God Doesn't Care About What We Care About(From our 9-8-24 Worship)
View the video version here: https://youtu.be/21cEX3Y1KD8
Transcript:
As far as companies go, it was, it was a behemoth. In 1970, in the primary market in which it operated, it had 90 percent of the market share. In the secondary market that it operated in, it had 85%. And everyone thought that this company was just gonna be one of those greats that just went on forever. And yet today, it's name, for a lot of people aren't even known.
I was doing my research for this lesson and I had something pulled up on the computer about it. And just to give you an example, my son walked in, called it and said, Dad, who's And he called off the name. He'd never even heard of them before. In 2012, they went bankrupt. And it's a pretty interesting study as to why they went bankrupt.
But most of us here, if you drove here today at least, you probably remember Kodak. I mean, they were such a big player in the market that when you captured those special moments in life, what'd you call them? A Kodak moment. I mean, they were, they were just massive. But in 2012, when they declared bankruptcy, they were put out of business.
Some people say because of the digital camera. In the 1990s, in the 2000s, digital photography took off and you didn't have to, you didn't have to send that little roll of film off and, and wait a week or so for it to come back and you had the little print that had all your pictures in about a, you know, a quarter by quarter square and you're trying to, you know, look at them.
Now you can just take the picture and pull it up, hook it to your computer, and, and go ahead and, and just get it right there. And you say, well, Doug, people miss trends all the time in business, right? Businesses go out of, out of operation because they just can't see the future. But that's not exactly the case with Kodak.
They were taken out of business by the digital camera, but guess what? In 1975, one of their employees invented the first digital camera. He's got it on his shoulder right there. It looks like a One of those old beat boxes, one of those, you know, radios that you used to pack around. So it wasn't like they couldn't see the trend coming.
They invested some in this technology, but for most of, most of the time, they just, they didn't care. They didn't care because film was such a profitable industry. They focused more on the wrong thing. Because at the time, when the film industry was still booming, it had a markup of like 70%. And they really liked that.
And they wound up caring more about the profits that film was making than where the future happened to be going. And because of it, it took them under. You see, it's easy for a large corporation to care about the wrong things. Because a large corporation is filled with people. And a great number of times people what care about the wrong things.
And this morning, I don't know any better way to illustrate this fact than the book of Jonah. Now Jonah is a nursery, a nursery room favorite, right? We, every time we think about Jonah, all we can think about is the big, huge whale. And yes, that's a pretty cool part of the story. I gotta admit, you know. God, I'm just not gonna do what you want me to do.
I'm gonna run away. Okay, God, God. In that instance, what we what I'd like to call a range transport right for Jonah to get him to go to where he wanted him to go. But the real story to me in the book of Jonah is not in chapters one, two or three. It's in Chapter four and in Chapter four, I want us to zoom in there this morning.
And I want us to look at what God cares about. And I want us to look at what and what Jonah cared about, because you're going to see that those two things are drastically different. And I hope the things that we see this morning keep us from getting eaten by a whale. I mean, help us to be better Christians.
You don't know what I'm trying to say. Now, as we get started here, I need to kind of I guess I I need to tell you where the idea for this lesson come from. I need to give you some structure before we get all the way down to the end of this to say what's he been talking about for for 20 30 minutes. If you look at the end of Jonah chapter 4, there's a verse in verse 11, and there's a word in that verse that depending on the English translation you have in your hand is translated one of several different ways.
The ESV says this is God speaking to Jonah. And should I not pity Nineveh, that word pity there in the ESV, in the NIV, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh? The Christian Standard Bible says it this way, so may I not care about. You see this word here in, in the original Hebrew is a word that, it talks about an emotion, an emotion.
But it also talks about an action that's caused by that emotion. You think about pity or concern or or care? I think care is the best English word that we have today for that, right? If you look at something and you care about it, you're gonna move, you're gonna take action. And Jonah, Jonah cared about some things.
