Jonah chapter 4. Jonah chapter 4. The title of the message is The
Lesson of the Gourd. The Lesson of the Gourd. In Jonah chapter 4 and verse
1, it begins like this, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was very raw, 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
Tarsus, 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." Now, I want at this point to go over the
history as to what brought this prophet to such rage. What incited the rage of God's
prophet? that he would be angry, not just
angry with men, angry with God Himself, angry with the purpose
of God in this thing of Nineveh. And so, by introduction, I want
us to go back through this book. We're going to just take an overview. There are many things in this
book I know that you could glean from that are very wonderful
things, but I really need to get to this point. I really want
to get to the lesson that the Lord will teach Jonah in his
anger, in his anger. Now, first of all, you know that
Jonah was called to Nineveh. In chapter 1, it says the word
of the Lord came to Jonah. It said, Arise, go to Nineveh,
that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has
come before me. Now, this city of Nineveh was
a great city, a great city. And what I understand, this city
was built by one and a half million men over eight years. Eight years,
a million and a half men constructed the city of Nineveh. It was 60
miles long and 60 miles wide in every direction. At this time, our Lord tells
us that there are three score thousand persons, 120,000 infants, that were in this city at the
time of Jonah's preaching. It had walls a hundred foot high
and wide enough to carry two chariots along side by side.
Now you can imagine how great this city was. It was huge. It
was a vast city. It was a powerful empire of the
Assyrian kingdom. It was a great city. Jonah was
called to go preach to these Gentiles, but you know the heart
of Jonah. He rebelled against God he Thought
to run from the presence of God And so he booked charter from
Joppa to Tarsus escaping going the opposite direction 180 degrees
he went he ran from God and you know that God sent a great wind
upon them a great wind in verse 4 of chapter 1 it says the great
wind of the sea the Lord sent a great wind into the sea and
there was a mighty tempest in the sea and the ship was like
to be broken and the mariners were afraid and they cried every
man to his God and cast forth their wares that the ship that
were in the ship into the sea and to lighten them, but Jonah
was asleep. You remember he was asleep in
that ship. Why? He knew God. Matter of fact,
this whole time Jonah's praying for God to kill him so he doesn't
have to go. And so if he dies in the sea,
what is that? That's great. It's his prayer
answered. He doesn't have to go. And so
these men, you know, they get religious. There's a lesson for
you right here. Here's a lesson. God sent Jonah
used Jonah's sin of rebellion to save these sailors in the
sea. Can you imagine if someone had
told them they were to be saved in the middle of the sea? These
were heathen sailors. When Jonah told them who he was
and who God was, they believed. And we find out that when they
threw him over, they didn't want to do it because they knew that
would offend God. And they prayed that God would
not hold this sin to their charge. And they cast him over into the
sea. And you remember the sea was calm for them. And you know
what these men did? They sacrificed unto God. They
believed in Christ. They believed in the Messiah.
They trusted in a sacrifice, the sacrifice it was to come. And you remember that fish that
God prepared? Now I thought that's a good lesson. God prepared the
fish. We'll get to that in just a minute.
This was no surprise to God, Jonah's rebellion, was it? How
many years did it take to prepare the fish to swallow Jonah? He
had already prepared it. Matter of fact, he was going
to use Jonah as an imminent type of the Lord Jesus Christ. As
Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly,
so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. He was using this as to show
Christ. Imagine that the rebellion of
his prophet used to glorify the Son of God that scripture comes
to mind the wrath of man shall praise him and The remainder
of wrath thou shalt restrain You see what God is doing is
all for his own glory Especially the salvation of his
people For all the promises of God in
Christ are yea and amen, for what? Unto the glory of God by
us, who are saved by us for the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 4.15,
all things are for your sakes. that the abundance of grace might
through the thanksgiving of many redound to what? The glory of
God. Everything is working for the
glory of God. Jonah's rebellion, the salvation
of these mariners, the calming of the sea, the swallowing of
Jonah by the fish is what? For the glory of God. The glory
of God. God uses this rebellion. See, God here uses the hatred
of Jonah for the Gentiles and his people. Caused him to save
those mariners. Now, consider that. What if Jonah
had not rebelled? What about those mariners? They
would have heard, would they? How shall they hear with what?
Without a preacher. And how shall they preach except
they be sent? You see, Jonah was sent, didn't
even know he was sent. Thought he was not being sent,
thought he was going the opposite way. No, God had mariners, he
must say, and sent Jonah to do it. What a lesson there is. But I must move on. And in the
belly of the whale, we know this, Jonah cried out for mercy, cried
out to God for mercy. In the belly of that whale, from
the mountains, he went to the very depths, the very bottom.
