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Understanding and Embracing God’s Grand Mission: A Missional God

The Lord’s Day
Morning

February 22, 2009

Missions
Conference 2009

Jonah 4:1-11


“Understanding and Embracing God’s Grand Mission: ‘A Missional God’”

The Reverend Mr.
Michael Campbell

Amen. Good morning. It’s good to be here with you today,
and may the Lord bless us as we look at His word. Would you please bow your
heads with me in a word of prayer as we ask the Lord to help us as we read and
begin to reflect upon His word. Pray with me.

Our Father God, as we once again settle our hearts
and come to Your throne of grace in prayer, we do so, Lord, mindful that You are
good and that You hear and answer the prayers of Your people; that, Lord, You
have redeemed us by the blood of Christ; that we are Your children, and as we
call out to our Father, You do answer. And our prayer even now, Lord, once again
is for You to help us. We need it. Lord, help us to know Your will. Help us to
rightly study Your word. Help us, Lord, to have minds and hearts that are open
to be led and directed by You. Lord, prick our consciences this morning and draw
us closer. Help us to know Your mind. Help us, Lord, to reflect Your will in
service and ministry and missions. And so, Lord, today as Your word is read and
then preached, guide us by the working of Your Spirit. Give to Your servant this
morning insight and clarity of thought and speech, and boldness in the
proclamation of the gospel. May You, dear Lord, do Your work in the hearts of
Your people. And, Father, even if there’s one here today that doesn’t have a
relationship with You, O Lord, may they hear the glorious grace of Christ and
turn in faith to You. Thank You, Lord, for this time. Bless us now, we pray in
Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you would, please open your Bibles with me this
morning to Jonah, chapter four. I’m going to be reading the entirety of chapter
four of Jonah, from verse 1 down through verse 11. Let me begin though by
setting the context for what we’re going to be reading by looking at verse 10 of
the previous chapter…chapter three, verse 10…before reading the text for today.
In verse 10 of chapter three, we read this:

“When God saw what they [the Ninevites] did, how they turned from their evil
way, God relented of the disaster that He said He would do to them, and He did
not do it.”

Now here’s our text for this morning, beginning in verse 1:

“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the
Lord and said, ‘O Lord, is not this 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. 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 went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made
a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what
would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up
over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his
discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn
came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it
withered. When the sun rose, 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 a night. And should not I 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?’”

May the Lord bless the preaching and hearing, and now our
response, to His wonderful word.

Jonah, as you know, is one of the best known books in
the Bible. I am certain that all of you probably know this book backwards and
forwards. If you grew up in the church, you probably learned it from the time
you were just this small. We know this story. We also know that the story of
Jonah is one of the great missionary stories that we find in the Bible, one of
the greatest ever told. And the reason is obvious. Here’s the example of someone
in the Old Testament who was sent out by God to preach and proclaim God’s word,
and the result of Jonah’s preaching is magnificent —maybe the greatest response
ever seen to the preaching of the word.

If you jump back up just to chapter 3 and you look at
verses 4 and 5, notice what it says: that Jonah began to go into the city, going
a day’s journey. It took three days to get through Nineveh…a day’s journey,
even, and he called out,

“Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown.”

(Not the most seeker-sensitive of sermons.)

“…And the people of Nineveh
believed God. They called for a fast and put on

sackcloth, from the greatest of
them to the least of them.”

By any measure standard, that’s a pretty impressive
response to the preaching of God’s word. Most of us preachers would long for
even a little bit, even partial response to the preaching of God’s word that we
see here in this response. This is a great, great story — a great missional
story. I can imagine many of you love to read mission accounts, and love to read
of the great adventures of missionaries, and this account is one of those kinds
of stories. It is extraordinary.

But the truth is what makes this particular story
great isn’t the missionary, it’s his God.
This is a story about our
missional God, about His heart; and in fact, that is where missions must begin
and end, in the heart of God. John Stott makes this statement about missions:

“Missions arises from the heart of God himself and is communicated from His
heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global
God.”

