Jonah chapter number four. I'd like us to read verse 1 through to verse number 11, that is the end of the chapter. We'll be focusing on verse number 1 to 4 this morning. Jonah chapter number four. The word of the Lord reads, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, 'O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.' And the Lord said, 'Do you do well to be angry?' 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 should become of the city. Now the Lord 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. But when the dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 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.' 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.' 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. 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?'" Father, we come to You this morning asking that You would help us to see how merciful You really are and that Your mercy, Lord, would become ours, that we might know how to love others and to have a heart that beats like Yours. Oh God, I pray You would send Your Spirit to awaken our understanding and to draw us near to our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. In chapter number 3 verse 1 to 10, we see Jonah obeying the Lord and going to Nineveh and preaching that message of repentance to them. And oh, what a sight it was to see all the city repent and turn to the Lord. And what would we expect to follow after chapter number three? We would expect that chapter 4 verse 1 would read something like this: "And Jonah rejoiced in God's great mercy and power to save." So he, so he always saw that it was part of the wisdom of God, and it's more wise to obey God than to obey his own way, and he and God lived happily ever after. Instead, the ending of this book is what we would say is anti-climactic. It's not like the romantic Western, Western civilization stories where tragedy meets triumph, and you know, the sun sets and it's all good and well, they live happily ever after. God is much more honest about the present age than most of our Western storytelling is. And there are many examples in the scripture of anti-climactic endings. Think about Noah and the flood. You know, this great tragedy of destruction and God saves Noah and his family. And then they come to dry land and Noah and the animals and his family get off and you're thinking, "Wow, this is the new beginning. The evil which God eradicated from the earth, lodged in the hearts of these sinful, wicked people that would not worship Him, has now been done away with." I think that's how the Noah movie, which I haven't watched by the way, but I think that's how it ends. It's kind of like this, this glorious ending. But the Bible tells us right after this great salvation of Noah and his family, that Noah gets drunk, sins against the Lord, curses his son. And then it says that he died. Not exactly such a romantic ending. The story of David's the same. Here is a young shepherd boy who becomes a warrior king, slaying the great giant Goliath and rescues Israel from their enemies. And he's enthroned as king. And yes, Saul is after his life, but he nonetheless makes it to the throne in fulfillment of the promises of God. And the story doesn't end there. David sins against the Lord, and the rest of the account of David's life is the unfolding of the consequences of his sinful choices. And his sons die, and his kingdom is divided, and it ends in many ways, a sorrowful ending. The story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as picked up by the writer of Hebrews, says this, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises." Of course, God fulfilled His promises to them in, in many ways, but the promises were beyond them. Moses the same. Here is this great deliverer, rescues them out of Egypt, out of slavery and out of bondage, and surely Moses is going to be the one to lead them into the promised land until Moses sins against the Lord. And he's up there on the mount looking at a land that he will not enter into because of his sin. What do these anti-climactic teachings, endings teach us? Well, firstly, they teach us that the biblical characters are just like us. And so it gives us real expectations of what growth in grace looks like and what sanctification actually looks like in our lives. That it is all too common to take two steps forward and three back, or one step forward and two back. To show us that Jonah's repentance is not perfect and permanent. He's a man like passions just like us, who one day we can be like Elijah on the mount with God, slaying the prophets of Baal, and next time asking that we would perish because we're in fear of Jezebel's command to take our lives. But it also teaches us that there is no hero except for Jesus. So that when we read the stories of Jonah and Moses and Abraham, and we read the stories of Noah, and we see that they kind of end in this unresolved tension, it should cause us to ask, "Who else is coming that will resolve the tension?" It should cause us to look for another. To realize that the answer is not found in these men, it must be to the God-man, to Jesus Christ, who is the true and better Adam, who is the true and better Moses, who is the true and better Jonah, who not only fulfills the will of God, but resolves the tension of a failing story in history. But also, it teaches us that the happily ever after of God's story is not promised to all of us in this life. But the happily happy, happy ever-ending story is promised to us in the age to come. So that we live as strangers and pilgrims in this world, that we live as it were on our toes and on our feet, looking to God, trusting in God, pilgrimaging on to heaven, realizing that our rest will come finally when we see His face. That there is a day