God's Sovereign Compassion - [Jonah 4:5-11]

Well, it was a classic case of obsession. Captain Ahab had lost his leg to the white whale, Moby Dick, and then he recruited another ship, the Pequod, to try to go destroy Moby Dick at all costs. After all, he lost his leg, he's now got a whale bone prosthesis, and he was obsessed with Moby Dick at all costs, at the sake of himself, at the sake of the crew members.

Ahab hated Moby Dick, he despised Moby Dick. Remember, he took the gold doubloon, nailed it on the mast, and said, if you see Moby Dick, you see the sight of him, the first one that sees it gets this gold doubloon.

He was obsessed with the death of Moby Dick. I don't know if you know this, but J .M. Barrie used that story as a backdrop to have Captain Hook, another captain, become monomaniacal in the destruction, not this time of a whale, but of a crocodile.

And we'll see today, Jonah has the same obsession, he has the same compulsion, he has the same fanaticism that something must be destroyed. And it's not a whale, it's not a crocodile, but it's a town of people.

Jonah’s Obsession With the Destruction of Nineveh

Let's turn our Bibles to Jonah chapter 4 this morning, as we take a look at Jonah, this turbulent prophet who is obsessed with sending people to hell. God damn these people. And that was Jonah's M .O.

As a prophet of God, as a bearer of good news, Jonah was obsessed with the destruction of the Ninevites. Jonah chapter 4. If Jonah took the Yale Brown obsessive compulsive scale test, I'm sure it would be off the charts.

Now, today's our last message in Jonah. I kind of feel bad because you say goodbye to an old friend of the last seven messages. But in my flesh, I want to say that I love the book of Jonah, but I don't really love Jonah.

Except the more I think about it, probably the reason why I don't like Jonah so much and I don't love Jonah like I should is because I'm just like Jonah. We're just like Jonah left to ourselves when it comes to the goodness of God and evangelism.

And so today we'll look at Jonah chapter 4 verses 5 through 11 and finish off the book of Jonah today. And you're going to see the sovereign love of God and the compassionless Jonah. The sovereign love of God and the compassionless Jonah.

Well, before I read part of chapter 4, S. Lewis Johnson described chapter 1 this way, Jonah runs away from God. Remember Jonah was told to go preach the gospel, give the good news of God's salvation to the Ninevites and he didn't want to do it.

And of course he goes into the boat, he tries to flee the wrong way. God superintends, God appoints a fish and gets him to where he needs to be. Chapter 2, he runs back to God. So first he's running away from God, then back to God.

Remember he's in the heart of the sea monster and he prays to the Lord. Chapter 3, he runs with God. That is to say, he preaches the message and all of a sudden the king repents, the people repent and God relents from judging.

And now in chapter 4, he runs ahead of God. Let's read Jonah 4, verses 1 -4 and then we'll work on 5 -11 as our passage today. It's an exciting passage. If you get bored easily, I dare you to get bored today.

How's that? I dare you. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly. What? The salvation of all these people. Chapter 4, verse 1, it displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was angry. Ever get angry when people sin?

Yes. Ever get angry when people get saved? And so he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country? That's why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you're a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

I knew it. Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me for it's better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? Do you do well to be angry? What a bitter man.

What a fanatical man. Now, we don't know what the time frame is between the end of verse 4 and the beginning of verse 5, but verse 5 does say, notice the word city three times here. So Jonah went out of the city, sat to the east of the city, made a booth for himself there.

He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. I know what's going to happen here. This is really going to be exciting. This is going to be fire and brimstone like on Sodom and Gomorrah.

I know the repentance won't last. I know that they're going to be sorry, but then they won't repent. I know it'll be short lived and I need to get out of the blast center. I need to get out of the kill zone.

I need to get far away enough so when the fire and brimstone comes out of the sky to destroy Nineveh like it did Sodom and Gomorrah that I'm not going to get burnt to a crisp. And so I might as well settle down.

Can you imagine? It's 4th of July. You're taking your family down to the park, down to the school. You say, well, let's just get a little cooler of some things and let's get a few lawn chairs. So Jonah didn't have a lawn chair with a built-in kind of shade.

So he gets some leafy plants and builds a booth for himself. That's what the text says, if you notice. He made a booth for himself. That's not like a phone booth per se, made out of plastic. It's like a phone booth that it covers from the wind and the sun, but it's made out of big leaves.

