Dennis Tuuri

# Jonah 4: Advent, God’s Character and History
## Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri
### First Sunday After Christmas, December 30, 2012

One note of explanation as we begin to read it: the structure of Jonah kind of goes A-B-C and then a last little thing here at the end. So there’s a commissioning right to Nineveh, the first commissioning. Then there’s the conversion of the sailors on the ship. And then Jonah prays from the belly of the fish. There’s a second commissioning. Then there’s the conversion of Nineveh. And then at the beginning of chapter four, we’ll see Jonah praying a little different prayer matching though his first prayer.

So there’s two prayers, two groups of people converted, two commissionings. And then from verses five on, there’s a little lesson at the end of the story. So there’s kind of a lesson sort of summing up what we’ve read about. And so in this case, there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, and then the seventh is the fullness of the lesson for us. And you’ll notice as we read it, and it has questions. God brings the reader into the text through this device of questions that cause us to think and cause Jonah to think as well.

Please stand for the reading of Jonah chapter 4. And remember the specific thing that’s happened is Nineveh has converted. And by the way, our Savior says they were really converted. They’ll rise up at the end and be a judge against Israel that rejected Jesus because they truly converted. All right. But the conversion of the Ninevites displeased Jonah exceedingly and he became angry.

So he prayed to the Lord and said, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

And then the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. And the LORD God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant.

But as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened when the sun arose that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!” But the LORD said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this question that ends this book and ends our final sermon text for this year. Here we sit on the cusp of the old year and the new year. And we pray your blessing upon us that we might indeed be reinvigorated by your word and spirit to commit ourselves intentionally to Jesus and your mission, Father, for our world. Bless us in our understanding of this book that we might be transformed by it, that we might by your questions be brought into the narrative and come to the right conclusions and commitments in Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

So we have this—we’re in the middle of sort of the middle of the twelve days of Christmas. The twelve days of Christmas begin with Christmas and they end on Epiphany. And this year next Sunday is Epiphany. So this year January 6, the traditional church demarcation of Epiphany, the visit of the magi, Epiphany, the revelation to the Gentiles or to the world actually comes on a Sunday. So next week we’ll be dealing with that text of the visit of the magi and talking about it, and that will be the twelfth day of Christmas.

In the middle of these days is New Year’s in our particular calendar, and New Year’s comes eight days after the birth of Jesus’s celebration that on Christmas day, and in the Old Testament on the eighth day, and under in Jesus’s time, the eighth day was the day for circumcision. And so traditionally, liturgical churches on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day have a celebration of the feast of circumcision of our Lord.

Also referred to as Holy Name Day because when you were circumcised, that was when your name would be given as well. Although we know Jesus’s name from before he was born. But in a way, your character, who you are, is identified then with this ritual of death and new life that circumcision represents in the Bible.

You know, the eighth day thing is significant. Creation ends in seven days. So the eighth day would be a new creation. The sacrificial system kind of prefigured this. So the tabernacle and everything in it was cleansed for seven days before they started using it. So on the eighth day, the tabernacle and later the temple are ready. Sacrificial animals had to be at least eight days old. So they’re not ready till the eighth day to be brought in as a sacrifice in the tabernacle and temple. And the priests themselves went through a period of cleansing like the building for seven days as the tabernacle worship is initiated.

And then on the eighth day, they’re ready. Now, Jesus is the priest. He’s the sacrificial animal. He’s the temple, right? It’s his body. It’s all about Jesus. And so Jesus’s circumcision on the eighth day reminds us of these eighth day events in the Old Testament. And what that symbol is in terms of the temple and the sacrificial system is that with the coming of Jesus, the eighth day would commence. The new week, the new creation would be brought into effect.

And in fact, in the Bible, both circumcision and our baptisms are tied to new creation. You know, being circumcised or uncircumcised doesn’t matter. What matters is a new creation because that’s what circumcision is picturing—God’s grace in rolling away defilement and uncleanness and bringing us into the new creation of Christ. So we like to here at RCC at least make notation of these things, and sometimes I’ll actually preach on the circumcision of Jesus at this particular time of year.

Now, we come to a text today that should have the same effect on our hearts. However, to be circumcised is to really be dedicated and committed as a priest of God. It was a priestly sign in the Old Testament, and we’re all a kingdom of priests now. And so it’s a reminder to us, the circumcision of Christ and our union with him as we come to this table, that we’re to be intentional in our service to Christ this coming year.

We’re a new creation because of being united covenantally with Jesus, and we’re united with his circumcision. And what that reminds us of is the need to intentionally move away from the old man, become intentionally more and more that new man, and serve him as his priestly people in the world. So it’s a very significant set of days here. A celebration of the birth of Jesus and his circumcision, New Years, and then Epiphany as we go forth from this place.