That’s a great definition of what mission is: the global
outreach of the global people of a global God. Our God is a missional God. A
global God is on mission; therefore, when we talk about missions it is important
for us to understand that missions isn’t just something that we came up with.
Missions isn’t something that we just decided to do. Missions isn’t just
something that would allow us to have Mission Conferences once a year and
support missionaries. All that is important, all of that is great, but if that’s
all missions is to you then it’s a lot like eating icing with no cake…or gravy
with no mashed potatoes. I like icing; I like gravy; but I don’t eat those
things by themselves. We need to get to the essence of what missions really is,
and it is about God.

Christopher Wright, in his book entitled The
Mission of God
, makes this statement. He says, “Mission was not made for the
church; the church was made for mission – God’s mission.” God’s mission. That
God is on mission, and that you and I have the great privilege of being a part
of that. And so the fact is, then, if we were to only know Him better, to know
the missional God better, then it would seem that it would then be unavoidable
that missional living and missional thinking would become the reality of the
church. Let me say that another way. The better we know God and the more
consistently we are willing to follow God, then the more missional we should
become.

But that actually puts before us what is really the
challenge of this book and the challenge of this chapter, in that as we reflect
upon Jonah and Jonah 4 what we see is this: we see the missional heart of God.
That’s clearly on display, and I’ll show you that in just a moment. But what we
also see here is the prophet of God, Jonah, who only partially and reluctantly
got that. And that should challenge us because, like us, Jonah knew God. Like
us, Jonah knew what God was like, but he didn’t consistently live that out in
his practice. Do we?

As we think about this whole book, and as we think
particularly about this chapter, you see two things in Jonah that stand out that
Jonah understood and knew about the character of God.
He knew these
things; and both of these things, if fully embraced by us, make us missional
people. He knew that God was both sovereign and merciful. Jonah got that. He
knew that about God, that God is a sovereign God, that God is a merciful God.
And Jonah knew this not just simply as head knowledge. He didn’t just know it as
a theological abstraction, he knew it in his head but it also had somehow taken
his life. He understood it as he had personally experienced these attributes of
God. And so if we were to go back to the beginning of the book of Jonah and
think about God commanding Jonah to go to Nineveh, he runs away. The text tells
us that God hurled this wind, this great storm upon the sea, and it almost
caused the wreck of the ship that he was on. And the sailors that were with him
were afraid, and as a result, they cast lots and they found out that Jonah was
responsible for that. They approached Jonah, and Jonah introduced himself in
this way in Jonah 1:9. “I am a Hebrew,” he said. “And I fear the Lord.” And
listen to how he describes the Lord — Yahweh. “I fear the Lord, the God of
heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

Now what is he saying? What he’s saying is ‘I know
God. Here’s who He is. He is the Lord of heaven, and He is the creator of the
sea and the dry land.’ In other words, Jonah is affirming right there his
understanding of who God is. God is the sovereign creator of all things.

But it wasn’t, again, just that Jonah knew this here;
he had experienced it. We see him experience the sovereignty of God even in
chapter 4. Notice again what it says. If you look again at verse 6, down through
verse 8:

“Now the Lord God appointed…”

[Important word, appointed!]

“…appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade
over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad
because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm
that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a
scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was
faint.”

Notice the repetition of ideas. God appointed…God
appointed…God appointed…God appointed…God appointed. This isn’t the first time
this language comes up. If you go back to Jonah 1, you will remember when they
tossed him overboard, God appointed a fish that swallowed him, and Jonah
was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And now God
appoints
. This is what Jonah is experiencing. God appointed a plant; God
appointed a worm; God appointed a scorching east wind. Jonah knew of God’s
sovereignty. He could declare it with his lips, he knew it in his mind and head,
but he had also experienced the sovereignty of God. As a matter of fact, when he
complains — and he does here — when he complains, notice when he says, “I would
rather die than live,” he’s not complaining to himself. He’s not complaining to
Mother Nature. He’s actually complaining to God because he knew that God was the
one ultimately responsible for all of this. Jonah knew the sovereignty of God,
and he also knew here and in his life the mercy of God.

You know, after he sees that Nineveh is going to
repent, notice what the text says in verse 2:

“And he prayed to the Lord, and he said, ‘O Lord, is not this what I said when I
was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.’”

“For I knew….for I knew that You are a gracious God and
merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from
disaster.” Notice what Jonah said he knew. He knew. He knew that God was
gracious. He knew that God was and is merciful. He knew that God is slow to
anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster.

Now how in the world did he know that? Well, in fact,
the prophet knew his Bible. He knew his Bible, and this language that he uses
here is not the first time that you see this in the Bible. You could go back and
run through the Old Testament and find it. One of the instances you find it is
in Exodus 34:6-7, where Moses there says [and notice the similarity of the
words]:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin….”

But that’s not the only place in the Old Testament you find
that. You could go through the Old Testament and find it multiple places: II
Chronicles 39; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 145:8; Joel 2:13. On and on, Jonah knew the
word, and therefore he knew that God is merciful and gracious. In other words,
Jonah had an orthodox theology. Jonah was a Calvinist before Calvin! He got it.
He got it here.

But he also had experienced God’s grace. Just
like he knew of the sovereignty of God, he had experienced the sovereignty of
God, he knew the grace of God and he had experienced the grace of God. He
experiences it here.

This plant…he knew this plant was from God. God
appointed the plant. Jonah built the booth. He had nothing to do with the plant.
God grew the plant. As a matter of fact, when God speaks to him in verse 10,
notice what He says:

“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.”

That plant was the mercy and the grace and the kindness of
God. He was experiencing it there. He had already experienced it when he was
thrown over that ship and that fish was there to swallow him. Remember what he
said from the belly of the whale? He cried out, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

Here is a prophet. He knew and he experienced
sovereignty. Here’s a prophet who knew and experienced grace. He knew it. And so
do we. If there are two theological realities that bode true and define us as
Reformed folk, they are these two things, are they not? The sovereignty and the
grace of God. I mean, we are Calvinists. We are Presbyterian. We understand the
five points of Calvinism. We understand the doctrines of grace. We understand
that if we are saved we are only saved by God’s sovereign electing purposes. We
know that it’s about Him and not about us. We love the words of Abraham Kuiper
when he said there is not one square inch where God does not cry, “Mine!” That’s
our heart. Sovereignty…grace. We get it, here. We’ve experienced it. We know it.
And yet, in the case of Jonah — and many times with us — there are those moments
in our lives where it becomes extraordinarily difficult for this to be
practically lived out in certain situations with us.

You know, the fact is Jonah — think about this — he
knew God’s character, but he didn’t reflect it here. That’s part of the tragedy
of this book, that God’s sovereignty and grace should have led this prophet
willingly and joyfully towards Nineveh. It should have made him a joyful
missionary, a willing missionary…but it didn’t. No, sovereignty means that God
has absolute right and absolute authority, absolute freedom to work with
whomever He wishes, whenever He wishes, wherever He wishes, and to call you and
me to get on board with that agenda. The people may be our enemies, as is the
case here. They may be those that you and I want nothing to do with. They may be
those that we despise and look down upon, but God extends His grace to broken,
miserable, sick people…the unlovable. Those are kinds that we would rather avoid
and maybe have nothing to do with, or wish they didn’t even exist anymore.
That’s what Jonah felt about Nineveh. That’s what he wanted for Nineveh. That’s
why he ran, according to verse 2, to Tarshish in the opposite direction from
what God had called him to do, because he knew something about God. He knew that
God’s grace…if it really was grace, it would not be confined to Israel. He knew
that. He knew that God’s mercy would extend beyond the parameters of Israel; it
would go beyond to Israel’s enemies and even to the nation (Assyria) that was
going to destroy Israel. He knew that. He knew God’s mercy in that way. That’s
why he didn’t want any part of it.

