"I Pity the Plant" Jonah 4:5-11 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well good morning.

I invite you to open your Bibles to the Book of Jonah, where we will receive a lesson from someone who well he did take his concerns to the Lord in prayer, didn't do so in the right way.

Jonah did pray to God, we see in Jonah 4, verse 2, he prayed to Yahweh, but he didn't pray to the Lord, trusting the Lord would hear him and trusting that the Lord would respond to his needs.

Jonah 4:2

And so what we find is the picture of someone who is uh spiraling in despair and sadness.

Uh if you're wondering what's next after we finish Jonah, next weekend, uh next Lord's Day, Dr.

Erwin Lutzer will be with us.

Uh many of you have heard him preach before.

He's kind of a favorite around here, and so I know he'll be a blessing to you.

And then after that, we'll start a series in the book of Nahum.

Uh the story of Nineveh doesn't end in the Old Testament with Jonah, uh, it keeps going.

Um later, God sends another prophet to Nineveh by the name of Nahim, and we'll spend a few weeks looking at his word uh from the Lord.

But let's do what we just sang and let's go to the Lord in prayer before we begin this morning.

Father, we do pray for your mercy to be upon us as we look into your word.

We know that were it not for your kindness and your goodness towards us, we'd be unable to receive spiritual truth from your word.

And so we do surrender our will and our obstinance and our and our mind to you.

We we pray that as we yield our mind to you, your word would work in it and we could form us into the image of your Son.

We pray that we would be convicted by sin that we harbor in our heart, that you would drive unrighteousness far from us this morning through your word.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Luke chapter 4 describes the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

You don't need to turn there, you can stay in Jonah 4, but in Luke 4, Jesus was taken away to be tempted by the devil.

And then after that, really begins his ministry in earnest.

This is after his baptism from John, of course, and his resist the temptation of the devil, and then he begins preaching.

And the text says that he begins his preaching ministry with power, and there's this very interesting verse, Luke 4, verse 15, says that Jesus at that point was being glorified by all.

Luke 4:15

In other words, at the start of his ministry, even before his miracle ministry, Jesus was being glorified by all those who heard him.

They were impressed in awe of his preaching ability.

It was during this time that he went on a preaching circuit and preaching through all the synagogues in Galilee, and then he went to Nazareth, back to his hometown where he was raised.

This is his first appearance back in Nazareth since his baptism and since his temptation, and he returns to the synagogue that he grew up in.

In fact, Luke says he goes there on the Sabbath as was his custom to do.

In other words, there is nothing unusual about this.

He just arrives in the synagogue in Nazareth like he would often do on the Lord's Day.

And as he goes in there on that Saturday, it's his turn to take the scripture to read it.

And he opens the scripture and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah, declaring that the work of the Lord is going to be done.

And then he says that this scripture is fulfilled in their hearing.

In other words, he is the one who will bind up the brokenhearted.

He is the one who will cause the blind to see, he's the one who will cause the lame to walk, he's the one that will set the captives free.

I think often in our mind we think that this was the point where people objected to.

Once he said that this scripture was about him, that's where they hit the panic button.

But if you look at Luke 4 carefully, that's not true.

In fact, they were in awe even of that.

I mean, this was a hometown hero returned, so to speak.

The people were impressed with his preaching ministry, even there in Nazareth.

It's like the seminary student who goes away, grows up in a church, and goes away to seminary and comes home on his winter break and preaches a sermon, and everybody goes, Oh, how adorable that is.

We're so glad.

We always knew he'd be a preacher.

I mean, wasn't that just lovely?

That was the experience they had in Nazareth when Jesus shared in the synagogue that morning.

But then Jesus sets the scroll aside and begins to address the crowd.

And he does so with a series of questions.

He asks them, Was it because there were no widows in Israel that Elijah had to go to the widow of Zarephath to show her mercy and grace?

You remember the widow of Zarephath?

She was not an Israelite, but she was dying through the drought.

She was starving with the famine, and Elijah went to her and ministered to her and brought miracles to her house so that she and her son might live.

That's a very interesting question for our Lord to ask at the beginning of his ministry, isn't it?

Is it because there were no widows in Israel during this time that Elijah went to her?

And the answer is, I mean, it's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obviously not.

Of course there were widows in Israel at the time.

Of course there were people starving to death and dying of thirst and famine in Israel during that time, obviously.

But you're not supposed to ask that question.

You're not supposed to ask why did Elijah go to the Gentile woman?

And then he carries on.

