Death To Self-Justification

If the Lord brought a revival of repentance to a city, most of God's people would rejoice, but not Jonah.

He felt double-crossed. God withheld the judgment Jonah had prophesied against Nineveh. Today, God teaches a lesson to a man who still rebelled even after surviving a fish's belly.

Stay with us. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. Today, we continue a series on brokenness, how God gets us to say yes, a study in the life of Jonah the prophet.

Later in our broadcast, Dr. Lutzer takes us to Jonah chapter 4 with a message on death to self-justification. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open our time of worship. We trust that you'll take your hymnal and turn to number 87, May Jesus Christ Be Praised. Here at The Moody Church, we emphasize that Jesus Christ as God, a very God, deserves our hearts, our minds, our tongues, and we do praise his name. Our scripture reading today is by Pastor Charles Butler.

He's our pastor of discipleship and urban outreach. We hope that you have come with your heart prepared to sing and to enter into worship. Immediately after the invocation today, we're going to remain seated as the choir is going to sing Make His Praise Glorious. Now, many of the words in this song are already known to you, particularly the first stanza, but also they will be singing Praise the Lord of Heaven, Praise the Lord of Earth, Praise him for his mighty power, Praise him for his works, Praise the Lord ye nations, Praise the Lord ye kings, Praise him all creation, Let your voices sing, Praise the Lord. And it ends, behold how good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him. So we're going to be blessed as they will be singing immediately after we pray together.

Would you join your heart and your mind as we come together now in the presence of our Lord, yielding ourselves to him, inviting his blessed presence to lead us and to change us for his glory and honor. Father, we do come with praise on our lips to Jesus, whom we love, who redeemed us. And we are so gratified at the privilege of being associated with him as his brothers and sisters, also as his subjects in his great kingdom. And we thank you now, Father, that as praise comes from our lips, that it is indeed given from hearts that are devoted. Focus our minds now, we pray, that we might worship you acceptably through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Praise him, all creatures, give me love. Praise him, all body, help me, Lord. Praise the Lord of heaven, praise the Lord of earth. Praise him for his mighty power, praise him for his works. Praise the Lord, ye nations. Praise the Lord, ye kings.

Praise the Lord, ye nations. Raise your voices, sing, praise the Lord. Shout with joy to the God of Jesus, sing, love him to praise him.

Tell the Lord his love for just works, his righteousness for praise. Glory and honor, fantastic in power be unto the Lord, founded by the strength, his grace and glory ours. Praise the Lord with music, praise the Lord with strings, praising with the heart and life and the symbols ring. Praise the Lord with your praise and the temple ring. Praise the Lord in all that your voices sing, praise the Lord. Shout with joy to the God of Israel, sing, love him to praise him.

Tell the Lord his love for just works, his righteousness for praise. Glory and honor, fantastic in power be unto the Lord, founded by the strength, his grace and glory ours. We call on high, holy days, to sing praises to the Lord. We call on high, holy days, to sing praises to the Lord. We call on high, holy days, to sing praises to the Lord. We call on high, holy days, to sing praises to the Lord. We call on high, holy days, to sing praises to the Lord. Shout with joy to the God of Israel, sing, love him to praise him.

Tell the Lord his marvelous love, his righteousness for praise. Glory and honor, fantastic in power be unto the Lord, founded by the strength, his grace and glory ours. Glory and honor. Glory and honor. Glory with the Son, and the Holy One. May Jesus Christ be praised, all on heaven and ground.

May Jesus Christ be praised. Oh, say can you see by the dawn, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? May Jesus Christ be praised, all on heaven and ground. May Jesus Christ be praised. May Jesus Christ be praised. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? From Romans chapter 5, verses 1 through 5, we will continue to exclaim the glories of Jesus Christ our Lord and the benefits that we receive as his children.

Join me in the bold print. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? My Lord, what love it is that makes so dear that I, the guilty one, may both be a major love for what's at your heart, the Son of God for me. My deadly name, my deadly child, when I, my name, when I, my name. And so they watched and died, despised, rejected, O the blood we shed, O for me, the grace of God was sent, the Son of God for me. My deadly name, my deadly child, when I, my name, when I, my name. O the blood we shed, O for me, the grace of God was sent, the blood we shed, O for me, the grace of God was sent, the Son of God for me. My deadly name, my deadly child, when I, my name, when I, I give amazing love for what's at your heart, the Son of God for me. My deadly name, my deadly child, when I, my name, when I, my name, when I, my name. O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, O God of hosts, How does this make me look, and how does this make me feel? And that's all that matters.

