Our thoughts this morning are
drawn from the book of Jonah once again and particularly in
chapter four. My mind was drawn as I was preparing
these thoughts to the fourth verse of chapter four and the
question that the Lord God asked of Jonah. He said, then said the Lord,
dost thou well to be angry? The Lord Jesus Christ has been
revealed to us as the everlasting word of God. And as such, as
the everlasting word, It is the Lord that we hear speaking whenever
God speaks in the whole of Scripture. It is the Lord Jesus Christ in
His pre-incarnate capacity that is speaking here to Jonah. It is always the Lord, the everlasting
Word, that speaks to his people throughout the history of revelation. In John's Gospel, chapter one,
we read these words. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God. All things were made by him.
And without him was not anything made that was made. In him was
life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shined
in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John tells us in these opening
verses, this glorious introduction to his gospel account of the
Lord's life, that this One who speaks is the eternal Word. He is the unique the unique,
the soul and alone revelation of God amongst men. If we would
know anything of God, if we would know anything spiritual, if we
are able in any way to get beyond this brute animal existence of
our human life, it must be through the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
word. And John furthermore tells us
that the Lord Jesus Christ is himself the only creator. Nothing exists apart from his
creative word and power. And he is life. All life flows
from him. All physical life comes from
the Lord Jesus Christ, for He spoke and it came into existence. All plant life, all animal life,
all human life comes from Christ Himself. And all spiritual life
comes from the Lord Jesus. And He is light. All illumination All spiritual
understanding is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. But because of sin, because of
the fall, because of man's wickedness, because we have turned away from
God and pursued our own ends, our own lusts, our own desires,
because of sin, Man is separated from God. More, he is antagonistic
towards God. He is rebellious against God. And that everlasting word, which
is Christ, that creator of all things, that one who is life
and light, he speaks. but we cannot hear. We will not listen. We do whatever we can to drown
out the things that he says. We are like children who cup
our ears and run around shouting, la la la la la, because we won't
hear what the Lord Jesus Christ has to say. And we fill our lives
with everything. We pursue our own ends. We seek
our own desires. And we have no time for the things
of God. We have raised ourselves up to
that place where we think we are God. and we have no desire
after the things that God has revealed as his will and his
way. We deny the creator and we seek
an alternative narrative to explain and describe everything we see
around us. We destroy what he has made. We deface it. We usurp his authority. We assume that authority to ourselves. Authority that he claims is his,
for he is life. And we usurp that authority. And we say that we have authority
for life and we have authority for death. And we exploit one and we inflict
the other. Oh, what pain. How many tears. What suffering, what loss of
life we have caused in this world. Can we begin to conceive of all
of the hurt that this world has experienced down through the
years for that simple rejection of God? because we say, there's
another way, there's a better way, there's my way. And so mankind
has proven himself to be at enmity against God. And in all this,
we confirm John's testimony concerning our rejection of Christ. He says
in verse five of chapter one, the light The light shineth in
darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. You see, we're in darkness
and we do not comprehend the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not
comprehend all that he has done and all that he has said. We
do not, we cannot, we will not understand Christ. We do not
believe Christ. We cannot believe Christ. We
will not believe Christ. We do not, we cannot, we will
not trust in him. Men talk about the Lord Jesus
Christ, they celebrate him, they go through the form of worship
and approach to him. He's become a cultural part of
our life here in our Western world. We grow up with the language,
we hear the vocabulary, we buy into the idea, the notion. Because essentially, having been
created in the image of God, we are religious creatures. And we want the insurance, we
like the idea, we just don't want it on God's terms. And so
we act and we serve and we study and we even preach about the
Lord Jesus Christ. But the light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And it takes a work of
grace and mercy. It takes a transcendent, divine,
sovereign, powerful work in the heart of an individual to bring
that person into the experience of God's grace. Now, I don't
know your hearts. I appreciate your faithfulness
at coming along to these services. I appreciate the fellowship that
we have together and the gospel and the things that are said
and done. I appreciate the lengths to which you have gone to establish
this witness here in the town and maintain a gospel testimony
from this pulpit. And we are united, I trust, in
our labours towards the end of glorifying the name of Christ
in these matters. But I don't know your heart,
and you don't know mine, in any way that we can understand one
another. And I say this, that the testimony
of the world is that men and women can replicate spiritual
language, spiritual activities, We were hearing the other day,
one of our sisters, what's the most important thing in life
is are you ready to stand in the judgment seat? Are you ready
to stand before God? Because that's the question.
