Let's turn in our Bibles to the Book of Jonah, Jonah chapter 4. While you're doing that, let me thank you for the warmth of your welcome today and your hospitality towards me and my family. It's always been a great joy to be here with you in Rhode Island and to enjoy friendship and fellowship with you all. And be assured of our continuing prayers for the ministry of your church here, especially I know you have a busy period coming up with the Rhode Island Bible School and the many labors of your pastors here, so be assured of our prayers for you down in East Haven. We're going to consider this evening these closing verses of the Book of Jonah. Let's read from verse 5 of chapter 4. So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah. It might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened when the sun arose that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself and said, it is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And he said, it is right for me to be angry, even to death. But the Lord said, you have had pity on the plant for which you have not laboured, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock? Amen. Let's begin by turning to the Lord in prayer. Father we know that the entrance of your word brings light and so we pray now that you would come and illumine our paths this night as we open this book of truth and that your Holy Spirit would come down upon us and give understanding and illumination to our hearts and minds and also we ask that you would incline our wills to walk in the way of your truth. Oh Lord, please, would you help us this night to hear and to mix with faith that which we hear, to apply, and as we go from here, increase our resolve to be those who walk in the ways of your commandments. Lord, please help us now, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. I don't know if you ever met somebody and you thought to yourself, I'm not sure they're in the right profession. I remember when we first came to New Haven and we were living in an apartment near the downtown area and in the kitchen there we had a sink. And it was one of those sinks that have the waste disposal units, you know, which sort of chews up all the bits of the food scraps. But it had this habit of malfunctioning. It would work for a while and then it would just sort of stop at random moments. And so in the end I thought, you know, I probably need to get a plumber in to look at this thing. And so I asked the maintenance man who's responsible for the apartment block, and he said, oh, you need to see, we'll call him Tony. You need to see Tony, he said. Tony does a lot of the work on the plumbing in the apartments. And it just so happened that Tony was on site that particular day. So I went and tracked him down, and I explained our problem to him, and as I was doing so, perplexed look came over his face and he said, uh, no, I don't do those. I don't like doing sinks. I don't like the smell. Now, obviously that's very frustrating for me, but also it made me think, you know, that must be a bit of a problem for him in his line of work. I mean, whoever heard of a plumber who doesn't work on sinks seems to be a little bit of a contradiction in terms. And it's a little bit like the situation we find here in the book of Jonah, where we have Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, who calls the people to repent, and as a result they do so, and he gets mad. I mean, who ever heard of a preacher like that who doesn't want people to do what he says? That doesn't make sense. It seems like a contradiction in terms. And yeah, that's the situation we find here with Jonah in the final chapter of the book. We see Jonah here, he's the angry prophet, he's getting bent all out of shape because the people of Nineveh did what God called them to do and as a result, judgment was turned away. So it's a very interesting scene that we have here in the final verses of this book as the Lord comes to Jonah and he's sitting there, he's sulking, he's pouting outside the city and he comes and he questions him, he probes him about his response and it's something we're going to think about for a few minutes this evening as we look at verses 5 through 11, the closing verses of the book of Jonah. Jonah the pouting prophet and also we will look at God, a gracious God. So let's consider Jonah here. Our first point is the comfort he prioritises. Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade till he might see what would become of the city. So here's the scene then, we've got Jonah, he's the runaway prophet, he's the man who was given that commission by God to go to Nineveh and to proclaim his word to them, but you know this, he ran away the first time. But the Lord in his mercy gave him a second chance. When he cried to the Lord from the belly of the fish, the Lord heard him, he had mercy upon him, and then he gave command to the fish to spew him out onto dry land. And so in chapter three of the book, We come to verse 1 there, and we read, the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, go. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.' And so off he goes, he made that perhaps six to seven hundred mile journey to Nineveh, probably took him about four to five weeks to get there, the scholars suggest, and in the end he made it, he arrived there in Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, and as soon as he gets there he begins to preach. Yet forty days, he cries, and Nineveh will be overthrown. Very strong, unequivocal message of judgement that he preached. A message saying, turn, repent and turn or else you will be destroyed. And amazingly, astonishingly, they did. They believed God. It says, and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. So from top down, from the king right down to the ordinary man on the street, they all fasted and mourned and manifested in an open and unashamed way their sorrow for sin. It's one of the greatest spiritual revivals of all time that took place there in Nineveh. And so what's Jonah's response to that? You'd think he'd be over the moon. You'd think he would be absolutely delighted. You'd think it might say in the next verse something like, and Jonah returned to his own land rejoicing. Or Jonah was glad when he saw the people's sorrowful sin. That's what you might think. But no, it doesn't say that at all. In fact, what it says at the beginning of the next chapter is he was angry. Chapter 4, verse 1. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. Very angry is what that word means. It's a word that actually means to burn. He was livid about this. Jonah was fuming, really not happy at all. Now why? Why the bad reaction here? Well he was outraged, really. He was sort of scandalized that God would be so gracious and so merciful to a people like that. Oh, mercy and grace, he thought, and forgiveness and all those kind of attributes were only for God's special people, for Israel, not for vicious pagan brutes like Nineveh. No, no, no way. You should have wicked people like that get such a display of grace and mercy like that. That's the way that Jonah is thinking. And so because of that, he's mad here. He's really mad. Now, you see it in verse five, Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. He goes off in a huff. Boys and girls, you might imagine a game, when I was a boy, we used to have games of football, soccer, you call it here. We might have a game, like a scrimmage game, I think you call it here, and there's a field nearby where we used to live, and we would go down there and we'd put sweaters down for goal posts, and one of my friends had a really nice soccer ball, and he would bring it along, but if it didn't quite go his way, if he got a bad foul, or if his team were losing, just at some point in the game, he'd just pick up his ball, and that was it, he would walk home. The game was done. He didn't like the way he was going. He went off in a huff. And it's the kind of thing we see here with Jonah. He just takes himself off. Verse 5. He went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade till he might see what would become of the city. So he goes out there to the edge of the city and he makes himself this kind of a lean-to or some sort of a small makeshift hut or shelter to shield him from the heat of the sun and he goes and sits there and it seems like he's waiting there. Maybe he's waiting to see what's going to happen, maybe he's got Genesis 19 on his mind and Sodom and Gomorrah and how that devastating firestorm came down from heaven and raised that city to the ground. Maybe that's what he's sort of hoping for deep down that now he's given them this warning but maybe still in 40 days time, now perhaps he's got his calendar there, he's chalking off the days, maybe still this might actually yet come to pass. And so he's sitting there on the edge of the city now and he's got his ringside seat, box seat there, on the edge of the city looking, waiting to see what's going to happen, to see if these brutal, warmongering Ninevite thugs might get what they've got coming to them. Perhaps that's the way he's thinking, we can't be sure. But what we do see in verse six is a very interesting thing. And it says there, the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So it was a hot place, that, Nineveh. A very hot desert environment. Nineveh would be quite close, apparently, to where Mosul is today in Iraq. So very hot temperatures you could get there, 110, perhaps a little above that sometimes in that desert region. Very, very hot. And so there's Jonah. And whatever it was that he's built there to make himself a hut or a shelter, it wasn't really offering him much protection against the sun's burning rays. And so the Lord God, it says, prepared a plant. And there are different words for that. Some call it a vine, some call it a gourd. The experts tell us this was most likely a castor oil producing plant, which apparently grows quickly and has these big, broad, expansive leaves. And so it could well be something like that. Either way, you notice that it was the Lord God who provided this plant. That's Yahweh Elohim. That's a name for God that first appears in the book of Genesis with reference to God's