Jonah Concluded
Text: Jonah 4:5 – 11
So we’re finishing up in Jonah today… I thought after last week I’d be done with it, but as I was re-reading it… just going over it one last time to see if the Lord would have me say any more on this book. I realized that I probably did need to touch on one more thing here.
This last part of Jonah is confusing to some. Because we’ve looked at Jonah, and we’ve talked about how he was a prophet, how he was a man of God who knew God’s ways. He understood God’s mercy and grace and that God looks to show His grace and mercy to people. We’ve seen how God had to use extreme measures to get him to repent and obey. And its mind boggling isn’t it. I don’t know a single pastor or evangelist that wouldn’t be overjoyed if an entire city of 120,000 repented when they preached on Sunday, but not Jonah. He’s angry that God showed mercy, and then he gets angry when the plant dries up and no longer shades him.
But instead of me just talking about it, let’s go ahead and go to the text.
(Read Text)
First of all I want you to notice that the writer of Jonah makes it clear to us that everything that happens in our text, happens because it was appointed by the Lord. We’ve seen that through this book. God appointed the storm, God appointed the fish, God appointed the plant, God appointed the word, God appointed the scorching heat and wind. You think he might be trying to tell us that God is sovereign and in control? And that it’s better to work WITH the One who is sovereign and in control than to try and go AGAINST Him?
And so Jonah has been the appointed agent of God to bring mercy and grace to the people of Nineveh, and then God shows Jonah mercy and grace, again because Jonah didn’t deserve a plant for shade, or anything. But then when God removes the plant, Jonah is angry… In fact our text tells us that he was angry enough to die (that’s verse 9). And the Lord says to him, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
So what’s the point here, and the lesson we need to learn?
Well I think it comes here in God’s response to Jonah. God is pointing out to Jonah that instead of being bitter and angry, he should instead rejoice over the non-destruction of the city of Nineveh.
Stay with me here for a minute… This plant that God created to shade Jonah was an act of grace. It was God doing something for an undeserving man. You see; there’s a distinction between saving grace… the grace that God gives to those who are saved, and what we call common grace… meaning grace that is common to everyone. God causes it to rain on the just and unjust. In other words, the reason sinners get saved is because of God’s grace, the reasons sinners aren’t destroyed the minute they sin and the reason they have an opportunity to go on living and possibly get saved at some later date, is common grace. Because God would be perfectly within His rights, and He would be perfectly just, if He just wiped us out the second we sinned the very first time. Even it if was a so called “little white lie.” But instead He is gracious to us, over and over, and over again. If you have a job, that’s God’s grace. If you’ve eaten today, that’s God’s grace. Everyone take a breath (DEEP BREATH) – that’s God’s grace. The Bible says that He holds our very breath in the palm of His hand.
And so this plant here can represent any sort of grace or gift from God. And let’s be honest; how often do we forget that all of God’s gifts are given to us even though we are totally undeserving of them?
So God causes this plant to spring up and give shade to Jonah, and our text tells us that Jonah was glad. He was happy with this gift from God… again there’s a contrast here. He was unhappy with God’s grace toward the Ninevites, but he was glad when God showed grace to him. Keep in mind what we’re talking about here.
The jerk at work gets a promotion and you don’t… God showed him a bit of grace and he got the promotion – do you get angry or celebrate that God showed such an undeserving sinner grace? Or the guy you know who seems to have it all… you know… big house, nice vehicles, money never seems to be a problem. The Bible tells us not to be envious of them, or to be angry with God because He has blessed them. Instead we should look at it as an opportunity to praise God for His grace.
And even if we receive His grace with gratitude, what happens when God sovereignly removes His blessings from us? In other words, when things are going good and we are praising God for His blessings, but then all of a sudden some unexpected bills come due, or sickness strikes us, or someone in our family or something else? What happens then?
