Rebuke of God to the Pouting Prophet

Jonah's Anger and God's Initial Question

0:04 We turn again this evening to our friend Jonah. The record of his life and ministry is given to us in the prophecy of Jonah.

0:18 And our attention this evening will be directed particularly to verses 6 through 11. So that we may be freshly familiar with the flow of thought, I shall begin reading with the first verse of chapter 4. Remember the circumstances Jonah has preached. God has made his preaching effectual.

0:42 The people repent. God then repents of the judgment that he had pronounced upon them. And now we read of Jonah's reaction to God's disposition of mercy and God's dealings with his pouting, angry servant. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly.

1:04 And he was angry. He prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I hasted to flee unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech thee my life from me, for it's better for me.

1:35 For me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Doest thou well to be angry? Then Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there built him a booth, and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. And Jehovah prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to deliver him from his evil case.

2:07 So Jonah was exceeding glad because of the gourd.

2:13 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass when the sun arose that God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted and requested for himself that he might die, and said, It is better for me, to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

2:52 And Jehovah said, Thou hast had regard or pity for the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should not I have regard for it? And he said, I have regard for Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle.

God's Rebuke and Restoration: Means and Method

3:28 In our study last Lord's Day evening, we examined the first five verses of this chapter in which we see the man Jonah once again manifesting this dominant, remaining sin of carnal Hebrew pride and exclusiveness, that did not delight to see mercy shown to Gentile dogs. And now in the latter part of the chapter, verses six to the end, we shall consider together the rebuke of God to this pouting and angry prophet. And on the very threshold of our study, one thing should strike us again, as it has throughout the entire study of this book, and that is the mercy of God coming in covenant faithfulness, taking the initiative to restore the man of God to a place of spiritual sanity. Again and again we have seen Jonah turning aside, but God taking the initiative in grace and mercy to come and to have dealings with him. In his grace it was God who turned the feet of the prophet into the path of obedience to his commission.

4:53 But from the first five verses of this chapter, it's obvious that his heart was not yet in his commission. So the same God of grace, who dealt so strangely and powerfully with his servant to put his feet in the path of obedience, now deals with him strangely and powerfully, again to put his heart in the very path in which grace had placed his feet. Now let's consider as we study the passage together the means that God used in this rebuke and restoration of his sulking, pouting, angry prophet. And the means used are basically two-fold. There is the word of God that comes in the form of several questions, and then there is the symbolic action of God in which he exercises his sovereignty with such matters as plants, worms, and hot winds, all of which are at his disposal to accomplish his sovereign will with respect to his servant. Well, consider first of all then this first prong of the means used to rebuke and to restore the prophet, the word of God that came to him in verse 4. And the Lord said,

6:23 Doest thou well to be angry? God presses a question upon the conscience of the prophet. One very astute Hebraist, Kyle, suggests that a good rendering of this question would be, Is thine anger justly kindled? Here the prophet has seen the forty days come and go.

6:49 No judgment is come, and yet with this perverted hope, as we saw last week, he builds a little shed outside the city, and there he sits, sulking and angry, upset with God that he hasn't destroyed that people, and God comes to him with a question that is calculated to derail him from this abandonment to the unholy passion of this carnal anger. And so the Lord comes with a simple but penetrating and probing question, Is thine anger justly kindled? Remember God dealt with another prophet who was in a very difficult situation with a question. He came to Elijah when he was out there in a cave running from Jezebel, and God pressed upon his conscience the question, What doest thou here, Elijah? Well, in the same way, this question was calculated to shock the servant of God into moral and spiritual sanity, for in a very peculiar way, a well-framed question pressed upon the conscience can have tremendous influence upon a distraught spirit. Where reason and rational thought seems to be ineffectual,

8:16 a question can act like the reins pulled up upon a galloping horse and bring a man up short. And that's precisely what God was seeking to do with His servant. He doesn't debate the fact that he's angry. He doesn't come and first of all rebuke him for the sinfulness of the anger.

