Our mission conference begins three weeks from Wednesday!
In anticipation of it, we’ve been learning lessons from the book of Jonah – the world’s most reluctant missionary who tried to escape from warning a savage nation to repent, because he actually wanted God to judge them!
So he fled in the wrong direction until God intercepted him with a storm. The mariners threw him overboard, the storm ceased, and these Gentile sailors became Jonah’s first converts as they worshipped the God Who had spared their lives.
Meanwhile, a great fish swallowed Jonah, and after three days and nights, it spat him out on land. Centuries later, Jesus used this to picture His own burial for three days and nights in the tomb.
Jonah finally began moving in the direction God had for him. He entered the city and began delivering his warning, Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
The city was swept with revival – everyone repented and turned to Israel’s God.
But Jonah saw his greatest victory as his greatest defeat! He very literally couldn’t win for losing. And it was all because of his hateful attitude! The prophet who acted like he hated God – for being so loving!
You know, throughout this book, you keep seeing these characters all acting so uncharacteristically! Jonah acts unlike any other man of God in the Bible.
The proud and mighty king of Nineveh humbles himself with fasting in sackcloth and ashes. His vicious people follow in repentance down to the last beggar.
And the rough, pagan, Gentile sailors repent and turn in mass to the God of Israel!
None of these characters are acting the way you’d think they’re supposed to!
Today, let’s finish the book of Jonah as God teaches him a lesson about priorities. Nothing in all of creation is of greater importance to God than the souls of men. Jesus did not die to redeem angels or animals or anything else, but the race of Adam’s heirs. And redeeming us was the only truly hard thing God ever did! Creating the universe cost Him nothing – redeeming your soul cost Him everything! Creating the universe, He didn’t sweat a drop – redeeming you, He sweat blood!
6 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.
7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat 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.
9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
10 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
Heavenly Father, we ask You to give us Your compassion for those who are without You. Give us the courage to warn them in love against the self-destructive nature of their own bondage. Give us a burden for our country and its culture, and may we use the light You give us to lead others to You.
And may any lost among us this morning see the love of God through Your word, through Your people being shaped by Your word, and through Your Spirit as You meet with us today – in Jesus’ name, Amen!
Now this brings us to the final scene and the final lesson of the book. Back in Jonah 1:4, we saw that the Lord sent out a great wind. In verse 17, God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Now as we come to the end, we see that same kind of language in the next three verses.
In verse 6, God prepares a gourd to shelter him.
In verse 7, He prepares a worm to destroy the gourd.
In verse 8, He prepares a vehement east wind to drive home Jonah’s lesson.
Because all of this is ultimately orchestrated to prepare Jonah himself. In all of the seemingly natural events of life, the hand of God is working behind the scenes to direct us, shape us, teach us, mold us into the likeness of Christ. Romans 8:28-29 says that all things are working together for our good, by which he means they are working to conform us to the image of his Son.
Winds and worms, fish and flora – these things God can prepare in a moment. But to prepare His people, God spends a lifetime.
I like how Charles Spurgeon summarized the next three verses:
God prepared a gourd, showing He is in our comforts.
God prepared a worm, showing He is in our bereavements and losses.
God prepared an east wind, showing He is in our heaviest trials.
And all of this was used by God to make Jonah’s heart more like his Savior’s.
You know, despite all of Jonah’s faults, God was His Savior. Jonah trusted in promises that a Messiah would one day deliver all who trusted in Him. And we who live on this side of the cross are saved by looking backward in faith to what Christ did just as those before looked forward by faith to Him. Have you repented of sin and trusted in the crucified and risen Son of God for your salvation yet?
And now God begins using this time to teach his grieving prophet some important lessons about grace, love and mercy.
6 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.
The gourd is from a Hebrew word which occurs nowhere else in the Bible but this verse. However it does appear in other literature where it is used to mean the castor-oil plant. It grows eight to ten feet high, with leaves over a foot large. It shoots up rapidly, but also dies rapidly when injured. It would have made a very cool and welcome shade for Jonah in his little palm booth that was already starting to wither in the sun.
This unexpected blessing might well have encouraged Jonah to suppose that God was on his side – which was always true, but not necessarily in the way that Jonah would have likely imagined. The verse says that Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
James 1:17 says, every good gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. So every blessing that you and I experience in life is not an accident, a coincidence or “good luck” – it is a blessing orchestrated by God for our benefit.
And notice that God sent Jonah this blessing even though His prophet was in a backslidden, sour mood. He’s angry at God, he’s angry at men, he’s in discontent and discomfort.
