Turning your Bibles to Jonah chapter 4, this is hopefully the last in a series of four messages on the book of Jonah. To get you up to date, God called Jonah to go to Nineveh to the north, and instead he fled to Tarshish to the west. That is a 90 degree turn from where he was supposed to go. And then God hurled a storm at him, And the long and the short of it was, he was pitched overboard by the other passengers and then swallowed by a giant fish. In the midst of that shock, he repented and determined to fulfill the call of God. And the fish vomited him up onto the land. And he went to Nineveh, and contrary to all expectations, His ministry there, warning the Ninevites of judgment, was successful. And what we suggested was that what Jonah was doing was the same thing that the Christian church has been doing for 2,000 years. He preached law and gospel. He warned them that judgment was going to come. He warned them that if they did not repent, that the hand of God would come down heavily upon them and destroy them. And they believed, and they repented. It was a remarkable thing that took place. He preached what the Apostle Paul calls the goodness and severity of God. It's always both. Or in that seminal revelation to Moses in Exodus 34, where God reveals himself as one who is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children and the grandchildren, and so forth. So he preaches law and gospel, and then comes revival. And we then suggested why we think that the message was received and believed. Because remember, this would be an audience that's even more pagan than our fellow citizens here in this land. These are people who had no knowledge of the Bible, no knowledge of God. I mean, what the last verse of the book says is they didn't know their left hand from their right hand. They don't know right and wrong. They don't know truth from error. They hardly know reality from non-reality. nevertheless they respond. Why would they respond to this message of what had to appear to be a half-crazed prophet predicting their doom? So what we suggested was that the message resonated. Why would it resonate? Because there is this sense of the divine in every one of us, and as Jonah preaches the justice of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, it resonates. The Apostle Paul describes this in Romans chapter 1. He says that the truth about God, His invisible attributes, eternal power, and divine nature are all clearly seen being understood through what has been made. You can see in creation that God is wise, that God is powerful, and that God is good. That's what we sang in the opening hymn. I sing the almighty power of God and the wisdom that made and the goodness that's displayed all around us. So when he preaches the truth of God, it resonates, it rings true. It has the sound of truth. Even to a pagan people who have no exposure to the Bible. And then right and wrong. Well, the Apostle Paul says that, Romans 1.32, although they know the ordinance of God. Speaking of the downward spiral into decadence and sin and evil and darkness, they know the ordinance of God. Who do? These pagans, these unbelievers, the people that don't have the Bible. They know the ordinance of God that those who do such things are worthy of death. That's Romans 1.32. Romans 2, verses 14 through 16, he says something similar. They don't have the law of God. They don't have the benefit of the Bible. But the law of God, he says, it's written on their hearts. On whose hearts? On everybody's hearts. We all have this sense of the moral. We have moral motions. We understand there's a right and there's a wrong. So the law of God is written on the heart of every individual, whether they have Bibles or not, their conscience bears witness, either condemning them or accusing them or sanctioning them. So when he preaches right and wrong and denounces their evils and warns of judgment and yet extends the possibility of mercy, it resonates, it receives, it has the ring of truth, and they respond from the palace to the most impoverished, the whole land, the whole city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. They repent, and the result is that God spares them. ministry is successful. He preaches law, he preaches gospel, and we of course have an advantage over him. We can preach Christ crucified, but that means even greater clarity of the grace of God, his mercy that's available to those who repent. But to surprise surprise, Jonah is not happy. Verse 1, it displeased Jonah exceedingly. He is not happy. Why? Why is he not happy? I think it comes down to this. We're going to explore this in depth. Because he thinks they don't deserve to be forgiven. These are terrible, terrible people. I mean, the historians of the ancient world, they will contrast the relative The relative benevolence of the Babylonians as they conquered people versus the sheer brutality of the Assyrians, they were a terrible, terrible people. And as far as Jonah is concerned, they don't deserve to be forgiven. They deserve to be destroyed. They are a terrible people and they are threatening to my people. So what we're going to see here is amazing grace. to a people who don't deserve it, and by seeing it, we trust that we will come to a greater understanding of the nature of the grace of God to us all. So we'll divide this up into three categories. Number one, Jonah's anger and God's rebuke. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was what? 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 Tarshish, that 90-degree turn to the west, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. You know, you hear the echo of, again, that original revelation that God made to Moses back in Exodus 34. and relenting from disaster. This is somewhat hard to understand. So I thought about this analogy. Consider mainland China and Taiwan. Mainland China has 1.5 billion people. And Taiwan has 23 million. In other words, mainland China is 65 times larger in population than is Taiwan. And yet the Straits of Taiwan are full of threatening, aggressive actions by mainland China. So let's imagine a pastor from Taiwan goes and preaches to the mainland If you don't repent, God is going to destroy you. And he is secretly thinking, and I can't wait till he does. And the threat is removed. And we are spared and saved by the judgment of God upon the wicked communist government and all that it represents. And he goes and preaches that. And from the premier, from the chairman of the Communist Party, President Xi, down to the lowliest citizen, the whole nation repents and they're spared. How would that Taiwanese pastor feel about that? Well, we hope he'd be rejoicing about it. But the fact of the matter is, China still has the capacity to destroy and enslave Taiwan. So put yourself in Jonah's position in chapter 3, verse 4, 40 days, 40 days, and the threat ends, and we are no longer in danger because God is going to destroy these people, this vast Assyrian empire, the capital of which is Nineveh. And it's not as though this is an irrational fear, because as a matter of decades, you know, 50 years in the life of any civilization is a long time. 50, 60 years later, the Assyrians come down and they do just that. They destroy what we call the Northern Kingdom of Israel. and haul it off into captivity in a distant place, and basically it disappears from history. We don't know what happened to Israel. Judah to the south was preserved, but Israel, the ten northern tribes, they just vanished. The whole civilization is destroyed. So it's not an irrational fear on the part of Jonah, and he's upset because they're not being destroyed, and so the threat persists. The danger continues. That's what he's saying in verse 2, "'Didn't I tell you, Lord, not to do that?' In other words, God, you are too nice. You know, compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and all that sort of thing. You are too nice. In other words, God, you don't know your own business. These are bad people. They should be destroyed. His outlook is the classic, I know better than God. The questions that we ask, why did God, why did he do that? Why did he allow that? Why wasn't he here? Why didn't he stop it? Why was there that death? Why was there that accident? Why was there that sickness? And we have our disappointments, and we don't know what God is doing, and why He's doing it, and why He isn't doing differently. And behind all that is the thought, we know better than God. And so Jonah is angry with God. He doesn't recognize what's happening here. He does not trust God. Let's go back to the categories again. Wisdom, power, goodness. all three of those are true, you either blame God or trust God, right? Something goes wrong, something goes contrary to all expectation, contrary to what you really wanted, contrary to your desires, your dreams, your aspirations. Is God wise? Does He know better than we do? Is He powerful? Could things have been otherwise? Well, certainly they could have been. And does He want them to be? such as is to our benefit, or is he not good? You put those three together, you either trust him or you blame him. And at this point, Jonah is blaming him. I know better. I'm wiser than you are. You're not using your power properly, because you should be destroying these people, and you're not being very wise about this, because these are terrible people, and they should be destroyed. And so he doesn't trust God. That's the position that we often find ourselves, or we think we know better than what God is doing, how he ought to use his power. And instead, you know, he's dominated by his goodness, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in chesed, steadfast love, relenting from danger. Verse 3, Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me. He is plunged into a dark, dark place. He expresses a death wish. For it is better for me to die than to live. I mean, I've betrayed my whole country. These people are going to survive now. They remain a danger to us. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? What is that? You know how we use that word, really? Somebody does something really foolish and you say, or say something really, really out of line, and you say, really? That's kind of a divine really right here. Jonah, really? You think you're wiser than I am? You think that you're more virtuous than I am? You think you know better than I am? You're challenging my wisdom? You're challenging my goodness? You're challenging the use of my power? Are you really? And you want to die because you didn't get your way? So, look, he's a prophet of God. It just shows we all have feet of clay, don't we? We're all weak. We're all foolish. We're all deeply flawed. Jonah is no exception. And he puts it all right out there on display, coming right up to the edge of what's really blasphemous as he interacts with God. Number two, Jonah's despair. So we look at Jonah's anger, God's rebuke, Jonah's despair, and God's mercy. So verse five. 