And he's out of the kill zone. He's getting to be away from the city. And now I'm just going to wait it out. After all, patience is a virtue, right? I mean, can you imagine? Listen to Genesis with Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He overthrew the cities and all the valley and the inhabitants of the city and what grew on the ground. He looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham did, and toward all the land of the valley.

And look and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. God's going to get them. Divine punishment, divine wrath. God is going to so smoke these people and I need to get a good seat, make a little shelter.

Kind of a feast of tabernacle kind of language. I know they're just changing their behavior. I know they're just sad they got caught. I know it's not real repentance. Wait till they get it. And do you notice it says in verse 5 at the very end of it, till he should see what would become of the city.

That's that same word used in chapter 3 verse 10. Do you notice it? When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He said He would do to them and He did not do it.

God sees them relent and Jonah can't wait to see them just get destroyed. Except Jonah's perch over there in the safety away from the kill zone, instead of being like 4th of July with lawn chairs, it's more like being in school 100 years ago and if you disobeyed, you know what they used to do kids if you disobeyed in school?

Well, they'd give you spanking. That's one of the things they do is they would put you in the corner. You'd have to look into the corner and you would have a conical hat on. It was called a what? A dunce cap.

Ever want to know what a dunce cap was from? Well, I'm glad you asked. Duns Scotus was the guy's name. And he had all kinds of crazy ideas, hair splitting literally ideas and he also thought that if you wear a conical hat, that it would stimulate the brain and it would be a thinking cap.

So you got a disobedient kid, I almost said dumb kid. Good thing I didn't say stupid kid. And a disobedient kid, you put him in the corner, you put the hat on because his brain needs to be stimulated to think properly.

And you know what's happening here in the book of Jonah? You just get so caught up into the story. Here's the sovereignty of God and His compassionate love for sinful, wicked people. And here's Jonah's obstinate fanaticism and how he hates people.

And you just get drawn into the story and you pretty soon start realizing just what you realize, exactly what Israel would realize when she read the book. That it's like deep down in our hearts, if we're not careful, if the Spirit of God isn't working, we're just like Jonah.

We're just like Jonah. Now God is a good God. He has a good way to talk to students who are sitting in the corner. Verse six, here's an object lesson. Here's a visual lesson. Here's an Awana council time that God is going to give to Jonah.

God Appoints the Plant to Teach Jonah Compassion

Jonah chapter four, verse six. Now the Lord God, it's kind of a transition in terms of a title for God. He's been called Lord earlier, the covenant keeping God of Israel named Yahweh. And now we're transitioning.

So Lord God appointed a plant. He's sovereign over plants and made it come up over Jonah. I mean, this is like Jack and the Beanstalk, right? Grew up overnight. This is fast, this is supernatural. This is an object lesson.

You can't say to yourself, well, what kind of plant could grow 12 foot up and over in a day? No plant can except if God is making it happen. Just like he had the fish come over and swallow Jonah. Just like he had appointed what we'll soon see to be a caterpillar like thing and a wind.

He made it come up over Jonah so that a shade might be on it over his head. Isn't that nice? To save him from his discomfort. So Jonah, hey, finally, he was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Can you imagine?

Here's this plant that comes up and finally now Jonah's happy. Hey, Jonah, go preach to the Ninevites so they get saved. He's not happy. He gets swallowed by the great fish. He's not happy. He's in the belly of the fish.

He's not happy. He gets called to go preach the gospel again to the Ninevites, chapter three. He's not happy. The people of Ninevite repent and believe. He's not happy. Finally, Jonah's happy. God does something for him and with his selfishness, he's finally happy over what?

Over a plant. He's got enough shade. I don't care about people going to hell. I care about a little bit of shade. That would really be nice and now I've got it. What kind of plant is this? Well, people have said that it's a gourd plant, an ivy, Egyptian kiki, K-I-K-I, a rinconus, don't know what that is, castor oil plant, castor bean plant.

But originally it was translated gourd and Jerome, when he changed it from gourd to castor oil plant in his Bible translation, a riot broke out. Interesting. Just threw that in there just for you Bible students.

Finally, I'm happy. I'm pleased. Literally, the text is delighted. Delighted. And if you notice the text in verse six, it says, Shadovers had to save him from his discomfort. That's the exact same word used in chapter one, verse two of evil.

Evil has come up before me. Trying to tie in the idea how this is related. God is patient with the evil people. Kind, long-suffering, generous as we've seen in chapter four, verse two. Now Jonah's out in the hot sun, 100 degrees Fahrenheit usually, 110 in the shade.

