Jonah 4: A Compassionate Lesson

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle who lived in the early 1800s, was a poet and writer. I came across his poems about Jonah in my studies last week and I wanted to share them with you. There are four poems, one for each chapter of Jonah, and I believe they really capture quite beautifully the message of Jonah. So, let’s look at each one:

LET’S COOL DOWN:

I know a better way to circumvent your silly streak of mixing love with righteous judgement All I need to do is take the next flight west, beyond your jurisdiction This will give you time for sober second thoughts to swear off this kick of simple minded kindness

INSIDE THE MONSTER:

I was as low as I could get when I remembered God, odd, that my distress impressed me with his apparent absence When his premised daily presence hadn’t meant a blessed thing Finding myself in that hole with my soul fainting and rolling The swell of my swollen ego Was good enough to kill me, good, Instead I saw stars in the dark and started home on a welcome water spout

COUNSELLOR TO THE ALMIGHTY:

Think twice before you pardon Men repent even in ashes, but repent again of their repentence Take a wiser bias of my advice Confine your charity to such good neighbours as your humble servent

ADDICTION:

Consistently Jonah chided his stupid and incredible creator for his addiction to mercy As though it were some miracle drug. A deity ought to be dependably capricious to keep the natives in line Decimating that overpopulated slum would wipe out delinquency in a hurry Naturally, Ninevah would make a perfect target Once he was safely outside.

Right?!

Powerful, right?! We have come a long way in studying Jonah. Along the way we have witnessed the grace and love of God maybe greater than any minor prophet we have studied to this point. What makes Jonah so relatable is that we often can see ourselves, the wayward and selfish selves, in the character of Jonah. But we also see our story of second chances, forgiveness, opportunity, and salvation from the Lord in Jonah’s story.

Now if the story had ended in either chapters 2 or 3 this story would be a happy ending. Often, when we teach Jonah to our children in VBS or what not we end there and give this sort of, “everyone lived happily ever after” ending, but this is not where the book of Jonah ends. I think we avoid the ending of Jonah sometimes because we don’t like it. Maybe sometimes we don’t quite understand it or maybe we just don’t understand the suddenness of it. After all, we live in a culture today where we need an explanation and closure for everything. Jonah doesn’t really give either.

Unsolved Murder Mysteries

Recently, Netflix released a series titled Unsolved Murder Mysteries where an investigative reporter went into Cold Case files and pieced together the best case Hollywood could conjure up for the purpose of American entertainment. Each episode deals with a different murder case that has gone unsolved for years and years to this point. The end of each episode was abrupt. No closure. No solving the case. Just those all too familiar scripts stating, “If you have any additional information about the whereabouts of so and so, or the murder of so and so please contact this and that police department.”

The show has been wildly successful, but just as aggravating. We like closure. We like to have an end to something. We like to know the ins and outs, the answers, and have an explanation or reason for everything. But much like the unsolved murder mysteries, we have no closure or explanation to the end of Jonah. We don’t know what he ends up doing whether he dies, or repents again and obeys God, or goes back to Tarshish, or what. We don’t know and I believe that is on purpose.

I think all along Jonah has encouraged us to see our faith and story in his story. And the ending is no different. The end of Jonah is so open ended so we can choose the ending. But not necessarily the ending for Jonah’s story, but the ending for our story. How will we respond? Especially, when it comes to the choice between sacrifice or self, love me or loving others, following God’s will or doing what we think is best. We have to make a decision and that decision will take us down a path either following the Lord and receiving the gift of His grace, mercy, love, and salvation from Him, or we will follow the path of the world which leads to anger, unhappiness, anguish, and suffering. The choice is ours, will you play or pray? Which Jonah will we end up being? Think about this as we read this final chapter:

Jonah 4:1-4

There are two episodes here:

Jonah’s Angry Prayer in verses 1-4 which is contrasts with his Grateful prayer in chapter 2. The question that is answered in chapter 2 is, “how will Jonah respond to God’s grace toward himself?” And the question answered in this prayer is, “how will Jonah respond to God’s grace toward Ninevah (or others)?” And the second episode is:

Jonah’s Lesson about Compassion in verses 5-11. This lesson is the climax of the story and the ultimate lesson from the book of Jonah. How will we respond to the compassion of God and ultimately will we have the same compassion toward others?

