Jonah 4:1–4

0:00 All right, I've got a question for you. You ready? Do you prefer justice or mercy? Do you prefer justice or mercy? Now my guess is your mind jumped to one of them at first, depending on how you kind of think about that. And then you started to think about the other one a little bit and say, well, hold on.

0:31 You know, I kind of prefer justice in this situation and mercy in that situation. And probably, as you were thinking through it, your mind, if it's like mine, swirled down into something like an answer of, it depends. Let's do a little thought experiment. It's a little bit dangerous, but you're going to have to trust me with it. Do a little thought experiment. I want you to think of, put this person into your mind, and do not tell anybody who you were thinking of.

1:02 It's one of the rules of the game. The presidential candidate in 2024, don't tell anybody what you're thinking, that you like least. Do you prefer for that person justice or mercy? Okay. Now, think about the presidential candidate that you like the most. Do you prefer justice or mercy for that person?

1:37 All right, now, I don't want to talk politics. I don't want to hear your case for either one of those people. The one you like most, the one you like least, I don't want to hear it. We're not here to talk politics. We're here to talk theology. We're not here to explore the American political landscape. We're here to explore our hearts. And so the point of me doing that little thought experiment is for you to see that your mind, if it's anything like mine, fought against the idea of mercy, no matter which of those two candidates you were thinking about. I wonder if you noticed that in yourself, like I noticed it in me.

2:12 When you were thinking about the candidate that you don't like, probably your mind was fighting against the idea of mercy, something like this. No, he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve mercy. He deserves justice for what he's done. Maybe you even thought, I don't even think mercy is the right category for talking about politics. It just doesn't fit. But what's interesting, I think, is that for the candidate you do like the most, your mind was probably, if it's like mine, again, thinking something along these lines. No, he doesn't need mercy.

2:45 He doesn't need it. The things that they say about him are untrue, or the whole thing is a misunderstanding. So, yeah, bring on justice because we're going to win. It's interesting, isn't it? No matter which candidate you're thinking about, your mind fights to keep mercy out of the equation in one way or another. Okay, let me give you another person to think about. Here's that person. I want you to think about you in your sin before God.

3:16 Do you prefer justice or mercy? Oh, well, now the door is wide open for all of us to let mercy into the conversation, isn't it? I mean, just like that, bam, I prefer mercy for myself. Thank you. It's interesting to see what your mind does, isn't it? Why is there the difference? Why are our minds so much more open to mercy in that last conversation as opposed to either one of the conversations above? I mean, for that matter, what kind of case does your mind start to make?

3:48 On that last question about you and your sin before God, what kind of case does your mind start to build for mercy being a part of that conversation but not the others? Maybe even a little more pointed, what kind of case does your mind start to build that you deserve for mercy to be in that last conversation? Interesting things that happen in our heads, aren't there? When we start to think about justice and mercy and even who deserves one or the other.

4:20 That's the kind of thing that Jonah was forced to face here at the end of this book of Jonah. We're going to be continuing the study of the book of Jonah, one of the minor prophets at the end of the Old Testament. Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn there because we're going to be looking at a particular portion of this little book. So if you're using a Red Pew Bible, you can find Jonah on page 774. That's where it starts. Our text this morning is over on the other side, page 775. You'll see a big four there. That's chapter four. We're going to be in just four little what we call verses or little smaller sections of chapter four.

4:54 We're going to be looking at verses one through four. Over the next two Sundays, we're going to be looking at two different parts of chapter four. It breaks down neatly into two different pieces. You've got verses one to four where Jonah is still kind of in the city of Nineveh. And he has this little exchange with God. And then you've got 5 through 11 where Jonah goes outside the city and he has this other exchange with God where God shows him this object lesson with a vine and a worm and a couple of other things in order to teach Jonah a lesson. Well, today we're going to be looking at the first section of that, verses 1 through 4.

5:28 If you're encountering this story for the first time of Jonah, our walking through it together, probably, if you know what's happening in chapter 4, probably chapter 4 is coming to you as a complete surprise. And that's because by any normal storytelling conventions, the story of Jonah really ought to have ended at the end of chapter 3. And by the time you get to chapter 3, verse 10, when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them and he didn't do it. By the time you get to chapter 3, verse 10, that's a full-orbed story right there.

