In this sermon, the preacher discusses the story of Jonah from the Bible. He highlights the four chapters of Jonah's journey: running from God, returning to God, restarting with God, and becoming resentful towards God. The preacher emphasizes that Jonah had clear instructions from God to deliver a message of condemnation to the people, but Jonah did not want them to be blessed. The preacher contrasts Jonah's message of doom and gloom with the message of the gospel, which is a message of hope and salvation. The preacher urges the audience to recognize the urgency of sharing the good news with those who are on the road to hell.

Book of Jonah, chapter number 1. I'd like to read a few verses there, and then turn through chapters 2, 3 and 4, just a few verses in each chapter. Jonah chapter 1, verse 1. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 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. And the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth their wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said he unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation, and whence comest thou? What is thy country, and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am in Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. And of course, we'll just read verse 17, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. And then we come to the commencement of chapter 2, and it says, Then Jonah prayed and said unto the Lord, Has God out of the fish's belly? I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me out of the belly of hell, cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hast cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about, all thy billows, and thy waves passed over me. Then said I, I am cast out of thy sight, yet will I look again towards thy holy temple. And verse 10, And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Chapter 3, verse 1, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah rose up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least. For the word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Chapter 4, verse 1, But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry, and he prayed unto the Lord his God. He prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in the country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. And that will suffice for the reading of the good word of God. I'm sure that God will bless the public reading of it to every heart. I have before me the story of a man, a prophet, and he in chapter 2 we read he returned to God, in chapter 3 he restarts with God, and in chapter 4 we find he is resentful at God. He ran from God when he received the word of God, he returns to God on reflection on the word, he restarts with God on reproduction of the word, and he finishes up resentful of the word in chapter 4. This man is perhaps a picture of many a Christian even today. God had given him clear instructions as to what he had to do. He went with a message, not a message like we have, a message of hope, a message of salvation, a message of deliverance, but he went with a message of condemnation. He told them that yet forty days in Nineveh would be overthrown. You know, with a message like that, maybe that was the reason he feared, but we read at the end of it that he knew that God was merciful and gracious, and yet in spite of all that he knew God did, he didn't want these people blessed. These were the enemies of the people of God, and Jonah couldn't see any reason why God should bless them. And even in spite of the fact that this word came to him quite clearly, and he goes away, and you'll find that when he goes away from God, it's a continual downward step. You know, some people when they go backwards from following the Lord, they go back at a great rate, but I believe that on many occasions it's progressive. You see, it says here that the word of God came to him, and he told him to go, and he rose up to flee. He didn't want to do what God wanted him to do, and he thought he knew better than God, and yet we see it says he went down to Joppa. That was his first downward step, and then he went down into the ship, and then we read he went down into the sides of the ship, and then we read he went down into the belly of the fish, and then it says he's down at the bottom of the mountains. You see, it's a progressive thing. He goes down further and further and further when he goes away from God, and when he disobeys God's word. That would be true for every person in the room here. I don't know how you are spiritually, but I know this, that I'm not very much, if you're a climber, I'm not a climber, you can see from my waistline I'm not a climber, but if you had to be a climber, and you walk some of these hills, you just get to the top, and you just reach the very peak, and the next thing you're heading down the other side. That sums up for me very often the Christian life. How many of us are up on the mountain top for a whole week at a time, a whole day at a time, a whole month at a time, a whole year at a time? Most of the time we're either spent trying to get back up there, or we're on the way back down again. And here this man Jonah, he decides to move away from the Lord, and to be disobedient, and he received clear instructions from God that this is what he had to do, and he didn't want to do it. You know, sometimes God makes demands on us that we're not prepared to go in for. You know, when we're thinking about some of them last night, what the responsibility of discipleship was, and all the things it would cost, and sometimes we're not prepared for the cost. Well, this man wasn't prepared for the cost. And just the first move led to the rest, and down and down he went, until eventually he was so far down he had no further to go, and he cried to the Lord, and the Lord delivered him. I wonder if we could learn the lesson from Jonah, and just not make the mistake in the first place. You know, it wasn't there was any dubiety about what God wanted him to do. And in the main, there's no dubiety in the word of God about what we should do. God has given us clear instructions as to how we conduct