Big Brother | Jonah 4

Good morning, Orchard.

This morning we will be reading from Jonah 4.

I wanted to give you a very quick um while you're turning to Jonah 4, I wanted to give you a very quick overview.

God called Jonah to preach to his enemies something he did not want to do.

So Jonah fled.

He went the opposite direction.

But then God sent a great storm.

He was on a ship, and so the sailors, fearful for their life, jumped over uh threw Jonah overboard, and Jonah sank to the bottom.

But God rescued him, and Jonah repented.

He repented, he obeyed, and he went and he preached to Nineveh.

And the great thing is that Nineveh repented.

I want to read the last verse of chapter three before we read chapter four, which says, When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

So let's read the word of the God, the word of the Lord, chapter four.

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 yet 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?

And 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 the shade till he sh 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, God appointed a worm and attacked the plant so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on his head of Jonah 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 not I pity Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?

So this is the word of the Lord.

Let me say a quick prayer as we enter into this time.

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, light of truth, opened our mind open our minds and hearts to understand the scriptures we have heard.

Shine upon your word that we may receive it with faith, embrace it with joy, and live it with obedience.

Lead us into all truth and come and conform us more fully to the image of Christ our Savior.

Amen.

Maybe seated.

You know, we just say what a joy it is to follow Jesus.

And I'll tell you what the Lord was doing in my heart as we were singing that, as I was thinking about last year, the hardest decision that our family has ever made was to leave Alabama and to leave home and to leave our church and to come to the orchard.

It took so much surrender and so much call, so much calling, so much, so many hard conversations, so many tears.

Can I tell you, like, I love y'all.

I love y'all.

And Meg and I were even talking about this Friday.

We feel such a deep, deep, deep call to the orchard.

Like it is so hard, but it is such a joy to follow Jesus and to see what he's doing in our lives.

So thankful.

Jesus' most famous parable is probably the parable of the prodigal son that we find in Luke chapter 15, because it has everything in it that we love in a story, doesn't it?

Luke 15 · chapter mention

We have a young man who wants to basically trade his family for a frat house.

A man who wants his daddy's money, but doesn't so much want his daddy.

But then, as it always does, the money runs out and the music stops playing, and all of his friends go home.

And when all of his friends go home, he starts for the first time to realize just how much better his dad was than all of the other things that he wanted or thought he wanted or thought he needed in his life.

For the first time in his life, this young man doesn't just want his father's stuff or his father's uh credit card.

He actually wants his father.

And so there in a country far away, they're longing for the slop of the pigs.

He begins to long for the household of his father, and he decides that what he's gonna do is he's gonna go home and he's just gonna throw himself on the mercy of his father.

And so he gets up the courage and he begins the long walk home and the whole journey home from this foreign country, he's rehearsing the speech that he's gonna give, and he's trying to muster up the courage to be able to say all these things to his dad.

But Jesus says that while the young man was still a long way off, while the young man was still a long way off, his dad was looking for him.

And his dad saw his son coming over the horizon, and his dad does something that Jewish men did not do in the first century.

He pulls up his robe and he sacrifices and forsakes his own dignity and he begins to run toward his wayward son.

He goes out to him and he throws his arms around him, throws him apart, he welcomes him home, he restores him as a son.

And we love that story because we see so much of ourselves in it, don't we?

In fact, like we even made the comparison when Jonah was in the belly of the fish, that in a lot of ways, in that moment, he is the prodigal son.

And so we see ourselves and we see Jonah there.

But the technical name of the parable is not actually the parable of the prodigal son.

The technical name of the parable is actually the parable of the two sons.

In fact, the prodigal son is not even the main point that Jesus is making in Luke 15.

The main point that Jesus is making in Luke 15 has to do with his older brother.

See, not everybody was super fired up to see baby boy come home.

Not everybody was excited when the party was being thrown.

Dad's throwing a party.

Everybody else is dancing and feasting and celebrating.

