Our Father, we commend now every word, thought, and motive unto thee to the tender care and keeping of the Holy Spirit, that, Father, there might be some eternal fruit brought forth out of this meeting tonight. We thank you, Father, for this hour when we can gather together with those of like faith and like mind, rejoicing in all of thy goodness and grace to us. And, Father, we would now be edified in the things of thyself. We would grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Again, Father, we pray thee that every mind might be open and every heart might be keen and alert to the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the word tonight. Father, we pray for every need here. We know that many times a smiling face will hide an aching heart. And yet, Father, we know that thou art sufficient for all of these things that we have as human beings. So, Father, we commend now the remainder of the meeting to thee and pray that thou should give help in and through the word tonight. That the name of the Lord Jesus Christ might be honored and glorified. For we pray it in Christ's name and for his sake alone. Amen. In the book of Jonah, chapter number one, we'd just like to read and look at the first four verses. That's the first four verses of the first chapter of this wonderful book of Jonah. We read here, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Mithi, 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. Here we have this very, very wonderful and yet short book of Jonah. only four little chapters in it. There are only, I think, forty-eight verses in the whole book and only thirteen hundred and twenty-eight words. And yet there's a tremendous amount of drama in it. There's a tremendous amount of plain old human interest of somebody who doesn't want to do what the Lord wants him to do, and that's a part of all of us here tonight. And there is the bringing about to a more conciliatory attitude in the heart of this one. even though he still has problems and the book closes. It has the grace of God in it. It has the love of God in it. It has the fatherhood of God in it. And it speaks always to my heart when I read this very, very short book. Now, there are many folks who live in our society today, especially in our religious society, who don't believe in the book of Jonah. And very often when you speak to somebody about the Word of God, And the Bible being the inspired word of God, very often they'll come back to you with this sort of a question I say, but you don't really believe the book of Jonah, do you? You don't really believe that a whale could swallow a man and preserve this man alive and deliver him after three days. You really can't believe that, can you? And I like the faith of the man who said, listen, if the Bible had said that Jonah had swallowed the whale, he said, I would have believed that. Now that's not blind faith, brethren. That's having faith in a God who can do anything. That's having faith in a miracle working God. Now there are folks today who say the book of Jonah is simply an allegory. There are those who say it is simply a myth. There are those who say it is simply a parable. It's simply something that was made up to illustrate something that needed to be said. But if this is the interpretation we take of it, we're going to run into trouble when we get over, for instance, into the Gospel by Matthew chapter number twelve and chapter number sixteen and the eleventh chapter of the Gospel by Luke, because the Lord Jesus Christ mentioned Jonah in those places. And he said, As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. And the Lord Jesus Christ said, Now look, when Jonah went preaching to the men of Nineveh, the men of Nineveh repented, and the men of Nineveh shall stand in judgment against the men of this generation because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. He mentioned also the Queen of the South, the Queen of Sheba, who would rise in judgment against the men of the Lord Jesus' generation because of the fact that they did not accept him. And he mentioned also Solomon in that same text. Now, if we say the book of Jonah is simply an allegory or a parable or a myth, you're going to also have to relegate the resurrection of Christ as being an allegory or a myth. You're also going to have to say there was no such person as the queen of Sheba. There was no historical person such as Solomon because these are all mentioned in context with Jonah in those passages we have just quoted. You can't mix up the two. You can't say this is a mythological character and this was a historical character. If it is true in Matthew and in Luke, then it must need be true also in the book of Jonah. I believe in Jonah. I believe he was a character of history. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ reached down and commissioned Jonah to do this particular job that he had for him to do. And there was a real person named Jonah who went through the experiences of being thrown into the Mediterranean Sea, swallowed by a great fish, and delivered some three days later upon dry land. And then he went on to perform the mission which the Lord had given him to accomplish. I believe in the word. And so we find... that this is not the only miracle that we're going to find in the book of Jonah. That is the miracle of the great fish. I believe in the book of Jonah tonight, and I believe you do too, or you wouldn't be here this evening hour. It's a wondrous book. Jonah is the only one of the minor prophets who was mentioned by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jonah is mentioned in the book of Second Kings. In the book of Second Kings, chapter number fourteen, and verse number twenty-five. Speaking here of the king, it says he restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath under the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath heifer. This then