“Pleasure While They Perish”
Jonah 4
Intro: Can I make a confession to you? I am not the most patient person in the world. There are some areas where I can be extremely patient. But there are some times I tend to have very little patience. For example, am I the only one who gets upset waiting in grocery lines? Does anyone else count the groceries in the basket of the people in front of you in the “12 items or less” line? If someone has thirteen, I tend to get a little upset. “What’s wrong with you-- can’t your read? can’t you count?”
Is there anyone here that ever got upset at someone because they were going the speed limit? You want to go a little faster, and the guy up ahead is going just where the law says he should be. We get upset with him.
We lose our temper at such trivial things. It shows just how foolish, immature, and carnal we are. We focus so much on ourselves.
Jonah was like that too. We want to talk a little bit about him this morning.
Read Jonah 1:1-3
The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.
I’m sure that most of us here remember the story of Jonah - called by God to preach to Ninevah - ran away - got swallowed by the whale - repented - spared
Did you ever wonder WHY Jonah ran from God? Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14 as giving prophecy about Jereboam II. He likely might have been taught by Elijah or Elisha. Yet he refuses to go to Ninevah.
Ninevah is the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Remember the Assyrians? They are the nation we have talked about the last several weeks that came down about 50-60 years later, destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and devastated the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
Jonah didn’t want to go preach to his enemies. It would be sort of like sending a missionary to Berlin while Hitler was in power during WWII. Jonah didn’t want them to hear the message of God because he didn’t want them to be saved.
Well, finally after 3 days and nights inside the whale, Jonah decides it might not be that bad to do what God wants. Any of us ever get to the point where things go so bad that we finally give up and decide that maybe God knows a little more than us anyways?!
Let’s look next at chapter 3. Read 3:1-10.
Jonah obeys God and the people repent. Luke 15 tells us there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." So of course, Jonah is overjoyed, right? Wrong!
Look at chapter 4. In verses 1-3 we see
I. Jonah’s anger
Read 4:1-3. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
A. He knew God’s merciful nature - Jonah was a prophet of God. His life was spent serving God and giving God’s message to the people. He knew what God was like. This wasn’t the first time Jonah had served God. He knew well what a merciful God he served.
B. He disliked God’s plan to be merciful to his enemies.
He knew if he preached and the people repented, God would be merciful to the Ninevites.
And he didn’t like that. Let’s be honest today. Did you ever work with someone who just rubbed you the wrong way. You knew they weren’t a Christian. And so you get comfort from the fact, “Well, one day they’ll burn in hell and get what’s coming to them.” We so often want God to be a stern God of judgment for our enemies, but we want him to be extra- merciful when it comes to us.
C. He tries to argue to manipulate God.
Jonah says, “God, I’m upset with you. You want to act like that to my enemy, fine, just go ahead and kill me. I’m your special messenger in the land, but fine, kill me and let them do your work!”
Jonah had no reason for his anger. Were the Ninevites evil? Yes, of course. Were they the enemies of the Jews? Yes, of course. But God chose to show them mercy based on his love of them.
Let’s look at
II. God’s Rebuke
A. The lecture - verse 4 - But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
God let’s Jonah know he is not right in his thinking. But God decides that Jonah is stubborn enough that he is going to teach him the lesson another way.
A friend of mine once gave me some marriage counseling. He said, when you’re coming home and your wife says, “Did you see, the Johnsons left their porch light on?” you will never get anywhere by saying “Oh, no they didn’t” -- in fact you could argue all night about it. He said you just come home, and a few minutes later say, “Let’s go out for an ice cream cone.” As you drive by the Johnsons, you can look over and say, “Well look at that - the Johnson’s porch light is out”
God decides to teach Jonah a lesson he will remember.
B. The lesson - Read 4:5-11
Jonah sits in a little shanty outside of town to see if God will destroy the town or not.
A large weed grows up and provides shade for him while he waits. In the middle of a hot, sunny day the shade it most welcome. The next day it withers up. And Jonah is mad about it!
He had undeserved comfort, faced unexplained loss, and ends up with unreasonable emotions.
He tells God he is angry enough to die!
A city of hundreds of thousands is ready to perish, but Jonah is concerned about a vine that was giving him shade. How self-centered he is! How self-centered we are!
The lesson for us today is that we serve a merciful God. A God who has prepared a wonderful plan of salvation for any who will accept.
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
God’s did his part already - Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world.
Their part is to believe. Rom. 10:13+ reminds us Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
That then comes to our part. Our part is to tell. The great commission Christ gave to us before he ascended into heaven was Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
God desires to use us to be his messengers, telling others of coming judgment, and calling them to repent. Letting them know that God is a merciful God and if they will turn from their sin and trust him, he will be merciful.
Yet, just like Jonah, often we refuse to go.
*sometimes we don’t like our neighbors or co-workers. We don’t want to see them get to heaven.
*sometimes it’s fear -- we are ashamed or embarrassed to talk to them: Yet, if we really believe there is a hell they will face, we would want to take every opportunity to tell them about Christ.
*sometimes we say we don’t know what to say - but we don’t have to know a ten step plan. We can simply tell them that God loves them and wants them to trust in him. John 3:16 does wonders: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
*sometimes we have given up - maybe we have talked to them once before and they didn’t listen - maybe they even mocked us. Yet the scriptures remind us that some plant the seed, some water, and others receive the fruit of that labor.
Concl: This morning, are we self-centered or are we other centered. When it comes right down to it, what really matters in this life? How much you make an hour? How much you have in the bank? What kind of car you drive?
Only two things last forever: God’s word and people. Let’s concentrate on telling others about the wonderful, merciful God we serve. We serve a God who offers salvation freely, but sometimes we get so upset over trivial things that we never get busy serving God.
There is a harvest of souls prepared for us. God desires to have us reach them with the gospel. Are we willing to do what he wants? Or are we focused merely on ourselves. Let’s learn a lesson from Jonah and work together to bring in a harvest of souls.
