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The Story of Jonah for
Grown-Ups
Part 4
September 1, 2002
God’s Concerns vs. Jonah’s Concerns
Jonah 4:1-11
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in conversations with people and then we get to that point where they inevitably ask me, “So, what do you do for a living?” Inside, that is when I’m cringing. If I say, “I’m a pastor,” everything will change—especially when they find out that I’m one of those Jesus-following, Bible-believing pastors. What had been a lively, jovial, fun conversation stops in its tracks, as the person immediately thinks, “Oh, he’s one of those.” I always just want to say that I’m a public speaker, or that I lead a volunteer organization in town or something like that… But that wouldn’t exactly be forthright would it?
Why is it that I have experienced this so often? I think it’s because for the last few decades, many high-profile evangelicals have given us a bad name. Evangelicals have come to be known for what we are against, not for what we are for. The average person in America thinks, “Those are the people against science, against homosexuals, against women, against liberals, against progress.” Increasingly, we are not known for what has marked Christians throughout the centuries: the people for the rights of the oppressed, for the poor, for being genuine friends, for helping anyone in need, for showing love and compassion.
It’s not that evangelicals should not take stands on moral issues in today’s culture, it’s just that we may have lost our gentleness along the way. Evangelicals have let a small minority of very vocal leaders warp the image of God’s people from a compassionate and loving people to a hateful and condemning people. And, sadly, many of us have slowly been sucked into this subculture within Christianity. Before we know it, we start seeing everybody as either “us” or “them.”
Jonah is a story to shake us out of this quagmire of self-righteous indignation toward everybody in the world. Jonah is the story of a man who has convinced himself that anyone who is not “in” with God is not worth the trouble.
Let me give a brief recap of the story so far. Jonah is a prophet of Yahweh, the one true God. He is told by God to go to the city of Nineveh to preach against their wickedness. Nineveh was the greatest of the capitals of the ancient Assyrian Empire, which flourished from about 800 to 612 B.C. It was located on the left bank of the Tigris River in modern-day Iraq. And just like modern-day Iraq, Nineveh had a reputation for its terrible atrocities against humankind—God speaks of Nineveh through another prophet, Nahum, with these words: “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” (Nahum 3:1). Archaeologists have unearthed the palaces of King Sennacherib and King Ashurbanipal. They’ve discovered reliefs that show the bloody destruction of enemy cities, and of captive Philistines, Tyrians, Aramaeans, and others working as slaves under the supervision of the king himself. What Saddam Hussein is today, these kings in biblical times were just as bad. The people of Nineveh were not innocent either—for their evils were also widely known.
Therefore, Jonah wanted nothing to do with going to this “city of blood” with God’s message. So Jonah went the opposite way. He was supposed to go east, but instead high-tailed it for the west toward Tarshish. On the boat heading across the Mediterranean, God throws a terrible storm at his boat, and through this trauma, the crew of the ship all come to faith in God. But Jonah remains stern against God and seeks to die in the depths of the sea. God will not allow him to drown by sending a giant fish to swallow him. Even inside this terrible fish, Jonah remains unrepentant—he seeks to tell God that he should take Jonah back to Jerusalem. Instead, God commands the fish to vomit Jonah (an indication of God’s feelings toward Jonah at that point!) not in the direction of home, but toward Nineveh. Jonah finally goes to that city, but instead of telling the people of Nineveh the whole message from God, he just tells them the part he likes. God’s full message was that the Ninevites were doing terrible evils and if they would turn to God and ask forgiveness and turn away from their wicked ways he would forgive them, but if they refused, God would destroy the city in forty days. This full message would take three days to explain, but what does Jonah do? Jonah went into the city only one day’s walk and proclaimed, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!” That was it! Nothing about what they should do about it! Miraculously, the Ninevites, led by their wicked, pagan, heathen king repented. We hear the king say,
“Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” (Jonah 3:9)
And God shows the compassion that he does toward those who are sinners and turn to him in sorrow for their sin:
“When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.” (Jonah 3:10)
That last verse of chapter 3 ticked Jonah off! And that is where we are at in the story. Look at Jonah, chapter 4.
“But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.” (Jonah 4:1)
The Ninevites have repented, God has relented. And Jonah is angry. What is wrong with this scene?
