Let's open our Bibles to the
book of Jonah, chapter 4. Jonah, chapter 4. We're going
to look at this last chapter in Jonah as a whole tonight. I've titled this message, Content
Only with Christ. What a blessing it is that the
Lord will not allow his children to find contentment outside of
Christ. If he did, we would be content
with a works gospel. We would be content with the
things of this world. We'd be content with relationships
that we have. as our hope and all our happiness. Though we are grateful for all
that the Lord has given to us, the contentment of our hearts,
the contentment of our souls can only be found in Christ. And that's that's God's grace
that makes it that way. The natural man can find perfect
contentment for his heart in the things that we find to be
lacking and empty. And I believe that's the message
that I want to try to, well, I know it's the message I want
to try to bring from Jonah chapter four. Let's read these 11 verses
together. But it pleased, yeah, I'm sorry. but it displeased Jonah exceedingly
and he was very angry. Now look back up at verse 10
of chapter three and remind us be reminded that God saw Jonah
preached and they repented and God saw their works that they
had turned from their evil ways and God repented of the evil
that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not. So the judgment that Jonah pronounced
was coming was held back by God. And this displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was very angry. And he
prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not
this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore, I fled
before unto Tartus, For I knew that thou art a gracious God,
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take I
beseech thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die
than to live.' Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city,
and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth,
and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what will become
of the city. 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 exceedingly
glad of the gourd. He goes from one emotional extreme
to the other. He goes from being exceedingly
displeased and angry and wanting to die to now being exceedingly
glad. But God prepared a worm when
the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it
withered. 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. 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. Then said the Lord, thou hast
had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored,
neither madest it to grow, which came up in the night and perished
in the night. And should not I spare Nineveh,
that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand
persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left
hand, and also much cattle? End of story. End of the book. I don't know about you, but I
feel somewhat left hanging. What happened to Jonah? So many
unanswered questions. Doesn't seem to be a conclusion
to the story. Sort of like watching one of
those movies when at the end, The villain is still at large
and the main character is still uncertain as to what his future
is. And you know there's gonna be
a sequel. You know there's gonna be a sequel. And that's where
I want us to go tonight because there is a sequel to this story.
And I believe the Lord inspired this story as he did in order
to leave us with the hope of that sequel. The glory of the sequel, as the
scripture says, which shall be revealed in us cannot be compared
to the sufferings of this life. Jonah was very discontented With
all the circumstances in his life, he could not find any comfort
for his soul in the salvation of the Ninevites, in the gourd
that the Lord had given to him. And I believe he's left us seeing
a bit of ourselves in this world. As we look at the book of Jonah
as a whole, I want us to think about these four brief chapters
as a history of the full story of redemption. We find in chapter
one, a revelation of the depravity of man. And we find in Jonah's
unwillingness to go to Nimah at the beginning, a picture of
the inability of the law to save. Jonah could not go to Nineveh
with a message of salvation until first he had spent three days
and three nights in the belly of the whale. And the gospel
of God's free grace could not go out into the world to save
God's people, all the Ninevites that belonged to the Lord. until
the Lord Jesus had spent three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. Jonah comes out of that whale
and we find in chapter three, he preaches the gospel. And the Lord is pleased to use
the preaching of the gospel message that the Lord had given him to
bring repentance and faith to the Ninevites. And now we're
left with this picture of the Lord's gracious providence in
providing for his Jonas, all his Jonas, providing for them
a world of discontentment in order
to drive them to Christ. The words of Jonah, I see them
not as the pessimistic ramblings of a suicidal,
depressed man, but as the believer who can find no true satisfaction
for the hope or happiness of his heart anywhere in this world. Jonah says twice in this last
chapter, it is better for me to die than to live. Paul said for me to die is gain. The scripture says for the child
of God, the day of death is better than the day of birth. There is a day brethren, that
we look forward to that day in which we'll be translated as
was Enoch will be will be changed from this mortal body to that
immortal resurrected body. We live our lives in this world
longing for and looking to that day and how often times because
of the flesh that we live in. We try to find happiness, we
try to find hope, we try to find contentment in places, in people,
in possessions, in accomplishments, and the unbeliever would be perfectly
content with that. But every time we look somewhere
other than Christ, we end up just like Jonah. We end up just
like Jonah. Just, Lord, there's nothing here. There's nothing here that really
satisfies the longing of my heart. And that's only because God has
given us a new heart. He's given us a heart that longs
for Him. Our flesh can be very happy in
this world and it can find a lot of satisfaction in this world,
but the nature that God's given us in Christ says with brother Jonah, it is
better for me to die than to live. Much could be said from
these 11 verses concerning prejudice, forgiveness, anger, faith, unbelief, all these things
are in this chapter. But I want us to rather look at the
way the chapter ends and see how it is that the Lord is so
merciful in not allowing us to find our rest in this world. We build our shelters and the
Lord provides He provides a gourd. He shelters
us from the heat of the sun. And then as the Lord gives, the
Lord takes away. And he took away that gourd. And he caused a east wind to
blow. The east wind is mentioned many
times in the Bible. And it's always a reference to
correction, chastisement, and even judgment when God sends
an east wind. how we are to be thankful when
the Lord takes away the comforts that we falsely rely upon in
this world and cause us to see that we've got to have Christ.
