Jonah chapter number 2 this morning, and we'll read verse 7 through to verse number 9. Jonah chapter 2, verse 7. "When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to You; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Let us pray. Thank you, Lord, that salvation belongs to You. We praise You that You are the God who saves. You've given Your Son for us. You have paid the price for our sins. You have called us to Yourself by the power of the Holy Spirit and given us everlasting life. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Lord, help us to stand in awe of this great salvation and the mercy of our God. We love You, Lord, but we know that we love You because You first loved us. We pray that You would send Your Spirit to lay hold of our hearts as we come to Your word. I pray, Lord God, that You would empower both hearer and preacher alike this morning to proclaim and to hear and to receive and to respond to the words of scripture. Help us to be as those that tremble at Your word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. What do you think of when you think of the book of Jonah? Well, if you're like me and most people, you think of a great fish. Probably don't even think of a great fish; you just think of a whale, which is a great fish. And in many senses, you'll be forgiven for that. But the problem really becomes when we start trying to work out how is this possible? A great fish swallowing a man for three days and three nights. What type of great fish was this? Was it the blue whale, the sperm whale? You know, some of these whales, they got too narrow of a passageway to fit a human being down there. And besides, they eat plankton. So, when Jonah got into the belly of the whales, you know, for whale for or the great fish for three days and three nights, what did he eat? How did he survive? The oxygen levels in the chamber of the belly of the whale. And, of course, what about the acid? Surely that would have left his skin bleached by the time he was spat upon the shore. And many people look at the book of Jonah from this merely scientific standpoint, trying to reason with a miracle that is found in the scripture. And I think it is most shameful when Christians get bogged down in such things, because really, we are those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if God could raise one from the dead and He ascended up into heaven and lives forevermore, is it too hard for God to sustain a man in the belly of a great fish? And besides, what makes you think there wasn't another kind of great fish that was extinct, right? That could have sustained, God could have sustained him in the whale, you know, in the belly of that great fish. The point being, G. Campbell Morgan said this: "Men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God." See, the book of Jonah only a couple of times mentions this great fish, and it only occupies a real small part of this prophecy concerning the life of Jonah, but it's not about the great fish. It's about the great God who appointed that great fish. And there is a combination of confessions found within the book of Jonah that help us understand who this great God is that we are to be learning about when we come to the book of Jonah. For example, look at chapter number 1 of this book and look at verse number 9. When Jonah was out at sea there and there was a great storm and the mariners didn't know what to do, the mariners didn't know what to do with it. Look what he says to them in verse number 9. He said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord." Listen to these words, "the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." There's that great God confessed by the mouth of Jonah. The One who made the sea and the great land. As we read in chapter 2 verse 9, who is this great God? The One to whom salvation belongs, says Jonah, in the middle of the heart of the earth, in the belly of the whale. He confesses that salvation belongs to God. And then towards the end of the book in chapter number 4 verse number 2, we see Jonah praying to the Lord. And in his prayer to the Lord, he complains to God and saying these words, "O Lord, is it 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 are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster." Jonah confesses that God is a sovereign God who rules over the heavens and the earth, who is a God who is both gracious and merciful, and who is a God to whom salvation belongs. This is the great God that we are to perceive in the words of the prophecy of Jonah. In the story that is before us, we see this sovereign God. And four times, there's a key word that appears in this book, and it is the word appoint, or appointed. God appoints in chapter 1 verse 17, a great fish. God appoints in chapter number 4 verse 6, a plant to come up and to shade Jonah. God appoints in verse number 4, 7 of chapter number 4, a worm to come and eat that plant so that the strong east wind and the heat would really, so that the heat would affect Jonah. And then God, once He destroys the plant through the worm, appoints a strong scorching east wind to blow upon Jonah, and Jonah gets really angry. Four times we see this word appoint appear. And this is not to tell us that only God occasionally appoints things. It's not to tell us that God appoints some worms and not other worms. Some great fish are in His control and others aren't. Nor