Spring City Fellowship
260510Sunday
Sunday May 10, 2026 10:15AM Service

      • Psalm 150:3NIV2011

  • How Great Is Our God
  • God Of Wonders
  • He Is Yahweh
  • Worthy
  • Who Else
  • Tremble
  • Mighty Name Of Jesus

      • Romans 8:37NIV2011

  • Our theme for 2026 is “Embrace Transformation”
    Transformation is the inward change that we experience when we become more like Jesus.
    Jonah is a case study in what happens when someone does not embrace transformation.
    So this series is called Jonah: Escaping the Belly of the Fish.
    The belly of the fish is that place that God brings us to both to preserve us and to persuade us to turn around.
    Maybe you have been in a place like that?
    You get out by learning your lesson
    or you learn your lesson along the way so you never get there.
    Let’s see what lessons we can learn that might help us to “escape the belly of the fish.”
    Last week’s lessons were:
    God hears you, even when you can’t hear Him.
    We learned about indirect reference and how most of what Jonah prayed was right out of the scriptures.
    When you don’t know what to say, pray the scriptures.
    Each of the statements that Jonah prays has a context which points to God’s faithfulness..
    Remember God’s promises and remember your promises too.
    We talked about how Jonah remembers God’s faithful love = His covenant promise - and Jonah renews his own promises to God.
    When we last left Jonah, he is lying on the shore - probably with half of his body sticking out of the mouth of a beached whale.
    But He’s alive!
    Let’s see what God does next!
    We are going to do our scripture reading all together at the beginning.
    So lets stand together for the reading of today’s passage.
    Jonah 3:1–10 ESV
    1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. 6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
    Who knows what God will do?
    That is what the king of Nineveh said.
    That’s what Jonah probably said when he set out the second time, this time for Nineveh.
    That is what we think every time we make a decision.
    No one can accurately or entirely predict the future.
    But we can all learn from past mistakes and let them guide us toward better decisions.
    The truth is that God often surprises us.
    He gives us a free-will - He lets us make choices.
    Often that means that we make wrong choices.
    And then He brings things around and somehow accomplishes His purpose even despite our wrong choices.
    The Bible tells us that God is thinking and acting on an entirely different paradigm from ours.
    Isaiah 55:8–9 NLT
    8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
    Could it be that God knows, even beforehand, about our failures and mistakes and factors all of that into His plan?
    Somehow God’s sovereignty and our freewill are not incompatible.
    God works around our poor choices.
    Sometimes He even works through them!
    Our lessons today are going to help us to better understand how God thinks, how He acts and about His ultimate goal for humanity:

    God gives second chances.

    Jonah 3:1–2 MEV
    1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”
    Get up! - Go! and Tell!
    Those are the same words that chapter one began with.
    And that is not an accident - that is intentional.
    In the 1993 comedy movie “Groundhog Day” Bull Murray plays a self-centered and cynical weatherman reporting from Punxsutawney PA when he is caught in a time loop and has to relive the same day over and over again until he gets it right. Spoiler alert - until he learns how to love.
    Have you ever found yourself learning the same lesson over and over again?
    Like Jonah, you go through one of those near disaster experiences.
    You say, ok God, we’ll do it your way.
    You say that, but deep down you think that God is going to compromise - take it easier on you.
    So you ask God for direction and He comes back with the same words that you didn’t want to hear before.
    Second changes are Gods way of saying, “Let’s try this again.”
    God is so patient with us!
    When we don’t get it right, He just circles back around.
    History repeats itself.
    We find ourselves living the same story over and over again.
    It’s a second chance - it’s a an opportunity to do things differently.

    God thinks you can do better.