Jonah was very passionate about what he cared about. But God, God cared about some things, too, and there's a great disparity there between what Jonah cared about and what God cared about. And maybe this is gonna be a shocker for you, but I still think today for a lot of human beings, there's a great disparity between what God cares about and what we care about.
So with that being said, let's we're gonna set the stage for Chapter four. I think we need to look at Chapter three to do that. So this is after Jonah's been swallowed up. He's chapter three. He gets spit back out on dry land. I have no idea what he smells like. It had to be horrible. But look at what? What happens in Chapter three.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh. According to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was exceedingly great city, three days and journey in its breath.
Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey and he called out yet 40 days and then it will be shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believe God. They called for a fast and put on sack cloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sitting ashes.
And he issued a proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by decree of the king and his nobles. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hand.
Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Amen. When God saw that they did have a turn from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said what he would do to them. And he did not do it. You imagine you imagine sit out and walk across Elton or Trenton or Guthrie and preach.
Yeah, 40 days in this town will be destroyed and everyone in it comes to God. You imagine what that had to be like. I mean, we would if that happened, we would talk about it for hundreds of years to come. And yet for Jonah, it happened. But there's that's as Paul Harvey would say, there's the rest of the story in there.
Jonah is not going to be exactly happy about this, and there's several reasons why. But like I say, I want us to get in now to chapter four, and we're going to look at what Jonah cared about versus what God. In particular, we're going to start out with this idea of talking about things that God does not care about.
Look at verse one. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. Can you imagine going and preaching to a town and converting the whole entire town, mayor down to the dog catcher, and everyone in between and being upset about it? I mean, if you ever stopped and wondered how God puts up with us, how patient he must be towards us.
Jonah, I want you to go. Uh uh, I ain't going. Just throw me out in the ocean. I'd rather drown as I had go. Okay. You know, he eats him up with a whale, spits him out. Jonah, go. Verse 3, I find it interesting. Verse 1, he had to tell him again, go to Nineveh. Okay, I'll go. And when he goes and does what God tells him to do, now he is angry.
about it. Can you imagine sitting on the throne and just her? I just wonder how many times I'm sure God's better than this. But if I was God, I could imagine just sitting on the throne going again one more time. But I'm sure he's better than that. You see, the first thing that we see here with Jonah is that God did not care about his preferences.
God didn't care about what he wanted. And I think today for far too many times, God doesn't care about our preferences either. Now, hang on just a minute. You probably sitting here thinking, well, Doug, you're just like, you're saying that God doesn't care about me. That's not what I said. There's nothing about scripture that would make you think that God does not care about you.
Why did his son have to go and die on the cross if God did not care about you? What did I say? God didn't care about his preferences. Jonah, I'm sure, would have preferred not to go to Nineveh. Jonah, I'm sure, would have preferred to have Nineveh destroyed. The reason for that is because a great number of times Nineveh has come in and attacked Israel, and they're basically, they're, they're staunch enemies.
Time and time again, they have attacked them and they've punished them and they have basically caught made their life miserable. Right. We're talking about Jonah's enemy. He would prefer that God did not save them, but God, God didn't care what his preference was. Could you imagine if God cowtailed everybody and what they wanted?
You know, yeah. A lot of times what I want may not be the best for everybody else. I mean, we have. Have you ever stopped? Considered that what I want may not be what's best. I mean, let's just be honest. Sometimes what I want isn't what's best for me. You ever noticed every dollar store you've ever been into?
I promise you when you go in the dollar store, one of the first two or three hours you're going to hit is what the candy out. And it's not just a little bit of candy. No, it's the whole entire aisle, double sided, and they put that thing right up front. Why? Because we know we don't need sugar, but I'm sure I would prefer some.
