Important Lessons from Jonah

Last week, when I finished the sermon, I told my wife, I said, I don't know, I just didn't feel real good about that sermon. I just didn't feel like I really communicated what I wanted to communicate. But I was sort of encouraged by other people's trials, because about half a dozen times this week, I was with somebody, either talking on the phone or visiting, and they said, I said, how's your weight going? I feel like I'm running with the horses. And there are times when we feel like that. We started about a year ago a series of Bible studies, Sabbath Bible studies, on the minor prophets. We got through four Bible studies, and then the last couple of months, either I haven't been here or something else came up, and we haven't been going through the minor prophets. And, of course, next month, the Bible study, we don't have the normal Bible study, because it's during that family weekend. So I thought, you know, we need to keep up with the minor prophets. So today, we're going to do a Bible study on one of the minor prophets. So we'll sort of keep going, we won't lose track too much. And the reason why this fits into a sermon is because this is a story we all know, and unfortunately it's become sort of a myth, I think, a bedtime story we tell children. We forget the reality of it, and it is the minor prophet known as Jonah. Jonah. You know, Jonah and the whale, although the Bible doesn't say a whale, it's a story we all know. It's a story our children know. And yet, this very important historical narrative because this actually happened is important in the lessons that it teaches for us today. And there's a lot in the book of Jonah for each of us today, also. Jonah's an interesting man. We don't know a whole lot about him, as far as his background. Like most of the minor prophets, we don't know a lot about their background. We know a little bit about Amos because he was a farmer and some of the others. But we don't know a lot about Jonah. We just know he was a prophet of God. He was called by God, and he was used by God. And then he was told by God to do something very special. And that's where the story starts. Now, a little bit of background to the story we need to know is that Jonah lives somewhere, when these events took place, was somewhere between about 750 and 793 or so BC. Okay, those are dates, big deal dates. We all remember dates from history. In history class we get dates, but we forget them. Well, this is very important to understand what was going on in the world, the Middle East at that time, during that 50-year span. Because Israel and Judah, of course, were two different nations, but they were powerhouse nations. During this time period, they were major players in what was the known world at the time. You had Egypt, and Egypt was a major power, but it wasn't the superpower that it had used to be, that it had been in the past. So, Israel and Judah were major countries, major players in the world, bigger and stronger economically, militarily, than many of the nations around them. And we know a little bit, you say, well, how do we know when Jonah lived? And it's because in 2 Kings 14, he's mentioned, and in 2 Kings 14, he's mentioned when Jeroboam II was the king of Israel. Now, this is important because under Jeroboam II, Israel had gone through a major economic revival.

And so, they were at the height of what they were as a nation. Under Jeroboam II, they were a military power. They had this economic growth. They also saw themselves as very religious. And remember, we went through Hosea, we went through Amos, which were prophets sent to Israel during this time period. And remember their messages. They keep telling them, God is calling you to repent, but you will not listen. You think you're okay and you're not. And they would list, Hosea enlisted all the spiritual problems they had, the religious problems they had. Amos dealt with the social problems, the fact that the poor were neglected, the fact that crime was rampant. It's in Amos that he calls the wealthy women a bunch of fat cows. And so you have these two prophets that are sent during this time period. And Israel is being told to repent.

And there is one great enemy they have in the Middle East. It's Assyria. Assyria is in the area of Iraq today. And Assyria was a rising economic military power, and they were beginning to exert that power. They were beginning to expand. They were beginning to become a major player in the world scene, and they were the mortal enemy of Israel. And the capital city of Assyria was Nineveh. Now, they've excavated Nineveh. It's very interesting that up until the late 1800s, many historians didn't believe Nineveh actually existed, which I find interesting because Nineveh appears throughout history in different accounts, but they had never found it. Well, they have found it. Part of it has been excavated. So, they know a little bit about Nineveh today. It was a major city. It was a major city in this eighth century BC. And Assyria became a major empire, eventually to be sort of folded over into the Babylonian Empire. So, this is the time period where Jonah comes along, and Jonah is a prophet of God. Jonah is in Israel. Jonah is told to do something. Let's go to Jonah 1. Jonah 1.

