Jonah 4:1-11 - Compassion > Anger
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Introduction:
Anger is a difficult emotion to control. I think there is something about anger that we like. We feel empowered. Adrenaline starts flowing through our veins and we feel like we can accomplish anything. Our pride usually swells and all of the sudden we become like God in our own eyes. We see ourselves as righteous and the other person as the transgressor. We see ourselves as right and the other as wrong.
Compassion is different. Especially when it involves our enemies. Compassion takes on a humble attitude and values the other person more than yourself. Ephesians 4:32 says it well:
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
The word tenderhearted means compassionate as well. True compassion comes from a place that realizes that we are all sinners and in need of forgiveness. When someone sins against us or is an enemy of ours, true compassion sees them as someone in need of the same forgiveness that we were in need of when we were saved by Jesus. This is an impossible place to come to without Jesus Christ working in our hearts. The very thought of loving our enemies and having compassion on them seems outlandish. Yet, that is exactly what Christ commanded.
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
Today, we are going to see Jonah struggle through anger while God shows compassion to his enemy Nineveh. I pray that we can learn from God’s life lesson for Jonah today.
Let us pray.
Prayer
Today we are going to discuss how we should respond to the Lord’s mercy and compassion on others - especially those we may see as our enemies or adversaries. The first is:
I. You Shouldn’t Resent the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (1-5)
I. You Shouldn’t Resent the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (1-5)
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.
We see Jonah’s true colors come back in verse 1. We are told that it displeased Jonah here. This word displeased is actually a stronger word that we see in English. Jonah actually says that he thinks what God has done is evil - or very evil when taking into account the word exceedingly as well. I’m sure just the thought of Jonah saying that God did evil makes us all want to brace ourselves for the wrath of God about to be poured out on this rebellious prophet of the Lord. Interestingly and mercifully however, God continues to allow Jonah to live!
What is it that God has done that Jonah refers to as evil? It is referring to chapter 3 verse 10 where we see that God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to Nineveh. This mercy of God displeased Jonah.
Jonah goes so far as to be angry with God. He argues that he knew this is what would happen and that is why he fled in the first place.
Jonah starts railing against God and quotes a frequently cited verse in the Bible in verse 2 here. It comes from Exodus 34:6:
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,
Note that Jonah does put a little spin on this by adding the phase relenting from disaster at the end of his rough quote from Exodus.
I want us to pause for a second here.
Note that the same mercy that saved Jonah’s life when he deserved death and that led to a wonderful prayer of praise in chapter 2 is the same mercy that Jonah resents now. The mercy that let him as a sinner off without death is now being offered to his enemy and he is angry because of it.
I am sure we can see a double standard here.
It is really easy to see this double standard in Jonah’s life. But what about yours?
Do you struggle when God is merciful to others? Especially when it is that certain man or woman or boy or girl?
Young people - do you struggle when that kid down your street who is disrespectful and unkind gets the bike that you spent all summer saving up for and they just got it for no work at all? Or even bigger - you get that older used car you have been saving up for and working so hard for while your neighbor down the street who is mean to you gets a brand new Mustang convertible even though he has never worked a day in his life!
Adults - do you struggle when that fellow employee gets the promotion you got 5 years earlier than you did. You know they aren’t even a kind person and don’t give their job nearly as much energy as you do.
Or how about the time you got your speeding ticket forgiven and received a warning and were overjoyed but when your enemy has the same thing happen you sound the alarm that there is corruption in the police force and you demand justice to be served!
These feelings come from a heart of sin. They come from a heart filled with hatred toward someone around us. 1 John 4:20 gives us a tough word regarding this:
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This verse lets us know that we cannot hate our brother and love God at the same time.
Friends we have to deal with this struggle with God’s power and ask Him to give us compassion to those who may have wronged us. We must move past our feelings of hatred or resentment and move forward in love and compassion even for those who hate or persecute us. Let us emulate God here and not Jonah. Let us not resent the mercy and compassion of the Lord.
Moving forward to the next couple of verses:
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 anger at God’s action has gotten so out of hand that it has caused him to wish he were dead. As Douglas Stuart says in his commentary:
“Rescue was all right for Jonah, but not for that important enemy city. A world in which God forgives even Israel’s enemies is a world Jonah does not wish to live in.”
Douglas Stuart
I find it incredibly interesting that when we get to verse 4 that God has completely ignored Jonah’s request to die. He goes straight toward Jonah’s heart.
Do you do well to be angry?
We see God being incredibly merciful to Jonah again here. He didn’t answer back with lighting from heaven. He didn’t reign fire down on his head. He asks a probing question that is meant to get Jonah to think more deeply about his sin.