is it there to tell us that some plants are from the Lord and others are not and the scorching east wind, only the one that God sends is really under the control of God. The purpose of mentioning this is the writer is trying to help us understand that God is in control of the heavens and the earth. And He is not the God of the deists who wound up the world, created the world, and went off somewhere aloof from His creation. But He's the God who sustains the creation, who's the God who upholds the creation, who is the God who is all things are under His reign and His rule and His control. This is the author's way of showing us something about our God, that He is sovereign over all. And this God appoints through various means mercy, and He appoints judgment. So in the case of mercy, God raised up a great fish. You know, we think of the great fish as the judgment of Jonah, but in fact it saved Jonah from drowning. It was actually God's way of saving him. Here's a man hurled into the sea, the waves and the billows are almost crashing the ship in which he was in. There is no way a human being is going to survive in that water unless God causes him to survive. So God appoints a great fish. God is in control not only of the elements, but also of the salvation of Jonah in the midst of the sea. His mercy. God also appoints a plant in mercy to shelter Jonah from this strong sun that was beating on his head. A way of giving Jonah comfort. God was showing him mercy. And then God appoints judgment, if we could say, by sending a worm to eat that plant so Jonah can feel what it's really like to not be under the shade of God because of his complaining attitude. And he sends a scorching east wind to teach Jonah a lesson also through discomfort. Now there are other many unmentioned appointments of God in the passage. God appoints a man, Jonah, and a message to preach to a people who are appointed to salvation from God, the Ninevites. And because Jonah did not heed to the words of God and ran on a ship and went away as far as he could from God, God appointed a storm and a tempest to get the man that he appointed to the people that he appointed so they can proclaim the message that he appointed. And God shows us all that without even using the word appointed in those cases. You see what the author's trying to show us? That there is a God in heaven and earth who is gracious and He is merciful. A God who is sovereign over all, a God who saves. And this is how God is presented to us. This is the great God that we lose sight of because we're looking at the great fish. But this is the God to whom we must see and must worship. God is so sovereign over the details of the book of Jonah that if we were to ask the question, who threw Jonah into the sea? We get two answers. In Jonah chapter 1 verse 15, you get very clear answers that the sailors threw Jonah into the sea. It literally says, "They hurled him into the sea." But then in chapter number 2 verse number 3, you get Jonah saying, "For You cast me, O God, into the depths of the sea." You see, the God that is sovereign over heaven and earth is over, sovereign over the affairs of these pagan people that were executing His very will in the throwing of Jonah overboard. And Jonah recognized, "Hey, it was of You, God, because they would have never done that had you not appointed the storm, had you not orchestrated all the things in the midst of my disobedience." This is the God of the book of Jonah. The God who is sovereign, but the God who saves. As I said, He saves Jonah by pointing, appointing in a fish, a great fish to swallow him so he doesn't get destroyed in the flood waters. He appoints a storm by and and in the appointment of that storm, He saves the sailors. Isn't this amazing? Here are these pagan sailors that do not know God, that worship other gods, that actually wake up Jonah and say, "What's wrong with you, sleeper? Arise. We're perishing. Why don't you pray to your god, little 'g' god, thinking that he has the same God or one of the same idols or some kind of idol from another place like they do?" Um, and and you pray to him and so that we don't perish." And God, and Jonah gets up and says, "I serve the true and the living God." And the pagans are like, "Whoa, the guy, the God that made the heavens and the earth, you mean the the sea and the dry land? Like, we need some dry land and we need some calm in the sea. Please pray to him." And he says, "Well, He's actually after me. Throw me overboard and everything's going to be fine." They cast lots, they didn't want to do it. Very kind of these sailors. Had more compassion than Jonah, by the way. You can work that out later as we go through here. Jonah didn't want Ninevites to be saved. These people didn't even want Jonah to drown, even though he was the problem. So they rowed harder and they didn't want him to go, but ended up casting lots. They knew it was him. They said, "We've got to do this, otherwise we die." Throw him in. God have mercy on us. But the Bible says that they paid vows to the Lord, to Jonah's God, and they worship Jonah's God. God appoints a storm to save the sailors, while there is a preacher on the boat that won't open his mouth for God. Isn't that amazing? Salvation's of the Lord. And this is what you have right through the book of Jonah, everywhere you look. The appointed worm, the appointed prophet, to save the appointed people, the