Embark on a spiritual journey with Dr. J. Vernon McGee through the captivating narrative of Jonah. Beyond the whale, this story reveals a deeper understanding of God’s inexhaustible compassion and mercy, even towards those who fervently resist it. Despite Jonah’s reluctance and personal biases, God’s purpose prevails, showcasing His love for all nations. Dr. McGee challenges us to transcend our personal feelings and participate actively in spreading God’s word, exemplified through Jonah’s transformative journey in Nineveh.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
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On what single event does the message of the entire Bible depend? Is it the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross? In this study on Through the Bible, Dr. J. Vernon McGee explores what connects the gospel message and the entire Christian life. So find your seat on the Bible bus and let’s listen to a quick introduction.
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And today we need to emphasize that the resurrection more than it’s being emphasized. We hear a great deal about the death of Christ, and we should, but also we should hear an equal amount about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have today, if you want an illustration of this, get your song book. You will find song after song about the death of Christ, the cross, blood of Christ, all of that. And friends, I wouldn’t take one of those hymns out of the book. But how many do you have on the resurrection? Very few. How many sermons a year on the death of Christ? We say that we fundamentalists, we’re preaching the gospel, but we have only one Easter sermon. My friends, we ought to have more than that. The early church, you remember, every Sunday, not on Easter Sunday, every Sunday, the first day of the week, they went around and said, He is risen. He is risen. When’s the last time that you heard that in your church? I’m sure you never heard it except on Easter Sunday. And therefore, without the resurrection of Christ, we wouldn’t have a church. The Holy Spirit would never have come into the world. There’d be no gospel. And we need therefore to put an emphasis today Upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a living Savior at God’s right hand. There’s a man in the glory. But someone has said the church has forgotten all about him. We have a living Christ at this very moment. Wherever you are, the living Christ is yonder in heaven. And he knows all about you. And he loves you. If he saved you, you belong to him. If he hasn’t saved you, he wants to save you.
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What a terrific invitation to the saving grace and love that God offers each of us. You know, if you don’t yet know him, please hear this. God loves you. Jesus died to save you, and he rose again to prove his sacrifice for you was acceptable to God. All you need to do now is turn to him in faith. Learn more about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by checking out Dr. McGee’s digital booklets and messages when you click on How Can I Know God at ttb.org or in our app. Or call 1-800-65-BIBLE and we’ll mail you a few of these free resources. Again, that’s 1-800-652-4253. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, please speak to us through your precious and powerful word. For those who don’t know you yet, Lord, would you draw them to yourself and comfort and encourage as well as convict or teach all of us according to our own needs. In Jesus’ name, amen. Now here’s our final study in the book of Jonah on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now, we come to the last chapter of the book of Jonah. As we said last time, it’s like an addendum to the book because the mission is accomplished. As we saw here at the very beginning, I arranged it according to a timetable each chapter. And the man had left Israel, the northern kingdom, probably Gath Hefer, his hometown. And his destination is Nineveh. And it took him three chapters to get there, and he accomplished his mission, and the entire city turns to God. Now, the book ought to end, but no, God has to win the prophet over. And in chapter 4, we have the destination as a little trailer court outside of Nineveh. He leaves Nineveh, not going to it anymore, but leaving it, and he arrives in the heart of God. Now, if I had had the privilege of being the one that brought the message to Nineveh and have seen the result that he did, I believe that I would have gone down to Western Union and sent a telegram back to my hometown or back to my home and tell people what had happened and cause them to praise and thank God for what had been accomplished. I’d rejoice in it. But that’s because of I’m where I am and under altogether different circumstances. Because if I’d been in Jonah’s shoes and certainly in Jonah’s fish, I might have had the same feeling that he did. Because this is something that seems unbelievable. Fact of the matter is, I have no problem with the fish. I have a lot of problem with Jonah. As you well know, at the very beginning, he’s called to go one direction. He heads the other direction. I don’t understand that. I guess until I look at my own heart and I found out that I’ve headed the wrong direction several times when it was very clear God wanted me to go the opposite direction. Now, will you notice chapter 4 opens with this unbelievable verse. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. Now, it didn’t displease him just a little bit. But it displeased him exceedingly. And he wasn’t just angry a little bit. He was very angry. This man is angry about what? He’s angry because the city of Nineveh has turned to God. And he didn’t like that. Now, will you notice verse 2? And he prayed unto the Lord. Now, the last time he prayed, he was inside the fish. Now, here he is outside of Nineveh. And he’s up there in a little trailer court. His camper is parked there. And he sits in the shade of it. And he prays. He’s very unhappy. He’s miserable. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Now, we’re going to begin to see the psychology of Jonah. And if you felt I was inaccurate at the beginning when I said he had hatred and bitterness in his heart against the Ninevites, and he probably had justification for it, and that was one of the reasons he didn’t want to go, then will you listen to this? He says, “‘O Lord, was not this my saying?’ When I was yet in my country, therefore I fled before unto Tarshish. For I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Now, I heard a liberal years ago at Vanderbilt University giving the co-lectures there, and he made the statement that Jonah’s problem was he didn’t know God. And I don’t like to say it like this, but the problem with that lecturer was he didn’t know the book of Jonah. Because it’s very clear that Jonah did know God and knew him real well. And probably better than that lecturer knew God. He says, I knew you were gracious. I knew you were merciful. I knew you were slow to anger. I knew you were of great kindness. And I knew that though you said you’d destroy Nineveh in 40 days, if Nineveh turned to God, you’d save him because that’s what you always do. And he said, I know what you’ll do. Jonah knew God. And knowing God, he said, I hate Ninevites. I don’t want them saved. I want God to judge them. So he headed the other direction. He said, those Ninevites, if they turn to God, God would save them. And you just can’t depend on Ninevites. They might put up a good front and they might say that they turn to God. And Jonah should have known that God would have known their hearts. He’d known whether they were genuine or not. And God would save them. You see, Jonah knew how merciful and good and gracious God was. Now he comes and he’s in great bitterness and anger. Therefore now, will you listen to him? O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it’s better for me to die than to live. Now, I want you to look at this man, because two of the great prophets of the Scripture said the same thing, that they wanted God to take their lives. In other words, they’re actually on the verge of suicide. When Elijah ran from Jezebel, And there’s another man running away. And it was unlike him. He went all the way to Beersheba. And that was the jumping off place for the Sinai Peninsula. And he left his servant there and he kept going as long as he could. When he’s out of breath, he crawls up and under a juniper tree. And he says, oh, Lord, let me die. And when a man does that, and he’s God’s man, That man is exhausted, exhausted and drained physically, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. Every drop is drained out of him. And that was true of Elijah. Elijah had been busy, and I mean busy, friend. He had withstood against the prophets of Baal way up at Haifa, at Mount Carmel. He had been before the public. And this man, he loved the spectacular. He loved the dramatic. But it drains you after a while. And this man, when he heard that Jezebel is after him, he took out for the far country. And now here’s Jonah. And I think you’ll agree that this man has really been through the mail. In fact, he’s been through a fish. This man has had quite an experience, and he’s come into the city of Nineveh, and he has given out God’s Word now faithfully, and the city has turned to God. This man is overwrought, overstimulated. He is exhausted. absolutely drained, and he wants to die. And there’s one thing about this, and there are many of us, I think, reach this stage at times. We get to the place where we feel like, well, this is it. I give up. I quit. I don’t want to go on any farther. And we’re tired, we’re exhausted. And to wish you were dead is just about as foolish a thing as you can possibly do. Because as far as I know, no one has ever died by wishing it. Now, people die of cancer and heart trouble and all other things, but they just don’t die of wishing to be dead. And so he’s wasting his time. Now, God speaks to Jonah. And I want you to notice how gracious God deals with this man. Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? And Dr. Young has given us, I think, a much better translation here. He has translated it like this. Is doing good displeasing to you? And that’s what God meant. God says, Jonah, I have saved Nineveh because I’m in the saving business and I save sinners. And I wanted you to bring the message there of judgment to see whether they wouldn’t turn to me. And if they’d turn to me, I’d save them. And they turned to me and I’ve saved them. And if there’s joy in heaven over one sinner turning to God, my, they must have had a real big time up there when Nineveh turned to God. And he says, now, is this displeasing to you that I’ve saved these Ninevites? And Jonah is in a huff. And he’s pouting. Notice what he does. Verse 5. So Jonah went out of the city, sat on the east side of the city. And if you’ll notice, that’s up there in the hill country. That is up in an elevation. And he got him a good spot where he could look over the city. Why? Because he didn’t trust Ninevites. He thought they’d go right back into their sinning. And if they did, he knew God would destroy them because God never changes. And he wanted to be up there if the fire fell. That’s the kind of man we’re dealing with right now. And he’s the man that brought God’s message. And they made a booth for himself and sat