God is full of grace and mercy. The Apostle Peter told us that God “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). Very often, we think of God as one full of wrath against sinners…and that scares us. But while God is just and will indeed punish evil, he does not wish our being doomed to Hell. He is patient, never wanting anyone to perish, but waiting for all of us to come to repentance—which is a technical term that simply means “to turn.” Repentance is an attitude adjustment of eternal proportions. It is our conscious turning from our life without God (filled with our selfishness, our pride, what the Bible calls sin) and our turning toward God and asking for his mercy and forgiveness. This is what causes conversion. This is when God enters a life in a profound way—for it is then that we say, “I’ve had enough of living life as the King of my life. I now take off my royal robes and admit that You, God, are King. I will follow Your rule in my life.”
Even someone as evil as the King of Nineveh did this. We read in Jonah 3:6, “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.”
Jonah doesn’t like how God operates. Jonah would rather that God would clearly delineate between two people-groups. Those who are God’s special chosen people, and those who are evil people, doomed to Hell. That’s neat and tidy. None of this stuff about people who are far from God turning to Him for grace and mercy and God actually accepting them into this exclusive family, thank you.
Look at what Jonah says to God:
He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:2-3)
What? Those two verses may be the most shocking verses in the whole Bible! Are you kidding me, Jonah?
We haven’t been told explicitly until now why Jonah ran from his mission to Nineveh.
In Jonah, chapter one, we read, “The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai:
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
(Jonah 1:1-2)
But here in Jonah 4:2, the Hebrew reads like this: “Oh, Lord, was this not my word while I was still at home?”
God’s “word” to Jonah was: “Go to Nineveh.” Jonah’s “word” to God was, “No! Because I know that you are a gracious and compassionate, you are slow to anger and you’re abounding in love. If I go there, all you’re going to do is relent from sending calamity on those no-good Ninevites!” Only Jonah would have the gall to take that which are the marks of our wonderful God and throw these things back in his face!
God is gracious.
This Hebrew word is only used in the Bible for God. He alone can show the kind of grace that forgives sinners like you and me, and can actually save us from perishing due to our evil ways. We are told in Ephesians,
“ (Ephesians 2:8-9). That’s grace: simply by turning to God in faith he saves us from our rightful calamity, not because of anything we have done to win his favor, but by simply turning to him and admitting our need for him.
God is compassionate.
This word is also used exclusively of God in the Hebrew Bible. God shows mercy and concern for people.
The root of the Hebrew word is the word for a woman’s womb. For those of us seeking to find feminine qualities in God, there it is! Even though we call God “Father” and with the masculine pronoun “He,” God is more than a mere man. God is God! God is certainly all that a Heavenly Father is to us, but God is also the tender, nurturing, compassionate and even motherly sustainer of the life he has created.
God is slow to anger.
Many of us remain frightened of God, who we picture sitting on his throne, wielding lightning at those who he is wrathful toward. While this may be a good picture of Zeus, it is a poor picture of the God of the Bible. God certainly has righteous anger at evil, as we all do. We all seethed with holy, righteous anger a year ago when we saw those planes ram into the World Trade Center. So did God. But his anger is not fly-off-the-handle anger like my anger so often is. He is slow to anger—he is slow to show his anger against sin, be it as bad as September 11, or as simple as a selfish act we do or a destructive word we say. If God were quick with his anger, none of us would survive much more than a day!
God is abounding in love.
Not just any kind of love, but hesed love. The Hebrew word hesed literally means “steadfast love.” A love that remains even when the one loved scorns that love. A love that remains even when the one loved does atrocious things that should cause the lover to say, “forget it!” God’s love is
hesed love—it is the covenantal love he has for his people. He says, “I am your God, you are my people—I will forever love you.”
God relents from sending calamity.
Anyone who lives selfish, sinful lives will be ultimately destroyed because of their evil ways; that is God’s justice. But God relents from sending calamity to those who turn from their sinful ways and turn to him for his mercy.
Notice that Jonah’s theology is right-on! He understands God, he just doesn’t like it! He is angry at God for being so… GOOD!
But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4)
Good question!
Jonah does not want to live to see the city spared by God. Jonah is angry that God would show mercy to a people as brutal as the Ninevites. He cannot find it in his heart to forgive them as God does.