ourselves, and how the message that he has given us, to go and preach it to others. We have a message of good news. The message that Jonah had was a message of bad news. It was all doom and gloom, there was no hope in his message whatsoever. And the message of the gospel is the very opposite. It's a message of hope, from a judgment that's hovering over the head of the unbeliever, that could fall at any moment. And we're in a place here in New Stevenson, and Bellshill, and Aberdeen, where multitudes are on the road to hell, and God sends us one man. You might not have thought much of Jonah. You might have thought it was really for the children, for the Sunday school, but I think there's much more in it than that. What about the people in New Stevenson? What about the people in Bellshill? What about the people in Aberdeen? I don't know what the statistics are, but I know this, that every day, men and women are passing out of time and into eternity. And they're not saved. And we know they're not saved. And we rub shoulders with them every day. And we've got a message from God, and he wants us to go and deliver it to the people. It's a simple enough instruction, isn't it? It's not too complicated. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and raised the third day according to the Scriptures. Men and women need to hear it. I would love to have heard the Lord Jesus speak. You know, we're thinking about the gracious words which fell from his lips. It must have been wonderful to hear him. They said, never a man spoke like this. There was not another who spoke like him. Oh, I might speak too loudly or too softly. I might speak too harshly. But none of these things would have been true of him. You know, the children were happy to run to him. Men and women, even despised by the population, they were happy to go to him. You know, there was people in the palace who got saved, and there was people in the prison who got saved. There was people everywhere who got saved as a result of this message of the gospel. I wonder if God has committed this to us. I wonder if we are prepared to deliver it. I wonder if we're prepared to deliver it the way he would deliver it. I would just love to be more like him. I really would like to have a heart like he had, and compassion on the multitude like he had. You never feel you come so far short of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Wouldn't you like to be like him in his preaching, in his teaching, and the way he moved among the people, and the compassion he had for them? Now this man, he was given a message from God, and he was told to go and deliver it, but he thought he could flee from God. You know, I think very often that Christians think that they're out of the sight of God. I'm sure if he were conscious he was with us all the time. I'm sure we wouldn't be like this man. He rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord. Now, there's not a soul in here would believe that you could flee from the presence of the Lord, but sometimes we act that way, as if the Lord doesn't see us, as if the Lord doesn't hear us. And this man was so blinded by, I think, his hatred towards these people, that he was thinking that he was getting away from God. And what was the result of his disobedience? I want to say there were several things in his disobedience. One, he put others' lives in danger. When he went into this ship, there was a great storm come on, and the mariners thought they were going to die because of the disobedience of one man. And it says every man cried to his own God, and they started throwing the stuff over the sides of the ship, so they lost all their cargo. It went over the sides, and the men thought they were going to lose their own life. And then, all the time, what was Jonah doing? Well, he was down on the sides of a ship sleeping. When all these men were in danger of perishing, the man of God, the man that God had sent to them, was sleeping. I wonder if that would reflect us today. I wonder if we are sleeping. I wonder if we have lulled ourselves into a sense of sleep in regard to the unsaved. I think I mentioned last night I lost my brother, 58 years of age. Was it saved? He went to his bed. Was it feeling too good? He never woke up. I can guarantee you, I have absolutely no doubt that you pick up the papers tomorrow, and you read what's happened over the weekend. There'll be people murdered. There'll be people in accidents, and they'll all have gone out into eternity. And one day, it might just be that you know some of them, and you had the opportunity to speak to them, and you never said a word. You're just sleeping like this man. I wonder, does it ever bother you? You ever lose an ounce of sleep over it? This man was busy sleeping when thousands were heading on to hell. You know, people died in this city every day. I'm sure of that. And in case I don't get to it, between the time the word came to him the first time, and it came to him the second time, and it just was the same word that came the first time to him, God didn't change his mind. God didn't soften it. God didn't give them a wee bit of hope. The message was exactly the same as had come the first time. I often wonder, before the people repented and believed, the whole city turned to God. The whole city. We would never have believed that possible, but we'll come to that. I often wonder, from the time he got the message the first time, and ran away, until he delivered the message the second time, how many souls went out into eternity. It's a great story that they all get saved. It's a great story that they repented in sackcloth and ashes. But how many went out into eternity without knowing God? How many people never had the opportunity because he never said it worked? I think it's a very, very serious thing, and I wonder sometimes myself if I'm sleeping. Do I see souls as those for whom Christ died? Oh, you know, I know the saints have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and they're precious to him, and they should be precious to us, every one of them. But what about the unsaved? What about those that know not the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour? A