You see, our preferences a lot of times don't matter. Now, is it possible maybe for our preferences as we live a godly life and our preferences to line up with God? Sure. I'm not saying he doesn't ever care about our preferences. But how many times do our preferences not line up with his will? How many times do our preferences not line up with what he cares about?
A lot. If you're looking at me in my life, and I don't know, maybe you're better at this than I am, but I dare say for all of us, there's lots of times that he's not going to care about my preferences because my preferences aren't right. Right? So, I don't know. We're going to verse two. He's angry about, about this verse two and three, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
That's why I made haste to flee to Tarsus where I knew that you're a gracious God and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, Lord, please take my life for me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
Once again, I just imagined God sitting on the throne. He asked to die, just strike him with a lightning bolt, right? I mean, he asked for it, but he didn't do that. You see, God didn't care about his plans. God, you told me to go to Nineveh to preach those people, try to save them. And you know what? I had a different plan.
I'm going to get on a boat and I'm going to go the different direction. I don't care. Just throw me in the, throw me in the, In the ocean, in the middle of the storm, I'll probably drown and I'd rather do that as I go to Nineveh and preach to them people, and God says,
Verse three, he says, It's better for me to die than to live. Really? How do you know that? How do you know that? You see, at the very best, we're horrible plan makers. You know why we're horrible plan makers? Because we can't see the big picture. We can't see what's coming tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day We might be really good at making the plans or the information that we have but we don't have all the information always Rarely, I would say do we have all the information God is a better plan maker than we are Now am I saying Doug?
I should never make any plans. Just throw my hands up. Jesus take no But you can make plans that leave room for God's plans James chapter four. You say that we'll go into such and such city and buy and sell and trade for a year and get gained. And he says, you ought to say if the Lord what if the Lord wills, we'll do those things.
I've got a plan, but you know what? I'm gonna leave room for God's plan. God may have a different plan than I do. God may want to tweak my plan a little bit. God may want me to go the completely opposite direction. Of course, I'm gonna make plans for my life. Of course. I'm gonna do those things. I'm gonna get up and go to work and I'm gonna have a career and a family and have hobbies and interests.
Of course I am. But when I stop making room for God's plan, that's a problem. That's a problem because if I don't care about what God's plan is for my life, then there's no way I'm gonna follow him. I just can't. I can't do what he wants me to do and not care about it at the same time. It just doesn't work.
There's a lot of times that God doesn't care about our plans because we're selfishly trying to make them for what we want and where we want to go and what I need. You ever prayed to God and said, God, I need this, I need that, I need this to work out that way? How did that work out for you? God's a better plan maker than we are.
We'll go a little bit further. John chapter, or Jonah 4 and verse 4. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? Now, I doubt this will ever happen to you, but if God comes to use one day and says, you think it's the best idea that you're angry right now? The automatic answer to that is probably no. Okay.
If God has to ask you, are you, is it a good idea for you to be angry? Do you do well to be angry? And you pretty much will just guess the answer to that question is no, it's not well for me to be angry, right? And it's, and it's not just once God has to ask him this question twice. You look at verse nine, but God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?
And look at this answer. And he said, yes, I do to be well, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. Right?
You don't think you ain't listening. You're wrong.
God, I'm angry. God cares about your anger.
What's the Bible say? be angry and what sin not is there times we're gonna be angry. Sure, sure, there is. But if we let that override us and overrule us, if we let that get in the way of our relationship with God, if we let that get in the way of his plans, we let that get in the way. Then that's wrong.
That's absolutely wrong. Versus five and six. Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east of the city and made a booth for himself. And he sat down in it, uh, under it in the shade till he could see what would become of the city. Now the Lord appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Now, there's something right here that I never really caught till I studied for this lesson. In verse five, it says, he's sitting outside the city. You done went across it for three days preaching. The whole place is repented, but you're going to go outside the city to see what will become of it.
What did he just say in verses one and two? What did he just admit? I kind of skipped over this part, right? For I know that you are a gracious God and merciful and slow to anger, bound in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. He just admitted that he knew that God is going to forgive him. This whole place is repenting now.
