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So when Nathaniel first told me that I was preaching in June, this was about two months after I had decided that I wasn’t going to shave until I got married. So my original plan was I was going to dress up like Moses and just preach on the Ten Commandments, because I thought it would be cool to say that you guys had Moses preach to you. Mark was on board with the idea. Nathaniel was a little skeptical, so we decided to just stick with the series that we’re going through. So we’re going to finish up on Jonah today. We’ve been going through the book of Jonah. We’ve been in three weeks now we’re three chapters into the book of Jonah. So before we jump into chapter four, for those of you that weren’t here, we’re just going to kind of do a quick review of what we’ve been going through. So Jonah is kind of a weird book. It doesn’t really have a beginning. It kind of starts in the middle. We don’t really know what’s going on with Jonah in his life at the time. It just kind of starts in Jonah one one and says, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. So Nineveh is in modern day Iraq. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. They were enemies with Israel.
They were the the world’s superpower at the time. And God says this is a really evil city. I want you to go and preach to them because they’re evil so bad that I can’t. I can’t have it anymore. So Jonah says, okay, well, they hate me and want to kill me. So instead of going there, God, I’m just going to go to Tarshish, which is in Spain. So he runs in the opposite direction of what God tells him to do, jumps on a ship and out of the port city of Joppa, hops on board. They start going out to sea. Storm comes up. Ship starts getting tossed. Sailors start getting worried. I mean, it’s a bad storm when people that for a living are out on the sea are starting to get freaked out. If you ever watch, like, Deadliest Catch. That’s what we’re talking about here. Really bad storm. I’d be down below peeing my pants. I’m so scared. I’m not a great swimmer. So waves like that make me a little uneasy. And Jonas down below. But instead of peeing his pants, he’s just kind of relax and sleep a little bit. The sailors are all up top freaking out. So they they go down. They all start praying to their various gods, trying to figure out why this storm has come upon them. Because this is such a bad storm. It has to be because somebody made someone’s god mad. And they come to Jonah and they’re like, what are you doing sleeping down here? You know, start praying to your God.
Otherwise we’re going to die. So they keep praying nothing’s happening. So finally, they cast lots to find out whose fault it was. And the lot obviously falls to Jonah. So they say, well, who are you? Where are you from? You know, what’s your occupation? What God do you worship? What’s what’s going on? And Jonah says to him, in one night he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land. So the seas raging on, they find out it’s Jonah’s fault. He’s the one that’s displeased God. And they find out. Not only did he displease some God, but he’s displeased the God who made heaven and being in the area around Israel. These people have heard the stories about this God and what he’s able to do and what he’s done. So they’re really freaked out now. So they start throwing stuff overboard and rowing harder, trying to get back to shore, trying to get to safety. But it’s not working. So Jonah just steps up and says, look, the only way this is going to stop is if you pick me up and throw me over. They’re like, no, we can’t do that. We’ll kill you, you know? So they keep trying. And finally he convinces them, just throw me overboard. It’s the only way it’s going to happen.
So they throw him overboard. Sea calms and it says that God appoints a great fish. Now, if you’re reading through the book of Jonah, um, it’s a lot like a movie in a lot of ways. Um, and you know how during a scary movie, you can always tell when somebody’s getting ready to die or the monster is getting ready to come out because the music all of a sudden changes. With Jonah, whenever you read the word God appointed, whenever you read that, that means something bad is going to happen to Jonah. Because every time, whether it’s a fish, whether it’s a scorching wind. Something isn’t fun about to happen to Jonah. So he gets swallowed by a fish. Spends three days in the belly of this fish. Most likely, it was a whale. Doesn’t really matter what you believe that way. The point is, it’s a great big fish. Okay. Um. Swallowed by it. He’s in the belly. He cries out to God, realizes I’m an idiot. I should have just done what God said. He prays to God. God has mercy on him. Whale spits him out onto dry land. So God says, all right, I’m going to tell you one more time. Go to the city of Nineveh and preach to them there really evil. So Jonah listens this time instead of going through this again. So he goes to the city of Nineveh, and he preaches kind of a half hearted eight simple word message to him.
