Jonah: God Loves the People we Love to Hate

“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” (Jonah 3:10, ESV)

a. Assyria is a violent and wicked nation, and Nineveh is it’s capitol city

1) at the height of their power they controlled most of the modern Middle East

2) they have oppressed, conquered, and subjugated all the nations around them — including Israel and Judah

b. Assyrians were universally loathed

1) Jonah’s hate for and loathing of the Assyrians is obvious throughout the book

2. it’s easy to hate people who are not like us

ILLUS. It is within human nature to love to hate. Because we live in a post-Genesis-three world, hatred is part-n’-parcel of our nature. America is going through a sea-change right now. A profound and notable transformation is taking place. In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. A quarter of a million people packed into the Washington Mall to listen. Literary critics are virtually unanimous that it was the greatest speech delivered by an American in the 20th century. Among the most quoted lines of King’s speech was "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" He encouraged America to live up to its basic creed — “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

That speech resinated with the American people. Civil Rights legislation advanced, and racism became untenable in the broader culture. King was right, Americans must not judge each other by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And Americans have worked hard to do so. We are not a racist nation.

Today, however, Critical Race Theory, seeks to take us back to a time when we did judge people by external characteristics rather than character. It’s only going to get worse. It began, I believe, with President Barak Obama, who saw almost everything through the prism of race. A man who had a profound opportunity to put a stake in the heart of racism, seemed to do almost everything he could to resurrect it. Within the space of a dozen years we’ve seen a re-emergence of hateful rhetoric and violent behavior between ethnicities. Many Black Americans seem convinced that every morning a White cop wakes up, their soul ambition is to shoot a Black man. The result has been riots in the streets of America. We’ve seen a huge spike in violence against Asian Americans — mostly perpetrated by Black Americans. Conservative Blacks are routinely criticized as “Oreos” by liberal Blacks and attacked. Jewish Americans and Palestinian Americans are clashing in America’s great metropolitan cities. The elites hate the deplorables, and the deplorables have little use for the intelligentsia.

3. my point is that it’s becoming tolerable to love to hate people who are different than us

a. the Body of Christ must oppose any movement that would divide the Lord’s Church according to color or external characteristics

4. Jonah had two complaints with God

A. JONAH COMPLAINS THAT GOD HAS SPARED NINEVEH

1. the prophet is shown as having his own personal pity party

a. Jonah is pouting like a five-year-old who doesn’t get his way

b. he leaves the city, finds a comfortable spot on a hillside, and waits for fire and brimstone to rain down and obliterate the city and its inhabitants

1) judgement serves them right

c. but God does exactly what Jonah was secretly afraid of

“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.” (Jonah 4:2, ESV)

1) God grants the gift of repentance, has mercy on the city, and does not destroy them

2. Jonah had preached the shortest revival message in history — just five Hebrew words that translate as, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown”

a. rather than ridiculing the prophet of God; rather than throwing him into prison and torturing him as an enemy of the state; the Ninevites do the unexpected

1) they begin to mourn over their violent ways

2) they begin to pray

3) they begin to repent

b. from the King on his throne to the beggar in the street the city begins to experience a great spiritual awakening

3. and Jonah is incensed

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

a. this is an incredible statement; literally it reads “It was exceedingly evil to Jonah”

b. now think about that

1) Jonah is not merely angry with God, he chastises God for being too compassionate

4. Jonah then does the unthinkable — he asks God to take his life

“Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”” (Jonah 4:3, ESV)

a. Jonah doesn’t want to live in a world where God loves the people Jonah loves to hate

b. in Jonah’s mind, saving Nineveh as evil, but sticking him dead was good

c. Jonah’s hate was really, really messing up his values

ILLUS. In the New Testament, we a similar event, but with a far different ending. In Acts chapter ten we have the story of Cornelius meeting the Apostle Peter. The text tells us that hours apart, but in different cities, God is giving a vision to two different men. Cornelius is a captain in a Roman Legion. They are described as devout and God-fearing. During his prayers he has a vision. An angel commands him to send for a man named Peter currently residing in Joppa. After the vision Cornelius sends men to find Peter.

In Joppa Peter is on the roof of Simon the tanner’s home. He, too, has a vision. Three times he sees a tablecloth lowered with all kinds of animal, many of them non-kosher. Three times a voice says “kill and eat” and three times Peter says, “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.” Actually, he says “Surely not. I’ve never eaten non-kosher food. And three times the voice says in return, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

The friends of Cornelius find Peter and persuade him to come to Caesarea, a forty-mile trip — two and one-half days. Upon arrival Cornelius tells Peter about his vision and Peter then tells him the story of Jesus. Peter concludes by saying “All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Peter’s response to all this is a transitional moment in the proclamation of the Gospel and the life of the Church. Peter says, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean ... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:” (Acts 10:34, KJV)

d. I wonder, in the back of my mind, is Peter thinking about Jonah?

