Sovereign Mercy (Jonah 4:5-11)

If you were able, would you please remain standing for the

reading of God's Word this morning I'll be reading from the

book of Jonah, chapter 4, beginning in verse 5.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and

made a booth for himself there. He said under it in the shade,

till he should see what would become of the city.

Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over

Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from

his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad

because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next

day, got appointed a worm that attacked the plant.

So that withered, when the sun rose, got appointed A scorching

E wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah, so that he

was faint. And he asked that he might die,

and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?

And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

And the Lord said, You pity the plant, for which you did not

labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night

and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh,

that great city, and which there are more than 120,000 persons

who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much

cattle? This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. Does God exist?

Does God exist? It's the most fundamental

question that we can ask as human beings.

But there is a second question like it that we must also ask,

and it's just as important. If God exists, then what is he

like? The answer to that question is

what we call theology. Now you may think that theology

is just for old men with long beards and long pipes with many

letter bound books. Or you might think that theology

is just for grumpy church curmudgeons who make

Christianity cold and stuffy and rob the gospel of any relevancy

to ordinary everyday life. Remember when I went to college,

I was searching for what I believed about God, and I was

asking the question why? I remember somebody saying to

me, You know what? Theology doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is your relationship with Jesus.

I wonder if anyone has ever told you that, Or maybe you've

thought it yourself. It's one of those things that

sounds right in a way, until you really think about it.

You see, because theology is relational, our theology

matters. And it matters because it shapes

the way that we relate to God. You see, you cannot have a

relationship with somebody that you don't know.

And the more that we know who God is and we're able to answer

the question, what is he like? The more that we're able to know

him relationally, the more that we're able to know what it means

to be known by him. See, theology matters because

every person is a theologian. RC Sprole put it this way, and

he says no Christian can avoid theology.

Every Christian's a theologian. The issue for Christians is not

whether we are going to be theologians, but whether we're

going to be good theologians or bad theologians.

And this isn't just true for Christians, but I would argue

every person is a theologian because every person has an

answer to the question, does God exist and what is he like this

morning? If you are not a follower of

Jesus, if you would qualify yourself as an agnostic or even

an atheist, you also have a theology.

You have an answer for what you think God is.

God does not exist. And if you are a follower of

Jesus this morning, if you are a Christian, you also have a

theology. The question is, where does your

theology come from? What has shaped your answer to

the question, what is God like and is your theology any good?

Now I want you to know that good theology, good theology, is not

just dependent on what you know intellectually, but good

theology takes what we know in our heads and transfers it deep

into our hearts because good theology always leads to

doxology. What I mean by that is that our

theology and seeing God rightly for who He is should always lead

us to worship. And we see this in the story of

Jonah. You see, Jonah knew who God was

with his head, but his theology didn't lead him to worship God.

No, his theology led him to be angry at God.

And last week we looked at God's righteous anger because we

considered Jonah's anger for God's mercy.

This week we're going to look at God's sovereign mercy and

through the story of Jonah and through his eyes, we're going to

answer the question, what is he like and how does that lead us

to worship him? So first thing we see in the

story of Jonah, what is God like?

Well, first, God is gracious. I want you to look with me.

Look with me at Jonah 4, verse 5.

Jonah 4:5

We're told that Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east

of the city and made a booth for himself there.

He said under it in the shade, till he should see what would

become of the city. Now this is exactly where we

left off last week. Jonah is God's rebellious and

reluctant prophet. He refused to follow God's call

to go to Nineveh, and so he ran from God and tried to flee from

his presence. And so God sent a storm out of

His grace and his judgement, and he sent a very big fish to

swallow Jonah up and spit him out on dry land in order to lead

Jonah to repentance, to do what he called him do in the 1st

place, to preach to Nineveh. Jonah preaches to Nineveh and

amazingly, Nineveh repents and they turn to God and God has

mercy on them. And now Jonah is angry about it.

The very thing that he did not want to happen has happened.

God showed mercy to Jonah's enemies, so now he's angry at

Nineveh and he's angry at God, and so he's left the city.

He set up camp by himself, and now he's angry and alone and

sulking. He's throwing a pity party and

he's complaining to God. I wonder if you've ever been

like that, You've been so upset with God that you just wanted to

be by yourself, to throw yourself a pity party and to

complain about something God has done in your life or failed to

do. I think every one of us goes

through this experience now and again.