Big brother's outside seething in anger and jealousy and frustration.

That he couldn't believe that his dad would celebrate someone that brought so much shame and reproach upon the family name.

The name that he had worked so hard to maintain, and the name that his father had worked so hard to maintain, and the name that his ancestors had worked.

This is so important in Jewish culture.

So here he is.

Watching, standing outside, hearing, the celebration, thinking.

I've always been here.

I've always done what you've asked me to do.

I've always been who you've wanted me to be.

I've always acted the way that you wanted me to act.

I've always obeyed what you've asked me to obey.

Where's my party?

Where's my party?

I guess maybe I should go live in the foreign country.

Where's my party?

So there he is outside of the party.

And he's ticked.

You know, we all love to believe that we're the runaway son who is received into the warm embrace of a forgiving father.

Oh, and brothers and sisters, we should.

So much truth in that.

But the truth is that most of us believe that we're the younger brother in the story when we're actually the older brother.

Most of us believe we're the ones throwing ourselves on our father's mercy when we're actually big brother seething in judgment and jealousy and misery.

And this is probably the best comparison to Jonah in the story, as we see here in chapter four.

And so this morning, what I want to do is I want us to ask four questions that all big brothers should ask.

Four questions that all big brothers should ask.

The first question that I want us to ask this morning is why am I so angry?

Why am I so angry?

In my ministry, there's probably been no question that I've been asked more in counseling than that one.

Probably no more.

It seems like all of us have kind of this low-grade frustration that's bubbling beneath the surface.

And it seems to always erupt on the wrong people at the wrong time, in the wrong ways.

And so we have this sense that we we know we're angry.

We know we're angry, but we don't really understand why we're so angry.

We do know, like maybe Romans 7 teaches, that we're doing this thing that we don't want to do.

We're doing the very thing that we hate.

And so we can see ourselves in the big brother.

When big brother heard about his brother's return and the party that his dad's doing, Jesus says this, he was angry and refused to go in.

He turned into a petulant child, didn't he?

He starts throwing a hissy fit, a temper tantrum.

He's frustrated.

Verse 1 says the same thing about Jonah.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.

And the rest of the chapter goes on to talk about the temper tantrum that Jonah is throwing here.

You know, our anger really reveals our values, it reveals what we want most.

It reveals what we actually believe beneath the surface, even if on the outside we're saying we believe and want and desire and love something different than that.

So the question becomes: if this is revealing our values, why are we so angry?

And how does that reveal our values?

And the reason that we're so angry is it's the same reason that Jonah is so angry.

It's the same reason that the big brother in Luke 15 is so angry.

That we're angry because God doesn't follow our rules.

There's nothing really that we want more than control, is there?

This seems to be the human pursuit all the way back to Genesis 3, doesn't it?

We we want control.

We want the ability to be able to direct our lives and the people around our lives according to our sovereign rule, according to our desires, according to what we deem best.

You can look and think about how different Jonah's prayer is here in chapter four than it was in chapter two when he's in the belly of the fish.

When Jonah's in the belly of the fish, all Jonah wants is some grace.

Lord, let me have mercy.

Lord, let me have grace.

Lord, I realize all I've done.

Lord, I'm so thankful for you.

Lord, would you please, please restore me?

Lord, I already have more of you than I deserve.

But here in chapter four, what do we find in Jonah's prayer?

He's resenting grace.

God, why would you forgive Nineveh so much?

Why would you be so good to them?

How dare you love them the way that you love me?

So in chapter two, he's longing for grace.

In chapter four, he's resenting grace.

And what he does in verses two and three is really remarkable.

That here he is with theological precision defining grace in a tirade.

In a tirade.

Grace spoken about in a tirade is a contradiction of terms, isn't it?

It's a contradiction of terms.

Like Jonah is the original Theobro, right?

See, when theology is rightly articulated but wrongly appreciated, it can actually become a club wielded in the hand of a prejudiced and abusive person.

