Well, if you have a copy of the scriptures today, let me invite you once again to turn to the book of Jonah. And today we're in Jonah chapter four, Jonah four, as we're continuing this series, this brief series through the book of Jonah, doing one message on each chapter. And again, today we come to Jonah four. We're gonna look at the entirety of the chapter and expositing it. But for now, I'm just gonna read the opening three verses, Jonah four, verses one through three. wherein the prophet records, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. and repent of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." May God bless today the reading and the hearing of his word. Well again we are returning to the book of Jonah one of the minor prophets so called and we have seen thus far in this book how the Lord gave to Jonah first of all a commission to go and preach to the people of Nineveh a wicked city and he ran away from that call and was swallowed up by a great fish that the Lord had prepared in that belly of the fish, he had prayed to the Lord and he was released and he was given a second chance. This is what we saw in chapter 3. He was given a second chance to fulfill the commission to go and preach the preaching that the Lord had bidden unto him. And indeed he went and we saw last week how in chapter 3 and verse 5 the people of Nineveh believed God and they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth so. Much to the surprise of outside observers, not the least of which was Jonah himself, the message was received, the warning was received, and the people of Nineveh repented. And so in light of this, the Lord, from his mercy, having seen their works, as we see in chapter three, verse 10, turned from the evil that he had warned against. Again, from an outsider's perspective, it seemed that God had changed his mind. Of course, God had never changed his mind. He had decreed, and he knew that the preaching of Jonah would be the means that he would use to turn them from their wickedness, and so that he would not have to lay them waste under his wrath. But from a human perspective, it seemed that God had, as it says here, repented of the evil, as it says in chapter three and verse 10. Now we come to the final chapter, chapter 4, and in this chapter we are given a description of Jonah's reaction to this gracious turn of events. What minister would not be filled with joy and even weep tears of joy to see sinners repent and turn and Face the Lord and worship Him. What minister of the gospel would not rejoice and exult in such circumstances? Well, then there's Jonah. And Jonah does not rejoice at this wonderful news of the repentance of the people of Nineveh. He appears in this chapter as an angry, and despondent prophet. In fact, I titled the message, The Angry Prophet. And so that could be the title that would be over the head of Jonah, The Angry Prophet. The final chapter not only reveals and extols to us the vast compassion and mercy of God, but it also denounces, in contrast, the sometimes stingy and confined spirit of those who serve him, like Jonah. Well, let's turn to our passage and look at the chapter, and we're gonna follow the chapter divisions that were given it by the old translators. And so there are two parts, verses 1 through 3 will be the first part, and then verses 4 through 11 will be the second part. The first part, we could describe it as Jonah's reaction, Jonah's reaction to the repentance of Nineveh as an angry prophet. Jonah's reaction as an angry prophet, that's in verses one through three. The tone is set for us in verse one, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. Jonah was fit to be tied when the Ninevites repented and the Lord turned from his fierce anger against them. In verse two, we have recorded for us a second prayer of Jonah. There are two great prayers of Jonah. The first great prayer is chapter two, where it begins in verse one, then Jonah prayed unto the Lord, his God out of the fish's belly. And I suggested that that prayer in the belly of the whale was a prayer of desperation. And he comes to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. It ends in verse 9 of chapter 2, salvation is of the Lord. This second prayer, now that we look at in chapter 4, is one that is quite different. And this prayer is not one that involves Jonah praising the Lord or Jonah repenting of his a rejection of the Lord's commission. The second prayer is more like a lament or a complaint against the Lord. And it shows us that one can pray wicked prayers. That even great prophets were capable of praying wicked prayers. Listen to his prayer that begins in verse two. And he prayed to the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country. In other words, he begins the prayer by saying to the Lord, I knew it, I told you so. I knew that if I went and preached to the Ninevites that you were going to do this very thing. I knew that you would have mercy upon them and you would not follow through with the warning of judgment that you had told me to go and preach against them and so he says in verse 2, therefore I fled before unto Tarshish. That's why I fled because I knew that you were not going to destroy the Ninevites. In fact he says he knew the Lord would relent and he knew the Lord would do this because of the Lord's character and so in verse 2 he says for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. and repentest thee of the evil. And again, we must understand the language here of repenting of evil as from a human perspective. God doesn't change his mind. He's not a man. His decree never changes. It seems to change from a human perspective, but not from the divine perspective. But the key thing is here is that Jonah here says that he knew that the Lord would be gracious, that he would be merciful, that he would