The Providing God

Jonah 4:5-6 ESV

5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

The Scriptures tell us that God’s ways are higher than our ways, that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. And because this is the case, that means that while we as people will do things for various reasons, and quite often for not so good reasons, everything that God does is done for an incredibly good purpose that originates from Him.

And because God’s ways are higher than our ways, because His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, that also means that so very often, what God does is above our pay grade. What I mean by that is that often what God does is so high, so holy that we as finite people just can’t understand why He does what He does and how He does what He does.

God’s purposes are higher than what we understand, He works in the hearts and in the lives of every person, every being simultaneously in order to bring about exactly what He wants to bring about, and what He brings about is always just, is always holy, and most of all, is always good… even when don’t really see how it is good.

In fact, so very often God works in ways that we deem as strange, as unnecessary, maybe even counterproductive as He doles out blessings to us and to others, blessings that we recognize that we and others don’t deserve.

So, how does God doling out blessings to we who don’t deserve blessings possibly accomplish His own holy purposes? That is something that we won’t ever fully understand, but it is certainly something that should invoke thanksgiving from us and to Him, the Giver of every good gift.

And today, as I deliver to you our Thanksgiving sermon, I want us to ponder on all of the undeserved blessings that God graciously gives to us and then offer Him that praise, that thanksgiving that He most certainly deserves.

In our reading for today we certainly see an example of God doling out a blessing that I think we all can confidently say that the one who received this blessing most certainly did not deserve it.

As we have been working through this series of messages from the 4th chapter of the book of Jonah, the two primary features from this chapter that we have discussed are the sovereignty of God and Jonah the prophet complaining that God does what He does, that He is Who He is, and that He runs His creation the way that He runs it.

God had commanded Jonah to prophesy to the wicked people of the wicked city of Nineveh which at first, Jonah attempted to run from. But through a great fish, God ensured that Jonah went where He wanted him to go and that he done what He wanted him to do.

Jonah preached repentance to the wicked people of Nineveh and repentance is exactly what happened as the entire city humbly recognized their wrongdoing and turned to the Lord for deliverance.

At this, Jonah was very angry, he said that the people of Nineveh deserved destruction and now that they have turned to the Lord, it may very well be that God does not destroy Nineveh after all.

Jonah shared some unkind words with the Lord concerning everything that had happened in Nineveh since he arrived, saying that he would rather die than see God mercifully spare the people of Nineveh to which God replied that Jonah may have been angry, but his anger was not justified because everything is God’s and God can do whatever He pleases with what is His.

And thus, we arrive at our reading for today.

We see first the reaction that Jonah has to the words of the Lord concerning Him doing what He wills with what is His, in verse 5 of our reading, when we read:

Jonah 4:5 ESV

5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city.

It is written here that at this point, Jonah leavesthe city. So, this tells us that Jonah’s complaint against God found in verses 1-3 of this chapter took place within the city where there was great revival breaking out as the wicked Ninevites turned to the Lord.

Imagine that! Jonah, who is a prophet of God is furious that these people whom he had preached repentance to are now repenting and flocking to God, and as he sees this with his own eyes, rather than saying, “Great, mighty is the mercy and grace of my God!” he says, “This all makes me sick! And God is unjust for doing it!”.

So, now rather than returning home to Israel, Jonah leaves the city and sits to the east of it. And as he stubbornly sits there, his hopes are that God would still destroy the city rather than spare it.

Now, this is a potentially dangerous situation as the heat in the Middle East can be legitimately life-threatening if you don’t take the proper precautions. And because of this, Jonah makes a temporary shelter in order to keep him safe from the beating sun.

But as I said at the beginning of this message, it was God’s will here to show undeserved grace to Jonah even though it is he who has been rebellious and angry lately.

And we see God providing Jonah with this grace in the first part of verse 6 of our reading, where we see:

Jonah 4:6a ESV

6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort.

