Jonah's Real Lesson

Our mission conference begins three weeks from Wednesday!

In anticipation of it, we’ve been learning lessons from the book of Jonah – the world’s most reluctant missionary who tried to escape from warning a savage nation to repent, because he actually wanted God to judge them!

So he fled in the wrong direction until God intercepted him with a storm. The mariners threw him overboard, the storm ceased, and these Gentile sailors became Jonah’s first converts as they worshipped the God Who had spared their lives.

Meanwhile, a great fish swallowed Jonah, and after three days and nights, it spat him out on land. Centuries later, Jesus used this to picture His own burial for three days and nights in the tomb.

Jonah finally began moving in the direction God had for him. He entered the city and began delivering his warning, Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!

The city was swept with revival – everyone repented and turned to Israel’s God.

But Jonah saw his greatest victory as his greatest defeat! He very literally couldn’t win for losing. And it was all because of his hateful attitude! The prophet who acted like he hated God – for being so loving!

You know, throughout this book, you keep seeing these characters all acting so uncharacteristically! Jonah acts unlike any other man of God in the Bible.

The proud and mighty king of Nineveh humbles himself with fasting in sackcloth and ashes. His vicious people follow in repentance down to the last beggar.

And the rough, pagan, Gentile sailors repent and turn in mass to the God of Israel!

None of these characters are acting the way you’d think they’re supposed to!

Today, let’s finish the book of Jonah as God teaches him a lesson about priorities. Nothing in all of creation is of greater importance to God than the souls of men. Jesus did not die to redeem angels or animals or anything else, but the race of Adam’s heirs. And redeeming us was the only truly hard thing God ever did! Creating the universe cost Him nothing – redeeming your soul cost Him everything! Creating the universe, He didn’t sweat a drop – redeeming you, He sweat blood!

6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.

7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.

8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

10 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:

11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Heavenly Father, we ask You to give us Your compassion for those who are without You. Give us the courage to warn them in love against the self-destructive nature of their own bondage. Give us a burden for our country and its culture, and may we use the light You give us to lead others to You.

And may any lost among us this morning see the love of God through Your word, through Your people being shaped by Your word, and through Your Spirit as You meet with us today – in Jesus’ name, Amen!

Now this brings us to the final scene and the final lesson of the book. Back in Jonah 1:4, we saw that the Lord sent out a great wind. In verse 17, God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Now as we come to the end, we see that same kind of language in the next three verses.

In verse 6, God prepares a gourd to shelter him.

In verse 7, He prepares a worm to destroy the gourd.

In verse 8, He prepares a vehement east wind to drive home Jonah’s lesson.

Because all of this is ultimately orchestrated to prepare Jonah himself. In all of the seemingly natural events of life, the hand of God is working behind the scenes to direct us, shape us, teach us, mold us into the likeness of Christ. Romans 8:28-29 says that all things are working together for our good, by which he means they are working to conform us to the image of his Son.