There are two main messages found in the book of Jonah: First, it shows what God is like in His love toward pagan nations. Second, it displays God’s grace, truth, and mercy towards Jonah even though he tried to run from God. God’s grace is greater than Jonah’s and is sufficient to save even the most grievous sinners of the Ninevites. Throughout the entire book, we see God teaching Jonah that He is a God of compassion. 

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for giving us words of life. Thank you for showing us what love looks like. Thank you for showing us our weaknesses and our lack of mercy, and that you would raise us up as a people who are so full of grace that we would not be put off by a place like Nineveh. Amen.

Well, welcome to the book of Jonah. There are two main messages in the book of Jonah and the first is a declaration of what God is like. He's full of grace. It's an astonishing grace. You know, we saw that in the book of Hosea as well.

It was absolutely stunning to see the ways of God's love. And you see a different angle of it here. You know, in Hosea it was a marriage. In Jonah it's about prejudices against people and people groups. It also shows us what it looks like to run from God, and Jonah ran from God.

And so we learn that God is full of grace, He's full of mercy that goes far beyond Jonah's mercy. And it's a mercy that is greater than the sin of the people of Nineveh. And you know, this whole thing about running from God is a critical matter. We're often unaware of the ways that we run away from God. And in Jonah's case, he ran away from God for a really specific reason.

And it should help us to think, what are the reasons that we turn away from God? What are the reasons that we ignore His voice? What are the reasons that we take steps that we know God doesn't want us to take. What are those? Because we learned from Jonah what it was that caused him to go in a different direction.

And you know there are many commands that God has given us as believers, we do ignore some of them. And we obsess about our own plans, and we run from God. Now, you don't have to go a half a mile or a mile or a thousand miles to run from God. It happens in your heart and in your mind. But with Jonah, he went a long way away.

And it's a great illustration of just, it's a sort of geographical illustration of what the heart does. So that's what we see here. The time of writing, probably during the time of the prophet Elisha. He may have been one of the members of the school of the prophets during the time of Elisha, which was taking place during the time of Jeroboam II's reign, 739 to 753 BC. And this is probably after the end of the Assyrian captivity of Israel.

And so, it was also during the time of Amos, time of tremendous prosperity in Israel, but there was no justice. Religion was thriving, but love was dying in Israel at that time. So let's look at Jonah the man, the third item in your outline. He's from the northern kingdom. He came from a town near Nazareth, which is in Galilee, And the book is written about him.

It's written in the third person. And it's biographical, not autobiographical. Somebody is writing about Jonah in the story of his life. We learn that Jonah was God's servant in 2 Kings 14, 23 to 27. He was set apart by God.

And you know, he was a real man with a whole catalog of human emotions. By the way, look for the emotions in the book of Jonah. You'll see a whole range of emotions. Like in Jonah himself, you see indignation. You see stubbornness.

You see humility. You see anger. You see defiance. And then when you look at the sailors, I mean check out the sailors, they're at their wits end. They're full of fear and then finally relief when they finally throw Jonah overboard.

They're the emotions of God in Jonah. You can see God's compassion. And His tender-hearted mercies, actually even with Jonah himself, He has mercy toward the people in Nineveh, the people who had sinned greatly, and he also had mercy on Jonah. He never abandons Jonah, even though he's indignant and stubborn and angry and defiant and running in the opposite direction. God's mercy is great toward Jonah.

Let's talk about the geography a little bit. This is really important. Understanding the geographical pinpoints helps you to understand the scale of Jonah's rebellion and what was going on in his mind. Remember what I said earlier, the geographical elements are external examples of what happens in your heart, of the trajectory of your life and how far it can go. And so Jonah, of course, he's living near Nazareth in his hometown, and then when God calls him, he goes down to the sea coast of Joppa.

So he's gonna get on a ship from Joppa to Tarshish. Okay, that means he's going from east to west. But where's Nineveh? Nineveh's not west. Nineveh is to the east, actually to the northeast, all right?