would make Jonah a historical person. contemporary together with Jeroboam II, which would put him in about about seven hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ. So I believe that there was a man named Jonah, and if there was a man named Jonah, he must have had the experiences mentioned here in this little book that bears his name. Whether or not this book is autobiographical or not, we don't know. I have a tendency to think it is, but I can't point you to a chapter and verse to tell you so. I believe this was recorded by Jonah himself. And so we pass on. Well, let's get into the book. First of all, in verse number two, you have the action. It says, The word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amidiye. The name Jonah, incidentally, I believe, means dove. And his father's name Amidiye means truthful. So he comes from good parentage, if the names mean anything. The word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amidiye, saying... Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now this initiates the action in the narrative. God has something for one of his children to do. A believer must be obedient to the word of God, and this is what the Lord wants this one named Jonah to do. Go to Nineveh, cry against that great city, and the adjective great there has to do with spiritual potentials. In other words, it's not only a great city in the mind of society of Jonah's day, but it's a great city also in the mind of God. Now we know it's a tremendous city. Jonah is going to travel about one day's journey into the city, which would be about twenty miles, and from outskirt to outskirt this great area of Nineveh encompasses about sixty miles. So twenty days, twenty miles would be about one day's journey. It's a very, very ancient city. You can trace it all the way back to the tenth chapter of the book of Genesis. And God says, now not only is this a great city because of the culture and because of the military might of it and because of the size of it and because of the age of it, but he also says, I cause it to be a great city because of the spiritual potential within it. As God says in the closing of the book, but Jonah, there are a hundred and twenty thousand people in that city who cannot discern the right hand from the left. Should we let all of these perish? Should we let all of these go on in their sin? God says it's a great city because of the spiritual potential which is within it. Now Jonah is given a very, very difficult task. Many of the prophets of the Old Testament were called upon to denounce their neighbors. but very, very, very few of them were ever called upon to go into the midst of those neighbors and denounce them there. This may be what perhaps frightens Jonah. We dare not accuse him of cowardice. I can't find it in the text, but it may be that he is a little bit apprehensive about denouncing a people in the midst of this great heathen metropolis of theirs. The Assyrians, these Ninevites, were a very brutal people. and they were very well known for their military might, and this goes on for a number of centuries. And one of the things that the Assyrians liked to do was to try to capture some of the folks who belonged to the city that they were trying to capture, and they would torture these people in a most fiendish way before the eyes of the people within the city to try to break down the morale and the will to fight of the populace still inside. They love to tear the hands off of their victims and tear their lips off and to flee them alive. And I believe it was Asher Bannapal who loved to make a great pile of the skulls of his captors. And God has asked Jonah to go into this situation and to give a message not of prosperity, but unless you folks get right with God, God's judgment is going to fall. I think a man's Life wouldn't be worth the proverbial plug-nickle, would you? To go one day's journey into a great heathen metropolis who is known throughout the ancient world for its brutality and to preach such a message is there. The God of heaven is going to rain down judgment upon you unless you get right with God. And so Jonah rebelled. But I think in this story here we have, for instance, the potential of God working in the case of a disobedient servant. Now, this thrills my heart. The tremendous grace and love and mercy of God that he should pursue Jonah at all. Jonah runs down to Joppa, gets aboard ship, heads for Tarshish, which we believe to be Spain, and to think that God would take time out to go and to chase this recalcitrant evangelist at all. There must have been scores, perhaps hundreds, were there thousands of people who would have been obedient to the call of God. And think about going over to this wicked Nineveh and say, well, though he slay me, yet will I trust him, and they would have been obedient to go with the message of God. But God takes time out, first of all, to do that which is necessary by way of miracle, etc., to bring this one disobedient child back to himself again. And that speaks to me of the love of God. Praise God that he does that. Before I was saved, or when I was saved, I appreciated the fact that the Word of God says he came to seek and to save that which was lost. Since I have been saved, I have come to appreciate those words in the reverse. that he came not only to save, but also to seek those who had been lost. For this is the truism that when we become disobedient and we stray from the pathway of God, God goes after us and brings us back again. Now you would think God would have more obedient people to go. And if one doesn't want to do the job, why should God bother with him? Let him go his backslidden way. Pick up one who is going to be obedient that the will and the way of God might go on. But God doesn't do that. He chases after the one who is strayed, and he brings him back again. I think it's the same thing you have