We are in Jonah chapter 4 tonight.
I want to read the last verse of chapter 3. Jonah chapter 3,
the last verse. Actually, I'll read a couple
of the last verses of chapter 3. Very short book, so we can
read a little bit more here. It says in verse 5 of chapter
3, so the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and
put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of
them for the word came to the king of Nineveh and he arose
from his throne and he laid his robe from him and covered himself
or covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes and he caused
it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree
of the king and his nobles saying that neither man nor beast heard
nor flock, taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water,
but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily
unto God, yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way. and
from the violence that is in their hands, who can tell if
God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger,
that we perish not? And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil
that he had said he would do to them, and he did it not. And verse one of chapter four,
but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he
prayed to the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not
this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled
before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God,
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of the evil." So here tonight, we want to look at these things.
The people of Nineveh cried to the Lord. The Lord repented of
what he said he would do through the prophet Jonah. Jonah was
very angry because he knew God was gracious and he would turn
from his anger against these sinful people and he did not
like that, not one bit. So I've entitled this message,
Ah, Sinful Prophet and Sinful People, but Oh, What a Gracious
Savior. Jonah's attitude in this chapter,
chapter 4, was the same attitude the Pharisees had in the New
Testament, and if we were to understand the truth of it, it
is our own shameful attitude by nature. The Lord saved Nineveh
without any help. without any inclination by any
but himself, showing them his own mercy, because he alone is
good and he alone saves. None but God would save, none
but God could save. That's the message here. Now,
think about this book. Notice in this book of Jonah
that in the case of Jonah, First of all, then the ship captain,
then the mariners, then the sea, then the whale, the people of
Nineveh, the king of Nineveh, the gourd, the worm, all these
things, whether great or small, in this book, what do you see?
The Lord is in every detail. Every detail of all that's in
this book, the Lord is in control. The Lord God of heaven and earth
is over all. He works in all places. He works
in all people, the places where Joppa, and the sea, and Nineveh,
and all the people, Jonah, the captain, the mariners, the Ninevites,
the king of Nineveh, all the creatures, the whale, the cattle,
and all things, the gourd, the sea, the wind, and he is acknowledged
to be Lord and God by all in this book. And this is an attitude
you do not find in the world today, do you? This is absent
from the attitude of this world. This world lives as if there
is no God. This world puts their hope in
governments, and governments fail them. The world puts their
hope in philosophies of men, traditions of men, religions
of men, and they all must be brought down. Only the Lord alone
can save us, only he is interested in showing us sinners mercy,
and that's an amazing thing. So this in itself, this fact
that God is in all and through all, in all the details and people
and events of this book of Jonah, this should direct our minds
and our hearts to the truth that at all times, in all places,
God is working all things according to His will, to accomplish His
will, and He does accomplish His will, and in this book, it
is God's will to save these sinful people. He first deals with a
sinful prophet, he deals with sinful mariners, he deals with
the whale and the sea and the wind, and he deals with the people
of Nineveh and the king all the way down to the cattle in that
city. God's will to save is seen in this book in contrast to man's
sinfulness and even the sinfulness of his prophet Jonah. So we learn
that our salvation is of the Lord, and without the Lord's
will, without His compassionate mercy and grace to sinners, there
would be no hope of salvation. But because the Lord does act
in all, therefore we are saved." That's the message of the book.
It's because God acts to save and therefore we are saved. The
Lord, it says in Deuteronomy 32, listen to these words, Deuteronomy
32 and verse 36. The Lord shall judge his people. I'm talking about his elect people. He shall judge his people and
repent himself for his servants. He will turn from the evil they
deserve and not bring it upon them. That's what it means. He
will repent himself for his servants. When he seeth that their power
is gone and that there is none shut up or left. The phrase to
be not none to be shut up or left means everyone's taken away
that could help. Let's say, think about our own
country, for example. God has designed the government.
