Good morning. So before I read Jonah 4, I think we need to say that God has already told Jonah that he's going to spare the city. Correct?
God's already told him. So Jonah jumps right, oh, I've been here a couple of years, I think. Right? Yeah.
Okay. So Jonah chapter 4. Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord, please Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?
That's why I fled to Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.
And now Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord asked, is it right for you to be angry?
Jonah left the city. He found a place east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city.
Then the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble.
Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. And when dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant and it withered.
As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted and he wanted to die.
He said, it's better for me to die than to live. Then God asked Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
Yes, it's right, he replied. I'm angry enough to die. And the Lord said, you cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and you did not grow.
It appeared in a night and it perished in a night. So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between the right and their left, as well as many animals.
This is God's word.
All right, well, here we are. We have made it to the end of the book of Jonah. Our journey is wrapping up today.
And so buckle up. We've got some stuff to cover this morning and about 3000 words ish to do it in. So we'll see how this goes. All right.
We've we've we've it's here where all of the themes that we're going to we've seen throughout the book of Jonah, they're all going to kind of coalesce and come together here in this final chapter.
And it's also here in this final chapter where we're going to for the first time witness Jonah and God in an exchange.
So up till now, we've heard God speak and we've heard Jonah prayer speak, but we haven't yet seen them in a dialogue saying and responding yet. And so what will we learn?
Well, for one, we will learn through this study.
Well, we'll finally hear why Jonah, he finally expresses his reason for running in the first place.
And we're going to have to look into that a little bit to really understand it. And so chapter three left us with a revival in Nineveh. Nineveh is bustling with a revival.
God, his grace is being poured out.
It says Jonah went there and preached a message of utter destruction to the place to Nineveh.
Forty days and it'll be overturned.
And that was the message he brought it. But the king of Nineveh, he responds by declaring a fast and turning.
Right. We said the word shoo, right. Turn, turn, repent, shoo from your way away from evil and toward God.
And that's exactly what the city of Nineveh did.
Who knows? God may turn and relent. He may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish, said the king of Nineveh.
Who knows? Maybe God will show mercy.
And the Bible says that God sees their response and just like he promised, just like he promised in keeping with his divine nature and character,
he relents from bringing disaster on those who turn and repent.
He did not do it is what it says. And that's how it ends. That's how chapter three ends.
Well, how does chapter four begin then? Like chapter three could have ended literally and the book could have been done.
And all of us would have gone, man, Jonah is an awesome book about how God can show mercy on a city and they'll turn and repent and come back to God.
What an amazing way it could have ended. Jonah chapter three ends with and God didn't do it.
And we go, yes, our God is great. And chapter four begins with Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.
Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. Jonah's response to the revival in Nineveh is displeasure and anger.
Displeasure and it literally in the Hebrew, it says that it was evil to Jonah.
It was evil to Jonah. Jonah turning from their evil and God relenting from bringing disaster on them is wrong to Jonah.
That is an evil disaster. Nineveh has turned and Jonah has turned as well.
How backward, how upside down. So what does he do?
Well, we get to Jonah's second prayer in the book of Jonah and his second prayer reveals his reason for running in the first place.
Please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?
That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God,
slow to anger, abounding in faithful love and one who relents from sending disaster.
And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
Why did Jonah run? Why did he flee from the presence of the Lord?
I asked a question a couple of weeks ago in our message. Does Jonah know the God he claims to worship?
Does Jonah know his character? Does Jonah know the Lord as he claims to fear?
And that was in question throughout the book. And the crazy part is we get to chapter four and we realize he does.
He actually does know the Lord. He knows what kind of God he is. He doesn't like him for that.
He despises him for being the God that he is, the God that he revealed.
He doesn't like it. He hates him for it. He can't stand to even live with a God like that, one that would pardon those people.
Does he even know the... Does this God even know the pain and distress that those people have caused on the Israelites,
let alone the rest of the world? Doesn't this... Doesn't our God care about his own covenant people more than any other people on the earth?