Jesus did this so often in the Scriptures. People would say certain things and ask questions, but Jesus would always go after the heart. God is consistent throughout the Scriptures in this way.
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.
Kevin Youngblood, in his commentary on Jonah shows a consistent symbolism in the Scriptures regarding the direction east. Oftentimes, the direction east was a sign and symbol that the person was not doing what was right. Adam and Eve were banished east of the garden (Gen 3:24), Cain settle east in the land of Nod after killing his brother (Gen 4:16), the builders of the tower of Babel were moving eastward when they stopped to built the monument to their fame (Gen 11:2), and Lot when he separated from Abraham traveled east toward Sodom (Gen 13:11).
Now we have Jonah going east of the city and making a booth for himself. The author wants us to know that Jonah is going the wrong way. Instead of taking God’s question in verse 4 and reflecting on it and allowing the Word of the Lord to change his heart - he hardens his heart and sets up shop to hope that his argument with God would somehow manipulate God to destroy this enemy city.
Sadly, Jonah keeps resenting the Lord’s mercy and compassion. Instead of resenting, you should...
Scripture References: Ephesians 4:32, Matthew 5:44, Exodus 34:6, 1 John 4:20; Genesis 3:24, 4:16, 11:2, 13:11
II. You Should Receive the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (6)
II. You Should Receive the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (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.
Here we see God sovereignly working again. In verse 6 we see some grace from God yet again upon Jonah as He provides a plant to provide shade for Jonah as he rests there. Apparently, the booth or temporary dwelling that Jonah had built in haste wasn’t very good at keeping the sun off of him because this plant that the Lord appoints provides much relief for Jonah. The area surrounding Nineveh wasn’t the best place to find great timber and building materials! In fact, Nineveh had to import such building materials. So we can assume that his booth was somewhat underwhelming.
Interestingly, now Jonah goes from exceedingly angry and displeased to exceedingly glad. I think one could infer here that Jonah might be thinking that God’s grace in this plant means that He is agreeing with Jonah and just might destroy Nineveh after all. Since God is showing grace to him then God must be pleased with him.
My friends, let’s stop right there and apply this to our own lives.
There is a philosophy and worldview called consequentialism that is ruining our nation today. It is also ruining our churches.
The classic definition of this term is this per the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The moral rightness of acts…depends only on the consequences of that act.
Per The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In other words, if you do something and good things happen, then the act must be morally right.
Jonah is buying this lie here. He is enjoying the grace of the Lord through this plant and is assuming that God must be in agreement with him now and will go through with the destruction of Nineveh. Boy, is he about to learn an important life lesson in our next point as we approach verses 7-11!
But I want to make sure you learn this lesson as well. If you are given a promotion at work - that doesn’t always mean that God is pleased with you. You may have gotten that promotion by fudging on some numbers and bending your ethics. Then again, maybe you did earn that promotion and were above reproach.
However, the important lesson is that God does not always bless what is good and curse what is bad on this side of eternity.
We needn’t look further than the life of Jesus Christ to see that! Christ died on the cross! No one has ever been sinless other than Christ and his consequence was obviously a bad one by earthly standards!
Churches can do this as well. A pastor may be considered successful if the church grows. He must be preaching the Word well because the church can’t even fit people in the seats alloted! They have standing room only now! This is not always the case my friends. Yes, sometimes God does choose to bless a Bible-preaching and believing church in this way and praise God for that! I pray that for us - that we see countless lives saved through our ministry here at CrossPointe. Yet, many times, people reject the Word of God. Many times, churches who hold fast to the Word end up smaller than others that bend their theology toward humanism and preach what itching ears want to hear and avoid all of the difficult passages of Scripture.
My friends, may we never buy into the theory of consequentialism. May we judge whether something is right or wrong by the Word of God.
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible,
The light of God’s Word shows whether something is right or wrong.
Jonah here recieved the mercy and compassion of the Lord. We should as well. Yet, may we not do it blindly and assume that we are right with God and sinless just because He is showing mercy to us. May we receive His mercy and compassion all the while obeying and measuring our obedience by the light of His Word.
In our final point we see that...
Scripture References: Ephesians 5:13
III. You Should Respect the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (7-11)
III. You Should Respect the Lord’s Mercy and Compassion (7-11)
But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered.
After enjoying this plant’s shade for a day the Lord sovereignly appoints something else. He appoints a worm to destroy the plant.
We saw the plant that was given which was God’s undeserved grace and mercy. Now we see the tide turn. Now Jonah faces judgment from God. This seems cruel at first glace. Why did God give Jonah the plant and then take it away? We will see in a moment that God is about to use this as a life lesson for Jonah. God is getting ready to reveal Jonah’s sinful hypocrisy.