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 should see what would become of the city. You see, everybody, no doubt, man, it's like the 4th of July in Nineveh. They've been spared. They're celebrating. So what's Nineveh doing? He's pouting. He's sulking. He didn't get his way. He doesn't like the outcome. It's not what he had expected. It's not going the way that he thinks it should go. So what's he doing? He's just pouting. He's not going to celebrate. He's not going to rejoice over the salvation of a city of 120,000 people who've been spared the judgment of God. No, no, he doesn't like the outcome. So what's he going to do? He's just going to sulk. He's like a sullen teenager who didn't get what he wanted, didn't get what she wanted. He went out to look at what would become of them. He seems to be still hoping that, well, maybe God still is going to destroy them, because they're awfully bad people, and maybe I've misread the situation. So he's waiting till he should see what would become of the city. So verse six, 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. That word appointed, it repeats itself in this passage. God appointed a fish, God appoints here, he appoints a plant, and then he's going to appoint a worm, and then he's gonna appoint an east wind. God is sovereign, he's in charge of the situation. What's he doing in verse six when he appoints a plant that it might be shade over his head to save him from his discomfort? What's he doing? God is protecting Jonah from Jonah. from the foolish decisions that he's made. He's protecting him from himself. Now, the other day, I watched the recent documentary about Johnny Manziel, the Heisman Trophy winner in 2012, first round NFL draft pick in 2014, paid $4.3 million for signing a bonus. And that was part of an $8.2 million four-year contract. He had it all, fame, money, and unrestricted hedonism. Notice what he said. He said, when I got everything that I wanted, I think I was the most empty that I ever felt inside. Fame, money, every imaginable pleasure that a person could want. What's the result? Empty. And he continued then on his reckless course on which he'd already started, his life unraveling, his football career ending, his visits to detox clinics increasing, what we do to ourselves. God is protecting Jonah from Jonah. This is the mercy of God. He appoints this plant to make him more comfortable in the depths of his depression. And it says, so Jonah, Continuing in verse 6, so Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Because of what? Because of the plant. He goes from the depths to the heights. The plant. The plant gave him comfort. He felt good. He had some relief. Jonah is in a very bad place. Psalm 43, 4, David says it's God who is his exceeding joy. For Jonah, it's a plant. The plant just represents the things of this world, the things that are temporary and skin-deep, superficial. He was chosen to serve God. and to find his joy in pleasing God and in bearing fruit for God and being faithful to God. And eventually he was faithful and then he was fruitful because the Ninevites repented. Is he happy about that? No. What's he happy about? A plant, one of the things of this world. car, a house, a beautiful wardrobe, a boat, a particular person. Jonah is set up for a big fall. He will plunge again into darkness and distress, hoping for death. Why? Because he set his hopes superficially on the things of this world, a plant for heaven's sakes, rather than aligning his affections with the will of God. So, continuing in verse 7, continuing in verse 7, but when dawn came up the next day, God appointed, there's that word again, He appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. So this is all part of the divine plan Jonah needs to face reality. Jonah is in a bad place, in a dark place, and this temporary relief that he's exceedingly glad about is no place to anchor his hopes. So God appoints a worm, the plant withers, all things in this world inevitably do. Does Jesus not say, do not lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal? See, it's inevitable. The rust, the thieves, the deterioration, the corruption, it's inevitable that these things are going to wither. They will not last. Many years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah asked, why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? In other words, not bread that's going to satisfy your soul. And why do you labor for that which does not satisfy? It won't satisfy. It doesn't satisfy. It cannot satisfy. It's like the plant. Everything in this world is like the plant. The apostle Paul 2 Corinthians 4, look, he says, the things that we see, they're temporal. You look around you. These pillars, they've been here a long time. Marble floors, granite