SPEAKER_01: Today's scripture reading is Jonah 4.
SPEAKER_01: But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
SPEAKER_01: And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?
SPEAKER_01: That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry?
SPEAKER_01: Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.
SPEAKER_01: He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city.
SPEAKER_01: Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from discomfort.
SPEAKER_01: So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant, but when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.
SPEAKER_01: When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
SPEAKER_01: And he asked that he might die, and God and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
SPEAKER_01: But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
SPEAKER_01: And should not I pity Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: This one, I think they call him where's wal where's Wally on this side of the world.
SPEAKER_02: In France, they call him Charlie, so où est Charlie?
SPEAKER_02: Je ne sais pas.
SPEAKER_02: C'est la vie.
SPEAKER_02: Alright.
SPEAKER_02: Anybody who speaks French, my apologies.
SPEAKER_02: But uh basically what what this is is it is a a search to try and find Waldo, the guy up in the postage stamp there in these big whimsical pictures.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna show you one of these pictures and I want you to see if you can find Waldo.
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02: There we are.
SPEAKER_02: Take a look.
SPEAKER_02: When you find Waldo, just give a little clap.
SPEAKER_02: Here's scattered, scattered claps.
SPEAKER_02: Some people have found him, some people have found him.
SPEAKER_02: Keep looking there.
SPEAKER_02: You track him down.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of not fair because there's some bleed from the lights over here, so he might be hidden, but he's not, I promise.
SPEAKER_02: Alright?
SPEAKER_02: If you didn't spot him, he is over here.
SPEAKER_02: Good old Waldo.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you spotted him right away, I would argue that that's kind of tragic.
SPEAKER_02: Because I would say that the point of a Where's Waldo page is not necessarily that one little dude there in the bottom left corner.
SPEAKER_02: It's all the goings on in the picture here.
SPEAKER_02: And I think if you take a little longer and you don't see Waldo right away, you're gonna see some pretty funny things.
SPEAKER_02: A few things that I saw, right?
SPEAKER_02: You've got an execution taking place, very solemn and very, very difficult event over here.
SPEAKER_02: And you've got the axe getting ready to chop someone's head off.
SPEAKER_02: But on the same stage, you've got another guy in a hood and an axe cutting firewood.
SPEAKER_02: That's that's different.
SPEAKER_02: Um you've got all kinds of different stuff here.
SPEAKER_02: You've got somebody pouring something out of the uh window.
SPEAKER_02: We'll not try to speculate what she's pouring out, uh, but it's landing on somebody.
SPEAKER_02: All of this stuff that's going on here, I think this is the real point.
SPEAKER_02: We're just drawn into this whimsical, crazy situation here.
SPEAKER_02: And by looking for Waldo, or Wally, or Charlie, or Jura, as he's called some places, um, by looking for him, you're seeing all of this other stuff here.
SPEAKER_02: So, like I say, Waldo's not really the point.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: And I think the book of Jonah is kind of similar to that, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: We come to the book of Jonah, we're expecting to see Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: We're expecting to get some kind of a character arc, you know, maybe a tale of redemption, maybe it may be a hero's journey.
SPEAKER_02: But really, we get to see in the book of Jonah God's story, God's tapestry.
SPEAKER_02: If we were to sum up the book of Jonah, it is not a complicated narrative.
SPEAKER_02: It's wild, it's a little strange, but it's not complicated, right?
SPEAKER_02: Chapter one, Jonah gets instructions from the Lord, go to Nineveh and give him the message.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah says, no, thank you, and he heads off in the other direction.
SPEAKER_02: God appoints a storm and later a fish to turn him around in his flight.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter two, Jonah calls out to God from the belly of the fish, not quite confessing, not quite repenting, but you know, at least praying, at least acknowledging God.
SPEAKER_02: The fish vomits him up, and then chapter three, Jonah does the work that God originally calls him to.
SPEAKER_02: He goes off to Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: And while I won't say that he throws himself into the work, it works.
SPEAKER_02: The people of Nineveh take in his five-word sermon, and they respond with repentance, and God relents from the disaster that he's been planning.
SPEAKER_02: And that brings us to today, chapter four.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter four.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah is not happy.
SPEAKER_02: He's not having it.
SPEAKER_02: He is displeased, he is angry.
SPEAKER_02: He's given God the whole I told you so routine.
