The Displeasing God

Jonah 4:1 ESV

1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

Throughout the month of November, we are going to be looking at several different topics, but chiefly among them are the thanksgiving that we should offer to God due to His mercy and His love that He has towards us who don’t deserve His mercy and His love.

You see, everything that we have is a gift from God, but also, everything that we don’t have is a gift from God. And always in the background of everything that there is, in the background of everything that occurs, God is at work, causing everything to work together for the good of His people, and for His own glory.

But even though that is the case we so often look past the fact that God is at work and not only question what has been done, but even become angry with God due to what has been done, rather than giving Him thanks for all things like He deserves.

Instead, in many cases we only give thanks when things happen the way that we want them to happen, the way that we think they should happen, reasoning as though we and not God, know what is best for us and for others. But, like I said, when things don’t go the way that we think they should go, we become angry with God.

We see a prime example of this way of reasoning in the prophet Jonah, particularly in the 4th chapter of the book of Jonah. And throughout the month of November, we will be working through the 4thchapter of Jonah as we look at everything that had occurred in the process of Jonah’s ministry and how he had reacted as a result of what had occurred throughout the course of his ministry.

You see, when a lot of us think about Jonah we just think of the great fish that swallowed him and that’s about it, but there is so much more to the whole narrative surrounding Jonah and what got him to where he is here in chapter 4 than just that.

So, let’s go ahead and talk about the background of Jonah’s prophetical career.

Jonah prophesied during the time of the divided monarchy, when there was the northern, more wicked Kingdom of Israel and the southern, slightly less wicked Kingdom of Judah. And Jonah was from the northern, more wicked Kingdom of Israel.

And during the time in which Jonah prophesied, approximately 785 to 740 BC, the Assyrian Empire was expanding at a rapid rate, gobbling up one kingdom, one nation after another.

Everywhere the empire went, they laid waste to the lands of those they conquered, and eventually, Assyria set its sights on the northern, more wicked Kingdom of Israel.

Now, at the heart of the Assyrian Empire was its capital city, Nineveh. And Nineveh was not just Assyria’s capital city, it was also Assyria’s largest city, and perhaps the world’s most influential city at that point in history.

But Nineveh was a city that was extremely godless, extremely violent, extremely brutal, extremely perverse, a city that was just all-around evil. In fact, in the book of Nahum, Nineveh is described as the bloody city (Na. 3:1) who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms (Na. 3:4).

This was an extremely wicked city whose wicked influence urged those they had conquered to be just as wicked as they.

One would believe that if there was any city, any empire that deserved God’s judgment and wrath, that it was this city, Nineveh, and this empire Assyria.

That was why when the Lord came to Jonah the prophet and commanded him to go to the city of Nineveh and urge those who lived in the city to repent in order that God might not judge them, Jonah balked at the commandment.

You see, Jonah knew what kind of a God, God is. God is indeed a vengeful God Who judges the wicked, but Jonah also knew that God is a merciful God, a longsuffering God, a God Who will forgive anyone and everyone who sincerely comes to Him and repents of their evil and turns to Him.

And so, Jonah knew that there was always the chance that if God sent a prophet to Nineveh, preaching repentance, that they may perhaps turn from their evil ways, repent of their evil, and be spared from God’s judgment… and that was the last thing that Jonah wanted.

You see, according to Jonah and probably according to the majority of people in Israel at that time, Nineveh deserved to be judged, and they hoped that Nineveh would never repent so that they would have to experience God’s just wrath just as the city of Sodom had well over 1,000 years earlier.

And because of this, Jonah did not do as God commanded, he did not willingly go to Nineveh, instead, he boarded a ship that was going the opposite direction of Nineveh.

In fact, Jonah wanted to get way far away from where God commanded him to go as the ship that he boarded was going to Tarshish, a city in modern day Spain, over 2,500 miles away from Nineveh, which is in modern day Iran.

But you can’t run from God and not be found… for while on this ship God sent a mighty tempest on the sea that threatened to break the ship up.

Eventually, Jonah revealed to the men aboard the ship that he was the one who was responsible for God sending this storm to the ship and that if they would throw him overboard, the storm would cease, and all would be calm again.

The men didn’t want to do this initially, but they finally gave in and threw Jonah overboard, and just like Jonah said, when he was thrown overboard, all was calm once again.

But that wasn’t the end for Jonah, for the very last verse of that first chapter of Jonah tells us that it was at this time that God appointed a great fish, so God commanded a great fish to swim to Jonah and swallow him so that Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now, I personally believe that when Jonah was thrown into the sea, he drowned and died there in the sea, but I also believe that at some point after this great fish swallowed him, God brought Jonah back to life.

Thus, from within the belly of the fish, Jonah recognized what God had graciously done for him in extending mercy to him and offered praise and thanksgiving to God for saving him. And at that, God caused the great fish to vomit Jonah on dry land.