6:02 I mean, it's gone from beginning to end and you've got a fully contained story. God calls Jonah to preach at this wicked city of Nineveh. Jonah ran away from God for some reason. God stopped Jonah from running away by having him eaten by this giant fish. Jonah survived, went to preach, and the people of Nineveh repented. And everybody lived happily ever after. I mean, that is a full-orbed story. It's a story of a reluctant prophet who finally obeys God. And the result is an entire city repenting. It's a triumph at the end of chapter 3.

6:34 But then you get chapter 4, verse 1. But this displeased Jonah greatly. And if you've never read the story before, you're supposed to be going, what? What are you talking about? It displeased Jonah greatly. I thought Jonah repented. I thought he obeyed God. I thought he went and preached and had the most successful preaching tour in the history of mankind. It worked on everybody. And he's not happy about that? What's going on with that?

7:06 Well, anytime you hit those places in the Bible that make you go, what? What is going on with that? Those are the places that you don't need to sort of blur your eyes and run as fast as you can to get through them. Those are the places where you need to stop and slow down and dig in and make your eyes very clear. And you need to linger there because you are about to learn something. If you can read the Bible and never hit a place where you go, what in the world is that all about? Then it's not that you've learned everything. It's just that you're not humble enough to learn what the Bible is trying to teach you.

7:38 So when you get to those places, linger and see what you're supposed to learn. Because it's really here in chapter 4 that the big lessons of the book of Jonah come to the forefront. And this chapter 4 is what we've kind of been waiting for. This is the big show. This is the main event. This is where we're invited into questions about who God really is and how he acts. Questions about his dealings with you and me as human beings and how our hearts react to God's dealings with us. See, this book at the end of the day is not about simplistic lessons.

8:09 It's not a book just telling you the lesson, obey God or you'll get eaten by a fish. As important as that might be to know. It's about profound questions surrounding why and how God shows grace and then how our hearts react to that grace. So we're picking up the story in chapter 4, immediately after Jonah has preached in the city of Nineveh. And the people have repented and God has relented from destroying them. So chapter 3 ended with that statement. We've already read it. When God saw what they did, he relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them.

8:44 And he did not do it. But Jonah doesn't know that yet for sure. He's just pretty sure that that's exactly what has happened. So let's look at chapter 4, verse 1. But this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

9:20 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? It's a short text this morning, just four verses. That's all we're going to look at. But it's critical because for the first time, we finally get clued into why Jonah was running from the Lord in the first place. We finally get clued into why he didn't want to preach to the city of Nineveh. And the reason that he gives to God for why he didn't want to preach to the city of Nineveh is it is something else.

9:55 And we're going to dive into his reason for that. So here's the main idea of verses 1 to 4. God's mercy is his to give even when we don't like it. God's mercy is his to give even when we don't like it. So two points to the sermon this morning. I'm kind of breaking it down into verses 1 to 3 together and then verse 4 all by itself. So that's what these points correspond to.

10:27 So verses 1 to 3, Jonah's complaint. And then point number 2, verse 4, the Lord's question. So let's dive into it and see what we can learn. Point number 1, looking at verses 1 to 3, Jonah's complaint to the Lord. One of the things that you've always got to wrestle with when you're looking at a story like Jonah, or a book even like Jonah, is an almost visceral impulse in the heart and stomach of a Christian to make the main character of the story a hero. We do that all over the Bible. You ever read the book of Judges? We take every single one of those judges and we try our best.

11:00 It's a visceral impulse to turn those people into heroes when most of the time they're not heroes at all. They're at least a mixture and sometimes total villains. But our impulse is to try to make them heroes. It's a natural Christian impulse to try to do that. Make the characters of the Bible heroes. And yet in this case, that impulse turns out, I think, to be completely wrong. Because it becomes blindingly clear here in chapter 4 that Jonah is no hero and has been no hero through the entire book. In fact, as we've read this book together, you've probably noticed the kind of ambiguity that's present throughout the book.

11:37 And it comes in this question, is Jonah a good guy or a bad guy? We've confronted that several different times. When he sings that psalm in chapter 2, is that a good psalm or is that a bad psalm? And if it's a good psalm, if it reflects Jonah's heart of repentance, why does the fish puke it all up? Right? Why does it make the fish sick when that happens? Why does it come right on the heels of that song? Is Jonah's repentance really repentance? When he goes to Nineveh and preaches finally, does he preach what the Lord told him to preach?

