Shalom-shalom; peace in the name of Yeshua. This is Crystal Sharpe and welcome to the Ancient Scrolls program. Today is the first day of the week, it is Sunday June 17th.
Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers who are listening today, and to our Father who dwells in heaven; and to my husband my brother who is a step-father, my cousin Bernard Sharp, and Lewis Williams. We appreciate men who love their families and they love God.
Last program I did a teaching on Jonah anointing Jehu in II Kings 9, and that this had set off a chain of events concerning the destruction of the idolatrous Jezebel and the children he had by her, plus his descendants from various other concubines. Their demise is a message of what God is going to do with those idolaters at the end of the age.
Today, so today we are going to finish out Jonah chapter 3, and talk about his being a sign to Nineveh, Yeshua used Jonah as a sign to his generation and he is a sign to the last days. Jonah was an end of days prophet.
Let us go pray in the name of Yeshua since it is the only name that Father God acknowledges.
Father,
Blessed are You O, Lord, our God, King of the Universe over heaven and earth. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. Thank You, God, that Your mercies endure forever. Thank You that we have a way to the Father, our Creator, and that is through the name of Yeshua.
Father, as I usually do, I confess the sins of this nation: abortion, and murder, the blood of the innocent cry out from the ground. The earth is polluted with the blood of the unborn, and the land is defiled with sexual perversions. This nation is guilty of deviance, of abhorrent perversions, of child molestation, abuse, adultery, idolatry; fornication, alcoholism, this nation is guilty of human sacrifice, human trafficking, zoophilia, hatred, homosexuality, witchcraft, drug abuse, greed, lesbianism, gender confusion. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can rescue us from ourselves and from the devil.
I pray for the release of truth in this nation, and I pray, Father, that You will call forth a people that are not afraid of preaching the truth. They won’t preach for fame, or for gain; they just want Your kingdom to be advanced.
I pray for those people in this nation that are alethophobic and veritaphobic, that You will deliver them from their extreme fears of truth. We pray You will push back these entities of darkness, these principalities, from the borders of this nation; dethrone them, the powers and rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places.
We pray You will take the stony hearts out of this nation’s people, and surgically remove the thick callouses from them, and plow the hearts to receive the Seed, the Word, of the Lord that will give them eternal life. Take every crooked way out of this nation.
We pray Your Spirit of repentance will come like a tsunami over this nation, over the nations, and Israel. We pray that You would give Your Spirit of wisdom, knowledge and understanding to President Trump. Take every crooked way out of him, out of the people in Congress, the Senators, Supreme Court, and every government seat, and out of our pulpits, and pews. We have sinned against You, Father. We have offended You greatly. We are asking for a cleansing of this nation. We pray in the name of Yeshua.
So, let’s get started on the teaching of Jonah.
As a lead to chapter 3, Jonah is delivered out of the fish’s belly and vomited out on dry land.
Now the word of the Lord, came to Jonah the second time saying: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.”
- So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. 4. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (it states here that Nineveh would be overthrown in forty days, and it parallels the nation of Israel during the 1st century as it took forty years after the death of Yeshua for Jerusalem to be overthrown by the Romans. So that was their end of days, until 1948 when Israel became a nation once again. For about 1,908 years, they were dispersed from their nation again.)
- So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying: Let neither man, nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. Verse 8. But let every man or beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish? Verse 10. Then God saw their works; and that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
Jonah has to be the most successful Old Testament prophet ever to have a whole city of 120,000 people repent. It was a massive revival of biblical proportions. On the day of Pentecost 3000 souls received Yeshua and were baptized with the Holy Ghost. Acts
120,000 people repenting was pretty incredible since Jonah did not go to Nineveh preaching repentance, and he did not address any of those things they were guilty of; nor did he say for them to put away their idols or gods. In fact, it was the king of the city that issued a decree with those charges they were guilty of: “Let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.” Jonah 3:8
According to the word Jonah’s message was blunt and direct in that the city would be overthrown; and because of this message Nineveh became a city of reformists.
God told Jonah at the beginning of chapter 3: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and preach to it the message that I tell you.” And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk, then he cried out and said: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
You think Jonah would have cried out: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed”, but many of the translations I have read “overthrown.”
I looked up the word overthrown in the Strong’s Concordance and in Hebrew it would be pronounced “haw-fak” (haphak). It means to turn about or over, return, by implication to change (change could mean a more degenerate change or a change to do better).
So the word overthrown actually is a bit ambiguous concerning which change is meant: but the reason it is ambiguous is because God gave them the liberty to choose which “overthrow” they wanted. Now the way the passage reads to us is that the people of Nineveh understood it to be destruction. Why would they take “overthrow” to mean destruction? Because they knew they were guilty of being evil and violent. They knew at the end of these forty days they were going to be destroyed.
Apparently, they were pretty bright because they immediately set about ingratiating themselves to God with works of fasting and putting on the sackcloth to show God they were serious about changing themselves. They wanted Him to relent of any destruction that was scheduled in forty days, their end of days.
