The Word of God is Not Bound
. . .
God is Sovereign Over His Word
Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.
JONAH 3:3-4
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.
JONAH 3:3-4
This morning we are looking at one of my absolute, most favorite verses of Scripture. Verses 3 & 4 have been words that have always stood out to me and fascinated me. As a Christian, and as a minister of the gospel in particular--one who’s job it is to preach and propagate the Word of God, this passage has always been a word of encouragement and comfort.
On the one hand, it is just amazing to see one of the greatest revivals of all time. A whole metropolis ends up converting as a result of Jonah’s preaching. It is absolutely stunning to see how this wicked, godless people ends up being converted in a massive wave. In less than a month’s time, the whole city ends up turning from their idolatry and the violence that was common to them.
But there’s another interesting thing about this passage. There’s the ministry that led to this revival. That’s something that has been of peculiar interest to me too. That’s because this passage is a reminder of how the gospel is able to sneak about. Because it is God’s word and because of God’s activity in that word, it knows no bounds.
For the last several weeks we have been talking about God’s sovereignty. We’ve talked about how there is not one thing in this vast world that is not somehow governed by God and ruled by him. And we’ve seen how he rules over the fish and the sea. The storms of the sky are subject to him. Even the hands of the mariners are somehow under his rule, because they cast the lots and the lots somehow, mysteriously and not coincidentally fall to Jonah. Last time we were together we even said that the fish’s digestive system is under the governance of God.
Well, this morning, we have yet another reminder of God’s greatness and power. As Jonah goes to Nineveh, Jonah learns the lesson of how God is sovereign over His Word.
And that’s what I want to talk about this morning. I want to tackle this subject a little different than I might normally. I typically have a couple points, each of which is anchored in some way in the text. However, I don’t want to make different points today. I really have only this one point.
And what I want to do is begin by explaining the text and how it makes this point. Then I want to develop this point by way of some examples. I’d like to illustrate how the Lord continues to do this. And then I’d like to end with some practical lessons that we can take away. So that will be our outline. As we look at the text we are going to do some explanation, illustration, and application.
Well, let’s dive in and let me explain what I’m driving at.
I. Explanation
There are some people who use Jonah as an example of a converted man. He’s gone through his fish trial and now he’s given a second chance to go to Nineveh and do the work God had called him to.
At different points I’ve mentioned that this probably isn’t the case. Jonah doesn’t really strike me as a guy who has undergone all that much reform. I think it is most especially clear when you read chapter 4. Jonah describes himself as a pouting prophet. He gripes about how gracious God is and how he had mercy on the Ninevites.
Well, I think you can already see that spirit here in chapter three. It is my viewpoint that Jonah is less than enthusiastic about his mission. And, when you understand some of what the text is saying, you begin to realize that Jonah really didn’t carry out his mission all that well. Maybe you could even say that Jonah failed in his mission.
Let’s look at the text and let me show you what I mean. First of all, you need to understand something about Nineveh and what the text means when it talks about Nineveh.
When you look at verse 2 you see that it calls Nineveh “that great city.” Some of you may remember our earlier message where we talked about the great fish. It was a “gadol” fish. It was a fish of extraordinary size.
Here, and back in chapter 1, Jonah is told to go to Nineveh, that “gadol” city. It is a great city; a city of some size to it.
Now, we would expect that the capitol city of any nation is going to be a big city, right? It’s going to be a metropolis because it is the hub of the nation’s life. And it was a really big city. As a matter of fact, Nineveh was renown in that day for being the biggest city in the world.
But you have to recognize that there’s more to it. The city of Nineveh has actually been discovered. There has been extensive archaeological digging has gone on in that particular place. It’s actually located in the city of Mosel, Iraq today. But the excavations show that the city of Nineveh was only about the size of Ashland.
You recognize that cities today are a lot bigger than they were back then. But, if you were to trace the walls around the city of Nineveh, it would only be about 7 miles in circumference.
I once rode my bike around Ashland, thinking it would be a really big bike ride and that it would take me most of the afternoon. I was actually surprised because it didn’t even take me an hour. Riding 6-7 miles on a bike doesn’t really take you all that long. And you can walk 7 miles in less than 2 hours.
