Jonah 4:5–11

0:00 So, a few minutes ago, as I often do, I prayed during the pastoral prayer that the Lord would help us to take whatever distractions are on our minds and our hearts and see them in the light of His Word. You may not think much about that, but I think it's a real dynamic when we come together as a church and try to sit under the preaching of the Word. We all come in to this place with all sorts of things on our minds. The vectors of our thoughts and imaginations and all the rest are just aimed in, you know, if there are 500 people in here, in 500 different directions.

0:34 We're thinking about what we have to do this week. We're thinking about what we did yesterday. We're thinking about something that we want or that we're concerned about. There are so many things that distract us. So I wonder what it is for you today. When you walked in the door today and you sang the songs, You sat down to listen to the sermon. What was distracting you? What maybe is distracting you? There are different kinds of distractions, right? Sometimes the things that are on our minds are legit concerns.

1:08 They're legit worries. Maybe you're worried about your child for some reason. Maybe you saw some signs of sickness in your child this morning and you're concerned about that. You're worried about it and it's keeping your mind off of what we're doing here this morning. Maybe you're concerned about paying the rent next month. Maybe you're concerned about a job that you're worried that you might not get or that you might lose. There are concerns like that that fill up our minds. Some of the things that distract us from the Word of God and what we're doing here this morning are just more like desires. I just want more of this or more of that or I'm feeling a particular loss today.

1:44 Maybe I've been praying for a long time that the Lord would give me a spouse and he hasn't done that. and that's just particularly painful this morning for whatever reason. Maybe the thing that's distracting you is even your desire for someone in your family or one of your friends to be saved through faith in Christ. There are all kinds of different distractions. They come in different categories. They have different colors. But whatever it is, whatever's threatening to distract you this morning, let me ask you a question about it. What is that distraction keeping you from seeing?

2:23 What is that distraction, whatever it is, whatever kind it is, good or bad, legit or not so legit, what is that distraction keeping you from seeing? Maybe to put an even finer point on it, what glory is that distraction keeping you from seeing? In the middle of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, who's the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, most of you will know him by that accolade most of all, but he wrote a sermon and preached a sermon called The Weight of Glory.

2:59 It's a sermon about what it means to have glory in heaven. When the Bible says that we're going to be glorified with Jesus Christ in heaven, what exactly does that mean? He says it doesn't hold much appeal to him to just be turned into a human light bulb. And so if the idea is just that we're going to shine like the stars in the heavens, he doesn't have all that much interest in it. And so he spends this entire sermon talking about the weight of glory. What does it mean exactly to be glorified? But he starts that sermon off by considering the question of whether we are too easily distracted.

3:33 Here's what he writes. He says, indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels to us, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. We are like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea.

4:09 We are far too easily pleased. I think that's right. I think we're far too easily pleased and I think we are far too easily distracted. And you know what one of the main distractions is that often sees us or keeps us from seeing the glories of God? It's ourselves. We get distracted by ourselves and what we want. Well, that's what I want to talk to you about today as we're finishing up this study of the book of Jonah.

4:43 We've been in this book, I think, for the last five weeks. This is the end of a six-week series on the book of Jonah. And finally, we've come to sort of the meat, the heart of the book, the middle of chapter 4, the last, you know, few verses of chapter 4, the reason that this book was written in the first place. Most people approach this book, I think, when they first come to it, as if it's a fairly straightforward story of this reluctant prophet who learns his lesson that you really should obey God. And if you don't obey God, then God will have you swallowed by a giant fish.

5:14 But if you do obey God, then good things will happen, and you might even go get to preach to a gigantic city, and that entire city of wicked people might even turn to God in repentance. Obey God, good stuff. Don't obey God, fish eats you. I think a lot of people come to the book thinking that that's its lesson. But I think, too, if you've been with us for the last five weeks or so, then you know that this book is nowhere near as simple as all that. This book, it turns out, saves up almost all of its treasures for this last fourth chapter.

5:52 This is when the thing comes to life. This is when you learn why the book was written in the first place. But until then, for the first three chapters that we've been studying for the last five weeks or so, it just sort of teases you. You're reading along, and it teases you with an almost savage ambiguity at every turn. It's just laden with questions right up until the very end. So, I mean, the most fundamental of which is, is Jonah a good guy or a bad guy? Is he a hero in the book, or is he a heel?

6:24 Is his song of thanks to God in chapter 2 genuine? Or is that song so hypocritical that it makes even the fish sick to his stomach? Why, here's another question, is Jonah so angry that the Ninevites respond so well to his preaching? You'd expect exactly the opposite. And if all of you responded to my preaching with repentance, I'm not going to get mad about that. That's awesome. Any preacher should want that, not Jonah. Jonah wanted them to respond badly to his preaching.

