Please throw me in the written Word of God to the fourth chapter of Jonah It's bittersweet to come to the end of Jonah It's been a sweet time in many many ways and otherwise has been a very convicting time It's a very convicting book but it has been a delight to preach the Word of God and to open up and what some ways has been really a an unknown part of our Bibles, because we think of Jonah and the fish, but then to really see what the real lesson is here is, I think, very helpful. You're in Jonah chapter 4. We're going to begin our reading the last verse of chapter 3. Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them. And he did not do it. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, was this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish. For I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm. 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, Is it right for you to be angry? 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 had prepared a plant and made it to come up over Jonah, that 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 so it 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. 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. But the Lord said, you have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, 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? Let's pray. Father, how convicting this is. how often when we want mercy for ourselves, we want justice for everyone around us, just like Jonah. Father, speak to us, show us who you are, show us what you are like, and help us to imitate our Father in heaven who loves his enemies. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. It was over 77 years ago on Sunday, April the 29th of the year 1945. The United States military marched into a Nazi concentration camp to liberate the prisoners who were inside of it. The camp was located 10 miles northeast of Munich in southern Germany. The camp was situated in the outskirts of a town known as Dachau. The camp had been opened 12 years earlier on Wednesday, March 22, 1933. It stayed open the entire regime of the Third Reich. It was started on that day by a man named Heinrich Himmler, whom you have heard of, a demonically twisted man who just had to have been demon possessed for the cruelties that he perpetrated. The press release came out when the camp opened. It sounded pretty benign, saying that this was basically just a holding facility for prisoners of the Third Reich, enemies of the Third Reich. But a couple of months after it was opened in May of 1933, one of the prison leaders stood before the men and told them what the real purpose really was in a speech. Among the things he said, he said this, quote, comrades of the SS. We all know what the Fuhrer has called us to do. We have not come here for human encounters with those pigs in there. We do not consider them human beings as we are, but as second-class people. For years, they have been able to continue their criminal existence, but now we are in power. If those pigs had come to power, they would have cut off all our heads. Therefore, we have no room for sentimentalism. If anyone here cannot bear to see the blood of comrades, he does not belong and had better leave. The more of these pig dogs we strike down, the fewer we need to feed." End of quote. Dachau was the first of what would ultimately be more than 44,000 concentration camps. It was considered the prototype and the model for all the rest. During its 13-year reign of terror, some 200,000 prisoners passed through their gates. One-third of them were Jews. The Nazis recorded 32,000 deaths, and it has long been believed that that is an extremely conservative figure. Hitler's contempt for the Jews was no state secret. As a matter of fact, it was state policy. But no one realized just how brutal the extent of their tortures and exterminations were until days like this one, in which the United States military, along with British troops, came into these camps and saw what was going on there. When they entered into Dachau on that day in 1945, they found 30,000 prisoners there. They were so starved that their bodies looked like skeletons. You've perhaps seen some of the footage of what they looked like. Literally, their skin was clinging to their bones. They found thousands of personal effects stacked up in great heaps all throughout the camp, including combs, brushes, eyeglasses, shoes belonging to men, women, and children. There were piles of gold fillings that were taken out of the teeth of the prisoners posthumously that were melted down and used to fund the war effort for Nazi Germany. The soldiers began to hear stories from the prisoners of how their fellow prisoners had been put to death. Some died before firing squads. Other Jews were stripped of their clothing, marched into rooms where they were told they were about to take a shower, only to have cyanide gas come from the vents above them. Others were hung, and crematoriums were specially built for the camps so that the Nazis could hide the evidence of their crimes by burning bodies once they were dead. I'm not trying to be gross, but medical experiments that were horrible, too horrible to speak of in this pulpit, were perpetuated upon many of the inmates. The skin and body parts of Jewish corpses were used to make ashtrays, lampshades, things of that nature. The soldiers documented what they found with movie cameras. If you have seen the film Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961, it actually shows some of the actual footage of what they found there. And that footage was used during the Nuremberg trials as evidence of what was going on. I've seen that film many times, but among all the things that went on in that film that I see, there's one thing that's more disturbing to me than anything else. When they came into the camp, bodies were stacked up like cordwood. And because there was not