12:10 Does he preach that throughout the city? Or does he just walk into the outskirts of the city and say one sentence and then sit down and wait to see what's going to happen? Is Jonah a good guy or a bad guy? Is he this hero who repents and obeys God, sees a miraculous conversion of the city? Or is he just pretty much a punk who never really gets his heart in the right place and just gets dragged kicking and screaming to do what God wanted him to do in the first place? I mean, there are times in the story, right, where you're just not sure. Because the text probably deliberately head fakes in both directions.

12:46 But even when we've kind of been looking at those head fakes and trying to sort our way through them, you've probably heard me say it 20 times through these four sermons so far. But then there's chapter 4. You just can't get around chapter 4. If you're going to make Jonah a good guy, a hero, you can't get around chapter 4. And it's true. Chapter 4 is a stunner. Because immediately on the heels of Jonah preaching and the people of Nineveh repenting and sackcloth and ashes and fasting, God relents from the disaster.

13:21 He forgives them. He shows them grace and mercy and it's all good. At that very moment, chapter 4 verse 1 just comes busting in like the Kool-Aid man with this made Jonah mad. It's a stunner. Look down at that first sentence. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. That first sentence there is interesting because literally, here's how it reads.

13:52 And it was evil to Jonah, a great evil. And it was evil to Jonah, a great evil. Now, even in that sentence, there's a little bit of ambiguity as to what exactly that sentence means and what it's saying. So does that sentence, it was evil to Jonah, a great evil, does that mean it was evil to Jonah, in fact it was a great evil to Jonah? Is that what I mean? That's how your ESV Bible is taking it. That's why they translate that as exceedingly evil.

14:22 It was evil to Jonah, in fact it was an exceedingly great evil to Jonah. That's kind of how they're taking it. But there's another way you can read that sentence. Do you hear it? It was evil to Jonah, comma, a great evil. You can read that as saying it was evil to Jonah. What God did for the Ninevites was evil to Jonah. And the fact that he took it as evil was a great evil. It was evil to Jonah.

14:54 Which is a great evil, right? You can take it like that. It's not clear which way you're supposed to take it. I mean, it is clear that the idea of evil is now being sort of connected with Jonah and not with the Ninevites anymore. And it's very clear, either way you take it, that the text is at this point setting Jonah and God completely at odds with each other. God forgave the Ninevites and Jonah thinks that's evil. But why? Why does he do that? Why does he think it's evil?

15:24 Well, up to this point in the story, we haven't known exactly why Jonah is so determined not to preach to the Ninevites. We just don't know. We know that he ran. We know that he preached reluctantly. We know that he preached shortly. And we know that he only preached a message of judgment and not repentance. But we don't know why. Well, here in 4.2, for the first time, Jonah tells us. He tells God, and we're kind of overlooking it, or looking over his shoulder is what I mean. He tells us for the first time what was going on in his head. Look at what he says.

15:55 Read verse 2. And Jonah prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That's why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Now that is just a stunning thing to say about God, isn't it? It's just a stunning thing to say. And I want to linger on it for just a little bit because I don't want you to run past this so fast that you miss exactly what Jonah's doing here.

16:29 So what he says there, his reason for not wanting to go to Tarshish in the first place is this. I knew, I made haste to flee to Tarshish because I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. That is not just Jonah's own description of God. He's not coming up with those words on his own. He's quoting them from Exodus 34. And you know that story in Exodus 34?

17:00 You know where those words come in? Compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love. You know where all that comes from? It comes from the story where Moses, the leader of the people, says, God, I want to see your glory. Show me your glory. Show me your very character. Show me who you are. And God says, you can't see all my glory. If you see my face, if you see my glory, it'll annihilate you, it'll kill you. So what I'm going to do is I'll put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand in order to protect you. And I will pass by you in all my glory, and you'll see my back.

17:32 You'll see the train of my robe, and I'll show you the glory that you can see. So Moses gets in the rock, and the Lord's hand covers him, and the Lord passes by. And Moses doesn't see much at all. He gets to see like the train of the robe and a bright light, but he doesn't get to see much at all. But what he hears is how God shows him his glory. God reveals his character, his glory to Moses by saying these words right here. Moses, you want to see my glory? You want to know me? You want to know my character, my nature?