I remember the illustration that I love to give. True stories, because narcissists exist all over the place. A wife who was beaten by her husband, a Christian woman, phones a friend, who is also a Christian, but who is very narcissistic.

All right, now catch the picture. Here's a wife, you know, who's just sustained a beating. She needs to tell somebody, and so she phones her narcissistic friend and says, you know, my husband just beat me up. Because what this dear woman, God bless her, she's looking for some compassion, some feeling. So what does she get? Oh, really?

Is that what happened? Well, you know, you guys are sure a lot worse than my husband and me. We have our own fights too, but you know, he's never beaten me.

You know, so really, we are better than you in terms of our relationship. Thank you so very much for the compassion that I was looking for. What we're going to see is traits of that in Jonah. So God has this problem on his hands, and this entire chapter is just between God and Jonah. So God tries therapy. God says, Jonah, you'll notice that the Lord says to him in verse 4, do you will to be angry?

Is it good that you're angry? God wants to get to the root of it, you see. He wants to help Jonah reflect back his feelings, as good counselors are, to try to get to the bottom of the matter. And Jonah won't cooperate. He doesn't stay for the session.

He walks away. He stomps out of the city, verse 5, and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there, and he sat under the shade till he could see what will become of the city. Now remember that the king of Nineveh is sitting in an ash heap, hoping that God will spare the city. Jonah is sitting here in his booth that he built for himself, hoping that God will destroy the city. And while God is compassionate, Jonah is full of hate, and he refuses to see the world God's way. And he's got this death wish. I'd rather die than see what you're doing. I'd rather die than see these Ninevites repent and not be judged.

What a man. So what God decides to do is to give Jonah an object lesson. What the Lord does is he says, I'm going to give you a lesson in comforts and so forth, and then I'm going to give you some lessons in compassion.

So that's the direction that the text takes from here. You'll notice that the Lord, first of all, appoints something. Now, four times the word appointed occurs in the book of Jonah. First of all, it says that God appointed a fish. That's in chapter 1.

But here in succession, there are three other appointments that God makes, and let's look at them. You'll notice it says, verse 6, Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad about the plant. Can you ever get a narcissist to be happy about something?

Yes, if they are particularly blessed and you add to their comfort, they will be quite joyful and work it into their day. So that's what Jonah was doing here. Notice what God does. God appoints comfort for Jonah. Here's a plant that grows up in a night, as we learn in a few verses.

It grows up just very, very quickly. In one night, obviously it was a miracle, a plant like that growing in the midst of the desert, and a plant growing up that quickly, and probably what is known as the castor plant, which has great foliage and beautiful leaves that are as big as the palm of your hand, and this plant grows up and it encases his shelter, and you can just see Jonah enjoying it, because at last, in the midst of this hot climate, God has given him an air conditioner. So he's very, very happy about the plant. Well, that's not all that God appoints. You'll notice it says now in verse 7, but when the dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm. God said to this little worm, little worm, here you are.

Do you see that plant over there? I want you to sod down, work at it all night, but get the thing sod down, because I'm appointing you to bug Jonah. So God talks to this little worm, and the little worm comes, and he begins to work on this plant, and by morning he has a down.

God appoints our comforts. God also appoints our disappointments and our losses, and Jonah is supposed to learn that lesson. So the little worm comes along, and by morning the plant is down, and soon the sun is going to rise, and it's going to become very, very hot, and Jonah is going to become very, very angry. Just as he was exceedingly glad for the plant, he is going to become very, very angry, because he's going to have a death wish in just a verse or two again saying, I want to die.

Just get me out of this. I would rather die than deal with a God whom I can't change and whose will I oppose. Well, it's going to turn out that this plant was really his God, meant more to him than the will of God. It's amazing what happens when you take away people's air conditioners. My wife and I live in a condo complex where you either have heat, as you do during the winter, or you can have cold air, air conditioning during the summer, but the whole apparatus has to be changed over a day or two, so they try to find a good time in perhaps near the end of April and then another time in the fall when they make this change.

Well, they don't change it into air conditioning until probably somewhere around the end of April, the beginning of May, but one April, two or three years ago, it became about 85 degrees before April was over. You should just see how angry some of these pleasant and wonderful people became. I mean, some of them swore, some of them cursed, some of them threatened the administration because they didn't have their air conditioner. And these are nice people who open doors for you and who help you carry in groceries if you need it, and you're saying, is all this stuff coming from people who are so nice? No wonder the little girl prayed, Oh God, make all bad people good, and please make the good people nice. Isn't that a great prayer? Now, if you had gone to these people and said, Hey, by the way, did you know that 25,000 children died today because of malnutrition, which is approximately the number that die every day because of that?