enough time to bury them all, they had no choice but to dig deep pits. And there's pictures of bulldozers pushing hundreds of bodies. into these pits. Men and women created the image of God having to be treated after their deaths as if they were just garbage. Now as I think about those things, I'm not a violent man. As a matter of fact, I only had one fight in my entire life. I was in the seventh grade, I was at a neighbor's house and I was jumping with a kid on a trampoline and he started insulting me and so I pushed him down to the trampoline and hit him in the chest a couple of times and he started laughing. I just quit hitting him. That was the beginning and end of my street fighting career. I'm not a violent man, but when I see these images, when I see the things perpetuated upon the Jews, when I see the inhumanity and come to the conclusion that these men had to be demon possessed to do the things that they did. I think to myself that if I was a commander of those armies, I would have taken all these Nazi vermin, lined them up against a wall, and ordered them to be shot. And maybe I would have told my soldiers to reload their weapons until they had used every bullet they had. I find myself wanting to see them exterminated. It's a twist of irony that Heinrich Himmler, who started the camp, literally killed himself with a cyanide capsule on the very day the camp Dachau was invaded by the liberating armies. Would you think I'm a monster if I tell you that there's a part of me that is very thankful that Himmler is in hell right now? Part of all this feeling inside of me, I'm sure you feel the same kind of rage when you think about these things, there's a part of it that's justice. There's a part of it that says, the blood of these innocents cries out from the blood to be avenged by God Himself. And there is an element of that that is certainly true as we think about these things, yet that being said, isn't it also true that our righteous anger quickly turns into unrighteous anger, ungodly thoughts, the desire to take vengeance away from God Himself and to let Him do what He does in His time. I certainly think as a gospel minister, if I had the opportunity to preach to some of those who were the architects of these concentration camps, there's a part of me that would want to run away from that assignment for fear that maybe they might hear and find mercy from God. We come to Jonah chapter 4. It's very easy for us to think upon Jonah and look at his attitude and think to ourselves, what a rotten attitude. What a horrible thing for Jonah to act this way. God brought revival after all under his ministry. And yet here he is angry at God because he showed mercy to the Ninevites. My brothers and sisters, what we have to recognize as we think about this is that when God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, it was like saying, go into the prison camp at Dachau. and preach to the people who are there. Just don't trip over the bodies as you do so. Remember what the Holy Spirit would say a hundred years later through Nahum in chapter 3. Speaking of Nineveh itself, several generations have passed since the generation that had repented under Jonah's preaching. The Spirit says, It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs. The noise of a whip and the noise of rattling wheels, of galloping horses, of clattering chariots, horsemen charged with bright sword and glittering spear. There is a multitude of slain, a great number of bodies, countless corpses. They stumble over the corpses." So many victims that you would stumble over them as you went to preach there. Jonah believed that the Assyrians were a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs who were not deserving of God's mercy. And let's acknowledge something. He was exactly right. He was right. They didn't deserve mercy. If you deserve mercy, it's not mercy, is it? Did they deserve to go to hell? He was absolutely right. Ada B'tozer says, the problem with the cynic is the cynic is usually right. The thing is evaluation is spot on. He was right, but he was also very, very wrong, because the thing Jonah was forgetting was, no, they didn't deserve mercy, but neither did Jonah. And neither did the Nazi war criminals, and neither do you and I. No, we may not have committed the same atrocities that they've committed. Nonetheless, we have sinned against the Holy God more times than we can remember or count. And all of us are worthy and deserving of hell. And yet we want mercy for ourselves, and we want justice for others. And yet the Lord is saying, I'm compassionate. And because I'm compassionate to sinners, you should be too. And because I desire their salvation, you should desire their salvation also. And this is one of the key lessons of Jonah. Well, as I look at our text this morning, I see three things. First, I see an angry prophet. Second, I see a dead shade tree. And third, I see a compassionate God. Let's work through all these things together. First of all, an angry prophet. Chapter 4, verse 1. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. What's the it? What's the it that made him so displeased? What's the it that made him angry? Well, that's verse 10 of chapter 3. Then God saw their works that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. He was displeased at two things. Number one, He was displeased that they listened to His preaching and they repented. Number two, He was displeased that God had shown them mercy and hadn't destroyed the city. But the thing I want you to see is, who was Jonah angry with? Jonah was angry with the Lord. He was angry with the Lord because he showed compassion to people that Jonah didn't think were worthy of such compassion. So what's Jonah do about it? Verse 2. So he prayed to YHWH. He prayed to YHWH. Now before we get too all-high, mighty, and critical of Jonah, let's recognize something right here. Richard Phillips points out he's on the right path here. Remember what happened when he first was commissioned to go to Nineveh way back in chapter 1? He ran from the presence of the Lord. Now he's angry as all get out, but at least he does something right. He turns towards the Lord. He directs his prayer towards Him. And yes, he's full of carnality. Yes, he's a backslidden prophet. Yes, his attitude stinks. But at least he's going in the right direction for once. He's finally settling down and saying, I'm going to start doing business with God. Has your heart ever been full of anger and rage because someone wronged you? It's a rhetorical question, by the way. Maybe it was someone in the world, or maybe it was a fellow Christian, and you were treated very unjustly. And there's a certain sense in which your response to that, your anger at that, is just. I have been sinned against. I've been treated wrongly. But how long does righteous anger really stay righteous anger? Maybe 0.5 seconds? And suddenly it's mixed with anger and bitterness and hatred. And here's the problem. Lord, you're being too slow about vindicating me. And you're being too slow about judging my enemies. I'm mad at them. Shouldn't you be mad at them too? Hurry up and get it over with, Lord, because they're being so wicked." And then you feel guilty inside because you know that the thoughts and the intentions of your heart aren't exactly pleasing in the sight of God. You know that. But you're like, Lord, they're the ones who acted against me. Why does my reaction have to be sinful? Why do I have to deal with my sin? I want to be perfect and blameless. Why don't you just judge them? Because they're the ones being the jerks after all. Is it just me or has someone else felt this way before? And yet, there's times when I have felt so frustrated like that, that I've literally had to go out and say, Lord, let me go someplace where no one else can hear me, because I just need to shout to you for a while. And I need to get some things off my chest. Is it just me that does this? And I have to get away to an isolated place where no one else can hear me, because they'll think I'm a madman if they hear me crying out to the Lord. And to tell him, Lord, this is what I'm feeling, and this is what I'm thinking. But sometimes I have to stop and say, Lord, I don't want to react the right way. You tell me to love my enemy, I don't want to love my enemy. You tell me to return good for evil, and I don't want to return good for evil. I just want you to be mad at him like I am. That's what I want. I want some vengeance. I want my pound of flesh. I want some vindication here, Lord. Could you shout with an audible voice? Jerry's in the right, and this person's a jerk. That would be wonderful. But I had to stop and say, Lord, I know my attitude is wrong. And I know I need to have a willing heart, but I don't even have that. Could you please give me a willing heart? Please? Because if you don't help me, I'm not strong enough or smart enough or wise enough to do this on my own. My shoulders aren't big enough to bear it. I need you to bear it on your shoulders, because I know you're strong enough to handle it. And I need you to help me to give me the right attitude and to respond the way you would have me to respond, even though it's the last thing in the world I want to do. So I look at Jonah. Yeah, his attitude is rotten. But he's doing the right thing, at least in this much, he's turning towards the Lord instead of away from Him. And unlike his prayer in chapter 2, which is fine as far as it goes, it just doesn't go far enough, but it's kind of pious sounding, and there he is in the fish, and, oh Lord, let's go back now and do what's right. Now he's at least finally, for the first time, getting really honest with the Lord. And being honest and directing him towards Him. And now the Lord is going to teach him. And He's going to instruct him. Well, it's interesting to see what happens next. Notice verse 2, the content of his prayer. It's actually very, very beautiful, but he realized that it's full of sarcasm as well on Jonah's part. He's saying very true things about God, but he's saying true things about God to accuse him. Notice what he says, Was this not what I said when I was still in my country? Why did I run down to Joppa in the first place and get a boat and try to go to Tarshish? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish, for I know what you're like. You're a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. First of all, do you recognize where he's getting that language? This is not the first time this language has appeared in the Bible. You first hear it in Exodus 34. Remember the context? Moses said, Lord, show me your glory. And he said, you can't see my face and live, but I'll hide you in the cleft of the rock, I'll let you see my back, and I will declare my name before you. So he does, and remember what he says. He says, Now the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood within there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. What I know means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. Jonah's taking up some of that language on his own lips, but he's doing so pejoratively. That is, he's using it as an accusation. He's saying, Lord, you're always doing this. You're always showing mercy to ungrateful slobs. I knew when you sent me here, you weren't going to destroy the city. You're going to show them mercy. They're going to grant them repentance and faith. And now they're my brothers and sisters in the Messiah who is to come. Thank you very much. I get to spend eternity with them now. You couldn't have just destroyed them when you had the chance. This is not amazing grace. This is ludicrous grace. This is absurd. Why can't you be angry with them and hate them as much as I do? That's what's behind it all. Now it's easy to laugh at my characterization