    Deuteronomy 8:2 NLT
    2 Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.
    Israel wandered in the dessert for forty years.
    I took a whole generation dying in the wilderness before a fresh start was possible.
    We often think of it as punishment - like God is mad at them for disobeying Him.
    It think, rather, it’s just consequences - They’re not ready for what’s next.
    You could even see it as God’s mercy - He preserved a whole new generation that would have died if their parents had been allowed to rush in unprepared.
    The Bible tells us that God is patient - far more patient than we would ever be.
    As Jonah is waking up on the beach, I’m sure that the boat, the storm, the fish all just felt like a bad dream.
    If I were Jonah’s counselor, I would say he’s been traumatized - he’s going to need a long time of low stress to recover.
    If I were his overseer, I would recommend that Jonah take a sabbatical from ministry for a while.
    He’s in bad shape, physically and mentally - the guy needs a break!
    Maybe there was some time lapse - the text doesn’t say.
    What it does say is that God’s call came to Jonah again in munch the same way it came the first time.
    God thinks you can do better.
    God does not abandon us when we fail.
    Failure does not disqualify you from God’s service.
    In fact it may qualify you!
    The inventor Thomas Edison is quoted as saying “ I haven't failed, I have found 10.000 ways that won’t work.”
    The point that Edison is making is that every unsuccessful attempt brings us closer to a solution.
    Every mistake teaches us diligence.
    Every wrong turn shows us the right way to go.
    Every lie we believed, once discovered, leads us closer to the truth.
    When Jonah fled from God’s presence - God turned it into a detour that brought Jonah back around.
    I can imagine Father, Son and Holy Spirit sitting up in heaven saying, “we’ve got to do something about Nineveh - things are getting out of hand!
    One of them says, “let’s send Jonah!”
    But God the father says, “I know Jonah, He has only ever had to give easy prophecies. If we give him a hard assignment, he’s going to run.”
    So the third member of the Trinity says, “Let him run - that gives me an idea!”
    “Nineveh is about to get such an out-of-the-box preacher, they won’t know what hit them!”
    You see God has an imagination that is beyond our wildest dreams and He will do whatever it takes to accomplish what He really cares about...

    God cares about people.

    2 Peter 3:9 CEV
    9 The Lord isn’t slow about keeping his promises, as some people think he is. In fact, God is patient, because he wants everyone to turn from sin and no one to be lost.
    Peter is writing to a church that is facing intense persecution.
    Peter himself will be martyred shortly after its writing.
    It has been more than three decades since Jesus’ death, resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
    For those of us here today, that would put us back around the early 1990’s
    When everyone was talking about Y2K.
    We were pretty sure that the world was going to end by now - one way or another.
    Guess what? We’re still here.
    And if we could go back and tell ourselves then what we see now - it would have blown our minds!
    Donald Trump is the President.
    We all have personal computers in our pockets.
    People can attend church online.
    We are doing moon travel again.
    Those of us who can remember back that far, did we ever think we would live to see these days?
    Why hasn’t Jesus come back yet?
    If your wondering - guess what - they were wondering the same thing in the first century.
    And the answer today is the same as it was then.
    God is not as concerned about time as He is about people.
    In fact, His priority is to save as many people as possible from corruption on this earth.
    So while it may seem to us that the world around us just keeps getting worse.
    The truth is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is spreading further and faster than ever before.
    But you probably wont hear that on the news...
    But that also means that every day is an opportunity
    It’s a second chance fro more people to hear the word of God.
    And its a second chance for each of us to obey God’s call.

    God meets people where they are.

    The second thing we see in this chapter is that when Jonah gets to Nineveh - instead of it being the horrible task that he envisioned - it was super easy!
    In fact, Jesus even used Nineveh as an example of a successful revival.
    Matthew 12:41 CSB
    41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s preaching; and look—something greater than Jonah is here.
    The text says Nineveh was about three days journey in size.
    The archeology has been done.
    Unless you are talking about the whole surrounding region, the city itself is only about 3-4 miles across.
    More likely, Jonah figures it will take about three days to preach in all the city squares.
    Jonah plans three days of evangelistic meetings and revival breaks out on day one!
    This reminds me of our Hopewell Network Camps. My kids are all involved in camp, first as campers and now many of them as staff. Normally, the climax of camp week is Thursday evening and the whole week has been building up to it. Every one has been praying all week for every camper. And Thursday evening chapel is the big altar call with kids on the floor all over the place praying and giving their hearts to the Lord.
    Well a few years back they began to experience that already on Monday evening when they would give the altar call, everyone began coming forward for prayer - on the first night! And this was happening, not just one year, but year after year. That is when they realized that for many of these kids, they were remembering their encounter with God from the previous year and could wait to get back to camp and pick up where they left off.
    That’s also when they began thinking about having “camp” services throughout the year, so that kids would continue what was begun at camp.
    When Jonah finally got to Nineveh, he found that God has already been there.
    God had already prepared the hearts of the people to receive.
    and all that Jonah has been through has only served to make him an even more eff effective messenger than he would have been otherwise.
    God doesn’t start working when you decide to cooperate with Him.
    You will discover that God is working long before any of us are even aware of Him.

