The Ungrateful Prophet

In this, our final chapter in our study of the prophet Jonah, we get a glimpse into Jonah’s heart, and we see God’s incredible grace and mercy—the lovingkindness of God’s heart.

The Lord God called Jonah to preach a message of destruction to the people of Nineveh, such that if they did not repent of their evil and wicked ways, God would destroy the city in 40 days. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh, and knew that God, being gracious and full of lovingkindness would work in their hearts to lead them to repentance. So Jonah refused to obey God by going in the opposite direction. God brought Jonah back in line, and he reluctantly went to Nineveh.

Two weeks ago, we witnessed Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the whale. We observed Jonah’s repentance—after being vomited onto dry ground he turned his back on Tarshish and went to Nineveh. Chapter four teaches us a great deal about Jonah’s heart, and it really isn’t pretty. Let’s take this opportunity to invite the Holy Spirit to examine our hearts, and let’s honestly evaluate our own condition, our own attitude toward others.

Displeased and Angry

Upon seeing God’s grace and mercy toward the Ninevites, what was Jonah’s reaction? Jonah was displeased and angry. Why? What drove him to such a reaction? He was angry and displeased because God’s Word had God’s desired effect. The Ninevites repented. They humbled themselves before God. They put on sackcloth, they fasted, they and their animals. The king got up off his throne and sat in ashes. He abdicated his authority and surrendered it to God. They turned from their evil and wicked ways. They did what was right in the eyes of God.

Jonah hated to see that.

Jonah was angry and displeased because God relented from His destruction. He wanted to see the Ninevites get what was coming to them. He wanted to see them get destroyed. That’s why he stuck around. That’s why went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, probably on a high point, where he could see the whole city laid out in front of him. If he had been in Lethbridge, he would have gone to the Water Tower Grill.

He prayed to the Lord and in his prayer he justified his earlier sin. This is what he said, in essence. “Lord, I told you this, when I was still at home. This is why I fled to Tarshish. I knew you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. You are one who relents from doing harm.”

Did you hear Jonah’s accusation? He blamed God for his disobedience. He says, “I was forced to sin, because God, you are too gracious, too forgiving.”

Jonah didn’t want to see the grace of God given to Gentiles. He didn’t want to see them repent, when his own people refused to do so. He didn’t want to see the Ninevites receive God’s goodness, mercy, and grace, especially when his own people refused to repent and turn from their wickedness.

In this, Jonah was precisely like the Pharisees who called out Jesus for eating and drinking with sinners. How could a prophet, how could a great teacher go to such people?

Jonah didn’t want to do good. Jonah didn’t want his prediction to fail. He wanted it to come true, why? Because his own reputation was on the line. He told them a great calamity would come, but then it didn’t. That made him look bad.

Jonah was a fiercely proud man, proud of himself, of his own people, and he had zero compassion for these one hundred twenty souls who didn’t know their right hands from their left.

Jonah would rather die than see the deliverance, the salvation of the Ninevites. In this, we see Peter’s same obstinate attitude when Jesus told him to make no distinction between Jew and Gentile, he was brought up short. How can that be?

Lovingkindness

How indeed can the lovingkindness of God be given to the Ninevites? God is sovereign, He says, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whomever I will have compassion (Romans 9:15 & Exodus 33:19). Jonah was so wrapped up in God’s special attention to Israel, that he forgot the purpose for which Israel was called out: to be the light shining in the darkness. To share the Lord God with the whole world.

But Jonah’s own people were doing the opposite. They were prostituting themselves after other Gods. They were not at all interested in doing the right thing, in keeping God’s commandments, in worshipping God alone. Their king was wicked, and the people were wicked, and the priests were compromised and wicked.

Still, the Lord, who at this point would have been totally justified by calling down destruction on Israel for being as wicked as Nineveh, was gracious to them—though their punishment was coming. The Lord would have been justified in punishing Jonah for his sinful behaviour and his brash prayer. But the Lord was gracious to Jonah, and extends the same lovingkindness as shown to Nineveh to him, by asking him, in verse 4, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

The simple, straight up answer is, “NO!” It was not right for Jonah to be angry. His disobedience in running away from God, of putting the sailor’s lives in danger, in the cost of their livelihood thrown overboard—did they have mariner’s insurance? Was their goods covered by “Act of God” insurance? Or was it, as is now in many places, not covered because it was an act of God. Fascinating, isn’t it. If if is a storm, it’s mother nature. But if it is damaged that can’t be covered by insurance, it’s an act of God. Just a wee bit of prejudice, don’t you think?

The Lord calls Jonah out.

And what does Jonah do? Does he go through the city, doing what he didn’t do before, teaching the people the truth, teaching them how to live apart from wickedness and evil? Does he go through the city with tenderness and respect for these fellow believers? Does he repent and confess his sin?