SPEAKER_02: I knew you'd do something like this.
SPEAKER_02: I knew you wouldn't actually destroy the city if we came and preached a message of repentance.
SPEAKER_02: If the people turned from their wickedness and honored you, that you would relent from this disaster.
SPEAKER_02: And then Jonah goes outside of the city and he waits, and while he waits, God grows a plant up over him to shade him from the desert sun.
SPEAKER_02: But the next day, God takes the plant away and tries to reason with Jonah, seemingly not to any good result.
SPEAKER_02: No resolution, and it kind of just ends on God's question to Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: I was actually saying to Mark this week, fittingly, uh, that Jonah feels like uh Lord of the Rings, right?
SPEAKER_02: It's got one ending too many.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine if Jonah had ended in chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: We have this very, very successful, triumphant situation where the people hear the message, they repent, God relents, happy endings all around.
SPEAKER_02: But I think if it ended there, we would miss out on something here, and that's what we see in chapter four.
SPEAKER_02: That this isn't Jonah's story.
SPEAKER_02: It's never been Jonah's story.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah's not the hero, Jonah's not the one that we're looking to here.
SPEAKER_02: This is God's story.
SPEAKER_02: Just like Waldo that we saw earlier there.
SPEAKER_02: It's not about Waldo.
SPEAKER_02: It's not about Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: So what is God showing us here in his story?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the first thing that we see in chapter 4 of Jonah is God's unchanging character.
SPEAKER_02: And the first place that we will see this is in Jonah's own words.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: If you've got it open in front of you, you'll see it there.
SPEAKER_02: But kind of the second part of verse 2 says, you know, I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
SPEAKER_02: Now, these words that Jonah is sharing here, this is not something new.
SPEAKER_02: It's not some innovation that he's made up on the spot.
SPEAKER_02: This phrase, these verses are, this verse is seen throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: There's probably a dozen places, you know, little variations in the wording, but the same basic idea here.
SPEAKER_02: Everything except for that relenting from disaster part.
SPEAKER_02: Put a pin in that, we'll talk about that in a minute.
SPEAKER_02: But all the parts up to that point that God is gracious, merciful, that he's slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, presumably these would have been familiar to all Israelites.
SPEAKER_02: It's in the law, it's in the Psalms, it's in the later writings.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah here is talking to God and he's rattling it off like he's very familiar with it.
SPEAKER_02: Because he would have been.
SPEAKER_02: In the book of Exodus, when when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to mediate the covenant between God and his people, that's where we first see these words.
SPEAKER_02: You know that God is God is gracious, right?
SPEAKER_02: God is gracious.
SPEAKER_02: That means that he extends favor, he gives gifts where none are deserved.
SPEAKER_02: Gives life to people who, by their very nature, are dead and unable to do for themselves.
SPEAKER_02: God is merciful.
SPEAKER_02: This means that he doesn't repay according to what is deserved.
SPEAKER_02: If gracious means that he gives gifts that aren't deserved, then merciful means that he does not give the punishments that are deserved.
SPEAKER_02: Says he's slow to anger, it doesn't mean that God is somehow soft on evil, turning a blind eye to it or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: But it points to the idea that God leaves room for repentance and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: And this idea of God being abounding in steadfast love.
SPEAKER_02: That steadfast love word there, it's in the Old Testament hundreds of times.
SPEAKER_02: And steadfast love doesn't really do it justice because it's a very deep and very strong phrase there, very strong word.
SPEAKER_02: It points to the love that God has for his people, word uh love that is rooted in covenant, love that is unchanging, love that is based on God's own character.
SPEAKER_02: So we see Jonah reciting a creed here to God.
SPEAKER_02: We'll recite a creed in a little while here.
SPEAKER_02: But he's reciting it because he knows it, right?
SPEAKER_02: He's read it, he's heard it, he's learned it over the years, he's become very familiar with it.
SPEAKER_02: But you know how else he knows it is because he's been living it.
SPEAKER_02: He's been living in the goodness of it.
SPEAKER_02: Over the last three chapters, he's been experiencing it.
SPEAKER_02: Think about that.
SPEAKER_02: If God weren't quite so gracious, if God weren't quite so merciful, if he were quick to anger, if he somehow ran low on that steadfast love, that covenant love, then Jonah, this rebellious prophet, this denier of God, well, surely he'd have had a bad day there.