Is it because there were no lepers in Israel during Elisha's life that the Lord brought Naaman, the Syrian military leader, from Damascus to Israel.

He was baptized in the Jordan and he was forgiven of his sins.

Is it because there were no lepers in Israel for the Lord to forgive?

And again, it's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obviously no.

Of course, there were lepers in Israel.

Syria and Damascus didn't have a corner on the leprosy market.

So why does God heal some Syrian leper instead of some Israelite leper?

That's the question.

And as fascinating as that would be to answer this morning, which we will, I think, inadvertently through the book of Jonah, the more pertinent point from the Luke 4 story as it relates to Jonah is the response of the crowd.

They went from saying, Oh, isn't that an adorable little sermon?

We're so grateful that Jesus is back.

We knew he would amount to something at some point.

They went from that to Luke says they were filled with rage.

And they grabbed him and they purposed to kill him by throwing him off of the cliff in Nazareth.

That was their response to that story.

That was their response to those questions.

They wanted to put him to death.

Where does that kind of rage come from?

Just from asking two simple questions.

Well, that rage is not new with those in Nazareth.

That rage is not new with those in Galilee during the life of Christ.

That rage is not confined to the Pharisees during Jesus' lifetime.

That rage goes back a long way.

And it is seen here in the book of Jonah this morning.

We saw Jonah sent by God to the town of Nineveh to bring revival.

And it is worth asking the same question of Jonah's life.

Is it because there were no cities that were set in their sinful ways in Israel that God had to send Jonah to Nineveh?

And the answer is obvious.

Of course, there were Israelite cities in need of revival.

But God sent Jonah somewhere else.

And this is why Jonah didn't want to go.

He knew God would show mercy to Nineveh.

He knew God would rescue them and free them from their sin.

And this is a kind of revival that had never taken place in Israel.

And so Jonah refused initially to go, and now he does go, and he is so upset about it.

Remember, we looked at this last week in Jonah 4, verse 1.

Jonah 4:1

The thing displeased Jonah exceedingly.

In other words, Jonah called God's actions here exceptionally evil.

Exceptionally evil.

And then in verse 3, Jonah says, Lord, take my life from me.

It's better for me to die than to live.

There's a world where Ninevehes are evil and wicked, and there is a world in which God is showing them mercy and forgiveness.

And Jonah says, I want no part of that world.

God, if you're not going to judge the Ninevites, don't leave me around here.

Jonah had obviously tried to flee from God's word, flee from God's presence, and God didn't let him get away.

So Jonah knows there's nowhere left for him to run.

He cannot get away from God.

This God, in addition to being forgiving and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in mercy and steadfast love, this God is also omnipresent.

And Jonah knows he cannot run him.

And so now Jonah just wants out of this world.

Take his life.

By the way, the kind of sinful disobedience Jonah had in chapter one, Jonah was angry at God and rebelling against God and being disobedient by running away.

What this scene here in chapter 4 shows you is that Jonah is now being obedient to God.

He did go to Nineveh.

He did preach to Nineveh.

And he's still angry at God.

It should sober you up real quick to realize that there is a kind of sinful disobedience that is seen as you're rebelling against God.

And there's a sign of a kind of sinful rebellion that is seen in your obedience to God.

And that's what Jonah's experienced.

Yeah, he's obeying God's commands, but he is so angry at God.

And so God responds to Jonah with a question Is it right for you to be angry?

And Jonah in verse 5 goes out of the city, and this is where our passage picks up this morning, and sat on the east side of the city and made a booth for himself there.

And that word booth, it's the word that we began our study in the book of Jonah with, all the way back in Jonah 1, several months ago.

It's the Hebrew word sukkho, it's the festival of the tabernacle.

Sukkot, it's the most significant Jewish holiday of the year.

Where they will dwell, they'll tabernacle under those little construction things they make.

And remember, in Judaism, it can't be a roof, it can't be a full-fledged roof.

To be a sukkho, it has to have openings in it.

You have to be able to see the sky through it.

Sometimes that word is just translated thicket.

It's a series of vines, perhaps dead vines.

There's not a lot of timber out here in the middle of the Iraqi desert.

But Jonah finds some kind of weeds, some kind of dead vine, some kind of just bramble, and props that up.

That's his sukkho, that's his covering for himself.

This is designed to elicit sympathy.

This is what the Israelites dwelt under in the wilderness wanderings.

There's Jonah here, taking one of those sukko, this bramble thing that's not going to really provide him shade, lodging it over his head somehow, and dwelling underneath it.

