Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Can you hear me? All right. Can we all open our Bibles to the book of Jonah, chapter four and verse one. It is a pleasure to be with you. Before we begin, let's give our time to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for today, we thank you for the fellowship of believers, and I pray that you would just bless the teaching of your word. Use me as you see fit. Help us to understand and learn your word. More importantly, help us to live out your word. We love you, we thank you. It's in your son's name we pray, and God's people said, "Amen."

Okay, I have Jim's PowerPoint up. Never mind. Can you all see that? One second, and there we go. Okay, by way of review, in our previous lesson we covered Jonah 3:6-10. We saw how God's mercy and compassion met genuine repentance.

When the Ninevites heard the preaching of Jonah in his brief sermon, we talked about how it consisted of what was it, five words in the Hebrew language. The great city of Nineveh collectively came to repentance. Jonah said in chapter three and verse four, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown."

Obviously these words clearly were sufficient to save an entire city from both temporal destruction and eternal damnation, and we took great care to demonstrate that. Regarding the Ninevites' eternal salvation, we learned that in Matthew 12:41, Jesus confirmed this with these words.

He said, "The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation in the judgment and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." In Matthew's context, we saw Jesus use the word "repent" as a synonym for faith or believe.

In their willful rejection, the Pharisees did not believe in Jesus as their Messiah, given all the signs that Christ had already produced. So no sign would be given to them except the sign of Jonah, which in Christ's mind meant his death and resurrection.

Jonah being in the belly of the sea monster for three days and three nights, according to Jesus, was a foreshadowing or a type of what was to come. Regarding the Ninevites' temporal salvation, this is confirmed in Jonah 3:10, which says, "When God saw their deeds, the Ninevites' deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared he would bring upon them, and he did not do it."

God did not do it. A little more insight on that later, but this verse closed chapter three, and it's very important that we observe that belief came first. Of course, justification by belief or faith in the word of Jonah, and then came the works of faith.

We also saw that God, instead of deserved judgment, he approached the Ninevites with mercy. This of course ties into the message of Jonah, which is to showcase God's universal love and plan of redemption, which extends beyond Israel to include all nations.

Up until this point, we've seen some pretty exciting stuff. Jonah fleeing from God, Jonah and the sailors experiencing a massive storm compliments of God himself. We saw Jonah being thrown overboard from the sailors' vessel so they could save themselves.

We also saw the sailors come to the Lord in faith, and famously, not only Jonah being swallowed by the great fish, he was also vomited out as well. Moving into chapter four, we can expect to see a climactic ending, don't you think?

To this very short, very condensed, yet unique historical account of the prophet Jonah. In fact, everything will be revealed in this final chapter in terms of Jonah's character and motives. How will all of that come about? It comes about through a conversation, through a penetrating and revealing one.

In fact, chapter four is so climactic, so deliberate and calculated, that the author himself, which we believe is Jonah, ends the book using a chiasm. What is a chiasm? A chiasm is a literary device, it's a writing technique commonly used by the biblical authors to enhance their message, their themes, to put an emphasis on their main ideas.

Like chiasms, things like metaphors, symbolism, foreshadowing, those are all examples of literary devices. Brad McCoy talks about chiasms in his article found in the journal formerly called the Chafer Theological Seminary Journal, now called Pneumatikos.

McCoy says this, "The use of chiasms as a major structural feature in the Bible is rooted in the fact that chiasms infuse the thought and speech patterns of the Semitic mind." He goes on to say, "These structural devices are an important key to an accurate exegesis of many major passages, sections, and at times even whole books."

"The structure in which a notion is communicated is the heart of its effectiveness. Authors specifically structured their material to enhance the impact of its message, but often intentionally utilized specific and sophisticated structural features in the organization of their text to reinforce the impact and the implications of their message, as well as to make them as memorable as possible."

So sophisticated are these chiasms, some even say that the Bible itself is a chiasm. It begins with the heavens and the earth and it ends with a new heavens and earth. One example, this is a typical chiasm, what it looks like. This is a chiastic structure found in Genesis 17:1-25.

Notice the inversion of ideas. In this case, the facts represented by the letters to the left. The As tell us about Abram's age, the Bs speak of how the Lord appeared and leaves Abram. If you go down the letters in succession, each letter has an inverted or mirrored match, if you will, or a corresponding element.

As the reader reaches the center, the X, or in this case, the chi of the chiasm, you discover the point of what the author is trying to make, the central axis. In this case of Genesis 17:1-25, Moses, the author of Genesis, is making the Abrahamic Covenant a big deal, with a capital big deal.

Here is another example, a New Testament example, another classic chiasm in John 1:1-18. If you observe, you'll see the correspondence of spiritual and historical elements throughout the passage, all surrounding a central axis, a chi.