6:55 Why? And who exactly is the target of Jonah's anger? When the anger comes, who's the target? Is it the Ninevites? Really, is he mad at them for repenting? Or is that target somebody else? Maybe even somebody else with a capital S and a capital E. Is he mad at God? At the end of the day, what is this book really trying to get us to see?

7:27 What is it trying to get us to learn and to take to heart? Because it's definitely something more than just obey God or get eaten. Well, last week, we looked at the first four verses of chapter 4 where this book's deepest lessons just start to come into focus. I mean, it's like a camera coming into focus. And in the first four verses of chapter 4, you can just sort of start making out the outlines of the big lessons that this book wants to teach us. So what happened in those verses is that on the heels of the Ninevites' repentance and God relenting from the disaster he was going to bring on them, Jonah is furious.

8:02 So he finally puts into words why he ran away from God in the first place. Up until that point, for the whole rest of the book, we have no idea, unless you've read this story before, You have no idea why Jonah is hopping a boat to get as far from Nineveh as possible. You have no idea. The text just says that he does it. But here at the beginning of chapter 4, he finally puts into words why he ran away in the first place. And it's a shocker. Because the reason he says he ran away is because he knew God's character as a loving and compassionate God.

8:34 And therefore he knew that God was going to be quick to forgive the Ninevites when they repented. And that ticked Jonah off to no end. I mean, you see what's going on there? He's saying, God, I don't like the way you are. And I don't like the way you operate. I know you said that your glory is to be a compassionate and loving God, slow to anger and quick to show mercy. I know that that's how you revealed your glory to Moses, but I don't like it.

9:10 You're too forgiving. You're too kind. You're too compassionate. And to put a fine point on it, Jonah seems pretty convinced here that he knows how to be God better than God knows how to be God. But then in verse 4, God answers him with this one amazing question. Literally, it's the question, is it hot to you rightfully? In other words, are you right to be angry? this anger that you've got?

9:41 Is it coming from righteous reasons? Is it hot to you rightfully? Well, Jonah doesn't answer, but the question just kind of hangs there. And what it's doing is begging you and me as readers of the book to give it an answer. Is Jonah right to be angry that God has forgiven these wicked Ninevites? And that's where we pick up the story today. Look with me at Jonah chapter four. I'm gonna start reading in verse five. right after God asks this question. Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.

10:17 He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

10:48 But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle? Well, what you got here, I think, is a somewhat strange story of God using a series of natural events.

11:23 That's a theme throughout the book of Jonah. God uses these natural things, right? The fish, now this plant, then a worm, then a wind. Each one of those is said to be appointed by God to do a certain thing. It's teaching you that God is sovereign in his providence over even the stuff of the natural world. There's not one tornado, there's not one hurricane, not one volcano that erupts apart from the sovereign command of God. That's part of what this story is teaching you, but it's not the main point. What he uses those natural events to do, especially in this chapter, is to give Jonah a painful but necessary object lesson.

11:59 In other words, he's going to use objects to teach a lesson. That's exactly what happens through the rest of this chapter. Most of the time in remembering or telling the story, if somebody asks you to tell the book of Jonah, maybe you wouldn't do this now. I hope not, having heard the sermon series. But maybe prior to hearing the sermon series, if someone said, can you just summarize the book of Jonah? Most of us, I think, would stop the story at the repentance of the Ninevites at the end of chapter 3. That's kind of where our mental image of the book sort of cuts off. But this object lesson with the plant and the worm and the wind this is really the point of the book. Everything else has been set up. This is where God wrenches Jonah's attention, and therefore ours as readers, onto the fact that Jonah really is not right to be angry. The answer to the question, is it hot to you, Jonah, rightfully? The answer to that is no.

12:55 And this object lesson is going to teach him that. It's going to teach him that his conception of grace and when and to whom that grace ought to be shown is fundamentally not righteous but self-centered. Ultimately, what's going on through this whole story is that Jonah thinks he deserves God's grace and goodness, but nobody else does. And that's the delusion that God uses this object lesson with the plant and the worm to point out. Now, when God does that, does it break the delusion for Jonah? I mean, does the object lesson show Jonah his selfishness and lead him to repentance?

13:36 Well, we'll talk about that later. For now, I just want you to focus on the main idea. I don't want you to get distracted, but focus on the main idea. Here it is. Your focus, Christian, I'm talking to you, your focus on yourself and the worldly things that you want for yourself will blind you to the glories of God's grace. You got that? Your focus, my focus, on yourself, myself, and the worldly things that we want for ourselves will blind you to the glories of God's grace.

14:16 That's exactly what happened to Jonah and it's what will happen to you too if you don't actively work against it. The human heart is like a stone in a pool. always tries to sink to the bottom, and it takes active work to keep pushing that rock back up to the top. You can't be a passive Christian and expect your heart to remain right. It takes work. Well, this text, as happens sometimes in the Bible, doesn't really give itself to a neat breaking down into parts that we could attach points of a sermon to. Sometimes that works, right? Even in a narrative, you can kind of break it into acts or scenes or whatever and attach a sermon point to each one of those parts. It doesn't really work like that in this story.