of what Jonah's saying, but that's what he's doing here. He's upset, and let's recognize what's going on with his attitude. He's saying to the Lord, my attitude about what is just and right and fair is better than your attitude about what is just and right and fair. Let me instruct you and tell a most just God what justice really ought to look like." And furthermore, he's thinking of himself as a man entitled to God's mercies and the Ninevites as people who are not. After all, he says, I'm a Jewish man, circumcised on the eighth day, a pillar of my community, a standout guy, a godly example, and to top it all off, a prophet of prophets. unlike these wicked, wicked vile people. Brian Estelle says it this way, one of Jonah's quintessential problems is that he has forgotten God's mercy toward him. Jonah is suffering from a memory problem. He too has experienced God's mercy, but now he is ill-equipped to appreciate God's mercy when he observes it exercised on someone else's behalf. A few weeks ago on our midweek service, Jesse Dudek taught us on the parable of the prodigal son and rightly told us it's not really the parable of the prodigal son, it's the parable of the prodigal brother. It's the Pharisee who can't understand why everybody's so full of joy that the prodigal son has returned home and has been forgiven and restored. Jonah is acting a lot like that older brother, isn't he? What is the joy in heaven that's going on because these Ninevites have repented? I'm upset about it. Why should we be joyful about it? And yet, brothers and sisters, I want to know something about verse 2. As sarcastic, as accusatory as Jonah is being, do you realize that chapter 4, verse 2 is the central theme of this entire book? It's what everything has been pointing towards. That God is love, and that God is gracious and compassionate to very unworthy sinners. And that's true whether you grew up as a good moral person in church, or as a debauched person outside of church, or in the church, or whatever. God is merciful to sinners of all stripes, of all varieties, no matter how sinful your past is. It's like the Pharisees who, when they saw Jesus eating with tax gatherers and sinners, they rebuked Him. And again, they meant it pejoratively. They said, you're a friend of sinners. And yet with amen as an accusation, we take up those same words on our tongue as cause of praise. Thank you that you are a friend of sinners. We're going to sing it here in just a bit. Jesus, what a friend for sinners. Jesus, lover of my soul. Friends may fell me, foes assail me. He, my Savior, makes me whole. We worship the Lord with the very accusation that the Pharisees made. Even so, we look at what Jonah says and recognize his bad attitude, but also realize that everything he's saying is absolutely right. This is the kind of God that you are, which is why I've been accepted into your kingdom, why I have been forgiven and shown mercy and given the righteousness of Christ. So whoever you are, the scriptures say in Isaiah, look to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth. For I am God and there is no other. O Palmer Robertson nails it. By the way, if you want some more on Jonah, get a hold of his tiny little commentary, real short, but wonderful, wonderful reading. He says this, often the best teaching is done by contrast. You appreciate the speed of an Olympic runner when you see him or her leave the pack behind. You see the greatness of God's compassion to the Ninevites when you set it beside Jonah's reaction. God loved and cared for those wicked Ninevites just as he does for the cruel, brutal drug dealers of today. Indeed, he expects repentance and trust, but he stands ready to receive the most wicked of the earth. Well, Jonah now has a death wish. He's told the Lord, I'm upset because you've forgiven and pardoned the Ninevites for their many sins. Then he says, verse 3, Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live. Better for me to die than for them to live and obtain your mercies. He's not going to commit suicide, but he's not shying away from saying, Lord, could you give me some assisted suicide here and take my life from me? That's how angry he is. What's going to happen next? Again, to quote Brian Estelle, he says this, What is God's method with Jonah? God is about to engage Jonah in a counseling session that Jonah will never forget. So what we have first of all is an angry prophet. What we next see is a dead shade tree. And that's verses 4 to 8. Remember how God had specially prepared a fish for Jonah? He's got three more things to prepare for him. Miraculous things that he's going to prepare. He's going to prepare first of all a shade tree, which springs up overnight. Next he's going to prepare a gluttonous worm. And third, he's going to prepare a blast furnace, all to teach Jonah a lesson. It makes you think of Psalm 119, where David said, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn to obey your statutes. God is showing his mercy to Jonah by taking him through a hard parable, as it were, and then he's going to explain the parable, which he's going to punctuate by asking him three rhetorical questions. The first one begins in verse 4. And then Yahweh said, Is it right for you to be angry? Of course, the understood answer is no. But it's rhetorical. But Jonah's in such a huff, he doesn't even respond to it. He just marches off to the eastern part of the village. Now, think about this. What should Jonah have been doing right now? He's seen revival come. He's seen people repent. If this happened in the book of Acts, what would the apostles be doing? Rejoicing, celebrating, baptizing. They'd be going in and rejoicing with Him and teaching Him about the way of the Lord and teaching Him about the first steps of the Christian pilgrimage now that the people have been converted. They would have been eating in their homes. They would have