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Transcript 512A
Jonah and the Gourd [Jonah 4]
HC: Good evening Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Camping. Would you please turn to the Book of Jonah, Chapter 4, the first verse?
HC: Jonah 4:1. Yes.
CALLER: The question that I have for you is why was Jonah displeased because God saved the people of Nineveh after they turned from their evil works and did good in God's eyes? And I would also like to know what a gourd is, because I've been reading this book for quite some time and I can't seem to get any understanding out of this particular chapter. Would you explain that to me, please?
HC: Let me answer the second question first. What is the gourd in the Book of Jonah? We read in verse 4 of Jonah 4: "So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd [which was a very fast-growing plant of some kind] and 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." The gourd is a very fast-growing plant. I don't know if there's a significance in the word gourd itself, but it certainly is a plant of some kind.
"For God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass when the sun did arise, God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. And then God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? He said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?"
Now the question is, what is God teaching through this? This of course is a bit of history. This is an account of an historical event that did occur. And what is represented by this gourd and by the reaction of Jonah?
Well, we'll get to Jonah in just a minute. But the gourd really represents this world, the things of this world that bring comfort to man, and which God brings to man without any preparation on man's part. We receive comfort from the things of this earth. We receive comfort from the trees, from the shade, from the warm sunshine, and so on. All of these things we derive comfort from. But man by nature is not at all interested in saving his fellow man from hell. Man by nature is more concerned about this earth than he is about his fellow man. In other words, we see this today as man gets very up-tight when animals, for example, might become extinct. This is a tremendous concern to many people. Or when the trees are being cut down in certain areas many people are up in arms, because this creation is what is important to them. And this is what pains them.
But the fact that all of their fellow men are going to hell, that doesn't disturb mankind in the slightest. Does it? And here is Jonah. He is more concerned about this plant that dies in the night than he is about Nineveh, that was on the threshold of being destroyed. And Nineveh is really a picture of the world that is consigned to hell because of its sin. You see how unbalanced, how out of proportion, the attitude of man is toward this world. He is far more concerned about those things which benefit him directly, the things that this world produces, than he is about his fellow mankind that are going to hell. That I think is the picture of the end of the chapter.
Now the question is raised, "What really is the Book of Jonah?" And I think we could summarize this in a couple of sentences. The Book of Jonah, I believe, is a picture of Israel, of national Israel. Now Jonah of course was a Jew. He was of national Israel. And God uses the Jews to bring the Gospel to the world. Remember, "salvation is of the Jews." Jesus was a Jew. The Bible came from the Jews. The whole program of God is that God worked through the Jewish nation in order to accomplish the salvation program that He has decided for the world.
Now she as a nation does not really want to be active in this program of sending the Gospel to the world. For example, when the Messiah came on the scene, remember now, Jesus was a Jew, you would think that if they were really spiritual and close to God, when Jesus came they would welcome Him with open arms. The Messiah is here. And now they would be ready to be obedient to whatever the Messiah would desire.
But instead they crucified Him. They do not want him as their Messiah, even though it is the nation of Israel that produced the Messiah. The Messiah came from the Jews. And of course this is pictured by Jonah in the belly of the fish. He did not want to go there, and he effectively became a figure of the Messiah. Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 12, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Jonah is a picture of Christ.
But he develops himself as a picture of the Christ because of His refusal to be instrumental of God in saving Nineveh. He doesn't want to see Nineveh saved; he is reluctant to go there. And of course the nation of Israel produced the Messiah. That is, she crucified Him, which was necessary for God's plan in making Christ a Messiah, because of national Israel's reluctance to accept Him as a Messiah.
Now in this brief time I can't go into all the background of all this, but this I think is the larger picture here. Now eventually the world is saved. In other words, the Gospel does go out, whether national Israel likes it or not. The Gospel does go out, and it goes out by the preaching of the Jews. Jesus was a Jew, and the first disciples were Jews. The apostle Paul was a Jew. The first missionaries were Jews.
But national Israel is unhappy about it. Right to the very present day they want nothing at all to do with the salvation of the world from eternal damnation through anyone like the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They want nothing at all to do with this, that is, except for the remnant chosen by grace.
And so that's the picture of Jonah, seeing that Nineveh has been saved, but not at all happy about it, much more concerned about this world as it stands than he is about the fact that the nations of the world are going to hell. We have really here in the Book of Jonah a picture of God's dealing through national Israel to accomplish the Messiah, to accomplish the salvation that was brought to the world.