When we look at Jonah, we are supposed to find ourselves looking in a mirror. Jonah is me. I am supposed to ask myself, “Am I one who does not wish God to show compassion on those that I find to be evil in my life?” “Have I forgiven that person who knifed me in the back at work?” “Have I forgiven the relative who borrowed money and never paid it back?”
On a grander scale, we who are in the “Christian camp” have to look in the mirror and ask, “Have I so demonized those who do not see issues as I do that I do not have compassion on them?” “Has my righteous indignation toward the evil things in this world turned into self-righteous hatred for those people that do not share my views?” “Have I forgotten that as a representative of Christ in this world, I am to show the grace and compassion of God, and not just the wrath toward what I perceive as sin?” “Am I slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love? Or have I become just another bitter Christian, known more for what I am opposed to than what I am in favor of.”
Jonah is the epitome of what some in our world see in today’s Christian. We are viewed as an unloving people, wishing for everyone to just go to Hell. When people hear the word “Christian,” do they hear “angry,” or “loving and compassionate?”
If you are someone who has been treated poorly by a Christian, or you have found yourself struggling to find faith because of the poor example of what it means to be a Christian by one of these harsh people, please accept our apology here at Vanguard Church for the sake of the body of Christ. Sometimes the body does not reflect the head of that body very well. Jesus, I think you know, is not like that. He is loving and compassionate.
God seeks to bring many people into a relationship with him. And some of these people are going to be those who are not stereotypically aligned with the so-called “Christian issues” of our day. God says to Jonah, and to those Christians who are always in fight-mode against those around them, ““Have you any right to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4)
So, Jonah goes out of the city and sets up camp. He is still hoping that God will not save those people. After all, those people do not deserve it!
Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”
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. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
(Jonah 4:5-11)
In verse 6, Jonah is “very happy.” Finally! We see Jonah HAPPY! But what is it that made Jonah happy? Was it that God was doing his God-thing and showing grace and mercy to people? Was it that a whole city of people was turning in faith toward God? Was it that his mission from God was a success?
No. He is “very happy” because God provided a vine to shade him from the harsh sun. Jonah is happy because of his comfort!
Then God provides a worm to chew the vine and make it wither. The scorching wind and sun are too much for poor little Jonah, so he begs to die!
Again, in a few gentle words, God simply says again, “Do you have a right to be angry?”
Do you see what God is doing for Jonah? He is providing things, as he has all through this book, to move Jonah out of his self-centeredness and help him see things the way God sees them. First, he “provided” the fish, then he “provided” the vine, then he “provided” the worm, and finally, he “provided” the scorching wind. God provides big things and small things for the good of this man, but Jonah never realizes it nor appreciated it.
Sounds familiar; there have been so many times that God has “provided” tough times in my life for a greater purpose. Perhaps right now you face a very hard time. What is God doing through that for your good? What is he trying to teach you about eternal realities? Is it a sickness, or a financial strain, or a relational struggle? What in these tough times is God trying to say about the reality of eternal life, about where you place your security, about whom you really love and trust? How is God trying to bust through and show himself to you? We are often very dense to this, going along in our lives as if God does not exist and is not trying to get our attention. But, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
For Jonah, God is trying to show that there is a dramatic contrast in the way Jonah sees eternal things and the way God sees them. Look there in the final words of God:
“You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
(Jonah 4:10-11)
In verse 10, God points out what Jonah is concerned about. In verse 11, God points out what he is concerned about. Jonah’s chief concern, after all he has been through, after four chapters of God trying to get through to him is this silly vine! In other words, Jonah is still only truly concerned with himself. When it all comes down to the end, Jonah is only truly concerned with his comfort. God, on the other hand is truly concerned for people!
God says, “Jonah! You should know better! You have my Word; you have a relationship with me (though you are trying everything in your power to stain it). Yet, what do you do with all that? You are only concerned for yourself, when instead, I have called you to have compassion as I do for the thousands of people who cannot tell their right hand from their left!”
