Mission of Mercy No.4 Right Priorities

God Almighty help me in my pain, Fill us, not just as a temptation, But deliver us from evil, For Thine is the kingdom, The life, and the glory forever and ever. As announced in the newsletter, the reading this morning is from Jonah chapter 4. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.

I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take my life, For it is better for me to die than to live.

But the Lord replied, Have you any right to be angry? Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort.

And Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.

He wanted to die and said, It would be better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Do you have a right to be angry about the vine? I do, he said. I am angry enough to die.

But the Lord said, You have been concerned about this vine. Though you did not tend it or make it grow, it sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh is more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.

Should I not be concerned about that great city? Amen. Now if you'd like to keep your Bibles open, that particular passage of scripture. Let's just ask God's blessing on his word.

Father, we thank you for this inspired, inerrant, authoritative word that you have granted to us that we call the Bible. We praise you for it and we ask that from its hallowed pages we might be able not only to read, but to hear your voice speaking to us. We thank you, Lord, that you have allowed not only the strong and courageous features of men and women to be recorded in the biblical account, but also you have allowed to be painted in the warts and the pimples.

We bless you for that because that makes this book so very real, so very natural, so very relevant to us. Now as we study its pages, oh Lord, we pray, speak to us. For from your word we believe, we hear constantly the voice of God addressing our situation.

In the name of our Savior, Amen. I suppose you could say that this book is full of things that you might summarize as great things. I mean by that in the first chapter there is the story of a great storm.

In the second chapter there is the story of the great fish. In the third chapter there is the story of a great deliverance. And here I suggest to you in this last chapter is, if you like, the feature of great questions.

Have you any right to be angry? Should I not be concerned about that great city? I sometimes think and say this with humility even if it doesn't at first sounding come over like that. I understand Jonah more than I understand most of the Old Testament or New Testament personalities. You see, Jonah was a preacher.

I know a little bit about preaching, a little bit about the temperament of preachers. The preachers that make their impact on the pages of the Old Testament and on the New Testament are men who are not just academic. In fact, some preachers are not academic at all.

But whatever degree of intellect they have linked wedded to that is also their emotion. And they do not only proclaim a word that they have thought out, they project it from the depths of their being. And sometimes these men and these women they reveal the psyche.

They give an insight into their temperament. Such I suggest to you is the case with Jonah. You see the man in the full flush of evangelistic endeavor as he penetrates that barbaric yet paradoxically civilized city of Nineveh and declares the word of God.

You saw him previously in the belly of a fish crying out to the Lord to preserve his life. And now just when you think that he might be at the crest of the wave with peons of praise lifting from his heart to the great and glorious God because of the revival that has broken out in Nineveh. You discover to the contrary that he seems to be plunged down into the depths of the depression.

I tell you I understand him because I understand just a little about preaching. The psalmist at times can too follow ecstasy with agony. Why art thou cast down O my soul? What is it within you that causes you to be so anxious? And so he speaks to himself.

Here is the apostle Paul and from time to time his emotions change as he's developing that great theological treatise we call the epistle to the Romans. And he spells out the condition of the Jews. And then he's lifted up into an ecstasy of praise.

And you'll discover it at the end of the 11th chapter and also at the end of the 8th chapter. What he has to say is not really relevant to what he has said but the emotion of the occasion just lifts him up. And thank God that the apostle Paul is not just a cerebral intellectual.

He's a man of warm blood. He's an emotional man. And so you find with Paul as with Jonah as with most preachers these shifts, these changes in their emotion.

Well here is Jonah in this fourth chapter. And we are astonished to discover in the opening verse that he's greatly displeased. And he becomes angry.

My wife says sometimes I'm broody. I think actually what she misinterprets is the fact that I'm meditating. Here is Jonah in a broody meditative condition.

And he prays to the Lord. He's not in Nineveh, he's some distance from Nineveh. And what he has to say in terms of his prayer is what the Puritans would call a body of divinity.