What does it say in scripture in 1 Peter and in Romans 13? The government is put in place
by God to punish evildoers and to reward the good. Is our government
doing that? To the degree they are, they
are fulfilling that purpose. But to the degree they are twisting
their God-given place of authority for their own benefit or for
the benefit of wickedness in this world, they are failing
to do what God has said to do. And therefore we find that God
has taken away all of the, in this country, He's taken away
pretty much all of the protection over his people from the criminal
intent of wicked men, and women for that matter. And so all of
our power is gone in that regard. And there's none in that structure,
that God-given structure to help us. That's where we are in this
world today. And so there's none shut up or
left. None of God's people are there, so what are we left to? Well, it says here that when
that's the case, God will turn himself from the evil for his
servants' sake. He will turn himself from that
evil that we deserve, and he will save us, which means he
will save us for Christ's sake. So that's Deuteronomy 32, 36.
You can look at that in your own time. God's saving mercy
and grace are declared to us, but the fact is, in our experience,
They are often not seen with clarity until all of our own
power is gone. That's the way it is. When we're
weak, that's when we cry. I was just helping Denise's parents
the other day and I couldn't do whatever I needed to do. And
I thought, Lord, I can't do this, but I don't know what I'm gonna
do if I don't get it done. And the Lord graciously helped
me get through it, so I was thankful for that. That's just the way
we are. Until we're facing an impasse, we won't cry. And Psalm 107 is all about that. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for his goodness. for his marvelous works to the children
of men. Now in Jonah chapter 4 we read of Jonah's reaction
to God's mercy when the Lord spared the Ninevites. Jonah preached
to them by the will and the command of the Lord. And Jonah was exceedingly
displeased, it says in verse one. He was exceedingly angry
or displeased. And he was very angry, very strong
words because, and why? He was angry at the Lord because
the Lord did not destroy Nineveh as Jonah preached, but he actually
spared them. This is an amazing thing. This
is what angered Jonah. Look at verse 10. God saw their
works, the people of Nineveh, that they turned from their evil
way, and God repented of the evil that he said that he would
do to them, and he did it not. We want to think about this tonight
a little bit. God repented of the evil that
he had said he would do to them. If he did not thus repent, if
he didn't repent in this way, if he did not withhold from Nineveh
the judgment that they deserved, but in place of that judgment,
if he did not give them life, then neither they nor we ourselves
could be saved, for our wickedness is seen in them and in Jonah."
Think about that. What we see here, the wickedness
of Nineveh, the wickedness of Jonah, the wickedness of all
the people in this book and throughout scripture. It's just a reflection
of ourselves. And if the Lord didn't turn from the evil that
he and his justice should bring upon us, then we also would not
be spared, just like they. Are we not worse than the Ninevites?
Because we have had the gospel preached to us day after day,
year after year. We've grown up in a nation and
have had the privilege of hearing the gospel. How many years? And
our hearts tend to be so unresponsive in hardness of our own pride
and self complacency. What we're to see here is that
we are every bit as hateful as Jonah. who opposed God for saving
the people of Nineveh, since we ourselves desire judgment
on others when we ourselves are spared from eternal judgment.
Isn't that true? Our natural selves want others
to be judged, because we see their wickedness. We think the
Lord needs to judge them. And this was the same attitude
of the Pharisees in Jesus' day. Had not God the Father sent His
Son, and had not the Lord Jesus come to save sinners, then no
one would be saved. No one could be saved. So see
the reaction of the Pharisees to Christ healing a man with
a withered hand on the Sabbath day. It says in Mark chapter
3 that the Pharisees preferred death to life. They preferred
shame shaming a man to comforting him, condemnation to justification. They did not care about the law
of God or the righteousness of God or the justice of God. They
only cared about justifying themselves before men and to do so at the
expense of others. They preferred to leave a man's
withered hand as it was because it was a Sabbath day rather than
that the Lord Jesus Christ would heal that man. They would rather leave a man
with a withered hand because they held a legalistic view of
the Sabbath day. But Jesus said this to them in
Mark chapter 3 verses 4 and 5. Is it lawful to do good on the
Sabbath days or to do evil? Is it lawful to save a life or
to kill? The Pharisees would not answer
him. And when he looked around about
them with anger, it says, being grieved for the hardness of their
hearts, he said to the men, stretch forth your hand. He stretched
it out and his hand was restored just like the other. Oh, that
the Lord would be so gracious to us to turn us to Christ in
whom alone we are saved and given life from the dead, even eternal
life when we were under the condemnation of eternal death. Now I want
you to think about that just a little bit here. The Pharisees
opposed Christ healing a man because it was a Sabbath day.
