Dear congregation, the last time we looked at the book of Jonah, we saw the remarkable city-wide repentance of Nineveh, which is recounted for us in chapter 3. God's grace was so powerful. Through Jonah and his somber, strict and slender message. God's grace was so powerful so as to turn this city from its evil way. And God in compassion had spared Nineveh with all its inhabitants. including children and cattle, as a remarkable monument of what His grace and His mercy can do. And you'd say to yourself, now isn't that a wonderful ending to this book? A climax. Anything after this would simply go down in terms of the suspense and the wonder, wouldn't it? But friends, man doesn't get to say how God's Word ends. And what God has written, He has written. And I hope you discover with me that the ending of this book is truly astonishing and very relevant for everyone sitting here. You see, all glory goes to God. And if the book had ended at chapter 3, we might have had a higher impression of Jonah than we should have and thought, well, he did really make a turnaround. And even though he seems so somber and strict, the Lord really mightily blessed him. And if only we could have a Jonah, in our day. Well dear friends we have Jonah's today and we'll see what they're like left to themselves. And the Lord is wonderfully not done with Jonah. Let me say that again. The Lord is wonderfully not done with Jonah. In fact Jonah seems to be in chapter 4 where he was in chapter 1, not agreeing with the Lord at all. And especially not with the Lord's mercy, and with His compassion. But as we hope to see this morning with the Lord's help, Jonah will wonderfully lose the fight against mercy. And we all need to lose the fight against mercy. And how that happens, we hope to see with the Lord's help this morning from this chapter. Really the whole chapter is our text, but let me read at this time verse four. Verse four, then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry? Our theme with the Lord's help is the fight against mercy wonderfully lost. And I don't have points really but there are three sections to this chapter and we'll go through those three sections one at a time. They're all steps in this fight that finally Jonah loses against God's mercy. The first step is in verses one through four and in each of these steps the Lord asks a question. And the question in step one is, is verse four, Doest thou well to be angry? The second step is, is verses five through nine. And God's question is, verse nine, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And then the third step is 10 and 11. And the question there is in verse 11. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle? Well, that's our sermon in a nutshell. The fight against mercy wonderfully lost. Our chapter opens up in a rather telling way. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. Children, do you ever get so angry, maybe at your parents or someone else, that you go outside, you find a place all by yourself far away from people, and you sit there to be alone? And maybe you put your head in your fists and you pout. Well, not only children do this. Adults do this. A lot of adults do this. And we have more refined and subtle ways of doing this. But this is human nature when it doesn't get its way. Jonah here is very angry. and the Holy Spirit sheds his spotlight on Jonah and on Jonah's heart and on Jonah's anger and puts it in the right perspective. It says it in the strongest possible way. It says, literally in the Hebrew, it says, and it was evil to Jonah, evil greatly, and his anger was hotly kindled. Jonah's in a rage. And anger can be like that. Anger in our souls is a raging force that if it is not held back can destroy us and destroy others. What you're seeing right now in California with the wildfires is just small compared to what anger can do in the human heart. And no wonder the Bible says Be angry and sin not. In other words, when we're dealing with anger, and there is such a thing as just and holy anger, but in our sinful hearts, so easily, so quickly, we get to a place where we are sinning. Be angry and sin not. And that's why the Bible is very clear. be slow to anger, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. And no wonder the Bible says, let not the sun go down on your wrath. Well children, why is Jonah angry? Has someone hurt him? Has someone done something unjust to Jonah? No, chapter three ends in a marvelous way. And he, that's God, did it not. And you might remember how God who had threatened to punish and destroy Nineveh in light of their repentance, he did it not. He did not overthrow the city. And this displeased Jonah. Jonah was angry at this, that God had had mercy on the Ninevites. Now perhaps that seems awful and silly to you, but let's enter into this just a little bit, because we can look down on Jonah and we can think, oh, I would never do that, but dear friend, I want you and me to see that left to ourselves, we do this and more. But remember