jesus on about? Well, you see, the Jews that were seeking Jesus in that story in Luke 11, they kept demanding more signs, more miracles. See, their evil was their refusal to believe, their refusal to trust in Jesus Christ. The unforgivable sin is not violence and brutality.
It's not sex, drugs and rock and roll. The unforgivable sin is the refusal to trust in God's son. It's the continual rejection of Jesus. Now we might think that brutality and violence is far more evil than unbelief, but in God's eyes, unbelief is the deeper problem behind all of our evils. When we refuse to trust in God, we are turning away from the one who is goodness, beauty, and love.
And when we turn away from goodness, beauty, and love, what do we have but evil, ugliness, and indifference? What else could be the result of doing that? We might think that sex, drugs, and rock and roll, or brutality and violence are far worse than unbelief, and yet God knows that unbelief is the deeper problem behind all of our sins. Jesus' very religious audience was also evil in His eyes because they refused to trust Him, to give themselves wholeheartedly to Him. And isn't that sometimes the same evil we commit, even as Christians, not to give ourselves wholeheartedly to Jesus?
Jesus calls this generation evil. And then He says, no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. Verse 32. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it.
For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. Do you see how much sense Jesus' comparison makes now that we understand a bit more about Jonah 3? Jesus is saying to His audience, the wicked, brutal Ninevites repented from this reluctant preaching on the outskirts of their city. And Jesus is saying to His generation, now I'm here. I'm God's greater prophet with a message for you, and I'm preaching it sincerely, and you don't believe.
That's how Jesus is using the Jonah story. Now, if some of you might have a question about what is the sign of Jonah, and there's a bit of debate about that. Some people say it's Jonah's preaching. Some people say, no, the sign is Jonah himself, and the fact that he rose from the fish after three days and three nights is symbolic of Jesus' resurrection from the grave after three days and three nights, and the reason people say that is because in Matthew's version of this speech, he talks more about that aspect of Jonah being in the belly three days and three nights and Jesus after three days and three nights in the belly of the earth, He will rise again. Now, actually, in the Greek grammar, it is clear, I think, and scholars have confirmed that the sign is Jonah himself, it's not merely his actions or his words, but I think, the whole discussion gets a little bit reductionistic when it becomes, was it his preaching, or was it his rising out of this belly of the fish?
And this is my view, which some other scholars agree with as well, is that the sign of Jonah for the Ninevites was not the fact that he rose from the belly of the fish I don't think he told them that. If he was spat out in the Mediterranean coastline, it would have been weeks and weeks before he would have reached Nineveh, so they didn't witness him come out of the belly of the fish. The sign of Jonah for the Ninevites was simply a prophet coming with a message from God. And so Jesus was that sign when He came into the land of Israel. He came as a prophet with a message from God.
That was the ordinary sign that God sent, and they should repent because the Ninevites repented. However, maybe I'm losing some of you here, but however, Jesus' audience, they knew the whole book of Jonah. They knew that Jonah had been saved from the fish, and so Jesus will fulfil the sign even further in His resurrection from the grave after three days and three nights. I don't think we need to split the two. I think Jesus is primarily talking about His appearance as a prophet, preaching a message from God, but that'll be even more fulfilled through His resurrection from the grave.
I don't know if that makes sense, but I think that's the way we should read the sign of Jonah. I, as a preacher, am here preaching God's word to you today. It's not accompanied with any signs or miracles. This moment is unimpressive and ordinary. There's people travelling along the M1, and there'll probably be thousands that travel past during this time that don't even know that we're here, don't even hear the words that I'm saying.
And yet God uses the ordinary preaching of the gospel to save sinners and to overturn cities and turn hearts toward Himself. If the Ninevites could believe a terrible messenger like Jonah, why can't our generation? Why can't the whole Gold Coast? Why not? It's not too big a task for God.