Now, when you look at our text again, you find that verse 3 says that the way the city of Nineveh is described is a lot bigger than little old Ashland. Verse 3 says that was so big that it was a three day journey in breadth. [The ESV says a 3 day journey in breadth. The words “in breadth” are not in the original. It could mean that it was a three day walk to cross it or it may refer to its circumference.] They say that the average person can walk about 20 miles in a day. That’s a fairly good hike. And if you have three days of that, you are clocking in somewhere around 60 miles. That would be like walking around Columbus on the I-270.
That makes a little more sense with what you find in chapter 4 too. At the end of chapter 4 we are told that in Nineveh there are 125,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left and much cattle.
When it says 120,000 people, that can be taken one of two ways. It could be referring to 120,000 children. You know there’s that time up til a child is about 5-6 years old where they don’t know their left hand from their right hand. If that’s the way the text is supposed to be taken, that could mean that there’s over a million people if you think about older children and adults.
Or it could be taken as a Hebrew idiom. When it says 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left, it means that there are people who are so spiritually ignorant that it’s like they are infantile. They are so wicked that don’t have any kind of spiritual understanding.
So, a small estimate, is a population of 120,000 people. Just to give you some comparisons, Columbus has a population of just under a million people. Dayton is Ohio’s 6th largest city with a population of 135,000. The city of Ashland has a population of around 20,000. You can’t get 120,000 people and much cattle to fit within the city limits of Ashland.
So when this passage talks about Nineveh, it’s referring to something a lot bigger than Nineveh proper. And what I would like to suggest to you is that when the text talks about the great city of Nineveh, it would likely include the city of Nineveh and some of the surrounding cities of that time, along with the countryside.
And I think that is what is implied in Genesis 10. In Genesis 10 we read about the descendants of Noah. We are told about how all the people began to spread over the face of the earth. And verse 12 talks about a guy by the name of Nimrod. And it says, “From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.” Genesis 10:11-12
You see that Genesis 10 uses that language of “the great city,” and it is in reference not just to Nineveh, but to the entire network of cities that Nimrod founded along with Nineveh
So, think of them as suburbs of Nineveh. If you are talking with someone from Florida, you might say that you are from Cleveland. But you might actually live in Parma or Bay Village. Someone from Florida probably won’t know where Parma is. But they will probably know where Cleveland is. And since you live in the greater Cleveland area, you can say you are from Cleveland.
Now, what is the point of this. I’m not trying to give a geography lesson. I’m helping you understand something of what this passage is trying to say. Nineveh was humongous. It had somewhere between 100,000 to a million people living in it. And much cattle. By the way, the cattle along could possibly exceed 500,000 cows. That’s a lot of beef. So the space had to be much, much larger than just the city limits of Nineveh.
Look at the text one more time. It says that this city was so big, that it required a three day journey. Let me ask you this, “how far did Jonah go?” It says that Jonah only went 1 day’s journey. What is the text trying to tell us? It’s saying that Nineveh encapsulated a gargantuan territory. But Jonah didn’t cover that much of it. Jonah probably didn’t really get to Nineveh proper. He probably only got so far as the initial suburbs.
You get the feeling that Jonah went in and started preaching, but, being the reluctant prophet that he was, he gave up. He just up and quit. He probably spoke to some farmers and some guys herding cattle out in the outskirts; maybe he went into one of the smaller cities (like Rehoboth Ir). But the text kind of insinuates that he bailed out. He barely got a third of the way into the area known as Nineveh. He probably didn’t even get to the city limits of Nineveh proper.
You can see Jonah, preaching with a scowl. Not because he was preaching about a coming judgment, but rather just because he was preaching. He didn’t want to preach to these Assyrians. He didn’t want to see the people converted. He didn’t want them to experience the mercy of God. And he probably got to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. So he stopped.
But what we read in verse 6? We read that the word somehow reached the king of Nineveh. It sounds like those hicks out in the suburbs heard the message and were really struck by it. They then ran to their neighbors and told them. Then their neighbors ran and told their neighbors. And the word kept spreading and being passed on until it got all the way up to the king.
Now, you see the point I’m driving at. Jonah wanted to keep God’s word from being spread. But God obviously took this as another opportunity to demonstrate how he is sovereign. He is sovereign over Jonah’s disobedience. The Lord demonstrated to Jonah that you cannot put limits on the Lord or his Word. The Lord caused his word to spread from one end of this vast metropolis to the other. It even goes from the lowest to the highest of the land.
