Jonah's anger at God's mercy toward Nineveh reveals a common human tendency to be sympathetic to God's ways but not His will. Despite knowing God as gracious and merciful, Jonah was displeased when his prophecy of doom did not come to pass, highlighting a disconnect between intellectual understanding and emotional submission. The sermon illustrates this through examples like reluctance to teach Sunday school or increase missionary giving, emphasizing that true spiritual vitality comes from obedience coupled with submission to God's actions. The narrative concludes with God's questions to Jonah about the gourd and the city, prompting reflection on whether our own anger stems from a self-centered perspective rather than God's perfect will, leaving the ultimate outcome of Jonah's heart unresolved.
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Well, already the man said that we'll have to get there, I guess, for this time. And I almost took exception to the words that said we've been looking forward to this final meeting. But I won't pick a brother up, and I, he doesn't feel well, and you don't like to be teased, and you don't feel well. But it reminded me of the fact that when I came to the both places by airplanes, I have a number of people that call up the house and say, do you have a way to get to the airport? And very, very few have ever called up and said, do you have a way to get from the airport home? Everybody's anxious to see that I leave, but apparently very few, you know.
Well, anyway, you and I have literally spent a week together. We have eaten together and we worship together around the Word and we prayed together and we talked together about spiritual needs and spiritual problems and we can't get away from the fact that you and I have invested this week together. This week is now going to slip into history past and we can't change it and this is the way my wife and I always feel whenever we are with God's people for the time that we are with them we feel that we are a part of them. An itinerant ministry doesn't mean that you simply go from one place to the next without really seeing people and without really feeling their needs and so forth.
But our life seems to be made up of a series of related incidences, spending a little bit of your life here and a little bit of your life somewhere else and a little bit of your life with other folks. So one of these days the Lord will come and then we should spend all of eternity together forevermore. So we look forward to that time. We appreciate the great hospitality not only on the hillside here, but also in your homes and apartments and all the wonderful foodies that you have given to us to eat. And whenever we come to Park and the Pounds, we always see much improvement. We see money that has been sent to improve the grounds, and we see facilities that are more and more adequate.
We thank the Lord for the fine leadership that you have here, and apparently a real sense of dedication to the things of the Lord in trying to improve things of the Lord. One thing especially, we always appreciate the food and dining room here, as well as the lunches you folks give us, somewhere around the midnight hour each night. But usually at a Bible conference, I lose weight. The rigors of preaching and so on and so forth, I lose gravity of my appetite. But when I come to Parkinson's, I gain weight. And I always go back home, a bigger man in the ministry than I was when I came. But, you know, I found a comforting word today.
I was reading in the book of Leviticus in chapter number three, and it says, the fat is the lowest. Isn't that a comforting thing to know? So now, when I put on weight, I will conclude that the heavier I get, the more spiritual I become. That's a good thing to literally fall back on. Well, we've come now to this. Closing lesson now in the book of Jonah. By now you're able to find the book of Jonah without any problems at all. You don't have to look in the index anymore. And here it is in the Old Testament. And by now your Bible ought to just fall right open. Either that or the Psalm of Solomon. One of the two. Here we conclude tonight this very, very short last chapter of only eleven verses.
Now before we do, let's ask the Lord once again what God is thinking as he sees this. Our Father, we commend ourselves now and believe for the help of the Holy Spirit. We thank you, Father, for these times of fellowship that we have had together around the word. Father, now taught us in the Word of God we should redeem the times because the days are evil. Father, we know that many of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world tonight are denied the opportunities and the privileges that we have to carry our Bible openly and publicly. And we gather together in such meetings as this, a study that which thou hast told us. So, Father, may we appreciate the privileges which thou hast given.