I mean by that he sets out his creedal statement. Where he is at theologically and it's utterly impeccable. Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was at home? Go on to the middle of the verse.

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who relents from sending calamity. Now there's nothing the matter with that at all.

That's a good concise statement of the nature of God. Then why is Jonah whinging? What is it that's caused Jonah to be sucked as I say into this vortex of depression? Well, you see it's the fact that this God has responded to the repentance of Nineveh. In a way that seems to suggest to Jonah in the state that he's in.

As indicating that Jonah, his reputation is on the line. These Ninevehites, they have repented. They have not as a result received the punishment of God.

Now this is what Jonah thought might happen. So he tells us in the first part of the verse. When first he received the commission from God to go to Nineveh.

Is not this the reason why I fled to Charshish? Because I know that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger. You see, this wasn't the first occasion when Jonah, you remember, had such a commission. In the second book of Kings in the 14th chapter.

You discover that Jonah is told to preach to his own people in North Palestine. And to say that unless they repented then something terrible would happen. And they did repent.

And a remarkable consequence occurred. And it seems to Jonah, even if you cannot follow his logic. Because he's now in a state of depression.

That actually his ministry was not really necessary at all. I mean, God if you're going to go around forgiving people. And being merciful to people.

And you're doing this because of your nature. Then why do you need preachers? You understand? He's even suggesting that the problem of Nineveh and the problem of Northern Palestine. Is what theologians call antinomianism.

In other words, it doesn't really matter how you live. This God will sort it all out in the end. Jonah is right in his propositions about God.

But he's wrong in his conclusions about evangelism. You see, there's nothing that Jonah says about the character of God. About which we would criticize him.

When Moses is on Mount Sinai. And he asks, and you can read the story in the book of Exodus. He asks that God will display his glory.

God passes by and reveals himself as a gracious God. The merciful God. The long-suffering God.

The God who longs to pardon. Not only one generation. But generation after generation.

After generation. And it seems as though you get in the Old Testament, surprisingly enough. If you only read selective bits of the teaching.

The notion that God forgives and forgives and forgives. Independent of the way that people live or respond. That is of course utterly untrue.

It's the theology of modern theologians. It's the philosophy of those who do not know the total revelation of the Bible. This God will forgive.

Longs to forgive. Extends his arm towards the Ninevehites. But, there has to be a repentance which is at gut level.

And Jonah isn't so sure. You see, I do understand Jonah. Pardon me for saying that.

But you see, a preacher who is like Jonah is a man who really loves this God. He not only loves this God, he loves the reputation of God. And there are times when as a preacher I wish I'd never preached this sermon.

There are times when I add up the years and I wished, in moments of depression, I'd never have addressed the same congregation for so long. Why? Well, the reaction of the people. You see, Jonah's contemporary, Nahum, within a matter of a few years, you read his letter, will be denouncing Nineveh.

Will be bringing God's wrath on Nineveh. This repentance is short-lived. And Jonah has some intuition about this.

You see, he's not just a coward that you might think him to be when you read the opening chapter. He's a man who has a great concern for the being of God, for the character of God, and for the gospel of God as he understood it. And when you see people responding to this gospel, and you have that sneaking suspicion that the response is superficial, give it a month, give it a year, give it a decade, and they'll be back where they were when you started to preach then, because you love this God and you're committed to this gospel.

You wish that you'd never opened your mouth. You may be wrong in your deductions, but the human aspect of a preacher's nature, who loves his God sometimes plunges him into the same situation as Jonah finds himself now. With the right theology, but with wrong deductions.

Oh Lord, take away my life. Strange that, isn't it? I mean, two chapters ago he's been asking for his life to be preserved when he was in the belly of the fish. Now, having been seemingly successful, not seemingly, obviously successful as an evangelist, he wants his life to be taken from him.

