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Everybody loves a happy ending.
Classic Hollywood.
The Princess gets her prince.
The sidekick cop on his last week of work before retirement...
doesn't get shot in the second last scene.
In the movie "The Day After Tomorrow", billions of people are wiped out as New York is flooded
and London is frozen by climate change.
Much like last week.
But the funny thing is according to critics, the fact that Jack, Sam and Laura, the three
main characters survive actually counts as a happy ending;
because they're the only ones in the story you actually care about.
Shakespeare on the other hand preferred writing tragedies.
"Macbeth."
"Romeo and Juliet."
In the 1700s the Irish author Nahum Tate decided he'd improve "King Lear" by adding a happy
ending: they all lived happily ever after.
Though even though nobody enjoys a tragedy, nobody much liked Tate's new ending either.
We've been working through the book of Jonah these last few weeks, and I wonder how you'd
have liked to end it.
Because if you stop at the end of chapter 3, it's a perfect happy ending story isn't
it?
You could finish at the end of Jonah chapter 3 with the words and they all lived happily
ever after.
But it doesn't.
The story doesn't end there.
And there's still chapter 4.
Which sadly, I think, is the whole reason for the book in the first place.
Jonah, the Israelite Prophet, called to get up and go to the Gentile city of Nineveh.
Enemies of Israel.
And warn them of God's coming judgement.
Jonah doesn't want to go.
We're not told why at the start.
But he runs the other way.
But as you'll remember is turned around at sea by a huge storm and a huge fish provided
by the God of Israel who's the maker of the land and the sea.
And so after a prayer of confession from Jonah in chapter 2 he's burped onto dry land and
heads off on his mission to the Ninevites, these gentiles;
non Jews just like us, in the enemy nation of Assyria.
Which remarkably, we saw last week, which incredibly...
hears God's word and repents.
The whole city literally overturned by God's word.
And the King who sits in the dust and says call on God.
He says, Let's turn from our evil and violence.
Because who knows, says the King, God may yet relent...
and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.
And the final verse of chapter 3...
"When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion...
and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."
And they all lived happily ever after.
End of story.
It's the perfect ending for a story like this, isn't it?
The ideal finish.
Except it's not.
Because just one verse later you're into chapter 4 and the spotlight is back on jonah the prophet.
The most effective sermon ever preached.
I was reading that in Eastern Europe there was a church tradition in the 18th century
to carve the pulpit to look like a giant fish, with some artistic license.
The preacher has to climb a ladder through the fish's belly to come out the mouth.
And then preach from the fish's mouth.
Like Jonah.
Because most preachers would dream of preaching a sermon with the same sort of results as
Jonah.
Most preachers long for lives to change.
For people to hear their words and turn back to God.
You'd think Jonah would be celebrating.
But take a look.
Chapter 4 verse 1.
God has turned from his fierce anger at the end of chapter 3.
And so Jonah picks it up.
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.
Literally, in the Hebrew, where the word for angry is the same word as hot, literally;
not hot in the same way as Rhonda in those Kiss me Katoot ads.
Hot under the collar.
Jonah gets heated.
Jonah came to Nineveh preaching fireworks.
And now he wants to see fireworks.
Jonah came to Nineveh to preach judgement;
and judgement is what he most wants to see.
Take a look at his prayer in verse 2.
Because he says, I knew this would happen.
And if you were wondering back at the start why Jonah ran the other way, here's the answer.
"He prays to the Lord, "O Lord, isn't this what I said when I was still at home?
That's why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.
I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love,
a God who relents from sending calamity.
Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.""
Jonah, who when he was fighting for his own life in the sea was more than happy to have
God's grace and compassion.
When the same grace is offered to the Ninevites, it's a different story.
Now I wonder if you've ever felt like that?
Or seen it in action?
Angry, at the idea of God's grace to the kind of people who don't deserve it.
The New Testament's full of exactly the same story.
The Pharisee, who complains that Jesus spends his time eating and drinking with sinners.