But you know, if God only blessed us when we behaved, we’d all live in constant misery, wouldn’t we? Thank God He’s always better to us than we deserve!
God sends Jonah the very thing he needs at the very time he needs it for the very purpose of giving him the comfort he desires.
But while the verse says that Jonah was exceeding glad, it gives no indication that he was exceeding grateful. It’s easy to take God’s blessings for granted or to not recognize from Whose hand they come. If we don’t foster a gratitude attitude, we become vulnerable to the kind of bitterness that Jonah is about to display.
7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
Although the word “worm” is singular in form, it is often used collectively for a swarm – as in Isaiah 51:8 which says, the worm shall eat them like wool, referring to the dead in their graves. Here too it seems that an infestation of a particular kind of worm or caterpillar is feeding on Jonah’s shade tree. It wilts in the rising sun leaving Jonah unprotected just as the day is heating up and Jonah needs it most.
Here we see that not only is God at work in all of our blessings and comforts, but He is also at work in our bereavements and losses to teach us that when our gourd is gone, our Lord is not gone. But Jonah, whose bipolar mood swings from mountaintops to darkest valleys over a single incident, is as grieved for the loss of the gourd as he had been for the rescue of the city. These are the two things which, back to back, have caused him to pray for death – winning the city, losing the plant.
8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat 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.
God is also at work in our sorest trials. He prepared a vehement east wind specifically to bring Jonah to this abject state. This was a blistering storm of heat racing in across the eastern deserts like the blast of an opened oven. And the Assyrian sun beat upon the head of Jonah – its intense rays straight overhead sun-burning his scalp until he fainted as if from a heat stroke.
And God prepared all of this for a purpose. Whenever we’re pressed and whenever we’re stressed, we’re facing a test. And how we respond to the trial determines whether we pass the test or fail it.
Job, whose misery was far beyond Jonah’s, said, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him, and he passed his trial and came forth as gold. Jonah fainted and wished in himself to die, and he failed the test, and received God’s reproof.
The trials that enter our lives are controlled by God. Our attitude to those trials are controlled by us. God sees an attitude we need to correct, and He prepares a fish, prepares a gourd, prepares a worm, prepares a wind – He prepares whatever trial we need to prepare us for a greater trial.
If we bear it in His grace, our faith grows, our peace prevails, our love deepens, our joy soars, our longsuffering becomes longer, our temperance more tempered, our meekness more mild, our Spirit grows deeper, and our nature more conformed to the image of Christ.
But if we respond in bitterness, anger and self-pity, we remain shallow souls. We’ll have to be tried again and again, and perhaps in time we’ll learn to cooperate with what God is doing in our lives – better to be wiser later than never.
But the finish line of life looms ever closer, and beyond the grave there are no more trials. Whatever beauty you allowed God’s tests to work into your life is what you will carry with you into the afterlife, and how death finds you is how eternity receives you.
So count it all joy when you fall into diverse trials, knowing that God is using them to strengthen you and impart to you His glory. Don’t waste time having to repeat failed lessons; be soft clay in the Potter’s hands. Respond to trials with His grace and overcome as many as you can as quickly as you can, and grow as much as you can while life still gives you the opportunity.
Because death is your graduation, and according to what you allowed the Potter to mold you into on His wheel of life, so shall you reign in the kingdom over two cities or five or ten. Teachability in life improves your GPA in eternity!
9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
God identifies Jonah’s anger as being for the plant that protected him, shielded him from the wind and sun. He grieves its loss because of the comfort it had given him. As in verse 4, God challenges his attitude – Doest thou well to be angry? The first time, it was anger over God’s mercy toward Israel’s repentant enemies, and Jonah had no answer. But this time it’s anger over the loss of the gourd, and Jonah’s rash mouth spouts, I do well to be angry, even unto death. He claims a right to be angry enough to even stroke out over it!
Which shows Jonah’s pettiness – his knee-jerk emotions are so easy to manipulate according to what conveniences or inconveniences him – like a spoiled child!
Then God springs the trap in verse 10:
Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night:
God says, “You care so much about a plant which sprang up one night and was gone the next – you care so much about that gourd that you’re willing to die over it?”
God says, “Hey – I really am going to die over these immortal souls that you’re so callous about! They have the breath of God – His image giving life to every one of them. And you care more about a plant than you do half a million souls? A plant that will become fossil fuel, but no concern for souls that will suffer in hell forever? Something’s mighty wrong with that value system!”
