Okay, I wanted to close our study
on the Book of Jonah tonight by addressing a couple of questions
that were raised after last week's Bible study. And I want to thank
those who raised the questions because it helps me to simplify
and clarify my own understanding of these things. The first one
I want to look at is, I mentioned last week that in this fourth
chapter, if you remember, Jonah was angry. at God, very displeased
that God had mercy on Nineveh, and he complained that he said
that this was what God would probably do because he was gracious
and merciful and slow to anger and of great kindness and would
turn himself from the evil that he said he would do upon a people,
and that's exactly what he did. And so Jonah He asked the Lord
to take away his life, in verse 3, and said it would be better
for him to die than live. And I suspect a large part of
his feeling that way was due to the fact that he had a great
concern for his people, the nation of Israel, and he saw them in
unbelief, though God had sent not only him to them, but other
prophets, and they had spoken God's message over and over again.
They had the message repeated. and yet they hardened their necks,
they were stiff-necked, and in their unbelief and their hardness,
they would not repent. They would not turn from their
self-righteousness, they would not forsake their own righteousness,
but they went about to establish it, and they imagined themselves
capable of doing that, and so they did not trust Christ. They
were not humbled by the gospel of his grace, and they did not
turn to him with their whole heart because of that. And so
he lamented, I'm sure, for them, but in contrast he was jealous
for them because God was gracious to Nineveh. This is what Romans
chapter 11 is about. that when Israel fell by their
unbelief, the gospel went to the Gentiles. So it's a foreshadowing
of that. I want to read one text of scripture
to you from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 9. And then I want to
get into the details of these two questions a little bit. In
Deuteronomy, chapter 9, we read this. God was bringing the children
of Israel into the promised land, the land of Canaan. And they
were enemies. Their enemies were in that land,
the enemies of God and the enemies of his people. They occupied
the land that God promised to them. And whatever land God gave
to a people, that was the land that they occupied. God gave
certain portions of land to various heathen people. the Edomites
and the Ammonites, for example, and the Moabites, but he gave
Canaan to Israel, and so he drove those people out, because that
pictured the eternal glory and rest that God has given us in
Christ. But in Deuteronomy chapter nine, the Lord says this. He
says in verse one, here, O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan
this day to go in to possess nations greater and mightier
than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, a people
great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest
and of whom thou hast heard say, who can stand before the children
of Anak? Verse three, understand therefore
this day that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before
thee. As a consuming fire, he shall
destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face, so
shalt thou drive them out and destroy them quickly as the Lord
hath said to thee. Speak not thou in thine heart,
after that the Lord God hath cast them out from before thee,
saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to
possess this land, but for the wickedness of these nations the
Lord doth drive them out from before thee. not for thy righteousness,
or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess
their land, but for the wickedness of these nations. For the Lord
thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may
perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. So not for their righteousness,
but for God's covenant. Verse 6, understand, therefore,
that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess
it for thy righteousness, for thou art a stiff-necked people.
There you go. So I read that to give you the
backdrop here. By nature, the nation of Israel
showed themselves to be a proud and stiff-necked people, unwilling
to submit to the righteousness of God in Christ. But to everyone who believes,
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. So in the
fourth chapter, I believe that Jonah's complaint here in verse
3 of Jonah chapter 4 was a complaint that God was not saving Israel,
the nation, so much as he was saving these people in Nineveh.