    God has already been working in your past.

    There is a curious phrase in verse three that bears explanation.
    Jonah 3:3 YLT
    3 and Jonah riseth, and he goeth unto Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah. And Nineveh hath been a great city before God, a journey of three days.
    I had to display this verse in Young’s Literal translation for you to notice what it really says.
    Virtually every other translation just has that it was an Exceedingly great city.
    What they translate as a superlative - exceedingly - it the word elohim.
    Elohim is the generic Hebrew term for God or even gods - small g.
    It isn’t in any of our translations - but most commentaries point it out that it could also be translated as “a great city to God” or even “a great city among the gods.”
    What gets lost in translation is that Nineveh is a city of supernatural importance.
    It plays a strategic role in the unseen realm.
    I mentioned on week one that it was founded by Nimrod who also played a role in the rebellion at Babel.
    It seems that through the centuries it has served as a hub for spiritual forces still bent on world domination.
    Ancient Nineveh would have been near Mosul in modern Iraq.
    It seems today there is till conflict in the region which is much bigger that human strategy or human egos.
    There are ancient forces still trying to get the upper hand.
    When God sends Jonah to Nineveh, all Jonah can see is an ancient stronghold of evil - really scary stuff!
    But God uses Jonah’s rebellion to turn him into the perfect messenger to a rebellious city.
    What I am going to say next is not in the Biblical text, but is pretty insightful.
    History tells us that fish had particular significance to the people of Nineveh.
    There are three different theories out there as to a fish connection - none of these by themselves hold up to the rigors of scholarly investigation - but if any combination of them are actually true, it explains a lot!
    Some have taught that the name Nineveh actually means “house of fish.” The word sound like the Akkadian word for fish, specifically the goddess “nanshe” who they would have worshiped.
    Other scholars counter by pointing out that this theory only works if you purposely misspell the words.
    But the Bible is also filled with wordplay - words that merely sound like other words.
    Another theory is that the people of Nineveh worshipped the god Dagon - who is believed to be half-man and half-fish.
    If Jonah washed up on the shore with his torso sticking out of a large fish - and if anyone saw it - that would be enough to spread the rumor that he is Dagon - a messenger of the gods.
    If this theory is true and the Assyrians worshiped Dagon - then it also add something to the story of the Philistine version of this god falling before the ark of the covenant and its human hands and head separating from its fish body.
    A third theory, and probably the most likely is that Jonah was mistaken for one of the Apkallu - demigods (like the nephilim) from the time prior to Noah’s flood.
    Apkallu literally means “wise ones” or sages.
    Legend has it that they taught mankind reading and writing skills.
    They are mentioned in extrabiblical Jewish literature like the Book of Enoch.
    They are depicted in carvings as people walking around in fish-like clothing.
    Some scholars speculate that Jonah’s skin would be bleached from the acid of the fish’s stomach - that his skin would be pale and perhaps even scared and scaley like a fish.
    Even if he didn’t exactly look like a fish - he had an amazing fish story.
    Or maybe he smelled like fish and that got everyone’s attention.
    The Bible only tells us that Jonah’s preaching has a profound impact on the people of Nineveh - these other theories may give us a clue as to how that happened.
    What is likely is that everything Jonah has experienced - what he thought was all a huge mistake - had actually prepared him for this moment.
    God had been there all along.
    Nothing was by accident.
    God was working in every detail.
    Gad was already working in your past...

    To bring you into your future.

