back to index2021-1-31 Ungracious Representatives of a Gracious God
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Father, this morning we ask that you would feed your sheep and that as you feed us that 00:00:14.200 |
we would chew well, digest well, and that your Word would bear fruit in our lives for 00:00:23.520 |
And I pray that you would just hide me behind the pulpit so you would speak and that for 00:00:31.520 |
us that all of our hearts really would be fertile and we would take heed to what you 00:00:37.000 |
say and that we would respond appropriately in worship and gratitude and in faithfulness. 00:00:48.080 |
Our text this morning is going to come from Jonah 4, 1 through 11. 00:00:56.200 |
I'll give you a couple seconds to kind of flip there. 00:01:08.640 |
But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 00:01:13.680 |
He prayed to the Lord and said, "Please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still 00:01:22.160 |
Therefore in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious 00:01:26.600 |
and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and one who relents concerning 00:01:33.400 |
Therefore, now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." 00:01:40.960 |
The Lord said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?" 00:01:44.640 |
Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. 00:01:48.360 |
There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what 00:01:53.960 |
So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head 00:02:00.840 |
And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 00:02:03.880 |
The God appointed a worm and when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and 00:02:08.960 |
And when the sun came up, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down 00:02:13.000 |
on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die saying, "Death 00:02:22.180 |
Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" 00:02:26.440 |
And he said, "I have good reason to be angry even to death." 00:02:31.320 |
Then the Lord said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which 00:02:36.800 |
you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 00:02:41.720 |
Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 00:02:47.400 |
persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand as well as many 00:02:55.040 |
The story of Jonah and the great fish is one of the most famous stories in all the Old 00:03:00.520 |
Even if you hadn't grown up in the church, you may have already been familiar with the 00:03:06.640 |
It's by far the most familiar of all the prophetic books and it's one of the easier books of 00:03:11.680 |
the Old Testament to read since it pretty much reads and flows like a children's story. 00:03:17.380 |
It's not hard to understand why the story of Jonah is pretty much in every children's 00:03:22.500 |
It's a fun and very interesting story to tell. 00:03:26.360 |
Jonah is actually the only minor prophet mentioned even in the Quran. 00:03:30.720 |
He's called Dol Nun, which means an apostle of Allah, the one of the fish. 00:03:37.840 |
Jonah's prophecy was also very well known to the Jewish people in Jesus' day. 00:03:42.760 |
Jesus referenced the prophet Jonah on at least two separate occasions in predicting his death 00:03:49.360 |
The Jonah narrative would have a very clean and happy ending if it ended at chapter three, 00:03:55.880 |
but you have chapter four, all of which we just read. 00:04:00.920 |
Chapter four is different, as you may have noticed. 00:04:04.920 |
It's so jarringly different that it doesn't quite seem to fit the rest of the story. 00:04:11.640 |
Since Jonah's reaction doesn't quite line up with the positive moods of our children's 00:04:16.920 |
Bibles, many of them conveniently leave the details of chapter four out. 00:04:31.480 |
Chapter four simultaneously gives us insight into both the arrogance and the helplessness 00:04:38.440 |
I'm going to structure today's sermon in a way that it's hopefully easy for you to follow 00:04:52.400 |
What do we learn about mankind through Jonah's prophecy? 00:04:56.760 |
What do we learn about God through Jonah's prophecy? 00:05:00.200 |
For you guys who are scrambling to write all this out, the outline and all the references 00:05:09.360 |
He is referenced very briefly in 2 Kings 14.25. 00:05:17.360 |
He's referred to in passing when the exploits of an evil king are recounted. 00:05:22.960 |
"He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the sea of the 00:05:27.600 |
Arabah according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke through 00:05:32.320 |