coming on that final day where the tension of our unresolved stories of life will find their resolution on that final day. The answers that you, you seek for in this life which you may never know in this life, you will have in that day. And the wickedness that you see prevail in this life and have unanswered questions about why is it not yet destroyed, you will have answers in that day. And the righteous deeds which are done in Christ, of which you wonder, is there a reward for me now? I don't see the fruit of that, you will know in that day. And so the unresolved story teaches us, in this passage at least and throughout this Bible, teaches us that world history is not about our story. You know, the great documentary guys, this is the world history, the story of us. Well, yes and no. It's really the story of God. It's really telling us the history of, of God's dealings in the world. It witnesses to God and His great deeds. It witnesses to the God who writes history and the God who governs history. History is God's story. That's really important for us to realize because in moments of life of a lack of resolution, or when we find ourselves failing and faltering, it is important to realize that God's purposes go beyond us. Go beyond us not only in time, because His purposes are eternal, but they go beyond us also with regards to fulfillment as they are to be fulfilled in Christ. His purposes go beyond us also with regards to our desires. That God is not orchestrating the world to fulfill your desires, but He runs the world in fulfillment of His own desires. So it's the history of God's dealings. It's God's world. And this is exactly what Jonah struggles with. You see, Jonah was not happy with how God was running the world the day He saved the Ninevites. So chapter 4 verse 1 begins with these words, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry." Just, do you notice the irony? In chapter number 3, God is angry. And the king of Nineveh is like, "God's fierce anger is against us. We must repent and turn to the Lord lest we perish." Now, God's anger ceases, God relents from His anger and judgment, but when God's anger ceases, Jonah's anger begins. At least that's how it was presented in the story. And Jonah's developing a reputation of doing things opposite to God. God relents from His anger, he gets angry. God says, "Go this way," he goes that way. And just when we thought that his disobedience has come to an end, and this man is in total subjection to God, here he is tested and tried, and he's just like every one of us, isn't he? Finding ourselves failing again and again. But why is Jonah angry? Well, I love how one commentator put it. He said it this way. He said, "Jonah finds that the time fuse does not work on the prophetic bomb he planted in Nineveh." The prophetic bomb that Jonah planted in Nineveh is 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah plants that bomb as it were, he leaves, and he thinks, "Okay, here it goes." And the time fuse doesn't work according to Jonah. God decides to have mercy. He's angry. He's angry because God is sovereign in His mercy, and now he looks upon a city which he desired to be destroyed and obliterated from the planet because they are enemies of Israel whom he so hates. Now he sees that very city experiencing the same grace and mercy as Israel. Is it possible that pagans that turn to God can experience the covenant blessings that God has promised to Israel? Yes, most definitely. They are received in Jesus Christ, the lamb which was slain before the foundation of the world. In fact, they enjoy the salvation of God, no different. But Jonah struggles with this. Surely they don't deserve that. Surely they deserve to be destroyed, destroyed. We are Abraham's seed. Blessings come our way. Yes, we say they come in mercy. Yes, we say that we don't deserve them, but as soon as they come to someone else and us, we're like, "Hey, hey, hang on a minute. That's really for us, isn't it?" And so Jonah prays a prayer, like all good prophets that are frustrated. But his prayer is an angry prayer. And there's two prayers recorded in the book of Jonah and they are both in the context of salvation. In Jonah chapter 2 verse 1, the Bible says, "And Jonah prayed to the Lord." And he praised this psalm of praise and thanksgiving because Jonah received mercy from God, and God saved Jonah from death through the great fish. And here is the second prayer. The second prayer is a complaint. Complaint that the God who saved him would save others whom he does not like. So he's happy at the mercy of God for his own salvation, but the very same mercy, on account of the very same mercy showed to a people he does not like, all of a sudden Jonah is going off his head, angry at God, telling God really what to do. He's not happy. And his prayer is this self-justifying complaint where he voices his grievance to God while at the same time simultaneously rationalizing his own previous disobedience. Now you would think that would be impossible. But it's possible. That's how wicked the heart of man is. We do it all the time. But on top of that, he actually uses scripture to demonstrate his point to God. "See God, this is why I disobeyed You, because I knew," and he quotes Exodus 34, and he quotes different passages of God's mercy that's mentioned in Joel chapter two, and saying, "Because I knew You were a merciful God, gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and all that, that's why I fled." By the way, if you thought Jonah fled to go to Nineveh because he was scared of the Ninevites because they're cruel people, you got it wrong. He didn't want to go to Nineveh because he didn't want to see them get saved. And he knew that God is merciful to save. So he makes this self-justifying complaint. But his