I had my own pity party this weekend, and now I'm not talking

about the first half of the Aggie game.

You see, when we confront something that God has done that

is disappointing or something that we're asking him to do that

he hasn't done according to what we would have him do, it causes

us to lose our trust in Him because in that moment we're

making ourselves God. And we're saying to God, you

don't know any better than I do. And if I were God, I wouldn't

have done it this way. And like Jonah, it fills us with

anger and we complain and we grumble and our hearts are

filled with doubt. This is where Jonah finds

himself angry and alone and complaining to God.

And God meets Jonah in the midst of his anger and complaint with

patient grace. Once again, God does not leave

Jonah alone. First God sent Jonah a fish, and

now God sends Jonah a plant. Look with me at verse 6.

Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over

Jonah that might be a shade over his head to save him from his

discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad

because of the plant. Now, grace is often rightly

defined as God's unmerited favor.

Another way to put that is that grace is about getting what we

don't deserve. And we see that grace here at

work in Jonah's life. God is giving Jonah what he

doesn't deserve. Here is Jonah, angry once again,

running from God, complaining against him.

He deserves God's judgement. Yet God is giving him grace.

God is giving him what he doesn't deserve.

God gives him a plant. Now if any of you have had

trouble with the book of Jonah in trouble with the whale, I

think that God sent a plant to Jonah in this moment is far

crazier. Why would God give a plant to

Jonah in order to make him feel more comfortable while he

complaints to him? What is God doing?

Well, I want you to know that the grace that God has for Jonah

is about much more than just a plant.

Once you look with me again at verse 6, we're told that now the

Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah.

This is the first time in the book of Jonah that the name of

God, the Lord God, that double name is used.

Before this, we just see the Lord.

Here we see the name, the title, the Lord God, Yahweh, Elohim.

It's the covenant name of God. We see this name in the book of

Genesis to describe the creator of all things.

This is Genesis 2 verse 4. These are the generations of the

Genesis 2:4

heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the

Lord God made the earth in the heavens.

It's the same name that we see in the book of Exodus, the

covenant name of God, the Redeemer of his people out of

slavery. This is Exodus 34, six, the new

American Standard Version, The Lord, the Lord God,

compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in

faithfulness and truth, who keeps faithfulness for

thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of his law

and sin, that he will by no means leave the guilty

unpunished. And in Second Samuel 7, it's the

same name that David uses in response to God's promise to

establish the throne of his Kingdom forever.

Second Samuel 728 And now, oh Lord God, you are God, and your

words are true, and you've promised this good thing to your

servant. What this means for Jonah and

for all of us is that the same covenant God, the God of

steadfast love who created the universe by the word of his

power. The same covenant God who

rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt.

The same covenant God who promised a Kingdom and a king to

come, who to redeem his people from their sins through the line

of David, is the same covenant God who has now come to Jonah

and appointed a plant to cover him.

Why? Well, verse six goes on and

tells us to save him from his discomfort.

But at face value this seems silly.

Why does God want to make Jonah more comfortable to sit alone in

his anger? Why would God go to such trouble

while Jonah complaints? There is more to the story than

just a plant. The word for discomfort here,

it's the very same word that we've seen many times before in

the book of Jonah. It's a word that I mentioned at

the beginning of our series several weeks ago.

It's the very same word for evil.

It's the word that we see in Jonah 4 verse one.

But it is fleeced Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.

The mercy of God for Nineveh was an evil to Jonah, and so he was

angry, and now God has appointed a plant in order to save him

from that evil. How?

How can a plant save Jonah from the evil of his rebellion and

his own judgmentalism for Nineveh?

How can a plant save Jonah? All over the centuries, scholars

have tried to figure out just what kind of plant this actually

was. Some have said it must have been

a vine. Others have said it must have

been Ivy. Many have argued that it had to

have been a gourd. My favorite is all of the ink

that's been spilled to argue that it is the Castor oil plant,

all because of the poisonous nature of that plant.

But there is something greater here than a plant.

God is appointed a plant to cover Jonah, to be a living

parable. And just like the miracles that

we see in the gospels that Jesus performs, this miracle is meant

to be a window to show Jonah and all of us what God is like, that

he is the Lord God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, who

forgives sin, yet will by no means leave the guilty

unpunished. So the second thing we see about

God and Jonah's story is this. What is God like?

Not only gracious, but God is the righteous judge.