protective, providing care that he manifests towards man there, placing Adam in the Garden of Eden. That's where you first see that name, the Lord God. And here we see it again, again in the context of the Lord showing his protective care for man by providing a special environment for him to dwell in. It's the Lord God, it's Yahweh Elohim who prepared or provided a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be shade for his head. And the result, Jonah was pleased with this. It says in verse six, very pleased. This is actually one of the few, the only occasion in the book, in fact, where you see Jonah's happy. He's pretty miserable. The rest of the time, angry even, when God uses his preaching to bring repentance to Nineveh. But here, by contrast, when he has this good given to him, springing up over his head, he's very glad. Oh, he's very happy with this. And so you see the contrast there. It's a striking one. He was angry over Nineveh. Literally, it reads, he was angry with a great anger. And yet now he's rejoicing over the plant. And literally, that reads, he rejoiced with great joy. And so do you see the contrast there? Do you see the sad irony? Here is Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, rejoicing in his own comforts and yet angry about salvation coming to Nineveh. happy in his own comfortable favoured spot and happy from there to watch the people around him perish. It's upside down. It's a completely topsy-turvy situation to be in. Got it completely the wrong way round. And yet isn't that, if we're honest, isn't that sometimes the way that we can be as well, sometimes more concerned about the things of here and now than we are about spiritual matters that affect eternity? More concerned, more focused on our own comforts and our own conveniences than we are about the fearful spiritual condition of those who are perishing all around us. Isn't that how we can be sometimes? Shows up, doesn't it, in our priorities and the way that we use what we have, our time, our talent, our treasure and the kind of priorities that govern those things. When, for example, perhaps I'd rather stay in and put my feet up on my lazy boy recliner and watch ESPN for an evening. and get myself out to the prayer meeting to pray. Or when I decide to devote a pretty sizable chunk of cash to the next stage of my nest feathering project rather than send a check to Pastor So-and-so who's laboring to establish a church in that huge urban metropolis of Nairobi or Mumbai or Manila. I'm just throwing out examples here. That kind of a thing. What's my priority? What's my focus? Is it on souls? Do I have a concern for souls? Is there anything of the David Brainerd about me? You know, David Brainerd, he was that great missionary to the Indians he served. South of here, didn't he? Down on the Delaware River there. died very young, but he once wrote this, he said, I care not where I live or what hardships I go through so that I can but gain souls to Christ. While I am asleep, I dream of these things. As soon as I awake, the first thing I think of is this great work and all my desire is the conversion of sinners. Or think about Adoniram Judson. Again, you know, not too far away from here. 1810 made up his mind he was going to become a missionary but he'd fallen in love as well around that same time and there was a young lady, Anne Haseltine, the daughter I believe of a deacon in another church and he wanted to marry her, he wanted her to come with him and so first he had to get around that sort of awkward situation with the parents so he writes a letter to her father and I'm sure some of you are familiar with this, the letter went like this. I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring to see her no more in this world. Whether you can consent to her departure and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life. whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all of this for the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you, for the sake of perishing immortal souls, for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Quite a letter that, isn't it? Imagine getting that. inquiring about your daughter, if you have one. But what's even more amazing is she went! Now, I know, of course, we're not all called to be missionaries and we're not all called to go off to Burma and Borneo, et cetera, et cetera, but it's the principle that we're getting at here. Do we have any of that spirit about us? Do we have any of that kind of a concern, a spiritual concern for the lost? Over and above our concern for our own home comforts. Or let me put it another way, what is it that makes you glad? What is it that really excites you? Possessions, things, consumer durables, the next thing to arrive in the mail from Amazon Prime? Or is it the thought of an unsaved cousin, an unsaved co-worker coming and saying, can you tell me more about that gospel that you believe? Remember what Jesus said at the end of the parable of the prodigal when the father ran to embrace his returning son. Jesus says at the end of that parable, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. That's the heart of God there. That's what makes heaven happy, you might say. It's seeing lost sinners get saved. So how about you? How about me? Are our hearts in sync with heaven there? Is your heart, is my heart in tune? Let me put it that way, he's in tune with the heart of God. That's the first thing to consider here as we look at Jonah, the pouting prophet. That's the comfort he prioritizes. Second thing, consider the correction he experiences. Verse 6, so Jonah was very grateful for the plants, but as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm and it so damaged the plant that it withered. Now the key word we need to note here is the word prepared or provided. You find it three times in these verses. Verse 6, the Lord God prepared a plant. Verse 7, as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm. Verse 8, when the sun arose God prepared a vehement east wind. And so here we see the Lord's sovereignty over this. The same way that you see it back in chapter 1 where the Lord sovereignly sent a great wind and he appointed also a great fish in verse 17 to swallow Jonah up. And now here in chapter 4 in like manner we see the Lord is at work again. Sovereignly he appoints a plant to give shade and sovereignly he appointed a worm to go and attack it and verse 8 he prepared or he provided a scorching east wind. And so you see the picture here, when you put all of that together, it's the Lord's sovereign hand, the Lord's sovereign work in providence to be seen in all of these things, ordering, directing, dictating all of the outward events that affect Jonah, both the good and the bad. The great fish sent to deliver him, the plant that springs up over his head to give him shade, as well as the worm and the east wind that were sent to try him. All ultimately comes from him, the big and the small, every detail of our lives, isn't it? Governed by providence. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way, has a beautiful statement about providence. Quote, providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God, by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them, that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things in fact, come to us, not by chance, but from his fatherly hand. as it is for you my Christian friend here this evening every detail of your life is governed by him both the good and the bad that you've just come through in the week that's just gone by the great fish of deliverance which perhaps you experienced as well as the scorching desert wind of a trial that perhaps came your way as well both sovereignly ordained by him and by his fatherly care And as part of that, in Jonah's case here, there was an element of correction in this. And as we see, it was something that he needed. Just think about the context here. Think about what's happened. He's just witnessed the Lord using him in a mighty way to bring revival to Nivir. But in response, he turns around and says, I want to die. And so the Lord comes to him and says, is it right? Is it right for you to be angry? Do you have good reason to be angry? And so, clearly, just by the very question here that Jonah is posed, we can see Jonah is in the wrong. Jonah is in the grip of a bad attitude and a sour, murmuring spirit. And so the Lord here, in a fatherly way, he brings discipline in the form of a worm, verse seven, sent to damage the plants, and then this vehement east wind sent to vex and trouble his spirit. Now some may say, well, where's the mercy in that? Doesn't it say, verse 2, Jonah says, I know you're a gracious and a merciful God. Where's the mercy in sending a parasite to chew down his plant and then sending a withering desert wind to make him sweat? Where's the mercy in that? That's a strange kind of mercy, someone might say. Well, the answer to that is it's what we might call a chastening mercy. It's a correcting mercy. It's the kind of mercy that a father shows towards an erring son who's brewing and stewing and nursing a sinful attitude when something hasn't quite gone his way. And so an attentive, conscientious father will correct him for that, for his own good. He'll go after him for that. He'll pull him over for that. for his own good. It's a mercy to stop him and not to allow him to carry on like that. It's like a story I once heard. It came out of California a few years ago about the police department there. They launched an intensive search for the driver of a stolen car. and they put out this APB on the car and also there were adverts on local radio because of course they wanted to apprehend him for his crime but also with that there was apparently on the front seat of this car that he'd stolen a box of crackers which were laced with rat poison which the owner of the car was on his way home to deal with an infestation he had in his home unbeknown to the thief. And so the police were now going after this thief, yes, to apprehend him, of course, but also there was a kind of mercy mixed in with their pursuit, because to allow him to go on like that, well, it might not end very well for him. And so they needed to get to him for his own good. There was a kind of mercy mingled in with that pursuit. And it's the same thing here. It's the goodness and kindness of God that moves him to go after Jonah like this, for his own good. Hebrews 12, verse six, sort of thing. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives. That's the mark of a true father. He's not going to allow him to go on like this. It wouldn't be merciful to do that. So he chastens him here. He gets him to examine himself here. That's what he's doing. He's getting Jonah to look at his own heart. That's the purpose of these questions. Do you have a right to be angry? Is it right for you to be angry? That in itself is a form of discipline. When we come to the Word and we hear God's voice and it speaks to us and it challenges us, that's a form of discipline. When we come to church each week and we listen to the Word of God being preached, we're submitting ourselves to a form of discipline there, aren't we? Because what we're doing is we're listening to God's voice. When the word is being faithfully preached, God is speaking to us from his word. And as he does so, he tests and he tries and he probes our hearts. And through the preaching of the word, he probes us inwardly, doesn't he? And very often, you know this, he has his way of putting his finger on things in our lives that need to be addressed under the preaching of his word, week by week. And that's why every time we come, we should come with a meek and a teachable and a submissive spirit. And that's why often we begin sermons by praying, speak, Lord, your servants are listening. That in itself is a regular healthy form of discipline. But then sometimes when that doesn't work, when because of our own hardness of heart, our dullness, Sometimes correction has to come to us in other forms, as we see here in this scene when Jonah, who doesn't seem to be responding to God's voice, suddenly discovers that pleasant retreat there is broken up. When a worm, we read, was sent to attack the plant and the sun came up, verse 8, it says God appointed a scorching east wind. That would be something that we might call a shiroko, a very hot desert wind. Very, very hot if you've been in the kitchen and you suddenly open the oven door and you get that blast of heat come from the oven. It's something like that. That sort of heat wave blowing across the desert floor there made life very uncomfortable for anybody in its path. And so that's what happens here. But again, the purpose in this is correction. It's a form of chastening for Jonah. The burning wind and the worm which destroyed his good, both prepared. or appointed by God in order to wake him up, in order to get his attention, we might say, to turn him off his murmuring sinful path and to turn him back to the Lord. And so the aim of this is remedial. The aim is to restore Jonah again to spiritual health, to make him once more a useful, fruitful servant of the Lord. Because think about it, where he is right now, I mean what good is he there? Sitting on the outskirts of the city, sulking, brooding, pouting, putting on his parts, we say in England. You know, no use there, is he? No use to God out there. And so because of that, God sends correction to bring him back to the Lord and also ultimately that he might go on to be a useful, instrumental servant once again in the hands of the Lord. And that, again, is sometimes how he works in our lives too. Sometimes he will send a voracious parasite to chew up everything that we've made. Sometimes he will appoint for us a scorching east wind that comes into our lives and really makes us sweat. We don't like it. It's vexing, it's distressing, but the aim is always for our good as believers. It's remedial. It's to bring about long-term spiritual health and to promote greater spiritual usefulness. It's a bit like J.C. Ryle. I don't know if you know the story of J.C. Ryle's conversion, but he grew up, he was the son of a wealthy landed banker. And as a young man, as the eldest son, he stood to inherit a vast fortune until at the age of 25 everything changed when his father pretty much overnight went bankrupt. Ryle put it like this in his autobiography. It then pleased God to alter my prospects in life through my father's bankruptcy. We got up one summer's morning with all the world before us as usual and went to bed that night completely and utterly ruined. That's what the Lord did to the Ryle family. He sent the scorching east wind into that family home. He sent the attacking worm to eat right through their family fortune in one night. And yet, what was the effect? J.C. Ryle went on to say this, I have not the least doubt it was all for the best. If I had never been ruined, my life, of course, would have been a very different one. I should probably have gone into Parliament. I should never have been a clergyman, never have preached, never written a tract or a book. Perhaps I might have made a shipwreck in spiritual things. Sometimes God has to do that. It's not nice. It's not pleasant. We rage and we vex and we roar. But it is for our good spiritually and for our own future kingdom usefulness, ultimately, that