in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Jeremiah. When the clay crumbled in the hands of the potter, It would have been far quicker and far better for the potter simply to throw away the whole lump of clay than to take the time to find out whatever it was in the clay that caused the thing to crumble. But he took out the pieces of sand or the stone or the bit of shell or whatever it was, and he made that same lump of clay yet another vessel. And that's what the master potter does. That's what the Lord does. He goes after his disobedient children. Why? Because he loves us. The Lord chastens those whom he loves. And he corrects every son whom he receives. I heard a man tell an evangelist one day, you know, since I've been a Christian, the Lord has never had to chastise me. And the evangelist says, brother, you better see whether or not you're really saved. And that man went home thinking serious thoughts. You know, when my daddy, and some of you folks met my mother and father here last year, and you know what size my daddy is, and when I would cross some of the household rules, I had to stand before daddy. Sometimes I had to lay down before daddy, right? I crossed his knees. And dad did like a lot of dads do. He always said, son, this is going to hurt me worse than it will you. You ever had that said to you? Boy, then the pain starts, doesn't it? And I thought in later years, well, if it hurt dead, worse than it hurt me, dead could sure stand the pain better than I could. And I always wondered about that as long as I was a kid. I don't understand this at all. If he loves me, why does he inflict pain? If he loves me, how can he do this to me? But now that I've reached adult years, I understand now what it was. He inflicted pain because he did love me. Because I was strained, because I was going the wrong way, because I wasn't developing the way he wanted me to develop, and he had to inflict pain to bring me back again. He did it not because he hated me, but because he loved me. And this is what God does. Lord, how can you do this to me? God is loved. I'm doing it because I do love you. You're getting a little bit too self-willed. You're getting a little bit too disobedient. You're getting a little bit too forward about saying what you want and what you're going to do. And so the Lord has to exert some corrective measures. And this comes out in this book of Jonah. And it's a wonderful indication of the grace and the love of God. That he does take time to run after us when we go astray. That he does correct us and bring us back again. And so God, rather than commissioning somebody else to do the work, this whole plan and project of Nineveh comes to a screeching halt until God runs after Nineveh and works a few miracles and gets him to come back again. The potential of grace in the story of God dealing with a disobedient servant. The potential also of salvation from the brutality of the Assyrians because primarily of their wickedness. Now, we've mentioned before the ancient world knew the Assyrians as being a brutal people. The Lord used a different word. The Lord said, because their wickedness has come up before me. The brutality was a part of the wickedness. But the wickedness was the overall problem. These folks needed to find the Lord. These folks needed to be saved. These folks needed to repent of sins. and their brutality which they exercised and for which they were noted was only a part of the fact that they were not believers. God says we can solve the problem of their brutality if we'll cause them to kneel down in repentance and seek the forgiveness of God. God said that's the problem. Brutality is only a part of the fruit that comes from this overall tree of wickedness, sin. And you and I face the same thing when we deal with people today. People think it's awful when they bump into an atheist. And many Christians get mad. And they quote Psalm fourteen one. Oh, the Bible speaks about you. You're a fool. And immediately they're a strange. I doubt if you can win him that way. You'd be like Peter. You chop off Malkas here and then you go to Malkas the next day and try to win him to the Lord. And you'll be lucky if you get inside his door. We need to remember this. If a person is not a Christian, He's going to be something else. He's going to believe in the hippie philosophy. He's going to believe in the hedonist philosophy. He's going to be a communist. He's going to be an atheist. He's going to be an agnostic. He's going to be a self-righteous religionist. If he's not a Christian, he must be something else. And we've got to learn to get beyond that outer facade and to reach his heart for the Lord. You know, lots of folks don't like to deal with hippie-type people. We have a lot of them in Daytona Beach. But underneath those rather strange clothes and underneath that long hair and behind that long beard, way inside there someplace, there's somebody that needs to be saved. And God says, that's the problem. The problem, Jonah, is not the brutality of the people. That's simply the fruit which is produced. The problem, Jonah, is their wickedness. They need to know the Lord. And with unsaved folks today, you and I need to face the same thing. If a man is not a Christian, he is going to be something else. Now, don't be frightened when he bumps into you with whatever it is philosophy that he lives by. Don't get mad at him. Don't let him run you off because not being a Christian, he can't live in a vacuum. He must have some sort of philosophy of life, and it may be any one of these that we have named together. God says the problem, Jonah, is the wickedness of these folks. And there's also the tremendous potential here of one believer's ministry. This comes out wonderfully well in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew. Matthew chapter number twelve and verse number forty-one, where the Lord himself