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.”
Jonah was basking under the shade of his booth and God’s appointed plant the day before. But now Jonah feels the heat. The plant is gone. And God sovereignly works again to put even more pressure on Jonah. He appoints a scorching east wind.
Many commentators think that this wind that was sent is the same wind that occasionally comes in the Middle East. It is called scirocco (sir-ah-co). Scirocco is a hot wind with so many positive ions that it affects the neurotransmitters in the brain leading to exhaustion and depression. The Septuagint - which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament - translates this scorching east wind as a “scorcher.”
God is working on Jonah at this point with His divine discipline.
Jonah is definitely someone who requires an extreme form of discipline. He has already had to be almost completely drowned and then swallowed by a great fish for 3 days in order to obey the Lord. And now it is taking him to the point of dehydration and heat stroke for him to speak back to the Lord again. Note, we haven’t seen Jonah speak again since verse 3 where he said he wanted to die. He has left Yahweh hanging after Yahweh asked Jonah if he did well to be angry. And it is obvious that this thought provoking question from God has not been pondered in Jonah’s heart.
And Jonah begins again where he left off in verse 3. He wishes to die again.
God, again, ignores Jonah’s death wish and asks Jonah the same question but includes the plant in his question. Do you do well to be angry for the plant. Jonah finally answers back in raw emotion. That he is angry and angry enough to die.
Let’s see how God responds to end this great book...
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 gives a lesson here to Jonah. He compares the plant dying to the destruction of Nineveh. He pities the plant but how much more should he pity the people of Nineveh who have repented and are still ignorant of the truth that has been revealed to Israel.
God is showing the duality of Jonah’s logic here. Jonah is angry when he faces judgment from the Lord and overjoyed when he is shown grace and mercy. Yet, Jonah has the exact opposite response when the same is shown to others.
We see here that God states that the people of Nineveh do not even know their right hand from their left. This does not mean that these people are not still guilty of sin.
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
We see here in Romans 1:20 that the Ninevites knew in their heart that there was a God. They were living in rebellion toward Him. Yet they were ignorant of the Pentateuch. They were ignorant of the Law of God. Ignorance is not an excuse for sinners as they are still in rebellion of what they know to be true in their conscience. But this ignorance and their response of repentance at the Word of God - has lead to the mercy of God.
For those of you who are animal lovers - we even see God mention the innocent cattle that would be destroyed if He rained down His judgment from heaven on Nineveh. God cares about all of His creation. And may this be a lesson that we need to steward well the animals God has entrusted to us. He obviously cares about them as well.
Scripture References: Romans 1:20, James 2:13
Conclusion:
As we come to a close, we have a very important lesson we can learn from this great chapter. I think the author intentionally left us hanging at the end so that we could apply this book to our own lives well. We are not told whether Jonah repented and turned toward the Lord again or not.
But we can determine how we are going to respond to the mercy of the Lord. We can allow God to give us concern for those around us who are lost - even those around us that are our enemies.
L.C. Allen makes the following statement:
“A Jonah lurks in every Christian heart, whimpering his insidious message of smug prejudice, empty traditionalism, and exclusive solidarity. He that has ears to hear, let him hear and allow the saving love of God which has been outpoured in his own heart to remold his thinking and social orientation.” - L.C. Allen
I pray that this difficult quote ruminates in your mind for a bit. Think of all of the people that you struggle with right now. It might be religious reasons, political reasons, social reasons, or even personal reasons. Maybe someone hasn’t been kind to you. Maybe they took advantage of you in some way. Maybe they hurt you deeply in a way that you can’t even express right now. There are many reasons that one might struggle with praying for God’s mercy and deliverance for another person.
I pray that as we end this message today, that we ask God to give us a better view of His mercy and a deeper understanding of how much we needed it as believers. Those of us who are saved have been given eternal life freely through the sacrificial death, burial, resurrection, and work of Jesus Christ. We have been saved by grace through faith and not by works.
If we truly understand and have open eyes to see how little we deserved that grace and mercy - it will help us understand how much our enemies need it as well.
If you are not a believer, this grace and mercy and compassion from God in the form of salvation is available to you as well! Only repent, or turn from your sins, and place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and you can be saved.
I’d love to chat with you if you need to know more about what it means to follow Christ. I’d also love to chat with you if you need prayer regarding praying for God’s mercy upon your enemies or those who have hurt you.
And may we always remember that Compassion is Greater than Anger.
James 2:13 says it well:
James 2:13 (ESV)
For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Let us pray.
Prayer
If you would like to learn more about salvation through Jesus Christ or want to obey Jesus by obeying the first commandment of a believer in going through the waters of baptism - please let me know.
Have a blessed week.