So he goes down to Joppa and he's standing on the seacoast. He can either go left and go west, or he can go right and head northeast. And of course, you know, he ends up going west. Now, if you get on a ship to go to Tarshish from Joppa, it's 2, 200 miles, okay. It's from here to Phoenix, Arizona.

That's how far he was going to go. It's amazing. And then, now Tarshish is in Spain. You know where the tip of Spain is and it comes down and there's the rock of Gibraltar, where ships can go through? Well, that's where he was headed.

So all the way from Joppa across that gigantic Mediterranean Sea, all the way almost to the Atlantic Ocean, right? And, but Nineveh, of course, was the other direction. Nineveh was 600 miles the other direction as the crow flies and it's about the same distance between Wake Forest, North Carolina and Providence, Rhode Island. How about that? These are really long distances and but you get an idea of the physical expression of Jonah's running from God.

He really wanted to get away from God. Let's talk about the authenticity of the story. The story is criticized particularly because of the fish. You know, some have called it a whale, the Bible doesn't call it a whale, the Bible calls it a great fish. But, you know, liberal scholars and unbelievers would say this could never happen.

But the problem with that is that Jesus believes that Jonah was in the belly of the fish. So if Jonah wasn't in the belly of the fish, then Jesus is a liar. So you've got to recognize how serious it is to criticize the book of Jonah because it has a great fish swallowing a man. You know, Jesus also believes that the Queen of Sheba is a real person in the same passage of Scripture where he talks about Jonah. And even further, Jesus gives the example of Jonah as a type of his resurrection.

The Lord Jesus Christ says that he died and he rose again just like Jonah was in the belly of a whale for three days. So Jesus hinges the story of Jonah on his own resurrection and he uses it as a type. Jesus is not going to use a fake event to point to a real event, i.e. The Resurrection. I'm going to just give you some key verses.

I think first of all you see the rebellion of Jonah in chapter 1 verses 1 through 3. In chapter 2 verses 1 through 10 you have the desperation of Jonah at the hands of a sovereign God. And in chapter 3 verses 5 through 10 you've got a picture of what might be the greatest revival in all of history. And then finally, the fourth key set of verses is in chapter 4, verses 2 and 3, and there's where you find why Jonah fled. You know, people give a lot of reasons why Jonah fled.

Oh, he was afraid of the Ninevites. They were wicked people. They were brutal. You know, he was afraid of his own people, whatever. Well, the book tells us exactly why he fled.

You don't have to think up, you know any speculative reasons because it's given right in the book Okay, so let's walk through the book you see the outline Notice there are two calls of Jonah the first calls in chapter 1 The call is in verses 1 and 2. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying arise go to Nineveh that great city and cry out against it for their wickedness has come up before me. Now notice the first words of verse 1 Now the word of the Lord came This is the most significant thing that can ever happen to anyone when the word of the Lord comes You know we're probably a little bit insensitive to it because we hear the Word of the Lord all the time. You know, when we gather together as a church, we hear the Word of the Lord. It really ought to be the most sacred time.

It should be the time when we're absolutely most attentive when the word of the Lord comes well, the word of the Lord came to Jonah and He responded in a certain way. He charged him to do two things go and preach That's all he wanted him to do go and preach This is very much like the Great Commission in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, where we, as the disciples of the Lord, are commanded to go into all the nations and preach the gospel and make disciples. So Jonah was charged to do these two things. Now it was a charge to go to Nineveh, And this should show us something about God. God's love.

Nineveh was a wicked city. And it was the love of God that was behind this command. God loves sinners. God loves pagans. And he sends a prophet to him.

It says here that it was a great city and notice you'll see this word great at least three times. There's a great city, there's a great wind, and a great fish. Those three things. And those things really form the structure of most of the story. So in verse 3 we read about Jonah's rebellion and what it looked like.

But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Have you noticed, from the presence of the Lord is in there twice in that one verse. When you see something repeated in scripture, pay attention, because you're finding what the author is trying to communicate.

And Jonah wants to shrug off the Word of God, and he deceived himself. He was trying to go from the presence of the Lord. Problem? You can't flee from the presence of the Lord. What he wanted to do was impossible.

