Big Idea #1: Whoever and wherever you are, God’s love is pursuing you.
(1) God’s love pursues those who are against Him (like the people of Nineveh).
(2) God’s love pursues those who are uninterested in Him (like the sailors).
(3) God’s love pursues those who are disobedient to Him (like Jonah).
Big Idea #2: God desires mercy for sinners, not judgment.
(1) God gives us a warning.
(2) God allows us to respond (rejection or repentance).
(3) God desires to show us mercy.
Jonah’s Anger vs. God’s Love
“You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy” (Micah 7:18b). When God’s anger stopped, Jonah’s anger started.
“But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry” (4:1). Why? See 3:10.
This verse can also be translated, “To Jonah it was a disaster, a great disaster. He became angry.” For Jonah, it is a disaster that the Ninevites have averted a disaster.
“He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish” (4:2a).
“What I said” is literally “my word.” Jonah boldly counters “the word of the LORD” of 1:1. “My word” was correct, claims Jonah, and God’s was ill-advised.
Jonah is focused on himself. “I” or “my” occurs no fewer than nine times in the original.
Big Idea #3: God loves everyone…including our ENEMIES.
Remember: God is HURT by our enemies’ sins more than we are.
“The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6). God weeps over the sinful world.
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (1:1).
1. God’s nature is to LOVE.
“I knew that you are…” (4:2). The sailors (“Maybe,” 1:6) and the Ninevites (“Who knows?” 3:9) hoped what Jonah had known all along: God is love.
a. He is “GRACIOUS.”
b. He is “COMPASSIONATE.”
The primary meaning of this word is “to be soft like a womb.” It is illustrated in the soft compassion of a mother for her child in the womb.
c. He is “SLOW TO ANGER.”
The Hebrew expression means “forbear, continue long, be patient, postpone anger, tarry long.”
The implications of such a God: It means that evil will endure longer on the earth, for God is slow to anger.
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
d. He is “ABOUNDING IN LOVE.”
This is the more intense word for love in Hebrew (hesed) and is best understood as God’s “unrelenting love,” which is God’s covenant commitment to His people. With this unrelenting love He binds Himself to His promises to them.
It is translated in modern Hebrew as “grace” but most often in the English Bible as “steadfast love.”
Psalm 136 declares in each of its twenty-six verses that this loyal love of God “endures forever.”
God gave Hosea a marriage metaphor to illustrate this kind of abounding love. Note Hosea 2:19: “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.” He tells Hosea to marry a prostitute and to be faithful to her as an example of God’s faithfulness to a faithless people: “The LORD said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is love by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes’” (Hosea 3:1).
The nearest equivalent word in the New Testament is agape, translated “unconditional love.”
Both God’s OT “covenant love” and God’s NT agape communicate God’s unrelenting love for the human race.
e. He “RELENTS FROM SENDING CALAMITY.”
“Relents” (naham) is one of the two kinds of God’s compassion in this verse. “Compassionate God” (raham) is a gentle womb-like compassion of God for His good creation; naham is an agonizing compassion of God in relation to a sinful humanity.
“Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (4:3).
“Over my dead body” is Jonah’s reaction to God’s grace.
Jonah’s words echo the prayer of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:4: “Take my life.” Instead of continuing “I am no better than my fathers,” Jonah adapts it to “for it is better for me to die than to live.” Elijah, wearied with his endless struggle with idolatry, was convinced that he would not succeed where his fathers had failed, and so felt that it was time to join them in death. Jonah is disappointed with the very success of his mission.
“But the Lord replied, ‘Have you any right to be angry?’” (4:4).
This question is the most important in the book of Jonah. “Any right” here means “Is it causing good [tob] that you burn with anger?” The Lord wants to know if Jonah’s anger results in any good. This is a moral question more than a legal one.
2. God’s love is always “UNFAIR.”
Jonah’s prayer is similar to the Prodigal Son’s bitter complaint (see Luke 15:11-32).
a. Nineveh did not deserve to be saved by God’s compassion.
b. Jonah did not deserve to be saved by the fish and the vine (“provided,” 1:7; 4:6).
c. We do not deserve to be saved by the CROSS.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
3. God’s love extends to EVERYONE.
“Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city” (4:5).
Jonah’s shelter (sukkah) is reminiscent of the shelters built in the desert by the Israelites as they wandered for forty years. God commanded that these shelters be built every year as a remembrance (the Feast of Booths, Tabernacles) of God’s provision for His people during those years of wandering (Lev. 23:39-43; see Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Deut. 16:13-15).
In Zechariah 14:16 the Feast of Booths is to be the celebration for the ingathering of all nations to Jerusalem to worship God. It’s ironic that Jonah is sitting in a booth hoping that Nineveh will be destroyed.
Jonah’s Concern for the Plant vs. God’s Concern for Nineveh
God provides an object lesson in order to demonstrate His love (4:6-8).
“But the LORD said, ‘You have been concerned about this vine… Should I not be concerned [to pity, have compassion] about that great city?” (4:11).
The Lord was only doing for Nineveh what Jonah had insisted he had the right to do for a plant.
• Jonah “did not tend [the vine] or make it grow,” but God CREATED the people of Nineveh.
• The vine “sprang up overnight and died overnight,” but the people of Nineveh had ETERNAL SOULS.
• There was only one vine, but there were 120,000 people in Nineveh.
God would have every right to spare Nineveh if only because of the animals in it! They alone would be worth more than was the vine Jonah had become so attached to.
Conclusion/Application
The book of Jonah ends with an open question: “Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (4:11). The open question is not the end of the story. We are challenged to consider that God’s concern must also be our concern.
How concerned are you about the lost…including your unsaved enemies? Do you get more concerned about things that break than people who die without Christ?
THE JOURNEY OF JONAH
God’s Universal Love
Jonah 4
Big Idea: God loves everyone…including our ___________________.
Remember: God is _______________ by our enemies’ sins more than we are.
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (1:1).
4. God’s nature is to ______________.
f. He is “_____________________.”
g. He is “_____________________.”
h. He is “_________________________________.”
i. He is “_________________________________.”
j. He “______________________________________________.”
5. God’s love is always “________________.”
d. Nineveh did not deserve to be saved by God’s compassion.
e. Jonah did not deserve to be saved by the fish and the vine.
f. We do not deserve to be saved by the ______________.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
6. God’s love extends to ____________________.
“But the LORD said, ‘You have been concerned about this vine… Should I not be concerned [to pity, have compassion] about that great city?” (4:11).
Jonah’s Concern for the Vine vs. God’s Concern for Nineveh:
• Jonah “did not tend [the vine] or make it grow,” but God __________________ the people of Nineveh.
• The vine “sprang up overnight and died overnight,” but the people of Nineveh had _________________________.
• There was only one vine, but there were ________________ people in Nineveh.
How concerned are you about the lost…including your unsaved enemies? Do you get more concerned about things that break than people who die without Christ?