friend of mine was telling me a story, and I'll just pass it on for your encouragement. She works with the elderly folk, and she took this woman to this church building where they were having this coffee that was on, that's not used for any spiritual meetings. She spoke to this woman, and the woman said, speaking about where this woman went, she said, I go to such and such a place. She said, oh, I'm jealous of you. She said, why are you jealous? She said, we can't keep any young people with us. She said, why is that? Well, she said, she just started to explain the gospel to her and tell her how she got saved, and how these other young people had got saved as well, and how they were going along there. She started to explain that the Lord Jesus had come and had died for them. Now this woman, her parents had been in the church, her and her husband had been in the church, the boys had been in the church, but they had left because there was nothing else for them. And as she explained the gospel to her, the woman said this, she said, where do you find all that? Where do you get all that information? She said, it's in the word of God. Now three generations had gone to the church for years, and they didn't know that the truth of the gospel was found in the word of God. That's the kind of Bible-loving Scotland we've got today. They don't even know where the gospel comes from. They don't know where it is. Well, not to assume that they know anything. Start on the basis they know nothing. You may get surprised they might know some things. But you know, by and large, they don't know anything at all. I would expect that most houses nowadays, they don't have a Bible at all. And sometimes when we speak to them, we speak as if they should know half of it, and we don't know half of it ourselves. It's a really serious thing when souls are perishing, and they don't know, and they're not getting any information from anywhere else. And we might be the only people they'll ever meet in their lives that have got the truth as directed by the word of God and the spirit of God. And so here's what happened to this man. He went down and down and down, and all the time he's going away from God. And these men's in the ship, their life's in danger. And eventually they draw the lot, and of course it falls upon Jonah. I don't suppose it was a surprise it fell upon Jonah. And he's got to tell them, and the thing that struck me when, that he said, verse 9, he said, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord. Well, you would never have known he feared the Lord when he was running away from him. And then it said the mariners were afraid when they heard that he feared God. But you know, the bit that really got me was this in verse 10, for the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. I was once at a business meeting in the assembly, and a brother left the meeting and went to the bus stop, and he heard three women who were unsaved discussing what had just taken place. And they couldn't understand how they knew all about what had just taken place in the meeting. And we found out later that someone else had left and got on the bus just before, and they had been talking about the things that had gone on in the meeting, and these unsaved people had overheard it. Now, it's not wise to tell unsaved. This is what this man, this man had told them that he was fleeing away from the presence of the Lord. Now what Jonah should have done, of course, instead of telling them that, he should have got down before God and repented and got back to God. Anything that happens in the assembly should be kept in the assembly. And anything that happens in another assembly, unless it's a matter affecting our assembly, should have nothing to do with us at all. We believe in the autonomy of the local assembly, and we should really practice it. But I thought it was really sad that he told these men that he was running away from God. I hope none of us are speaking to the unsaved about our poor spiritual condition. Jonah's then taken up, and of course he's cast into the sea, and said, The men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Isn't it great that the Lord had prepared a fish to swallow up Jonah? It made me think about the Lord Jesus, not the three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, but I was thinking more on the time when he was with the wild beasts, and they don't lay a mark on him, and yet when it comes to Calvary, men do their very worst to him. This was the one who had control of the animals. He created the world and all that's in it, and he had control over the great fish. He just spoke once to the fish, and it obeyed him, but he had to speak twice to the servant of God before he would obey him. Isn't it sad? Isn't it sad that the very crown of God's creation man, he's got to be spoken to twice, and this great fish has only gotten to be spoken to on the one occasion. And so, the Lord prepares this great fish and swallows him up. Now, when Jonah can go no further, he starts to cry by reason of his affliction. He's going to return to God, but you know, God's got to take him down so very far before ever he looks to come back again. Notice that Jonah didn't pray when he was being disobedient. He didn't pray when he was being disobedient, and maybe if we want to see how we are doing spiritually, we can maybe just check our prayer life, because if we're being disobedient to the word of God, we're not going to pray. And if we have an issue with another brother or sister, then we won't be praying for them. So, if we just check with our prayer life, we might find out who we're praying for, and what we're praying, or if we're praying at all. And so, it's a good guide as to our spiritual condition. Also, I know he prayed because it says, the reason of mine affliction. I don't think he would have prayed if he hadn't been afflicted, and you know, sometimes God brings affliction upon us, just to bring us back to himself. I noticed where he prayed as well. It was out of the fish's belly. You know, there's no where we can't pray. There's no where we can't pray. Every time when we go to our work, and we might think, well, it's