The unrelenting Assyrian sun and he needs a little comfort. After all, it's gonna be a long 4th of July, hot. He was exceedingly happy. He rejoiced, the text says, over the vine with great rejoicing. Here's the situation.

Now, when somebody here at Bethlehem Bible Church professes faith in Christ Jesus, they believe that they're sinful. The only way they can have their sins forgiven and atoned for is not by themselves because they just cannot make atonement for themselves.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ's work on Calvary, that he's a substitute, he's a ransom, that he redeemed sinners out of the slave pit of sin. He reconciled them, they were enemies of God and now they're friends because he died in their place.

He lived in their place and he was raised from the dead. And you just have that hope and you have that desire and people get in the baptismal font there in the back and they say, by the way, I'm here to show you that Jesus Christ has saved me, he's loved me, he's demonstrated that love at Calvary and even today and I want you to know that I'm a Christian by the grace of God.

I didn't save myself, he did it all. I contributed my sin, he contributed all his grace in the person and work of Christ Jesus and I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ loved me and in response to that, I love him and I'd like to get baptized and all the congregation says, boo!

I mean, what do we do? You know, we're a very kind of staid church, right? Prim and proper and nobody's going too crazy when we sing songs, at least I don't know if you are or not, that's why I sit in the front.

I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, all the shenanigans that go on. But we do clap, we rarely clap, it's a big deal when we do clap, but we clap when there's a baptism, why? Because we're thinking God saves sinners.

Remember how bad the Ninevites were? Remember how they would flay people alive, skin them alive, put it down on the docks by the boats there so you knew if you mess with the Ninevites, you were gonna get it.

And all of a sudden, God saves sinners and Jonah can't stand it. Boo at the baptismal, I can't stand to see sinners going to heaven. I want them to go to hell, that's what I want them to do. And you think the whole time, Jonah, weren't you a sinner?

Yes. Weren't you gonna go straight to hell when you died? Yes. Wasn't God sovereignly gracious to you? Yes. Wasn't God good to you? Yes. And it's the heart of a Christian, at least it should be. You've saved me, you can save others.

You'd just as soon save as you would damn. I know that as a fact, both in Scripture and in my life. So God, save other people, don't damn them. But at least I got a plant. At least it's not too hot today.

God Appoints the Worm and the Wind to Expose Jonah’s Heart

Well, the object lesson still goes on, verse 7. But when the dawn came up, the next day, God, that's the word Elohim, the Creator God, in the beginning, God created, Genesis 1 .1. God appointed a worm and attacked the plant so that it withered.

The education continues. All right, I was really unhappy when you started saving people. I'm happy now that I'm in the shade. And now I'm unhappy that I have no shade. And along comes this worm. I don't know what kind of worm it is.

Some people call it a cutworm, a black caterpillar. It doesn't matter. It's something small and it's something insignificant. And it can destroy that jack-in-the-beanstalk type of plant quickly. And God appoints it.

God directs it. God's sovereign over the worm. Can't you see it in the book of Jonah? It can be a huge sea monster, a huge whale-like fish, and it can be a little tiny cutworm, and God's sovereign over everything.

He's sovereign over every atom in the universe. If there's something in this universe that God's not sovereign over, whether it's heaven or hell or you or me or Wes Boylston or Timbuk3, then God's not God.

And He's sovereign over cutworms and He sends this cutworm to go take care of business. Now, I've got a question for you. What's been destroyed in the book of Jonah so far? Not one thing. Nothing has been destroyed.

Oh, we've wanted the Ninevites to be destroyed, but nothing's been destroyed. Not one thing. Here's the first thing that's been destroyed. Now, see, you don't know how much Jonah loved that plant. You don't know how much he loved what the plant gave him.

You don't know how selfish he was. Now, let's see if I can kind of bring this in a little bit. Jonah, I think, nicknamed his plant with two words. These are the two words that Jonah nicknamed his plant with.

Ready? This is in the Greek, my precious. He loved that plant. I mean, who loves plants? I mean, some of you are gardeners and all that stuff and you're pretty proud of your raspberry bushes and you're proud of your blueberries and stuff, but I mean, he loved the plant with all his heart and soul and mind and strength.

You could just hear him sing, the plant is exalted on high and I will praise it. I mean, it is really, you're just, he was in love with the plant. And again, don't forget, we're watching all this go on, but the finger is really gonna come to our own sternum.

Do you love the lost? Do you love the lost? You know, every person that you know is gonna go to heaven or hell when they die. Every single one. Your mom, your dad, all your kids, aunts, relatives, everybody in the world, from the president to the pauper, because Adam's sin was credited to them by God's wisdom.

