Jonah - part 5
August 16, 2009
As we look at the final chapter of the story of Jonah, we need to remember this is a story about a man who was reluctant to follow God’s plan for him. One thing we tend to forget is that God wasn’t calling a non-believer to do something difficult, but God was calling one of His prophets to do something. A man who knew the voice of God and who had a very intimate relationship with God.
Jonah has always been one of those fun stories for kids to learn about in Sunday school because of all the drama, but this is really an adult story, with an adult message. Most people who are believers in Christ, consider themselves pretty good people. They usually attend worship, give some money, give some time; and you may be thinking “I’m not so bad. To some degree, I’m trying and I care about God’s agenda, as long as it agrees with mine.” So many Christians think this way, yet, that’s not the right way. You see, if we were to look at Jonah, we would consider him a good Christian, too. He heard the voice of God, he did the work of God, he sometimes followed God, and he prayed.
As a quick background, Jonah was called by God to preach to a place called Nineveh, in Assyria. God wanted to give these people a chance to repent and if they did, then God wouldn’t bring destruction upon Nineveh. Jonah’s problem was that the Assyrians were some of the cruelest people in the world. Everyone hated them, and within about 40-50 years, they would destroy the very nation where Jonah lived.
So, Jonah ran, and boarded a ship to the other side of the world. Then God sent a huge supernatural storm to stop Jonah. Jonah finally confessed to the sailors the storm is on account of him and tells them to throw him overboard and the storm will stop. Eventually they throw Jonah overboard, the storm stops, and the nonbelieving sailors become believing sailors in Almighty God. God then sends a huge fish to swallow Jonah and rescue him. Eventually after 3 days the fish barfs Jonah onto dry land and once again, God tells Jonah, go to Nineveh, which Jonah does. Everyone, including the king repents and God has mercy on them and doesn’t destroy them.
So, that’s where we are . . . now let’s get into chapter 4 . . . which starts off with Jonah complaining to God. Listen to how Jonah felt —
1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 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.
I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
Isn’t this amazing? The very thing Jonah needed in his life when he was sinking and dying was provided by God. God was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and overflowing in love, who didn’t allow Jonah to die in the sea. Jonah was saved, and then the very God who saved him, saves the Ninevites because they also cry out to God. But Jonah’s angry. Jonah needed grace and God gave it, now God gave grace to someone else, but Jonah was intensely angry and furious at God.
So Jonah says, 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
4 But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
Doesn’t Jonah sound like a spoiled 3 year old? Ever been there with a child, let alone sometimes we hear adults complain and complain, when they should be grateful to God?
So, what does Jonah do? You gotta love this guy, because if you don’t love him, you want to beat him. At least our righteous part wants to, our sinful part, identifies with him. So . . .
5 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.
Do you know what Jonah was doing? He was waiting for God to destroy the city. He didn’t think they would stay good. So, he built himself a shelter and waited for the heavenly nukes to start falling upon Nineveh.
6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. Of course Jonah’s happy, God provided for him!
7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint.
He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live." 9 But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" Now catch Jonah’s response, "I do, I am angry enough to die."
10 But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
11 But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
And Jonah said . . . NOTHING. The book just ends. We want an ending, don’t we? It’s like a movie that suddenly ends, and we don’t know what happens to the main characters, and we’re left to make it up ourselves. Did they or didn’t they?
Did Jonah suddenly get it - did he cry out to God, “OMG, Oh my goodness, now I get it. Oh God you’re so awesome, I love it, I love you!!” Or did Jonah sit there in the heat waiting and wanting to die, until he finally does. Or here’s a good made for TV ending, better yet some wicked Assyrian sees him and cares for him and nurtures him back to health and they lead him back to a relationship with God.
The book of Jonah ends and he is no hero. He’s more like a spoiled kid. He loves to take from God, everything he needs from God and receives is good, but he was unwilling to give those same things to others who needed it. Jonah could have made a long list of people he knew, even other nations who would be worthy of God’s grace, but the Ninevites wouldn’t be included on his list. But God didn’t agree with Jonah’s answer. So, the Ninevites were invited to God’s party.