Like I said, we're just going to do a bit of a Bible study today, so we can keep up with the minor prophets a little bit. We probably will do another minor prophets. Well, we won't now, probably until after the feast before we can do another minor prophets Bible study. Jonah 1. Verse 1, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amatei, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up to me. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found the ship going to Tarshish, so he paid his fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now, Tarshish has mentioned a whole lot in one verse. He was intent on going someplace else. Now, if you had a map of the ancient world, you would understand why this is stressed so much. If he left Israel and Judah, and he went northeast, he would end up at the Tigris and Euphrates. That's where Assyria is. Tarshish is the modern-day country of Spain. Now, if you know anything about the Mediterranean, that's due west. He's running in the opposite direction as fast as he can. Now, I want you to visualize this. Here's a man of God. This isn't some, you know, pagan that's called. This was a man who worshipped God, who was in contact with God, who was God's servant. He was a prophet. God comes and gives him instructions. He knows they're from God. He knows they're from God. And he goes and he gets on a ship. Now, normally, he could travel across land up to the Tigris and Euphrates, or he could go to Japa, which was a major port city, and he could get on a boat, and he could swing up to the northern part of the Mediterranean, get off there and go across by land, or he could go up into the Black Sea and come down into the Tigris and Euphrates, and then headed south. So, getting on a ship is a way to get there, but that's not the fare that he bought. Why would he do this? Understanding Jonah's motivation, because at the end, we're going to show that you and I have to be careful that we don't apply the same thought processes and motivations to our Christianity that Jonah did to his commission. In Jonah 4, we have Jonah declare what his motivation was. So, we know. Jonah 4, verse 2, so Jonah prays to the Lord. He prays to God, and he says, Ah, Lord, Yahweh, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? He said, didn't I say this to you when you gave me this commission? You gave me this command, and isn't this what I told you? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish, for I know here's why. I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant and loving kindness, who one who relents from doing harm. He tells God the reason, and he's very unhappy. We'll get back to this chapter for a couple minutes. He's very unhappy. This is a really unhappy man. He's a depressed man, and he's depressed because you were sending me to the most despicable people on earth. They're cruel. They're godless. They worship pagan gods, and you're sending me to them, and if they repented, you would forgive them, and I could not stomach that. Let's just say God calls you, and you're one of God's servants, and God says, I'm sending you to Mecca. I know I'm sending you to Al-Qaeda. I'm sending you to Al-Qaeda. Here's where their headquarters is. Here's where they are, and you're to go tell them to repent.

And what if they repented? There are people who would say, I'm not going there. Those people deserve to be punished. If you put this in a modern context, this would be like being told, it's 1942, and God's saying, I'm sending you to Adolf Hitler, and I want the Nazis, I want you to go to the Nazis, and I want you to tell them to repent. And he said, well, what if they repent? Well, I'm going to forgive them. He was afraid that people would repent.

He wanted them punished so much, he was afraid that they would repent.

And so, he heads to Spain. He heads in the opposite direction. He figures, I'll go there and live the rest of my life. Now, I mean, he's paying a great price, by the way. He's giving up his native land. I mean, think about what he's doing. He's leaving behind his family. He's leaving behind his wealth, his house. He's leaving behind everything he knows, to go to a place where they speak a different language, live a different lifestyle. That's a pretty heavy price to pay, isn't it? He was willing to pay that price rather than have the Assyrians repent. And there was some slight possible chance, because I know God is a God of grace, and I cannot allow him to do that, because we are his people.

And so, he heads off. This is a great, important lesson. Sometimes, because we know that God has called us, we know that God has given us his spirit, we can come to conclusions that were so exclusive that not only do we look at others with contempt, but we literally try to keep them from coming to God. It's interesting, in the 1840s, after the great disappointment, when everybody, thousands, tens of thousands of people in the United States thought Jesus Christ was coming back, and he didn't, there were different churches informed, the Seventh-day Adventists being one of them. And among the Adventist movement, there was a group of people who decided they had a doctrine called the closed-door doctrine. They decided, after 1844, God wasn't calling anybody. So, they deliberately made sure nobody knew could come to their church. Of course, guess what happened to them within a few years? They died out. They couldn't have children fast enough. Of course, I don't know what you do with children that are being born if no one's calling anybody. I don't know how they dealt with that problem, but they died out. These people, you know, we're so righteous, God can't call anybody to us because we're too righteous. Of course, when God calls people, they don't know what we know. Right? They're in need of repentance. They're in need of baptism. They're in need of learning God's way. They're in need of dealing with their sins. And sometimes, if we're not careful, we look on new people, and all we see is, who? Sinners. We're forgetting, of course, who we are and what we still are. This was Jonah. I am one of God's people. I am one of God's anointed. He was. I am one of God's servants, one of His prophets. And my people must be protected from the evil of other people.

