Okay, good. Jonah chapter 4.
I want to take a brief overview of the entire book of Jonah.
In chapter 1, we see Jonah fleeing. from God's word that came to
him to tell him to go to Nineveh and preach. He fled, God arrested
him on his journey away from Nineveh, sent a storm, the mariners,
the ship, were about to drown, the mariners were about to drown,
the ship was about to be broken up, and everyone was about to
lose their lives. But God sent, in the storm, He
also told the mariners to throw Jonah overboard, that's what
Jonah told them to do. which they did, reluctantly,
and God saved the entire ship through the substitution of Jonah.
As soon as Jonah hit the water, the sea, the sea was calm, not
a ripple. Now, you understand that the
Old Testament is given as a figure, as a pattern, as a shadow. These words that are used throughout
the book of Hebrews especially, a parable, the events of history,
the prophets, and the events of their lives all tell the message
that is being conveyed by God. And this is especially important
when you consider the Lord Jesus Christ as our prophet. What did
Jesus do in his life? Whatever he did was part of the
message. What happened to him, whatever happened to him was
part of the message. And that's why we say Christ
and him crucified, we understand... Excuse me. that that means not
only what he said, but what he did, and what we know about what
he did from the epistles and the doctrine of Jesus Christ
and him crucified. He didn't die for himself. We
know some of the things that were said when he suffered and
when he died, but what was important was the doctrine of the atonement. the doctrine of his substitutionary
death by which he established or obtained our eternal redemption
and established our everlasting righteousness. And so the first
book, the first chapter of Jonah is about the substitution of
Christ. And the second chapter is about
Jonah suffering as a figure or a pattern of Christ who would
both die, be buried, and rise again. God prepared a fish to
swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in
the belly of the fish, which corresponds to the three days
and three nights Christ spent in the grave. And then also God
commanded the fish to spit Jonah out, and by that command God
is showing that he would raise his son from the dead after he
suffered in our place for our sins under the wrath of God.
And then in chapter three, Jonah goes to Nineveh to bring the
message God, again, told him to tell. And he told the Ninevites,
who were Assyrians, and the Assyrians were enemies of the nation of
Israel, he told them that in 40 days God would destroy their
city. It would be overthrown. And so,
from the king down, they believed God, and they turned towards
the Lord from what they had formerly been doing, And they covered
themselves in sackcloth and ashes, and they cried mightily to God. They didn't eat, they didn't
drink, and they cast themselves on the mercy of God. and you
know what happened. God turned from the evil he said
he would do when they did that and they were all saved. Chapter
four is about, it's going to continue this story, but I want
to give you a summary title for the entire book. The message
of the book of Jonah, what is it? Well, it's Christ and him
crucified, but in a larger sense, it's the sovereignty of God in
the salvation of his people. And it's important that we understand
that because when we look at chapter four, we especially see
the sovereignty of God in the salvation of these people. Now,
as I say that, think about what happened here in history. Jonah
went to a Gentile city. And that city was huge. It took
three days to go through it, to walk through it. A huge city,
lots of people in it. And we're going to estimate that
here in a minute. He didn't want to go. Why did
Jonah not want to go? Well, because he knew that God
was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, would turn from the
the evil he pronounced on a people, and this was all part of God's
character. But these people were not people
Jonah wanted to preach to. He didn't want them to be saved.
They were the enemies of Israel, being Assyrians, and besides
the fact they were wicked, and Jonah had a prejudice, and this
prejudice was very strong. But God saved the entire city.
And that's the message here, is that God sovereignly sent
a man who was reluctant to go in order to save a people the
man didn't want saved, and yet God saved them. It shows that
salvation is of the Lord, doesn't it? That's the very thing that
Jonah concluded when God taught him in the fish's belly. So the
book of Jonah is about God's sovereign mercy in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And chapter 2 is the shadow of
Christ and Him crucified in His redeeming work for His elect.
And chapter 3 is the result of that redeeming work that Jonah
preached to Nineveh, just like when Jesus had ascended and taken
his place in the right hand of God, he sent his apostles to
preach throughout this world the gospel. He had all power
and all authority given to him as a son of man and as son of
God, he sent with almighty power to bring that gospel to chosen
sinners. Now in chapter 4, clearly Jonah
is angry with God. We saw that last time in verse
4. You see it, though, the Lord said to him, Doest thou well
to be angry? And then again in verse 9, and God asked him in
verse 9, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? So we want
to look at that. The question here is, why was
Jonah so angry with God? Well, there's lots of questions
I want to ask you tonight, and hopefully we're going to get
to the answers of these questions. Why was Jonah so angry with God
is the first one that I want to ask. The second one is, what
did Jonah give as a reason for his anger? Why did Jonah say
he was angry? Because he admitted it. And then
the third question was, because in his answer he said, when I
was yet in my country I said this, what did Jonah say when
he was in his country? What did he say then? And who
did he say it to? That's another question I want
to ask and try to answer. And then why did Jonah say, when
he was talking about these things, why did he say, Lord, take away
my life from me. It's better to die than to live.