So, I want us to look at a couple of points as we try to live as Christ followers. With the final question being, how do we deal with the Ninevites in our lives?
1. The first thing we need to remember is to look at the kind of God we have.
In verse 2 Jonah gives us a wonderful description of God’s character. We talked about it last week,
God is slow to anger, abounding in love, gracious and compassionate and who relents from sending calamity.
Please hold onto these words. They are so true and so important in our lives. We love the fact that God offers us Himself. We all want God’s grace, compassion, His overflowing and abundant love, for God be slow to become angry and to relent in bringing about our destruction? I want that!! I’ll be first in line.
But when we come across people who we think are our enemies or the enemies of God, we forget about this verse. I want to give you another verse about God’s character, it’s in Ezekiel 33:11 - - God said, ’As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.
Now, if we were to be honest, there are people we can think of who we think deserve to go to hell for the way they lived their lives. You could come up with all types of reasons they shouldn’t experience the grace of God. They’re the wicked people, they’re our worst enemies, and God’s. They are our Ninevites.
Yet God says, He takes no pleasure in the destruction of His people. He wants us to turn from our wickedness and find real life in God. Ever notice, we love to hear stories about people after they’ve had a God sized conversion experience. Those are great stories, but God wants us to love the people before they have that great conversion experience. That’s the kind of God we have.
2. We need to remember the kind of people God invites to His party.
Think about the people invited to have an intimate relationship with God —
Think about the family tree of Jesus. Because He’s the Messiah, He could’ve picked His family tree. And if you look at most family trees there’s at least one black sheep in every family. There’s someone who you joke about being in the family and if possible, you would leave them off the list and forget about them.
By the 12th chapter of Genesis we meet Abraham, who is not only the father of many nations. He’s the father of the Jewish people. Out of his line would come Jesus, the Messiah. Yet, when we think about Abraham, there’s something we often forget about, he was an idol worshiper. He didn’t know God, he knew wood carvings and statues and worshiped demonic gods. Abraham wasn’t looking for God, but God wanted Abraham so He called Abraham, and invited him to the party.
In chapter 1 of Matthew, we see a geneaology of Jesus. There are some pretty interesting people on that list. It starts with Abraham and moves on from there.
When you look at verse 5, we read, “Salome was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.” We talked about Rahab on Mother’s Day. Rahab wasn’t the ideal person to have in your family tree. She was a woman of the night, a call girl. Yet, God invites her to the party and even wants her to be part of the family tree of Jesus, the Christ. How cool is that! If she can be part of that tree, so can I.
Just a little later we read about Ruth, who was a Moabite. She wasn’t a Jew, and anyone with “ITE” at the end of their name was an enemy of Israel. People like the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites were enemies. Ruth was part of the lineage of an arch enemy of the people of God. Yet, God invites her to the party to sit at the head table with Jesus. She’s in the family tree.
We even see people like David invited to the dance. The great king David, the one whom God said, David was a man after His own heart. The guy who wrote some amazing psalms, including Psalm 23. Yet, David had an affair with a good looking neighbor lady, named Bathsheba. And as it went, she became pregnant and David freaked out, so he ends up having Bathsheba’s husband killed to hide the fact that Bathsheba was pregnant. So, think about it again, God picked an adulterer and murderer to be part of the family of God.
And isn’t that what got Jesus in trouble? He hung out with sinners, he didn’t sin, but he loved to hang out with them, to show them what real love was like. Because to the Jews, these people were just as bad as Ninevites. So, Jesus picked tax collectors like Matthew and Zaccheaus, then the great early missionary named Paul, who before God called him, was killing all the early followers of Christ.
That’s the kind of God we have and the kind of people He invites astounds us, because we forget about the people God invites. And sometimes, admit it or not, we become angry at the people God invites to His party.