Would that have mattered? I don't care about whether or not the kids die. Get me an air conditioner. I can't stand it. Have you ever noticed that God not only appoints our comforts, but he also appoints our discomforts and our disappointments, and the very thing that was bringing Jonah happiness is the very thing that God takes away because what God wants to do is to get at the heart of this guy. The reason for these appointments is God is saying, Jonah, I am putting a mirror here so that you can see yourself, and I want to take this mirror and shove it right up to your face so that you can see what's in your heart. Well, God's not through with him. We know that Jonah is going to have a bad day with this plant that has withered now, thanks to this little worm, and so God is saying, Oh, Jonah, huh? So you think you're hot? Wow. Guess what? Verse 8, When the sun arose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun be down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint, and once again he asked that he might die.

It is better for me to die than to live. God had this wind come like a kiln. Now you know that Nineveh is actually not too far from Baghdad. As a matter of fact, when you're looking on the map and you often see that there have been flashpoints of resistance in Mosul, directly across the Tigris River from that city is Nineveh.

That's where it is. And our son-in-law, who survived a summer in Baghdad, said that there was one day when it got nearly 140 degrees. And the people, by the way, couldn't understand how the American soldiers were able to manage it with all of their equipment. Well, that's understandable.

I wonder, too, how they managed with all of their equipment. So this is the area now, and God sends this scorching east wind to Jonah and says, well, Jonah, how do you like that? So God appoints our comforts, he appoints our disappointments, our losses, and he also appoints our trials.

And Jonah's not handling this trial very well. Could I say parenthetically and theologically, you'll notice that all are equally appointed by God. Do we have comforts today? You believe that God gives us comforts. We have comforts as human beings, in friendships, in love, in opportunity, in clothes and houses, and all of the things that we enjoy. And those comforts are God-given.

They are appointed by God. But so are our losses appointed by God. Our disappointments, those things that we cannot control that just happen, situations over which we have absolutely no control, that God brings into our life, probably for the same reason that he brought these things into the life of Jonah. And then God appoints also those scorching east winds when we are almost about to die and to see what is in our hearts, because it's only these events that really show what's in there.

It's not all the niceties, all the pleasantries, when everything is going well. It's how do you handle adversity? But each are equally appointed by God. I'm sure that Jonah was very angry with the worm. I'm sure that he had some very choice words for the wind. But actually, no use getting angry at the worm, no use getting angry at the wind, because the worm and the wind are both sent by God. It's God that stands behind these events. So God again begins a questioning.

He picks up the therapy and says, I wonder if you're willing to listen to my question now. So you'll notice there in verse nine, God continues the dialogue. But God said to Jonah, do you be well to be angry for the plant? And this time he answered God. You see, the first time God asked the question, it was, do you have a right to be angry because the Ninevites repented? Jonah didn't answer that question. But God says to him now, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And without even skipping a beat, he says, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

Now, just think for a moment what it is that Jonah is really saying. He's saying, I have a right to the comforts that God gives me. I have a right to my air conditioner. I have a right to be comfortable and not to be in this heat. But I am denying the compassion of God that brings me those comforts. I am denying the right of other people to experience that compassion. I deny the rights of the Ninevites, eternal comfort.

I would rather see them burn in hell than to have me burn under the sunlight here in a temporary way, without a good booth and without a plant and with a scorching east wind. So you can see here that Jonah is in the midst of this dilemma. And he does not get the lesson at this point that God is trying to teach him. So God goes on and he says, Jonah, that's a lesson in comforts now. What I want to do is to give you a lesson in the whole business of compassion.

So God picks it up in verse 10. And the Lord said to him, you pity the plant for which you did not labor. Did you deserve the plant?

Did you create it? By the way, do we deserve our money? You say we earned it.

Oh, really, did you? Who gave you the ability, the brains, and the opportunities to be born where you were, to be gifted the way in which you are? You mean to say you have a right to this?

Believe me, you and I have no rights to any of this. But you'll notice that the Lord says, you have pity for the plant for which you did not labor. You did not make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

Now comes the really big question. 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? He may be talking here about children, 120,000 children. If you think about that and you realize that they had parents, you can begin to multiply out how big the city of Nineveh really was. And God says, you had compassion on the plant and you have no compassion for people?

