back to indexBerean Community Church Sunday Service 1-31-2021
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Just a couple of announcements that I want to highlight for us this morning. 00:21:16.000 |
The first one is starting next week for you guys who are parents or 00:21:20.000 |
you know people who are coming and their child is four or five, 00:21:24.000 |
the nursery is actually going to go open back up. 00:21:27.000 |
So there is a registration that needs to take place. 00:21:31.000 |
And so please spread the word and if anything, 00:21:34.000 |
please do pray for our teachers and the children that are coming. 00:21:38.000 |
So our nursery is going to reopen and then our youth group and 00:21:42.000 |
our elementary department, it's as per usual. 00:21:45.000 |
So everyone's, whoever's able, they're physically here. 00:21:51.000 |
And also next Sunday, we actually are taking a communion together. 00:21:58.000 |
And so next week, we will be doing the Lord's Supper together. 00:22:02.000 |
So please do use this week to prepare your hearts. 00:22:05.000 |
If you are new and are visiting for the first time, 00:22:09.000 |
find someone with like a little lanyard and there is a table outside. 00:22:12.000 |
So if you do want to get plugged in to the church and find out more about Berean, 00:22:21.000 |
Where do I get my offering receipts for last year? 00:22:24.000 |
You ask them and they might end up referring you to one of the pastors, but whatever. 00:22:27.000 |
Just they're the first people that you want to talk to. 00:22:31.000 |
Well, we're going to take a time of offering. 00:22:33.000 |
For those of you guys who have been here, you know you can do it electronically. 00:22:37.000 |
Or if you have a physical offering, you can do it in the box in the back. 00:22:40.000 |
So after I pray, we're going to take a brief moment to do the offering 00:22:49.000 |
Father, we are very thankful this morning that you give us just the freedom 00:22:57.000 |
We do pray that as we just respond this morning to the preaching of your word 00:23:04.000 |
and just the fellowship of believers, that we would leave here just wanting more. 00:23:09.000 |
We would want more of you, that we would want more to be Christlike, 00:23:14.000 |
and that we would want to share you with those in our lives. 00:23:17.000 |
And we thank you, Lord, for all your provision. 00:23:19.000 |
We do pray that you would help us, whether in plenty or in want, 00:23:23.000 |
that you would teach us how to steward everything, every opportunity, every valuable, 00:23:28.000 |
every privilege, that we would steward those things well. 00:23:33.000 |
We pray that you really would guide our time this morning. 00:24:30.000 |
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's womb. 00:24:44.000 |
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains, 00:24:57.000 |
lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains. 00:25:10.000 |
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. 00:25:40.000 |
thy precious blood shall never lose its power. 00:25:50.000 |
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more, 00:26:03.000 |
be saved to sin no more, be saved to sin no more. 00:26:17.000 |
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. 00:26:42.000 |
I will whisper this peace, I will whisper this peace, 00:26:57.000 |
And in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. 00:27:24.000 |
And in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. 00:27:50.000 |
And in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. 00:32:53.000 |
Father, this morning we ask that you would feed your sheep, 00:32:57.000 |
and that as you feed us, that we would chew well, digest well, 00:33:03.000 |
and that your word would bear fruit in our lives for your glory, for our joy. 00:33:08.000 |
And I pray that you would just hide me behind the pulpit so you would speak, 00:33:15.000 |
and that for us, that all of our hearts really would be fertile, 00:33:23.000 |
and that we would respond appropriately in worship and gratitude and in faithfulness. 00:33:28.000 |
So we pray for your help this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. 00:33:32.000 |
Our text this morning is going to come from Jonah 4, 1 through 11. 00:33:38.000 |
Jonah chapter 4, verses 1 through 11. I'll give you a couple seconds to kind of flip there. 00:33:44.000 |
If you can't find it, it is on the screen. So, Jonah 4, 1 through 11. 00:33:53.000 |
"But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. 00:33:58.000 |
He prayed to the Lord and said, 'Please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? 00:34:06.000 |
Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, 00:34:12.000 |
slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 00:34:18.000 |
Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.' 00:34:25.000 |
The Lord said, 'Do you have good reason to be angry?' 00:34:29.000 |
Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. 00:34:32.000 |
There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. 00:34:38.000 |
So the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. 00:34:45.000 |
And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 00:34:48.000 |
But God appointed a worm, and when dawn came the next day, it attacked the plant and it withered. 00:34:53.000 |
And when the sun came up, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint, 00:35:00.000 |