Throughout the Bible, botanical imagery is used to describe the

people of God. And this shouldn't surprise us

because our story begins in a garden.

And in particular in the Old Testament, God's people, Israel,

are described as a vine. Let me give you some examples.

This is Psalm 80, verse 8. You brought a vine out of Egypt.

Psalms 80:8

You drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the

land. The mountains were covered with

its shade, the mighty Cedars with its branches.

Does any of this sound familiar? God raising up a fast growing

plant to provide shade. We see the same language used in

the other prophets. This is Isaiah 5 verse 7.

Isaiah 5:7

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel,

and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting.

And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed.

He looked for righteousness, but behold an outcry.

So what's the point? God appointed a plant to cover

Jonah, not to make him comfortable while he complained.

No, God appointed a plant to cover Jonah to confront him with

his character. Jonah was angry because he did

not want mercy for Nineveh. He wanted judgement.

So God appointed a plant to cover Jonah to show Jonah that

God alone is the righteous judge.

He alone is the one who judges sin, and he alone is the one who

has mercy. And this righteous judgment for

sin doesn't just belong to Nineveh, a nation that warred

against God's people with great acts of evil, but that same

judgment for sin belongs to God's people, Israel.

It belongs to Jonah, and it belongs to you and it belongs to

me, because every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the

glory of God. Every one of us is a rebel just

like Jonah. Every one of us has gone our own

way. Every one of us has turned our

back on God. Every one of us is a traitor

against his kingship and his Kingdom.

And so after God appointed a plant, the very next day God

sends a worm Look with me. Verse 7 But when dawn came up

the next day, God appointed a worm and attacked the plant so

that it withered. Just as the image of the vine is

used in the Bible to describe the people of God, so the image

of a worm is used to describe sin and judgement.

This is Deuteronomy 2839. You shall plant vineyards and

dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor

gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them.

We have 3 red oaks in our front yard and just last night my wife

and I were talking about how they don't seem to be giving us

beautiful fall color anymore because I guess we've reached

that age where we talk about our plants on dates.

And in particular, we were concerned and we are concerned

about one of these three red oaks.

It's the one in the middle. Because not only is it not

giving us fall color like it used to, but it looks sick year

round. And our concern is that it has

oak wilt, a disease that affects oak trees in North Texas.

The problem is, if it has oak wilt, there's really nothing we

can do about it. We just have to watch it die.

You see, this is the reason that throughout the Old Testament, a

worm and locusts are seen as one of the worst acts of judgement

that God would give to his people because they were

dependent on the things that they planted not just for their

beauty, but bear their food. So God would send a plague of

locusts or a worm to tear their crops away from them to decimate

their plants. All is an act of judgement.

But God doesn't stop here with a worm.

Then he sends the wind. Verse 8 When the sun rose, got

appointed A scorching E wind and the sun beat down on the head of

Jonas that he was faint and he asked that he might die and said

it is better for me to die than to live again.

The wind is a sign of judgement. This is Jeremiah 18.

Verse 15 But my people have forgotten me.

They make offerings to false gods.

They made them stumble in their ways and their ancient roads and

to walk into side roads not the highway, making their land a

horror, a thing to be hissed at forever.

Everyone who passes by is horrified and shakes his head

like the east wind. I will scatter them before the

enemy. God sent an E wind, not just to

fill Jonah's mouth with thirst so that in this dry wind Jonah

would be beaten down by the sun. But God sent this E wind as a

sign of judgement. And so here is Jonah.

He's angry, he's alone, and now he is weary and faint.

God has once again brought Jonah to the end of himself, and in

verse 9 he asks him a question. Do you do well to be angry for

the plant? Second time he's asked this

question, Do you well to be angry?

In other words, what good can your anger actually do?

Can your anger for the plant actually bring it back?

Jonah was angry about Nineveh, and now he's angry about the

plant. He's faint, he's weary, and he

wants to die. And once again by his grace, God

has brought Jonah to the end of himself so that he could show

Jonah his judgement but also his mercy.

So 3rd and final thing we see in Jonah's story, what is God like?

Our God is merciful. Verse 10, the Lord said you pity

the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow,

which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

The word pity here I think is an interesting word.

It's not a word that we often use, at least I don't.

You could translate This word is mercy, but it's a different kind

of mercy. See, in the Bible, Hebrew gives

us really two different words for mercy.