that Jonah was from Israel, and Assyria was Israel's enemy. They had already done a lot of harmful things in Israel, and more would follow. Jonah was a prophet of the Lord. He was a true prophet. He spoke the Word of God. He was a converted man. Any doubt of that needs to be removed on the basis of chapter 2. The best of men is a man at best. And Jonah here, we see his heart left to himself. But this is kind of how he would have reasoned. How can I go back to my own country and my own people and tell them that God spared our enemies? Wouldn't it have been far better for me to go back into the cities and villages of Israel and say, you know, I preached against those Ninevites, I told them they were awful people, and they had to repent, and they cast it into the wind, they scoffed at it, and fire came down from heaven and destroyed those people, your enemies, and God might very well do that with you as well, except you repent. You see, there is this There is this patriotism in Jonah. He talks here about my country. Did I not already say back in my country? Dear friends, we need to watch that we don't also in our own way do not put first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, which is a worldwide kingdom. And God's mercy ought to dictate everything that we think about our country and other countries and the world. But you can kind of see how this would work with Jonah. And here he is. Maybe he thought too, you know, these people repenting like this, well, that's gonna pass. That's just external. Well that's not real. You know we often can have that judgmental attitude in our own souls with respect to other people sitting down the pew from us, or across the aisle from us, or in other churches. And we just say well you know the tears that they're crying now they'll pass away. And we judge people's repentance in a way that we think we're God and we're not. And God is jealous of his own honor. the Lord had worked this repentance. And Jonah is very displeased. You know the amazing thing in this chapter is not even so much Jonah's anger. The amazing thing is that God stoops and talks to Jonah, and asks him a question. Jonah, do you do well to be angry? Do you see congregation, the forbearance, the long-suffering, the mercy, the compassion of the Lord with respect to his rebellious and sinful and awful servant? The Lord just comes to him and whispers a question to him. Are you right to be angry? You know, God could have cast Jonah off entirely, immediately, gone forever. This ball of rage against me and against my purposes, gone Jonah. No, he comes, patiently, condescendingly, gently, tenderly, He says, Jonah, are you right? You know, in the New Testament we have the Lord Jesus Christ. And He was angry at certain times. But if you could ask this question of the Lord Jesus, the answer would always be yes. Because there was in the Lord Jesus, the greater than Jonah, there was never a hint of wrong anger. When he made that scourge to cleanse the temple of his God, did he right to be angry? Yes, he did right to be angry. when he was angry with his disciples because they turned away little children that came to him. Did he write to be angry? Yes, he did write to be angry. When outside of Lazarus' tomb he was angry at death and at the unbelief of the people. He did well to be angry with Christ. Anger was always right. always, always, anger was always well. And so it is with the Lord too, congregation, we can't pass over that, that the Bible does tell us that God is angry with the wicked every day. And His anger is right, even though He holds back in His long-suffering. He holds back. His anger against the wicked is right. And He's angry with people who flaunt His laws, who take His commandments and go their own way. He's angry, and He's right to be angry with that. And He's angry when widows and orphans are oppressed, and when the poor are oppressed. He's angry, He says in His Word, and He does well, He does right to be angry at that. He is angry. When even one of his people causes a little one to stumble, he is rightly and justly angry. Oh, when we look at ourselves in light of this, and when the spotlight of God's Spirit comes on our own heart, what kind of anger lives in you? lives in me. Let's review this past week, the times that you were angry inside, at others, at God, at Providence, at God's way for you. Did you do well? Were you like Christ? Were you like God Himself? That's what God is asking of each and every one of us today through His Word. Do you do well to be angry? Do you do well to be angry at me, my purposes, and especially at my mercy? It's a remarkable thing that Jonah doesn't answer the Lord. the Lord asked the question in four, and so Jonah went out, and he built this booth. Now there's various ways to read this, but most commentators think that Jonah is so angry that he can't and won't speak. It's as if God stoops to him to ask him a question, but he won't stoop to even reply back at God. And that's how we can be. can we? So hard, such