I Am Jonah
Part 4: Who Am I?
Pastor Ryan Akers
Last message of the series. The theme for today is questions. The title of the sermon is a question, God will ask Jonah two questions in this chapter and I will also finish by asking a question. Lots for you to ponder as you listen and then reflect later.
Jonah 4:1- If you’ve been here for these messages then you know the story very well, if not then I’ll give you the quick version. Jonah is commissioned by God to go to the Ninevites and warn them that if they don’t repent and turn from their wicked ways within 40 days they will be destroyed. Jonah doesn’t want to give the message(he hates the Ninevites) so he runs, God sends a fish, Jonah reflects for 3 days and nights. The fish spits him out and Jonah obeys. His heart still doesn’t seem in it or at the very least he still doesn’t seem to care about the future of these people because he tells them they will be destroyed in 40 days not that they will be destroyed unless they repent. Regardless, the people repent and they hold out hope that God will see their repentance as genuine and will relent which he does. Now, Jonah is angry. He wanted Ninevah destroyed. They are a wicked, violent, and cruel people. Jonah felt they deserved the wrath of God. Jonah 4:2-Funny that he prayed. We only see him pray twice. First is in chapter 2 when he is thanking God for saving him, granting grace towards him and forgiving him for his disobedience. But then in chapter 4 his prayer of thanksgiving and worship becomes an angry rant of complaints about God’s goodness and how he hated that God showed grace to the Ninevites.
I have rarely heard of someone who would get angry because God chose to show them mercy. I don’t think I know any pastor who would complain that through their preaching God changed thousands of lives. That’s why we preach. Each week I stand up here hoping and praying that even one person will be transformed for Jesus Christ. That one person will be touched, convicted to change, to repent, to make their life right by living for Christ rather than their individual selves. If God used my message in the way he used Jonah’s I wouldn’t be sulking I’d be rejoicing. But it only made Jonah burn with anger which is ironic considering that as a prophet Jonah’s life mission was to proclaim God’s Word for the purpose of changing people’s lives.
At the same time we might be able to empathize with Jonah a little. If after killing 6 million jews Hitler became a born again Christian, we would have to believe that god would forgive him otherwise you can’t say that Christ death was sufficient or that Christ shed blood covers the sins of ALL who believe but rather just some who believe. Would it be incredibly difficult for us to accept that Hitler is forgiven and as a believer would be in heaven? Absolutely it would. It might even make us sick to our stomachs to imagine that he was spared and is in heaven. Essentially it was the same with Jonah for the Ninevites. To imagine them being spared after all the cruelty they had done is, in his mind, unacceptable. They are unforgiveable.
Now, what I consider the point of the book is right there for us in the second part of verse 2. Jonah says, “I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.” Jonah never wanted to go to Ninevah because He knew what God was like. He knew that if they repented God would relent. God would forgive. Why? Because unlike humans who are only sometimes merciful, sometimes compassionate, sometimes loving, usually quick to anger and slow to love God is ALWAYS merciful towards us. He is ALWAYS compassionate. He is ALWAYS loving, and patient. God’s desire is that none of us would perish but that all of us would come to repentance and a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Will everyone in this world who hears about Jesus believe and come to a saving faith in Jesus? No. But God hopes that all of us would.
God doesn’t see anyone in this room as hopeless. You may have had people give up on you your whole life but God has never given up on you. God sent Christ to die so that we might be live. His grace is beyond comprehension, his love is beyond our understanding and his patience for us is unmatched. Jonah knew that and so he ran. And when he did obey he still showed no grace. And when God relented he got angry. So angry in fact that he wanted to die. Jonah 4:3. Now, God could have just struck him dead like he did to Ananias and Saphira in Acts but, God doesn’t get angry with jonah. He doesn’t get impatient with him although, after all Jonah has done, he would certainly have a right to be. Instead God continues to grant grace to a graceless man. The way God deals with Jonah only confirms what Jonah knew about the character of God. He chooses instead to challenge Jonah’s emotions and reaction with a question.
