Today's reading will come from Jonah 4:1 11. So please join me as we read the word of the Lord. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, oh, Lord, is it not that I. Isn't it not what I. Is it not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I know 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 live than to die. And then the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? When Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there he sat under the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant, made it come over Jonah that it might be shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

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

When the sun arose. 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 the night. And should not I pity Nineveh, the 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 is the word of the Lord.

Introduction

In 1914, a crew led by Ernest Shackleton set out to explore Antarctica. They were going to be the first group of people to cross the continent. His crew of 27 people and him boarded the ship called the Enterprise. This was a vessel specifically built for Antarctic navigation, trying to cut through the ice. And yet, because it was 1914 and the ship was made of wood before they hit the mainland, the ship stopped in the ice. It was seized completely. They tried for months trying to get this ship to budge free from the ice. And they lived on the ice for months as this huge ice drift, this huge sheet of ice drifted in the Antarctic Bay. This was an incredibly dangerous situation for them. This sheet of ice, because it was freezing and unfreezing, trying to budge them free, ended up. The pressure from the ice ended up smashing the hull of the boat, rendering it completely useless for them to get back home. They had no way back home. They had no radio, and no one was coming to save them. Imagine the feeling that would come over you, being in a place like that.

They camped on ice floats and survived on penguin and seal meat, and they barely made it out alive. They made a daring escape on a makeshift life raft, and they made it to South America. At many points, if you read the account of them escaping and trying to survive, there were many points in this emergency that they should have all died. But incredibly, every single person made it out alive. And yet, by all accounts, this mission was a failure. They never made it on the continent. And yet, when anyone looks at this experience, no one thinks about it as a failure. Everyone survived. There's a tension in Jonah. Chapter 4. He had a plan. He had expectations. He wanted Nineveh to be judged, not forgiven. And then God relented. Jonah was furious. His expectations had been crushed like that of Shackleton's. He stood at the wreckage of his own plans. But unlike Shackleton, Jonah did not adapt. He got angry. He went outside the city. He sulked. He even said, it would be better for me to die than to live. Shackleton lost the mission that he dreamed of, but saved the lives that were entrusted to him.

Jonah, on the other hand, got the mission that he dreamed of, but hated the heart of God, the outcome that God desired. Shackleton adjusted his plan to save life, and Jonah refused to adjust his heart to God's mercy. That's the tension in Jonah. Chapter 4. What happens when God's. When God ruins our plans. When God's grace ruins our plans.

Big Question

And that leads us to our big question.

What happens when you don't get the outcome you planned for?

What happens when you don't get the outcome you planned for? What happens when you get passed up for the promotion that you rightfully deserved? What happens when you lose your best employee, the one that had brought in so much business to you or had just been so loyal? What happens when you don't get the same class with your best friend? What happens when you miss that monster buck that you've been chasing all summer long? What happens when you don't get into the right college, or you lose a loved one? Or the person you thought you were going to marry ends up saying no to you. What happens when the tests come, come back with results that you were sure God was going to prevent?

What happens when your spouse confesses the big secret to you? A secret that they had been hiding, or confesses that they had been having an affair? What happens when we hear heartbreaking, soul crushing news like that? When the earth seems to shatter, when the earth seems to stop spinning? And as Christians, there's even more tension, there's even more unrest in our soul because we know God is in control, that he is sovereign over everything, that he holds the world in his hand. And as Christians, we can sit there and think, God, why would you allow this to happen? We can feel the conflict in our own hearts. Here's what Jonah 4 shows us. That God's mercy is greater than our preferences. But when that mercy offends us, how will we respond? What will happen when you don't? Or what happens when we don't get the outcome we planned for?

Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Jonah, Chapter four. As we see this outline or these movements in this chapter, we'll see when God's.

Outline

1. When God is too gracious for us

2. When God's mercy corrects our misery.

For the context of this passage, we've been looking at Jonah and this is our last, our last, our last chapter, our last sermon on this, on this, in this series.