a shell, such a wall around us. You know we do this sometimes with each other. I hope we don't, but we do, don't we? We give each other the silent treatment, where we want the other person to suffer. But just, but just being quiet. Maybe Jonah was doing that. We don't know. But the Lord goes to a second step, and that's what we want to see here. The Lord is so long-suffering, so merciful, that He now does something very interesting. This is verses 5 through 9. You may want to keep your Bibles open. This is step 2 in the fight. The text here uses the word prepared. three times, once in verse six, once in verse seven, and once in verse eight. God prepared a gourd. God prepared a worm. God prepared a vehement east wind. Now children in school, maybe now that you're back in school or however you receive your education, Sometimes your teacher will give you object lessons, right? So there's all kinds of things, and good teachers do this all the time, in science and history, and they'll bring something in. Maybe to teach gravity, for example, your teacher can take in something heavy, like a metal ball or something like that, and then something fairly light, like a stuffed animal or something like that, and holds it up, high and lets it go. And you see the metal ball go down and hit the ground faster than the stuffed animal. And it teaches us something about gravity. Those are object lessons. Now that's what the Lord is doing here. He's teaching Jonah what he needs to learn through nature. through these different objects that we'll look at one at a time. By the way, Spurgeon has a wonderful sermon called Jonah's Object Lessons. You might want to see that later. Jonah's Object Lessons. And the first lesson is this gourd, which is some kind of very leafy plant. There's all kinds of speculations what kind of plant this is. It is a very leafy plant that can grow up in a day. And Jonah has made for himself a little shelter here on some hill outside the city, a booth it's called here, probably out of sticks or some other things just to protect himself a little bit from the sun. But right around that grows up this enormous plant. It comes up, and there it is in a very short span, and it provides a wonderful shade for Jonah. And Jonah is very happy. It says in our text in verse 6 that he was exceedingly glad. He's genuinely, wonderfully happy at this. By the way, doesn't Jonah seem to be a person of extremes, just he's exceedingly displeased, and he's exceedingly happy. And isn't that our character? Often we too, we head this way, very far, and then we head this way, very far. At any rate, Jonah is exceedingly pleased about this providence of God. He may even have seen us as God's smile on him. I mean he was a believing man. And don't we do this? Don't we? Day by day we look at what happens to us and we see providence as either God's smile or God's frown. That's a lot of times how we talk. We even say it to each other. You know, such a providence happened to me today. And then we tell something wonderful that God did for us. Well, providence is happening every moment of every day, whether it seems good or it doesn't seem good, but that's how we think. And Jonah may well have thought, you know, despite everything, despite my attitude, despite the Lord's question, for me just a moment again, providence is smiling on me. But the lesson is not done, because there's a second object lesson. And God prepares, God sends a worm. that eats the gourd at its root. So as quickly as it had risen up, so quickly, it's destroyed, it shrivels up. Jonah looks and there it is, shriveling up in the desert sun. And things are worse for him and his experience than they were before. You know how it is if you've endured a very hot day and then you get an air conditioner. You have some cool for a while and then the air conditioner goes very shortly afterwards Then it's like the heat that was the same as before, it feels even worse. And inside his heart Jonah is just fiercely, fiercely upset. And so this is what Jonah would have called, and we call it this way too, a frowning providence, right? A smiling providence, a frowning providence. And he senses just this awful Just frown on him. And he himself, within himself, he's raging. And then there comes this third object lesson. God prepared an east wind. And you need to know in the Middle East, especially around this area, an east wind is a desert wind. And even if you're in the desert, if you get a hot wind, if you get a wind from the east, it's going to be even hotter. It may have been even a sandstorm kind of thing as you get over there where you can hardly even see and sand is everywhere. Anyhow, it's a terrible, terrible, grievous affliction. You see, God is working upon Jonah every step of the way in the smiling providences, in the frowning providences, in the east wind providences. Spurgeon says that these east wind providences are like trials to the max. where yes, you might be able to handle the desert sun. It's hard, but you