No, he walks away from them and goes where he can see what would become of them. He made himself a shelter and sat in the shade, wallowing in his own misery. Nothing is going according to his plan. He’s angry, he’s displeased with the Lord, and he’s ungrateful.

Ungrateful

Still the Lord shows lovingkindness to Jonah. Seeing him sitting under his pathetic shelter, the Lord caused a plant to grow up very quickly. The Lord prepared it, and just as with speed the storm came up against Jonah’s ship, and after was immediately calm, He made the plant grow fully mature in one night. God’s power is awesome to behold!

Jonah was grateful for the plant, for the shade it provided, and for the relief it gave him. But when the Lord prepared a worm the next day, which attacked the plant so that it withered. And also, the Lord prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint.

Is this not all of Israel, all of Nineveh, all of humanity, all of us? We receive good from the Lord’s hands, but we treat it without any honour or respect. We use things for our own ends. We fail to honour God with the treasure given in Christ. We grumble and complain when things don’t go our way. We behave like Jonah.

Jonah was utterly miserable. He’d grown attached to the plant. He appreciated it. And when it was gone, he was ungrateful for ever having it, and once again, he longed to die. “It is better for me to die than to live.”

I can relate, can you? When things don’t go the way I want them to go, I feel despondent. I feel helpless. Especially if I get called out on something I know I did wrong. I react much like Jonah, how about you?

The Lord God comes to Jonah, just as He came to Cain, just as He came to David through Nathan, just as He came to all the kings, all the people through the prophets. Just as the Lord comes to us through His Word and the preaching of His Word. The Lord comes to Jonah and says, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is right for me to be angry, even to death.”

Wrong.

Jonah, sorry, Jonah needed to be told, “Man up. Grow up. Stop being a wimp, and stop being sorry for yourself. You didn’t get your way. The people of Nineveh proved themselves as more obedient then you, more obedient than your own people. Take a page from their book. Learn from them. Stop sinning. Stop blaming God and others for your situation.

The Lord called Jonah out for showing more grace, more love toward that plant, than he did for the great city of Nineveh—for the 120,000 souls. Jonah did nothing for the plant. He didn’t put the seed in the ground. He didn’t water it, he didn’t fertilize it. He didn’t do anything to protect it from the worm. He didn’t do anything to shelter it from the east wind. He just sat there, passively doing nothing, watching it get eaten, and blown away.

That’s what he did to Nineveh. He warned them. Maybe he did whisper, because he didn’t want them to actually repent. And maybe it had the opposite effect, it got their attention. Again, no matter what Jonah did, it was God who worked in their hearts and minds to bring them to repentance. Just as God caused the plant to grow up one night and then removed it the next, God causes people to live and die. And in the time between birth and death, His grace, His true grace is given to all.

True Grace

In all His dealings with Jonah, in all His dealings with Nineveh, God demonstrated true grace. I don’t know about you, but there were more than a few times that I wanted to smack Jonah upside the head. He should have known better.

Jonah was a Pharisee, before there were Pharisees. He wanted all God’s grace and love for himself, but not for others, and certainly not for those who didn’t fit his standards—Gentiles, Ninevites, outsiders. More, he wanted God’s grace to live as he wanted to live, for himself, for his own glory and honour. Jonah was selfish and lazy.

God extended true grace even to those terrible and wicked people. But listen to the consequences of their faith, listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 12:39-41 “But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”

Jesus is the greater than Jonah. And the people, those who should have known better, refused to receive Him. And the Ninevites in Jonah’s day will rise up in judgement on those wicked people who refused to believe Jesus’ message. They repented, but those people did not.

Now, let’s examine our own hearts. Do we truly repent of our evil deeds, or do we justify them as Jonah did? Do we believe the lie that because we do many good things, our bad things are cancelled out? It doesn’t work that way with God. If you are guilty of breaking one commandment, you’re guilty of breaking them all. Do we believe the lie that because we’re not as bad as the people in society around us, in that we don’t fall into certain sin: fornication, adultery, violence, addiction, abuse of strength, money, weakness, we’re somehow less guilty? Do we believe we’re entitled to the privilege we have in Christ?

The simple answer is no, we are not entitled. No, we are not less sinners. No, our good deeds, church attendance, Bible study, devotions, what have you, do not make us less bad than others.

No, only by God’s true grace, are we where we are today. It is only by God’s true grace that we are not totally depraved and given over to our sin. We are indeed wonderfully privileged by God.

So, let’s man up, stop making excuses for our sins, be bold an courageous in keeping God’s commandments, and turn to Him in faith. Let’s call upon the power of God, to rescue us from evil, to transform our hearts, as He did with the Ninevites, and let’s not be weak, feeble, reluctant, ungrateful prophets, but let’s speak boldly about Jesus. It’s not about us. We don’t change people’s hearts, God does. We just have to share the message. Trust God. Speak the truth. Amen.