But we forget that God has also invited YOU to the party. That’s right you and I are invited to join the party with everyone else.
So, we need to ask ourselves, am I more like Jesus or Jonah? The more I follow Jesus, the more committed I become, am I becoming more like Jesus or more like Jonah?
So, how do we get around all of this and avoid the Jonah trap? How do we build into our lives the ability to be slow to anger, overflow with love, to be gracious and compassionate; and to relent upon sending or even wishing for calamity upon others?
Can you identify some of the Ninevites in our lives? Who are some in your life?
Let’s start with someone who has hurt you. They’ve done something which in your opinion and maybe in the opinion of others was terrible. Jonah knew the Ninevites. They were mean, cruel, and godless people and in his opinion they deserved to burn. They were evil. They would never change. He believed it and knew it.
We can include anyone who isn’t like you. People who dress differently, look different, maybe they smell, their not your color, they’re bigger or smaller. They just aren’t like you, so you look the other way. I was really proud of our ladies at the Women of Faith conference last week. They had about 10 extra lunches and both days they left the safety and comfort of Conseco Fieldhouse and found homeless people and gave them lunch. It’s not always easy to walk up to someone who lives on the street, they can be our Ninevites.
Our Ninevites are people who we have a disagreement with. We may not agree with their stance on something, they said something or did something we didn’t like. Maybe it was a brother or sister in Christ, and now we’re giving them the cold shoulder. How dare we desecrate the holiness of God and Christian fellowship by doing that. But we do, don’t we?
How’s that for a start. We can add to it. What if we move on a more national or international scene. How about muslims. Most Christians don’t like muslims. We believe they hate the west, they hate Christianity, and all that we stand for. And that hatred is returned. They’re our Ninevites.
We can look at political figures. Depending upon what side your on, one side hates the left, while the other side hates the right. We argue and bicker and look foolish.
We hate abortionists and gay activists. They’re also our Ninevites. So, we want all of them to burn, and aren’t always happy when they get that second chance from God.
So, what we can do?
We can seek to love others by demonstrating Christ’s love as Jonah believed it was handed out. We can be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and overflowing with love.
You see, our biggest issue is ourselves. We get in the way of loving others, showing kindness and grace.
I believe so many people are dying a slow and painful death and the cancer which has invaded their body is a spiritual cancer. It is called RESENTMENT.
Resentment occurs when we have a deep bitterness and ill will towards someone. Another word for resentment is malignancy, which goes along with the spiritual cancer theme. So, resentment, then, is the opposite of graciousness, compassion, being slow to anger, overflowing with love, and gentleness.
Resentment is when I won’t let go. It’s where Jonah lived. When Jonah hoped God would nuke the Ninevites.
So, how do we move beyond resentment in our lives?
Accept the love, grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. That’s the only answer. Don’t just believe it in your head, you must believe it in your heart. We can have all the intelligence in the world, but if Christ does not live within us; in our heart and in our spirit, then we won’t get over our hurts. We will remain bitter forever. Now there are lots of ways to deal with anger, and we’ll talk about anger and forgiveness in a series later this year or at the beginning of next year.
But folks we need to work on this. It’s not easy. It’s hard, because it means we must relinquish control. Sometimes we must confront others, and it’s no fun. But it leads to spiritual and emotional growth, and that is what Christ followers are supposed to do.
We give love to others, because we have experienced Christ’s love. We must bathe in it, drink it in, let it soak into our hardened hearts and celebrate, really celebrate who Christ is in our lives, embrace the love, accept the spiritual power at our disposal, and become passionate about the gift Christ has given us.
And friends, we must do it everyday! Ask for it again and again and again and again . . . and the great news is . . . God will give it to you again and again and again and again, just because you believe and you ask.
Then we can go into the world as new creations no longer with a Jonah attitude, but with a Christ attitude, and that changes the world. Last night we saw a little bit of our world changed because we took a risk, we had Jesus hearts in a Jonah world.
That’s what I live and love to see.