14:56 Because the point of the story is really bound up in the whole thing. And then it comes to a point in the very last two verses. So in the sermon this morning, we're not going to try to break it down into parts. We're going to look at this whole object lesson that God gives to Jonah. We talk about the vine and the worm and the wind, all of it. We're going to look at it all together. We're going to try to understand the point that God is making to Jonah in the object lesson. And then we're going to draw out a number of applications from what we learned. And my prayer, brothers and sisters, is that as we study this story, we're going to learn, as Christians, as members of Third Avenue, we're going to learn what God wanted to teach Jonah.

15:32 That God's purpose of grace is far more glorious than we could ever imagine, but we will miss it entirely if our minds are captured by thoughts of what we can get for ourselves. I want to try to break a tendency to selfishness in your heart and my heart. So here we go. First of all, point zero, as I call it, the story. The story. We're just going to walk through the story, talk about some of its details, try to understand what's going on here and the point God is making to Jonah.

16:04 So I've already brought you up to speed on what happens in the first four verses. It ends with the Lord asking this just dart of a question. Is it hot to you rightfully? And I hope after the sermon last week, you used that in your own life when you felt yourself starting to get angry. I hope you stopped and said, is it right to me? Or is it hot to me rightfully? Am I getting angry rightfully or maybe am I wrong? Well, that's the dart of a question that Jonah gets asked here by the Lord. And Jonah says in response, nothing. He gives no answer to the question.

16:36 See that? Verse 4 and then moves on to verse 5. There is no 4.5, right? There is no answer that Jonah gives. He gives absolutely no answer to the question. It does not penetrate his anger. It does not penetrate his hard-heartedness. He doesn't change at all in the light of that question. Instead, in verse 5, Jonah goes outside the city and makes himself a little booth to sit under so that he can keep an eye on the city of Nineveh to see what happens to it. Now, it's hard to know.

17:07 I mean, the text just doesn't tell us exactly what's going on in Jonah's mind. We don't know what his thinking was here. I mean, he had seen the Ninevites' repentance, right? That happened pretty quickly. And Jonah was in the city when it happened. So he saw the sackcloth. He saw the ashes. He heard the prayer to God who was going to, you know, maybe the king said, relent from this disaster. He also was pretty sure that God's character was going to mean that God would relent from destroying the city. But he goes out and he watches anyway.

17:38 Builds himself a little booth on top of a mountain. Looks down over the city to see what was happening. Presumably he was out there for the entire 40 days of his prophecy to see what would happen. Maybe with the thought that the Ninevites would, you know, like that stone, sink back into their former wickedness. And God would destroy them anyway. He may have had some thought that maybe God himself would come to his senses. And understand how unjust and wrong it is to relent from disaster on these people. And God would turn the whole place into Sodom and Gomorrah. Like they deserved. We don't know, but he sat there, not answering God's question, but to see what would happen to the city. Well, in verse 6, school goes into session for Jonah, and God starts this multi-move chess game with him in order to reveal his heart. So the first thing that happens is that God appoints a plant to grow up over Jonah very quickly. It seems like in the course of a night, This plant grows up almost immediately.

18:38 We don't know and it does not matter what kind of plant it was. Traditionally, people have called it a gourd of some kind. Others have said it was a castor oil plant. I can't for the life of me figure out why it matters. The point is that the plant grew very quickly and it was big enough to shade Jonah from the intense heat that would have existed from the Assyrian sun beating down on his head. The plant was shading him. Now, some people have looked at this and asked, well, why did Jonah need the plant if he had his little booth?

19:10 Right? I mean, he built a booth, he sat under its shade, and then the plant comes up. Why does he need the plant if he had his booth? And the answer is that Jonah's booth wasn't much of anything to look at. It would have been pretty pathetic. I mean, Jonah's not out there building himself a house. He's not building a log cabin. There's no lumber. At this point in history, lumber was a luxury. You had to have it shipped from Lebanon overseas. A lot of the lumber, in fact, would come into Joppa, from which Jonah took off on the ship. That was the port city. And you had to get lumber, and it was incredibly expensive.

19:42 Jonah didn't have anything like that. So when you think about a booth, you shouldn't think of the guard booth at a national park here in the United States. That's not it. It's just this little lean-to made out of sticks and leaves that would have dried out and withered in the desert sun and therefore stopped providing any real protection pretty quickly. He might have even had to build it over and over again. The point, though, is that Jonah was very, very happy for God to give him this plant.

20:14 In fact, in verse 6, he says there that he was exceedingly happy. Literally, he rejoiced with a great rejoicing. Now that's interesting because there is nowhere else in this book that Jonah gets this happy. This is the high watermark of Jonah's joy in this book. A big plant. That's what gets him going.

