Jonah's anger at God's mercy toward Nineveh reveals a profound lesson about God's immeasurable love and compassion for all humanity. Despite Jonah's self-centered displeasure, God patiently uses a series of events, including the provision and destruction of a gourd plant, to illustrate that His concern extends far beyond human understanding. The sermon emphasizes that God's love, as demonstrated by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, is the ultimate measure of His heart, urging listeners to embrace this truth and extend compassion to others. Ultimately, the book of Jonah teaches that God's pity and mercy are boundless, even for the most wicked cities and individuals, and that true understanding comes from recognizing the depth of His love.
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Shall we continue our study of the closing chapter of the book of Jonah, chapter four, where we have the prophet being instructed by God that he may be taught one of the greatest lessons he needed, as well as we do also, even today. Poor Jonah, what tremendous experiences were his? Who in human history could tell the world of such phenomenal experiences? As were his. Being cast overboard in the midst of a great storm? To be swallowed immediately by a great fish? Wherein he was preserved and then brought out alive after three days?
What a story. If it were not in the word of God, he could be verily doubted. But if the Son of God himself had not authenticated it in Matthew twelve, not even a Christian would possibly feel like accepting it. But thank God the story is true. Yet the man who by divine inspiration writes the story of his own experience, who would think that in chapter four in verse three such a one would be heard saying in despair and petulance, saying it even to the Lord, Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech thee my life from me.
For it is better for me to dive and to live. What an attitude. It seems incredible that a man of such great experiences with the power of God manifested could ever say such words. He has not been the only one. Even Elijah requested to die in First Kings chapter nineteen and verse four. And Elijah was one of the greatest prophets in Israel. Well, perhaps there have been many times in your experience and mine, beloved friend. when we may have expressed the same prayer, and oftentimes, as in the case of Jonah, how a request has been wholly selfish and indefensible.
But how gracious, how patient, and how loving God is, bearing with us, forbearing with our selfish complaints. So we may note the exceeding grace of our God in relation to his servant. In the fourth verse of this chapter, the fourth chapter, we read, Then said the Lord, Do us thou well to be angry? God does not sharply rebuke Jonah, neither upbraid and punish him for his attitude, but he asked the prophet one question, Do you have any warrant?
Do you have any just right and right grounds to be angry? Now God certainly wanted Jonah to view his anger and his sinful displeasure in his proper light. Did Jonah have a true and reasonable ground for his anger? Tell me, my beloved Christian friend, does any human being have a reasonable basis for ever being angry with God? It is most unfortunate that many seem to manifest this Yes, there are many people who have felt so. It might be in the taking away of a loved one in the family by death.
And they become bitter and angry against God. Very unfortunate. It may be the painful and the lengthy sickness that one must endure by disease. Physical disability. can also be used by many and is to be angry with God. It can be the reversal of financial conditions, financial disasters, and still one can become angry through that with God. There may be other unavoidable catastrophes, and there are many such like tragic events in life that may bring and have brought disability.
And feelings of resentment and bitter anger come against God. Did you not know that some of life's greatest disappointments in trials can prove to be divine appointments of spiritual blessing? Let us pause and consider very carefully what it means to be angry against God. And God said to his servant Jonah, Doeth thou well? Is it right for you to be angry at me? For if ever there was a man upon the earth who was so suddenly bereft of all of his great possessions, if ever there was a man whose large family of children were taken away at one time, and all that he possessed beside his wife, all else he possessed was taken away very suddenly, that man was the patriarch Job.
His enormous wealth vanished very quickly. His children were all destroyed by a cataclysm of great power, a tornado. Yet when all was gone, Job is reported to have said, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Though physically afflicted, with putrefying boils and sores from his head to his feet, He paused through his suffering, and at the end God doubled his blessing. As he passed through those sufferings, at the end God doubled his blessing, spiritually and physically and materially.
The way may be rough that God may permit us to be led through, but can we say with Job, as he did on one occasion, though he slay me, yet will I trust him? and when he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold one is well said and I believe the words are attributed to the great missionary J Hudson Taylor the greatest submission in the the greatest mission rather in the world is submission to whatever God wills or may God help us to do that but what answer did Jonah give to God the only answer that we find is in verse five 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, till he might see what would become of the city.