And, you know, even to the point where God sometimes is too lenient with these Gentiles.

Now, he wouldn't have said that in a way, but in another way, it is exactly what he said. He said, I know you are a God of grace and a God of mercy. And I just thought, what if these wacko Assyrians, these people who worship God, you know, these statues, these people who are so warlike, which the Assyrians were, and very cruel in war, why do you say repent? So we know what he did. He gets in a boat. He heads off towards Spain. Verse 4 says, But when the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. The mariner starts throwing things off. You know, we heard about that in the sermon. And they started throwing things off the ship to lighten it up because it was sinking. Now, what's very interesting here, at the end of verse 5, they're panicked. They're afraid. They're going to die. They've taken down the sails. They're throwing their own cargo overboard, and their ship is sinking. Where's Jonah? But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had laid down, and was fast asleep.

There's an interesting spiritual state that happens when we run from God.

All of us have run from God from time to time. We don't like what he tells us to do. We don't want to obey. We find ways to get around it. We find ways to not do it. And we're running from God. But when we run from God, we spiritually go to sleep.

He's running. Everybody else is afraid of dying. Jonah is shutting down. He's spiritually shutting down. That's what happens when we run from God. We begin to... we run, and we compromise, and we compromise, and we compromise, and then we begin to spiritually shut down. And we just go to sleep. We're totally unaware of our spiritual state, and we're totally unaware of the spiritual state of the world, and we just... we go through life sleepwalking, spiritually sleepwalking. That's where Jonah was. Verse 6 is very interesting. So, the captain came to him and said to him, what do you mean, sleeper? Jonah the sleeper. Yeah, it was so bizarre. He didn't wake up, sleeper, sleepy head. What's wrong with you? If there's a rise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. Now, you read the story. They began to decide, well, there must be something wrong. There must be something wrong. We must have displeased the gods. Maybe Poseidon doesn't like us. Well, they would have probably known Poseidon at the time. It was a little early for Poseidon. The Poseidon worship came a little later with the Greeks and the Romans. But, you know, there was different gods in the ocean. And, okay, let's cast lots. Let's find out which God is angry with which guy. And a lot falls on Jonah. And they say, okay, which God is mad at you?

And verse 9, he says, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, okay, who do you worship? I worship the God who made everything, the Jewish God. I am a Hebrew and He made everything. Oh, he would have called him the Jewish God because he was from Israel. That's a Hebrew. Now, they'd all heard of the Hebrew God. You know, there were all kinds of rumors like, you know, centuries ago, He caused a flood on the earth. Centuries ago, He opened the Red Sea to get His people out. I mean, these things were known throughout the entire Middle East.

Flood stories are throughout the Middle Eastern cultures. The Babylonian one is really interesting.

And so, they heard of this and they're saying, this is really scary because this God can reach beyond Israel. See, most Gods couldn't. He can't. Why have you done this? For the men knew that He fled from the presence of the Lord because He had told them. So they asked Him, what do we have to do? And Jonah says, you're just going to have to throw me overboard. I can't run from God and we can't run from this storm. And wherever we go, something was dawning on Jonah.

He must have figured if he got to Spain, God would just go away. And something's really dawning on him and it is what David discovered when he said, I could go to the top of this mountain. I could go to the deepest ocean and you're there. He isn't just the God of Israel. He's the God of the world.