And so notice verse 1 again, that the thing about
verse 1 is that it’s one of these brutally honest verses that shows how wrong we
can be. Notice what it says: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was
angry.” Well, what displeased him? Well, the fact that Nineveh repented. The
fact that God was going to relent. That displeased him. This could literally be
translated like this: “It was an exceeding evil to Jonah, and he burned with
anger.” In other words, when he saw this it wasn’t just simply a matter of him
being somewhat displeased with what happened and got a little bit irritated with
God. That’s not what’s being said here. He actually saw this response — their
response of repentance, God’s response to relent — he saw this as an evil, and
it made him so angry that if you go on to verse 3, notice what he says. Right
after talking about who God is, verse 3 says, “Therefore now, O Lord, please
take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” This isn’t
just a pity party on his part. What he’s saying is this: ‘God, if You’re going
to be like this…if You’re going to be this gracious, this kind, to even those
that I would see as enemies…if You’re going to be like this, then I might as
well die than to live.’

Now we hear that, and immediately we respond by
going, “That’s just awful! That’s horrible to think that, and there’s no way in
the world I could possibly ever think that. And there’s no way in the world I
would ever say anything like that to God.” But before you move past it and think
that that can’t be you, let’s let it land a little bit closer to home. Think
about it in a slightly different way.

If you were to go into the New Testament, one of the
parables that you know so well is the parable of the prodigal son. You remember
that story. You remember what happened. When the younger son took his
inheritance and he went off and squandered it in all kinds of sinful living, he
came to his senses and he came back. And what did the father do? The father
graciously received him back, and he put on this banquet. Fatted calf for the
younger brother. And the older brother was invited in. And in Luke 15:28 it says
this: the older brother was angry, and he refused to go in. Why was he angry? He
was angry because his father was gracious to someone that he felt was unworthy
of it…gracious for someone he felt unworthy.

Now as soon as those words come out of my mouth you
should be thinking, “That doesn’t sound right.” How could you be unworthy of
grace? You see, it’s tweaking the understanding of it. I mean, grace is to the
unworthy. It’s for the undeserving. It’s unmerited favor from God. In other
words, you can never find anyone that you could actually look at and say that
somehow they’re unworthy if you’re not talking to yourself! All of us are
unworthy! Without exception, all of us are unworthy.

Somehow what happens is we can build this…C.S. Lewis
describes it as sort of an inner ring that we find ourselves in, and everybody
else is on the outside. Or we put certain people on the outside of the inner
ring, and so we kind of understand that we’re unworthy of it, but they’re
really
unworthy; and they’re so unworthy that, you know, grace can’t go to
them. And just think about who that may be to you. Someone who has done you
wrong; someone who has hurt you in your past; some enemy of yours; some group of
people that you look at and you go, ‘They’ve had so many chances, so many
opportunities; why don’t they make themselves right?’ Some group that we put on
the out as being unworthy of grace, whoever that may be. And in our heart of
hearts, what we do is we disdain God’s sovereign grace being poured upon them,
if it means we have to do it. And if that’s where we are, we’re standing in
opposition to our missional calling. We can’t get it then. We can’t live it
consistently. We won’t follow through on it.

This is where Jonah was. This is what caused him to
run. This is why he’s sulking in this particular passage. And we can be right
there. And if we are, we need to hear how God confronts Jonah, how He challenges
Jonah. And He does it by asking him three questions. And the reason He asks
these questions is because the questions get at the heart, the questions get at
what’s going on in the inside. The questions begin to dig under the surface as
to what actually is happening in Jonah.

And you see the first question if you look again with
me at verse 4: “And the Lord said, ‘Do you do well to be angry?’” Now Jonah
doesn’t answer that question, but this question is key because what He’s
actually saying to Jonah here is this: ‘Jonah, do you actually think you are
justified in being angry? Do you actually think that what you are considering
about this is right, and My way is wrong?’ That’s a question that all of us have
to think about. I mean, in the midst of these times when God’s grace goes to the
broken, to the miserable, to the sinner, to the enemy, to whomever…and we’re
going, ‘No!’ we’re right here. God’s asking us, ‘Do you think your way is better
than Mine?’