Lets read the first four verses and look at Jonah’s prayer first:

Jonah 4:1–4 ESV

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 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. 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’s immediate response to the pagan’s ridding themselves of evil (ra’ah) and God relenting of the disaster He was going to do to them was anger. It was a lack of compassion. In the Hebrew the word displeased is that word (ra’ah) so it literally says It was exceedingly (gadol) or very greatly evil to Jonah what God had done. The pagans got rid of their evil and are now in harmony with God who got rid of the disaster, but Jonah here is full of evil hate and anger and is once again out of sync with God.

I wonder if we ever respond in a similar way when our enemies receive grace and mercy. We are okay with grace being poured down on us. We welcome it with open arms! But do we expect the same for those we find it hard to get along with? Do we do the same for our enemies? Jonah was perfectly fine with God relenting from disaster when he was the one who was facing it, but not so much when it was the Ninevites. We need to be careful not to react the same way. God’s grace is free for all who turn from their evil ways and bow before Him, the Creator and Sustainer.

Now, in verse 2 Jonah tells us why he fled to Tarshish in the first place. He knew that the God is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster. Jonah knew what the Scriptures say. When we studied Joel we say the same description of God in Joel 2:13. This description is taken from Exodus 34:6-7. This is following the golden calf incident. Moses intercedes on behalf of the people to the Lord asking Him to relent of the disaster that would come upon the people of Israel, and God does relent. In verses 6-7, God passes before Moses and proclaims,

Exodus 34:6–7 ESV

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

This is the character of who God is. Jonah knew this and it was the steadfast love of the Lord that apparently caused him to not go to Ninevah in the first place. He knew God would relent. Jonah never had good intentions toward Ninevah. He was filled with so much hate. The irony, once again, is that this steadfast love of God is the source of Jonah’s anger in chapter 4, but it was the source of his thanksgiving in chapter 2. When the steadfast love of God was extended to Jonah he rejoiced, but when it was extended to Ninevah he is filled with anger.

Now, we need to go easy on Jonah a little. After all the Ninevites were evil people. They were barbaric and ruthless. The Ninevites during this time were the world’s most fierce terrorists. Today they might be our ISIS or Al Queda. That’s a scary thought. I want to read an excerpt from The Pouting Preacher by Michael Whitworth:

“Roughly 2,700 years ago, the name and face of terror in the known world was the Assyrian Empire. History tells us that the Assyrians were a cruel and heartless people who thought nothing of burying their enemies alive, skinning them alive, ripping out tongues and testicles, impaling them on sharp poles under the hot sun, and raping the women (and this is just the PG-13 version). Buildings would be razed to the grounds, and salt would be sown in the fields to render them unusable. In one of his battle accounts, Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (c. 885–860) boasted: 3000 of their combat troops I felled with weapons. … Many of the captives taken from them I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some (of these) I cut off their hands to the wrist, from others I cut off their noses, ears and fingers [?]; I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers. … I burnt their young men and women to death. I fixed up a pile (of corpses) in front of (the city’s) gate. I flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the piles. … I flayed many within my land and spread their skins out on the walls. 2 Erika Bleibtreu sums up the Assyrian’s record of state-sanctioned violence, “It is as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know.” 3 The prophet Nahum corroborates these Assyrian war crimes: “Everyone has felt your endless cruelty” (Nah 3: 19 NCV).”

Later, Whitworth says, “Jonah is really about a pouting Israelite prophet who preached God’s grace, which he had no intention of personally practicing. Jonah’s story is about our response to evil and terror in the world- not anger and judgement and bitterness, but love and mercy and a zeal to show grace to those blinded by hate.”

If we were called to go and preach a message of grace, knowing God’s steadfast love, to our enemies would we be any better than Jonah? This is a lesson we must learn. God’s grace is free and available, and not just for us, but for anyone who chooses to repent and turn to Him. We are not called to love those who are like us, who think like us, and who speak like us and hate those not like us. Instead, we are called to love our neighbors and our enemies with the same love God shows us in Christ.

Gordon Wilson

Let me illustrate this in another way:

Let me show you a picture of a man named Gordon Wilson. Gordon Wilson is an Irishman, passed away now. He lived in the town of Enniskillen, Northern Island. In 1987... late 80s, [in] Northern Island...was at the height of the conflict between the British who was still basically a colonial power over the Irish, and then you have the Irish who were resistant against British rule, and so on. [The name of the resistant group against the British is] the IRA. The Irish Republican Army. But Gordon Wilson, he was an Irishman who was a follower of Jesus, he did not endorse the IRA and he was not behind them.