You see; Jonah’s problem, is often times our problem. Somewhere along the way, Jonah got to thinking that he had somehow merited God’s favor, and God’s blessings, and God’s calling and God’s grace. He had forgotten somewhere along the way that God’s grace is undeserved, and totally dependent upon God. And we have to remember it too. Like this plant that shaded Jonah, the grace of God comes to us without any labor on our part. It comes to us without our laboring to earn it, produce it, or make it grow. It happens without our intervention or ingenuity, but we tend to claim it as our “RIGHT” and we complain when it’s no longer ours. We; as Christians, have to remember that we’re still in the land of exile. We’re still engaged in spiritual warfare. We’re still required to carry our crosses and repent and take our share of suffering for Christ’s sake. And so when these things happen we have to be more like Job than Jonah. Remember Job
All the bad things happened to him and he said, “Shall we receive good at that hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).
Go back to Jonah 4:10 – 11 (READ).
“Jonah; I caused a fish to swallow you, and then caused it to puke you out on dry land. I sent you to Nineveh and 120,000 people got saved, and the only thing you care about is this stupid plant?!?”
Remember; Jonah causes us to look at things from God’s eternal perspective. We need that so bad! God provides us with things and we get so enamored by the things that He has provided and we start caring more about things than about the eternal souls of people! We start caring more about the things He provides than the One who provided them. We can be just like Jonah… we can care more about our little shaded spot than we care about the community around us!
Here’s the deal – Jonah got upset because the thing that gave him comfort and made him happy was something that God gave him, and not God Himself. Jonah had found his happiness and comfort in the thing, rather than in the One who provided it. So God takes it away to show Jonah where his affections lie, and the result of it all is that Jonah gets angry. And I’ll just tell you… I think Jonah is angry because he’s finally seeing himself for the first time. God has shown him what he really is. God has shown him that he’s selfish, self-centered, arrogant, and that he’s still an idolater who worships and adores himself more than he worships and adores God.
So God’s like, “You care about a plant… shouldn’t I care about 120,000 people who don’t even know their right hand from their left?” They had no real knowledge of God and His righteous requirements. Matthew Henry in his commentaries actually says that this number… the 120,000 and the fact that they don’t know right from left, is a reference to small children. If that’s the case then the actual population of the city might be around 650,000 people. Regardless; Jonah’s mad because God doesn’t smoke them all, and he’s mad because his plant has died and now he has to sit in the sun.
God rebukes him. God gets the last word in, and that’s where the book ends.
Here’s how we apply it to us.
Often times; God wants us to do the work with Him so that we can see ourselves in the work. You see; we tend to think we are so glorious and God is so impressed with us and our skills, and the reality is that if we’re honest; we probably don’t love the way we should. We don’t care the way we should, we don’t understand grace the way we should, but we don’t see it until we step out and begin the mission. And that’s what happens… God sends us out of this building on a mission to bring a message to our communities and our neighbors so that we can see conversion in our communities, but in the process we will begin to see conversion in ourselves. God used Jonah, not because He couldn’t find a better prophet. He used Jonah because as God converts the sailors on the ship, and as God converts the people of Nineveh, He’s working on Jonah as well, and it concludes with God taking Jonah on journey through his self-righteousness, and through his rebellion, and through his anger, and through his nationalism and racism, all for the purpose of making Jonah the man of God he is meant to be!
This is just as much a story of God’s mercy and grace to Jonah as it is a story of God’s mercy and grace to the people of Nineveh.
And people will ask, “Did Jonah repent?” And my answer is, “Who wrote the book?” I personally believe that the fact that we have the Book of Jonah, shows us that Jonah repented. He wrote it because God humbled him, and Jonah; knowing that this book would cast him in a bad light, really didn’t care how it made him look. His desire was to glorify God and show Him in all of His glory and show His grace in all its awesomeness.
I’m going to close with some questions for all of us.
1 – Has God spoken to us as a Church?
2 – What has He called us to do?
3 – Has God spoken to us as individual Christians?
4 – What has He called us to do?
5 – Who has God called you to go to?
The purpose of the Book of Jonah is to show God’s glory; how are we showing it?