We always go forth in Epiphany, a revelation of Christ to the world. And we’ll talk about that more specifically next week. So it’s a great time of year for preachers, wonderful material to talk about, and hopefully in your life these things become meaningful to you. It doesn’t just become—in spite of what the world is telling you—a series of secular days, but rather you enter into the full significance of these symbols.

Our text today is interesting. It’s real history. God really did appoint a plant and he really appointed a worm, and it’s a weird plant. Nobody knows what kind of plant it was, and it’s a worm and nobody knows what that is. And then he appoints this wind to come up. Those are real things that happened so that Jonah was almost killed through the wind. But at the same time, it’s obviously parable-like and it obviously has lessons for us that we’re supposed to meditate on.

Just like at this time of the year, we sort of meditate on who we are as we get ready to leave the old year and to move into the new year. I’ve got a New Year’s song for you. We’re not going to talk about it today, but we have in the past, but it’s an old carol for New Year’s that kind of explains is this: you leave the snake skin behind, you become a new creature. So that’s what we’re doing here. We’re tying the results of Jonah and the lesson here to this intentionality of commitment to serve God.

And we have a source story in Jonah of mission to the world. That’s what it’s all about. Jonah’s being sent out, you know, to convert Nineveh. And you know, it’s a weird deal because we have to keep remembering that Jonah is a prophet to Israel. We know that from Second Kings, but that’s his basic calling. And so to Jonah, what happens here with Nineveh is related to that. And if you remember that, the story takes on a little different twist to it.

But having said that, it’s certainly a good story to remind us of the need to be missional, to not be parochial, to not despise classes or different kinds of people, no matter how vehement their opposition to Jesus. I mean, these Ninevites—I tell you what they did. When they went in and they’d capture a city, sometimes they would lop off a bunch of heads of people and they make a pile of heads at the gate of the city.

We rule. Sometimes they weren’t quite so quick. They would skin you alive and then they would take your skin and nail it up to the wall of the city. So they’d have a bunch of dead people’s skins there as a sign. So they ruled through intimidation. They were, you know, like the Russians or like the Babylonians—they ruled through getting people in debt and that kind of thing. And that’s more like the United States.

But in any event, so the Assyrians were pretty evil, wicked people. And so when you go and talk to somebody who’s really evil, wicked, nasty guy, don’t think that he can’t convert. We have a single prophet from a little country that was a vassal state to the empire come in and convert God himself. Because in the Assyrian religion, as in most religions of the old times, the ruler is kind of like Pharaoh. He represents God. I mean, for him to die symbolically and to serve God, to be converted, well, this is this is, you know, beautiful, wonderful thing, but it’s completely unexpected.

And then for apparently every last person in the city, even the cattle, to put on sackcloth and ashes or be dressed in them, and to be brought back to life is represented by the resurrection of the king. The old king is dead. Long live the new king in Yahweh. That’s a wonderful thing that happens. But the point here is that our intent—our intentional service to Christ this year, if it’s going to be formed up by this narrative of Jonah we’ve been going through this Christmas season and Advent season—then it should be formed up with a high degree of commitment to being missional, to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, to call on your friends and neighbors and fellow workers to serve Jesus.

And we’re going to talk about that as we get into the new year. Don’t go saying, “This is what you got to do.” Don’t go running off tomorrow to your work and saying in forty days this business is going down because of Obama’s policies. No, don’t do that. But be prepared to speak the gospel this year. That’s what one of the big reasons why we’re transforming our parish groups into community groups. And we’re going to start the training in January and February.

The groups will start meeting in mid to late February. And what I want you to do—and children, you know what I want you to do—is to get your parents to take you to that group so that group can be praying for you to be missional like Jonah to people that don’t know Jesus yet. And instead of just saying they’re bad, we’re good. Don’t say that. Say God wants to save them just like he saved us. So this intentionality, this new man stuff that we’re looking at here as we go into the new year formed by this story is directly tied to the vision of the elders of your church to form community groups that will support you in prayer and kind of keep hearing about how you’re doing speaking to your person you want to talk to this year about Jesus.

Now, it’s going to be hard. It’s a hard thing to do. I shared a clip on Facebook this week of the old Moby Dick with Gregory Peck, and the book itself, and I shared a clip of the sermon. The book—this is the way part of the sermon is described in the book of Herman Melville. And he says, you know, he says, well, you know, God, Jonah’s sin was that he didn’t obey God. And it’s hard to obey God. So he’s saying that’s his basic point here.

It’s always tough. He says, but all the things that God would have us to do are hard for us to do. Remember that. And hence he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade us. It’s hard to do what God wants us to do. If we obey God, we must disobey ourselves. And it is in the disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. Why is it hard to obey God? Because we want to be the masters. We want to be the captains of our own ship and estate.

So it’s going to be hard to go to the community groups. It’s going to be hard to think of somebody you want to share the gospel with. And it’s going to be hard for you to actually speak to that person—that neighbor, that friend, that relative, that coworker. It’s a hard thing. Just like it was hard for Jonah to go to Nineveh and he didn’t want to do it. He disobeyed. Now, we’re at the end of the book, though.