Why would he say such a thing like that? And why did Jonah
go outside of Nineveh to see what God would do? So there's
some questions here. And what is this thing called
a booth that Jonah made? What is a booth? Why did he make
it? And why did God prepare this
gourd And what was the gourd, what effect, what reaction did
Jonah have to that gourd? And why did God prepare a worm
after preparing a gourd? Those are curious things, aren't
they, that we see here. If he prepared the gourd, why
would he take it away right away? Another question that I have
when I look at all this is, What do all these things teach
us about the lesson that God is trying to teach here? Because
when we look at this, this is a book of a prophet, Jonah. But in 1 Peter 1, verses 10 and
11, we read there that God gave the message to the prophets of
old, and that message was not for them, but for us. to whom
the gospel has come. It was the message of Christ's
suffering and the glory that would follow. So Jonah is angry. He's mad at God and he admits
it. He can't help it. He's incensed
here. So let's look at this. Well,
in chapter four, when it says he's angry, it makes me wonder
that a man could be angry with God and admit it, and that that
wouldn't in itself cause him to stop and think, what am I
doing? It's an evidence that the man
is entirely wrong when he's angry with God. We can see that when
a child goes ballistic towards their parent, maybe a two-year-old
or something like that. They just go out of control,
screaming and yelling and stomping and kicking. And we think, well,
it's evident who's at the fault here. It's the child. Well, that's
the way it was with Jonah. It's incredible that Jonah recognized
his own anger and yet stubbornly claimed that he was right. He
said this, it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry,
in verse 1, verse 2, and he prayed to the Lord, And he said, I pray
Thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish,
for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger,
and of great kindness and repentance 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. Not only was he angry, but he
thought that because he was so angry that he just needed to
die. It's quite amazing, isn't it? God's ways here in this whole
thing of what's happened make me so angry that I would rather
die than live. He's a whirling dervish, he's
out of control. Now we get help from the New
Testament on this topic of why Jonah was angry. Consider, first
of all, that this was a pure, an anger of pure pride and prejudice
against these people. Why was he angry? Because God
had mercy on a city of Gentiles, Assyrian Gentiles, the enemies
of Israel. That's one thing. But there was
something else that made him angry here too. And it's not
so clear when you read it just at first face value. Jonah was
a prophet to the nation of Israel, the 10 tribes in fact. And you
can find that, we'll get to that maybe later if we have time.
But the fact is that as a prophet,
what was he doing? He was bringing God's word, obviously
he was a prophet. And the people to whom he brought
that word, where did he live? Well, he lived all among them.
He was right there where they lived. So the prophet was a resident
of the nation that he was preaching to, the nation of Israel. How
often did he come to Nineveh? Just once. One time to Nineveh,
all the time he spent in Israel. And how often did he preach to
the people of Israel where he was? Well, no doubt he preached
every time the Lord spoke to him. He preached to them. However
often that was, God spoke by him. But how often did he preach
to Nineveh? Just once. And what was the response
of Israel to his message? Well, it's not clear, but we
can see throughout the Old Testament what Israel's response was to
the prophets. Jesus even told the Pharisees,
you adorn the tombs of the prophets, but you admit that you're the
children of the fathers who killed the prophets. So the nation of
Israel, God constantly sent his messengers to them, they constantly
preached the message God sent, and they hated the message, they
hated the messenger, and they killed, they stoned and killed
their own prophets. And so what we see is that the
nation of Israel as a whole, throughout the Old Testament,
they had the Word of God, and yet they were idolaters. They
were in unbelief. They heard the message repeatedly,
and yet they did not believe it. And this is seen in the wilderness
over and over again. They complained when there was
no bread. They complained when there was no water. They were
afraid to go into Canaan because the inhabitants of the land were
too big. Even though God had promised,
He had delivered them out of Egypt, showed them those great
and mighty signs. Their whole history is a history of sad idolatry
and unbelief. The book of Hebrews talks about
this throughout, the unbelief of the Hebrews. And so, and that's
in contrast, of course, to the faith of God's people within
that nation. So the point I'm getting to here
is that Jonah had been a preacher to the nation of Israel, but
as throughout all of their history, the nation of Israel as a whole
remained in unbelief. So Jonah's anger here is that
God saved an entire city with one message, And yet, most in
Israel were going to perish for their unbelief. Jonah actually
reminds us of the Apostle Paul. Remember before his conversion?
The Apostle Paul persecuted the Church of Christ. Why? Pride. total prejudice against the Gentiles. He thought that the gospel, that
the law, actually, was his only hope, and so he trusted in the
law. And he not only trusted in the law, but he trusted that
he was a Hebrew. In fact, let me read to you what
he said himself in Philippians chapter 3 and verse 4. He said, though I might also
have confidence in the flesh, if any other man thinketh that
he have whereof to glory, or I'm sorry, hath whereof he might
trust in the flesh, I more. So Paul is saying, look, if anybody
has a reason for trusting his flesh, I would have more reason. Verse five, circumcised the eighth
day, spot on, right on schedule, of the stock of Israel, So he
was of the nation. Of the tribe of Benjamin, I've
got my genealogy straight. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, atop
of my class, as touching the law, a Pharisee. Concerning zeal,
persecuting the church. Who was the church? They were
the Gentile believers. They were anyone who professed
salvation other than man's religion, other than man's obedience to
God's law. They professed a religion. I
mean, they trusted in Christ. And so Paul was against that.