his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was of Gath Hefer." 00:05:38.160 |
The he there at the beginning is King Jeroboam of the northern kingdom of Israel. 00:05:44.080 |
There are two King Jeroboams in the Old Testament, and they are both very significant. 00:05:49.320 |
They are both wicked kings of the rebellious northern kingdom of Israel, and they are not 00:05:54.080 |
related to one another, and their reigns are separated by about 150 years. 00:06:00.200 |
This one, this Jeroboam is a second one, so he is often called Jeroboam II, even though 00:06:08.440 |
The people of God at this time were in a civil war, and King Jeroboam reigned 41 years in 00:06:17.160 |
Before this Jeroboam became king, the nation had become very poor and was spiraling downward. 00:06:24.400 |
It was one of the darker times in the history of the north. 00:06:27.560 |
It says in two verses later, in verse 27, that God saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, 00:06:36.400 |
During this wicked king's evil reign, the north enjoyed one of its most prosperous and 00:06:45.560 |
This was the golden age of Israel, and they went from hard times to prosperity, and who 00:06:53.240 |
was in Jeroboam's ears giving instruction is Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet of 00:07:01.080 |
So, Jonah spoke, Jeroboam listened, and we see that the territory of the northern kingdom 00:07:10.600 |
And now, outside of what we see in the book of Jonah, this is all we know about Jonah 00:07:17.640 |
But Jonah was a prominent figure in Jeroboam's reign, hence the mention, okay? 00:07:22.000 |
And we can assume that Jonah was instrumental in the growth and the restoration of the northern 00:07:28.320 |
The nation was very wealthy and very powerful, and it appeared on the surface, anyway, that 00:07:33.520 |
God was blessing rebellious Israel, and I assume Jonah was a big reason for this success. 00:07:43.000 |
And so, sometime during Jonah's ministry, he gets a preaching assignment from God. 00:07:51.400 |
The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, 00:07:56.720 |
the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me." 00:08:02.840 |
And Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 00:08:07.760 |
Now this mighty prophet doesn't look too good here in the opening verses of Jonah. 00:08:13.400 |
God tells him to preach to the Ninevites, and Jonah takes off completely in a different 00:08:18.160 |
And this prophet, the mouthpiece of God, rebels and goes against what God would have him do. 00:08:25.040 |
He literally tries to flee the command of God. 00:08:28.920 |
It's like God telling me to go to San Francisco, but I immediately get on a flight going to 00:08:33.680 |
Okay, so that's kind of geographically what you can think of. 00:08:37.400 |
Why would this Jonah, this man of God, do such a thing? 00:08:43.200 |
So we will look at the why of the disobedience a little bit later in the passage, but first, 00:08:47.680 |
I'd like for us to look at what happened to cause Jonah to be so angry in chapter 4. 00:08:53.920 |
The text says that he actually begged with all his soul to die. 00:09:03.680 |
So verse 1, "But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry." 00:09:11.160 |
So here in verse 1, this "it" gives Jonah great displeasure. 00:09:20.400 |
The word for displeasure in verse 1 is like "ra-ah." 00:09:27.760 |
And the word for angry, similar root, "ha-ra." 00:09:31.000 |
So basically, the feel of the verse reads like this. 00:09:34.320 |
Jonah was enraged by this evil, and he was raging with rage. 00:09:44.080 |
He's very mad, and because he's already mad, when God takes away a plant that Jonah was 00:09:54.600 |
You see in verse 8 and 9 that he begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better 00:10:01.640 |
Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" 00:10:06.160 |
And he said, "I have good reasoning to be angry even to death." 00:10:12.920 |
He is so angry, he begs with all his soul to die. 00:10:15.720 |
He is not just a little bit irritated with God's plan, he's out of his mind with rage. 00:10:23.600 |
What is the "it" that greatly displeased Jonah? 00:10:27.400 |
I'm going to walk you through some of the details of this story, most of which you likely 00:10:32.960 |
Chapter 1, against his will, Jonah is called to preach a message to the Ninevites. 00:10:38.960 |
He rebels against his call, he gets caught in a storm, and then he requests to be tossed 00:10:43.800 |
overboard because he knows that the storm is because of him. 00:10:47.600 |