And I use that term legalist. What is a legalist? What is a
legalist? Well, a legalist is somebody
who professes to honor the law. They say, we want to uphold the
law. So in the name of upholding the
law, they do what they do. They have this attitude of holding
everybody accountable to the law because they think the law
is so good. But do you know that a legalist is actually against
the law? There's a word for that. It's
called antinomianism. Nomi, nomian means law and anti
means against law. So they were, a legalist is actually
against the law and here's why. Because a legalist can't take
the law as it's written. They have to add to it or modify
it or replace God's law and most of all they want to replace God
as the judge so that they can insert instead man's traditions
and insert themselves as the judge. So a legalist has no interest
in God's righteousness because they refuse to submit to Christ's
righteousness, whose righteousness alone is the righteousness of
God, and whose righteousness alone is provided by God for
his people, and whose righteousness alone is accepted by God for
his people. So here's what a legalist will
do. You've heard this phrase before. A legalist will cut off
his nose to spite his face. Have you ever thought about that
phrase before? In other words, out of extreme pride, motivated
by his hatred for another, he injures himself more in the process
of judging others. If a man set his neighbor's car
on fire because he hated his neighbor, but when he started
the fire, he actually not only burned down the neighbor's car,
but he burned his own house and his own cars and all that he
had, then his hatred against his neighbor would result in
a greater damage to himself So not only in the process of hating
his neighbor, he lost everything he had and he was put to open
shame for his envy and his vengeance and his hatred. So he proved
by that act that he hated, he had spite against his own face. He thought to cut off his brother's
nose, a horribly cruel and vengeful act, but ultimately he cut off
his own nose in a kind of a parable, a comparison, showing that his
hatred for his neighbor was truly and ultimately a hatred of himself
that brought judgment upon himself since his intemperate hatred
for his neighbor destroyed all that he had and put himself to
shame by it. So to cut off your nose in spite
of your face means to act so foolishly that you destroy yourself
while attempting to do your neighbor harm by revenge and temperate
rage or envy against him. Ultimately, unless our own sinful
thoughts and attitudes are borne away from the throne of God by
the substitute of God's providing, then we also will suffer the
judgment with which we judge others. Jesus said, Judge not
that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you
shall be judged, and with what measure you meet, it shall be
measured to you again. I don't want God to judge me
how I judge others, do you? I don't, because I'm a very bad
judge. But Jonah was like this. This
is what Jonah exhibited. He wanted God to destroy the
entire city, and yet God had just spared him, had just saved
him. Remember the prayer in chapter
2? He's crying out. Just reread it again. He says,
Jonah prayed to the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.
I cried by reason of my affliction to the Lord and he heard me.
Out of the belly of hell cried I and thou heardest my voice.
Thou hast cast me into the deep and the midst of the seas and
the floods compassed me about. All thy billows and thy waves
passed over me. I said, I'm cast out of thy sight. Yet will I look again toward
thy holy temple. What's he doing? He's in need
of mercy. And yet when God shows mercy to the Ninevites, He wants
them destroyed. He hates it, can't stand God's
mercy. What does this teach us? It teaches
us that if it were up to men, there would be no mercy. Even
a prophet. There's this exceedingly evil
tendency in us to oppose God's own holy character and His will
and His work because it says this in Romans 8, chapter 8,
verse 7 through 8, the carnal mind is enmity, hostility against
God for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be, so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
In our natural selves, in our flesh, We are the enemies of
God. Our mind is hostility. We're
opposed to him. Now the realization of this,
this fact about our natural selves, it should keep our faces in the
dust. And we should always be expecting that the Lord will
continuously be correcting us because we don't think right
by nature. So don't be surprised when your
pride is wounded by God's discovery of it. And don't be surprised
when your hypocrisy is discovered or your propensity to envy or
hate others in opposition to the saving mercy of God is discovered
to your shame. In your mind, you will feel it.