God, you're going to forgive him. But yet he's still sitting outside the city in a little hut, waiting on to see if God will destroy the place. Can you imagine? You just went across the city and preach in the whole place, repenting and you're mad at God. You slur God because how good he is. God, I know you're gonna forgive this people.
I'm gonna sit out here and I'm gonna wait a little while and I'm gonna see if you destroy them anyway. Can
you imagine? That's what he's doing. And God is going to show him a lesson with this plant. Everybody thinks the whale is the most powerful part of the story. I think the plant. And the worms show, show us way more and are way more powerful to us than the whale is. The whale's cool. I mean, getting swallowed up and riding around for three days in the belly of this great fish, okay, that's neat.
Okay, that's, I'll give you that. But, apparently the whale was not enough to change his heart. Apparently the whale was not enough to change his mind. And God is going to give him this plant. And I want you to notice the last part of verse six. Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Why was he exceedingly glad because of the plant?
Because it gave him shade. It benefited him. You think that Jonah loved that plant for a selfish reason? You think Jonah hated them people for a selfish reason? You think God doesn't care about our selfish ambitions?
I don't think he does. And it's really easy. It's really easy. I want you to notice here, I put, in all these, in the bottom, I put our. Because I'm preaching to me as much as I am all of us. Right? It's really easy for me to have selfish ambitions as well. Well, it's about me and my career, and it's about this and that.
And, you know, it's really easy for the focus to be on me. Don't, don't think I'm not preaching to me at the same time. But God doesn't care about our selfish ambition. It doesn't matter if we've got a hundred million dollars or ten, He owns it all. I like to say very lovingly that He has all the ribeyes on a thousand hills, that's my favorite part.
Okay? He owns it all. Doesn't matter what I have. Whatever I have is because He's given it to me. What is my focus? What do I care about more than anything else? Don't care about the stuff. Do I care about this plant? Do I care about? I mean, there's no telling. You imagine how big a city has got to be for it.
Take you three days to walk across it. That's a huge city. And Jonah, Jonah didn't care nothing about them. But he loved his plan because he was getting something out of it. God didn't care about his selfish ambition. He didn't care about ours either.
Now, You look at all this and we've talked about everything that God doesn't care about. Let's talk about what he does care about. Verse 7. When the dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked a plant. And it withered. As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted.
And he wanted to die. And he said, it's better for me to die than to live. Then God asked Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? Verse 8. Yes, it's right. He replied. I'm angry enough to die. Really? And the Lord said, You cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in the night and perished in the night.
So may I not care about that great city of Nineveh, which has more than 100, 000 or 120, 000 people who cannot distinguish between the right and their left as well as many animals. A person that is so young that he cannot distinguish between the right and their left is what we call what a child. If there's that many Children in that place, how many more people were there in the city?
Big enough that it takes you three days to walk across. God didn't care about his anger. God didn't care about his selfish ambition. God didn't care about any of that. What God cared about and still cares about his soul. That's what God cares about. The exact people that Jonah hated was the ones that God cared about.
That's a lesson to me because it's really easy. It's really easy for me to look at somebody that's different. Or maybe they've got a little bit of history with me. Maybe they've done something over again. Right. Peter asked how many times my brother said against me and I forgive him seven times because that eighth time I'm gonna drop a hammer on him and knock him blow out.
No.
No, Peter, you're not going to do that because I'm God and I care about souls. We look at this today and I don't have a big grand conclusion. I don't know what else to ask you except what do you care about? I know God cares about you. I know he cared enough about you to send his son to die on the cross. I know that he cares enough about you to to bless you.
Don't you want to put people in your life that can help you. And I don't know what you need is this morning. Maybe you need to come front. Maybe you need to go out back. Maybe you need to pull somebody aside. I don't know what you need. But if you need help today, don't leave here without it. Reach out if you need help today.
