The Reasoning God

Jonah 4:7-11 ESV

7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, 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 is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 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. 11 And should not I 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 much cattle?”

This morning we come to the end of our series of messages from the fourth chapter of the book of Jonah, and as we end our series this morning, I would like for us to highlight the topic of love. But not just any love, the love that God has for me, for you, for everything that He has created.

Now, last week we started our sermon by contemplating on the fact that God’s ways are greater than our ways, that His thoughts are greater than our thoughts, and this topic of love, specifically the love of God is a topic that so far transcends anything that we could ever adequately describe or understand that I don’t think we will ever fully understand or fathom it, not even when we are in His full, perfectly loving presence for all eternity.

But though that is the case, with the Lord’s assistance, I am going to, in a very imperfect way, attempt to describe to you the love of God as it is spelled out for us here in our reading for this morning.

As we have been studying the narrative found for us in the 4th chapter of the book of Jonah, we have seen an unwilling, stubborn, near blaspheming prophet, and a sovereign, very persistent God.

God had called Jonah to preach repentance to the extremely wicked people of the wicked city of Nineveh, which Jonah, with God’s persistent determination, finally did. The result of this preaching was that the incredibly wicked Ninevites recognized their sinful ways and repented of their great evil, turning to the Lord in the process.

Now, this repentance of the Ninevites greatly displeased Jonah, and Jonah accused God of being unjust, unfair, and evil for sparing the city from destruction.

And what was God’s response to Jonah’s accusations? Miraculously providing Jonah with a plant to give him shade and take away his great discomfort… This taught Jonah that God lovingly gives blessings to those who don’t deserve them, and all for His own glory.

But in our reading for today, we see God displaying His love to a much greater extent as He takes away the blessing of comfort that He had given to Jonah.

We see this in verse 7 of our reading where it says:

Jonah 4:7 ESV

7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered.

Now, as was said, God gave this plant to Jonah so that he could receive comfort from the sweltering Middle Eastern sun. It was a plant that miraculously grew overnight from a sprout into a large plant that provided comforting shade for Jonah.

Now, we noted the language used in our reading for last week, where it was written that God appointed this plant to grow. It was God’s will and His good pleasure to cause this plant to grow, and being sovereign, He could do just that, and so, that’s what He did.

But now, in this verse, we see that phrase, “God appointed” once again. But this time it says that God appointed a worm. In other words, just as God moved the great fish to swim to Jonah while he sank to the bottom of the ocean and swallow him up, so does God now move this worm to go to this plant that He had caused to grow to give Jonah comfort.

And for what purpose does God appoint this worm to go to the plant? To attack it, so that it would wither and die…

God had given Jonah the plant so that it may provide him with comfort for a time period in which He had already determined, and once that time period that God had set was over, He took the plant away and killed it... The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and His reasons for doing so are always most wise and holy.

But that wasn’t all, the Lord wasn’t done yet, for after God appointed the worm to attack the plant so that the sheltering plant would die, He appointed something else.

We read of this appointing in the first part of verse 8, where it says:

Jonah 4:8a ESV

8a When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.

So, one day Jonah enjoys the comfort of the sheltering plant that God had graciously given to him for his own comfort, but the next day he awakens, and the plant is gone, God had removed it.

And then the sun rose, the heat of the day came, and when the heat of the day came, it is written that God appointed, He caused a scorching east wind to blow across the desert and as this scorching wind came, the sun was beating down on Jonah’s head.

Imagine this, Jonah has this temporary shelter that he had made, but now the plant that God had given him is gone. So, with this plant no longer there to give Jonah comfort and shade and with a scorching Middle Eastern wind sweeping across the desert with the sun beating down on Jonah’s head, the shelter that Jonah had made to protect himself from the sun was literally being turned into an oven with Jonah being cooked inside.

And the discomfort grew so great that Jonah’s discomfort was now turning into disaster as he begins to faint.

Why would God do this to Jonah? I believe He done it so that Jonah would see what disaster was really like and thus repent for wishing disaster to come upon the city of Nineveh.

But unfortunately, Jonah’s response to all of this was not repentance. Rather, we read of his response in the last half of verse 8, where it says:

Jonah 4:8b ESV

8b And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

God showed Jonah what disaster was really like as he baked in his temporary shelter turned oven so that he would repent of desiring the people of Nineveh to have a much worse disaster brought upon them.

But instead of doing that, Jonah was madder than ever before! He essentially said, “God, You need to take this disaster away! I may have sinned against You, but You should be gracious and forgive me instead of making me go through this!” he says, “I would rather die than keep going through this, now You recognize that and give me comfort again!”