You'll feel that pain to realize that I oppose the God who saved
me in the way he saved me because of my attitude towards others. And so this tendency to oppose
God with hostility is not only exceeding the evil, but if left
to run its course, is an opposition to God's will, that would oppose
our own salvation, wouldn't it? Our wickedness is so great that
we will destroy ourselves. Hosea 13, 9 says, O Israel, thou
hast destroyed thyself. Our own thoughts and motives
and words and works are self-destroying. We naturally oppose our own salvation
because in the pride of our natural hearts we are legalists who want
to sit in the seat of judgment against others and to withhold
mercy and salvation from others because of their wickedness,
to make up rules for others that we cannot meet, and rules that
break the very law of God. And in all of this we show our
contempt for God's holy law like the Pharisees did. But in this
attitude, we prove ourselves unworthy of all mercy and unworthy
of our own salvation. And yet, yet, yet, here is grace. Though we have brought ourselves
under the condemnation of God for our sins and our evil hearts,
yet God's mercy and God's grace and his power to save are yet
unchanged. He saves, why? for His namesake. To continue the quote from Hosea
13, 9, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. And listen to these words here
from the book of Psalms, Psalm 106. I'm going to read the first
eight verses of Psalm 106. It says, praise ye the Lord.
Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. For His mercy
endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts
of the Lord? Who can show forth all His praise?
Blessed are they that keep judgment and that doeth righteousness
at all times. And then the psalmist pours forth
his cry to the Lord, because he knows the Lord is good. He
says, remember me, verse 4 of Psalm 106. Remember me, O Lord. with the favor that thou bearest
unto thy people. Oh, visit me with thy salvation,
that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in
the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance."
See his prayer? I know the Lord has mercy on
his people, his chosen, his elect, so give me that salvation. We
can pray that prayer with earnestness, can't we? That's a good prayer.
We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We
have done wickedly. Our fathers understood not thy
wonders in Egypt. They remembered not the multitude
of thy mercies, but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red
Sea. Nevertheless, even though they
forgot God who saved them and provoked him even at the sea
where he delivered them, Nevertheless, He saved them for His name's
sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known. He
regarded their affliction when He heard their cry, and He remembered
them He remembered for them His covenant, and He repented according
to the multitude of His mercies." That's Psalm 106, verses 1 through
8. God turned away from the judgment
that He should have brought on Israel in justice, and He dealt
with them according to His mercies. And so we are saved because God
has respect to His holy character, His name. The one reason why
the Lord saves us is because it is His nature and His character
to be both just and gracious, both true and merciful, and to
save when there is no cause found in us and no strength in us to
help Him, so that He acts according to His own goodness, by His own
power alone, and for His glory alone. So it says in 2 Timothy
2, the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto
all men, apt to teach, and patient in meekness, instructing those
that oppose themselves. That's what we are by nature.
If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth. That's what repentance is, being
turned from the error to the truth in faith. that they may
recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken
captive by him at his will." You see here, Jonah was opposed
to God and his ways. And yet he says this, God's ways
are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
He must teach us. He must humble us. He must convert
us. He must give us a new heart and
a new mind. He must give us the mind of Christ. And though we ourselves preach
the gospel like Jonah, though we do many good works, in all
of our works there is much sin. That's one thing you see here.
Jonah's best work to preach the gospel was mingled with great
sin, wasn't it? Therefore, we must be humbled
over and over. Our God and Savior must grant
repentance to us. As Job, our God must bring us
low before we will see how vile we are and how great God is in
His goodness, entirely unlike ourselves. We must live our lives
by faith, looking to Christ alone, for He alone is good, and He
alone is able to save, and we must expect that because we are
wrong-headed and proud, that we must be brought low in our
own eyes, and in the eyes of others too, so that we are enabled
to see the truth of what we are, and the truth of God's great
goodness in Christ to save us. Let me make a comment here. Innately,
innately, what we know by nature, each one of us knows something
about God's justice, don't we? These people understood about
God's justice in the book of Jonah. When they heard this word,
that God was going to overthrow their city in 40 days, innately
they knew that God would do what he said he would do, because
he is just. We innately know this, evidence
that we know this is seen by our lack of assurance of God's
mercy. We think, how could God be merciful
to me? Of course, if we consider ourselves
just ourselves, there is no reason. There's no reason, there's no
basis for God's mercy to be shown to us. There's no reason why
God would withhold from us the judgment we deserve, and so much
more. There is certainly no reason
why he would graciously give us spiritual blessings in Christ,
is there? And yet He Himself, notice, when
we were enemies, He reconciled us to Himself by the death of
His own dear Son. This is the lesson He must teach
us in our hearts. We cannot believe Him. We cannot
believe that He is merciful and gracious as He has been in Christ. Therefore, by this barrier of
unbelief in God's mercy and grace that's in Christ alone, we prove
that we know that God is just, Because we can't believe he'd
be so good to us. And yet in the gospel, it is
his justice and his righteousness that is made known. In the gospel.
