Jonah 4:5-11ヨナ4:5-11
V5 SEEK A QUIET
PLACE TO SEE THE WORKS OF GOD 神の業（わざ）を思い見る静かな場所を求める
This has been done
before. Abraham sat and watched Sodom &
Gomorrah burn---from a distance. Not the
same feeling or attitude as he had been concerned for his nephew Lot’s life and
for those who still might be righteous.
Here, Jonah sets up camp on the east side of the city—to watch something
that will not happen. He looks for
comfort in the destruction of a city and of her people. He sets up a shelter .
Others do the same,
as in similar situations, those with anxious uneasy consciences have diligently
constructed something that appears to be more uncomfortable than the situation
itself. They do this so that they still
can complain and still have much to complain about. Complain: Express dissatisfaction or annoyance about a state of affairs or
an event. IN fact, there are today, web sites for
those who want to complain (不平を言う) (подавать жалобу) (klage)
(불평하다). HowtoComplain.com is a
one-stop source of consumer information, providing the capability for you to complain online
to any organization, including consumers, companies and governments…and it is free! Not
fair? Go to the site and find ways to sue them or
find satisfaction. So... don't complain
and talk about all your problems--80 percent of people don't care; the other 20
percent will think you deserve them. Mark Twain.
Out West, a cowboy was driving
down a dirt road, his dog riding in back of the pickup truck, his faithful
horse in the trailer behind. He failed to negotiate a curve and had a terrible
accident. Sometime later, a highway
patrol officer came on the scene. An animal lover, he saw the horse first.
Realizing the serious nature of its injuries, he drew his service revolver and
put the animal out of his misery. He walked around the accident and found the
dog, also hurt critically. He couldn't bear to hear it whine in pain, so he
ended the dog's suffering as well. Finally
he located the cowboy --who suffered multiple fractures--off in the weeds. "Hey, are you okay?" the cop
asked. The cowboy took one look at the smoking revolver in the officer's hand
and quickly replied, "Never felt
better!"
V6 GOD PROVIDED … A SMALL THING THAT JONAH WAS GLAD FOR BUT NOT
THANKFUL TO GOD FOR. 神は与えた...小さな事を
How
many things we find in our day-to-day lives that are really blessings from God,
yet we do not thank Him for those things?
Here was a small, very hungry BUG and God was in it! There may be small
things in our lives that eat away at what the Lord has provided. Things like ungratefulness, slander,
bitterness, and pride. It is not seen on
the outside but very active from within.
(A small worm destroys a large gourd.)
That which was alive in us begins to die…ever so slowly. In this case, Jonah was very grateful for the
gourd. He put his hope in the wrong item…in the wrong thing.
God provides so much: Missionary
statesman Hudson Taylor ハドソン·テイラーhad complete trust in God's
faithfulness. In his journal he wrote: Our heavenly Father is a very experienced
One. He knows very well that His children wake up with a good appetite every
morning... He sustained 3 million Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. We
do not expect He will send 3 million missionaries to China; but if He did, He
would have ample means to sustain them all... Depend on it, God's work done in
God's way will never lack God's supply.
With
all the things God has to deal with, He is still looking after His
Prophet. He sees him sitting in the hot
sun. He knows that he will get sunstroke
(日射病). He will burn. He will grow faint. God provided a vine to shade him…but sees no
change in his behavior. No heart filled
thankfulness in light of what Jonah knew about the character of God, his own
heart was unmoved.
But mankind has had
a problem with being thankful. We might
sit down for a meal and start right in eating without thanking the Lord for the
food. Small thing? I don’t think so.
所沢からの友人 A number of
years ago, a very good friend from Tokorozawa, before he became a Believer
found himself on a bike ride with a fellow missionary. The missionary had been talking to him about
Jesus and the Japanese man must have known that during this long bike ride, the
missionary would share the Gospel with him.
That sharing came in a very different manner. They had stopped for lunch
and they took out their obentos and as small as it was, the missionary said: “Let’s thank God for this!” His prayer
was in Japanese and it was in very simple Japanese. My friend said something like: “Ten no
otosama, kono obento o, arigato gozaimasu, amen. 天のおとさま、このおべんとお、ありがとございます、アメん！” My Japanese friend was taken back by that
prayer of thanks. He said, “You are thankful to your God for such a
small thing. Yet I do not have anyone to
thank.” A short time later, he opened his heart to Jesus BECAUSE he could thank Him!