18:03 You want to see my very glory? It is that I am a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, Showing mercy to thousands upon thousands upon thousands. That's my glory. So you see what Jonah is doing here? What Jonah is doing is saying, God, I know you. I know who you are. I know who you are because I've read the scriptures. I know your character.

18:35 I know your glory. Your glory is that you are a loving and compassionate and merciful God. And I knew that if I went and preached to those Ninevites, you'd wind up forgiving them because that's your glory. And I don't want them to be forgiven. It's just stunning. It's just stunning. He's quoting the Bible about God's loving and merciful character, his glory. But it's not to praise him for it. It's to complain about it.

19:07 You see what he's saying? He's saying, God, I don't want a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. I want a God stern and unforgiving, swift to anger and lacking in compassion, unyielding in punishment, and relentless in bringing disaster upon the disobedient. That's what I want. Now, it's easy. It's real easy to make fun of Jonah for that.

19:40 To say, what was he thinking? Like, that's blasphemy. What was he thinking and saying that? And then to think about yourself, oh, I would never, never say something like that. I would never quote God's character to him and then indict him for that character. I would never do that. But it's important, I think, to understand where Jonah was coming from in this. And once you understand where he's coming from, you might sympathize with him just a little bit more. I mean, you start to think about it. The people that Jonah did not want to be forgiven, the people that Jonah wanted to be wiped off the face of the planet, were the early stages of the Assyrian Empire.

20:20 And this was a people who, by Jonah's time, were already famous for their cruelty. And who were already threatening Jonah's own people. Let me read to you just a few paragraphs from one book, one commentary that's describing the Assyrians' usual way of handling their enemies. So here we go. It's a little bit lengthy, but I think you'll see what I'm talking about. So here's what this commentary says. Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the most cruel and ruthless nation of the ancient world.

20:54 The Assyrians terrified their intended victims because not only did they destroy and burn the cities they conquered, they also subjected the inhabitants to various kinds of suffering and humiliation. One Assyrian king, Asherbanipal, boasted in the following terms about some plotters that he had foiled. As for those common men who had spoken derogatory things against my god Asher and had plotted against me, the prince who reveres him, I tore out their tongues and abased them. As a posthumous offering, I smashed the rest of the people alive by the very figures of the protective gods between which they had smashed Sennachera and my grandfather.

21:32 Their cut-up flesh I fed to the dogs, swine, jackals, birds, vultures, to the birds of the sky and to the fishes of the deep pools. The Assyrians were the ones who had destroyed Samaria and with it the northern kingdom. In 2 Kings 17, it says the king of Assyria laid siege to Samaria for three years. We can imagine the people getting hungrier and more desperate and more hopeless as they looked out on the Assyrian army, this invincible multitude. They also knew that these soldiers were completely ruthless. They would flay people alive, strip the skin off them, and drag them off with hooks in their flesh.

22:06 And if the people didn't already know what their enemies were capable of, the Assyrians would have reminded them every day. In the British Museum, there are stone carvings taken from Nineveh which show how the Assyrians dealt with conquered cities. One shows a great heap of heads. The picture of the siege of Lachish shows three men impaled on wooden stakes outside the city. A grisly visual aid to those who were still shut up inside. Captives were often mutilated by cutting off hands, feet, noses, ears, and tongues. A relief from the city of Khorsabad shows Assyrian chariots driving over mutilated bodies.

22:42 Infants were often dashed in pieces. Women might be taken as spoil, and pregnant women were usually disemboweled. Having conquered a city, the Assyrians would take steps to see that they did not have any more trouble there in the future. So when Samaria fell in 721 B.C., 27,000 Israelites were exiled. And a comparable number of deportees from other places were brought in. This destroyed the unity and even identity of the nation. And made it very difficult to organize resistance in the future.