He volunteers to be tossed to his death into the raging sea, and my guess is he was very 00:10:55.640 |
I think he really preferred to drown over preaching to the Ninevites. 00:11:06.080 |
He sends a fish, and the giant fish, often assumed to be a whale, sometimes referred 00:11:12.240 |
in scripture as a sea monster, so he's pretty big, swallows him up. 00:11:17.800 |
This poor dude is stuck in the stinky belly of the fish for three days, unable to die. 00:11:26.720 |
So chapter 2, we don't know exactly what brings about the change of heart, but most of chapter 00:11:33.680 |
So we see him calling out to God in prayer, and in his prayer, a pledge is made to fulfill 00:11:37.720 |
a vow, and the tone of this prayer is generally more pensive and thankful than upset. 00:11:44.520 |
So you kind of just assume, okay, he calmed down a little bit, which makes his anger in 00:11:58.840 |
God repeats the charge to Jonah to preach his word in the city, and this time, Jonah 00:12:04.560 |
He takes a one-day's walk into the heart of the city, and his message is summed up in 00:12:08.720 |
just a single sentence, only five words in the Hebrew. 00:12:13.600 |
He says, "Forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown." 00:12:16.800 |
The message translation actually says, "Nineveh will be smashed." 00:12:20.040 |
So that's a simple message, and what follows is comedy. 00:12:26.660 |
So Jonah 3, 5 through 8, "Then the people believed in God, and they called a fast and 00:12:31.040 |
put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. 00:12:34.600 |
And when the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe 00:12:38.920 |
from himself, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes. 00:12:43.160 |
He issued a proclamation, and it said, 'In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his 00:12:47.680 |
nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. 00:12:54.720 |
Do not let them eat or drink water, but both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, 00:13:00.480 |
and let men call on God earnestly, that each may turn from his wicked way and from the 00:13:11.520 |
The king decrees a citywide movement of repentance. 00:13:15.400 |
And they are so serious about showing God their repentance that they declare a fast 00:13:23.080 |
All the citizens are ordered to clothe themselves in sackcloth, and the king so desperately 00:13:27.260 |
wants to show God that they are repentant that he even decrees that the people put sackcloth 00:13:36.160 |
A Ninevite just running, trying to chase his sheep, trying to put sackcloth over their 00:13:50.560 |
And the children's Bibles make them look kind of like buffoons. 00:13:59.120 |
This would be funnier if it weren't the Assyrians we were reading about here, and if it weren't 00:14:06.040 |
Jonah, just walking into the center of Nineveh is like you or me walking into Pyongyang, 00:14:19.640 |
Assyria had been a nation that had been around for a long time, but in Jonah's time, it was 00:14:23.960 |
a growing empire, and it was very, very terrifying. 00:14:33.200 |
The Assyrians are a very cruel, brutal, and ruthless people. 00:14:36.720 |
So here's some facts about the Assyrians that don't appear in your children's Bibles. 00:14:40.520 |
One, with the people they conquered, they would skin them alive, then bind them, and 00:14:45.280 |
then as they're dying, hoist them up on a stake and light them on fire. 00:14:49.880 |
Two, they would decapitate children and send little skulls to the neighboring kingdoms 00:15:01.560 |
Leaders and leaders of conquered peoples would often be left alive to wander the streets, 00:15:07.080 |
but not before they had their noses, ears, fingers, toes they kept intact so they could 00:15:12.400 |
walk, and tongues, and very often, the genitals cut off, and the rulers are walking the streets. 00:15:23.960 |
Whoever they captured, it is well-documented that they put through psychological torture, 00:15:29.680 |
and women who were captured would be stripped naked and paraded in chains as the soldiers 00:15:36.700 |
So the Ninevites, who were in the capital of Assyria, were a violent and ruthless people. 00:15:43.520 |
So no wonder that Jonah the prophet ran the other way. 00:15:48.080 |
You see, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah had been 00:15:51.240 |
growing in disgust and fear of the Assyrian empire, and they believed that Assyria represented 00:16:02.640 |
Nineveh was a capital city of the feared and hated global power. 00:16:12.140 |