May we hide thy word in our heart that we might not sin against thee. So, Father, we ask thee now to take charge of this meeting, and all of the arrangements which will be mentioned and discussed in it. And every thought, word, and motive be under the divine control of the Holy Spirit himself. So, Father, we commend now each one of us to thee that thou might do with us without us eat this. We're afraid all in Christ Jesus Lord be saved. Amen. Here we are in chapter number four. And we read it pleased Jonah exceedingly. That is the spiritual awakening that the Ninevites experienced. And Jonah was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I praise you, O Lord.
Was not this my day when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Carthage. for I knew that thou art a gracious thought and merciful, flowed of anger and of great kindness, and repentancy of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Then, says the Lord, do us thou well to be angry. So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, so he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief.
So Jonah was exceeding glad for the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and a smote the gourd that it withered. He came to pass when the sunset arrived, that God prepared a pheom beneath wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted, and wished in himself to die. said, It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the Lord. And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on this Lord. For the which thou hast not labored, neither made it did grow, which came up in the night and perished in the night.
Should not I spare Nineveh that great city? We're in our more than six score thousand persons that cannot be served between the right hand and their left hand and all so much cattle. We mentioned that night the fact that in these short eleven verses which comprise this concluding chapter of this book of Jonah, we noted that there is mentioned one prophet or one evangelist, if you would rather. There are given two reasons, there are given three miracles or three wonders. There are four questions asked, and there are five descriptions given. It breaks the story of Jonah in his first initial act of disobedience and how the Lord worked a miracle to bring him back again to the point where Jonah would be willing to pray that prayer, which came forth out of the summit of that great fish.
And as someone as well said, I was so interested in noting what was going on inside the great fish that I forgot to notice what was going on inside Jonah. Don't forget that. While Jonah was inside the fish, the Lord was working inside Jonah. So finally, Jonah prayed the prayer that we had recorded for. The Lord spoke to the fish in the town of the south Jonah upon the dry land. Then he was recommissioned and finally he went to Nineveh. He preached a message which contains only five words, apparently, in the original Hebrew language, and the folks believed the word of God. And from that point on, Jonah had nothing more to do than Nineveh. God takes over it. And the folks deal directly between their own hearts and God themselves.
And so God has to go back now and continue to deal with the heart of Ezra Luton's evangelist. So this is the point at which we pick up again the story of Jonah tonight. First of all, let's mention this one evangelist. Now, he points out here, or it is pointed out here, the principle of scripture that I think we ought to always keep in mind. And that is, one can be sympathetic to the way of God, but not sympathetic to the will of God. One can be sympathetic to the way of God, but not sympathetic to the will of God. Now, this is a condition of Jonah, as we find in here, as this last chapter opens.
He says unto God, I knew this would happen. Didn't I tell you this? Now, we had no record that he did tell God that. but apparently it wasn't alive. Jonah said, wasn't this my thinking when I was back yonder before you ever gave me the first submission? I knew this would happen. I'd come and I'd preach the word, the people believed the word, and then that makes me look as if I'm a prophet of doom, because that which I had prophesied didn't come to fail. Now, he knew that this is the way God works, that God is a gracious God, God is a merciful God, God is slow to anger. He knows the will of God is to forgive those who come unto God and ask for repentance and for forgiveness. And he knows the way of God.
He knows how God operates. He knows the way God acts. And yet Jonah is not sympathetic to the will of God. He has discussed that things have turned out the way they did turn out. Now, this is possible for you and for me today. For instance, we know that it is the way of God. that Sunday school classes have to be taught. We're perfectly sympathetic towards this idea. But sometimes we come into conflict with the will of God when the Holy Spirit taps up on the shoulder and says, I want you to teach one of those Sunday school classes. We are sympathetic to the way of God when we know that the missionary enterprise and program must be carried on.
