Sugar Land Bible Church

Guest (Male): How are you this morning? Praise the Lord. It’s wonderful to be with you this morning. Could we turn in our Bibles to the book of Jonah, chapter 4, and verse 5? Verse 5. And could we give our time to the Lord?

Father God, we thank you for your truth. As Jesus prayed for his disciples, sanctify us in your truth, for your word is truth. And I pray that you just bless our time together in the study of the book of Jonah. Use me as you see fit. We love you, we thank you. It’s in Jesus' name we pray, and God’s people said, amen.

So last week, we ended up in Jonah 4:1-4 and a little bit of verse 5. Here in chapter 4, we reach the climax of the book where all is revealed in terms of Jonah’s character and what God is trying to do and teach Jonah. Jonah’s rebellion, his ungodly attitude, what we concluded to be an ethnocentric attitude towards the Ninevites, are all on full display.

Our sermon last week was entitled "Jonah’s Response to God," and in that sermon, we began the discussion of some very significant topics and themes found in chapter 4, particularly dealing with the anger of man and the questions of God. Jonah’s anger, as we saw, was on full display due to what God did with the Ninevites. He relented from bringing upon them deserved destruction.

Rather than giving the Ninevites the judgment they deserved, God dealt with them in his grace and compassion and slowness to anger and his lovingkindness. And we also discovered that Jonah’s anger burned because of that, because God exercised his attributes. He said, "I knew that you were going to do this, God. I knew it, and that’s why I ran from you. That’s why I ran from you in chapter 1 to Tarshish, the total opposite direction of Nineveh, because what God did with the Ninevites was evil in the sight of Jonah."

We also discussed the questions of God, many times rhetorical questions of God. The answers are obvious. Some scholars call it the dialectic ministry of God, where God uses penetrating questions to interact with his creation in a relational way.

And so, in response to Jonah’s anger, we saw that God did not deal with Jonah in his anger. Rather, God dealt with Jonah graciously and tenderly by asking him this question: "Are you right to be angry?" God placed the focus upon him. "Are you right to be angry?" The NASB has it: "Do you have good reason to be angry?" And it was a question designed to penetrate deep within Jonah’s heart so that Jonah might evaluate the root of his anger, indeed his theology.

And in most cases, men cannot answer God because only God knows the answers. Like the questions God posed to Job. By the way, Ed Alstead is doing a brave and impressive study in the book of Job on Wednesday nights. I would encourage you to attend. This Wednesday would be his last part in the study of Job. Myself and the youth are in attendance, and we are being so blessed by it. So thank you, Ed, for your service to the body. The questions of God left Job and leave men speechless, hopefully making us realize how frail we are, how small we are in comparison to an almighty and all-knowing God.

We also learned about chiastic structures last week, and in that, we boldly implemented this chiastic structure to outline the last chapter of Jonah. We adapted our outline from R. Reed Lessing's structure, to be exact, and you can find this in his Concordia commentary on the book of Jonah. We went over the initial half of the chiasm last week. We now reach the axis, as they call it, of the chiasm, and in this case, verses 5 through 8, the double C’s, which would represent the point of the passage, indeed the book.

More on that a little later. So with God’s help, we’re going to cover what remains of this outline, starting with the C’s there. Jonah’s response to God and we’re going to see him building a hut. God providing a plant to save Jonah. We’re going to see again Jonah’s response to God and God’s provision. Jonah rejoices greatly in verse 6b. Then God provides again, this time a worm to kill the plant and then a scorching wind to afflict Jonah. And so the title of this sermon is "God’s Provisions."

Notice what Jonah 4 verses 5 and 6 say. It says, "Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city." Verse 6: "So the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head, to deliver him from his discomfort."

Notice that the text says Jonah sat east of the city. Now at face value, this would place Jonah obviously east of Nineveh. Nineveh, circled in red. However, commentaries either have a lot to say about this word "east" or nothing at all. Some will say that Jonah entered in the west and then he exited in the east, very plausible. Some will say that the east is more a mountainous area, meaning he had a higher elevation. This would be ideal for Jonah to have a better view of the city. This is also plausible.

Some will even say that the term "east of anything," for example, or eastward movement, draws important themes from Genesis, for example. The author is trying to symbolize humanity’s departure from God when he says "east of something." For example, Adam and Eve were banished east of Eden. So was Cain for the murder of his brother. Very reasonable interpretation. And so, what is it, Gabe? Answer: I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. And since scholars don’t have a consensus on the significance of the east, we shouldn't be dogmatic about it. We should just take east as east.

Jonah also makes it a point to include information that he left the city but really never left the area. He goes out of the city, of course, for the purpose of being a spectator, it says. We made some conjectures last week. Maybe God will change his mind, he hopes. Maybe Jonah stayed 39 days, then left on the 40th day in hopes that God would relent from his relenting. This is probably the case. Jonah probably stayed the whole 40 days just to make sure. He is likely staying in hopes that God does not spare them. At any rate, this tidbit of information speaks volumes of Jonah and his character, and it supports or it puts the flesh on the anger of Jonah, in other words. He still wants fireworks, in other words, the destruction from God upon Nineveh.

Now the text also says there that Jonah made himself a shelter, obviously to provide shade. And as you may know, ancient Nineveh, indicated by the purple dot there with the arrow, that’s where ancient Nineveh was located. Nineveh laid across the Tigris River opposite of modern Mosul in Northern Iraq. Of course, the red line there indicates the borders of the modern-day Iraq. And so this region’s geographical and seasonal realities make shade a necessity.

