Jonah 4:6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head… I. THE SPRINGING UP OF THIS GOURD. This took place under very remarkable and truly affecting circumstances. 1. Learn that a gracious God sometimes visits us with mercies when we have reason to expect judgments. Rage drives Jonah out of Nineveh into the scorching heat of an eastern sun, and there, while he is quarrelling with God and asking for death, springs up suddenly a wide-spreading plant to shelter and comfort him. In seasons like these faith is weak, and a compassionate God stoops to its weakness. He gives the soul sensible indications of His love, recalls it to its duty and happiness, by mercies which it can feel and understand. 2. There is no want of His servants too small for God to notice, and no suffering too light for Him to relieve. Jonah's worthless head is as much an object of His concern as Jonah's guilty soul. In no point do we mistake more than in this. "This matter," we say, "is too contemptible to be taken to God." We limit, we dishonour God when we say, "This is too small for Him." The care He invites us to roll on Him is, all our care. 3. The Lord often reveals His greatness by the mode in which He imparts comfort and manifests compassion. Refer to those dispensations of Providence, those unexpected deliverances, and blessings and comforts which every servant of God occasionally experiences: things occurring so that he must be blind who does not see in them the Divine hand. We have not to run after goodness and mercy. II. THE EFFECT PRODUCED ON THE PROPHET'S MIND BY THIS INTER-POSITION OF GOD ON HIS BEHALF. Jonah rejoiced in the gourd with great joy 1. Well may we wonder at the folly of that heart which could take so much pleasure in so mean a thing; but there is still greater reason to wonder at its amazing selfishness. This history is like a libel on human nature. 2. The ingratitude of the human heart. We too have often' forgotten God in the comforts He has given us. Those very comforts have been the causes of our forgetting Him. They have separated between Christ and our soul. III. THE WITHERING OF THIS OVERVALUED GOURD. 1. All earthly comforts are short-lived; they are frail and perishing. They often die while we are rejoicing in them. 2. The comfort that most delights us is generally the first to perish. The mercies we lose the soonest are those we love the best. This is the testimony of fact. 3. Our comforts are often taken from us when they appear to be the most needed. Our prop gives way when we are the weakest. The gourd withers in the morning, just when the sun is beginning to scorch. 4. Our comforts often perish from unforeseen and very inconsiderable causes. A trifle — a worm — destroys them. Such is the history of this miraculous plant — it sprang up, it gave delight, it brought into sight the baseness of the human heart, and then it withered. Is not this the history of every comfort the earth yields? It speaks to us all. It bids us care less about a passing world. It calls us to seek after that refuge and comfort of which no creature, either small or great, can rob us. Is there such a refuge? Yes. It is in Christ Jesus, in a manifested, incarnate God; in His cross and righteousness and spirit, in union and intercourse with Him. And it is nowhere else. A crucified Jesus is the one only remedy for all human ills, the one only source of all solid happiness. (C. Bradley.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. |
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