What a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and how he descended and
plumbed into the depths of God's justice. and how he kept his eye firmly
fixed on God during the whole time he suffered, trusting in
God. And there's Jonah at the belly
of the whale, trusting in God. Looking, he said, I will turn
again toward thine holy temple. And you know what happened? God
caused that fish to vomit Jonah out, and now Jonah was sent back
with the same message. The same mission he was given
at the beginning, come round about, here he is, covered in
whale puke, whatever fish that was. And he said this, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and cry, cry into it. As Jonah goes
and preaches, I want you to listen to his message, here it is. Forty
days and Nineveh shall be destroyed. Period. Nothing else. What a message. He walks one
day into this city. I imagine that, I don't know,
they probably knew he was some kind of prophet. They knew he
was a foreigner. He'd come in, must have drawn
some kind of crowd, some kind of people heard him. Goes into
this city and says, 40 days and God will kill every one of you. Chapter 3 in verse 5. So the people of Nineveh believed
God. Believe God! And what did they
do? They proclaimed a fast. They
put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. For the word came
unto the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne, and
laid down his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth,
and sat in ashes. And he calls it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and
his nobles saying, let neither man nor beast nor flock nor herd
taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water,
but let man and beast be covered in sackcloth and cry mightily
unto who? Unto God. Let them turn everyone
from his evil way and from their violence that is in their hands."
Now, what's the reason for all this turning? Jonah did not give
them any hope, did he? He did not have a message of
hope for Nineveh. He had a message of destruction,
yet God used the message. And they said this, who can tell? Isn't that what those lepers
said? Those lepers said that same thing. They said, if we
go in the city, we'll die and starve to death. If we go out
here to these Assyrians, who knows what God will do? We're
going to die either way, so who shall tell? And they repented. Who can tell if God will turn
and repent from His fierce anger that we perish not? And listen,
and God saw their works and they turned from their evil way. And
God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do.
You know the Lord Jesus Christ commended these men? Their repentance
was so great that Jesus himself commended their repentance. Remember
what he said to those people of Capernaum? He said, the men
of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment of this generation. and shall
condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. What
was the preaching of Jonah? Forty days and you shall perish. Now how much greater was the
message of the Lord Jesus Christ and yet they repented not. This
was a great repentance. You talk about a revival. How
great was this city? How great was this revival? I don't believe that there's
a preacher in this book that has had greater success than
Jonah. One message, without hope, and a whole city was converted.
As far as we know, the whole city, I don't know, many of that
city were converted. The Spirit of God used that message
and moved and they repented and believed on God. Contrary to what most preachers
would have felt. Now what would I feel? What would
you suppose would be the, would this not be exciting? Would you
not think this, the apostles, when they had those 5,000 men,
they weren't converted, but yet they thought they were, they
were excited. And I'm sure that Peter and them
were very excited when they had the 5,000 men there at the very
beginning in Acts, when they repented. The 3,000 and the 5,000.
That's a lot of people. That's an exciting time, isn't
it? I just read of J.C. Philpott and how he went back
to this church that he had been before and he remembered the
presence of the Lord in the place. And he'd hoped that God would
again visit them with such great power and joy of the Holy Spirit
that many would come. And you'd think that would be
a joy. But where do we find Jonah now?
