SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/27/2025
My Worship Time Focus: “A Final Admonition”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Jonah 4:9-11
Message of the verses: “Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” Then Yahweh said, “You had pity on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came to be overnight. So should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”
I believe that the wind blew and the sun beat down not only on Jonah but also on the people of Nineveh, and while this was happening to this beleaguered prophet, the Lord then asked Jonah a piercing question: “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? I think of what Paul wrote “Be angry and sin not; don’t let the sun go down on your angry.” It seems to me that Jonah was sinning because he became angry which is what the Lord is saying to him now. It was earlier that God had asked a similar question to point out the prophet’s distorted understanding of good and evil, and this was written in an earlier SD when discussing verse 4:4, so you can go back and look at that discussion if you want to. Here, the question served to correct Jonah’s errant understanding about grace, something he wanted, but did not want the Nineveh’s to have. The question emphasized how perverted Jonah’s thinking had been: the prophet was angry that God showed mercy to repentant Nineveh. “10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it. 1 But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 "Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life’” (Jonah 3:10-4:3). We can see in this section we are looking at this morning that Jonah was just as angry that God had removed mercy from him. Let us now look at Jonah 4:7-8 “7 But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. 8 When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life." Jonah was irate that God killed the plant, and he was equally angry that God did not kill the people in Nineveh as seen in 4:3 “"Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” The Lord questioned Jonah in order to expose his selfish and sinful priorities, and to demonstrate that he did not in fact have good reason for this anger. Previously, Jonah was enraged because God had extended His grace to the 120,000 of Ninevites, sparing them from judgment as we saw in verses 4:1-3, but then he was angry because God had removed His grace from him by killing an insignificant plant. MacArthur writes “The point behind Yahweh’s question was to compel Jonah to consider whether it was better for divine grace to be extended or removed.” And with that quote I will end this SD, but before I do that I want to wish all of those who are celebrating Thanksgiving today a very happy Thanksgiving, and as believers we certainly have much to be thankful for.
11/27/2025 10:14 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment