(Text and Audio)
Title: Plants Vs. People, Part ONE
I’m going to try to remain calm during today’s sermon…but I think I’m going to fail. I cannot adequately express the enthusiasm, joy and passion I have for what I am about to share with you.
If I lose it, and I probably will at some point in the next twenty minutes, please know it is not because I am to be a showman, (In fact I hate showy preaching, because the focus shifts from God to man)
I may lose it this morning because passages like these, and the passages they lead my mind to, CRUSH me before the throne of the One true God.
I weep and crumble when passages like these lead me to the knowledge of what I am, what God it, and the expanse that exists between those two point.
Let us begin.
(read/pray)
- The Question Repeated, The Context Altered, a HUGE truth revealed
“Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
The first time God asks Jonah this question it is back in verse 4, when Jonah is lamenting that the people of Nineveh are, indeed, repenting, which means the Lord will relent in his anger, and spare them.
The second time God asks the same question, here in verse nine, the context and subject has been altered slightly.
It is after Jonah is lamenting the fact that the plant has withered, he is baking in the sun, desperately watching Nineveh from outside the city, hoping God will destroy it.
God uses these two similar questions, each with their own special subject, to reveal a truth about his character that is all over scripture…can anyone guess what that truth is?
Of all of God’s creations, man is special.
Proof:
Matthew 6:26
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Psalm 139:13-14
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well
Genesis 1:26-28; 31 (ESV)
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it… And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
2. God’s Comparison Makes Jonah Look Childish
Let’s break down what God says to Jonah here:
“You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored…”
Jonah did not create the plant, God did. In fact, as we looked at last week, Jonah’s creation, the hut he made, was failing him, he was miserable in the desert sun, and freezing in the desert cold. God creating this plant for him was an act of sovereign mercy.
Spiritual Point: We will perish if God does not intervene on our behalf.
Salvation Parallel:
Jesus in John 15:16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit…
“…nor made it grow…”
Jonah did nothing to sustain the plant. He did nothing to make it grow. The story does not tell us that God provided Jonah with a packet of gourd seeds, and with hard work, dedication, and discipline, Jonah cared for, watered, and nurtured that plant until it grew to such a size that it was able to provide shelter for him.
Spiritual Point: God does not give us the magic elixir of salvation, and then it’s our responsibility to “choose him.” Scripture makes it clear we are DEAD in our sins before God, unable to do ANYTHING to please him, or help ourselves.
Salvation Parallel: (Hold on to your hat…)
Ephesians 2:1, 4-10
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,
(did we make ourselves alive? No, because we were?)
(Look at the language as we jump down to verse 4, look at the actions that God is doing to us, tell me if you see ANY evidence of us doing something for ourselves…)
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
(And why? Why does Salvation work this way? God’s work from beginning to end? So that God, and not us, gets all the glory!)
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Finally, let’s look at the last thing that God reminds Jonah of concerning the plant:
“…which came up in a night and perished in a night.”
The Final thing God reminds Jonah of is that the plant growing in a morning, providing shade, and then withering from the worm overnight, was all SUPERNATURAL.
There is no other explanation. It is the final “nail in the coffin” of the argument.
Spiritual Truth: Salvation is a Supernatural GIFT from God.
Salvation Paralel:
John 6:44
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day
Ephesians 1:4-6
…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
He made us accepted.
He made us accepted.
(let’s pray)