been sleeping in their guest bedrooms. They would have been enjoying them and teaching them more about the Lord. Is it too hard to imagine that that's exactly what Jonah should have been doing? You have now put your faith in the God of Israel. Let me tell you more about the God of Israel and what it is to worship Him. He should have been training them and teaching them, and had he been doing that, let's realize something, he probably would have been given food and lodging, and he wouldn't have had the sun beating down upon him in the middle of a rock, which is where this took place. But that's not what he's doing. Bring a revival under my ministry, will you? I'll show you. And he goes marching out to the outskirts of the city, throws together some sort of shelter to protect him from the sun, which was brutal. And notice what the text says. Verse 5, So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and he made himself a shelter, and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. Maybe the Lord will listen to my bad attitude and be angry just as I am. Maybe He'll relent again. And if He does so, I ain't gonna miss it. I'm gonna eat my popcorn and drink my Coca-Cola, and I'm gonna watch the fireworks. He's hoping to see God's wrath pour out upon them. Boy, what a story I'll have to tell to my fellow Jews when I get back. He's sitting out there, and what's the Lord do? Well, the Lord's merciful to him. He recognizes he's under the shade, and apparently he wasn't much of a boy scout. His shelter just isn't enough to protect him. So he miraculously raises up the shade tree. And I say miraculously because it grows so quickly. It wasn't there before, and suddenly, boom, there it is. And notice what the text says. It says that he loved the shade tree. Remember, it's the only thing in the entire book of Jonah that Jonah said to love. He is really excited about the shade tree. It's his favorite thing in all the world. He loves it. He cherishes it. Oh, my wonderful shade tree. He's got this strange affiliation and fixation on the shade tree. Maybe he interpreted God's miraculous intervention as his blessing and approval, not only of his ministry, but even of his attitude. Well, God must not be too upset with me because look at what he's done to protect me. Well, It's sad to realize that the same man who passionately hated the Ninevites now passionately loves the Shaytri. He cares more about his creature comforts than he does about the never-dying souls of men. That's the point that we're going to come away with here. Well, the passionate prophet gets to enjoy his marvelous shade tree for about 24 hours. And then the next morning, God prepares something else. A carnivorous worm. A gluttonous worm. And this was some kind of worm. This is like the worm from hell. Because it starts eating on the shade tree in the morning, and by midday, the tree is completely gone. It's dead. And so here's Jonah out in the middle of all this heat. The sun is beating down mercilessly upon his head. And just in case he wasn't getting the message yet, God prepares something else. He prepares a violent east wind that's full of heat to come against him. It is said that in that region to this day, there are sometimes winds that get up to 60 miles an hour. So basically, he's got Jonah in a blast furnace. He's in the middle of a blast furnace being forged, as it were. The Lord's trying to bring his dross to the surface and he's literally putting them on the pressure cooker. He's putting them under the heat. And as I think about Jonah, I feel sorry for him a little bit, I must confess. I used to be a roofer in Georgia. I know a little taste of what he's talking about here. But the Lord is getting through to him to show him something, to teach him something. So what do we see? We see an angry prophet. We see a dead shade tree. But then the book concludes by pointing us to a compassionate God. Notice that for the second time in this chapter, Jonah cries out for God to kill him. Verse seven, it's morning dawn the next day. God prepared a worm and so it 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 they grew faint. Then he wished death for himself and said, it is better for me to die than to live. Second time he said that. Well, now God's going to respond to him and ask him the same question he asked before he gave him the shade tree, took away the shade tree, and gave him the hot east wind. Verse 9, then God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry? Notice these final three words, about the plant. You're not just angry because you're caught in this violent storm or this violent heat. You're angry because I took away the plant. Do you have the right to be angry about it? Now again, it's a rhetorical question, but this time Jonah gives him an answer. And notice the latter part of verse 9. It is right for me to be angry even to death. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. It's a pity party. I'm having a pity party. I've invited friends. Nobody's come. They never do. But he's going to have this pity party. I have the right to be angry, even unto death. Do you realize these are Jonah's last recorded words ever? They're not his last words, but they're the last recorded words we ever have of Jonah. Those are the last words you would want to have recorded, if it was you. But the reason is that the Scriptures are giving God himself the final word. He gets to have the last word in the book of Jonah. And so notice what the Lord does. Verse 10, The Lord said, You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. None of your works had anything to do with it rising up. It was simply my voluntary mercy that made it grow. You had mercy upon a plant. You loved a plant. And there's an implication in his question. He's saying, your plant does not have a never-dying soul. Your plant's not going to stay in eternity in heaven or in hell. And yet you're