and begged with all his soul to die, saying, 'Death is better to me than life.' 00:35:06.000 |
Then God said to Jonah, 'Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?' 00:35:10.000 |
And he said, 'I have good reason to be angry even to death.' 00:35:15.000 |
Then the Lord said, 'You had compassion on the plant, for which you did not work, 00:35:21.000 |
and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 00:35:26.000 |
Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons 00:35:32.000 |
who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?'" 00:35:39.000 |
The story of Jonah and the great fish is one of the most famous stories in all the Old Testament. 00:35:45.000 |
If you hadn't grown up in the church, you may have already been familiar with the story of Jonah. 00:35:51.000 |
It's by far the most familiar of all the prophetic books, and it's one of the easier books of the Old Testament to read, 00:35:57.000 |
since it pretty much reads and flows like a children's story. 00:36:01.000 |
It's not hard to understand why the story of Jonah is pretty much in every children's Bible. 00:36:06.000 |
It's a fun and very interesting story to tell. 00:36:10.000 |
Jonah is actually the only minor prophet mentioned even in the Quran. 00:36:15.000 |
He's called Dol Nun, which means an apostle of Allah, the one of the fish. 00:36:21.000 |
So Jonah's prophecy was also very well known to the Jewish people in Jesus' day. 00:36:27.000 |
Jesus referenced the prophet Jonah on at least two separate occasions in predicting his death and resurrection. 00:36:33.000 |
And the Jonah narrative would have a very clean and happy ending if it ended at chapter 3. 00:36:40.000 |
But you have chapter 4, all of which we just read. 00:36:45.000 |
Chapter 4 is different, as you may have noticed. 00:36:49.000 |
It's so jarringly different that it doesn't quite seem to fit the rest of the story. 00:36:55.000 |
And since Jonah's reaction doesn't quite line up with the positive moods of our children's Bibles, 00:37:02.000 |
many of them conveniently leave the details of chapter 4 out. 00:37:15.000 |
And chapter 4 simultaneously gives us insight into both the arrogance and the helplessness of man. 00:37:22.000 |
So I'm going to structure today's sermon in a way that it's hopefully easy for you to follow and track along. 00:37:36.000 |
What do we learn about mankind through Jonah's prophecy? 00:37:40.000 |
And what do we learn about God through Jonah's prophecy? 00:37:44.000 |
So for you guys who are scrambling to write all this out, the outline and all the references are on the app. 00:37:53.000 |
He is referenced very briefly in 2 Kings 14.25. 00:37:58.000 |
And the reference isn't even a direct reference. 00:38:01.000 |
He's referred to in passing when the exploits of an evil king are recounted. 00:38:07.000 |
"He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Araba, 00:38:12.000 |
according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, 00:38:15.000 |
which he spoke through his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-Hephaer." 00:38:22.000 |
So the "he" there at the beginning is King Jeroboam of the northern kingdom of Israel. 00:38:28.000 |
And there are two King Jeroboams in the Old Testament, and they are both very significant. 00:38:33.000 |
They are both wicked kings of the rebellious northern kingdom of Israel, 00:38:37.000 |
and they are not related to one another, and their reigns are separated by about 150 years. 00:38:47.000 |
So he is often called Jeroboam II, even though there is no relation to the first. 00:38:52.000 |
So the people of God at this time were in a civil war, 00:38:56.000 |
and King Jeroboam reigned 41 years in the northern kingdom. 00:39:01.000 |
And before this Jeroboam became king, the nation had become very poor and was spiraling downward. 00:39:08.000 |
And it was one of the darker times in the history of the north. 00:39:11.000 |
And it says in two verses later, in verse 27, 00:39:14.000 |
"The God saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash." 00:39:23.000 |
the north enjoyed one of its most prosperous and successful chapters in its history. 00:39:36.000 |
And who was in Jeroboam's ears giving instruction? 00:39:41.000 |
It was Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet of God. 00:39:48.000 |
and we see that the territory of the northern kingdom expanded and got restored. 00:39:53.000 |
And now outside of what we see in the book of Jonah, 00:40:00.000 |
But Jonah was a prominent figure in Jeroboam's reign, hence the mention. 00:40:05.000 |
And we can assume that Jonah was instrumental 00:40:08.000 |
in the growth and the restoration of the northern kingdom. 00:40:11.000 |
The nation was very wealthy and very powerful, 00:40:15.000 |
and it appeared on the surface anyway that God was blessing rebellious Israel. 00:40:20.000 |
And I assume Jonah was a big reason for this success. 00:40:35.000 |
The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, 00:40:39.000 |
"Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, 00:40:46.000 |
But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 00:40:51.000 |
Now this mighty prophet doesn't look too good here in the opening verses of Jonah. 00:40:59.000 |
and Jonah takes off completely in a different direction. 00:41:05.000 |
rebels and goes against what God would have him do. 00:41:08.000 |
He literally tries to flee the command of God. 00:41:12.000 |
