This sermon delves into the story of Jonah, highlighting his rebellion against God's command to go to Nineveh, his attempt to flee to Tarshish, and the consequences of his disobedience. It emphasizes the need for radical discipleship, surrendering to God's will completely, even when it goes against personal desires. The sermon challenges listeners to confront their own Nineveh, the areas of sin or disobedience they are running from, and to embrace God's call for total surrender and obedience.

We're going to read a chapter from the Word of God in the book of Jonah. In the book of Jonah. I'll give you a moment to find it. Start at the end of the Old Testament, work back, if you get as far as Amos, you've gone too far. If you get as far as Micah, you just go two more. Book of Jonah, chapter one, and after this chorus we will sing with head bowed and hearts bowed before the Lord. Father, I adore you, lay my life before you, how I love you. Let us first read this portion of scripture together. At least, I'll read to you. I used to like to ask people to read this together, but you've all got so many versions now, that's impossible. There's a new standard, the standard revised, an American standard, a new English Bible revised and authorized, and if we all read together you'd think we're all speaking in tongues, and of course that would never do. Now, chapter one of Jonah. Now the word of the Lord came to 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 to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare, and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. And the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his God, and they threw the wares that were in the ship into the sea to it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship, and had laid down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean you sleeper? Arise, call upon your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we do not perish. And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then they said to him, Tell us, on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation, and whence do you come? What is your country, and of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may be quietened down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, Take me up, and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring the ship back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried to the Lord, We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood. For thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and threw him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. This is the word of the Lord. Let's bow our heads in our hearts before God, and quietly and reverently sing, Father, I adore you. Please echo in your heart the prayer which I would offer on your behalf, and on my own. Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while we wait on thee. Hush our hearts to listen in expectancy. Speak, O blessed Master, in this quiet hour. May we see thy face, Lord, and feel, and feel thy touch of power. In Jesus' name. Amen. I'm so thankful that the theme chosen for this spring harvest is radical discipleship. Because living in this revolutionary decade, any other kind of discipleship is just not on. A very good friend of mine, who for many years served with O.M.F., was director of the Christian Discipleship Center in Singapore, came home on furlough and came to see me and told me of some thrilling news. That the leading communist of the youth movement there had been converted and come to know Christ. And my friend was absolutely thrilled. He went back after a year's furlough, and he wrote to me, and told me that I would be sad to hear that his communist friend had reverted to communism. And he said, I sought him out and said, why have you done this? Why possibly, why on earth have you gone back to something that's so utterly, absolutely anti-God? And this fellow from the communist world just looked at him and said, your Christianity is too soft. I've never forgotten that. Because that's the trouble with us. It's too soft. And I have been led, I believe, by the Holy Spirit to take this book of Jonah for our Bible readings and base what I have to say on it. And of course, what's more than important still, what the Lord wants to say from this book. And to address ourselves to the theme, radical discipleship. I can't see you. That's my misfortune. It's also my misfortune that you can see me so well. But I can't see you because of all the lights. But hoping you have your Bible with you, and it's open at the book of Jonah, chapter one. Let me first just put in the background to this book, so that we can see the tremendous ministry he had and the circumstances in which he was ministering. Jonah was one of the earlier prophets of old times, ministering in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II. You find a very brief account, actually, of his ministry in 2 Kings chapter 14, verse 23, which I read to you. 2 Kings chapter 14, 23. In the 15th year of Amaziah, son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria and reigned 41 years. Verse 25, he restored the coast of Israel from the entering in of Hamath to the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spoke by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathheba. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter, for there was not any shut up, nor any left, any helper for Israel. That lets us into quite a background, for it was a time of tremendous affliction for Israel, and that great power of Assyria had captured a lot of territory and seemed likely to take a great deal more, and Israel were powerless to prevent it. But Jonah stepped in with a word from the Lord, and declared in the name of the Lord that the coast would be restored to Israel. He believed God's word, preached it faithfully, and God fulfilled his promise and saved his people. I learned from that, therefore, that this man had been a forceful messenger from God, and he tasted the danger and the thrill of success. Get that in your mind, it's an important background to the story. A man who had been used of God, had been blessed in his ministry, had been successful, and known the dangers arising out of it. Actually, of course, as you probably know, the book is written and arises out of a command that God gave to Jonah, which he did everything he could to avoid. The opening part of the book, God brought him to the very depths, physically, to the point of apparent suicide, and then brought him out again to give him a second chance to start all over again. And the second part of the book, he brought Jonah down with mental depression, until he was absolutely at the end of the rope, at the end of the story, he had to admit that God was right and he was wrong. That God's merciful purposes were right, he was absolutely shallow. But you know, this book is unique in all the books of the Bible. It isn't like other prophetic books are. It isn't a record of a man's ministry. It's a story of God's dealing with him. We may say that Jonah was a Well, if that's so, so have I been, and a lot of others of us too, I think. At least, it would never have been written at all if he hadn't written it himself. Certain sections might have been added by sailors and others, but the main part of the story, God's dealings with him, were unquestionably written by Jonah himself. I need hardly say from this platform that I accept the historic facts of this story without question. The fact that the Lord Jesus used it as the only sign he would give to his generation puts the idea of mythology absolutely out of count. Listen to Matthew chapter 12, verses 39 to 41. An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. There shall no sign be given it but that of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with his generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, a greater than Jonah is here. A greater than Jonah is here, said Jesus. You know, it's very interesting that Jonah came from a little village called Gathipha. That's about an hour's walk from Nazareth. And I imagine in my mind that very often our Lord, in the early days of his obscurity, would ever walk along there and reflect upon Jonah, and think of what happened to him, and recognize that what happened to him in a figure was going to happen to Jesus himself in a year or two. He's the only prophet to whom our Lord compared himself. A greater than Jonah is here. But my interest in this book of Jonah, and the thing that really hit me time and time again about it, is its inner exposure of God's dealings with his people, with all of us. The length to which God will go with anybody in order to achieve radical discipleship. The length to which I will go in order to escape it, in order to run from it, in order to quit from it. The sheer pig-headedness of a man of God in the face of all the Lord's goodness and all the Lord's mercy. But above all, the sense of peace and calm when the controversy is over, and the victory is won, and the story has been told. Over this book, in my Bible, I have written this. Lord, great has been my stubbornness, but greater still your faithfulness. That would be my testimony today to you. Great has been my stubbornness, but greater still has been your faithfulness. So as we turn to these 48 verses in four chapters during our Bible readings, I trust we'll get something out of it for our lives today, right down to earth, where we are, in terms of the kind of discipleship that the Lord wants from each of us. By the time we've finished, you should have three words written over each one of these four chapters. They all begin with the same letter. I'm not good at sermons with various numbers of points all beginning with the same letter, but I've fallen into the trap here. I couldn't very well help it. So I'll give them to you as we go on. And the first word, I hope you have a notebook. I don't. Well, I have, yes. But I use a wide-margin Bible. I recommend that to you, by the way. It's a good thing to have. You'll wreck it, but once in ten years. Mine's just about due to be replaced, unfortunately. I thought it would last out the journey. But I was at Peru in December, and the sheer sweat and heat, it all went to fell apart. So I've still got it, but I'm holding on, because it's going to take the rest of my life to put notes into the new one. But I recommend the wide-margin Bible, and I suggest that over Jonah chapter 1, the first word you put is the disciples' rebellion. Radical discipleship, the disciples' rebellion. Verse 1, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. That was a dreadful moment, an awe-inspiring moment. God had spoken to him. It wasn't simply the Lord speaking in terms of fellowship or communion as friend to friend. It was Jehovah. It was Elohim, the Almighty God, the God who never breaks a promise. It was that God issuing orders that had to be obeyed or else. It was heaven's mandate to one of its ambassadors. It was to be the outworking of God's strategy for blessing on the mission field, to be experienced through a man ready to pay the price, ready for anything in the will of God. What was the command? Verse 2, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. Nineveh, a great city, yeah, about a thousand years old in Jonah's time, built by Nimrod just before the events of the Tower of Babel. You get that in Genesis chapter 10. A great city, the greatest city in the greatest empire in the world at the time, Assyria. Go to Nineveh. Why Nineveh? Well, that was God's business. He was concerned for Nineveh with a concern of love, and he's going to destroy it and judge it unless, unless they repent. So he'll find a messenger, find someone. For