Aren't they dear and precious to him? Why would he show this kindness or this kind of mercy to this wicked and perverted Assyrians?
Why? Jonah knew that God would do this because Jonah knew the history of God's people.
In fact, he uses the very words that God reveals himself to Moses back in Exodus chapter 34.
It's the verse that we read at the front end of the service. And one pastor described these words in Exodus 34, verse six and seven,
as the John 3.16 of the Old Testament. They're repeated over and over again throughout.
You can't not know them. In fact, they're very familiar to anyone who's read the Bible or been around the church for long.
The Lord, the Lord is compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth,
maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion and sin.
So he knew that God's intention all along was that he wanted to show mercy. He wanted to pardon the Ninevite people.
Jonah's experience in contrast to how he is responding to the Lord's mercy to Assyria is what is the most egregious
because Jonah experienced that same mercy only a couple chapters back.
He experienced that same mercy as he was wayward, running from the presence of the Lord.
And the Lord showed him severe mercy and he saved him through judgment as he appointed a fish to swallow him after being thrown overboard to certain death.
The Lord had shown him his gracious compassion.
And what did it actually result in? It actually resulted in this beautiful prayer of thanksgiving, right?
I mean, it was lacking repentance, but it was thankful. God saved him through judgment.
So what has happened to Jonah's words? Salvation belongs to the Lord.
Remember he said that in chapter two? Salvation belongs to the Lord.
How about this salvation of the Ninevites? Does that belong to the Lord?
So we know that Jonah is angry with God and we know it is because the Lord is abounding in faithful love.
But that doesn't actually answer why God's mercy and grace would so enrage Jonah. Not fully. So let's keep going.
How does God respond to Jonah's temper tantrum? With a question. A really cutting question if you think about it.
Think about where you're at. Think about what you struggle with.
Think about the areas that you think are of utmost importance in your life or in this world.
And then hear the words of the Lord say, is it right for you to be angry? Period. Question mark.
Is it right for you to be angry? Jonah, have you a right to be angry with my mercy and grace?
Jonah, what gives you the right? What gives you the right?
Well, there's actually a little wordplay here as well. There's also a demonic fly attacking me. Sorry.
There's a wordplay and you guys can see it, right?
We don't want another one of those debacles where you're watching the live debate, right?
And the fly, you guys remember that? Fly gate.
There's a little wordplay that's going on here as well. To be angry, right?
Is it right for you to be angry is also translated to be hot. To be hot.
And we're going to see what comes next, right?
Jonah will actually get to experience on the external, the truth of what's happening internally within his heart.
He's going to get to feel it.
So Jonah, if you notice in that scripture, Jonah doesn't even answer God.
God says, do you have a right to be angry? And Jonah doesn't even answer. He doesn't say anything.
He just heads out of town to the east. That's Jonah's M.O., right? Get up and go.
Heads out of town to the east and he made himself a shelter there.
He sat in its shade to see what happens to this city of Nineveh.
Why is he going to see what's happening to the city of Nineveh?
They repented already. God shows mercy on them.
Jonah's still holding out hope. Jonah's still holding out hope, but for what?
He's hoping they screw up.
He's hoping their repentance falls apart, the revival falls apart, that this turn of events fizzles out and he gets,
he's really hoping for a front row seat to the fire and lightning show.
Jonah is still hoping for judgment.
He thinks he has a better read. Jonah has a better read on these people than God does.
And God just needs a little time before he comes around to Jonah's side.
And so he sets up and he watches.
And how does God respond to Jonah?
Then the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble.
Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant.
When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant and it withered.
What on earth are we reading here?
You guys remember when God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah?
It's the same wording here.
Same wording, God appointed a plant.
And God in the first case was providing for Jonah a whale or a fish, a great fish, not a whale, a great fish,
that he might be provided for and learn a lesson through it.
And again, he's providing for Jonah, but there's a lesson behind it.
Even when God, even when Jonah has accused God of the evil of showing mercy to Israel's enemies, God is still providing.
Even in the midst of his obstinate behavior, God is still interacting with Jonah.