But sometimes we become unsympathetic to the will of God when God says, I want you to increase your missionary giving. I want you to go as a missionary. I want you to send your children as a missionary. Sometimes there's a vast difference between what we know about the ways of God and what we know about the will of God. Very often we are more sympathetic to the way of God when it affects somebody else. So many times folks say, you know what we need in our chapel? We need us and so on. Sometimes you say, good idea. Why don't you head up the committee? Well, who does not know me? Not me. You know, it's a good way to tell a lot of mumbling and grumbling and groaning and complaining and dissatisfaction so forth.
Well, you've got the exercise of art. You carry on the project. Well, no, not me, but I thought it'd be nice if somebody else did it. Let George do it. After a while, you run out of George's, you know. There's not that many in any given local assembly. So Jonah knows the way God operates, but he's not sympathetic to it. Sometimes we think, trust is obeyed. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. But that ain't necessarily so. For some person can be obedient to the way of the Lord and not be happy. This is the case of Jonah. He was obedient. He did go to Nineveh. He did preach the preaching that the Lord gave him to preach.
Jonah's not happy about it. He was obedient. He did obey the Lord, but he's not happy. He doesn't have the peace of the Lord. And nothing will rob us more quickly of our spiritual vitality and strength than to be dissatisfied with the way the Lord is running. It will rob you of your peace and your happiness every time. Now, what is it then? It's a matter of not only being obedient to what God would have us to do, but also being submissive to that which God is doing. Otherwise, God gets a rather grumbling obedience. Well, I'll do it. I don't know what else is going to do it. Somebody has to do it and fall back on good old pictures.
I guess I better go ahead and do the thing again. I won't get any peace out of that sort of a situation. I won't have any happiness and joy with that sort of an attitude. So, brethren, obey the Lord is not enough. One must also be submissive to that which is being done in order for the peace and for the joy to come flowing into the heart. This is a very same thing Peter's doing. having done what God asked him to do, and yet he's not that good. He's disappointed, he's disgusted, the thing didn't turn out the way he wanted to, etc., etc. Sometimes we find also in the Bible that cases of depression, such as Jonah is feeling here, very often follow signs of spiritual victory.
For instance, this great spiritual awakening that's just taken place in the city of Nineveh, and after a hundred and twenty thousand young folk who seems to turn the right hand from the left. There must be several hundreds of thousands of adults. It's a tremendous metropolis, a very ancient city. And he would have thought that any sermon of the Lord that was anywhere nearby or had anything to do with it at all would be most happy. But Jonah is not. He is not. After this great spiritual victory, when the folks have come to know the Lord and God has averted the impending judgment and doom upon them, Jonah, the servant, the one who is responsible for bringing the message, goes into this slough depression, and down he goes.
And Jonah is not the only one in the word of God who suffered this sort of a thing. For instance, we have in the case of Abraham, after the heath and kings had come to Sodom and Gomorrah and taken away Lot and a number of other folks, you recall how Abraham gathered up his shepherd boys and sent off, and God gave them the victory as he said, Didion, and they brought Lot back and much of the spoil and so forth. And when Abraham was on his way back, and when the king of Sodom was going up to intercept the path of Abraham, that's when Melchizedek appeared to Abraham to strengthen him. And when the king of Sodom said, well, here now, give me the souls of the people, and you can take all of the materialistic stuff, Abraham said no, and quoted the word that he had just heard Melchizedek say.
Abraham was strengthened. at that point. Now, we would have thought, Timothy speaking, Melchizedek should have appeared when Abraham was going up to fight these heathen kings. That's when he needed the strength. That's when he needed the encouragement. But Melchizedek knew that Abraham would be more susceptible to defeat when he came back from the victory. And that's the psychological time at which Melchizedek met Abraham. On the back of a tremendous victory, a person is always the weakest. Happened in the case of Abraham. Happened also in the case of the New Testament of Peter. Who do you say that I am? Thou art Christ the son of the living God.