8:36 He says, Now look, Jonah, you're obviously in a stew. You know it and I know it. Now, Jonah, I want you to reflect upon your stew. I want you to reflect.

8:47 Is thine anger justly kindled? And has it not been true with many of us that on many an occasion when we have been in a state that has been contrary to the revealed will of God, as was Jonah, that we did not begin to get untangled until we began to ask ourselves some very pointed, probing questions. What is the root of this spirit of jealousy, this spirit of suspicion that I have towards so and so, this spirit of mistrust, this spirit of animosity, this spirit of friction, this attitude that is contrary to the word of God? As long as we're being carried along in the passion and pressure of some carnal attitude, it seems as though many times we're powerless before it. But a question has that effect of bringing us up short. And so God begins to deal with His prophet with this question pressed upon the conscience. But then the second prong of the means of rebuke and restoration is this strange symbolic action recorded in verses 6 through 11.

The Symbolic Action: The Gourd, Worm, and Wind

10:03 Now let's begin, first of all, by getting the basic facts of the action clearly established in our minds, and then we will look at God's interpretation of those facts involved in that action. All right? The basic facts of the action. Verse 6.

10:22 And Jehovah God prepared... And then you have all kinds of translations and speculations as to what God prepared.

10:33 One commentator, I think it was Calvin, who said, I believe to speculate where God has not spoken His mind clearly. We don't know what this kikion was. All we know is that in the Hebrew, that's what it was. Was it a gourd?

10:52 Was it this? Was it that? And people who've studied the plant life and the ecology of the Middle East tell us, well, this is that and this is that, and none of them agree. All we know is that the Lord prepared a special plant, and His intention in the preparation of that plant was clear.

11:10 He made it to come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to deliver him from his evil case. Now think of the mercy and patience of God. Jonah had no business being out there in that ill-prepared booth that apparently had too many slits in it to block out the burning eastern sun. And there he is, sitting there, stewing in his anger, apparently doesn't even answer God's question when God seeks to attack his conscience.

11:42 Is thine anger justly kindled? And yet the Lord comes, and very compassionately, God prepares a special plant. Now, it could have been a plant hitherto totally unknown, or it could have been some plant that existed, and frankly, I don't understand the mentality that spends pages upon pages trying to track that thing down. What in the world difference does it make?

12:07 God prepared the plant, and He tells us why He prepared it. It was some kind of a broad-leaf plant that when it grew up, it became a shade over his head to deliver him from his evil case. God is showing compassion to Jonah's physical discomfort, knowing that if he's going to get to his mind and his spirit, he may have to alleviate, first of all, some of the physical discomfort of being out under that burning eastern sun. Now, Jonah's reaction to that is very normal.

12:45 So Jonah was exceeding glad because of the kikion. And when this plant grew up, apparently it grew unusually fast. Why, Jonah's heart sang within him. He was so pleased.

13:00 As you and I are in the midst of a hot day, and someone brings us a glass of cold ice water, or lemonade, or something else that refreshes us, and we are made glad. There is the relief that comes to the whole personality when a specific physical need is met. We're such an interaction of body and soul. Your body doesn't just rejoice when you get a cool glass of water in a hot day.

13:25 Your soul rejoices, doesn't it? Sure, that's why the Bible talks about drink and food and these other things that make glad the heart of man. They not only fill his tummy and taste good going down, but they make the spirit glad. Well, this is what happened.

13:41 And Jonah is delighted. But now verse 7, God prepared a worm. And again, the writers go on page after page, was this a certain kind of existing mid-east earth worm? Who cares?

14:00 God prepared a worm. Now, whether it was some existing kind of worm, and God just nudged it by the tail and says, hey, buster over there, go to work on that plant. Whether God made a spe...

14:13 All we know is that behind and beneath around the activity of worms outside of great cities is the hand of Almighty God. So God prepares a worm when the morning rose the next day. Apparently, Jonah just had one day's delightful respite under his God-made sun umbrella. But the next morning, this old worm goes to work.