He created all things. He says, He created everything and I just figured out that means everything is His and I can't run fast enough. So you might as well just kill me now so the rest of you can live. And so we know what they did. Jonah the sleeper is an important lesson for us there. Are you running from God? Are you falling asleep? You know, in Pentecost they gave a sermon while he went through the parable of the ten virgins, Matthew 25. And remember, all ten of them go asleep.

A spiritual state of lethargy comes into the church and it's not just lethargy, it is a self-sufficiency. I'm okay. Jonah was asleep. He wasn't afraid because he felt okay. But he was running from God. Are you running from God? What areas of your life are you running from God? Is it in your conduct? Is it in your marriage? Is it in what you allow? Is it in how you spend your money?

Is it in how you compromise with honesty? Is it in where any area of your life? Where are you running from God? Because if you keep running, you will eventually go to sleep. It's what happens.

And then it won't be just Jonah the sleeper. It'll be, and you can put your name, the sleeper in there. Leave a marker here in Jonah. Let's go to Romans 13 because the Apostle Paul is dealing with the exact same problem in the early New Testament church. You think, whoa, they wouldn't have to deal with this. Well, that's the problem. When you start running from God, you get tired and you get spiritually exhausted. Last week I talked about running with the horses. Remember, I said you can't run with the horses unless you're getting your power from God. You can't run with the horses. This will get our power from God, and that's what God had told Jeremiah, and it's what he did with Elijah.

Well, this is sort of the same principle. If you try to run this race without God's help, you will become exhausted because you'll be running in the wrong direction.

Just like Jonah did. He ran in the wrong direction, and he got exhausted. He found out he couldn't outrun God. Early New Testament church, Paul's writing to the church at Rome. It's a pretty corrective letter that he writes to them. He writes to them in their first chapter about how they're becoming too much like the world. Hopefully, before the feast, remember I gave a sermon a while back about Babylon and what ancient Babylon was like and how there's parts of that society that are very similar to what's going to happen in our society, but also will happen in the future with Babylon the Great.

Well, we need to understand Rome, too, because what happened in Rome is happening in our society and will be the great beast power that rises up at the end will be a resurrection of the Roman Empire. So, I hope to be able to go through that and just explain more about that so we can see what's happening and we can see what's going to happen in the future. We're going to see where that beast power is going to come from. But here he is dealing with a church, early church, one that people knew the apostles. Man, what a vibrant church that must be, right? What a church with power.

Verse 11, and do this, he says, he says, I want you to take action knowing that the time and that now, I'm sorry, knowing the time that now is high time to awake out of sleep. He says, the church there in Rome, you people are going to sleep.

Even you're starting to run from God. You're starting to become too much like society. And the more you run from God and the more we become like society, the more spiritually exhausted we become. It's the exact opposite of what we think.

Some of the people told me this week, I feel like I'm running with the horses.

Well, if you're running with God, you're doing just fine.

Because that's where your strength is coming from. That's where your help is coming from. He says, to awake out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent. The day is in hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in reverie and drunkenness, or in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh to fulfill its lusts.

There's a sermon right there. That is a remarkable passage of Scripture. But He has to tell the church to wake up. So the message of Jonah the sleeper is a message for us today, too. Because we can be just like Jonah, so comfortable with ourselves that we're not fulfilling what God wants to do in our lives, what God wants to do in your life. That's a remarkable statement, isn't it? What are you running from? What am I running from sometimes? We're running from the Creator of the universe who wants to do something in your life.

The message of Jonah is very important. So we know what happened. Jonah was saved because God prepared a fish, and the fish swallowed him up, down, heads back the other way, heads east, and either on the shores or the northern shores of the Mediterranean or up into the Black Sea, one day it beaches itself up onto the shore and vomits out a man. He must have been a mess. He must have been a mess. What's interesting is, chapter 2 is Jonah's prayer of thanksgiving and deliverance. And you read through there, he says, I was covered with seaweeds.