not a quiet corner, we can still pray to God. It doesn't matter if you're on public transport, or you're in your car, you can pray to God. If you're driving, don't shut your eyes, but you can still pray to God anywhere. Anywhere you go, you can pray to God. This man could go no further down, and yet he was able to pray to God. And God had inflicted him, and he's prepared to come back to God. What was the result of his prayer? Well, the Lord heard them. You know, I sometimes hear people saying that people pray and God doesn't hear them. Well, I'm not one that subscribes to that, whether they're saved or unsaved, because at the end of the day, the unsaved will stand before the great white throne judgment to give account. So they'll give account of these things as well. And of course, if you're unsaved and you pray to God, well, it's a prayer for salvation as well. But the result of this prayer was that God was going to take this man up and use him again. We might have thought after the end of chapter one, when he was down in the fish's belly, that there was no hope for this man at all. He had run away from God. He had gone away from God's people. He was endangering the lives of others. And maybe he thought that there wasn't any possibility of him being fit for being left on the earth. Maybe he thought he would end it all. But God has a purpose and view that's going to lead to the salvation of all these people in this great city. I noticed too that he doesn't blame the men. He acknowledges the Lord in it all in verse three. For thou hast cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods compass me about, and all thy billows and thy waves pass over me. You know, very often when we're not in the will of the Lord, we start to blame others for their condition. He doesn't do that. I thought that was encouraging. This is a man on his way back, and he acknowledges that all the fault is his. All the fault is his. And God can work with a man or woman who does that. I notice in verse four, he was going to look again. And I think he had just taken his eyes off the Lord and turned away. But you know, he remembered his former days. He remembered days when things were better. He remembers days when God was blessing him. And he wants to get back to these days. And so he's got to turn again. It says in verse six, yet thou hast brought up my life. He didn't only acknowledge the Lord in it all, but he acknowledged the Lord in his recovery. Jonah was on his way back. He'd taken all these downward steps, but he's now on his way back. You remember when Mary and Joseph went up to the temple with the Lord Jesus? It says they went a day's journey before they missed him. And they went looking for him, and it took them three days to find him. That is really a principle on the matter of recovery. You might be away for a day or a week or a year, but very often it takes you three times as long to get back to where you were. It's always a danger when you move away from the mind and will of God. And so he says, I remember the Lord. I remember the Lord. You know, sometimes we can forget him as well. I know life's busy and there's many things press upon our time, but it's good just to check yourself every now and again, whether it's during the day or during the week or during the month, that you're just conscious of the Lord's presence with you every step of the way. In verse 9, he says he's going to pay his vows. He says, I will pay that which I have vowed. Now, the scripture says it's better never to vow a vow than to vow a vow and not keep it. You remember, I'm thinking about the story of the prodigal son. You remember, he says, I will arise and go to my father and say unto him, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. And he says, I'm no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants. It says, and he arose and came to his father. But when he's yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. It's a wonderful, wonderful story, the return of the prodigal. But you know, he had said he was going to go back and confess to his father that he had sinned before heaven and in thy sight. And when the father ran and met him and covered him with kisses, that's the idea. He covered him with kisses. He might have thought, well, I don't need to say anything to my father because my father's forgiven me. But you know, the next verse says, and the son said unto his father, father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and I'm no more worthy to be called thy son. He could have got away without doing it because the father, when the father embraced him, all the things he'd said he was going to do, he could just have forgotten them there and then. But he didn't. And it's better for us as well, if we've made promises to the Lord, be very careful what you promise the Lord, because the Lord will hold you to it. Better never to vow a vow than to vow a vow and not keep it. And then we find the Lord spoke to the fish and vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. I think it's a marvelous thing that, of course, great fish wouldn't be able to get too near the shore, but however this happened, he gets delivered back on dry land. Then when we get to chapter three, we find he's going to restart with God and he's got to do the very same thing that God had told him to do the first time. You know, we might have, God might have spoken to us to do certain things and we might have thought of a thousand reasons why we shouldn't do it. And Jonah, in chapter one and in chapter four, gives all the reasons why he shouldn't have done it. And we're like that as well. We're looking for excuses why we're not to do the will of God. But I want to tell you that God didn't change one word that he gave to Jonah. It was exactly the same message. Maybe he thought, well, Lord, if you give me a better message to give them, maybe if we soften it down a wee bit, maybe we just tell them they're in danger. There's a thousand and one things he could have told them. But the word of God came unto Jonah the second time saying, and he just told them the very same thing, to tell the people as he told them the first time. It's the same in the