Now when did Jonah go outside the city? We cannot tell, was it before, or was it after the forty days that expired? Some have suggested that Jonah did so before the forty days were done. Perhaps so, and perhaps not. But God's rebuke to the prophet would have, God's rebuke for the prophet would have greater force if we believe that Jonah waited the forty days before doing so. But during those forty days, Jonah had no way of knowing the depth or the reality of Nineveh's repentance.
And also, He may have waited the complete forty days before determining what God would really do. If he waited forty days, he might have thought God implied by his question, Doest thou well to be angry, that God still might destroy the city. But Jonah, because of extreme anger, was not in a proper mental condition to think very straight, which is so true of any of us. But what Jonah did not know was that God was going to teach him a lesson and a great lesson through the booth that God built or through the booth that even Joe built, or Jonah built rather outside the city.
At any rate, Jonah built a booth on a or a shelter for himself. That was what it was. probably on a convenient spot where he could overlook the city, and sit under the shadow of that booth until he would know exactly what God would do in relation to the prediction he had made. Forty days, then Nineveh shall be overthrown, the destruction of the city. There's no question he wanted to see it destroyed. But little did he realize that God was going to use that booth which he had built, as a school of discipline to teach Jonah one tremendous lesson about God, which all of us need to know.
In relation to this booth, or the shelter that Jonah had built, God used three special agencies in his sovereign providence to speak to Jonah. There was a God. There was the worm that destroyed the God. And then there was the wind. Now if you have carefully followed this study of Jonah from the beginning, please remember we have made the suggestion for each of the four chapters that in chapter one we considered the contents in relation to Jonah and his disobedience. In chapter two we considered his contents in relation to Jonah praying, chastened and praying.
In chapter three we consider the contents of the chapter in relation to Jonah and being in his ministry a successful prophet. But in chapter four, as we thus enter into it, in more detail, it is an instructive prophet that we are now finding. God has a lesson to teach his servant, one that was greatly necessary. The attitude and the spirit of Jonah displease God. It was an attitude of displeasure. It was intolerable. It was unjustified because of God's repentance to destroy Nineveh. God is not all merely concerned with his servant's obedience to proclaim his message, but is more concerned about the servant himself.
My beloved, that you and I should realize as the servants of God, He is not only concerned of the message and about the message that we should tell, but he is more concerned about ourselves, what we are in relation to him. It has been properly expressed in these words. God is more concerned in what he can do in you than what he can do through you. And how important this principle is. It is to be remembered by every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. It should be remembered by every servant of the living God. The inward spiritual attitude, the inward attitude of the heart, desires to be like God.
As far as God is concerned, he desires that attitude to be the same as his. Jonah was manifesting a wrong inward attitude and a wrong spirit. Now God intended to correct it. we may raise the question do you and I my beloved friend need a lesson like this let us say with the words of David search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way within me and lead me in the way everlasting from Psalm one hundred and thirty nine the last two verses but let us follow this lesson as we go on and see what God has to teach us in his dealing with Jonah and the booth that he had built, and then the gourd and the worm and the wind.
We now read in Jonah chapter four, verse six, the words that Jonah has written regarding his unique experience. It tells us that the Lord God prepared a gourd, made it come up over Jonah. that it might be a shadow or a shade over his head to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the God. After Jonah rebuilt his booth, we find God causing this God to rise up with a miraculous rapidity. It is indicated, undoubtedly, that the tenderness of God was manifested toward his servant Jonah.
Here we find God ministering to his physical comfort, even though Jonah seemed to be completely unsympathetic to God's plan in sparing Nineveh. Now this particular plant was a native to the Middle East, and it attained a height from eight to ten feet usually, very possessing, possessing large leaves, and growing up in a few days, but it could easily be injured by the tender stock that it possessed and died. Now because of the shape that it gave to Jonah, Jonah seemed to have changed, his spirit seemed to have changed from one of anger to a note of gladness.
We read that he was exceeding glad because of the God. What a difference from his displeasure and his anger in verse one. If you read this book through carefully, you will find that this is the only place in the whole book where it is said of Jonah that he was glad. Yet it undoubtedly was a selfish joy over his own personal comfort. There is an outstanding truth in the Word of God that too few people take in regarding its record of God's servants. And it is this. Where can you find a book written that so accurately and faithfully portrays the faults as well as the virtues of the characters in the Bible?