It's like God telling me to go to San Francisco, 00:41:15.000 |
but I immediately get on a flight going to Hawaii. 00:41:17.000 |
So that's kind of geographically what you can think of. 00:41:20.000 |
Why would this Jonah, this man of God, do such a thing? 00:41:26.000 |
So we will look at the why of the disobedience a little bit later in the passage, 00:41:30.000 |
but first, I'd like for us to look at what happened to cause Jonah to be so angry in chapter 4. 00:41:37.000 |
The text says that he actually begged with all his soul to die. 00:41:47.000 |
So verse 1, "But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry." 00:41:54.000 |
So here in verse 1, this "it" gives Jonah great displeasure. 00:42:03.000 |
And the word for displeasure in verse 1 is like "ra-ah." 00:42:11.000 |
And the word for angry, similar root, "ha-ra." 00:42:14.000 |
So basically, the feel of the verse reads like this. 00:42:17.000 |
Jonah was enraged by this evil, and he was raging with rage. 00:42:27.000 |
He's very mad, and because he's already mad, when God takes away a plant that Jonah was using as a shade, 00:42:37.000 |
And you see in verse 8 and 9 that he begged with all his soul to die, saying, 00:42:45.000 |
Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" 00:42:50.000 |
And he said, "I have good reasoning to be angry even to death." 00:42:56.000 |
He is so angry, he begs with all his soul to die. 00:42:59.000 |
He is not just a little bit irritated with God's plan. 00:43:07.000 |
What is the "it" that greatly displeased Jonah? 00:43:11.000 |
So I'm going to walk you through some of the details of this story, most of which you likely already are familiar with. 00:43:16.000 |
Chapter 1, against his will, Jonah is called to preach a message to the Ninevites. 00:43:24.000 |
He gets caught in a storm, and then he requests to be tossed overboard because he knows that the storm is because of him. 00:43:31.000 |
He volunteers to be tossed to his death into the raging sea, and my guess is he was very glad to do this. 00:43:39.000 |
I think he really preferred to drown over preaching to the Ninevites. 00:43:51.000 |
And the giant fish, often assumed to be a whale, sometimes referred to in scripture as a sea monster, so he's pretty big, swallows him up. 00:44:01.000 |
And this poor dude is stuck in the stinky belly of the fish for three days, unable to die. 00:44:09.000 |
So chapter 2, we don't know exactly what brings about the change of heart, but most of chapter 2 is a prayer. 00:44:17.000 |
So we see him calling out to God in prayer, and in his prayer a pledge is made to fulfill a vow. 00:44:22.000 |
And the tone of this prayer is generally more pensive and thankful than upset. 00:44:28.000 |
So you kind of just assume, okay, he calmed down a little bit, which makes his anger in chapter 4 even more confusing. 00:44:42.000 |
God repeats the charge to Jonah to preach his word in the city, and this time Jonah obliges. 00:44:48.000 |
He takes a one-day's walk into the heart of the city, and his message is summed up in just a single sentence, only five words in the Hebrew. 00:44:56.000 |
"Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown." 00:45:00.000 |
The message translation actually says, "Nineveh will be smashed." 00:45:09.000 |
So Jonah 3, 5 through 8, "Then the people believed in God, and they called a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. 00:45:18.000 |
And when the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from himself, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes. 00:45:26.000 |
He issued a proclamation, and it said, 'In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. 00:45:40.000 |
But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and let men call on God earnestly, that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.'" 00:45:54.000 |
The king decrees a citywide movement of repentance. 00:45:58.000 |
And they are so serious about showing God their repentance that they declare a fast that applies even to all the animals. 00:46:05.000 |
All the citizens are ordered to clothe themselves in sackcloth, and the king so desperately wants to show God that they are repentant that he even decrees that the people put sackcloth on their animals, too. 00:46:19.000 |
Nineveh just running, trying to chase his sheep, trying to put sackcloth over their heads. 00:46:32.000 |
And the children's Bibles make them look kind of like buffoons. 00:46:40.000 |
This would be funnier if it weren't the Assyrians we were reading about here. 00:46:45.000 |
And if it weren't Nineveh we're talking about here. 00:46:48.000 |
Jonah just walking into the center of Nineveh is like you or me walking into Pyongyang, North Korea, and going completely untouched. 00:47:01.000 |
Assyria had been a nation that had been around for a long time, but in Jonah's time it was a growing empire, and it was very, very terrifying. 00:47:14.000 |
The Assyrians are a very cruel, brutal, and ruthless people. 00:47:19.000 |
So here's some facts about the Assyrians that don't appear in your children's Bibles. 00:47:23.000 |
One, with the people they conquered, they would skin them alive, then bind them, and then as they're dying, hoist them up on a stake and light them on fire. 00:47:32.000 |
Two, they would decapitate children and send little skulls to the neighboring kingdoms to intimidate and terrorize. 00:47:43.000 |