The town of Enniskillen had a little town square, he worked in kind of the downtown area doing a drapery business. Family’s doing drape and window dressing business. Britain has an equivalent to a memorial day called Remembrance Day. It’s in November and it’s the way in honoring theBritish soldiers who died in the two world wars. And so Gordon Wilson went with his family to the town square of Enniskillen and unbeknownst to him and all the people there, the IRA had sent people to plant bombs in different buildings around the town square, and during the Remembrance Day ceremony, those bombs went off.

The number of buildings around the town square collapsed, and walls caved in on groups of people that were there. And among them were Gordon Wilson and his family. And he and his daughter were caught underneath a wall that collapsed and were there for many hours and after a number of hours, they were both trapped next to each other, both pretty injured, and they were able to talk during that time. When they were pulled out, Gordon’s daughter did not survive through the night, but Gordon did. And about two days later, the BBC came and did an interview with different survivors. And the interview with Gordon Wilson went viral.

It caught the attention of the whole world because of what he said. And William Uri who recounts the story this way. “No one who heard Gordon Wilson will ever forget what he said in that interview. His grace towered over the miserable justification over the bombers. Speaking from his hospital bed, Wilson described his last conversation with his daughter, “She held my hand tightly and she gripped me as hard as she could, she said, 'Daddy, I love you very much.’ Those were her last, exact words to me and those were the last words I ever heard her say.”

William Uri said to the astonishment of listeners, Wilson went on to add, “But I will bear no ill will. I will bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring her back to life. I will pray tonight and every night for the men who did this that God will forgive them. No words in more than 25 years of violence in Northern Island had such a powerful, emotional impact.”

A year after, to commemorate the Enniskillen bombing, Gordon Wilson held a public event where he invited public representatives of the IRA to come meet with him, and he invited news crews to all show up there, and because of his faith in Jesus Christ, he announced that he forgave his daughter’s murderers. And he begged the IRA to stop the violence.

Wilson later became a senator when the Irish gained independence, and he is still a towering figure to this day. One of the later presidents of the Irish Republic, Mary McAleese talks about the legacy that he left and she puts it this way, so interesting.

She said, “Gordon’s words, they shamed us all and caught us off guard. They sounded so different from what we expected and what we all have become used to. They brought us stillness with them. And they carried a sense of the transcendent into a place that has become so ugly, we could hardly bare to watch.” But Gordon had his detractors. And unbelievably, he even received bags of hate mail. “How dare you forgive?” people demanded. “What kind of father are you who can forgive your daughter’s killers?” It was as if Gordon had spoken those words of forgiveness for the first time in human history.

As if Christ had never uttered the words, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” One out-spoken critic who was a Christian said to me about Gordon Wilson, surely the poor man must have been in shock. As if offering love and forgiveness is a sign of mental weakness instead of spiritual strength.

Did you see that here? You know people name their daughters Grace and we sing songs about grace and whatever. And we think this is a beautiful thing. But there actually is this real scandalous side to it when grace, the wideness of God’s mercy begins to include people that we hate. Begins to include people that we despise or has wronged us or that we think don’t deserve it. And then it’s really, really disturbing, this whole grace thing. This is what Jonah 4 is about. It’s not so crazy. He’s depicted as ridiculous, yes. But the motivations that are behind Jonah’s critique of God’s grace are the same that motivated Gordon’s detractors. How would you respond in a similar situation?

When we resolve to behave pouting like Jonah we might just have a response like his. In verse three Jonah says,

Jonah 4:3 ESV

Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

The word for “my life” and “to live” also occur in Jonah’s first prayer in chapter 2. In verse 6-7 Jonah says,

Jonah 2:6–7 ESV

at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Again, ironically, when God extends the same mercy to the Ninevites as he does to Jonah, Jonah wishes his life would be taken. What a sad and bitter way to respond!

God responds with a question, “Do you do well to be angry?” or, is it right for you to be angry. For Jonah, a man who loves justice he might respond with a resounding, “Yes! It is right for me to be angry if justice is the only way good can triumph evil!” We can be very similar at times. We seek for justice alone without giving though to grace. Thankfully, God does not feel the same way and aren’t you glad for that!

