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Part 6 Jonah 4, Of the way he seems to spoil it all, though self will in his surrendered life By Graham Miller

 This is our last, the sixth, and last of our studies in the prophecy of Jonah.
And you could call it, if you wish, the self-life in the surrendered Christian.
Or more personally, after convention, what?
Now I don't belong to the Christian medical corps, but I have a little private information,
and it's this.
That there is a virus that gets about at conventions which has an incubation period of several
days.
You'll find the temperature showing up the first day or two after you get home, liable
to reach the crisis three or four days after you get back, and it's a help to know that
other convention girls have detected this virus, have isolated it, know how to diagnose
the problem when it happens to be your problem, and the person who was the guinea pig is our
friend Jonah.
I remember coming home from the first two conventions I attended at the age group of
quite a number of you here this morning, coming home full of joy and elation after all that
I had heard and that God had led me to do in response at a convention.
I suppose I expected to be warmly welcomed by the Miller family, possibly almost even
fated.
I didn't want to tell mum and dad what had happened, that I had surrendered my life fully
to Christ, that I had claimed the enabling of His Holy Spirit, and that I'd really gone
the length of offering for missionary service.
I didn't want to get all of that off my mind to them at once, wasn't quite sure whether
it would last, and so I thought I'll keep this rather privately a matter in my own heart
between me and God.
But I think I must have expected a real welcome with the bands out and a good deal of enthusiasm,
and you know the first thing that happened when I got home was I think I had to cut some
firewood.
And no one made me the subject of conversation at the table, and there were the usual chores
to do, and about the second day I was beginning to feel this wasn't half as exciting as being
at a convention.
Everybody sang, everybody smiled, everybody was pleased to see you, and here I was back
in the humdrum of home and nobody seemed to think I was very important after all.
There was the anticlimax, the virus, the incubation period was over, the temperature
had set in, and I didn't know it was a diagnosable disease.
You know now, because we're going to see what happened in this test case.
He was admitted to God's infirmary, he was well treated, and unto the antibiotics which
God administered to him, we'll find that this patient pulled through, but the whole of his
case history is here spread before you for your own guidance.
The question is, after convention, what?
Now you'll remember Jonah's case history was something like this, that he had his call
from God to go to Nineveh, that he didn't like the idea for reasons which we've discussed
in our second, first and second study, that God chastened him and administered to him
the wounds of a friend.
The ultimate came when he surrendered gladly to the will of God, filled chapter two with
his song of praise, was recommissioned at the beginning of chapter three, had fantastic
success as an eighth century BC Billy Graham, and then the anticlimax.
And this incredible fourth chapter seems to be, it's not so much as if Jonah is under
a good, he seems to be under a permanent cloud, doesn't he?
And after you've read the fourth chapter, you say, well, I wish Jonah had just left
that bit out, but you see, there's going to be a fourth chapter in your experience.
And if God had left this out, you wouldn't have known the meaning of after convention
what.
Now here are the three headings.
We've got to find the cause of this low fever, we've got to find the condition of the patient,
and we've got to find the cure for the disease.
First of all, the cause of this low fever, and I've noted down four thoughts.
First, it was due to his not getting his own way.
You notice, it's linked with a relapse of a very old ailment that Jonah had suffered
from previously.
You'll see the symptom in the first word of chapter four.
It's the word but.
And you may remember from chapter one, verse three, that he had this dose of buttitis quite
a long time before, didn't he?
And here it is back again, it's a sort of undulant fever, and the butt which was there
in the unsurrendered heart, here it is still in the surrendered heart.
The butt of the old willful Jonah somehow still seems to be lurking in the bloodstream
of the man who's had the colossal success of leading thousands to Christ to God in enemy.
Tough will in the surrendered Christian, but in the consecrated soul.
The storm which previously was outside Jonah in the waves of the sea is now inside him,
and the tempest is within his own soul.
And the words are very strong words, but, and the temperature built up, it displeased
Jonah, it displeased him exceedingly, and he was very angry.
You can see the mood of storm and resentment mounting.