SPEAKER_02: He'd have been swept up in God's wrath.
SPEAKER_02: Could see this maybe when Jonah first ran back in chapter one.
SPEAKER_02: Could see it when maybe he got on that boat heading in the opposite direction of where God sent him.
SPEAKER_02: When he doubled down, when he said that I would rather die than obey God, when he when he coerced the sailors to toss him into the waters.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe when he prayed his unrepentant prayer of repentance.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe when he gave his weak and indifferent proclamation of God's message to the Ninevehites.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe here, like we see in our passage this morning, chapter 4, verse 3, therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
SPEAKER_02: You're hearing all this, right?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, hundreds of years later, thousands of years later, I'm getting annoyed with this fellow.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: You think he would have caught on to the irony in his own words.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, God, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't respond with wrath and condemnation.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say, hey, you know what, I had some fire set aside for Nineveh, but maybe I'll dump it on your face.
SPEAKER_02: You know, he doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_02: What Jonah stumbles onto here in verse 2, even in his anger, is that God's character is what has preserved him up to this moment.
SPEAKER_02: Truth is, if God wanted Jonah dead, Jonah has made that eminently easy.
SPEAKER_02: Just like in chapter 1 when he's thrown into the sea, if God's purpose was to punish or condemn Jonah, all he'd have to do is let nature take its course.
SPEAKER_02: Now in chapter 4, you literally have Jonah asking God to do just that.
SPEAKER_02: Take my life.
SPEAKER_02: It's better for me to die than to live.
SPEAKER_02: We saw it in verse 3, he'll ask again in verse 8.
SPEAKER_02: God isn't willing to put Jonah to death.
SPEAKER_02: Even if he deserves it, even if he's asking for it.
SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, what does God do for Jonah?
SPEAKER_02: Verse 6.
SPEAKER_02: He grows a plant.
SPEAKER_02: It says he appointed a plant, which is the same word that was used in chapter 1 that he appointed a fish.
SPEAKER_02: What was the fish there for?
SPEAKER_02: It was to save him from the seas, it was to turn him around.
SPEAKER_02: Now God's appointed a plant.
SPEAKER_02: God is once again showing himself gracious, providing comfort where Jonah deserved no such gift.
SPEAKER_02: And it's funny, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: Because Jonah was just criticizing God for his kindness.
SPEAKER_02: But when that kindness comes his way, verse 6, it says, Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.
SPEAKER_02: It's like God saying, You see, Jonah, you object to me showing grace.
SPEAKER_02: But that's less about any sense of injustice, more about your own issues, your nationalism, your exclusivity.
SPEAKER_02: Even see it how it's how it's said here in verse 2, oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
unknown: Right.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah doesn't get to decide how God gives his grace.
SPEAKER_02: And seemingly, to illustrate just that exact point, God takes the plant away.
SPEAKER_02: He appoints a worm to eat it and then appoints a hot wind along with the desert sun.
SPEAKER_02: Not to punish Jonah, but to teach him.
SPEAKER_02: You say you don't want me to be gracious?
SPEAKER_02: You were happy when I freely gave you this shade, but now you're angry when I take it away.
SPEAKER_02: If you were to look into the New Testament, the Gospels, Jesus tells a parable about workers in a vineyard.
SPEAKER_02: And just to just to nutshell that one for you there, basically this vineyard owner hires people to help him with the harvest.
SPEAKER_02: And he goes throughout the day and he hires people in different groups and at different times, such that, you know, there's there's a group of people that work basically all day long, and there's a group of people that work part of the day, more or less, and then there was a group of people that only worked maybe an hour at the end.
SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, when the work is done, and the vineyard owner goes to settle up with wages and make the payments and all of those things, he gives them all the same wage.
SPEAKER_02: And the guys that were there the whole day were not having that.
SPEAKER_02: They were pretty annoyed with it.
SPEAKER_02: They were just like, you know, why are you giving them the same as you're giving us?
SPEAKER_02: We worked harder, we did more, we accomplished more, we deserve more.
SPEAKER_02: And the vineyard owner, who represents God in that parable, says, Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
SPEAKER_02: God's a God of grace.
SPEAKER_02: It's not up to Jonah, and surely it's not up to us to tell him who he should or should not give that grace to.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, how do we know that God didn't send the worm and bake Jonah a little bit there to punish him?