We can find our comfort and our hope nowhere but in Christ. All of our murmurings, all of
our discontentment, all of our disappointments are exposed to
us by God and causing us to, look what Jonah says in verse six. He was exceedingly
glad for the gourd. He rejoiced with great rejoicing. Now this gourd represents all
the things that God provides for us in this world. The Lord
told Jonah, he said, you didn't cause the gourd to grow. You
didn't plant it. I gave it to you. And here we find Jonah exceedingly
glad and glorying in the thing that God had given to him. how
oftentimes we find ourselves trying to rest in the accomplishments
of things that we take pride in, that in fact were all given
to us of the Lord. A man can receive nothing except
to be given to him from God. All that we have has come from
him. And as soon as we become exceedingly glad, as soon as
we find the things of this world, the people of this world, the
possessions of this world, the places of this world, the pleasures
of this world. As soon as we find those things
to be our happiness, the Lord knows how to send an east wind. The Lord knows how to send a
worm to destroy the gourd and take it away and show us the
weakness of it and cause us to say, Lord, I'm thankful for the
things that you've given me, but I can't be content with them.
I can't be content with them. The natural man might can. The
natural man might think that gain is godliness. He might think
that as he gains possessions or as he gains accomplishments
or achievements, whether it be worldly or religiously, that
that is an indication of God's blessings upon him. That he has
wrongly concluded that gain is an evidence of godliness. But for the child of God, godliness
And make no mistake about it, great is the mystery of godliness. Christ was manifested in the
flesh. So when the Lord tells us that
godliness with contentment is great gain, he's telling us that
Christ is our gain. And if we have Christ, we have
everything. Turn with me, if you will, to
Psalm 17. Psalm 17. Look at the last verse of Psalm
17. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness,
and I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." The Lord tells us if we have food
and raiment that we're therewith to be content. Whatever the measure
that the Lord has given to us, we're to be content with those
things in this life. But those things can never meet
the hunger of our hearts to know God and to be saved. And what's
David saying here? He's saying, I'm not gonna be
satisfied until I awaken thy likeness, until I see thee as
thou art and am made like thee. Lord, as long as I'm bearing
the body of this death, as long as I'm living in this valley
of the shadow of death, this world that is so anti-Christ
at every turn, I'm not going to be satisfied. Jonah, I believe,
is giving us a picture of a dissatisfied believer. And the end of the
story is open in order for us to know that there's a sequel. There is one in whom we can find
contentment. And only in him can we be content. We can't be content with anything
else. Go back with me to verse eight in this chapter. David's
praying, keep me as the apple of thine eye, hide me under the
shadow of thy wings, from the wicked that oppress me, from
my deadly enemies who can pass me about. Here's Jonas crying. Now the Ninevites were the enemies.
We could take this, you know, David said in Psalm 119, thy
word is exceedingly broad. And certainly there are many
things that we can draw from Jonah chapter four concerning
Jonah's unbelief and what the Ninevites, the relationship that
Israel had with the Ninevites and the hatred and resentment
that they had and all those sort of things. But the wicked that oppresses
us is not the Ninevites. The wicked that oppresses us
is this pride and this unbelief and this worldly interest and
constant effort on our part as believers to try to find hope
and happiness outside of Christ. That's our enemy. They are enclosed in their own
fat. With their mouth, they speak
proudly. I mentioned to you all before,
one time I thought, maybe one day I'll be able to preach the
gospel without any thoughts of myself or any concern
for self. And I've come to conclude that's
never going to happen. It's never going to happen, not
in this world, any more than I'm ever going to be able to
do anything without the presence of pride and unbelief and self-righteousness
being right there with me. It's always going to be there.