says, The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The tremendous potential of what one believer can do if obedient to the Lord and directed by him. Now maybe Jonah's heart would have been a little bit encouraged if he could have read that twelfth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew, but he couldn't. For the Lord would have us go not by sight but by faith. But this is the potential of the ministry of just one believer. thousands upon thousands upon thousands of folks believed in the Jehovah God of heaven because of the ministry of one person. One person. Despise not the day of small things. When you're asked to give your testimony or when you have an opportunity to speak to somebody, you never know how far that testimony is going to go. You never know how far a track will travel. You never know how far a prayer will carry. Despise not little things. Here's an indication now of the tremendous ministry that was given to one man when you consider especially that he didn't want to go in the first place. Just the ministry of one believer who finally did what God wanted him to do. I think of this when I see our Sunday schools meeting together. How do we know who there are in those in those Sunday schools. And barring the soon return of the Lord, out of our Sunday schools will come the future full-time workers and the Christian businessmen and all these folks that the Lord needs, the foreign missionaries and all of these other ones. And they're in our Sunday school today. And we never know in our Sunday schools who they are or what they will be called upon to do or unable to do by God if you and I are faithful to hold them up before the throne of grace. The tremendous potential. of one ministry, of one believer, especially when he didn't want to go in the first place and wasn't happy when he got there in the second place. And yet God used him. The tremendous potential here. Well, that's the action. That's how it starts in verse number two. Now, of course, you get a reaction in verse number three. God says, Go unto that great city Nineveh and cry against it. But, verse three, Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord and went down to Chapa. Here it speaks about fleeing from the presence of the Lord, and there are those who say, you see, the ancient Jews believed in a local God, like the Canaanites did. And so Jonah thinks if he can get over here to Spain, that he'll be out of the place where God can ever reach him. He'll be out of God's territory, as it were. But this is not so. Because this tremendous prayer that Jonah prays in chapter number two has many quotations from the Psalms. And in the book of Psalms over and over and over again we have the teaching, Where shall I go to flee from thy presence? If I flee into heaven, behold thou art there. If I go into Hades, behold thou art there. They knew there was no getting away from the presence of God. What Jonah is trying to do is to get away from the area of service. Now he was called upon to go about five hundred miles northeast from where he was to Nineveh. But by turning around and getting aboard ship, he was going to go about two thousand miles west to Spain. Rather than go cross-country, he was willing to go the whole length of the Mediterranean Sea so that he would not be available for service under the hand of God. This is what it means when it says he sought to escape from the presence of the Lord. And people today still try to do the same thing. This past fall in another state, a man told me, I go to a big church because I want to get lost in the crowd. Now, he's doing the same thing that Jonah did here. If I'm only one of a huge congregation, Maybe I won't have to teach a Sunday school class. Maybe I won't have to serve in some official capacity. Maybe I won't be involved in the visitation program or some other thing. I like to get lost in the crowd. He was trying to remove himself from the area of service. And this is what Jonah is trying to do here, to flee from this area of service. Now in the first part of verse number three, first of all, he tries to get rid of his commission. to put himself out of commission. Well, the Lord wants somebody to go to Nineveh, but if I'm in Spain, it follows logically that I can't go, and if I'm not in the place where I can be used of God, then God will, of necessity, have to use somebody else. So first of all, he's trying to get out of his commission. Now when he goes down aboard the ship in verse number three, And now he's out of control. In other words, what Jonah is saying now, the minute that this ship is six feet away from the dock, you see, I won't be able to change my mind if I wanted to. If I experience remorse or repentance aboard ship, how can I be back again? Once the gap between the dock and the deck become so great that I can't leap over it, then I can't go back even if I change my mind. Now I've put myself into a situation which is beyond my control. Say, Lord, boy, I changed my mind. I sure like to go. But Lord, here I am in the Mediterranean Sea. And I see I'm just not available. I just can't go. He puts himself into a situation where he is completely out of control of the situation. And the last thing we note about Jonah in this situation is this. We find him down in verse number five. He's down into the sides of the ship and he's gone to sleep. Now he's completely out of contact. He doesn't know what's going on at all now. He's unconscious as far as the outside world has gone. First of all, he's out of commission. Now he's out of control of the situation. And last thing, he's out of contact. And some folks like to do this. Well, this ought to be done. That ought to be done. But I'm just not in the position to be able to do it. This is what Jonah tried. Now you notice also... It says he went down. Perhaps it's been pointed out to you before, the series of downs that you have here. He rose up to