What is this? Here you have the clash of personal comfort and desire, the clash of personal comfort and desire with the eternal destiny of human beings and all that you can think of, Jonah. All that you can think of is whether or not you're comfortable where you're sitting and your world ends there. Earlier I spoke about narcissism. If I may use one more illustration of a narcissist, the reason I do that is because I'm always interested in the causes of human behavior and once you're as old as I am, you've heard a lot of stories. The fact that I use another woman in no way indicates that women are more narcissistic than men.

In fact, the opposite is probably true. There's much more narcissism out there on the part of our male species, but I am reminded of a man married essentially to a narcissist. And he went to the doctor for an exam and the doctor looked him in the eye and said, you've got cancer. So he calls his wife and says, I have cancer. What is the first question out of her mouth? Not the second, not the third, not the fourth, not the fifth, where it may be a legitimate question at some point.

What is the first question? Not, well, is it the kind of cancer? Do they think they can cure it? Do you think that there's a medical treatment?

No, the first question is, how much insurance do you have? That's a true story, you know, not making this up. What happens is in our lives, it's possible for us to be so focused on self. As I mentioned, all of us are born with narcissism and God tries to rid us of it, where our comforts, our perspective, our standard becomes the benchmark upon which everything else is judged and there is no compassion, there is no pity, there is no sacrifice.

All that matters is me. And Jonah here wants to create God in his own image and saying, God, I hate these people and I want you to know that I think that if you were right, you'd hate them too. Why don't you become like me? I met a man one time and I said, you know, do you want to serve the Lord? He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I want to serve the Lord. I said, how do you want to serve him?

He said, as an advisor. And we become angry because God does not become angry with the people that we are angry at. And God does not exercise his justice that we think he should exercise toward people that we believe a just God should. And so we become angry with God because we know that back of these circumstances lies God. And therefore we consider our own point of view, our own little narrow place in this planet, the most important thing by which everything else is to be judged, including God. There are two or three very important applications of this passage.

The first is simply this. Unless we are broken, we will never be touched. I need to say this slowly and I'm going to say it twice because if you're in the writing mode, you need to write this down. Unless we are broken, we will never be touched by what breaks the heart of God. Unless we are broken, we will never be touched by what breaks the heart of God. We'll not be touched by the 120,000 children in Chicago.

And there are a lot more children than that and their needs. We'll not be able to look beyond our own little world with our own little comforts and our own little entertainment centers and our own little world and our own little vacations. We will always just be narrowed in. Unless we are broken, we will never be able to weep or to be touched by that which breaks God's heart and God is compassionate and merciful and full of pity and we won't be. Because self is on the throne of our lives and all that we care about is ourselves.

We look out for number one. We have so many people in our churches today and we're all guilty of this. You know I'm preaching this message to myself too. I hope you understand that. I always preach to myself first. But we have so many people in our churches today who say they love God but have absolutely no concern about those who are precious to God.

Talk is cheap. And so unless we're broken, we'll never extend ourselves. You say, well, I am concerned about the children in this city but I don't know what to do about it.

Well, one thing you could do is to check the bulletin. We need workers in our children's ministries right here at this church. God is raising up a marvelous ministry over at Cabrini Green that you've heard about. And we need, we need people of compassion, people who care. We need people of sacrifice, people who have been able to see beyond their own little precious circle of comfort.

So that's the first lesson. There's a second lesson and that is unless we are broken, we will feel comfortable in our sin and our rebellion. Unless we are broken, we'll feel comfortable in our sin and our rebellion. We'll have rationalized it. We'll have lived in denial.

We will not confront. God takes this mirror, shoves it in our face through maybe messages, through songs that are sung, through experiences, through people, through events. God takes the mirror and shoves it in our face and we will not see ourselves and we will become comfortable in our rebellion and justify our rebellion and look into the face of God like Jonah does and say I have every right to be angry even to the point of death. You see my friend, what God wants us to do is to allow his mirror to actually show us ourselves so that we can open our lives to God and invite him into every crevice, every closet of our lives looking in, inviting him everywhere so that so that he can show us our great incredible need and at the same time show us his grace so that we are broken before him and that our will becomes his will no matter what it is. God, I take your perspective.

I don't understand it. But I take your perspective and I bow humbly before it and I accept it. George Mueller who had so many various orphanages in England, about eight of them all run by prayer and faith, said there came a time when George Mueller died. I died to my own ambitions. I died to my own plans. I died to my own reputation.

I died to everything that I had been working for and had only one question. What does God want me to do? That is brokenness. Wasn't it Varley who told D.L. Moody one day, we have yet to see what God can do through a man who is totally devoted to him and D.L. Moody said, by the grace of God, I'll be that man. And he began a Sunday school.