The older brother, in the story of the Prodigal Son, absolutely furious at the fact that little
brother goes off the rails and then comes home and there's A party.
He says I stayed home all along, so where's the party for me?
Over and over again in the parables, and the theme's the same because most times they're
actually aimed at the pharisees who have got exactly the Jonah attitude.
But even now I reckon I know Christians, or they say they're Christians, who'd rather
see God punishing people than changing them.
That kind of attitude that says well we don't want those kinds of people here.
We don't want their kids influencing our kids.
We don't want their values influencing our values.
We'd rather just have nothing to do with them.
And we hope God feels the same way.
Westboro Baptist Church...
have you seen them demonstrating on the news?
The American church that pickets the funerals of soldiers, that says God hates America because
of the way moral standards are declining, as if God loves moral people because they're
moral.
Jonah says to God, I knew you'd do this.
Because you're soft.
You're forgiving.
You're gracious.
And I don't like it.
"But the Lord replied, "Have you any right...
to be angry?""
Which is a fair question.
I was reading in a book by Eugene Petersen the other day the suggestion, and I think
he's right, that we tend to get angry when our mental picture of how the world should
be...
is at odds...
with how things turn out to be.
Now the interesting thing is, we tend to get equally angry when either side of the equation
is out of whack.
Sometimes anger is righteous.
When a situation is so wrong;
so corrupted, so against the nature of things, it's only right to be angry.
But sometimes the problem's with me and my expectations.
God says, have you any right...
to be angry?
Not your city.
Not you they've offended against.
Not your job to judge them.
You'll notice, Jonah doesn't answer.
What can he say?
He just heads out of town to a hill to the east, sets up his deck chair.
Builds himself a little shelter of branches and he sits there.
Waiting.
And hoping for fireworks.
Now here's where things get a little bit weird again.
Because overnight, the Lord decides to add to Jonah's flimsy little shade house with
a miraculously fast growing vine.
How kind.
But Jonah should know: it's the start of another object lesson.
You'd think he wouldn't need it.
I mean, at this point, I'd be expecting God to say didn't you learn anything from the
fish?
Didn't you learn that my mercy's a good thing, even for you.
Didn't you figure out that if you've received mercy you need to show mercy.
Which again is what the New Testament is just full of.
Another parable.
The debtor who's forgiven much.
Then meets a guy who owes him a little bit and won't forgive.
Jesus says that kind of thinking is all wrong.
And Jonah should know it.
But that's not what God says.
Watch what happens.
Verse 6.
Now remember, Jonah's already got a hot head from his anger.
As well as from the beating sun.
Verse 6.
"Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his
head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine."
At last something's going right for him.
"But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered.
When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head
so that he grew faint.
He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live.""
Now did you spot the repeat there?
Here's the pattern in the passage.
God spares the Ninevites.
And verse 3, Jonah gets so angry he wants to die.
God doesn't spare the plant.
And verse 8, Jonah gets so angry he wants to die.
God says to Jonah about the Ninevites, have you got any right to be angry, in verse 4.
God says to Jonah about the plant, do you have any right to be angry about the vine,
in verse 9.
And Jonah says, "I do;
I am angry enough to die."
At which point you'd be forgiving for maybe thinking, just get it over with and die.
What gives him the right to be angry about a withered plant that for a moment in time
made him slightly less uncomfortable?
Because he had nothing to do with it.
He didn't plant it.
Or tend it.
Or make it spring up.
It's God in verse 6 who provides the vine;
and the same God who provides the worm in verse 7 to take it away.
Just like God provided the storm and God provided the fish in chapter 1.
He can do what he likes with it.
God can do what he likes.
And as Jonah said, he's a God in the end who likes nothing more than to have mercy on people.
Whether jonah likes it.
Or not.
Whether you like it.
Or not.
And Jonah needs to be reminded that neither the vine nor Nineveh...
are his to get angry about.
Look at God's words which close the book.
Here's where it's all been heading.
Because Jonah mightn't care much about a city like Nineveh.
But God does.
Verse 10.
And they're words that apply just as clearly to lost cities like Brisbane as well.