can, but throw in the east wind and you are brought beyond your limits. It's horrible. Spurgeon writes, his trials were like the tossing of the troubled sea whose waters cast up mire and dirt. This vehement east wind threw up great masses of black seed weed upon the shore of Jonah's character and made the great sea of his heart roll up the foul mass of corruption that else might have been hidden and still. Dear friends, the east wind in our lives can show up so much iniquity, sin, rage, Until a man or a woman is tested at this level, he or she does not really know what they are capable of left to themselves. My friend, have you learned this lesson in a measure? And it's after these object lessons that the Lord comes and asks his second question just as gently, just as tenderly, but in a focused way now. He says, Jonah, doest thou well to be angry about the gourd? Are you right, Jonah, to be angry about my providence, both the seeming good and the seeming bad? He focuses Jonah's anger here in a way in which Jonah, if he was in his right place, if he was in his right mind, he'd say, Lord, I can't be angry about anything. that thou are doing. Thy ways are just, even though I don't understand it. Thy ways are in the sea, and thy footsteps are not known. But thou dost lead thy people as a flock Lord, give me patience. Give me endurance. Give me understanding. Give me the grace that I need. Give me humility of heart. And banish this rage out of my soul against Thee and against other people. That should have been his response. And instead, when the Lord comes and asks him probingly and searchingly and says, Jonah, doest thou well to be angry? Jonah digs in his heels. I do well to be angry. even unto death. In other words Jonah is saying I'd rather be dead than alive. I'd rather be on the other side of eternity than in this condition, under thy hand of providence, whatever it brings my way. Maybe someone feels that. Maybe someone has said it this week. I'd rather be dead than alive. My friend, if that's you, I don't look down on you because I've been there. And many of God's people have been there. Elijah was in the wilderness after an amazing display of God's power. And he said, take away my life. But my friend, that's not the way. That's not the way to go. And God is speaking to you this morning, whoever you are. And He has something to say to you. My friend, to live apart from God is death. It is good God's face to seek. Dear friends, before we leave this second point, how we all need faith. Because there's no way to go through providence, through all that God's providence unfolds for us, apart from faith. There's no way you and I can handle the various frowning, smiling, east wind providences that come our way without faith which stabilizes our soul. Faith helps believers to be thankful in prosperity, patient in adversity, and in all things that befall us. We place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from His love, since all creatures and that includes gourds and worms and winds, are so in his hand that without his will they cannot so much as move. My friend, you need faith. You need faith of the operation of God that will stabilize you. Oh, believers are still, they're so prone to go up and down, but God stabilize me, secure me, help me, set my feet upon the rock so that even when there is nothing, no fruit on the vine, and the barns are completely empty. And it seems like providence is completely against me. And I would say with David, all these things are against me, or Jacob. But nevertheless, I would rejoice in the Lord. I will sing to the God of my life. How we need faith. Pray for faith. Pray for an increase in faith, like the disciples did. Lord increase my faith. Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief, which torments me and rages within me. But secondly, we need to learn this. And Sinclair Ferguson points this out He says, God uses providence in our life not just for consolation, but for illumination. A lot of times believers, they think and they want, and this is understandable, they want God's providence to console them and to comfort them. They want that smile of God in providence all the time. We need to learn to live from the smile of God and His Word and from the cross of Calvary. But we look to providence, don't we, for that smile. But providence is not ultimately about your comfort, no. It's about God showing you who you are and leading you. That in His light you would see light. And if God sends a worm to eat up some creature comforts, as we call them, some things that make our life comfortable, and he eats away at them, it's in order that we would look more to him and cry more to him, and that he would be our refuge and our strength and our ever-present help in trouble. Then our gourd might be gone and our shelter might be taken down, but God will never leave his people. no matter what. He is my strong tower, and my defense against the enemy. Ferguson helpfully gives this example of a stress test. So when you