We see it in Jonah chapter three four. It says, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. That’s it. That’s all he’s got for him. 40 days and your city is going to be destroyed. That’s the sermon. Kind of. I wish I could preach something like that and then have 120,000 people repent and turn to God. That’d be pretty impressive. Jesus didn’t even. And his ministry never saw 120 000 people at one time repent. So to to say eight words and to have that happen was pretty miraculous. So then we jump into chapter four. And this is where the end of the story. So everybody’s happy. And Jonah’s thrilled that he saw this great revival happen in the city of Nineveh. And it’s all just hugs and smiles and everything, right? Unfortunately not. Jonah, we learn, has had a heart issue the whole time he’s been going through this book. And chapter four isn’t your typical Hollywood ending where everything ends and everybody lives happily ever after. It’s more like The Book of Eli. Have you guys have you seen The Book of Eli? You watch the whole movie, and then at the end there’s just this big twist and you’re like, what? He was blind the whole time. For those of you who haven’t seen The Book of Eli, I apologize if I ruined it. Don’t talk to Mark because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s blind.
The whole movie. And it just totally blows your mind. Or like The Sixth Sense, you know, at the end you’re like Bruce Willis. No way. You know, it just that’s the way Jonah was. So you see Jonah and he’s he’s he disobeys God. But then he he’s in the belly of the whale, and he repents, and he has a life change and he’s following God. He even goes and preaches to God. But then we find out in chapter four what’s really been going on with Jonah in his heart. So, Jonah, for one last part of chapter three, we see the great revival. The King ordered all the people to repent and to mourn. Even the cattle were going to fast. Um, to show that their their sorrow for what they’ve done. Jonah four one but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. Um, okay. It doesn’t make sense, but we’ll go with it. 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 were 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 so here’s the big plot turn. And we see the real heart of Jonah, where his heart’s truly been the whole time.
He sees the city of Nineveh repent and turn from their evil ways. And God says that he sees their repentance and he grants them mercy and says, I’m going to relent my anger against you, and I’m not going to destroy your city. And it makes Jonah mad. And this is the real heart of Jonah. The whole time we’ve been thinking, Jonah, he’s a prophet of God. He’s. He’s a he’s got to have his head on straight. He knows what he’s doing. Um, but in reality, he suffers from a prideful heart. A prideful, self-righteous heart. And in chapter four, that comes clear. Uh, and Jonah, when he says it’s interesting how angry he is to get the real picture. Uh, in verse one where it says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry to get the real picture of how angry Jonah was. The Hebrew word comes from the root word rah, and it’s the same root used that God uses towards Nineveh when he says in one one that their evil has come before me. And then 310 how they have turned from their evil way. So what Jonah is basically saying is God by you sparing the lives of these 120,000 plus people in this city by you not punishing them, you’re sinning. You’re evil. He’s calling God. Jonah has the audacity at this point. After all, he’s gone through. Being in the belly of a fish for three days has the audacity to tell God he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s sinning.
Um, and he goes into what, uh, what some people refer to as infantile spiritual, infantile regression. Really? Basically, all it means is Jonah started acting like a baby. Um, he reverted back to to the four year old that is playing in the nursery, and somebody comes and takes their toy, or they’re playing with the other four year old, and the other four year old wants to play a different game, and they start pouting and crying and like, no, I don’t want to play. He goes and pouts and that’s what that’s what Jonah does, basically. That’s what the first part of chapter four is, is Jonah being a little baby and and in for two in his prayer we can see that. And he says, you know, God, I knew this was going to happen the whole time. That’s why I went to Tarshish. That’s why I didn’t want to be here. And because he knew that the people of Nineveh were going to repent, and he knew that God was gracious. This is you see this prayer a lot, especially in the Psalms about God. You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster. But this is to my knowledge. I haven’t done all the research on it, but I’m 99.9% sure. This is the only time that prayer has ever been said in a negative way.
Um, this is the first time anybody in Scripture has ever been upset with God that he’s gracious or upset with him, that he’s slow to anger and that he relents from disaster and he shows people mercy. So why does Jonah have this attitude? Why would he feel that way? So you have to kind of think what position Jonah was in. Okay. Jonah was a Hebrew, so he was God’s chosen people. He was a prophet of the Hebrew. So he was he was God’s mouthpiece to his people. And and a lot of the attitude in that day. And if you read even into the New Testament of the Hebrews and of the Jews, was that if you weren’t a Hebrew or a Jew, you didn’t deserve God’s grace and you didn’t deserve his mercy. Sorry, you’re out of luck. We’re his chosen people. We’re the only ones that get any of it. And so we see that Jonah’s heart is prideful because of who he is and what he does. What he does for a living, what his occupation is. He becomes prideful to the point where he thinks that he’s better than anyone in the city of Nineveh, and he thinks that that nobody other than him or the Hebrews or the Jews deserves God grace. God’s grace. But the bad news for Jonah and for some people today is that nobody deserves or earns grace by the definition of grace.
And there’s a blank in your notes if anybody got the notes handout where you can write this out. But the definition of grace is unearned, undeserved favor and kindness from God. Nobody. Jonah did not deserve God’s grace. God would have been perfectly justified if he would have left him in the belly of the fish to be slowly digested by the fish. That would have been perfectly fine, because Jonah didn’t deserve to be spit out. We as people today don’t deserve God’s mercy and grace, but he gives it to us. It’s a gift. It’s clear in the Bible. I just put a couple of passages, but there are many passages that support it that grace can’t be earned. It’s undeserved. It’s all from God. Titus three five. Not of works of righteousness which we have done. Okay? That’s not what saves us. It’s God’s grace. Ephesians two eight and nine for, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It’s by God’s grace through faith in that grace, not by the works that we’ve done. So, Jonah, in this idea that he’s got in his head that he’s superior to the Ninevites, to these people in this city, is totally false. It’s totally off base. He has no reason to think that. But he does. And this is this is how self righteous thinking starts to work. We start to think that we can earn spiritual status. We start to think that we can earn points to to raise ourselves.
And we start, instead of looking humbly at God and who he is. We start looking at the people around us and saying, well, I’m better than than her. So that’s good. I can take a step up the ladder and I’m better than him, so I can take a step up the ladder again. And we start looking at people around us. But the problem is, is when you compare a turd to a turd, you know, one turd might not be as bad as the other. And that’s what you do when you compare yourself to other people. You compare, you know, I’m a sinner. So when you compare yourself to me, yeah, you’re going to see that man. That guy is a sinner. If you watch my life, you’re going to know I’m a sinner. I’ll go ahead and admit it. I’ll tell you. Paul even said that he’s the chief sinner. He’s the most sinful man. And so when you compare yourself to other people, it’s easy to see, oh yeah, I don’t stink quite as bad as them. So I’m a little bit better, you know. But that’s not who we’re supposed to compare ourselves to. We’re supposed to compare ourselves to a holy God who’s perfect. And when you make that comparison, there’s no way you can make yourself holy. And we start to get this self-righteous attitude that on my own, I can I can be better than other people and make my way into heaven.
