(Text and Audio)
Title: Sovereign Shelter
The way the book of Jonah ends is fascinating. It is not at all what you might expect. The book of Jonah not only ends in a strangely abrupt fashion, but the focus of the book shifts dramatically from the events surrounding the people of Nineveh, to a lesson on God’s sovereignty over all things.
Before we go any further, I want to pause for a moment and consider that word, “Sovereignty” I know you hear me use it all the time, and I’m sure most of you have a pretty good idea of what it means, but let me show you an illustration to help draw of some of the richness of this word
(sovREIGNty) slide
(read/pray)
Last week, if you recall, we focused on a singular question: “Is it right for you to be angry?”
It is the question that God asks Jonah, when Jonah is pouting, and asking God to kill him because Jonah would rather die, than see the sworn enemies of Israel, the Assyrians of Nineveh, come to repentance before the one true God.
Now, what I did not tell you was that this is not the only time God will ask Jonah this very question. The first time God asks Jonah, there is no response from Jonah, only that he goes to sit outside of the city of Nineveh to watch what might happen to the city.
The second time God asks the question, will come next week, just on the heels of what we’ve just read in v. 5-8, and that time, Jonah will answer God.
So let’s dig in and see what prompts God to ask this very question a second time:
(read v5)
A Shelter from the Sun
In verse 5 we see that Jonah goes out to the East side of the city and creates a shelter for himself, he sits in the shade provided and watches to see what might become of Nineveh.
Now, what is he waiting for? We’ve already seen at the end of chapter 3 that God has decided to accept the repentance of the people of Nineveh, and has spared them from His wrath.
Another question: does anyone remember the timeframe that God gives the people of Nineveh to repent?
40 days. I agree with most Biblical Scholars here, that Jonah does not just go outside of Nineveh for ONE day, but rather for 40 days. He is waiting out the time, to see if the initial repentance of the city holds up, or if they regress to their pre-conversion ways and are destroyed at the end of the 40 days.
This is similar to what we read of Moses regarding Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:27-28
And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD:
And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
Lesson: Though Jonah is definitely motivated by spite, there is a good reminder here: A person’s devotion to anything is revealed over TIME.
(Two examples: Nevaeh and gymnastics, a new convert to Christianity)
A Better Shelter Is Given
Have any of you spent any extended time in the desert? The days are very hot, the nights are very cold. Anyone know why? (No clouds.)
Therefore, Jonah builds for himself a shelter to wait out the days, but, we soon see that his shelter is inadequate.
And how do we know that his man made solution is failing him?
(read v.6)
Jonah is miserable in his man made solution to the harsh environment. God, in his compassion and love, does for Jonah what Jonah cannot do for himself: He gives him relief.
Matthew Henry:
Jonah was sitting in his booth, fretting at the cold of the night and the heat of the day, which were both grievous to him, and God might have said, It is his own choice, his own doing, a house of his own building, let him make the best of it; but he looked on him with compassion, as the tender mother does on the froward child, and relieved him against the grievances which he by his own willfulness created to himself.
He prepared a gourd, a plant with broad leaves, and full of them, that suddenly grew up, and covered his hut or booth, so as to keep off much of the injury of the cold and heat.
God had before prepared a great fish to secure Jonah from the injuries of the water, and here a great gourd to secure him from the injuries of the air; for he is the protector of his people against evils of every kind, has the command of plants as well as animals, and can soon prepare them, to make them serve his purposes, can make their growth sudden, which, in a course of nature, is slow and gradual.
Lesson: There is no adequate “Self-Help”. There is only Grace. We either reject that Grace, build our own shelter, and die in the desert, or we accept that Grace, recognize that it’s from God, and serve him as our Lord.
A (NOT SO SUBTLE) Reminder of Sovereignty
(read 7-8)
How long did God allow Jonah to use his own shelter, before showing mercy and providing the plant with the shade? We don’t know for certain, but I bet it was long enough for Jonah to clearly see the difference between his solution and God’s solution.
But here, we read that the next morning, God takes two actions:
- The worm TAKES AWAY the very plant that provided the shade and shelter for Jonah.
- The wind INTENSIFIES the already present heat and grows so unbearable that Jonah grew faint.
In fact, the misery was so intense, that Jonah once again makes the exclamation, “It is better for me to die than live!”
Lesson: EVERYTHING (Nineveh, the plant, the wind, the sun, Jonah himself) EVERYTHING falls under the jurisdiction of a SOVEREIGN God.
Bonus Lesson: God will both GIVE (shade) and REMOVE (worm) his blessing to demonstrate His sovereignty.
Close:
(A lesson from my days at hospice: I don’t believe a person dies a moment before or after God has designed them to.)
After the events of the great fish, nobody should know this truth more intimately than Jonah.