Blessed art thou Simon of Arjuna, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee. But my father who is in heaven. And I'm right on the back of that. The Lord Jesus Christ told how he would have to go to Jerusalem and be slain of his enemies and so forth. And Peter took hold of the Lord. And the word of God says, Shook him. For so the word said in Christ. Shift the Lord Jesus Christ and says, Be it far from thee, or, Lord, don't think about those things. And the Lord has to say to you, I am saved. For thou saith not the things that you are God, but the things that you have been. And he had just said, Blessed be thou Simon of Arjuna. And now, get to him and say, Great spiritual victory, and boom, down the mountain.
And that's what we need to be applied, though, President, that when we have a spiritual victory, Let's back it up. Let's blanket it with prayer. Now, Lord, keep us safe. Now, keep us safe. Let us not glory in our flesh. And let us not hold so long now in this period. Because at the teaching of Scripture, very often on the backside of this great spiritual victory, there comes that depression. The same thing is true also. And I think you're thinking now of Elijah. After the great miracle on Mount Carmel, and again, a great revival broke out. Elijah, if he took himself... A hundred and twenty miles away and sat under the tree of her tree and said the same word she told her, said, Lord, I want to die.
I want to die. Such a great spiritual victory. And then depression followed it up. Why did he want to die? Because the woman was chasing him. Jezebel, if you will. Now this woman was chasing him. Good thing our prayers aren't answered. If Elijah had really wanted to die, he didn't have to run a hundred and twenty miles to do it. He could have presented himself before Jezebel and said Jezebel and I want to die. And Jezebel would have said, be my guest, or some such translation. And the problem would have been taken care of. But after Elijah had run so far that he was sitting, then he said, I think he felt sitting, now Lord, on one side. And there's a strange setup, apparently, about our human nature, that very often after we actually have experienced some wonderful things with the Lord.
Down to go, you know, the power of the Lord. So there were all the teams to work out. Well, that's not one of any of those. Look at the two reasons. They're mentioned in verse number seven, at the very last verse of the book. God gives these two reasons as to why he should spare none of us. He says, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between the right hand and the left hand, and also much cattle. Remember the cattle were included in the repentance, weren't they? The king's decree demands that even the cattle be clothed with sackcloth and be given neither nothing to eat nor drink, that the lowing of their voices might add also to the cries of the people for forgiveness from the means of glory.
And so God recognizes this. And he says, I have had mercy not only upon the people, but also upon the cattle. It's an amazing thing that such a God as we serve, the God of heaven, Should also notice the little children. Should I destroy also these little pots? Should I destroy also these little innocent ones? Do you think that you're in the right hand from the left and also much cattle? The Lord is saying, lost people and lost creation. And it reminds us of something that we have in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. Eighth chapter of Romans, verse number eighteen. I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
for the earnest expectation of the creature, made it for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and prevaileth in pain together until now. The Romans tells us that all of creation shall be included in the new redemption. God includes the same thought, the conversation that he has with Jonah. Shall I not also have mercy, even upon the cattle of the fields?
That takes a time down at High Elias. I heard Ernie Tatham speaking about the time when he was speaking at a conference in Yellowstone, Expo Park, and Lord's Day morning, they remembered the Lord in a great open amphitheater out there. And he said, after the bread had been broken, the brother who had broken the loaf forgot to put the napkin back over it again. And Mr. Chapin says, it wasn't very long before the rather tame bird began to compound out of the trees and lighted there on the table, the great stone table, and began to pick up the crumbs that were broken or were shed there when the bread had been broken. And he said, for at first I was horrified. I thought, my, what's left for me? And he says, and then I remembered the verses from the eighth chapter of Romans.
that even the creatures of God are looking forward to that day for final and complete redemption. In that moment on my heart was addressed in the peace and certainly that which creation was doing at that time. Well, God gives two reasons as to why he should spare Nindler. Now we move on to three miracles which happen. And you'll recall from this short little chapter we find in verse number six that the Lord God prepared a Lord that made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head and go on and so forth. Now, the Lord's having the same trouble as Jonah that it very often has with us.