SPEAKER_02: Because he keeps talking to him.
SPEAKER_02: He keeps talking to him, he keeps engaging with him.
SPEAKER_02: He's trying to show him the error of his ways and get him back on track.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: If he if he wanted to, if he wanted to end Jonah, it'd be a real easy thing, but he keeps engaging with him.
SPEAKER_02: Let go of your animosity, Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: Let go of your dislike of these Ninevites.
SPEAKER_02: There's absolutely no sense from chapter four here that God is done with Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: And God's not done with us either, right?
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: If you're sitting here this morning, got breath in your lungs, blood in your veins, he's still at work.
SPEAKER_02: Still at work in you.
SPEAKER_02: This gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
SPEAKER_02: Do we ever live like maybe we know better than he does?
SPEAKER_02: Like we're worthy recipients of his grace?
SPEAKER_02: Like someone else shouldn't receive that grace.
SPEAKER_02: Look, I know this is the 21st century and we're not meant to discriminate.
SPEAKER_02: We're not meant to, you know, follow up with stuff that's not equal access and equal protection.
SPEAKER_02: But I also know if we dig around a little bit in our hearts and in our minds, we might find some areas where we struggle.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's not groups of people, maybe it's not types of people, maybe it's specific people.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I worked hard to get where I am, and they just had everything handed to them.
unknown: You know?
SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, if I had all of their advantages in life, I would have done a lot better than they did.
SPEAKER_02: It's so easy to let that resentment build up in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And it's easy to let that resentment turn into bitterness.
SPEAKER_02: We start kind of relishing the failures of other people or hoping to see them, you know, just maybe even in small petty ways come to ruin.
SPEAKER_02: It points to something I might call, uh, from a diagnostic standpoint, Jonah Idis.
SPEAKER_02: Instead of nitpicking each other, right?
SPEAKER_02: Instead of comparing ourselves to others, let's focus on the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen it on full display all through this book.
SPEAKER_02: Let's remember we don't get to decide who benefits from that character.
SPEAKER_02: God is showing his unchanging character through this chapter, through this whole book.
SPEAKER_02: Let's live in light of that.
SPEAKER_02: Alright, the next thing that's on display in the Where's Jonah page that we're looking at here.
SPEAKER_02: To a certain degree, it's us, but really, I'd say this chapter shows us God's patience for us, God's patience for his people.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah makes us look in the mirror.
SPEAKER_02: And like the image that we were looking at earlier, the Waldo business there, some of what we see in that mirror is a bit ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02: If you were here a couple of weeks ago, uh Simon Donahoe led us through Jonah chapter two, and he said something that uh Jonah is kind of a comedy, which is true.
SPEAKER_02: I was reminded of an interview that I saw with Stephen Fry, the English comic, uh, a while back.
SPEAKER_02: And he was being asked, you know, what's the difference between, you know, sort of American humor and British humor?
SPEAKER_02: And he gave just a great answer there.
SPEAKER_02: He gave the example of a film where there was a house party going on, and in this house party, there's a there's a fella just sitting there strumming his guitar with a few people around him, singing some cheesy folk songs and whatever, and the comic hero comes in, looks at what he's doing, takes his guitar, smashes it to bits, kind of gives a cool guy look to the camera, and then walks off screen.
SPEAKER_02: Hilarity, right?
SPEAKER_02: That's American comedy.
SPEAKER_02: But Stephen Fry says British humor, the comic hero would want to be the guy with the guitar.
SPEAKER_02: He would want to be the guy who's a little bit out of touch, a little bit uh lacking in self-awareness, a little bit pathetic, you know, more Mr.
SPEAKER_02: Bean than an Adam Sandler character.
SPEAKER_02: And if that's the kind of humor that we're talking about, certainly we can see that's that's the kind of comedy that Jonah is a bit lacking in his own self-awareness there, a bit uh pathetic.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah's here in chapter four, and he's having what we might respectfully call his diva moment.
SPEAKER_02: For me, better to die than to live.
SPEAKER_02: Goodbye, cruel world.
SPEAKER_02: But in spite of Jonah, in spite of all of this, God remains patient with him.
SPEAKER_02: Just as he has all the way through this book.
SPEAKER_02: God twice in the passage asks Jonah, Do you do well to be angry?