Why was he doing that? Well, because, again, God doesn't
have respect of persons. John the Baptist said God is
able to raise up children to Abraham of these stones. So don't
trust in your relation to Abraham. But that, I believe, is why Jonah
was angry. But then God gave this lesson.
the lesson of Jonah's experience in the next few verses, where
there was this booth that Jonah made to protect himself from
the heat and wait to see what God would do to Nineveh, hoping
that God would actually destroy them after perhaps they did not
remain in their state of repentance, but turned again to their violence
and other things. God didn't destroy them for that
then. So Jonah waited, but while he was waiting, God caused a
gourd to grow up, and the gourd provided shade, and Jonah was
very glad for the shade. It says this in verse six, the
Lord God prepared a gourd, 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 exceeding glad for
the gourd. And then we see that God prepared
a worm when the morning rose the next day, verse 7, and it
smote the gourd that it withered and it came to pass when the
sun did rise 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. So there's a lesson here. A booth that didn't shade Jonah,
a gourd that did, a gourd that was taken away by a worm that
God prepared, and the hot sun and the east wind. So, the question
is, is it true that the sun here represents God's wrath, and how
is it that scripture speaks about the sun? It turns out that in
this place it must, because listen to some of these verses of scripture.
I'll just refer them to you. The sun also provides a scorching
heat on earth at times, and so that represents the scorching
heat of God's wrath from which only Christ can deliver us. And that's the lesson here. So,
the scorching heat of the sun with the wind, which brought
from the desert that heat stored in the sand from the sun also,
The wind bringing that stored heat from the sand and the sun
rays beating down on Jonah's head, blowing in his face, beating
down on his head and his body, drying the moisture from him,
and making him absolutely miserable so that he didn't want to live.
He wanted to die. He actually fainted. So, what
does it all mean? It means, I believe, what it
suggests here. In Mark chapter 13 and verse
6, remember the parable of the four grounds. The seed was cast
on four different kinds of ground, and one of the grounds was the
ground that had stones, and the plant that sprang up couldn't
get root because it was stony ground, and so it says when the
sun was up, in Matthew 13, verse 6, when the sun was up, they
were scorched. The plants and their roots were
scorched by the sun. Because they had no root, they
withered away, Jesus said. And then again in Revelation
16 verses 8-9 it says, And the fourth angel poured out his vial
upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. and men were scorched with great
heat, and blasphemed the name of God which hath power over
these plagues, and they repented not to give him glory." So here
you can see God's wrath on unrepentant men on the earth. Even the heat
of God's wrath didn't turn them. And then in Deuteronomy chapter
4 verse 24 it says, the Lord thy God is a consuming fire,
which is quoted in Hebrews 12.29, our God is a consuming fire.
And then again in Deuteronomy 9.3 where we just read, the Lord
thy God is he which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire,
he shall destroy them. So God himself is a consuming
fire. The sun was given to scorch unrepentant
and unbelieving men with great heat. And so in the book of Revelation
and in Matthew chapter 13, the plant that grew up, sprang up,
which had no root, the seed of the word was planted there, was
also scorched with the heat of the sun. And then in Obadiah,
which we're going to look at next week, in Obadiah the 18th
verse, the house of Jacob shall be afire, the house of Joseph
aflame, and the house of Esau for stubble. And they shall kindle
in them and devour them, and there shall not be any remaining
of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken it. Now consider
all these references in Scripture. I just bring them to your attention
so that you can see that here in Jonah, the sun is bringing
great heat upon Jonah's head with the east wind and it's afflicting
him very greatly. And so we see that God pronounces
judgment, a judgment of wrath upon the wicked. In Matthew 13,
the stony ground hearer was a plant, like a plant that grew up and
had no root, because the ground was full of stones, and it couldn't
bear a root. A root couldn't penetrate it.