Name the most leading characters in the Word of God. And you will find that the divine record also reveals their failures as well as their virtues. There is but one exception, and that would be our Lord Jesus Christ himself when he was upon the earth. Many biblical characters are lovely, but of only one can it be said. He is altogether lovely. Everything that is lovely in God's universe of heaven and earth is found in Christ, but do not expect to find this in any other person. There is none.
So let us keep our eyes upon our beloved and blessed Lord Jesus. By Jonah's great gladness over the God, God intends to reveal to him his own great gladness in the repentance and the sparing of Nineveh through the experience that follows. God wanted Jonah to find out how glad he was that Nineveh repented. even though Jonah was mad. And we read, But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, And it smote the God that it withered. Do you remember that in chapter one and verse seventeen we read, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
In verse six of chapter four, the same God prepared a God for Jonah. But now in verse seven we read that God prepared a worm, a most insignificant creature of extreme contrast of the great fish. Oh, my beloved, what a difference between a whale and a worm. How significant their contrast. But please let's be reminded God prepared them both. And it may be difficult for a man to prepare and make a whale. But it is just as difficult for a man to even make a worm. He couldn't even make the wing of an mosquito.
Our God is the great creator of the great as well as the small. According to some authorities, an insignificant worm can strip a plant like this God of all of its foliage in a single night. It was a bitter disappointment for Jonah to lose his protection. the protection of the spreading God that had grown up overnight. But when the sun did arise, as we read in verse eight, God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and wished in himself to die, and said it is better for me to die than live.
Poor Jonah, what a character! My are many Jonah's we have around us. Things are getting worse for Jonah, and worse indeed they were for him. The sudden removal of the protecting God was bad enough, but to add to his misery was the rising of the blazing sun, which was accompanied by a sultry wind, again significantly prepared by God, as was the great fish as was the God, and also as was the worm. The word prepared means it was appointed.
All these things were divinely appointed by God and sent by God, but very definitely not properly appreciated or even welcomed by Jonah. Are we any different? Can we, in faith and confidence, trust God and truthfully say, My disappointments are His appointments? Job long ago said, He performeth that which is appointed for me. It's a very difficult thing for us to believe that all that happens is by divine appointment.
But if we are true children of God, we should do so. And if we do, God will bring us through such trials and difficulties more quickly, as well as for our great spiritual blessing. The scorching heat beat down upon the head of Jonah, so greatly that he fainted, and that east wind, with its sultry air, added to the discomfort of the prophet, and once again Jonah wished to die, but that Jonah he was. No question of doubt we get the expression again and again concerning people. What a Jonah he is!
My beloved may God forbid that you and I should be such. How many Jonah's there are like him today? They become angry and displeased with their circumstances that God permits. Yet God is always seeking in our adverse circumstances to teach us a lesson. May I say very faithfully on the basis of the Word of God, as well as experience, that our adverse circumstances can be the greatest spiritual blessing to our souls and in our lives. Faith grows amidst difficulty. Adverse circumstances test the genuineness of our faith and also challenges our confidence in God.
Read the hundred and seventh psalm at your convenience. And there you will find what the psalmist writes in regard to the time when men begin to pray it's when they get into trouble that's when men pray and turn to the Lord and through trouble one of the greatest instruments of divine blessing that God can use and does use for the discipline and the schooling of his dear children every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ that has gone on for him to any degree must and will confess times of adversity have been the times of great spiritual blessing. In the days of prosperity we fail to seek the Lord.
We are tempted to forget him, and usually we turn away from him. Until the pressure of our need becomes so great we turn again to the Lord. But God is always seeking in the adverse circumstances of the lives of his children to teach lessons as well as to the unsaved. And if you think Jonah was angry because God spared Nineveh, Jonah was more angry when God ruined his shady protection by smiting the God in one night. In the vernacular, he was madder than with him. Now he really was angry more so than ever before, yet God still asks another question.
Listen to it. In verse nine, Doest thou well to be angry because of the God? How did Jonah feel about this? In no uncertain words, and probably with very great bitterness and vehement, Jonah dares to answer God in these words. I want you to note the petulance, the bitterness of soul, the angriness of spirit, that Jonah had the dareness to say the incredible adversity to say to God, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
He empathically tells God his anger is justified because of the loss of the God. Absolutely insensible to the fact that it was God trying to teach him a lesson, something that he needed to know. It's a wonder that God didn't smack him down and shake him till his teeth shattered. And he fully deserved it. And may I say, sometimes we do too. But oh, if there was one thing in all of this that Jonah never realized, and which God was endeavouring to teach him, he did not learn it in the storm, did he? Neither did he learn it inside the great fish.