Rulers and leaders of conquered peoples would often be left alive to wander the streets. 00:47:49.000 |
But not before they had their noses, ears, fingers, toes they kept intact so they could walk, and tongues, and very often the genitals cut off. 00:48:05.000 |
Whoever they captured, it is well documented that they put through psychological torture. 00:48:11.000 |
And women who were captured would be stripped naked and paraded in chains as the soldiers prepared for the next battle. 00:48:19.000 |
So the Ninevites, who were in the capital of Assyria, were a violent and ruthless people. 00:48:26.000 |
So no wonder that Jonah the prophet ran the other way. 00:48:29.000 |
You see, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah had been growing in disgust and fear of the Assyrian empire. 00:48:38.000 |
And they believed that Assyria represented everything that God hated. 00:48:45.000 |
And Nineveh was the capital city of the feared and hated global power. 00:48:55.000 |
How did he survive just waltzing into the capital? 00:49:04.000 |
If you look at the map, Nineveh is toward the right, northeast of the Mediterranean. 00:49:13.000 |
And though there are rivers aplenty around Nineveh, the ocean is quite a distance away. 00:49:22.000 |
So if it was a whale, and there are whales in the Mediterranean, this would be something completely abnormal for a whale to do. 00:49:34.000 |
It's not every day you see a giant fish/whale/sea monster swimming down a river. 00:49:41.000 |
So it doesn't help that Jonah doesn't give much detail in chapter 3. 00:49:46.000 |
How are the events in chapter 3 even possible? 00:49:50.000 |
I have so many questions in my head, and I find it spiritually very annoying that the scriptures do not address this at all. 00:49:58.000 |
And even the entire recorded portion of this sermon is only 5 Hebrew words. 00:50:06.000 |
I mean, when's the last time a preacher stood up on a pulpit, 5 words, done. 00:50:12.000 |
So my assumption is that he said more, but only the 5 Hebrew words of significance were recorded here for the Jewish reader. 00:50:21.000 |
So the whole book would be very difficult to believe if it weren't for the fact that out of all the minor prophets, Jesus himself lends the most credibility to the events of Jonah. 00:50:34.000 |
So here is a simple explanation of chapter 3, one which every Jew in Jesus' day would have easily understood. 00:50:42.000 |
In fact, when the Pharisees and the teachers of the law kept demanding a sign from Jesus, Jesus responded with, "No sign will be given you except the sign of Jonah." 00:50:55.000 |
God sent Jonah in an utterly supernatural, miraculous way to preach his word. 00:51:04.000 |
We'll get into a little bit more of this later. 00:51:07.000 |
God sent Jonah in an utterly supernatural, miraculous way to preach his word, and unthinkable, unimaginable things happened. 00:51:18.000 |
A man surviving 3 days in the belly of a fish? 00:51:24.000 |
A man being vomited by a saltwater ocean fish onto the shore of a city bordering an ocean? 00:51:33.000 |
A man preaching doom and destruction walking in and then out of the heart of one of the wickedest empires in history? 00:51:47.000 |
An entire city full of wicked people with a fearsome army, repenting of their wicked ways? 00:51:57.000 |
This is the equivalent of me going into North Korea, which I've done twice, preaching a warning of God's judgment, which I've never done, hence why I'm still alive, 00:52:08.000 |
and Kim Jong Un decreeing to everyone in Pyongyang, "Repent and turn to God." 00:52:15.000 |
If something like this happened, you'd assume I'd be ecstatic and dumbfounded. 00:52:22.000 |
"Oh, the spirit of God is really moving in me powerfully. The whole city repented." 00:52:34.000 |
I would probably write a book about how I was God's gift to the people in the North. 00:52:42.000 |
But Jonah is raging with raging rage over it. 00:52:52.000 |
So as strange as the details in chapter 3 are, Jonah's response in chapter 4 is stranger. 00:52:58.000 |
Jonah did the absolute unthinkable and he's furious. 00:53:01.000 |
He's so angry that he begs with all of his soul to die. 00:53:10.000 |
Because God was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness. 00:53:18.000 |
And the Ninevites responded in repentance to his preaching. 00:53:22.000 |
Revival broke out and Jonah is upset and this is why. 00:53:26.000 |
He did not believe that the Assyrians were deserving of God's mercy. 00:53:37.000 |
Jonah did not like God's granting of mercy to these wicked, violent, uncircumcised Ninevites. 00:53:46.000 |
So Jonah is throwing a spiritual temper tantrum in essence saying like, "God, that is not fair." 00:53:57.000 |
I believe that what we see in Hosea and Amos, contemporaries of Jonah, give us some insights that are very helpful. 00:54:06.000 |
The book of Amos has a lot in there about the judgment that's to come to the north. 00:54:12.000 |
Amos, a sheep herder from the southern kingdom of Judah, enters into the north and preaches doom and gloom in Israel about Israel's destruction. 00:54:26.000 |
"For behold, I am going to raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel, declares the Lord God of hosts, 00:54:33.000 |
and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the Ereba." 00:54:39.000 |
So here Amos just concludes four straight chapters on judgment on Israel. 00:54:45.000 |