So when the sun arose, it scorched them. Now, to understand that
parable, realize that in that section of scripture in Matthew
13, where there's one word, one seed, and is planted, which is the
gospel, by the way. And that gospel falls on four different
kinds of soils, and those four different kinds of soils represent
the different hearts, the different kinds of hearts of men. There
was the wayside ground where the birds of the air ate up the
seed. That was Satan taking away the
seed of the gospel before it took root. There was the stony
ground, which the roots couldn't penetrate, and so the sun scorched
them. There was the thorn choke ground. How many is that? Three or four? Anyway, the point
here is that, and then there was finally the good ground,
and the roots went deep. The point of that parable is
that the Word is one, the Gospel is one. All of us by nature have
a heart like the first three grounds. Unless God makes the
Word effective, it won't be effective. But the result of God making
that word effective is that the root of the gospel goes deep
into us. So a shallow root, which the
stony ground here was, would be a root that describes a man
whose heart doesn't really need grace from God, because that's
what the gospel is. It's the message of God's grace
in Christ. A man who doesn't see his need
for sovereign mercy because he he rankles at the thought that
God would be sovereign in mercy and doesn't realize that unless
God is sovereign in mercy, there's no hope for us. He doesn't see
that Christ alone is the only thing that he has that could
save him in this world or the world to come, the only one that
could be his shelter from the wrath of God, acceptance before
God, and blessing from God, and the way to know God. And so the
proud heart of an unbelieving sinner who doesn't hear the gospel
as a sinner, that man has no root in himself. God's gospel
doesn't go deep into his heart like it does into the heart of
a sinner who's desperately in need of God's forgiveness and
God's power to save him from his sins as a guilty, helpless,
condemned sinner who's corrupt and can't see how he could possibly
escape either the wrath of God or the corruptions of his nature.
That man is going to have a deep root in the gospel when the gospel
comes to him, when the Spirit of God applies it to him. who do not hear are those who
are rightly condemned. They do not hear as those who
have no strength against their sin. They don't hear as those
who have no defense to answer God in His justice and judgment. Therefore, they do not cry and
they do not come to God to be saved by Christ alone according
to His righteousness, out of His grace alone, without any
contribution from themselves, past, present, or future. And
so to the proud, unbelieving sinner, Christ is of little value,
just like he was of little value to Cain or the Pharisee in Luke
18. At best, Christ is an addition
or something that comes alongside or to be held onto in addition
to these other things or trusted as a backup plan. He's not their
only hope, and so therefore these proud and self-dependent and
unbelieving and self-righteous persons cannot endure trial.
They cannot endure the trial of the standard of the righteousness
of God's law, for they flee to their own righteousness to try
to find shelter. And they cannot endure the trial
of God's justice because they cannot provide God's satisfaction. They cannot endure the trial
of their own weakness in the face of temptation because they
won't say, Lord, turn us again. And they don't take up the words
of Hosea in chapter 14, Or in verse 13, 9 of Hosea, as precious
words where God says, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,
but in me is thy help. Those are precious words to a
sinner. And so the root of the gospel goes deep into their heart
when God applies it to the heart of someone who has been made
to know their sins. And I'm giving you that kind
of as an aside, really, because I want to emphasize the gospel
here, the sun representing the scorching heat of God's wrath
that men experience when they are outside of Christ, because
Christ endured the scorching heat of God's wrath for his people. Listen to a couple of verses
here. about how those who do hear the gospel, who hear it
as sinners, in whom the gospel takes deep root, respond when
they face trials of weakness. When Jehoshaphat was afraid because
of the enemy, he said, oh, our God, wilt thou not judge them?