20:46 In fact, there are only two times in the book, you ever notice this? There are only two times in this book when Jonah seems genuinely happy. You know when those are? it's here when God gives him the plant and in chapter 2 when God saves him with the fish. That's when Jonah gets happy. He gets happy when God does good to Jonah. Now that's worth taking a minute, isn't it? I mean, ask yourself this question.

21:18 When do you most tend to feel the joy of the Lord? Is it when you're contemplating the excellencies of God himself? When you're contemplating the wonder and the majesty of King Jesus? Is it when you see God pouring out goodness on somebody else around you? Or do you tend most to feel the joy of the Lord when God does good for you?

21:52 It's a good thing to question yourself about. And the answer that you come up with might make you pay just a little bit closer attention to the lessons of this book. Jonah got happy when God does good to him. So anyway, Jonah's at this point super stoked about his gourd. But it's short-lived because in verse 7, the next morning God appointed a worm to eat the plant. And the plant withered and died. I mean, you can go into all kinds of scientific stuff about plants whose stems, when once they're bit into, will quickly wither and try to figure out what kind of plant it was.

22:25 what kind of worm again it just doesn't matter the point is that overnight the plant grew up and overnight the plant died and it was all at God's hand because God had a point to make with it doesn't make matters worse if you look at it God sent a scorching wind from the east to torment Jonah and he caused the sun to beat down on his head so that Jonah in the midst of all of this this horrible desert heat is once again thrown into despair you can look at verse 8 when the sun rose God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and he comes to despair again at the end of verse 8 he asked that he might die and said it is better for me to die than to live now I think there's something interesting in that this is the same thing basically that Jonah had said up in verse 4 or verse 3 therefore now oh Lord, please take my life from me.

23:17 It is better for me to die than to live. And then down in verse 8, again, it is better for me to die than to live. But the reasons are very different. The reasons that Jonah gets to this point of despair are very different. Think about verse 3. What has led Jonah to that kind of I would rather die despair? It's seeing God's action of saving. That's what's led him to despair. God saved the Ninevites. He relented from the disaster he was about to send upon him. And that sends Jonah into despair, God's action of saving.

23:49 What is it that sends Jonah into despair in verse 8? It's not God's action of saving, it's God's action of destroying. That's what's sent Jonah into despair. You see the point here? He doesn't seem to be operating on any principle whatsoever. He's mad when God saves. He's mad when God destroys. He's mad all the time. No matter what God does. And yet, even though there's no principle, even though there doesn't seem to be any organizing principle, it turns out that there is.

24:20 There's a pattern to Jonah's unhappiness. There's a pattern to his despair. What is it? Well, hang on to that question for a little bit longer. Look what happens in verse 9. God asks the same question from up in verse 4, but this time he adds the words about the plant. Is it hot to you rightfully about the plant? So in other words, are you, Jonah, rightfully angry? You are angry, but are you rightfully angry about what happened to the plant?

24:52 And this time Jonah can't help himself. He's done. He's done with the silent treatment to God. He answers and he does so explosively. Yes, I'm right to be angry. I am angry enough to die. And then God sets the hook. Are you, Jonah? You're angry enough to die because of what happened to the plant. Verse 10, the Lord said, you, Jonah, pity the plant. You pity the plant. You're sad for the plant. You're angry because of what happened to the plant. For which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow.

25:23 It came into being in a night and it perished in a night. You didn't have any long history with that plant. You didn't love that plant. You didn't have a relationship with that plant. But you're angry about it. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle. So much to learn. Just parenthesis though, I want you to see here, I want you to see here that Yahweh was Nineveh's God, even though Nineveh didn't recognize it.

25:59 Yahweh was Nineveh's God, even though Nineveh didn't recognize it. For that may be an important little lesson, little side lesson for you to get a hold of this morning. You may not want to have anything to do with this religion stuff. You may not want to have anything to do with this Christianity stuff. You may not want to acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ for half a second. And yet, and yet, Jesus Christ is your God and your judge. whether you recognize him or not.

26:33 You don't have to recognize Jesus as king for him to be king. You don't have to recognize him as judge for the reality to be that on the last day, whether it's your last day or history's last day, you will stand before him as judge. You don't have to acknowledge it. It's true. But the point is that if you do acknowledge it, if you do acknowledge it in this age, What will be waiting for you at the last day is not judgment, but salvation. God was Nineveh's God, even though Nineveh didn't recognize it.

27:14 But what's the point that God makes? That's a side point, right? God loves the Ninevites. He has this fatherly compassion even for the Ninevites because they are his. They're made in his image, right, even if they don't know it. But what's his point to Jonah? Well, you can see what he's trying to teach Jonah with this object lesson, and it's this. He's trying to show Jonah that his priorities, his understanding of God's goodness and kindness and how it ought to be shown to this person or that person were entirely out of alignment.