So here comes the great question. Have you, Jonah, any right to be angry? Have you, Tony, any right to be broody? I had a rough day yesterday. Six hours of travel.

Service I thought would last an hour lasted two. For one hour I couldn't get away. I arrived back, confessions good for the soul, feeling absolutely blown with my head almost registering lava in a volcano that wants to get out.

Those of you who've had the feeling will experience, will appreciate the purple language in describing it. But Lord, I need that half evening. You see, it's not in any way you're sending me to, but I've got the tab and the formidable.

Could you not just have at least lowered the headache scales? How easy it is for us to get into a position where we misunderstand this God and say, hey, if I put the money in the slot machine and pull the lever, why don't I get the result that logic says should come out? The fact of the matter is that there is no slot machine theology about God. Have you any right to be angry? Well, Jonah goes and he meditates. He doesn't brood.

He just goes. He sits outside the city. Strange, isn't it, that he could have been having a banquet in the city because he's a hero there.

But instead of that, he absence himself. He distances himself from Nineveh. And there he makes himself a shelter.

He gets together the bric-a-bac. He gets together a little bit of trellis work. And there he creates a booth.

Those of you who are into the Old Testament scriptures will know something about the Feast of Tabernacles. When the Old Testament Jews remembered God's faithfulness to them as they spent 40-odd years in Sinai, when they remembered how God gave them corn and wine despite their predicament, fed them with manna, ensured that they had sustenance, when they recognized taking up their stand in the Promised Land that He was the faithful God of agriculture, so at the end of the cycle of nature, each year they would keep the Feast of Tabernacles. They'd leave their own homes, and they'd go out in the streets or into the countryside, and they'd live for several days in booths.

And interestingly enough, the Feast of Tabernacles projects in the Messianic way of looking at scripture the day when not just the Jew but also the Gentile will come to know God. So it's a bit ironic, isn't it, that you've got Jonah constructing a booth which is sacramental for the evangelization of Gentile and Jew, yet brooding over the fact that God has been gracious towards Gentiles. You see the problem that Jonah's in, but don't criticize him too much.

You'll find yourself in the same problem, even if the circumstances are a little different. They're the same in principle. Jonah went out, makes himself a booth.

He waits to see what would happen in the city. I'm very indebted to Waverly Hall and Selwyn Hughes and the very helpful counseling courses that they make available for local churches and denominations. The Counseling Ministry is a wonderful ministry, and it's an extension, if you like, of gospel preaching, though I sometimes think that if gospel preaching was in the power of the Spirit, we wouldn't need so many counselors.

But if you want to know how to handle a man who's in difficulty, then here's a classic example. Here is the counselor par excellence dealing with Jonah, this broody preacher. Jonah waits, verse 7, to see what will happen to the city, and God manifests Himself to Jonah, verse 6. Did I say that was verse 7? It was verse 5 to start with.

If you're not confused now, I am. Verse 5, he's in the shade in the booth. Verse 6, God manifests Himself, comes down, has a look at what Jonah's living in.

I can do better than that. Then the Lord provided a vine, or a good, as is the translation in the authorized version, and made it grow up over Jonah. Isn't it interesting how God engages in two creative things in this prophecy? The fish He prepares, the good or the vine He prepares, and He makes it to grow over Jonah to give him shade.

Here is God acting lovingly towards Jonah like a good counselor towards the counselee. And He does so with incredible patience. Have you ever heard about the patience of God? Ever heard a sermon on the patience of God? It really is one of the most glorious of attributes.

The NIV version unfortunately loses the word patience when it translates Romans 15 in verse 5. It enlarges on the word, but I think they'd have done better if they'd have kept it, actually. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity. May the God of patience.

Don't you think that would have been better? I'm sure my good friend Len Bickerton feels that it would be better, and all those who have the authorized version of the Bible to which my memory is wedded, as I've said many times, it's the only version I can actually learn off by heart. Well, it retains that good old-fashioned word patience. And when you get to the book of Revelation, and the first chapter there, and the ninth verse, here is John, writer of the book, and he says, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus.