So if this is your first time here, you picked the very right time to come because you're going to get the entire series right here. In one nutshell, you guys were the smart people while everyone else had to spend five weeks listening to me. You guys got, you guys got one. So no, the context of this. In Jonah chapter one, Jonah runs and flees from the presence of God, hearing the word that he wants Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach repentance to them, Jonah flees to the end of the world. God appoints a fish. As Jonah is thrown overboard towards his near certain death, God saves him by the fish inside the fish. God, or God hears Jonah's pleas, his prayer, and he rescues him. He saves him. And last week in Jonah chapter three, we see Jonah finally goes to Nineveh and preaches repentance, does what God wanted him to do. Nineveh repented and God relented from the disaster that was for them. And in this chapter, God will reveal his heart to Jonah as Jonah revolts against it. So let's look at this first point, this first movement in this passage,

When God is too gracious for us

Verses 1 through 5, God gave Jonah a mission, a mission to preach repentance to Nineveh. He goes and does it, and guess what? It happens. They repent. God had used Jonah to preach repentance to bring an evil nation back from their sin. And that's what's so jarring about verse one. Look at verse one with me in chapter four. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, right? Chapter three, verse ten. God relents from disaster. It seems like everything's going good, but Jonah is unhappy. Jonah is exceedingly angry with God. This is written in a way to make the reader, to make us when we read this, go, how could this be? How could a prophet of God be upset with God saving people? This is a prophet's dream. Isaiah, when he gets the prophecy from God, when he gets a mission, his calling is to go and preach to. To Israel, who will never hear, who will never change. And Isaiah hears this and goes, how long are. How long am I supposed to do this? He says, until one stone is not stacked on another, until the end of time. Jonah gets a prophecy, he gets a word to preach repentance, and it happens.

And Jonah is angry. And that leads Jonah to pray to God. He says in verse two and three, he says, or it says, and he prayed to the Lord. And he said, oh, Lord, is this not 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. Jonah prays to God. He says, this is exactly why I wanted to run to the end of the world. This is exactly why I wanted nothing to do with your plan, nor your heart. Jonah is saying, I knew that this is what was going to happen from the start, and that's why I ran. What about for us? Have you ever felt frustrated with God because things didn't go the way you wanted, even if you knew it was right? Have you ever felt frustrated? Have you ever said to yourself, God, I knew that you would do that. That fits with your character. But I just can't get behind it. Jonah isn't shocked by God's grace.

He isn't shocked by God's mercy. He's offended by it. So much so that he goes to quote Scripture against God. He quotes Exodus, chapter 34. He says this. This is a passage where Moses is hiding in the cleft of a rock. God is passing before him. And God says, this the Lord passed passed before him, Moses and proclaimed the Lord. The Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The irony that Jonah would quote this passage in this moment is unbelievable, except for it has to be from God. And I think it has to be that Jonah is also extremely frustrated with God. Jonah quotes this passage. This the context of this passage. The reason that Moses is hiding in the cleft of the rock and this is happening why? Why is it that God is proclaiming this message to Moses is that the Israelites had just built a golden calf. They had just broken the covenant that God had made with them. God, wanting to destroy them, relents from disaster of his own people and proclaims that this is who God is. He is a God who is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

In the same moment where Jonah is furious with God that he would not save his own people, that he doesn't save his own people, that he doesn't care for Israel, he quotes a passage where God does exactly that. Jonah is furious. So Jonah tells God that it would be better off for him to die than to live. Verses 3 and 4, it says, 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 responds to God, I would rather die. I would rather die than be in a world where this is true. Have you ever felt so crushed by the unmet expectations that you didn't want to keep following God's will anymore, God's ways anymore? Not that you didn't believe in him, but that you didn't like what he wanted for you. Jonah is making a mistake here that too many of us make, too many people make about God. I have heard people say time and time again things like, well, if God could send people to hell, then I don't really want to worship him.

If he would say that homosexuality is wrong, then I don't want to follow him. If he could make people, knowing that they would go to hell. I can't follow a God like that. Essentially, what people are saying is my version of morality, my version of what I think is right and wrong, is ultimate, is ultimately correct. If God doesn't fit my definition of good, then I'm out. I get to have the godlike standard of morality that everyone else has to submit to. Essentially, that's what we're saying. I've had Multiple people come up to me and debate about God. Usually atheists talking about whether God is real and passages like whether homosexuality is true or not, or, you know, whether, you know, creation was in six days or whether evolution is true. You know, these are the things that we get hung up on. And then I finally have to get to a spot where I say we can talk about those things after. But we have to answer this question first. Is Jesus actually God? Did he actually die for our sins? Is he actually risen? Because if that's true, if that's the point that we believe, we believe that he is God.