The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth
it not. Until the Lord Jesus Christ quickens,
until He confronts, until He converts a sinner, all our labours,
all our works, all our words, all our studies, all our desires
and our aspirations and our hopes, they don't amount to anything
until the Lord Jesus Christ opens our heart and pours in that life. We do not know Him. If he opens
our eyes and our ears and our hearts and our souls to know
him, we are blessed amongst men and women. I say we are the envy
of millions. We are favoured in all eternity. And I want to say these things
because I want to stress how far above us Christ is and how
far beneath him we are. How prone we are to presume that
all is well with our souls. You know, The case is made easily
for those who are thoughtless about these matters, that they
have no interest in the things of God. But I want us to be clear
in our own hearts that even where we have an interest in the things
of God, that there is a truth and a reality, a vitality in
that experience of grace. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness. This story of Jonah has caused
me quite a bit of concern as I've been thinking about my preparation
here. I have not found it easy to preach
from this fourth chapter of Jonah. And it is a passage which is
really very strange in the context of the scripture and the revelation
that God has given us of himself. And I want to speak to you this
morning about this man, and I want to just emphasize that the context
and the backdrop in which we read of this man and know of
this man is as one who is one of God's elect, a believer in God. Here is a
man who knows God. Here is a man who knows the Lord
Jesus Christ. Let us not doubt that. We have
read his prayer in chapter two. We have seen his testimony there. And this morning, I trust I'm
speaking to the Lord's elect. Hear amongst us that there are
those that are the Lord's true people. And I desire to use Jonah
as an example to teach us all. I believe this man is a dear
brother in Christ. I believe he is an elect child
of God. I believe he is a blessed prophet
of God. And I believe he tells us this
story, this personal testimony of himself as an object lesson
against the presumptuousness of the Lord's own people. And we may be children of God,
just like Jonah. We may have been blessed by a
deliverance from our sins, just like Jonah. We may have been
saved from the depths of hell, just like Jonah, and been employed
in the service of God. We may have ministered. We may
have been called to preach the gospel, instrumental in the salvation
of souls, useful in the ministry of the Lord's people and in his
church. And yet we may be full of prejudice,
preconceptions, pride, conceit, and of a rebellious heart. And I struggle, I struggle to
see that. Now, religious people, they may
mock and self-righteous might contend and they say, that's
inconceivable, that's not right. We've been changed, we've been
altered, we've been made different. That's what conversion is all
about. Don't you understand conversion? Don't you understand the change
of heart, the change of mind, the change of will? And maybe
even some true believers will say, yeah, it can't be. It can't
be that we are as you describe us. Saints are converted men and
women and yet they say things and they
do things and they think things that are hideous. Perhaps we can imagine the most
hideous example of human depravity that is possible to us. And we think we're past that
and beyond that. I tell you, it would do us well
to remember that there but for the grace of God go I. There
is not a sin, there is not a prejudice, there is not a wickedness to
which we, even as the elect of God, cannot stoop. and don't
ever imagine that you are beyond sinning against the light that
you have been given. After we're finished looking
at Jonah this morning, I want each of us to be able to say,
oh to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, O take and seal
it. Seal it for thy courts above. Let me read in this chapter four
of the book of Jonah. I think we are reading a unique
incident. I can't find another passage
like this in the whole of Scripture. Now they say, there's an old
adage which says, hard cases make bad law. And what that means
is that you don't make laws based on the hard cases or the extreme
cases or the unusual cases because invariably your laws won't fit. You make your laws to fit the
common and then if you need to you deal with the hard cases
as exceptions. Well wise men and women Don't
build their doctrine on unusual cases or on the hard verses of
scripture. What we've found is that there
are many odd views and strange doctrines that have been developed
and based on people taking extreme views or odd verses and applying
them and making them into teachings and doctrines which are not supportable
by the rest of Scripture. So we are taking the broad teaching
of Scripture when we understand the ways of the Gospel. And yet,
and yet, here with this man, we have recorded for us something
which I think we ought to take cognisance of and something which
will teach our hearts. Is it rare? Yes. But I believe
it's an extreme example that the Lord has left in scripture
in order to provoke his people to honesty, humility and thanksgiving. Jonah's frank testimony here
in this passage ought to make us all reflect and consider. Jonah is annoyed at what most
preachers would find amazing and wonderful. Jonah has gone
to the city of Nineveh and he has preached there. He has brought
a warning of imminent destruction. And as we saw before, a warning