He must have been conscious. I don't know what state that is in. Obviously, it says God prepared a fish. It had to be a really specially prepared fish, three days and three nights in any animal, and the gastric juices are going to eat you up. What I wondered is, what did it smell like in there? I doubt if this was like a real nice sweet. Like it swallowed him up, and you know, God says, ah, welcome. And there's the nice chairs and couches, little TV set, some wine. You know, I don't think this is what he was in here. God put him in a very horrible situation. By the way, that happens to us, too, when we run from God. Don't be surprised if you're running from God if one day you find yourself being thrown overboard, and you find yourself in the belly of a big fish, and you say, this stinks! And God says, yeah, I'm just taking you back where you needed to go. You know, you could have stayed in the ship. You could have gone a nice ship, nice luxury cruise, cruised up the Mediterranean, up into the Black Sea, got off at a port. You know, could have been real nice, but you didn't. So, I gotta take you in a stinky, smelly place. I don't know what he ate for three days and three nights. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. Right? You know, luxury cruise, belly of a whale.

He's learning a real important lesson here. You can't run from God, and if you try, you end up God taking you where he wants you to go, but it's a whole lot messier.

It's a whole lot messier. Jonah 2, verse 10. So, the Lord—I love the way this is written. We don't know who wrote Jonah, but it's a great story. The guy was a good writer. So, the Lord spoke to the fish and vomited Jonah on the dry land. He spoke to it. I don't know what he did. He maybe tickled him. Being vomited out can't be a real pleasant experience. Okay? And so, he finds himself covered with fish—whatever's in there—covered with fish stuff, covered with weeds, smelling real bad, emaciated, hungry, half blind. You know, he hasn't seen daylight for a long time—three days and three nights. And it's like, hooverly I'm back in Joppa. So, the first person that will get close enough to him to talk to him, where am I? You know, I don't imagine people want to be around him right away, the way he looked and the way he smelled. I've often wondered if there were people who saw this happen. Maybe that's why the Assyrians listened to him. You know, the guy gets vomited out of the fish and shows up and says, I've been sent by God. You'd say, you know, this may be true.

So, now Jonah says he figures something out. It's better to go to Assyria because this could get worse. Maybe I'll get dragged by camels or something. I mean, this could be worse than this fish, even. Because he's got to walk there. Now, he's not vomited into the Tigris or Euphrates. He's vomited somewhere on the shore of the Mediterranean or Black Sea. He's got to walk there. Probably gets cleaned up. He gets on the eat. He says, I better go. Maybe rent a camel or something. You know, get some kind of caravan. But he's not going to run away because what kind of animal is going to get me now? How's God going to get me there now? So, I better go. So, he goes. It's in verse 1 of chapter 3. Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, now, I find this amazing. You think God would say, Jonah, how stupid can you be?

Or he'd say, Jonah, how dare you rebel against me? He said, no, Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh.

Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you. It gives him the exact same message. Sometimes you will go to a trial that goes on and on and on, because you never listened to the first message. And you can say, God, what is it you're telling me to do? Go to Nineveh. So, you know, you're asleep in the ship. You fled from God. You're spiritually exhausted. You're asleep. You're in a storm. You're going to die. What did you want me to do? Go to Nineveh. They throw you overboard. You think you're going to drown, because it says in this chapter 2, he thought he was going to drown. And he said, God, what am I supposed to do? Go to Nineveh. He wake up in the belly of a fish. Because I don't know how long did it take him to figure that out, I wonder.

Did he think he was going to be there for eternity? You know, what happens? God, what am I supposed to do? Go to Nineveh. See, what it is, a lot of times we don't want the message from God, so we keep asking, thinking we're going to get another answer. If I ask God long enough, He'll give me the answer I want. I want to go to Spain. I really like Spanish music. They play guitars there like no other place in the world. I want to go to Spain. Guess how much you got in Nineveh. So God comes to him, and finally he gets to talk to God, and God says, okay, let's go to Nineveh. God's patience is amazing here, too.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh. He's like, okay, so he goes.

Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. There's a lot of debate over what that phrase means. It's an uncommon phrase in English. We do know from the excavations of Nineveh it didn't take three days to walk around it. Although there is something interesting, as they excavated Nineveh, they found out that there were suburbs, and the suburbs were just sprawling little towns that came out from Nineveh. The suburbs were about 60 miles around it, which is about a three-day walking journey. So it may have meant, you know, not just Nineveh the city, but all this huge suburban area. It may have been a colloquialism of the day, but whatever it was, the point was, this is a big city. Okay? This is a big city.