Rocky, come sing to us
Transcript:
As far as companies go, it was, it was a behemoth. In 1970, in the primary market in which it operated, it had 90 percent of the market share. In the secondary market that it operated in, it had 85%. And everyone thought that this company was just gonna be one of those greats that just went on forever. And yet today, it's name, for a lot of people aren't even known.
I was doing my research for this lesson and I had something pulled up on the computer about it. And just to give you an example, my son walked in, called it and said, Dad, who's And he called off the name. He'd never even heard of them before. In 2012, they went bankrupt. And it's a pretty interesting study as to why they went bankrupt.
But most of us here, if you drove here today at least, you probably remember Kodak. I mean, they were such a big player in the market that when you captured those special moments in life, what'd you call them? A Kodak moment. I mean, they were, they were just massive. But in 2012, when they declared bankruptcy, they were put out of business.
Some people say because of the digital camera. In the 1990s, in the 2000s, digital photography took off and you didn't have to, you didn't have to send that little roll of film off and, and wait a week or so for it to come back and you had the little print that had all your pictures in about a, you know, a quarter by quarter square and you're trying to, you know, look at them.
Now you can just take the picture and pull it up, hook it to your computer, and, and go ahead and, and just get it right there. And you say, well, Doug, people miss trends all the time in business, right? Businesses go out of, out of operation because they just can't see the future. But that's not exactly the case with Kodak.
They were taken out of business by the digital camera, but guess what? In 1975, one of their employees invented the first digital camera. He's got it on his shoulder right there. It looks like a One of those old beat boxes, one of those, you know, radios that you used to pack around. So it wasn't like they couldn't see the trend coming.
They invested some in this technology, but for most of, most of the time, they just, they didn't care. They didn't care because film was such a profitable industry. They focused more on the wrong thing. Because at the time, when the film industry was still booming, it had a markup of like 70%. And they really liked that.
And they wound up caring more about the profits that film was making than where the future happened to be going. And because of it, it took them under. You see, it's easy for a large corporation to care about the wrong things. Because a large corporation is filled with people. And a great number of times people what care about the wrong things.
And this morning, I don't know any better way to illustrate this fact than the book of Jonah. Now Jonah is a nursery, a nursery room favorite, right? We, every time we think about Jonah, all we can think about is the big, huge whale. And yes, that's a pretty cool part of the story. I gotta admit, you know. God, I'm just not gonna do what you want me to do.
I'm gonna run away. Okay, God, God. In that instance, what we what I'd like to call a range transport right for Jonah to get him to go to where he wanted him to go. But the real story to me in the book of Jonah is not in chapters one, two or three. It's in Chapter four and in Chapter four, I want us to zoom in there this morning.
And I want us to look at what God cares about. And I want us to look at what and what Jonah cared about, because you're going to see that those two things are drastically different. And I hope the things that we see this morning keep us from getting eaten by a whale. I mean, help us to be better Christians.
You don't know what I'm trying to say. Now, as we get started here, I need to kind of I guess I I need to tell you where the idea for this lesson come from. I need to give you some structure before we get all the way down to the end of this to say what's he been talking about for for 20 30 minutes. If you look at the end of Jonah chapter 4, there's a verse in verse 11, and there's a word in that verse that depending on the English translation you have in your hand is translated one of several different ways.
The ESV says this is God speaking to Jonah. And should I not pity Nineveh, that word pity there in the ESV, in the NIV, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh? The Christian Standard Bible says it this way, so may I not care about. You see this word here in, in the original Hebrew is a word that, it talks about an emotion, an emotion.
But it also talks about an action that's caused by that emotion. You think about pity or concern or or care? I think care is the best English word that we have today for that, right? If you look at something and you care about it, you're gonna move, you're gonna take action. And Jonah, Jonah cared about some things.
