I. Introduction
A. We have come to our last sermon on Jonah.
1. In the first sermon, we learned about Jonah’s audacious God as we considered God’s call to Jonah to go proclaim His message in Nineveh.
2. Then we learned about Jonah’s gracious God when we saw how God relented on His threat to destroy Nineveh when they repented.
3. We learned about Jonah’s missionary God when we focused on God sending Jonah to a foreign land to proclaim His message, leading to repentance and forgiveness.
4. And we learned about Jonah’s impartial God when we took note of how He sent the prophet to a Gentile city and forgave them when they repented.
5. We learned about Jonah’s God of revival when we talked about God granting repentance to the people of Nineveh.
6. On Easter we learned about how the story of Jonah is a prophecy of the coming when we saw how Jonah foreshadows Jesus in many ways, and in particular in His substitutionary death and resurrection, and how Jesus Himself refers to Jonah’s story as a sign of His coming resurrection,.
7. And, last week, in observing God’s use of the storm and later the worm to invade Jonah’s comfort, we talked about how the Lord sometimes uses destructive tools to disturb our comfort, in order to accomplish His good purposes in our lives.
B. Today, we are going to look at and think about the strange ending to the book of Jonah, and the final and primary message of the book.
1. It sort of seems like the story should have ended after the third chapter. “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.” (3:10)
2. That would give us a “They lived happily ever after” kind of ending. Jonah disobeys, God disciplines, Jonah obeys, Nineveh repents, God relents — the whole thing is beautiful.
3. But then there’s that big “But” in chapter 4...
C. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?” 5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:1–4:11)
D. But not only does the story take this strange twist in chapter 4, but it then ends abruptly, leaving us hanging, so to speak. It never tells us if Jonah finally got the point.
E. But the fact is that where the Bible seems most strange and confusing, that is often the spot where you can find buried treasure. And so it is, I believe, with Jonah.
II. The first lesson we learn from chapter 4 is about the return of the flesh.
A. The Bible is brutally honest about sin. It doesn’t hide the warts of God’s people.
B. We thought Jonah had learned his lesson, but then in chapter 4 Jonah’s bad attitude comes storming back in all its ugliness.
C. In one sense it was much easier to convert an entire pagan city than it was to sanctify one grumpy prophet. You can see that in this story. The Lord seems to bring the entire city to repentance with a snap of His fingers. But getting the prophet Jonah to think and feel the way he should think and feel was a much more difficult matter.
1. It took storms and great fish and vines and worms and sunlight and wind and repeated assignments and questions like, “Do you do well to be angry that I relented of my judgment of Nineveh?” and “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?”
2. And by the end of the book, the process isn’t yet over. God’s still working with him.
D. And that’s the way it is for us, too. We’re still in process.
1. Sanctification isn’t a one-step process. Repentance and faith are not one-and-done.
2. Our hearts are going to rebel. Our hearts are going to need realignment.
3. We are going to need the Lord’s correction.
4. Even after repenting, we’re going to fail again and again. We’re going to have to keep listening to God’s rebukes. We’re going to have to keep rerepenting.
5. The human heart is stubborn. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of God’s child, and repeated use of His loving rod of discipline is needed to drive it away. (Prov.22:15)
6. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Gal.5:17)
7. Over the last few weeks my son Jacob and I have worked hard on our island to get rid of prickers, vines and saplings which have grown up since last year. Now it is pretty much done and I think it looks really beautiful.
a. However, anyone who thinks that the job is actually done is not in touch with reality.
b. Even with all of our effort, embedded in that ground are the roots of hundreds of future problems.
c. It’s the same with our hearts. This is an ongoing process. And that’s the way each one of us is too.
d. Sin is much more deeply ingrained in us that we think. And it requires power tools to address it.
e. The question is, are we working with God or against Him in fighting against the undesirable things which want to grow up and take over?
8. Think of Peter. He came to faith and followed Jesus.
a. But then he rebuked Jesus about going to Jerusalem to die on the cross.
b. Then after Jesus was arrested, he denied he knew Him three times.
c. And after he had his “Do you love me?” talk with Jesus, he still stumbled again, this time as an apostle and having been filled with the Spirit at Pentecost.