So what is it that that made Jonah and Nineveh and Jonah think that Nineveh was worse than him? Well, Nineveh was a city that was evil. God said that they, their evil, has come before me. They were known for their horrific acts, killing people the way they would torture people, the way they would conquer cities, and what they would do to the citizens of those cities and countries that they would conquer. They were a mean, evil group of people. Jonah disobeyed God because he didn’t do what God said. See, there’s two types of sin. There’s their sins of commission. Like the Ninevites, they broke God’s law. They said they did things that God told them not to do. That’s a sin of commission. Okay. If you, um. If you are speeding, you break the law because you committed a crime, because the posted speed limit is a certain thing. That’s a commission, okay? You’ve committed that crime. You’ve broken that law. The Ninevites committed a sin. Jonah committed a sin of omission because he didn’t do what God told him to do. And when you don’t do what God tells you to do, it’s just as bad as if you do something that he told you not to do. Okay? It’s just like when I was a kid, my, uh, you know, don’t, uh, no, don’t eat any cookies before dinner. Those are for dessert. You know, you can have them after dinner.
But I eat the cookies. I broke the rule. I did what I wasn’t supposed to. Mom’s leaving the house. Hey, make sure you do the dishes before I get back. Yeah. Okay. Keep playing the video games. Mom gets back. Dishes aren’t done. Why didn’t you do the dishes? Oh, I was doing really good. I didn’t want to break my rhythm, you know? It was the sin of omission because I didn’t do what she told me to do. Both crimes punishable equally. Okay. Didn’t end well for me. I’ll go ahead and tell you that. Um, but. But either way. So Jonah sees himself as better than them because he hasn’t committed a sin, a sin of commission. But he’s done a sin of omission, so it doesn’t look as bad. But James 417 says, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it to him, it is sin. So it doesn’t matter if you aren’t doing what God said not to do. It matters if you are doing what he told you to do. And Jonah failed to do that. And Romans 323 also tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Nobody is better than anybody else. Nobody is without need of God’s grace and salvation. We’re all sinners. Even Jonah. And so this mindset that he got of being better than others is just totally off base. And the problem with self-righteousness is we begin to look at the outward actions of people, the things that they do, and we begin to make our judgment based on that.
And while I can look at what what they’re doing and I can compare myself to that, but it’s not about the outside. And Christ teaches us multiple times throughout his ministry in Matthew 1916, he’s talking to the rich young ruler. He’s teaching. And this young man comes up to him and he says, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he and Jesus responds to him and says, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. So basically, Jesus is establishing the fact, asking him, why are you asking me about what’s good? There’s only one. One who’s good and that’s God. And so Jesus is establishing the fact that you’re acknowledging me as God. So he acknowledges him as God. And then he says, um. Oh, gosh, I lost my place. Sorry. Um, if you would enter life, keep the commandments. And the young man responds and says, well, which ones? And Jesus said, you shall not commit murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And the young man said to him, all these I have kept. What? What do I still lack? And notice that the commandments that Jesus brings to him are all physical things that we can see.
There are relationship between, uh, man to man, person to person. They’re all external relationship issues. They’re the commandments that deal with our the way we interact with the people around us. These were things that people could see in tangible. And so the young man says, well, yeah, I’ve done all those things. I’ve done those things. I love my neighbor. I do all that. And he says, what am I still missing? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Come and follow me. And we see the young man. Then it says that he becomes discouraged and walks away because he had great possessions, great wealth. He had a lot of money, and he didn’t want to give it up. And we see that the heart of the problem, he looked good on the outside. He looked the part, but on the inside he wasn’t willing to give up to God. He was still holding on to his possessions. And he had. He made an idol out of his possessions and broke one of the commandments. But you couldn’t tell it just by looking at him the way he lived his life. And Jonah is the same way you look at his life. He’s a prophet, you know, he preaches God’s Word. He’s got to be he’s got to have his head on straight.
He’s got to have his act together. But inside, he’s he’s selfish, he’s prideful, and he’s self-righteous. And really, when you compare Jonah to the to the Pharisees of Jesus’s day, Jonah was like a preview of what the Pharisees were going to be like. Um, he he was more concerned about following the steps one, two, three and being a Jew and following the Jewish customs than he was with God. And that’s the same problem that the Pharisees had. And Jesus even yells at him in Matthew 23. Um, this is just a snippet of it. It goes on for just about the whole chapter of chapter 23. Is Jesus telling the self-righteous Pharisees and scribes to to be careful, because the way that you’re living isn’t the way that it’s not what it’s about. That’s not how you get to heaven. Um, but he says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and plate that the outside may also be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. That’s Jonah. Outwardly he was a prophet followed God.