Consequently, they were sinful and the wages of sin is death and God is so holy, God is so just, God is so righteous that he can't have sin in heaven. He can't have sinners who haven't been forgiven in heaven.

There's only one hope. There's only one hope. And when you think about this God of Jonah, chapter one, two, three, and four, he doesn't just love the Jews. And that's the point of Jonah, is that God so loved the world.

He loved the world in this manner, that he gave his son for pagan Ninevites, for pagan West Boylstonites. He gave his son for sinners and that's the only hope. And for you who have been saved, the way others get saved, the way they receive the benefits of Calvary is through preaching and the Spirit of God sovereignly applying the preaching.

Nobody gets to heaven without hearing the message about Jesus. Well, what about the person in Sri Lanka? What about the person in Madagascar? What about the person in Africa? What about the person in New Zealand?

They're all sinful people and they don't get to heaven unless they hear the gospel. And so we look back and we see Jonah, we see his selfishness, we see him dealing with a plant. He loves a plant. And the whole point is going to be, do you love plants more or do you love people more?

And I can prove which one's true by do you open your mouth to unbelievers or don't you? Talk a big game, Jonah. You say you love people, I'm sure you love your mom, you love your grandma, but you love plants more.

And so what Jonah is trying to do, as Israel would read it and as we on this side of the cross would read it, we are forced to say we've got to preach the gospel to people. We've got to tell them, yes, I know I'm a sinner too, but you're a sinner.

Yes, you think you can get to heaven by baptism, by being good, by speaking in tongues, the list goes on and on and on. There's no good in you and if there was, why would God the Father have to kill the Son?

And we've got to open our mouths. I can just imagine Jonah singing this song, can't you? Regarding the plant. I don't know if you sing to plants or not, but in my story, Jonah does. Oh, you make me live.

Whatever this world can give to me, it's you, you're all I see. Oh, you make me live now, honey. Oh, you make me live. You're my best friend that I've ever had. I've been with you such a long time. You're my sunshine and I want you to know that my feelings are really true.

I really love you. Alright, I promise never to quote that again. But you know what? Here's what I thought. If Alistair Begg can quote John Lennon, I can quote Freddie Mercury once. It's the sovereignty of God over plants, over the worm, over the wind, over the sea mariners, over everything.

He's sovereign over all, but see, Jonah's point is not just he's sovereign, kind of an Islamic sovereign fatalistic way, but God's sovereign in a personal way. He cares. And how do we know God isn't fatalistic?

Answer, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, cloaks Himself with humanity to live among sinners. Jonah's just mad that he's hot now. It's hot outside. God controls the little worms. He controls the wind as well, verse 8.

And when the sun rose, God appointed. There's that language of sovereignty again. God appointed, God directed, God sovereignly made happen a scorching east wind, a Sirocco, 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's better for me to die than to live. And He asked, better death to me than life. Fourth time this word appoint occurs in the book of Jonah. God appointed the fish, chapter 1, verse 17.

He appointed the vine, chapter 4, verse 6. He appointed the worm, chapter 4, verse 7. And now to show His divine sovereignty and initiation, He appoints the wind, chapter 4, verse 8. And the sun beat down on his forehead.

Locals back then didn't even like this kind of hot sun. One man describing it said, at times every scrap of moisture seems to have been extracted from the air during these Siroccos. So that the curious feeling occurs and you think that your skin has been drawn much tighter than usual.

20 degrees hotter, but it feels like it's 40 degrees hotter. Another writer said, hot air so full of positive ions that it affects the levels of serotonin and other brain neurotransmitters causing exhaustion, depression, feelings of unreality, and occasionally bizarre behavior.

It's a scorcher. And God sends this wind to demonstrate something to Jonah. It's the same word used in chapter 7 of to chew or to strike. Here comes this wind that's gonna chew, strike through the issue.

I wish I was dead. You know, you can just imagine kind of the infantile spiritual regression that Sinclair Ferguson talks about. I just don't get my way. So just as soon be dead. Just as soon be dead.

This is the same kind of language used one other place in the Bible. Do you remember? Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the one, as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.

And then Elijah was afraid and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba. And he sat down under a broom tree and asked that he might die. It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life. I'm no better than my father's.

What's the point? Jonah under the shade of the proverbial tree or Elijah under the broom tree? What's the point of the message? Don't sit under a tree? Hardly. Verse 9, but God said to Jonah, still this loving, patient, kind God who's reeling in one who's walking by the flesh, not by the spirit, of course.