And the entrance of Hamath and the Sea of Ereba are the same borders that are mentioned in 2 Kings 14, 00:54:50.000 |
the passage that I read to you early on describing Jonah. 00:54:56.000 |
"Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, 00:55:02.000 |
'Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. 00:55:12.000 |
Remember, one of the greatest kings in Israel's history. 00:55:15.000 |
"Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile." 00:55:22.000 |
It's very unlikely that Jonah, who was in Jeroboam's service, 00:55:28.000 |
it is very likely that he was aware of what God was saying about the future of the northern kingdom. 00:55:34.000 |
Hosea, another contemporary, also explicitly and implicitly foretold the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians. 00:55:44.000 |
So I don't doubt at all that Jonah knew and believed those prophecies to be true. 00:55:51.000 |
And so I'm pretty sure that Jonah knew what was coming, 00:55:55.000 |
and he must have hated the fact that God was demanding that he play a role in all of this. 00:56:03.000 |
Perhaps, like he did with Habakkuk in Habakkuk 1.1, 00:56:12.000 |
a picture of the violent and wicked Ninevites standing in judgment of God's chosen people, the Hebrew race. 00:56:19.000 |
Can you imagine? The people you hate the most, the people you deem to be everything that God hates, 00:56:31.000 |
Why else would he beg with all his soul to die? 00:56:35.000 |
Not the Assyrians, no way. Why, God, would you grant mercy to Assyria? 00:56:40.000 |
Why would you judge Israel, your beloved people, and that at the hands of these vile and lawless Gentiles? 00:56:46.000 |
Why would you use me to preach to these wicked people so they would turn and then wipe us out? 00:56:52.000 |
Why do I have to play a part in this? This is so not fair. 00:56:58.000 |
So perhaps Jonah got a glimpse of not just the imminent future of the Assyrian judgment, 00:57:05.000 |
but the more eternal one, where the generation of Ninevites he's going to preach to 00:57:09.000 |
permanently stands in judgment of the nation of Israel. 00:57:12.000 |
Jesus speaks of this in one of the encounters with the Pharisees and tax collectors, Matthew 12, 40-41. 00:57:19.000 |
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, 00:57:24.000 |
so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 00:57:28.000 |
And the sign of Jonah includes all of this, okay? 00:57:31.000 |
The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment 00:57:37.000 |
and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, 00:57:42.000 |
and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. 00:57:54.000 |
Can you imagine how Jonah would have felt had God visibly shown him this picture? 00:58:00.000 |
And Jonah knew that whenever God decreed or foretold something, that it would come to pass. 00:58:05.000 |
The prophet Jonah knew that God's word could break even the most calloused hearts of stone, 00:58:10.000 |
and Jonah knew better than you and I would know that God's kindness was effectual 00:58:16.000 |
and that it would lead to repentance, and Jonah did not like that one single bit. 00:58:22.000 |
He prayed to the Lord and said, "Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? 00:58:31.000 |
Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, 00:58:39.000 |
slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 00:58:44.000 |
Therefore, now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." 00:58:50.000 |
So Jonah is taking issue here with the sovereignty and the omnipotence of God, 00:58:55.000 |
and God's sovereignty is a running theme in the entire book of Jonah. 00:59:00.000 |
In fact, God is the main character of the book of Jonah, not Jonah. 00:59:04.000 |
And most of the significant verbs in the book of Jonah are all associated with God. 00:59:11.000 |
I'll give you an example here, a bunch of examples. 00:59:34.000 |
So God gives, God takes away, God moves, God causes, God stirs. 00:59:41.000 |
And in his sovereignty and power, God extends kindness. 00:59:45.000 |
And Jonah had a problem with God's choices here, of God's election. 00:59:52.000 |
Jonah does not have a problem with God being gracious and compassionate, 00:59:55.000 |
slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness toward Israel. 01:00:00.000 |
He had a problem with God extending his mercy to those he personally deemed undeserving. 01:00:06.000 |
So after all, it was a covenant people of God who had been keeping the sacrifices 01:00:09.000 |
and ceremonies and festivals, superficially anyway. 01:00:12.000 |
It was a covenant people who had been given the promise of land, wealth, and riches. 01:00:17.000 |
It was a covenant people who had been religious and special 01:00:20.000 |
and had been bound to the ways of the Lord for nearly a millennia. 01:00:27.000 |
To Jonah, and probably to all those to whom the prophet ministered, 01:00:32.000 |
the Ninevites were the last people deserving of salvation. 01:00:36.000 |
The Hebrews were in the right, all the Gentiles were in the wrong. 01:00:39.000 |
Hebrews deserve grace, all outside deserve wrath. 01:00:43.000 |
Especially those who did the things that the Ninevites did. 01:00:46.000 |
And in Jonah here, we get a glimpse of the heart of judgmental, self-righteous, sinful man. 01:00:56.000 |
In many ways, Jonah is the prodigal son's older brother, personified. 01:01:02.000 |
And there is an element of this in all of us. 01:01:08.000 |