And both of those words appear here in Jonah chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

The first appears in Jonah's prayer, Jonah 4/2 where Jonah

prays. O Lord, is not this what I said

when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee

to Tarsus, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from

disaster. That's the first use of mercy,

but the second word for mercy happens here in God's response

to Jonah's angry prayer. Look again at verse 10 says the

Lord said you pity the plant for which you did not labor.

The word for mercy here that is translated for us, pity is a

mercy mixed with compassion. It teaches us that God's mercy

flows out of his love. The image here is that when we

have love and compassion for someone beneath us, a person or

even a plant, we're broken hearted over them.

It fills us with mercy for them. God's mercy flows out of His

compassion. And you need to understand that

grace and mercy, though they're related, are different from one

another. If grace is getting what we

don't deserve, mercy is when we don't get what we do deserve.

Mercy has to do with judgement. God shows us mercy when though

we deserve judgement because of our sin, He does not give us

that judgement. That's mercy not getting what we

deserve. And God here is showing Jonah

what mercy actually is. But he's also showing Jonah that

his mercy is sovereign because it's tied to his judgement, just

as God alone as judge. God is the only one who can be

merciful. And ultimately, This is why

Jonah's angry. He's not simply angry at mercy

as a concept or idea. No, he's mad that God is the one

who's merciful, because if he had it his way, he would never

show mercy on Nineveh. He wants to be the judge, and

God is reminding him in this moment, but not only am I alone

the judge, but God is saying I alone am the one who is able to

show mercy. And so he tells Jonah, you pity

the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow,

which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

In other words, he's putting Jonah in his place.

He's saying here you are pitying this plant, yet you did nothing

to grow it. You did nothing to plant it.

Jonah, do you not realize that in your life you have done

nothing to sustain yourself? But God the Sovereign One has

been there every step of the way.

Jonah was angry about the mercy of God because he wanted to be

the judge. And you and I are no different.

And we are so quick to want judgement for the sins of

others, while failing to realize that that same judgement is what

we deserve. Apostle Paul puts it this way.

Romans chapter 2. He says, therefore you have no

Romans 2 · chapter mention

excuse, O man, everyone of you who judges for passing judgement

on another, you condemn yourself, because you the judge,

practice the very same things. Jonah wanted to make himself

judge, and in making himself judge he had mercy on himself.

He had mercy on US, fellow countrymen of Israel, but he did

not want mercy for Nineveh. And here in this moment God is

showing Jonah that he alone has the power of mercy.

Verse 11. God says, Should I not pity

Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than

120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left

and also much cattle? You see, the same judgement that

Jonah wanted for Nineveh as the very same judgement that he

deserved, and the very same mercy of God that Jonah was so

angry about is the same mercy that he so desperately needed.

And just like Jonah, it's that very mercy that you and I need

this morning, the sovereign mercy of God.

You see, because what the story of Jonah teaches us is that not

only are we like Jonah, but we are just like the plant.

We're just like the plant. There is nothing any of us have

done to plant ourselves, to take care of ourselves, or to make

ourselves grow. We are completely and utterly

dependent on God. We are literally at His mercy.

And because of the worm of sin, every one of us is like a vine

that has withered away and died. But God, out of His sovereign

mercy, did not just send us a fish or a plant.

He sent his Son Jesus Christ. And on the cross, Jesus bore the

righteous judgment of God for our sin, so that you and I would

have mercy. And so, for every Sinner who

trusts in His name, Jesus offers this promise.

I am the vine, and you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in Him, he it is that bears much

fruit. For apart from me you can do

nothing whatsoever. You feel this morning, however

weary and faint and beat down by life, however consumed with sin

and anger. I want you to know that His

mercy is greater because His mercy is sovereign and every one

of us. It's been called by Jesus to cry

out. Lord, have mercy on me, a

Sinner. Jesus is the true Vine, whose

love for you never Withers, whose sovereign mercies never

come to an end. Jesus Christ, the true Vine, is

gracious, and he's merciful to us, and his mercies are new

every single morning. Let's pray, Father in Heaven, we

pray that that would be the cry of our hearts, not just one

time, but every moment of our days.

Lord, have mercy on us. Sinners, we thank you that you

hear the cry of our hearts, that you hear our prayer that you

meet us with grace and that you've given us mercy.

And we pray now that we would live out of that mercy, boldly

sharing that mercy for a world that desperately needs it.

We ask this in Jesus name, Amen. Would you please stand?

Let's sing together.