It’s like the Lord says, “Jonah, you can’t keep my word from doing what I want it to. I’m going to accomplish my purposes even despite you.”
And that’s the point I want us to take home today. God’s Word is unstoppable. If the Lord so chooses, it can become a forest fire that spreads over huge territories. All it takes is a spark and it can begin to move in ways that we don’t even realize.
And what I want to do now is simply offer you some illustrations of this. You’ve seen what happened in Jonah’s day. But I want you to understand that this was not just a one time thing. This is something that still happens; maybe not on the scale that it did in Nineveh, but God is still sovereign over his Word and he still sends it abroad.
II. Illustration
And my hope is that in hearing some of these examples, it might be an greater encouragement to you. To show you that God is not only sovereign, doing as he pleases, but he sends forth word. And in sending it forth, he always accomplishes what he intends with that word. Sometimes he works over and above us to see to it that his word goes where it needs to go.
Our first illustration then, comes from the city of London. There’s a story about how a man was converted by what I call a “second hand sermon.” You’ve heard of second hand smoking, where you breath in the fumes of someone else’s cigar. This is a second hand sermon; a sermon that you get from someone other than the one who preached it.
It regards a message that Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once preached. Lloyd-Jones was one of the famed gospel preachers of the 20th century. And, as was his custom, he got up and delivered a message on some particular Sunday morning.
Later that week some of the ladies of that congregation had gathered together for tea. They were at a local cafe and they happened to start talking about the sermon they had heard from that Lord's Day. It just so happened that a man was sitting at a table nearby. And he ended up eavesdropping on their conversation. As the ladies talked, he couldn’t help but be drawn in by what he heard. Not only did he get drawn into listening, but this random man at the cafe ended up being converted. The man became a Christian.
This man was not in a church. He was not even being directly evangelized by someone who attended that church. He just happened to be an innocent bystander. God used that sermon and he used those ladies and he used that cafe. And without anyone really knowing it the Lord brought his word to bear on the life of that man and completely redirected the course of his life.
There are other stories we can tell. I love stories about the Gideons and how people get converted simply because there happened to be bibles sitting in drawers of those hotel rooms. People just pick up that book that had been collecting dust and start to read. And voila - they are converted. The word of God had been sitting there, waiting for them. It’s been like a tiger ready to pounce. And it brings people to Christ.
There are all kinds of stories about gospel tracts too. Not just how someone handed out a gospel tract and brought someone to the Lord, but some of the most random, wild stories of how gospel tracts mysteriously came into people’s possession and ended up leading the reader to faith in Christ.
There’s the one story about the cobbler (a shoemaker) who hated Christianity. A long time ago there were people whose occupation was to make and repair shoes. And one of the things that they did when they made those shoes was put paper in the soles. They didn’t have the fancy foam and rubber stuff that we do now. So to put cushion in the shoes, they would line it with paper. And this particular cobbler was given a gospel tract. And he hated the Lord so much that he took that tract and put it in the shoe. He joked that someone would end up stepping all over God’s word. Unbeknownst to them they would trample down the gospel of Christ every time he took a step. That’s how this shoemaker viewed the gospel.
Well, wouldn’t you know, years later the man who had purchased those shoes saw a piece of paper sticking out of the sole of his shoe one day. He picked it up and pulled out this gospel tract. He ended up reading that tract and, guess what happened? He was converted. That cobbler who hated God; he became the very instrument of spreading the gospel.
There’s another story which comes from the 1950’s or 60’s. This is back when they had the full service gas stations. There was a day when you couldn’t pump your own gas. Some gentleman would come out and he would pump it for you. He would check the oil and wash the windows. That was a full service station.
One one particular day it was rather warm out. So they had the door of the gas station open to let the breeze in to help cool things off. At one particular moment a scrap of paper blew into the gas station. It happened to land right by the service desk. That pump attendant picked it up and it happened to have a couple verses of the Bible on it. No one knows if they had thrown it away or accidentally dropped it, but by mere providence it got blown into that gas station. That man ended up reading those bible verses and you know the rest of the story. He ended up getting saved right there. God’s Word spoke to him and convinced him that he needed to trust in Christ.
There are other stories about how the word of God simply takes its time. God is sovereign over the distribution of the word. We understand that. But sometimes the Lord has a different timeline. His word takes a little longer to make its impact.