And we don't know what kind of support structure he has.

Likely he's laying down to fit under this thing.

Out there in the sand of the Iraqi desert while he is rooting for Nineveh's destruction.

The whole thing is sick and twisted.

He sits under, it says in verse 5, in the shade, whatever shade this Sukkho could provide, until he would see what would become of the city.

Jonah is throwing a tailgate party out in the Iraqi desert, rooting for one of the largest cities in the world to be destroyed by God, preferably through fire, but I think Jonah would settle for anything at this point.

After asking God to kill him.

Now, if you were God, again, how would you respond to this?

Probably by honoring Jonah's request and killing him.

But God responds to Jonah with a series of signs.

Three, there are four times in the book of Jonah where it says, the Lord appointed something for Jonah.

The first was the whale.

The next three are all here at the end of the book of Jonah, in a row, one after another, all designed to teach Jonah about the nature of God's grace.

Because remember, this is what Jonah is upset at.

Jonah is upset that God is a God of grace.

He says that in chapter 4, verse 2.

I knew you would do this, God, because you're a gracious God.

Jonah is hateful towards God because of God's grace.

Jonah is rebelling about God being a God of grace.

And so God gives Jonah three signs, three lessons here, and we'll use that as our outline this morning.

I'm going to call this Jack in the Beanstalk Lessons and Grace.

Jack in the Beanstalk Lessons and Grace.

And of course, God is both gracious and merciful.

Grace is where God gives things to people they don't deserve.

Mercy is where God withholds things from people they do deserve.

And they're basically the same thing because if God is giving you forgiveness, that's grace.

You don't deserve it, he gives it to you.

If God is withholding his wrath from you, that's mercy.

You do deserve his wrath, and he's withholding it back.

Well, he can't do one without the other.

That God is giving good things.

And so God is going to unmask Jonah's hypocrisy, his scorching hypocrisy here, with a series of three signs.

The first is the sign of the weed.

And the lesson of the weed is that grace is for sinners, not saints.

The lesson of the weed, that grace is for sinners and not saints.

And so you see this in verse 6.

Now Yahweh God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might shade, be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.

We know that this is a miraculous plant because verse 10 says that God caused a plant to grow up in a night.

Jonah didn't find some little seedling and bury it down in the Iraqi sand there and water it and fertilize it and make it prosper.

This was a miracle.

God miraculously causes this kind of plant to grow up.

No idea what kind of plant it was.

It doesn't really matter.

It's a miraculous plant.

I don't know what species of plant this is, but I know its name.

The plant is called grace.

Like the fish.

We don't know what kind of fish it was, but we know the fish's name.

The fish's name was grace.

This plant is related to the fish, and that it is an act of grace towards Jonah.

It grows up in a night.

It was a gift of God to Jonah.

Jonah remembers under this bramble, rolling around in the sand, trying to find some shade.

It's scorching out there.

He's going to be out there for 40 days, remember?

Because it's 40 days until Nineveh's destroyed.

He's rooting for that to happen.

He's in horrible discomfort out there the whole time thinking he's the righteous one, thinking that he is the one who's acting rightly here, thinking that God has slipped and hit his head and lost his mind.

But Jonah is around, fortunately, for God, to think clearly about these kind of things.

And so he is just in utter agony out there.

And so God gives him the grace of this plant.

Notice it says in the middle of verse 6 the plant was given to him to save him from his discomfort.

I asked you earlier what you would do to Jonah if you were God, and probably in your mind you said, I would take him out of this world.

But God responds even to Jonah's sin with grace.

God gives Jonah a plant to help him out.

Let me give you a day of shade, God tells Jonah.

And Jonah loves the shade.

Look at the end of verse 6.

So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

This is the same word, the word great.

Remember the second most common word in the book of Jonah?

The most common word is Yahweh.

The second most common word is great, Godol in Hebrew.

And we saw the great storm in chapter one, and then the great fish in chapter one, and the great revival in chapter three because of Nineveh's being a great city and they're greatly e they're evil, and they have a great revival because they're a great city.

And then chapter four, Jonah thinks God is acting in a greatly evil way.

And now Jonah is greatly happy.

He's on an emotional roller coaster.

Chapter 4, verse 1, he says God is being greatly evil.

Now, chapter 4, verse 6, he is so happy.

He's greatly happy.

He's stoked about the plant.

Now, why is Jonah so happy?

You can see through Jonah here, it does not bother him that God is showing him grace.