What's stopping you from sharing Jesus with your neighbours and colleagues and friends? God can use what we think are pitiful attempts to do far more than we can imagine. If we want to share the love of Christ, which is our mission statement as a church, to grow in and share the love of Christ. If we want to share the love of Christ, we must actually tell people about Christ. We must share who Jesus is with them and invite them to join us at church.
Or maybe you're here because not because you're a Christian, but because you're here seeking the truth, and you have this strange draw to Jesus this morning, but you still have doubts about whether God could really accept you. Well, let me encourage you to look at how God responds to the Ninevites. Remember, they had so much blood on their hands. They were a violent and murderous people, and God's response to their repentance is actually the most shocking part of this story. In the third and final scene, we encounter shocking mercy.
So we've seen shocking evangelism, shocking repentance, and now shocking mercy. Now going back to the Nazi example, the Nazis at the end of World War two, if they actually repented, and there was this wide scale repentance and contrition, and they're crying, and they're sorry for what they've done, and you are the appointed judge to decide what their fate will be as a nation, what would you do? Surely, them getting down their knees and crying out for mercy is not enough to pay for the countless millions that they had slaughtered. It's just not enough. So even if it was genuine, sorry, justice must be done.
That's why it's so shocking when we see God's response in verse 10. It says, when God saw what these Ninevites did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it. Excuse me? Really, God? Are you sure?
These Ninevites, they skinned people alive and impaled them on poles. They've only had a few days to be sorry. How can that be enough? See, we often think God's judgement is controversial, but His grace is even more controversial. We believe people like the Nazis and the Ninevites should pay for what they have done, and yet God extended grace to the wicked Ninevites when they repented.
His mercy is shocking and scandalous, so much so, you might think it's immoral. It's evil. But you see, the difference between my illustration about the Nazis is that God's mercy does not come at the expense of God's justice. In the Nazi illustration, if you granted them mercy, there is no justice. But when God grants mercy to the Ninevites, He can see He's outside of time.
He can see forward to the future when His son, Jesus, will come. This is why Jesus died. Jesus died to vindicate, to justify God's mercy to undeserving sinners. At the cross, the grace of God and the justice of God are held together, because God actually pays for all the sins and wicked deeds of those who turn to Christ, in Christ. That's why Jesus died such a shameful, brutal death.
He was given over to the pagan Romans, and He was put to death as a criminal and an outcast outside the city, crucified, because He was taking the place of people like me, the place of sinners, and He was paying the penalty that we deserve to pay. That's why Christ died. God's mercy is scandalous, but it does not come at the expense of His justice. He takes sin far more seriously than we do. Let's not pretend we're more serious than God.
We who so often excuse our own sins and get indignant at the sins of others. God is far more serious than us, and He's also far more gracious, far more merciful. God is not unjust to forgive wicked sinners. His grace is not inconsistent with His justice because God Himself in Christ has paid for the sins of the wicked. God knows the cost of evil and the consequences of sin far better than you and I ever will.
And the reason He sends prophets like Jonah in the first place is with the hope that people would repent and change. Jeremiah 18 says, if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it. And if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. See, Jonah knew this about God. He knows God's character.
So God is being true to His deepest heart when He relents of this disaster proclaimed against the Ninevites. It's not a contradiction. God's judgement here was not ultimate, but conditional. When the Ninevites repented, the God who was merciful and gracious and abounding in steadfast love had mercy on them. It is who He is.
It is who He loves to be. He cannot help but be gracious and merciful and forgiving. So you who doubt God's love because of your past or because of your present, you who feel undeserving, you who feel you are too far gone, come to Jesus. Christ is present here right now by the Holy Spirit, and He is calling you to Himself. He only warns you of judgement against your sin because He wants you to come and experience His mercy.
God is saying to you through Jonah 3 that shocking repentance is possible because our God is shockingly gracious. Shocking repentance is possible because our God is shockingly gracious. And some of you might even be shocking yourself right now with this desire to turn to God. You've come here, and you didn't believe before you came, and now all of a sudden, you have this draw to come to Jesus. Don't just be shocked, but believe.