27:47 Jonah had his understanding of God's grace and kindness and goodness and to whom it should be shown completely wrong. Because in Jonah's mind, the person who deserved the grace and goodness of God, the fish, the plant, the forgiveness, the person who deserved all that was Jonah and nobody else. You see the pattern in the book? Jonah was glad when God graciously gave him the fish. He was glad when God graciously gave him the plant.

28:19 He was mad when God took the plant away. And he was mad when God showed kindness to the Ninevites. Do you see what's going on there? Through the whole book, the one single factor that explains Jonah's entire emotional rollercoaster in this book is this. He's happy when God does good things for Jonah. But he's furious when God does a good thing for somebody else. That's it.

28:50 That's what explains the whole emotional rollercoaster of the book. he's happy when God does good things for Jonah. He's furious when God does good things for anybody else. And so that's what God's pushing on here in verses 10 and 11. Jonah, you're angry because the plant died. This plant that you had no relationship with, you didn't create it, you didn't nurture it. I gave it to you, God says, as a gift of grace. You're mad that this plant died and yet you're charging me with wrong in showing grace to these Ninevites. These people who, in a creator, creature, kind of way, not in a covenant way, but a creature creator way. They're my people. They're created in my image. I've raised them up in my sovereignty, in my providence. I've nurtured them.

29:37 You're mad about that. And why? Why? Why ultimately, Jonah, are you mad about the plant in the first place? It's because it was providing you with shade. You don't really care about the plant even. And it's just giving you something that you wanted. You see what he's doing there? He's drawing this comparison between the plant and Jonah's reaction to it and Nineveh and God's reaction to it. I mean, just incidentally, we should take just a second because you're all going to wonder about it. It's worth taking a look at that last phrase of the book, and also much cattle.

30:11 It is just a really weird way to end the book. And people have laughed about it for almost 3,000 years now. Like, why does God end with, you know, this great statement? Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left? Strong ending. Own a bunch of cows. It just seems very anticlimactic. Why is that there? Well, it might just be pointing out the wealth of the city. Again, the book has made a big deal of the greatness of the city of Nineveh.

30:43 So it might just be pointing out the wealth of the city. but I think it's doing something a little bit more. I think it's actually underlining again the absurdity of Jonah's anger about the plant. One more time. I think essentially what he's doing is God is saying, look, Jonah, you're mad that this plant died. And yet what you want is for fire and brimstone to rain down on Nineveh. But Jonah, even the animals there make that city worth saving.

31:16 far more so than your plant. The animals make it worth showing grace to, not even to mention the people. I think that's what's going on there. So big picture, and we've come to the end of telling the story. Do you see what God's doing here? He's using this plant, and then it's death the next day, to show once and for all that Jonah's priorities, his understanding of God's grace, are just fundamentally out of whack. And that whether he sees it clearly or not, The one driving principle that's shaping Jonah's opinions of stuff and his emotional reactions to those things is selfishness.

31:54 He's looking out for number one. And that's blinded him entirely to what God's grace is all about. Okay, so what lessons are there to learn from this story, from this object lesson that God teaches Jonah? Well, five of them. I'm going to give you five. There are lots more that you could come up with, talk about it. over the course of the week in your home groups, all the rest of it, I'm going to give you five. So lesson number one, and this I think is probably the main lesson that this book is trying to teach. Here it is. It is wrong for you to lay selfish claim to God's goodness and grace.

32:33 It is wrong for you to lay selfish claim to God's goodness and grace. That's exactly what Jonah was doing here, and it all clicks in place when you see him get happy about the gourd and then mad at its demise. You see that happen in the story, and all of a sudden it just clicks. Jonah's not mad about Nineveh getting forgiven out of some high-minded view of justice. He's not mad because God is somehow acting in an unprincipled or inscrutable or unjust way. That's not what he's mad about. The only principle he was operating under was that God should show grace to him, Jonah, and not to them, the Ninevites. You see that? Jonah's happy in this book. He's ecstatic, in fact. He rejoices with an exceedingly great rejoicing. He's ecstatic when good things happen to Jonah, and he's mad when bad things happen to Jonah, and he's mad when good things happen to people other than Jonah. His whole galaxy brain calculus for how God should run the universe is

33:34 Do good things to me. Now I know that I could launch off into a diatribe against, for example, the prosperity gospel. That so many people who call themselves Christians are dragged away by like a fish on a hook. Because that's exactly the principle that underlies the prosperity gospel too. It's a galaxy brain take on how the Lord should run the universe. And it all comes down to, God, you do good things to me.

34:09 But I don't think it's just the prosperity gospel that operates on that principle. I think far too often it's people like you and me sitting in pews of churches like Third Avenue Baptist Church. Brother and sister, you and I, even as Christians, we have to be careful that our understanding of what's right and good and just doesn't wind up being just like Jonah's. We have to be careful not to think that God's goodness is defined and exhausted by what he does for us or doesn't do for us.