So we sit there. Or there's another explanation that possibly it meant to really cover all the major points would take three days because it was that big. But he goes, and Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk, and he cried out to them, yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Now, imagine walking in and what he's now facing. He's facing a very large city with tens of thousands of people that don't even speak his language. He's facing people who don't know who he is. He has no calling card, except maybe got vomited out of a fish. He shows up, and he's got to start yelling to people, the God that I'm here to represent is going to destroy your city in forty days, and I'm hoping he does. And of course, the Syrians were known for torturing people to death, so this can't be a Reno, but it's, you know, well, it's better than the belly of a whale, so there he is. And he says forty days. Now, forty days is very interesting in the Bible. It is the time of judgment. It is a time of preparation. It is a time of repentance. When you think about how all the places in the Bible where you see forty days, Jesus fasted, of course, for forty days. We know that it rained for forty days, but at the flood of Noah's time, Israel wandered for forty days. Moses was on Mount Sinai for forty days. The spies were sent into Canaan for forty days. Elijah was in flight at Mount Horem for forty days. Of course, he fasted forty days. So it's a time, though, as God says, this is the time you have, the time of judgment. If you haven't repented and turned in forty days, you're not going to. And so he does what he's supposed to do. And he begins to preach to the people. Verse 5, So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth, and the greatest to the least of them. This movement started among the people. People started to say, I know this man is right. Now, why they did, I don't know. It may be that they saw their society was deteriorating. Maybe it was just God was stirring them up. But whatever, for whatever reason, the people began to do that. From the greatest to the least. And they began to say, this man's God is going to destroy us. Maybe it's because they knew about the God of Israel. Once again, maybe because they knew this was the God of the flood. This was the God who opened the Red Sea. This was the God who took Israel through the wilderness. If their God has sent this man here, it's going to happen. Now, it doesn't say they gave up their gods. This is not a great spiritual repentance. This is a physical repentance that says, I acknowledge this God and the power of this God, and I, we will change what we're doing in order to adapt to this God. Verse 6, it says, The word came to the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king in his noble saying, that neither man nor beast, heard nor flock, taste anything. Do not let them eat nor drink water, but let every man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Now, notice the word God there is not capital L-O-R-D, it's not Yahweh. Yahweh was the covenant God that was the name that he gave himself to Israel. They weren't saying we're entering into a covenant with God. They're using the general word for the greatest God.

The greatest God sent somebody here, and none of our God can deal with the greatest God, so we must worship and submit to the greatest God. That's important to understand. God did not make a covenant with Assyria at this point. He didn't make a covenant with Assyria. He didn't even offer them salvation. What he offered them was, if you'll stop, if you'll take this evil and you'll just recognize me and you'll pull back from the evil that you do, then I won't destroy you. Later, as we go through these books, we'll get to Nahum because 150 years later, God sends another prophet to Assyria, and He says, I'm not giving you a chance this time.

Few people went back to evil again, and he destroyed Assyria. But it was interesting. He sent a prophet to them. He sent two prophets to Assyria, Jonah and Nahum. Verse 10 says, God saw their works that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. This is unique in all of biblical history. It's the only time an entire Gentile nation turned to God, acknowledged that He was the great God, and God relented from punishment. It's only time He relented from punishment. What a great example of God! What a great example. You think about Jonah at this point. Jonah is one of the great heroes of all time. Jonah is sent by God. Oh, he fights and he flees. He goes the other way. He tries to do something else, and Jonah is the only prophet in all of history that has an entire nation say, Yes, your God is the great God, and we're going to do what He says. Whatever He told them to do, they did. They humbled themselves and said, Yes, we agree. We understand you are the great God. Now, if the story ended there, we'd be saying, wow, Jonah is a real hero. But how did Jonah respond? Verse 1 of chapter 4. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. This is real important. He became angry. Because I want to talk in the few minutes we have left about his anger and why he had that anger, and why you and I have to be careful about that anger, having that same kind of anger from the same kind of motivations. And he prayed to the Lord and said, and this is where we read before, I tried to get to Tarshish. I tried to go away because I knew you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant and loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. I knew you would forgive these people if they're repented. I knew you would give them grace. I knew you would do that, and I can't stand it because they're my enemies. And because they're rotten people, God, these people worship idols. These people don't keep the Sabbath. These people are cruel. You can't forgive them. You can't forgive the Nazis. You can't forgive the Communists. Come on, you can't do this, God. It's just not fair to all of us who do worship you, who do the good things. Verse 3, Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Just kill me. He's so depressed, and of course, the depression can come from a lot of different sources, but one source of depression in life is anger. Unresolved anger sits there, and it just causes us to get to the point where we don't even want to live. You're just too mad to live, right? Too angry to live. How does he get to this state? How could this happen?

