Pouting Prophet

Introduction

Have you ever had a bad day? I know that this is kind of a rhetorical question since we all know that life on planet earth is filled with its good and bad days. But what makes a day a bad day? I think simply this…we all have our ideas how we want to feel or what we want to accomplish, or how we want to look and approach each day with a list of things that will bring that to fruition. When it happens, it’s a good day, when it doesn’t, well the day is bad. But if that is what makes a good or bad day, it seems to be centered around one main object…me! In other words, it’s all about my comfort, my looks, or my accomplishments.

Well, in our current series, Jonah, a treatise on the Sovereignty of God, we’ve seen God’s sovereign hand at work in the life of the prophet Jonah in several ways, such as, three weeks ago we saw how Jonah, the Prodigal Prophet, attempted to run from God, and God of course, stopped him in his tracks and placed him for safe keeping in the belly of a great fish. Then two weeks ago we found Jonah, the Praying Prophet, communing with God from that same great fish, coming to realize that God is not only the God who saves, but that salvation belongs exclusively to Him.

Then last week, we saw Jonah as he finally obeys God’s command and becomes the Preaching Prophet, experience one of greatest revivals in history as the Ninevites repented of their sins and believed God, incurring God’s mercy upon them instead of His judgment. You would have thought that Jonah would be on a spiritual high, but instead we see Jonah having a very bad day, so bad that he asks God to take his life. But why? We will attempt to answer this question, and since Jonah is so much like us, we should benefit from what the Lord shows us in Jonah 4, as we look carefully at Jonah, the Pouting Prophet.

Text: Jonah 4

Main Idea: Because all that God does is always perfect and good, we must as His people view our life experiences from His perspective of good.

So in other words, we should view each day as a good day because God has ordained it so.

We can only understand this when we realize that God goodness is directly related to His glory.

Isaiah 42:5–8 ESV

5 Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

In the context of this passage we see that God gets exclusive glory, how?; by doing good in a way that no one else can do; making and carrying out a covenant with a people (nations) that He chose to save and bring to maturity, so that they may shine like lights in the darkness. We saw this last week when we looked at repentance...

Romans 2:4 ESV

4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

The scriptures reveals this salvation as a process; what God has done for His people in the past, which we call Justification (we have been saved), what He is doing in the present, in our Sanctification (we are being saved), are being conformed or made like Christ, and the final completion of our salvation in the future, called Glorification (we will be saved), when He takes us to glory, or heaven, away from the presence of sin.

Romans 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 6:22 ESV

22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

Romans 8:30 ESV

30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

When we view all of our lives from the perspective of where we are in God’s salvation plan, it allows us to rest in His good plan, and cause us to realize that...

1. God’s Goodness Cannot Be Measured By Human Standards (1-5)

We are a people that like to measure things.

We judge one another, our government, our jobs, etc. on how they or it measures up.

So where do we get these measurements? They come from our life experiences and the logic that those experiences bring. So in other words...

a) Human standards elevate human logic (1-3)

We’ve determined that our human logic sets the standard by which we determine everything, and in the context of this morning, what is good.

(v. 1)Jonah was displeased exceedingly - The Hebrew is particularly vivid (lit. “it was evil to Jonah as a great wrong”). Jonah’s emotion is expressed in the strongest language possible: his greatest fear was that the Lord would bestow forgiveness on Israel’s most hated enemy.

(v. 2) That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish - Now the truth is revealed for Jonah’s flight from God.

(v. 2) for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster - Jonah is literally accusing God of being God!

Here Jonah echoes a liturgical formula describing God’s mercy to an undeserving Israel...

Exodus 34:6 ESV

6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,

Jonah in essence is saying, “God, it’s not time to be merciful, it’s time to be judgmental!”

Habakkuk uses a similar argument against God when God revealed that He was going to judge His people Israel with the evil, ruthless Babylonians…

Habakkuk 1:12–13 ESV

12 Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. 13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

(v. 3) O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live - In other words, I can’t take it any more, you did not live up to my standards so I am out of here!

Since human standards elevate human logic, it is also true that...

b) Human standards are devoid of Spiritual logic (4-5)

(v. 4) Do you do well to be angry? - Notice that Yahweh is speaking and saying In other words, “Jonah, are you thinking correctly in your anger?”, or, “ Are you thinking like I am thinking ?”

Jonah’s problem as well as ours is that he/we do not look at life from any higher then are little claustrophobic world, and do not desire to think from God’s perspective. However, Isaiah reminds us...

Isaiah 55:8–9 ESV

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

(v. 5) He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city - Jonah was still hoping against hope that God would still judge his enemies, and wanted to watch first hand. There is a sense in the wording of this text, that Jonah felt he had a right to God that no one else did and he wanted God to prove him right.

Ok, we cannot measure God’s goodness by human standards, so how are we to know God’s goodness when it is difficult to understand God’s thoughts? Simply this...

2. God’s Goodness is a Result of God’s Character (6-11)

Note here that God teaches Jonah and us a valuable lesson with regard to His thinking by using a real time and space object lesson, created by 3 appointments...

a) God’s character creates joy and happiness (6)

First appointment: (v. 6a) the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah - Note again that God’s sovereign appointments are a part of God’s character and bring joy and happiness to comfort us

(v. 6b) Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant - as in v. 1, Jonah’s emotion is expressed in the strongest language possible, however this time it was related to being glad since God was providing something that benefitted him greatly in a personal way.

Finally, things were turning around for Jonah, starting to go his way and provide him comfort, however, he was about to also learn that...

b) God’s character creates trials and sorrow (7-8)

Two more appointments: (v. 7) God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered & (v. 8) God appointed a scorching east wind - The same God who appointed the plant to give Jonah shade (v. 6), is the one who appointed a worm to attack the plant and cause it to wither, and appointed a scorching east wind to make Jonah faint.

So how are we to deal with this? Has God’s goodness changed? Does he no longer care about Jonah and his comfort? James explains to us how this works...

James 1:2–4 ESV

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

God brings trials and pain for our growth because He is good and knows that we can only mature when our faith is tested. In fact, discipline is a sign that we are His and He loves us...

Proverbs 3:11–12 ESV

11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, 12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

Ultimately, as we mentioned in the beginning, God’s glory is seen must brilliantly as we see that...

c) God’s character brings salvation (9-11)

This is the lesson that God was trying to teach Jonah, and the one to which we must pay close attention.

(v. 9) Again God asks Jonah similarly as He did in verse 4 but using the object lesson He just provided for Jonah: “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?”, and Jonah’s response was solely focused on the object lesson and his comfort, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”

(vs. 10-11) Now God drives home the point of the lesson:

you pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow - in other words, you had pity on a plant that was an object of my mercy and grace given to you for your comfort, however, in the same way...

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? - in other words, what brings me comfort, says God, is when people repent of their sin and turn to me in faith!

So in the final analysis, God has the right to show mercy to whomever He choses and we must believe that everything He choses to do is always good!

One final truth...

Romans 8:28 ESV

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

So What?

Are we attempting to live our lives and serve God with preconceived notions of what should happen should be defined by our human logic?

Do we understand that the goodness of God is outside of our logic, but is always apart of who God is and what He ordains as a part of His character?

Will we attempt to obey God even when all that we hold dear has been ripped from us, giving way to faith in God’s goodness, even if we can’t make sense of it?