mourning over it. You're ready to have a funeral for it. You're having a pity party about it. You're ready to die because of it. And yet you don't care about the Ninevites. Not at all. In other words, I gave mercy to you and then the moment I took that mercy away, next thing you know, you're angry and you're ready to die and you're complaining. I read that and I go, man, it sounds so much like me. God gives a slight hard providence to me and next thing you know, I'm complaining. Lord, life is so hard. And yet, not realizing the mercies that God has shown and that he's not obligated to continue showing mercy to me. He's not obligated to continue showing mercy to Jonah. He didn't owe Jonah the right of having a shade tree over his head. He mercifully gave it, and then he graciously took it away. And so then, verse 11, the application is, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and too much livestock? He's saying, these people are spiritually ignorant. Unlike you, Jonah, they never had the Hebrew Scriptures in their language so that they could read the Bible for themselves. Until now, no one's ever preached to them, but now a prophet has preached to them. You've heard preaching all of your life. I withheld all that from them that they were never given the light that you were given. They're spiritually backwards. And now they've repented at the little light they've received. And should I not have pity upon them? And the implication is, Jonah, shouldn't you have pity upon them? You who are the recipient of great mercy should desire that others receive that same mercy as you have received." And notice, have you ever thought, when you look at Jonah and read Jonah, it kind of has an unsatisfying ending. You want verse 12, and Jonah repented and loved the Ninevites and went and preached among them and stayed in their houses. It doesn't tell us that. Just leaves it there. Just leaves you hanging. You don't know what Jonah's response was. My suspicion is he humbled himself. He listened to what the Lord said. His attitude did change, I suspect. Jonah was the author, the human author of this book. If so, it speaks well of him. Because what he's clearly wanting us to do is when we get to the end, he wants us to think very little of Jonah and a whole lot about the Lord. And certainly that's what the Holy Spirit intends, regardless of who the human author was. As one brother has said, the Bible deliberately throws mud on all its heroes except for one. And the one it doesn't throw mud on is Jesus Christ. But the others, it shows us, we're all too human. We have feet of clay, we're fallible, we're fallen, we fall short. Even prophets, even preachers, even pastors, we all fall short. Even Jonah. But thank God we have a compassionate God who loves sinners in spite of what sometimes God's servants do. Here's 120,000 never-dying souls. And Jonah, should I not have mercy upon them? And the implication is, shouldn't you have mercy upon them? Someone has said, or several commentators point out, that the reason you don't get Jonah's response at the end of Jonah is because it's as if the Lord is turning away from Jonah and he's looking at you and me and saying, I have compassion upon unworthy sinners. Shouldn't you too? Shouldn't you desire the salvation and not the damnation of your fellow man? That's the question that we're being asked. Sinclair Ferguson gives a good summary. He says it this way, If you are angry enough to die because of this plant, should you not be compassionate enough to live for these people? The truth was that Jonah seemed to care more about plants than about people. This was a devastating critique of Jonah's spiritual condition, but it raises an issue no less disturbing about our own lives as Christians. Could the same be said about us? Do we care more about the items in our gardens, the produce of our fields, or perhaps the contents of our garage or home than we do about our fellow men and women and the spread of the gospel to them? Do we care more in the last analysis about our own comforts and plans than about the evangelism of the world in our time? The statistics of our giving or praying or going in the cause of Christ throughout the earth provide embarrassing reading to the church. They raise the very real question about whether or not we've begun to rid ourselves of the Jonah syndrome. Two applications I wanna make from the end of Jonah. First, God is compassionate to the chief of sinners, and if he so loves vile, unworthy sinners, so must you. So must you. When the Lord commissioned Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites, he was essentially saying, go to Dachau. Preach to the architects of the camp, who have done all these horrible atrocities against your fellow man, and call them to repentance, that they might obtain mercy from me. When I hear about missionaries being sent out to go to militant Islamic places, I think about the fact that they go into some place where ISIS has a presence, for example. These merciless vermin who have exterminated others. And you think to yourself, either you're cold or you're crazy, or maybe you're a little bit of both. It's a little bit like John Payton in the 19th century volunteering to go to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific to plant a church among cannibals. Sounds like a great place to go plant a church. And yet he did so. He did so. But it's not just these extremists that we're talking about. The truth of the matter is Jesus told us, did he not, Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves. We are told to expect that we go into a hostile world to share the gospel. And don't get the notion that somehow North Georgia is less hostile than the rest of the world. Maybe it's not openly hostile the way other places are. It's getting there quickly. But it's a very hostile place. If people understand what you're saying when you give them