given by God is a call to repentance. More than annoyed, Jonah is angry. He is angry that these people
have repented of their sins and found deliverance and salvation
with God. Tens, hundreds of thousands of
people. This whole city, we spent time
on it last week reflecting upon the fact that here was a whole
city that could cry out before God. Who can tell if God will
turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we
perish not? Here were people who, when the
word of truth, when the word of God, when the message of the
Lord Jesus Christ came to them, they heard that word. and it
entered into their hearts and it entered into their souls and
they found deliverance and they found salvation with God. And Jonah was angry. He was livid
that they should find salvation. God commissioned this prophet
to warn Nineveh of impending judgment. and the people repented
at his word. They converted and they threw
themselves upon the mercy of God. Verse one of chapter four says,
but it displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was very angry. And Jonah's
anger is focused upon God's mercy. it's focused upon the fact that
these sinners have been converted. Now I wonder if this is a verse
that we ever could have expected to read in the Bible, that one
of God's prophets, one of God's ministers should be so afflicted with this
attitude that the last thing he wanted was to see men and
women converted. And what he really desired was
to see hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people
destroyed for their wickedness and their sin. Jonah goes on to reason with
God about this matter. He says, I knew this would happen. I knew that this is what was
going to be the outcome of me going to Nineveh. Not only did
I know that this is what was going to happen, that's the very
reason why I ran away to Tarsus. Why I didn't want to be involved
in this whole thing. I knew that judgment wouldn't
come on these people because I knew that you're really a gracious
God and you would repent of the evil, that you're full of mercy,
that you're slow to anger and of great kindness. Now, I don't know whether What
was behind Jonah's thoughts was that he was offended because
of his own honour, that here he had gone with a message and
now it wasn't going to happen, and he felt slighted because
of that. Maybe he thought that God's honor
was at stake, that God in his righteousness and in his holiness
should not have given these people another opportunity. He should
simply have blotted them off the face of the earth because
they're just wicked Gentiles and that's all they deserve. Or maybe It was something else,
his sense of justice, that why should these people go on doing
what they're doing? After all, they had been the
military power of the day, the empire. This is the epitome of
wickedness in the world. Why should they find peace with
God? Why should they find deliverance?
Justice demands that these people pay for their crimes. I don't know what it was that
triggered this thought in Jonah's mind. And in a sense, we're not
given the reason, we're simply given his response. And therefore the reason isn't
important, because if it had been important, it would have
been explained to us. But Jonah's reaction is revealed
to us. And what it shows is that there
are natural, fleshy inclinations that lie just beneath the surface
of God's chosen people. Believers can be obstinate people,
sulking people, self-justifying and petulant people. There is
a perversity even in the regenerate mind that says, I know better
than God. I would have done it differently.
I would have done it better. And even God's ministers even
preachers of the gospel, even those who have experienced God's
blessing, even those who have shared in fellowship with the
Lord's people, been part of his church, have known what it is
to see the power of God manifested in miraculous ways, they still
have this proneness to wander and this ability to plumb the
depths of human wickedness and attitudes that are contrary to
the things of God. I'm reminded of a conversation
that took place between the Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples.
Turn with me please to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16. I want to show you there. of a
conversation that took place between the Lord, his disciples,
and particularly with Peter. Look at verse 13. Matthew chapter 16, verse 13.
When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, he asked
his disciples, saying, whom do men say that I, the Son of Man,
am? And they said, some say that
thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or
one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom
say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus
answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged
he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus
the Christ. What a revelation Peter had,
and what a blessing was promised to that man on the back of that
revelation. Flesh and blood hasn't revealed
this to you, but my Father in heaven, you are blessed indeed,
Peter, because you have been taught and had these things revealed
to you. Verse 21. From that time forth
began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go
unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and the
chief priests and the scribes and be killed and be raised again
the third day. Then Peter took him and began
to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall
not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter,
Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art an offence unto me.