How did he survive just waltzing into the capital, and how did he make it out of there 00:16:21.120 |
If you look at the map, Nineveh is toward the right, northeast of the Mediterranean. 00:16:30.080 |
And though there are rivers aplenty around Nineveh, the ocean is quite a distance away. 00:16:37.340 |
Nineveh is not anywhere near an ocean, so if it was a whale, and there are whales in 00:16:41.180 |
the Mediterranean, this would be something completely abnormal for a whale to do. 00:16:51.560 |
It's not every day you see a giant fish/whale/sea monster swimming down a river. 00:16:59.660 |
So it doesn't help that Jonah doesn't give much detail in chapter three. 00:17:03.800 |
How are the events in chapter three even possible? 00:17:07.540 |
I have so many questions in my head, and I find it spiritually very annoying that the 00:17:15.340 |
And even the entire recorded portion of this sermon is only five Hebrew words. 00:17:21.580 |
I mean, when's the last time a preacher stood up on a pulpit, five words, done. 00:17:28.240 |
So my assumption is that he said more, but only the five Hebrew words of significance 00:17:38.240 |
So the whole book would be very difficult to believe if it weren't for the fact that 00:17:43.420 |
out of all the minor prophets, Jesus himself lends the most credibility to the events of 00:17:51.880 |
So here is a simple explanation of chapter three, one which every Jew in Jesus' day 00:17:58.160 |
In fact, when the Pharisees and the teachers of the law kept demanding a sign from Jesus, 00:18:03.480 |
Jesus responded with, "No sign will be given you except the sign of Jonah." 00:18:12.960 |
God sent Jonah in an utterly supernatural, miraculous way to preach his word. 00:18:22.240 |
And we'll get into a little bit more of this later. 00:18:24.560 |
God sent Jonah in an utterly supernatural, miraculous way to preach his word, and unthinkable, 00:18:36.040 |
A man surviving three days in the belly of a fish, unthinkable. 00:18:41.440 |
A man being vomited by a saltwater ocean fish onto the shore of a city bordering an ocean, 00:18:50.560 |
A man preaching doom and destruction, walking in and then out of the heart of one of the 00:18:57.200 |
wickedest empires in history, completely untouched and unharmed, unthinkable. 00:19:04.480 |
An entire city full of wicked people with a fearsome army, repenting of their wicked 00:19:14.840 |
This is the equivalent of me going into North Korea, which I've done twice, preaching a 00:19:20.720 |
warning of God's judgment, which I've never done, hence why I'm still alive, and Kim Jong-un 00:19:26.840 |
decreeing to everyone in Pyongyang, "Repent and turn to God." 00:19:32.740 |
If something like this happened, you'd assume I'd be ecstatic and dumbfounded. 00:19:38.320 |
"Ooh, the spirit of God is really moving in me powerfully. 00:19:50.480 |
I would probably write a book about how I was God's gift to the people in the North. 00:20:09.600 |
So as strange as the details in chapter three are, Jonah's response in chapter four is stranger. 00:20:15.120 |
Jonah did the absolute unthinkable and he's furious. 00:20:18.200 |
He's so angry that he begs with all of his soul to die. 00:20:27.400 |
Because God was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness. 00:20:35.520 |
And the Ninevites responded in repentance to his preaching. 00:20:38.880 |
Revival broke out and Jonah is upset and this is why. 00:20:43.840 |
He did not believe that the Assyrians were deserving of God's mercy. 00:20:54.040 |
Jonah did not like God's granting of mercy to these wicked, violent, uncircumcised Ninevites. 00:21:03.760 |
So Jonah is throwing a spiritual temper tantrum in essence saying like, "God, that is not 00:21:14.120 |
I believe that what we see in Hosea and Amos, contemporaries of Jonah, give us some insights 00:21:23.480 |
The book of Amos has a lot in there about the judgment that's to come to the north. 00:21:28.800 |
Amos, a sheep herder from the southern kingdom of Judah, enters into the north and preaches 00:21:36.020 |
doom and gloom in Israel about Israel's destruction. 00:21:43.040 |
"For behold, I am going to raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel, declares the 00:21:48.640 |
Lord God of hosts, and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of 00:21:56.520 |
So here, Amos just concludes four straight chapters on judgment on Israel. 00:22:02.800 |
And the entrance of Hamath and the Sea of Ereba are the same borders that are mentioned 00:22:06.360 |
in 2 Kings 14, the passage that I read to you early on describing Jonah. 00:22:11.920 |
"Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, 'Amos 00:22:20.040 |