You can see the nurse's anxiety as she takes his pulse, reads his temperature, puts it
on the chart, and it stabs its way up to the top of the chart.
And she reports to the ward sister, she says, we'll have to put this fellow, we'll have
to put him under special treatment, have to get a special private ward.
Well, God did do exactly that.
He was running a very high temperature.
He was a Christian who was angry with what God was doing with him.
And I just remind you that these bad, horrible moods continue in the heart of the man and
woman of God.
And that at the age of 17, it's just as well to know the cause of post-convention low fever.
The first cause then was, it was due to his not getting his own way.
And the second cause was this, it was due to his being all wrapped up in himself.
Verse three, O Lord, take I beseech thee my life from me.
It is better for me to die than to live.
It doesn't matter about an enemy.
It doesn't matter about God.
It doesn't matter about the family.
But Lord, I feel bad about this.
They're not taking any notice of me.
I feel really bad about this, God, before I try to commit suicide.
But God, it would be far better if you murdered me.
You murdered me, God.
You know, the time when we're least fitted to be taken is the time when we pray to be
taken.
There are three possible reasons why Jonah was all wrapped up in himself.
The first one was that he was really concerned for the glory of God in Nineveh.
He had preached a certain prophetic message of doom.
And Nineveh, from king to commoner, had repented and been turned to God.
They had found a real and vital faith in the living God.
And now Jonah is going to be confronted with people who say, but your word hasn't come
true.
Your promised word hasn't been fulfilled.
We've put our trust in the wrong God.
So that Jonah, all wrapped up in himself, could plead as it were a theological reason
for his low fever.
Secondly, he felt he'd lost face personally.
After preaching and having all this public prominence, after having the notoriety that
made boys and girls stop in the street and say, there he is, and hurry round the corner
and get another long look as he walked down the next alley, there he goes.
That's Jonah.
He had to be consent to sit out outside the city, no one taking any notice of him.
And fearing that his own manner, to use a Maori word, had gone down and down because
his word was no longer to be fulfilled, Jonah's thoughts had become introverted instead of
toward God and toward the glory of God.
What will Nineveh say about me was his big concern now.
He didn't care about God's salvation for Nineveh any longer.
I can remember in 1941 walking to the assembly hall in Sydney on our way through to the New
Hebrides for the first time, meeting a returned missionary from India who said, look, brother,
when you get malaria, you won't worry about saving souls anymore.
You don't need to get malaria to be like that.
As soon as you as a missionary get all taken up with the fact that they brought the mail
to your fellow missionary instead of to you first, or that your fellow missionary sent
some mail by a carrier to the plane and forgot to ask you first, have you got any mail?
And you haven't spoken to her for 36 hours.
That's exactly the condition of low fever.
It's the self-life in the surrendered life.
Now the third cause of this low fever was this.
It was due to Jonah's loyalty to principle rather than his loyalty to God.
And you'll find that, I think, in the second verse.
He prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, wasn't this exactly what I said
would happen when I was still in my own country?
That's why I fled before unto Tarshish.
I knew the kind of God you were, a God gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and a great kindness
who repentest thee of the evil.
He couldn't adjust his ministry to the adjustment of people being born again.
He had a church full of converted people, and he was still pounding away to get them converted.
And God wanted him to give them a further message.
He was harping on the puns.
He actually threw up to God the fact that those backsliding days weren't a bad idea after all.
Didn't I tell you, God, why I fled?
And can't you see now how justified I was?
And it's easy to taunt God with the barren, bleak years of our wilderness experience and
say, God, my wife and I were happier as pagans than we've ever been as Christians.
She's out at the prayer meeting one night in the week.
She's away at the women's guild.
She's on that street stall another day.
We never seem to see each other at all.
And it's possible in this state of low fever to start quarreling with God and say the old
days were better.
Have you ever felt like that?
I can remember it early in my Christian experience, looking a bit wistfully over my shoulder and
saying, I'm not too sure about this being a Christian.
Those days on the way to Tarshish, they were exciting.
His loyalty to principle rather than his loyalty to God has been a contributing factor in his
low fever.
And the fourth point, and it's a homely one, is this.