He is seated on the throne right now. If that's what we believe, those things ultimately we can address later. Those things we can get to. But everything that we believe, everything that God then says we must submit to. Is there anything that we wouldn't do for God? These secondary things, I mean, if God. If God were to ask us to only wear the color green from here on out, or that we couldn't eat soup, or that we had to speak in Spanish from now on, or we had to hop on one leg, would we do these things for God? Or would we say, no, God, what you've asked of us is way too much. No, if he is truly God, if he's seated on the throne, there isn't anything that we shouldn't do for him. This feeling of self righteous morality, believing that he knows what's right, drives Jonah's anger into a deeper and darker place, into a place of utter distress, saying, God, it would be better for me to die than to live. And God responds with a question. He says, son, are you sure? Do you think that this is the right response?

Where are these actions taking you? Are you on the right path right now? Verse 5 helps us to see furthermore what Jonah is feeling. So Jonah leaves the city in verse five and makes a hut outside the city or a booth outside the city. He does this because he's trying to get comfortable. He's trying to avoid the sun. The heat in the Middle east is not, it's not like the heat that we get in Michigan. It's not, you know, the sun isn't like, you know, in the Middle East. It's not like the first day of spring when we get sunburned. At least that's what I get because I'm the shade of sour cream. I'm pretty white and so I get burnt like crazy. But it's even more dangerous than that. It could take people's life. And so he's making this hut for himself. And he sits down. He's waiting to see God destroy the city. It's as if Jonah's outside or he's at a sports game and he's making a little booth for himself to watch, to become a spectator of what would become of Nineveh. Jonah makes himself comfortable in the hopes that he would see thousands of people suffer.

God sees that Jonah is not getting the point, and that leads us into our second point,

When God's mercy corrects our misery

God is going to correct Jonah here in verse 6, God then appoints a plant to come up over Jonah to grow rapidly, and this results in Jonah going from exceedingly sad to exceedingly glad. And then in verse seven, God, it said, but God, or But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm to attack the plant so that it withered. Notice a familiar word that keeps coming up here that we saw in chapter one, the word appointed. Just like God had appointed a fish to rescue Jonah, the plant was more than rescue from the heat. It was there to correct Jonah. God wanted to show him something. And yet this frustrated Jonah. In verse nine, it says, 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, God. Jonah's essentially saying, God, I'd rather die than be in this discomfort, than be around you, who's not only not punishing Nineveh, but also forcing me to suffer in this way.

Now, there's something before we move on, we have to examine here, because it's not in our English translations. It's this word raha. It's a Hebrew word that means disaster, displease, discomfort, evil, or even ugliness. This word pops up three times in this ending. It actually starts in Jonah 3, verse 10, and it pops up two more times in chapter 4. He says in Jonah 3 that the Ninevites were rescued from their disaster, or racha. In verse one of chapter four, it says, but it displeased, or Racha. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and that he was angry that Jonah's heart was turning ugly, it was turning towards evilness, the disaster. In verse 10, it was the ugliness that would have been poured out on Nineveh. And in verse 6, Jonah is saved from his discomfort, from his raha, the ugliness that would have happened to him, the bad outcome that would have happened to him. Now, I'm not just bringing up Hebrew words because it's fun or it's Interesting. I oftentimes don't intentionally, because nobody knows Hebrew. Not even many pastors know Hebrew. It's a terrible language. Anyways. Greek I understand a little bit, but Hebrew, never mind.

