We are now coming, congregation, into this final section of the book of the prophet Jonah. And I think you will agree with me when I say that it puts him in a rather bad light when we see him in a kind of temper tantrum because of the great thing that God has done. That's one of the truly wonderful things about the Bible. It doesn't hide the faults and failures of the great men of God. The Duchess of Windsor once wanted to have her biography written, but she had an awful time finding somebody who would write it the way she wanted it to be written, because she didn't want some things included. Well, friends in the Bible, the things that we don't like are included. And as you go through the Bible, you find that all of the great heroes of the faith They had their warts and their failures. And that's because God wants us to know these people as they really are, but that's not the most important thing. He wants us to know himself as he really is. He wants us to know that he really is a God who has compassion on sinful, stumbling, imperfect people. And when we see that God can use a man like Jonah, we also see that he can use someone like we are. And that if Jonah could confess his sins and God would forgive him, so we can confess our sins and he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And don't forget that Jonah wrote this so we know that even though he did have a terrible fit of anger, he was a great saint of God and a genuine prophet of the old covenant. So here congregation was a man who was wonderfully saved in one of the greatest signs and wonders of the old covenant history. One of the greatest signs that God ever gave his covenant people. But that didn't mean that for the rest of his life he would be as flawless as one of the righteous angels. And it didn't mean that for the rest of his life he would face no more crises. Always remember that it's only he who endures to the end that will be saved. And this idea that you have one great experience and then you live happily ever after and you have no more trials and temptations and failures is not the teaching of the Bible. The Bible shows us that even the greatest men of God still had their difficult moments. So tonight we consider what I will call the Jonah Syndrome. which is a sinful and very emotional reaction to the sovereignty of the one true and living God. Now, congregation, on the surface of it, you might have thought that a man would rejoice to see what Jonah saw, because God had used him to bring one of the greatest turnarounds that any great city has ever seen in the history of the world. Have you ever read any of the literature on the great revivals of the past, like the great awakening in New England in the early history of our country? It's really quite a wonderful thing to read the accounts of those revivals, because when you do, you will read about preachers who labored with a half-broken heart for years with little effect, who were suddenly empowered by the Holy Spirit of God to harvest in a few days far more than in a lifetime. Incredible changes taking place in people who seemed to be absolutely unmovable for many years before that. Well, I've often thought, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing as a preacher to live long enough to see that at least one time in your life? To see how people who moved at a snail's pace in their religious experience and life all those years would suddenly make great strides in progress under the ministry of the Word of God that you brought them. You would think that a man would rejoice to see such things. But the Bible says Jonah was not rejoicing at all, but he was actually shattered by this event. The Hebrew actually says he was shattered. And he became terribly angry at God, angry enough to go to the Lord with one of the strangest prayers in the Bible. So he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, wasn't this what I said when I was still in my country? That's why I fled to Tarshish. I knew that you're a gracious and merciful God. slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live." When Jonah was in the belly of the whale and he was about to die, he cried out to the living God with a prayer of self-abasement and humiliation and a cry for mercy. And God heard his cry. But in this prayer, he justifies himself. Didn't I tell you, he says to God Almighty, didn't I tell you? Isn't that what I said when I didn't go down there to Nineveh in the first place? And doesn't he daringly speak to God those words, take my life, Lord, for death is better than living. Is there anybody here that has ever had such a devastating emotional experience As to pray a prayer like that to God, many of the prayers of the Bible are fit and suitable models for our prayers, but dear Christian friends, I hope you will never pray a prayer like this one. A man of God, yes. There's a lot of things that God's servants do that are not models for us, and here's one of them. Don't you ever pray a prayer like this. no matter how shattered you may feel. Now, the commentators have different explanations for the anger of Jonah. Some say that he just plain hated the Ninevites. They were historical enemies of the people of Israel, and he wanted to see them shattered and destroyed. Well, that's a plausible explanation. And if Jonah foresaw with prophetic insight that if they were spared, later on they would become an enemy of God's people with terrible repercussions, you can understand why he would feel that way. But other commentators say, no, the real concern for which Jonah got angry was his own reputation, his honor as a prophet. Now the people would say, well, Jonah, you said The city of Nineveh would be overthrown, and now it's not overthrown. It would undermine, in other words, the credibility of this prophet when he also spoke words of warning and judgment to his own people, the wayward covenant people of Israel. Well, I'm not sure if we can decide between those, but I