Neither did he learn it in the city of Nineveh. And up to now he was not yet learning it. Oh, my beloved, we're so hard to take the lessons that God is trying to teach us. We can be in a great storm as was Jonah, in the bowels of the great fish in such a dilemma, and in the city of Nineveh as he went through it. And now, Upon the hillside outside the city in relation to the God and relation to his destruction, Jonah was not yet learning what God desired him to know. You may ask, what was that?
Through all these strange experiences in the life of this prophet, he never seemed to learn how much God loved him. Can I say that again? He never seemed to know how much God loved him. And neither did he know how much God loved the people of Nineveh. My beloved, let me ask the question of your heart as well as mine. Do you and I really know how much God loves us? Isn't that a lesson worth knowing if we only will learn it? Oh, the great lesson of knowing how much God loves us.
I confess with shame, this is a deep-needed lesson for me to know how much God loves me. Oh, many times we proclaim it. Many times we try to tell it. But yet, experimentally in our souls, do we know how much God loves us? And neither did Jonah know how much God loved him. the very experiences that he passed through the storm the belly of the great fish in which he was for three days and three nights his ultimate deliverance and his preservation to be recommissioned by God in mercy to take the message to Nineveh all of it was the manifestation of the love of God surely the Apostle John has well written the words here in Islam not that we loved God but that he loved us and send his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Many, many years ago there was a farmer who placed a weather vane on the top of his large barn. Upon this weather vane he had the words written from first John chapter four and verse eight, the last three words of that verse. God is love. Or there are many attributes of God that have passed our understanding, but here is one that's so precious. God is love. A noted preacher came to visit the farmer one day, and he saw the weather vane moving around in the wind on the top of the barn. And he asked the Christian farmer, what do you mean by putting that weather vane there with those words upon it?
God is love. Do you mean that God's love is as changeable as the wind? No replied the Christian farmer. It means whichever way the wind blows. God is love. What a valuable lesson. My beloved friend, which way is the wind of circumstance blowing today for you and for me? Can it alter and change the abiding, the unfailing, the eternal character of God's love? Has he not said, I love thee with an everlasting love? Has he not said, I am the Lord Jehovah, I change not?
Is he not immutable in his character? And his love will never change. We think of the words of the Lord Jesus as written of him in John thirteen, verse one. Having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved them to the end. Not that there was an end to his love, God forbid. But even at the moment that he was facing the trial, Gethsemane, the trial, the crucifixion, death and judgment, and go home to the Father by the way of the cross, the intensity of his love increased for his own disciples. My beloved, whichever way the wind blows today for you and for me, please remember God is love.
This was something Jonah had not learned. And this is a lesson that many of us don't learn well. That God grant by his Holy Spirit, we may realize that God was seeking to instruct his servant Jonah. He likewise would teach us the unchangeable, the immutability of his precious love. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us. sent this sum to be the propitiation for our sake. We come to the concluding story of the book of Jonah, remembering from our preceding study that God was seeking to teach Jonah the prophet, his servant, a valuable lesson.
On the very moment when Jonah in verse nine of chapter four was very vehemently declaring his anger, and expressing his desire to die. Jonah very clearly indicated how much that God had meant to him in protecting him from the rays of the scorching desert sun. But which had been removed by God in one night by a tiny little caterpillar, the caterpillar worm cutting through the tender stalk of the God that had grown up overnight. Now God reaches the crisis of all this foolishness in Jonah, to show to his servant the Prophet that in his narrow-minded soul, Jonah had more affection, more concern for the unimportant plant than for all the people in the city of Nineveh.
Jonah, God's commissioned servant, had clearly indicated that he had no pity on the citizens of Nineveh by expressing his great displeasure and his anger when God spared them. Now God says to Jonah in verse ten, Thou hast had pity on the God. Oh yes, that was different. He was selfishly concerned about his own personal comfort. but not concerned about the threat and destruction of possibly a million of people who lived in the city of Nineveh.