There exists in every single corrupted and sin-tainted human being 01:01:13.000 |
great arrogance, self-righteousness, and condescension. 01:01:17.000 |
And there exists in every single one of us an erroneous belief that 01:01:22.000 |
there are people in our lives and in our world who are more deserving of the wrath of God than we are. 01:01:30.000 |
There exists in every single one of us an erroneous belief that we are more deserving of the grace of God than certain other folks. 01:01:40.000 |
We are in the right, others are in the wrong, and God should judge accordingly. 01:01:46.000 |
If you don't believe me, just go on social media. 01:01:50.000 |
So here's an important lesson we can learn from this little piece of biography of Jonah's life. 01:01:55.000 |
Be very careful whom you personally deem fit and unfit to receive the favor and the grace of God. 01:02:05.000 |
What kinds of people, what tribes of people, what individuals can get your blood boiling? 01:02:14.000 |
It wouldn't sit well if God favored them over you, would it? 01:02:23.000 |
Were the Ninevites a horrible people? Oh, absolutely. 01:02:27.000 |
Did they deserve to be on the receiving end of the unbridled wrath and judgment of God? Absolutely. 01:02:33.000 |
Were the Hebrew people more deserving of the grace of God than the Assyrians? Absolutely not. 01:02:40.000 |
Are people who lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape, oppress, and blaspheme deserving of the unbridled wrath and judgment of God? Oh, absolutely. 01:02:52.000 |
Are those who are racists, like real racists, drunkards, those who are for the aborting of babies or pushing gay rights, 01:03:01.000 |
those who traffic children for sex, who con hard-working people for money, those who have personally injured and scarred you, 01:03:10.000 |
are they deserving of the unbridled wrath of God? Absolutely. 01:03:15.000 |
Are people who go to church, who tithe, serve on the mission field, feed the poor, who believe that the Bible is inerrant, 01:03:24.000 |
are those kinds of people more deserving of the grace of God? Absolutely not. 01:03:31.000 |
So even Paul, the once super moral, all-star Jew, the Pharisee of Pharisees, I'd pick him over Jonah in the Hebrew of the Year contest. 01:03:39.000 |
So even Paul includes himself and all the Jews throughout history as those deserving of the unbridled wrath of God. 01:03:48.000 |
Among them, we Jews, too, all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, 01:03:57.000 |
and we were by nature created for wrath, children of wrath, technon, spawn of wrath, objects on whom wrath is poured out from the day of conception, even as a rest. 01:04:13.000 |
So verse 3, we weren't only deserving of wrath, we were basically fully deserving to be obliterated. 01:04:24.000 |
But it says in verse 4, "But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love for us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 01:04:32.000 |
made us alive with Christ, by grace you have been saved." 01:04:39.000 |
So how fortunate that Jonah, someone like a spiritual mosquito, no purpose, no use. 01:04:48.000 |
You guys like mosquitoes? Nobody likes mosquitoes. You want to just wipe it out. 01:04:53.000 |
Jonah is a mosquito. How gracious and how fortunate for him, a spiritual mosquito, to serve a God who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in love and kindness, 01:05:04.000 |
one who relents from sediment and calamity, and yet Jonah, a little spiritual mosquito, is griping to God that the spiritual cockroaches over there are far less deserving of the mercy of God. 01:05:18.000 |
This is such a silly thing. Nobody keeps termites, maggots, bedbugs, fleas, mosquitoes, roaches as pets. 01:05:27.000 |
If you did, please do not tell me because I would judge you. Nobody. 01:05:37.000 |
Spiritual condescension and self-righteousness are very dangerous things. 01:05:43.000 |
Spiritual condensation and self-righteousness always results in the callousness of your heart. 01:05:55.000 |
You cannot worship the Lord in spirit and in truth when you consider yourself a more qualified worshiper than the guy in that other camp, in that other denomination, 01:06:09.000 |
the guy who votes for the other political party, the guy of that race, that nationality, that guy who injured you deeply. 01:06:20.000 |
If you believe yourself to be more worthy of worship than somebody else, be careful. 01:06:32.000 |
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 01:06:37.000 |
You and I belong to what people would call a Bible church. Not just if you already knew that. 01:06:44.000 |
The purpose of a Bible church is that we would strive to correctly understand how much God hates sin, 01:06:51.000 |
correctly understand how much He loves a sinner, for in that paradox is the beauty of the cross of Christ. 01:06:58.000 |
And we study His word so that we may know Him and revere Him and love Him and help others to love Him. 01:07:05.000 |
That we may truly know this God for whom we have been created, that we may know His heart, 01:07:10.000 |
that we may worship Him in spirit and in truth. 01:07:14.000 |
And that's the point of the study of His word. Amen? 01:07:19.000 |
But in our self-righteous bent, if we're not careful, we start wielding the scriptures to tell everyone else why they're wrong about everything. 01:07:34.000 |
You know what dangers exist for those in the Bible churches? 01:07:40.000 |