has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. 00:22:29.760 |
Remember, one of the greatest kings in Israel's history, okay? 00:22:33.680 |
"Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile." 00:22:39.940 |
It's very unlikely that Jonah, who was in Jeroboam's service, it is very likely that 00:22:47.520 |
he was aware of what God was saying about the future of the Northern Kingdom. 00:22:51.640 |
Hosea, another contemporary, also explicitly and implicitly foretold the destruction of 00:23:01.960 |
So I don't doubt at all that Jonah knew and believed those prophecies to be true. 00:23:08.720 |
And so I'm pretty sure that Jonah knew what was coming, and he must have hated the fact 00:23:14.720 |
that God was demanding that he play a role in all of this. 00:23:20.200 |
Perhaps, like he did with Habakkuk in Habakkuk 1.1, God visibly showed Jonah his prophecy, 00:23:29.360 |
a picture of the violent and wicked Ninevites standing in judgment of God's chosen people, 00:23:37.800 |
The people you hate the most, the people you deem to be everything that God hates, he sees 00:23:48.920 |
Why else would he beg with all his soul to die? 00:23:57.900 |
Why would you judge Israel, your beloved people, and that at the hands of these vile and lawless 00:24:03.880 |
Why would you use me to preach to these wicked people so they would turn and then wipe us 00:24:15.200 |
So perhaps Jonah got a glimpse of not just the imminent future of the Assyrian judgment, 00:24:22.280 |
but the more eternal one, where the generation of Ninevites he's going to preach to permanently 00:24:29.440 |
Jesus speaks of this in one of the encounters with the Pharisees and tax collectors, Matthew 00:24:36.840 |
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so 00:24:41.640 |
will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 00:24:45.800 |
The sign of Jonah includes all of this, okay? 00:24:48.160 |
The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn 00:24:55.560 |
it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than 00:25:11.720 |
Can you imagine how Jonah would have felt had God visibly shown him this picture? 00:25:18.080 |
And Jonah knew that whenever God decreed or foretold something, that it would come to 00:25:22.960 |
The prophet Jonah knew that God's word could break even the most calloused hearts of stone, 00:25:27.960 |
and Jonah knew better than you and I would know that God's kindness was effectual and 00:25:34.040 |
that it would lead to repentance, and Jonah did not like that one single bit. 00:25:40.400 |
He prayed to the Lord and said, "Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in 00:25:48.480 |
Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are 00:25:54.400 |
a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness, and one 00:26:01.680 |
Therefore, now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." 00:26:07.640 |
So Jonah is taking issue here with the sovereignty and the omnipotence of God, and God's sovereignty 00:26:14.280 |
is a running theme in the entire book of Jonah. 00:26:17.360 |
In fact, God is the main character of the book of Jonah, not Jonah, okay? 00:26:22.200 |
And most of the significant verbs in the book of Jonah are all associated with God. 00:26:28.960 |
I'll give you an example here, some bunch of examples. 00:26:52.160 |
So God gives, God takes away, God moves, God causes, God stirs. 00:26:58.840 |
And in his sovereignty and power, God extends kindness. 00:27:02.760 |
And Jonah had a problem with God's choices here, of God's election. 00:27:10.400 |
Jonah does not have a problem with God being gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, 00:27:13.480 |
and abundant in loving kindness toward Israel. 00:27:17.440 |
He had a problem with God extending his mercy to those he personally deemed undeserving. 00:27:23.360 |
So after all, it was a covenant people of God who had been keeping the sacrifices and 00:27:26.680 |
ceremonies and festivals, superficially anyway. 00:27:29.900 |
It was a covenant people who had been given the promise of land, wealth, and riches. 00:27:34.680 |
It was a covenant people who had been religious and special and had been bound to the ways 00:27:44.940 |
To Jonah, and probably to all those to whom the prophet ministered, the Ninevites were 00:27:53.680 |
The Hebrews were in the right, all the Gentiles were in the wrong. 00:27:57.080 |
Hebrews deserve grace, all outside deserve wrath, especially those who did the things 00:28:04.360 |
And in Jonah here, we get a glimpse of the heart of judgmental, self-righteous, sinful 00:28:13.580 |