SPEAKER_02: Verse 4 and verse 9.
SPEAKER_02: This is just a side note.
SPEAKER_02: Husbands, if your wife is angry with you, do not break this phrase out.
SPEAKER_02: Do not say, Do you do well to be angry?
SPEAKER_02: God can get away with it.
SPEAKER_02: We can't.
SPEAKER_02: All right, so hang on to that.
SPEAKER_02: But God's question here is valid, and Jonah's response shows us a lot.
SPEAKER_02: First time he doesn't respond with words at all.
SPEAKER_02: What does it say?
SPEAKER_02: He just heads out of the city, going off to see if God will ultimately destroy it.
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: You know, God, you asked me, do I do well to be angry?
SPEAKER_02: Your move.
SPEAKER_02: We'll see if I do well to be angry.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah's angry that God is showing mercy to the Ninevehes.
SPEAKER_02: Let's not forget God is showing mercy because of their repentance.
SPEAKER_02: Let's not forget their repentance came on the back of Jonah, sharing God's message with them.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine this.
SPEAKER_02: This is a prophet.
SPEAKER_02: This is a prophet of God.
SPEAKER_02: He's a professional message giver.
SPEAKER_02: And I have to assume that in all of his years working as a prophet, he probably never got a response like this.
SPEAKER_02: Probably never got this kind of reception.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine, you know, the guys down on Henry Street with their speakers and their platforms and they're down there preaching the gospel every day.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what their normal response rate is, how many people listen to them as they're walking up and down that street.
SPEAKER_02: But imagine if those guys, you know, kicked on their speaker and said one sentence and the whole street just stops what they're doing and listens, turns to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Or more to the point of Jonah, imagine the whole city of Dublin just from the words of one person turned to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: That would be amazing.
SPEAKER_02: But here you have Jonah, not amazed, not thankful, not overjoyed.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, he's angry.
SPEAKER_02: He's displeased.
SPEAKER_02: God didn't work the way I thought he should.
SPEAKER_02: If we need more evidence of Jonah's hypocrisy, it's in his description of God from verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, I said the relenting from disaster thing we'd look at later?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's later, so let's give it a look.
SPEAKER_02: Up to this point in Scripture, everything that comes before this chronologically, there is never a time where this description of God being merciful and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is connected to this idea of God relenting from disaster.
SPEAKER_02: This is a new thing.
SPEAKER_02: So is Jonah wrong in this?
SPEAKER_02: No, he's not wrong.
SPEAKER_02: He hasn't mischaracterized God, he hasn't gotten his theology wrong or his creed wrong here.
SPEAKER_02: We can see loads of places in the Old Testament where it talks specifically, uses those words about God relenting from disaster.
SPEAKER_02: But this is the only place where it is not specifically talking about God's own people.
SPEAKER_02: Every other place it's talking about God intending disaster as a response to the wickedness among the Israelites, among his own covenant people.
SPEAKER_02: You can go back, the first place that this is used is also an Exodus.
SPEAKER_02: Moses had just gone up on the mountain to get the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_02: And he was up there a long time.
SPEAKER_02: And the people started to get worried, started to get restless, started to get panicky.
SPEAKER_02: So they say, you know what?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe Moses is dead up there.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we just need to move on and find another God to follow.
SPEAKER_02: So make us a golden calf.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll say that's our God.
SPEAKER_02: We'll say that's who brought us out of slavery and is bringing us to the promised land.
SPEAKER_02: And God sees this and he's like, These guys, they're down there worshiping an idol made by their own hands and turning away from the very God who did save them, who rescued them from slavery.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, You know what?
SPEAKER_02: This is me paraphrasing, this isn't God's actual words here, but he says, I'm done with them.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna strike them down.
SPEAKER_02: But God holds his wrath.
SPEAKER_02: And the word, you know, the verse there in Exodus chapter 32 says, The Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.
SPEAKER_02: Now why do I bring that up?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Jonah, perhaps reluctantly, perhaps even accidentally, has made a profound statement of who God is.
SPEAKER_02: He hasn't gotten any of it wrong.
SPEAKER_02: He hasn't said anything that's not true.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, God is gracious, God is merciful, God is slow to anger, God is abounding in steadfast love, and yes, God does relent from disaster.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah's not disputing any of these truths.