But he goes on. This is what happened when he
was converted. But what things were gained to me in my self-trust
Those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless. And I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do
count them but dung that I may win Christ. So like Jonah, Paul
began totally prejudiced against God's sovereign saving grace
to the Gentiles. But because Jonah was a prophet,
he was looking forward to the time in the New Testament to
us, to whom the gospel has come, about Christ and him crucified
and the glory that would follow. So the sermon of the book of
Jonah and the prophet Jonah are for us. But they were also for
the nation of Israel because when Jesus came and he spoke
these words and summarized what the book of Jonah was about in
Mark, I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 12, And they asked him, show
us a sign. And he said, there shall no sign
be given to this generation except what? The sign of the prophet
Jonah. And he explained chapter two
of Jonah, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the fish, so the son of man shall be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth. And this is the only sign.
And then he also mentioned repentance, chapter three. He said, as the
men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment in this generation and
shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of
Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The one Jonah
was a shadow or a pattern or a figure of was there among them.
Jonah came to the Ninevites, preached one sermon, and they
repented. They believed God and repented.
But the Pharisees, who heard the one greater than Jonah, and
had him explain what Jonah's book meant, they did not believe. And so, That's something that we stand
amazed at. Hold on, I'm gathering my thoughts
here. So what we see here is that Jonah
had this huge prejudice. The prejudice was a foreshadowing
of the prejudice of all of those in Israel who trusted in the
law. And it was also a foreshadowing of how God would bring the gospel
to the Gentiles and save them, though they were not part of
the nation of Israel. And so we have the book of Romans,
and chapter 9 of Romans in particular, where The Apostle Paul explains
that it's not all in Israel who are of Israel. Why weren't all
of Israel saved? If Jonah was a prophet to that
nation, why didn't more of them believe? The answer is not because
God's word failed, but because they were not all chosen to be
given this eternal life. They were not all chosen to salvation. So the message of the New Testament
is absolutely clear. God's mercy and God's grace,
according to Moses' own words, are according to his sovereign
mercy and his sovereign grace. God will have mercy on whom he
will have mercy. He will be gracious to whom he
will be gracious. In fact, Jonah chapter 4 and
verse 3 where he says this, I knew that thou art a gracious God
and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of the evil, is almost a quote directly from Exodus chapter
34, which I will read here. Exodus chapter 34, it says this
in verse 6, And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed,
The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering
and abundant in goodness and truth, You see that? The Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. That's almost
word for word what Jonah said here. He's gracious, merciful,
slow to anger, long-suffering, and of great kindness and repentance
of the evil. So Jonah understood that God's
mercy was sovereign mercy, didn't he? He understood it from what
Moses said, and God is teaching him and teaching us through the
lesson, it was a hard lesson for him to learn, that truth.
God's mercy is sovereign, it's in Christ, by Christ, chapter
2 of Jonah, and it's because of Christ and him crucified that
the message is brought to us and we, who are Gentiles now,
believe it and hear it. It's not new. That fact that
God is sovereign in his mercy is not a new concept in scripture.
Think about the flood of Noah's day. How many people were saved? And who were they? Remember what
God said in Genesis? He said to Noah, he said, the
only have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Now take
yourself and your family and get into the ark. He didn't tell
anybody else to get into the ark. the entire world perished
in the flood of Noah's day. We might say, well, God, I mean,
the people, in fact, what did Jesus say? As it was in the days
of Noah, so shall it be at the end of the world. They were eating
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the flood came
and they all perished. So they weren't expecting it.
To them, justice was a complete surprise that God would judge
them and His wrath would be poured out upon them. And this is a
fundamental truth in scripture, that to the ungodly, to the unbelieving,
justice, the justice of God comes to them when they least expect
it as a complete surprise. But what happens to the believer
when they least expect it? Grace comes to them as a complete
surprise. And in the coming of that grace,
what do we see? That God's justice also came
in Christ, and that, to them, is a complete surprise also.
So there's two things that surprise every believer. That God is gracious,
and that He is just towards me in being gracious. But to the
unbeliever, justice is always a surprise. They were taken away
in the flood. Sodom and Gomorrah, the same
story. Only Lot was saved. The whole city of Sodom and the
city of Gomorrah, both cities, were destroyed by fire, and they
were not expecting it. The angel came, told Lot, go
tell your children to get out. They laughed, they mocked, they
went about whatever they were doing, and the fire fell from
heaven. 2 Peter 2 says this, For if God
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved to judgment,
and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person,
a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the
world of the ungodly, and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an
example, to those that after should live ungodly and deliver
just lot, or righteous lot, vexed with the filthy conversation
of the wicked." You see this? This is a history. It's not new.