And now we see something different going on. He’s not disobeying God anymore, right? He did it. Nineveh was converted. But the story reminds us at the end of our year and the beginning of our new year, entering into the new creation of Jesus through our circumcisions and baptisms. The story reminds us here at the end about our attitudes, about our attitudes. Jonah struggles now through anger at God’s providence.

He doesn’t see all the plan. So he gets very angry and wishes for death. Okay. So clearly, if this is the concluding section and this has got like the object lesson for us, then God is interested in more than your obedience. He’s interested in your attitude. You know, this is the first time in the book where God and Jonah converse or they talk. And so, you know, that’s a beautiful thing. God is interested in you conversing with him.

He’s interested in your relationship to him. Yeah. He was interested in that great city Nineveh. He’s interested in Portland and Oregon City and Salem. He’s really interested in cities. He’s made that clear in chapter three. But in chapter four, he says he’s interested in you. He wants your heart. He wants relationship with you. And he wants you not to be angry with the things he does in the world or the things he calls you to do.

Right? He wants you to be in a correct frame of mind. And so as we start this story, those are important considerations to keep in mind as well as when we enter into this year. May God give us not just obedience to do the hard thing, but then the really hard thing of relationship with God that is thankful for stuff. I know there’s some of you that are not thankful for these community groups yet. You ought to be.

It’s what God has decreed. Could be a real bust. I don’t know. But I know with the council of the elders that this is what God wants us to do. Now, maybe it’s going to be a big failure. I don’t know what God intends for it, but I know this is what he wants us to do. And so your attitude right now—if you got a bad attitude—should become a good attitude. That’s the point. Like Jonah, obey. And more than that, obey with a thankful, happy, engaged heart.

And I know most of you are looking forward to it, as are we. All right. So Jesus was circumcised at eight days after he was born. Eighth day is a sign of the new creation. Temple, priest, and sacrifice all were ready on the eighth day relating to the baptism of Jesus. Circumcision is a sign of a new creation. Circumcision meant that the curse had been reversed. So I didn’t stress that, but that’s what it’s about.

The curse is reversed. The old man is rolled away. The reproaches of Egypt rolled away, and the new man has come. Jesus bled for us at the beginning and end of his life. So in the early church period and medieval period, this was a big deal because you know the beginning of Jesus, his birth at eight days he’s circumcised. And they saw in that little bit of blood that would happen at circumcision, a prefigurement of what would be required at the end of his life to bring us into new creation, to save us from our old man, to provide atonement for our sins, to be our substitute.

He must die for us on the cross. So the blood that comes out of his side on the cross, his giving his life, his atoning blood there is a prefigurement of the work of Jesus as our sacrifice at the beginning. So new creation isn’t just about new start and now we can get do everything. No, it’s about being united to Jesus who paid the price of the old creation that the new creation might come into effect. So the beginning and end of his life prefigurement of blood and then the shedding of his blood on the cross for our sins.

Real men serve other people sacrificially. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus was born to save the world, right? We’ll make this point later again maybe, but you know, one of the big lessons of Jonah chapter 4 is Jonah doesn’t quite know what’s going on. He has no idea. He sees some things. He does a better job of interpreting his history than most commentaries give him credit for.

He knows what’s going to happen to Israel now. It’s going to be judged and destroyed. But he doesn’t understand beyond that the greater plan of God—how this is going to be preparatory, the exile for the coming of Jesus and the spread of the gospel so quickly. He doesn’t get that yet. He has partial knowledge. And so often what we do, it’s the same thing. I’m giving away the ending of the sermon. That’s okay.

Some of you may not be listening at the end, so you’ll get it now. We have partial knowledge like Jonah had, and we can get angry, but the full knowledge of God’s providence, we can see from a distance, and we rejoice in it, and we remember it. If we remember that Jesus didn’t come just to save a few, right? For God so loved the world, cattle apparently in Nineveh. God so loved the world that he gave us.

He does he’s not just interested in saving some people out of this thing. He loves the world. Okay, the created order and humanity. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. When John sees Jesus for the first time, John the Baptizer, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You see, he understood the cosmic thing that was happening—that new creation would fill and displace totally old creation.

Okay? So Jesus said he didn’t come into the world to judge it. He didn’t come to judge the world, but to save the world. And you know, I’ve heard this discussed in various ways what it means. Well, his first ministry is salvation. The last time he comes, it’ll be judgment. I don’t think that’s the idea. He’s not giving you a time reference. He’s giving you the priority of who he is. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

It’s in the Lord’s nature to save things. Now, you know, to save things, judgment is involved. But judgment serves the greater purpose—Jesus was saying—of the salvation of the world. And you see, if Jonah had kept that in mind, that what was going to happen to his people, to his family, to his friends and relatives, you know, they would end up perhaps as heads at the opening of the city or nailed to a wall—tough sledding. Before we’re quick to condemn this guy, let’s remember who these people were and how tough it would have been for this prophet to know that Israel was going down as he saw Nineveh converted.