Jonah gladly receives God's grace when it's for him.

Jonah's not bugged by the presence of God's grace, but by the ubiquity of it.

And what I mean by that is Jonah is not upset that God is gracious towards him.

He's upset that God is gracious towards others.

And if you recall, as we looked at chapter 4, verse 2, what Jonah does there is he quotes Exodus 34 about God showing covenant love to his people.

And he says, this is why he's angry at God for showing that love to the Ninevehes.

The Ninevehes are not part of God's covenant.

They are those evil, sinful people out in the desert, incredibly barbaric and wicked.

They are not part of the covenant.

In Jonah's mind, it makes perfect sense for God to show grace to those who are inside of the covenant, those who deserve Hesed, the steadfast covenant love of God.

God should be gracious to them.

And so for Jonah to have a plan over him, that makes sense.

This is God, I'm glad things are getting back to their right created order here.

The Jews and their prophets, they get your grace.

The Ninevites ought not to have your grace.

Remember, Jonah thinks he's operating on the side of Israel here.

Hating Ninevites in Jonah's mind is a basic measure of righteousness.

If you are at all righteous, you would hate the Ninevehites.

And so Jonah feels that same standard should apply to God.

We should all hate the Ninevehes.

God, if you're going to be righteous, you should hate the Ninevites also.

They should not have grace.

But me, I should receive your covenant love because I'm I'm good.

I'm righteous.

Perhaps even more righteous than you are right now, God.

That's Jonah's attitude.

And the plant exposes that.

He is so happy to receive this kind of grace and mercy.

Remember, Jonah feels that he is interceding on behalf of Israel here in his hatred towards Nineveh.

By the way, Jonah's first prophecy in the Old Testament is not the book of Jonah, of course, it's 1 Kings 14, verse 20 or so, or 2 Kings 14, verse 20, where Jonah is prophesying grace to the Israelites that they will not be conquered by the Syrians.

1 Kings 14:20 2 Kings 14:20

The very next chapter, chapter 15, the Assyrians, the Ninevites, do start extracting finances from the Israelites.

So their threat is very real.

It's the next chapter in 2 Kings when they begin their attack on Israel.

And so Jonah here says, it's not right for you to give grace to them, God.

They are sinners.

Me, I should get the plant.

Israelites should get your covenant love.

Notice here, though, that grace is effective on both of these people.

Grace is effective for Jonah when he's in discomfort.

It makes him happy.

Grace is effective on the Nineveh, it leads to their revival.

But Jonah doesn't appreciate the God of grace because Jonah's so angry at him.

Jonah is so self-righteous that he is angry at God and does not rejoice in the God of grace.

You see this so clearly in Israelites' history.

You see this most clearly in the Pharisees.

The Pharisees and the Jewish religion as a whole, Paul says in Romans 9, theirs is the covenant, theirs is the word of God, theirs is the prophets, theirs is all the promises.

To them belong the Messiah, who is the Savior of all.

That should be.

They should rejoice.

They have been given grace after grace after grace, the Israelites have, but they don't thank God for it because in their mind, God should be giving them grace.

They are partakers of the old covenant.

Grace belongs to them.

It should not go to the Gentiles.

It should not go to those pagan sinners.

God has no business showing them grace because, in their mind, grace has to come through the old covenant.

This is exactly what What you see with Jonah, our scripture reading this morning from Luke 7 is a beautiful picture of that, isn't it?

What we didn't read is right before that.

The Pharisees are surrounding Jesus and haranguing Jesus, and they're upset at Jesus, saying that he eats with sinners and tax collectors.

And so Jesus rebukes them and says, You're like people that I sang a sad song for and you didn't weep, and I sang a happy song for and you didn't celebrate.

And so one of the Pharisees just tries decides to take a different approach at Jesus and invites Jesus to his own house for lunch.

If the problem was with Jesus is that he eats with sinners and tax collectors, this Pharisee says, Let me fix that problem and have him eat with me.

Do you just even in that see all of the self-righteousness on a full display?

Jesus, your problem is that you're eating with sinners and tax collectors.

Let me fix that by inviting you to my house.

And so Jesus comes to his house.

But do you remember who tags along?

A prostitute.

A prostitute comes to lunch with Jesus in the Pharisee's house.

Imagine if you're the Pharisee at this meal.

The whole point of this was to have Jesus not eat with sinners and tax collectors, but eat with the righteous people like me, and he has a prostitute in tow.

