If you'll open your Bibles to Jonah chapter 4. Jonah is just right after Obadiah. Kind of flip through there and you'll start at the Psalms and just Keep going toward Matthew, and you'll flip through there and find it. Smaller, minor prophets are easy to skip over sometimes, and your fingers go right over them. You think to yourself, it's not there anymore. What happened to it? Well, this morning, I want to continue in Jonah 4, verses 1 through 4. Last week I really focused on predominantly the ideas of verse 1 and the idea of Jonah's anger. I said some other things in the context of his anger dealing with verses 2 and 3, but I want to give some observations, some more observations on this section and for us to continue to think through chapter 4 verses one through three, um, and, and even verse four, a little bit as well. But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. Now let's start verse 10 previous chapter. Give us some context. When God saw their deeds, speaking of Nineveh, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity, which he had declared he would bring upon them. And he did not do it. But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, Please, Lord, was this not what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish. For I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." The Lord said, do you have good reason to be angry? As we think about the context of this, Jonah has taken the message or the word of the Lord to the Ninevites. The Ninevites are a pagan nation. They are a pagan group of people. They worship many gods of all different types and sorts. And yet he took the word of God to them. And once he took it to them, they heeded, they listened, they obeyed, they repented. God showed his grace and mercy to them. And Jonah was angry that God showed grace and mercy. This is really the story of the scripture in a nutshell. The idea that God has a people and those people continually are seeking God in some way, and yet they're often seeking him apart from his word. Each generation. in the nation of Israel was given a prophet, one who would speak the Word of God to them, that would speak His commands, and they would often hear them and obey for a little while, and then they would turn. Sometimes they would turn for generations at a time, time and time again. Jonah here is seen to be a one who wants to protect the ethnicity of God's people in national Israel. He does not want these pagan Ninevites to see God's grace. But it's not unlike God to show his grace to those who are not of the ethnicity of Israel. He's done it before. And he'll do it again and again and again. Because his people are not just simply an ethnicity. His people are those who he has changed their souls. He determined by purposeful plan before the beginning of time to save a people for himself and not to lose one of them. And those people, when all is said and done, will be from every tribe and tongue and nation of the world. When Jonah recognized the grace of God and you say, well, how did he recognize it? Well, he recognized it because the people turned in Nineveh And because of their turning, they were not destroyed. See, Jonah wanted to see the fire and the brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah. He wanted to see the city destroyed. He wanted to see Nineveh taken down. And he would know that God had spoken in this fire of brimstone. It's not that God wouldn't do it or couldn't do it, or that He had not done it before, but that was not His plan. And Jonah's anger is shown not only by the fact that the text tells us that he was displeased and became angry, but we even see and know it in the words of his prayer. He prayed to the Lord and said, Please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are gracious and a compassionate God." Firstly, this morning, we need to recognize that even our complaints must be disciplined by theology. Even our complaints must be disciplined by theology. Notice in Jonah's prayer, The idea that he continues to use this pronoun I or another pronoun me. It's as though in this prayer he takes a moment to almost preach at God. Martin Luther indicated that prayer may be best measured by the percentage and placement of our pronouns. It's not bad to use the pronouns, the personal pronouns of I, or me, it's often the placement of them. There are times in the Psalms that we read that placement of the pronoun and where the psalmist is saying, I have sinned against you. Or he's calling out to the Lord to say, God, will you do this based on who you are? And will you help me or your people? But here Jonah is using this I and me to almost throw this back at God to say, I knew you would do this. I knew you would be gracious. I knew it. And that's why I went to Tarshish to begin with. I didn't want these Ninevites to have your grace. Matthew Henry says this was a very awkward prayer. To think for a moment how our prayers ought to be structured, our theology matters. Who is the one who's in control? Who is the one who has made the heavens and the earth? Who is the one who has ordered all things? The scripture says it is God Almighty, the covenant God. Jonah's prayer