14:41 And is he hungry? The Lord must have given him a prodigious appetite that morning. And he began to eat at the vital parts of that plant. And it says it smote the gourd that it withered.

14:54 And I had a wonderful commentary on this with our zucchini this summer. You know all the big broad leaves that the zucchini have? And we'd look out of our yard and in the night, you know, the plants just seemed to jump out of the ground at night and have a growth spurt. And we'd look out, especially if it had after been a few days, we'd had a few days of rain, and there'd be the big broad leaves of the zucchini plant.

15:16 One morning I looked out and they were all just bowed over like they were in mourning. Just all turned inward and bowed over. And I went out and sure enough, some kind of a grub had eaten right at the base of that plant and the whole thing withered. I couldn't help but think of this passage when I saw it.

15:34 So it withered. Now what happens? And it came to pass when the sun arose that God prepared a sultry east wind. God prepares a sultry east wind and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and requested for himself that he might die and said, it's better for me to die than to live.

16:06 To add insult to injury, not only does his sun umbrella go, but now a wind begins to blow that is not a refreshing cooling breeze, but it's like that which you feel when you open your oven on a hot day and that hot air just billows out and hits you. Now this hot air was billowing into his face from the wind and the sun beating down upon his head from above. And now Jonah, feeling the intense discomfort, the intense physical annoyance of this situation, he repeats what he said earlier, it's better for me to die than to live. No record this time that he prayed that God would kill him.

16:48 He just said, sort of probably mumbling under his breath, woe is me, I wish I were dead. You ever hear that before? So what happens? Well, here are the basic facts of the action.

17:04 Jonah is brought to the place, misery without and misery within. He's almost like a Job at this point, is he not? Sun beating down from above, sultry east wind blowing into his face. His gourd or his whatever that plant was is withered.

17:25 God has not brought down judgment, so the anger sees within, matched by the heat of the sun. The heat of the sun without, and the wind in his face. Now those are the basic facts of the action of God with his pouting, angry prophet. Now, what is God's interpretation of all of this?

God's Interpretation: Pity for the Gourd vs. Pity for Nineveh

17:49 For remember, three times it is said, God prepared. He prepared the plant, the kikeion. He prepared the worm. God prepared the sultry east wind.

18:01 Well, God's interpretation of the facts is given to us in verses 9 through 11, and it begins with a preliminary question, verse 9. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the kikeion, for the plant? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Jonah, God says, Are you justified in your being angry on account of the gourd?

18:37 Can you justify becoming so attached to something that was meeting a temporal need? Can you justify being in such a state of mind simply because that which brought you a little physical comfort has died, has withered? Since the first question was asked in abstraction, verse 4, Doest thou well to be angry? And apparently it didn't penetrate his conscience.

19:09 God has to take greater means and to flesh out his question with some tangible object lessons. And Jonah's answer is one of complete self-justification. Imagine the brassiness. Jonah's answer to God is, I do well to be angry even unto death.

19:29 You want to know God? Yes, I believe my anger is justified. Here I was just beginning to enjoy the respite that this kikeion brought to me, and now it's taken away from me. My miseries within are matched by my misery without.

19:45 It's right for me to be in this kind of a stew. That's Jonah's answer. Well, it doesn't look like God's making much progress with him, does it? But the Lord isn't going to quit on it.

19:57 So from that initial or preliminary question, God now comes to a crucial assertion and a very penetrating question that resolves the whole issue in verses 10 and 11. Look now, please, verse 10. And the Lord said, Thou hast had regard. And this is one of the few places where I believe the translation of the American Standard Version is very, very weak.

20:26 It should be translated, Thou hast had pity for the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And from that assertion, now this penetrating question with which the book ends, And should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle? Let me paraphrase this assertion and question so that we may come to the heart of what God is saying. God says in essence, Now Jonah, you listen to me. It's about time you got down off your high horse and got quiet long enough to let me reason with you. You've shown a tender loving regard for that plant which brought you a welcome respite from the burning heat.