You can do it in your heart. You can do it in your mind. But you cannot flee from the presence of God. You know, Psalm 139 makes this very clear. Psalm 139 says, Oh Lord, You have searched me and known me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought from afar. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me in behind and before and laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it." And then verse 7 is so remarkable. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me." And in the same way that God is there, God was going to follow Jonah wherever he went. You cannot get away from God. And I think there should be a comfort and a terror.

One is that God does watch all the activities of the earth. And secondly, that when he's there and you're in rebellion, understand you're not going to win this one. And that's exactly what we find here. Now, do you see the words there? He paid the fare.

He paid the fare. Donald Gray Barnhouse, a pastor in the 20th century, wrote about this verse. I'm just going to read it to you. When you run away from the Lord, you never get where you are going, and you always pay your own fare. But when you go the Lord's way, you always get where you're going and He pays the fare.

That's so true. You always get where you're going and He pays the fare. If you go your own way, you'll pay dearly. And there'll be a lot of hurt as a result. Nobody ever fled from the Lord without gaining new scars, acquiring new disappointments, and new hurts.

You just can't beat the system. So, What was going on here? You know, he had a hard heart toward the Ninevites. And here's the secret of Jonah. Jonah was hardened to mercy.

His heart had not been softened by the heart of God. And what was in the heart of God, an ocean of grace and mercy and compassion was not in Jonah's heart. To me, that's one of the most significant things about this book. When you look at Jonah and you look at God, you see how unlike Jonah is before God. And when you see that contrast, you should ask the same question, how am I so different compared to God?

Is my compassion like God's? You know, in Lamentations, you know, we read that his compassion never fails. They're new every morning. This is your God. And, you know, when you compare yourself with the kind and tender-hearted mercies of God, just recognize that the reason that God saves his people is to transform them, to give them His compassion.

And that is not what was driving Jonah. And God had compassion on pagan people who did not know their right hand from their left, and Jonah didn't have that same compassion. So then in verses 4 through 17, you'll see God's judgment against Jonah, And it starts with the wind in chapter 1, verse 4. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Notice the words, the Lord sent.

He rules the waves and the winds. It's God who controls nature. And here the Lord sent the great wind. There wasn't a great wind, and there was because God sent it. You know, you can always know wherever you go in the world that whatever the weather is has been determined by God.

You never have to worry about the weather. And here, while the weather was quite worrisome to everyone who was involved in this gigantic storm, you have to recognize that the Lord sent the wind on the sea. Then, in beginning of verse 5, you see the fear that broke out among the mariners. Every man cried out to his God. They started throwing the cargo over the side.

They're lightening the load and where's Jonah? He's down in the lowest parts of this ship and he's asleep. I think Jonah is a picture of the church sleeping. It's a picture of a drowsy church. Remember Isaiah chapter 52 verse 1, awake, awake, get up, put on your garments, you know, that's the call of God to the church.

But here Jonah is a picture of the people of God sleeping through the midst of the judgment of God. So in verse six, the captain comes to him and says, what do you mean, sleeper? Now the word there, quite possibly in Hebrew, could indicate that he was actually snoring. There is a sense that from this word that you can say he was just sawing logs and snoring. You ever heard anybody snore really loud?

I mean just picture Jonah just grinding away. Some people are going to really snore up a storm, right? While the storm is raging, there's the sleeper sawing up a storm of snoring in the pothole of this ship. And he says, get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us that we may not perish.

And so everybody got together, they decided to cast lots to know what the trouble was, and so they did that, and guess where the lots fell? Jonah. You know, we don't cast lots all that much today, but the Bible and the book of Proverbs says that the Lord gives the answer in the casting of lots. You know, there have been a few times I've made some decisions flipping a coin. You've probably done that too.

I'm pretty reluctant to make big decisions flipping a coin. But that's exactly what they did. They flipped the coin, you know, Jonah got heads. So everybody's pointing their fingers at him and Jonah says I'm a Hebrew. This is verse 9.