For we have no might against this great company that comes
against us, neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon
thee. 2 Chronicles 20, verse 12. What a prayer that is. We have
no strength, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are upon
thee. That's what Jehoshaphat said. And then, I could go on and on here, but
about the stony ground here and the result of God's saving work
in the heart of a sinner to trust Christ, but I just want to read
a couple more scriptures here. In Romans chapter six, it says,
knowing this, that our old man, is crucified with him, with Christ,
in order that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth
we should not serve sin. So, to the one who hears and
fears, that God has given grace to hear in fear and come to Christ,
he sees that his old sinful self has been crucified with Christ,
been put to death, and that's the hope that he died with Christ
and that he was buried, his sins were buried with Christ and that
he rose justified with Christ and so he lives by the faith
of the Son of God and Christ lives in him. Okay, all right,
so I say all that to emphasize the fact that the Lord is a consuming
fire. Outside of Christ, that heat
comes upon us and that heat is not, we cannot bear it, it's
unbearable by us. It says in Psalm 79, verse five
through nine, it says this in Psalm 79. How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be angry forever? Shall
thy jealousy burn like fire? Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen. that have not known thee, and
upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. For they
have devoured Jacob, in other words, God's elect, and laid
waste his dwelling. Oh, remember not against us former
iniquities. Let thy tender mercies speedily
prevent us or go before us. For we are brought very low,
brought low because we see we're sinners and corrupt and have
no help unless the Lord saves us. Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of Thy name, and deliver us, and purge away our
sins, for Thy name's sake. Now that's the prayer of someone
whose heart the word of the gospel has gone deep into it. Don't
you know? When you come to God, you come
to him with all the corruptions of your sinful self, pleading
with him as in the first, Oh God, be propitious to me, the
sinner. And you look to Christ and consider
nothing but Christ. So that's the son. And I wanted
to talk about that. Now the next question here that
I touched on last time I wanted to clarify is, why did God destroy
the gourd? I raised that question last time
and I don't think I answered it well. And so I want to thank
Tim for asking that question by email. Here's the question,
why did God destroy the gourd? So here, I believe, is the answer. God destroyed the gourd as a
picture of his sovereign mercy in Christ, withheld from a rebellious,
proud world, which refuses God's righteousness in Christ, preferring
their own righteousness over his. Now, that's a long statement
and I'm going to give you some detail on it so you don't have
to remember all the details. So this lesson that I just tried
to describe as why God destroyed the gourd comes to us after the
entire book of Jonah. Realize that. Out of the context
of the entire book. But out of the immediate context
of the fourth chapter. So, I believe the answer developed
from considering that larger context gives us a greater understanding. Here's some more detail from
that lesson. Notice that what Jonah valued,
he pitied. But Jonah did not value what
God both made and pitied. Jonah was angry that God pitied
Jonah. And Jonah's opposition to God's
will was sinful. So the gourd is an object lesson.
God made the gourd and God destroyed the gourd. Jonah wanted God to
spare the gourd, but God saw fit to take it away instead.
Jonah was motivated to spare the gourd because it comforted
him. Jonah was not motivated to join God's gladness, his purpose
and delight in sparing Nineveh. So So you see the comparison. Jonah pitied the gourd. Jonah
wanted God to spare the gourd. God made the gourd. God saw fit
to raise it up and take it away. God also made Nineveh, and God
was pleased to have mercy on Nineveh even though Jonah was
displeased with God for having mercy on Nineveh. He had nothing
to do with those people. He didn't create them. They were
not created for his purpose. He didn't provide them life,
breath, and all things. So, keep that in mind. Scaling
up. From the relative insignificant
importance of the gourd, because it's just an object lesson, God
made Nineveh. Now, Jonah wanted God to take
away Nineveh, but God did not. He did not want to take away
Nineveh. Instead, he saved Nineveh. It was his purpose. Because God
delights in mercy. Micah 7, verse 18. And so the case of the gourd
extends upward also to the case of men and even cattle in this
chapter. God made men, and cattle, and
in fact all things, and he made them for his pleasure. Colossians
1 verse 16 says Christ made everything and for his pleasure it was made. Jonah wanted God to show mercy
to the gourd. Jonah did not want God to show
mercy to Nineveh. God chose to show mercy to Nineveh,
but God did not choose to show mercy to the Gord. The lesson
taught by all of this is as follows. God chose to show mercy to His
elect, those He chose in Christ. God did not choose to show mercy
to others. The elect were created for God's
glory, in fact, the glory of His grace. The rest of mankind,
and fallen angels for that matter, were created for the glory of
God too. Proverbs 16, 4, The Lord hath
made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the
day of evil. God makes known the riches of