a task so near to his heart, so dear to him, in order to bring these people and to give them a chance for repentance. And so Jonah is chosen for the chance. And this book of Jonah is the greatest prelude in the Old Testament to John 3.16 and in the New. God so loved the world, not only Israel, not only Judah, but the world that he gave his only begotten son. But my brother and sister, far more important than the salvation of Nineveh, was the radical discipling of Jonah. And I think as we go through this, you'll see, though I had prepared the message before I came here, you will see how it's underlining a lot that Clive said to us last night in that tremendous word from this platform. More important than the salvation of Nineveh, I repeat, was the discipline and discipling of Jonah. He had to learn three lessons, and these three lessons keep cropping up right through the whole book. I'll give you them. One, he had to learn to turn aside from his popularity and from his success and from his big name and importance, and to tread the path of surrender to the will of God, no matter what it cost. Even if everybody thought he was a complete failure, that's the way he had to go. He had to learn to turn his back on popularity and success. Two, he had to learn to share the compassion of the Lord for people who were his enemies. Anticipating the fact that one day one would come from heaven and would say to us, I say to you, love your enemies. And Jonah had to learn to do that. And three, the third lesson, he had to learn to take sides with God against sin, all of it. He had to declare total warfare against everything that was contrary to God's will. This was radical disapproach. This was the kind of man whom God could use in a crisis time. May I just for a moment earth that, you know what I mean? How shall I say this? Because I want you to know that, that I don't quite know how to say it, that I'm not preaching at anybody. I'm sharing and opening my heart as an old man who's been through it all, and who counts it an immense privilege to share Jesus with this up-and-coming generation. And therefore, to say to you, based on my own experience, there's a Nineveh to which God calls every one of us. Not necessarily a far-off city, possibly it could be. Possibly a nearby familiar circumstance. Yes. Probably, probably, you don't have to move off your seat to reach your Nineveh. For the Nineveh which God cries to you to be against is not necessarily an outward circumstance. It is probably an inward condition. It's not, it's not the location that matters. It's the principle. It's a place where I bow my neck and die to myself. It's a place where I ally myself with God against sin in 100% declaration of war. Not 99%. 99% leads to disaster. Because Satan knows where that 1% is, and he's in right there. 99% not on. 100% yes. And I'm facing, as you face, this fact that discipleship today means I'm prepared to bow my neck and know what it is to die to myself, and ally myself with God against sin. A place where popularity and success don't matter anymore. A place where God's will is the one thing that matters and the one motivation of my life. And the result, the outcome, is in his hands. 100% declaration of war and all the future handed over to him. His responsibility. A place, however, if that sounds grim, a place, however, that leads to blessing beyond my wildest dreams. Because the place of crucifixion is the place, the only place, the only place, I repeat, of Holy Spirit anointing. You can't have a high on the Holy Spirit unless you're prepared to have a low at Calvary. It's no use crying, God give us Pentecost. He looks down on you and says, you give me Calvary. And if you're prepared to go there and stay there for the rest of your life, Pentecost is inevitable. But there's no evading Calvary. The same command, you may remember, came to Philip in Acts chapter 8. To go from a revival to a desert. He didn't know why. He didn't know he was going to meet anybody, not even one person, but he did. He met the chancellor of the exchequer of Ethiopia and through his obedience to the Lord, the gospel got into that country. It came to Peter, strange to say, at the place from which Jonah departed, Joppa. When Peter was having a sort of what I call a horizontal quiet time after lunch in the heat, and he saw a strange thing coming down from heaven with reptiles and birds and things in it. And the voice said to him, rise Peter, kill and eat. And he said, not so Lord, I never. That's a dangerous thing to say to Jesus. I never eat anything common and unfeasible. Not so Lord, stupid. You can't say that. You cannot say not so, oh sure, if you like. You can say Lord, yes, but you can't say not so Lord. It came to Peter. It came to Jeremiah, speak unto all them that I command thee. I have made thee a defenced people, city against the whole land. It came to Isaiah, who will go for us? And he said, here am I, send me. And it comes to all of us at one point or other in our lives. There's an enema in your life and in mine about which God speaks. It's a call not to remain alone and fruitless, though apparently successful, but a call to fall into the ground and die, that your life may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit, not necessarily in success. You may never see anybody born again, but fruit in Christ-likeness of character. Dear friend of mine, Stephen Alford, perhaps you know him. If not, you've missed something. You hear him on radio every week. Great friend, he always has been. He and I were visiting Columbia Bible College in the States, and after a meeting, a student came up to us, a fellow, with a notebook, big Bible, and he said to us both, tell me, what is the key to Christian leadership? And while I was thinking it all out, he was obviously waiting with his pen to take notes, Stephen had him, had him by the ears, and he said, we're just going off after eve to catch a plane, but I'll tell you, if you want to know, it's bent knees, wet eyes, and a broken heart. Big name? No. Massive publicity? No. Tremendous popularity? No. You photograph in the press? No. Bent knees, wet eyes, broken heart. You can't put it better than that. A call to speak against Nineveh. A call to take sides with God against sin. Verse two, their wickedness had come up before him. So it is, so it is with us. He sets our iniquities, our secret sin, in the light of his countenance. And then he speaks his word of absolute authority. Go and speak against that. Take action against that. What follows? Verse three. This isn't history, it's biography. God said one thing, Jonah said another. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He did what Moses didn't do. Moses said, who is going to take us up to the land? Who's going to be with us? And the Lord said to him, my presence shall be with you, and I will give you rest. And Moses said, except your presence goes with us, carry us not up here, for how shall people know that we're unique, we're different, except your presence goes with us. Moses was scared that he'd ever lose that sense of uniqueness in the presence of the Lord. And the thing, the one thing that would characterize his people, they would be different. But Jonah rose to flee from the presence of the Lord. God said Nineveh. Jonah said Tarshish. Nineveh, northeast. Tarshish, due west. Right in the opposite direction. Jonah preferred a Iranian cruise. No, no, no, not for me. They didn't hold it. Oh, I wish Jonah could come and just sit there a minute. Oh, if he likes, he prefers to stand. Because I would like to ask him something. And if he's here, I would say, Jonah, just tell me, because I'd like these people to know. Perhaps they know, but I'm not sure. Jonah, why on earth Tarshish? I mean, I mean, there's nothing to stop you staying where you are. Why go to all that trouble, all the risk, all the danger of involved in a total voyage like that in an old wooden ship or something? Why do that, Jonah? Why not stay right where you are? You don't need to go, no, no, no, you don't want to, but just stay there. And you know, if Jonah was standing here, he would just freeze me up and say to me, you fool. You fool, you idiot. Haven't you learned through all the years that you lived that you can't stay where you are when the Lord is commanding you to do something? David knew about that. He said in Psalm 32, wasn't it? Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned to the drought of summer. The verse that precedes that. While I wouldn't confess my sin, day and night thy hand was heavy upon me and thy moisture, my moisture is turned to the drought of summer. Dried up, completely dried up, lost all sense of touch of heaven upon my life. All because I wouldn't own up to it and admitted that I was wrong and God was right. I wasn't prepared to face radical discipleship. Anything, anything, Lord, anything to escape, escape the responsibility of going to Nineveh. You know what I'm talking about? I trust you do. I haven't looked back long in my life to remember times like that. I assure you, I haven't. No. The times when God said to me, don't you do that again. That's not my way for you, this way. Don't you say that anymore. And something got up inside me and said, phooey, I want my own way. And that moisture, you know what I mean by that? The promise of the Lord is I will pour water upon him that's thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. He that believeth in me out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. And it dried up. The moment disobedience came, the water ceased to flow. The Holy Spirit went out of business. He was in my heart nagging, pleading, kicking against me, doing everything to make me uncomfortable, but me refusing to budge. Great has been my stubbornness, but greater still, thy faithfulness. Jonah, I know, I understand. One day when we meet in heaven, I'll ask you to make sure. But somehow I know, I know that's why you couldn't stay where you were. That's why you had a head in the opposite direction. And it may be today in this great crowd, there are hundreds of you running from God. God calling one way, you going another, simply because you won't obey him. And you think you can get away with it. Why Tarshish? Well, of course, I know why Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh, because he tells us so in chapter four of opening verses. If I go to Nineveh and I preach against it, the Lord is so merciful that he'll forgive them if they repent. And I don't want that to happen. God wants to give this enemy of mine another chance, and he doesn't deserve it. If God spares Nineveh, what's going to happen to us? It's going to be the end. In Jonah's view, Nineveh deserved punishment, nothing else. I'm mad with him, God has got to clear them out. And I know he's so merciful that if I go, he'll forgive them, so I'm not going. He refused, refused to offer salvation to people he hated. So again, in his ugly little pride, bitter pride, the bad guy has got to be over there, the good guy's over here. And that's a distinction that only earth can make, and certainly not heaven. Oh, I think perhaps there was something else. I think something else, yeah. Don't trouble to look it up now, but jot down in your notes 1 Kings 10, 22. There I find that there was material prosperity at Tarshish. For every three years, the navy of Tarshish brought gold and silver and ivory to Solomon. Oh my, says Jonah, that must be a comfortable spot. Easy to forget the inner voice that pleads with me there. If I get off to the place, I get a job and plenty of money, oh, I never need worry anymore about none of it, forget it. Just let me off on the hook, get out of this. Isn't that a telling portrait? In a few minutes, I have to pause