Do you do well to be angry for the plant? Now when asked this earlier, there's no response. Chapter 4, verse 4, do you do well to be angry? No response. He's got a quick retort to this one. Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

Yes, I do. Foolish, childish. The last word we hear out of Jonah's mouth is that word die. Angry enough to die. Hey Jonah, what's your justification of saying you wanna die earlier? Nothing. Now what's your justification?

And he's basically saying, I'm so mad I could die. It'd be better for me to die. And it's not just the plant that's a sad, shriveled up state of affairs, it's Jonah. And so God moved from kind and gentle to still gentle but firm, verse 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. And should I not pity, you pity, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120 ,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also from their left.

Much cattle. Okay Jonah, why don't you have a seat in my office, in my study, why don't you have a seat on the couch and let's talk to you. You didn't do anything to make this plant give you shade and it was here today and gone tomorrow.

And I'm the one who made these Ninevites, they're image bearers, they're people, they have eternal souls. And I made them and I cared for them and I matured them. And you're mad at me for having pity on people.

When you have pity on a plant, I mean plant pity, ever pity a plant? Which plants do you take pity on? I guess I walk outside, I see the raspberry bushes, we don't have too many things in our garden, it's just like raspberry bushes and you know, I pity the poor fool who pities those plants now because I look at those plants and they're just, I'm just like, oh, pitied plant.

Who do you know that pities plants? The closest I can get to is, I had to admit this first service, I guess I'll tell you as well. I'm probably seven, eight, nine years old. We take a family vacation from Nebraska and we go down to Missouri, the show me state to the Lake of the Ozarks.

I'll never forget that time because my dad said, yes, you can go with those other boys down to the lake, but don't fall in, of course I fell in, but that's not part of the story. We collected crawdads, what do you call them here?

Crawfish, crayfish? Okay, crawdads. And you know, we'd use them for bait. You'd put the hook on one and you try to catch something and well, this one, when I picked it up, it didn't bite me. It didn't take its claws, you know, it's lobster like claws and it didn't pinch me.

And I thought, you know what? This is like my new pet crawdad. And so we named the crawdad, we taught it things and it would not pinch us. And actually we took a welcome mat, a floor mat that had a bunch of holes in it where the sediment would come down through the shoes and we would hold it up like that and we could talk to it and it would go through the holes in the floor mat.

It was a trick crawdad, I kid you not. So you didn't think I could do anything but preach. You didn't know about that either. I love that crawdad. You know, if you've got a minnow box and you put a crawdad in there, it might get too hot and so you need to have some aeration so you can buy these little kind of Carmex containers and you take the top off and drop it in and the aeration comes up and you get to keep your pet crawdad for a long time and you get to do tricks, crawdad tricks.

Well, one day we were teaching that crawdad to go through the welcome mat and my friend Scott was holding it like this. It's kind of a bowed thing and he was holding it like that and I was teaching the crawdad to go through and he let go and it slammed down and it smashed my crawdad.

My crawdad was dead. I mean, I love that crawdad. That was my way to fame, crawdad fame. I love that crawdad. Okay, so I don't have to go very much further to say that is just stupid. This crawdad story, everything else.

I mean, Jonah, it's not even a crawdad. He's loving a plant. It's a gourd. It's ivy. He pities the plant. Pity in the Hebrew in both verse 10 and 11 with Jonah's pity and God's pity means you're moved to the point where you would even do something for that person with a tear in your eye.

I pity people. I pity a plant. I think God has his attention. We don't pity plants usually. God is driving home the message and that is image bearers, Ninevites and Jews, nations of all kinds need to hear the gospel and their worth is more than a gourd's worth.

Do you care for the heathen? Do you care for the lost? That's the point. God cares for the lost so much that there's tears in his eyes, as it were. And for us, if we're not careful, oh, of course we would all say as Christians, we do really care, but sometimes our deeds and our words deny what our theology is.

Jonathan Swift said, we are God's chosen few. All others be damned. There's no place in heaven for you. We can't have heaven crammed. The plant lasts a day. The souls last forever. If you take a look at verse 11, 120 ,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left.

Who would that be? There's two real options. So if I were to say to you, all the kids who are three years old and under, raise your left hand, they don't really know what to raise because they don't get it.

You know, we would always teach our kids to go like that. How do you know your left hand? Well, no, that's not it. Left, kids don't know. Left, right. So maybe there's 120 ,000 kids in this big sprawling city that overflows its technical walls and lines.