But the key to that is to remember the cosmic purposes that Jesus came to save the world. God is very kind to Nineveh and very kind to Jonah. Isn’t it nice the interaction we just read between God and Jonah? Not the way we would be typically. You know, somebody says, “Well, I’m going to—I’m so ticked off and teed off at God, man. I’ve had it. I’m checking out. I’d just assume be dead.” We’re like, you know, we can usually be pretty, you know, crass in our speech to such people and tell them you repent right now of that. And sometimes that’s appropriate.

But look at God’s attitude. He questions Jonah. He stays in relationship with him, right? He doesn’t just cut it off. Look at his relationship to Nineveh. Horrible empire. I mean, claiming to be God, gross idolatry, horrific social injustice, right? With the skins and the heads and all. But God is kind and he brings them to repentance. He does it with a message of judgment. Forty days you’re going to be overthrown. Implied, of course, that they can repent.

But God is so kind and patient, and don’t don’t miss that. That’s an essential part of the story. And we’ll see in just a minute as we look at Jonah’s prayer the same thing. Jonah pitied the gourd or plant just like God pitied Nineveh. Talk more about that in just a minute. And then who tries to destroy God’s work? The devil. And so I’m getting a little bit into the imagery that’s going on in the text. So let’s turn to the text and go through it briefly and then try to draw out some lessons from it as well.

Okay. So as I said, Nineveh has converted. Jesus makes quite clear in Luke 11:32, in spite of what many commentators continue to say, that this was real conversion. So there’s no doubt Jesus interprets it for us. He tells us the Ninevites really converted, and so Jonah is mad. Now it’s real interesting just as we get into this text. You know, there’s different ways to read things, and a lot of commentaries over the years I think have been pretty negative on Jonah.

So why is he so angry? We read about this anger here in the first few verses. It displeased Jonah exceedingly. Now, now that’s very strong. You can’t get any stronger in the Hebrew. Jonah is not happy. He is very unhappy. He wants to vomit. He’s so upset. I mean, it really angers him and distresses him, and he became angry. So why? Well, commentators say, well, see, Jonah was real upset because God made him a liar.

You know, Jonah thought, well, if I’m going to say this thing and then it doesn’t happen, everybody will say, “I’m a liar.” I think that’s ridiculous. I mean, the prophets were men of God, right? They knew about conditionality of God’s statements. They knew that if God went to you and had a message of destruction that carried with that implicitly is the ability to turn. I think that’s just wrong, wrong, wrong.

And so many commentators do it. Well, he was so nationalistic. He was a jingoist. All he cared about was his own country. Or he just didn’t like those pagan Assyrians, you know, all that stuff. I don’t think—I think it puts a characteristic on Jonah that’s more negative than we need to be. Now, he’s sinning, but you know, I think in general, a lot of us, if we’ve been raised in evangelical churches, we tend to hear these stories of the Old Testament.

And when we hear them, we’re always told what horrible people these Old Testament guys were. Everything that can be taken is taken very negatively. Okay? I mean, for instance, so Jonah rejoices at the gourd. He’s exceedingly happy about this plant. And people say, “See, that guy was just too materialistic. He liked his wine. He liked his stuff. He liked his gourd. That’s all he cared about was things.” Now, God does tell him, right, that, well, if you have compassion on that plant that doesn’t have much significance in my ways, then why not on Nineveh?

He doesn’t tell him he’s wrong for being glad with the plant, though. There’s no negative affirmation on Jonah delighting in watching a plant grow. So we have these kind of commentaries all the time, and I think a big part of it is because of a complete failure to understand the nature of the Old Testament. We think of it as law, New Testament is grace. And so that’s what it’s all about. Even Patrick Fairbairn, who is one of the best commentaries on Jonah’s psychology and what was really going on—Fairbairn lived in the nineteenth century.

When they started a seminary, he became the professor of systematic theology. And then later when they started a different school, he became professor and head of exegesis. Fairbairn’s written several books. One on typology that a lot of our people read and study. Great guy. And his commentary on Jonah is excellent. You can actually read it online on Google Books.

There’s another site that’s converted it into an actual text that you can save as a document. But even Fairbairn, you know, what’s that Old Testament bias come in? He says, well, you know, the problem with Jonah was he didn’t understand grace, and he’s just thinking in terms of law because the Old Testament, it’s always about law and not grace. But look at Jonah’s prayer. He prays to the Lord and he says, “Well, I was upset. For I know that you are gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm.”

You know, his prayer, that part of it is great. It’s right on target. And he doesn’t say, “Well, I thought you were a God that was a God of law and not grace.” He says, “I knew you were a God of grace. That’s why I’m mad. I knew that’s why I was mad when I was told to go there.” So there’s, you know, we get all messed up. So we don’t want to—you know, paper over Jonah’s sins, but I’m telling you, he’s gotten, I think, some rough treatment from a lot of commentaries and undeserved.