Once he was on dry land, Jonah heard from the Lord again, and what he heard from Him was the same message that he had heard before: Go to Nineveh and preach repentance to them… This time Jonah listened, and he went to Nineveh like he was told.

As Jonah went through the great, wicked city, he called out: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” This was a call to repentance as Jonah informed them that if they did not repent, God would inflict judgment against them.

Then something truly miraculous happened when it is written that the godless, wicked people of Nineveh believed God and repented! Even the king of Nineveh repented, covering himself with sackcloth and sitting in ashes and commanding all of the inhabitants of the city to fast and call out to God pleading with Him to be merciful towards them.

And when this happened, God did indeed relent and showed them mercy.

This is the point where we arrive at our reading for today and our narrative for this month.

And it is at this point we see that while the people of Nineveh turned from their evil and worshipped the God of heaven and earth, certainly thankful and joyful that God had mercy on them, the prophet Jonah certainly was not thankful or joyful for what had happened, instead, our reading starts off by saying:

Jonah 4:1a ESV

1a But it displeased Jonah exceedingly,

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly… The “it” spoken of here refers to the repentance of the Ninevites and the mercy that God showed them as a result of their repentance.

So, the “it” is the repentance of the people of Nineveh and God’s mercy towards them. And what was Jonah’s reaction to this? Displeasure! It displeased him that God would show mercy to such an evil mass of people.

In fact, that word “displeased” could be translated in the Hebrew as something morally bad, something evil. So, we can then safely conclude that after Jonah had preached repentance to the people of Nineveh and after they repented of their exceedingly wicked ways, Jonah considered God’s judgment in showing mercy to the Ninevites as unjust… as evil.

Jonah considered what God had mercifully done here as evil… Jonah was accusing God of being evil.

Now, when we look at the entire narrative in the book of Jonah and when we see that Jonah himself had done evil by initially fleeing from the command of God to prophesy to Nineveh and God nonetheless graciously preserved Jonah and gave him a second chance, this makes Jonah’sdetermination of God’s act exceedingly evil.

And though Jonah is the one who is truly behaving in an evil manner here, he nonetheless accuses God of being evil!

So, we see that Jonah was displeased that God had had mercy on those who were evil, which was an inward feeling, but in the latter part of our reading, we see that this displeasure that he had towards God due to His mercy on an evil people also outwardly manifested itself when we read:

Jonah 4:1b ESV

1b and he was angry.

In other words, Jonah was inwardly displeased, reckoning that God’s loving determination in this matter was unjust and evil and now it begins to outwardly show in anger. And in our message, next week, we will examine how Jonah made his displeasure manifest to God.

But I want to dwell here on Jonah’s attitude towards the situation for a moment or two as we finish out our message this morning.

As we read of this narrative, all of us, me included will shake our heads at Jonah’s attitude and his lack of gratitude towards God.

We say, “How could he?! Surely, he should know better! If anyone deserves to be punished here, it’s Jonah!” But are we so different than Jonah?

What I mean is that so often we look at the evil of society and we shake our heads, and we say, “My! My! How dare they! Such evil!” and then we kind of just leave it at that.

Or maybe we say that we need to pray for our political leaders, but when we think of some of our least favorite politicians, do we really want them to repent? I mean, honestly, do we? Or would we rather say, “One of these days I hope they get what they deserve!” and just leave it at that? I can admit that I am sometimes guilty of that, can you?

And if God did work in their lives and they legitimately did repent, would we even believe it? Or would we be like the early Christians were when Saul was converted? Would we say, “I don’t believe it! It’s all a show! They’re just doing this and saying this for political reasons so that they can butter us up and then stick a knife in our backs when we are least suspecting it!”?

Once again, I will admit that I too have been guilty of that very kind of reasoning.

We say, “These people don’t deserve mercy. They don’t deserve forgiveness. They don’t deserve the grace of God!” And you know, we’re right when we say that they don’t deserve it… but neither do we.

And when we question the goodness of God, when we question the mercy of God, we are no different than our friend, Jonah the prophet.

And beloved, how easy it is for us to walk right into this trap! O how deep is the depravity in the heart of man!

But praise be to God that although Jonah did that which is evil, Jonah still remained God’s prophet. In other words, though Jonah was angry that God was merciful, forgiving, and gracious to the people of Nineveh, God was still merciful, forgiving, and gracious to ungrateful Jonah.

And although we as Christians are often angry that God does what He does, although we are often angry that God is merciful, forgiving, and gracious to those whom we deem unacceptable and unworthy, even in spite of this, He is still merciful, forgiving, gracious to us.

Why? Because we are His and He is ours, and nothing, not even our own evil can separate us from the love that God has for us in Christ Jesus.

And so, as we began to inch towards the Thanksgiving season here in the month of November, let us be most thankful that God loves all of His blood-bought children, even the most stubborn of us, which I know that I quite often am among.

Let us thank God that His mercy, that His grace overlooks our own transgressions and doesn’t give us what we truly deserve.

Amen?