Do you see this and I fear the Lord The God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. So now he's witnessing. He goes from snorer to evangelist. And he's telling them that he fears God. Why is he saying that?

He's been running from God. Is he a liar? What is happening here? We don't know exactly, but he says that God made the land and the sea. So he's speaking as a believer, And then they said, what do we need to do to you to calm this storm?

And he says, throw me overboard. So that's exactly what they do. And then when that happened, a fear came upon these men, verse 16. It says they feared the Lord exceedingly. Their fear shifted from the wind to the Lord.

That's who they should have been fearing all along. And then they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and they took vows. This is amazing. I think this is a picture of conversion. They turn to the God of the Hebrews, they quit worshipping their old gods, and it's another example of how a trial can turn your head to the Lord.

You know sometimes people get in a terrible accident they almost die and they turn to God and they say, oh Lord have mercy on me. Some terrible things happen. You know someone you know is in love with someone and their hopes are dashed and the other person has no interest in them and their whole world falls apart and then they turn to the Lord. God uses trials and He used this trial in the lives of these men here. And then verse 17, you know, one of the most remarkable things in the whole Bible, the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So we read earlier about how the Lord sent the waves on the sea. Now we learn that the Lord prepared a great fish. Now what did God do to prepare this great fish? Well, first of all, He caused him to be born and He caused him to be big enough to swallow a man and he sent that fish in the middle of a storm to a single boat in the middle of this gigantic Mediterranean Sea on the way to Tarshish and So, you know this fish is sent from God You know, did you ever think God sent fish different places?

Hey, God tells fishes where to swim. How about that? Remember when Jesus wanted to pay the temple tax, and a fish swam up and coughed up the temple tax? What's that all about? You don't ever need to be afraid of animals.

Now you might want to be wary of certain animals, but here's the deal. God controls the wind, He controls the waves, and He also controls the fish of the sea. I have actually, when I was fishing, I have actually prayed that God would send a fish. You know, the other day I was fishing with my grandkids and I so wanted them to catch a fish. And I said, Lord, please send a fish so that this kid can catch a fish.

Well, God controls the fish. It's okay to pray that God would send a fish. So anyway, this amazing scene, here are a few things that are happening. God is bringing down judgment and there are consequences to running from God. But here's one of the scary things, is that when you run from God, you put other people in danger.

You see that? Don't think that your running from God will only affect you. And this shows how God's judgment on His people affects the people around them. The sailors were just threatened by this sin of this Hebrew. Often calamities come on a nation because the Church is disobedient.

We put others in peril when we sin. We saw this in the book of Joshua, in the story of Achan's sin, where he hoarded booty that he was told not to take. And we saw back in David's sin, in numbering the people, 70, 000 people died of pestilence because of David's sin. Whenever your heart is tempted to turn away from the Lord, you have to recognize that your sin doesn't just affect you. It can affect your whole nation.

And here, these men were affected who were in the boat. Okay, so Jonah swallowed up. We get to chapter 2 now. And there's this prayer of desperation. So let's read Jonah's prayer in verses 1 through 9.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly and he said I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple." This is an example again of how God turned Jonah's head to himself through a trial. In the last chapter, it was the storm.

Now it's the belly of the fish. God is so kind that he'll use a calamity, even a dramatic one, to turn your heart toward him. You know, if you have a hurt, if you have a disappointment, if there's something going on in your life that's really hard, you need to know why it's happening. It's happening to help you turn to the Lord, that you would trust him in the midst of your disappointment. And that's exactly what happened here in verse 4, yet I will look again toward your holy temple.

Again, this wasn't the first time Jonah had been receiving the chastisement of God. Again, we shouldn't think poorly about the chastisement of God. God disciplines his people in order to help them, in order to pour out his love toward them. And that's what we see here. And then Jonah talks more about it, you know, the water surrounded me, Even to my soul, the deep closed around me.