It's amazing.
It really is.
But there is a lesson for Jonah in God's provision because verse seven also has the same wording.
Verse six, God provides shade to rescue Jonah from his trouble.
And there's all sorts of wordplay going on here.
Trouble is the same word as evil.
To rescue Jonah from his evil, God provides shade.
Jonah likes the shade because he's in a scorching desert, right?
But the next day, God appoints a worm to kill the plant.
So what's the deal with all this?
So much of the culmination of this story is wrapped up in what was happening in the nation of Israel at this time.
And it's important for us to know that so we can better understand what's going on here.
So what is going on?
Israel has consistently disobeyed God. Consistently.
They've rejected his headship over their nation and their people, and they've rejected his covenant over and over again through idol worship.
They have become evil and oppressive, just like all the nations that God has rescued them from.
The Lord has been patient with Israel decade upon decade.
But his long suffering is now shifting to bring the covenantal promise of disaster and destruction on all those who reject God and disobey.
It's promised.
It's not a mystery.
It's not a surprise.
It's a blessing of obedience, blessing, disobedience, curses.
And so the Lord is now bringing about and we get some of the the insight from some contemporaries of Jonah.
There are two prophets, particularly who are contemporaries of Jonah.
If you want to take your study deeper into this whole Jonah theme, then go read the Book of Amos and go read the Book of Hosea,
which is the first time as Jonah's life and ministry.
And listen to these words of the Lord that came through the prophet Amos to Israel.
These are words to Israel that God spoke through the prophet Amos.
I give you, it begins in verse six, Amos, I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities.
That sounds like a good blessing from the Lord.
I gave you in all your cities a shortage of food in all of your communities, yet you did not return to me.
This is what the Lord declares.
I also withheld rain from you while there was still three months until harvest.
I sent rain on one city, but no rain on another.
One field received rain while a field with no rain withered.
Two or three cities staggered to another city to get drink water and were not satisfied.
Yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.
I struck you with blight and mildew.
The locusts devoured your crops.
I sent plagues like those on Egypt.
I killed your young men with the sword.
I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
Yet you did not return to me.
This is the Lord's declaration.
Therefore, Israel, this is what I will do to you.
And since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God.
He is here.
The one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to men.
The one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth.
The Lord, the God of armies, is his name.
Wow.
To his covenant people.
Both Amos and Hosea prophesied that Israel will be destroyed and that her people will be taken off into exile.
It's gone.
The covenant has been violated.
The promises of God.
We love to say, we have a song, all your promises are yes.
Even the ones about disobedience.
Even the ones about judgment.
Even the ones about rebellion.
All your promises are yes.
Jonah knows all of this.
He knows the time is coming.
He knows.
And what else does he know?
He knows that Assyria, Assyria is the world power of the time.
Of course it's going to come through them.
It's going to come through Assyria.
He knows that.
They've already been threatening the northern borders of Israel.
They've already subjected some regions to be forced to give tributes of their resources.
It's only a matter of time.
Assyria is coming.
Jonah knows Assyria is the one who will ultimately be God's servant to bring about the destruction of his homeland, his nation, and his people.
And what is he supposed to do?
He's supposed to go and preach a message of repentance to them.
How dare you, God?
How dare you ask me to do that?
He wants Assyria destroyed.
Yet he knows his message is one of salvation.
And he can't stomach it.
Back to that plant.
What does it have to do with anything?
We have to truly understand.
I'm sure that scripture in Amos can be shocking because we're so used to a triumphalism.
A God who just loves me and accepts me.
This is the same God.
We have to see that God's sovereignty is not only restricted to acts of compassion.
God's sovereignty is not only restricted to acts of compassion.
The author of life has the power and the prerogative to give and take away.
That's his and his alone.
He has the power to choose a small, insignificant people out of all of the nations in the world
and to reveal himself and his word to them so that they might become a light and a blessing to all people.
And when they fail to keep his commands and honor him as their God,
the Lord who is like a husband to them, and they forget their husband of their youth,
and they go and they prostitute themselves to other gods.
