All right, if you'd return to
the book of Jonah. This morning's message started
out as a bulletin article, and then I realized that it should
be a sermon. And as I continued studying,
I discovered a pattern across the book, and that kind of changed
the direction of the message, and I hope it'll be profitable
for you. It was for me, and generally, if it's helpful to
me, it'll be helpful to others also. There is a word used in this
book four times. And it concerns the actions of
God in his dealings with Jonah. And when you see such a pattern
in the Scriptures, generally God's, well, we know God's arranged
it, but there is a theme to take note of. Now these themes don't
always show up in our English translations because translators Well, any word might be translated
with several different words. But this one, they did translate
every occasion of it with the same word. Let's begin, and I wanna read
these four occasions of this particular word. And first one's
in verse 17 of chapter one. Jonah 1, verse 17, but the Lord
provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the
fish three days and three nights. Then looking at chapter 4, beginning
in verse 6, then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow
up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about
the vine. But at dawn the next day, God
provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided
a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so
that he grew faint. He wanted to die and said, it
would be better for me to die than to live. Now this word that
they have translated, provided, it's not the same word that Abraham
used when he said, the Lord will provide for himself a sacrifice. I looked that up because I thought
it would make a nice connection, but it's not the same Hebrew
word. The word actually, or strictly speaking, means to count. To
count. It's used in Isaiah 53 when it
says of our Lord Jesus, He was numbered among the transgressors. When you read of David or any
of the other kings counting the people. This is the word that's
being used. So when we look at this word
or see it in the context here in Jonah, we might get a little
more insight into this book. Instead of just using the word
provide, we use the word counted out. Often when people make provisions,
they count out, you know, well you get so many of this, so many
of this. And I believe that there is a
lesson to be learned from that in grasping this concept of these
things from the Lord not simply being provided, but actually
counted out. And that's what I entitled the
message, Count It Out. Every aspect of the lives of
God's elect is a direct result of the Lord's actions. Notice
every time we read that, the fish, the vine, the worm, and
the scorching wind, every one of those things came directly
from the Lord. The Lord counted out a fish.
The Lord counted out a vine. The Lord counted out a worm.
The Lord counted out a scorching wind. Everything is from the
Lord. I'm glad I'm not among those
who believes that there's an ongoing
battle between God and the devil, as though the devil is just kind
of a bad version of God. And you know, on one day, God
has the upper hand, and on the other day, the devil has the
upper hand. As someone once pointed out, the
devil is just the Lord's dog. He's got him on a leash, and
if somebody needs barked at, he gives him some more leash
to bark at him, and when enough barking's been done, he pulls
him back. Everything. and see if the grace of God,
the Spirit of God will give you heart to grasp this, but everything
that happens to you comes from the Lord. There's not a thing that occurs
within the life of a child of God that was not sent there by
the Lord by the God of his creation and the God of his redemption,
and everything he sins has as its ultimate purpose the salvation
of his elect. Now that's easy to say when we
are prospering in fleshly matters, when we have good health, sufficient
wealth, when our children are doing well. We say things like, oh, the Lord
is blessing us. And we wouldn't doubt that. Those
things are blessings. But the opposite of those things
are equally blessings if the Lord sends it. See, nothing comes our way by
chance. Nothing in our lives is an accident. If we go to the doctor concerned
about some symptom, he checks us over and he says, nothing's
wrong. That's it. It'll go away on its
own. Don't worry about it. That's
good. And we thank the Lord for the
good news. If we go to the doctor concerned
about some symptom and he gets a serious look on his face and
he says, I hate to tell you this, but you have such and such. You
need to put your affairs in order. you'll likely be gone within
six months. If you're among the elect of
God, that's a blessing too. And everything in between. It's
not just the extremes. In everything God is working
for the salvation of His elect, and we may give God thanks for
everything, even those things we do not enjoy, even those things
which we may at first believe are signs of His displeasure. We still have that old legalistic
spirit in us, don't we? When things are going good, we
tend to think God's pleased with the way I'm acting. When things
go bad, oh, what did I do that that happened? And the fact of
the matter is, we cannot determine God's attitude towards us by
the pleasantness of the things that He brings in our lives.