It was due to his sheer physical and nervous exhaustion.
No wonder.
He'd fled.
He'd had that long battle of wits with God, a running duel passing through many days.
He had gone into the Mediterranean.
He had drowned or almost drowned.
He'd spent three days in this living submarine.
He'd been vomited out on dry land.
He'd had to get used to seeing the light again.
He'd gone off and preached under the tremendous tension that Billy Graham knows in every big
campaign.
And at the end, he'd got the premonition that God wasn't going to do the things that he'd
promised to do.
And the tremendous buildup of nervous and physical exhaustion had just overwhelmed him
the way it did with Elijah after Carmel when God said, what doest thou here, Elijah?
And he said, I was very jealous for you, God.
Wasn't that right?
God said, you get a way back.
Sheer physical and nervous exhaustion will be your lot after this convention.
You can't digest four three-course meals a day here, not in the rooms, but here, without
getting a certain amount of spiritual indigestion.
And you can't have the threat of being up there at the watchnight service or helping
in the open air till half past twelve or one last, yes, this morning, and being here
for the pre-meeting at seven, up for your quiet time at six, without needing, when you
get back, to have two or three good nights of rest.
You have them.
It's a very good antidote to low fever.
You'd be warned.
Get some early nights when you go home.
And don't give the low fever bug a chance.
Well, now, that's about the cause of this condition.
And I want to describe now the condition of the patient.
There are three points I've noted down here.
First, first of all, that he was still in communion with God.
He could still pray.
But prayer is an odd thing.
Chapter one, when he was a backslider, he didn't pray and wouldn't pray.
Chapter two, when he was a penitent, coming back to God, his whole language was the language
of prayer.
His hymns were in the form of prayer.
His history was written in the form of prayer.
And his petitions were in the form of prayer.
The whole language of his soul had been set to the melody of prayer.
But here's prayer in chapter four, but it's the abuse of prayer.
In chapter one, the neglect of prayer, chapter two, the use of prayer, and chapter four,
the abuse of prayer.
It was prayer in his petulance, prayer rattling the door of God's sanctuary and saying, God,
come on out here.
I want to have something to do with you.
I've got a bone to pick with you, God.
That's not prayer.
I can remember when I came back from one of these conventions and a young friend of mine
named George Robertson in Dunedin who worked for Patterson and Barr Limited, the wholesale
merchants.
And I put it all up to have a special little convention at Easter time for our two churches,
the young people.
I was 18 and he was 17.
And we worked it all out.
We arranged the speakers.
We arranged the commissary.
We had the place settled.
We biked out to Evansdale Glen, a magnificent place 15 miles north of Dunedin.
And then I realized I had to tell Dad about it.
He was the minister.
So I realized the best time, the best time to choose was when Dad had finished his preaching
for the day.
So I waited stealthily the moment when he took off his black suit on Sunday night and
sat in front of the gas heater in the lounge and looked very relaxed.
And I very cautiously came in on the beam and said, Dad, and he looked up from his Spurgeon
sermon which he invariably read after church on Sunday night and said, what is it?
And I said, Dad, some of us were thinking of having a camp, Dad.
Oh, when?
At Easter time, Dad.
And who's going?
York Place Hall and our own young people, Dad.
Oh, you won't be having the camp.
But I said, Dad, we've prayed about this.
You may be very mistaken in your prayers, my son.
And I learned a lesson.
It's no use saying as a brick bat or a club to God, but, God, we're praying about this
like the old Scots Elder who said in his prayer very urgently, Lord, grant us our request,
for thou knowest we are very determined.
And then the second thing you need to notice about the condition of the patient was that
he was theologically sound.
Verse 2, and immediately his thought had turned back to that lovely textbook he had as a lad
at Gathhepa.
And he said words that he must often have learned and repeated as a lad in his little
Sunday school there, he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, as for man
his days are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth, but the mercy of
the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness
unto children's children.
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
And a lovely confession of faith which forms Jonah's credo in verse 2 could hardly be better
for orthodoxy.