This verse begins by saying, “The Lord God appointed…” this is the second time in the book of Jonah that it is said that God appointed something to do something.

The first time that we read of this is in the last verse of the first chapter of this book when it is written that God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. In other words, God influenced this great fish and directed it to go to where Jonah was so that it would swallow him up.

So, although it was the will of the great fish to swallow Jonah, God directed it there so that when it saw Jonah, it would do what great fish do, swallow things. And so, it can be said that God appointed the great fish to go where it went and to do what it did.

Well, here we see something even more striking when it is written that God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head.

So, God ordained it to be that a plant would grow in the exact location that Jonah was resting at, outside of the city.

But what is most remarkable here is that God caused this plant to miraculously grow from being a tiny sprout to being so big that it could provide Jonah with additional shade in a single day.

And why did God do this? Look again to our reading, to save Jonah from his discomfort.

Now, when we take all of this in, we see that complaining, angry, rebellious Jonah does not end up being the object of God’s displeasure, no, he becomes the object of God’s grace.

You see, this is what the true definition of grace is. Grace means that I have done nothing whatsoever to earn God’s favor, in fact, what I have done is everything to provoke His wrath against me, yet He not only foregoes His wrath which I justifiably deserve, He also gives me blessings which I most certainly do not deserve.

You see, every person in the world, whether saved or unsaved has and continues to experience a certain measure of God’s grace.

Everyone in the world experiences His grace in that He causes the sun rise on the just and the unjust, that He sends rains to fall on the crops of the righteous farmer and the unrighteous farmer, His grace even includes the fact that we have breath to breathe and the lungs to breathe it, because we don’t even deserve that.

Jonah complained against God, he questioned God, he even proclaimed God to be unjust, unfair, and evil, and God responds by giving Jonah a plant in order to be saved from being uncomfortable… that, my friends, is grace!

And in the last part of verse 6 of our reading, we see the response of Jonah to this gracious provision of God, where we read:

Jonah 4:6b ESV

6b So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

While Jonah had been exceedingly displeased and angry at God’s determination to be gracious towards the Ninevites, we see here that he is exceedingly glad because of the plant that God had provided for him.

Jonah was glad so long as the gracious blessing of God was for him. But not when the blessing is for one that he deems is unworthy.

And think of it, Jonah is exceedingly glad for the blessing of a plant to give him added shade, but he is displeased at God relenting from His wrath and fury to a huge city full of people. Jonah says, “Give me shade so that I can be comfortable, but don’t show mercy to a great number of people”… how deep is the depravity found within the heart of man!

So, there is certainly quite a bit that Jonah has done wrong throughout the book that bears his name, but here at the end of our reading we do see one good thing concerning Jonah and that is that he was glad, he was thankful for the plant that God graciously provided for him.

He recognized that the plant was from God and the plant gave him comfort, so he thanked God for the plant and for the comfort that he received.

And all of us, my friends, have that God-given plant sporadically provided for us as we make our own pilgrimage through this world. Sometimes it may come in the form of a stress reliever of some sorts, some unexpected money that comes in, maybe we get some good news from the doctor, we happen to wake up in the morning and our bodies aren’t hurting as bad as they normally are, or many other ways.

And if we look hard enough within ourselves and are absolutely honest about it, we know that we don’t deserve any of these blessings, they are absolutely free, given by God to us who not only did not earn them, but who do not deserve them.

But those figurative plants that God graciously provides for us not only come in the form of the blessings that I just mentioned, as I said, everything that we have is a gift from God, even the small things that we take for granted, things like waking up in the morning, safely driving from point A to point B, having a hot meal to eat and a cool drink to drink. These are all gracious, unmerited gifts from God.

And beloved, as we take in everything that God has provided for us up until now and everything that God will provide for us in the future, let us thank Him and praise Him for it.

This Thanksgiving season, may we look at every last one of our blessings, recognize that they come from the Giver of every good gift, and may we humbly thank Him for these gifts from the bottom of our hearts.

Amen?