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, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd.”
The gourd is the root out of a dry ground spoken of by Isaiah. As we contemplate the city, are we not glad of the gourd? It is a tender plant. Are we not happy to have the Lord with us? Under His shadow there is immunity from grief. Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. Were we not exceeding glad of the gourd also when first we found respite and shelter under its beneficient presence? Can we not look back to a day of joy when first we found its presence over us, when we basked in its shady coolness from the burning heat of the desert sun? Christ was the great rock in a weary land. Christ was our salvation, our joy, our life, our respite from grief. He was the manifestation of the care of God for us. The Lord God had prepared the gourd to shelter us, to guard us, showing thereby His great kindness and tender mercy to us. We were exceeding glad of the gourd. How we enjoyed the love of God for us, the care, the tenderness He showed! Yes, He was our God all right, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great mercy. We have been glad of that tender plant ever since, have we not? Has Christ not been our delight, our refuge, our sufficiency from that day to this? Have we not loved Him, admired Him, welcomed Him, seen His perfection and His loveliness, learned to look to Him always for shelter and protection, and blessed God for the preparation of the gourd that came into our lives in a day of need? Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd also.
4:7
“But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.”
Alas, the gourd had to die. In remembering His loveliness we are made painfully aware that He had to die. The Lord God who prepared the good gourd prepared also the evil worm, the old serpent, which smote the gourd unto death. Why did He have to die? Was it not because of sin, because of the wickedness of the men of Nineveh? As we sit on the east side of sin we are made aware that on a hill outside the gate of Jerusalem once the gourd was smitten by the worm, as our picture shows. It is cruel, it is tragic, it is pathetic, but it is true. It is a harsh reality of life. The tender plant is gone, and we are left with only the booth. Evil has overcome good, as it ever seems to do, for the gourd was but a root out of a dry ground, a tender plant in the eyes of God. Was it the same gracious God, merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, who prepared the worm to smite the gourd? Yes it was, the very same. His ways are not our ways, beloved, neither His thoughts our thoughts. Jonah had to learn that too. “And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.” Yes, we do well to be angry, even unto death, in this instance. We do well to pity the gourd, to hate the sin that caused its death, to abhor evil, to see everything through the eyes of God, a holy God who calls evil evil and good good. If we are not angry for the gourd, if we cannot pity the gourd that had to die and hate the worm that smote it then there is something wrong with us, we are not righteous prophets at all and we have no business preaching to Nineveh.
4:8
“And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.”
We know that wind, a mighty rushing wind from God that followed the resurrection. It blew the apostles out on to the street where derision awaited them but where men repented and perished not. The death of the gourd and the violence of the wind should impel us on to the streets of our city too, where we will no longer be sheltered but exposed to the noonday sun. It is the power of God unto salvation for all men, but it may cause us to faint and wish to die. We delighted to sit contemplatively in the shelter of the gourd, separate from sin, merely looking at the city as spectators of the game of life and death. When we find the gourd withering over us we are dismayed. When we find the vehement east wind howling about our ears we are frightened. And when we find the sun beating down upon us we may faint and wish to die. But we cannot ignore it. Nor will it go away if we close our eyes to it all. We are disobedient messengers already, missing prophets, reluctant witnesses to the truth, and second-chance Christians. We have sat still for too long, waiting for Nineveh to perish. Yes we were exceeding glad of the gourd, exceeding angry that it had to die. Yes we have hated sin. But the wind has come and God means us to be exposed to the burning sun and there is no way to avoid either and still be righteous. If the early apostles had sat on in the upper room despite the wind men might never have repented and Nineveh would have perished.