34:47 That's a hard lesson to learn, but it's critical. Most of you have read our church covenant dozens of times, right? One of the promises that we make in our church covenant is exactly on this point. We say that by God's grace, we will participate in each other's joys and endeavor with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other's burdens and sorrows. Now, it's the second half of that one that gets most of the press, right? We will endeavor with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other's burdens and sorrows.

35:20 We will weep with those who weep. And by God's grace, I think we as a church do that exceedingly well. You guys as a church care for one another in the pains and sorrows of life. You weep with those who weep. But it's the first part that by God's grace, we promise that we will participate in each other's joys. It's that first part that's the hard part. Because that's the part that says, I promise by God's grace that I will watch God give something good to someone else and not to me that I really wanted for myself.

36:04 And I will nevertheless rejoice. Oh, that's hard. That's hard. When you've been praying and praying and praying that God would do this thing in your life and he does that thing, but not for you. When somebody stands up in an evening service and says, I've got to praise because the Lord has answered my prayers to give me this or that thing. And you're thinking, I've been praying for that for years and he hasn't given it to me. It's hard. It's hard to rejoice with that person in their joy.

36:38 But we do it. We do it. We ask God to help us do it. And why? Because we want to be a people who rejoice to see the goodness and kindness and grace of God wherever he gives it. Not just when he pours it out at my feet. We want to be a people who say, I'm not going to lay selfish claim to God's goodness. As if I somehow deserve it. Now I'm going to rejoice when God brings glory to himself by showing grace and kindness to somebody else.

37:13 That's the first thing. Here's the second lesson. Jonah's priority here in this story was very clearly on the things of this world and not the things of heaven. His priority was on physical things, not spiritual things. You notice that? I mean, think back again. What gives Jonah the greatest, most exceeding joy in this story? Is it the spiritual reality that the Ninevites are brought to repentance? That they take the first step, maybe even in getting to know Yahweh, the covenant God, a little bit?

37:49 Is that what causes Jonah joy? No. Where's his joy? It's in the plant. That's what makes him happy. This temporary, weak, fading plant. That gives him a little bit of comfort and security in this world. That's where his mind is. That's what affects his heart. So I could turn and I could ask you, where's your mind? Is your mind on the things of this world or is your mind on the things of heaven?

38:20 It would be a good question. I mean, that will preach. I could get you to think about where is my mind? Where are my priorities? Where is my focus? Where are my thoughts going? It would be a great question. But you and I both know the answer to that question. The answer to that question for most of us is that our minds are jumbled up and mixed. Sometimes on the things of this world, sometimes on the things of heaven, most of the time just sort of suspended between the two, like Tarzan between two vines. That's where most of us spend most of our lives. But what I want you to see, what I want you to see from this for the umpteenth time in Scripture is the futility of putting your trust in things that are going to fade away and disappear.

39:06 Of rejoicing in those things. Like Jonah rejoiced in this plant. Or of getting mad. And those things ultimately slip through your fingers like sand because they will. Look, here's the bottom line. The things of this fleeting world are not worth your ultimate joy. And the loss of them is not worth your ultimate anger. It's just not.

39:39 Those things are going away. I love how one Jewish commentator put this. He's not even a Christian, but he's reflecting on this story. And here's how he says it. Jonah's joy in the gourd is like the joy of people in the possessions of this world, which do not persist, over the possession of which it is not worth rejoicing, nor is it worth being sorry for their loss. So, Scripture comes to show us the limitations of those things' benefits.

40:10 And to make that point, it says, God appointed a worm. Friends, when it comes to the things of this world, God always, always appoints a worm. He always appoints a worm. They always go away. Money gets spent, houses burn, paint peels, cars rust, phones get slow, friendships fail, family disappoints.

40:44 God always appoints a worm to take away the things of this world. Look, I'm not, don't misunderstand me. I am not trying to push you here toward a platonic asceticism where the things of this world don't matter at all and we should all just, you know, free our minds of those things and go into a kind of state of heavenly nirvana where we don't care about anything. That is not what I'm trying to tell you. God gives us good things in this world. And according to Ecclesiastes, part of our duty before God, hear that, that's important, part of our duty before God is to enjoy those things to his glory.

41:18 It's an incredible thing that Ecclesiastes says. If you're not enjoying the good gifts that God has given you in this world, you actually are in sin and you're going to give an account to him for it. It's an incredible thing that he says. But the problem arises, and Ecclesiastes makes this point too, the problem arises when you have no higher joy than the good things God has given you in this world. That was Jonah's problem. His problem wasn't that he was glad of the fish and the plant.

41:49 He should have been glad of the fish. He should have been glad of the plant. The problem was that he could see no higher joy than those things. Not even in the life-sparing repentance of the Ninevites. Friend, don't let your highest joy, don't let your highest joy be the bottom of the barrel of what God has to offer you. We are far too easily pleased. Here's the third thing, very closely related to that. Jonah's priority was on the things of this world, not the things of heaven.