Turn from self rule and submit to God's rule. Turn from self justification and trust Jesus to justify you before God. It's a gift to be received. Open up your empty hands and receive it. You can't bring anything in your hands to pay God for it.
You can only receive it, and that's humiliating. That's humbling to say, I've got nothing to give. I don't have any good works to give. I've just got faith. I receive the righteousness of Christ offered to me in the gospel.
I remember a time when I was shocked by someone else's repentance. I had no idea that after a few days of meeting this man that I would be leading him in a prayer of repentance to Christ. I was a youth worker at one stage, kind of like a youth pastor about a decade ago, and I was taking our youth group to Easterfest in Toowoomba. Who knows what Easterfest is? Anyone know?
Yeah, there's a few people that know what Easterfest is. It's like a Christian music festival, and I went there in the final year that it ran. So I don't know how bad I was, but stopped running after I went there. So, anyways, we took this group of this youth group, and we also partnered with another local youth group from Petrie near about where the church was, and we came together in the car park, and we decided who was carpooling, and some of the guys from the other youth group came in my car, some of the leaders of the youth group. But one of them was tagging along, and he wasn't a Christian.
He'd been hanging out with his church, and they'd invite him to come along. He wasn't a Christian. He got in my car, and the whole time we were in the car, he kept paying out how he kept calling my car a bomb and kept paying me out for how terrible my car is and making jokes about it, and I was like, who is this guy? Like, he's not paying me for petrol. I'm giving him a lift to Toowoomba, and he's just paying me out and going on and on and on.
I remember having just pray in the car like, Lord, please give me patience. Help me to love this guy. And by the end of the trip, we got to Toowoomba, and all of a sudden, he became like my best friend. He actually wanted to be around me, a friendship began, and a few days later, after he'd been at the festival for a while, we're walking in the streets of Toowoomba, and we're just talking about spiritual things. And I asked him, you know, where are you at?
And are you ready to put your trust in Jesus? And he said, yes. And I said, well, do you just want to pray right now? He said, yes. So in the streets of Toowoomba, we just stopped there, and we prayed together, and he put his trust in Jesus.
I couldn't believe that. It shocked me at the time. Shocking repentance is possible. It doesn't matter who you think is too far gone for God or if you think you are too far gone for God. If God graciously opens someone's heart, nothing can stop them from running to Christ.
He's too beautiful. He's too good. And that's why we're all here, isn't it? Because Christ is good. Let's come to Him in prayer right now.
Father, You are gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger. You forgive iniquity, yet You are just. You are all things good and beautiful. And we just praise You today. We thank You for Your precious word and the way that You speak to us.
And, we ask that You would give us great courage as Your people. Dispel the lies that we must be more eloquent in order for people to be saved. Help us to see that You can save anyone and that You've given us the gospel that has the powerful salvation and that we are simply to courageously share it. Grant us the courage, give us opportunities to share, and help us to obey Your great commission to go out and make disciples, to share the love of Christ. Now, I just want us to keep our eyes closed for a moment and just keep a moment of privacy because in a room this size, there's probably some of you here that haven't actually turned to Christ.
I just want to give you some time in this moment of privacy and quietness. If you want to turn to Jesus, you can do that with me now. You don't have to have the right formula or words, but if you genuinely believe in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead and you want to put your faith in Him, then you can say that to Him in your heart, or you can pray this prayer with me. I'll give you some words you can use if you prefer. Don't waste this moment.
If the Holy Spirit is knocking on your heart, asking you to open the door, open it to Him. You won't regret it. You can pray these words with me if you want, or you can pray your own words if you want to turn to Jesus and receive His grace. Jesus, I'm sorry for going my own way. I turn away from living for myself, and I turn to You.
Teach me how to live. I believe that You rose from the grave and that You have paid for my sins. Thank You. I receive this as a gift, and I believe. It's in Your name we pray, Jesus. Amen.