What does our text say? And this repentance of the men
of Nineveh and the repentance of God, it displeased Jonah. He was angry. Now why was Jonah
angry? I'll give you two reasons why
he was angry. First of all, he hated Gentiles. Jews, he supposed
himself to be superior because he was a Jew. and the Lord here
is obviously trying, is going not trying, he will knock down
his man. He will abase his man. That's one reason he's doing
this, to abase his man. The second reason is Jonah would
be considered a false prophet. He proclaimed that God would
do something and God didn't do it. And he feared what men would
perceive of him. Therefore he said, you might
as well kill me. You might as well kill me. What
I said would happen, didn't happen. And you can see that in Deuteronomy
18, 22 later. That's one of the signs of a
false prophet, is that when he tells something that God would
do and it doesn't happen. So Jonah, being blinded by his
hatred, angry with God, doesn't this show then the humanity of
God's prophets? Can you not identify then with
this man of pride? This man who cares more of what
others think than what God declares. Jonah was angry with God, wanted
Him to kill him, so Jonah went out to this city. And what is
he doing now in our text? He's sitting up there. Look at
this in verse 5. Verse 4, God asked him a question,
doth thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city
and sat on the east side of the city and he made him a booth
and sat under it the shadow of it till he might see what would
become of the city. What is he doing? Maybe God will
change his mind now. He's pouting. He's sitting up
there hoping God would just turn around and get back on his side. But the Lord here is going to
teach his prophet a lesson. A lesson that we all can learn
from. A lesson that we as his people,
what we as his people should consider to be important. What
Jonah considered to be important was his heritage and his name. God had something more important
than Jonah's heritage and Jonah's name, namely the salvation of
his elect. That should have been Jonah's
focus. That should have been Jonah's purpose. To preach the
gospel as God told him. Preach the word, whatever word
God gave him. It should be compassion. It should
be mercy. And so these are the lessons
I want us to see this morning. First of all, I want you to see
this lesson. All things are of God. This is a lesson that we
should learn because there are so many things that are going
to go against us. There are so many things that
appear to be against us, opposite of what God promised us. And
it does make us angry. We can become angry with God
when He opposes what we think He should do. If you think you're above being
angry, this man here has put it in this place to show us that
you're not above that sin. But God asks you this if you
are angry, do you wail to be angry? And so when you are angry, listen,
all things are of God. Remember that God, who sent the
wind to save the sailors? God. God. Remember who prepared the fish
to swallow Jonah? God prepared the fish. And so
then let us notice that all things, both good and ill, that happened
to us as in the life of Jonah are prepared of God and all things
are for the glory of God and your good. All things, all things. Now you just reach out as far
as you can and that encompasses everything that happens to you is of God. God knowing the misery
of Jonah, though wrong and sinful. Now
look what God does to show him the lesson here. Verse six, and
the Lord prepared a gourd. and made it come up over Jonah
that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from
his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad for
the gourd." Now I'm going to get into this a little bit, but
a gourd is something like an olive tree. It's a tree that
is rather large. It's a larger tree. And the leaves
of this gourd were about a foot wide and a foot long, like a
palm tree of sorts. But this tree looked thick, it
looked sturdy, but it was hollow. It was hollow. This is very important in just
a minute, so keep that in mind. Now this good thing that happened
to Jonah was not because he deserved it, did he? No, he was angry
with God and yet see the kindness of God toward his people that
he provides shelter and shade for this man that had rebelled
so many times and sat there in anger and seething over what
God had done. And yet God still did good. God
provided his purpose to give Jonah shade and comfort for his
grief. Oh, how often does God do this
for you and me? in the very teeth of our iniquity
and sin, yet God still provides protection and shelter and shade
over us. How good is God to do these things? He gives us seasons of comfort
and joy, times of prosperity and ease of life. Trials are
small and our joys are many. And Jonah rejoiced in the gourd
and so do we. We rejoice in these gourds. Now,
what are these gourds? The gourds represent those things
in life that God gives his children, such as comforts and joys of
earthly things. Earthly things. If God has given
you any health, any wealth, we must remember that it's God that
gives it. And what should you do? Should
you despise these good gifts? No! Jonah was exceedingly glad
and he was not wrong for being exceedingly glad. He was glad
for the gourd. And you should be thankful for
these things. But we should never let them
be the center of our joy and comfort. This is where Jonah
failed. Jonah took the gourd and was
exceeding glad for the gourd. Yet he was not exceeding glad
for the salvation of those people. He made the gourd his center
of joy instead of the salvation of God's people. And so just as God sent the gourd
to comfort Jonah, listen what he did next. Verse seven, and
God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day it
smote the gourd and it withered and it came to pass when the
sun did arise God prepared something else a vehement east wind and
the sun beat upon his head of Jonah and he fainted and wished
in himself to die and said it is better for me to die than
to live God prepared a worm and he prepared the vehement east
wind. The thing that Jonah took most joy and comfort in was now
taken from him. So then we see this, all things
are of God. Remember, he gave the gourd and
what? He took the gourd. He took it
away. He gave the comfort and now the
comfort, the next day is gone. God is the one that caused a
gourd and then prepared the worm. And not only prepared the worm,
but the vehemity's when it's necessary to see it. It's a sandstorm.
It's a sandstorm. It's where the pressure of the
heat from this wind bears down on a man. So it feels like he's
in an oven. It's like having a heater in
the middle of the desert. And behind it becomes this wall
of sand and covers a man head to foot. Oh, how much anguish
Jonah was in. He was in real anguish and trouble. And what was the root? What's
the cause? All things are of God. All things
are of God. This is true in our lives as
well. Sometimes God's prosperity and joy that he gives us in a
moment is taken away. And in the place of joy comes
what? Sorrow. Sorrow. All things are of God. And without
a right perspective of God, guess what? Misery, despair, and depression
always follow. If you don't have a right view
and understanding as to who and what who controls all things,
misery and despair like the east wind will bear down on your head
and you will begin to sink into the sands of despair if you don't
have a right view of things. Jonah did not have a right view
of things. And often we don't. We must understand
that God is doing all things after the counsel of His own
will. All things are done of God and nothing but His own will
moves Him to do so. All things are done that pleases
God. Isn't this what the psalmist
said? Our God is in the heavens and done what? What? Whatsoever. He hath pleased."
