Jonah: Trying to Run God

Just a quick review this week and then we’ll get into Jonah 4.  The book of Jonah was written roughly 3000 years ago by the prophet Jonah.  A couple of the key themes we find in this book are God’s sovereignty – the fact that he is in control, and the belief that God cares for all people, even sinful people like the wicked Ninevites, and even disobedient people like His follower Jonah.  In Jonah 1 we saw Jonah get called by God to go and preach repentance to Nineveh.  Jonah in his disobedient prideful bigoted mind thought that wasn’t the best plan for his life, so he hopped on a boat going 2000 miles in the opposite direction.  Rather than let Jonah run off in his sin, God gets Jonah’s attention by nearly sinking the boat he was on with a great storm.  The sailors on that boat all become followers of God, and they throw Jonah overboard to save their own lives.  Chapter 1 closes with a great big fish swallowing Jonah.  Chapter 2 was Jonah talking with God in prayer from inside the fish.  Jonah tells us how he was about to die, and realized that he could only be saved by God.  He cried out to God, and God answered his prayer.  Jonah repented of his sinfulness, and at the close of chapter 2 the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.  In Chapter 3 Jonah makes his way to Nineveh, where he walks up and down the streets preaching a simple message – “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”  Nineveh hears this warning, and the entire city repents from the king on down to the livestock.  As we start in chapter 4, remember that at the end of last week all of Nineveh had repented, put on sack cloth for clothes, and begun fasting with the hopes that God would not destroy them and their city.  Because the Ninevites hadn’t been worshipping Jonah’s God, the One True God, they were uncertain at this point whether or not God would relent.  That brings us to today, Chapter 4 of the book of Jonah.

Jonah’s Objection

Jonah calls this conversation a prayer.

In a sense, he is speaking with God

But in reality he speaking to God and complaining. He had an attitude - he was angry

Jonah literally hated what God had done. As God’s anger and judgment were averted in chap. 3, Jonah’s anger was incited. Why was Jonah’s reaction so negative?

Failing to recognize God’s sovereign plan, he missed the joy of the situation.

I can admire one aspect of this prayer

Jonah was honest with God

By speaking honestly, he opens a window into his heart

Inside this prophet of God, we see a black poison that tinted his perspective on the work of God at Nineveh

The word “I” or “my” occurs no fewer than nine times in the original. Not only does this prayer show an extreme selfishness, but it also indicates Jonah’s shortsightedness.

I Said

Jonah 4:2 KJV 1900

And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

He tried to correct God, but the Lord didn’t listen

Apparently, Jonah has lectured God when the Lord initially called him to go to preach in Nineveh.

Jonah informed God that Nineveh deserved judgement and that he was the wrong man for the job.

Jonah wanted God to conform to his wishes

Not vice-versa

I think it is often foolish to believe that we can convince God that He doesn’t know what He is doing in His treatment of others or His calling of us.

I Fled

When God refused Jonah’s request, the prophet took matters into his own hands

Jonah decided to thwart God’s plan by refusing to participate.

His confession clearly revealed his heart

He ran from God because he did not want the Assyrians to even have a chance to repent

We see this a lot in our churches today.

We know that God has commanded us to reach out to all people

But we have a hard time reaching out to those not like us

We simply don’t try to reach others

We ignore our calling and disobey God

I Knew

Jonah was mad because he knew God was always good

This seems like a really silly thing to be upset/mad about

I usually get mad when I feel like something bad was done to me

Can I tell you that I rarely get mad when someone does something nice or good for me?

But then I am reminded of times in my life when God has blessed others

And my response to those things

Jonah understood the fairness of God’s love for a sinning world

He knew that God is merciful

He knew that God is compassionate

He knew that God is slow to anger even in the face of sin

He knew that God is rich in faithful love to those that are unlovely

He knew that God is willing to relent from sending judgment on those that repent

He was mad because he could not change God’s attitude towards sinners

Jonah hated the Assyrian sinners

God loved the Assyrian sinners

The prophet refused to see them as God saw them

As candidates for grace.

Take my life

Jonah valued his reputation more than God’s

The prophet petitioned God to take his life because he felt the lost his credibility with the Jews by preaching to their enemy

To Jonah, his reputation was more important than compassion on those that are perishing in their sin

Although Jonah repented and submitted to God in the fish

Pride and prejudice are like all sins of the flesh

They find themselves becoming inflamed again

Less than 40 days later Jonah was back to his old self

He was outwardly obedient while inward rebelling

We must guard against returning to the pig pen of our past sins or we will find ourselves in the mud again

Jonah’s complaint against God’s goodness reveals his misplaced, ungodly, and deep-seated values.

God’s Object Lesson

Have you ever met a hardened criminal?

We hear of their brutal activities and concluded that they are monsters

But then a person’s mother or neighbor testifies that this criminal was a good father or a gentle person

How can a person demonstrate such radical personalities

It is a divided heart

In August of 2007, a mass murderer was apprehended in the Northwest. The person most deceived was his wife. She had no idea that her gentle husband had brutally murdered a number of women.

God asked a pointed question to Jonah

Essentially is it right for you to be angry?