How could he ever be so unbalanced in his heart and in his mind? One little plant, a gourd, was more important to be kept alive than all the population of Nineveh. This seems to be the colossal height of selfishness. But before we condemn Jonah, let us ask our own hearts, may we not also be just as guilty of selfishness in this same respect. When you reach verse ten of Jonah chapter four, you see why God chose a plant like this God, which grew up so rapidly and was chosen, is an object lesson for Jonah.
Let me read the tenth verse all the way through. Then said the Lord, Thou hast pity on the God, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Jonah had absolutely nothing to do in making the plant grow. It came of itself up so rapidly. He needed no garden hose. Neither did he have a sprinkling can to water that garden. He contributed absolutely nothing toward the appearing of the plant. And he could not tell God how much he had done to even keep it alive.
Now, Jonah, what you're talking about? Why all this complaining? You've never done anything to provide the God. I've done it all for you. In substance, God was saying to Jonah, If you were so attached to the God, because it protected you and served you, a plant upon which you expended no thought, upon which you did no labor, no toil, no sacrifice did you ever make, no care did you ever show to it, you never planted it, you never watered it, you never pruned it, and it was only a plant of a short duration which grows up so quickly and passes away just as quickly.
Shall I not allow my love, my pity, my compassion, to flow out to thousands of people whom I have created, whom I have sustained with the necessities of life? And more than that, they will exist forever. They will never go out of existence. They will be existing for all eternity. My beloved, there's one thing that we certainly are convicted of. How little we enter into the great heart of God's love for all of humanity. One thinks again of those words of Peter.
God is not willing that any should perish. One thinks of the words of Isaiah as he wrote them, telling of God, that God is not pleased. I have no pleasure, says God, with the death of the wicked. The immeasurable love of God for a guilty world of sinners. Who can tell it? And what God is saying literally to Jonah is this, Jonah, you do not know my heart. You do not know my love. You do not know my mercy. You do not know my compassion. After all that you have gone through, you should know my love for you.
You should know my mercy upon you and my compassion that I've shown to deliver you. By all this you should also be glad and happy when I show my mercy to a multitude of others. All the ingrained selfishness of our human hearts. God would say again to Jonah, I would not wonder that Jonah began to feel very small and greatly humbled by now. Surely how humble he should feel, and how we should also feel. Have we been able to fathom yet the breadth, the length, the depth, and the height of the love of God?
For a world of sin is lost. It has been so perfectly expressed by the Son of God himself in the words so familiar in John three and verse sixteen. when the Son said, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Surely in the words that the Savior spoke, He reveals the breadth, the length, as well as the depth and the height of the love of God. Her breath that took in every man, woman, boy and girl in the whole world.
The length of it that gave his son to die upon the cross of Calvary to pay the penalty and provide the price of an eternal redemption for every soul. The depth of it to save us from a hell, an everlasting pit of degradation, shame and sorrow and pain, to die in our sins and be banished eternally from him. and the hide of it to bring us into everlasting life? What a love. There's no love to me like the love of Jesus, wrote the poet, never to fail nor fall. Has there ever been such a boundless love?
Has there ever been such pity shown as God has shown it? And my beloved, if I'm speaking to an unsaved friend, you'll never know how much God has loved you. and still loves you. Read with me the last verse of Jonah, and listen to God. Continue to reason, rather, with his servant, and seek to instruct him, saying, Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left arm, and also much cattle, a hundred and twenty thousand are mentioned here but again we repeat as stated once before in our study this one hundred and twenty thousand were of such young age and may we give an estimate surely at least three years to seven years of age little children who are unable to discern their left hand from their right hand if they were but one fifth of the whole population Six hundred thousand would be the approximate complete number of the city.
And yet perhaps even more, up to a million, would be within that city. Yet Jonah loved one little gourd plant more than all those people. That's right. What a narrow heart he had you say. Well, my beloved friend, let's ask the question, how large is your heart? And how large is mine? And thus the cattle even God chose to show his pity upon and his compassion. This is a tremendous challenge and a searching of heart for all of us. Do we know in proper measure and appreciate the heart of God? My fellow Christian, how you and I need to enter into God's heart of love as we see a dying world all around us.
The appropriate words of the hymn writer. When he wrote, quoting in part these words, Love this world through me, Lord. This world of sinful men should be our prayer too. I think also of the words, very searching words, of a beloved brother, friend of mine and the Lord many years ago who wrote this lovely little chorus saying, Lord crucified, give me a heart like thine. Teach me to love the dying souls around. Oh, keep my heart in closest touch with thee, and give me love, pure Calvary love, to bring the loss to thee.