SPEAKER_02: He's just not particularly happy about them right now.
SPEAKER_02: But the great paradox, irony, if you like, is that without these qualities of God's character that he's whining about, Jonah wouldn't even have a nation that he would be representing there.
SPEAKER_02: He wouldn't have an office, he wouldn't have countrymen, he wouldn't have people, might not exist himself.
SPEAKER_02: And an Israelite hearing this back in the day would have surely recognized these references in play.
SPEAKER_02: They'd see that the very things that Jonah is complaining about are the only reason he's even there.
SPEAKER_02: So Jonah isn't really complaining about who God is, he's complaining that God is who he is to everyone, not just to Jonah, not just to his people.
SPEAKER_02: And we can see this in the interaction over the plant as well.
SPEAKER_02: I always thought that was a funny little side quest there, but Jonah's angry that God took away the plant.
SPEAKER_02: Something that he didn't have to provide in the first place.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, this same Jonah wanted God to take much more than a plant away from the city of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: How can he miss that hypocrisy?
SPEAKER_02: That disconnect there.
SPEAKER_02: The plant comes as an illustration of God's grace, his undeserved gift to Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: And when that particular grace is pulled back, it reveals the condition of Jonah's heart.
SPEAKER_02: He's angry that God has killed a plant, and at the same time, he's angry that God has not killed every man, woman, and child in the city of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: But God's response in all of this is to keep talking with him, to keep engaging with him so that he might see reason.
SPEAKER_02: How many of us would have just lost patience with Jonah altogether?
SPEAKER_02: You still don't get it?
SPEAKER_02: I'm wasting my breath here.
SPEAKER_02: But not God.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah continues to show us that God is patient with his people.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I know when we read a story like Jonah, we can think, oh, Jonah, what a loser, right?
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I'm not like that.
SPEAKER_02: I would never respond like that.
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't act like that.
SPEAKER_02: But you know, we can go too easy on ourselves sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: We can map ourselves in the wrong way as we're reading stories like this.
SPEAKER_02: You know, focus on some obvious ways that we're not like Jonah, and miss some of the subtle ways that we are like Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like if we're if we're looking at the story of David and Goliath, right?
SPEAKER_02: It's very easy for us to say, yes, I would have been like David, heroic, man of God, slay the giant, awesome.
SPEAKER_02: But do you have stuff in common with Saul and the other Israelites who were just quaking in their sandals every time Goliath turns up?
SPEAKER_02: Let's not shy away from the mirror here.
SPEAKER_02: This is like one of those intense magnifying mirrors, you know, you get your face into focus and you're like, whoa.
SPEAKER_02: You can see everything there.
SPEAKER_02: So, do we have our diva moments sometimes?
SPEAKER_02: Do we fail to look at things in light of God's unchanging character?
SPEAKER_02: Do we learn a lesson and then almost immediately have to learn it again?
SPEAKER_02: Do we lay down a burden, leave it with the Lord, and then take it right back up?
SPEAKER_02: Do we make resolutions?
SPEAKER_02: I won't do that again, I won't go there again, I won't say that again, I'll do better at this, I'll try harder on that, and then just break them.
SPEAKER_02: Of course we do.
SPEAKER_02: The point of seeing Jonah and his diva moment isn't to sit there with this kind of knowing laugh, like oh, poor silly man.
SPEAKER_02: If you gave him a penny for his thoughts, you'd be overpaying.
SPEAKER_02: The point in seeing Jonah's diva moment is that mirror.
SPEAKER_02: Once we've recognized ourselves in it, the point is to see just how patient God is with Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: To see how God, rather than smacking Jonah in the back of the head, still speaks with kindness, patience.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you, but even the worst of my diva moments have not gotten me eaten by a fish.
SPEAKER_02: So if God still has patience with Jonah, what a comfort for all of us.
SPEAKER_02: Now, sadly, we never get to see the penny drop for Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: We never see him catch on, come to himself there.
SPEAKER_02: We never read a verse where Jonah says, Oh, I get it now.
SPEAKER_02: I was wrong, I get it now.
SPEAKER_02: And that feels kind of messy, kind of unresolved.
SPEAKER_02: But I think in some ways that's also comforting for us.
SPEAKER_02: God isn't just patient with Jonah once he gets it all figured out.