After all, how many of those whom God passes by, on whom God
has no grace, for whom God has no mercy, nor any plans of eternal
good, those people may have some of the best lives. Many of them
are at the top of the world. Fabulous wealth, good health,
the respect of many. They may be in positions of power.
And yet everything that comes to them is for their destruction. But if we belong to God, no matter
how we are acting, and Jonah was not acting good right here.
He was in rebellion. Whether we're in rebellion, whether
we are obedient children or disobedient children, whether we are sons
at home or on our prodigal way, Everything that's happening is
for our good, sent by our God for our eternal welfare. Not
only this, every aspect of our lives is counted out to us. That is, it's measured out to
us in its proper portion. If we receive a blessing, Well,
here I'm denying my own words. If we receive a pleasant blessing,
we receive exactly the right amount of it. What did the psalmist say? Lord,
give me neither riches nor poverty. If you give me riches, I might
forgive you. I mean, excuse me, forget you.
If you give me poverty, I might curse you. So just give me enough. But these things are measured
out to us, and our troubles and trials, the difficulties He brings,
they are counted out to us in proper measure. Not so much that
they will overwhelm us. Not so much that we will indeed
bring reproach on Him or curse Him or have contempt for Him.
If he sends a trial our way, there would be too much for us
in our present state. He will send also with it a counted
out portion of grace to deal with it. But I love that idea. God, as
it says in our translation, provides. He counts these things out. I want to look at each of these
things, primarily the first one. It says in verse 17 again, Jonah
chapter one, the Lord counted out a great fish to swallow Jonah,
and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. Now Jonah, and I don't know what
time period Jonah lived in, Since he was sent to Nineveh, I assume
it was sometime during the Assyrian Empire, because Nineveh was the
capital of Assyria. It was a huge city. I believe
the Lord said there were 120,000 Yeah, 120,000 people who cannot
tell their right hand from their left. So what the Lord, there
he's talking about infants, don't know their left from their right.
So 120,000 just infants. So you can imagine how many people
were in that ancient city. And this city, and as much as
it was the capital of an empire that persecuted the people of
God, it was under God's judgment. And so God sent them Jonah. As far as I know, he is the only
prophet that was sent to a Gentile country. He wasn't sent to the
Israelites. He was sent to those who were
persecuting the Israelites. And the message he was to tell
them is, you all have 40 days to repent of what you're doing.
Repent of your wickedness, or God will overthrow this city.
In fact, our translation says overturn, so that sounds like
not just a political or military overthrow, just turn the place
upside down, destroy it. Well, Jonah didn't want that. That is, Jonah did not want God
to be gracious to Nineveh. He wanted God to destroy Nineveh. Therefore, instead of following
the Lord's command to go to Nineveh and preach this message of repentance
to them, he got on a boat and headed in the other direction. And so God, who is sovereign
and controls all things, arrange things so that Jonah would get
back on course. Now we have in this story, and
our brother read it to us, the time of Jonah when he was in
the belly of the great fish, and The overall or overarching
lesson from Jonah's experience there is the very last line of
his prayer, salvation comes from the Lord. That's chapter two,
verse nine. Salvation is of the Lord. Now I bet you there was nobody
who knew that more than Jonah did at that moment. Though I
do not know if at that moment he was certain that the Lord
was going to deliver him, but he knew this. If there was to
be deliverance for him, it had to come from the Lord. Now Jonah,
like I said, he got on a boat, and I don't know how far they
got out. They weren't any farther out than was necessary, or than
the men thought they could row back. Because it says at one
point, after the storm came, They tried to row back, so they
hadn't been gone too far. But gets out there, the Lord
sends a storm, and it's such a bad storm, they start throwing
cargo overboard, and to give you an idea how serious that
would be, in those days, the captain of the ship was responsible
for the cargo. If he pitches cargo overboard,
he's got to pay for it. So that, you know, even the captain
of the ship was to the point, he's thinking, okay, if I keep
this cargo, I die. If I pitch it over, I gotta pay
for it, but at least I'm alive. And they're pitching it over,
trying to lighten the ship, and then they try to row back, but
nothing's working. And all of them are calling on
their various gods. Jonah was the only one on board
that ship that was a worshiper of Jehovah, the God of Israel.