Let's look at Jonah's anger for a minute. Jonah's anger, there are going to be five reasons Jonah was angry. Jonah's anger was based on a belief that his relationship with God was so special that no one except his people had the right to have a relationship with God. Now, the truth is, his relationship with God was special. You know, before Jesus Christ came and started the church, he worked, what, primarily through the people of Israel. They were special. God was on a special work in them. But he considered that special privilege from God to be so personal that he actually got to the place where nobody else could have that. You can't give that to anybody else. He automatically assumed that his enemies were God's enemies. He actually believed his enemies are God's enemies. Do you better not mistreat me? Boy, will God get you.

You see, Jonah measured his spiritual specialness by measuring the people who were spiritually less than him. Sound familiar? Sound like the Pharisees? I measure who I am by how less you are. That's why the Apostle Paul says we measure ourselves by Jesus Christ. Because every time you measure yourself by Jesus Christ, you come up short. But that's not what we like to do. Because we have a relationship with God, we tend to measure ourselves by someone else's relationship with God. And you can always find somebody worse off than you, right? You bet I can, and that makes me better. Joseph's anger was based on his belief that his relationship with God was so special that nobody else had the right to have that. Only his rights.

It would be like us saying, you know what? This agnostic prayed to God in desperation and got an answer. That could have been from God. That had to be from Satan. Because God wouldn't answer someone that didn't have a relationship with him as special as mine.

Everything's that way?

Well, how are we measuring ourselves by other people? A second point. Jonah's anger was based on a misconception about the nature of God.

I think that actually he had a profound understanding about the nature of God. He knew that God was a God of judgment and justice. God believes in right and wrong. He enforces right and wrong. Even though we might get to choose right and wrong, if we choose wrong, we get punished. It's that simple. We choose it, we get punished. But he also is a God of grace and mercy and forgiveness. He had to learn that what Jonah resented was that God would give mercy to people that he thought shouldn't get mercy. He really resented the fact that God would give mercy to people that he thought shouldn't get mercy. Well, that person should never give mercy. Can you imagine being in the first century church and the Apostle Paul comes into the church? People were saying, that man shouldn't give mercy. He killed Christians. He put them in jail. What right does he have to mercy? The third point is Jonah's anger was based on a misconception about the covenant God made with Israel. Because God had made a covenant with Israel, he automatically thought everybody else didn't have the same value to God. That's not true. God made a special covenant with Israel? That's true. That didn't mean God did not love Assyrians. Just because Jonah didn't love Assyrians doesn't mean God didn't love Assyrians. And he didn't make a covenant with Assyrians. He didn't, but he gave them mercy. Fourth point, Jonah's anger is based on the lack of thanksgiving. There's a huge difference between Chapter 2 and Chapter 4. When you go home this afternoon, read Chapter 2 and then read Chapter 4, and it's like, wow! And one prayer, he's thankful because God helped him. I mean, if you were thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish and vomited out and was still alive, you'd be thankful too. Still didn't make him like Assyrians anymore. And the last point, Jonah's anger was based on a misconception about his commission. God had given him an enormous privilege. God said, Be my instrument to go to these people, and I will show mercy on whom I want to show mercy on, not who you want to show mercy on.

God will show mercy on whom He wills to show mercy on, not who we decide will get mercy or not get mercy. And so, he cannot stand it. So God says to him in verse 4, Then the Lord said, Is it right for you to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, 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 come of the city. He's still hoping God fries him. So he goes out to the city and sits there and says, Okay, God really, really won't insult me by not killing these people.