23:15 Now, Fred, I don't know about you, but as I read that and as I understand the Assyrians more, as I understand the people and what they did, that Jonah wanted to be judged, it is harder for me to make fun of Jonah for not wanting God to forgive them. Jonah wanted that nation to be judged. He wanted that nation to be wiped off the face of the planet. He wanted that evil and that cruelty to end. And was it wrong of Jonah to want cruelty and evil to end? no of course not he wasn't wrong to want that jonah was right to want that but see that's where the deeper lessons of the book come to light that's where we start to get to the deep things of this book the first lesson of which is the infinite depth and strength of god's grace see i think the first thing that this book does once you start to step into its deeper waters is that it starts to put the screws to our understanding of grace. And do you feel that

24:19 when you think about grace with regard to those Assyrians? Do you start to feel that? I mean, it's hard not to think, wow, maybe Jonah was right. I mean, the Ninevites didn't deserve God's grace. They didn't deserve to be forgiven. They were evil. But once your mind does that, that's just the thing. That's just the thing. Grace is never deserved by anybody. And if it is, it's not grace. I'll say that again. Grace is never deserved by anybody. And if it is, it's not grace. You see that, right? If you deserve to be shown grace, if you've earned the right to be shown grace, then it's not grace that's being given to you. It's not mercy. It's payment for what you have earned. No, it's only grace if it is completely undeserved. And friends, that's

25:25 incredibly good news. Because if you and I understand ourselves rightly, we would see that we are just as undeserving of God's grace as the Ninevites were. I mean, imagine if somebody had total access to your entire life, your thoughts, the secret things in your heart, everything, everything about you, and then wrote a dictionary entry about your life like somebody just wrote about the Assyrians. You think somebody would read that and go, oh, yeah, that guy doesn't deserve grace.

25:57 Of course they would. Of course they would. They'd read that dictionary entry about your life and your thoughts and your emotions and your reactions and your actions and all the rest of it. And they'd say, no way, no way. That guy doesn't deserve grace. We'd all have the same reaction to each other that we all just had to the Ninevites. But the good news is that salvation isn't based on you deserving it. It's based on a God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from the disaster that you deserve.

26:39 Praise God. Here's another thing to think about in this regard. We don't like to admit this to ourselves, but nobody's asking you to say it out loud, so you can answer the question honestly. Are there particular groups of people, like the Ninevites, that you don't particularly care for or like? I mean, whatever the reasons, maybe you've experienced some sort of injustice at the hands of, I don't know, rich people, or white people, or black people, or women, or men, or Texans, or Californians, or University of Kentucky fans, or conservatives, or liberals, or democrats, or republicans.

27:19 take your pick. It doesn't matter. And I don't mean to make fun of it. It might be real injustice that you have received at the hands of some people. But friend, what this book is calling you to see is that God's grace is infinitely big. And even those people that you don't particularly care for or like, even if it's a whole group of them, God wants to forgive even those people who have hurt you if they'll believe the gospel okay so then then here's the question what if that that group of people that you don't particularly care for or like what if God called you to take the gospel to those people in particular what does that thought do to your heart does it hurt you feel a little bit like Jonah not a chance Lord I'll take the gospel to anybody else in the world but not that family not that group of people Not them.

28:21 Don't ask me to do that, God. Don't ask me to do that. Maybe that's what happens. Maybe another thing that happens. Maybe your heart, maybe, maybe your heart starts to soften. And you think, yeah, yeah, yeah, if God called me to take the gospel to them, maybe I would start to see them more as human beings and not as enemies. Maybe I'd start to see those people that I don't particularly care for as people who need the gospel. And my heart starts to soften. Well, friend, here's the thing. Whoever those people are, the Lord has already called you to take the gospel to them.

29:02 Go and make disciples of all of them, he said. Go and make disciples of all of them. Think about that group. What fills your heart when you see them in your mind? Is it revulsion? Anger? Or is it compassion? Well, verse 3, Jonah keeps talking.

29:34 He says, I knew who you are, and I knew you'd forgive them. And I didn't want that to happen, but that's exactly what happens. So therefore now, this is verse 3, therefore now, O Lord, because all of this is true, Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Now, you can read that again as Jonah just kind of being petulant, throwing a fit. You can read it as kind of, you know, humorous relief in the midst of this intense story.

30:07 But I think, again, it's important to sympathize with him a little. I mean, think about him. He's a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel. They know that the Ninevites are their worst enemy. They know what the Ninevites want to do with them. And now God has forgiven them, which Jonah probably knows opens the way for those horrible armies to come in and lay siege to the city. He's just opened the gates of his own country to that kind of cruelty. His life has basically just come apart. He felt betrayed by God.