In many ways, Jonah is the prodigal son's older brother personified. 00:28:21.040 |
And there is an element of this in all of us. 00:28:26.700 |
There exists in every single corrupted and sin-tainted human being great arrogance, self-righteousness, 00:28:35.220 |
There exists in every single one of us an erroneous belief that there are people in 00:28:40.140 |
our lives and in our world who are more deserving of the wrath of God than we are. 00:28:48.340 |
There exists in every single one of us an erroneous belief that we are more deserving 00:28:53.140 |
of the grace of God than certain other folks. 00:28:57.760 |
We are in the right, others are in the wrong, and God should judge accordingly. 00:29:03.500 |
If you don't believe me, just go on social media. 00:29:07.300 |
So here's an important lesson we can learn from this little piece of biography of Jonah's 00:29:13.100 |
Be very careful whom you personally deem fit and unfit to receive the favor and the grace 00:29:22.820 |
What kinds of people, what tribes of people, what individuals can get your blood boiling? 00:29:32.160 |
It wouldn't sit well if God favored them over you, would it? 00:29:45.080 |
Did they deserve to be on the receiving end of the unbridled wrath and judgment of God? 00:29:51.320 |
Were the Hebrew people more deserving of the grace of God than the Assyrians? 00:29:58.460 |
Are people who lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape, oppress, and blaspheme deserving of 00:30:10.600 |
Are those who are racists, like real racists, drunkards, those who are for the aborting 00:30:16.040 |
of babies or pushing gay rights, those who traffic children for sex, who con hardworking 00:30:22.560 |
people for money, those who have personally injured and scarred you, are they deserving 00:30:33.160 |
Are people who go to church, who tithe, serve on the mission field, feed the poor, who believe 00:30:40.360 |
that the Bible is inerrant, are those kinds of people more deserving of the grace of God? 00:30:48.160 |
So, even Paul, the once super moral, all-star Jew, the Pharisee of Pharisees, I'd pick him 00:30:54.800 |
over Jonah in the Hebrew of the Year contest, okay? 00:30:57.280 |
So, even Paul includes himself and all the Jews throughout history as those deserving 00:31:06.320 |
Among them, we Jews, too, all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires 00:31:13.160 |
of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature created for wrath, children of wrath, 00:31:19.680 |
technon, spawn of wrath, objects on whom wrath is poured out from the day of conception, 00:31:30.680 |
So, verse three, we weren't only deserving of wrath, we were basically fully deserving 00:31:39.160 |
But it says in verse four, "But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love for 00:31:46.080 |
us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive with Christ. 00:31:56.920 |
So how fortunate that Jonah, someone like a spiritual mosquito, no purpose, no use. 00:32:13.000 |
How gracious and how fortunate for him, a spiritual mosquito, to serve a God who is 00:32:18.720 |
gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in love and kindness, one who relents 00:32:23.400 |
And yet, Jonah, a little spiritual mosquito, is griping to God that the spiritual cockroaches 00:32:29.120 |
over there are far less deserving of the mercy of God. 00:32:38.880 |
Nobody keeps termites, maggots, bedbugs, fleas, mosquitoes, roaches as pets. 00:32:45.040 |
If you did, please do not tell me because I would judge you. 00:32:55.640 |
Spiritual condescension and self-righteousness are very dangerous things. 00:33:01.760 |
Spiritual condescension and self-righteousness always results in the callousness of your 00:33:12.760 |
You cannot worship the Lord in spirit and in truth when you consider yourself a more 00:33:18.480 |
qualified worshiper than the guy in that other camp, in that other denomination, the guy 00:33:27.360 |
who votes for the other political party, the guy of that race, that nationality, that guy 00:33:37.760 |
If you believe yourself to be more worthy of worship than somebody else, be careful 00:33:49.920 |
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 00:33:54.660 |
You and I belong to what people would call a Bible church. 00:34:01.560 |
The purpose of a Bible church is that we would strive to correctly understand how much God 00:34:08.080 |
hates sin, correctly understand how much he loves a sinner, for in that paradox is like 00:34:16.520 |
We study his word so that we may know him and revere him and love him and help others 00:34:23.680 |