prayer is also an expression of self-pity. Look at verse number three. He says, "Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." Now, there's a passage in Ecclesiastes that says, "Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools." And definitely what we see here is a very foolish statement made by Jonah because anger has got the better of him. And what he says to God is, "I'd rather die than live. Take my life." You see it? He loves to live when God's mercy is poured out on him, but now he wants to die when God's mercy is directed to people that he doesn't want that mercy to be directed to. Now, what's Jonah's problem? Is Jonah angry with God's sovereignty or is Jonah angry with God's mercy? Well, the answer is both, isn't it? He's angry at God's sovereign mercy. He's like the objector in Romans chapter nine who says, "What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part?" Jonah thinks there's injustice on God's part, that God should destroy the Ninevites and He is being unjust by not doing that. But as the writer says, Paul says, "By no means, for He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it depends not on human will or human exertion, but on God who has mercy." And Jonah shares the same objection as the writer predicts here by the objector in Romans. Why does God save some and not others? Is not God obliged to save all? And why does He save these people and not other people? As the Jews really had a problem with. Why save the Ninevites? They should deserve God's wrath. God says, "If I want to save the Ninevites, I will save the Ninevites. With your permission or without your permission, Jonah. I am the God who saves." "If I want to save your enemy, what's that to you?" God is a God of sovereign grace. God is a God of sovereign mercy. And Jonah wrestled with this. But God has an important question to Jonah that we should really ask ourselves when we struggle also with this. And this is the question. Jonah, do you do well to be angry? In other words, is it appropriate for you, Jonah, at this point in light of what has happened at Nineveh, is it appropriate, Jonah, for you to be angry? Now, there are many reasons why anger is appropriate, but not in this case. We can be angry at injustice, but this is no injustice, this is mercy. We can be angry against sin, but God has not done any sin by saving Ninevites. We can be angry at many things as the Bible even gives us permission to, "Be angry and sin not," but the reality is this thing right here, we have no right to be angry at. It's not ours to question the judgments of our God. But the question is a deep searching question that promotes self-examination not only for Jonah but for ourselves. Because Jonah comes to the point in his life where his anger now is revealing his idolatrous heart. You see, when Jonah says something like this, "Without the destruction of Nineveh, I don't want to live," you know what he's actually saying? "God, I expect you to do what I want you to do, and if you don't do what I want you to do, then I have no reason, no purpose, no drive to live. My existence is vain and empty unless You, God, orchestrate the world according to my likes." There's a big idol, isn't there, in the heart of Jonah. His expectation has become an idol upon which his drive and motivation to live rests. Now, however you finish the following sentence will reveal what you worship. I want you to be honest with yourself this morning as I read this sentence to you, and you fill in the blank. Life is not worth living unless I have... You fill in the blank. Life is not worth living unless I have. Unless I have that relationship, unless I have that money, that job, unless I have that fame, unless I have that respect. How often do we lose the motivation to live because we don't get what we want? Isn't this really at the heart of depression? Doesn't this really touch at the innermost recesses of our hearts as to the motivations by which we live? I mean, if God is the fountain of life and in Him we live and move and have our being, and if He is the joy of the world and if He is the satisfaction of our soul, if the Bible is really true and says, "You drink of me and you'll never thirst again, and if you eat of this bread, you shall be satisfied," then who are we who have drunk of that water and who are we who have eaten of that bread to say that we are not satisfied? And when we do, and we get angry because of our dissatisfaction, what are we saying to God? "There's something else that I worship, God, that competes with you." Is God more than enough or is He not? And God's sovereign mercy is way too free and too radical for Jonah and his idolatrous heart. God's mercy is too intense for him. It's too radical for Jonah's patriotism. He loves his nation, so much so that he doesn't want to see other nations saved. It's too much for his ethnic pride. It's too much for his passion for justice. He wants justice so badly that, "Don't show mercy to these people." God's mercy is way too radical for Jonah's sectarianism, and it does not gel with Jonah's bitterness. He wants God to be a God of the Jews only and not also of the Greeks and of the Gentiles. And ultimately, Jonah is angry because God doesn't fit his box. He's crafted a God in his own imagination who acts in a way that he wants Him to act, and although he knows what the scripture says, he hopes that God doesn't do those things. But when God acts outside of his box, Jonah is enraged. And I, I submit to you, that's exactly what happens to us when we get enraged. That God chooses that our life takes a course that we never intended it to take. And instead of seeing the wisdom in God's work and trusting in His goodness and resting in His providence and in His sovereign control and power, we tend to despise God without saying it. Because the complaint of the children of Israel in the wilderness concerning the manna and concerning the water was ultimately a complaint against God. Because they wanted leeks, onions, and garlic, but God gave them manna from heaven and water to drink from a rock. And was that not good enough? Did they want more than to be delivered from Egypt and their bondage and slavery? Did they forget what God had done for them in the Red Sea? Had they forgotten how God had led them out with a mighty hand and destroyed their enemies and put the gods of the enemies on display and showed His mighty power? Did they forget that they were just rejoicing and singing the song of Moses as they crossed the Red Sea because of God's great mercy towards them? Yes, they forgot. They forgot the Lord their God and they perished in the wilderness. Why? This was an idolatrous heart that was angry at the providences of God. And so it was with Jonah. Jonah is angry because God doesn't fit his box. The question for us this morning is does God's mercy bother us? You ever thought things to yourself, how can God forgive somebody like that? Like really, I mean, like that. I mean, like a Hitler. You know, he turns to the Lord, let's say, and he repented if, if this, say that happened, we would probably be like, "Whoa, whoa, no, no, this is not good. This is the story that we don't want to see. This is not the happily ever after story." How can he, how can he just forgive and that's it? You know, we struggle with that too, don't we? Like here is a person that is a lifelong, life of sin and rebellion against God, and on their deathbed by the mercy of God, they turn to Christ and they're forgiven completely and entirely. They repent and they believe and their judgment is passed just like the Ninevites. Is that how it works? They've been treating the Israelites so bad for so long. They've been persecuting and hating us. And all of a sudden, one message, one preacher, and the grace of God and mercy is poured out and the destruction ends. How can God bless someone who lived a life like that? And surely we wait to see what consequences of sin still lay in their lives. This is God's way of getting them. But you know, God's so merciful, He doesn't even let us sometimes experience the consequences of our own sin. How many people have lived a promiscuous life previously that now have a quite a faithful marriage? And people that didn't live in promiscuity have a struggling marriage when it comes to their marriage and and fidelity. You see what I'm trying to say? We think, "How come it works like this?" How can God bless someone who lived like that? Surely the consequences of past sin would make that person's children worse than my children, because I had good parents and therefore I know how to parent and they had, you know, they had bad parents and therefore they don't know how to parent, and therefore I'm expecting that my children will be better than theirs. But God has mercy. Saves theirs and not yours, perhaps. Maybe you're thinking that their life must be much more rockier than my life because of the things that they have done, the seeds that they have sown in the past. You know, they're ex-drug addicts, surely the effects of that will go on for so long in such a way that I'm going to have a real good head start compared to them. And God surprises you. Why do they have children and I don't? Why do they have that job? And why do they have that money? And why do they live in that suburb and I don't? Why is it that God saves these people that are so vile and corrupt, but doesn't save my husband who I've been praying for for his salvation for years who's just kind of an upright guy, and even a religious folk, fella. You see that? We can struggle with God's mercy when it doesn't really compute with our expectations. But do we do well to be angry? You know, when you consider your own sin and when you consider God's holiness, and when you consider what our just deserves are every single one of us, from the least of us to the greatest. When you consider that whosoever offends in one point of the law is guilty of all. When you consider that whosoever looks at a woman to lust after her commits adultery already with her in her heart. When you consider what the Bible says, he that is angry with his brother is a murderer in his heart. When you consider the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the justice of God, the magnificence of God's mighty power in, in and and His mighty justice to judge and condemn all of us, then you realize I cannot put a price on mercy and think that I can earn it because of the things that I do. You know, it's so easy to look at other people's sins and not our own. We get so fixated on what they have done and what I haven't done, and therefore we lose out on experience the glory of God's mercy because we're stuck on comparisons. If you put God in a box, you will find that your box will be broken many times, and you will be like Jonah, angry and losing your resolve to live. There's a parable of these grumbling servants that at the end of the day when they come to their master to receive their wages, they all receive a denarius, one day's wage. But each of them worked different hours in the day. One worked four hours, one worked six hours, one worked eight hours, one worked 10 hours. And at the end of the day, they come to the master, the master said, "Here's a day's wage, here's a day's wage, here's a day's wage, here's a day's wage." And they're so focused on what this guy has is the same as what I have, even though he didn't work like I worked, that they cannot be thankful for what they have received in a day's wage. And they begin to grumble and complain. And the passage says in Matthew chapter 20, it says this, that Jesus, or the master replied to one of them, saying, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I gave to you. And am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge My generosity?" You see that? Do you begrudge God's generosity because you do not accept what you've received from His hand as your mercy given to you, but you compare it to others. You see the problem there? And this is the problem was the problem of the Pharisees. They could not grapple with the way that Jesus did ministry. Here He is, looking at religious leaders that have come out from lineage and lineage of people that could trace themselves to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that were pure in their outward garments and garb that would fast twice in a week and pray and do all these things. And all of a sudden Jesus goes around saving publicans and sinners and prostitutes. And He sits with them and eats in their house. And the Pharisees cannot handle this. And what they do is they attack God's mercy and says, "Look at your master, what He does." You know what Jesus says to them? "Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice." You see the problem? These people were so fixated on the fact that God was showing mercy to others, which they believed was not their right due. But in so doing, they were saying to God, "We deserve mercy and we alone." And that's what Jonah's doing in this. You see that? By Jonah saying the Ninevites don't deserve your mercy, he is saying to God, "I deserve your mercy. I surely do." And if we, if we're honest with the story of Jonah, we'd be thinking that's something. Are you serious? You deserve God's mercy? None of us deserve God's mercy, Jonah. Look what you've done. Can't you see your own sin? Can't you see how God has been merciful to you and gracious to you and longsuffering with you? And now on account of the fact that he shows that same mercy to someone else, you got a problem with it? Come on, Jonah. And Jonah is angry with the fact that God dispenses, how God dispenses his mercy. And we must be careful of this and we must be a people that must submit ourselves to the rule of God, whether or not it makes sense to us or not. We must not suppose that our ways are higher than God's and our thoughts are higher than God's. We must remember who we are and who He is and thank Him for whatever He gives us. Because if He gave us what we deserved, the floor would open under us right now and we would perish in hell immediately. But God is merciful. If He gives us what we deserved, then we should not take another breath from our mouths right now and live another day. But God treats us better than we deserve. And the problem that we have with our idolatrous hearts is that we contend with God's authority because we want to rule and we have set up idols in our hearts and expectations that if not fulfilled, we get angry, and in so doing, in Jonah's case, this was a matter of mercy. He did not like God's mercy. But what Jonah needed to do and what you and I need to do is to look again at the cross. It is the only way that you and I can understand and fathom and comprehend the wonder of God's justice and the wonder of God's mercy. Because there at the cross of Jesus, we see the fullness of God's justice, the entire weight of the law and of sin and of the penalty of sin that was owing to us falling on the Son of God. Jesus suffering as a sinner when he committed no sin. God's justice poured out on him. He is dying in our place. And in the fullness of this justice that is descending on Christ, although He committed no sin, but because He was bearing our sin, so the weight of that justice falls on Him, but from that flows mercy to us. A mercy incomprehensible. A mercy that would silence our complaints against God. You understand this? Stand at the cross in your mind's eye this morning and behold a dying Savior who is bearing the wrath of God in your place. And you complain to God about His mercy. Look at the pierced hands of our Lord and the pierced feet and the nail thorn crown brow and the blood and sweat that is coming down from His body upon that tree, and you make a complaint to God about His mercy. See Him there dying for you, and you will not be filled with anger, but you would be filled with trembling and astonishment that you would say, "God, how could You have mercy on a sinner like me?" Your complaint will turn to utter silence as you behold that lamb of God wounded for our sins and bruised for our transgression. Your anger will lose its force in light of the cross of Jesus Christ, and you will not question the wisdom of God. Does the mercy of God baffle you, Jonah? Well, don't be angry at His mercy. Join the party and rejoice in God's mercy. You see, we'll look at this next week, but God rejoices over one sinner that repents. You know what God's doing the day that the Ninevites repent? He is having a party in heaven celebrating the glorious salvation of 120,000 souls. But here's Jonah, like the elder brother in the prodigal son, who cannot rejoice in his brother's salvation because he's so fixated on the fact that he's such a good person and that my brother doesn't deserve that. Let us join the party. God's rejoicing in mercy. Why don't we rejoice in mercy instead of complaining against it? We should be glad that God's mercy is radical because it's the only hope for your salvation. If it was not radical, and if mercy just did not burst our boxes, we would never be saved. If we orchestrated salvation, we wouldn't be saved. If it was rightly applied to us. But thank God that He is the God of mercy and the God who saves. C. H. Spurgeon said this in closing: God is too good to be unkind, too wise to be mistaken. And when you cannot trace His hand, you can trust His heart. Let's pray.