He does sin. There’s no doubt about it. But the nature of that sin, as we’ve said before, isn’t some of the—I mean, if he was that bad a guy, as the commentaries point him out to be, we would not expect to see him in heaven. If he’s a legalist and, you know, a secularist and indulgence in his flesh, that’s all he cares about. This guy’s not born again, but he is born again. He’s a prophet of God. And God doesn’t do with him what the commentaries do.

God treats him kindly and he brings him to an awareness of some things. And I’m convinced that when God ends it with a question, Jonah’s going to get the answer right. Then he’s going to get the answer right. He doesn’t at the beginning. He becomes angry. And as I said, I think this is primarily because he knows from Deuteronomy 32 that God’s judgment through the Assyrians is coming. But look what he does with his anger.

Okay, right away, what are we told? He in his anger, he prays to the Lord. Oh, you know, men particularly—I know women get mad too—but men who are prone to anger, man, right away, right there, boom, you got the application from the lesson today. Start the year with a commitment to when you get angry, to get off with the Lord and to struggle with that anger with him in prayer. God delights in that. Don’t think you got to get pre-sanctified to go to prayer.

That’s not what it’s about. This here shows us the dialogue between God and Jonah that helps Jonah be moved along. He goes to prayer and even his prayer—I read these and David Dorsey does this. You read these kind of—oh, it’s just a horrible stinking prayer that he prays now, you know, and what they’re doing is they’re comparing it to chapter 2 and the prayer there which was all thankful, you know, for his own personal deliverance, and they’re saying well, what he really didn’t want was Nineveh to be saved.

That’s why he’s angry. And therefore this is really a horrific prayer because he was so happy about his own salvation, but now he’s not happy about their salvation. And if you if you I think take the example of that we’re given here, in reality, it’s not that he’s unhappy that the Ninevites are saved. He offered himself substitutionary death for the sailors on the ship. You know, the Old Testament prophets.

They understood conditionality. They also understood that God’s plan was to have the Gentiles converted. And in fact, frequently their denunciations of Israel and Judah is that they wouldn’t do that. They were sectarian, ingrown. They weren’t missional and intentional in presentation of the gospel to the nations round about. The prophets knew that. Jonah wasn’t an idiot. Jonah loved the fact that people would convert.

He’d love it if the, you know, Gentiles converted. He loved it when the sailors on the ship converted. But his problem is that he knows that in the conversion of this particular nation, this nation is going to get worse. I mean, they’re going to get stronger. And then when this nation breaks bad, God’s going to use them to absolutely crush Israel and destroy them forever as a people. And Jonah is right about that.

He interprets the short frame of history over the next fifty years correctly. That’s just what happens. You know, when you convert, you start doing all kinds of things that make you more prosperous. You leave that stupid magic stuff behind and you apply yourself to technology and industry. You leave that stupid, you know, male physical strength domination of women behind and now you see the usefulness of women in building a godly culture.

Okay? You leave the videos behind and you start reading books and you start learning things. Oh, what did he say? I mean cultures change when they convert and they become stronger. They get blessed. Yes, it’s the blessings of God, but God uses means. And when you are sane, you become a more productive person generally than when you’re nuts. And when you’re not saved and when you’re as particularly as bad as Nineveh had been, you’re kind of nuts.

So they’re going to get built up. And Jonah knows this. And then he knows that they’re going to break bad and they’re going to come in and destroy Israel in a bad way. And that’s just exactly what happens. The conversion lasts, you know, ten, fifteen years, maybe something like that, maybe twenty, and then they break bad and they go back like a dog to their vomit. And now they’re used by God. You know, Jonah, Micah, right?

Do you know your list of books? Jonah, God builds Assyria up into a huge nation through conversion. They break bad. And then in Micah, God uses an apostate Assyria now to judge his people to destroy them. Nahum, God then judges Assyria. So those three books are this little chronicle of God’s use of a godless nation by making them convert first—stronger, better missiles, better armies, all that stuff, better business, you know, they’re doing great.

And when they break bad and when somebody takes over the helm who is really wicked and people fall away from God. Then God’s going to use that to punish Israel. And then after Israel is punished, he’s going to destroy the Assyrians through the Babylonians. Jonah knows all this. He gets this part right. And that’s why he’s angry. And that’s why there’s no need to denigrate what he says here. And in fact, he’s praying the Bible.

Again, remember we said before that in his first prayer, he’s praying the Psalms. And in this declaration of who God is, he is specifically citing Exodus chapter 34. This is Moses at Sinai, and we read the Lord passed before him—pass before Moses. By the way, the context for this is the people have sinned. God is judging him. Moses builds a tabernacle, a structure away from sinning Israel, at Sinai, because they’ve sinned while he was up at the mountain.