Weeds were wrapped around my head. Can you imagine that? You know, I've spent a significant amount of time in the ocean, and every once in a while, you know, you might be surfing in a place where there's a lot of kelp or a lot of seaweed and It can get wrapped around your head not too much, but it definitely can happen. And so anyway, he's got seaweed around his head it's not looking very good And so he goes down to the deep, and there's all this dramatic language. And then in verse seven, he says, when my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple." So that's where God brought him.

And now verse 8 is really worth memorizing. Out of this calamity, Jonah comes to his senses. He comes to see something that is so important. And you know most of you are young here and Knowing this early in your life will help you a lot. It'll soften your heart, it'll bless your life, it'll make you happier, and it'll save you from all kinds of problems.

Verse 8, are you ready? Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. What do you get from your turning away from the Lord. You get a forsaking of mercy. So then, Jonah says, I'll sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.

I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is from the Lord. OK, so this is his prayer of desperation. He turns to God. He does the right thing.

And, you know, for some reason, when we face the greatest trials, our prayers are the greatest. It's what it's always been like for me. I wish I prayed with the same intensity all the time. But there's something about a trial that makes you pray more. And that's another reason why you should never despise a trial.

Even in the pain, you're on your knees and you're before God you're acknowledging his power and that's what happened with Jonah and then verse 10 Is it's such a it's a crack-up honestly, well, maybe it was probably wasn't for Jonah but you know here Jonah goes from the belly to the beach. And so the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. God spoke to the fish. Well, remember, God tells fish what to do and where to go. There's not a fish in the world that's not under divine orders.

You know, here in North Carolina, we've had this rash of shark attacks, seven shark attacks in just like a couple months I think, on about a hundred or 150 mile stretch of beach. It hasn't happened like that around here before. What's going on with all those shark attacks? Well we have to ask does God control the sharks? He does control the sharks.

And if you go out in the ocean and a shark attacks you, It's because God spoke to the shark So think of all the times you've gone to the ocean and God didn't tell a shark to bite you Well, God's never told a shark to bite me yet so and I'm not going to get bit by a shark until God tells the shark to bite me. When we go to the beach, you know, I always try to, you know, we always like to try to relive shark week. So I have my daughters, you know, put, you know, multicolored nail polish on their toes so that they can, you know, flip their feet in the water to tease the sharks. Because we know that Sharks only bite you when God speaks to them and says go bite that guy Okay, all right Now so Jonah is belched under dry land. I mean he's vomited onto dry land Okay you know I don't think Jonah smelled very good after that.

So that's chapter 2 right? Now a lot of the words in chapter 2 of the prayer of Jonah can be found in Psalm 32. Jonah quotes little teeny phrases out of the Psalms. Jonah knew the Psalms and so he has some of the statements there. Now what we should realize as we get to the end of chapter 2 is that God uses many means to bring people back to himself.

Yes, even a wind that was going to destroy a ship and even a fish that was going to swallow a former snorer. And that's exactly what he did. You know, the miracle of the fish isn't anything compared to the miracle that happened in Jonah's heart. God changed his heart. And he is a sleeper who has been awakened and now he's alive in his soul.

He slid back, he was running from God, and now at this point in the story Jonah is back and his heart is toward the Lord and I think it's a great illustration of Psalm 119 verse 67 where David says before I was afflicted I went astray but now I keep your word so Jonah was going astray he was headed in the wrong direction, and God stopped him. He afflicted him. He afflicted him with a storm and then a fish. And then he belched him up on the beach. Okay, now let's get to chapter 3 and we find Jonah's obedience, but it's a begrudging obedience.

His heart is turned a little bit toward the Lord. At least he's obeying, you know. So now we come to Jonah's second call in verses 1 and 2. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you. So again, the word of the Lord came.

This is the second call. And he says the same thing, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach the message. Now we don't know how far Jonah got on his 2, 200 mile journey. Maybe he was coughed up on an island somewhere, maybe the fish took him back to Joppa and some beach near Joppa, so he only had a 600 mile trip to go to Nineveh. We don't really know where where he was coughed up, but he had to start going in the right direction.

And then in verse 3 we see Jonah's obedience. So Jonah went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now get this, this is why Nineveh is called a great city. Nineveh is an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. Three days just to walk across this town.

