Nineveh That Great City
Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/FQ77ob8YMaU?list=PL4ByrircmXL4AIWLkRrpeoEq_A6VmA54y
As the preaching of Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so Christ's preaching was a sign to His generation.
As king and nobles, with the common people, the high and the low, repented at the preaching of Jonah (Matthew 12:41) and united in crying to the God of heaven, His mercy was granted them.
When Jonah learned of God's purpose to spare the city that, notwithstanding its wickedness, had been led to repent in sackcloth and ashes, he should have been the first to rejoice because of God's amazing grace; but instead he allowed his mind to dwell upon the possibility of his being regarded as a false prophet. Jealous of his reputation, he lost sight of the infinitely greater value of the souls in that wretched city.
Then the Lord gave Jonah an object lesson. He prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
Again God spoke to His prophet, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? Jonah 4:7-11
The lesson is for God's messengers today, when the cities of the nations are as verily in need of a knowledge of the attributes and purposes of the true God as were the Ninevites of old. Christ's ambassadors are to point men to the nobler world, which has largely been lost sight of.