be slow to anger, that he would be kind because this is part of his nature. And what Jonah is saying here is very similar to what we read about in Exodus chapters 33 and 34. And you may remember in Exodus 33 and 34, there was a time when Moses asked if he could see the Lord's glory. And the Lord told Moses that God was too great, he was too powerful in his holiness, no man could look upon him and live. But the Lord said that he would grant Moses' request and that he would put his face in the cleft of a rock and he would cause his goodness to come by. And that would be as close as Moses could get. And so if you were to look at Exodus 33, Beginning in verse 18 it says, And he, that is Moses, said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he, that is the Lord, said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And we had that hymn, he hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock. And then, if you look at Exodus 34 in verse 5, it says, and the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquities and transgressions and sin. And that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And so what Jonah repeats here in Jonah 4.2 are the characteristics, the attributes of God, that God is a God of compassion. He's a God of mercy. He's a God who's slow to be angry. He's long-suffering. He's a patient God. And this is Jonah reflecting on this, not in worship of God as Moses would worship him, but he's complaining that God is like this. I knew that you would be merciful to those Ninevites. And Jonah is really saying he wanted the Ninevites to be destroyed. And so he resents, Jonah resents the graciousness of God. He continues in verse 3, Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. This is how despondent Jonah was. He wanted to die. I've mentioned before here recently Spurgeon's articles that he wrote to the ministers at his preacher's college, and one of them was on the minister's fainting fits, talking about how ministers and All Christians can go through periods of life and times when we are despondent and we go through our fainting fits as Spurgeon put it. But here we have a description of a prophet's fainting fits. And he is so upset that he actually again asked the Lord to take his life. You may remember that something similar happened to the prophet Elijah. After Elijah had won the great victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18, he had to flee for his life from Jezebel. And he went out into the wilderness. And while he was out in the wilderness, despite the fact that he had this great victory, he was despairing. And we read in 1 Kings 19 verse 4, but he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, speaking of Elijah, and came and sat down under a juniper tree And he requested for himself that he might die, and said, it is enough. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my father's. There may be times in your life, maybe times in the lives of people that you know, people who are solid Christians and believers, but they go through periods of despondency. And we can remember that this happened to Elijah. This happened to Jonah. that Jonah asked the Lord to take even his life away. But of course, if you think about the story of Elijah, what did the Lord do to Elijah? He poked him on the side and through his angel said, get up. And when he didn't get up, he poked him again and said, get up. And then after he went with Elijah through the wilderness and cared for him, at the end, the Lord said to Elijah, I have 7,000 men who have not bent the knee to Baal. Hello, I'm God. I can raise up rocks to do my work. Everything doesn't depend on you, so get out of this pity party for yourself. And then, remember what he did also in 1 Kings 19? He said, you know what? When you come to the end of your term, I've been preparing this guy named Elisha, and he's gonna take your place as the prophet. So my purposes don't begin and end with you. And so, although it doesn't say that he said this to Jonah, we could apply the same thing. Jonah is despairing. Oh, look at all I've done. I didn't get my way. Just take my life. And the Lord, here's this. And then we have the second part of the account. The first part is talking about the anger of Jonah. The second part is the Lord challenging or questioning Jonah. And we see this in verses four through 11. The Lord's reaction to Jonah begins in verse four. As we read, then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry? doest thou well to be angry." In other words, the Lord says to Jonah, do you really think all this anger you have against the Ninevites and against me, do you think that this is justified? Do you think this is a righteous response to what you have seen and heard? And of course, this wasn't the response that Jonah wanted. Jonah wanted some some other kind of response and so we're told in verse 5 that Jonah went out of the city and he sat on the east side of the city and there he made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow till he might see what would become of the city. The idea seems to be that Jonah went out hoping that maybe the Lord would destroy the Ninevites. that maybe the Ninevites would blow it and the Lord would send down maybe a fire and brimstone upon them the way he did on Sodom and Gomorrah. And he wanted to have the best place where he could see this, the best sight there on the east side of Nineveh so he could see the destruction of that city. And next we read in verse six, again, we've got the question that the Lord asks in verse four, but the remainder of these events as Lord interacts with Jonah seemed to be through providential circumstances. He's gonna speak to him again at the end, but after he poses that one question, he begins to speak to him through the providential circumstances. And so we read in verse six, it