To the same question we answer, “No, it is not right for me to be anger if grace and love are more effective in transforming the world.” Let our grace abound as God’s grace abounds, and leave the justice to Him. After all, Romans 12:19-21 says,

Romans 12:19–21 ESV

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Jonah 4:5-11

Let’s read the rest of the story and find out the lesson Jonah learns about compassion:

Jonah 4:5–11 ESV

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. 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. 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.” 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?”

Jonah is still hopeful that the destruction will come, so he goes outside the east gate of the city and sets up a “booth” for himself. This is a sort of shelter for Jonah so he could watch the impending disaster over Ninevah. But this shelter does not have a top to it, so Jonah is hot and uncomfortable. God causes a plant to come up and provide Jonah with both physical and emotional comfort. All throughout this story we see God’s providential hand at work in causing the sea and waves to rage, the fish to swallow and spit out Jonah, the plant to grow up, the worm to eat it away, the scorching east wind to come upon Jonah, and His grace and salvation to be seen throughout.

Notice Jonah’s reaction to this comfort that comes from God. Verse 6b says, “Jonah was exceedingly (gadol) glad!” This is once again a contrast to verse 1 and Jonah’s exceeding unhappiness. It shows again the irony of how Jonah was so displeased and angered at the covering and salvation God provides for the Ninevites contrasted to his joy and gladness to the covering and salvation God provides for him.

Next, God causes the worm to come and devour the plant. The plant has perished and Jonah is once again angry enough to have a death wish, “It is better for me to die than to live?” he says.

This is quite impactful. Throughout the entire story Jonah fails to have any concern or care for anyone perishing away. Finally, Jonah is concerned over something perishing, but ironically it is the plant. It isn’t the 120,000 people who are spiritually and morally unaware of their ways. Jonah is concerned over this plant withering because he is more concerned for himself than anyone or anything else.

So, God asks him the same question, “Is is right for you to be angry?” And Jonah’s selfish response is, “Yes, and I am angry enough to die.” Jonah is very dramatic. But God teaches him a humble lesson. Jonah if you can be this concerned about a plant withering, a plant that you had nothing to do with its growth you only benefited from its supply than why shouldn’t I have compassion over a people who I created and who are in need of righteous teaching and comfort?

The final words are quite interesting. God says if you can’t be concerned over the 120,000 souls in Ninevah then can you be concerned about the cattle? This question is a bit comical as if to say, “Well Jonah since you were concerned about a plant are you willing to have compassion on animals? Of course, the question is left unanswered and we have spoken about the reason for this.

The question is unanswered because we, the readers, get to answer it. Will you respond like the Jonah of chapter 4 or the Jonah of chapter 2? Will your prayer be one of gratefulness for God’s all encompassing love and grace that brings salvation, or will your prayer be an angry prayer?

The Whale Pulpit

It used to be a common occurence in Eastern Europe to build pulpits in the shape of an upright whale. In order to take his place as a preacher, the preacher had to enter the interior of the pulpit at the base, climb up a ladder through the belly of this whale, and then come into the open mouth and deliver the sermon. This architecture is so accurate. Every true gospel message is a resurrection that arrives after a passage through the belly of a fish.

In other words, we all must go through the belly of the fish before we are adequately prepared to deliver the message of Christ. If we want to teach love, mercy, and grace we need to feel and experience love, mercy, and grace.

For all of us who have been baptized into the Lord we have done precisely this. We die to our worldly, selfish, old selves when we go under the waters into the belly of the fish. But being lifted out of the water, vomited from the belly, and resurrecting into the newness of a body in Christ we experience firsthand love, mercy, and grace. The love of God to send His only begotten Son to die on the cross for our sins, the mercy of a Savior who mediates on our behalf to the Father asking Him to relent from the disaster that we deserve, and the grace found in the Spirit, a gift we just do not deserve. I hope and pray each of us will make our journey through the belly of the fish and come out a new creation willing to do the work of the Lord and show the compassion of the Father even if it is to our enemies.

We began this lesson asking a question. how will you respond? Will you play in the world or pray to God? Which Jonah will you be? How will you finish this story? The choice is ours, I hope we all make it ours in Christ Jesus.