I fled before thee, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, of
great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
How we torture reason when we are in this state of low fever, how inflexibly pigheaded
we get, giving God our prayer and repeating before him our credo and willingly continuing
with the virus and our high temperature.
And then the third thing to notice is that he was talkative. Bad sign, isn't it? Sign
of a high temperature too, isn't it? Delirium, he was talkative. Verses 2 and 3, he began
explaining to God why it was good for him to be a backslider. He was proud of his disobedience.
It worked out a whole theodicy of God's ways justifying the backslider, a whole theodicy
upending the pyramid on its apex and saying, God, how smart that is. I can justify now
God's sovereignty when I remain a backslider.
He's got a cunning scheme worked out here to justify remaining as a permanent patient
in the infirmary.
The fourth thing to notice is, verse 3, that his logic had all gone to pieces. He put a
therefore there which simply didn't follow. The premises and the conclusion don't tie
together, do they? Oh God, because of this I fled. Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech
thee my life from me. It's better for me to die than to live. His logic had gone to pieces
as if God would murder anybody, let alone his servant. And yet you've heard people say,
Lord, they gave me such a doing at the Sunday school committee meeting. I thought they would
give me that job and they didn't. Lord, here's my resignation. I'm going to hand it in at
the next meeting. It's better for me to die than to live. Lord, you murder me publicly,
pleasantly in a way that they'll say, oh, it's a shame she handed in a resignation.
We'll go and ask her to come back.
There's a spiritually sick man, a spiritually sick man who wants to remain sick, and there's
the self-life in the life of full surrender. Well, now it'll be interesting to look at
the cure, won't it? That runs from verses 6 to 11. God has an amazing variety of weapons
in his treasury, and you'll remember what William Cooper said, deep in unfathomable
minds of never-failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign
will. Among those bright designs, there was the hurricane that he hurled on the ship in
chapter 1, verse 4. There's the east wind which blew in chapter 4, verse 8. There was
a worm of all things, side by side with a whale. What an odd assortment of things God
used, a tiny, creeping, wrinkly-backed, hairy worm, side by side with a colossal sea monster
that could act as a suitable motel for Jonah for three days. And God uses these diverse
instruments to work his sovereign will. Well, it so happens in this case that the cure was
tied to a good. You'll notice in verse 6 what it says. God didn't chide Jonah for what he
said. He worked a little miracle just for Jonah's sake, to be an object lesson, to lead
him out of his condition of low fever. The Lord God prepared a good. When Cyprian in
the Church of North Africa was reading that passage one day, he said, the good probably
was the ivy plant, and there was a rustle of disapproval through the congregation. It
nearly divided his parish. They said, don't you take liberties with the text. Kikiun in
Hebrew means the castor oil plant. Well, I hope it was the castor oil plant. He needed
a good emetic. God made the good, God made the worm, and God made the wind, and then
God withered the good. And Jonah said, I'll probably never get over this, God. This good
was just what I needed, and now you've withered it. And I'm feeling this could be some stroke
added to my low fever. I'll probably never get over this. And God took away the good
to show Jonah that there wouldn't have been a good if God hadn't made it. Listen to this.
This is about a good, and it was written by another Jonah who actually took to the high
seas and then came back. The good by John Newton of Olney. As once for Jonah, so the
Lord to soothe and cheer my mournful hours prepared for me a pleasing good. Cool was
its shade and sweet its flowers. To prize the gift was surely right, but through the
folly of my heart it hid the giver from my sight, and soon my joy was turned to smut.
While I admired its beauteous form, its pleasant shade, and grateful fruit, the Lord, displeased,
sent forth a worm, unseen, to prey upon its root. I trembled when I saw it fade, but I
guilt restrained the murmuring word. My folly I confessed and prayed, forgive my sin and
spare my good. His wondrous love can ne'er be told. He heard me and relieved my pain.
His word the threatening worm controlled and bid my good revive again. Now, Lord, my good
is mine no more. Tis thine who only couldst it raise. The idol of my heart before, henceforth
shall flourish to thy praise. The cure. The first part of the cure was in corrected perspectives.