And she is on his feet, weeping on his feet, drenching his feet with tears, and the Pharisee mumbles to himself and says, If only Jesus knew who this woman was, he would not allow this in my house.

And Jesus tells a story about the person who's forgiven much, who loves much, and looks at this woman and says, Of course I know what kind of woman she is.

Her sins are so many.

And that's why you see such profound love in her.

And then Jesus says, the most outrageous thing imaginable to her, your sins are forgiven.

Your faith has made you well.

That mealtime ends with a prostitute having her sins forgiven and a Pharisee being even angrier at Jesus than when the whole thing started.

And we read that again, we read that story, and we're we think, praise God, for this woman whose sins are committed.

How can he be so blind as a Pharisee?

Do you understand that to this very day the Jews read that story and are upset?

This is why they can't believe in Jesus.

How could you look at a Jewish Pharisee and not extend grace to him, but then extend it to some prostitute who's living in full violation of God's law?

This is the problem with Jonah.

How can God give grace to the heathen Ninevites and not to Israel?

And the plant exposes that so well.

This is the story of the prodigal son, where the father has two sons, and the younger one takes the money and lives in a horribly vile and sinful way and runs away, robbing from the father, wishing the father was dead, goes his own way.

He's obviously representing the Gentile nations of the world that go their own way in sins and transgressions.

And the older brother stays home and does everything the father wants, follows every rule the father gives him, works so hard, the only thing the older brother forgets to do is actually love the father.

And so when the younger brother comes home, when the Gentile nations and the sinners and the prostitutes come home, the father shows them grace.

And the older brother is so furious.

How dare they get grace?

This is the lesson of the plans.

That God is exposing in Jonah this flagrant hypocrisy, that Jonah, it's not that Jonah is upset at the fact that God gives grace.

He's upset at the fact that God gives grace to sinners and not saints.

We understand the truth that both the older and the younger brother need saving faith.

Both the older and younger brother need their sins forgiven.

Both Israel and Nineveh need their sins forgiven.

That's the lesson of the plant.

The second lesson is the lesson of the worm.

God's grace is for people, not things.

God's grace is for people, not things.

When we leave Jonah at the end of verse 6, he's so happy.

This has turned into a real tailgate party now.

He is partying it up out there.

He is just exceedingly filled with joy and hopeful expectation.

God's giving him a plant.

Maybe God's coming around to Jonah's way of thinking now, finally.

But when dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacks the plant so that it withered.

The Hebrew word for attack there, it really means that attacked.

Like this worm goes to war against the plant.

It was a supernatural plant, and now you got a supernatural worm.

Picture some big fat worm that just devours this plant.

Imagine Jonah's surprise.

He wakes up in the morning and what was providing him such lovely shade.

Now has these massive holes in it, and there's this fat worm laying on its back burping.

That's how I picture the story.

I'm reading a little bit into it, but I'm that worm went to war on that plant.

It was Thanksgiving Day for the worm.

And Jonah is furious.

Look at verse 9.

Do you do well to be angry for the plant?

God asks Jonah.

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

This is the third time Jonah asks for death.

God, I'm so angry you took my plant away from me.

I want to die about the plant.

I'd rather die than live in a world where I can't have my pet plant.

He's furious about the plant.

Now, any neutral reader of this sees the flagrant hypocrisy in Jonah that Jonah cares more about the plant than he does the city, right?

That's the point of this.

Jonah is more upset that God killed his plant than he is that there's a city that's on its way to hell in Jonah's mind.

Jonah's okay with the whole nation perishing to eternal damnation as long as he has his shade.

He throws a pity party for the plant.

Now, there's so much to say about this, but I just hope that you see this same sin in your life.

It's so easy to make fun of Jonah for the plant because it's just obvious because it's not us, it's Jonah.

But I hope you see the truth of the danger or the cancer of materialism in your own life.

The lesson of the plant here, I mean the lesson of the worm here, is that when you start to love things, your love for people gets eclipsed.

When you start to love your stuff, your heart for the nations is what perishes.

Your love for materialism is the worm that eats your affection for the lost in your heart.

That's the way materialism works.

That's why the love of money is such a profound sin.

When you start to love money and love your stuff, what fades, it's not just that your generosity is eclipsed by your love of materialism, but what really fades is your love of missions and your love for the nations.

That's what fades.

When you store up treasure for yourself in this world, you're not investing in making friends for yourself in the next world.

That's the problem with materialism.

That's the cancer of stuff.

And this, I'm telling you, is the latent sin of American consumerism.

This is the sin in our world.

Our culture teaches you that if you if you work hard, you get things.

And if you get things because you worked hard, you deserve those things.

And if you deserve those things, you can spend them on whatever you want.

That's just like Americanism 101 right there.

But the truth is, everything you have is a gift from God.

Everything.

This is 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7, where Paul asks, What did you, what do you have that you did not receive?

1 Corinthians 4:7

And if you received it as a gift, why do you boast about it as if you had earned it, as if you didn't receive it?

Now I understand that there are blessings to hard work.

The Bible has whole chapters in Proverbs about the benefits of hard work.

It is better to be married to a hardworking man than to a lazy man.

The scripture makes that quite clear.

But now ask yourself a question.

Who taught you, if you're a hardworking person, which I hope you are, for the husbands here, if you're a hardworking person and how you provide for your family, let me ask you a question.

Who taught you to be hardworking?

You're a blessing to your family by that, but who taught you that?

Well, the scripture taught you that.

So even the fact that you know you need to work hard, that in and of itself is also a gift to you from God.

You didn't discover that on your own.

You're not Columbus here.

That's a gift to you.

Everything you have is a gift to you from God.

Even the fact that you're born into a country where you can work hard and be rewarded to you, rewarded for it, that's a gift to you that you don't deserve.

I mean, where would your hard work and your Protestant work ethic, so to speak, get you if you lived in Haiti or India or Zimbabwe?

Nowhere.

It wouldn't get you anywhere.

You'd still be in poverty.

And it's really arrogant to think otherwise.

And so this is the point that you have things in your in this culture, and in our country, you have things because of your hard work.

And it's great that you work hard.

You should work hard and you should have the blessings of that.

But don't mistake that for deserving it.

And once you start deserving it, it gets your love for the nations gets eroded in your life.

Your love for the lost gets eaten by your love for stuff.

And that is so clear with Jonah.

Jonah here is rooting for Nineveh to be destroyed because he loves his plant.

And your stuff has more in common with Jonah's plant than you might admit.

The plant was there in a day and gone in a day.

Is your stuff any different?

This is Job.

Naked I came from my mother's womb.

Naked I'll return.

Blessed be the name of Yahweh.

I hope you see the danger of loving things in your life, especially as it relates to using your resources to advance the gospel in the world.

I have a Nissan Titan pickup truck that I love.

I love this truck.

It's such a handsome truck.

If you've seen it, you would look at that truck and go, hmm, that is a handsome truck.

That's what would go through your mind.

We have it's a it's a new truck.

It's about a year old now.

And we have a missionary from Chad staying in our house.

And when I say a missionary from Chad, I mean like the actual kind of missionary in Chad.

Like he's in an unreached people group, living in a place with no electricity or running water, with a group of people that don't have a language.

He's learning their language to write down their language, to teach them to read, to translate the Bible, to teach them the gospel.

That kind of missionary.

So you got the picture?

He's staying in my basement.

Deidre and I, he's home for a little while to get you know better technology and stuff.

And Deidre and I are away on vacation last week in our minivan.

And I get a text message from our Chidean missionary saying, hey, I have the opportunity to go visit a church in Baltimore and share about the ministry.

Do you mind if I borrow your truck?

If not, this is what the text message says.

Do you mind if I borrow the truck?

If not, no worries, I can rent a car.

How am I supposed to respond?

Like, what's the right response to that text message?

Do I mind?

Yeah, honestly, I would prefer if you not look at the truck, frankly.

So I go with this approach.

I ignore the text message for like an hour.

I'm like, hmm.

And an hour later I text him like, hey, have you left yet, question mark?

And he texts back and says, Yeah, thanks for the truck.

What do I have that I did not receive?

Jonah was unmoved by the destruction of Nineveh because of his plant.

And when the Lord took his plant away, he wept about the plant.

This again is so important for Americans to understand.

God beached the whale.

The whale dies, of course, right?

A whale doesn't come up on shore and vomit at a prophet and then swim away happily ever after.

God beaches a whale to save a prophet.

God cuts down the tree to sanctify the prophet.

There's a little hierarchy there for our American thinking.

The third lesson.

Lesson of the weed is that grace is for sinners, not saints.

The lesson of the worm, that grace is for people, not things, and the lesson of the winds, and grace is for others, not just yourself.

God says to Jonah.

In verse 8, the sun rises.

God appoints a scorching east wind, and the sun beats down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.

This is one of those desert winds that God just afflicts Jonah with.

And Jonah asked that he might die and says, It's better for me to die than to live.