He’s built a little shelter just like Jonah, right? He’s built a little shelter, and then he asked for God to pass by him. He can see him. He says, “Well, you can’t see me front side. You can see my backside, but I’ll pass by you.” And here’s what happens. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth.” There it is.

That’s who God is. That’s the character of God as revealed in the Old Testament. The same character of God is revealed in the New Testament. There’s one God. He doesn’t change from being law oriented to grace-oriented. Grace is finished and accomplished with the coming of Jesus. But this is his nature as described in Exodus 34. And Jonah nails his prayer. He knows Exodus. And he knows the same thing is picked up in Numbers 14.

The Lord is long-suffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgressions. Okay, he knows that. He knows Psalm 86:5, “You Lord are good, ready to forgive and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you.” And then verse 15 of the same Psalm, “But you, oh Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” Joel 2:13, “Rend your heart, not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness and he relents from doing harm.” That Joel text looks like Joel and Jonah are about the same time. It’s almost identical wording, but they’re both building on Exodus and what God says there. The very same characteristics as are named in Exodus and then in Joel are the ones that Jonah prays. So get ready for anger.

Get ready for disappointment over an election that goes bad or a negotiation today that goes bad. Whatever it is that happens in our country the next few years. Get ready to get angry and get ready by committing yourself to be a person of prayer and to know your Bible and the character of God well enough to your anger can find its expression in focusing on the person of God. This isn’t a crummy prayer.

This is a good prayer. It’s the sort of prayer we should all be doing. In fact, it’s a prayer that Paul picks up in telling us what love is. First Corinthians 13, what is love? Love is patient and kind. And what did we just read? Jonah says that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, gracious and merciful. He is gracious in helping people and overlooking their sins and merciful. Exodus 34 says that the Lord God is merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth.

He’s patient and he’s kind, abounding in goodness and truth. The word kind in the New Testament in First Corinthians 13, it means doing good for people. And that’s exactly how God is described in two of these terms. He is long-suffering. God is patient. And he is kind. He does good things for people. Love. God is patient. Exodus 34, Jonah’s prayer. And kind—doing good things for other people. First Corinthians 13 just picks up the strand that the Jews always knew from the reading of Exodus that Jonah knows and he prays.

Jonah’s problem is not somehow getting mixed up with legalism and grace. He knows that this is who God is, but it’s what concerns him. What he knows is because God is that way that God will bring those Ninevites to repentance. And when he does that, God is going to provoke Israel to wrath with jealousy. And then he’s going to destroy them. What Jonah wanted—Fairbairn thinks—was a great demonstration of the judgment of God to destroy an entire empire so that finally the Jews would wake up and say, “Oh, he might do that to us.”

What Jonah got was God saving an empire and realizing the people in Israel, we’re not the center anymore. He’s going to take us out. Deuteronomy 32 says the center of God’s work working with people has now shifted to a godless, previously godless gentile nation. We’re toast. That’s what Jonah knew. These are days the Lord brings us this text in days when it seems that the rest of our lifetime will be spent likely—who knows what God’s going to do—but the rest of our lifetime will be spent watching the declension of the church in America.

America, and the rise of an apostate nation that becomes more and more centralized, less and less prosperous, more and more magical, yada yada. If we just say green energy enough, it’ll all it’ll take care of everything. People are going crazy. Well, that’s the way it works. And what’s happening is Africa, China, there are these tremendous evangelistic movements in these countries, and it seems like the entire center of the Christian church is moved away from Europe and America, the West to go now to Africa and the East, China.

Now, I don’t know, but that’s the kind of cosmic thing that may be going on here. It’s just what happened in the time of Jonah for. So before you, you know, get real snarky about the guy, recognize what he knew was coming down the pike for his family and the people that he loved. “Therefore, now, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it’s better for me to die than to live.”

Well, he’s a prophet to Israel. He thinks that as a prophet, he’s getting them to repent and become good again. But actually, the prophets were an announcement of death. It’s over. But he thinks he’s going to call him back to life. And now he knows that ain’t the message. No. What you are doing is announcing to that body of people, you’re dead. You’re going to die now. You’ll come back. There’ll be an exile. You’ll be another opportunity to be a light to the nations, but you’re dead.

And Jonah gets that now. And he says, “Well, what’s the point of my life then? My life is supposed to be about calling Israel to life and repentance. And now I see what you’re doing. I get it. It’s the provocation to jealousy. We’re toast.” Oh, I guess that’s the end of it for me. My life’s over. My life is connected to kingdom work. And the kingdom work that I understand I’m supposed to be doing is no longer capable of being done.

If I can’t preach, just take me because my life is only doing your job. I think it’s that kind of thing with Jonah. I don’t think it’s an indication that he is a horrible person. I think it’s more indication that he’s committed to kingdom work, but he gets the kingdom work wrong, and as a result, he sins. God doesn’t chastise him for the death threat. Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Meditate.