Big town. Three days to get across it. Then Jonah cries out. On the first day, he's crying out, in 40 days, Nineveh's going to be overthrown. That's his message.

Forty days and the judgment of God is going to fall down upon your city. Now Jonah was, you know, probably sort of happy to declare this because the Assyrians had been a thorn in the flesh of Israel and Judah. Remember that? Remember in our studies in Isaiah that Assyria is afflicting the northern kingdom, takes them captive in 722 BC, and then afflicts the southern kingdom, but God kills, you know, a hundred and eighty-five thousand But God kills, you know, 185, 000 of the Assyrian army. That's these same people.

So, but he's announcing 40 days and then they'll be overthrown. And then the people of Nineveh repent and they believe. This is verses 5 and 10. So the people of Nineveh believed God proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. Wow, they believed.

And notice it starts with the people They believed first and then in verses six through nine the king repents and believes then the word came to the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe and covered himself with sackcloth and ashes. And then he said, let everybody be covered with sackcloth and ashes, and cry out to God, and let everyone turn from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will return and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Jonah's message was flee from the wrath to come. This is a message that we need to recover.

A lot of time we want to be so sensitive to people rather than to say don't you know God punishes sin? Don't you know that you're adultery and you're theft and your immorality? You know, your fornication. Don't you know God is going to judge you for that? It's a good message to bring.

Flee from destruction. Then God relented. Think about that for a second about your king repenting. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our king repented? Now if our president repented, it would be so remarkable.

You would see a turning to God, but would you see a comprehensive 100% return to God? Probably not. I don't believe that every single human being turned to God in this revival? They might have, but it could be a general statement indicating just a broad revival. You know, in times of revival, lots of people turn.

Every single person doesn't. But anyway, we don't know exactly. You could say, well it says that everybody repented, but then you have to ask, does that demand that every single soul turned? So we get to chapter 4, you would think Jonah would be so happy, and Jonah's not happy. Verse 1 of chapter 4, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly.

It made him angry. He was not happy that this happened. And then so he prayed to the Lord. And in verses two and three we learn why Jonah fled in the first place. So he prayed to the Lord and said, Ah Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country?

Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish, for I know, " here's the answer right here, I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness, one who relents from doing harm. So this is why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. He feared that God would be God. Gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, relenting from doing harm. You see, Jonah was bitter toward the Ninevites.

He just couldn't get over what they had done to his nation. It's possible that the Assyrians had come in and even killed some of his family members, but he couldn't get over it. He did not have the mercy of God. But here is the key. This is a disclosure of the love of God.

And so Jonah wants to die. That's what you learn in verse 3. O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Now, At this point in the story, it might not be surprising if God did strike him dead, but he didn't. Why?

Because God's merciful. So then the Lord rebukes Jonah, beginning at the end of verse 4, then the Lord said, Is it right for you to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery.

So Jonah was very grateful for the plant, But as morning dawned the next day, God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened when the sun arose that God prepared a vehement east wind. And the sun beat on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself and said, It is better for me to die than to live. This is the second time Jonah is saying that he wants to die.

There's another disclosure of the emotions of human beings in this book. So then God continues to speak. In verse 9, God says to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And he says, It is right for me to be angry even to death. I think this is an epic example of losing perspective.

But the Lord said, You have had pity on the plant, for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than 120, 000 persons, who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and much livestock. And that's the end of the story. It just breaks off right there. The story ends with a question in verse 11.

And should I not pity Nineveh? Why shouldn't I pity Nineveh? These people, they don't know their right hand from their left. Why does this book break off so abruptly? Does Jonah repent?

There's no evidence that he repented. It seems like his heart is hard all the way to the very end. You know, he was morally awake to his own morality, but he was asleep to the glory of God. He cares more about a plant than he does about people. And so, the book of Jonah leaves us with this dilemma.

Will Jonah ever care about lost people? Or does he care about the trivialities of this world? He cares more about a plant than he does people. This is the problem that Jonah had. He did not love people.