First of all, he can't get us going, and then secondly, he can't get us stopped. And most of the time, it seems as if in the normal, average Christian experience, we're either dragging back or running ahead of the Lord. This is the case here in Jonah's experience. First of all, the Lord can't get him to go. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and speak the speaking that I shall bid unto thee. The Jonah didn't go. He wanted to go in the opposite direction in his head. Now, once God gets him going, he's going to go too far. He finds that he went one day's journey into the city. preached his message apparently the people repented and apparently that's the only time he had to preach it he finishes out his other two days journey through the city so that by the time we get here to verse number five Jonah's gone clear through the city and has come out on the east side of it which is the opposite side from top of the port and there he goes up probably on some sort of little hill or bluff and makes himself a poof or a lean dude and then he sits down to see what's going to happen first of all God can't get involved Now God came here and stopped.
Now he goes too far. Clear through the city. Out onto the east side. And now it's down. So wonder what's going on. So God prepared a good word. Now this word prepared is exactly the same word as you have when God is speaking about the great fish. In verse number seventeen chapter number one. The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up notice. That word prepared there in the Chapter one, verse seventeen, is exactly the same word that appears here about the Lord. In other words, the word as we have translated it means to appoint or to assign. As God had appointed or assigned that great fish to be at that particular longitude and latitude because there was a passenger soon to be deposited there which needed to be picked up.
As God appointed that great beast to be at that particular time at that time, this is the same thing that God does with this Gord. He appoints that Gord to grow up out of the ground at that point in order to be at that specific location of shade unto Jonah. Now the Gord is as much a miracle in the Word of God as the appointment of the great pig. The same thing is true also when God, in verse number seven, prepares a worm to eat the gourd, so that it is. The same word. Now God appoints a worm. He assigns a worm to come from fifteen feet over this way to eat this gourd.
Now maybe it's just a worm three weeks to walk that far, but God says to the worm through nature, I suppose. Now I want you here in this particular time, and when you get here, I want you to start chewing on this thing. Now, God does the same thing again in verse number eight. God prepared a seaman each wind. Same word. He appointed it. He assigned it. So if you link all the preparations or appointments together, you end up with four in the book of Jonah. God prepared a fish. God prepared a sword. God prepared a worm. God prepared a wind. But do you notice that every time God appoints something, it's a little bit smaller.
from the thing that's gone ahead of it. See how the thing decreases as we go along. For instance, we go from the great fish, which is a tremendous thing, that a man could live inside. Now God goes from that huge, tremendously large fish to go from that to a plant, to a gourd. And then God goes from the plant, the gourd, down to that little worm that crawls along the ground. And from the worm, he goes to the wind that you can't even see anyway. The Lord Jesus Christ told Nicodemus, you don't know where it comes from, and you don't know where it's going after it leaves you. And every time God uses something else out of nature, it's smaller than the thing before it, but it's still a miracle. In other words, the quality of God's work remains on an even plane.
It remains the same, but the tools which he uses decrease every time a new incident comes along. In other words, God doesn't need big things or big tools to do big things. Now, we know this in our heart of hearts, but sometimes we don't live it if we really believe it. And we think that God needs a big tool to do a big miracle. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Not by might or by power, but by my spirit. Say it for the Lord of hosts. This is the word of God. So every time God appoints something, it's smaller than the thing before it. Now, if we could somehow think that perhaps the great fish is a member of the Hoyos species, this would make it a warm-blooded, air-breathing mammal.
And this being so, if God used this particular type, and of course we can't prove it from Scripture, but if it is not the Hoyos family, we find that God is working in the realm of zoology. Now God sets the fish aside. He's done this perfect work to transport Jonah to the point at which he is supposed to get off. And now God picks up the story of the gorge. That's the second appointment. So God goes from the realm of zoology into the realm of botany. And then when he goes from the gorge to the worm, God goes out of the classification of being a botanist down to an entomologist. And at last, when he goes from the worm to the wind, he gets into the realm of natural science.