Now what are we to do? Isn't Job a good example of that?
He had the gourd. God prepared the worm, and Job
said, The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He had a right perspective of
God. Asaph was a man that struggled
with the goodness, with the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering
of God's people. And yet God showed him the only
way to understand these circumstances is that you trust in God. You have to trust in God. In what? His goodness and grace. It's good. It was when I went
to the sanctuary. It's when I saw what God did
for me in Christ. I can understand then that all
things are for my good. All things are for my good. If
he spared not his own son, how shall he not with him freely
give us what? All things. All things. For we know that all things work
together. Not independently, but together. See, you may not see how it works
together, but it does. It works together for what? Our
good, to them that love God, to them who are His elect, called
according to His purpose. The next lesson is this, that
all earthly things are trinkets of a day. This gourd only lasted
one day, and how long will this life last? a day, a short day. All things of earth are fading
as the flower. The fact that Jonah was glad
for the tree was not bad, it's the fact that he made it the
center of his joy. I believe times of prosperity
are really the hardest for the believer because then we're tempted
to latch on to those things of earth. What are these things?
Look around you. Family. What is family but a
gourd? These children, they're mine
for a day. And either I'll go or they'll
go. But they won't last. They cannot be the center of
my joy. They cannot. Otherwise, God will prepare a
worm and a behemoth he will correct me. Money, family, lands, property,
whatever. It's a gourd. You can have joy, but don't hold
too tightly because it's all vanishing. Will thou set thine eyes upon
that which is not? For riches certainly take themselves
wings, they fly as an eagle toward heaven. Isaiah 40 verse 6, cry
and I said what shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all goodliness
thereof is the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the
flower fadeth, Because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it,
surely the people is what? Grass. The grass witherth, the
flower fadeth, but what should be my hope and standing? The
Word of the Lord shall endure forever. Jesus Christ and Him
crucified should be all my joy, all my hope, all my glory, all
my life. and everything else a gourd.
And remember, what is the gourd but an empty, hollow tree? Isn't
that exactly what this world is? An empty, hollow tree. The third lesson is this, the
kingdom of God is to take priority over our comfort and our thoughts
of self. Verse 10, and the Lord said, Thou hast had pity on the gourd,
for the which you did not labor, 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 is more than a hundred
and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern their right hand
from their left hand, and also much cattle?" Jonah thought himself
righteous to be angry with God and his mercy toward the people
of Nineveh in his righteous zeal for God. He thought that God
would have nothing to do with this evil nation, but God had
a people. God had a people that he would
save. What God does with his word is
his own business. Is that not right? God's telling
John, he said, look, this is my business. I had a people there
and listen, you are so petty as to take love and care for
a gore and have no love or compassion for those people, my people. This matter of God's children
is very dear to his heart. And we are told to hold it near
to our hearts and not the things of this world. God puts it to
Jonah and asks him, the more important, the tree or the souls
of men? So then, may God put this to
our hearts, what's more important to us, the gourds or the souls
of men? Are we like Jonah? as to take
more care for the things of the world than for the preaching
or the furtherance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the sight of God, his children
are the most precious thing to him. And he will do all that is necessary
to call his people to faith in Christ and repentance from dead
works. People of God are precious in his sight, so much so that
he gave his only begotten son to redeem them. And we who love God's people
should have the same desire as God. For the Lord is not slack
concerning his promises, some men count slackness, but is long
suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance. So what is our business? What
is our purpose? You and me, we're like Jonah. We're selfish, self-centered,
self-righteous. We care more for the gore. and
we care for God's sakes. Oh God, help us. Help us to hold loosely the things
of this world and cling ever so tightly to Jesus Christ. May God move us to do his work
and his will in this world. What is it? He couldn't leave
you many things to do. Preach the Word. Go you into
all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. How simple! He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. Simple. Jonah's Word was not
complicated. It was simple. And God used it to save a multitude
of people. May God teach us the lesson of
the Lord. May we be about our Father's
business, declaring the word, faithful, loving his people. Jonah should have went around
and hugged the king's neck. Brother, brother, so thankful
God was gracious to you. See how long-suffering he was
with Jonah? He's long-suffering with us,
isn't he? He's been long-suffering with us. Pray you, teach us.