may have well been fashioned, if it were not in anger, to say, Oh God, your will has been done. Oh God, you have shown mercy to these people based upon your will, your plan. And as they have submitted to you, I will submit to you. Now last week we said we wanted to be careful not to just throw Jonah under the bus and to take our time to stomp Jonah in the ground. And one of the reasons why is is because we have to recognize we have prayed prayers like this before. We have prayed prayers telling God what we wanted and what we thought he should have done versus submitting to what he had done and giving thanks and honor and glory to him for doing it. Secondly, this morning, Given the defects of our prayers, it is surprising that God listens. Given the defects of our prayers, it is surprising that God listens. One pastor theologian set this up this way in three sentences. He says, Jonah recites his own confession and objects. Jonah recites his own confession and objects. Thirdly, Jonah quotes God's word and objects. Jonah quotes God's word and objects. And thirdly, under this one, he says, Jonah lists God's splendid attributes and objects. Now, I want us to think about these three for just a moment. Here we have, in this sense, that Jonah is reciting his own confession of who God is, and he objects. Here we have an understanding of Jonah finding himself uncomfortable with his own confession of God. Notice what he says of God in Jonah 1, verse 9, when he's being questioned on the boat. He said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Jonah's prayer at this moment doesn't seem to be one who fears the Lord, the God of heaven and who made the sea and dry land. It seems to be one of questioning God's authority and even God's motive and God's purpose. He had made his own confession of God and now in his prayer he's objecting to that very confession. Furthermore, in his prayer he even notes the graciousness and the compassionate nature of God in the context of being gracious and merciful to sinners. And in his prayer he objects to it. Secondly, in this defect of his prayer in some way, Jonah quotes God's Word and he objects to that. If you think for a moment about Exodus 34, 6 and 7, it says, Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, The Lord, this is Yahweh, the covenant God. The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Jonah's quoting the very Word of God. And yet he's objecting to the very, not only Word of God, but the nature of God that that Word proclaims. One pastor noted that Jonah missed the context in his prayer of even the second portion of Exodus 34, 7. It says, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. God had a purpose in bringing about the repentance of many in the nation of Nineveh. And yet, several generations later, He would destroy that same city by another pagan nation. The idea is to recognize that when sin continues time and time and time and time and time again, the Lord shows His mercy, but He is also just. Both are true. God is gracious and just all at once. We should not shirk or smirk at either one of those. We should be thankful for how many of us have sinned the same sin numerous times over and over, and yet we have gone and we have asked mercifully for God to forgive us. Does not the Word in 1 John tell us He will forgive our sin when we go on behalf or before Him and we have the Advocate on our behalf? You must be careful not to be angered when God doesn't treat the ungodly or the unconverted person the way we would want them to be treated. For how often have we received grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy? It's very easy for us to look at someone else and say, well, they did that to themselves. They deserve that. Look at what they did for the last 20 years. I didn't really do that. We become the brother of the prodigal son with our self-righteousness instead of in the moment recognizing God's grace saying, as we've heard a thousand times before, but for the grace of God, there go I. How many decisions and choices did God keep me from in the midst of all my sin? How many places could I have been if He had not been merciful? How many things could I have done or said or been a part of if it were not for God's mercy and grace? So if God saves the most unlikely, if God saves the most unrighteous, if God saves the one who we think may not deserve it, we need to look and say his loving kindness is everlasting. Thirdly, under this, the defects of our prayers, it's surprising that God listens. Jonah lists God's splendid attributes and objects. He says, this is why I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness. And Jonah says, well, just kill me. Just take my life. The strangeness to be able to state plainly the great attributes of God in His holiness and graciousness and mercifulness and kindness in its eternal nature. His plea here is actually against even the immutability of God. He cries out, God, I knew you were this way and you've always been this way and you will never change. And yet I'm objecting to it. We must be careful in our prayers not to object against the very nature of God, His perfections. Well, thirdly, this