under it in the shadow till he might see what would become of the city. See, he didn’t believe Nineveh would stick by their conversion, their confession of faith. But he’s up there and he’s waiting for the fire to fall. Now, notice what God does. God moves in on this man, and he’s going to deal with this man personally. And this, of course, I think ought to answer the question, and we’ll deal with that in just a few moments. Do you have to love people before you can bring the word of God to them? Do you have to love a people before you can go as a missionary? Well, Jonah may be a good example to your friends in that particular connection. There’s one thing for sure. He didn’t love Ninevites. Now, I’m reading verse 6. The Lord now is moving in on Jonah. The Lord God prepared a gourd. Now, that gourd was prepared the same way God prepared that fish. And if you don’t believe in the fish, you ought not to believe in the gourd. I believe in the gourd. I believe in the fish. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and he made it to come up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd. Now, Jonah is made happy at last by this little green gourd growing up. And every day, Jonah would go down to the Tigris River, fill a bucket with water, and come up and water this gourd because that’s a dry country over there. And he trained it to run up over his camper, you know. And he sat under the shade of it. And he got attached to it. Now, you must see the background of this man to understand him. And understand a little about human nature. It’s amazing how people can get attached today to living things other than human beings. Especially if they’re lonesome. If they have no person to love, they’ll have either a dog or a cat. And even a vine. I visited several years ago some friends in Chicago. And they live in an apartment. And they have several plants there. And one was a geranium. And they took me over and showed me the geranium. And it’s just a little old stub sticking up. I take my hole and I have to cut them back here in my yard to keep them from taking over. And I just cut them down like you cut anything else. And this lady, she says, Dr. McGee, look here at this little geranium. Says, I know you grow them in California, but this is such a sweet one. It grows up each year and has flowers on it. And then it just dies back in wintertime, though the apartment is warm. I don’t know why it does that. And I said, well, geraniums have a way of just lunging out at times growing. And that one hadn’t done much lunging. You can be sure of that. A little bitty thing. And when I walked away, she patted that little geranium and says, you sweet little thing, you. And I thought, my gracious alive, does she talk to the geranium? And I guess she did. And she’s certainly a very sensible woman and a very intelligent woman. And actually, she didn’t have very many friends. Now, Jonah has no friends. He doesn’t like Ninevites. And there’s not a person in that city that he cares about visiting. And he’s alone and he’s out of fellowship with God at this time. So God lets him get attached to the little old gourd. And I have a notion that Jonah would come panning up the hill with that bucket of water every afternoon. And he’d say to the little gourd, little gourd, I brought you your drink for today. Can you imagine that? Well, people get attached to dogs. I took my daughter when she was just a little thing for a walk one evening and we came to a corner and there’s a lot of vines there and we couldn’t see around the corner, but we could hear a woman talking. And I have never heard such sweet talk. And I thought we were interrupting something. And so I took my daughter and started to cross the street. And then a woman came around the corner. She’s carrying a little dog, talking to a little dog like that. Now, I don’t know whether she’s married or not, but I bet her husband never heard her sweet talk like she was talking to that little dog. And you talk about some people leading a dog’s life. There are some men that wish they could lead a dog’s life and have sweet talk like that. Well, this is what Jonah’s given his gourd vine. He’s attached to it. Now God’s going to move in on him. Will you watch this? And God prepared a worm. That worm’s just as miraculous as the fish is. When the morning rose the next day and it smote the gourd that it withered, that worm just cut the vine down. Because worms just don’t fall in love with gourds. They like to eat them. Verse 8, And it came to pass, when the sun did rise, that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted and wished in himself to die. Here he goes again, wishing, won’t do him a bit of good. And he said, It’s better for me to die than to live. Now in this state, God moves in on him. Listen, God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the God? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. He said, the only thing that I had that was living I cared for was this little gourd vine that grew up here that you gave me. And now the worm has cut the thing down, and here I am all alone. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd for which thou hast not labored. Neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Jonah, a gourd is nothing. Friends, I hate to say this, but a pussycat’s nothing. And a little dog is nothing. But a human being has a soul that’s either going to heaven or hell. And the interesting thing is God didn’t ask you to love the lost before you go to them. He said, I love the lost. I want you to go to them. And that’s what he’s saying to Jonah. Jonah, I love the Ninevites. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city in which are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle? And God says, now I’ve spared this city. And what does he mean by six score thousand person can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand? He means little children. God says, you wouldn’t want me to destroy that city, would you, Jonah? You certainly wouldn’t want that judgment to come upon them. If you can fall in love with a gourd vine, can’t you fall in love with Ninevites? Now, may I make this application? I used to say when I was teaching Bible, like all the other teachers were saying, if you’re called to go as a missionary, you ought to love the people that you go to. I disagree now with that. violently, because how can you love people before you know them? Now, I first applied that to myself. I have never accepted a call to a church in my ministry because I love the people. I didn’t know them to begin with. I went because I felt like God had called me to go there and preach. Now, I’ve never been to a church that I didn’t meet the people, and many of them I’ve stood at the bedside in a hospital. I’ve stood there when death has come. I’ve been at the graveside. I’ve been with them in marriages that have taken place in their families. And I can say truthfully that I have never yet left the church that there wasn’t a great company of people that I love. And I really mean I love them in the Lord. But I didn’t love them when I went there, didn’t know them. Now, God is saying to a great many people today, God is saying, I want you to go and take the word of God out to the lost. And you say, I don’t love them. God says, I never asked you to love. I asked you to go. I can’t find where God ever asked Jonah to go because he loved them. He said, Jonah, I want you to go because I love them. I love Ninevites. I want to save Ninevites. And I want you to take the message to them. And I’m afraid that there are a great many people in the church today like this that I read. I guess I read this last time. that there are church members that are either pillars or caterpillars. The pillars hold up the church and the caterpillars just crawl in and out. And there are a lot of people just crawling in and out of a church today, waiting for some great wave of emotion, waiting for some feeling to take hold of them. And they’ve never done anything yet. God says, you get busy for God. I remember asking a missionary when I was pastor here in Pasadena. He was a missionary in Africa, and he came home and he showed me a picture of some little boys that he had in the orphan’s home there. And I could tell the way he looked at the picture, he loved those little boys. And I said to him, calling him by his first name, I said, when you first went to Africa, did you love the Africans? He said, no. He said, I really wanted to go to my people in Greece. But at that time, the door was closed after the war and I couldn’t go. So I had to go to Africa to tell the truth. I wanted to go as a missionary. And as he held that picture, I said to him, but do you love those little fellas now? And tears came down his eyes. He said, I love them now. God says to you and me, you go with the word. I love the lost. You take the word to them. And when they’re saved and you get acquainted with them and know them, you’re going to love them too. Now, since Jonah wrote the book, I think it’s reasonable to say that after this experience, Jonah left the dead gourd vine and went down where the living were walking the streets of Nineveh. And I think that he rejoiced with them that they had come to a saving knowledge of God. My friend, what a message this is. Why don’t you get involved in getting the word of God out? Don’t wait for some great feeling to sweep over your soul. There’s so many people that are waiting to be motivated by that. And that’s the reason they’re moved by things that are emotional. My friend, don’t wait for that. Don’t wait till you see a little picture of an orphan. Take the word of God because God loves them. And if you will take it, I’ll guarantee you, you’ll learn to love them also. Until next time, when we go to 1 John, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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Dr. McGee is right. God is actively pursuing those who don’t yet know him. And we don’t have to learn the hard way like Jonah did. You know, I love that we can actively be involved together in getting God’s word to the world in the most natural way, simply by praying about it. Our world prayer team lifts up a different language group every day, asking God to make his name known among those people. One team member recently wrote this. I read your email today and smiled and thanked the Lord for his work in a country that I visited long ago. I’m glad for the reminder that he’s still in the business of transforming lives. Well, if you want to join us on that world prayer team and travel the globe on your knees, just go to ttb.org forward slash pray to sign up. The Bible bus, well, it’s headed back to the New Testament to begin a journey through the foundational book of 1 John. Get ready to have your head and your heart stirred by all that God’s doing to make your salvation and Christian life possible. I’m Steve Schwetz, grateful for your fellowship with us in the Word of God and looking forward to spending more time with you as the Bible bus rolls along.
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All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
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Today’s study with Dr. J. Vernon McGee is brought to you by Through the Bible, and it’s made possible by the generous prayer and financial investments from listeners like you on the Bible bus all around the world.