I can't get away from it. I can't get out of my own way. And I believe that's what Jonah
is bewailing. And the Lord in his mercy takes
away the very thing that Jonah became exceedingly glad for.
Look at verse 11. They have now come past us in
our steps. They are set their brows, bowing
down to the earth, like as a lion that is greedy for his prey.
What's the Lord tell us about Satan? To beware of him. Why? Because he is as a roaring
lion seeking whom he may devour. As long as we're in this world,
we're dealing with him. And as it were, a young lion
lurking in secret places. Oh, the secret places of our
hearts. And we only see a glimpse of
it, don't we? We see just a little bit of the
wickedness of our own hearts. Thank God He doesn't show it
all to us. But He shows us enough for us
to know, I've got to have Christ. I've got to have Him for my righteousness. I've got to have Him for all
my happiness. I've got to have Him for all
my hope. And apart from Him, this world has nothing to offer
me. Did you see the little Mathematical equation that Todd came up with,
it was in our bulletin last Sunday. Christ plus anything equals nothing. And Christ plus nothing equals
everything. What a blessing. That's a mathematical
equation the world can't relate to. We have everything if we
have Christ. And if we don't have Christ,
we have nothing. We have nothing. I believe that's
the reason, at least in part, why the Lord left the book of
Jonah with such an incomplete ending. Because the rest of the
story, this is, Jonah chapter 4 is our life. And the rest of
the story has to be found in the hope that this life drives
us to. Arise, O Lord, disappoint him,
cast him down. Deliver my soul from the wicked,
which is with thy sword. Lord, take thy word and deliver
me from myself. Deliver me from any false hopes. Deliver me from any false comforts.
Deliver me from any false peace that I might try to carve out
for myself in this world. Help me. And if he does it, he's gonna
do it with the sword of his word. Look at verse 14. From men which are thy hand,
O Lord, from men of the world, which have their portion in this
life, and whose bellies thou fillest with thy hid treasures,
they are full of children, and they leave the rest of their
substance to their babes. spend their whole lives getting
what they can and canning what they get and sitting on the can
and passing it on to their children and that's all the world has
to offer. As for me, as for me, I will
behold thy face, I will behold thy face in righteousness and
I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. Never gonna be truly content
until I'm with you, Lord. Weeping endures through the night,
but joy cometh in the morning. The Lord sent a worm. This worm is mentioned several
times in the Bible. Psalm 22 verse 6, the Lord Jesus,
David's speaking prophetically of Christ when he says, I am
a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised. Now this word worm that's found
in several places in the scriptures is what's called a scarlet worm. And this worm, when it was about
to give birth to its larvae, would always attach itself and
does. I guess it still exists over
in that part of the world. attaches itself always to a tree. And then it dispenses its larva
between the tree and its body and protects that larva with
its body until the larva are prepared to be off on their own. And when the larva finally come
out, the mother crimson worm turns crimson red. It's called
a scarlet worm. And this worm is what they used
to make crimson dye from back in that day. And she would dye right there
attached to that tree and leave a crimson red mark on the tree
and the offspring would receive their life from her. The Lord
invented that. The Lord invented. The Lord created that worm. He
created that worm. He designed that worm exactly
as it was supposed to be, as a picture of himself. He sent
this worm to take away the gourd. The gourd that Jonah was exceedingly
glad for, rejoiced abundantly for. And then the worm comes
and takes it away, takes it away. When we find anything in this
world that satisfies us, Lord's gonna take it away. He gonna
put us in a place to where we're going to be able to say with
David, I'll be satisfied when I awaken my likeness. Lord, nothing
else. We're certainly to be content
with the things that the Lord has given us. Hebrews chapter
13, 5, be content with such things as you have. For the Lord has
said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. David said,
feed me with that food that is necessary for me. Lord, give
me the portion that I need. Don't give me so much that I
forget my need for you. And don't leave me with so little
that I'm tempted to be dishonest and to steal. Lord, I trust you
to give me that portion, which is convenient for me. exactly what you see I must have. Turn with me to 1 Timothy. Look at chapter 6 in 1 Timothy. And we'll begin reading a verse. Well, look at verse five. Perverse disputings of men of
corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain
is godliness, from such withdraw thyself. There's a description
of this entire world. The religious world believes
that gain is godliness. In other words, they believe
that the the outward evidences of their ministry. Whether they
were able to gain more converts or gain more knowledge or gain
more influence, that that is an evidence of godliness in their
life. That's an evidence of God's blessings
upon them. Or whether it be the irreligious
man who's looking at the accumulation of his possessions as the evidence
of God's blessing on him. may not be the evidence of God's
blessings, may be just the opposite. But godliness, and that's Christ,
with contentment, content with what we have, content with Christ
as all of our righteousness, content with him as the sacrifice
for our sin, content with him as that scarlet worm who was
nailed to a tree and shed his precious blood for the covering
of our sins. Lord, I don't want to add anything
to who he is and what he's done. Make me to be content with him. Lord, if I'm content with Christ,
I'll be content with whatever you've portioned for me in this
world. And that's where he's gonna go.