morning, we may be assured we are off track when we hear ourselves defending God. We may be sure we are off track when we hear ourselves defending God. In chapter 3, Jonah, when he had pronounced judgment upon Nineveh, he was very careful in his pronouncement. In verse 4, the very end, he never actually mentions God. He just says, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Now he had, to some degree, been known as a prophet, and certainly they had some understanding of that. But here Jonah is, in his prayer, calling God, Lord, the covenant God. He knows who he's speaking to in his prayer, and yet he doesn't use those words in pronouncing judgment. It's as if, as one writer notes, The comment paints Jonah here pleading his own reputation. God, if you don't consume them with fire, what will they think about me? Last week, we mentioned this briefly to have some identification and understanding that we should not be worried about our own reputation in the context of our Christian living. What we must do to live for Christ, yes, we do it graciously. But we don't do it apologizing for God. We don't do it trying to make some defense for Him. He can defend Himself. And we certainly don't do it trying to defend our own reputation. There's a British pastor named Dick Lucas. I think he's well in his 80s now. He's kind of in the vein of a J.C. Ryle, a little more modern version of that. He says, if Nineveh is not destroyed, no one will ever again believe Jonah, is what Jonah's thinking. And Jonah's thinking is, what is worse? They will never again believe you, God. Anytime we live our lives thinking we have to apologize for God's word or apologize for who God is, we've missed the concept. We've missed the concept of the gospel. We've missed the concept of Christian living. We've missed the concept of what it means to be called a Christian. And there's a lot of Christianity, so-called, out there today spending a lot of time apologizing for the truth of God's Word, as if they have to defend God. Jonah here, in some strange way, has some idea that he has to not only defend his own reputation, but he has to defend God and say, God, I'm trying to defend You here. Even in my prayer, I'm trying to defend You here. You don't need to do this way. That's why I went to Tarshish was to get away from all this so that you would see you don't need to show them grace. You need to do what you said you were going to do. It goes back to our understanding of God's relenting in the context. It's not that God's mind was changed in the moment. It's the context of grace being worked out in pre-predestination and for ordination. God did not change. God's always been loving, kind. He's always been gracious and merciful. And you ought to see Him that way today. You need to remember that. Yes, your sin is great. Yes, you have sinned against the Lord your God on multiple occasions. But His everlasting loving kindness is great. It's abounding. It's eternal. If you're a young person here today, and you've sat in this church for years, and you might think for a moment that you've heard different sermons about the holiness of God, and the judgment of God, and all those types of things, and yet in your own mind you question whether God could save you. I say to you, the Word says plainly He can. Question no longer whether God is able or capable of saving you by His grace and for His glory. He can. The problem for Jonah is he's not believing here rightly. He's walking in this moment of unbelief. I say to you, stop thinking about questioning whether God can save or not. He can, and He will. Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from your sins. Just by way of thinking about the world that we live in, apologetics is often the study and the work of defending the faith. And we must be careful in doing that in our lives in a way that we try to defend God. He doesn't need our defense. We need to seek God's word rightly and live it rightly. And to seek God through the power of his spirit, according to his word that we would desire to live it rightly. But anytime our explanations of God start with trying to appease men and apologize for who God is and who his word is, we've started on the wrong foot. And we need to remember Paul's words, who are you, O man, to answer back to God? I'm not saying to be ungracious to people in your living and your responses to them, but it's okay to look at someone and say, hey friend, I disagree. I love you. You're my fellow human. I love you. And, and I disagree. I disagree graciously and thoughtfully, and I'll be glad to talk to you about that. We can speak the truth with a little bit of honey and not always be sour. But at the same time, we don't want to walk away from the truth to make ourselves more palatable to the culture. Well, Fourthly, we have no right to any emotion which cannot stand rational inspection. We have to be very careful that we don't lead ourselves down a path of pure emotionalism. The modern church has done this in so many ways. It's so concerning. We no longer know what real experience is. We have to conjure it up or trump it up in some way to make ourselves feel like we've had this