blocks on the exterior of this building. Is this building going to be here forever? No. Even though they're solid mahogany pews, they are vulnerable. They will deteriorate. They will return to dust. Nothing in this world lasts. The things that we see, he says, are temporal. It's only the unseen things that are eternal. So why are you living for that which is temporal? For the things that can be seen. Why are you not living for the eternal? So verse 8, he's even worse off. When the dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant. And so it withered, verse 8, and the sun rose. God appointed, there it is, God has got a plan. He's working with his servant. He's not giving up on him. He 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. Jonah's hopes are misplaced. He wishes to die. His joy is in this world. And that's what never works. The things of this world are always going to disappoint us. It's inevitable. So that brings us to number three, Jonah's defiance and God's correction. But God said to Jonah, verse nine, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. I mean, he's completely irrational at this point. Do you do well? What should you be answering? Yeah, that's just foolish. No, yes, I do well to be angry enough, angry enough even to die. He's just completely out of control at this point. He doubles down on his irrationality. I think he doesn't mean it. I think he knows better, but you know when you're angry, you just say things you shouldn't say. He's angry. God says, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And so what's he saying? He just blurts out in anger something that he knows is not true. Yes, yes, it's well that I be angry with the plant, angry enough to die. That's what we do, isn't it? We get angry, we just say things. We just blurt things out. Things we don't mean, things we shouldn't say, things that hurt other people, things that are irrational. And yet God deals gently with pastoral correction, verse 10. And the Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor. You have compassion and mercy toward the plant, for which you did not labor." In other words, it was my gift to you, nor did you make it grow. That also was my gift to you, which came into being in a night and it perished in a night. It's a worthless plant. It has no value at all. It was just temporary and cheap and nothing. So God is arguing with Jonah from the lesser to the greater, really. Should I not pity Nineveh? Look, you pity the plant and it's just worthless. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left hand and much cattle? 120 souls and cattle. And these people, they don't know the right hand for their left hand. Should I not pity them? And here's what's implied. Here's the deduction Jonah should be making. Should you not be pitying them too and be relieved and rejoicing that they're not going to be destroyed? So let's make a couple of concluding applications of this. Number one, we share Jonah's mission. We have a difficult, harsh, condemning message of God's judgment, of his holiness and righteousness, and the inevitability of the day of judgment. We will all stand before God and give an account And we have a hopeful, gracious message that if you will repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be forgiven, you will be reconciled to your Maker, you will be given the gift of eternal life. So the question is, what is our plant? That we have more pity for, it's a gourd in the King James Version, that we prefer over the importance of saving human souls. So to back up a little bit, we've already asked how it is that we like Jonah are fleeing from our calling. You know, what has God called us to do as believers? And are we fulfilling what he's called us to do? Or are we fleeing from that? Are we failing to do the things that he's called us to do? We already asked, again, previous Sundays, are we asleep in the storm? The storm clouds or the storm is raging all around us. Society is unraveling. The culture is collapsing. Families are disintegrating. Massive confusion. A storm is raging throughout our land. And are we like Jonah, asleep in the back? It's all going on. We're just sleeping. We don't recognize it. We're just carrying on with life. We're asleep. See, our world is the world of the last verse. People do not know their right hand from their left hand. People don't know right from wrong. They don't know truth from error. They don't even know reality anymore. They're out of touch with the real world. They don't know the real from the unreal. It's a desperate situation. And this just illustrates it. This is just a phrase. They don't know the right hand from their left hand. So the question is, what's the plant that we have pity on while we're failing to have pity on our civilization, our people, the people that are all around us who are utterly detached from eternal realities, who don't know right and wrong, who don't know the truth, can't distinguish it from error? What's that plant that we have pity on and give more focus and attention to and where our hearts really are? For some people, I think it's politics, just like Jonah. This is a political thing for Jonah. He doesn't want those Assyrians coming down and destroying his people. He wants