I, John, who reflect on the patience of Jesus. The patience of the Father. The patience of the Son.

The patience of the Spirit. Aren't you glad that God is patient? I mean, if Jonah had applied to be a member of worthy tabernacle, we'd have chucked him out. I mean, how can you cope with a man who chops and changes like he chops and changes? Thank God he doesn't deal with us at a relationship level how we sometimes deal with one another.

He is the wonderful counselor. So he deals with this man, Jonah, and he tries to show Jonah that he's made wrong deductions, and that Jonah is not actually part of the Trinity. God could cope without Jonah.

I sometimes find that difficult to believe that God can cope without me, don't you? The patience of our God as He draws alongside and He sees this man who's making wrong deductions as I make wrong deductions and say, Lord, why? Why do I feel so spent of energy when I've got a crowd to preach to? And he chuckles away, and he says, do you think your preaching is dependent on your study? Do you think your preaching is dependent on your ingenuity? You who preach about the Holy Spirit, you who preach about the gifts of the Spirit, do you not think that my omnipotence is equal to your utter inadequacy? And it's only when there is a marriage of your inadequacy with my omnipotence that anything is achieved? What fools we are. So God comes along, and He helps Jonah as He helps us. Sometimes God, in His grace, gives answers to prayer even when we haven't properly formed the request.

Jonah, what do you call that thing you're taking shelter in? Jonah, I can do better than that. So He creates a good. This vine.

I could go into details about this plant. In fact, I was going to check it up just in case I dared at the flower festival preach on this verse. But the whole idea of the thing withering at the end, that caused me to feel that I'd have civil war amongst the womenfolk and some of the men who helped.

So that's why I backed off, because I lack courage. But I'll not take you into the sort of horticultural aspect of this. Just stay with the idea it's a good or a vine and it grows rapidly to several feet and its branches or its leaves are wide and it creates shelter.

And Jonah's happy. Jonah was very happy about the vine. God, you see, has stepped in and He's given him a providence that indicates that God still has concerns for Jonah.

And God does this at times. He answers our prayers. Not always, but He does at times.

And the danger of answered prayer is this. Some of you who are older than the others in the tab may remember I once preached a sermon on the problems of answered prayer. Do you know that answered prayer creates greater difficulties than unanswered prayer? And one of the difficulties is this.

You might put your faith in the answer and not in the answerer. Do you understand? You might put your faith in the providential dealings of God than God Himself. A. W. Tozer says God wants to be loved for Himself.

Not because of what He does, but because of what He is. Fools that we are when we feel that unanswered prayer is an indication that God is negligent towards us. Not at all.

It's those who know answers to prayer constantly who sometimes become the most immature Christians. They're always wanting the extraordinary. They're always wanting snap resolutions of their problems.

But that is not what God promises. Neither is it what God wants for us as being best for us. He wants us to love Him for Himself and to trust Him despite the consequences.

But God recognizes our humanity. And so in His grace, He sometimes grants the vine or the good. And as a result, Jonah and all who are the kith and kin of Jonah, they're happy.

God is answering. When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on His unchanging grace. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.

Can you say that? You see, Jonah couldn't at that point. He needs help. He needs external evidence of God's intervention in his life.

But if there's no good, if there's no vine, then I ask you in terms of the hymn, is God still your strength and stay? Alright, so your job's gone. So your health's gone. So your wife's gone.

So your husband's gone. So everything is gone. But if you have God, can you cope? Because that's what God wants.

When William Carey had translated the Hindi Scriptures, at least one of the Gospels, spending years cracking the language, and with his primitive printing press, getting everything ready, do you know what happened the night before? The press caught fire. The manuscripts were burnt up. And Carey writes in his diary, everything is against me, yet I have God.

And that is enough. God knows how long we can take discouragement. He also knows how long we can take encouragement.