21:39 Now Jonah, think of your relationship to that plant. You were neither its creator nor its sustainer. Look at the language. Verse 10.

21:51 Thou hast had pity for the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow. You have shown a response that has involved your entire personality to a little plant, which you neither made nor sustained. I made it, I sustained it, but you're the one so attached to it that when it withers and dies, you're angry even unto death. Here it is, part of this creation, like the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven.

22:30 It just gets absorbed into the ecological process, and yet, Jonah, you've had pity upon it. Now while it existed, it brought you delight, because it protected and sheltered you. Look at verse 10 again. It came up in a night, perished in a night, but in that one day that it was with you, it brought you delight.

22:54 Now that it's gone, you say you're justified in demonstrating so deep a concern as to justify anger. Now Jonah, if that's so, think of me. I am the Creator of all men. The inhabitants of Nineveh are my workmanship.

23:17 They bear my image. Furthermore, even in their sin, in their wickedness, I who have made them have nurtured them and cared for them. Acts 17, He giveth to all life and breath and all things. In addition to this, Jonah, I will add another two facts.

23:39 There are 120,000 children in Nineveh who though guilty in Adam have not come to an age of moral discretion and conscious moral choice. Notice I did not say age of accountability. You'll never hear that terminology from me. But God is saying they do not know right hand from left.

24:00 Here are these 120,000 infants. And furthermore, you've shown concern for a plant. Is not the beast something of much greater dignity, manifesting much more of my creative wisdom and power? And in that city, the destruction of which you almost sadistically long for are all these creatures made in my image.

24:27 And when in my name you pronounce judgment, I made that pronouncement effectual to bring them to repentance so that I may justly turn away my anger and show mercy. In that city there are 120,000 infants and there is much cattle, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Here you are all in a stew over one plant that is here today and gone tomorrow. And yet you fail to understand that that city towards which I've shown mercy as they've repented, there are image bearers, immortal souls, men and women made to glorify me and much cattle as well. Hugh Martin commenting on this dealing of God with Jonah in this area says, and he says it so eloquently, I don't read too much of Hugh Martin at one time. I get discouraged and feel I'll never preach again. And I mean that sincerely.

25:28 There are times when the burning holy eloquence of this man is not only invigorating, it's terribly discouraging. To a preacher. But he says, who but must admire the divine wisdom in turning off in this direction all the keen intensity of the prophet's excited, morbid, powerful affections. The very emotions of anguish and anger with which he has perplexed his soul was formerly contemplating the deliverance of Nineveh are now turned toward lamenting the destruction of his wealth and the destruction of his kingdom.

26:10 And now the Lord argues with him. If your affections were twined around the gourd because it pleased your fancy and served your ends, will you not allow mine to repose with satisfaction on the teeming multitudes, the workmanship of my hands, which strong the alarmed, the humbled, the obedient, the converted city? Thou hast had pity on the gourd for which you have not labored, neither made it to grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. This little shrub, in no sense your own, neither planted nor watered nor cared for nor pruned by you, brief-lived too, passing hastily away in a night from the place that only for a day hath known it. Should not I spare immortal men, the workmanship of my hands, cultivated and cared for and fed and clothed and dealt with variously in patience and pity, because I am not willing that any should perish, but rather that they should come to repentance? Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?" Do you catch what God was saying to Jonah?

27:35 Do you feel it now? The object lesson and then God interprets the lesson. And I'm not surprised that the book ends here. I believe personally, and I cannot prove this apart from the circumstantial evidence, that at this point the prophet was humbled.

27:54 And I have very little reservation in my own mind that at this point it was not long before he convulsed in sobs of self-reflection and humiliation at this tremendous display of the heart of God and the narrowness of his own heart. And the book stops because its message has now come around full circle into Jonah's ears and into the ears of his countrymen that God's heart is large with compassion for all of His creatures. And if He pleases us, to show mercy, He will be magnified in the display of that mercy. Well, so much for the basic exposition of this portion. Now then, what does all of this say to us? And in the time that remains I want to try to bring three, if time permits, four lines of specific application from this portion of the prophecy of Jonah.