Notice the second question, verse 9: “But God said to
Jonah, ‘Do you do well to be angry for the plant?’” Now this is right after the
object lesson of the plant and what God had done in raising it up, bringing it
down, pouring the scorching east wind upon his head. “Do you do well to be angry
for the plant?” And he answers this time. “Yes, I do well to be angry enough to
die.” Jonah answers this time. His answer is important to think about because it
begins now to flesh out where he is in his self-centeredness and the way that
it’s okay for kindness to be shown to him, but not someone else; that he somehow
is deserving of this. And in one way, Jonah stands here as a type for Israel
because Israel got into that bondage, that trap, that mindset of actually
thinking that somehow they had become worthy of God’s mercy; that somehow they
had become worthy of God’s grace. But in fact, for Jonah, for Israel…for you,
for me, for our churches…we are no more worthy…Israel was no more worthy…than
Nineveh.

Here’s something that Jonah had forgot, and Israel
had forgot. It’s what Moses writes in Deuteronomy 7:6 and 8 when he says this:

“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession
out of all the people on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more
in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you,
for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the Lord loves you and
is keeping His oath that He swore to your fathers.”

Do you hear what he’s saying there? He’s saying to Israel,
‘It wasn’t because you were great; it wasn’t because you were mighty; it wasn’t
because you were this huge number of people. You weren’t anybody! I loved you
because I am loving. I loved you because I am gracious. I loved you because I am
merciful. You are unworthy of this. You are unworthy of this kindness…and you
have it.’

In Christ, you have it. The absolute wrong response
to grace is to ever think that we deserve that and others don’t. The only way
for you and me to truly be the missional people that we’re called to be is to
understand on a daily basis how much we need and are recipients of the grace of
God; that we’re constantly drawn back to the gospel of grace every day, every
moment, every second; that the gospel wasn’t something that just got you into
the kingdom, it keeps you day in and day out; that we’re always unworthy of
this, and it’s always being showered down upon us. And that understanding of
grace, what it does is it gives us different eyes for the broken. Maybe that’s a
family member. Maybe it’s a neighbor. Maybe it’s someone you work with or go to
school with. Maybe it’s a subordinate. Maybe it’s a city that seems to be
falling apart around us. Or a nation. Or a world. It levels us at the cross and
gives us eyes towards the needy, because we know we are right there as well.

You know, God asked Jonah one more question, and it’s
in verse 11. Notice what He says:

“And should not I 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?”

You know — the first question He asked Jonah, Jonah doesn’t
answer. The last question in this book — it’s not answered. The book ends with
this. It just ends with this question, right? So we don’t know how Jonah
responds. He doesn’t say anything to this. It just ends with this. And the
reason for that is important for us to understand. This question is a question
that really rests before God’s people through the centuries. It is a question
that is before us even now: “Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city?”

You know, to pity isn’t just to sympathize. To pity
is a sympathy that acts. It’s not from a distance. It engages. It responds. It
is a heart that responds in missional love: “For God so loved the world that He
gave….” He gave His only Son, that whoever believes on Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.

“Should not I pity Nineveh?” Should not I
pity…Jackson? Should not I pity…it’s just a blank. You fill it in. That person.
That group of people. That whomever. Should I not pity? When we begin to
understand how much God has pitied us and live that way; when we begin to really
understand how much God has been gracious to us; when we truly begin to
understand how unworthy we are of His constant and continual mercy and love and
kindness and compassion that is showered upon you each and every day of your
life…. You have it right now. You’re gathered here in worship because you know
it’s here for you. You know that grace is here for you. You know that kindness
is here for you. When you get that, your need for it every day, it can do
nothing else but push you out to a people who are equally in need with the only
answer, the only hope — and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ, His grace.
That’s what makes us missional, getting the heart of God not just in our heads,
not just something we’ve experienced, but something that moment by moment
defines us — as sinners in need of grace. That’s the gospel. That’s the
missional life.

Pray with me.

[Tape ends.]