The God with More Compassion than Us

Introduction

Read Jonah 4.

Explanation

Jonah 4:1 “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.”

The better way to phrase that verse is, “It was evil to Jonah as great evil.” Tim Keller // Sin always begins with the character assassination of God. Jonah thought God was in the wrong for saving the Ninevites.

In Chapter 3, you hear all about the evil of the Ninevites.

In the Hebrew Bible, they weren’t divided into chapters. So you hear the Hebrew word over and over. But you hear it twice in the same sentence - Jonah attributes the wickedness of the Ninevites to God. And Jonah cannot conceive that God would love someone as bad and sinful and wrong as the Ninevites.

Your inability to love people, to speak life and truth into others, and to desire the best for people who don’t think, look, or act like you shows less of who they are and more of who you are.

I am bracing myself up for pastoring through another presidential election, which is not for the faint at heart.

I am worried about the conversations that we have about people who disagree with us. There is so much hatefulness and vitriol.

We have the US’s and the THEM’s. And WE have it right, and THEY have it wrong. And I have seen this reality in people’s minds excuse slander and hatefulness and obscene language and dishonesty and other harmful reactions.

Don’t allow your actions and language around the things you cannot change steal the opportunity you have to effect the things you can change.

Jonah 4:2 “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

Now, the most shocking part of verse 2 is that we could put the second half of this verse to a tune and track , and we could sing it in worship. “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”

Jonah knows God’s attributes abstractly, but he has missed God’s heart.

Be careful when you say the right things about God and miss being transformed by his heart.

My son this week at VBS came home singing, “Chew, chew, the bacon.” I thought, what in the Kevin Hash, is this song. Erin followed up with his teachers. The song was actually, “Choose to obey Him.”

Jonah 4:3–4 “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?””

Jonah says, “I would rather die than see these people saved.”

We may take this as hyperbole, but Jonah is not exaggerating.

Jonah is beside himself.

And God says, “Do you do well to be angry?”

God is not going to let that question go. God did not let the command of Jonah go from Ch1-Ch3. And God is not going to let the heart transformation go either.

Jonah 4:5 “Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city.”

Jonah sat outside of the town and waited on them to be condemned. A Jewish audience would have immediately thought about another instance where a man sat outside of a city - waiting on it to be condemned.

Abraham. At the condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What is Abraham doing in chapter 1. Sitting under a tree in the heat of the day.

As God tells Abraham of the plight of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham begins to plead with God to save them if only a few righteous can be found.

But what a Jewish audience would not see - not until the day of Jesus - is the Son of God weeping over his people.

Luke 19:41–44 “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.””

Jesus entered the city and took the sin of the city in a way that nothing else could.

Jonah 4:6 “Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.”

Now, note something with me here. God gave this plant as a great gift - a gift of his grace - to Jonah, and Jonah was exceedingly happy about this plant. We can learn two things from this verse.

The first thing we notice is the irony of Jonah rejoicing over the mercy he is receiving while spiting the mercy God gave to the Ninevites.

The second thing we must remember - what do our hearts delight in?

We could do a study of the emotions of Jonah. Depressed in the ship in Ch1. Distressed, humbled, yet hopeful in Ch2. Disconnected from the Ninevites in 3:4. Bitter, Displeased, and Angry in 4. But in 4:6, Jonah is glad - finally - about something. What was it? A shade tree.

Jonah was delighting in something made for the sake of his own comfort. Was it a grace? Yes. Should it have been what brought Jonah delight of all the things that could have brought Jonah delight in the text? Probably not.

And before you get too down on Jonah - There are blessings that God has given us that shouldn’t take the amount of time and energy they do in your life. And you know what they are. Especially with the weight of eternity in the balance.

I am not telling you that God’s blessings aren’t good. I am saying how easy it is to derive joy from created things instead of the Creator, himself, and his purposes.

Jonah 4:7–8 “But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.””

God, in his mercy, did not leave Jonah in his bitterness. He attacked it. Praise the Lord he attacks our sin instead of leaving it.

The Lord is always for us, even if something He has to fight us for us. You might ask, “How can God fight us for us?” The same way you have to wrestle something out of your toddler’s hands that he/she isn’t supposed to be eating.

He first had to get rid of Jonah’s crutch. Now, Jonah could have found shade in town, but He wouldn’t go back into town, would he.

Some of you are so consumed with the stuff of future garage sales than you have forgotten that God is on His throne and He is worthy of all adoration and worship in your life. The Lord may, in his mercy, remove that from your life at some point. To do so would be a grace.

Jonah 4:9–11 “But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?””

God begins to ask Jonah some questions. Now remember from our study of Luke, God never asks questions that He doesn’t already know the answer too. God often asks questions to reveal to us our blindspots.

Do you do well to be angry for a plant? - Is this plant really worth all of your fuss? Couldn’t you be concerned with more pressing matters?

If you pity the plant, should I not pity Nineveh? - Can you not see that I have done something good here?

Invitation

We have to end this narrative of Jonah thinking about the prodigal sons. Jonah embodies both. In chapters 1-2, Jonah is the son who wondered to the far country only to come back and obey his father. In chapters 3-4, Jonah is the older prodigal son, who would not enter the party that his brother threw because he didn’t think he brother deserved it.

Jesus, is the God of grace for both the self-seeking and the self-righteous.

Jesus is the greater Jonah.