Why do you’re telling me how great I am and how difficult your life is and you want to die because these people are going to get killed. But Jonah, what I want to talk to you about is what got you to this stage. What got you to this state of praying the prayer is anger. So don’t try to come now with a pious declaration that my kingdom work is over. You might as well just take my life. God says, I know you got there through anger.

And I’m going to teach you something now about anger. I’m going to clear some things up for you. So, you know, wonderful picture to us of how to process things correctly. And you know, what does it tell us? It tells us that no matter how well we understand and memorize our Bibles and use it in prayer—Jonah used Exodus 34—no matter how committed we are to kingdom work (Jonah says it’s over because my job isn’t going to happen anymore. I can’t bring him back. You’ve just announced the thing’s over for us), he’s committed to kingdom work. And he’s committed to these things, right?

But what he’s not committed to is letting God rule the future, trusting God for things that look absolutely horrible, right? So it’s not enough for you to know and love God and to be committed, intentional about kingdom work. What the story of Jonah is that yeah, all that’s great, but you need a little better lesson on the heart of God and you need to get with God’s plan.

God’s plan is what’s bringing things to pass, not Obama’s campaign. God’s plan is doing this stuff. He’s got his purposes. Now, he’s not telling you what those purposes are, but you can trust him because just like you said, he is patient and he is kind and he is merciful. He’s loving. He’s compassionate. Remember that. And look at how he’s compassionate toward the broad world, not just the United States, not just your own group, not just your own church.

Understand that God has these things in store that are global. Text goes on. Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. Now, this is strange. I don’t want to get into a big deal, but this separates this last little bit. As I said, this is the concluding part. What we just read was the second prayer—just like there was a first prayer after the Ninevites, after the sailors, after the second commission, after the first commission.

And now verse 5 starts something new. He we have movement. He goes someplace and he goes out of the city. He sits on the east side of the city. We’re told east. He’s east of Eden. I mean, maybe that’s one thing, one of the images we’re supposed to have in mind here, right? People were sent out of the garden to the east. Cain was sent out to the east. Okay, so that isn’t a good blessing thing. He’s going out there.

But anyway, he goes out there. He makes himself a shelter just like Moses’ shelter. I think it’s the same word. Sat under it in the shade that he might see what would become of the city. Now, he’s already mad at what became of the city. So, now what’s he doing? Still hoping? No, I don’t think so. I think this is probably an event that happened prior to what we just read, prior to the prayer. Okay, but maybe I’m wrong.

It doesn’t make any difference, but it is separate and it’s the concluding little parable or picture here that I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon. The Lord prepared a plant made it come up over Jonah that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from its misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm, and so it damaged the plant that it withered.

Maybe ate away the roots. We don’t know what happened. But all of a sudden that big luscious plant—you know, in this part of the country there’s not—like you can’t build a house, he’s got like a lean-to. The sun’s coming through it. So God kindly prepares this gourd-like plant, big leaves comes over his head and shelters him. God gives us shelter from the elements, and Jonah just absolutely delights in that. And then God appoints a worm, and we don’t know where the worm is—maybe underground eating the roots, maybe chomping away at the stock—whatever it is, those leaves all of a sudden they shrivel up, like in a cartoon you’ve seen in cartoons the leaves shrivel up, and now no help for Jonah.

And then it happens when the sun arose that God prepared a vehement east wind. Here comes the spirit of God. The sun beat on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He’s about ready to pass out. And then he wished death for himself and said it is better for me to die than to live. Now what are these things? Well, we don’t know for sure, but remembering the story, Assyria’s conversion means that it will be a Yahwehist nation and empire.

This should be good news for Israel, right? In the short term. So in the short term, just like Jonah delighted in the protection of the gourd, Israel will receive protection from Assyria. Long term, actually, the various empires that would come, it’s the same thing. They’re like shade for Israel. But what’s going to happen in Assyria is that’s going to be a short-lived protection, and then God’s going to destroy him because even with that protection they don’t repent.

If you read Second Kings 14 and 15, you see right after the king Jeroboam I that Jonah preaches in the context of—few years later along comes another king, and along comes the king of Assyria and puts him under tribute. So they’ve broken bad by then. And so what’s going to happen is that gourd’s going to be taken away. What takes it away? A worm. What’s a worm?

Well, I don’t know, but see seems like normally a worm is associated with the serpent. Satan does his work. He deconverts Assyria. They become evil, nasty people, and he thinks he’s destroying God’s work. But in reality, he’s furthering God’s work because God’s going to use Assyria broken bad to judge Israel, to remove the covering, to let the heat and the spirit come down and blast Israel with his judgments, the judgment of the spirit of God.

God. So he’s given I think he’s given Jonah a little picture of the history, and Jonah gets it. I think he tends to understand it. And then God gives him the object lesson at the end. And God says to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” And Jonah says, “It is right for me to be angry even to death.”