Remember Romans chapter 1 verse 17? Because in it, the gospel,
the righteousness of God is revealed. In the Gospel, Christ fulfills
God's righteousness and satisfies His justice. Therefore, and only
on the basis of His redeeming blood, God is merciful and gracious
to us according to righteousness. He is gracious according to righteousness. This is such comfort. In the
gospel we learn our horrid wretchedness, and God's infinite justice and
righteousness, and God's unbelievable mercy and grace, and we are thus
humbled. We are brought low. By that same
wisdom outside of ourselves we are lifted up and taught that
Christ is the righteousness of God and God has been exceedingly
gracious in his kindness towards us by Jesus Christ and that his
ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts
and we learn both his ways and his thoughts in the one who is
God himself manifest in the flesh. So let us be humbled daily and
cry against our own thoughts and embrace with glad embrace
and trust the saving grace of God's thoughts in our Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is that Jonah was opposed
to the very salvation by which he himself was saved. Isn't that
amazing? Unless the Lord was gracious
to Jonah, unless he was gracious to Nineveh, no one would be saved. Amazing grace. In Job chapter
40, Job chapter 40 to show how God works in us, to bring us
low, to teach us that He is good, both in His righteousness and
justice, and also in His grace and mercy. Jonah chapter 40 verse
2 says, Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?
Are you arguing with God? Are you going to teach God? That's
what he's really saying here. He that reproveth God, let him
answer it. Then Job answered the Lord and
said, Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer thee? I will
lay my hand upon my mouth once I have spoken, but I will not
answer, yea, twice, but I will proceed no further. You see how
God humbled Job all that time he was opposed to understanding. He didn't understand why God
was, his hand was upon him, and he spoke against God. Sometimes
not, and sometimes against him. He thought, I'm righteous, why
would God do this? And so he spoke against him,
and the Lord had to show him, it's the Lord, it's the Lord,
it has to be right. And then also in Ezekiel chapter
36, it shows us that God has to give us his mind. It says
in Ezekiel 36, 24, I will take you from among the heathen and
gather you out of all countries, and I will bring you into your
own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you. and you
shall be clean. From all your filthiness and
from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I
give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give
you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you." That's
what we need. God's got to put his mind and
His Spirit in us, a heart of flesh, not a stony heart. That's
what we are. Our hearts are hard and proud
by nature and God has to take away that stony heart. The natural
man, according to 1 Corinthians 2, the natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him.
God's thoughts and ways are above us. Neither can he know them
because they are spiritually discerned. We need a spiritual
mind. But he that is spiritual judges
all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath
known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have
the mind of Christ. We see in Christ, we see how
God can be both just and justify the ungodly. Now, think about
this in Jonah chapter three, verse 10. It says that God repented,
God repented. And I want you to think about
this statement, God repented, and consider this, that this
is a display of huge repentance. Condescension. Huge, gracious
condescension. It said that God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the
evil that he had said he would do to them, and he did it not,
but it displeased Jonah exceedingly. Amazing. It displeased Jonah
because God turned. Now, as I said, this is great
condescension for God to repent. And are we so proud? Are we so
proud as to attempt to save our own face when our corrupt nature
is evident to others not to repent? God told Jonah to preach to the
people of Nineveh that he would destroy their city. And then
God did not do what he said by the preaching. He did not bring
destruction on Jonah, I'm sorry, on Nineveh as he told Jonah to
pronounce against them that he would. Instead, he has spared
the entire city. I want you to think about this
very carefully. Every man, according to scripture, is a liar. He says
in Romans 3, verse 4, let God be true, but every man a liar. And in Numbers 23, verse 19,
he is not a man. God is not a man that he should
repent. God doesn't change his mind.
So we need to think about this fact that God repented. Nothing
in all of the world is so certain, and nothing is unchanging, and
nothing is unfailing, except what? The Word of God. Jesus
said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word shall not pass
away. Heaven and earth will pass away,
but every jot and tittle of the law shall be fulfilled. God says
in Psalm 138 verse 2, Thou hast magnified thy word above thy
name. And yet here in Jonah chapter
3, here God did not do what he said he would do. Why? In order that he might save a
sinful people. Now isn't that condescension?