That he knows about grace, but it's just as obvious, though he knows about grace, that he does not understand grace.

Because grace for Jonah has actually made him harsh and severe rather than gentle and kind.

He's angry because God is in control.

It's the same reason the big brother is angry, isn't it?

The big brother is angry because he wants to control his estate.

He sees what his father's doing and how his father's responding in the estate, and his thought is immediately, I would do it differently, and I would do it better than him.

But the big brother's problem is Jonah's problem.

This estate doesn't belong to him.

It isn't his to do as he would please.

He's mad that he's not in charge, but he doesn't get to be in charge because it's not his.

We blow up on our wives or our husbands, we blow up on our kids, we blow up on our friends, we blow up on our colleagues.

Why?

For the same reason.

For the same reason.

We blow up because we want control.

We want them to respond to us as though we are God, as though they would receive our wrath for transgressing our law.

That we, why is it that we, as grown adults, throw temper tantrums?

I mean, don't didn't you think you'd outgrow that by now?

Right?

Most of us still struggle with it.

That's just real.

Most of us still, but why?

Why is it like the big brother, like Jonah here, why is it that we can become so petulant in response to frustrating situations?

A temper tantrum is often the quickest way for us to gain control.

It's often an attempt for us to seize the control of a situation.

A few years ago, we had one of the most successful businessmen in the area where I'm from.

He called me.

And he is really a good dude.

I mean, he is a good dude.

And I could tell, it was one of those calls that I could tell it took all of the courage that he could muster to make this phone call because he wanted to ask this question: why is it that I get so angry so quickly, so often?

That by his own acknowledgement, he said, we could just be riding down the road, and the smallest thing can happen.

And I feel like I just erupt on my wife or erupt on my son, and I don't want to be that way.

I know that it's not right, and I know that they don't deserve it.

So why am I so angry?

So I asked him this question.

I said, Does your life feel out of control?

Does your life feel out of control?

And then he started explaining, like, yeah, like business grew so much faster than I planned on.

Like, praise God, so thankful, but it grew so much faster than I thought it would, and it's outgrown so much of the capacity.

It grew so quickly, wasn't able to get all the hires in place and do all the things.

He said, So like I never have a minute.

I feel constantly overwhelmed.

I feel constantly trying to grasp and figure out how to get to the next place or the next appointment or solve the next staffing issue.

It's like all the problems happen faster than I can solve them.

I said, What happens when you yell?

What happens when you erupt?

He says, Everybody gets quiet.

Everybody stops talking, at least for a little while.

And so I said, So you get control of a situation temporarily.

You get control of a life that feels out of control.

You get control of a circumstance that you are overwhelmed by.

You're able to get everyone to cower down just a little bit.

See, we get angry because we're not God.

And we get angry because we're not God and we're not in control.

And so our temper and our anger is an attempt to manipulate the people around us and the God that we serve to capitulate to the will that we have and the desires that we have.

We express wrath because we have reconstructed the law and placed ourselves at the center of it.

And they get our wrath when they transgress our law.

But Jonah discovers that God cannot be manipulated by our temper tantrums.

A loving and wise father doesn't cede control to his unruly children because that's not good for them.

We're angry because God doesn't follow our rules, and we're angry because life doesn't go our way.

Jonah's temper settles for a while.

He has 40 days.

Nineveh is given 40 days to repent, and so what Jonah essentially does is he pulls up a lawn chair, pops some popcorn, and waits for the city to burn down.

He's ready for that.

He's excited about it.

And while he's sitting there in his lawn chair, the Lord lets a plant grow.

And the plant grows in the desert sun and begins to protect him and provide for him some shade.

And there's Jonah thinking, sipping lemonade, eating popcorn, thinking, man, this is the favor of God.

This is the blessing of God.

But then, as quickly as the plant sprouts, it begins to wither.

And in verse 9, you'll notice that it says that he's angry.

He's angry again.

Jonah, it seems like he's perpetually just an angry guy.