And isn't it interesting that Moody Church was begun with children and now so many years later, there are so many ministries that God is birthing in this church for children as his vision gets carried out. But that is brokenness that's yieldedness. You say, well, did God ever get Jonah? This book ends and you say, you know, it really doesn't have an ending. I want to read more. I don't know about your translation. I'm reading the English Standard Version and it ends there and then it has room on the page and I'm saying, hey, I want to know more about what happened here. I want to know whether or not Jonah had anything to say after God was finished at this point.

But we don't. But you know, I have a suspicion that Jonah did say yes. You know, the theme of this message, this series is brokenness, how God gets us to say yes. And even when I began the series, I was saying to myself, well, God worked with Jonah, but he never did say yes because the pages of Scripture just end. I can't prove this biblically, but I suspect that Jonah did say yes and I'll tell you why. Every scholar, every rabbi, the scholars throughout the centuries have puzzled as to who the author of Jonah is because we're not told. And virtually everybody says it must have been written by Jonah because who else would know all of these details, you know?

Now you tell me something. Would a man write a story like this that makes himself look that bad unless he had been broken by God? I don't think so because God looks great in this book. Jonah doesn't. Because you see, the person who's delivered from his narcissism no longer asks, how does it make me look?

Now he's asking a different question. How does it make God look? And as you read this book, God looks great. It's Jonah who's narrow-minded, shall I say pig-headed and very narcissistic. But God comes off wonderfully. And a man who is broken by God is willing to say, I am willing to tell the truth as the truth is even though I look bad because at the end of the day even my reputation in the lives of others is not as important as telling an accurate story and letting people give praise to God. And so he tells the story here without trying to make himself look good. There's no tweaking here.

Some time ago, a rather prominent woman wrote her biography and I can't prove this but I heard that one library put it in the fiction section. Everything tweaked and worked so that it's my point of view so that I come out looking a certain way. A person who's broken by God even his reputation is left in God's hands and he's not always trying to fix it. Appearances no longer become the important thing.

Reality does. And it seems to me that anyone who'd write a book like this is proud of it. A book like this is probably somebody who in the end said yes to God and finally gave up the fiction of his own will and his own desire. So as I come to the end of the series I have a question for you today. Are you broken?

Let me ask you a different question. What would have to happen in your life in order for you to answer yes to that question? What areas of your life are unyielded, unsubmitted, protected, guarded, rationalized that would have to be given into the presence of the Almighty? What would you have to give up? Who would you have to talk to? What would you have to make right in your life if you were broken? Remember that God especially blesses those who finally say yes. Let's pray.

Thank you. As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last I snatched them back and cried how can you be so slow?

My child he said what could I do? You never did let go. How many of you are here today who say Pastor Lutzer today by God's grace I want to let go. Would you raise your hands please all throughout the auditorium many are and also in the balcony I can see you there. You're willing to say God you've got me.

You've got me. I'm letting it go. I'm yielding it all. I'm trusting the Holy Spirit of God to grant me the grace to do that. Whatever it is that you need to say to God at this moment would you say it? In this message I did not explain that Jesus died on the cross for sinners and that your first step in saying yes is to say yes to him as Savior. So you may be here and you're not connected to God at all you can say Lord Jesus I say yes to you as Savior.

Those of us who know him have to say yes to him on a whole host of other issues. Father we've done what we could do and if the Holy Spirit does nothing then everything is a failure but we believe that the blessed Holy Spirit of God has been poured out to change us. So work with us.

Work with us Father. Grant us that balance between patience and discipline that we need to bring us to yieldedness to give up the idea that we can transform you into our image. May there be no point in our life in which we are out of agreement with you we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen. Amen. Let's sing the hymn Cleanse Me. I think the one that we know best there are two different tunes is 438.

Four hundred and thirty eight. On today's Moody Church Hour Pastor Lutzer brought a message on death to self justification. The last in a four part series on brokenness. How God gets us to say yes. We hope you now have a new appreciation of how similar we all are to the prophet Jonah and how we like him must eventually say yes to God. We are so grateful to all who support The Moody Church Hour and during this month we have a special opportunity. Every gift you send will be doubled thanks to a matching gift fund.

It's been set up by others who value The Moody Church Hour as it reaches the wider culture and addresses crucial issues of the day. You can make your gift a double one by calling 1-800-215-5001. The number again 1-800-215-5001. Or you can write to us at Moody Church Media 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, Illinois 60614. Online go to moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer.com. Join us next time for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.