SPEAKER_02: While Jonah's sitting there in his self-imposed exile, baking in the sun, out on the Nineveh plain, God's with him.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: If you're going through something, you can't quite get your head around it, God's with you too.
SPEAKER_02: He's patient with you.
SPEAKER_02: We're far better to go to God even in our distress, even if we are going to spout absolute nonsense to him sometimes, than to live our lives like he's not there.
SPEAKER_02: Engage with God, wrestle with God.
SPEAKER_02: God is patient with his people.
SPEAKER_02: Third thing we'll see on the canvas of Ue Jonah is God's mercy on his enemies.
SPEAKER_02: Now we already know from chapter three that the city of Nineveh received Jonah's words, they took him on board, and they turned to repent.
SPEAKER_02: And chapter three ends with the verse When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, that doesn't change in chapter 4, even though Jonah would surely like God to relent from his relenting.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 11 gives us a great insight into God's mercy.
SPEAKER_02: It says, And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle?
SPEAKER_02: God's telling Jonah, there are thousands of people in Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: Thousands of people created in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: Are they flawed?
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: Are they fallen?
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: But they have dignity, they have value.
SPEAKER_02: And let's not forget, they responded to God's warning.
SPEAKER_02: They responded with repentance.
SPEAKER_02: And surely they're worth more than a leaf or a plant.
SPEAKER_02: They're lost.
SPEAKER_02: They're unaware.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what this phrase about not knowing the right hand from the left is all about.
SPEAKER_02: Some people have said over the years, oh, that meant that there was, you know, 120,000 infants.
SPEAKER_02: What a city that would be.
SPEAKER_02: But I think this is pointing to moral infancy, spiritual infancy.
SPEAKER_02: They're not, they're not as mature as Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: If you look at Genesis 18 in the Old Testament, where God's about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is interceding for them.
SPEAKER_02: He's asking God, would you spare these cities if even a small number of righteous people were in them?
SPEAKER_02: And God's answer was yes, I would spare these wicked, wicked cities, even if just a small number of the people in them were righteous, even if the vast majority of them were wicked.
SPEAKER_02: That's a great picture of God's mercy, and you can take it forward here to this idea of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: There's also this passage in Luke's gospel that we that we saw a few weeks ago, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: This city that in a few days' time would put Jesus to death, this city that has such a history of rejecting the people that the Lord sends.
SPEAKER_02: This city that would be put to the sword because they didn't recognize the hour of their visitation.
SPEAKER_02: Unlike Nineveh, they ignored the Lord's message of warning.
SPEAKER_02: Unlike Nineveh, they did not repent and turn to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Unlike Nineveh, they would not be spared.
SPEAKER_02: But even at this, the Lord takes no pleasure in it.
SPEAKER_02: He weeps over it.
SPEAKER_02: What we see in the last verse of Jonah is the same mercy.
SPEAKER_02: Nineveh, that great city, is not going to be in God's crosshairs.
SPEAKER_02: He would take no delight in their destruction.
SPEAKER_02: And because they've responded the way they have, God has relented from disaster.
SPEAKER_02: So it's really a remarkable chapter, this chapter four here.
SPEAKER_02: Much as I was wishing that the book would have ended in chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah has very clearly explained why he's angry.
SPEAKER_02: We get a great insight.
SPEAKER_02: People say, oh, you can't know what's in someone's heart.
SPEAKER_02: You can't, but we have this mouth and it lets it out sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: God has explained exactly why he hasn't done the thing that Jonah wants him to do.
SPEAKER_02: But it ends without a resolution.
SPEAKER_02: We don't get to find out what happened next in Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: We don't get to find out what happened next with Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: But we can sift through some things here and we can come to some resolutions.
SPEAKER_02: At least figure out what we think here.
SPEAKER_02: First, Nineveh, this great city.
SPEAKER_02: The book tells us that in the moment the Ninevehes have heard God's warning by Jonah's mouth, and they've responded in repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_02: But I would surmise that at least for a lot of the people in the city, this was not necessarily enduring heart-level change.
SPEAKER_02: Why do I say this?
SPEAKER_02: Well, of course, the historical record shows there's no history of the city of Nineveh suddenly having a drastic change in their religious belief or practices.
SPEAKER_02: But more than that, you can go two books further on in your Bible, you'll find the book of Nahum.