his grace on the vessels of mercy, that's his elect, those who believe
Christ. But he makes known the power
and he makes known his own power and his justice on the vessels
of wrath. Remember Pharaoh? He boasted
himself that he didn't have to do anything God said and God
overthrew him in his strength, in Pharaoh's strength, and God
did it easily. So both are right, both that
God would spare the elect and that he would bring justice on
the vessels of wrath because God did it. Jonah should have
had a high regard for God and a low regard for himself, but
he rather had a high, self-conceited notion of himself and of his
own mercy for the gourd. In this we learn that Jonah considered
himself more righteous than God. Jonah considered himself more
righteous than God with respect to Nineveh also, turns out. He
had a high regard for his own sense of justice and what Nineveh
should have gotten. In his own eyes, he was more
righteous than God because, in his opinion, they deserved to
perish. Just like the Pharisees said
the woman taken in adultery, and John 8 said she deserved
to be stoned. Jonah should have had a high
regard for God and for what God created. After all, where was
Jonah when God called all things that are made out of their empty,
dark void and nothingness, like God said to Job? But in this
book of Jonah, Jonah should especially have known and learned the lesson
to hold up and show a high regard for those on whom God chooses
to show mercy. Jesus told the Pharisees, who
also exhibited this unsanctified attitude that Jonah held, he
said, if you had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and
not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Matthew 12, verse 7. The guiltless in that verse was
the disciples who plucked the grain on the Sabbath day. On
the one hand, there is one lawgiver who was able to save and to destroy. Who art thou that judgest another?
James 4, verse 12. Do we make ourselves more righteous
than the judge of all and the only lawgiver, and in so doing
usurp God's throne to arrogate to ourselves the role of lawgiver
and judge? Remember Haman in the book of
Esther, who tried to do that for Mordecai and all the Jews?
And what was his end? He was hung on the gallows he
made to destroy Mordecai. If God spares them, who are we
to condemn them? And on the other hand, if God
condemns devils or men, who are we to say that God, the righteous
judge of all, is not fit to judge because he is unjust? Do we have a higher justice than
He does because we are more merciful and righteous than God is merciful
and righteous? Of course it's a rhetorical question.
Of course not. Hence, the lesson is that God
is sovereign in mercy, and we ought to defer to Him in all
matters, knowing He is the Creator, He is the Judge, and He is the
Savior. He shall do right in all that
He thinks and in all that He does. We not only ought to defer
to Him in passive submission, But we ought to implore him with
active submission to acknowledge his wisdom and righteousness
in all things. It's one thing to just, well,
OK, I'll just bear this. This is going to be a martyr.
I'm going to die under this. That's the grumbly kind of false
contentment. But true humility, a true fear
of God, actually gives place to God's wisdom And God's sense
of righteousness and justice and mercy in place of its own
and acknowledges that God is the one who does right. We ought
to do all this, first of all, because God is the only creator
and the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone is able to do all things.
If He is able to do all things, He alone can raise us from the
dead and create us in Christ out of our spiritual nothingness
as new creatures in Christ. He is the Judge. As Judge, He
is the one who must justify us, and He is the one who can condemn
us. He is the only Savior. As Savior, He can be both just
and He can justify the ungodly. Consider the mercy of God revealed
in the book of Jonah. Jonah deserved to die for his
rebellion and his anger, but God spared him. The mariners
ought to have perished for their idolatry, but God calmed the
sea by requiring Jonah's life for theirs in substitution. Jonah
also deserved to die in the fish's belly, but God raised him from
that watery grave again, and he commanded that death should
release him. Remember, he was saved through
death, burial, and resurrection, just like Christ. We're all saved
in Christ the same way. Jonah ought to have rejoiced
with heaven over the thousands of sinners that repented. Like
Jesus said in Luke 15, heaven rejoices over one sinner that
repents. Jonah took pity on the relatively
insignificant gourd. God removed the gourd to expose
Jonah to the heat of the sun and then added to his affliction
by the vehement east wind. Jonah could have understood by
these things that God's mercy The gourd with its shadow, that
Jonah's own booth could not provide as a picture of Christ crucified,
that shadow saved him from the heat and from fainting and from
affliction, all of which made him want to die. But God's mercy
that spared Jonah from the scorching heat that he deserved from God
for his anger in opposition to God's ways and works, and especially
the mercy of God that spared him from his self-conceited preference
of himself to God and his works and his holy character, should
have taught Jonah that God is sovereign in his mercy because
God had mercy on Jonah. apply it to ourselves when you
read these things. God spared that great city of
Nineveh in which were a hundred and twenty thousand that could
not discern the most basic truth, which is my right hand, which
is my left. Now think of that as spiritual.