That we may truly know this God for whom we have been created, that we may know his heart, 00:34:28.360 |
that we may worship him in spirit and in truth. 00:34:32.240 |
And that's the point of the study of his word. 00:34:37.360 |
But in our self-righteous bent, if we're not careful, we start wielding the scriptures 00:34:45.240 |
to tell everyone else why they're wrong about everything. 00:34:52.640 |
You know what dangers exist for those in the Bible churches? 00:34:58.400 |
We can easily fall prey to the dangers of loving doctrine more than loving God. 00:35:03.800 |
We can easily fall prey to the dangers of loving the idea of Bible teaching without 00:35:11.000 |
We can easily fall prey to telling people why they're wrong, why they're not saved, 00:35:17.760 |
without grieving over their souls or having compassion on them. 00:35:33.040 |
Bible churches gone wrong produce dudes like Jonah. 00:35:39.440 |
Bible churches can ironically be full of biblically illiterate people who may know a little bit 00:35:45.820 |
about the word of God, but have very little understanding of the heart of God. 00:35:51.480 |
You can have superficially biblical people who are not led by the spirit of God, but 00:35:56.920 |
rather their own sense of spiritual superiority. 00:36:01.420 |
Churches like ours sometimes can attract or produce spiritual know-it-alls. 00:36:10.000 |
Oftentimes, biblically illiterate people who have dogmatic personalities can be drawn to 00:36:24.040 |
But something that you and I need to fully understand, true biblical literacy always 00:36:42.420 |
True biblical literacy always produces humility, terror, and love. 00:36:52.700 |
True biblical literacy always results in the building up of the church. 00:37:06.160 |
There can never be spiritual condescension or self-righteousness in someone who intimately 00:37:20.860 |
The more you know God, the more you realize, "I am a dust. 00:37:35.000 |
That's what the study of the word of God is supposed to do. 00:37:40.440 |
Each time Jesus referred to the sign of Jonah, do you know in what context he brought them 00:37:50.400 |
Always in his confrontations with the spiritually blind know-it-all Pharisees, tax collectors, 00:37:56.960 |
So when you see the attitude of spiritual condescension and self-righteousness growing 00:38:03.800 |
in your hearts, when you want to make that comment, when you want to write that post, 00:38:13.640 |
Jonah 4 is super interesting because Jonah is extremely happy about what? 00:38:25.480 |
Some people actually think that Jonah was partially digested, so he was bleached white in skin, 00:38:28.520 |
so the sun was actually heavy on his skin, so he was super miserable and uncomfortable, 00:38:34.520 |
So there's commentary notes on all that stuff. 00:38:36.720 |
I'm not even going to ... I mean, that's nothing substantial, but he's extremely happy about 00:38:52.080 |
It's a trivial, inconsequential thing that sprang up overnight and died overnight, and 00:38:56.920 |
he's extremely happy about it, but when God shows mercy and extends kindness to lost souls, 00:39:08.200 |
What kind of things get you upset and enraged with raging rage? 00:39:13.920 |
Sometimes I want to get off social media because it makes me rage with raging rage. 00:39:33.440 |
What is it that we learn about God through Jonah's prophecy? 00:39:35.840 |
And as I mentioned before, God is the main character of the book of Jonah, Jonah 4, 10 00:39:40.440 |
Then the Lord said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, in which 00:39:44.640 |
you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 00:39:48.720 |
Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, a great city in which there are more than 120,000 00:39:54.520 |
persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many 00:40:00.800 |
Basically we see God saying that the Ninevites, who are a numerous people, you don't need 00:40:09.160 |
They are so lost in their depravity and in their helplessness that they really do not 00:40:15.320 |
And they do not have a clue that they have no hope. 00:40:19.360 |
And the book of Jonah ends with that question. 00:40:22.560 |
I hate it when things end with a question because you almost want to answer it. 00:40:26.200 |
So if verse 12 was there and I actually got to write it in there, which is judgment according 00:40:31.040 |
to the scripture, you're not supposed to add. 00:40:32.600 |
But if I could, I would say, "Absolutely not. 00:40:40.840 |
There are only two books of the Bible that end with a question. 00:40:49.600 |