Application 1: Behold the Largeness of God's Heart

28:59 And the first is this. Behold, in this incident, the largeness of the heart of God towards His sinful creatures. Thou hast had pity for the gourd. Should not I have pity for Nineveh?

29:22 Now, wait a minute. What was Nineveh? Nineveh was that wicked city. Chapter 1 in verse 1 says, Go, cry unto Nineveh, for its wickedness is come up before me.

29:34 And surely the word of God teaches, and this truth is asserted from this pulpit, that there is in the heart of God a pure and holy indignation to sinners, that God has a controversy with the impenitent who violate His law. But standing alongside that truth revealed with equal clarity and forcefulness in the Scripture is that God's heart is large with compassion and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with love and with compassion towards His sinful creatures. Should not I have regard for Nineveh? Should not I pity these that are the creatures of my hands, brought into being by my own power, sustained by my own almighty providence? Jonah, will you keep me from being God? And there are some of you who need desperately to behold this aspect of the heart of God. For listen to me, if Satan can convince you that God is holy, just, angry with sin and to impenitent sinners, but He is not merciful, you will never embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.

30:55 If Satan can get you to believe that God is anything but God, you will never embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. If Satan can get you to believe that God is anything but God, you will never embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior and other than full of compassion to sinners. You can only avoid and dread an unmerciful God. You can never draw near to such a God.

31:30 It's morally impossible to do so. And the reason why some of you, as it were, continue to linger on the borders of the free offers of the gospel in Jesus Christ is you believe the lie of the devil. Our Lord said, Ye of your father the devil. He was a liar from the beginning and one of His lies told in the garden He repeats throughout history.

32:04 Adam and Eve, the reason God doesn't want you to take that fruit is God's heart is narrow. His purposes are mean and restricted. He knows if you do, some good will be withheld. You will be like Him knowing good and evil.

32:21 And if the devil can get men to believe that lie, no matter how much gospel preaching they hear, they will think under the guise of I'm too sinful to come. Oh how God had mercy upon so vile a sinner as I. God is determined to display His mercy against the backdrop of human sin and human vileness. And surely He demonstrated it when He chooses to do something as far as we know never done in the history of Israel before.

32:57 Never was a prophet sent completely out of the borders of the covenant nation. And He sent that prophet not to a neutral city that was just normally wicked, but a city that was abounding with wickedness at every pore. And yet He says, should I not have regard for Nineveh? Oh behold the largeness of the heart of God toward His sinful creatures.

33:30 You see the God whom we worship is the God revealed in Jesus Christ. I'm going to say something that may shock some of you but it's biblical. It's the God who weeps and sobs over an impenitent city doomed to destruction. For it says in Luke that when Jesus beheld the city He wailed over it.

33:56 Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And the heart of God is read, it's understood, it is exegeted in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh my friend, whom the devil has not been able to enmesh with the lie that God is nothing but mushy love and He's kept so many enmeshed in their sins by thinking, oh well I don't need to worry about sin. It's just one big glob of love and if I believe He loves me everything's all right.

34:31 We abominate that lie and it's the lie that enmeshes many. But I fear for some of you and not a few of you sitting here tonight it's not that lie that will damn you. It's the lie that God is something other than merciful to sinners. But the truth of the scripture is that He is merciful.

34:53 God expostulates, God pleads, He says, why will ye die? I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that ye turn and live. Come now let us reason together though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat of the good of the land.

35:20 Seek ye the Lord while he may be found call ye upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous and his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord for he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. Oh I trust you'll behold my friend in this passage something of the largeness of the heart of God towards his sinful creatures. But then in the second place behold the wickedness of being unlike God in his compassion to sinners. Behold the wickedness of being unlike God in his compassion to sinners. The essence of holiness is to be like God. Be ye holy for I the Lord your God am holy. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk even as he walked whom he did foreknow to be conformed to the image of his son.