flee and he went down to Japa. And so he went down into the ship. And then finally he's gone down into the sides of the ship fast asleep. Now the devil comes along and he tempts us by saying, you know, if you don't serve the Lord in this way, it's a step upward. You'll have more freedom to do the things that you want to do. You won't be criticized if you serve the Lord the wrong way. You won't be responsible to any of your Christian brothers and sisters. Now, the way of freedom, the way up, is to not do the will of the Lord. But the Bible teaches in both Testaments that when one refuses to do the will of God, it's always a downward path. He went down to Joppa. down into the ship and then down into the sides of the ship and was fast asleep. Down, down, down. And I always like to link it up with Philippians chapter number two. Because there it lists the series of downward steps that the Lord Jesus Christ took. Why? Because you and I were way down there. And finally it's way down at the bottom and he was faithful unto death, even the death of the cross. And so our Savior had to come down and down and down and down. Why? Because you and I, away from God, we had gone down and down and down and down. So here he is now, down in the sides of the ship, all fast asleep. Also it's very evident here, this very, very pregnant phrase, so he paid the fare thereof. That's always a very serious note. It's always a very succinct note. He paid the fare thereof. Or he paid the fare of it. Of what? Of going down. And this is true, isn't it? When a Christian steps out of the way of obedience, when he gets to the point where he no longer wants to trust and obey, he begins to go down and every step that he takes, he pays the fear. A number of months ago, a dear friend of ours had a personal problem. I won't relate it to you. But it was a crushing blow because there were so many of the young folks who for so many years had looked to him for Christian testimony. and for the example of what a young man ought to be. And he did something that he wanted to do, a bad thing, and he paid the fare thereof. And now we find that there are some other folks paying the fare also. And this is a tragedy. And it happens, it seems, every once in a while in Christian circles. There's always the fare to be paid. Whenever somebody gets away from the Lord, there's always other lives that are affected by it. I think of the time that I told about the Lord Jesus Christ going across the sea in the ship. And it says, and there were also other little ships with them. And every life that sails across the sea of life also has a satellite or several around and about it. In everything that you do or do not do as a Christian, you will have an effect, an influence in the life of others around and about you. It's a serious thing to pay the fare, to pay the fare. Now, this fare seems to be paid, and there doesn't seem to be any way to get it back again. For the time will come when Jonah will say, the only way to save this ship is to throw me overboard. We don't find in that part of the narrative that the ship's captain or purser says, wait a minute, boys, before you throw him overboard, he's got a rebate coming on his fare because he's not taking the whole journey with us. We don't find any refund given. And no refund is given when somebody pays the fare to get away from the Lord. It costs something. It costs something. And there's no refund. There's no rebate given. And we will find that even if and when that Christian is restored to the Lord, there's always that feeling, well, can I trust him? Can I trust her? Or will they forget the Lord? Will they be disobedient again? It's a serious thing, and it costs a lot to leave the Lord. So he paid the fare of it. And so he went in the company of these ungodly heathen men, as Peter was warming himself around the enemy's fire. So we find Jonah taking a trip with ungodly people. Then you notice also there is now a counter-action. And this we find in verse number four. And it starts with but the Lord. We wonder how long it's going to be before the Lord steps in. Maybe Jonah wondered this same thing. And he rose up to flee unto Tarshish, and he knows that God knows what's in his heart, but there wasn't anything to hinder him from packing his suitcase. And he walked on down the street, and God didn't cause an angel to come down and trick him so that he fell and broke his leg and wasn't able to go to Spain. And he got all the way down to the waterfront, and this ship from Tarshish could have just departed. Jonah could have just missed it. The Lord could have worked it out that way. The Lord could have worked it out so there wouldn't be any ships going to Tarshish at all. The Lord could have worked it so this ship might have just been coming in. But everything seems to fall into place, doesn't it? And I wonder if Jonah wondered about it. Maybe, just maybe, this is what the will of the Lord is. This is the way Christians think sometimes. Well, certainly the Lord wouldn't have let me have gotten this far if he didn't want me to go to Spain. And the Lord didn't hinder me. Jonah one single bit. There was no miraculous writing in the sky, no thundering voice, no host of angels to deliver Jonah and carry him back to his house again, no one there to unpack his suitcase miraculously. Everything seemed to be going a little bit too smoothly. And finally he's aboard the ship, now it's out of his hands, no more responsibility, so he falls asleep. And then you read, but the Lord. But the Lord. sent out a great wind into the sea. The word here is hurled. The Lord hurled the wind and stirred up this huge tempest when the boat, we think, was just a little bit of a ways offshore. Now, here's an unforeseen circumstance that God allows to come into the life of Jonah, and this is what the disobedient Christian never thinks of. He assumes that this pathway will always