(1) In Antioch he sat with the Jews who refused to sit with the Gentile believers there, and Paul had to rebuke him in front of everyone (Gal.2:11-14).
9. We learn lessons, and then we forget them and have to learn them again.
10. I’m not saying we don’t make progress, I’m just saying that our progress includes setbacks and failures as well as hardships and frustrations.
E. Pain is hard. And we don’t always come through our encounters with God completely intact.
1. Jacob had a limp for the rest of his life (Gen.32:22-32).
2. But that’s good. It’s what we need. We need our pride to be wounded. We need to be disenchanted with this world. We need our trust in our own abilities to be damaged. We need for our sleepiness to be shattered. Our dreams and ambitions need to be tempered by learned humility and sanctified priorities.
3. Through it all, by God’s grace, we get humbled and tenderized and more compassionate and learn to trust in the Lord more. And we get wiser. By the skillful and persistent touch of the Master’s hand, we are being fashioned into the image of Christ.
F. It’s not that our dreamy expectations of life are too great for God to fulfill. The problem is, they aren’t great enough!
1. We dream of lives of success and security and popularity and lots of fun.
2. But in the book of Jonah we see that God has a different goal. We see in it that God wants to work in us a love which is much bigger, much stronger, much wider than we ever thought.
3. And God wants us to see how patient and persistent and loving He is in training us to love.
4. We lust for lots of love FROM others. God desires to give us lots of love FOR others.
G. The Bible doesn’t paint a rosy picture of what it’s like to be a Christian.
1. It portrays it as a life with many challenges, many disappointments, many trials, many heartbreaks.
2. But it is also a life full of meaning and hope and acceptance and joy and usefulness and destiny, a life full of Christ. These things are far more valuable than ease and popularity and success.
H. God cares about the smallest details of our lives, such that not a hair on our heads can fall apart from His will.
1. But that doesn’t mean having a head full of hair (or things like that) are His ultimate purpose in our lives. He wants us to have a heart full of Christ, and He uses everything else toward that end.
I. And He is so patient with us, even when we are bitter and angry toward Him.
1. Look how patient God was with Jonah when he was bitter and angry with Him.
2. Look how patient God was with Job when he was bitter & angry with Him. Firm yes, but patient.
3. Dufflepuds & Coriakin the magician in Dawn Treader: they were so rebellious, he was so kind.
J. It’s always been really easy for me to be hard on Jonah. But then I realized, how can I be harder on Jonah than God was?
1. And another thing I realized. Who am I to think I’m better than Jonah?
2. The purpose of the book is for me to see that I am like Jonah, and that God wants to change me.
3. The Jonah I should be hard on is the Jonah in my own heart.
K. And not only is our Lord patient with us even when we are bitter and angry with Him, but He knows that we are weak and He is very careful not to give us more than we can handle.
1. “Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)
2. Listen to Matt.24:22: “If those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.”
3. I don’t mean that He never gives us more than we THINK we can handle. But He knows what we can handle far better than we know what we can handle.
III. Now we come to the final point of the book, and therefore the main point of the book.
A. So, the book ends in a strange place. After Jonah’s return of the flesh and God’s final confrontation of Jonah, the story just ends with God challenging Jonah, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, with its 120,000 people?” (Jonah 4:10-11)
1. We’re left dangling. We’re never told whether Jonah accepted God’s correction or not. We’re not told anything about his response.
B. So what if this is not literary clumsiness but literary genius?
1. What if it ends with God’s challenge to Jonah because that is exactly where God wants it to end?
2. What if God doesn’t want us focusing on the resolution of the story? What if He wants us focusing on His final question, His final challenge?
3. What if the whole book is God’s challenge to US to have compassion on this sinful world?
C. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And when we are filled with God, we are filled with His love for the world.
1. It is hard to love the people near us and like us.
2. It is even harder to love the people far away and very different.
3. But God wants to help us become people whose love stretches as far as His (Romans 13:8).
4. He is remaking us into the image of Christ.
5. Each of us is in a program of love training. And the programs are individualized for each person.
D. Think about the disciples. They walked with Jesus, they made many mistakes, they got taught and corrected by Jesus, and eventually they became very useful tools in the work of Christ’s kingdom.