They couldn't discern the most basic truth, yet God spared them.
Aren't you glad? You find in yourself the inability
to understand the most basic things. Here, God spared a whole
city with so many like that in it. Therefore, we can trust that
he will spare us. And God also spared much cattle.
Neither the 120,000 simple-minded in Nineveh nor the cattle seemed
important to Jonah, but both were important to God and to
His glory. Therefore, the cattle and the
120,000 and the rest of Nineveh, some 1.5 to 2.4 million people,
represent God's estimation of His elect throughout time. God's
estimation. It is for them that God made
the world sent Christ into the world, and orders the world,
and shall bring it to its determined end. It's for God's elect." The
gourd shaded Jonah. But God exposed him to the scorching
heat of the sun and the east wind when he took away the gourd.
Thus it is that all outside of Christ are left exposed to the
scorching heat of the wrath of God. Again, the lesson here is
that God gives or withholds His mercy at His own discretion by
His own prerogative. As Jesus said in Matthew 11,
verse 25, Since God's mercy and justice
arise from God alone, this means that His salvation is holy because
He did it. He thought of it. It was His
initiative and it was to His glory. And because this is holy,
therefore His wrath is holy. And God, because God is holy,
He does nothing that's not holy. God's mercy makes us willing. It makes us submissive in willingness
to the way God saves sinners, doesn't it? And God's mercy makes
us submissive to His sovereignty. God showed mercy on the following
people. Rebellious Jonah, who fled to Tarshish, the idolatrous
mariners, Jonah in the belly of the fish, having cast him
into the flood of the seas and prepared a fish to swallow him,
the city of Nineveh, because God rejoices over His own work,
His work by Christ to redeem and then give repentance, borne
out by Christ's redeeming work for his elect. He had mercy on
the gourd, and he had mercy on the angry prophet Jonah. But
God did not have mercy on these. He did not have mercy on the
withered gourd, and He did not have mercy on most in the nation
of Israel, and He does not have mercy on most Gentiles. That's
the fact of Scripture. Look at the flood of Noah's day,
or Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Babylonians, or the Edomites, You could go down the list, the
Assyrians, later on in history, the city of Nineveh was actually
destroyed. Is it right that God would spare
so many and yet withhold from another great number of men entrance
into His presence because they would not submit to His righteousness?
It is right. God saved a great multitude in
Nineveh. Whatever the population of Nineveh
was, it is clear that their conversion amounted to the greatest number
of converts ever recorded in history under one sermon. The application is this. In fulfillment
of His covenant, God will save millions, hundreds of millions,
a number no man can number. And the gourd is thus God's mercy,
his sovereign mercy in Christ to his elect. The withered gourd,
the shading gourd is God's sovereign mercy, but the withered gourd
is the withholding of God's mercy from the non-elect, which are
not only non-elect, but they're wicked. as we'll see next week
in Obadiah. Jonah and we ought to join heaven
to rejoice over one sinner that repents more than over the 99
who do not need, that they don't think they need to repent. How
much more then ought Jonah to have rejoiced over the multitude,
the millions in this city who were Gentiles? So, the gourd
was an object lesson. The sun represents God's wrath
upon all men by nature. Ephesians 2, we were under children
of wrath even as others by nature. The booth Jonah made represents
his own and our own attempts to avert the wrath of God by
our works, because it didn't provide adequate shade from the
sun. The gourd represents God's mercy to his elect in Christ,
which delivers them from the just wrath of God that they deserve.