And this question I believe is for us today as well. Jonah 4:4. Again, God doesn’t seem to be angry when asking the question. It seems to be much more of a, “What gives you, the guy I just showed a huge amount of underseved mercy and grace to, the right to be angry at me because I chose to show that same mercy and grace to others?” “Why are you better than them?” When you look at the big picture of this book you definitely see an us vs. them mentality. God can save us but he can’t save them. God can show grace to us but not to them. Believe it or not we also do this. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Jonah 4:5-9. Jonah doesn’t listen. He still holds out hope that God will destroy. He is being selfish, self-centered and incredibly stubborn. He is blinded by hate. He refuses to see the world as God sees it and instead sees it as he wants to see it. God then, despite Jonah’s continued attitude, shows him more grace by doing another miracle. As Jonah is waiting for God to destroy the city God sends this plant to shade him. Jonah is thankful for the plant, he’s happy. Why? Because it benefits Jonah. Then God sends a worm and it eats the plant and he sends a storm that would have been 110 degree air and winds and dessert sands blowing on him and Jonah again gets mad because he lost his shade and protection from the wind and sand. He is upset that the plant died and God tries to get him to think by asking…Jonah 4:9. “So you think you can be angry because I showed grace and you also think you can be angry because a plant that you had no control over died?” This just reveals the spiritual immaturity and childish attitude of this so called prophet. He cares more about a plant perishing than he does about a people.
If there’s anyone in this story who has a right to be angry it’s God. Jonah has no right to be angry. It is God who hates sin. God hates evil and violence more than we ever could. And yet, it is God, not us, who exercises patience providing an opportunity for even the most wicked of people to repent and seek Him. It’s also God who continues to give Jonah chance after chance even though he doesn’t deserve it. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.
Then we see the wrap up of this book in Jonah 4:10-11. God is calling him out. Basically saying how he cares so much about something that he had nothing to do with(the plant). He did nothing to put it there he had no control over it and yet he has the chance to save thousands and thousands of people from eternal punishment and he’s mad? Here’s why this last part is such a powerful statement by God when you understand it in context. It mentions 120,000 people. God wasn’t saying there were 120,000 total people there were hundreds of thousands of people. The 120,000 that God speaks of are the children. A different translation of that verse says, “But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" God is speaking of the children. Is Jonah so angry and so merciless that he would even say the children deserve to die? Even though they aren’t yet mature enough to know right from wrong good or evil or even their right hand from their left? Not to mention all the animals that did nothing wrong.
This is a brutually honest picture of who we so often are as humans. The more that I read about this man the more I relate to him. That’s a confession that isn’t easy to make. Most of us, especially if we consider ourselves Christians would do or say whatever it takes to not be in the same group as Jonah. From what we’ve read over the last several weeks we have seen several things about this man that we don’t want to categorize ourselves as being. Jonah is angry. He is blantantly disobedient to God’s will. He is self-righteous believing only certain people should be shown grace and forgiveness (Ninevites are enemies of Israel- only God’s chosen should be shown grace not those pagan worshippers). He is graceless, merciless, unforgiving, unrepentant, and unrelenting. Even when he does obey he does it begrudgingly. He still has no grace. He still hasn’t changed. It looks like he’s changed in chapter 2 but that chapter seems to be written sometime after this experience has ended which does give me hope that in the end Jonah genuinely did change. And maybe that’s why the book is left with an unanswered question. I choose to believe since we know Jonah to be the author of this book that after God challenged him in chapter 4 he saw his error and sins. Perhaps he wrote this book to teach us what not to do and how not to treat people while at the same time he wanted to emphasize just how amazingly patient, loving and gracious God is and how amazingly short we as humans come to God’s standard.
Which of us would honestly want to confess that in who I am right now as a person I am just like Jonah? I doubt any of us. But, I think that if we looked at Jonah and who he was and take an honest look at who, many times, we are as people, as individuals and even corporately as the church we would see we are just like Jonah in more ways that we care to admit. Aren’t we, like Jonah, quick to hold a grudge? Seriously, aren’t we more apt to get mad at someone for something they did and then instead of showing grace, offering forgiveness or even talking to them about it we would much rather form a gang of people around us who think like us, who will agree with us and who will talk bad about that person. Yes we are.
Aren’t we, like Jonah quick to gossip, quick to unfriend( I don’t like what you did so you know what you just lost facebook friend status), quick to express anger(lebron james- I’ll show you! I’ll burn my own clothes!), quick to judge (every homosexual is headed to hell, every person who aborts a baby is evil, every immigrant is here illegally and should be deported)?
Aren’t we, like Jonah, disobedient to God? Honestly, how many in here follow God’s will 100% of the time in everything you think, say and do? Aren’t we more apt to be selfish, quick to be happier that people got what they deserved rather than happy they were shown grace and when that grace is shown we get angry? They don’t deserve grace. Case in point: Brett Favre. Let’s stop and have some therapy for our packers fans right now. It shocks me how many people get excited when this guy gets hurt. 3-4 years later people are still hurt, people still feel betrayed, people still hope he gets sacked play after play, that he’ll retire that ESPN will quick talking about him( I agree with that one). You mention his name now and it’s like he killed your first born or something. Seriously? This is what happens when we pin our hopes and place our faith in an imperfect, sinful human. They will ALWAYS let you down. Humans don’t make great heroes or saviors. You will somehow some way get hurt and let down. And so for thousands of fans even 3 or 4 years later they hold a grudge and wish this guy, who most of us have never met, some form of harm or embarrassment.