That’s the case with John Newton. Many of you will be familiar with the man who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. Newton was a wretch of a man in his early days. He became a sailor and worked on the ships that were carrying slaves for the slave trade. One night there was a terrible storm and he was sent below deck to pump water out of the haul of the ship. The ship was taking on water and he was in fear of losing his life. In the dread of those moments he began to recall the Bible verses his mother had taught him as a child. She died when he was only 6 years old, but it was almost 18 years latter that those words had any noticeable effect upon him.
Maybe that’s a good reminder to you moms just how important you are. Don’t underestimate the things you are teaching your kids. God is sovereign. Those things you stuck in your kid’s head may bop around in there (and maybe even seem lost). But who knows what may happen in the future.
There’s another story that I have heard about a missionary who went to a particularly dangerous country. He tried to minister there, but he ended up being killed. Muslim terrorists came in and took his life. A little later another missionary came to replace him. It wasn’t long afterward that he was kidnapped. They threw a blanket over his head and shoved him into a vehicle. It was feared that he had met the same fate.
That wasn’t the case at all though. After driving some distance they stopped and pulled him out of the van. They took him into a large, dimly lit room. When they took the blindfold off his head he was face to face with over 500 Muslim men. They told the missionary that they wanted to know more about this Jesus.
You see, the first missionary had been killed, but the word of God continued to live. They continued to talk about the things this missionary had said. Some of them were struck with guilt for having taken his life. Some of them had even had dreams about the God of this missionary. And now there were 500 of them standing there asking his replacement to tell them more about how they can follow Christ.
I believe I’ve told you before about the conversion of Dr. Ronald Wallace. Wallace was an atheist and he hated Christianity. He would often go to seminars and conferences on atheism just so that he could get more material to rip apart Christianity. And one well known atheist leader was coming to his town one day. And he went to that conference and it was doing just what Wallace wanted. It was ripping apart Christianity.
At one point in the lecture the atheist said, “Just to show you how absurd Christianity is, let me read you this passage from the New Testament.” And he read a passage about the resurrection of Christ. And right at that moment, Wallace was converted.
If that sounds far fetched, here’s one that is even more crazy. There’s a young man who I met in Cleveland who converted to Christianity in one of the most far fetched ways I think I have ever heard. She was an atheist and she was converted by reading comments on a facebook page.
Now, if ever there was a miracle, that is it.
Those are just a few stories that I have come across over the years. They are all stories of how God has caused his word to multiply and abound. We know that these are not the usual way that the Lord works. The Lord does have more ordinary ways of convicting and converting sinners. The preaching of the word and regular discipleship are the normal means he uses to bring people to faith. But we should recognize that the Lord can work above and beyond those means too. Those things can sometimes just be the springboard for the greater work that God wants to do with his word.
And it just goes to show that nothing can stop our God and nothing can stop His word. Our God is sovereign over his word and he can make it fly to the ends of the earth if he so desires.
Now that we’ve illustrated this principle, let’s think about some practical applications we can draw from it. How should an understanding of God’s sovereignty over his word effect us?
III. Application
There are a couple applications that I would like to point out. The first is simply the encouragement that we should have in regards to the ministry of God’s word.
1. We should be optimistic when it comes to the work of the gospel.
Unfortunately, we all too often get discouraged because we don’t see any kind of fruit from our labors. Maybe you as a parent have these feelings with your children. Maybe you have witnessing opportunities with some people that you’ve come across in life. Or maybe it is just that you get discouraged that it doesn’t seem like much is happening with the ministry of the church. Why is the church not growing? Why does it seem to be so fruitless.
My encouragement to you is that you be encouraged. You don’t know what may be happening. Jonah certainly didn’t know what was happening. John Newton’s mother certainly didn’t know what was happening. Those people who were mourning that missionary’s death didn’t know what was happening. To them, the results probably looked pretty dismal.
Scripture tells us in 2 Timothy 2:9 that “the Word of God is not bound.” Paul was in chains for his preaching. He was facing prison time for his work as an apostle. But he tells Timothy not to be discouraged because the word of God is not bound. The word of God has incredible freedom. It can be passed from person to person. It can be like a little bird that flies about and lands where ever it pleases, just like a tract that just happens to blow into a gas station.