Again, my beloved friend, let me state emphatically how we need to recognize, surely realize, the greatness of God's loving heart to a perishing world. One thing we can conclude with very definitely There'll be no person, no man, woman, boy, or girl, who may find himself or herself in the lost regions of hell that will be there without having been loved of God. One may often ask the question, how do I know God loves me? Well, let me point out to you, there's only one measurement. You might say, sometimes people will say, well, he's been so kind to me.
I was sick. I called upon him and he healed me. Oh, you may say I was in great trouble at one time. I called upon him and he delivered me. And you may relate some circumstance and personal blessing and benefit that may have been brought to you by God's goodness and kindness. But may I state very simply, clearly and emphatically, there's only one way to measure the love of God properly for all of us. And I quote again the words of John three sixteen in part. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Would you and I measure the love of God?
The only standard of measurement that is a true one must be and is the cross of Calvary. Tis there I read the love of God. My circumstances may not always tell me God loves me. Many times they may contradict it in an outward sense. as oftentimes we're prone to think. But when I look at the cross of Calvary, there I see how much he loves. On that cross, God gave his only-begotten son, and the Son of God voluntarily, willingly, obediently, bore the judgment of your sins and mine to declare the love of God.
Again we repeat, here in his love, not that we love God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin. There we read, The Love of God. We've crossed the book of Jonah. We've covered it chapter by chapter. Some may wonder at the seeming abrupt ending of it. It does end very abruptly. There's no salutation, an exclamation at the end, not even a benediction. But we must not forget to realize that by divine inspiration Jonah undoubtedly wrote this prophecy.
He did not spare the unpleasant revelation of his own selfish character and his disobedient heart, for which we should all be grateful. Please let me say with all honesty and appreciation, let us indeed respect that Jonah wrote without any partiality the true character of his person and ministry, and that for your benefit and blessing and mine. For this we should ever be grateful. The fact that without sparing his servants from the exposure of their own failures, God shows that he has written the Bible himself, thus proving the divine glory of giving it to you and me as being the true and the living word.
If the Bible was only human in its origin, the glaring sins and the failures of the people of God would never be written. They would be kindly veiled and unrecorded, but the Bible is the written revelation of God, and it records the failures. And thus, not to write the words of truth concerning men would be unjust, and would indeed refute the inspiration of the vote. But as well as the words of grace, God also has written the failures of men and even the failures of the saints in the Word of God.
And we find it thus is accompanying with it God's judgment and his correction. There are some people that complain regarding the condemnation as well as the judgment that God brings upon people for their sins in the Word of God. But let me say this. God shows you what he thinks of sins, whether they are the sins of his people or the sins of the ungodly. And when you read of judgment in the Bible, when you read of revelation of some terrible sins, awful sins, God is telling the truth. But along with the truth of the sin, he declares his judgment and condemnation. So it is with the book of Jonah.
The Hebrew scholars, they would not They would not omit this prophecy from the Old Testament, from the canon of Scripture. They placed it in the Scripture, and God wanted it there and always will. Now what have we learned from the book of Jonah? And without apology, let me be permitted to rehearse the main teaching of these four chapters in the book of Jonah. In chapter one, Jonah the disobedient prophet was fleeing from the Lord. but he found himself in the midst of a storm. Now may you and I learn the lesson, that disobedience to the Lord is not the path of blessing, but it will lead to the storms of trouble.
You cannot run away from God and neither can I, without paying an obvious price. The second chapter we found, Jonah, was the chastened prophet, and we found him in his chastening experience praying to the Lord. while he was inside the great fish. This should tell us that the believer should profit in times of chastening, no matter the circumstances, ever realizing that whatever they may be, while we are in then, while we are passing through then, we can pray to God in contrition and repentance for deliverance. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will answer thee, and thou shalt glorify me, said the Lord through the psalmist in Psalm fifty and verse fifteen.
So as Jonah prayed, made you and I pray in all of our troubles and difficulties, salvation or deliverance is of the Lord. In the third chapter we found Jonah the successful prophet speaking for the Lord in the great city of Nineveh. He was chastened, but he was restored, and he was recommissioned by God to go to Nineveh and give God's message. When the believer is chastened and restored, God will use him or her, for Jonah's success was phenomenal. The whole city repented and turned from their evil unto God. Oh, that you and I could see something like this today.