That's Hosea, right?
That's Hosea.
They go and prostitute themselves to other gods.
He has the right to send a worm to destroy their protection and covering
and allow them to experience the severity of life away from his goodness.
He has that right.
God often turns up the heat on us in order to expose the deepest parts of our hearts.
That heat pushes us immediately to defensiveness.
But you know what defensiveness does?
It shows clearly.
That's a problem.
Out in the open.
Yep.
I don't like that.
That's good for us.
I'm somewhere on this page.
I'll find it.
He is God.
We are not.
We've said this before in our study of Jonah.
He is God.
We are not.
As the sun was rising, God appointed.
There's those words again.
God appointed.
A scorching east wind.
The sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted.
And he wanted to die.
He said, it's better for me to die than live.
And God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
Yes.
Yes, it's right.
I'm angry enough to die.
It literally says, when it says the sun beat down on it, it says the sun attacked Jonah's head.
The sun attacked Jonah's head.
Trying to get through his thick skull.
And ask the question.
God asked that question again with a little twist.
Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
Okay, you didn't get it when we were talking about the city.
Let's talk about the plant.
Let's bring it down to your level.
Let's talk about a plant that popped up one day and went away the next.
Is it right for you to be angry?
And he says, yes, it's right. I can be angry enough to die.
Remember in verse three of this chapter, Jonah wanted to die because of God's right to deliver.
He could not stand the fact that God would show mercy and deliver a people.
And now he wants to die because of God's right to destroy.
How could you take this plant away from me?
Now I'm exposed.
I just want to die.
God's right to deliver.
God's right to destroy.
And so God turns up that heat on us.
He does it to us to expose the deeper parts of our hearts.
He does that heat, that heat moving us to defensiveness clearly exposes the idols of our hearts
where we have put our hope and our trust and our confidence in anything other than God.
And for Jonah, he idolized Israel's special status.
He thought that privilege brought immunity.
I'm privileged.
I'm immune.
We're immune.
He didn't want to lock steps with the Lord in obedience and covenant following.
He demanded that the Lord lock steps with his perspective.
He couldn't stand a God who wouldn't defend his special status.
Tim Keller says in his great book on the book of Jonah that Jonah fell into a kind of extreme
partisanship where he would rather have people destroyed and spiritually lost forever as long
as it benefited his country.
His country and his status had become idols in his heart.
And he didn't care the cost.
He wanted God to be for the cause of Israel instead of Israel for God.
That's what prophets were supposed to do, right?
They're supposed to go to the people and remind them of the covenant and call them back.
And this prophet wanted God to endow special blessings and privileges on a people who had
been disobedient.
He forgot the story of Joshua's encounter with that man outside of Jericho.
You remember that story?
Joshua encounters a man and he says, are you for us or are you for our enemies?
And what does that man say?
Neither.
Not for you or your enemies.
He replied, I have now come as the commander of the Lord's army.
In other words, are you on the Lord's side?
I'm not on your side or their side or anyone's side.
You get on my side.
Jonah wanted a God he could control for his own benefit.
But who did he actually encounter?
Well, he encountered the Lord, the God of armies.
And so in this book that we have been studying, who gets the last word?
God.
God gets the last word.
And the Lord said, you cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow.
It appeared in a night and perished in a night.
So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot
distinguish their right from their left, as well as many animals.
And that's how it ends.
That's how it ends.
God continues to the very last verse to be merciful with Jonah.
He doesn't give up.
He doesn't flick him to oblivion.
He wants Jonah's heart to beat with God's heart, not the other way around.
He wants Jonah to grasp what God's priority is.
He is about saving people.
He is about showing mercy.
The Assyrians didn't have the law of God, as Israel did.
They didn't have the law to guide them.
They didn't have the 10 sayings, the 10 commandments.
They didn't have the tabernacle or the priesthood or the sacrificial system to atone for their sin and their guilt.
Because of sins, corruption, they were unable to make proper moral judgments.
That's what it means when it says they could not distinguish between their right and their left.
They couldn't make proper moral judgments.