So you should be encouraged. Knowing that God is sovereign over his word and that it is not in anywise bound to these walls should instill in you an optimistic spirit. God might not be doing something like that every day, but there certainly is potential. And some of our own stories might not even be known until we get to heaven.
So don’t ever underestimate God’s word and don’t ever get discouraged when it comes to the ministry of that word. God’s word is not bound.
2. We should be praying that God will make his word to abound.
If God can make his word do things that far exceed what we possibly could imagine, doesn’t it make sense that we should ask him to make his word fly off and work far beyond the reach of our own voices?
I hope it makes sense because that’s exactly what Paul exhorts us to do in 2 Thess. 3:1. Paul says, “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you.” Paul says we should pray that the word of God should speed ahead. Some versions say pray that God’s word would run swiftly. Another version says that the word of God would spread rapidly.
If you think about it, that’s kind of funny what Paul commands us to do. If we take it literally, Paul says we should pray that the word of God should grow feet and start moving on its own. The word of God is supposed to run swiftly and speed ahead.
Paul knows that he can only reach a certain amount of people. He can only do so much. He might be more diligent than Jonah. Jonah stopped short and quit. Paul might be working tirelessly, but his reach can only go so far.
So what are we supposed to do? We should pray.
After church you may go home and have lunch. You can discuss what you all learned that morning. Now what? You have the rest of the afternoon. Before you take that nap or go off to play pickleball, take a few moments and ask God to make that word grow some feet.
Say “Lord, that message this morning was really helpful to me. I pray that you would send it far and wide and make it a blessing to someone else.”
Or maybe you could ask the Lord to give you an opportunity to share some of what you learned with someone else. Maybe you might be the one who will give the word a little more traction. Maybe you can pass it on to someone who will end up passing it on to someone else, just like what happened in Nineveh.
And while you are at it, pray that the word of God would infiltrate those hard to reach places.
3. Pray that the word of God would infiltrate hard to reach places.
Think about places that seem impenetrable. It is so hard to get the gospel into those Pacific Islands, many of which are still closed off to the outside world. Pray that the word of God can somehow seep in there.
And pray that the word of God would go places like the highest places of our own land. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the gospel infiltrated the White House? I’ve heard that there are Bible studies that are conducted on capitol hill. What if Nancey Pelosi were to sit outside and happen to overhear one of those Bible studies? Wouldn’t it be amazing if Elizabeth Warren had a worksheet from a Bible meeting fly into her office by chance.
Don’t think it could happen? It happened in Nineveh. Somehow the word of God got the attention of the highest position of the land. The king of Nineveh came under great conviction and ended up making a decree of repentance and fasting just because he happened to have someone in the same room who had heard from a neighbor that this Jewish God was going to send a massive calamity upon them.
If you think about it, we are to pray that God’s kingdom may come and his will would be done. And that means that the gospel needs to get moving. It needs to be unleashed. People need to come under its conviction and start talking about it.
There are likely many other things we could say by way of application, but let me finish with this:
4. Knowing that God is sovereign over his word should make us love and honor the God.
That was the intent of this passage, after all. As Jonah writes to Israel, he’s reminding them of who they should worship. The gods that they were following, what power did they have? They couldn’t move a dry, withered leaf. If those gods had any power, wouldn’t they have stopped God’s word from spreading?
Yet the gods of Nineveh just let it slip right past them right to the king. This is just a reminder that our God is supreme. And he alone is to be worshipped.
And it is my hope that today the word of God comes to you. I hope that you come to understand that our God is the sovereign God; who alone is to be worshipped and served.
Conclusion
On a certain occasion Jesus and his disciples came to a place called Caesarea- Philippi. And he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter responded by saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus responded by saying, “You are Peter and upon this rock (the rock being that very word that you have confessed), I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
When Jesus said that, he was standing right at the gates of hell. Caesarea Philippi had a temple which was devoted to the god Pan, who is the god of the underworld. And his temple was a large cave which was called “the gateway to hell.”
Jesus was saying that he was going to build his church. The gates of hell would not prevail. In other words, the word that Peter had professed would go forward. It would march forward and conquer Caesarea Philippi. It would sprout wings and fly all over the Roman Empire. The word of God would end up spreading all over the world. And it continues to do so in amazing ways even today.
And it is just a reminder that we should put our hope in the God of that word. We should love and trust him and not let any false word into our lives.