For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that
be of men. Now I don't know whether I'm
right in drawing some parallels between that passage and what
we see here in Jonah. But I tell you this, that I don't
think that the Lord spoke more seriously or with firmer words
to any Pharisee or scribe than he spoke to Peter that day. Get
thee behind me, Satan. You savour not the things that
be of the Spirit of God. Don't you get between me and
my people. Don't you get between me and
my church. Don't you get between me and
my work. Don't you get between me and
my love and the grace that I have for my people. He was blessed
because he had seen these things and yet just underneath the surface
was an attitude which says we can do it a different way. We
can do it differently, Lord. We can gather these people, we
can form a movement, we can establish a kingdom here upon earth and
we'll reign together. Wouldn't that be a better way
of doing it? What a contradiction, what a
contradiction exists in the heart of every saint. We are flesh
and we are spirit. In our minds, we consent to the
will of the Lord. But with our flesh, we want to
satisfy our own lusts and desires. How often do we get angry when
things don't go our way? What is that but displeasure
at how the Lord has done things? About what the Lord has provided. And yet we feel that a mistake
has been made. We feel that something has been
done wrongly. And we feel that we could have
done better if we had just had it left up to us to sort the
matter out. We get angry at the children.
And we get angry at our boss. And we get angry with the spouse.
And we get angry at the weather. And we get angry over traffic
and the economy and politicians and terrorists. Man, we get angry
at everything. We get angry at everything. If
it doesn't go our way, we get angry. And in Jonah 4 verse 4, then
said the Lord, dost thou well to be angry? You know, here's
a little thing. When I was a boy, my mother used
to say to me, when you feel yourself getting angry, count to 10. Did anybody ever say that to
you? Well, I've got an adaption for you. From now on in, when
you feel yourself getting angry, recite Jonah chapter four, verse
four to yourself. Just say quietly into your mind. Then saith the Lord, dost thou
well to be angry? Dost thou well to be angry? Let us ask ourselves that question
every time we feel anger rising in our heart. Why are you angry? Do you well to be angry? Who's
in control? Whose job is it to manage the
affairs of this world, the providences of life, the circumstances that
prevail in your life? Who's in control? I have got this idea that so
much of our Bible language and our Bible teaching and our Bible
thinking has been affected badly by free willism, by Arminian
doctrine, if you like. So much of what we read in scripture,
we immediately fall into a certain mindset of thinking about it,
as if to say, yeah, that's what that verse is talking about.
When if we really thought about it, we would say, you know what,
that's not what that verse is saying at all. And the whole
thing about belief and the whole thing about trusting the Lord
is a prime example of that. Free-willers, they call sinners
to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. They call them to believe in
God, to accept and receive the gospel call. They call it an
offer, an offer of salvation. They say, God's offering you
salvation and we want you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, I say most often they're stealing the children's portion.