and stop, so you can fasten your safety belts and prepare for landing. I shall be through in three minutes' time. I didn't mean to be, but I will be. Hmm. Hallelujah, anyway. Oh, but I'm concerned about it. I'm concerned. I'm concerned about it for myself. I'm concerned about it for you. I'm concerned about it most of all for the Lord's sake. Do you see, do you see the picture? Isn't it a telling portrait of God's dealings with you? Do some of you all must begin to think, why that fellow, he must know me. I don't, but I know myself. Yes. And you know, don't you, my beloved friend, listen, you know, don't you, that there's no silencing the Lord's voice. He calls us to be totally against sin, every bit of it. It has to go. Am I willing for that? Furthermore, not only against sin, but to go the extra mile and share the love on the heart of God for someone, even though he's an enemy. Do you ever want to get rid of difficult people? Perhaps you say, we haven't gotten here now, church, haven't you? Don't believe it. Sorry, I don't. There's no church this side of heaven that's got difficult people. You want to get rid of them, get rid of them. Oh, this is too costly. There must be an easier road just to stay where I, I can't stay where I am, to be worried by my conscience. God is saying to me, to you today, now it's your Nineveh, that thing, that thing you've refused to be against, that sin you refuse to quit, that one thing, it's that or else. He insists upon it, the principle of death. And, and time and time again, and God forbid it should be now. Lord, I can't take it. I can't take it, really. Let me choose an easier path, more comfort. Let me get out of this, the pressure of all this, of your voice in my heart. Let me get away. Lord, please don't, don't, don't, don't keep insisting. And heaven watches another potential instrument for revival, for blessing, for turning England upside down. Turn away from, from spring harvest and go back. And I tell you, the angels in heaven weep. A life that God wants, who could be used to save a continent and a nation, is not prepared to pay the price. May I close with this? Some years ago, I was a pastor in Chicago at Moody Memorial Church. At one time in my ministry there, which was over a period of ten years, a man came into my vestry every Sunday morning at one minute to eleven, put his head around the door and looked at me and said, hopeless pastor, the church is half empty today, when went out. That didn't help. Then another man came in about half a minute later, and he came right across the floor and put his arm right around me, and he said, wonderful pastor, the church is half full today. Well, both those men were saying the same thing, but one with the idea of rubbing me, ribbing me, the other with a view to encouragement. Which of those two men was it easier for me to love? I don't need to answer that question, do I? My reaction to man number one was totally negative. Of course, I had scripture to justify that situation. You can always get a verse of scripture that will enable you to take any attitude and be satisfied with it. I remember the verse in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, which said, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh and the saving of the soul. And I said, yes, Lord, that's what I'm going to do. Right, well, how do I begin? I know, I write him a letter. So I wrote him a stinker. Oh, I'm ashamed of it, that thing. Get out of here, get to another fundamental church in Chicago, do your thing over there, don't interfere here, we can never have blessing with you around, etc., etc. I left that letter open on my desk, and my wife saw it. And she said, don't you think it'd be a good idea if we had a little prayer about that before you send it? And I said, oh, sure. Certainly, I mean, I have a lot of prayers that wouldn't have been written. But you come and join me and have some prayer. So we knelt down, and I said to her, you pray first. And she prayed. And I have never forgotten the next 15 minutes in which my wife prayed not for that man, but for her husband. And that broke my heart. I had to go to that man and apologize. A year after we left the church, we went back. The first person to greet us was that man. Came up and hugged my wife and kissed her, and I didn't mind that, and when he'd finish with her, he came up to me and he said, Pastor, how we miss you. Yeah, I could have said that. Wish he'd said that about 10 years ago. When you get the thrust, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. In other words, die to all your rights except the right to do the will of God. Even this first morning of our Bible readings, somebody here could say, right Lord, I accept. No, no, no. Let us pray. One moment's quiet prayer in which maybe you would like to give your answer to the Lord Jesus. Now, let's stand for a closing prayer together. We thank you, Lord, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. We praise you for your patience and for your mercy with each one of us, your mercy from everlasting to everlasting. Thank you that your face has always turned our way, and you're waiting, waiting for somebody here, all of us maybe, but somebody special to say to you, Lord, Lord, I've held on against you for years, and I haven't been prepared to forsake what I know is wrong. Lord, I can't in my own strength, but I turn my face heavenward, and I say to you this morning, cleanse me from my sin, Lord. Put thy power within, Lord. Take me as I am, Lord, and make me all thine own. Keep me day by day, Lord, underneath thy sway, Lord. Make my heart thy palace and thy royal throne. For Jesus' sake, amen. The grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God, the fellowship of the Spirit be with each one of us, and all God's redeemed family everywhere, now till Jesus comes again, and then forevermore. Amen. Goodbye.