And the worm destroyed the gourd is the same symbol. The covering that God provides
for his people is withheld from proud, disobedient, like Jonah
was, unbelieving world that refuses to bow to God's righteousness
in Christ. You see, Jonah's pride is what
made him angry against God. It was his pride. He thought
he was a better judge of what ought to happen than God himself. even though he was not the creator.
That's arrogant, isn't it? That is pride. Pride is the root
of every sin, I'm convinced of that. I'll talk about that more
next time, too. And so the gourd, the worm that
destroyed the gourd, symbolizes that God withholds the covering,
the shade, from a proud and disobedient, unbelieving world who refuse
to bow to God's righteousness in Christ. the vehement east
wind of the sun upon Jonah's head, and his subsequent fainting
and wishing to die, but not being able to die, all teach the awful
consequence of our sins that God's justice demands. Men seek
death in hell, but they cannot die, and they are therefore surprised
by God's justice. All believers are surprised by
God's grace. Believers are surprised that
God would choose them. Why me? Why me? You hear that from people. They
escape a great calamity when most of others perish and they
ask that question, why me? Some of them have guilt, carry
it through their whole life because they were spared. But God's people
ask that question, why me? The answer is found in God, it's
not found in us. And God's elect, the believer,
they're surprised that God would require his son to fulfill God's
righteousness and answer God for their sins by suffering the
heat of God's wrath for them instead of them in himself. They're surprised by that. We're
surprised that our sinful self was crucified with Christ, and
so our sins were put away, and the power of sin is broken. And
all unbelievers, on the other hand, are surprised by God's
justice. Like the world that perished
in Noah's day, they will be surprised when judgment comes. Jesus said
in Matthew 24, 38, as in the days that were before the flood,
they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage
until the day that Noah entered into the ark and knew not until
the flood came and took them all away. So shall also the coming
of the Son of Man be surprised by God's justice at the hand
of Christ, the one that they would not bow to. Yet all believers
are surprised by God's justice, not only His grace, but His justice.
God expended the full extent of His justice for our sins when
He poured it out on His Son as our substitute. Romans 8.32,
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.
That's a surprise, isn't it? It surprises us that God would
choose Christ and lay our sins on Christ and receive from Christ
a righteousness that he would impute to us. That surprises
me. And we're surprised when God
says this about the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy because of God's
justice. were surprised that God would
be so just as to crucify His Son, that He was wounded for
our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. And never
before was there such a display of God's justice as in the death
of Christ. Would this thought have ever
entered into the heart of a man when God says in Zechariah 13,
7, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man
that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts, smite the shepherd. That's what Zechariah said. That's
justice. That's surprising justice. But
how about this? The believer is surprised that
God, who is holy and righteous in all his works and ways, could
justify ungodly and sinful me. And how? How could he do that
in Christ? That is surprising to a sinner,
isn't it? Jonah was not the only one that
God taught by this prophecy. This book is a lesson for us
all. The Book of Jonah ends with a
question. We must understand that it is a question whose answer
is obvious from the context and the question itself, because
it's a rhetorical question. And yet the question refers to
things outside the story. Outside the narrative of the
Book of Jonah, the question speaks of the city of Nineveh and the
120,000 people who had no understanding of the most basic things and
of much cattle. But surely these all refer to
those that the Lord will save. Here's the question. It's God's question to you and
to me. Let us have grace to answer it according to His own revelation
of His character, for we are saved by Him for His name's sake. It says this in Jonah 4.4, Thou
art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness,
and repentest thee of the evil. And then he says this in Jonah,
the last verse of chapter four, Should not I spare Nineveh, that
great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons
that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,
and also much cattle? The answer, surely, is yes, you
should. Whatever seems good in your sight
must be good. So listen to the heart and the
gracious words of our savior and our judge when he says this
in Matthew 11. At that time, Jesus answered,
and he said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and has
revealed them unto babes. The wise and prudent are the
proud. The babes are those whom God has humbled and made sinners
who have been humbled by the grace of God. He goes on. Even
so, father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things
are delivered unto me of my father, and no man knoweth the son but
the father. Neither knoweth any man the father
save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him. And
then he ends it with this, come unto me all you that labor and
are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall
find rest unto your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden
is light because Christ does all. And so, in conclusion, God
destroyed the gourd as a picture of His sovereign mercy in Christ
that was withheld from a rebellious, proud world which refuses God's
righteousness in Christ, preferring their own righteousness to His.