See, Jonah was angry because his life wasn't going the way that he wanted it to go.

It wasn't going the way that he desired for it to go.

In James chapter 4, James says that you quarrel, you are angry, this is so profound, because you want and you do not have.

James 4 · chapter mention

You want and you do not have.

Like the reason that you fight with your wife is because you want and you do not have.

The reason that you explode on your children is because you want and you do not have.

The reason that you you mumble under your breath profanities towards your boss is because you want and you do not have.

The reason that the big brother gets angry with his dad is because he wants the party.

And he doesn't have the party.

That is, your anger is a demonstration and a display that you have unmet desires in your life.

That your anger is revealing what it is that you believe you need to add to Jesus in order to have a satisfying and content life.

Your anger reveals that you believe you need Jesus plus perfectly behaved children.

You need Jesus plus a doting spouse.

You need Jesus plus a certain standard of living.

You need Jesus plus the admiration and the acceptance of others.

And in that way, your anger is really a rejection of the sufficiency of Christ.

Do you have a good reason to be angry?

Do you have a good reason to be angry?

Like actually?

The second question should really be understood as an extension and a clarification of the first.

The first question is, why am I so angry?

And another way to ask that same question is, why am I so unhappy?

Unhappiness might seem to us like a shallow subject for us to broach here in church, but the real reality is that it's the deepest problem that all of us are seeking to respond, resolve.

That all of us want to be happy, struggle to be happy, and struggle to know why we struggle to be happy.

If you think about it, the big brother is really the opposite of happy when his brother comes home.

Like everybody else is dancing, everybody else is singing, everybody else is feasting, he's seething.

That describes many of us, doesn't it?

That describes many of us.

It's almost like the happiness of others compounds our own misery.

And this is exactly where Jonah is.

Nineveh repents, heaven rejoices, and he's so happy that he says, God, would you just kill me?

Like, just kill me.

If this is how life's gonna be, if this is what you're gonna do, if this is how you're gonna love, like I wish you'd just bake me in the sun, take me out of the why did you save me with a fish, right?

You see, we tend to see ourselves first.

This is certainly the case with Jonah.

Notice how often in Jonah's prayer, in verses two and three, that he speaks in the first.

Person.

In English, it's eight times.

If you saw this in Hebrew, it's actually nine times.

He says this.

He says, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?

This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster.

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

Jonah loves Jonah.

Jonah is in the Jonah.

Jonah is focused on Jonah.

The big brother actually protests in the same exact way.

Luke records Jesus saying this about the big brother, that the big brother is saying, I have served you, I have never disobeyed you.

You never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate.

In fact, verse 6 at the bottom of your screen, it's the only time in the entire book that Jonah is happy.

The only time in the entire book that Jonah is actually happy.

And why is he happy?

Well, he tells us.

Because it saved him from what?

His discomfort.

Two things, two things that Jonah hates.

Jonah hates Nineveh and Jonah hates discomfort.

Two things that Jonah hates.

Then he hates anything, in other words, that doesn't revolve around him.

He hates anything that doesn't revolve around him.

And so Jonah has a happiness in verse 6 that worms can destroy.

It's superficial and short-lived.

The only actual destruction that takes place in the entire book of Jonah is to the tree that provided him the shade.

In other words, the only destruction that takes place in the entire book of Jonah is to Jonah's source of happiness.

That God is pleased to let superficial happiness wither.

The more that you think you need your way and your wants in order to be happy, the more you're attempting to seize God's throne as your own seat.

And God will not abide one of his children who bears his name to bask in the enjoyment of self-control.

So he'll send a worm.

He'll send a worm to destroy your shade tree.

He'll send a worm to ruin your fragile hope of superficial happiness.

Because Jesus loves you too much to live your life with a treasure that rust and moths can destroy.

I mean, think about this.

How much happier would Jonah have been if he could have just celebrated repentance with God?

How much happier would he have been?