Most often they're stealing the children's bread. It is we, God's
people, who are called to trust Him. It is we, God's people,
who are called to believe in Him. Faith in Christ, trusting him,
isn't something that happens at a point in life that we call
conversion, and then afterwards we're believers. If you think
that, then you've never struggled with unbelief. But the reality
is that the Lord's true people struggle with unbelief constantly. They are always lacking in trust. the events of our day, the troubles
that we face, the lack of calm that we feel, the problems we
encounter, the aspirations that we have, they are all a function
and a feature of a lack of trust in the Lord. Now, maybe you're saying, yeah,
but I've never wanted A whole city to be destroyed rather than
God to show mercy. I'm not as bad as Jonah. Well,
I say that may be true. Maybe this is a hard case to
make the point. But I tell you this, that the
point is well made nevertheless, because in our lives we are constantly
getting angry at God for the things that go on around about
us. And we lose comfort and we lose peace and we lose the joy
of the Lord for that very reason. We need to trust in our hearts
and in our minds what we read in the Word of God about His
sovereign control over all things. We need to believe that He is
accomplishing and achieving His purposes in every event that
transpires in this world and in our lives. We need to Be confident
that it's perfect what is going on in the world right now, because
this is how God is bringing his purpose of salvation for his
people to its right conclusion. We are to trust and believe in
all that Christ has done and all that he is doing and all
that he will do. And we are to testify that it
is very good. When the Lord Jesus Christ died
on the cross, he absolutely won the victory. And we need not
fear the battle that is going on, that it is going to be lost. We have no doubts about the end,
and therefore we should have no doubts about the means to
the end. It was wrong for Jonah to ask
to die because things appeared to be so bad. It was wrong for
him to blame God for his own misguided priorities. And it
is wrong when we become discouraged at the rise of sin in this world,
as if it's about to overwhelm us and suck us under. The lesson
of the Gurd taught the prophet that fact. Jonah mourned the
loss of a mere plant that had provided him with some shade
and protection from the sun and from an east wind. And yet the
larger work of the salvation of souls passed him by completely. His personal comfort was of greater
priority than the salvation of that city. Let us not become
immersed in the trivia of this world at the cost of the greater
picture of God delivering his church out from amongst the wicked
and the sinful. Did Jonah learn his lesson? Was
he a different man for this that had happened? I believe he was. And my reason for saying that
is that he wrote the book and he left this book as a standing
testimony of himself for all successive generations. It is,
as it were, his self-confession. It is, as it were, him telling
us, this is the kind of man that I was. I witnessed grace and
mercy from God in the lives of these Ninevites. I experienced
personal deliverance when I was taken from the depths of the
ocean in that whale's belly. I was recommissioned by God to
give me a second opportunity to go and fulfill this task of
preaching. And I was granted understanding
in God's ways of the purposes of his grace. And yet I held these thoughts
in my heart and my antagonism against God. Friends, we are
no different from Jonah. prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Susceptible to pride, yes, it
is true. Subject to self-justification
in the face of our mistakes and our faults. Guilty of uninformed
judgmental attitudes. God be merciful to me, a sinner. Our assumptions are skewed, our
understanding is limited, and the outcome is invariably that
we are angry with God because we don't see and understand his
ways in this world. Our joys are stolen, our peace
is disturbed, our faith is undermined, our usefulness in the church
of God is curtailed because we countenance these thoughts and
these ideas. We look to our own things and
we take our eyes off the Lord Jesus Christ and his sovereign
power. Jonah confessed, he said, I knew
that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and
of great kindness. And I say, Jonah, was that not
enough? Was that not enough to know the
Lord like that? Why harbour these thoughts, these
antagonisms, this anger against God? We have a gracious God whose
hand is still outstretched to sinners. We have a merciful God
who has dealt justly with sin by laying it upon the shoulders
of his own dear son and slaying him on behalf of the people that
he loved. We have a God who is slow to
anger, who is long-suffering, while the lost sheep of the house
of Israel are gathered in through the preaching of the gospel.
A God who is of great kindness, willing to protect, to preserve,
to deliver, and to save his church and his people. And if the world
will not listen but despise his so great salvation, well, we
have the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ himself that the
men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation. And they shall condemn it, because
they repented at the preaching of Jonas. And behold, a greater
than Jonas is here. Jonas was used by God despite
himself. Jonah was able to go in there
and preach a message and despite the complexity of that man's
thinking and the vagaries of his mind and the way in which
he conceived and interpreted the events that transpired, the
Lord was pleased to save his people from their sins. I think the lasting testimony
that we have of Jonah in the writing of this book and in the
personal witness that he gave, is to be remembered in the ninth
verse of the second chapter. I will sacrifice unto thee with
the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. We see some strange attitudes
in the person of Jonah, but let that testimony be the lasting
testimony of this child of God, this saint of Christ. And look,
look, there in glory, in the company of angels and saints
from all of the history of this world. There are the Ninevites
that repented at Jonah's preaching. There are the Ninevites who found
grace in the sight of God. And there is Jonah standing amongst
them, praising the Lord, his God. And he knows better now,
and we will know better in a day to come. Let us be wise. Let us look at these scriptures.
Let us see that salvation is of the Lord, that he is in control,
that the sovereign purposes of our King are being unfolded all
the days of our lives in the big things and in the little
things. And let us be careful not to
be angry. Sure, Jonah struggled. As do we over many and varied
things, but the will of God for the salvation of his people,
that will prevail. Amen.