30:39 He could even be accused of being a traitor against his own people. Being the guy who had let this enemy of theirs into the land. He was in despair. Everything looked hopeless to him. So look, I know that in a crowd this big, there are, in fact, people here who have felt that way. Who have gotten to that brink and who have thought life is so hopeless, life is so ruined, that it would just be better for me, just like Jonah felt, it would be better for me to die than to go on living.

31:16 I know you're in here. You know, there are three people in the Bible. Three people in the Bible who came to that spot. All of them prophets of the Lord. Do you know who they were? The three people who came to the point of saying, God, it's so hopeless, and I am in such despair that it would be better for me to die than to live. Do you know who they were? There's Jonah here. There's Elijah, the prophet in 2 Kings. And then there's Moses. All of them. all three of those men came to the point of crying out to the Lord, it would be better for me, oh Lord, if you would just take my life.

31:53 But here's the encouragement. Here's the encouraging part. Do you know what all three of those men have in common? All three of those men, when they came to that point of despairing of life, were all on the cusp of learning the most important lesson of their lives. All three of them were on the brink of knowing God and his ways more deeply and more profoundly than they had ever known him before. And it wasn't all the same.

32:25 All three of them learned about God's character and nature in three very different ways. But when they came to the point of despairing, that was the moment when they were on the brink of diving into the deepest things of God that they had ever seen. There's a song that we sing here sometimes called When Trials Come. And there's a line in it that talks about treasures of the darkness. Treasures of the darkness. Treasures that you can find, but only in the darkness because that's where they grow. It's like crystals in the darkness, diamonds in the darkness.

32:55 But they only grow when it's the darkest. Are you in that kind of darkness? And there must be somebody here who is. And if you are, then you need to know that in that darkness, there are treasures. There are diamonds in there that God wants you to find. There are truths about God that you'll find in there that you will never find anywhere else in life. There are deep things of the Lord and his ways that you are only going to find as treasures of the darkness.

33:32 So if you're in there, don't despair. Don't despair. Quiet your heart and look to the Lord and just tell him, Lord, you've brought me here. You've brought me, oh Lord, to this place, to this darkness. So what are you going to teach me? What treasures are there in here to be found and had that will encourage my heart? And then trust him. Trust him to show you. I don't know how long it'll take, but I know that the consistent witness of the Bible is that when people were driven to the brink of despair, all three of them, Moses, Jonah, and Elijah, it was so God could teach them something about himself that they would never have learned otherwise.

34:16 Trust him for that. Here's point number two. We had Jonah's complaint. Now we look at the Lord's question. The Lord's question. So in verse four, well, in verse three, Jonah says, please take my life from me. It's better for me to die than to live. And then verse 4, the Lord answers Jonah. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? That's an extraordinary answer for, I think, a whole lot of reasons.

34:48 And we're going to delve into those in just a minute. But I want you to notice that it's an extraordinary answer first just because of its quiet compassion. I mean, think about it. Jonah, Jonah has just basically quoted God's character back to him and said, God, this is your character, this is your glory, and I think that's evil. I mean, that's as close to blasphemy as you can get. And what you'd expect in this is for God to just unload on him like he does other blasphemers, like he does other idolaters.

35:25 I mean, that's what Jonah deserved, right? and yet this answer shows such compassion. It just asks him a question. But it turns out that that question opens up Jonah's heart almost immediately. Do you do well to be angry? It's an answer of compassion, not just in its softness, but in its ability to open up the heart and show Jonah who he is and where he's gone wrong.

36:00 That question there, do you do well to be angry, is three words in Hebrew. That's all it is. It's a very short question. And it means literally, is it hot to you rightfully? Is it hot to you rightfully? Now, there's nothing unusual about the use of hot there. You know, it's one word, and sometimes it means hot, and sometimes it means angry. We do the same exact thing in English. You know, you walk up to somebody who's looking a little salty, and you say, oh, you're hot about that, aren't you? They're like, yes, you know, I'm angry, I'm hot, right?

36:33 Same thing happened in Hebrew. People have argued a little bit about what exactly the question is getting at. So, you know, is it hot for you? You know, are you angry rightfully? Is it hot for you rightfully? So people have argued a little bit and said, okay, well, is it asking, do you have a right to be angry, right? Do you have the authority sort of to be angry? Maybe it's asking that. Or is it asking something slightly different, which is, are you angry righteously? Like, is your anger righteous?