Then in the fourth chapter, our closing one, Jonah was an instructed prophet. What a difficult lesson it seems to have been for him to learn. One of the greatest lessons that any of us can learn from God. Learning to know something of his love. Of his pity. Of his compassion. The greatness of his heart. For a world of sinful men. The last words of the book of Jonah in the opening of verse eleven tell us this. God said, And should not I spare Nineveh that great city? This is the greatest teaching, if we may say, in the book of Jonah.
Please let me repeat it. The closing words of the book, they pour out the heart of God in His compassion and love for the wickedness of human race, and particularly for the great city, the wicked city of Nineveh. In our book, it was called That Great Wicked City. And God says, Should not I spare Nineveh that great city? This is the greatest teaching in the whole book we say. And in the words of the New Testament, we can repeat these words that Peter wrote. God is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Second Peter chapter three and verse nine. There was perhaps, we repeat again, anywhere from six hundred thousand to perhaps a million souls within the city of Nineveh. May we ask our own hearts, do we count the millions of souls in the world? Do we count them of any value? And those that are living upon the earth today? The great heart of God loves to save them from an eternal hell. The great heart of God is given his only son to Daniel Calvary for their eternal salvation. The sacrifice and the death of his son upon the cross has fully revealed that every soul he desires to save.
And oh, how sad it is to realize that there are so many pressing stubbornly against that love toward a lost eternal hell. They will pass neglectfully the great love of God and His great salvation. One thinks of the words of the Hebrew writer when he wrote, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? May we visualize the very death of the Son of God, the beloved Son, Christ our Lord upon the cross. May we visualize what the pouring out of his heart in affection and love for a dying world of sin as must have been?
As we quote the words of the weeping prophet Jeremiah that are found in the book of the Revelation, a book of Lamentations rather, when we can hear the Lord Jesus say from that cross as he watched them passing by before him, Is it nothing to you? All ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like under my sorrow, which the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of its fierce anger. My beloved, the commemoration and the memorial of that death of Christ upon the cross is the perfect revelation and complete and full, and declaration of the love of God for the souls of mankind.
But many are passing by. Pay ye no heed to that love. Give ye no heed to the imploring voice of God. Turn ye, oh turn ye, for why will ye die? And the greatest lesson that Jonah had to learn, the greatest lesson that the Christians should learn, the greatest lesson that a sinner can learn, is that God loves and pities in tenderest compassion, the hearts, the lives, and the souls of his creatures. You go on your way to hell, my sinner friend, but you will have to pass by his love, his pity, his mercy, his compassion.
But oh, that you would take a look and stop at the cross. Don't go by that cross. Stand before it and say with the poet, as one is well written, On the cross for me, on the cross for me. See him hanging there in agony. Jesus paid the price. Himself the sacrifice. On the cross for me. Paul is well written in Romans. Saying God spared not his son. But freely gave him up for his all. Verse eight. Rather chapter eight of Romans and verse thirty two. My beloved friend. All the punishment for your sins and mine.
God placed upon his dear son. He did not spare him. All the penalty was manifested and borne by the Savior in his own body on the cross. Why? Because in order that you and I could be spared the eternal death in an eternal hell that we fully deserve, this is God's love for the whole world. Christian, you and I can tell it. You and I should tell it out. Sinner, you should believe it. sinner you should receive it. For God's love is ever seeking to save all who will rightly come to him, all who are justly doomed to an eternal punishment.
God is willing to save. Thanks be to his name. God is not narrow-hearted, like mankind may be. He has shown his pity and revealed his love and his compassion. He can never do it any more than he has done it. by the gift of his Son upon the cross of Calvary. May God sanctify to our hearts what we have covered in this prophecy of Jonah, making it a blessing to both saints and sinner, and most of all, to those of us who know the Lord. May it bring us where God desired and sought to bring Jonah, to have the same compassion and love and grace and mercy to others, as God has shown to ourselves.
Shall we pray? Blessed Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we thank thee for the words that have been written in the New Testament, that all these things that were written aforetime were written for our learning, upon whom the ends of the world have come. We confess, Lord, there are great lessons for us to learn. Grant that through the study that we have followed in Jonah, we may thus come to know thee better, and not only know thee better, but live for thee better in our testimony of life. For we ask it, giving thanks, in our Savior's precious and worthy name.