Chapter 3 and verse 5. So the people of Nineveh believed God (you think they would have said believed Jonah, but it says here they believed God).
Why would they begin to believe? What convinced them that something profound was in their midst? Was it the message only, or was it his appearance along with the accompanying message?
Did he arrive at the city with green sea weed still wrapped around his head with the skeletal remains of fish knotted in his hair? Had his flesh become bleached from all the fish’s stomach acid eating away at him for 3 days, and his clothing tattered and torn with sea weed hanging loosely from his shoulders, and a star fish on his collar. If he had not bathed before arriving at Nineveh, one can be sure he smelled of stomach acid, vomit, sea water, and whatever dead refuse was lurking about in the dark. I am thinking he was a spectacle. Nineveh was a pretty good distance away from where he was vomited up on the sands. A person would think this time around, Jonah, would not waste any time to get to Nineveh.
I do believe that Jonah bore some remarkable signs on his flesh of having been in the fish’s stomach. The stomach acid would have created havoc on his flesh as it would try to break down his body for consumption. So, like Yeshua who bore scars from His ordeal on the cross, so did Jonah bear some scars as well.
These scars would be his proof of being in the place of the dead and he came out alive to talk about it.
Ok, I am going to have to move on let’s look at Luke 11:29
And while the crowds were thickly gathered together, He began to say: This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, (what was the sign that generation wanted? To them: the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, scribes, priests, it would be the outward manifestation of the Messianic Kingdom of temporal triumph over Rome and the nations, and of material greatness for the chosen people), and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation. (So what is the sign? Well there could be a couple of signs. Jonah was wrong when he ran to get away from God. He sinned, and he went to the depths of death. Chapter 2, says of his experience: I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried and You heard my voice. For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. And the floods surrounded me ; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me (I was able to capture this sense that every time the whale opened his mouth, the sea waters would gush over him). Then I said I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again at Your Holy Temple. The waters surrounded me; even to my soul; the deep closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head I went down to the moorings of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever (bars of death, you sense his despair of never escaping); Yet, You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD, my God. Salvation is of the LORD. The miraculous sign in the book of Jonah is his being raised up from the dead; and his end of days message to the gentiles, the Ninevites.
The queen of the South (she was a gentile) will rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.
The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.
Yeshua was truly concerned about the spiritual condition of Jerusalem at the time of His living amongst them. Yeshua stated in Matthew 12:39, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. As I stated Jonah was an end of days prophet. The Jewish factions were adulterous and evil, and in this condition they claimed they were serving God, but instead were the enemies of God. They quarreled, bickered, and fought Yeshua from every side.
Let’s look at John 12, and go down to verse 9
Lazarus had died and was raised from the dead; and this happened a few days before the death of Yeshua at Passover. A supper was made for Yeshua and Lazarus was one of those sitting with Him. This is the place where Mary anoints Yeshua’s for his burial, she wipes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. John 12 says a great many of the Jews knew that Yeshua was there and they came there not for Yeshua’s sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus whom Yeshua had raised from the dead. But the chief priests conspired to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Yeshua. So, many of these Hellenist Jews followed after Yeshua.
I am nearing the end of the program.
Jonah was a couple of signs for Nineveh. I would say he had some visible scarring on his body from having been in the fish’s belly; and he was an end of days prophet. Yeshua was hinting at this to those religious sects; and he was saying he was like that prophet Jonah. He had an end of days message that Jerusalem will be destroyed and He was going into the place of the dead to be resurrected.
Nineveh had one prophet come to it and they repented. Israel had hundreds come to it and they killed them, and finally killed the son of God.
Mark 12 is a parable about an owner of a vineyard who built a tower and some wine vats and leased out his vineyard to others. The owner leased out the vineyard to others. The time came the owner wanted some fruit from the vineyard and he sent servants to fetch some. Those leasing the vineyard abused the servants shamefully. Eventually he sent his son to them thinking they would honor them, but they killed him… (read where the priests know he is talking about them)
Nineveh, a gentile city, did not strike down Jonah. Nineveh had a reputation for being an exceptionally cruel people. There are reliefs found on the walls of ancient Nineveh of the Elamites being conquered by the Assyrians and they flayed alive these captives for sport, their eyes gouged out, heads cut off. I saw one relief had the head of the king of Elam hanging from a tree like an ornament.
For about 50 years Nineveh was able to perform righteous acts, but then later it became a rod of God’s wrath against Israel. So, you see, Nineveh’s survival later served as a useful tool to punish Israel. To some degree Jonah may have known this would happen and had no desire for the citizens of Nineveh to survive.
Nineveh is symbolic of the future Babylon. As Nineveh did to the Elamites so will Babylon do the servants of God, and Israel.
All the nations will gather against Israel. All the nations that were once Christian are now apostate. Zech 14
Next week, if it is God’s will, I will have another teaching. Remember to walk by faith, not by sight. Ask God to cleanse you from all unrighteousness everyday. Keep your spiritual garments clean from spots, wrinkles and blemishes. Love God, love your neighbor.