42:22 Closely related, Jonah's selfishness, his focus on himself and the things of this world, scorched his concern for other human beings. It scorched his concern for other human beings. I hope you can see that in the story. It's plain as day. That's God's whole point, in fact, in verse 10. Jonah, you are sad and angry about this plant because it was meeting your earthly needs, but you have not a thought for the spiritual state of the Ninevites. In fact, you'd be happy to see them destroyed even as you're crying about your plant.

42:59 And that's what happens when we turn inwards and decide that our purpose is to nurse ourselves. That's what happens. We lose concern for other human beings. We lose concern for those human beings' eternity. We give massive emotional resources to our own situation and not a thought to the fact that people around us are people who need God's grace. Did you ever think about that as you're making your way through your day, through your office, around your school, in the restaurants, whatever it is?

43:35 Did you ever think about that? Every single person that you meet in the course of a day, every single person that you talk to or interact with is someone who is going to live forever either in heaven or in hell and yet how easily do we treat those people with contempt maybe even with just the contempt of benign pleasantness when we could be pointing their eyes even in a small way to Jesus that same sermon that where c.s lewis talks about the mud pies on the beach he talks about this very idea of seeing people in the light of eternity listen to what he says he says the load or weight or burden of my neighbor's immortality should be laid daily on my back it is a serious thing to live in a society full of immortals to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to in a day may one day be a creature which if you

44:40 saw him now you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare all day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations and it is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities it's with the awe and the circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all our dealings with one another. All friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, empires, civilizations, those are mortal. And their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.

45:39 Immortal hoarders or everlasting splendors. Brothers and sisters, don't be like Jonah. Don't let your concern for your gourds scorch your concern for people and their eternity. Here's number four. I want you to just notice God's universal purpose of grace here because that's one of the sort of minor notes in this story is God's universal purpose of grace.

46:11 Because what's going on in this series of events and what's going on in the book too is that it's kicking out the walls of Jonah's blinkered, myopic, ethnocentric, Israel-centric understanding of God's purposes of grace. Jonah thought God's purpose of grace was for Israel and Israel alone, how dare you show it to anybody else? God's purpose of grace was universal and it included the Ninevites. And so God's got to kick the walls out of his blinkered understanding of grace. And to do that, God sends him to the one city at the time that would raise the most objections in Jonah's heart.

46:45 It was meant to do that. You're going to show grace to those people? What are you thinking, God? Yes, Jonah. I'm going to show grace even to them because the purpose of my grace reaches that far. I intend to take it to the nations. You know, there's a very similar story to Jonah in the New Testament, and it's in Acts 10. Do you remember the story? It's the moment when the gospel of Jesus in the book of Acts is about to be preached to the Gentiles, and this wall that separated Jew from Gentile is about to be breached for the first time, because this guy named Cornelius is about to hear the gospel and believe it in all of its fullness, right?

47:28 There are various other Gentiles who have believed it in, you know, sort of dawning terms. But Cornelius is about to believe it in its fullness. So Cornelius, this Gentile, is told to sin for a man named Peter. So messengers go from Cornelius' house to where Peter is. Peter goes with them. And on the way, Peter has this vision. Do you remember what it is? It's another object lesson. It's this sheet full of a bunch of unclean animals, as they're defined in the Old Testament. And God says, Peter, rise up and eat these unclean animals. And Peter's like, no way, I'm not going to eat the unclean animals.

47:59 God uses that object lesson to show him that, no, all that's off now. The gospel is going to the Gentiles, to the unclean people. That's what's happening here. Same thing happens to Jonah, right? He has to be shown an object lesson in the plant and the worm and all the rest of it. He has to be shown an object lesson to teach Jonah, just like Peter had to be taught, that God's purpose of grace is bigger than either one of them had ever thought. But here's the kicker. Do you remember where this journey into this whole long lesson began for Jonah?

48:38 Where did it begin? This city called Joppa. Do you know where Peter was when he set off for Cornelius' house to learn the same thing? He was in Joppa. Friends, there are no coincidences here. The book of Jonah is the Acts 10 of the Old Testament. It's kicking open the doors of our blinkered, narrow understanding of God's grace.

49:10 Our God is a God who wants his name to be known in every nation of the world. And you will not know him rightly until your vision and your actions are as universal as his. We serve a God who is king of the world. Not just king of this church or king of your household or king of this city. Let your vision and your actions be as broad as his. Here's number five. I just want you to notice how quickly God responds to repentance. This kind of reaches back up into chapter three, but I think it's important.

49:45 Do you notice how quickly God responds to the Ninevites' repentance? The Ninevites repent and God relents. I mean, it's not like God sits up in heaven and says, well, let's give it some time. You know, let's see how this pans out because, I mean, frankly, it didn't pan out well at all. A generation later, it's the Assyrians, the Ninevites, who are coming in and destroying the nation of Israel and deporting them all over the known world. The repentance didn't last very long. But do you notice how fast it is? The Ninevites repent and God relents.