And as far as Jonah's concerned, it's 24 hours. Jonah was very happy about the vine, but at dawn the next day, God provided a worm. Hallelujah.

Do you think that was Jonah's reaction? Would it be yours? I have yet got to arrive at the place where I can say hallelujah in every situation. Somebody wrote a book by that title. I never read it, because I thought I'd be so convicted if I did.

God provided a worm, which chewed the vine, so that it withered. And then, then he adds insult to injury, does this God. Look at verse 8. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head.

You know, it was the east wind that really would have reduced Nineveh in terms of its population. You see, when the east wind blows, there's something about the east wind in the Old Testament. Have you ever thought of this? When the east wind blows, there's problems in Palestine.

The reason, well, it's fairly easy to work through. You don't need a degree in geography or anything else to comprehend this. The east wind is coming across the desert, so it's a hot wind.

It's a wind without air. It's a wind with a lot of velocity and a wind with a lot of heat. And it's that east wind that really should have been turned on Nineveh to reduce it, to eliminate its population.

But here is the extraordinary thing. God turns the east wind on Jonah. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head.

And Jonah says, it would be better for me to die. The second time he's asked that, the Samaritans would have been quite busy had there been a phone call in a hotline to them in Jonah's day. And God says to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry about the vine? You see, Jonah's not so angry about the wind.

He's got this vine in his mind. And it's the vine that really is the problem, the good. And yet, Jonah, think it through.

You are angry about the taking away of this vine, of this good. Did you deserve it? Did you produce it? Did you work for it? Was there one thing that you did to cause the vine to grow? The answer is no. Who was responsible, Jonah? Well, Lord, you were responsible.

Don't I have a right to do what I want with my own? Do not I have a right to be merciful to someone who needs shelter and has only an inadequate booth? Do I not have a right, Jonah says, I know what you're getting at. Do you not have a right to show mercy towards Nineveh? Irrespective of what may happen in the future, do you not have a right to be God alone and for me to retain my humanity and to recognize that you know a bit more than I know? Right, Jonah. You see, it's all there, isn't it? Read it through.

It is a most incredible insight that it gives into human nature. You see, God understands about the good. God understands about the worm.

You see, the time was when God had a good, when God had a vine, and a worm came. Listen. Long years ago, Jonah, I too had a good when the earth was still young and the world was a wilderness.

There in the desert, I planted a garden not far from this place where you first built your booth. It became an oasis, a verdure, an order, a bridgehead of peace in the midst of the chaos, a place where I walked in the cool of the day, and the good that I planted was tender and vibrant, a source of refreshment, of pleasure and joy. But a worm came and struck it and caused it to wither.

My good, even Adam, who fell to the ground, yet not with surprise did I see all this happen, for I made the worm, Jonah, fashioned its beauty, made it to serve me in treason and duty. All this is a mystery still hidden in history, nor can it be known on this side of my throne. Then I looked on my man who had faded as petals, and I yearned for my good whose flesh was as grass.

I said I will spare him, will save and revive him, this creature so mortal that died in a night. So I came to deliver my man who had withered. By truth I exposed him.

Through death I reclothed him. I promised a seed and a means of restoring, till the worm was dismayed and the devil went roaring, for man was my image, yes, man was my glory. Oh, should I not spare? You must think on my story.

And now in the city I see Adam's children, all withered and worn by the work of the worm. I see the young infants and very much cattle. They do not suspect me, my love shall direct me.

Why should the worm conquer when I am creator? My good was so fair, then should I not spare? Just think how you felt, Jonah, your good and its coolness. How happy you were in the heat of the day. You took it and used it whose hands had not made it.

You never imagined a worm would invade it. But then when it happened you went all to pieces. You shouted me down with your crude exegesis.

How could such a good be struck down in a night? The thing was outrageous, you wanted to fight. Yet its life was not yours, though you claimed its refreshment. Who flared up in anger and swore at its blight? Oh, give me your answer out there in the sunshine.