We can easily fall prey to the dangers of loving doctrine more than loving God. 01:07:46.000 |
We can easily fall prey to the dangers of loving the idea of Bible teaching without loving the God of the Bible. 01:07:53.000 |
We can easily fall prey to telling people why they're wrong, why they're not saved, 01:07:59.000 |
without grieving over their souls or having compassion on them. 01:08:05.000 |
"Yeah, I don't think he's a Christian. Yeah, whatever." 01:08:14.000 |
Bible churches gone wrong produce dudes like Jonah. 01:08:21.000 |
Bible churches can ironically be full of biblically illiterate people who may know a little bit about the word of God, 01:08:29.000 |
but have very little understanding of the heart of God. 01:08:33.000 |
You can have superficially biblical people who are not led by the spirit of God, 01:08:39.000 |
but rather their own sense of spiritual superiority. 01:08:43.000 |
Churches like ours sometimes can attract or produce spiritual know-it-alls. 01:08:55.000 |
Oftentimes, biblically illiterate people who have dogmatic personalities can be drawn to churches like ours. 01:09:06.000 |
But something that you and I need to fully understand, true biblical literacy always produces humility, terror, and love. 01:09:24.000 |
True biblical literacy always produces humility, terror, and love. 01:09:34.000 |
True biblical literacy always results in the building up of the church. 01:09:41.000 |
Knowledge puffs up, but what does love do? Builds. 01:09:48.000 |
There can never be spiritual condescension or self-righteousness in someone who intimately knows God. 01:10:03.000 |
The more you know God, the more you realize, "I am a butt dust! Why would he choose me? 01:10:14.000 |
Man, I want others to know this God! That's what the study of the word of God is supposed to do." 01:10:22.000 |
Each time Jesus referred to the sign of Jonah, do you know in what context he brought them up? 01:10:29.000 |
Matthew 12, Matthew 16, Luke 11. Always in his confrontations with the spiritually blind know-it-all Pharisees, tax collectors, religious leaders. 01:10:38.000 |
So when you see the attitude of spiritual condescension and self-righteousness growing in your hearts, 01:10:47.000 |
when you want to make that comment, when you want to write that post, be careful. 01:10:55.000 |
Jonah 4 is super interesting because Jonah is extremely happy about what? 01:11:00.000 |
The plant! It's a blessing from God to be enjoyed. 01:11:06.000 |
It's shade over his head. Some people actually think that Jonah was partially digested, so he was bleached white in skin, 01:11:10.000 |
so the sun was actually heavy on his skin, so he was super miserable and uncomfortable, but the casserole plant made him happy. 01:11:16.000 |
So there's commentary notes on all that stuff. I'm not even going to—I mean, that's nothing substantial. 01:11:21.000 |
But he's extremely happy about the plant. Do you see the wording? 01:11:26.000 |
He's like elated with this dumb plant. It's a blessing for him to enjoy. 01:11:33.000 |
It's a trivial, inconsequential thing that sprang up overnight and died overnight, and he's extremely happy about it, 01:11:40.000 |
but when God shows mercy and extends kindness to lost souls, he's furious. 01:11:46.000 |
What kind of things make you happy? What kind of things get you upset and enraged with raging rage? 01:11:55.000 |
Sometimes I want to get off social media because it makes me rage with raging rage. 01:12:00.000 |
What kinds of things make you happy? Trivial things spring up, go down. 01:12:08.000 |
And what kind of things get you upset? It's a good litmus test. 01:12:14.000 |
This brings us to our fourth question. What is it that we learn about God through Jonah's prophecy? 01:12:18.000 |
And as I mentioned before, God is the main character of the book of Jonah, Jonah 4, 10-11. 01:12:22.000 |
Then the Lord said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, in which you did not cast a grove, 01:12:28.000 |
which came up overnight and perished overnight. 01:12:31.000 |
Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, a great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons 01:12:37.000 |
who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?" 01:12:42.000 |
Basically, we see God saying that the Ninevites, who are numerous people, you don't need to worry about the number. 01:12:51.000 |
They are so lost in their depravity and in their helplessness that they really do not have any hope. 01:12:57.000 |
And they do not have a clue that they have no hope. 01:13:01.000 |
And the book of Jonah ends with that question. How awkward. 01:13:04.000 |
I hate it when things end with a question because you almost want to answer it. 01:13:08.000 |
So if verse 12 was there and I actually got to write it in there, which is judgment according to the scripture, 01:13:13.000 |
you're not supposed to add. But if I could, I would say, "Absolutely not. 01:13:23.000 |
There are only two books of the Bible that end with a question. 01:13:32.000 |
They are like the book ends of God's dealing with Assyria. 01:13:35.000 |
The book of Jonah is about God extending grace to Assyria. 01:13:38.000 |
The book of Nahum, which also ends with a question, is about Assyria's utter destruction. 01:13:43.000 |
So it doesn't seem that Assyria's repentance, that it was long-lived. 01:13:49.000 |
It doesn't quite get passed down to future generations. 01:13:52.000 |