Which is the mission field on our doorstop.
Verse 10: "But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you didn't
tend it or make it grow.
It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right
hand from their left, and many cattle as well.
Should I not be concerned about that great city?""
Jonah...
would rather spare the plant and wipe out the city.
God...
would rather lose the plant and save the city, even though they're his enemies.
Jonah...
would rather sit comfortably and watch judgement fall than have them hear the word and turn
and be saved.
Because Jonah, in the end, doesn't get it.
He doesn't get God.
Most of all, he doesn't get grace.
Or if he gets it he just doesn't like it, unless it's extended to him.
You know, I don't think we often stop to think about the fact that the people in this story
who are most like us are the Ninevites.
A far off nation, far from the land of Israel.
Far away, at least it seemed, from the promises of God.
Far away from God's covenant.
Far away from any hope of grace.
Or so it seemed.
And if it was up to Jonah, that's how it would have stayed.
blessing for Israel.
Curse for us.
Condemned in our ignorance and our wilful stupidity.
Not even knowing our right from our left.
Actually, I'm exactly like that.
I was at my friend Steve's place the other night, I said to him how do you turn on the
TV, and he said, it's the button on the left.
And I kept feeling around down the right side and he said no, the button on the left.
It took him three tries to get me figure out which hand was which.
Nineveh, says God;
more than 120,000 people who don't know their right hand from their left.
And in spite of their ignorance, in spite of Jonah, God wants to have mercy.
And it's only when Jesus comes, it's only when a prophet greater than jonah comes, that
we actually get the privilege of being included.
That we get to fully share the blessing.
Jesus says those words in Matthew 12, we saw them last week, but now one greater than Jonah
is here.
Greater, especially, this way.
Did you notice?
Jonah would rather die...
than see his enemies spared.
Jesus would rather die...
that see his enemies punished.
Which is why he goes to the cross where every overlooked sin is finally brought to account.
Where even the sins of the Ninevites which God graciously put aside to Jonah's dismay...
even those sins are paid for.
Where at the same point in history at the cross even your sins and my sins are paid
for.
In that same day of reckoning.
Romans 5 puts it this way, Rom 5:6, 8: "You see, at just the right time, when we were
still powerless, Christ died for the unGodly...
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ
died for us."
Now again.
The point is: that's you.
That's me.
None of us are saved because we're impressive.
He hasn't gone through and kind of hand picked all the nice ones.
While we were still sinners Christ died for us, his enemies.
And yet in the next moment like Jonah we suddenly don't like grace when it applies to anyone
else.
I guess the challenge of Jonah for you and me is to ask yourself where things stand with
you.
Found grace...
so are you gracious?
Known God's mercy...
so you want other people to know it as well?
Grace is hard sometimes, isn't it?
Jesus welcomed sinners.
He ate and drank with us.
He died for us.
Yet we somehow, like Jonah, suddenly find a way on the other side of that to be straight-away
self righteous.
Maybe straight-away fearful.
Maybe angry.
In our own small strident ways we turn into mini versions of Westboro Baptist Church.
And we get strident and we get defensive and we get entirely ungracious.
When the call is, in whatever small ways you can, God wants you to get involved in graciousness.
And be a part of reaching the people around you in love instead of just condemning them.
This coming week in growth groups we're starting a short series in Acts as we work up to Vision
Sunday on the 25th when we're going to think about our three key goals a church that reaches,
teaches and cares.
And the challenge is, we want to be all in.
Everyone doing something.
All of us, doing out bit to reach our city.
To reach our neighbourhoods.
To reach our classrooms with the good news of God's mercy embedded in gracious gospel
lives.
Are you going to care about our city enough to want to reach it?
Enough to rejoice when God's merciful?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "God has a soft spot for sinners.
"His standards are quite low"."
I wonder if that's reflected in the people you're willing to show grace to?
Or you're just sitting back on your deck chair in the shade hoping they'll get what they
deserve?
Looking forward to their bad ending?
As long as you and yours are comfortable in your own private happy ending for you?