Well, you know, that can either be an undue delight in plants or maybe Jonah sort of gets the metaphor going on. We don’t know. But the Lord said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night.” And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and much livestock?

He’s saying, “Look, you didn’t cause the thing to grow. I did. So he’s claiming his right to what he owns, and in his providence grows. He’s doing that. But bigger than the right that God is declaring to Jonah—of God alone to determine the fates of nations—bigger than that, what he wants Jonah to focus on is the very thing that Jonah prayed.

He prayed about God’s compassion. And that’s what God says the lesson is. I’m going to have compassion on Nineveh. And I’ve got my reasons. You know what’s going to happen is Nineveh is going to convert. Then they’re going to be built up so they can really give it to Israel when they break bad. Israel is going to be taken into captivity. The Babylonians, the same thing will happen to the south and you’re going to go into exile.

Now, I’m going to bring you back. But you know what I’m doing? I’m preparing the world for Jesus Christ. I’m sending the knowledge of God and the scriptures in to the regions where the gospel would soon travel. Within thirty years, the guy after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the gospel has shot out to faraway countries—to Africa and to Rome and to the Mediterranean, to Greece, to all kinds of people beyond that.

Why? Well, one reason why is because God in his providence had faithful believers in the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Bible, who had established the knowledge of God and the influence of God in the broader region so that when the gospel comes along after thirty years, boom, it’s all over the place. And within a century, it’s literally all over the world, right? Justin Martyr says there’s not any place you can go in the world where people aren’t getting together and praising God’s name through the work of Jesus Christ.

God’s purposes were broader and bigger than Jonah ever imagined. He was sort of stuck in his time frame. We always are. How do we know what’s going to happening in fifty, one hundred years or let alone in five hundred years after the exile and after Jesus, after Jesus is born? Who knows? But what we do know is that we’re serving a God who with the gourd, with the worm, and with the wind, he’s appointing at stuff. He’s appointing little worms to nod the roots of plants.

And he’s using that little thing in the life of Jonah to bring him a better apprehension of who God is. His details go down that far to the little worms that come along and affect the environment in which we live. Global warming maybe. But if so, the Lord God, right? He’s doing this stuff. And on the other hand, he’s doing things so vast and big that we can’t comprehend. But we must say, Lord God, you are gracious and glorious.

You prepared the world for the coming of Jesus so that when the gospel came, when new creation life came to us, it could spread like wildfire without Facebook, without the internet, without cell phones. No, but the Lord had appointed these judgments to Israel, to take the word of God just like Daniel did in Babylon. The very different places, the same thing happens. And God is doing his purposes. Now, whatever we face this year, brothers and sisters, the nature of it, from the smallest details of little worms in our gardens, to the biggest detail of what his plans are for world history.

All of those details are overseen by God. He’s sovereign, but the message isn’t his sovereignty. It is that, but the message is his compassion, his love. I had compassion on Nineveh. 120,000 kids. That’s probably what the term means. Million people. You don’t love it. I do. You don’t love Portland because it’s too weird. Hey, it’s got nothing on Assyria, Nineveh. Okay, imagine yourself next to that city and the crud that comes flowing out of it.

No matter what it is though, the Lord God is loving this world, and his plan is to save it. That’s what Jesus said. I didn’t come to judge it. I came to save it. Now, that involves some judgment. That involves sometimes telling a city to repent or be destroyed. Requires a lot of different things. We’ll look at different texts this next year. But brothers and sisters, what I need from you today is a commitment to be intentional about your service to God in spite of the hard things that he asked you to do this year.

It is a hard thing to do some of these things we’re asked to do. It was hard for Jonah to do something that he figured would result in the destruction of his own people, relatives, family, et cetera, to have their heads lopped off and their skins stripped from their bodies while they’re screaming. That’s a hard thing, brothers and sisters, right? God’s going to call you to do hard things this year. But I need from you today commitment to serve him.

Don’t let these community groups or anything else you’re going to use in your life this year to get you off to the right start to produce an intentionality of knowing why you’re here. Christian, you’re a little anointed one representing Jesus Christ. You’re a Jonah. Expect great things for the world. Expect you won’t see him more often than not. But don’t think parochially in terms of yourself, your church, your own little part of the world.

And don’t think about your own little part of history. Trust God that he is compassionate. And in that compassion, in his compassion, in his patience, in his love, kindness, mercy that he abounds in, the Lord God is bringing this world to salvation through means that seem completely wrong to us. God’s ways are not our ways, but they are right ways. They are effectual ways he’s saving the world, and they are the ways of true compassion.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we bless your name for this story. May it motivate us, Lord God. May we work with our kids this week to try to convince them to be intentional about being disciples of Jesus, being willing to obey him in the hard things that come up this year, this week. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to focus on your character, your compassion. Even as we, like all reformed churches, delight in your sovereignty, may we delight more in your compassion, knowing that is what is controlling history, in Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.