37:04 Is it justified? Should you be angry about this in the first place? And there's some debate about which one it is. I think it's probably the latter. I think it's probably asking, are you angry righteously? And the reason for that is because in the rest of the story, the object lesson that the Lord gives Jonah in the last part of the story, it's not really about Jonah's right to be angry. It's not a question of, you know, do you have authority to be angry at me? That's not what the Lord goes at. He does go at that when it comes to Job, if you've ever studied that book. That's what God goes at with Job. You have no right to be angry at me.

37:36 That's not really what happens here. Here, it's more whether Jonah's anger is righteous. Is it justified? Do all the pieces line up so that it's right for Jonah to be mad? That's what he's asking. Well, we don't get an answer to that question here. Jonah doesn't, you know, if you look at verse 5, he hasn't given an answer to the Lord at all. So the effect of that in the story is that the question just hangs there. Do you do well to be angry? Are you angry righteously? And we're supposed to think about it.

38:08 Was Jonah right to be angry about all of this? Given the Ninevites' wickedness, given everything that's happened in the story, was Jonah right to be angry that the Lord forgave them? Well, what do you think? I mean, it's a huge question. You've got to bring in the whole story. You've got to bring in God's character. You've got to bring in the nature of grace and mercy and compassion. You've got to bring in the Ninevites' sin. It's all there. But ultimately what the Lord is getting at is that the answer goes back again to the very nature of grace.

38:41 It goes back to the very nature of what grace is right down at its core. If forgiveness of sins, if salvation from evil, if the showing of grace is a matter of deserving it, then yeah, Jonah's right to be angry. The Ninevites were a wicked, wicked people. And so Jonah's angry when God decides to relent from destroying them and wiping out that evil. And yet, Jonah had rejoiced for a whole chapter.

39:18 He wrote a hymn when God had relented from destroying him in the ocean, even though he deserved it. What's the difference? What's the difference between Jonah and the Ninevites? What's the difference? Why does Jonah rejoice that God shows him grace in the midst of his sin and he is mad when God shows the Ninevites grace in the midst of his sin? What's the difference? Is it that the Ninevites' sin was worse? Well, then you're back into this deserving category.

39:50 Is it because Jonah was more deserving of salvation than the Ninevites? I mean, if that's how you're going to play it, if that's the case you're going to make, then grace wasn't involved. Compassion and mercy weren't involved. it was a transaction. Jonah's right to be angry because he deserved the grace and the Ninevites didn't. But if it's God's mercy and compassion and grace that are at issue here, then no. Jonah is not right to be angry that God relented from destroying Nineveh and rejoicing when God relented from destroying him because he didn't deserve it any more than the Ninevites did. Look, this is an important thing to think about. Because I think you and I can very easily find ourselves stuck in that same sad reality and irony that Jonah found himself stuck in here, right? Oh, I deserve grace. They didn't, and therefore I'm mad. I mean, think about what's happened here in this story.

40:49 Jonah sinned against God. He sinned against God. He looked into God's face. He heard his call to go preach to the Ennivites, and he said, uh-uh, I'm not doing it. He hopped the ship, and he took off. And God, instead of killing him, graciously saved him with the fish. And then Jonah spent an entire chapter praising God for that undeserved grace to him. But as soon as God shows the same undeserved grace to somebody else, Jonah is furious.

41:24 So you see the irony there? Do you feel the pressure of what's going on there? Jonah has a fundamentally flawed understanding of grace. That's what he's got. He's got a fundamentally flawed understanding of grace. He uses all the words, grace, mercy, salvation, compassion, all of it. But it's all undermined by his idea that all of that stuff can be deserved or not. Despite all his words, all his songs, all the rest, Jonah still thinks that grace is fundamentally a matter of deserving it.

41:59 I deserve to be shown mercy. They don't. I mean, maybe you can recognize some of that thing in your own heart. I mean, think again about that group of people that we talked about earlier that you don't particularly like. I mean, I wonder when you first thought of that group of people, did you feel some of that? Did you feel some of that? No, they don't deserve it. They don't deserve grace. They deserve justice. Well, friend, if that's the kind of thing that was going on in your heart, and my guess is that that is a little bit at least what was going on in 100% of the hearts in this room, including mine, then it's worth some work.