Application 2: The Wickedness of Being Unlike God in Compassion

36:37 The essence of holiness is moral conformity to the likeness of God to God revealed in Jesus Christ. And we see in Jonah something of the wickedness of being unlike God. It seems unbelievable isn't it that he is actually with a little plant that protects him from the sun and then dies than he is for an entire city full of the image bearers of God who possess immortal souls. Isn't that right there in the rebuke of God? Since you've had pity for the gourd should I not have pity? Today we praise you Lord and in service of the faith of the people of the world who judged the law of God and of the flesh of the world. I am the God of this warlike nation, he should have gone through the streets

38:06 with the tears streaming down his eyes, preaching judgment with a broken heart. Then if the city would not repent, he should have been sitting outside that city, weeping and praying, O God, I'm for reprieve. Yet show mercy to Nineveh. That's the God we see in Jesus Christ.

38:33 We're to be like Him. And my dear Christian friends, it is wicked to be more like Jonah than like God. And I would not be guilty of rubbing raw the sensitive conscience of any precious, tender child of God. But I must run that risk to penetrate the conscience of some who become very Jonah-like, who become insensitive to the hordes of the ungodly about us, and we become, more irritated at their ungodliness than compassionate towards them as sinners in need of the grace of God.

39:17 We become so weary with being bombarded to solicitations from sin because of their blatant ungodliness that we almost wish that God would strike the whole bunch of them dead. Don't we? Come on, be honest. Don't we?

39:37 How many of your neighbors' names are upon your lips in prayer? Pleading that God, for Christ's sake, would have mercy upon them?

39:48 How many of you as parents plead that God would have mercy upon your children? Oh, not when they get in trouble that brings shame to you as a parent. I mean when everything's going well. But when they're yet in their sins.

40:02 How many of you plead, I mean plead with God, before you come to this meeting, week after week, Oh, God, as those who preach, sound the gospel trumpet and plead, plead with sinners and entreat them to repent. Lord, make that word effectual.

40:22 Or do you sit there and almost say, that's it, preacher, give it to them, they need it.

40:28 You see, Israel died whenever she turned inward upon herself and ceased to realize she was set there amongst the heathen nations to show forth the glories of her covenant-keeping God. And that church will die. It turns inward upon itself. And that Christian will spiritually die in the sense of having a shriveled soul who is not growing in likeness to God in terms of compassion for sinners.

41:05 Do we have any yearning? Do we pray? Do we plead? Can we rejoice when God saves even the riffraff?

41:15 Or do we feel like the elder brother? Two. Look at the kind of life he lived. I've never done that.

41:23 Do we have the elder brother spirit? Do we have the Jonah spirit?

41:28 Do we almost wish God will cut off blatant, notorious sinners? Or do we plead that God would show mercy and save notorious sinners? Behold the wickedness of being unlike God in this compassion to sinners. And then thirdly, by way of application, behold God.

Application 3: God's Determination to Bring Acquiescence to His Will

41:54 It was God's determination to bring His children to acquiesce in His will. Behold the determination of God to bring His children to acquiesce to His will. It was God's will to save the city of Nineveh. That's why He sent Jonah there in the first place.

42:15 It was God's will that Jonah should enter into God's rejoicing. And God's determination set him to, to prepare a kikaiot, to prepare a worm, to prepare a sultry east wind, and to come with probing questions that finally pierce the dullness of the prophet until with that question ringing in his ears, it's as though he's so filled with shame he cannot write another word in the story ends. And God wins the day. Behold the determination of God to bring His children to acquiesce to His will. And I read again from Hugh Martin speaking to this issue. And he says, Is there anything in which I am, like Jonah, unreconciled to the will of God, His will as revealed in His word, His procedure in His providence? And when He expostulates, that is, questions kindly with me, doest Thou well to be angry, do I allow His condescending remonstrance

43:43 to pass away unimproved? You see what he's saying? Am I stewing because God has done this to me, to my child, to my family, to my relatives? Do I have an inward seething at some dispensation of God as Jonah did when he's sitting out there angry, angry about the great sins of my parents?