God's mercy is sovereign. He saved some. Noah and his family. Lot, and that was it. And think
about the number of people that were probably saved in Jonah's
day when he preached. So Jonah was very jealous for
his nation. And the Apostle Paul was too.
Remember Romans 9? He says, I say the truth in Christ,
I lie not. My conscience also bearing me
witness in the Holy Ghost, I have great heaviness and continual
sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself
were cursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according
to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants, and the service of God, and all
that. And yet, why? He says, not as
though the word of God had taken an effect. It's not because God's
word failed. It's because they are not all
Israel, which are of Israel. So now, with that as background,
understand that Jonah was angry. And he felt in himself, he was
just in his anger, because God would not save most in Israel,
and yet he went out of the way to send this prophet to a city
of Gentiles, Assyrians, their enemies, and save an entire city.
He was fit to be tied. He was ticked. And so he said,
he said he was angry. He said, it's better for me to
die than to live, that this is the way it's gonna be. He did
not like God choosing whom he would have mercy on. Jonah thought
that he could, because he preached to his nation, because they were
part of that nation, that God was obligated to save them. And
that was not the case. Remember what John the Baptist
said in Matthew chapter three, I think it is, or chapter, yeah,
I think it's Matthew three. He said, don't trust, don't say
or trust to yourselves that we're children of Abraham. God is able
of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. So don't think that. It's not of blood. It's not of
the will of the flesh. It's not of the will of man.
It is of God that shows mercy. That's what it says in John chapter
1 verse 12 and 13. And so it says again and again. Listen to this. He says in Hosea
chapter 1, you want to turn there. It's just a couple pages back
in the book of Hosea. It comes right after Daniel.
Look at Hosea chapter 1 and verse 6. The same truth, it was true
throughout the entire history of the nation of Israel. You
read the first chapter of Isaiah, this chapter in Hosea, the whole
book of Hosea is about this. Chapter 1, verse 6. Hosea's adulterous
wife conceived again and bear a daughter. And God said to Hosea,
call her name, this child that was born, Lo-ru-hamah, for I
will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will
utterly take them away. But, verse 7, I will have mercy
upon the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord
their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor
by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. Verse 8, now, when
she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bare a son, then
said, God, call his name Lo-Ami, for you are not my people, and
I will not be your God. Yet, The number of the children
of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured
nor numbered. And it shall come to pass that
in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people,
that there it shall be said to them, you are the sons of the
living God." That is sovereign mercy, isn't it? And this is
quoted in Romans chapter 9 to prove that God has vessels of
mercy that he before ordained to be vessels of mercy, and it's
his sovereign will to do that, and he had vessels of dishonor,
that he chose in his sovereign good pleasure. God did this to
leave them to what? to justice, to leave them to
receive the due reward of their own deeds, not to spare them,
but to give them, like Pharaoh, up to their own heart, like Romans
1 says, they were reprobate. Okay, now I say that as background.
It's necessary that we see that in order for us to understand
what comes next in chapter four, in chapter four of Jonah. Let me read this to you here. Let's just go through some of
these questions now that I raised. So what did God, what did Jonah
give as a reason for his anger? Because you saved these Gentiles. I knew that you were gracious
and merciful, slow to anger and would turn from the evil that
you said you would do. And yet, even though I knew that
and I tried to run away, here I am. and you did what I expected
you would do. I said that when I was in my
own country." What did he say? Well, he not only said that,
but no doubt the message of God's grace, mercy, slow or long-suffering,
being slow to anger, and turning from the evil. Who did he preach
that to? But his own people. And what
was their reaction? It didn't matter how many times
it was preached, they weren't turning. And yet he preached
it in Nineveh. He told them, God's going to
overthrow this city in 40 days. Bam! They believed God. And they
cast themselves on his mercy. They knew the God who was their
judge must be the one who shows mercy. They sinned against God,
therefore their sin had to be forgiven by the one against whom
they'd sinned, and only he could do it. And he did. And so that's
the great thing here. So that was the reason for Jonah's
anger. He was fit to be tied. He was
prejudiced that God would save Gentiles and pass by his people. And he didn't have the view that
the apostle Paul had, where he said, I could wish that myself
were cursed from Christ. Yet Paul went on to say how glorious
God's grace was that he would save the Gentiles. And he himself
was an apostle to the very people that he persecuted to death before. So Jonah's expression of this
is a total overlay on the nation of Israel being rejected, they
will no more be my people, they are not my people, I will no
more have mercy on you as a whole, and yet, out of that same nation,
God would save a remnant, the elect of God, just like out of
the nations of the Gentiles, he would save a remnant, the
elect of God, and the Ninevites were of that remnant. So that's
the message. He spoke it in his own country.
He knew it was true. Moses said it. He not only said
it before he ran to Tarshish, but he said it, no doubt, in
the preaching of the gospel that he preached, that God gave him
to preach to his own people. And they wouldn't turn. He didn't
tell the Ninevites, oh let me tell you in verse 4 of chapter
3, in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown. He didn't give them
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, he was buried
and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures.