God really won't insult me by not killing these people. Instead of saying, That was amazing, tens of thousands of people sort of turning to God. Now, they didn't turn to God completely. But they did enough that God said, I won't destroy your city. He's still wanting it destroyed. So the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah that might be shaved for his head to deliver him from the misery. God's still loving Jonah. He's sitting out there in the sun, so God makes a miraculous plant to come up to give him shade. Now, you talk about Jonah's going to say where that plant come from. It wasn't there ten minutes ago. He knows God's doing this. Okay? He probably watched it come up out of the ground and shade him. And it's like, instead of thank you, God, it's like, Yeah, but what are you going to do to them?

But as morning's on, the next day God prepared a worm and it's so damaged the plant that it withered. Okay, you can have that kind of a bad attitude. I'll kill the plant. Come on, I'm giving you a plant. What more do you want? I want them fried. Okay, I'll kill the plant. So it is.

Verse 8 says, "...and it happened with the sun rose that God prepared a vehem in east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head, so that he grew faint. And he wished death for himself, and he said, It is better for me to die than to live. And then God said that, Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And he said, Is it right for you to be angry even to death? He says, You're going to kill yourself. You will, if not literally, he will destroy his health. His anger was so great. God, you can't let the Assyrians off. You have got to punish them. And God says, I'm just not destroying them. You're still my special people. You're still my servant. You're still the one I'm with. I still have a relationship with you. I don't have with any of the Assyrians. Is that not enough? That you even have to get mad so angry with this plant that I just, okay, I took it away. If you don't want it, you don't have to have it. How many blessings has God given us that we've taken away because we're too angry? Think about that. How many times has God given us a blessing and we aren't thankful? So he takes it away. He takes it away. And there were even more angry. Why are you doing this to me? I gave you a plant. It was hot. What do you want, Jonah? Verse 9, 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. Now should I not pity Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who can have discerned between their right hand and their left and much livestock? And it ends there. We don't know whether Jonah repented or not. And that's the great interesting story here, because if Jonah did not repent, he's worse off than the people of Nineveh. Jesus said in Matthew that the people of Nineveh will come up at the great judgment and it will be easier for them than the Pharisees.

Because they will say, You're the God who sent Jonah, right? You're the God who sent Jonah, and You're the God who sent Nahum, and You're the God who destroyed our civilization. What must we do to worship You? The Pharisees will say, No, no, no, this is the way this must work out. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm coming up alongside an Assyrian? No, no, no, I'm better than that. No, no, no, God, You can't think You bring us up in the same resurrection. I'm better than this one. God, You know I'm better than this one.

We don't know what happens to Jonah. We know the people of Nineveh come up in that great white throne judgment. Quickly then, the lessons. We have a slide I'm going to show you here. Important lessons from the life of Jonah.

One, God extends His grace to whomever He wants to extend His grace. God does. You and I don't determine that. Although we should be asking for God to extend His grace to people, we should be asking God to extend His mercy to people.

Two, even though Israel was chosen by God for a special purpose, He was still involved in the affairs of others. Egypt, Edom. It's amazing how many peoples throughout especially the Old Testament. Of course, the New Testament, God's involved in calling people to the church from every kind of nationality and background and race coming into the church.

Three, those called by God must have a higher patriotism. The kingdom of God must take precedent over our personal allegiance to our native land. Now, you think about it. That's a problem that Jonah had. His allegiance to Israel was greater than His allegiance to the kingdom of God. His allegiance to Israel was greater than His allegiance to the kingdom of God. Number four, some prophecy is conditional. God's actions are based sometimes on human responses. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are. Number five, when God calls someone to His service, that person gives up his or her rights to self-determination. The duty to do the will of God is absolute. And that took Jonah a while to figure that out.

Look at what he had to get to, to realize he really means God and Inaba. There's a terrible price to pay. And number six, God can use the most unlikely messengers to bring about His plan. We looked at Hosea, we looked at Amos, we've now looked at Jonah. The most unlikely people. Many times the story of Jonah is looked on as a myth, Jonah's bedtime story, as an important historical narrative of how God used one man to change a city. And it is a very relevant book, because it contains all these important lessons that are just as important to you and me today.