He's not even helping anything, right?

Like, how much happier would the older brother have been if he could have joined in the party and sang with everybody and feasted with everybody and danced with everybody?

How much happier would we be?

How much happier would we be if our happiness was the same thing that made God happy?

You see, Teflon joy is not the result of us getting what we want.

Teflon joy is not the result of us trying to, or of us finally attaining all of our life's goals.

And if you live in pursuit of joy that way, you have a joy that is sure to wither.

Teflon joy is when our happiness is tethered to God's happiness.

And what pleases the Lord is what pleases us.

See, Jonah and the big brother, they aren't just self-centered.

It becomes evident that they feel entitled.

And that's probably why we often are very unhappy too, is that we believe ourselves to be entitled.

Teddy Roosevelt famously said one time that comparison is the thief of joy.

And we all know that's true, don't we?

Like we all know that's true.

Unhappy people inevitably compare what they believe they deserve to what other people have received, and typically the other people that have received it, they believe didn't deserve it.

See, the miserable keeps asking, why do they get what I want?

Why do they get what I deserve?

Why do they keep having what I desire?

Jonah's plant winners, and Jonah is so despondent that he wants to die.

Nineveh received God's favor, but he does it is the way he's feeling.

Like, God, you've been so good to Nineveh, but you've deprived me of so much.

How could you?

The big brother is unhappy because his brother is enjoying what ought to be his party, ought to be his goat, ought to be his celebration.

And we do the same thing, don't we?

We see somebody with the marriage that we believe we deserve.

We see somebody with the kids that we desire.

We see somebody with the health that we long for.

We see somebody else with the money that we've worked hard to attain and haven't.

And we see all of those things that we would never say it out loud because it sounds, it sounds so yeah.

But we want it, and we feel it, and we believe it, and we're jealous, we feel like victims, don't we?

You know, victimhood is the close companion of entitlement.

This is certainly how Jonah sees himself.

In verse one, uh, if you literally translated the Hebrew, verse one would say, it was evil to Jonah, a great evil.

It was evil to Jonah, a great evil.

The surest way I know to make sure that you are a miserable person is to see yourself as a victim of your own life, to see yourself as a victim of every circumstance.

But do you know who is unshakably happy in the book of Jonah?

The fish, the tree, the worm, the wind.

There are five appointments, five times in the book of Jonah where it says, God appointed.

All right?

God appointed the fish to swallow Jonah.

We see more here.

God appointed a plant, God appointed a worm, God appointed a wind.

And all of those appointments were happy as little larks to go and do exactly what God had appointed them to do.

They were living, in other words, in submission to the sovereignty of God, to the commands of God.

They were obeying the Lord.

But the fifth appointment, God appointed Jonah to go to Nineveh.

Here's God's own prophet.

And he's taken his own life into his own hands to go the other way.

That is, the fish, the plant, the worm, and the wind lived in obedience to the sovereignty of God, but Jonah resisted, and Jonah ends up being the miserable one.

See, both the durability of our joy and the quickness of our temper flow from how trustworthy we believe God to be.

I have sat, I have sat in the living room of an 8,000 square foot house with a bitter, angry man.

And he was bitter and angry because he was convinced he had not been treated by God the way that he deserved to be treated by God.

He had not received from God what he was certain he was supposed to receive from God.

And I'm telling you, I've sat in a rundown mobile home with a man that was dying of cancer, who may have been the single happiest human being I've ever known in my life.

What's the difference?

The first man saw himself as a victim of his life, the second man saw himself as living surrendered to the will of a sovereign God who he was going to go and dwell with for eternity.

Resist the sovereignty of God like Jonah, and you're guaranteed to be miserable.

Surrender to it, and you can find joy behind every ominous cloud that this life has to throw at you.

That our happiness isn't found in what or isn't happening to us, but in who is seeing us through.

So I ask you again the question that God asked to Jonah: do you have a good reason to be angry?