44:07 Of course. And why doesn't this happen? Because God wrong artistries. It is showed not.

44:13 It isczea. If you live in the chastisement, saying you like. It's normal. You're okay.

44:19 So you goodness. I'm not lying to me. You can listen. I know how my민 You MRI were long ago10 and you now see by them what I've seen.

44:30 You have been wronged. You're angry. And if it's here, you miss the point. So we must stay away from the truth.

44:34 Often I sit down and I'm thrown into my eyes. has done, and to acquiesce from the heart. And he may teach me practically as he taught Jonah. He may send me a welcome gift, a lovely, serviceable little plant, a sudden, acceptable, gladsome gourd. You see, he's using the analogy, I become exceedingly glad of my gourd. My heart entwines around it, this pleasing prospect, this budding hope, this successful movement, this dawn of a charming friendship with the bright-hearted and the noble, this light of sunshine falling most unlooked for on my vexed and weary heart, this welcome visitor, this golden-haired little one within my earthly home, growing in my arms, searching my eye for the kindling glance of joy and love, dancing gleefully on finding it, ah, in many a form, my kicky arm may grow. And I'm exceedingly glad of my gourd. Even when I quarrel with God, I may be all the

45:42 more glad of my gourd. For what end may it have been planted? For what end may it have grown? To the end, perhaps, that it may wither and droop and die, and that my heart, untractable, may at last, by losing my gourd, be taught to feel that if the object which my poor foolish love fastens on must be parted with, how infinitely wrong in me to desire God to abandon those purposes which His infinitely wise will hath cherished from eternity, and which He hath bound in and wrapped around my destiny to bless me and to train me." Do you see what he is saying? God is so determined to bless me and to train me. He is so determined to bless me and to train me.

46:37 He is so determined to bless me and to train me. He is so determined to bless me and to train me. bring his profit to acquiesce to his dispensation of mercy, that he goes to all this trouble of preparing this plant, causing it to wither, that he might have the heart of his servant Jonah, fully embracing what he has done in sparing him. Well, Hugh Martin rightly takes the principle that though we are not prophets, it is often true that in the will of God, God's plan, which is the only infallible exegesis of his secret decrees, God's plan as it unfolds in my own life history and providence, it falls out in a direction contrary to everything I've hoped for. And I have a controversy with God. My friend, you're a child of God. God will track you down until you say from the heart, Thy way, not mine, O Lord, however dark it be.

47:47 O dear child of God, how slow some of us are to learn that mess. Some of us who've known abounding physical strength all our lives, and in the prime of our lives, God's touch,

48:03 and said, you're going to go to your grave with pain, and you'll serve me with pain, and you say, but God, I can't. God says you will.

48:15 But Lord, I want to be free from pain to serve you.

48:23 And God says you'll serve me with the circumstances that I get.

48:28 Lord, this child that will take all of the attention and time that I... Lord, I can't.

48:35 God says yes.

48:38 Acquiesce to my will. The great truth of 2 Corinthians 12, my grace is sufficient for me. Though I'm not directly in this passage, I'm never so bound. Through any artificial rules or homiletics that I can't pour out a pastor's heart, no matter how I may get to where I am.

49:01 Paul had come to the place where he said, Lord, I cannot serve you with this thing. It's impossible. Take it. And God says you'll serve me with it.

49:12 My grace is sufficient for me. Then he acquiesced and said most gladly, Will I glory in my infirmities? That the power of Christ may rest upon me. And I tell you, Paul was never, never distracted.

49:33 And the banners went up in the next town. Great healing campaign. Miracle night on Monday, all goiters will be healed. Miracle night on Tuesday, all internal diseases healed.

49:46 Miracle night on Wednesday, all thorns in the flesh will be healed. You'd never find Paul at such a meeting. He says, I will glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. My friend, God's determined if you're his child to get you to acquiesce to his will.

50:07 And he's got to prepare gourds and then prepare worms to wither the gourds and then hot winds to blast you and burning suns to beat down upon you until he gets your heart sweetly and freely to coalesce with his will.