He had to find that God gives the good and God removes the good, and that whatever blessing
we have in our work, it's from Him and not from us. And if you go back this year to a
year of tremendous increase and encouragement in your Sunday school, CE, Fellowship Association,
or your congregation, remember it's God who's made the good grow. And if you go back to
a year of testing, when the vehement east wind beats on your work, and you see the young
people slipping out of your hands, and you say, Oh God, it is better for me to die than
to live. Lord, give us a call to another parish. I can't bear this any longer. Then the Lord
will remind you that it's He who makes the good grow. It's He who withers the good in
order that we should look at God and not at the cucumber vine. The second thing to notice
about the cure is that we must here recognize the extremes of elation and depression in
the life of the Christian as often being rooted in trifles. They really are. And when you
get back home, it may be some ridiculous trifle that will bring the first collision with mum
and dad. Actually, what will happen is something like this. You'll be, you've got some books
about the quiet time, and you'll be enjoying the quiet time in your room the first morning
back, and there'll be a tap on the door. Dear, why aren't you out? We need you. Why haven't
you cut the lunches? And you'll say, Oh mother, if only she understood. She doesn't know anything
about a QT. Mother, I'm having my QT. What's a QT, my dear? You've got to cut the lunches.
You always have cut them. And with a heave of a sigh of resignation, as much as to say
mothers never will understand these spiritually minded daughters, you just leave the QT and
go and cut the lunches. You see, it's a matter of recognizing that the extremes of elation
and depression are often rooted in trifles, and you've got to get those trifles sorted
out, haven't you? I like these words of John Wesley, which I picked out of his biography
when I read it last year. He said regarding trifles that got him worried and got other
people worried, and particularly regarding people's criticisms about his work and about
his people, this. By the grace of God, I never fret. I repine at nothing. I am discontented
with nothing. To have people at my ear fretting and murmuring at everything is like tearing
the flesh off my bones. I see God sitting upon his throne and ruling all things well.
Well, that's a great way to go home. And if mother taps on the door and says, you give
her a good hearty response and say, I'm sorry, mother. I'm so sorry. I was just far away
from you at the moment. Where is the bread? Where is the marmot? Now, the third point
about the cure is this, that we've got to get our eyes off the goods of circumstance
and onto the God of love. Jonah preaches the first word in this dialogue of chapter four,
but it's God who preaches the last. Jonah preaches about impatience, out of petulance
in prayer. He gives his credo as a kind of God. There's the gauntlet. Pick it up. Can
you do anything with a man who believes as perfectly as that? Can you do anything with
a man who prays as well as this? Oh, you can. What's this good about? God in verses ten
and eleven, by the use of the emphatic Hebrew pronouns, says this. Verse ten. Yes, said
God. You, Jonah. Yes, you. We're sorry for the good. But I, Jonah. Yes, I. Verse eleven.
Am sorry for Nineveh, with its six score thousand people who can't even tell their right hand
from their left. That is, they're still under two years of age. And for the cattle, too,
who are better than any lantana bush or cucumber good. All upset over a little cucumber plant,
a castor oil flower that you had as an ornamental shrub against the dark brick wall of your
home. And you're not concerned about the people over whom God's concern rules in love
and in constraining mercy. For the love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind.
And the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. The words of Jonah, the son of Amittite,
are ended. Jonah, the patriot. Jonah, the rebel. Jonah, the penitent. Jonah, the surrendered
servant of God. Jonah, the successful evangelist. Jonah, the sick convention-goer. The words
are ended. But not the story. But not the story. The story is that the patient recovered.
And God said to the patient after he was convalescent and sent home, write down for the benefit
after Toomba Convention 1959-60 your autobiography. Let's have every word of it. The bit about
the weeds being wrapped about your head. That petulant prayer that you prayed. That silly
business you were talking about cucumbers and goods. Give us every word, Jonah. Simply
honestly. So much that we'll know that it's a true authentic picture of our own heart.
So we can adore the great physician who ensures that while low fever may endure for a night,
joy cometh in the morning. Seeing then, brethren, that we are compassed about with so great
a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset
us. And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith.