Jonah 4

Alright, we are in Jonah chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

We will finish Jonah today, Lord willing.

If something awful doesn't happen or the Lord doesn't return while I'm standing up here, we're going to get through Jonah today.

We serve an amazing, amazing God.

And I don't just say that in a cliche way, but as I go through the book of Jonah, it has helped me realize that fact a little bit more, that God is truly amazing.

In the book of Jonah, in this book alone, God has simultaneously controlled the weather, controlled wildlife, called a city to repentance, and also, maybe the most impressive part of all of this, is changing the heart and really going after the heart of one single man at the same time that he's doing all that other stuff?

How can a God that is doing things on such a large scale orchestrate the tiniest events that tug at our emotions to reveal where our heart is so that we can then tune our hearts to sing his praise?

How does he do all of this at one time?

Have you ever felt like that God has done this huge thing and that you, that everybody else around you is experiencing it, but he did this gigantic thing just for you?

I'm gonna give an example of that.

I was in lawn care and landscaping for like 15 to 18 years, and with lawn care and landscaping comes snow plowing in the wintertime.

And with an Ohio winter, what you have is anywhere from a skiff of snow to 18 inches of snow, and that could go on all winter.

So you could get a winter where you have consistently snow on the ground from Thanksgiving until this feels like Memorial Day, or you could have a winter where you don't get anything and it's negative six degrees and it's just blowing outside, or you could have a 30-degree winter.

Well, one winter we weren't getting much snow, and it's kind of a feast or famine type deal, and we needed snow because we needed money.

Uh that's the way it works.

When people plow snow, they get money and then they pay their bills.

We were not getting any snow, so we weren't getting any money.

So we I just began to pray about it, and I was like, Lord, we need snow, and we need it pretty bad.

Can you sit?

Can you send some snow?

At the same time, I'm sure there's people that were saying, Dear God, thank you for no snow this winter.

This is amazing.

So competitive prayers going up, um, maybe not, but uh we're praying for snow, and uh, it was the month of January, I think it was 2012, and it began to snow.

And I'm not this story, isn't about how my prayers are powerful, please.

They are anything but but it began to snow, and we began to plow the snow that was on the ground and shovel the snow and salt the snow.

And then we had this number in mind that we were praying for, like, Lord, if you could give us this number, um, we we would greatly appreciate that.

It is never, we've never actually done this number in a month of snow plowing, but that's what we need.

And about halfway through the month, we hit that number and we adjusted the number.

I was like, Lord, you know, if we could hit this number, that would be that would really help out even for next month, and then you could back off on the snow if you wanted to, even though you can do whatever you want anyway.

But um, and then the Lord met that number, and I was like, okay, everything else after this is just icing on the cake, and the snow kept coming, and we exceeded this number that we needed to by like 40%, and I felt like everybody had experienced like the snowiest month that we had seen in a long time, and it was like for me, I and I know it wasn't, and that's the point of God.

That snow was a bother to some people, it caused some people to slow down, uh, which probably prevented a lot of different things.

It probably caused some people to fall down, which caused some different things, caused some injuries, caused some people to pause and evaluate some things.

It provided for some people, it made some people go without.

God does all of this at once.

And at the same time, he comes after my heart in the midst of that snowy month.

That is incredible.

That is the incredible God that we get a glimpse of in Jonah.

And I just I often think like, how can he control all of this?

How can he do all of this at once?

And sometimes I think, what if I was responsible for everything on my property?

And some of you are like, Yeah, I am, you should come see my property.

But I mean, no, I mean everything.

Like, what if I had to water the grass and feed the right bugs the right things to keep the ecosystem balanced?

And then I had to bring the right rain clouds about, and then I had to produce the right soil, and then I had to like raise and set the sun at the right time, and then I had to kill off the right bugs to feed the birds and the other bugs, and then I had to like tell the trees to grow, and I had to tell the birds where to go get the food, and tell the other bugs where to go get the.

I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't do that on a tiny little city lot.

There, that's it's too overwhelming, and that's just the stuff that I can see.

I can't I can't control that.

God does this with everything, he He does it with every single thing.

Uh there's this song on the radio that I hate, and it says um, God is doing something.

And it says it like 400 times.

God is up to something, God is doing something, God is up to something.

Like, okay, I get it, but God is up to everything.

It's not, it's not like, you know, God's up to something over here.

I don't know.

Uh that's kind of implying that there's some things that God's not up to.

God is up to something, God is up to literally everything.

And yet, in the midst of that, he genuinely cares for me and you.

He cares about what is going on in our hearts as he is orchestrating a billion other things.

And a billion is really an understatement.

So, Jonah, the book of Jonah, has shown me that the same God that controls the fish and the ocean and the weather and nations is going hard after my heart for his good and for my glory, for my good and for his glory.

Well, I said that backwards.

Uh, that's incredible.

That God cares about what's going on inside of me.

And that's what I really want us to see as we as we wrap up Jonah today.

That a God so powerful and so in control cares so deeply about what's going on in our hearts.

And as we go into Jonah chapter 4, um, most people have heard of the book of Jonah.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

I mean, most just people have heard of the book of Jonah, and they know that it just involves this big giant fish swallowing a guy.

And I would say that not everybody, but most Christians know that Jonah went to Nineveh.

Like he went to Nineveh and he preached a message of repentance.

But I would say that most Christians don't know about Jonah chapter 4 because the book just ends.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

It just, it just ends.

It's just like this weird ending.

And I've never even actually heard a message on Jonah chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

I know they're out there, but I've never, in all of my church historiness, I've never heard anybody preach a message on Jonah chapter 4, and it's been kind of difficult because it just it just ends.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

There's no pretty bow put on the end of it, there's no happy ending.

Uh Jonah is not riding off on a donkey in the sunset uh as the people of Nineveh are in the background rejoicing about God's mercy, and Jonah cocks his head up to God with a smile and a tear in his eye.

That doesn't happen.

We don't get that.

It's actually the exact opposite.

Jonah goes and preaches to the Ninevehes a message of repentance.

Repent, or God's gonna destroy you.

The people of Nineveh repent, and Jonah heads out of town, pouting that they repented about the message that he brought to them.

So he sits in this little shelter that he made outside of town and he watches over the city, holding on to some hope that God would destroy these people.

That is not a happy ending.

Nobody, like if that's playing in the theaters and they're like true to the book, nobody's standing up and clapping when the when the credits roll.

They're like, this is a rip.

We got ripped here.

This isn't a happy ending at all.

So at the end of chapter of Jonah chapter 3, God did not do the disaster that he had said that he was going to do to Nineveh if they didn't repent.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

So God doesn't do it.

Nineveh repented and God withheld his judgment.

God had mercy on Jennah, on Nineveh.

Chapter 4 starts right on the heels of chapter 3.

And I'm gonna read the entire chapter here of Jonah chapter 4, and you'll kind of get let in on just the weird awkwardness of how this ends.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

Jonah chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

But it disp displeased Jonah exceedingly.

That's it, it displeased him that the Ninevehites have repented and God has had mercy on them.

Uh it but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was in my country?

That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshus.

For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry?

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.

He sat under it in a sh 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 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, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east 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, and came into a being in a night and perished in a night.

And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are almost there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.

What a weird, awkward ending to this story.

I mean, Jonah is upset that the message that he preached was effective, and that God had mercy on the Ninevehes by not destroying them.

In fact, he's so angry that he wants to die.

Jonah is so self-righteous that he can't see that it took mercy for him to even get to Nineveh in the first place.

His anger has blinded him to his own sin and has magnified the sin of others.

Listen to some of that language that describes Jonah's emotions in these texts.

As we go through this text, you will hear these big emotional words, like in verse 1.

It says that he was displeased exceedingly.

So now we know why in Jonah chapter 1, why Jonah ran from God in the first place.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

He tells us right there in verse 2, he says, That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshus.

For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

How do you think Jonah knew that God was a God like that?

Because some of the very things that Jonah is accusing God of have been experienced by Jonah and his people.

They have been shown great mercy.

God has relented of disaster that he was going to do to them.

And yet Jonah has forgotten all of that in a fit of rage.

And the list that he accuses God of, what a list of things to be accused of.

Jonah says that God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

And he levies that on God as if it's some sort of accusation that he should be like embarrassed about.

And in Genesis 1.26, we are told that God has created man in his image.

Sin then enters into the world and breaks that image.

We, as image bearers, we are broken.

And then Jesus came, dies on the cross for the sins of those that would believe, and now those of us that have put on Jesus' righteousness can now bear God's image a little bit more accurately.

Not perfectly.

We're not going to bear it perfectly, but that list that describes God, slow to anger, gracious, merciful, that's a list that should somewhat describe his people.

Not perfectly, but somewhat.

And I think part of Jonah's problem is that he thinks it describes him, but not the Ninevites.

He has determined that the Ninevehes don't deserve the graciousness, the steadfast love, and the slow to angerness of God, like he and his people do deserve.

He is forgetting about having God's righteousness and thinking that it's somehow his own righteousness that is making him worthy of being able to make the judgment call on Nineveh.

He is putting himself in God's seat.

And isn't that really what we do when we get angry?

Like Jonah, we forget that God is sovereign over all things.

And that he has brought about whatever is happening on purpose, and we get angry as if we should have made the call.

We had better ideas.

If it was up to me, this would have gone differently.

Our anger toward a just a given situation is almost always because we think, deep down inside, we think we know better.

We are being overlooked.

We are doing all the work.

Other people don't deserve this.

I do.

Or I don't deserve this, other people do.

We are at those times telling God that we know better than He does.

And I think if we said out loud or we had to write out our complaints, like Jonah's complaints are written here in Jonah, they would seem just as dumb as Jonah's complaints to God.

So let's say, for instance, uh you, let's say you come to church early and you help set up chairs, and then you help take down chairs for the and then you help set up tables for the meal, and then you clean up the chairs after the meal has been spread out, and you start to grumble in your heart, and you start to complain to God how no one else seems to be doing anything here.

I mean, come on, God.

Everyone's got to see that there's stuff to do.

And I knew it.

I knew if you gave me a healthy body and a good work ethic that I would have to do stuff.

I knew you were gonna do this to me.

I knew I would get stuck doing the stuff if you left me be healthy.

Why did you do this?

I knew if I came to a church that met in a danky old building that doesn't have a permanent building, that it smells weird downstairs, I knew I would be the one that would get stuck setting up tables.

I knew you were gonna do this to me, God.

And we began to complain as if God hasn't been over this entire situation, as if God isn't doing a billion different things that we can't see.

And we sit and we soak in our anger because our sinful self feels good to be mad.

We feel good about it.

And in verse 3, Jonah is so mad that he asked God to take his life from him because he thinks that that would be better.

Now, I've been mad about all that stuff.

Like I've been, I get it, like I've been mad, but I've never been like God, I'm setting up chairs.

Can't you just kill me?

Like, I've not been there yet.

Um, I don't know.

But Jonah has totally lost sight of the fact that God knows best.

God knows better than Jonah.

And in that moment, in the moment where Jonah sinks to his lowest, uh, God comes after Jonah's heart.

He pursues Jonah.

He comes at Jonah.

He doesn't come at him with a storm, he's done that.

He doesn't come at him with a big giant fish or a big giant assignment.

He comes at him with a question Do you do well to be angry?

At Jonah's lowest point, God pursues him the most gently.

And that blows my mind.

Because I feel like I would have sent some sort of shark NATO or something at Jonah after all of this.

But God deals with him the most gently when he is at his lowest.

God asked Jonah a question.

That is mind-blowing.

God has every answer for everything ever.

And he asked Jonah a question.

He could have lectured him, he could have browbeat him, he could have threw the ocean up onto the sea at him, he could have done anything, but he asked Jonah a question.

There's a lesson in there for us as we talk to others.

This may be off the beaten path a little bit, but we probably should ask some stinking questions sometimes.

Sometimes we're so concerned with looking like we have all the answers that we won't ask questions.

Even in conversation.

You want to get to somebody's heart?

Ask them a question.

Have you ever been in a conversation with somebody and it's completely one-sided?

Like you have gotten their life story, all of their cousins' life stories, and you're pretty sure that they don't know your name.

Like they don't, they haven't even got around to asking you what your name is yet.

But you know everything about everybody, everybody on their mom and dad's side.

If if you've never been in that conversation, you might be the one that's letting everybody in.

I don't know.

Talk to Rick afterwards, you can hash it out with them.

But true concern for someone else will always cause you to want to hear from their heart.

A good way to get to someone's heart is to ask them some questions.

And this shows us that God, the God that has every answer to everything ever, isn't just looking to flex the fact that he has all the answers.

He is truly concerned about our hearts.

Our God shows humility and meekness toward Jonah at the most undeserving time of Jonah's life.

At the lowest point.

And it actually gets a little bit lower in verse 5.

And verse 5, it gets a little worse.

I'm gonna read verse 5 again.

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself.

So in the Old Testament, uh the children of Israel lived in booths in the wilderness.

It's just like a temporary little makeshift shelter.

So picture that.

Let your imagination go crazy.

He made a booth for himself there.

He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city.

So Jonah makes this little shelter and he sits there and he's waiting to see what God is going to do to Nineveh, hoping that Nineveh still is going to be destroyed.

Not only was he rooting for God to destroy Nineveh, he actually wanted to see it if it was going to happen.

And where is God in the midst of this outrageous behavior?

Verse 6.

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.

God made a plant come up over Jonah's head for some shade as he sat and pouted, waiting to see some destruction.

Remember in verse number one of this chapter, Jonah was exceedingly displeased, so much that he wanted to die.

And that God had mercy on the Ninevehes.

Now he is exceedingly glad that a plant grew up over his makeshift shelter tent thing that he built.

How dumb to get excited, to get that excited about something so temporary when his actual Purpose was so much greater than the temporary trappings of this world.

And I'm going to repeat that for those of us that live in the United States of America.

How dumb to get that excited about something so temporary when our actual purpose is so much greater than the temporary trappings of this world.

Jonah is so excited about a little shelter and a little plant that gives a little bit of shade so that he can sit there for a little bit and hopefully be entertained and indulged and indulge himself in his self-righteous behavior as he's waiting for God to destroy Nineveh.

He's just giddy about this.

And again, God is doing so much here.

I just love that.

Like, here's the little shade tree thing, little gourd thing I grew up, and then he sends a little bug in and it kills it.

And Jonah's like, no! He had this moment where he was so happy, and God's like, nope, that's not good enough.

We're destroying that.

He did all of that.

He grew all that stuff and did all this while going after Jonah's heart, using those things to go after Jonah's heart.

Do you see the scope of God's power here?

From a big old fish to a tiny worm, he appoints those things to do things to come after our heart.

That sun that is rising, the wind that is scorching, those things are doing a hundred different things for a hundred different people at the same time.

And it's also revealing something in Jonah's heart.

God isn't content with Jonah simply going to Nineveh and preaching the message that he gave him.

He wants Jonah's heart.

He doesn't just want the obedience.

And here we are in the land of the free, where we can distract ourselves with temporary shelters and frivolous entertainment, all while being called to something so much greater than that.

And the same exact God that is doing one billion other things is coming after your heart.

He is not content for you to stroll up in here, plop down, and take this all in.

And he loves you so much that he will send a storm, he will send a shipwreck, he will send a scorching east wind, a giant fish, a tiny worm, he will send sickness, he will send job loss, he will send friend loss, he will send people not helping you pick up chairs.

He will send all of that because he wants that to reveal your self-righteous sin for what it is.

And he wants you to stop worrying about other people's sin and repent of your own sin.

Jonah, again, is so mad about all of this that he tells God that it would be best if he would just let him die.

Verse 9.

Or verse 8, I'm sorry, when the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east 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.

And this is how God responds in verse number nine.

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

Jonah so angry, so upset that God has done all of this, but yet God still being gentle with Jonah.

And verse 10, um, verse number 10, and the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you grow it, which it came into a being in a night and perished in a night.

God is actually conversating with Jonah in the midst of this lowliness.

But I love how verse 9 starts with these two famous words.

We see these throughout the Bible often, but God.

That happens from time to time.

In Ephesians chapter 2, I'm gonna turn there.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 2, what happens often is God will outline what our life looks like when we are in charge, and then it'll swoop in with a but God, and then he'll describe what he can do for us.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So Jonah chapter 2, and you were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

Pretty negative there for us.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

But God, but God stepped in.

Again in Romans.

I'll read this real quick Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Romans 5, 6 says, For while we were still weak, that's us, we're weak.

At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die.

But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Here we have Jonah running from God in direct disobedience with his heart in a very dark place, wishing death upon himself.

And at the height of his disobedience, at the height of his self-righteousness, it says, But God said to Jonah, God, still gentle, still gentle with Jonah, ask him if he does well to be angry for the plant.

And Jonah even has the nerve to answer that with yes.

And he raises it another level and says, I'm angry enough to die.

I don't even know how mad that is.

That's very mad if you are angry enough to die.

So God has appointed a plant to shade Jonah, and then a worm to destroy the plant, and destroy Jonah's shade, and then this sends Jonah over the edge because he finds all of this unbearable.

He is fed up with the way that everything has turned out, even though God has had his hand on all of this and has ordained all of this to happen in order to expose Jonah's heart.

To show Jonah that he is not God, that God will indeed have mercy on whoever he wants to have mercy on, and he will expose the self-righteous heart of Jonah because he has actually experienced the same mercy that the Ninevehes have experienced.

I love how in these moments God doesn't go to Jonah and say, Jonah, you're okay.

You're doing great, Jonah.

Just be you, Jonah.

He doesn't say, Jonah, you have the ability within yourself to fix this.

Because he doesn't.

He actually points out Jonah's hypocrisy and gently reminds Jonah of who he is.

He says, You pitied a plant that I made and I made grow.

And shouldn't I, the God that's slow to anger, stead, full of steadfast love, gracious, shouldn't I also pity Nineveh?

Jonah lost sight of who God really was and needed to be reminded of that.

And the thing is, as we have trekked through the book of Jonah, God has reminded him a few times of this in a few different ways.

And the weird thing is, on top of that, he has reminded him again here at the end of the book, and then that's it.

Like, do you do well to be angry about a plant?

Yep, I do.

I want to die.

Okay, but you pitied a plant that you didn't do anything to make rise up.

Shouldn't I have gracious mercy on this people that don't know anything?

Because I'm God and you're not, and then that's it.

It just ends.

He just spent this entire book doing all of these monstrous things and all of these tiny things and pursuing Jonah's heart.

Then we're left with nothing else.

And I actually think that it's a fantastic ending.

I love this ending.

It's just, it's over.

Because this is how it goes in life.

We don't get like pretty little bows put on anything.

A lot of times stuff just ends and that's it.

And we're like, wait, what?

And we're thinking about it and we don't even know how to make sense of it.

That's how it goes.

We tell God, no, we run away from God.

We run away from what is good and right.

We take God off the throne of our heart and put ourselves there.

We grumble, we complain, we say in our hearts that we know better than God.

That, yeah, God's orchestrating all this, but if I was orchestrating it, it wouldn't happen like this.

And God is always there reminding us of who He is.

That's what we need.

If you are in a state of anger and rebellion, I could self-help and nine-step you to death.

But if you don't begin to understand a little bit more of who God is, then you're just going to continue to make yourself your own God.

You have to understand who God is.

It's so perfect that this book just ends because we would try to make Jonah the hero if he even flinched toward obedience.

If Jonah just like, okay, yeah.

We would be like, yeah, Jonah! Because we love to make ourselves God.

I mean, I thought and I was taught for many years that Jonah repented and then headed to Nineveh, and then that was the end of it.

Because we love to make people heroes.

So we're like, yeah, Jonah's the hero.

He repented and then he went to Nineveh and did his job.

And it's like, wait, there's a whole nother chapter here.

No, wait.

Jonah pouted and wished death upon basically everyone.

That's not really happy.

And then that's it.

He's not the hero.

God is like, you know what?

We're gonna end this book right now, right in this weird, awkward stage, so that people can see that Jonah is not the hero of this book.

He is a terrible sinner.

And he's not the hero.

He's the one that's being pursued by the hero.

People, that is us.

That's us.

Take that away as we close out Jonah.

You're not the hero.

Step off the throne of your self-righteous heart and submit to the real king.

God is not interested in all of your answers.

He already has the answers.

He's not interested in your outward obedience, of you just going to Nineveh and doing what he told you to do.

He wants your heart.

Luke 11, 39 says, And the Lord said to him, Now you Pharisees, cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

God wants your heart.

In the midst of doing everything that he is doing, he is pursuing your heart.

The very things that he is doing are tied to the pursuit of your heart.

All the little storms, all the big storms, all the tiny little worms, all the little things and all the big things, God has ordained those things to happen so that He can get a hold of your heart.

Submit your heart to Him.

Let's pray.