    Romans 8:28 NLT
    28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
    The amazing thing about Jonah’s story is the incredible way that God works through Jonah’s life and Jonah doesn’t even seem to know it.
    We are going to see next week that while Jonah is preaching to the people of Nineveh, God is still working on Jonah.
    But let’ take a moment to reflect on what this could mean for you and your story.
    Is there anything that ever happens to us, good or bad, that catches God by surprise?
    We know that God is outside of the limits of time and space.
    We tend to think that is God knows everything, then He would micromanage our lives to make sure everything works out for the best.
    But that is not what the scripture is saying.
    It is saying that He is working in our lives, weaving everything together, including our lives, into a much bigger and better plan.
    And He invites us to try to see our lives from His perspective.
    Colossians 3:1–2 CEV
    1 You have been raised to life with Christ. Now set your heart on what is in heaven, where Christ rules at God’s right side. 2 Think about what is up there, not about what is here on earth.
    Jonah probably thought his assignment was to go to Nineveh and make Jewish converts.
    Yeah, that wasn’t ever really going to happen.
    But God had a bigger purpose in mind.
    Within a hundred years Nineveh would become the most influential city in the world.
    Within a hundred and fifty years, it would fall as Babylon rose to power.
    What Jonah did probably only bought a little more time.
    But during that time, there was a revival in Israel that would produce prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel.

    God turns things around.

    There is a lot more interesting wordplay in this text.
    For example, in verse four, when Jonah say Nineveh will be overthrown.
    The world literally means to be overturned or turned around.
    Jonah seemed surprised when the city repented.
    But that is exactly what he said would happen - just not in the way that he thought.
    There is an old saying that preachers have been using for decades, if not centuries, that comes from this chapter:

    When man repents, God relents.

    In case you had not noticed. there have been some significant things that God has been doing in our own country.
    On April 19-25 there was an initiative called America reads the Bible.
    The entire Bible was read aloud, with voices representing various segments of society reading select passages.
    President Trump read the segment including this famous passage:
    2 Chronicles 7:14 ESV
    14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
    There is also a ceremony planned on the National Mall next Sunday for rededicating our nation to God.
    We are having our own regional prayer gathering next Sunday evening at Sunnybrook Ballroom.
    I expect the same kinds of prayers will be prayed over our region.
    For Jonah, his personal turnaround led to a national movement of repentance.
    I can only hope that God does the same for each of us.
    God knows we need a huge turnaround in our society.
    If things keep going the way that they are going, I fear for what the next generation will have to face.

    It not too late to change.

    For Jonah, repentance began with him.
    He couldn’t confront a principality of spiritual rebellion until God had confronted it in him.
    Lets keep that in mid as we are praying for revival - God may want to start with me.
    I hope I don’t have to spend much time in the belly of the fish to get there.
    Repentance is not a message for “other people” it is a message for all of us.
    1 John 1:9 TPT
    9 But if we freely admit our sins when his light uncovers them, he will be faithful to forgive us every time. God is just to forgive us our sins because of Christ, and he will continue to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
    Repentance is not something we do only once.
    It is something we do continually.
    The word the the Bible uses for repentance means a complete turn around.
    Like instead of Tarshish, we’re going to Nineveh.
    Obeying God, whether we feel like it or not.
    Repentance should become a lifestyle.
    I am continually bringing my heart and my thoughts into the light.
    And God is continually cleansing me and making me more like Him.
    The people of Nineveh demonstrated their repentance by fasting.
    They changes their appearance - their clothes were made from sackcloth.
    They changed their habits - they denied themselves food and water.
    They changed their lifestyle - it applied to every level of society and even to their domestic animal.
    God saw their turn around and responded with His own turn around.
    Sometimes change just needs a place to start.
    You never know how the changes you make are going to result in other changes.
    It’s never to late to change - until it is too late.

    Questions for reflection:

    What does it mean to you that God knows everything? Does that frighten you? Does it fascinate you? If this is true, then if God gives you a second chance, wouldn’t it be best to do things His way?
    God never wastes a trial. We may never know why we had to go through all of the things that we did. But wouldn’t it be amazing if God were to use all of those experiences in a plan uniquely suited to each of us and for His glory?
    Instead of just seeing all that is wrong in the world. What if we could see what God is doing? Do you thing God is actively working to turn things around? And if that is what God is doing, what should we be doing?

      • Jonah 3:1–10ESV

      • Isaiah 55:8–9ESV

      • Jonah 3:1–2ESV

      • Deuteronomy 8:2ESV

      • 2 Peter 3:9ESV

      • Matthew 12:41ESV

      • Jonah 3:3ESV

      • Romans 8:28ESV

      • Colossians 3:1–2ESV

      • 2 Chronicles 7:14ESV

      • 1 John 1:9ESV

  • Carry The World
Spring City Fellowship
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