God destroyed the gourd just as Jonah would have had God destroy
Nineveh. God did withhold mercy from the
greater part of Israel who remained in their unbelief by obstinate
refusal to submit themselves to Christ's righteousness in
all of their coming to God. Where Jonah wanted to withhold
mercy, God showed mercy, Nineveh. Where Jonah thought mercy was
deserved as an entitlement, God withheld it. Jonah was angry
because God showed mercy to Nineveh, but he was angry also that he
destroyed the gourd. Mercy is not an entitlement. God was angry because God took
away the gourd. He thought, I deserve this gourd.
I need this gourd. Mercy is God's prerogative. Nor is mercy deserved. To him
that worketh, Romans 4.4, the reward is reckoned of debt, not
of grace. Mercy, by definition, is God's
grant to the ill-deserving, therefore it cannot be earned. Salvation
depends on sovereign mercy. Salvation cannot be earned, but
God gives it by His prerogative. Salvation is not an entitlement,
nor is God's love an entitlement. Remember Noah and his family
and the world of the ungodly that perished in the flood, and
consider those words. Consider also Sodom and Gomorrah,
and consider Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba and the elect
remnant within Israel and within the Gentile nations. And therefore,
let us praise the God of all grace, for if salvation were
not of grace, not all of grace, and of grace alone, then we who
deserve God's just wrath could not be spared from that wrath. As God provided all in salvation
of the mariners by substitution, So he has mercy on all believers
who are delivered by Christ. He had mercy. He provided salvation
for Jonah out of the fish by death, burial, and resurrection.
So all believers are crucified, buried, and rose with Christ.
And as he provided salvation to all of Nineveh by preaching
Christ and him crucified, Because Jonah was one who was risen with
Christ and sent by Christ and preached to them the message
given him to preach, they believed and turned, which is faith and
repentance, they abandoned their own righteousness, and they called
upon God to be merciful to them, which is only possible by the
propitiation of Christ. So God's grace does in all of
our salvation, from the initiation of it, the decree of it, the
will of it, to the redeeming work of it by Christ's precious
blood, to the sending of a preacher to preach it to us, to the gift
of faith to believe God for it, and to the gift of repentance
to forsake all confidence and self-dependence and trust in
ourselves, and to flee in total dependence on Christ. Since salvation
is of the Lord, then why Why, O trembling, failing sinner,
should we, you and I, not find all of our strength and righteousness
in the Lord, since salvation is of the Lord? Why should we
not come by the blood of Jesus in full assurance of faith to
Him who is able to save us to the uttermost and avail ourselves
of His grace promised by Him in the Gospel through the access
he provided to us in Christ and by faith in his blood, confessing
our sins, asking him to forgive us for Christ's sake and to seek
from him deliverance from our sins and to save us to the uttermost. That's why God destroyed the
gourd, I think. to teach us about his sovereign mercy, the shade
Christ crucified, the withered gourd mercy withheld to the proud
and self-righteous. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for
the instruction of your word. Thank you that the preaching
of your gospel teaches us about your mercy, which alone can save,
about Christ, the one by whom alone you have a just cause to
justify us according to your law, to receive us. and by your
goodness and your eternal love that made us your sons by the
death of your son. Lord, help us to be thankful,
not proud, humble, to know that your will is the will that must
be done and to trust you for it in all things, in life, in
death, in judgment, especially all things in our salvation.
For it is in Jesus' name that we come and pray, amen.