So basically, Nahum got to write 120 years later what Jonah would have loved to have written. 01:13:58.000 |
Nineveh is going to be absolutely and literally wiped out. 01:14:09.000 |
If you get all your theology and ecclesiology from only Jonah, 01:14:16.000 |
you may end up with some very incorrect conclusions. 01:14:19.000 |
God will always be gracious and tolerant towards sinful people. 01:14:24.000 |
If you only study Jonah, oh God is really a God of compassion. 01:14:32.000 |
Oh yeah, we shouldn't preach strongly about sin because we're sinful. 01:14:42.000 |
The book of Nahum, like I said, is full of wrath, destruction, because of God's hatred towards sin. 01:14:56.000 |
But what do we need to draw from Jonah? It's that God's kindness has led you to repentance. 01:15:02.000 |
That's led you to faith, not your lovability. 01:15:06.000 |
And you're in a world full of people that don't know this. 01:15:13.000 |
So when non-Christians say funny stuff, they don't know they're right or they're left. 01:15:21.000 |
When people in the church, in their immaturity, say silly stuff, love on them. 01:15:30.000 |
So let's look at the question that the book of Jonah ends with. 01:15:46.000 |
What's so truly amazing is that holy, holy, holy God has grace. 01:15:57.000 |
Ephesians 2, 4, "But God," remember we were all technon of wrath, okay? 01:16:02.000 |
"But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, 01:16:10.000 |
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, 01:16:16.000 |
by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, 01:16:19.000 |
and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 01:16:26.000 |
"So that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace 01:16:36.000 |
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift." 01:16:43.000 |
1 Corinthians 4 says, "So then we're there in his boasting." 01:16:46.000 |
Okay, so it is a gift, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 01:16:52.000 |
The sign of Jonah has come, the word was made flesh, he died on the cross, 01:16:56.000 |
was raised to life on the third day, and you and I have been saved supernaturally, 01:17:01.000 |
miraculously, heart of stone turned into heart of flesh, completely by grace. 01:17:08.000 |
And let us respond appropriately in humility, holy terror, and compassionate love. 01:17:24.000 |
In humility, awe, reverence, and terror, and compassionate love. 01:17:33.000 |
So that others around you can respond in the same way toward our great creator. 01:17:40.000 |
Ephesians 2 ends, or the next verse says this, and it's not up there, but I'll read it for you. 01:17:47.000 |
Verse 10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, 01:17:57.000 |
which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. 01:18:05.000 |
May your feeding off of his word, as you meditate on a day and night, 01:18:12.000 |
as you are like a tree planted by streams of water, and as you are getting ready to see your fruit being born in season, 01:18:21.000 |
as you are feeding, may that always cause you to be humble, 01:18:30.000 |
healthily fearful of the holiness of God, and filled with compassion. 01:18:37.000 |
This world is getting stranger, the church is getting more muddy. 01:18:44.000 |
How do you respond? With humility? With hatred towards sin and terror at the holiness of God? 01:18:55.000 |
But by your great love for each other and for those on the outside. 01:19:01.000 |
For by your love all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." 01:19:07.000 |
Amen? May we truly be a biblically literate church, where we are humble, terrified, 01:19:15.000 |
and super good at lovingly, warmly speaking the truth, 01:19:23.000 |
mourning with those who mourn, rejoicing with those who rejoice, 01:19:27.000 |
being the hands and the feet of Christ to his glory. 01:19:34.000 |
Don't be a spiritual Jonah, who knows a lot about God, but it seems he's failed to know the heart. 01:19:47.000 |
May God bless us and bear fruit in our church in his time as we grow more and more like Jesus, to be like Jesus. 01:20:01.000 |
When we're not feeding, when we're left to our own thoughts and devices, 01:20:05.000 |
we end up becoming either helpless and hopeless or arrogant and haughty. 01:20:11.000 |
But would you speak daily into our lives and cause us to understand the gift of eternal life, 01:20:19.000 |
to appreciate grace, and to respond to those around us in and outside of the church with supernatural, miraculous love. 01:20:29.000 |
To your glory and to our joy. In Jesus' name we pray. 01:20:35.000 |
Let us spend a few moments in prayer as we reflect on the passage, or the message. 01:21:54.000 |
Let us all rise as we sing our closing praise. 01:26:11.000 |
Father, we thank you for feeding us this morning. 01:26:14.000 |
I pray that you would help us to chew thoroughly, to digest well, 01:26:19.000 |
and that it really would cause us to be strengthened in our faith, 01:26:29.000 |
that this world would know that you are indeed a holy God who is good, 01:26:34.000 |
and that those around us would come to long to know you the way we know you. 01:26:48.000 |
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each and every one of us, 01:28:31.000 |
When you leave, please leave in an orderly fashion, 01:28:34.000 |
so it's not chaotic, just cramming the doors for you parents. 01:28:37.000 |
Please wait until about 12.30 to go and collect your child.