But he was down in the hold asleep while all this is going on. So
they go and wake him up. They said, wake up, call on your
God and see if maybe that will stop this storm. And Jonah said,
he'd already told them that he was trying to run away from the
Lord. And he told them, he said, you know, the only way that this
storm is going to stop is for you to throw me overboard. Well,
they didn't want to do that. even though they were not believers
in the God of scriptures, they still had written in their heart,
as Paul says, had written in their heart the law of God. And
part of that law is you shall not kill, you shall not murder.
And they saw that as that would be murder. But it finally became
evident that there was not gonna be any other way, and so they
pitched Jonah overboard, and they prayed. And they cried out to the Lord,
it says in verse 14, O Lord, please do not let us die for
taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for
killing an innocent man for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased. I read that and I thought, man,
these pagans knew more about God than many who are in church
this morning. you have done as you pleased."
This storm is not something the devil sent to get Jonah and snuck
by God. This was not the work of any
of the gods of the men, the crew on board. They recognized it as God's work. the outworking of God's will,
that that storm came because God wanted it to come. I have noticed this. People are
much more ready to blame God for the things they think are
not enjoyable. Much more inclined to be angry
at him for things they didn't like, then to give thanks to
him for the things they do enjoy. They'll curse God for what goes
on in this world that is unpleasant, and then take credit whenever
something good happens. But these men, they said, you've
done what you pleased. Now, Jonah's in a mess. He knows he's in rebellion against
his God. And he knows God sent that storm,
and he figured that God sent that storm to destroy him. And
that's exactly what would have happened if the story stopped
there. But let's take a minute to look
at this from Job's viewpoint. You are running from the Lord.
A storm comes up. and you are asked by your shipmates,
call upon your God, see if that'll work. Job knows, no, that's not
gonna work. That's not gonna work. The only thing that'll work,
the only thing that will satisfy the anger of God against me is
my death. And he says, the only thing that's
gonna work, you throw me overboard. And so they do, and Jonah went
overboard, fully expecting to drown and to die. To die at the hand of God for
his disobedience. However, he may have held out
some hope that once he's pitched overboard, the storm would settle
down and maybe another ship would pass by and pick him up. So even though getting pitched
into the sea during a storm, you don't have much chance, you've
got some, so what did the Lord do? He counted out a great fish. Now Jonah was not expecting this.
Now, most people talk about Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and
that's because in the New Testament, when it talks about this, it
does give the Greek word normally considered as whale, but you
have to understand in the days in which the scriptures were
written, they didn't altogether understand the difference between
fish and whales, and I imagine that their word For whales, the
Greek word for whale probably meant just about anything that
big that swims in the ocean. They didn't understand that whales
were mammals and not fish. But here in Hebrew, it just says
a big fish. Here's the problem. Whales, at
least the kind that we're aware of, None of them have a throat
big enough to swallow a man. They're huge, but their throat
is relatively small for the size of their body. And there are
skeptics who have said, see, this story can't be true because
whales could never swallow a man. Well, I'll tell you this, they
could swallow a man if God wanted them to. You know, with man,
things are impossible. With whales, things are impossible.