God sends sometimes the worm to chew up or the desert wind to blast away the goods that we've been leaning on. John Newton understood that very well, didn't he, in that hymn that he wrote about the whole subject of spiritual growth and usefulness. That was his desire, that's what he wanted. came not quite the way he was expecting. You know this hymn, don't you? I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his faith. That's what he wanted, real spiritual growth and usefulness. Didn't come quite how he was expecting. I hoped that in some favoured hour, at once he'd answer my request and by his love's constraining power, subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead of this he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my goods, Jonaphor, and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembled and cried. Will thou pursue thy worm to death? "'Tis in this way,' the Lord replied, "'I answer prayer for grace and faith, "'these inward trials I employ from self and pride "'to set thee free and break thy schemes of earthly joy "'that thou mayest find thine all in me.'" That's the purpose very often in the trials that we experience. A lot of the time they're sent with a long-term goal of disturbing our comfort in this life and pressing us into an even closer walk with God. That's how it was with Jonah here. His resentfulness needed to be addressed in order that his future usefulness might be preserved. And so to that end, for his spiritual growth, the Lord sent the worm and the withering east wind. And so we're looking here at Jonah, the pouting prophet. You've got three main points. The comfort he prioritizes, the correction he experiences, just one final thing. Consider the question he wrestles with. And this is the question the Lord leaves with him and us. In verse 11 there, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left? Now before we unpack that, we need to just back up a little bit first of all to see Jonah's initial response to the withering of the plant, verse 8. Then he wished for death for himself and said, it is better for me to die than to live. Then God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And he said, it is right for me to be angry, even to death. And so the plant is attacked by the worm and the scorching east wind and as a result it dies and for Jonah that was it. That was the final straw. I've had it, I'm done. I just want to die, he says. To which the Lord then comes to him and shows him the foolishness of what he's saying. You had pity on the plant for which you have not laboured nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city? Now the word pity there or compassion is a very strong word and it means to mourn or grieve over someone you love who has died. And that's what the Lord says to him, you mourned, you grieved, you had that kind of pity over a plant that you did nothing to create and which was here. and gone in, in a day. Should I not then, he says, have compassion on Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who don't know the difference between their right hand and their left as well as many others. It's an argument from the lesser to the greater. Jonah loved this little plant for which he did nothing, he exerted no effort, was here and gone in the blink of an eye, and yet in front of his eyes was a whole city filled with precious souls. Were they not of far greater importance and significance than a plant? And so the Lord says, should not The well-being, both spiritual and temporal, of these never-dying human souls, should they not be of far greater concern, 120,000 who don't know their right from their left, that's a reference to their moral and spiritual ignorance. They're lost. He's saying they're blind, they've got no moral compass. They don't know what they're here for. They don't know who or what to live for. They're utterly hopelessly lost. And so you, he says, you had compassion on a plant, just a leafy good which sprung up overnight and was gone in a moment. Should I not have compassion and pity on these precious never-dying souls? Are they not far, far, far, far more important? That's the question he asks. That's the question he leaves Jonah to wrestle with. And as he does so, this is giving us an insight into the heart of God, who's moved by their plight. He has pity on them in their plight. He has compassion. That's what that word means. The word means to be moved by something. It means to be so moved by someone's condition, someone's plight, that you are moved to do something about it. which is just what God had done of course. That was the reason he sent Jonah in the first place. He saw that condition and he was moved to do something. That's why he sent Jonah the second time. That was his purpose in sending Jonah to that sin sick city of Nineveh. It came from a heart of compassion for them. The same mercy and compassion that caused him to send his son, so much greater than Jonah, into this world. The One who when He came, He didn't come reluctantly, He came willingly. And when He came, He didn't come resenting lost sinners, He came with a