The central idea of the passage, which is the saving faith in the incarnate Word, and that's Jesus Christ. Now according to R. Reed Lessing, Jonah 4:1-11 is also a chiasm, a chiasm of a similar but different sort. Instead of the ABX CBA pattern as you see up top there, the ABC X CBA pattern, you see the ABCC BA pattern.

In other words, the Cs carry the weight of the author's message. Does that make sense? The only obvious different is the X pattern comes to a single point, where the double C pattern, the author places a double emphasis, twice at the center, intensifying the focus of that material.

Said differently, the double Cs function also as an interpretive key, having a twofold purpose. The first purpose is to ensure that the reader does not miss what matters most, because the author literally puts it there twice.

The second purpose is that the C completes a textual unit, signaling like a closure or a conclusion and at the same time demanding interpretive attention. All that to say, Jonah 4:1-11, we find a chiastic structure of the ABCC BA pattern.

Now, identifying chiastic structures in the scripture no doubt takes considerable skill. I don't have that skill, that's why I use the scholars to figure that out, but preaching from chiastic structures is another thing altogether.

We love a good challenge, amen? Since chiastic structures I believe are very cool, I'm going to attempt to use an adaptation of Lessing's chiastic structure as our outline this morning, and let's see how that goes.

Taking this chiastic structure, that will be our outline for today and probably next week, likely next week as well. So we have Jonah's response, chapters 4:1-2. We have Jonah's request and then God's question. We have Jonah's response in the Cs, Jonah's response and God's provision.

Then it's repeated, Jonah's response and God's provision in 4:6b-8a. Then we have Jonah's request and then God's question, and then finally Jonah's response and God's final question. The title of this sermon is very straightforward, it's Jonah's Response to God.

Let's see his response there in chapter four and verse one. This would bring us to bullet point A where we will see Jonah's anger, verse one, and then Jonah's question and confession. Notice verse one, it says, "But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry."

What displeased Jonah? The "it" there is referring to what God did in chapter three, verse 11. God relented from destroying the Ninevites, he spared them. Why did he spare them? Because they proved their belief by turning from their wickedness.

Now when it says "it greatly displeased Jonah," in the Hebrew, it has a different feel or intensity. The Hebrew word for "displeased" is rasha, which means evil or wickedness. I think the English translation here is somewhat weak.

Rasha, or "it greatly displeased Jonah." What it's trying to communicate to the reader is that in Jonah's mind, what God just did was evil or wicked. It literally reads, "and it was evil to Jonah." Now the word "displeased" is the same word used back in Jonah 1:2, rasha, which says, "Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and cry against it for the wickedness, or the rasha, has come up before me."

That's the same word. Did you notice also the adjective "greatly"? In other words, what God just did wasn't just evil, to Jonah it was a great evil. You won't see it in the English, but infused in the verse there in verse one of chapter four is what you call in the Hebrew linguistics a wayyiqtol verb, "and it was evil."

The author uses the wayyiqtol verb to maintain continuity in the account, or the action of the account, in other words. To indicate there was no break in the action. In other words, God relented from destroying the Ninevites and immediately Jonah deemed what God did was evil and wicked.

This is an instance where the chapter divisions of the Bible are a disservice to the text's flow there. In other words, Jonah gave zero time to think about it, to cry about it, or to ponder whether there was error in his thinking or not.

He immediately concluded what God did was evil and wicked. Jonah was so disturbed by what just took place that scholars like Wolf said Jonah "fell into an evil inclination." I think Wolf is accurate here, because what is Jonah's next response?

He becomes angry. Notice what the verse says, "and Jonah became angry." Now this word, "anger," charah, indicates that Jonah was hot, inflamed, burning. Do any of you guys get hot or inflamed with anger? Not you guys, right?

This is the kind of anger that just boils. This is what Hoyt said in her commentary on Jonah. "Jonah is certainly displeased, but such a translation focuses only on his feelings, while the Hebrew word goes beyond emotion to Jonah's evaluation of the situation. Rasha, or 'and it was evil,' indicates that something is bad in someone's judgment."

"In other words, Jonah is judging the situation to fall short of his unstated criteria, he doesn't list that, and thus be unjust." So Jonah is livid, inflamed with anger. Now this sets the tone for the rest of the chapter, chapter four.

So much so that you'll notice the word "anger" there is repeated two more times throughout the chapter. That's how the theme of anger is throughout this chapter four. You would think being the prophet of God, as also an Israelite, that Jonah would get his cue from his covenant God and learn how to think and behave like God.

Not just in the regards to God's work, but what he's doing with other Gentile nations, sort of like David. In Psalm 92:5, David said, "Great are your works, O Lord." To David, everything God did was great, everything.

Or when the prophet Isaiah acknowledged, rather he celebrated, the salvation of the Lord in anticipation of the future when he said in Isaiah 19:23-25, "In that day, the future, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians."

"In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, 'Blessed is Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.'" You would think that Jonah would be more like the Apostle John.