1. And Jesus is discipling us as well, training us to live in His grace, by His grace, and for His grace.
2. That means breaking down our pride, our self-sufficiency, our prejudice, our disdain for others.
3. And that means making a lot of mistakes, saying things we shouldn’t say, doing things we shouldn’t do, failing to say things we should say, failing to do things we should do.
E. And it means suffering afflictions, because afflictions are what help us become compassionate.
1. Who are the people who start campaigns to address problems in society? Those who went through it themselves (e.g. those shot in school, kids who have a certain illness, families of 1st responders).
2. Isn’t suffering what changed Ebenezer Scrooge into a generous and compassionate person?
3. 2Corinthians 1:3-4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
F. But guess what? A person doesn’t learn anything if he thinks he already knows it all.
1. You see, we have a listening problem.
a. Psalm 81:8 Hear, O my people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
b. What’s it like to be God? We get a glimpse of one aspect of it in Romans 10:21, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
c. That’s not the kind of people we want to be. But that’s the kind of people we are naturally.
2. The people who don’t grow, the people who don’t change, are the people who either don’t think they need to change, or they don’t think they ever could change (in other words — though they would never say this — they think their inability to change is stronger than God’s ability to change them).
G. So, do I think Jonah finally got the point? Of course he did! How do I know?
1. Jonah’s the one who wrote the book. He left off the story of his response not because he was unresponsive but out of humility he did it for literary effect.
2. And even if we’re not positive that Jonah himself wrote the book, the only way we could know what happened at the end of the story is if Jonah divulged it.
3. It’s really easy to end the book of Jonah and not like him very much — until you realize that the information about what happened must have come from Jonah.
4. He’s writing about his own sin, his own struggle, his own foolishness — to craft a powerful message for us as God’s people.
5. This isn’t just a surprise ending, it’s a surprisingly humble ending.
6. (One of the evidences that the Scriptures are not of mere human origin is that the authors often don’t portray themselves in a favorable light, not like you would expect. They divulge their own failings and weaknesses.)
H. There are many parallels between Jonah and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).
1. Both are stories of sin and rebellion, repentance and the amazing forgiveness of God.
2. But then they both have a strange turn later in the story. The stories both go on too long.
3. They both seem like they should end earlier: Jonah after Nineveh’s repentance and the prodigal son after the younger son’s repentance, both of which would have made for nice, happy endings.
4. But they both add on another somewhat disturbing section about the human refusal to enjoy the happiness of repentance and forgiveness.
5. This refusal is followed in both cases by the Father pleading with his son to open his heart to the repentant sinners.
6. And both stories end without resolution, God pleading with the one who won’t forgive, without any indication of the response of the hearer.
a. Both stories end with God’s plea ringing in our ears. Why? Because God’s plea is not just for Jonah and the older brother. It’s for us.
b. We are the ones who have to end the story, because we are Jonah and we are the older brother.
c. We are the ones who write the ending by how we respond to the Father’s plea.
d. So, the endings beg the question: Will we join the party? Will we listen to God’s plea and repent of our lack of forgiveness?
e. Neither of these stories are designed for our entertainment. Ultimately they are pleas from God aimed at us, calling us to forgive and accept messed up people, just like He does.
I. So, are we going to have compassion on sinners?
1. Jesus said that there is rejoicing among the angels of heaven when one sinner repents (Luke 15:10). Are we ready to join in the celebration?
2. Are we ready to welcome the sinful friends of Christ, those who have been lost, and have been strangers to the kingdom of Christ, even if they smell like pigs, even if they speak foreign languages like the Ninevites did?
3. You know, we don’t get to pick which sinners Jesus befriends. He fills His church with all kinds of people, not always the kind of folks we want to hang around, not always the people we feel like being close to.
4. Just like our family, the church is a group we get assigned to. We don’t get to pick the members.
5. But when we get rid of our Jonah eyes and God gives us the eyes of Christ, we see that what may look like a band of misfits and weirdos, is actually “the joy of the whole earth” (Ps.48:2) and the beloved bridegroom of Christ.
6. And the question isn’t whether we can put up with them. The question is, Do we love them as Christ loves us? Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)