Basically, what Jonah was saying was that his own evil should graciously be forgiven by God, but others whom Jonah deems not as acceptable as he, they should not be forgiven under any circumstances and if God does forgive them, then He is just as wrong as those He forgives.

Jonah says, “Come on God! Get with it! Learn to do Your job the way it’s supposed to be done!”

So, after hearing yet another complaint from Jonah, God responds with a question, which we find in the first part of verse 9, where we read:

Jonah 4:9a ESV

9a But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?”

God flat out asks Jonah if his anger towards Him due to the death of a plant which provided him with shade and comfort was a righteous, justifiable anger? If it is really something worth getting so worked up over?

Well, let’s see how Jonah responds in the second half of verse 9, where we read:

Jonah 4:9b ESV

And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”

Jonah tells God, “Yes, Lord! I most certainly am justified in my anger! You are wrong for not forgiving me! And I would rather die than continue to live in a world ran by a God Who refuses to give me comfort when I want it!”

Well, the Lord’s response to that was a major reality check to Jonah that we would hope would surely put him in his place and showed him just how wrong he was here.

The response is twofold showing both the wickedness of Jonah and the love of God.

First, we read of the first half of God’s response in verse 10, where it says:

Jonah 4:10 ESV

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.

Jonah is so overly concerned about a mere plant. A plant that he did not plant in the ground or cause to grow at all. Instead, it was sovereignly placed there by God and so of course, it was God Who caused this plant to grow.

One night, God caused the plant to miraculously sprout up and grow and thus when Jonah awoke the next morning, there was the plant, providing him with shade and comfort. But then the very next night, God caused the plant to wither and die, so when Jonah awoke the very next morning, the plant was gone, and so was his shade and comfort.

But Jonah had nothing to do with producing this plant and causing it to grow, God Himself graciously provided it, and it was here for such a short time that it was almost as though it never even existed.

And it is for this plant that Jonah had nothing to do with creating or causing to grow that was here for such a short amount of time that he is so angry about.

That is the wickedness of Jonah here; he didn’t plant the plant, he didn’t make it grow, and right after it was here, it was gone, yet he says to God, “Give me the plant! It’s not fair for You to do this to me or to the plant!”

So, we see the wickedness of Jonah in this response by God, but we also see the love of God in His response to Jonah in verse 11, where we read:

Jonah 4:11 ESV

11 And should not I 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 much cattle?”

Jonah pities an insignificant plant that he neither planted nor caused to grow, yet, according to him, God should not pity people made in His very own image. And many people at that, over 120,000 people! People who did not realize what great darkness they walked in until God spoke to them through the preaching of Jonah. And not only the people, but even in the livestock whom God created.

Surely these people and these animals are worth more than the insignificant plant that God had graciously given to Jonah. And thus, God asks Jonah, “Don’t you agree? Aren’t these things more valuable than the plant that you are so angry about?”

And thus, the book of Jonah ends with that question unanswered, as it leaves us to answer that question for ourselves.

We so often get so worked up about our own comforts and concerns that mainly affect our own state and our own well-being. And if we aren’t comfortable with whatever God, in His wise and holy providence has decided to give us, we start to get kind of testy with the Lord. We say, “Well surely it is God’s will to comfort me! To heal me! To give me the things that I like! So why am I getting this instead?!”

I’ll be the first one to admit that I can be that way quite often. But then God comes to me, and He says, “What is more important? Your comfort that I graciously give to you even though you don’t deserve it? Or obedience to Me and My commands and submission to Me regardless of whether I bring you comfort or not?”

I find that for so many of us, so often, we equate obedience to God’s commands and submission to Him as a pathway to receiving blessings. Instead of viewing obedience and submission to God as something to be done simply becauseit is God Who commands the obedience and submission from us.

Don’t get me wrong, blessings quite often follow obedience, but even the blessings are gracious and undeserved. It’s not as though God says, “Ok, you’ve worked really hard, you deserve this blessing!” as Jesus says, we are unprofitable servants, those who add nothing to God through our service to Him and any service that we do is service that we should be doing anyway.

Beloved, may we not reason like Jonah reasoned and claim that God is scandalous for taking away our own figurative plants that He graciously provides for us. May we always put into proper perspective our obedience to God and reason that God is holy, and God is worthy of our service, of our obedience, of our submission regardless of the results that He wisely brings from our submission to Him.

Amen?