He didn't tell them that. He didn't have all that information
in those few words there, but here he was, a living man who
looked like he'd just been spit out by a fish. I'm a standing,
walking testimony to Christ and him crucified. And so God got
the message through anyway. And so they trusted in God's
mercy. All right, so we know now something about what he said
and why he was so angry. So here's, Here's the next question. I'm getting through my notes
here. I'm trying to get through this a little faster. So, why
did Jonas say then, O Lord, I take, I beseech Thee, my life from
me, in verse 2 of chapter 4? Why did he say that? Who would
say such a stupid thing? Our life isn't our own. We might
not feel like living, but God is the one who gives life, and
only God should take life. We don't take our own lives just
because we're tired of the trial. To do that is to act out of faith,
isn't it? We have to admit that that's
a sin, to take our own lives. just like it would be sin to
say, well, you know, it's too much for me to endure this hardship,
so I'm going to sin to get out of it. That's not right. It's
not right to go against the revealed will of God. I heard someone
say, well, I'm trying to understand if this is God's will, so I'm
praying. But it's a plain revelation from scripture. You don't have
to ask God to reveal what he has already said in his word,
whether it's true or not. It's true. You can take it as
the gospel fact. So Jonah is saying this, O Lord,
I take I beseech Thee my life from me, for it is better for
me to live and not die. Because of his proud prejudice
against God's sovereign mercy, this is why he said it, if God
would save his enemies, the Ninevites, and if God left most of Israel
in their willful unbelief, Then Jonah said, for him, it's better
to die than to live. And this is the setting of what's
going to follow. It's setting it up. God is showing
us the attitude of Jonah's heart here. He's so opposite of what
makes any sense, because he's opposing God, he's opposing his
own life. And so the Lord is going to say
this. So why did Jonah go outside of Nineveh? He says here in chapter
4, Oops, I turned the page too far,
went into Micah. It says here in chapter four, Verse 5, So Jonah went out of
the city and he sat down on the east side of the city and there
he made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow till he might
see what would become of the city. Why did he go out? He went
out so he could watch to see how God was going to judge those
people. He was hoping, come on, I'm waiting to see what is God
going to do to destroy these people. He told me he was going
to, but he wouldn't do it. He was hoping against hope God
would actually do that. He wanted to see their judgment.
He knew they would return somehow. They would return to their wickedness
and God would judge them for what? Their works. Did God do
that? Did God judge them for their
works? He couldn't have. If he would have judged them
for their works, where would they have been? He didn't judge them for
their works, otherwise any slip-up after He spared the city would
have been a cause for destroying them. He didn't do that, did
He? He judged them not for their works, that's called mercy. He
withheld from them the judgment their works deserved, that's
mercy, and He gave to them the blessings that they didn't deserve,
that's called grace. When God withholds His judgment
from us, it's not because God ignores his justice is because
he pours out his justice on our substitute. Mercy doesn't come
at the expense of God's justice or holiness. In fact, mercy always
comes to the delight of God's justice because God pours out
his justice first on Christ, our propitiation, and then God's
mercy can flow to us freely. And grace is the same way. God
gives to us what we don't deserve. He gives us the blessings that
God gives to Christ. We deserve punishment. He withholds
punishment from us because He punished His Son. We don't deserve
blessings, but He gives us the reward that Christ earned. And
so He poured on our Savior He laid our sins on our Savior and
poured upon Him the wrath we deserved, and He blesses him,
and in blessing him, He gives it to us. That's grace. Complete
mercy. Complete grace. And so if God would have judged
these people by their works, one slip up, bam, they're gone.
But he didn't because he viewed them in Christ. That's the only
way. And you think, well, how can
you possibly say that? What basis do you have for saying,
well, I have the word of God here? He says in Romans chapter
3, to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that
he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,
oh, I'm sorry, chapter three, verse 25, whom God has set forth
to be a propitiation through the faith in his blood, to declare,
notice, God set forth Christ, to be a propitiation, the wrath-appeasing,
justice-satisfying sacrifice, through faith in His blood, to
declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are
past." Whose sins? The Ninevites. How did God do
that? He remitted their sins. How?
Through the propitiating blood of Christ, through the righteousness
of God, which Christ established. And so there's the revelation
of it. God didn't judge them for their works. Jonah wanted
him to, but he didn't. And so several things now emerge
in the account here. Let's look at them in chapter
four. He says, so Jonah went out of
the city, sat down on the east side of the city, verse 5, and
there he made him a booth, and he sat under it in the shadow,
notice the words, a booth and a shadow, him sitting under the
booth in the shadow, till he might see what would become of
the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come
up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head to
deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of
the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next
day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. That's clear. So he made himself a shelter,
but God created a gourd, and in the morning, right after the
day where the gourd had protected him from the sun, now God prepared
a worm, and the worm ate the gourd. There's got to be a message
in here somewhere, isn't there? God doesn't do these things without
teaching a lesson. Verse 8, It came to pass, when
the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the
sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, And he wished
in himself to die and said, it is better for me to die than
to live. And God said to Jonah, doest
thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well
to be angry even unto death. All right, so here's the questions.