experience. You and I as believers ought to be able to read the word of God and the spirit of God work in us and the truth of God's word. It will deal with our very emotions and our wills and our passions and our concerns. It's as though Jonah in his prayer worked himself up in this prayer to some great huff, to where at the end of it, total emotion has taken over, and he says, well God, since you didn't do what I wanted to do, well just take my life! What? God answers Jonah very Succinctly, in verse 4, he says, do you have any good reason to be angry? Or there's one translation called the Young's Literal Translation. He put it this way. He says, is doing good displeasing to you, Jonah? See, if you think about it for a moment, it puts it in the context that Jonah has now put himself in the place to be able to tell God what's good and what's not. And God has to put this back in the form of a question to him to get him to think for just a moment, to think and understand. Wait a second. Are you the judge of what's good? Not only that, is doing good because I'm going to tell you what good is and because I'm showing you good, I did good toward Nineveh. Are you now saying that my good is displeasing to you? The patience of God with his people is amazing when you see these types of prayers. Think about it for one moment. Just get this in your brain. Jonah wants Nineveh. Bam! Gone. And in the midst of that, it doesn't happen. And then Jonah starts to talk back to God and try to tell God what's good and what His purpose ought to be and how it ought to work. And as God's listening to all that, what could God have done to Jonah? Bam! Gone. And he doesn't. He doesn't. He just asked him this question. Do you have good reason to be angry? See, this is the mercy of God to us as sinners. The fingertip of a stroke of God's judgment could come across and we would all disintegrate. And yet how merciful is it, is he, that we're still living? We're even at times given to God's mercy in the fact that when we react to him in ways that Jonah, or even at times the psalmist may react, that God shows his mercy. How merciful has he been? And have we deserved one ounce of it? It just shows us that Jonah is his own worst enemy. As Matthew Henry said, a blessing his life had been to Nineveh, yet now, for that very reason, His life became a burden to himself. God had used him to preach his word to Nineveh and repentance had happened. And now he becomes a burden to himself. When we don't recognize God's mercy and grace in the lives of others and in what's going on and see it, certainly there's lots of reasons to be concerned. There's lots of reasons to be troubled. There's lots of reasons to have all kind of just complete frustrations and questions about what in the world is going to happen next. That's all fair. But God's Word gives us plenty. a providential evidence of how God, through all the tumult and struggle and strife of life in all of the nations, has always been saving and keeping His people, and He's always been carrying them to the very end, never leaving them, never forsaking them. Maybe this week you've questioned all the national and international uproar and thought to yourself, well, if they would just do this one thing, if that that that Biden would just do one thing, we could solve all of this. Maybe, maybe not. You know what, though? Through everything that's happening, God is saving and keeping his people. He's working something out. I don't know how he's using Putin. I have no idea. Putin thinks he's his own man and can ride a horse without a shirt on, and everybody thinks he's great. He's delusional and everything else you can imagine, true enough. But you know what? God's using him for his ultimate glory, and God will gain it. There's no need for us to become our own worst enemies. and to try to preach back at God. We need to look at Him for who He is. And when we make these confessions of His attributes, believe them, pray them, stand in them. Let us not fall into a place to think it's our job to dictate back to God. But may God be gracious to us that we're reminded of his mercy and everlasting loving kindness that we would trust in him because of the provision of his son, the Lord Jesus. What he promised is genuine, real, actual, eternal salvation from our greatest enemy, sin and death. And what He provided is exactly that. Let us walk in those truths and glory in them and give thanks. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, You've been merciful to us. Once again, to come on this day Your day. To sing and pray. Glory in your word read and preached. And we ask your mercy upon us at the time of your table. Or will you help us? To be a thoughtful people. As we come before you. At the time of your table. We would see your son rightly and glory in him. Or will you make us repenting repenters? You give us minds and hearts to be cunning as a serpent, to look at the world rightly and to see it for what it is, yet to be as gentle as a dove, that we would not lose sight of your sovereignty in all of life. Glory and honor be to you through your son. by the power of your spirit. We pray all this in the name of Christ. Amen.