Jonah: The Antihero
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There has been a growing trend in the last decade or so to make movies and T.V. shows centered around the villains of classic stories. It began for me when Disney made a movie about Maleficent, the villain of Sleeping Beauty. As time went on, I noticed a shift where kids were more interested in dressing up as Darth Vader rather than Luke Skywalker, or the Joker and not Batman. There is even a T.V. show called Villains that I have no interest in watching. These films and shows are like anti-hero stories and the more I study Jonah, the more I understand he is not the role model in the story.
Last week we left off with Jonah traveling to Nineveh to proclaim to them that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown. While he was faithful to do his job as the Lord called him to do, he held out hope that God would bring judgment. The book’s shocking moment comes when the people of Nineveh actually turn to God and believe in Him. The king calls everyone to turn back to God in the hope that He will relent and turn away from His anger.
As we now arrive in chapter four, we see how Jonah responds:
But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry.
He prayed to the Lord and said, “Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.
“Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.”
Jonah knew, based on God’s character, what God was going to do. He knew he was going to spare the Ninevites. Jonah had developed such a hatred for the people of Nineveh that he would rather die than see them come to repentance and follow God. This reveals much about Jonah’s attitude.
Jonah is hard-hearted. He’s quite a jerk. Here he is throwing a pity party for himself because God didn’t do what he wanted him to do.
Then God answers Jonah:
The Lord said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?”
Notice that Jonah does not answer God. Instead, he leaves the city.
Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city.
So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant.
But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.
When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.”
Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.”
Notice the compassion God had for Jonah in spite of his attitude. As upset as Jonah was, he went outside the city and set up camp to see what would happen to the city. The Ninevites are turning to God for salvation, but maybe this new trust in God will be short lived. After all, we like it when we call out to God to save us from trouble, but when things cool off and we feel safe again, we have a way of turning back to the things that got us in trouble in the first place. So maybe this is what Jonah is waiting on. It’s like he is saying to himself, “Alright Nineveh. We’ll see if this attitude lasts. When it doesn’t and God brings His destruction against you, I’ll be here to see it.” So Jonah constructs a shelter for himself (some translations call it a booth), which was typically made of branches twisted together with a roof of sorts made of leaves.
Then we have this strange story about God providing a plant for Jonah which provided shade for him from the heat of the sun. Jonah is comforted by this, but the next day God allows it to wither and Jonah gets angry again. There is much debate as to whether this story is true, but we discussed in chapter one that a supernatural God can do supernatural things. If He can speak the universe into existence, he can accelerate the growth of a plant if He wants to. The story does not specify the type of plant, but it seems clear that this is a matter of divine intervention. The important part is why God did this.
The story about the plant presents a final act of compassion for Jonah. It illustrates further the character of God. God is compassionate to both those who have not known Him and those who know Him but with bad attitudes. The two times Jonah is grateful in this whole story are when he is saved from drowning and when the plant provides some relief from the sun’s heat. Both of these things were provided by God in a moment when Jonah needed them.
God knows what you need and wants to give it to you.
God knows what you need and wants to give it to you.
Even in times where we are rebellious or in times we have a bad attitude, God still knows what we need and wants to give it to us. God is gracious and merciful sometimes in spite of our attitudes. Jonah was so mad that he was ready to die but God wouldn’t give it to him. This is not what Jonah needed. What Jonah needed was grace and compassion long enough to understand that he is the problem.
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
Jonah is not the hero of the story here. He ran from God and his assignment, risked the lives of the sailors aboard he ship headed to Tarshish, obeyed God only after being swallowed by a great fish, then was mad at God for doing what God does. Jonah is not the hero. He is the antihero, the character the story centers around but possesses no heroic qualities. There are a number of people to look up to in the Bible. You have Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Daniel, Ruth, Esther, he disciples, Paul, and ultimately, Jesus. Jonah is not one we look up to.
The book ends in a somewhat puzzling fashion since God raises questions that don’t receive answers.
Then the Lord said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight.
“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 and left hand, as well as many animals?”
Oh the irony! Here Jonah is said to have compassion on the plant, which he did not work for or cause to grow, But he is mad at God for having compassion on the Ninevites who he did cause to grow? The whole lesson in this book is to demonstrate to the reader the hardness of his own heart.
And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”
The Jewish audience forgot their whole mission was to be a light to the nations around them. They forgot their true purpose. They forgot they were supposed to be the prime example of what it looked like to be called God’s children. So while the book is not a story about Israel on the surface, we see in God’s dealing with Jonah, it is. It tells us about the heart of a nation who forgot whose it was.
This sounds very similar to the parable of the unmerciful servant. Do you remember the story? A servant had a massive debt owed to the king but the king forgave the debt instead of throwing him into prison. The servant, having just been freed from his debt, finds a fellow servant and begins choking the life out of him demanding repayment of a debt that was tiny in comparison. When the king hears about this, he throws the servant in prison. He who is forgiven much forgives much.
Don’t be like Jonah.
Don’t be like Jonah.
Jonah the antihero is not a man we should emulate. Rather, his story reveals to us the kind of people we are when God does not do what we want. When we don’t get our way, we have a way of throwing a fit like Jonah.
Signs you have become like Jonah:
When we think God works for us, we have become like Jonah.
When we forget that our mission is to proclaim the gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth, we have become like Jonah.
When we think the church is there for us and not us for the church, we have become like Jonah.
When we forget that the church is a place where broken people come to find healing, we have become like Jonah.
When we forget that all people matter to God, we have become like Jonah.
The church exists for the sole purpose of proclaiming freedom from sin and its bondage found through Jesus Christ. When Jesus was in Nazareth, one day he entered the synagogue and read from Isaiah 61:1.
And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.
And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The ministry of Jesus is our ministry. Every one of us has been called out and commissioned to share the good news of Jesus to everyone we can. Our personal feelings cannot stand in the way of that. Have you become like Jonah? Do you need to confess an attitude to the Lord today?