Jonah was very passionate about what he cared about. But God, God cared about some things, too, and there's a great disparity there between what Jonah cared about and what God cared about. And maybe this is gonna be a shocker for you, but I still think today for a lot of human beings, there's a great disparity between what God cares about and what we care about.
So with that being said, let's we're gonna set the stage for Chapter four. I think we need to look at Chapter three to do that. So this is after Jonah's been swallowed up. He's chapter three. He gets spit back out on dry land. I have no idea what he smells like. It had to be horrible. But look at what? What happens in Chapter three.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh. According to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was exceedingly great city, three days and journey in its breath.
Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey and he called out yet 40 days and then it will be shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believe God. They called for a fast and put on sack cloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sitting ashes.
And he issued a proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by decree of the king and his nobles. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hand.
Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Amen. When God saw that they did have a turn from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said what he would do to them. And he did not do it. You imagine you imagine sit out and walk across Elton or Trenton or Guthrie and preach.
Yeah, 40 days in this town will be destroyed and everyone in it comes to God. You imagine what that had to be like. I mean, we would if that happened, we would talk about it for hundreds of years to come. And yet for Jonah, it happened. But there's that's as Paul Harvey would say, there's the rest of the story in there.
Jonah is not going to be exactly happy about this, and there's several reasons why. But like I say, I want us to get in now to chapter four, and we're going to look at what Jonah cared about versus what God. In particular, we're going to start out with this idea of talking about things that God does not care about.
Look at verse one. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. Can you imagine going and preaching to a town and converting the whole entire town, mayor down to the dog catcher, and everyone in between and being upset about it? I mean, if you ever stopped and wondered how God puts up with us, how patient he must be towards us.
Jonah, I want you to go. Uh uh, I ain't going. Just throw me out in the ocean. I'd rather drown as I had go. Okay. You know, he eats him up with a whale, spits him out. Jonah, go. Verse 3, I find it interesting. Verse 1, he had to tell him again, go to Nineveh. Okay, I'll go. And when he goes and does what God tells him to do, now he is angry.
about it. Can you imagine sitting on the throne and just her? I just wonder how many times I'm sure God's better than this. But if I was God, I could imagine just sitting on the throne going again one more time. But I'm sure he's better than that. You see, the first thing that we see here with Jonah is that God did not care about his preferences.
God didn't care about what he wanted. And I think today for far too many times, God doesn't care about our preferences either. Now, hang on just a minute. You probably sitting here thinking, well, Doug, you're just like, you're saying that God doesn't care about me. That's not what I said. There's nothing about scripture that would make you think that God does not care about you.
Why did his son have to go and die on the cross if God did not care about you? What did I say? God didn't care about his preferences. Jonah, I'm sure, would have preferred not to go to Nineveh. Jonah, I'm sure, would have preferred to have Nineveh destroyed. The reason for that is because a great number of times Nineveh has come in and attacked Israel, and they're basically, they're, they're staunch enemies.
Time and time again, they have attacked them and they've punished them and they have basically caught made their life miserable. Right. We're talking about Jonah's enemy. He would prefer that God did not save them, but God, God didn't care what his preference was. Could you imagine if God cowtailed everybody and what they wanted?
You know, yeah. A lot of times what I want may not be the best for everybody else. I mean, we have. Have you ever stopped? Considered that what I want may not be what's best. I mean, let's just be honest. Sometimes what I want isn't what's best for me. You ever noticed every dollar store you've ever been into?
I promise you when you go in the dollar store, one of the first two or three hours you're going to hit is what the candy out. And it's not just a little bit of candy. No, it's the whole entire aisle, double sided, and they put that thing right up front. Why? Because we know we don't need sugar, but I'm sure I would prefer some.
You see, our preferences a lot of times don't matter. Now, is it possible maybe for our preferences as we live a godly life and our preferences to line up with God? Sure. I'm not saying he doesn't ever care about our preferences. But how many times do our preferences not line up with his will? How many times do our preferences not line up with what he cares about?