Ninevites. Even the believing Ninevites after they had repented and believed on the Lord, they confessed God's sovereignty over salvation. And this is what they say in in um chapter number 3 verse number 9. They say these words, they repent, they believe, and he says, "Who knows?" says the king. "God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish." Isn't that amazing? They heeded the word of Jonah, repenting and believing, but they were still casting themselves upon the mercy of the God who saves. That's a beautiful thing, isn't it? They weren't even trusting in their faith, saying, "Ah, now you have to save me, God, because look what we did. We've called a fast here and we've done this and that." No, they've come to the point and they've realized and understood that it is the sovereign God who saves. Jonah's God, the one who proclaimed judgment over this city. And so their attitude is very much so, "Who knows? God may turn and relent." There's this humility, there's this laying of themselves before this God who saves. And even Jonah knows when he complains that God saved the Ninevites, he's not complaining by saying, "Oh God, I can't believe that they believed." "I thought they'd be more ignorant than that." He blames God for their salvation. Look what he says in chapter number 4 verse 2, and he prayed 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." Not because I knew that the Ninevites would really believe the word of the Lord because they really loved God and there was some really light in them and good in them that they would just choose God if they had an opportunity to hear God. "No, no, no," he says, "I know that that that that this would have happened because of you. You're a gracious God. You're merciful, you're slow to anger, you're abounding in steadfast love, you are the one that relents in disaster. That's why I didn't want to go because I know you would save them, God." The Ninevites know that it is God's sovereign mercy that saves. Jonah knows even in his complaint that it is God's grace and mercy that saves. Yes, the Ninevites believed. Yes, the Ninevites repented. But who saved them? Who ordered the means? Who secured the ends? Who is the God who saves? It is none other than the God of Jonah, the God of the Bible who saves. He's the God who is gracious, the God who is merciful. Everything that fell out to the people of Ninevites fell out from the merciful hands of a gracious God who saves. The one who rules over heaven and earth. And so the lesson of the book is quite simple. God is free in His saving mercy. You see, this was a trouble with Jonah. He didn't like the way God uses His sovereignty. In chapter number 4 verse 9 to 11, look what He says here. "But God said to Jonah, 'Do you do well to be angry for the plant?' And he said, 'Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.'" 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." Listen to these words, "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?" You see what God's saying here? "What's your problem, Jonah? You don't like the fact that I'm merciful? You don't like the fact that I save people you don't want Me to save? Is that the problem that you have, Jonah? I'm free in the way that I dispense My mercy." You see, Jonah's most despised passage of scripture is Exodus 33 verse 19. "I will have mercy or grace on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." For Jonah, he likes the mercy part. He'll take the mercy that comes from the great fish. He'll take the mercy that comes from the plant that makes him comfortable. But he doesn't like the "on whom I will have mercy" part because that means God decides on whom He has mercy and not Jonah. And Jonah had a problem with that. He ministered in fact during the reign of King Jeroboam II, who was one of the most wicked kings in Israel. And Jonah was a prophet during that time. And during that time, it says to us in 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 25, that Jonah prophesied of Israel's restoration, that the war would be restored. Listen to this, his prophecy was full of mercy to his own people, Israel, despite their wickedness. Right? That war was going to be restored when? When Israel obeyed? No, in the middle of King Jeroboam II's rule when he was the most wicked king. And Jonah had no problem prophesying that. We don't see him running away and saying, "How can you God? Look at King Jeroboam, he's so bad." "No, that's my own country people. Yeah, that's the people that I love. Have mercy on them, oh God. Have mercy on them. Have mercy on me, but don't have mercy on those Ninevites. Don't have mercy on those Ninevites. They're trouble." The Ninevites were such a wicked and corrupted people that we probably don't have an equivalent like them today to compare them with. They were so ruthless and so brutal. They were Assyrians. So we won't hold it against the Assyrians here today. But they impaled people alive. They were ruthless, skinning their enemies alive and using their skin to to um if I could say, wall the lining, put the wall lining on like wallpaper basically in the city. That's what they used the skin, the skin of their enemies for. They were so brutal that they would cut off arms and eyes and ears and all other body parts from their enemies. They were ruthless pagans. They were the enemies of Israel and of God. And what was going to happen is