He goes into everything he wants to. And he usually works through nature. This is what Christ did when he was upon earth, taking up the clay in the spindle and putting it upon the man's eyes, and so on and so forth. This is usually the same thing that the Lord did. Now, even though this plant, this gourd, grows rapidly, it may very well be the castor oil plant. maybe going to have done a little better off, he might have had a little bit inside. This might have taken the meanness out of them a little bit because this is what my mother used to use on us. That spring tonic, you know, or did you get sulfur and molasses? We got castor oil. If we were too sick to go to Sunday school and church, we were sick enough to have castor oil.
And it wasn't one or two or three times of what we thought we'd go off to Sunday school and church, no matter what kind of disease we had to take with us when we went. But at any rate, This being so, this plant grows rapidly anyway. The Lord simply accelerates its growth. It's up in the day. And it perishes overnight. This is the same thing that the Lord Jesus Christ did when he turned the water into wine. That first public miracle of the Lord. Now we know that this is what the vine does. We know that the plants can't eat food. They have to drink food. They have to have water in their root system to dissolve the plant food, and literally a plant doesn't eat, a plant drinks. They have to have that soup in order to get the nutrients up into its root system.
And so the vine that the Lord is reminding us of takes the water up out of the ground, and it causes the grapes to come forth. Man takes the grapes, crushes them, and the wine is the result. What the Lord was doing was simply speeding up the whole process. taking the water that the plant starts with and ending up with wine that the project finishes with. And the Lord had a perfect right to do this because he is divine. He's simply feeding us across the seas of nature, and this is what the Lord does here. Now, the smaller the tool, the greater, the smaller. This is what we have, and we won't take time to read it, but this is what we have in first Corinthians chapter number one.
when the word of God tells us that God has perfectly chosen the weak things, the base things, the despised things. So work is work, but what's the reason? So that no flesh is glory. So that flesh itself should not get the glory of God himself. So these miracles are all on the same level. Each one of the four is appointed or assigned, but every time the Lord does it, he uses something a little bit more insignificant. And so finally he's using the wind that he can't see at all. Now this brings up another problem. Perhaps this occurred to you already. When skeptical men read the story of Jonah, quote, and the whale, unquote, they stumble over the problem only of the fish.
And yet the gourd, the worms, and the wind are on an equal part of the fish. The last three are as much miracles as is the first one, the fish. And yet I've never had anybody come to me and say, I simply can't believe the fantastic story of Jonah and the Gord. Clear to that view? I simply can't comprehend, intellectually, the problem of Jonah and the worm. Nobody ever said that to me. Nobody has ever mentioned the fact of Jonah and the worm. Why is it that in the mind of a skeptical man, he always stumbles over the fish part of the story? Because in the others, Jonah is bigger in his environment than the other three.
I think this is the thing that natural man stumble over. He cannot comprehend a situation in which anything is bigger than man. That's the case in the great city. He doesn't have any problem understanding the gorge and the worm and the wind. Because Jonah is bigger than these things. He's bigger than a plant. He's bigger than a worm. And the wind comes and goes. Doesn't have much in fact at all. I'm going to make him a little bit more in that. For natural man. cannot abide before that there might be a situation in which man is not the predominant one. This is the situation that dwells against our ego-centric thinking that I might get into a situation that I cannot control myself.
And so he has the problem, unsaved me, as the problem, not with Jonah and the Gord or Jonah and the Worm or Jonah and the Wim, but he has the problems with Jonah and the Gord. This is the reason. Because man loves to think that he's bigger than anything else that's created in his own life. Well, shall we move along? Now we have four questions rather rapidly. The first one is in verse number two. Jonah says, Oh, Lord, was not this my day when I was dead in my country? I knew this would happen. I knew this would happen. It turned out exactly as I thought it would. I've had this long run for nothing. And it's a very unusual experience. And I thought I was going to drown everything out.
Was this not my thing in my own country? What Jonah had in mind, we don't know. It may be that Jonah was an intensely patriotic prophet. And he knew that the Senebites were very militaristic people and very brutal. And many times, as the Egyptians came up to fight the Assyrians, or the Assyrians went down to fight the Egyptians, whichever direction they went in, they had to cross Palestine. And the Jewish folks, poor souls, always suffered because they were the pauper state in between the great nations of Epiria and Egypt. And perhaps Jonah, if he was a patriotic prophet, thought, will be better off as Hebrews if the Epirians are out of the way. If God sends down fire and brimstone and destroys them right down to the very last one, that will relieve us of one of the great problems that we have in our history as the Hebrew people.
This may have been part of this thing. It may perhaps have been a little bit more personal than this, for he may have thought, now here I go, now I've got a reputation as being a prophet of doom. And periodically, in some newspaper or magazine, you'll see a cartoon character, and he's usually a ferocious-looking gentleman, and sometimes with a long robe, and he's carrying a sign over his shoulder, and he says something like, prepare to meet thy God, or the end of the world is at hand, and so he becomes a known, in our society, as being a cartoon character. Always saying something that never materializes. Always a crape hanger. Always going around mumbling and speaking pessimistically, and maybe Jonas doesn't want to be stereotyped, so that's sort of a characteristic.
That's going to be able to message that you're going to destroy the place. These people were offended. You didn't just go at a place. Now folks will say, oh, here comes old great man, Jonah. He's got nothing ever good to say about anybody. He's a prophet of doom. He's a prophet of doom. And maybe Jonah's afraid personally that folks might think the wrong thing about him. Well, whatever the motive that might have been in his heart, he asked the Lord this question. Was not this my thing when I was yet in my country? And then in verse number four, God asked the second question, doest thou well and be angry? We're angry here. It's hot. And we still talk about getting hot today. No, it's exactly the same word, brethren. Literally burned up.
The Lord says, Jonah, do us how well to be burned up? You say that. Boy, did I get hot under the collar. And then, because this sounds to me, I have what you usually say. Of course, it was righteous and mistaken. We all dispute ourselves this way, though. And the Lord says, Jonah, do us how well to be righteously indignant. Is yet righteous indignation? or simply old carnal temper. Doest thou well to be angry, doest thou well to be hot, or doest thou love to be burned up? What did Dylan need to do to the men of the city? Dylan went out of the city, and built himself a little lean-to, and there he sat down to see what was going to happen, and action under us challenges. Now, my wife's grandmother would have called this wooden swearing, W-O-O-D-E-N, wooden swearing.
And she says, this is what a person does, When they don't answer back, they're hot, they're burned up, but they don't answer back, but when they leave the room, they slam the door. When you slam the wooden door, that wooden swears. I think you get credit for having sworn, but you don't actually say the word. And I think that's what Jonah does here. He doesn't answer God by word, but he answers God by action. Do us how well to be angry? Well, that's a good question we ask ourselves. When does the Lord get angry? You got angry at self-righteous folks. Oh, are you a scribe, Pharisees, hypocrites? He got angry when there were some folks changing money and making a commercialization out of the Lord's house. He got angry then, we recall. And the Lord apparently only got angry when sin was involved.
Only when sin was involved. So the Lord says to Jonah, do us thou well to get hot. Do us thou well to be burned up. Jonah didn't answer this time, but he's going to. And so we find them as we jump over to verse number nine. The Lord asked them again, do us thou well to be angry? back on it, but there is no grace for the Lord. Now anger, you see, has not, has become not that great, vague sort of a thing, not that philosophical question, is anger all right? But now the anger has been brought down to where Jonah can focus his anger on one little thing, the Lord. And now it's come out, not out of the, it's come out now, out of the realm of the philosophical, into the realm of the experimental.