50:17 I think sometimes people have this wrong notion that it's hard to come to God. That there are obstacles, that God is stingy. That he's sitting up on his throne with his arms crossed going, yeah, well, you say that, but let's see how it goes. Now, sometimes we as a church have to do that. But God responds quickly when a person repents. Because he can see their heart. Friend, if you'll repent, there are no obstacles between you and God except your own sin.

50:49 No obstacles except your own refusal to repent. But if you'll repent, if you'll come to him in faith, if you'll put your trust and reliance on his son, Jesus Christ, there's not going to be sitting back on the throne of God saying, well, let's just see how this works out. The Lord Jesus will rush to you to save you from your sins. Believe in him. Well, there's one last question in all of this. What about Jonah?

51:23 What happened to him? Did Jonah repent? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. The book just doesn't tell us. It just leaves God's last words hanging there in verse 11. I mean, honestly, if you think about it, a whole lot depends on who wrote the book, right? I mean, if Jonah wrote this book, which is possible, then in all likelihood he repented. And that's why he's writing the book in the first place. Because, you know, if he's still hard-hearted, if he still thinks he was in the right, he's not going to write a book that puts him in this light that has fishes vomiting him out and stuff because of his hypocrisy.

52:00 He's not going to do that. It's only a man who's repented who's willing to talk about himself in those terms. So if Jonah wrote it, he repented. But we don't know who wrote it. The book doesn't say who wrote it. Jonah's always talked about it in the third person. Here, there are other clues. We just don't know who wrote it. But there are two little clues here in chapter 4 that give me some hope that he did repent. Let me show you what they are. They're not, as the lawyers say, dispositive, right?

52:30 They don't dispose of the case and lock it up. But there's something. So look first at verse 6. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. That little phrase right there, to save him from his discomfort, is really interesting. Because the word for discomfort is ra'ah. It's the normal biblical word for evil. It doesn't just mean discomfort. It means evil. Now, sometimes in the book of Jonah, evil is used for a physical evil, like the storm that almost sinks the ship, is called an evil.

53:06 The thing that God is about to bring on the city of Nineveh is called an evil. It's a physical thing that's happening to somebody sometimes. Sometimes, even in the book of Jonah, the word ra'ah means moral evil. In other words, wickedness. Okay, so what does this phrase mean? What does it mean that the plant was given by God to save Jonah from his ra'ah? Well, it might just mean that God appointed the plant to save Jonah from the physical evil, the physical ra'ah of the heat and the sun.

53:42 It might mean that. But it could also be translated, God appointed a plant to save Jonah from his own wickedness. And that's what the purpose of the plant really was, wasn't it? It was not just to give shade. It was to change Jonah's thinking. To show him where he was wrong and lead him to repentance. That's one clue. Here's the second one. Look at the first words of verse 6.

54:13 Now the Lord God, you see that word Lord in all caps? That's the covenant name of Yahweh, covenant name of God. It's used when he's talking to and interacting with his people Israel. That's when that word is used. So Jonah's a Jew, and it's not surprising to see it used here. What's surprising is that for verses 7 and 8 and 9, when this object lesson to show Jonah his own heart is actually going on, the telling of the story reverts to God, which is the word that's usually used to refer to God for those outside the covenant.

54:57 Now that's a little ominous because it might be showing that the Lord is dealing with Jonah here as one who has broken the covenant, who is outside of it, who doesn't know or understand him. but then look what happens in verse 10 when the Lord comes to the point and the Lord said you pity the plant the covenant name is back maybe Jonah learned is it proof?

55:29 no ultimately we don't know and that's sad right I mean it's sad that when you come to a book like Jonah and the whole story is over and you don't know anything else about Jonah, the question that kind of burns in your mind at the end of the story is, did he repent? Did he come in the last moments to know God? It's sad that we don't know that. So, friend, here's my point in talking about that. It's not just to sate your curiosity. My point, friend, is don't let your life come to an end with people having to ask the question, did he finally repent?

56:07 Christians say that. They say that about their parents. They say that about their friends. When somebody dies unexpectedly, we say things to each other like, well, maybe he repented in the last moment. Maybe in the last moment before he closed his eyes and took his final breath, maybe he came to faith in Jesus. Maybe he repented of his sins. For don't make your family, don't make your friends ask that question of you. Because it's a heartbreaking question. Let them say what Andy Sims is saying about his dad right now.

56:40 He repented. And I know he repented. Because I saw it and I heard him talk about it. He repented long, long before the last moment. Let that be what's said of you. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you that you are a God of infinite compassion and boundless love.

57:13 And that the purposes of your grace and mercy are as wide as the universe. Our Lord, we pray that you would never ever let us lay a selfish claim to your grace. Or think that you are only good when you do good to us. Father, help us to rejoice with those who rejoice. And help us to teach others out there to rejoice as they come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.