INTRODUCTION
• Have you teachers ever had a student who just did not get it?
• As we look at Jonah 4 today, we will see a student who still did not get it.
• As we left Jonah in chapter 3, we see that Jonah had a successful revival meeting in Nineveh.
• Jonah’s message was preached and the people heard and were convicted that they needed to heed the message to the point of repentance.
• A happy ending to the story right? It is happy for the people of Nineveh, but for Jonah it was a different story.
• As I said last week, I would be ecstatic if the whole community of Leonard repented and turned to the Leonard, much less over 120,000 persons.
• Jonah’s worst fears came to pass, the people whom he hated with every fiber of his being were going to be spared from the wrath of God.
• Jonah had a good reason to hate the people of Nineveh for what they had done to his country while under their rule.
• As we see, Jonah was so afraid that God would show mercy on the people of Nineveh that he tried to run from God.
• Do we have people that we do not want to see God remove His wrath from?
• When we refuse to reach out to the lost, we are in a sense saying that we hope that God’s wrath comes down on people.
• Jonah is going to learn some things that he seemed to miss somewhere along the path if his life. Jonah is going to receive an education from God Himself.
• Try to put yourself in Jonah’s place as he surveys this incredible response to the word of the Lord. The Ninevites hear the good news wrapped up in the bad news of judgment, and the entire city repents of its evil ways. All the people put on sackcloth, sit in ashes, and fast because they believe God.
• How would you feel if you were, say, leading a Bible study and everyone in the study responded in a mass movement to the good news of the Scriptures and turned their lives over to Christ? Wouldn’t you be excited?
• Let us look and see what God is trying to teach Jonah.
SERMON
I. AN UNWILLING STUDENT. 1-5
READ JONAH 4:1-5
• God had been trying to get Jonah’s attention and He seemed to get it with the taxi ride. Jonah, fearing for his life seemed to repent and do what God wanted him to do.
• As we look at the story of Jonah, it is amazing how much God put up with from Jonah.
• I believe that when God called Jonah for Nineveh, it was not just for the benefit of the people of Nineveh but for Jonah also. God wanted Jonah to learn a lesson that he needed.
• How many times does God teach us something when He has us doing things for the kingdom?
• Sometimes we do not learn a lot from God because we do not do a lot for God. We can learn some valuable lessons while serving Jesus.
• Jonah explains in verse 2 that he did not want to do what God wanted him to do because he knew that God was merciful and Jonah did not want God’s mercy shown on Nineveh.
• What we are going to find out is that Jonah is just as guilty of idolatry as the pagans he said back in chapter 2 verse 8 when he said in prayer: "Those who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness,"
• Jonah’s idol is Jonah. He is more committed to his own concepts of God and how God should act than he is to God himself. All of his proclamations of love for the Lord and for his nation in his prayer in chapter 2 were like a projection of his love for himself.
• He is still clinging to his prejudice that God is the exclusive possession of Israel; that God is his own personal God. Jonah has developed a theological system in which he has locked God into a box to which he has the key, and he isn’t going to let God out. Jonah’s theology has become an expression of his stubborn will. His hard heart says, "This is what I believe about God, and even God himself isn’t going to change it."
• In chapter 2 we saw that Jonah’s attitude put him into mortal danger. He called out to God for help, and God rescued him. At that time the prophet confessed his need. But he never really repented of his sin, for now he continues to object to God’s extending his mercy to Gentiles. Never in the first three chapters did Jonah ever say, "I’m wrong and you’re right. You’re God; you can do anything you please and forgive whomever you wish. Please forgive my narrowness and judgmental attitude."
• Notice that since Jonah wanted God to be what he wanted him to be. Jonah sets himself up as God and he shows a lack of faithfulness.
• Jonah’s problem is that he wants to control God. What do any of us do when we can’t control circumstances and get our own way? We get mad; we try to manipulate circumstances to get what they want.
• Jonah is trying to work God to get his way. Jonah thinks he can manipulate God.
• For a willful, controlling person there is nothing as frustrating as not being able to control events or circumstances or people.
• It is especially frustrating to not have the ability to control God’s direction and activity and purpose.
• Jonah’s destructive anger seems to turn into self-destructive despair, which is the basis of his request that God take his life. The only thing left for Jonah to control is whether he lives or dies.
• He tries to exercise this last area of willfulness by pronouncing his own death sentence and demanding that God carry it out. (Haven’t we heard this before? Back in chapter 1.
• I don’t know what you would feel like if you were in God’s place having to respond to Jonah at this point, but look at God’s response in verse 4: The Lord said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?"
• God doesn’t respond to anger with anger. There is no thundering rebuke of Jonah, just a gentle, thoughtful question. Ignoring Jonah’s death wish, he addresses the issue of his anger. He is calling this suicidal prophet to a self-examination of his willfulness.
• Think about it logically: If anybody has a right to be angry with the Ninevites, it is God; who hates sin, destructive evil, and violence, yet God chose to offer them forgiveness.
• So implied in God’s question is, who is Jonah to be angry when God chose not to destroy Nineveh? Remember, Jonah knows that it says in the Pentateuch, "Vengeance is mine, and recompense" (Deuteronomy 32:35).
• Notice in verse 5 that Jonah is so angry that he will not even answer God’s question, instead Jonah goes to the edge of the city to wait and see if God will conform to Jonah’s will.
I confess that I would have given up on Jonah long before this. But look at God’s next move in verses 6-8
II. AN OBJECT LESSON FOR THE STUDENT. 6-8
• Jonah goes out to the edge of the city and makes a small shelter to protect himself from the sun. Jonah still hoped that God would change His mind.
• Maybe he was hoping that the people of Nineveh would fall off the wagon and slip back to their evil ways. (In 606 BC, the city was destroyed for good)
• How many times to we look with suspicion at a person who has repented and turned to Jesus. How many times deep inside do we hope that people fall? How often do we say, “I knew this would happen” when a person falls back into their old ways?
• God had an object lesson for His student Jonah.
• It is amazing to me that God would spend so much time trying to teach His stubborn student a lesson, a lesson the student did not seem to want to learn.
• God appointed a plant to grow over Jonah’s shelter to give Jonah shade from the heat. Jonah was very pleased for the relief from the heat.
• Here is God helping the prophet who would not even answer the question posed to him in verse four. God is delivering him from the heat.
• Notice that Jonah did not deserve the shade that God had provided for him, Jonah did not earn the shade, God gave it to him.
• Well you have heard it said that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
• In verse 7, we have the Lord taking the shade from Jonah by way of a worm that attacked the plant and killed it.
• Jonah is angry and he is about to die from the heat. Jonah is to the point of begging God to take his life. Notice that Jonah does not take his own life. Maybe he thinks that God will take care of him, maybe he hopes to manipulate God?
• Jonah put himself in this position, he could have stayed in the city and rejoiced with the people who heeded his message and repented.
• Jonah is in misery because of his selfish judgmental attitude.
• Have you been around people who are that way? They usually are miserable people who have no joy in their life. Life is a labor instead a gift for them.
Jonah is about to learn the lesson that God has been trying to teach him throughout this whole ordeal.
III. A LESSON EXPLAINED FOR A DENSE STUDENT. 9-11
• God asks the question again, "Do you do well to be angry?" He is putting Jonah on the spot, trying to back him into a corner to deal with his rebellion. Look at Jonah’s answer in the middle of verse 9: "I have good reason to be angry, even to death."
• His answer shows something frightening: He isn’t willing to live with the God who can give grace to or take grace away from whomever He chooses, Jew or Gentile. There is contradiction in Jonah’s heart that we have seen throughout the whole book.
• He can’t stand the thought of God’s extending his grace to the Ninevites; and yet he knows that he can’t live without that grace himself.
• Since Jonah can’t convince God that his kindness to people who repent is wrong, he wants to die.
• Jonah is saying, "I’m going to win the final round in this power struggle. There is no way that you’re going to beat me in this one, Lord." Back in chapter 1 Jonah would rather have died than obey what God said. Here it’s very different---Jonah would rather die than admit that he is wrong. The root of his rebellion is idolatrous pride.
• READ VERSES 10-11. This is the point God was trying to drive home with Jonah and with us today.
• The plant symbolized to Jonah God’s mercy on Nineveh. God wanted Jonah to understand how wrong it was for him to be angry about God’s intervention to save the city. The death of the plant symbolizes the removal of God’s mercy from Jonah, just as God might have chosen to remove his mercy from Nineveh if he had followed Jonah’s desires.
• Jonah is very thankful for the plant, and he should have been thankful for God’s kindness to Nineveh. However, he is very angry when the plant dies, yet he would have been delighted if the mercy of God had been denied to Nineveh and they had died. God is trying to show Jonah how confused his thinking is, valuing a plant but disdaining a whole nation of people.
• The story ends here. One thing that strikes me as I read the end of the book is that we do not know if Jonah learned his lesson. After all God did for Jonah, the book leaves us hanging in wonder. Did the prophet learn his lesson?
CONCLUSION
• The book of Jonah has many lessons for each of us yet today. The book is as relevant today as it was when it was first penned.
• We see the love that God has for mankind, the mercy that He has for us along with the patience He has with us.
• Jonah teaches us the dangers of being judgmental. The book shows us that if God loves ALL people so should we.
• The last chapter illustrates that God’s grace and mercy are not earned or deserved so we should rejoice when people experience it.
• God did a lot to get Jonah to listen to Him and learn from Him.
• How about you today. Has God tried to get your attention?
• Come today and receive God’s grace and mercy through the blood of Jesus.
