4 Valuable insights to help us grow in understanding and participating in God's redemptive work.
1. Selfishness & Hypocrisy are a hinderance to God's redemptive work. (1-3)
- The preacher is mad because 120k people got saved after his sermon.
- Jonah delighted more in the destruction of his enemies than the thought of them being delivered from what they deserved.
- Anger = Hebrew: Kindled, Burning.
- Hypocrisy: Jonah himself called on the mercy of God (ch.2) and enjoyed the mercy of God when it was extended to Jonah. Now he resents it when it is extended to others.
- What if God treated Jonah the way Jonah wanted God to treat the people of Nineveh?
- Isn't this WHAT I SAID: lit. "my word" (4:2) vs. God's Word (1:1)
- He also states that this was the reason he fled the call - not out of fear that he would be ineffective, but fear that he would be effective!
- Jonah's complaint: "God... your behavior does not conform to my theology."
- Quenching of the Spirit
- Kingdom Opposition often comes from professing Christians who:
- have made their theology their God. God does not have permission to do things that I don't like or agree with.
- have sound theology but a rebellious spirit.
When we aren't healthy spiritually, we validate the lies of the enemy. Verse 3
-Today's phrase: Over my dead body. If I'm not going to get my way, I'd rather just not live at all. (not the first time Jonah has tried this... 'toss me overboard' makes sense now).
2. Our feelings & emotions should be questioned often (4)
- We cannot trust our hearts or emotions.
- "The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable - who can understand it?" - Jeremiah 17
Jonah wasn't just angry with the situation, he was mad AT GOD.
There may be times where we are angry with God, but we ought to repent of this anger.
God is good, and only does what is perfect and righteous. Jonah wasn't out of bounds in communicating the honesty behind feelings that God already knew, but Jonah was in sin when he was continually unrepentant for his unrighteous anger.
- God asks questions to reveal our heart
- In our time with the LORD: God search me... question my heart.
God's questions precede his lessons. We must be available to receive those cutting questions.
- Good Christian accountability
3. God sovereignly appoints exactly what we need to learn what He wants to teach us.
God appointed a plant (6). **God provides
- Jonah is delighted with the plant. God has rescued him from trouble, which is the same Hebrew word that is rendered wickedness in Jon 1:2 and punishment in Jon 3:10.
- So what is the trouble Jonah was being delivered from? It wasn't his comfort: it was his evil.
God appointed a worm (7). **God takes away
God appointed a wind (8). **God leads us to places of desperation to deepen our dependence
But all Jonah desires is death.
4. Recipients of God's grace ought to delight in extending grace to anyone who would receive it. (10-11)
- God contrasts the care that He has for his own creation, even the most wicked people imaginable at the time, with Jonah's care about a Castor oil plant that he had for a day, that he didn't even work for, but it made him happy. (The only time he expressed happiness in the book of Jonah!)
- Cannot distinguish their right and left: They are lost. They need a Savior. And God loves them. He cares for them. And the same is true for you.
-Even if you've run like Jonah
-Even if you've engaged in evil like the Ninevites
-Even if you've been angry with God and have grown distant
-Even if you've been giving lip service to God but your life doesn't match it.
He can save you