42:40 It's worth some work. But here's the kicker. The work is not to convince yourself that the people you're thinking about are as deserving of God's grace as you are. That's not the work. say it again, it is not to convince yourself and get yourself thinking that those people that I don't particularly like, they are as deserving of God's grace as I am. That's not the work. The work is to convince yourself that you are as undeserving of God's grace as they are.

43:17 That's the fundamental reality that this book is trying to teach us. We are all completely undeserving of anything good from God. What we deserve is to be cast into the sea, not just in the middle of a storm, but in the middle of a hurricane with a millstone around our necks and for it to drag us all the way down to hell. That's what we deserve for our sins. And yet our God is a compassionate and gracious God, abounding in steadfast covenant love. And he sent his son, the eternal son of God, to endure that curse that you deserved.

43:55 He stretched out his arms and he died on a cross so that you wouldn't have to be dragged to hell. And now he stands with his arms still wide open to give mercy and grace to anyone who will come to him. Not because you think you deserve it, not because you think you deserve it a little bit more than those people, But because you know deep down in your heart that you don't deserve it. Just one more thing.

44:26 Think about this question here again that God asks to Jonah. It's an amazing response because it goes right to the heart of Jonah's problem, right? Is it hot to you rightfully? Are you angry rightfully? You know, this may be a simple little application, but I think that's a question we should all put in our back pockets and pull out frequently. I mean, imagine the good that could be done in all of our lives if we just asked ourselves that question occasionally instead of rushing forward with an assumption that our anger at whatever it is, is right.

45:07 How often do you do that? Something happens and you get mad and how fast does your mind make the case? It's like a split second that your mind puts that case together, boom, I'm mad, and off I go. And you don't even question it. You don't even go back and ask yourself, well, how strong is the case really? And if somebody tries to question the case, you're not willing to hear it because you're mad. The case was made in a split second, your anger is righteous, off I go. How much good could be done if you would just stop in the first few seconds When you feel that flame starting to fire up to say, is it hot to you rightfully?

45:46 Are you angry rightfully? Imagine what it would do if you had that question right at the front of your mind in your marriage. When your temper flares at your spouse, if you just stop and say, am I right to be angry in this? Anger, friends, is not self-justifying. It's not self-justifying. the fact that you got angry does not mean that you were right to get angry you have to question that is it hot to you rightfully imagine what that would do in your parenting are you mad at your kid because they actually disobeyed you or are you mad at your kid because they interrupted your watching of Netflix?

46:34 Is it hot to you, rightfully, at your workplace? Are you mad at that employee because they actually did something wrong to you that deserves your righteous anger? Are you just mad because they outflanked you on a project or something because they got the best of you? When disagreements come to the church, how much good would it do if we all just stop for a moment and say, is it hot to me rightfully? Look, sometimes if you ask that question of yourself you'll find that the answer is no, actually.

47:11 I'm hot, but it's not rightful. I'm angry, but it's not righteous. My case that my mind put together in a split second is not watertight. It's not a good case. And you can adjust. You can stop. You can repent. You can ask the Lord to cool you down and put the fires out. But friends, let me tell you. Even in the times when the answer is yes, I am rightfully angry. The case that clicked together in my mind in a split second is right. I'll tell you what happens if you ask that question. Stopping to make sure, stopping to ask yourself that question, I promise you this is what will happen.

47:46 It will cool the temperature in your mind and heart just enough for you to let the remembrance of grace in the door. Maybe I am right to be angry. Oh, but God, God was right to be angry with me. And yet he showed me grace. Maybe, just maybe, even though I'm right, I should do exactly the same thing for that person.

48:22 Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are, in fact, a gracious God and merciful. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Lord, our whole eternity, our whole spiritual eternal life depends on that fact. That you are not a God who is infinitely stern and unmoved and unmoving. You're a God who has loved us and who has sent your Son to die in our place so that we can live forever in your glory.

49:00 Our Lord, we pray that you would help us to remember these things. Help us to remember what grace really is, that it's never deserved. We didn't deserve it. And when we show it to people, they don't necessarily have to deserve it either. Our Father, help us to remember these things and help us to live in light of them. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.