The point is…We do hold grudges, we do act selfish, we do disobey, we do hate, judge, take revenge, retaliate, boycott and just like Jonah act like babies sit on a rock and throw a fit when things don’t go our way. Jonah says, “Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.” Really? Your hate is so intense that you’d rather die than see God do a miracle of redemption of the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at once? Yes, he would. And sometimes we would too. That’s a major problem because acting like Jonah means I am willing to extend grace to others only when I feel like they are worthy to receive it even though God has, because of his unfailing love, granted me grace over and over and over again even though I don’t deserve it either.
Romans 3:10, “No one is righteous—not even one. 11 No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. 12 All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” Not me, not you or anyone else deserves to be saved or has the right to say I deserve grace and they don’t.
And yet, like Jonah we too can have an us vs. them mentality. We can see certain people as worthy of hearing the gospel, but others as hopeless. Jonah was a prophet who followed the law, who loved God, who knew exactly what God’s character was all about but when God asked him to reach out to people who he didn’t like all of that went out the window. Don’t we do that? God I’ll obey you until it’s inconvenient. God I’ll listen until you want me to do something I don’t like. I’ve worked in a lot of churches and the one thing I’ve noticed about each one of them is that so often on the outside peoples say they want to reach the lost, they want to share the love of Christ they want all men to be saved but what we say and how we live are two different things. We may say we want to see people saved but sometimes I think we want them saved someplace else. (lady that said, “I don’t want to see this church any bigger. I like who we have”, Jamie-black kid) that mentality will kill the church before it ever gets going.
If we as individual believers and as the church as a whole live like Jonah and have an us vs. them mentality we may as well close our doors. If we are only interested in reaching out to the white, blue collared middle class American who votes conservative on all issues we’re in trouble. This book is supposed to convict all people who hear it not just a certain type of people. The Gospel is for all mankind not just those we feel comfortable sharing it with. The big point God wants you and me to get is that he is compassionate for all people and passionate about all people. That regardless of who we are, regardless of how evil this world considers us to be Jesus died so that all men could have the chance to be saved. God sees no sex or race or income or age he only sees the lost. None of us deserve the grace God has given us. None of us deserve the Gospel but God revealed it to us and many of us in this room were convicted of our sins and believed in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. Who are we to ever think that we, who were once blinded by sin and under God’s wrath would ever have the right to choose who should receive God’s love and who shouldn’t?
Who are we to ever judge those on the outside who don’t know the truth of scripture and pronounce them as hopeless or guilty before ever giving God a chance to do a work in their lives? Who are we to hold back from forgiving others when God has forgiven us of so much? Who are we to make excuses and withhold the message of the Gospel from others when someone took the time to share it with us? At the very least the story of Jonah teaches us that God’s heart breaks for all people. God loves all people. My question for you as we close out this book is, “Does your heart break for the things that break the heart of God? Or could you care less? Are you living a life of greed or grace? This story calls for something more than just our compliance. We can be like Jonah and comply with God’s will but just because we comply doesn’t mean we’ve experienced a heart change. God wants us to understand His character. He wants us to share His viewpoint. He wants us to reflect Him. He wants us to love all people enough that we’d share His message of salvation with them inspite of who they are or what they’ve done. Let’s ask ourselves some personal questions…Are there people we resist loving and caring for because their values, beliefs, or lifestyle contradict ours? Who are our personal Ninevites, our enemies? Do they belong to religious cults? Are they secular humanists? Are they homosexuals? Are they people who stand for pro-choice and pro-abortion? Are they those who advocate a left-wing social agenda? Do they embrace New Age spirituality? Are they of a different ethnicity? Are they someone who just ticked you off? And if the Lord said to arise and go to any one of those groups, love them, be patient with them and preach the gospel to them, would it be difficult to obey him?
Does your heart break for what God cares about or does it only break for that which effects you? God cares about all who are lost, all who are in spiritual bondage, all who are slaves to sin, all who don’t know their right hand from their left. Do we? Or are we more concerned about your happiness, getting your way, making sure your life is comfortable and making sure your enemies and the groups of people I disagree with or are prejudice towards get what they deserve? Something all of us need to consider this morning.
God has been so good to us, so gracious to us, so patient with us. How are we as individuals extending that same grace to others in our lives through our actions and our words?
Who in your life today needs Jesus? Will you pray for their deliverance?