You guys don't need to know that. But the point in bringing this up, the point in any of this, is that Jonah writes this intentionally. The reason that this word comes up three times in this short section, the short amount of verses, is because Jonah wants us to see something here. He wants us to see something and not to miss it. The original reader wouldn't have been able to miss it. I don't want you to miss it. What Jonah is saying to the reader is what God did for Nineveh, he did for me. And I missed it. I missed it. I was wrong. I had this whole thing wrong about God. I only wanted what I wanted. I wanted what my heart desired. I didn't want God's heart. I thought that my ways were higher than his ways. I didn't see his mercy. I didn't see how beautiful he was. I didn't see how gentle he was being with me. And that's what we see in these last two verses. Verses 10 and 11. It says, 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 I not 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? God is saying to Jonah, I saved you. I was the one who did it. I saved you in the boat. I saved you when you jumped into the sea. I'm saving you now. God's saying, I was the one who did it. But you're mad at me for doing the same thing for Nineveh. You don't even care about the cattle. You care about the plant, and you don't even care about the cattle there, let alone the people who bear my image in that city. Jonah was mad that God didn't destroy them. God was showing Jonah that he loves Nineveh, that his heart breaks for them. Jonah would have preferred for the plant to live and for Nineveh to die. He loved comfort more than compassion. And that's where God presses this question into Jonah that Jonah doesn't want to hear, that we don't want to hear. Do you pursue God's heart or just your own preferences? And that leads us to our main idea for today.

Main idea:

God's mercy is greater than our preferences.

God's mercy is greater than our preferences. But essentially, God is asking Jonah this do you pursue my heart? Do you want to continue to act the way you think, the way you think you should? Or do you want something infinitely better? Too many people sit in church week after week feeling this feeling of God. I really just want to be able to do what I want. But I know that you, your word says that I shouldn't do these certain things, but I just. I see these as rules. And there's this tension in a lot of people's hearts who sit in churches week after week. This heart wrestling of going, these laws feel like they're keeping me from really what I want to do. The truth is, as we get to know each other more and more, I want to help you get to understand a little bit more of me. But I'm not going to be the kind of pastor who leads a moral reformation. The truth is, I don't really want you guys to leave here simply being more moral. I don't want you to leave being less moral.

But if you leave here today with 10 tips on how to follow God a little bit better, you've missed the point. If you leave today here going, well, I need to try harder and be better, and God will love me for that. You've missed the point. If you want to run after your own desires, I'm not going to be the kind of pastor who stops you, because God won't stop you either. Romans, chapter one lays this out for us, actually, in some nice clarity. It says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to the impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. You might think, okay, that sounds pretty harsh. That sounds. It doesn't really sound that good. And yet I want to lay it on thick here. This is what God calls his wrath. I specifically left out verse 18, which is the intro to that section.

It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. We think about God's wrath in a couple different ways. We think of it as hellfire and brimstone coming against judgment, against those who are doing wrong. But the New Testament lays it out for us like this. God is going to allow us to run after the sinful and evil desires of our heart, that is enough punishment. That's the same kind of punishment of hellfire and brimstone. And we think, wow, that seems pretty, pretty easy. Sounds like I can still do the things that I want. If you are thinking that you don't understand your sin. Our sin divorces us from our soul. It separates us from who we are. Our sin allowing us to run after our sin is torture in God's eyes. It will destroy us. This is what Jonah's doing. He's running after what he wants. God comes to Jonah and asks him, where does this path lead you? Where does living you do you lifestyle lead? How is it, how is it beneficial to you, Jonah, that you could do this? That you could run from me? Can't. The truth is you can chase what you want only for so long before you find yourself outside the loving arms God.

I'm not saying that there's a place that you can run to that you can be so disobedient that you can be beyond forgiveness. That's not what I'm saying. But there is a reality that you can run so far from God that you find yourself permanently separated from him again. This isn't a try harder be better message. This isn't a if I do the things that God asks me to do, then I won't be outside God's loving arms. And that'll be good for me. No, the only way for you to follow God's law in joy, in a joyful attitude, is by pursuing his heart, is by loving Him. We can't do it any other way. A white knuckled trying to be obedient to God's law will not grant us anything except for resentment. We have to love the God who gives us his word, who gives us his law. When we love him, we'll fall in love with what he commands us to do. It's not always easy, it's not always comfortable. But it's always centered on what's true and eternal. There's a hymn by John Newton. He was the same person who wrote Amazing Grace.

