SIGNS OF GRACE TO THE WORLD

JONAH 4

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight”

(Jonah 4:10).

After Nineveh repented and converted to Yahweh, Jonah was angry at God. He went outside the city and made a booth to shade himself from the burning sun. The booth was not enough, so God caused a large plant to spring up giving him shade as well. Jonah was happy. Then the plant withered, and the sun blazed down on him, and Jonah became angry again.

God explained the object-lesson to Jonah this way. The plant represented Nineveh. The plant shaded and protected Jonah from the sun. Just so, the converted Ninevites would shade and protect Israel from tribulation. Just as the plant sprang up overnight, so Nineveh had converted overnight. If the plant died, Jonah would be scorched. Just so, if Nineveh fell away from the faith, Israel would suffer. The message was this: It is a blessing for Israel when the Gentiles receive the Gospel.

It is true that by converting Assyria, God was raising them up to be a mighty power. It is also true that God would use that mighty power to punish Israel in the future, and that Israel would go into Assyrian captivity. But when the Israelites were deported to Nineveh, they would find groups of true believers there, who were still clinging to Jonah’s message preached a century before. These people would shelter the Israelites in their captivity.

God’s loving provision for all men, and His intention to bring the Good News to the Gentiles, is also seen in Jonah 1. When Jonah fled from God, he boarded a ship bound for what is now Spain. God sent great storms, and the ship was almost destroyed. The sailors cried to their gods, but to no avail. Then Jonah told them it was his fault, and the true God was causing the storm. The result of this message from Jonah was that “the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to Him” (Jonah 1:16). The Bible could hardly make it any clearer: These men were converted. Notice that the sailors tried to save Jonah (Jonah 1:12–15). Here again, Gentiles are acting as protectors to an Israelite. Jonah should have gotten the message.

CORAM DEO

Joel

Revelation 4

WEEKEND

Amos

Revelation 5–6

Orthodox Christianity affirms that the events in the book of Jonah happened exactly as they are recorded. It is possible to become so caught up with defending the historicity of these events that we fail to see their meaning. In line with today’s lesson, consider the object-lesson in the fact that God saved Jonah by putting him into a fish after he had been thrown into the sea. God preserves His people even when He chastens them.

For further study: Genesis 12:1–3 • Matthew 12:38–41; 13:1–9

WEEKEND

Psalm 19: Revealed in His Works and His Words

by Derek Kidner

In a famous saying, Immanuel Kant declared that “two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: … the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” It is a fine pronouncement; yet the psalm outstrips it at once by pointing us beyond the glory of the universe to that of its Maker, and beyond our inward perception of morality to the revealed will of God, spelt out for us in Scripture. How challenging this was to David, and should be to us, emerges in the final verses where he turns to this living God in confession, dedication, and the intimate trust which can name Him “my Rock and my Redeemer.”

The heavens declare Thy glory, Lord. In every star Thy wisdom shines.…

The very sound and sweep of the psalm’s opening lines matches the theme which they develop, delighting in the immensity and breadth of these natural witnesses to their Creator. The successive days instruct us with their endless procession and their total independence of us, humbling us as Job was humbled. “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the hems?” (See Job 38.) As for the nights: without their unveiling of the starry heavens how poor a universe should we have known! The New Testament takes these wordless witnesses seriously, both as plain evidence of the Creator to an open mind (Rom. 1:18–20) and as a measure of the relevance and reach of God’s total message. Both of His proclamations—of His glory and His Gospel—are for the whole world (Rom. 10:17–18). Then verses 4b–6 sharpen the focus for us with the formidable magnificence of the sun, that great servant of so great a master: joyous, tireless, and potent. Is there a tacit analogy between its penetrating heat and the searching radiance of Scripture, from which there is likewise “nothing hidden” (6c, 12b)?

But when our eyes behold Thy word, we read Thy name in fairer lines.

So wrote Isaac Watts, with good reason, since the quiet verses 7–11 display the written revelation as life-transforming. Now the most general term for God (El, v. 1) gives way to the most intimate (the Lord, i.e., Yahweh, His covenant name), and we begin to explore the blessings of His explicit will.

At once the words “reviving (restoring/converting) the soul” go far beyond anything that the book of nature can do for us. Equally, “making wise the simple” (7b) is, in its truest sense, beyond the wit of man, whose unaided thought leaves out the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7) to build its philosophic castles in the air.

In verse 8, right and radiant (NIV) are uncompromising words which meet us elsewhere as upright and pure; but their close links here with joy and light bring out the blessedness of living under precepts and commands that blur no issues. In the Song of Songs 6:10, the expression “bright (literally pure) as the sun” dispels any thought of purity as merely negative; and for good measure the glorious Proverbs 4:18 assures us that “the path of the righteous” will be anything but dull!

Then, in the word clean, verse 9 pinpoints a central concern of God’s law (NIV’s pure makes this link with Leviticus less obvious). An almost surgical spotlessness was the outward condition of living as God’s people; and while this concern could produce Pharisees, it could point David (and us) to the heart of true godliness in a cleansed conscience (Heb. 9:14), a clean mind and will (heart, Ps. 51:10), and clean hands (i.e., actions, Ps. 24:4). When we are tempted to belittle Christian “moralism,” we may need to look again at this verse. So too when the world would lure us from heaven’s “gold” standard (10a) with counterfeit rewards, or teach us perverted tastes (10b, cf. Isa. 5:20), we may need both the warning and the promise of verse 11. Already in that verse David takes these things to heart, and begins to pray.

Thy noblest wonders here we view, in souls renewed and sins forgiven.

Here is the end which God has in view, in His self-revelation: not our distant admiration but a response as frank and full as David’s. No longer can we cover up (12) or brazen out our sins (13) in the face of God’s law which prescribed confession and atonement for the very least of them (e.g., Lev. 5:4–6), in its foretaste of His Gospel (1 John 1:5–10).

With that, the psalm can end as positively as it began: with God’s glory reflected now at the modest level of a forgiven sinner’s grateful dedication and revealed in the grace that welcomes him to know his Creator as his refuge and his Savior.

Lord, cleanse my sins, my soul renew, and make Thy Word my guide to heaven. ■

Derek Kidner is a leading Old Testament scholar and former warden of Tyndale House in Cambridge. England. This article is the final installment in a twelve-part series written for Tabletalk.

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