But with God, all things possible. I have read that there are some
fish large enough to swallow a man whole. But here's the thing. It doesn't say a fish passed
by. It says God counted out a fish. For all we know, he made a special
fish. For that occasion, there was
never one like it before and has never been one since. It
appeared, whether it was some naturally occurring fish and
God merely directed it there, or if he created another fish,
it doesn't matter, here's the thing, God counted it out to
Jonah. And when that fish opened its
big mouth and Jonah went down its gullet and landed in the
fish's belly, I know what Jonah had to think of first. All hope
is lost. And I think that's what I would
have thought too. Bad enough being in the ocean. Worse yet,
being in the belly of a fish in the ocean. What hope is there
in such a state as that? But here's the thing, and this
is what drew me to this particular story. From Jonah's viewpoint, that
fish, that fish was destruction. That fish was the fullness of
judgment. God sent that fish to take away
even what little hope he might have as a man trying to stay
afloat on a stormy sea. But you know what that fish really
was? That fish was God's way of saving Jonah. Because at the end of the story,
where's Jonah? Says the fish spit him out on dry land. What is that fish a picture of?
That fish is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here's
the thing to understand. God's salvation, often looks
like judgment. In fact, I originally titled
this God's Mysterious Ways, because I was only thinking about this
particular point. But how mysterious of God. In his predetermined
plan to save Jonah from the ocean, which was an illustration of
God's wrath, he had a fish come and swallow him. And so far as
the flow of time in Jonah's life's concerned, I'm sure Jonah's thinking,
man, it's worse now than it was a few minutes ago. But notice how this pictures
Christ. First of all, Jonah is thrown into wrath. Where's the fish? Right in the
middle of that wrath. Now Jonah, outside the fish,
gonna drown. But in the fish, he survives. Now when our Lord Jesus Christ
came, he didn't look like salvation. His name means that Jehovah is
salvation, but he didn't look like it. and particularly when
his work of saving us involved him dying, involved him in the
midst of the wrath of God. That doesn't look like salvation. But here's the thing. He, being a perfect man, and
being God in human flesh, was able to survive the wrath of
God. And he, as it were, gobbled us
up from the sea of wrath, put us in him, and we went through
the storm in the belly of the fish. The Lord counted out this fish,
how many fish? One. The scriptures say there's
one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Only one. But one was enough,
wasn't it? One was enough to be able to
take Jonah within him, carry him to safety, and spit him out. And thus our Lord Jesus Christ,
there's only one. But that's enough. He's all the Savior you need
if he's all you have. And our Lord Jesus Christ, like
that fish, weathered the storm with us inside. So first of all, salvation often
starts out looking like judgment. In our experience, what does
God do? What did God do with you? There
was a time when you were, by nature, children of wrath. You
were living, so far as your experience is concerned, in a state of condemnation
because you had not yet believed. And it says, the one who believes
not, the wrath of God abides on him. So you are walking around
with wrath, you know, just over your head, barely held in suspension
by God's patience. And then the time came when God
was going to call you to himself, grant you faith to believe the
Lord Jesus Christ. And for many, and in some ways
I think it would be right to say for all, before he ever revealed
that what he was doing was salvation, he brought you into a state where
you felt you had no hope at all. See, the problem is we will never
go to Christ till we have nowhere else to go. It's not as though
the Lord takes pleasure in bringing us pain, like he's some kind
of sadistic God. He's not. It's just that we will
not let go of natural hopes until we have none. We will not flee
to Christ for refuge until we have nowhere else to go. And
so in our hearts, He robs us of all those things we've trusted
in. At first, you know, Jonah's swimming. Well, maybe, maybe
I can tread water. Maybe another ship will come
by. Maybe I won't die in this storm. And we think, maybe I
can be good enough. Maybe I can go to church enough.