go to the doctor for a stress test, you know you go there hoping for a good result. You're going there hoping that all is well. And the doctor at some level wants that too. But the stress test is not for your comfort. In fact, the more you're on this machine and going through this, the harder it is. It's pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, in order to reveal what your heart is really like, what your heart really needs. And that's why illumination, Ferguson said, is so much more important than consolation. And that's what God is doing in your life. Think about it this week. What God brings your way is to test you, to shed light on your soul and on your heart, and to lead you. And that's why the psalmist says, search me, oh God. It's a dangerous prayer. But search me, oh God, and know my heart. And if there's an evil way, and there is, lead me in the way everlasting, and that's good. That is so very good. As we wish to see in our third and final point, the third step. The third step in this wonderful fight that Jonah loses. So the third question is here in verse 11. And should not I spare Nineveh? That great city. Should I not do it? Should I not have mercy upon whom I will have mercy? And should not I display my compassion to the farthest reaches of this world? You know, congregation, it's sometimes easier to experience something than to understand it. A child can experience his mother's compassion and yet not understand it. And Jonah here had experienced God's mercy. We know that from chapter 2. But he didn't understand it. And it hadn't gone through him in a way and to a degree that it came gushing forth out of him to others. And that's what the Lord designs for His mercy to do in our life. If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. and whosoever believes on me, in him, in the center of his being, there shall be a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life. You see, congregation, so often we think that God, he can have mercy on me, and it stops there. And when Jonah was in that place, it wasn't good because then there was rage and anger and all this stuff that displeased the Lord. The Lord wants to make us truly a channel of His grace and of His mercy to others. And we block it out, block it up. We just pile on the sandbags, if you will. And the Lord has to come and make us to lose that fight. And one by one, take away all those obstacles, all those sandbags that dam up His mercy in us and in our souls. And that's why the Lord has another lesson from this gourd. He refers back to this gourd in verse 10. Look with me. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh? In other words, The Lord is saying here, Jonah, you loved that gourd. You were caught up with that gourd. Your soul was, as it were, wrapped around that gourd. Don't you remember, you were exceedingly happy about that gourd. And you didn't work for it. You didn't care for it. You didn't do a thing for that, but you enjoyed it. you loved it and when it was gone you missed it and if you Jonah can have such feelings for a soulless plant You show that much pity and compassion and preoccupation and love for something that you didn't do a thing for and that's there one day and gone the next. Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city? And he doesn't say it, but you could say, that I planted, and that I watered, and that I labored over, and that I sent you to, and I labored over with my word, and with repentance, and with my grace. I labored over, and there are more than 120,000 persons who can't even discern their right hand from their left hand. They're so ignorant. Usually this is seen as a reference to children, but basically the Lord is saying, they're ignorant. They don't know. They don't know that eternity is waiting for them over here. And they're living their lives. And I'm laboring with my word and with my grace. I'm so preoccupied with them. And I have delight in their repentance. And all that you can delight is in this gourd that you did nothing for. Jonah, I've labored on these people. I've spent labor upon them. And should not I have mercy upon them? You see how the Lord takes this parable of the gourd, this object lesson, even further in his life. It's not just a lesson about providence. It's a lesson about God's heart. You see, the chapter began with a look in Jonah's heart, in your and my heart. And it's not good. But the chapter ends with a look in God's heart. A heart that is unfathomably deep in terms of love for sinners. And this congregation, this makes Jonah lose the battle. How do we know? It doesn't say it. But it does say it. Because who wrote this book? Nobody could have written this book that had all the thoughts of Jonah in it, except for Jonah himself. And Jonah writes down all his sin and all his folly. He writes it all out in bold for you and me to see, and perhaps to look down on. Perhaps you look down on Jonah. Jonah, as it were, says, I don't care. That's who I was. And that's the truth. But