says, and the Lord God prepared a gourd. and made it to come up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. There's a lot that we could say about this simple verse. For one thing, we have this phrase, and the Lord God prepared a gourd. This language of the Lord God prepared the gourd could be put in parallel with other statements like this. Like look back at chapter 1 verse 17. Now the Lord God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And then after the description of the Lord preparing a gourd, if you look at verse 7, it's going to say, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day. And if you look at the next verse, verse 8, And it came to pass when the sun did rise that God prepared a vehement east wind. And the repetition of this expression throughout the book of Jonah simply reminds us of the meticulous sovereignty of God in all the events of life. The pagan says, you know, fortune brought me this or that, or luck brought this, or chance brought this. But the Christian looks at everything that happens in his life and he says, the Lord has done this. The Lord has brought about this circumstance. The Lord has prepared this. So the Lord is at work in these providential circumstances. And the Lord brings this gourd, that's the translation, that's the word that's used here in the King James Version. Although there's a marginal note that suggests, in my Bible at least, that an alternative word for gourd could be a palm crest. I'm not, I don't know plants, maybe Amy knows, could explain this to us. I looked it up just to see what like a modern translation would say. In the New International Version, it describes it as a leafy plant. So there's some plant that grows up while Jonah's out there waiting to see if maybe Nineveh will be destroyed. I imagine that it was hot and it was sunny. It's the Middle East after all. But this plant grows up and it's a leafy plant, a gourd, and it brings some delight. It brings some shade to Jonah and we're told that the man who's ready to take his life is going through all this drama, all of a sudden now he's exceeding glad of the gourd. And then though, we come to verse seven, and we read, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. Now, it's a simple verse, beginning, but God prepared a worm. But it raises actually some pretty profound questions. God brought this worm to destroy the gourd that would bring pain and suffering to Jonah because he wouldn't be under the shade of the gourd. And although, again, Jonah is a deceptive story. It's a very simple story. We think it's a children's story. But really, what's being probed here is the question of evil. Why do bad things happen in the world? And this says the Lord, the Lord prepared the worm to bring about this thing that would be perceived as an evil, a bad for Jonah. And so this line here, we could ask, well, who sent the worm? God prepared the worm. We could also ask, have you ever heard anybody say, you know, where did the serpent come from in the garden? They're tempted out of an Eve. Well, God made the serpent, right? Does that mean God is the source of evil? No, the serpent was a rebellious creature, but God had permitted the serpent to be there. Or maybe if you read through the book of Job, why does Job, a righteous man, suffer? Well, the Lord permitted it. God is not the source of evil, but he permits evil things to happen, and he works in the providential circumstances even when He allows worms to be present, to work things toward His good. Well, not only did the Lord prepare the worm, look at verse 8, And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat down upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. And so the Lord permits another evil. Not only does he allow the worm to destroy the gourd, but he sends this, he allows the sun to rise in the heat of the sun, the wind to come. There's no sunscreen. And I just had this picture of Jonah being like on a barbecue and being fried and the wind and being sunburned and his lips being chapped. And he's exposed and so much so that he has heat stroke and he faints. And in his swimming thoughts, he says, I just wish I would die. This is the second time in this brief chapter where he's expressed what we could call our suicidal thoughts. Somebody described suicide as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And he's ready to throw in the towel and to say, I give up. My life is valueless. I want to die. And so it's a very despairing circumstance. Now, God asked the question, God spoke through the circumstances, and then the whole chapter and the whole book ends with God speaking to Jonah again. Begins in verse nine. And God said to Jonah, doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? So this is a parallel to the question he'd asked before in verse 4, doest thou well to be angry about my graciousness to the Ninevites? And now he reframes the question in light of the circumstances. Do you well to be angry for this gourd? And Jonah replies in verse 9, I do well to be angry even unto death. Talk about digging in your heels. Talk about continuing to justify yourself when you're clearly in the wrong. You're clearly shaking your fist to the sovereign God. But I don't know, I think I've done this a few times. You probably have too. Sometimes when we're confronted in our sin, it can just be a question. We dig in our heels and we fight back and we justify ourselves. And this is exactly what Jonah is doing. Well, the book of Jonah ends, this conversation ends in verses 10 and 11 with the Lord giving a lecture to Jonah. And he makes use of a very Hebrew way of making an argument. And that is he uses an analogy from the lesser to the greater. And so he starts off with the analogy from the lesser, which is Jonah's compassion for that gourd. Look at verse 10. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. See, this is the lesser. Well, you, Jonah, you didn't create that gourd. You didn't make it grow. It appeared overnight, it was gone overnight, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, and you're all bent out of shape and ready to die because of this gourd. And then there's the analogy to the greater, and what's going to be described here is the Lord's compassion upon the Ninevites. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, We're in our more than six score thousand persons. More than 120,000 persons were in the city of Nineveh, which would have made it a huge city in the ancient world. And what about those people? They cannot discern their right hand and their left. That's a metaphor that's used throughout the scriptures to describe somebody who is in complete ignorance. They don't know their right hand from their left. Of course, in Bible school, I ask them, hold up your right hand, and a few people were holding up their left. If you don't know your right hand from your left, you're in complete spiritual ignorance. And I love the way it ends. Many people have noticed this. Not only were there 120,000 people in Nineveh, and also much cattle. And God says, listen. You got all bent out of shape about a gourd and its well-being. And I'm a sovereign God. And I have mercy on whom I have mercy. I have compassion on whom I have compassion. Yet there are 120,000 image bearers who are in spiritual darkness and ignorance, not to mention the creatures that live within that city. and you're grousing and complaining and stingy about my mercy and my patience and my long-suffering toward those people. Jonah is a simple story, but it has profound lessons for us. Let me point briefly to three things we can learn from this chapter. First, we learn about the great character of the Lord, the one true God of the scriptures. He is a gracious God. He is merciful. He is slow to anger. In His benevolence, He does not pour out upon men the wrath they deserve. He saves many. I heard one contemporary preacher recently quoted as saying, finding grace Forgiveness and mercy from the God of the Bible is not like trying to get blood out of a stone, but it is like trying to get water from the ocean. The God of the Bible is vast in his mercy and compassion. I read recently another quote from a Puritan preacher of the past named Richard Sibbes who wrote, there is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us. There's more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us. Maybe someone needs to hear that today. Maybe you think, I can't be loved of God. I can't be forgiven of God. I can't receive compassion from the Lord. He poured out his compassion on the Ninevites. There's more mercy and love in him than there is sin in you. The second thing that we learn here is that the Lord so often works and teaches us through our providential circumstances. He prepares, in this account, the great fish, the gourd, the worm, the vehement wind. God worked in Jonah's life through providential circumstances. And guess what? He works through our providential circumstances. Again, there's no chance, there's no luck. Everything that's happening in your life is there, placed there by God, and all the circumstances of your life are a classroom in which you're being taught how to depend upon the Lord, how to love Him, how to serve Him, and how to trust Him. Thirdly, as we read through this passage, we must ask if we have become angry at God's mercy just as Jonah did. The New Testament passage that Jonah 4 reminds me the most of is found in Luke 15 and it's the account of the prodigal son in Luke 15. And you know there's the son, the profligate son, who goes and wastes his living, his inheritance and rides his living, and he comes back and the father rushes out and kills the fatted calf. But how does the story end in Luke 15? With the elder brother. The elder brother comes back. And he hears the noise of the celebration, and he's informed by the servants that the prodigal son has returned, that the father has killed the fatted calf. And what does the elder brother do? He complains. You never killed a calf for me and my friends. And the father says to the elder son at the end of that account in Luke 15, 31 and 32, son, Thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine. It was meet or fitting that we should make merry and be glad for this thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found. It's kind of a strange question, but maybe we should ask ourselves, have there been circumstances, situations, have there been persons for which I've taken a Jonah-like stance I've been angry or stingy at the mercy of God. We might pose the question like this, who is your Nineveh? Jonah had good reason to hate Nineveh. Nineveh was his enemy. Is there someone you would begrudge God being merciful and compassionate to because he or she is your enemy? Because he or she has done you wrong? If that's the case, we must remember that Christ taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount what? Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Amen? Let me invite you to stand together. Let's join in prayer. Lord, we do thank thee for this study we've had of the book of Jonah over the last four Sundays, including this one. And we ask that you would help us to learn from this, this ancient prophet and the message that is here and help us to learn about your character. Help us to learn about our own sinfulness and our stinginess. And help us to learn that you're at work in the providential circumstances of our life, whether they be things that we perceive to be good or things that we perceive to be evil. And oh God, today we would reaffirm our trust in thee and our love for thee. Show us more of thyself. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.