Aside from the whole run into Tarshish thing. But then he repents, gets his life back straight, goes to preach God’s word. But inside he’s full of hate, he’s dirty. And the analogies that Jesus uses are pretty simple. You know, when you’re doing dishes, if you just wash the outside of the cup but leave the inside, you’re going to get the milk build up in the bottom. It’s going to start to get dirty and stink and mold, and then you pour more whatever in there and keep drinking. I was just going to build up and get worse and worse. You have to clean the outside first, otherwise it does you no good. Or the inside first. Sorry. One. When I was in high school. When I was a freshman, I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll say freshman. Doesn’t really matter. Um, me and my friend decided to make a wager. I don’t recommend this to anybody, but we decided to see who could go the longest without showering. Yeah. And so being that age is when, you know, you’re starting to get the body odor and starting to kick in really bad with the bow. Regardless, I, uh, I won. Um, I won’t tell you how long I went, because it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of gross. Looking back on it, but I would. I wouldn’t wash my body. You were allowed to wash your hands, but that was it. Because, you know, that’d be gross.
Because you go to the bathroom stuff, you gotta wash your hands. So that was all you were allowed to wash. But I wouldn’t wash my hair or my face or my body or anything, but I would put clean clothes on the outside and I’d, you know, get the body spray out, make sure, put on some extra deodorant that day. And I would cover it up and you wouldn’t necessarily know. Well, at least I thought some people probably could tell that I hadn’t been taking a shower. I had really long hair at that time too, so it was starting to get a little greasy by the time I finally showered. But I would put on the exterior appearance of being clean. You know, I would I would put on new clothes. I would try and fix my hair as best I could. I would try to not stink, but I wouldn’t wash myself. And it didn’t do me any good. The second I put those clean clothes on, they were dirty because the inside was dirty. And just like that, when we put on the appearance, we come to church and we put on our smile and we carry our Bible in and we tithe and we, we do these things. We go to our neighbor, make sure they’re doing okay. We take take food to people that are sick. We do these things that look good. But if our heart isn’t in the right place. Our heart isn’t humbled before God.
It doesn’t do any good. It’s like not taking a shower for two weeks. And that’s. That’s why Jonah is like the end of a movie that has a big plot twist, because on the outside, he looked like he had it all together, but inside he was all messed up. And in chapter four, that’s finally revealed. And so Jonah is out on the hill pouting, and God says, do you do well to be angry? Do you really have a right to be mad at me for showing mercy to these people? And Jonah doesn’t even respond. He just you know what, God, I’m going to show you. And he pouts off and he storms off and he goes out onto a hill outside the city, and he builds himself a shelter. And he says, you know what? 40 days. And then it was going to be destroyed. I’m sitting right here and waiting till it happens. I’m counting the days down. So he’s sitting there angry, praying that God just destroy these wicked, evil people. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve your mercy. And he’s counting the days in the sand. Probably. I don’t know how you would pass the time. It was a desert and you were out on a hill. So it’s not a good place to be. When’s it going to hit you? The sun’s going to hit you. But he passed the time somehow with his makeshift shelter. Just pouting, just pouting, pouting, pouting.