A lot. If you're looking at me in my life, and I don't know, maybe you're better at this than I am, but I dare say for all of us, there's lots of times that he's not going to care about my preferences because my preferences aren't right. Right? So, I don't know. We're going to verse two. He's angry about, about this verse two and three, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
That's why I made haste to flee to Tarsus where I knew that you're a gracious God and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, Lord, please take my life for me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
Once again, I just imagined God sitting on the throne. He asked to die, just strike him with a lightning bolt, right? I mean, he asked for it, but he didn't do that. You see, God didn't care about his plans. God, you told me to go to Nineveh to preach those people, try to save them. And you know what? I had a different plan.
I'm going to get on a boat and I'm going to go the different direction. I don't care. Just throw me in the, throw me in the, In the ocean, in the middle of the storm, I'll probably drown and I'd rather do that as I go to Nineveh and preach to them people, and God says,
Verse three, he says, It's better for me to die than to live. Really? How do you know that? How do you know that? You see, at the very best, we're horrible plan makers. You know why we're horrible plan makers? Because we can't see the big picture. We can't see what's coming tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day We might be really good at making the plans or the information that we have but we don't have all the information always Rarely, I would say do we have all the information God is a better plan maker than we are Now am I saying Doug?
I should never make any plans. Just throw my hands up. Jesus take no But you can make plans that leave room for God's plans James chapter four. You say that we'll go into such and such city and buy and sell and trade for a year and get gained. And he says, you ought to say if the Lord what if the Lord wills, we'll do those things.
I've got a plan, but you know what? I'm gonna leave room for God's plan. God may have a different plan than I do. God may want to tweak my plan a little bit. God may want me to go the completely opposite direction. Of course, I'm gonna make plans for my life. Of course. I'm gonna do those things. I'm gonna get up and go to work and I'm gonna have a career and a family and have hobbies and interests.
Of course I am. But when I stop making room for God's plan, that's a problem. That's a problem because if I don't care about what God's plan is for my life, then there's no way I'm gonna follow him. I just can't. I can't do what he wants me to do and not care about it at the same time. It just doesn't work.
There's a lot of times that God doesn't care about our plans because we're selfishly trying to make them for what we want and where we want to go and what I need. You ever prayed to God and said, God, I need this, I need that, I need this to work out that way? How did that work out for you? God's a better plan maker than we are.
We'll go a little bit further. John chapter, or Jonah 4 and verse 4. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? Now, I doubt this will ever happen to you, but if God comes to use one day and says, you think it's the best idea that you're angry right now? The automatic answer to that is probably no. Okay.
If God has to ask you, are you, is it a good idea for you to be angry? Do you do well to be angry? And you pretty much will just guess the answer to that question is no, it's not well for me to be angry, right? And it's, and it's not just once God has to ask him this question twice. You look at verse nine, but God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?
And look at this answer. And he said, yes, I do to be well, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. Right?
You don't think you ain't listening. You're wrong.
God, I'm angry. God cares about your anger.
What's the Bible say? be angry and what sin not is there times we're gonna be angry. Sure, sure, there is. But if we let that override us and overrule us, if we let that get in the way of our relationship with God, if we let that get in the way of his plans, we let that get in the way. Then that's wrong.
That's absolutely wrong. Versus five and six. Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east of the city and made a booth for himself. And he sat down in it, uh, under it in the shade till he could see what would become of the city. Now the Lord appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Now, there's something right here that I never really caught till I studied for this lesson. In verse five, it says, he's sitting outside the city. You done went across it for three days preaching. The whole place is repented, but you're going to go outside the city to see what will become of it.
What did he just say in verses one and two? What did he just admit? I kind of skipped over this part, right? For I know that you are a gracious God and merciful and slow to anger, bound in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. He just admitted that he knew that God is going to forgive him. This whole place is repenting now.