Jonah’s mad because a worm devoured his plant. But there’s been a worm at work destroying the city of Nineveh that God planted – the devil has been seeking whom he may devour all along. The flesh and blood is not our enemy. They’re the ones we’re sent to try and rescue. The devil is the real enemy of all mankind!
Jonah has invested nothing in making the plant grow – but God, in His common grace, did bless the city of sinners and allowed it to grow into a mighty empire. He changeth the times and the seasons; he removeth kings and setteth up kings. And He does not quickly or easily destroy the work of His hands.
Jonah’s gourd sprang up in a night – Nineveh was one of the very oldest cities in history – built about the time of Babel in Genesis 10. Should not God have more pity on a city with a great and long history than Jonah does over a gourd that arose overnight? That’s what He says in verse 11:
11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
God used the gourd to help Jonah understand the Lord’s compassion, and to expose the prophet’s irrational, misplaced sympathy. He cared more about vines than Ninevites!
He says there are more than sixscore thousand (that’s 120,000) persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand. That is, little children too young to know right from left. Part of the reason God tells Jonah to pity the city is because of all the innocent children within it. Jonah may hate Nineveh for all the violence its adults are guilty of, but surely the toddlers and infants are worthy of more sympathy than a gourd!
Now consider that. If Nineveh had 120,000 children, say, two and under, then the total population must have been over half a million souls. God says, Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are so many people? When God talks about the city’s greatness, He doesn’t mention its wealth, military might or political power – He mentions the people within it.
Consider also that he spares Nineveh, in part, because of the many innocent children within it. But if a city that promotes abortion is sodden with the blood of its innocents, then the cries of the living infants that would have moved God to mercy become instead the cries of the blood of the butchered calling out for justice!
He also says, much cattle. These beasts participated in the fast to reflect the repentance of their masters, and God weighs them also in His pity to spare Nineveh.
Now notice that Jonah never answers this question. It’s just left hanging there. And some Bible scholars have suggested – and I think it’s a valid suggestion – that the reason is because the question is not addressed to Jonah alone. The question is addressed to you and me. Can we accept that God loves our enemies?
Like I said at the start of chapter 4 – I really do need the lesson of this chapter,
because, I’ll be honest with you – I really have a hard time when I see what evil people are doing to our nation, to our culture, to our fellow Christians.
When I see Antifa activists beating people in the streets...
When I see Black Lives Matter protestors provoking people to shoot policemen...
When I see millionaire athletes disrespecting the anthem of the nation that made them so rich...
When I see atheist groups trying to strip every vestige of Christian expression from the public arena...
When I see homosexual activists suing every Christian baker and florist and photographer that won’t knuckle under to them...
When I see secular universities indoctrinating a generation of leaders to believe that America is the worst country on earth with a history of nothing but oppression...
I tell you, sometimes I just have to stop reading the news, because my blood has a low boiling point for stuff like that!
And I have to keep reminding myself that they are not the real enemy.
Our Mission conference is three weeks from Wednesday, and the focus this year is about saving America.
Aren’t you and I glad that God put up with His enemies? And He even puts up with all the Jonahs of this world – including me!
Well, that finishes the book of Jonah, but not the story of Nineveh.
Jonah’s great revival was somewhere around 770 to 760 BC. So the violent Assyrians of Jonah’s day did not carry out the destruction of Israel. Bitter as Jonah was over their repentance, he had, in fact, just saved his nation for another generation. Ironically, though, it was those very 120,000 infants that Jonah was directed to feel pity for that would one day grow up and conquer the 10 northern tribes in 722 BC – after Jonah and most of his contemporaries had gone to their eternal rest.
About 70 years later, the prophet Nahum from the remaining southern kingdom, Judah, would announce the final doom of God upon an unrepentant Nineveh about 650 BC. His prophecy was fulfilled when Babylon conquered Nineveh in 612, absorbing the 10 northern tribes along with their Assyrian captors. Just 25 years later, Babylon would conquer Judah and carry them away into captivity as well, and all 12 tribes would be reunited during Judah’s 70-year Babylonian Captivity.
The prophecies of Jonah, Nahum and all the other Old Testament prophets all came true – history verifies them – proving that they were God’s true spokesmen.
If the things they foretold about this world proved trustworthy, then we would be wise to heed what they said about the world to come. And the short of it is this – God’s Son Jesus would one day shed His blood to pay for the sins of the world, and He would rise from the grave after three days and nights just as Jonah had risen from the fish’s belly. Now, all who trust in His death will participate in His resurrection. Have you repented of your sins and trusted Jesus as your Savior yet?