What do we have here? What are these pieces that God
has put in the story to teach the lesson of his sovereign saving
grace? Well, there was a booth. First of all, there was the sun,
then there was a booth, then there was a gourd, then there
was a worm, and then there was this east wind with the sun beating
on Jonah's head. His wish to die, he fainted,
and he asked the Lord to take his life, and God said, are you
angry for the gourd? Are you doing well to be angry
for the gourd, even to death? That's what he said. All right,
what do these things mean? Understand this again. What is
a prophet? Someone who tells God's word.
How does he do that? How does God speak through the
prophet? Well, he gives him words, but he also uses his life and
the events in it. And also remember that the Old
Testament is a shadow of the good things to come. So the things
in the story are building up to the lesson through these elements,
and they also teach the same message. We remember when Pharaoh
dreamed about the fat cows and the skinny cows and the fat corn
and the skinny corn. And Joseph said, the dream is
one. You got different pieces here, but they're all talking
about the same message. I'm paraphrasing, of course.
That's the same thing as we have here with Jonah. Different parts
are all supporting the same conclusion in the message. What is the sun? The sun is beating down on Jonah's
head. Why does Jonah make a booth? What is a booth? Well, a booth
is usually made out of branches from trees or wood that you find
laying around. So he might have piled up some
wood, he found some branches, they were leafy branches, he
put them together to create a shade. But obviously the shade wasn't
enough, because God prepared a gourd. And when the gourd came
up, Jonah, it says here, in verse 6, he was exceeding glad for
the gourd. So get this, the sun The sun,
the booth, the gourd, and then the worm. What did the worm do?
The worm did something to the gourd, probably ate enough of
it that it withered and died. And it shriveled up in the sun
and it didn't provide any shade. So the sun beat down on Jonah.
Clearly, the booth that he made wasn't providing him any protection,
right? Because if the booth had provided
him enough protection, the gourd wouldn't have made him really
happy. And when the gourd went away, the booth would have been
enough. So the booth with whatever branches, maybe the branches
got withered when he plucked them off of whatever they were
on and put them together and they got withered and dried like
leaves do and blew away. Whatever it was, it's teaching
a story here. And you wonder, why would God
take away the gourd that he just created for Jonah to protect
him from the sun? And then after that, he not only
allowed the sun to beat down on Jonah, but he sent this wind
that made Jonah faint. What does it all mean? If you
look at it from the gospel message, according to the message that
is in this book, God saved the mariners, God saved Jonah and
God saved the Ninevites, but God didn't save all in Israel. It's a message of sovereign mercy
and sovereign grace. Where is that grace and mercy
found? Christ and Him crucified. How does it come to us? Through
the preaching of the message and the sign of Jonah. Three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth, Jesus would
be. That's the sign. You have to believe the sign.
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To those who believed, what? They received the righteousness
and the reward of the righteousness of Christ. What is the message
of the gospel? If you were to distill it down
to an elevator speech, we used to use that at work. I've got
to go to a meeting, my boss has joined me in the elevator, we're
about to, because he came from another place in the plant, we're
going to the meeting, we've got like 10 seconds in the elevator,
What are we going to talk about in this meeting? We've got all
the big swells there, all the big managers, and we've got to
give them this message, we've got to be convincing. What's
it going to be? And you've got ten seconds now to distill that
one hour presentation into what is the message here. If you were
to distill it down, what is the message here? The message has
to be Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's the message of God's sovereign
grace. But when it comes here to Jonah, it's showing that there's
a distinction. God made a distinction. And that's
what's happening here. Jonah is mad as a hornet. He's
prejudiced in his pride against God. Okay? God asked him, are
you doing well? Obviously he wasn't. He didn't
even see, he couldn't, he tried to justify his anger by probably
some internal thought that, look, he's gotta save the Israelites,
he doesn't have to save these Gentiles, the gospel, I mean,
the salvation of God is for his people, the children of Abraham.
He was thinking wrong. But what he was going to learn
here is that God's mercy and grace in Christ is a sovereign
mercy and grace. And so he goes through this process
with the booth, with the son, the booth and the gourd and everything.
What does the son represent then? It represents the wrath of God
on all men without distinction. God's justice will come. God's
justice must be upheld. Our sins deserve wrath. And so
God's wrath is against all of us. And it was against the Ninevites,
it was against the Mariners, it was against Jonah too, but
God spared them. The Mariners through the substitute,
Jonah out of the belly of the fish in order to show us what
Christ would do, and the Ninevites through the preaching of Christ
and Him crucified. Okay, but Jonah's angry. He's still angry
because God didn't save all of Israel. And so Jonah is going
to become an object lesson of God's sovereign grace. The son
representing the wrath of God that is justly against us for
our sin, and Jonah is feeling that, so what does he do? He's
mad at God and he makes himself a booth. He makes himself his
own covering. What does that covering represent?