It is as if God is saying ““Jonah, I had every right to kill you for disobeying me. In fact, I had more right to destroy you than I did the Ninevites, because you knew about my righteous requirements and chose to disobey anyway. They did not know, and although they were living in sin, they were ignorant of my requirements. Now that they know, they have repented of their sin and so I have turned from my wrath. You still have not repented of your sin, and I am still being gracious and patient with you. Have you any right to be angry?”

While he was not an axe-murderer, Jonah had a divided heart.

On the one hand, he was God’s spokesman for morality.

On the other hand, he was full of hatred and contempt

God knew it

God used a plant to show Jonah his heart

As we read of this plant, we are reminded of God’s sovereign rule over nature

Jonah Hopes God will change his mind

The 40 days of which he had spoken of probably had not yet happened.

He was waiting to see if God was going to judge them despite their repentance

God used a plant to comfort the prophet

God used the worm to intentionally destroy the comfort of Jonah

God sent a scorching wind to disturb Jonah

God asked Jonah a difficult question

Do you have the right to be mad about the death of a plant

Jonah cries, that he has a right to be mad

Keep in mind that Jonah did nothing to grow this plant

He did not own the land that the plant was on

The plant belonged to God

God asked this question to show Jonah how misplaced Jonah’s values were

Jonah cared more about his personal comfort than for the people of Nineveh

Jonah cared more about the plant/vine than for the people of Nineveh

He had a divided heart

Judson Mather wrote, "Life for Jonah [is] a series of disconcerting surprises and frustrations. He tries to escape from God and is trapped. He then gives up, accepts the inevitability of perishing, and is saved. He obeys when given a second chance, and is frustratingly, embarrassingly successful. He blows up; his frustration is intensified."

God’s Objectives

God had two objectives in some of the things that we see happen with Jonah

He wanted to correct Jonah’s lack of compassion

Jonah had no right to get angry over the plant and yet be unmoved by the people that needed grace and mercy

Jonah had just experienced that which he loathed to show the Assyrians

He didn’t want to show forgiveness and mercy

He needed to clarify His love and compassion

God is not a respecter of persons

Salvation is offered to the worst sinner imaginable

If I am honest, this book ends extremely strange.

The story could have ended in chapter three with “God has mercy on Nineveh”

That wasn’t the end

Because the story is not about Nineveh

Jonah is about God and his dealings with a man whose heart is cold

Jonah wanted the city to be destroyed

He did not care for anyone in the city

He cared for a plant

Jonah, look what you are saying. You did not cause the plant to grow, and yet you loved it and wanted it to survive. Neither did you cause Nineveh to grow, and yet you want it to be destroyed. And Nineveh is full of 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left. In other words, they are ignorant about me and about my requirements. They do not know good from evil. Yet if you had to choose between 120,000 people and a plant, you would pick the plant? The book closes with one final question from God: “Shall I not be concerned with that great city?”

We do not get an answer from Jonah.

We do not know what his response was. We do not know if God got through to Jonah’s heart. We do not know if Jonah repented of his ways.

We do not know if Jonah learned his lesson. Because the text is not primarily about Jonah. Most people think this story is about God’s love for other nations.

It isn’t about that, or the story would have ended after chapter 3.

A few people think that this story is about God working on the mind and heart of a prophet of Israel.

The story is not about that either, because we are not told how Jonah responds.

The story is about you and me. The text leaves us hanging because it asks the question, “What about you? What would you do if you were in Jonah’s place? What does God see in your heart?”

Who do you hate? What do you love? What are your priorities? Do you love your car, sports, or making money more than you love your family? Are you more concerned with how you look, or the clothes you have than the welfare of you neighbors? Are you more concerned with your personal security or comfort than helping others who might be overseas or who might need to hear the Gospel?

Here is the question the text asks of you: What are you concerned about? What is God concerned about? Do these match? If not, you better look at your heart, because God’s concerns do not change, and he is on a mission to change your heart. He is not so much concerned with where you are, or what you do, but in who you are. The question is not “Where can God use me the most, but where can God change me the most?” God’s will is not necessarily a place, but a heart or a character. Who do you hate? What does God want of you in regard to them?

The real reason for the book of Jonah is NOT letting Gentiles know his mercy, as most teach. Jonah is about God’s mission to the heart of a man. This is often the most difficult mission to undertake. The text leaves us hanging on whether the mission was successful or not. The reason: what about you? What is your heart condition? Sometimes God asks us to do things, not necessarily because he wants them done, but because he wants to first and foremost work on our heart, and teach us something about him and his character.

Americans tend to think we have been “blessed” due to our intelligence, creativity, hard work, and our devotion to God. We excuse ourselves from sharing our wealth and prosperity with others by convincing ourselves that other nations suffer because they lack the righteousness we have. While other nations, such as Indonesia that we are going to hear about this week, lavish is poverty and starvation, we assure ourselves that they poverty is a result of their worship of false gods. We think it’s simple, but in the final analysis, it is self-righteousness.

We Christians condemn many sins in America today — sexual immorality, lying, drug and alcohol abuse, pornography, crime — but we tend to tolerate, even praise someone who is self-righteous because we see it as having a good “self-image.” We must remember that Christ came to seek and save the lost, and those that disdained and avoided Christ were those Pharisees and religious leaders who were self-righteous. They had their act together, and yet they missed the One who was the reason that this act was put together. Do not miss out on God’s grace because you think you have deserved it. Grace is not earned, but is given to those who know they do not deserve it.