And there's 600 ,000 people in the city and there's 120 ,000 of them who are little tiny infants. And so you want me to just send them all to hell and damn them all? And you care about a little plant so that's option one.

But most likely the option is, especially when you look at the context of Jonah, why is Jonah written? And Israel understands that this John 3 .16 of the Old Testament that God is rescuing people out of every tribe and tongue and nation.

And God doesn't just save Jews, He saves Gentiles. He saves the most wicked people that you could think of. And so these people are Gentiles. These 120 ,000 people who don't know their right hand from their left, spiritually, morally, they don't have the oracles of God, they don't have the Pentateuch, they don't have Deuteronomy, they don't have the instructions of God.

And you say, yes, but they've got the conscience, they've got general revelation. That's true. But still, why would God destroy these people when He's a pitiful God? He's a merciful God. He's a kind God.

Pitiful meaning showing pity on other people. Valuing the souls of other people. We know in chapter 4, verse 2, that He's gracious and He's merciful. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love.

So if you want to save their infants, you can. If you want to save their spiritually infants, I think that's better, but the point is still the same. God loves to save people and Jonah wants them damned.

And then how does it end? Did you know only two books in the Bible end with questions? This is one of them. What's the other book that ends with questions? Nahum. Nahum ends with a question as well, which also deals with Ninevites, but that's another story.

Here's the question. And it's kind of abrupt, but it makes you answer the question. Here's the question that you should have to answer. Are gourds more important or souls of men more important? And once you ask the question, so what are you going to do about it?

If you think gourds are more important, then just be quiet. Be just calm and collected and don't raise your voice. Don't ever call anybody based on the word of God a sinner. Don't ever evangelize anyone.

Tell them that they can have forgiveness of sins only in Jesus. Don't ever tell them that it's not the baptism that saves, the sacrament that saves, good work that saves. Don't say anything like that and you will end up saying, I love gourds.

Or, the writer of Jonah wants you to say, I've read the book and my question is, God, I struggle with this. I'm sinful in this. I don't evangelize like I should, but you have one son and you made him a preacher, an evangelist, and I want to tell others.

I want to value in my life and in my actions, not gourds, not ivies, not Egyptian kiki plants, not castor oil plants, not raspberry bushes, not crawdads, but I value people so much. Everybody I know is going to go to hell unless they're born again.

Would you give me the words to utter in evangelism? It forces you to answer the question, do you like gourds more or do you like people more? So I guess I could ask you the question, do you love gourds or do you love people more?

When's the last time you got to tell somebody there's forgiveness found in Christ Jesus? We've got lots of opportunities coming up. Maybe you'll have some gourds on the Thanksgiving table. Or maybe if you don't say anything to your friends and your family, maybe they're more than just ornamental.

Think about who God is. How is God portrayed in this book? Gracious, sovereign, full of pity, compassionate, slow to anger. He loves souls. He loves people. He loves Ninevites. And you say, yeah, but the most wicked people I can think of, I don't have any compassion for them.

I think of ISIS people, they behead journalists. I think of abortion doctors, they kill babies in the womb. It should be the safest place in all the world. I hate people that go into Jewish synagogues with meat cleavers and chop people up.

I hate these people. I hate them with an everlasting love. I hate people that speak Arabic. I hate people that say this. I hate people that say that. And the longer we say that, the longer we say to ourselves, we're so unlike God when we say that.

We're so unlike God because that's the feeling of the Jonah that's dwelling in me. And no good thing dwells in me as Romans 7 says. That's just like Jonah. I would rather be like John the Baptist. And remember he saw Jesus and he said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of not just the Israelites.

Why does he say world? Every single person in the world's sins are gonna be taken care of? Absolutely not. Jesus goes on to say something about that in John chapter three. Not everybody's going to heaven, but he saves Ninevites.

He saves Muslims. He saves your neighbors. Every reader. I have to ask myself the question. Here's the question. Should not God pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120 ,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left hand?

And then he adds in even something more valuable than a gourd. And also much cattle. Charles Feinberg said, Jonah is the greatest missionary book in the Old Testament. If not in the whole Bible. It is written to reveal the heart of a servant of God whose heart was not touched with the passion of God in missions.

Does it strike home, dear reader? Are we more interested in our own comfort than the need of multitudes of lost souls in Israel dying in darkness without the knowledge of their Messiah and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Are we more content to remain with the gourds, the comforts of home and at home than to see the message of Christ go out to the ends of the earth to both Jew and Gentile? And the curtain falls. Jonah's over.