1) here is Peter’s moment ... he sees God pour out the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and his family

2) is Peter going to “get it”? is Peter going to rejoice in the salvation of Gentiles or is he going to “pull a Jonah” and curse God for His compassion?

B. JONAH COMPLAINS THAT GOD HAS NOT SPARED HIS SHADE

1. while Jonah is waiting for something to happen ... preferably a rain of fire and brimstone, the prophet has made himself a little brush arbor for shade

a. we don’t know what time of year this event takes place, but if it’s summer it is horribly hot in that part of the world

ILLUS. Average daily high temperature in Baghdad, Iraq is 98 degrees.

b. to add to Jonah’s relief from the heat God provides a leafy plant to grow up supernaturally fast over Jonah’s little brush arbor

1) and Jonah was very happy about the plant — he spends a happy day thinking about terror, mayhem and death of the Ninevites

c. but the very next morning, God provides a worm the gnaws through the stem of the plant causing it to quickly wither

1) but that’s not all, now God provides a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint

2) all the Nineveh remains intact ... no fire and brimstone ... not earthquake cracking open the earth and swallowing the city

2. and for the second time Jonah tells God “Just kill me”

3. it is now that we arrive at the moral of the story

a. God chastisers His prophet

“But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” ... “ (Jonah 4:9a, ESV)

b. Jonah’s answer is unbelievable

“ ... And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”” (Jonah 4:9, ESV)

ILLUS. God has got to be saying to Himself, “Oy vey, this schlemiel just doesn’t get it.” Schlemiel is Yiddish for fool. Yiddish also has a word for idiot which is what Jonah is being. The Yiddish word for idiot is idiot!

c. Jonah is angry about Nineveh’s survival, he’s angry about God’s compassion, he’s even more angry about the loss of his shade and the wind-burn and sun-burn that resulted

4. God’s response is a rebuke

“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. 11 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 4:10–11, ESV)

a. now, here is the rebuke ... God tells Jonah “Jonah, if you can love the vine that much, can’t I love the people of Nineveh that much? Jonah, you can love them with me or you can love your prejudice. Which will it be?”

5. and with that the story ends

a. it’s the proverbial cliff-hanger

b. what does Jonah do?

1) does Jonah repent of his attitude? does he eventually rejoice at God’s compassion or does he slink back to Israel pouting at Nineveh’s survival

II. GOD’S COMPASSION

1. Jonah knows that God is a compassionate God

2. there are three things the text is telling us that help us understand what it means when we say God is compassionate or merciful

A. HIS HEART IS VOLUNTARILY ATTACHED TO US

1. this word, compassion, shows up in verse 2, where Jonah calls God compassionate is a word that actually means to grieve

a. it means to mourn over someone who you love who has died

1) it's a very strong word

2) it means to have your heart broken

3) it means to weep

2. what God is saying here is, "Jonah, you got your heart attached to the plant so that when it died, you died. Your heart was so attached to it that what affected it affected you."

a. then God amazingly turns around and says, "You had compassion on the plant. Well, I have compassion on people. I have compassion on this huge city."

b. as Jonah grieved over the plant God grieved over the people of Nineveh

3. theologically, we know that God is complete in Himself

a. within the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is complete unity and complete fellowship

b. God does not need anyone or anything to be complete or to be happy

c. that begs the question, “Then why does God set his love on sinners?”

1) and the only answer is that He choose to ... God voluntarily attaches Himself to those whom He choose to love

4. that’s compassion

B. HE IS MOVED BY OUR CONDITION

1. look what God says, "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons … who do not know the difference between their right hand and left hand …" ?

a. it's a way of saying they are spiritually blind, they're spiritually lost, and they don't know how they should live their lives

2. God looks down at that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual confusion, that spiritual blindness, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn't say, "You idiots. You blew it in the Garden. And you’re blowing it now. I wash my hands of all of you."

a. He has compassion ... He's moved ... He's grieved

b. that's the second aspect of the word mercy or compassion in the Bible

1) it means to be moved by someone's trouble, moved by someone's problem, moved by someone's condition, their suffering, or their difficulty, and to want to do something about it

“For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”” (Romans 9:15, ESV)

2) the words mercy and compassion here are both verbs — these are not just feelings that God has toward us, but actions God takes toward us

3) God mercies us and He compassions us

C. HE FORGIVES READILY

1. that's what has gotten Jonah so upset. Right?

2. the Ninevites do not take on the law of Moses ... They don't get circumcised ... They don't join Israel ... They don't wholeheartedly come in under the law of God and say, "Now we're going to live for you." ... They don't enter into a covenant with God

a. all they say is, "We're sorry. We'll try not to be violent," and God forgives them

D. GOD’S ULTIMATE COMPASSION IS SEEN IN THE LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF HIS SON JESUS CHRIST

““O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”” (Matthew 23:37–39, ESV)

Con.

God is a God of grace. “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20, ESV)

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