I mean, this is his go-to move right here.

Verse 10 says, You pitied the plant which you didn't labor, nor did you make it grow.

It came into being in a night and it perished in a night.

Poor Jonah here.

He is so upset about the death of the plant, and now it's exasperated that he has the wind beating down on him.

And he wants to go back to those days, those days of comfort, those days of ease.

And that wind is afflicting him.

This wind, this supernatural divine wind.

I imagine this was a brutal wind.

In the same way the fish was great, in the same way Nineveh was great, in the same way that weed was supernaturally a great weed.

In the same nature that worm was an incredibly Superman kind of worm.

So it is with this.

This wind would have been brutal on Jonah.

And again, he wants to die.

When Jonah was shaded, he was happy, but now he's afflicted again, he's angry at God.

Jonah's attitude here is that grace for me, not for thee.

God's grace is good for me, but not for thee.

That would be Jonah's tattoo.

Remember back in Jonah chapter 2 when he was in the fish, how confident he was in God's grace.

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

He prayed, fully confident, that God would hear his prayer and answer his prayer.

He knew God would answer his prayer.

And that was the thrust of his prayer.

God, I pray that I would, my words would go back before you.

I pray that I would again see your temple.

He wasn't praying in light of going to Jerusalem again.

He was praying, saying, I know God, even though I've sinned, even though I ran away from you, God, I know you'll hear me again.

That was his prayer.

He was so confident in God's grace for himself.

And now he is so angry that there are those in the world who are receiving that same grace.

He reveals his hypocrisy.

In verse 11, the story ends just with this theological principle out of left field, it seems, but I'll tie it together for you.

Should I not pity Nineveh?

God asks.

That great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who don't even know their right hand from their left.

Little kids who are too young to know the difference between right and left.

God says there's 120,000 of them in this place.

Means the population is probably 600,000.

This was a huge city.

And God says, shouldn't I show mercy and compassion to the little children who are there?

And this is a principle that is taught over and over and over again in Scripture that God has mercy and saving grace for little children and little babies who die who are too young to even know the difference between right and left.

They don't sin like Adam sinned.

Adam sinned by knowing the command of God and breaking it.

This is how people sin.

They know what God wants them to do and they reject it.

This is how Jonah sinned.

This is how the Ninevehites sin.

You don't need God's word.

Even the unreached people sin in this way.

You don't need God's word to sin like Adam.

You have a conscience, Romans 1 says.

Your conscience convicts you of sin.

This is Romans 1 through 3.

In the unreached places in the world, they sin and they die and they're on their way to hell because their conscience tells them the truth about God and they reject it, and God will judge them for that.

But not their little kids who die, not their little babies who die.

They're too little.

They don't know the difference between right and left.

They definitely don't sin like Adam.

That's the point here.

That God is going to show his saving grace to these little children who die.

So do you see the argument here from the lesser to the greater?

Obviously, God is going to show mercy to these little kids.

So, Jonah, don't you want me to show mercy to their parents?

Not saying that those outside of the gospel go to heaven when they die, of course not.

That's the point of this: that these people have repented of their sins.

They have turned from their wicked ways, they have given up their idols, they have cried out to God for mercy, they have believed that Yahweh is the real God.

They have surrendered to the God of the universe.

So should God save them?

That's the question.

He's obviously going to show mercy to their kids who have died.

Shouldn't he save people who repent from their sins and believe in who God is?

Yes.

And Jonah says, no.

Let their kids perish.

Let the little babies die.

And then it ends with this, and also their cattle.

So it reads the word of God.

Let's go home.

Also their cattle?

Remember, there's the 40-day fast.

The cattle are dying right here.

The cattle are dying.

The babies are dying because their babies aren't eating.

The babies aren't drinking.

You don't feed a baby for 40 days, the baby dies.

You don't feed the livestock for 40 days, it dies.

That's what's happening in Nineveh right now.

And God is telling Jonah: should I not end this, Jonah?

Shouldn't I show them mercy?

Shouldn't their their fast end?

Shouldn't they know that they're forgiven?

And this is an incredibly profound point because it's not just true of Nineveh.

God has given his covenant to Israel, and the Israelites are in a special relationship with God in the Old Testament, where they had an access to God the other nations did not have.

But are there people from the other nations in heaven?

Yes, there are babies and little children who died.

And so Jonah's objection here is that salvation is going to the world.

It's jumping the banks from Israel and going to the world.

And Jonah can't tolerate that.

And God, this is why God ends Jonah with this.