that God was actually going to use the Assyrians to destroy Israel only not long after this this prophecy in about 722 BC. And it is very likely that Jonah understood that was going to be the case because of Israel's rebellion. And so you can see what's happening in Jonah's heart, right? "What are you doing, God?" And God's telling Jonah, "Jonah, I'm not only the God of the Jews, but I'm also the God of the Gentiles." "But but but God, why the Ninevites? Why the Ninevites out of all people?" "I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy. I have compassion on whom I have compassion." In fact, we could actually argue, "Jonah, what makes you think that you're any better than the Ninevites?" "Oh, but we are the people of God." "Yeah, but I called your father Abraham out of the Ur of Chaldees when he was a pagan. And what if I would call more pagans out of their paganism? What's it to you, Jonah?" Jonah wrestled with these things in very much the same way as the people in the parable of Jesus wrestled with these things. If you remember the parable of the master that had a whole bunch of work to do and he called out workers and said, "Come, work here uh in the morning, come and work this shift for the day, and I'll pay you, I think it was one denarius. I'll pay you a day's wage." And so the guys are like, "Yeah, good, we'll work for that." So they come and work. And midway through the day, the the owner says, the master says, "Oh, you want to work with me? Come on and work with me too." And someone jumps in in the middle of the day and works to the same time that the first guys finished. And towards the end of the day, more people come and they work as well. And at the end of the day, the master comes down and he says to them, "Okay, everyone, take your day's wages." And you know what? They all get the same wage. Oh, imagine happening on a job site today. "Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. I was up at 5 a.m. in the morning busting my back here while this guy was having a cup of coffee until lunchtime and didn't start his shift till lunchtime. Man, this is a 3:00 finish and I'm there at 1:00 working only two hours and I get the same money as this guy?" You can imagine what was going on there as the uh boss is handing out the wages. But the master said these words in response. "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the first will be last and the last will be first." Isn't that interesting? The people on the job site were complaining that the that what was happening to them was unjust and not fair. But the master saying, "This is not a matter of fairness. I do what I want with my own. This is a matter of generosity. You don't like the fact that I'm having more mercy or mercy on the person that worked the middle shift and the person that worked the late shift and you want that kind of mercy too for yourself?" You see what I'm saying? What he's saying is, "Mercy is mine. You don't deserve a job. You don't deserve the work. You agreed to work for this many hours for this pay. Don't come up to me and now complain now, I'm being generous to someone and you don't like that? The first will be last and the last will be first." "Don't be surprised if the publicans and the sinners and the harlots enter the kingdom of heaven even before you, oh Pharisees." What people or Jonah in turn looks at as injustice, God says, "That's my mercy. You have a problem with my mercy?" "Don't question my mercy," says God. "I delight," God says, "to show the riches of my grace. Salvation belongs to me. I set the terms. I set the conditions. I created the universe. I am the one who saves. I am the one who takes an unwilling prophet and I make him willing to go and preach to an unwilling, hardened people so that those people can come to repentance and faith and believe in my name." God is simply saying to Jonah, "Power belongs to me, mercy belongs to me. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." Jonah, don't argue with my compassion. And God does this very same thing throughout the entire history of redemption, the entire history of the human race. From the time of the fall of Adam to the present time, this same God who is sovereign over the heavens and the earth, the same God who is not only in control, but the one who saves, is the same God who's gracious and merciful who continues to do what He did with Jonah and the Ninevites even to this present time. You know, when the when when when our father Adam and Eve fell in the garden and sin entered into the world, God set out to redeem man from their sins. And as God was cursing Satan and the curse that fell upon the human race also was happening all in that period of time, God said some words to the devil that day that Adam and Eve fell. Words of grace, words of promise, words that explain to us what's happening here in the book of Jonah, that the sovereign God of heaven and earth is gracious and merciful and He is a God who saves. And these are the words that he said. He said, "I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring." You know what God said to Satan? "You thought that you won when you brought Adam and Eve and the human race into sin. The people that I have created will not all belong to you from this day on. There will be a seed of the woman. And that seed of the woman will be at enmity against your offspring, Satan, the children of darkness will