when I confessed transgression, then thou forgavest me. Friends, it's about becoming honest under the power and grace of God. That's His labor upon your souls. Hasn't He labored upon your soul? Can you deny that He's done that? With His word, He's come. How many men have not labored with your souls? How many people have not been led to pray over your souls? Especially the Lord labors. He labored ultimately in sending the Son of His love, the greater than Jonah from his heart, from his bosom. The son was in the bosom of the father, and he said, go, show those Ninevites the world over what lives in my heart. A heart of compassion, and of love, long suffering, kindness, slow to anger. and plenteous in mercy. And show it on the cross of Calvary, where there is no gourd to cover his head. There's the blasting of the east wind like never ever did this world see. The wrath of God against the sins of all mankind, the Catechism says. It came upon him. God made him to be sin for Jonahs and for Ninevites, for raging men and women who left to themselves would go to hell. And he took it. Congregation, he took the east wind He took the wrath of God, and he says, should I not have mercy? Should I not have mercy? Who here is in a fight against mercy? At some level, I think we all are. Unbelievers, you're fighting against God's mercy. You won't be reconciled by mercy. Maybe you want to do it yourself. Maybe you want to keep the law. Oh my friend, don't. Don't, don't, don't. Hell waits on the other side of that. God displayed His mercy and His love. And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. Oh my friend, don't you see it? Don't you see really how Jonah climaxes in chapter 4? Not even with the repentance of Nineveh, as beautiful as it is, but with the heart of God, so full of mercy, and compassion, and love. Is there a greater climax? That's the cross. That's what the cross of Calvary is all about. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing iniquity unto them. My friend, how long are you going to fight against this mercy? How long are you going to go on warring against God. A God who is full of compassion, who takes sinners back, who labors on them when they won't labor themselves. And His heart is full of everything that you need. Oh my friend, don't be like that prodigal in this sense, that when he came to the end of his resources, he went a step further. He went to the pigsty and tried to scrape something together. And all the while his father was waiting and looking. And the minute he said, I will go, the father ran. with mercy and with love that was in his heart from the never begun eternity. He went running all the way to meet his son. And he wrapped his arms on him. And he loved on him. And it says there he had compassion upon this wayward son. Oh my friends this is it. This is it. This is the love of God for sinners. There's no other message in the Bible for sinners who fight mercy than this. It isn't do a bit more of that or be convinced a bit more of this. No, my friends, should not I have mercy? And my friends, shouldn't the world know about this? Should it stop with us? to stop with you. Should you receive this mercy and then a dam, and no one else? No, should not I spare Nineveh, that great city in which there's people who don't know the first thing about me, or about themselves. They don't know their left hand from their right. They need mercy. And I just ask this, because God asks this of me. Do you and I stay under our gourds, and in that comfortable shelter, caring more for the gourds of our life, than for the souls of men and of women who are perishing? And isn't God taking away some of those comforts, In order that the mercy of God would not just come to us, but through us to a perishing world. I don't need to convince you that the world is perishing. It is. And do we stay under our gourds? My last words this morning are for those of you who are still fighting, still angry, still raging. My friend, whatever your shelter is, whatever you made to be your shelter, it's not going to last. It can't last. The worm is already on its way. The east wind is already starting to blow. My friend, lose the fight to mercy. lose it wonderfully, God's way. As we cast a glance back, the Lord just asked questions. He came to Jonah with three questions and nothing more. Do you see how the foolishness of God, quote unquote, is wiser than the wisdom of man? You think you're so smart. You think you know so much. And God comes and says, do you do well to be angry? Do you do well to be angry about this gourd? And should not I have mercy? Yes, Lord. Thou should have mercy. Have mercy. And let that be the last word. You see, this book ends with a question. not just for Jonah, but for you. Answer it then. Should he not have mercy? Should he not have mercy on a sinner like you, who have often strayed and gone against him, rebelled against him, been angry against him? Should he not have mercy? I will have mercy. I will have mercy. I will have mercy. Amen.