They are like the book ends of God's dealing with Assyria. 00:40:52.840 |
The book of Jonah is about God extending grace to Assyria. 00:40:55.840 |
The book of Nahum, which also ends with a question, is about Assyria's utter destruction. 00:41:01.320 |
So it doesn't seem that Assyria's repentance, that it was long-lived. 00:41:07.180 |
It doesn't quite get passed down to future generations. 00:41:10.000 |
So basically, Nahum got to write 120 years later what Jonah would have loved to have 00:41:16.720 |
Jonah is going to be absolutely and literally wiped out. 00:41:27.400 |
If you get all your theology and ecclesiology from only Jonah, you may end up with some 00:41:37.480 |
God will always be gracious and tolerant towards sinful people. 00:41:42.200 |
If you only study Jonah, oh, God is really a God of compassion, slow to anger. 00:41:49.280 |
Oh, yeah, we shouldn't preach strongly about sin because we're sinful. 00:41:59.980 |
The book of Nahum, like I said, is full of wrath, destruction, because of God's hatred 00:42:16.060 |
It's that God's kindness has led you to repentance, that's led you to faith, not your lovability. 00:42:25.040 |
And you're in a world full of people that don't know this. 00:42:31.320 |
So when non-Christians say funny stuff, they don't know they're right or they're left, 00:42:39.060 |
When people in the church in their immaturity say silly stuff, love on them. 00:42:48.520 |
So let's look at the question that the book of Jonah ends with. 00:43:04.920 |
What's so truly amazing is that holy, holy, holy God has grace. 00:43:15.640 |
Ephesians 2.4, "But God," remember we were all technon of wrath, okay? 00:43:20.320 |
"But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when 00:43:28.720 |
we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have 00:43:34.800 |
been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places 00:43:40.480 |
in Christ Jesus, the mosquito has become an heir, so that in the ages to come he might 00:43:47.760 |
show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 00:43:54.960 |
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift," 00:44:01.960 |
1 Corinthians 4 says, "so then we're then as boasting." 00:44:04.040 |
Okay, so it is a gift, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 00:44:10.680 |
The sign of Jonah has come, the word was made flesh, he died on the cross, was raised to 00:44:14.960 |
life on the third day, and you and I have been saved supernaturally, miraculously, heart 00:44:21.220 |
of stone turned into heart of flesh, completely by grace. 00:44:26.880 |
And let us respond appropriately in humility, holy terror, and compassionate love. 00:44:42.960 |
In humility, awe, reverence, and terror, and compassionate love, so that others around 00:44:53.400 |
you can respond in the same way toward our great creator. 00:44:58.720 |
Ephesians 2 ends, or the next verse says this, and it's not up there, but I'll read it for 00:45:06.320 |
Verse 10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God 00:45:17.080 |
prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. 00:45:24.240 |
May your feeding off of his word, as you meditate on a day and night, as you are like a tree 00:45:31.800 |
planted by streams of water, and as you are getting ready to see your fruit being born 00:45:38.720 |
in season, as you are feeding, may that always cause you to be humble, healthily fearful 00:45:50.120 |
of the holiness of God, and filled with compassion." 00:46:05.640 |
With humility, with hatred towards sin and terror at the holiness of God, but by your 00:46:14.640 |
great love for each other and for those on the outside. 00:46:20.080 |
For by your love, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. 00:46:27.640 |
May we truly be a biblically literate church where we are humble, terrified, and super 00:46:34.560 |
good at lovingly, warmly speaking the truth, mourning with those who mourn, rejoicing with 00:46:44.640 |
those who rejoice, being the hands and the feet of Christ to his glory. 00:46:53.400 |
Don't be a spiritual Jonah who knows a lot about God, but it seems he's failed to know 00:47:03.200 |
And may God bless fruit, or bless us and bear fruit in our church in his time as we grow 00:47:20.040 |
When we're not feeding, when we're left to our own thoughts and devices, we end up becoming 00:47:25.540 |
either helpless and hopeless or arrogant and haughty. 00:47:29.200 |
But would you speak daily into our lives and cause us to understand the gift of eternal 00:47:36.720 |
life, to appreciate grace, and to respond to those around us in and outside of the church