Maybe I can read my Bible enough. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And God
will take all of that away. He will wrap you up in Christ.
and in the midst of great darkness. You'll be safe, but you won't
know it. And he will hold you in there,
and it's interesting, three days and three nights. And our Lord
said that as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days
and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the belly of
the earth three days and three nights. What a picture. Paul
says, I am crucified with Christ. He said we were buried with him
in baptism and raised again. And so we, by the gracious workings
of God, experience what our Lord experienced, the death of hope. and the need to rely entirely
upon the Lord for salvation. Jonah's last words in the belly
of the fish were, salvation comes from the Lord. Somebody said
it must have been a free will fish and couldn't handle sovereign
grace so it threw him up. But whatever, that was the last
words. Everything that God had done
brought him to that point, salvations of the Lord. He will give it
to whom he pleases, when he pleases. He thought and foolishly thought
he could run from God. Did not the scripture say, whether
shall I flee from my presence? Where shall I hide from your
spirit? He thought he could get on a
boat and run from God. You can't do that. God is God
everywhere. And he says to himself, God wants
to save Nineveh. I don't want him to. So I'm going
to foil his plan. Really? No, Jonah. I know where you are. I know how to get you. And I
know how to teach you what you need to know. For your own welfare
and for the welfare of those I'm sending you to, salvation
comes from me, and it goes where I want it to go. Those pagans said, you've done
what you pleased. Interestingly, Jonah, who should
have already known that, didn't realize God was gonna do what
he pleased. And he was pleased for Jonah
to go preach a message of repentance to Nineveh. Jonah's last words were, salvation
comes from the Lord, and what were the last words of our Lord
on the cross? Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit. His deliverance from the punishment
that he bore for our sins, he committed it to the hand of the
God who actually sent the punishment. We have to be taught this lesson
so many times, don't we? We call upon the name of the
Lord, he brings us to the point we've lost all hope in ourselves,
and we call upon his name, and we're so full of the grace of
God and the joy of his salvation. And then as life goes on, We
find out that this salvation, the portion of it we've experienced
in this life, doesn't keep us from sinning. And so we sin. Well, it wasn't that bad, you
know. Bound to be a few, some stumbling when you get started,
you know. Child learning to walk doesn't, you know, walk perfectly
from the beginning. But time keeps going. And one thing that I've learned
for the significant time I've been around, things don't get
any better. And that old legal spirit begins
to rise again. Because you see, we thought we
would be better. And we started to put a little
of our hope of salvation in the fact that we are better than
we were before. Or we fall for that, you know,
well, if you were a Christian, you wouldn't do that. This is
no way for a Christian to act, that's true, that's no way for
a Christian to act. The problem is, that is the way they act.
That doesn't excuse it, but it's true. But we find that whatever
self-righteousness we've gathered to ourselves, whatever confidence
in our own righteousness we gather to ourselves, our Lord is going
to kill it. What did he say here in his prayer?
In verse eight, those who cling
to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. And
the greatest idol we have, and the most stubborn idol that I'm
aware of, is self-righteousness in the sight of God. Of thinking
that I have done something that cause God to look on me with
favor and bestow some blessing on me, or the other side of it,
it's really the same thing, just the other side of the coin, because
I've done something bad, God's going to destroy me. Those are idols. God's grace does not come to
us because we're good and it doesn't leave us because we're
bad. God counted out one fish. And that fish, that one and only
fish, swallowed up Jonah, and to Jonah it looked like the end
of all things, but it was his deliverance. It was his salvation. Now, chapter four, verse six. What happens is, in the intervening
period, Jonah goes to Nineveh, he preaches the message God told
him to preach, and there was city-wide repentance. Even the
king took off his royal robes, sackcloth and ashes, and repented
before the Lord, and therefore the Lord did not destroy the
city of Nineveh. Now, if we went out testifying
of the grace of God and people believed and were saved, we'd
rejoice, wouldn't we? Jonah didn't. He was so upset. And he says,
he prayed to the Lord, verse two of chapter four, oh Lord,
is this not what I said when I was still at home? When you
told me to go to Nineveh, didn't I tell you, you're a gracious
God and I'm gonna go there and I'll pray, I'll preach a message
of repentance and you're going to give them grace to repent
because you're a gracious God. And when they repent, you're
going to withhold your hand from judgment. So exactly what I told
you was going to happen, happened. As though God didn't know. So that's why I was so quick
to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious
and compassionate God. Can you lay hold of that? Jonah
certainly had the wrong attitude about that. He didn't want anybody
else but the Jews to have that grace and compassion. But think
for a minute with regard to your own self. Is this not glorious
news? We know that he's just. We know
that he's righteous. We know that he's holy. We know
that he will by no means clear the guilty. Yet we see this.