gospel. The gospel hasn't changed. There's people trying to dress it up with music and attractions and puppets and all these kind of things to try and make the gospel more attractive. There's nothing attractive about the cross. There's nothing attractive about the cross. My friend, God hasn't changed his mind on how it should be proclaimed. Preach the word. Preach the word. And we need to stick just to that. As I mentioned last night, we need to get them to Christ, but just stick to the word of God and the person of Christ and you won't go far wrong. And this word came and it was just the same word. Not softened, not changed in any way. And what about the results? What about the results? It says, he arose and went. That's in contrast to him in chapter one where it said he arose and fled. Now he arose and went and he did the very thing that God had told him to do. Now there's been various estimates as to how many people were in this city. I think it must have been somewhere about a million people in the city. So it was one man and God and a million people and he preaches the message that God had to ask them to preach and the whole city, the whole city turned over to God. They repented in sackcloth and ashes. Now if that can happen in a great city with a great number of people like this, what could happen in this land of ours? What could happen in New Stevenson or Aberdeen or anything? With a man or a woman devoted to the Lord and just following his every word and doing what he said. You see, it's our responsibility to preach the gospel. It's the Lord that will save them. And this man, when he was obedient to the word of God and carried out the command of God, then God blessed. And that's all we're asked to do as well. Now I know Brother Kenneth is going to preach the gospel elsewhere. It's his responsibility to preach it. But if people are going to be saved, it'll be a work of God. And it won't matter whether he's the best of preachers or the worst of preachers, God can still save them. We need to leave it up to God to work, but we need to be in a condition where we're moving in accordance with the mind and will of God. And that's what this man eventually had to do. He eventually came back and what God had told him to do, he was prepared to do it. And of course, it was a great multitude were saved. He thought about different people in the word of God. He thought about the apostle Paul. He had a really good start in his life, didn't he, when he was saved. And he went on well and he finished well. This man had a bad start and then he got back on track with things. And then he finishes up his resentful at God in chapter number four. I think for most of us, we have good patches and bad patches in our life. I wonder if I could ask you today, just where you are on the Christian pathway. Have you had a good start in your Christian life? Now it's not everyone that has a good start on their Christian life. You know, as soon as you get saved, Satan's after you. As soon as you're saved, he's after you and he never leaves you. And you've still got the flesh and the world and the devil against you. Some people don't make a good start, but you know, maybe like this man, that God brings him back again and he's able to use him. Peter was a man like that, wasn't he? You know, Peter failed the Lord time and time again, but God was able to take him up and use him. Maybe you've started well, but maybe things are not just going so well just now. You know, God can recover you just the way he recovered this man. And maybe you're just coming to the end of the journey. And maybe you've had your ups and downs. I want to tell you today that the one thing that's open to every Christian is to finish well. Because between now and the coming again of the Lord Jesus, or between now and us being called home to heaven, every one of us could finish the course well. I wonder where we are in our spiritual life. Are we on the mountaintop? Are we trying to get up the mountain? Are we on the other side on the way down again? I wonder today if these few lessons from the book of Jonah might be a help to us, might be a challenge to us, that we might ask ourselves, where are we in the spiritual journey? If we had to project a picture of a mountain up here, whereabouts on that mountain would you be? In Christ at the top of the mountain, and you're trying to get up. Or you're on the other side, you've known by experience the great blessing of being close to Christ, and maybe you're on the way back down again. Oh my dear friend, my dear brother, my dear sister, oh to be like him, oh to be near him. If we can all finish well, I trust that today as we consider the word of God, that we might think about our life, and see that even as God has given commandment to this man, he ran away, but you know God recovered him again, and was able to take him up and use him. Don't think because you fail that God won't use you again. And don't think because someone else has failed that they're never going to be fit for God to use, because God can use them. Just as you would never have thought Peter was going to be a man that was going to be mightily used of God after he failed. But God was able to take him up and use him. You would never have thought he was an elder, but he speaks about his fellow elders. And by the way, I think Peter was a great man. I don't know anybody here, we're thinking about the sea here, I don't know anybody here that would have stepped over that boat. I wouldn't have stepped over it in the flat cam. And he stepped over in the middle of the storm. And we never hear anything about the other disciples that never get out of the boat. He was a man that did something, he was criticized for doing it. If God tells you to do it, just you go and do it. And we trust that today, we might just be able to take stock of our lives, where we are, and what we want to do, and seek to get back to the Lord, and seek to reach that top of that mountain, and just abide there, as long as it's possible. And I'm sure that God will bless you, and if God has called you to do a work, like preaching the gospel, then I trust that you'll do it for his honour, and for his glory.