Man's works to avert the wrath of God, you see. Because the
gospel, when you distill it down, is the righteousness of God in
Christ. And to believe the gospel is
to forsake all of my own righteousness and to lay hold on the righteousness
of God, which is Christ's righteousness. And so, when Paul speaks about
this, for example, in Philippians chapter three, where I just read
a minute ago, he uses these same words here. He says in Philippians
chapter three, verse nine, listen, I want to be found in him. He says, and be found in him that
not having mine own righteousness. So this is what faith says, not
my own righteousness. And faith doesn't stop there,
which is of the law, my own righteousness which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. So two things are set in contrast,
mine and Christ's. Unbelief holds to mine. Faith
holds to Christ's. So Jonah, in constructing the
shelter, was doing what all natural men do. Cain brings a bunch of
fruit. And he's looking at the fruit.
He had regard to his fruit. He considered his fruit. He's
looking to it. He's considering it. And with
reference to God, he has one eye on his fruit. One eye on
God. He's thinking, You know, look
at this. And Abel's like, no, don't look
at me. Receive the sacrifice of the
Lamb, the propitiation. That's what looking to Christ
means, not mine, His. I come without an answer, without
a defense. without any works, and I come
to God. So repentance, if that's the
distillation of the message of the gospel, that my righteousness
is in Christ, and he has fulfilled all righteousness, he's obtained
eternal redemption, he's perfected his people by his one offering.
Therefore faith, repentance is turning from my own righteousness
to lay hold on Christ's righteousness. And Jonah built a booth. It must
have had holes in it or faulty things. It didn't shade him.
He tried to shade himself. Then the Lord prepared a gourd.
What is that showing? That God must provide a covering
for us. And the covering that God provided
for Jonah, the gourd, made him so glad. He was exceeding glad,
verse 6, because of the gourd. That's sovereign mercy and grace
given to an unworthy sinner. He was angry. God could have
brought his judgment on him. He didn't. He spared him the
heat of the sun. He even blessed him with his
gourd. Fine. Well, in that position,
Jonah represents all those on whom God has mercy. But verse
7, But God prepared a worm, when the morning rose the next day,
and it smote the gourd that it withered, and it came to pass,
when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east
wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted.
What is this? It represents the fact that outside
of Christ, without the gourd, outside of the ark, like all
the ungodly who perished in the flood, outside of those who were
part of the promise made to Abraham, like all of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Lot was the only one rescued, he had the promise. Apart from
Christ, we must bear the full heat of the scorching wrath of
God in justice." And so the worm eats the gourd, the gourd goes
away, there's this huge sun, the east wind, and it's beating
on the head of Jonah. What happens to him? He faints. He faints, and it says that he
wished in himself to die. This is the state of everyone
under the wrath of God. They are going to wish that death
comes upon them, and it won't come. And he said, it's better
for me to die than no doubt it would be. But you're not going
to die under the wrath of God. You're going to be constantly
tormented. That's the teaching of scripture.
And why? Because you stand before God
in all of His justice, having rejected the righteousness of
God, and you have clung, you've held fast in stubborn refusal
to submit to God's righteousness in Christ. But all who repent
by God's grace, who lay hold on Christ by faith, then they
receive the blessing of Christ's righteousness. But here, in this
case, Jonah reflects the ones who are outside of him. That's
the nation of Israel in their unbelief. Those under the gourd,
the mariners, Jonah out of the fish's belly, Christ and him
crucified, and all of Nineveh saved. And here Jonah, like a
prophet, he's proclaiming this message through what God does
to him. And God's gonna teach him a lesson. Look at the next
part. God said in verse 9 to Jonah, doest thou well to be
angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be
angry even at a death. He sets himself up for God's
lesson now. It's the same anger he had when
God saved the Ninevites. The gourd, Christ in him crucified
for us, a shadow from God's wrath. The Ninevites, spared by God's
sovereign mercy, both reflect God's sovereign grace to sinners.
And so he was angry, the same anger, the self-serving, proud,
God-hating prejudice against God's sovereignty and salvation.