be confronted with the children of light. But when Adam and Eve sinned, all the world fell into darkness, so what on earth is God talking about?" You know what God's saying is, "I will be gracious. I will be merciful. You will have children, Adam and Eve, and I will save many of your seed. And they will be like warriors and arrows in my hand that will stand against the darkness and against the children of the darkness, and they will be a light for the generations to come, and they will build my kingdom and glorify my name and worship me." And God declared there before Satan a message of grace. He promised grace in the midst of the greatest of sin. "I will have mercy." And God then in that very same verse in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15 said this, "And out of the offspring, he, one particular offspring of the seed of woman, shall bruise your head," that's Satan's head, "and you will bruise his heel." God not only appointed salvation to a people for his name through the word of his promise to the very face of Satan, the one who would rule the kingdom of darkness. But also on top of that, God said, "I will appoint a seed, an offspring, a particular individual who will be a savior. One who will crush your head, Satan. Yes, you will bruise his heel because he will suffer and he will be wounded for my for our transgressions, he will be bruised for our iniquities. Yes, he will hang upon a tree. Yes, you will gather together the rulers of this world and the people of darkness to cry, 'Crucify him, crucify him.'" But you understand that the day that he is crucified and the day that he is buried and the day that he arose again as a sign as it were to Jonah, three days in the heart of the earth, this one will be the savior seed who will crush your head. And God has appointed him. He not only appointed a people whom he will save, but God appointed him as a savior, and God would crush the serpent's head. So the apostles understood this in an amazing way because when they looked at Christ being delivered up by the Jews and by the Romans to crucifixion, this is what they said. This is what Peter said in his sermon, "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." You see that? This Jesus that you crucified with your own wicked hands, he was delivered up by the determined plan of God. God's determined plan, God's foreknowledge, God's foreordination. God, they thought they had him, but what they were doing is exactly what the sailors were doing to Jonah. They were throwing him into the sea, not realizing that God was God throwing him into the sea. And the apostles also recognized this when they prayed to the Lord when they were threatened in Acts chapter 4 verse 27 to 28, it says, "For truly in this city," that is in the city of Jerusalem, "there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod, Pontius Pilate, along with all the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place." You see what's happening? What the apostles are saying is what's what's happening there in Jerusalem is not a poor man that is just being ravished by these people that are not under the control of God and being hung upon a cross. It's more than that. Wicked men, yes. Lawless hands, yes. People fulfilling their own the heart's desire against the Lord of glory, yes. But the seed was a promised seed and the plan was a perfect plan and that was a plan that entailed the crucifixion of the Son of God because God said in the garden to Satan, "There will not only be a seed of the woman, but there will be one who will crush the serpent's head." And God by his mercy then appoints a people for his name so that the redemption that Christ has won by his death shall be effectual in the lives of those who believe in him. And these people are referred to in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 6 as those that he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. Listen to these words, "In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has blessed us in the beloved." Do you see what's happening here? God is putting His grace on display. God is putting His mercy on display. And God says, "That which I have appointed, that will I fulfill so that my name will be magnified and my grace will be seen throughout all the world." A greater than Jonah is here. The one who did not despise the word of the Lord to arise and go to Nineveh, but the one who said, "I delight to do Your will, oh God." Who came down from heaven to a place worse than Nineveh to save a people worse than the Ninevites so that we might have grace through his name and mercy through the cross and the blood of his cross. Christ did not flee from the presence of God. He did not refuse mercy. He delighted in mercy. He desires to show mercy. So He says, "I will give myself as a sacrifice for sin. I will pay the debt. I will be the one that will be stand in the place of sinners and be a substitute for them. I will hang there upon a cross. I will be that greater Jonah and lay down my life for the Ninevites. I will lay down my life for sinners that you might show mercy upon whom you will show mercy and compassion upon whom you will show compassion." Salvation belongs to the Lord. What you see in the book of Jonah is the very same reason why you and I who believe in Jesus Christ stand redeemed today. Because there is a sovereign God in heaven and earth who is gracious and He is merciful, who is a God who saves. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And therefore, none of us can boast. And this is the whole point. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God." Salvation is the gift of God. The whole thing from start to end is the author and finisher of our faith. It is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. You see, the reason why God takes salvation into His hands is for the glory of His own name so that no one can say, "I stand here because I deserve to be saved." And by the way, if it left it in our hands, none of us would ever be able to be saved. But He's done this for the riches of His glorious grace to be on display to the world and to the heavenly beings, to show that there is a God who saves. Have you tasted of this salvation? This is the question this morning. Have you tasted of the mercy of God? I'm not simply asking, do you know intellectually with your mind that Jesus came into the world and died for sinners. I'm asking you this question: Can you say with certainty that he died for me? That he is my savior, that he is my Lord? That God has had mercy on me? That I, like Jonah, have run from the presence of the Lord. I am the one that has sinned against God. I am the one that is guilty before him. I am worse than the Ninevites in my thoughts and in my heart and in my deeds, my lust, my sin, my anger, my pride, my arrogancy, my indifference to the things of God, my failure to worship him and uphold him and magnify him as the holy God that he is. "I have sinned, oh God. I am guilty." Have you come to that place like the Ninevites where you have repented in dust and ashes and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and been saved? Have you come to the place where you've said, "Who knows? I pray that he will save us." It's not this arrogant spirit before God, "I deserve your salvation, God," you know, because I grew up in a Christian home. "I deserve your salvation, God, because, you know, I'm not so bad as the other person down the street." No, no, none of this, none of this business in the presence of God. No one shall boast in the presence of God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. No matter where you've come from, no matter your upbringing, no matter what kinds of sins you have committed, God is so holy that if you offend in one point of the law, you are guilty of all. And the only way that you and I can stand complete before God is through His mercy that is found in Jesus Christ. There is no other mercy but in Christ Jesus. The blood of the Lamb has been spilt. The salvation has been offered. Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But don't you dare come to God with the blood of Jesus and your own righteousness. Don't you dare come to God saying, "God, look what I have accomplished by my own hands." No one will boast in the presence of God. Why? Salvation is of the Lord. It belongs to him. We are to be like beggars that come to him and say, "God, have mercy on me. Feed me with the bread that will satisfy me forever. Give me the drink of the water of life so I will never thirst again. I have no water of my own, I have no bread of my own. God, save me." Or like the publican said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." Is that what you've come to in your heart and in your life and in your mind's eye? Have you come to see these things? You know, if you have, then you will understand and should understand that the ground is always level at the foot of the cross. You see, Jonah had a problem with the Ninevites because he believed that they shouldn't be treated better than the Israelites. But what Jonah didn't understand is that Jonah was who he was by the grace and mercy of God. And were it not for that grace or mercy, Jonah would be just like the Ninevites. Jonah didn't understand that he had no right to question whom God had mercy upon because he himself was a recipient of mercy. You see, in the very attitude of Jonah rise this arrogancy and pride that comes back into a works-founded gospel or comes back into the idea that Jonah deserves better because of who he is, or because of where he comes from. And that the Ninevites don't deserve that because Jonah doesn't really see the depths of his own depravity at this point. And so when we look at a text like this, not only do we learn that salvation of the Lord and He desires to save us, but we also learn that we have to be careful of this Pharisaical spirit that Jonah had when it came to the mercy of God. The Pharisees had this spirit when they saw Jesus eat with the publicans and sinners. And in chapter number 15 of Luke, this is what it says, "They they grumbled saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'" And you know what Jesus does? He tells three parables. The parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost son. And what he says is, "Hey, guess what, Pharisees? I don't I don't even just eat with them." Listen to this, "I rejoice over every sinner that repents, and my heavenly Father rejoices over every sinner that repents, and beyond that, it is I that pursues those sinners." What is he saying? "You have a problem? Like you deserve to eat with me or if I'm meant to be this holy prophet of God that I won't eat with so and so. I understand. You should understand, Pharisees, is that the only thing that matters is the mercy