heart full of love for lost sinners. And He came not with a message of judgement, but a message of forgiveness and grace. And when He went out of the city, He went out there not to watch sinners die, Jesus went outside of the city in order to die for sinners. And even as He was doing so, hanging on the cross, He said, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. They don't know what they're doing. And so we see the heart of God's mercy that he would send his son for us. embodiment of his mercy. And also the other thing we notice here is the wideness of God's mercy. We see that here, don't we? The mercy of God is not confined to the boundaries of ethnic Israel, but it reaches, it stretches to people from other nations, tribes and tongues, reaching even as far as the worst of sinners, to the most brutal, desperate of sinners, even to Ninevite sinners. There's a wideness in God's mercy, you see, that reaches even to them, There's a wideness in God's mercy that reaches even to you, my unsaved friend, listening to this message this evening. Whatever your situation this evening, wherever you've come from, whatever you've done, there's a wideness in God's mercy, the hymn writer says, like the wideness of the sea. God's mercy stretches, doesn't it? Stretches far and wide. And the place you see that best, of course, is again in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus, there at the cross with His arms outstretched as He shed precious blood for us. Do you see God's mercy there? You see the wideness of God's mercy calling to you to come to Him, to trust in Him, turn from your sin, believe in Him, the one who shared precious blood for sinners like you and I. Come to him and you'll discover there's mercy, there's forgiveness there for you. There's a wideness in God's mercy. It's wide enough for you. That's encouragement here if you're not a Christian. But if you are, I just want you to think about, just as we close here, think about that question, the question to wrestle with, God's question. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh? Now we don't know what Jonah said. We don't know how Jonah answered that question. But that's not really the main point. The point for us is how do we answer it in our own lives? Are we spiritually aligned here? Are we spiritually on the same page as God? We are partakers of the divine nature if we're Christians and so do we have the same perspective? Do we see men and women in the same way as being without Christ and being spiritually lost, not really knowing what they're here for, why they're here? And if so, do we then also have compassion on them? Do we have concern in that condition? Are we moved by their plight, their lostness and the fearful eternity to which they're fast heading? Does it move us? Like William Chalmers Burns, he was the Scotsman and the man who went on to become the great missionary to China. As a young man, his mother took him from their little hometown of Kilsyth to Glasgow, the big, huge city of Glasgow. And young William had never been there before. And he came to this city, and his mother took him to Main Street in Glasgow. And there was a sea of people coming down the street. He'd never seen anything like it before. And so many people, they actually got separated. And it was only after a little while that his mother realized that William wasn't with him. And so she eventually retraced her tracks and went back and found him down a side street. And he had tears streaming down his face. And she said, Willie, my boy, what ails you? Are you ill? And he said between the sobs, oh, mother, the thud of these Christless feet on the way to hell, it breaks my heart. Do we feel something of that? Do you feel something of that about your city of Providence? So many lost souls in spiritual darkness? Or in your own neighbourhood? Put it that way, is your heart moved by the thud of Christless feet as they walk down your street? Or maybe in your office? the thud of Christless feet as they walk past your desk or past your cubicle. Is there some compassion for souls, souls that abound fast in spiritual darkness? Do we have the heart of God for souls? Do we have the heart of Christ himself, who seeing the multitude as like sheep without a shepherd was moved with compassion? That's the heart of God. And so that's the question for us. Should I, should you not have compassion also? May the mind of Christ my Savior dwell in me from day to day by his love and power controlling all I do and say. May his beauty rest upon me as I seek the lost to win and may they forget the channel seeing only him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your holy word. And as we have looked into it this night, we pray that we would not go from this place as the man who walked away from the mirror and forgot what it was that he looked like. Help us to go away, O Lord, with your word. resonating in our hearts, and with a renewed resolve to walk in the light of your truth. Lord, help us this night and in the coming days to be not hearers only, but doers also of your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.