He cared more about things than he cared about people. So that's the dilemma. So let me give you some lessons, some final lessons. First of all, notice the magnificence of the mercy of God. God has mercy on pagans.

He calls his own people to have mercy on those pagan nations and the book is meant to soften our hearts against the fearful and worldly people of this world and to reach out to them and not to care too much about our own trivialities and The question is do you have compassion on the people that are in corrupt cities? You know, think of the most corrupt cities you know. There are some remarkably dangerous and corrupt cities in America. Is it possible to even have compassion on people that are messed up like that? And Jesus is telling us through this story that Jonah's heart was not broken for the broken people.

It was okay for Jonah to leave the people as they were. His sense of the righteous demands of the holiness of God were dull. He was not broken by the brokenness of the people in Nineveh. And when he thought about the families there, he was totally unmoved. And when he was sitting outside the city, he was more moved by a plant than he was the people who did not know the difference between their right hand and their left.

Meaning they were just so confused. How confused is that? Everybody knows the difference between their right and their left hand. But the confusion was so great. You know, we live in a society where people are confused about a lot of stuff.

Question is are we going to love them? You know, Mark 16, 15 says, go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all creation. Okay, so the first lesson is the magnificence and the mercy of God. The second is that God expresses His displeasure toward those who do not have mercy. God is making a statement.

The third is the opposition of man's will to the sovereignty of God. In chapter 1, verse 3 and 4 you read these two words, but Jonah and then the Lord. The will of man and the sovereignty of God are at odds. God wins. We also can't escape God's sovereignty over nature.

He sends a great wind, He sends a great fish, He saves a great city, And he commands a fish to go swallow a man and then to belch him up on the beach. It's amazing. Another thing that exposes a sin in us is that Jonah's plans were bigger than God's plans in his own mind. He was so entertained by his own view of the world that his plan obscured God's plan. And that's why the Lord Jesus Christ said, follow me and I'll make you fishers and men.

Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever desires to give up his life will find it. The question is, how big are your plans? Are they bigger than God's? Do they trump God's plans? And number six is really a lesson about the gospel, the resurrection and the mercy of God.

This is a historical illustration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We learn that from Matthew chapter 12 verses 39 and 40, where the scribes and the Pharisees are quizzing Jesus, and they say, teacher, we want to see a sign. And Jesus says, I'm only going to give you one sign. It's the sign of Jonah. The seventh lesson.

It's the lesson of grace. There is not enough grace in Jonah's heart. You know, what about you and me? Is there enough grace in our hearts for those who do not know their right hand from their left that would motivate us to go and tell them of the coming judgment of God. Is there enough grace in our hearts for that?

You know in John chapter 1 The Lord Jesus Christ said, And of his fullness we have all received grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, The whole idea here is that Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth, and He imparts His grace to His people. And when His people love Him, they become like Him, and they become people of grace. And then finally, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The grace of Christ is enough. There was a second Jonah. His name was Christ. He came from a far country like Jonah. He came to seek and save the lost.

He rescued idolaters, homosexuals, adulterers. This is the grace of Jesus Christ. He goes and he seeks to save and he opens up his mouth because of his grace, because of his mercy, because he doesn't let paganism put him off. He desires to save them. Let me just close with Isaiah 55, which I think is something that we would want to say to Jonah at the beginning of his journey and to say to ourselves, seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he's near, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon for my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways says the Lord you know here we have before us the book of Jonah that teaches us about grace and what grace does to a person and what the loss of grace does to a person. It makes his heart hard and he cares more about trivial physical things more than he does about people. And he loses his love. But Jonah is set here before us so that we would hear this remarkable question that the Lord asks at the very end of this book, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, with all the people there who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock. God is a God of love.

He has mercy on the pagan nations. Well next time we're going to fast forward 150 years back to Nineveh where the prophet Nahum speaks to Nineveh. So there's a revival, 150 years pass, and the next time we get together we'll speak of Nahum who is the prophet that speaks and then you learn the rest of the story about the fate of Nineveh.