50:25 What a wonderful thing it is. Not only to assert as a theological proposition that his will is best, but from the heart to embrace it.

Application 4: Detailed and Specific Providence

50:39 Well, I said there might be a fourth line of application. I'll tell you what it would have been. This is a wonderful passage teaching the doctrine of definite and detailed providence.

50:51 If you'd been living at the end of that day and happened to be walking by Jonah's gorge, you'd say, oh, isn't that a pretty plant? Grew kind of fast. Someone must have fertilized it pretty good. Next day you'd see it withered and say, oh, and the grub must have got hold of it.

51:04 And then the next day you'd say, boy, it's really hot around here. You would have no way of knowing that Almighty God was using these elements in the natural creation to hedge up one of his children.

51:18 What a wonderful picture of detailed, specific providence that has detailed and specific ends. Not one sparrow falls to the ground without your father. Not one kiki. Not one chameleon in our lives withers without God's worm being at the root of it.

51:39 Not one blast of the burning eastern sultry wind do we feel, but that God has created that blast.

51:50 And again, dear child of God, what a terrible thing it is to claim we believe in a sovereign God. And then we go around kicking at the goads of the sovereign exercise of his will. In the specific providences, that pinch us where it pinched Jonah.

52:11 Well, I say that's another whole area of application. You work that out for yourself. We've left our friend Jonah. Hopefully, we'll consider in two or three more messages now the New Testament interpretation of Jonah as a type of Christ and consider Jonah in the light of the New Testament.

Conclusion and Prayer

52:30 But as far as studying the life of our friend Jonah in the book of Jonah, we've come to an end. Frankly, I feel kind of lost. I feel lonely leaving him after these 11 or 12 Lord's Day evenings. But I trust we will not leave him, nor he us, but that we may continue to profit as we read and meditate and reflect upon the lessons that I trust the Spirit of God has written upon our hearts.

52:56 Let us pray. Our Father, there is none of us who feels worthy to pick up the first stone to cast it at Jonah.

53:16 For in looking at this man in his pouting, angry state, we have to our shame seen ourselves, when our hearts have been so narrow,

53:28 when our inward disposition has been so unlike yours,

53:34 when days have passed and we've felt no conscious yearning for sinners,

53:41 when we've gone to our places of prayer and left them and never pleaded and yearned over the loss. And yet, if we've dropped a favorite glass or, we've had a piece of furniture broken or marred, how quickly our emotions have been stirred and our whole human personality has been involved. Oh God, forgive us for such distorted values.

54:13 Deal with us and make us more like yourself. May we look upon men not only as rebel sinners, sinners which they are, but those whom you've made in your image to love you. Those who deserve you. Those for whom you have pity.

54:31 Make us like yourself. And Lord, we pray for any area in which we may not be acquiescing in your will. Do bring our hearts to line up with our feet. We ask, oh God, that you will take the principles articulated tonight and apply them in a hundred ways where we could never do it, but where you can because all things are naked and open before your eyes.

55:00 Seal them, the word to our hearts. Receive the praise that we offer for this blessed Lord's day. For your presence, for your people, for the privilege of singing psalms and hymns of praise, for witnessing the confession of those who went beneath the waters of baptism. Oh God, for all of the rich blessings that have been ours, freely we've received, help us as a people freely to give, oh deliver us from becoming ingrown and becoming like Jonah and the nation of Israel at the time of the writing of this book, when there was an almost a total loss of sensitivity to responsibility to the heathen nations. May we as a church ever be seeking new channels of gospel endeavor and gospel activity. May we ever be seeking new channels to proclaim the message of life, and may we ever be seeking new ways to proclaim the gospel. Oh God, may we never be content, but may we know what it is to be stirred by your Spirit, filled with holy zeal to see the kingdom of Christ extended in this hour, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the uttermost parts of the earth.

56:22 Hear then the praises that we offer at the conclusion of this Lord's day, and hear these our prayers, as we offer them, Jesus Christ. Amen.