And God says, appoints a plant. Okay, again, when you’re reading Jonah, if God appointed something, get ready because Jonah is about ready to get smacked. So he appoints this plant and it grows up and provides shade for Jonah. It’s got big leaves, big branches, and it provides shade for Jonah. And it says that he’s extremely pleased by this. The extent in the Hebrew that you see that Jonah was pleased by this, by this plant that grew up, is the same extent that he was displeased with God earlier for not destroying Nineveh. And he’s super happy about this plant. So he’s sitting in the shade and he’s probably thinking to himself, and it doesn’t say this in the scripture, so I’m just kind of speculating, but it wouldn’t be far fetched to think that Jonah, you know, this plant miraculously grows up overnight to provide him shade. He’s probably thinking, all right, you know, God’s finally seeing things my way. He’s giving me this plan. I got some shade. Give it just a couple more days and Nineveh is getting wiped out. God is happy with me now. I’ve finally convinced him because I threw my little temper tantrum and I’m going to get what I want, you know? But then God appoints a worm, and the worm comes and eats the plant, destroys the plant, plant dies. No more shade for Jonah. And then God appoints again a strong wind from the east, a scorching wind from the east, and just starts baking.
Jonah, just like being in an oven. And he’s miserable again. And he oh God, it’s better for me to be dead than alive now and again. Things don’t start going Jonah’s way, and all of a sudden he’s back to being a four year old, whining and crying. And God says to him. Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? He said, yes, I do well to be angry even enough to die over a plant. Jonah thinks that it’s better for him to die because this plant died. 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. Basically God says, Jonah, are you freaking kidding me right now? It’s a plant. You didn’t even plant the seed. You didn’t water it. You didn’t do anything for that plant. And you’re mad that I killed it. But these people who are living human beings repented and turned to me and want to follow me now. And you’re mad because I’m not going to kill them. What the heck is wrong with you, man? Have you ever seen the TV show Whale Wars? Yeah.
Okay, I’m not a fan of that show. I’m not going to lie. I’ve only seen it, like, a couple times because I get really frustrated when I watch it because they they spend these millions of dollars. The premise of the show is it’s the these environmentalists go out and try and stop. It’s a reality show. So they go out and try and stop these Japanese whaling vessels from killing the whales and harvesting the meat and everything. And, uh, they spend millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars on trying to stop these people from doing from killing these whales on these boats and all their their gear and everything. And it’s a fish. Like, really, there’s people that probably when you get back home and go to your house, there’s probably people three doors down that are really, really hungry because they got laid off and can’t afford to pay bills, and you’re spending millions of dollars trying to save a fish. And no offense to you guys if you love whales or anything. I mean, they’re God’s creatures. That’s fine. But let’s get our priorities a little bit straight here. You realize that with the well that we’re that we have out front that with $1 million, how many times you could fill that well and support that orphanage for how many months in India? It’s a lot. And just like this, just like Jonah, he’s lost total perspective because he’s so focused on himself and who he is that he’s forgotten totally about the value of a human life.
He’s become so inwardly focused that he forgets to have compassion on people that on the outside might not look like they deserve compassion. But if you think about it, if you remember Christ’s ministry, the majority of Christ’s ministry he spent with people that on the outside looked like they didn’t deserve compassion. He spent time with the Samaritan woman. If you read John chapter four. Now Samaritans were the Jews called them dogs. They were below people. They weren’t even human beings. And not only was she a Samaritan, but she was an adulterous Samaritan woman, so adulterous that she wouldn’t go out at the normal time, in the cool of the morning, or in the cool of the evening, to gather water for her house. She would go out in the middle of the day so she wouldn’t have to deal with all the the, the people talking under their breath and looking down on her in judgment. And Jesus goes and talks to her. He sits down and has a whole conversation with her. He didn’t care. She needed compassion. He didn’t care what she looked like on the outside. He knew that without what he had to say to her, she was going to die in her sin and he didn’t care. He had compassion. He ate dinner at a tax collector’s house. Now a tax collectors are even worse than the IRS today.