He is a gracious and compassionate God. Easy to be entreated. He was so upset. He told the Lord, he said, just
kill me. Just kill me. I'd rather die than live. I was looking forward to you
making a heap of rubble out of Nineveh. Now look what you've
done. You went and saved him. What a bad attitude. And the Lord replied, have you
any right to be angry? No, we don't hear Jonah's answer,
but his answer was, obviously, yes, he thought he had a right
to be angry. He thought he had a right to
expect God to destroy those who had been an enemy to him. And we know this because it says
in verse five, Jonah went out and sat down at a place east
of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade,
and waited to see what would happen to the city. He went out
and had himself a good pout. He went out there and just sat
and watched to see how all this would play out. But I want you
to see how gracious the Lord is. Then the Lord God counted out
a vine. and made it grow up over Jonah
to give shade for his head, to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about
the vine. So there's Jonah, all in a tizzy,
got himself all worked up, sitting out there, builds himself a shelter,
and whatever he built himself a shelter from, it had to be
dead things. wood or stones or something like
that. And evidently it wasn't doing
what it was supposed to do. It wasn't giving him any comfort.
So what does the Lord do? And think on this now. If one of your children acted
like Jonah, usually what we do, and it's probably the right thing
to do for them, they need to learn, you know, not to be so
selfish as to pout like that. We just back, we say, oh, go
ahead and pout, you know. But the Lord came to Jonah and
did for Jonah in the midst of his bitterness, bitterness he
shouldn't have had, he should have been rejoicing, but he's
bitter over the grace of God. Does God bring him trouble? No, he causes a vine to grow
up. And to give him some relief from
the bitterness he brought on himself. Now what we'll find out here
in just a minute is that this was done not simply to give him
comfort, but to show him what kind of, that God truly is a
gracious and compassionate God, and that God was being just as
gracious and compassionate in sparing Jonah as he was in sparing
Nineveh. Jonah thought he didn't deserve
judgment. And the Ninevites did. So the
Lord comes to him in the midst of his self-caused bitterness
and gives him relief. And the Lord counted that out
to him in its proper portion. But the next morning, God counted
out to him a worm. Now of all the things, unless
I'm going fishing, Of all the things I don't want you to count
out to me is worms, I'm not interested in them. But God counted out
one, that's all it took. One worm, and it ate into that
vine, and the vine withered, and therefore Job, Jonah, now
I keep thinking Job, but this is Jonah, Jonah lost that vine,
previously given pleasant blessing. Now the Lord counted out the
vine, but the vine was a limited thing. And you know, everything
in our lives, it comes to us in measure. And we'll have our
good times, and we're going to have our unpleasant times. We're
going to have our times to rejoice. We're going to have our times
in sorrow. Each one of them is measured out by God. God gave
him a time of relief. Now God took that relief away.
He counted out to him a worm which destroyed it. And you know,
one of the things that will destroy our joy is a worm of conscience. You know, the Bible describes
hell where the flame is not extinguished and the worm does not die. And whenever we begin to look
at ourselves and think something of ourselves, God will send a
worm, a worm of conscience. And it takes away our joy. That
took away Jonah's. He counted out a worm. But it
was for Jonah's good. Then he counted out to him scorching wind. God adds insult
to injury, takes away what comfort he has, and then makes it worse
than he was before. And so Jonah grows faint. And God brings these things in
our life, he counts them out in their proper measure, but
he makes us faint, makes us weak. You say, why would God do that?