Ephesians 5:20 always giving thanks
to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. エペソ人への手紙5:20
1 Thessalonians 5:18 give
thanks in all circumstances; for this is
God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1テサロニケ5:18
But here we have a “Man of God” who lost out on a real blessing because he would not
be thankful NOR wanted to be thankful.
He remained bitter (苦い). He
wished the very worst to happen to those people. He was not in any mood to bless them. He was so ready to curse them. No tenderness of heart was apparent. He was lost in his feeling of hurt and anger
and he could not see his way clear of it.
He was ‘thankful’ for the
possibilities of seeing calamity. That
is not
the conduct of a Believer!
Even today, those people who are ready to
curse people and to cut them down is not walking in the Spirit. When a person finds delight—yes, delight—in
bringing people down, there is something wrong in that person’s spirit. He is bitter.
He is unfair and he is out of step with the kindness of God. Jonah was such a person. We cannot be that way.
V 7 GOD EVEN
PROVIDED … FOOD FOR THE WORM! 神は与えた... 虫にさえ食べ物を I love this next section. God sees no change in the heart or attitude
in Jonah so what does this loving, caring God do, He shows His concern for the
welfare of a worm. He gives him a feast.
“Eat the whole plant!” “My man, Jonah, does not seem to be thankful,
I will provide for the worm.” This does not please Jonah once again. He becomes angry. (Note that he is generally
an angry person. Know anyone like that—ready to bite your head off for the
slightest provocation (挑発)?
V 8 GOD PROVIDED … A STRONG EAST WIND) 神は起こした...強い東風を
Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting
prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to be grateful. One
Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to
himself, "Certainly the preacher
won't think of anything for which to thank the Lord on a wretched day like
this." Much to his surprise, however, Whyte the Pastor began by
praying, "We thank Thee, O God, that
it is not always like this." Give
thanks in ALL things!
Do
we notice a trend here with what God keeps doing? God is the One who provides. He provided Jonah a place to work out his
issues—the belly of the fish. He
provided the sailors an opportunity to give Him praise. He provided the people of Nineveh with the
message of salvation. He provided a
place for Jonah to sit: He provided shade. He provided a meal for the worm and we also
see that
He provided Jonah clean air to see the Glory of God’s Mercy: He provided a strong
east wind to clear the skies away. Jonah’s only unoriginal response is ANGER(怒り)
… once again. He again wants to die!
Lost his center. Lost his moral compass (道徳的なコンパス).
This is anything that serves to guide a person’s decisions based on morals or
virtues.
Once that area of
the heart is broken, it is ever so hard to reclaim it once again—certainly not
with any human effort. It takes the Work
of God in that heart of stone and we know that it can be done: look where we
have been from and now, on this side of the Cross, we have that moral compass. Jonah needs a compass change—and fast.
Jonah’s
reason to live before was the possibility of seeing God destroy Nineveh. Once that was gone, his only delight was the
vine that gave him shade. But he cared nothing for the lives
of people who lived below him in that once threatened city. My
shade was gone, I wish I would die!
Ben Franklin once
said: Anger is never without a reason,
but seldom with a good one.
怒りは理由がないわけではないが、めったに良い理由によることではない
And here is NOT a good reason to be angry.
He cared more for the vine than for lives of so many people—even if it were ten
righteous people, Jonah did not care. He
was spiritually bankrupted. God saw it
missing in him.
V 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant,
though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died
overnight.”
CONCERN
FOR THE SMALL THINGS and MISS THE BIG THINGS 小さな事へこだわると大きなことを見逃すThe FACT was that there were people down in
that city that needed to know God. And
all Jonah was concerned with at this point was to die because of his petty need
of shade. Don’t you feel sorry for him? He had an experience of a lifetime—in fact—an
experience that almost took his life and now he is faced with sunstroke and he
wants to die! But, I feel akin to him.
And maybe you, too.
NO COMPASSION あわれまないWe are SO concerned for
the little things in life and we tend let the big things go. We get concerned
for the comfort we can have here and we forget there are people—not even that
far away from this Chapel, who do not have the bare necessities of life. We
might be concerned for a short time, but time moves us and we move on. We forget that there are people in need out
there and that we can help them.