I don’t know anybody here that’s like, I love the IRS. Way to go. Unless somebody might be employed by the IRS that I don’t know about, which that’s fine. Got to do what you got to do. But tax collectors in Jesus’s day were were they were cheats, man. Okay, well, you owe $50 to Caesar, so you got to pay me 120 20 of it to process all the paperwork and 50 of it for my my wage. So they would just cheat people over and they would charge them double. They would. And tax collectors were seen as worse than dogs, too. They were terrible people. And in Luke 19, Jesus tells Zacchaeus, the tax collector, hey, go get your house ready because I’m coming over for dinner tonight. On the outside, Zacchaeus did not deserve the compassion of having dinner with Jesus Christ. But Christ knew what he needed, and he had compassion on the people that didn’t necessarily deserve to have compassion on. If you look at Christ’s disciples, most of them were uneducated fishermen, not well respected on the outside. Why? Why would the Messiah choose these guys to change the world, to start a revolution? But that’s who he chose because he had compassion, because he doesn’t care on the outside what people look like. He cares what their hearts like. And a lot of times it’s the people that look the worst on the outside that need the most help. And he had compassion on those people.
He didn’t he didn’t look to see if somebody was better than somebody else. He just had compassion on people. And so as we look at Jonah and just kind of a little fact for you, the only other book in the Bible that ends with a question mark is the Book of Nahum, which is also written about the city of Nineveh. Um, I don’t know if it really means anything, just throwing that out there. So if anybody asks you a Bible trivia, you can say the two books that end in question marks are Jonah and Nahum. Um, but as we look at Jonah, we see the contrasting difference between the self-righteous pride of man and the compassionate love of of God. Nineveh deserve to be destroyed. We all deserve to be destroyed. But God shows us compassion and doesn’t give us what we deserve. So we’re left to ask ourselves the question, and we’re going to close with this. We’ll be done a little bit early today. It leaves us asking the question. What does the heart look like on the inside when I get down to it? Does my heart look like Jonah’s? And it’s a heart of selfish, self-righteous pride that I’m so proud of who I am that I look down on other people. Or is it a compassionate heart like God’s? And I look at people and say, you know what? They need a Savior. They might be my enemy, but they need Jesus.
You know, studying this, this passage I’ve read Jonah, I don’t know how many times. I know the story. Um, But studying it this time. It was pretty convicting for me. Um, you know, I look back on my life and, you know, I haven’t very compassionate towards people. A lot of times I’ve looked down on them because of who I am and what I do. I think that I’m better than them. And I look at myself with pride and say that, you know what? I’m not going to show compassion towards them. And I puff myself up and reading this. It was really convicting. Um, and I, I was trying to figure out a way I could, could take it in a different application direction and apply it in a different way. Just because it was getting pretty uncomfortable for me. But, um, but it is what it is. I need to be more compassionate. You know, I talked to my friends in Ohio a lot and West Virginia all over the country that I don’t see very often. And I always ask him, you know, how’s it going? How’s work going? What are you doing for work these days? How’s the family? You know Mom and dad if they’re married. How’s the wife? Um, but because I’m proud and don’t want to lose them as a friend and don’t want them to think less of me or differently about me, I never ask them.
Do you know Jesus? Do you know that he loves you? Do you know that all he wants from you is a relationship with you? Do you know that he cares? I’m so proud about who I am. I don’t ask them that. I don’t ask them if they know for sure. If they died today, if they were going to get to go to heaven. Because I don’t want them to think I’m a jerk and pushing my religion on them, and I hide. I don’t have compassion on them because I don’t share with them the reality of what the gospel is. I just want to leave you with just with one verse. It’s a simple verse. It’s Romans ten one. It’s one of my favorite verses. This is Paul speaking of his his fellow Hebrews, his fellow Jews. He says, brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. The only thing that Paul wanted. Was that his fellow Hebrews would be saved, that they would turn from their ways and follow God. That’s what happened with the city of Nineveh. They turned from their evil. They repented, and they followed God. Paul says, that’s all I want for the people around me. That’s the only thing that my heart’s desire is. And that’s what my prayer to God is, is that they would be saved from their sin. So then the question is, is your heart compassionate enough to go to those people that are in need of a Savior, too proud and too prideful and self-righteous to think that they deserve a chance?