of God. That is what God receives, those upon whom He has mercy, those that have come to Him." See, God is a God of mercy, but He's also a God of sinners. He's a God of the broken, He's a God of the bruised. As the Aussies said, he's the God of the scallywags. He came not to call the righteous, the Bible says, but he came to call sinners unto repentance. Look at his disciples for a moment. Tax collectors, fishermen, and a woman that was possessed of seven demons that got delivered and was Mary Magdalene that came and and ministered to him and with him. Oh, what about that prostitute woman or that that woman that broke the alabaster box and poured out that fragrant ointment on his leg? There, she belonged to him too. Because he had mercy upon those who knew their sin. And so therefore there is no class in Christianity. There is no Jew, there is no Gentile, there is no bond, there is no free, there is no male, there is no female. You know, there's not even the idea of predators or uh you know, people that are perpetrators and victims. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level. We are all perpetrators and and we're all uh enemies of God and we've all sinned against His holy law. There is no rich, there is no poor. And some of us need to be mindful that we do not pat ourselves on the back for anything that we've done that makes us feel like we deserve such mercy from God. Paul says, "What do you have that you did not receive?" And if you received it, why do you boast and glory in it? You get the point? Everything we have comes from this creator of heaven and earth that holds the world in His hands, who is gracious and merciful and He is a God who saves. And there is no reason why any of us could boast, and there should be no reason why any of us should think that we deserve better from Him. See, this is what's happening in our minds, feeling that we deserve better from Him. "God, I have a stable marriage. Why isn't my life more blessed? God, my kids are ordered and everything is ordered, you know. Why is it that I don't have more blessing? God, I do this and I pray and I fast twice in a week. Surely you should give me more. Surely I deserve to be treated better by you." Well, it's problematic, isn't it? Of course we should pursue all these things, but we should pursue them because God is worthy. Not because we want to earn something from God. Sure we should strive for holiness, but that's because God is holy and He's worthy of our worship and our praise and a life that reflects His glory. But never think that because you are holy or because you're walking with God or because you're in the word or because you're praying or because you're doing this that you deserve better from God. God owes us nothing. Nothing at all. We are standing or falling in regards to His mercy and His mercy alone. And therefore, we must be careful. Not even thinking that we deserve mercy because even we believed. Can I just say this? It's God who saves. Yes, through faith, but I can tell you in the final analysis, it's not your faith that saves you. It's God who saves. And you can look up the full version of this, but there's a great thing by Alistair Begg on the regarding the man on the middle cross. I'll read a little bit to you this morning. If you were to die tonight and were getting entry into heaven, what would you say? If you answer that in the first person, we've immediately gone wrong. Because I, because I believed, because I have faith, because I am this, because I am continuing. Loved ones, the only proper answer is in the third person. Because He, because He. He says, think about the thief on the cross. He said, "I can't wait to find that fellow one day and ask him, how did it shake out for you? Because you were cussing the guy out with your friend. You're cussing out Jesus on the cross. You've never been to a Bible study. You never got baptized. You didn't know a thing about church membership, and yet you made it. How did you make it?" And he goes on to explain the discussion that goes on further with the angels and then trying to grapple their head around what's going on. But the point is this, on what basis they ask him, "are you here?" And the thief on the cross says, "The man on the middle cross said I could come." "The man on the middle cross said I could come." Christians, we should be delighting in the grace of God like no one else. Here's an old hymn that would be a blessing to you. It's called, "How Sweet and Awful Is the Place." "And all is this place with Christ within the doors, while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores, while all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cry with thankful tongues, 'Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear the voice and enter there while there's room, when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?' Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in, else or else we had still refused to taste and perish in our sin. Pity the nations, oh our God, constrain the earth to come. Send Thy victorious word abroad and bring the strangers home. We long to see Thy churches full that all the chosen race may with one voice and heart and soul sing Thy redeeming grace." "Lord, it is not that I did choose You, that I know could never be, for this heart would still refuse You had Your grace not chosen me." Salvation belongs to the Lord. Let us pray.