Come, purge in defiance and grow to your God. Oh, learn to love people regardless of background. Don't weep for a gird or shed tears for a pod.

Just one thing more, Jonah, I need now to tell you. A thing not quite realized away there in Israel, that you were a good to me, you were my treasure. Your faith in that desert afforded me pleasure.

So I called you and taught you and made you my vessel. I sent you to Nineveh, the good to the evil, to thunder my judgments, to warn and to shade them, to call to repentance, to seek and upbraid them. They heard and believed me, they truly received me.

So grace pardoned all, for they answered my call. But a worm at your roots cut you off from my favor. Your green leaf turned brown, you were left without savor.

Oh, you raged and you pouted, you withered with madness. T'was I who you flouted and mine is the sadness. As meanly you stand and meanly you stare.

Have you never had children? How can you not care? Oh, don't be a worm, Jonah, don't gnaw at my purpose. Oh, don't play the maggot at the root of my plans. For though I have made you and sent you and used you, I too can destroy you as well as employ you.

Yet still I have pity on you and the city. Oh, rest in my care, I have chosen to spare. Should I not be concerned about that great city where men do not know the difference between right and wrong, where animals in innocence graze, I, God, am a loving and a compassionate God, longing to extend the day of pardon so that Jonas can go and tell of the great and glorious gospel.

Up, you modern Jonas, off to your Nineveh, and accept even what you cannot understand in terms of the providential dealings of this God as he calls you on into further service for himself. Let us pray. Jonah came under the greater cover of God than the vine indicated.

He was covered by his love, he was covered by his compassion, he was covered by his providential care. There is a sense in which God's cover extends to all who place confidence in his Son, for Jonah speaks of a greater than Jonah. He speaks of the Lord Jesus who came into the Ninevehs of this world to seek and to save the lost.

Jonah speaks to us of the Christ who died on the cross to take away the guilt and the penalty of our sins. It's only through embracing that truth that you and I can ever know forgiveness and peace of heart and mind. Submission to that God on finding that absolution of our sins so that as you go along life's journey, you trust him regardless of what comes in terms of difficulties and obstacles.

He asks for your trust and your confidence in him, not just because of what he has done and can do, but because of who he is and ever will be. And so we're going to sing this song about the covering of God. We're going to sing it carefully and thoughtfully.

And as we do so, we're going to come around the table of our Lord and discover that there set out for us also is the cover of God's salvation grace, is our confidence for now and for eternity. Father, help us as we sing this hymn and as we take bread and wine together in a moment or so to pledge our confidence and our trust again in you. May the bread and the wine be come to us as the body and blood of Christ.

And may we go on this way, content to take what comes in terms of life's experience, knowing that you are with us in Jesus' name. Let's stand and sing. It's 28 in the supplement.

Cover me. Songs from Mission Praise, which we're going to put together. Number 792 and 606.

The first one is, You are the vine, we are the branches. Keep us abiding in you. Then we'll grow in your love.

Then we'll go in your name. That the world will surely know that you have power to heal and to save. I think these songs are relevant to the story of Jonah.

The second one is, Soften my heart, Lord. Soften my heart. From all indifference, set me apart.

I don't think Jonah suffered from indifference, do you? But we do sometimes. So we'll sing the first one through once, go back to the second stanza, and then we'll go straight into the second one. You are the vine.

We are the branches. Keep us abiding in you. You are the vine.

We are the branches. Keep us abiding in you. Then we'll grow in your love.

That the world will surely know that you have power to heal and to save. You are the vine. We are the branches.

Keep us abiding in you. We'll grow in your love. Then we'll go.

That the world will surely know that you have power to heal and to save. You are the vine. We are the branches.

Keep us abiding in you. Soften my heart. From all indifference, set me apart.

To be your comforter. To weep with your tears.