Friends, what is our duty? What
are we required to do? Why are we here? Micah 6:8
states three reasons: He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. ミカ6：8
Jonah failed on all three counts! Don’t let that happen to you. Supreme Court Justice
Horace Gray once informed a man who had appeared before him in a lower court
and had escaped conviction on a technicality, "I know that you are guilty and you know it, and I wish you to
remember that one day you will stand before a better and wiser Judge, and that
there you will be dealt with according to justice and not according to
law." Later in that man’s life of crime, he was surprised while
burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium. The
thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down the
other side, and found himself in the city
prison. Oops: The Book of Blunders, 1980. That is true justice!How can we act justly? 正しく行動する In our homes, be fair—look for ways to be just. This means just being fair, guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness. In the society—support the rights of children. Be sensitive to the plight of those who are less fortunate than us. Be fair with our fellow workers. Treat them with respect that is their due. Don’t expect justice back. It would be nice to be treated fairly, but—Jonah was not being fair with is attitude toward the city dwellers. He wanted them just dead.
How can we love mercy? What does mercy look like? 愛の慈悲Years after the death of US President Calvin Coolidge, this story came to light. In the early days of his presidency, Coolidge awoke one morning in his hotel room to find a cat burglar going through his pockets. Coolidge spoke up, asking the burglar not to take his watch chain because it contained an engraved charm he wanted to keep. Coolidge then engaged the thief in quiet conversation and discovered he was a college student who had no money to pay his hotel bill or buy a ticket back to campus. Coolidge counted $32 out of his wallet -- which he had also persuaded the dazed young man to give back! -- declared it to be a loan, and advised the young man to leave the way he had come so as to avoid the Secret Service! (Yes, the loan was paid back.) Today in the Word, October 8, 1992. True mercy…not what he justly needed but mercy—something beyond. Because of the resent events in the US, Billy Graham writes: "My heart aches for America and its deceived people. The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance."
To Walk humbly with your God! あなたの神とともに謙虚に歩くThere was a minister who said he had a wonderful sermon on humility but was waiting for a large crowd before preaching it. If our own heart does not humble us, some one or something will humble you. The old saying: Be humble or you'll stumble. George Washington Carver, the scientist who developed hundreds of useful products from the peanut: "When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is reserved for Me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well, George, that's more nearly your size.' And He told me." Adapted from Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver.
It was
Socrates who said the unexamined life is not worth living. Many of us might be so wrapped up on our PC
and MACs or iPhones and enjoying the surface areas of life that we might not have
time or energy left to engage with God on any level deeper than merely surface.
We are not thinking critically about our
own lives and therefore we are unable to think critically or Biblically about
our world or our response to it. We
favor knee jerk reactions, but God wants us to respond in agreement with His
purposes, not against His purposes.
God’s message to Jonah is a message for us
today. Who will care for those who
cannot speak? V
11 (120,000 INFANTS WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH HAND WAS
THEIR RIGHT HAND—NO CARE FOR THEM-NO
COMPASSION AT ALL!) Who will stand
up for them? Will you ask the Lord for that kind of compassion?
And we come to The END OF
STORY—物語の終わりNOT RESPONSE FROM JONAH. It interests me that we do not hear from Jonah
again. Will he run away? Will you? The last few times God spoke to him, he
moved away. Once in disobedience and the
next in silent obedience. His heart
seemed unmoved. His words are cold.
If
there were a fifth Chapter, what would it say?
The romantic in me would suggest that a fellow from the city walked up
to him and asked him to teach him about his God. It seems that Jonah knew ABOUT God very well,
(his problem would be living that out!)
This man would ask him many questions about what he should do and how he should
act. Jonah would tell him of the need to
see that God works everything for His Glory.
That man would verbalize better than Jonah of what that would look like
and once again, Jonah would be set back to learn the same things again. The man would be ever so thankful and shares
this new information with his family, with his neighbors, with his block
leader, with his mayor and the chapter ends with him talking to the king, whose
life would change and be an example of a Godly life.
Or, Jonah would not even talk to the
Ninevites. He would pretend he can’t
speak his language and walk away, looking for a shady place and the man would
understand that Jonah would not help him.
He turns to another man who happens by.
He is a Hebrew man too but he is willing to teach the man the right way.
Or, Jonah is seen sitting—all by
himself—on the side of the cliff and once fallen asleep, rolls off the edge and
falls to his death.
But
the truth is, there is no chapter five yet there is more to the story. The
repentance of that city last for one generation and they fell back into sin
once again. After years of being at the
top of the pile of men spoilers, another government comes in and destroys them
and they are no more. Cycle of
life. Want to break out of that
cycle? God is asking us the same
question God proposed to Jonah: What am I going to do with you?