In fact, Northern Iraq is known for its strong continental semi-arid climate, which makes for very hot and dry summers, very little rainfall, intense solar exposure because of the desert, and regularly hot winds. Very interestingly, I looked this up. Iraq regularly exceeds 104 degrees in the summer, and the Nineveh area or Mosul can at times approach or surpass 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now trying to establish how hot it was in Jonah 4:5 is probably not what we want to ask. It was naturally hot there, and sitting outside without adequate shade is not wise in that kind of landscape, and it would become quickly debilitating. And we haven’t even reached verse 8 yet.

Fun fact, I can attest to this heat. I was shipped to Fallujah, Iraq for about 7 to 8 months in 2005, two weeks after Ashton was born. And Fallujah is very close to where that red teardrop there is on the map, the center of Iraq. And Fallujah can be miserably hot.

And so why am I telling you this? Because the accounts of the Bible happened to real people in real places. And so notice that the text also says that Jonah built some kind of makeshift shelter there. He didn’t have 2x4s, he didn’t have plywood. Very interestingly, the word shelter there is the Hebrew word sukkah, where we get sukkot or the Feast of Booths. And in this context, this would indicate a very makeshift shelter, lowering the exposure of the heat.

And I’m willing to bet that Jonah had very little to build this shelter. Maybe instead he had some sparse branches, dried up from the desert. I say this because of what the text says next. Notice what 4 and verse 6 says: "So the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort."

And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. The phrase there "happy," "greatly happy" or "extremely happy," is simcha gadol, happy great. Why is Jonah simcha gadol? Because in God’s mercy, God appoints this plant. And so far, we’ve seen God appoint a great wind, we’ve seen God appoint—well, it says he hurled a great wind for Jonah in 1:4. We saw that the lot fell on Jonah, this is likely God’s doing if you check out Proverbs 16:33. We can safely assume that God calmed the storm as well. If he brought it, he’ll calm it in 1:17—no, that was 1:15. We’ve seen God command the fish to swallow Jonah and to vomit Jonah out. We’ve seen God remove his judgment of destruction concerning Nineveh in 3:10. Now we see God appoint a plant for Jonah here in 4:6, and we’ll see God take that away very soon.

And these verses communicate that God is one who gives and takes away, amen? God is a God who controls and directs his creation. More importantly, God is a God who saves. Now what kind of plant did God use? Believe it or not, scholars will go back and forth on and on about what kind of plant they believe God used. Was it an ivy? Was it a vine? It must have been a gourd, some scholars say. It must have had big leaves to provide shade, adequate shade. I like what Martin Luther said concerning this plant. Luther said, "Nothing is gained by fighting over a matter of no importance. Since the Hebrew word means neither ivy nor gourd, but it is likely the name of a tree unknown to us but indigenous to that region." I like that answer.

In other words, the identity of the plant is not what’s crucial. What is crucial is what God is trying to do to accomplish with the effect and the function of the plant in the context of this historical account. The same is true with the great fish. Is it a fish? Is it a whale? Jesus called it a great sea monster. It profits one nothing to bicker about what swallowed the whale or what kind of plant this is. It’s what God is doing.

And so Jonah provides a shade for himself, notice, but God provides a better shade for Jonah. Jonah’s shelter is humanly constructed. The plant is divinely appointed, causing extreme happiness. This sounds very similar to what happened in the Garden of Eden, right? Adam and Eve made fig leaves to cover their nakedness. God used an innocent scapegoat to cover their sins.

Now we know also from the text how long Jonah enjoyed this divine shade given, about a day’s worth, give or take. And according to God, a day’s worth was all that Jonah needed. Notice what verse 7 says: "But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day, and it attacked the plant and it withered." So Jonah just enjoyed this for a short time.

And notice, too, the phrase "but God." Whenever you see that phrase "but God," we should pay attention because God is trying to say, he’s trying to do, he’s trying to teach or communicate something big. These are not casual or accidental words, and typically these words follow the accounts of human shortcomings and sins, whether it be prevalent evil that led to the flood, you’ll find that phrase; the stubbornness of God’s people throughout scripture, you’ll find that phrase; the defiance of Jewish leaders regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, you will find those words. "But God" acts in spite of these sins, our sins, and uses them for his purposes. I hope we know that. I will say that again. God sovereignly acts in history, intervenes in history in spite of humanity’s sins and uses them for his glory, for his purposes.

And it also proves that God is entirely different from us. He’s sovereign. He is in control, whether unmistakably out in front or subtly behind the scenes. He is in control, working all things to his glory, whether we like it or not. And this is why deism, the idea that God remains distant from human affairs, is an absolute absurdity. And you should reject deism. And verses like these directly counter a deistic worldview.

So what we typically see follow the phrase "but God" varies in content and context, but in each instance, it consistently demonstrates divine intervention. Take, for example, Ephesians 2:4-5. God introduces mercy and grace towards the spiritually dead. "But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love," notice the phrase, "with which he loved us, even when we were dead," notice the phrase, "dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved." I sometimes ask the youth, did you know that zombies are a biblical idea? Before you met Christ, you were a zombie. You were dead in your trespasses. They get a chuckle out of it. But God made us alive in Christ Jesus.

The same phrase is found in Romans 5:8, God demonstrating love towards sinners through Christ Jesus' death. It says, "But God demonstrates," there’s our phrase, "his own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners," see the humanity’s faults and sins connected to that phrase, "Christ died for us." 1 Corinthians 1:27.