The one thing that God will not violate is his word. And yet here, God did not do
what he said. So we have to ask this question,
did God's word fail? If God didn't do what he said,
did his word fail? And the answer is, of course
not, no. It was no failure of his mercy,
was it? Because he showed mercy to those
he promised to destroy. So his mercy wasn't failing,
but he never promised them mercy, yet it didn't violate his character
of mercy. In fact, it displayed his glory
in his mercy. Nor was it any failure of his
justice. Why? Because he spared them through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Remember Romans chapter
three? This is the gospel. Sometimes
we don't realize this, but this is tremendous. This is why the
gospel is the revelation of the glory of God. Romans chapter
three, verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through,
there's the word, the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God
spared them with reference to the redeeming blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He says, I'll go on and read
this, being justified freely by His grace, that's God the
Father showing grace to us, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, that's the basis of our salvation, the redeeming blood
of Christ, that's how God can be just and justify us. Verse
25, whom God has set forth a propitiation, he is our propitiation through
faith in his blood. We receive the truth of what
God has done and said in Christ as all of our redemption and
our propitiation before God. And then it goes on, to declare
his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past. Amazing.
God's righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed because
of the blood of Christ through the forbearance of God to declare,
I say at this time, His righteousness that He might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. So He passed over the
sins of the Ninevites with reference to the blood of Christ. His word
didn't fail. not in His mercy nor in His justice,
because He sent His Son into the world. He goes on in Romans
3, where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law?
Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Our boasting is removed from
us because faith says, look what God has done in spite of my sin. Therefore, we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, not his
own law keeping, but Christ's. Is he then the God of the Jews
only? No. I'm sorry, is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not
of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seen
as one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and
the uncircumcision through faith. Verse 31 of Romans 3. Do we then
make void the law through faith? Do we set it aside? Do we nullify
it? Do we make it, well, we're just
gonna put that away, because no one could fulfill it. No,
God forbid, yay. We establish the law. Jesus said,
not one jot or tittle will go unfulfilled. How do we establish
the law? Well, we don't ourselves establish
it, but we agree in believing Christ, we agree with God in
His justice and His righteousness and His mercy and His grace.
This Lord Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's law. So
when God repented, what does it say? is saying he took, he
had mercy on the Ninevites according to his eternal purpose in Christ,
according to that ordained will that he would give the Ninevites
faith, Acts 13, 48, as many as were ordained to eternal life
believed, and therefore they were given faith by the redeeming
blood of Christ. God did not fail in his word. He said he would judge them.
He judged them. How? He judged them in Christ. and
he withheld his judgment from them and he gave them the reward
of Christ's righteousness. Amazing grace, isn't it? And
so we see this. Now, I want you to compare God's
repenting here with what Jesus did in Matthew chapter 15, because
when we see the Lord Jesus Christ, we see God, don't we? I want you to think about that
a little bit. When we look upon the Lord Jesus Christ as a man,
on this earth, in his life, in all of his words, in all of his
ways, as a man, we are looking at God. He is the revelation
of the Father. The word was made flesh and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.
Never a man lived like this man. Never a man spoke like this man.
The one man in all of history who did everything according
to God's holy character perfectly without missing it by even a
smidgen. So compare the way the Lord Jesus
dealt with this woman here in Matthew chapter 15. Let me read
it to you. Matthew 15 verse 21. Then Jesus
went thence and departed into the coast of Tyre and Sidon.
These were notoriously wicked cities. Notoriously cities God
judged in the Old Testament. Over and over God spoke of Tyre
being judged and Sidon. Verse 22, And behold, a woman
of Canaan, so it calls her out. She's a Canaanite. She came out
of those same coasts and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy
on me, O Lord, thou son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. She's troubled. She's constantly
tormented by this devil. But he answered her not a word.