perhaps be as smooth as it was from Jonah's house down to securing passion aboard the ship. And to get this passage in this particular way, everything seemed to have worked so smoothly. But now comes this unforeseen circumstance. Now the Christian gets sick. Now the Christian loses his business. Now the Christian becomes estranged from his children. Now the Lord brings in this unforeseen circumstance into the life of the Christian, which is going to be the tool to restore the Christian back to the Lord again. And this, the Christian apparently, never thinks of. Here now is this tremendous storm, and the word is hurled. To run from God always means that sooner or later I'm going to collide with God. I'm going to bump into Him sooner or later. A friend of mine once upon a time had a little tiny dog called a Chihuahua. You know, one of those little tiny dogs that's all bark. And every once in a while, my friend would take his little dog out on a regular short leash. And this dog always wanted to fight the St. Bernard dogs and the German shepherds and the Great Danes and some of the horses around and about. And the little dog would leap and strain, but not much damage was done because he didn't have much of a leash to go on. But then I've also seen my friend take his little dog with a big bark. and the big determination out on a big leash. And this leash was a great big long line of closed line rope. And this little dog would start out and he'd get almost a half a block down the street, going faster and faster and faster and faster. At last I'm free. At last I've gotten away. Now I can do what I want to do. Oh, I've seen that painful experience when at last he's run out of rope. And I've seen that thing snapped to and that little dog bounced six or eight feet up in the air and come down. I've wondered sometimes why he didn't break his back, why he didn't snap his neck. I thought he should have been as long as a doxom all the time that he'd come out at the end of that leash. He thought he was getting away with it, but the longer the leash was, the harder was the catching up at the other end. And that's the way it is when we get away from the Lord, isn't it? The longer we get away from the Lord, the more it's going to hurt. when we set you up on the other end of it. And so this is the way I think it is with Jonah here. Well, the last thing we note is this, coming back again to the wonderful grace of God, we find that in the mind of God, apparently from the teachings of this little book of Jonah, that the person is always more important to God than the project. We mentioned this at the beginning. The person is always more important to God than the project. Here are still several hundreds of thousands of people who need to repent of their sins over in Nineveh. But this project comes to a halt because over here God has a disobedient child. Someone that needs to be straightened out. Someone who needs to come to God again and admit Him as Master and Lord of the Life. And so the project ceases for a while. God leaves it right here. And he goes to deal with this person over here. And isn't this the same thing that Peter tells us? He says, In these days there should be many scoffers, saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the Father fell asleep, all things continue as they were. But Peter says, This is the reason, because God is not willing that any should perish. And the long suffering of God is that one more might be saved. and one more might be saved, and one more might be saved. The Christians longing to see the rapture as our brother prayed about it tonight. And we think, oh, Lord, perhaps nineteen seventy-two will be the year. But if it's not, we won't be discouraged. We'll look for him in nineteen seventy-three as we look for him in nineteen seventy-one. And the Christian longs for the rapture of the church. But then think of the troubles that shall come upon the world following the rapture. And God seems, as it were, to delay this project. because here's one more person, one more person, one more person that needs to be saved. And so the projects of God seem to halt when somebody needs to be dealt with. And an indication of the mercy of God, the great grace and the love of God, that he needs to deal with one of his recalcitrant loved ones. I wonder if in closing we might sing, sing together number one eighty-one. Number one, there's no love to me like the love of Jesus ever, always just the same. Even though of this world you may be most lowly, Jesus still loves you, bless his name. Then I thought of Jonah also in verse number two. When far, far away, and in condemnation, feeling no one cared for me, there came a sweet voice, I shall never forget it, Jesus thy Savior still loves thee. number one eighty one There's no love to me like the love of Jesus, ever always just the same. Means all of this world you may be most lonely. Jesus still loves you, bless His name. that never was one like jesus ever always jesus There never was one like Jesus. There's no love like his love to me. Second verse as the last, please. When far, far away, and in condemnation, feeling no one cared for me, There came a sweet voice I shall therefore get it. Jesus my Savior, deal of thee. They never was one like Jesus, ever always true is he. There never was one like Jesus. There's no love like his love to me. Our Father, we give thee praise tonight for the fact that we do have a Lord who loves us and gave himself for us. Father, we pray that you, Dr. Seale, this thy word unto our hearts tonight, that being forewarned we might be forearmed against all of the blandishments and temptations of the devil, to sit down and to take it easy and to stray from thee. Father, we ask thee for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to bring forth fruit from this meeting tonight. We pray it all in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.