Do you have a good reason to be angry?

You see, the answer to these first two questions could really be found in by asking a better question.

A question better than, why am I so angry?

And a question better than why am I so unhappy is, why am I so loved?

Why am I so loved?

Jonah says boldly, audaciously, with hubris, you're dang right, God, I'm angry.

I have every reason to be angry.

I knew you would do this.

You gave grace to Nineveh and you took away your favor from me.

Like, of course I'm angry.

Of course I'm bitter.

Jonah and the big brother are angry for the same reason.

The big brother is asking his dad basically the same question that Jonah is here and asking the Lord.

How could you love him the way that you are meant to love me?

How could you love him?

Jonah, like the big brother, he wanted to define the boundaries of grace.

And the whole point of Jesus' parable and the whole point of the book of Jonah is that grace belongs to the Lord and to the Lord alone.

Grace is the Lord's to distribute.

Jonah was right in ways that his heart could not compute when he says from the belly of the fish, salvation, salvation is of the Lord.

That if you look back to the confession that Jonah complains in verses two in verse two, what you read is you read about the grace that Jonah needed, not Nineveh.

Oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

That that is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Guess who needed a patient God?

Guess who needed a God that abounded in steadfast love, not dependent upon his own faithfulness?

Guess who needed a God that was slow to anger?

Man, it was Jonah.

Jonah needed that grace, not just Nineveh.

He ought to be another skeleton at the bottom of the ocean.

He ought to be fish food.

He ought not to have a breath to be able to speak his words.

And yet here he is with enough grace to be able to complain to God.

Jonah needed that grace.

That is, Jonah and the big brother were angry and unhappy because they were asking the wrong question.

The question isn't, how could you love them?

The question is, how could you love me?

How could you love me?

It's the question that flips bitterness and entitlement and victimhood on its head so that we have not just the perspective of the lost, the perspective of the bitter, the perspective of the broken, but the perspective of the saved.

The perspective of grace.

How could you love me?

And I was thinking about this.

There isn't a counselor worth his or her salt in the United States of America that would counsel God to stay in a relationship with me.

Not one.

I've been too unfaithful too many times for too long.

All God has done is been good to me.

And all I've ever done is take it for take advantage of it and take it for granted.

Like, how could he love me?

How could he love me?

Jonah needed what Nineveh needed.

The big brother needed what his little brother needed.

I need what the LGBTQ community needs.

And Iran needs.

And I need grace.

You see, grace is always a scandal.

It never goes to people who deserve it.

That's the very definition of it.

That's what Jonah's anger teaches us.

It seems crazy that God would love Nineveh, but it's crazy that God would love me too.

That God loved Jonah in spite of Jonah.

And God was good to Jonah in spite of Jonah.

And God used Jonah in spite of Jonah.

And God blessed Jonah in spite of Jonah.

Brothers and sisters, I'm the same way.

I'm the same way.

God loves me in spite of me.

And God has forgiven me in spite of me.

And God has used me in spite of me.

And God has blessed me in spite of me.

And God has let me know his favor in spite of me.

All of it is in spite of me.

All of it is scandalous grace.

I had accumulated a debt that I could not repay, but he canceled the record of debt with its legal demands by nailing it to the cross.

It's a scandal.

It's a scandal.

I'm not shocked that there's a place in my father's house for the prodigal.

I'm shocked that there's a place in my father's house for me.

Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father, we come and we bow ourselves.

Broken.

Overcome with our own pride and our own hubris.

Lord.

And we drag it into the shadows of the cross where we see your grace.

That we might realize that we are not victims.

We are in the process of being redeemed in a broken and disordered world, yes.

We are hurt and wounded.

We are limping and bleeding.

But the scandal of grace says that we are not victors, we are not victims, we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus.

So, Lord, would you forgive us?

Would you restore us?

Would you meet with us?

Would you let us leave this morning knowing that we have encountered the living God through the Holy Spirit and through your word?

We ask these things, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.