And then God is going to give verbal instruction to clear it
all up. Verse 10, Then said the Lord,
Thou hast had pity on the gourd, Now he's going to start with
the lesser, and he's going to move up the chain. Thou hast
had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored,
neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night and perished
in a night. And here's the bigger one. And
should not I spare Nineveh? Did God, did Jonah create the
gourd? No, of course not. Did he provide
for the gourd? No. He didn't even think of the gourd
coming up. It just came up on its own. God did it. God thought
of it. God provided it. God raised it
up. And so he takes that gourd and
reflects God's sovereign grace to sinners. He said, and should
not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than 120,000
persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left
hand, and also much cattle? So he's going from the lesser
to the greater here. God's sovereign mercy, you understand
it on the simple basis of this gourd? How much more should God
have sovereign mercy on a city of people? In fact, the number
of people so huge here, 120,000, if you take the number of children
on average under the age of five, statistically, how many people
in any population are under the age of five? They wouldn't know
their right hand from their left. Statistically, it comes out to
between five and a half and 8%. If you multiply 120,000 up in
order to get the total population, you get somewhere between 2.5
or 1.5 to 2.5 million people. This is a big city. A couple
of million people or more. How many people were saved? Millions. Why? Because of sovereign grace
and much cattle. God is lumping the huge number
of people that are saved with the cattle to show that all things
were created by him and for him. Even the wicked were created
for the day of evil. But notice God focuses in this
book on his sovereign grace to sinners. Remember that number
in Revelation chapter 5, in verse 11, I beheld and I heard the
voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and
the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000. That's a hundred million. And thousands of thousands, millions. So a hundred million or hundreds
of millions and millions. What's God saying here? that
just as God promised to Abraham that he would be the father of
a multitude of people, innumerable, so that the sands of the sea
would have to be compared with them in number, so here in the
city of Nineveh, God gives a representative piece of that huge number of
people God is going to save out of Gentile nations and the nation
of Israel. His elect, His remnant, who don't
deserve it, they don't know, their left hand from their right,
and much cattle. It's all God's work to use His
sovereign grace to save His people wherever they are. So this whole
thing here The cattle, the people saved, the 120,000 who can't
discern their left from their right hand, the gourd, they all
correspond to God's sovereign mercy to sinners in Christ. whereas
the withered gourd that didn't provide shade, the booth that
Jonah made which was a representation of his self-righteousness and
his trust in that reflect the unbelief of man to trust in their
own righteousness. So in the book of Jonah we see
here again the righteousness of man in contrast with the righteousness
of God, the sovereignty of God that saves sinful man and and
the sinfulness of even this man Jonah who opposed God's salvation
and had to be turned in his prejudice in order to see that. And notice
how God ends the book with a question mark. And should not I spare
Nineveh? Dot, dot, dot. And also much
cattle? Question mark. Whenever a question
is asked that's not answered, what does it usually mean? It
usually means that the answer is in the question itself and
in the context. Should I not? Obviously, if God
does it, it's right. So yes, you should. But why am
I so opposed to that? See, the gospel is not meant
just for the people we think that God should save. Salvation
doesn't match a particular look and, you know, you meet people
Maybe they're really quiet people. We think, well, no, God would
save more boisterous people. If you're boisterous. If you're
a quiet person, you say, why are you, this loud-mouthed person,
saved? You don't seem like the kind
of person God would save. I expect him to save more quiet,
subdued people. Or maybe you say, you know, any
number of things. Well, you know, we come from
a California, so it's going to be saving people in California.
You know, I used to have this attitude when I was younger,
before I knew the Lord, that our church was better than other
churches. It's just natural prejudice, isn't it? It's just the way we
think. It's our color, it's our, he won't save the rich because
I'm poor. Or he won't save the poor because I'm rich. Or he
won't save the women because I'm a man. Or he won't save the
children because I'm a grown-up. Or we have this view that if
the Lord saves me, then that's the pattern. It's not. He won't
save the weak because I'm strong. Or he won't save the strong because
I'm weak. We have to throw out all those prejudices and entrust
ourselves to the sovereign mercy of God, because if God didn't
save whom he will, and if he didn't save without our contribution,
then we could not be saved. And so he's teaching us this
lesson. The gourd, it's God's making,
God's purpose. God's gonna get glory out of
the gourd. The children that can't understand, he's gonna
get glory from them. The cattle, all the people, they
all represent God saving at his sovereign good pleasure. And
Jonah is taught in this lesson, that's the way it should be.
The question mark at the end means yes, of course. So that
God, Jonah doesn't answer him on purpose here. because he's
leaving the answer to the sovereign will of God, you see. The question
unanswered means yes, God is sovereign. He will do and must
do and he should do all that he wants to do because that's
the way he saves. And if he didn't save that way,
there would be no salvation. God sent his son into the world
because he had a people he loved in Christ before the foundation
of the world. And if it wasn't that way, It wasn't that way
with angels. They perished. Let's pray. Lord,
thank you that your... that you are in yourself, apart
from all outside influences, apart from all of your creation,
gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and you turn yourself from the
evil you pronounced on a sinful people, because in your wisdom
and in your grace and mercy, you have seen fit to provide
another to stand in the place of your chosen people, to bear
their wrath, to satisfy your justice, and to fulfill all of
your righteousness for them, and to give them the inheritance
that a perfect righteousness deserves so that we could come
to you and that you would uphold us in this life and give us this
faith to see your work and to know you in it, and you would
even bring us to glory and give us an eternal inheritance with
the Lord Jesus Christ, all out of pure grace. and this is your
doing. Help us in our hearts to be completely
aligned with your thinking, to have the mind of Christ in this,
and to not prejudice ourselves against your salvation in anyone,
but to freely proclaim the gospel as wide and far as we can, knowing
that you will not allow your word to return void, but you
will save your people. Help us to know that we can't
save one soul, that you must do it. It won't be because of
our talents or because of anything about us, but because of your
free and sovereign grace according to your will. Thank you for your
electing grace, your redeeming grace, your regenerating grace,
your preserving grace, your perfecting grace, all of your grace. It
will be an exceeding great grace when we look back on it in the
ages to come. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.