SPEAKER_02: The Book of Nahum was written after Jonah, some years later, and it's again crying out against Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: It's proclaiming God's destruction on Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: So whatever change we saw in Jonah's day, it seems to be back to business as usual soon enough.
SPEAKER_02: History books tell us that Nineveh was destroyed in the 7th century before Christ, and the entire Assyrian Empire was defeated not long after.
SPEAKER_02: So, what was the point of this whole exercise here?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I would speculate, this is me speculating here, it's not in the text, but I would speculate that while the widespread population of Nineveh didn't hold to the faith and repentance that were on display in chapter 3, something you often see in the Bible is the idea of a remnant.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Jonah came over from the northern kingdom of Israel, and we read some stuff a few weeks ago looking at that, seeing that they were pretty wicked as a nation.
SPEAKER_02: They were pretty far gone, far from God.
SPEAKER_02: But there were still faithful people, even in that very wicked, wicked civilization.
SPEAKER_02: People who were living out their faith in contrast to the moral decay around them.
SPEAKER_02: So I wonder, this is just me wondering, me speculating here, the seed that Jonah planted resulted in a minority of the Ninevehites remaining faithful to God.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if that branch of God's people endured even beyond the fall of the city, the fall of the empire.
SPEAKER_02: And something that I ran across while I was researching here, today, 2026, 21st century, this place that used to be the city of Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: Nineveh's long gone.
SPEAKER_02: It was destroyed, you know, centuries ago.
SPEAKER_02: But it there's a place in northern Iraq that's called the Nineveh Plains.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, the city of Mosul is up there.
SPEAKER_02: And there in the Nineveh Plains, in the Republic of Iraq, which is a 90 to 95% majority Muslim country, is the biggest concentration of Christians in the entire area.
SPEAKER_02: And these, it's not like these are foreign Christians who've come in and settled there, the people group that these Christians are from.
SPEAKER_02: They're the Assyrians.
SPEAKER_02: That's what they're known as.
SPEAKER_02: They speak Aramaic.
SPEAKER_02: The very same people group that Jonah went and proclaimed God's warning to, their descendants are living today in this area.
SPEAKER_02: And they are following Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Back in the first century, following the resurrection of Jesus, it seems that the gospel was preached there, and many turned to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Now, they've been disrupted over the years by ISIS and different wars.
SPEAKER_02: They're divided among various sects and various traditions.
SPEAKER_02: But I thought that was too interesting not to share.
SPEAKER_02: The same God who showed mercy to Nineveh in Jonah's day is still proclaimed by the descendants of their people centuries later.
SPEAKER_02: And what about Jonah?
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, we don't get to see his turning point, we don't get to see where he repented, where he finally saw and understood.
SPEAKER_02: But here we are, centuries later, reading his book.
SPEAKER_02: Reading his book that's part of God's eternal word.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think Jonah would have sat down to write this if he just lived out the rest of his days baking in the sun in the Nineveh plain there.
SPEAKER_02: Just as God wasn't finished with the Ninevites, he wasn't finished with Jonah either.
SPEAKER_02: That should fill us all with hope and expectancy.
SPEAKER_02: After all, if God can redeem Jonah's story, imagine what he can do with each one of us.
SPEAKER_02: And for us, just like Jonah, we're all living out our story in the context of God's greater story.
SPEAKER_02: And that may be why the book ends where it does.
SPEAKER_02: The book of Jonah starts and ends with God.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's far better to be amazed by this wonderful God than to get stuck thinking this was ever Jonah's story.
SPEAKER_02: Just like Waldo, we might spend our time looking to see Jonah, but all God is showing us Himself there.
SPEAKER_02: We're seeing Him, His unchanging character, His patience with His people, His mercy on His enemies.
SPEAKER_02: May we all, as brothers and sisters in Christ, may we all live in light of His character by the power of His Holy Spirit for the glory of the risen Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Let me pray.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for the story of Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: That is your story.
SPEAKER_02: That you are revealing more of yourself, more of your character, more of your patience, more of your mercy.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, may we live our lives in light of that truth.
SPEAKER_02: Father, if there are people here this morning who don't yet know you, people who are just looking in on the faith, Lord, don't let them be put off by the fantastical elements of this story.
SPEAKER_02: But let them see through it.
SPEAKER_02: Let them see the tapestry of your love, your grace in all of it.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.