This is what I have experienced. So God asked him again, Doest thou well to be angry? The Lord? I do well to be angry. I do well to be angry. Now this is something that I have grown to appreciate. I have appreciated the service with the Lord. And now the Lord's gone. Had Jonah been saying with Job, the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. He repents it when God takes from him something that Jonah has learned to depend upon. And I wonder, We live in this great affluent society of ours, and we've grown accustomed not only to necessities of life, but to many luxuries of life. I wonder now if our country went into a great sweeping depression, and we had to give up a lot of those things that we have grown accustomed to.
I wonder if there are any Christians who would get mad with God. Well, the Lord gave me these things, and the Lord couldn't maintain them, and now he's taking them away, and the Lord's punishing me for something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Could we say, this is one of the beneficences from the hands of God itself? The Lord has given these things, he gave them to the youth of them for a while, and now he, for some reason, has taken them away. I didn't have them before, and I don't have them now, and I got along before, and I can get along now. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You do it thou well to be angry, said the Lord. You bet I do. I've got to repent on that. So Jonah comes along. And then, of course, the last question is in verse number eleven, as we've already noted, should I not fear?
And then it looks. Now the fourth, the five descriptions are given here in verse number two. You found them already. Jonah describes God by saying, I knew that thou art a gracious God, a merciful God, a God's soul to anger, a God of great kindness, and a God who repents him of the evil. Five very wonderful, theologically correct, and biblically accurate descriptions which the prophet gives. concerning God. That brings up the last thing that we know tonight. That is the fact that the perfectly scriptural, perfectly sound, straight as an arrow, all the way down the line, can still be missing much in his personal experience before God.
Each one of these five descriptions of Jonah's gifts concerning God are just as straight and just as true and as accurate as to be. And yet the Lord has this continued problem with Jonah. Too much of Jonah in Jonah. Now the book ends in a rather strange way, doesn't it? The book ends with a question mark. And we were not told, we are not told, whether Jonah ever got straightened out or not. And it seems a rather strange way. You feel as if there ought to be one more chapter, or at least another verse, something to close the thing up and keep it well satisfied and with a happy feeling about our hearts that the Lord straightened out with other ones is perfect.
But that's not the way the book ends. And it's sort of an open-ended book. We trust that Jonah got straightened out and became more subservient and submissive. We hope he got straightened out. One of these days, we've seen face to face and ask him if he ever got straightened out. We've asked him how the book really closed. But God doesn't give us an indication. And it may be because there's so much of Jonah in us. So the Lord says, all right, now you fit yourself. This is your story. You've had a lot of these famous priests as a children did. And the Lord says, I can't close the account because your account hasn't closed yet. You're still a living believer upon the basis of your word. Daily learning new lessons.
Daily trusting your Lord. Daily receiving help from you. Being chastised when you go astray and so on and so forth. So the Lord said, I can't close the account because... come to you. I'm going to give my children your honor. This may be the reason why we're left sort of up in the air when the children come to a close. It ends with a question mark. Is there a question mark in your life and in your heart? I trust not. I trust that each one of us can say there's nothing between my soul and the Savior. Pray the Lord to help us to learn and relearn the lessons that are given to us in this very wonderful little book. Let's go. See we've got together now in the word of grace. Dear Father in heaven, we thank you again for these times that we have been able to spend together in thy word.
We know, Father, that thy word declares concerning itself, and it is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our pathway, and the entrance of thy word to this life. Father, we pray thee for not only life, but also knowledge. Father, we ask thee that thou should bring forth fruit, and ye study the way of heaven and better. And we go forth rejoicing in thee, and all of thy grace and goodness through us, and how to love us, even when we become disobedient through Calvary. Father, we thank you that we love and serve the one. We go down to the sheep who have just gone astray. Father, feel the word to our hearts and minds in praise. And dismiss us with our blessings and benefits for creating Christ for his sake alone.