Isn't it okay if God wants to show mercy to a people like that?
God asks Jonah.
And how did he show mercy?
God sent Jonah, a messenger of Yahweh, because God wanted to show mercy, but only if they would respond to the word when it came through Jonah.
And it turns out this book shows that Jonah needed serious heart surgery.
He needed some invasive, deep-cutting surgery.
And in the process, Jonah got to see all the ugliness that was inside as it came streaming out.
And in closing, the book of Jonah brings home a few things that reveal who God is, that expose the human heart.
And as we've seen in the prior weeks, the last four weeks, that point us forward to that work of Jesus Christ.
First, it shows, and we have four points here.
First, it shows that God has compassion for all nations.
It shows that God has compassion for all nations.
Jonah is upset because God shows mercy to Nineveh, a non-Israelite city notorious for its wickedness.
And this foreshadows God's intent through Christ to bring salvation to all nations, not just Israel.
Jesus' ministry and his mission and the mission of the apostles make it clear that the gospel was both for the Jew and for the Gentile.
Praise the Lord for that. Amen.
Number two, it shows that God's, it shows us God's desire for repentance.
God is shown to be compassionate and willing to relent from bringing calamity upon those who repent.
This theme is brought to its fullness in Jesus' message in the gospel, where he calls individuals to repent,
declaring that the kingdom of God is near.
And Jesus' work itself culminates in him offering himself as a sacrifice to enable humanity's repentance and reconciliation to God.
That it might go out to all nations.
And we've learned of God's compassion for all nations, God's desire for repentance.
And number three, that we've learned of the problem of a hardened heart.
Jonah's bitterness and his anger highlight the problem of this hardened heart that is resistant to God's will and his mercy.
In the New Testament, Jesus encounters religious leaders that have very similar attitudes,
who are more concerned about their own righteousness or the letter of the law or the people of Israel
as a special status than the spirit of love and mercy that Christ is preaching.
And through Jesus' death and resurrection, as well as subsequently the sending of the Holy Spirit,
they're all designed to bring about, as Ezekiel talks about, a new heart.
A heart inclined toward obedience with God or to God.
And finally, number four, we learn about God's sovereignty and human responsibility.
This book presents a tension between God's sovereign choice, always at work,
his choice to show mercy, to use destruction and what we would call turmoil or what,
biblically, the word evil, we have too much loaded into that word.
That word evil to us automatically means like a sinister evil spirit in the background working, right?
Evil is calamity. It's destruction. It's disaster.
God has been shown to use those throughout the Bible to awaken people.
That whole Amos scripture, I did all these things, yet you did not return.
You did not return. You did not return.
We see God's sovereignty at work, and we also see Jonah's personal desires and bias.
And over again, God is at work moving and influencing the course of things.
And yet at the same time, we see humans have real choice to make about how they will respond to God.
Real choice. And this confronts us with the same choice as we walk through life.
How will we, my friend, how will you respond to God's word?
If you are not a follower of Christ, you too must answer that.
How will you respond to God?
The book of Jonah forces each of us to wonder as we contemplate the sovereignty of God and human responsibility.
It even causes us to wonder why we are sitting here today listening to this sermon.
John Newton, who is famous for writing the hymn, anyone?
Amazing Grace. How sweet.
Just an amazing story of a man redeemed by God's grace.
But he did write other songs. Not as famous.
He did write other songs. In fact, there's one song that he wrote that he clearly had Jonah in mind.
I'm going to end with the words of that song.
The title of the song is I Ask the Lord that I Might Grow.
I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace.
Might more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face.
I hoped that in some favorite hour at once he'd answer my request and by his love's constraining power, subdue my sins and give me rest.
Instead of this, he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part.
Yea, more with his hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds and laid me low.
Lord, why is this? I trembling cried.
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
Tis in this way, the Lord replied, I answer prayer for grace and faith.
These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee free and break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou mayest find.
Thy all in me.
The Lord is saying, don't you see that if you treasure him supremely more than anything else, only then you'll be truly free.