That phrase, “they cannot tell their right hand from their left,” has become a part of our colloquial speech. But few of us know what it actually meant in the biblical times and culture. In Ancient Near Eastern texts, we have found that the right and left hands refer to something equivalent to “Law and Order,” or “Truth and Justice.” So, when somebody does not know their right hand from their left, they are confused or ignorant of the law. This phrase is used 5 times in the Bible, and every time, it refers to those people who are ignorant of God’s moral law. People who do not know their right hand from their left are those who are trying their hardest to get along in the world, but do not have God’s revealed way of living to guide them.
And God does not hate them for that—he has compassion. He wants to bring them into the family and teach them the way of life. This is today’s culture in North America! This is the people you work with and play with and live with in your neighborhoods. They do not know that God is there—caring, loving, and offering guidance.
Not that we who are believers have our act all together, but we are at least seeking to understand God. At least we have committed to trying to conform our lives to the model of Jesus Christ as revealed in the pages of Scripture. We cannot be so pompous as to say we’ve figured it all out—it’s just that we are committed to following the one who has it all figured out, since he created it all.
Each time I get together with somebody to open this Bible, I get a little awed. Here I am, with other people just as committed as I am, studying the words of God in order to try to understand God and ourselves and how to live life that is more loving and more purposeful. What a privilege! How awesome to be able to open this revelation from God and get just a little bit closer to him, and then to meditate and really evaluate my life in light of that!
Most of my neighbors do not participate in such an endeavor. And they are trying to figure out life on their own. It’s not that they are evil in doing it that way, its just that they “do not know their right hand from their left.” They are doing the best they can under such conditions, and many are doing pretty well by the common grace of God. But how much better if they were to open their minds and hearts to the special revealed grace of God found in His Word!
But again, Jonah is a book that I am supposed to read and see myself in. Jonah is me.
So, this is what I see in Jonah that applies to me: Jonah has all the right theology. He has it in his head, but he refuses to let it sink into his heart. I must ask myself, “Am I orthodox all the way down the line, able to state what I believe about God, about sin, about evil, about salvation, etc., but do not have a heart of compassion and love? Have I let my theology positively effect my emotions and my actions? Or am I like Jonah, coming up with self-righteous reasons for not feeling and acting the way God wants me to?”
I urge you to check your attitudes, as I have mine, toward those you work with, those in your neighborhoods, those you disagree with on political issues, those who do not share your passion for doing right. Do you see them as enemies deserving destruction? Or do you view them as God does?
The book of Jonah does not end with a grand conclusion. We are left with God asking Jonah the question,
“Should I not be concerned about that great city?” The last image we see is Jonah still sulking in his shelter, still fighting with God, still more interested in his comfort, still more interested in his agenda, still knowing everything…but knowing nothing at all.
The camera pans out from a sulking Jonah and into a city. We see people dancing in the streets, celebrating on its 40th day—God has relented, God has forgiven! God is worshiped!
And as the credits role, and everybody starts to file out of the theatre, I sit in the dark and wonder, “Why does God even bother with Jonah?” And then I wonder, “Why does God bother with each one of us?”
The story of Jonah tells me an amazing fact about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We have all been called by God to be a part of a grand mission. We all have been called to participate with God in his purpose to show love and mercy and compassion to a hurting world. We have been called not because we are so great, but because he wants us to enjoy the privilege of sharing in this sacred mission in the world. That is what it means “to do God’s will.”
And as the music plays and the names of the cameramen role up the screen, it strikes me. The choice is ours! We can fully participate in what God is doing and find joy and purpose in living life on this grand scale, or we can fight it all the way, and sulk when God goes ahead and does his will without our cooperation!
What is God’s will? It is certainly many things in many different circumstances. But overarching all of that is a grandest purpose. He seeks to bring his beloved creatures—you and me and as many others as he has called—into a deep, mysterious, satisfying love relationship with him. He wants to call people into a life where they will indeed know God and his will. And he wants those who have already begun to follow him to do his will in participating in this grand purpose.
That is why we are unapologetically evangelistic in this church. It is not that we get some devious satisfaction out of making people conform to our way of thinking. No. It is that we want people, in their own way and through the power of the Holy Spirit, to find the true God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
That is compassion. That is steadfast love. That is what God is all about. And that is what life is all about. I do not want to be Jonah, missing out on the joy of seeing God use me for that purpose. I want to participate fully in that. I want to know that I have been used by God for his grand purpose.
And I know that you do to.
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