He wrote a hymn. It was never put to music, but it's one of my favorite pieces of literature written in all of Christianity. It says this. Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before, since we have seen his beauty are joined to part no more. To see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. What this hymn represents is what it is talking about is at some point in our Life following our duty to God, being obedient to God was separate from our pleasure, was separate. It was a burden on us. But when we see Christ, when we become a child, when we are transformed from a slave into a child, that duty, that obedience, becomes something that's light. It becomes a choice, becomes something that we live into. That leads us to our points of application. First, we must remember God's goodness before suffering comes. One of the worst times to be given a book on suffering is when you're in the midst of it. If you've ever been there and a well intentioned Christian has given you that, it can feel, it can feel harsh.

We need to prepare ourselves before suffering comes. Trials and suffering will come. This is a promise to all of us as humans, especially those of us as Christians. Are we ready? Are you ready to see God in the midst of suffering? Or will you be like Jonah and run? Jonah forgot that the same God who could be trusted, who rescued him from the sea, could be trusted with the city. If we remember God's goodness before the storm, we will forget him in the midst of it. Suffering can be hard for us individually, but some of the hardest things for us spiritually is not just our own suffering, but seeing those around us suffering, seeing our spouse, seeing our parents, seeing our children or our brothers and sisters, our friends suffer can be detrimental, can be so hard on us spiritually. My challenge for you this week is to take inventory of the things and the people in your life. Pray to God this week about how he can prepare you for suffering. That's what you got in your bulletin this week. It's a prayer, a prayer guide. I challenge you. Take 15 minutes this week, go through that, prepare your heart, because suffering will come.

And if we're not ready for it now, it'll be incredibly hard for us later. Trials will happen. God will bring us through suffering. Will we pursue him or our own sense of what's right and wrong? And that leads us into our last point of application. Recognize the danger of loveless orthodoxy. The reality is that Jonah had good, good theology. He even quoted scripture. The problem isn't that Jonah didn't believe the right things. It's that Jonah didn't love God's heart. The thing about us as reformed people is that we don't just love being right, we love knowing that we're right. Probably more than any other denomination, that's true of us. I feel that I've. I had a professor say that to me once and I was like, oh, that cuts right to the Heart. It's easy for us to say that God is powerful and yet we don't fear God. It's easy for us to sing songs about God's mercy and yet demand justice of all the people around us. It's easy for us to say that God is infinite and yet try to force him into a box small enough, small enough that we believe we can control Him.

Having good theology is often like obedience. If we do it out of a heart that is not in love with God, it is meaningless. You will not be able to be joyfully obedient or have good theology without loving God. And if you try, you will miss the point entirely. The truth is, Satan can pick up God's word and say that this whole book is inerrant, that there's not one word in here that isn't true. Satan can say that. He just hates that. It is true. He hates it. Jonah's theology was flawless, but his heart was frozen. He could quote Exodus, but he couldn't rejoice in it. Orthodoxy without love is idolatry. Don't pass up delighting in God, delighting in the heart of God for something so shallow as having good orthodoxy, good theology. It's an idol that leads us actually away from God. How is it that we can run in joyful righteousness? How is it that we can love theology and not be a shell? It's not idolatry. Why is it that we can pursue God's heart? It's because on the cross Jesus heart was was crushed. Jesus heart was pierced and water flowed out of it.

God wanted, or Jonah wanted Nineveh to perish and Jesus died to save the Ninevites on the cross. God crushed the heart of His Son so that ours could be made new. This is why we can pursue God's heart. It's because his grace, his mercy, already pursued us. Jonah ran from God's heart. Jesus revealed God's heart for sinners. Jonah sat outside the city waiting and hoping for judgment. Jesus went outside the city ready to bear our judgment, the judgment for us. We can love good works, we can love righteousness, good theology, obedience, and not have it be idolatry. Because we can love the heart of the infinite, God of the universe, a heart that bursts forth with mercy for the undeserving Ninevites and for us as undeserving sinners, prosper as we leave here. But let's be reminded that God's mercy is greater than our preferences.

Do you pursue God's heart?

Would you stand with me as we pray? And prepare to respond in worship.