the gospel, they're probably not going to be neutral to you. They're probably not going to be indifferent to you. Why? Why do they hate us? Think about it. You're telling them to give up the sin that they love in order to be reconciled to a God that they hate. And you're telling them, furthermore, your own righteousness isn't going to cut it. Because your righteousness is as filthy rags. And the things that you're proudest of about yourself are the things that may damn you to hell if you trust them to save you. And because man is by nature self-righteous, he doesn't like being humbled to the dust. And when he's told to bow to the Lordship of Christ, he's saying, take your self-will and put it to death and bow your will to the will of God. And the world doesn't like that. In order to stifle the conviction they feel when we teach them these things, they want to silence our voices, put us to death, do what they must. And yet, as hostile as the world is, if they do not hear the gospel, if they don't have it preached to them, they will not be saved. They cannot be saved. Because the Bible says, and hearing from the word of God. The angel told Cornelius, go fetch Peter. He's over in Joppa. And when he comes, he'll tell you words by which you will be saved. There's content to the gospel. If the backwards Ninevites were to be delivered from their sins, they had to have someone preach to them. If the people who were in the concentration camps were going to be delivered from their sins, the gospel had to be preached to them. If ISIS members are going to turn from Allah to God and believe on Jesus Christ, someone must go there and live among them and near them and preach Jesus Christ to them. The point I'm getting at is this. The twin motivation for all of our obedience to God, but even for our evangelistic and missionary labors, are number one, love for God Himself, but number two, love for our fellow man. I don't know about you, but when I read Romans 9, Paul says, I'm not exaggerating, I'm telling you the truth, I'm speaking the truth in Christ, I'm not lying before God, that I have great and continual grief and sorrow in my heart for my fellow Israelites. The very Israelites who were persecuting him, by the way. beating him, stoning him, having him scourged, hounding him, planting terrorist plots against his life. He says, I continually grieve for them because I want them to obtain salvation. And if I could wish it, I would wish that I would be a curse from Christ himself, so that they could be grafted in. If my eternal damnation could somehow be used to graft them into Christ, I could wish it upon myself. Brothers and sisters, I don't know about you, but if I lived a thousand lifetimes and had a thousand lifetimes of sanctification, I still don't think I would be that selfless. To have the heart of Paul. But where did he learn it? Jesus sacrificed himself. And he was condemned himself in order that we might receive salvation. And he's just imitating his Savior. And saying, that's the kind of heart I need to have. Well, that's the heart we should have for a Ninevite. That's the heart we should have for a society gone mad. A desire not for their condemnation, not for the condemnation of our governing officials who frustrate us so often, but a desire truly for their salvation. A desire that they should obtain the same mercy we have obtained in Jesus Christ. There's a very telling verse in Acts 21 verse 8. It tells us that Paul and his traveling companions stopped in. It says this, On the next day we who were Paul's companions departed and came to Caesarea, and entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. And you look at that verse and you kind of pass over and it seems kind of benign. Oh yeah, well the New Testament church was always being very hospitable, so Philip lets Paul and his traveling companions stay with him. Okay, what's the big deal? Well, it is a big deal when you can remember who Philip was and when you remember who Paul was. Philip was one of the seven. He was one of the original seven deacons appointed in Acts chapter 6. And alongside of him was another man who was a fellow deacon and a good friend of Philip's whose name was Stephen. And when Stephen was martyred in Acts chapter 7, there was someone guarding the coats of those who stoned him to death. Who was it? It was Saul who was, the Bible says, consenting to his death. He agreed with Stephen being killed and it filled him with animating zeal so that he created havoc in the churches and began persecuting them as a religious terrorist. When the Bible says the saints made great lamentation over Stephen, Philip would have been one of those sobbing uncontrollably over the loss of his dear friend and fellow deacon, Stephen. And yet here we are years later, That same Philip, who has four daughters, opening up his home and saying, Paul, my brother, come in and have a meal with me. Come in in our guest room, sleep under my roof. That's nothing short of miraculous. That Jesus had received this religious terrorist to himself and forgiven him and therefore I have an obligation to receive him too. And so the man who was consenting to the death of my dear friend, is now my brother, and I'm gonna show the grace of hospitality to him." So when you read Acts 21.8, don't think it's benign. It's something very big deal. It's a big deal going on there, because I look at that and I see what grace can do. See, God had received the Ninevites. It was now obligatory for Jonah to receive them also, and embrace them as his brothers and his sisters in the Lord, because they had repented, however much animosity had existed between them before. That's what God does. Before I began preaching this series, I preached to you about the Olivet Discourse. And I began that series by talking about when Jesus came over the peak of the Mount of Olives and he saw Jerusalem. Remember what happened? When he saw the city, he began weeping uncontrollably. Because he saw with prophetic eyes what was going to happen 40 years later in 70 AD. They were going to be razed and destroyed because they had rejected their Messiah. O. Palmer Robertson connects Jonah's attitude towards Nineveh with Jesus' attitude towards Jerusalem. Listen to what he says. The Lord Jesus looks over Jonah's city of Jerusalem and weeps. Yet his reason for sadness is the exact opposite of Jonah's. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her brood, and you would not. So your city is left to you desolate. Now listen to what he says next. Jonah grieves that a repentant city shall be spared. Jesus grieves that an unrepentant city must be judged. What is the condition of your compassion today? Are you more like Jonah or Jesus? Do you wince and draw back every time you're stung when trying to help others? Or do you gladly surrender life itself for the sake of saving people who hurt you? Let the limits of your compassion be determined by Jesus, not Jonah. The real lesson of Jonah's book is really found in Jesus' words in Luke 6. Listen to what he says. Just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise. But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High." Now, why does he say you'll be sons of the Most High? He's going to say, you're going to show that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, because you look just like your father. Listen to what he says next. "'For He,' that is, God the Father, He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful." That's the lesson of Jonah. I am merciful towards the Ninevites, should your heart not be the same. Second and final lesson. God's love was shown to the Ninevites, but the greatest display of His love is found in His only begotten Son. All good preaching ends at the same place. And so I'm going to end the preaching of this series on Jonah in the same place, and that is at the cross of Jesus Christ. That's where all good preaching leads. If it doesn't lead you there, it's not Christian preaching. God showed great favor and great mercy to the Ninevites. But remember what Jesus said when he talked about it? Jonah was kept alive in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, but what did he say? A greater than Jonah is here. First of all, a greater miracle took place in Jesus' ministry. He wasn't just inside the belly of a fish for three days and three nights. He was inside the belly of the tomb for three days and three nights. He was dead. And yet, after those three days, he rose triumphant, alive from the dead. A far greater miracle than a man being kept alive under the Mediterranean Sea for three days and three nights. But it is, we look how sinful Nineveh was, we think about the Assyrians and their atrocities, or think about the Nazis and their atrocities, very similar. It makes their conversion that much more astonishing. When you think about a holy God, who is a just God, who shows compassion and mercy to people like that, you realize their conversion is nothing short of a miracle. But brothers and sisters, is your conversion anything less of a miracle? When I consider the fact that, okay, no, I haven't murdered anybody, but you know what? I've got a murderous heart beating here. And while I've been faithful to my wife, if you think upon a woman in your heart to lust after, you've already committed adultery in your heart. When I think about the animosity and the bitterness and the anger and the malice that can rise up in my heart, I marvel that holy God can even look upon me, much less accept me as His own child and adopt me as His own son. But why can He? He can because He sent His Son Jesus to die for my sins, My name is not just written in the land's book of life, it's written in the scars of Christ and his hands and his feet and his side, never to be erased. I'm not worthy to have my name in the land's book of life, I'm far less worthy to have it written in the body of Christ himself. That his noble blood should be spilled for me to forgive me for my sins, and yet that is what has happened. That is what God has done. 1 John 4 verses 9 to 11 tells us, In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. That is to say, His love for you and me was not caused by us, It wasn't deserved by you and me. It's uncaused, undeserved. But nonetheless, God himself loved us because that's who God is. And he's compassionate to sinners. And while when we hated him, he sent his son to die for us and to be our propitiation. That is to satisfy the wrath of God on our behalf. He poured out his wrath upon his son so he could pour out his mercy and grace upon you and me. That's what God did at the cross. And of all the displays of God's love, none is greater than His display at the cross. Michael Card has a song, he says, you can choose what not to believe in, you can deny there's a heaven above, but once you take a look at Jesus, there's no denying that God is love. Because there in Christ, we see His love manifest. So this morning, I remind you of this truth, that Jesus came to die for sinners like you and me. and the greatest manifestation of His love is found in the cross of Calvary. So if you're outside of Christ, flee to the living Christ for mercy, because there's mercy to be found in Him. No matter how wicked your past, the same God who can forgive Assal, the same God who can forgive Nazi war criminals, the same God who can forgive Assyrians has the power to forgive you. And He's willing to do so, and He's able to do so. So flee to Him, repenting of sin and putting your faith in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you and praise you that you are such a merciful God. We thank you for what you have done for us in Christ. Bless us now as we partake of the Lord's Supper together, and pray that we will know the presence of the living Christ as we do. In Jesus' name, amen.