That's not very nice, that's not good, that's not what I trusted
him for. Well, if God sent it, it's good.
And once again, remember, our salvation often looks like judgment. He took away those temporary
Times of pleasantness. The sun beat down on Jonah's
head and he grew faint. He wanted to die and said, it
would be better for me to die than live. Now that's just a repetition
of what he prayed before the whole vine business. Isn't that
something? Jonah wants to die, so the Lord
sends a vine. He gives him a little shade,
you know, he has a revival. Lord takes away that shade and
he's back to, I just soon die. Is that not like you and me?
How little it takes for us to forget the blessedness of those
times when God makes our way easy and enjoyable. Henry used
to say, it doesn't take a big cloud to blot out the sun. And
we're covered up in blessings. We're covered up in His mercy
and His grace. And yet just some reversal in
the things of this life. And we're back to, I'd rather
die than live. And God asks him again, do you
have a right to be angry about the vine? Now here is our Lord's important
question, which reveals the whole lesson to Jonah. First, he says,
do you have any right to be angry? He meant angry about the fact
I'm showing mercy to Nineveh. And then he says, now, do you
have any right to be angry about the vine? And of course, by that, he meant
the vine dying. You see, Jonah didn't deserve the vine
in the first place. The fact that he had it for only
a day was not a reason for him to gripe and complain. It was
a reason for him to give thanks for a day without the sun beating
on his head. Jonah thought he deserved the
vine. God said, I gave it to you. I
took it away. You didn't do anything to earn
it. And you didn't do anything specific
to make me take it away at the time I did. It came and it went
according to my pleasure. You didn't deserve the good.
Don't complain that you had it only for a certain amount of
time. And here's why. You're concerned about that vine.
And yet there are 120,000 infants in this great city. And you weren't
concerned about it. You were so full of your own self-concerns. You had no heart
for anyone else. You told me way back when you
were still in Israel, I know you're a gracious and compassionate
God. Do you realize how gracious and compassionate I've been to
you? That even as you're in the midst of all this grace and compassion
I've shown to you, you're embittered towards these people, and you're
even made more angry, because the same kind of grace and compassion
I showed you, I showed to them. And then I give you a little
vine, and you're so happy about that, I take it away, and you
think the end of the world is upon you. Jonah, you think way
too much about yourself. way too much. Now you and I, I tell you, if
we're believers, we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He has counted out to
us the unsearchable riches of Christ. How could we ever hope for anything less for anyone
else. How could we ever be so angry that we would desire the wrath
of God to fall on someone? And having been given so much
in Christ, how could we ever find fault with God if he gives
us some time of pleasantness and then takes it away? Jonah was in Christ in Israel. Jonah was in Christ on the boat. Jonah was in Christ in the water. Jonah was in Christ, and my son
did a study on this once. He said that they had to be in
the Mediterranean Sea, or ocean, whichever one it is, but the
closest place the fish could spit him out to Nineveh was 800
miles from Nineveh. He was in Christ that whole trip,
upset of what he's going to have to say. He was in Christ the
whole time he was preaching. He was in Christ when the Ninevites
repented and experienced the same grace and mercy that he
did. He was in Christ when he went out and pouted. He was in
Christ when God gave him the vine. He was in Christ when God
took away the vine. He was in Christ when God sent
the scorching wind, and he's still upset. Oh my, brethren, just remember
this. You're in Christ. And God will count out to you
whatever is best for you. It will be counted out to you
as to what it is and how much of it. And we dare not grumble, but
blessed be God even if we do. We're still in Christ. How sweet to know that none of
my salvation has to do with me. God has done whatsoever He pleased. I have no idea why, but He was
pleased to save me. I didn't give Him a reason to
do it, and therefore I cannot do anything that will give Him
a reason to quit. It was never about me. It was
always about Christ. Thank God for that.