Look at verse seven, for we brought nothing into this world and is
certain that we can carry nothing out. We didn't bring anything in,
we're not gonna bring anything out. We're going out the same
way we came in. And having food and raiment,
let us be there with content. But they that will be rich, and
how there's temptations in every heart for these things, the things
of this world. We become discontent with what
we have and greedy for more. And the Lord's warning us here,
those that would be rich, those that want more, that need more
in order to be happy, in order to have hope, fall into temptation and a snare
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which draw men into destruction
and perdition. And it's only by God's grace
that he would keep us from doing that. For the love of money, nothing
wrong with money, but the love of it, the need for it, the craving
of it as your life. Let's stop right there. Hold
your finger there for just a moment and turn back with me to Colossians
3. We're going to come back to that passage
in 1 Timothy, but we need to look at this passage in Colossians
3. Verse 1, if you then be risen
with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God, Set your affections on things
above, not on things of the earth, for you are dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life? How many times you've heard someone
say, well, Jesus is the most important person in my life.
I can say to you that Tricia is the most important person
in my life, but Tricia is not my life. Christ is my life. I've known mothers who their
life is so bound up with their children that their children
are their life. You see, here's the difference.
We have important things and important people and important
possessions in our life, but it's not our life. And if they're
taken away, we don't die with them. We don't say that the Lord Jesus
is the most important person of our life. We say what God
says. When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall you also appear with
him in glory. There's the end of the book of
Jonah. Discontent with the things that promise so much, The scripture
calls it the deceitfulness of riches. What is a deceitful thing? A deceitful thing is something
that promises what it can't deliver. And that's what the world does.
The world promises what it can't deliver. Not for the child of
God, but what it promises to the unbeliever, it does deliver. Verse 16, for the love of money
is the root of all evils, which while some coveted after, they
have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with
many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee
these things. Follow after righteousness and
godliness and faith and love and patience and meekness. Fight
the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto
thou art also called and has professed a good profession before
many witnesses. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness and all these other things that be
added unto you. Jonah built for himself a hut
to protect him from the heat of the sun. God added to that
hut a gourd vine that provided more protection. And the only
time in the whole chapter of four of Jonah that Jonah was
happy, he was exceedingly happy. He was so content. And what he was happy over was
what he had done nothing to provide for himself. God provided it.
Oh, what a blessing it is. It's not, it's not God's wrath. It's not his judgment. It's his grace. It's his grace
that he would take from us anything that we would falsely hope in
as a replacement for him. He doesn't do that for everybody,
but he does it for his children. That hymn, I read it a few weeks
ago from the pulpit. It's in our Spiral Hymnal. John
Newton wrote it. I ask the Lord that I might grow
in faith and in love and in every grace that I might more of his
salvation know and seek more earnestly his face And then the
next several stanzas speak of how God answered that prayer. And one of the lines in that
hymn is, he crossed all the fair designs of my schemes and he
blasted my gourds and laid me low. And I asked the Lord why he was
doing this. This is the way. This is the
way that I answer prayer for grace. This is the way. He blasted all my gourds. Now he may not, he might not
take something completely away from us. He may just cause us
to see how unfulfilling that thing is. These things are not
our life. They're not our life. Christ
is our life. Our Heavenly Father. Thank you
for the story of Jonah. Thank you for leaving. This story
with a. Reminder. Of ourselves. And how? This world cannot provide
for us the hope and the happiness that only comes in Christ, the
full salvation of righteousness and justice before the godliness
and contentment. Lord, forgive us for how oftentimes
we we look away from the and try to find our comfort in the
things that the world finds comfort in. We worry about the things
that the Gentiles worry about. Lord, we know that our Heavenly
Father knows that we have need of these things, that you'll
provide for us according to your will. Lord, might we find
our true satisfaction only in Christ, Thank you for your Holy
Spirit that makes this so. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Adam? 323? Let's stand together.