And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for
she cries after us. First, the Lord himself ignored
her, or at least it seemed like he did. And then the disciples
interceded against her because she was crying after them. Verse
24, and then he, it says, but he answered and said, I am not
sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She clearly
was a Canaanite and he calls that out as a reason why I was
not sent for you. This is the third rebuke she
received from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, compare this with
God's word to Nineveh by Jonah. You would think that God would
have destroyed the city. Jonah went outside the city and he
sat down waiting for God to destroy it. Here, the disciples are saying,
Lord, get rid of her. She's crying after us. And he
said, I'm not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
And she heard that. And so what did she do? Verse
25. Then she came and she worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. She had nowhere else to go, did
she? But he answered and said, this is the fourth rebuke. It
is not right or not meet to take the children's bread and cast
it to dogs. Now, remember how many times
in Scripture someone prayed three times and the Lord didn't answer?
He said, no, no, no, and they said, okay, I guess that's it.
The Apostle Paul prayed three times to have the thorn in his
flesh removed, and the Lord said, no, my grace is sufficient for
you. That was it. But here, the Lord speaks four
times against this woman. First by ignoring, second by
the disciples interceding against her, third by saying, you're
not of Israel. And then this last one, I'm not
sent to the dogs. No, he didn't say that. He just
said, it's not right for me to take the children's bread and
give it to the dogs. And she said this, notice, truth,
Lord. Amen, Lord. Yet the dogs eat
the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Jesus answered
and said to her, O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee
even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole
from that very hour. So this woman, who was a Canaanite
from a notoriously wicked place, came to Jesus asking for mercy
for her daughter who was grievously troubled. She was pleading on
the compassion of Christ, and we know he's compassionate, but
the Lord didn't answer her, not a word. His disciples asked him
to send her away. She was troubling them, they
said. No word from Jesus. The disciples
prayed against her. It would seem by these things
that it was not God's will to save her. And when these things
were so, when he didn't speak to her and the disciples pleaded
against her, Jesus said, I'm not sent but to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel. Surely she must not be one of
God's elect. She must not be of Israel because
she was not physically from the nation. She was a condemned people. She was in a condemned nation,
a wicked nation. And was Jesus sent only to the
Jews? It would seem so by what he said. And she was not a Jew.
There was no hope for her in Christ. And so she came and she
worshipped him. And she said, Lord, help me.
But no help came at that time. She knew there was no help but
help in him. So she worshipped him. Her daughter
was grievously vexed by the devil. And but the Lord said, I'm not
going to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs. Not
only not of Israel, but the Lord Jesus, who came to save sinners,
he spoke directly to her and he compared her to a dog in an
analogy that since she was a dog, it would not be right to give
to her bread. It wasn't hard to understand,
in fact, It was a painful and open statement, now the fourth
time, to her desperate and pitiful condition, surely if there was
ever a needy, selfless, Helpless sinner, she was the one. She
was crying for a daughter. Why wouldn't the Lord save her
immediately? Why did he raise barriers to
her every plea? He said it was not right to give
the children's bread to dogs, so she therefore took her place,
the place the master assigned to her, and said, truth, Lord,
yet the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master's table.
And so to this, Jesus seems to take an entirely opposite attitude
towards her. It's as if up to this point he
discouraged her in every way, but she continued knowing that
her only hope was in him, and knowing that he could help her
daughter, that he would overthrow the power of Satan over her daughter,
and knowing he was full of compassion, she could not believe that he
would pass her by. that he would not have compassion
on her. So she argues from this God-given faith in him, in who
he is, the Savior and the salvation of the Lord, and she owns her
own shameful place, but in so doing, she gives testimony to
his goodness, as if to say, yes, I am a dog, and yet you are my
master, and little dogs eat crumbs from their master's table, and
so the implication was, just let a crumb fall. Out of the
riches of your mercy to me, the dog, though I am not of Israel,
though I am evidently not God's elect by all evidence, and worshipping
him and asking him, Lord help me, she put herself in his hand
and would not leave him but clung to him after four rejections. And thus, as God repented and
did not bring judgment on Nineveh that He pronounced by Jonah,
so we see in the Lord Jesus Christ that He turned. And in this case
of this woman, he showed himself to be both just and the justifier
of him which believeth in Jesus. This is the view, the God-given
view that faith holds to. God in Christ and our place in
him as our only and all-sufficient salvation. Though it seems to
us in our mind and in our circumstances, and in the words, even the words
of this book, though it seems to us that God has said to us,
no mercy, you are not my people. Yet we come to him by the blood
of Jesus to be justified before God for his righteousness and
not our own. That's the message here. God
turned and God did not visit them because he visited his son. Now, finally, I want to point
this out to you. In Jonah chapter four, and this
is just the first part, we're gonna spend more time on this
chapter next time. Notice in verse one, it displeased
Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed to
the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying
when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish,
for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger,
and of great kindness, and repentant 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. And the Lord said, doest thou
well to be angry? How patient God is with us in
our pride. God is right, we are wrong, and
yet we hold, like Jonah, to our way, and yet God reasons with
us. His pride was evident and open.