Jonah, let me remind you that there are people from every tribe and every nation, every tongue in heaven.

There are babies who have died.

This is not new.

Salvation is not confined to Israel.

That's the point of this.

God is a gracious and merciful God.

And I remember when we were taught on Jonah 3, and I said, I point out to you that if you don't feed livestock for 40 days, the livestock dies.

And I saw in some of your faces like you hadn't thought of that before.

You're like, not the goats.

Should God not have compassion on the nations then?

This is the end of Jonah.

To this day, the Jews read the book of Jonah and they identify with, guess who?

Jonah.

They stand up and declare in one voice, literally, this happens on Yom Kippur when the Jews read the book of Jonah.

They all stand up and they all declare, we are all Jonah.

And they do not mean it like we would mean it.

We see ourselves in Jonah with our materialism.

We see ourselves in Jonah by our lack of compassion for the nations.

That's not what they mean by it.

What they mean by it is that this question the book ends with is unanswerable.

It's not an answerable question.

In the Jewish mind, that's why the book ends with the question, because it's not an answerable question.

How would you possibly answer the question?

Should God show grace and mercy to the nation that does the first Jewish Holocaust?

The horribly evil things the Ninevites do, and the book ends with the question: should God show them mercy?

If you're a Jew, you do not have the capacity to answer that question.

And so they resonate with Jonah.

Oh, poor Jonah.

How would you answer that question?

And now that comes to us.

How do you answer that question?

It's so much easier to answer the question if you see yourself as the prostitute than if you see yourself as the Pharisee.

It's so much easier.

To answer that question, if you see yourself as the Ninevehite, than if you see yourself as the prophet.

You're not the prophet in the story.

You're designed to be the sinner in the story.

It's so much easier to answer that question if you see yourself as the younger brother than as if you see yourself as the older brother who keeps all the rules.

Listen, if you look in the mirror and you see yourself as righteous and you try to do a good job and the best you can, and so you deserve things in life because you're a good person, you come to the end of Jonah 4 and you're like, I don't know.

But if you look in the mirror and you see yourself as the wickedly sinful person here, then you then you say, God, you better show sinners mercy.

You better show them mercy.

Remember, we began our study in Jonah by talking about how the Pharisees, when they tried to arrest Jesus, and Nicodemus opened up his mouth to defend Jesus, and the Pharisees told Nicodemus, search the scriptures and see, has there ever been a prophet from Galilee?

Do they forget about Jonah?

It's just the message.

It's not digestible for someone who is self-righteous.

But if you see yourself as the broken, if you see yourself as the sinner in need of grace, and this book offers you remarkable hope.

Let me tell you the plot of a book.

Here's the plot: God gives his word with clarity and power.

And God's word is rejected and ignored.

Nevertheless, God makes a covenant people for himself who will guard his word and bring it to the world.

Those covenant people are disobedient.

Nevertheless, God does not remove his word from them.

Those covenant people go their own way and God keeps them with their word.

Meanwhile, the nations go their own way and fall into horrible sin.

Despite all this, God sends a messenger to those nations.

That messenger comes with a message of salvation.

That messenger himself becomes the sacrifice for sin.

That messenger himself takes the nation's sin upon himself and is offered as a sacrifice for sin.

The God receives that sacrifice and removes his wrath.

The sacrifice dies, is buried, and raises three days later to demonstrate that God really does give sin, forgives sin, and gives new life.

That resurrected messenger then becomes a preacher to the nations.

God accompanies that preaching with a work of his spirit that brings revival to those who were outside of his covenant before, who now believe in the mercy of God.

And those people are saved.

Meanwhile, the Jews go their own way, rejecting God's grace.

But to all those who do receive it, they receive eternal life.

And then the book ends with a picture of people from every tribe and every nation and every language gathering around, receiving the mercy from God and worshiping Him.

What book did I just describe to you?

Is it the Bible or is that Jonah?

It's the same story.

If you're here this morning and you have never trusted in Jesus Christ, you've never believed the message of Jonah or the message of the Bible, I pray that you would believe it this morning, that you would recognize that Jesus died for your sins, that you are the sinner in need of a Savior, and God will extend you grace.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a God of grace and mercy who shows his grace to those who call upon it.

We're thankful for your promise of salvation.

We know that you came to your own, and your own received you not, yet to all those who do receive you, you give them the right to be called children of God.

Children born not of the flesh or of a work of the will or of human decision, but children born by your spirit.

And they would see that your grace is for the world.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel globally.