think one thing is definitely clear. Either way, and that is that Jonah was motivated primarily by a concern for his own, God's old covenant people. If his word of warning had not been heeded by the Ninevites, then Nineveh would have come to destruction. And then it would have been a powerful warning before God's covenant people. And then he could have said, now you see people, I warned the Ninevites that destruction was coming and there it is, you see it, destruction came. And now I'm warning you. And he could have thought, well, if only God had given them a vivid emblem of his wrath and destruction, then maybe they would listen to the prophets. But now this terrible turn of events, the repentance of these ungodly heathen had changed all that scenario. And so Jonah was in effect warned, pardon me, robbed of a warning sign for his people the Israelites to whom he was related by all the ties of flesh and blood. And so he went into this emotional tantrum, as it were, against the sovereignty of Almighty God. He did not like what God, in his absolute sovereignty, had seen fit to do. And you can see this from the self-incriminating prayer of the prophet. I knew you were that kind of God all along, he says. That's why I was disobedient in the first place. That's why I ran off to Tarshish, because I knew that you had the nature that you have, and I didn't want to see that nature come to manifestation in kindness to the people of Nineveh. And how did he know that God was a gracious God? Well, the whole history of God's covenant people demonstrated that. the story of his dealings with the patriarchs. That certainly demonstrated that God was a long-suffering, compassionate, and merciful God. What did God also say to Abraham right from the beginning? He said to him that in him and his seed all nations of the earth would be blessed. Well, that's one of the most merciful statements ever made anywhere. God is going to be merciful to all the families and nations of the earth. And Jonah knew that. He knew that God's great plan of salvation, his plan of mercy, had worldwide dimensions. And that God's mercy was that great. He knew that. He knew that there was some time on God's timetable, a place for all the nations of the earth to be blessed through Abraham's seed. And he also knew that it was by God's unmerited favor, God's undeserved grace, that these Jewish people were first to be favored with the goodness of God. For as Moses clearly said, the Lord did not set his love upon you, he's speaking to the children of Israel, or choose you because you are more in number or because you're great or because you're worthy or anything else. but because he swore to their fathers that he would do it. The trouble is that it's not so easy to forget the sovereignty of God, but it is easy to forget the sovereignty of God when you owe a debt of gratitude for it, and to start thinking that you have a right to God's mercies and that you are once in, always in, that you have a right to expect his favor on down the line forever and evermore, and I believe that that was what disturbed and upset Jonah. Jonah wanted with all of his heart the very same thing that you do, and that is the salvation of his own kinsmen. Do you pray for anyone as much as you pray for your own kinsmen? your own flesh and blood, your own children and grandchildren and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and even a father and mother. We're all that way. We keep knocking at the door of heaven, pleading with God to show his unmerited favor to us and to ours. We want that more than we want any other thing. And I'm not saying that that's wrong in and of itself. God never condemned anybody for praying for their kinsfolk, for their children, and for their relatives and the like. But God does expect us to acknowledge and respect his absolute sovereignty. You can see then in Jonah, in a way, a reflection of the sin of God's covenant people. Because the exact thing that was wrong with the people of Israel in that day was that they had forgotten the rock out of which they had been hewn. The Jewish race was hewn out of the rock of a fallen race that sinned in Adam, and they were sovereignly chosen by God to be the vehicle of his plan of redemption until the coming of the Messiah. I believe that when it all started out, they understood that. Abraham knew that he didn't deserve it, and he knew it was God's unmerited favor, God's sovereign choice that made him the founder of that covenant people. But then later on, as you plainly see in the history of God's old covenant people, they began to forget this, and they began to think that they had a right to it, unconsciously even perhaps that they deserved it. Jonah knew that God was a God of great and infinite mercy and compassion. He learned that when he was in the depths of the sea, in the belly of the fish, and he cried out to God for mercy. But so strong was that innate, natural desire that God would bless Jonah's own people that he got angry when God exercised that sovereignty in the display of His mercy to Nineveh. Have you ever acted like that? Has the sovereign plan and working of God ever caused you displeasure? Let's say that you have two sons, and one of them is a little bit your favorite. The way Esau was with his father Isaac And then God comes along and he works sovereignly in the heart of Jacob and not in the heart of Esau. And you cry out in anguish and pain because you want God to save Esau. And God has mercy on Jacob. Same thing happened in the family of Abraham, and Abraham cries out. He was a saint, but he's just like you. He cries out, oh, that Ishmael might live before you, God. God says, no, in Isaac shall my seed be called. That's a tough one, to bow down to the sovereignty of God. And when you see that God doesn't do it your way and He doesn't have mercy on whom you want Him to see as the object of mercy, but on someone that you are thinking is secondary to that, do you feel the way Jonah did? Do you even get a little angry and maybe have a fit of temper? Well, it's even possible for people when they are confronted that way with the absolute sovereignty of God to think that life itself isn't worth living. Jacob and Esau's parents, and especially the mother, almost got to that point at one place in her life. And people will sometimes pray ridiculous things like, Jonah, please, Lord, take my life. It's no use living. Because I haven't got what I want is really what lies at the root of that kind of temper tantrum against God, and that kind of a sinful prayer. It is not easy to bow down before the God who is an absolute Sovereign. It is not easy to bow down in the practical reality of life before the God of the everlasting predestination of which the Bible speaks. The God of the double decree of election and reprobation. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. So let's not be too quick to point the finger at Jonah, because we are very much like him. And that's the wonderful thing to me about the text today. For right after Jonah made that horrible statement, In a prayer, therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live. Then the Lord said, is it right for you to be angry? You'll notice that no answer is recorded in the Bible. Do I have to tell you why? There isn't any answer. If God put that question to you, there wouldn't be any answer. There is no answer to that question. Of course not. To even think that the question has to be answered is ridiculous. And that, I believe, is what God says to you when you're a little angry, discouraged, or irritated with God. Do you have a right to be irritated? Do you have a right to be displeased with God because He does not sovereignly elect the one you want Him to elect? Who are you? Is there any human being, including your flesh and blood, that deserves eternal life? My dear friends, not one of them does. They deserve eternal damnation. And doesn't God have a right to give what He wishes to whom He wishes? He says in the Bible, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Do you have any right to complain against that? If you do, you are in effect complaining against your own salvation because you didn't deserve it either and God was simply pleased to give it to you. I recall one time in New Zealand when a young girl in the congregation became terribly angry with me. So angry, in fact, that she refused to talk to me and wouldn't even answer a question when I asked her. Well, come to find out, she wasn't really angry with me at all, but she was angry with the Bible and some of the things that are taught in the Bible, like this one. She didn't want to hear some of the things that God had to say in the Bible, and frankly, she took it out on me. That's not uncommon. And I know that's true because one day God in His sovereign mercy worked through a sermon to totally change the outlook of her heart. And then she could talk to me. And she even told me that she knew very well that she had been altogether wrong to be angry. And she said, I was really angry with God. I just took it out on you. So the next time you get angry, For whatever reason, in spiritual matters, may God give you this out of this sermon, if nothing else. Remember the question that God put to Jonah. Is it right for you to be angry? What's the beef? You ever heard that one? What's the beef, you know? What are you angry about? A lot of our anger is not justified from the standpoint of God's interrogation of us. But I want to tell you that I thank God for this part of the Bible. I even thank God for that question. That's mercy in action. God could have said, Jonah, I'm sick and tired of you. I'm going to toss you out. But God didn't do that. In mercy, he said, Jonah, is it right for you to be angry like that? That's mercy. That's grace. And I hope that God will bring that to your mind and heart the next time you're angry. Because it will remind you that you still have a Savior whose mercy and compassion for his chosen people is without limit and without end. He is full of compassion and mercy, and I don't think he ever showed it more than when he answered this irritated, complaining prophet with that simple question. And you know, that's what we have to keep asking ourselves. What is the lesson that God would have us to learn out of all these experiences of life? I believe it always comes back to this. We are saved only by God's sovereign mercy, something that we have not merited. I came from a family of five brothers and sisters. Maybe one besides me is a believer. How did it happen that out of that ruination of a family flowing from the apostasy that has taken place in this country, I should be called of God to believe? There's only one possible reason, and that is God's sovereign decree and his infinite and mysterious mercy. Wouldn't it be a terrible thing if I got angry at God for the very thing that lifted me out of the horrible pit and set my feet upon a rock." So whenever you start acting like Jonah did, may the Lord God Himself bring you to your senses by calling to your mind the question, is it right for you to be angry? For if you really are a child of God, one of God's called, justified, sanctified, and one day glorified, right away you're going to remember what you were and what an incredible thing it is that God had mercy on you. May God grant that we may remember this whenever we, and we are all guilty of it, begin to manifest the Jonah syndrome. Amen. Father in heaven, help us to remember the question that God put to your prophet Jonah. Lord, help us to remember that searching question that we might be once again brought to our senses, humbled before you, and made to feel once again the awe and wonder that was ours when first you called us out of darkness into your marvelous light And may we then, Lord, never complain against the sovereignty of your mercy again. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.