He was openly angry and displeased with God. Now, when all of his
sin is open and on the table, God patiently reasons with him
and says, is it right for you to be angry? Think about this,
Nineveh was a city of three days journey. Jonah had walked one
day into it, since he was spit out by the whale. And he had
announced to them that 40 days from then, Nineveh was gonna
be overthrown. After he preached, the people
didn't eat food or drink water. So they couldn't have been that
way very long before the Lord turned and repented and didn't
bring the judgment that he said he would do. They sat in sackcloth
and ashes without anything to eat or drink. So it had to only
be a few days, maybe two or three, that Jonah now, who had just
prayed out of the whale's belly, was now completely opposite,
displeased with the Lord and angry with the Lord. What does
this teach us? That we are fickle, that man is fickle. But God is
unchanging in all of His ways, in all of His grace. What a faithful
God we have. We, who are the Lord's own people,
those whom He has saved, even those who preach His Word, the
present speaker most of all included, we are a sinful and a fickle
and a changing people. And our salvation is not in our
own faithfulness, but our salvation is in Christ's faithfulness. 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse
13 says, if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot
deny himself. There is but one reason that
we are saved from beginning to end. If it had not been the Lord
who was on our side, from Psalm 124, if it had not been the Lord
who was on our side, that's the only reason, we would have remained
children of wrath, even as others. And what shall we then say to
these things? Romans chapter 8. If God be for us, who can
be against us? He that spared not his own son,
which he did before we were born, but delivered him up for us all,
how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, ye rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also makes intercession for us. Jonah was not the advocate. Jonah
was not the mediator who made intercession to God for Nineveh.
Jonah was a mere man. And he portrays a mere man in
his attitude towards God and towards Nineveh. But though God
uses sinful men, he is not limited by their weakness or their sins. His grace alone is sufficient
to save. In Jonah, we see the truth doubled. that salvation is of the Lord. It is from the Lord in its inception,
in its origin. It is from the Lord in its purpose.
It is from the Lord in its provision. It is from the Lord in its performance. When Christ gave himself for
our sins, it is from the Lord in its application to us. when
God operates in us to give us faith by His Spirit under the
hearing of the gospel. And it is from the Lord in His
preservation, and in His completion, and in our perfection in Christ. It is from the Lord alone in
all these, so that the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. Isaiah chapter two, verse 11,
and I'll close with this. the lofty looks of man shall
be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and
the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. when it's all said
and done in the matter of our salvation and blessing, and all
that led up to it, and all that followed after it, all that accomplished
it, and all from which we were kept and preserved and presented
in the very presence of God in His glory with exceeding joy,
the Lord alone will be exalted. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you
that even though Jonah and we ourselves are sinful and oppose
the very salvation that we trust and proclaim in the salvation
of our souls and in the salvation of your people, our nature, our
sinful nature, is so sinful, it's utterly sinful, and it's
so intertwined with what we are, and yet you have given us this
grace by your Spirit to see in Christ both your justice and
righteousness, your truth and your mercy and grace, utterly
fulfilled in all of their glory. so that we see you magnified
in our Savior. We find in Him alone all of the
performance that you require from us and the satisfaction
to your justice and your wrath for our sins. So we come to you
by Him. We look to Him in coming to you
and so come openly not concealing what we are, but owning it, though
it stings our mind, and yet we can't truly understand it all,
but we take you for your Word, we take you to fulfill your Word,
that you have, in mercy and grace, in truth and justice, fulfilled
all in our Savior for us. And there we are. Left alone
with the Lord Jesus, we pray, Lord Jesus, save us. Save us
for your name's sake. We have no plea, no one else
to go to, no one else to trust, and certainly no one else is
worthy of all of our worship and praise. In your name we pray,
and we ask, Lord, again, that you would be with these who are
sick, that we love and think about, and we pray you'd strengthen
them for Christ's sake.