a different political outcome. Look, people make a religion out of politics. And as a result, they're not worrying about the souls, the souls that are perishing all around them. They're all wrapped up in political questions, political realities. There's, of course, a lot of importance to that. Political things, legal things, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches, it's all as important. It's not more important than human souls, surely. You see, that becomes our plant. The thing that we have pity on, the thing that we focus on, the thing that we're rejoicing and exceedingly glad about, just like Jonah, a plant, a thing of this world. I think for some people, it's social status. That's really the thing that we rejoice in, we focus on. We want to fit in. society. We don't want to be thought strange or weird, and so we're willing to, you know, to compromise. We're willing to set aside, to tone down this gospel business and dress it up in nicer clothing so that we won't be thought strange. and bizarre and weird by the people that count. Listen, the Apostle Paul says of himself and the faithful of his generation, this is from 1 Corinthians chapter 4, we are a spectacle to the world, we are fools for Christ's sake, we are the scum of the earth, the refuse of all things. That's the regard with which the world of the Apostle Paul's time That's what they thought about the Christian community. More and more that's what they are thinking about us, and our moral code, and our hate speech. For others, it's sports. That's what they're exceedingly joyful about. Oh, it's sports. And exceedingly sad, as well, if ever deprived of sports. College football. Make enormous sacrifices for the sake of college football. Enormous devotion of time and resources, money, to fun. Nothing is to interfere with that. That gets all the attention. That gets all of our focus. Instead of souls, social status versus souls, sports versus souls, pleasure, comfort over souls. I think when you're younger, it's pleasure. I think when you're older, it's comfort. I like comfort. Maybe more than anything, I want to be comfortable I don't want to be too hot. I don't want to be too cold. I want to have a nice chair to sit in. I'm planning to go to China in January. I don't want to sit on an airplane for 15 hours, but that's what I'm going to do. I don't like being in China. I don't. I don't like their food. I like sleeping in my own bed with my own pillow. I'm comfortable there. I'm not comfortable in that other bed with that other pillow. I want to be comfortable. I want to maintain my comfort. I think you get what I'm getting at. When you're young, it's all about pleasure. It's all about fun. It's all about the next thing. You get older, it's all about comfort, avoiding pain, avoiding discomfort. You can make a god out of that. It can become like the plant, exceeding joy in being comfortable, nothing unsettling or upsetting the status quo. Instead of, why am I going to go to China? I think I should. I think I'm obligated. I think I have something to do there that I'm being called to do. Do I want to go? No. Am I going to go? Yeah, I'm going to go. All things being equal, I'm going to go. Because I think that I have something that God is calling me to do there. That's what I think. But I'm telling you what I fight against. I'm not pointing to any virtue. I'm telling you what I fight against. I don't want to sit on that airplane. and all the rest that goes along with it. Being around people who don't speak a language that I understand and who are culturally so different, it's difficult. So why go? Well, we do these kinds of things because we're concerned about souls. And so the question I want to ask of all of us is, do we share God's priorities? Jesus says there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents Then in 99 they need no repentance, all right? But take the first half of that. What are they rejoicing about in heaven? One soul. They're celebrating that. That's because they understand that that's what's important. That's what we ought to be rejoicing in. That ought to be given our attention. It's not the plant. It's not the perishable things of this world that we become so fixed on and obsessed with. No, it needs to be the eternal. It needs to be salvation. It needs to be winning souls. It needs to be being faithful, loving our neighbors, and so preaching law and gospel, judgment. salvation, the whole gospel to the whole earth. That's our mission, Jonah's mission, and we can't run from God, right? Jonah can't do it, we can't do it. You cannot run from God. So let's put our shoulders to the plow, however uncomfortable it gets to preach this gospel to this generation, and be faithful and pray that, like Jonah, our labor will be fruitful, and the whole land, from the White House to the outhouse, will repent and turn to Christ as we pray together. Our Father in heaven, we rejoice in the glorious gospel of the blessed God. We pray that we would be faithful, and we pray that our labor would be fruitful, and that we would not set our hopes and joys in the things of this world but rather on the blessing of faithfully knowing and serving and honoring you, our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.