God, you're going to forgive him. But yet he's still sitting outside the city in a little hut, waiting on to see if God will destroy the place. Can you imagine? You just went across the city and preach in the whole place, repenting and you're mad at God. You slur God because how good he is. God, I know you're gonna forgive this people.
I'm gonna sit out here and I'm gonna wait a little while and I'm gonna see if you destroy them anyway. Can
you imagine? That's what he's doing. And God is going to show him a lesson with this plant. Everybody thinks the whale is the most powerful part of the story. I think the plant. And the worms show, show us way more and are way more powerful to us than the whale is. The whale's cool. I mean, getting swallowed up and riding around for three days in the belly of this great fish, okay, that's neat.
Okay, that's, I'll give you that. But, apparently the whale was not enough to change his heart. Apparently the whale was not enough to change his mind. And God is going to give him this plant. And I want you to notice the last part of verse six. Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Why was he exceedingly glad because of the plant?
Because it gave him shade. It benefited him. You think that Jonah loved that plant for a selfish reason? You think Jonah hated them people for a selfish reason? You think God doesn't care about our selfish ambitions?
I don't think he does. And it's really easy. It's really easy. I want you to notice here, I put, in all these, in the bottom, I put our. Because I'm preaching to me as much as I am all of us. Right? It's really easy for me to have selfish ambitions as well. Well, it's about me and my career, and it's about this and that.
And, you know, it's really easy for the focus to be on me. Don't, don't think I'm not preaching to me at the same time. But God doesn't care about our selfish ambition. It doesn't matter if we've got a hundred million dollars or ten, He owns it all. I like to say very lovingly that He has all the ribeyes on a thousand hills, that's my favorite part.
Okay? He owns it all. Doesn't matter what I have. Whatever I have is because He's given it to me. What is my focus? What do I care about more than anything else? Don't care about the stuff. Do I care about this plant? Do I care about? I mean, there's no telling. You imagine how big a city has got to be for it.
Take you three days to walk across it. That's a huge city. And Jonah, Jonah didn't care nothing about them. But he loved his plan because he was getting something out of it. God didn't care about his selfish ambition. He didn't care about ours either.
Now, You look at all this and we've talked about everything that God doesn't care about. Let's talk about what he does care about. Verse 7. When the dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked a plant. And it withered. As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted.
And he wanted to die. And he said, it's better for me to die than to live. Then God asked Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? Verse 8. Yes, it's right. He replied. I'm angry enough to die. Really? And the Lord said, You cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in the night and perished in the night.
So may I not care about that great city of Nineveh, which has more than 100, 000 or 120, 000 people who cannot distinguish between the right and their left as well as many animals. A person that is so young that he cannot distinguish between the right and their left is what we call what a child. If there's that many Children in that place, how many more people were there in the city?
Big enough that it takes you three days to walk across. God didn't care about his anger. God didn't care about his selfish ambition. God didn't care about any of that. What God cared about and still cares about his soul. That's what God cares about. The exact people that Jonah hated was the ones that God cared about.
That's a lesson to me because it's really easy. It's really easy for me to look at somebody that's different. Or maybe they've got a little bit of history with me. Maybe they've done something over again. Right. Peter asked how many times my brother said against me and I forgive him seven times because that eighth time I'm gonna drop a hammer on him and knock him blow out.
No.
No, Peter, you're not going to do that because I'm God and I care about souls. We look at this today and I don't have a big grand conclusion. I don't know what else to ask you except what do you care about? I know God cares about you. I know he cared enough about you to send his son to die on the cross. I know that he cares enough about you to to bless you.
Don't you want to put people in your life that can help you. And I don't know what you need is this morning. Maybe you need to come front. Maybe you need to go out back. Maybe you need to pull somebody aside. I don't know what you need. But if you need help today, don't leave here without it. Reach out if you need help today.
Rocky, come sing to us
