First Baptist Church
Like it or not. . . Grace Happens
Jonah 4:1-11
August 4, 2002
Have you ever read the children’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. It’s about a little boy whose day starts out bad and goes downhill from there. He gets gum in his hair and gets his sweater wet in the sink and he trips over his skateboard and doesn’t get a prize in his cereal box, and that’s all before breakfast! He knew it was going to be a TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY. Then he goes to school and his teacher doesn’t like his drawing of an invisible castle, he doesn’t get a dessert in his lunch bag and his best friend doesn’t want to be his best friend anymore. After school his mom buys him plain white sneakers instead of the ones with red and blue racing stripes, his dentist finds a cavity in his tooth, there are lima beans for dinner, and he gets soap in his eyes when he taking his bath. In frustration, he finally says, "I think I’ll move to Australia." If you’re like me you can relate to this book because we all have had days like Alexander. Days when people treat us unfairly and nothing works out the way we want it to and by the time we finally collapse into bed at night. . . we’re just plain mad. Well, Jonah 4 can be summarized by Jonah as thinking he has experienced one of those TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAYS. Jonah was angry, but not at things or even people. No, he was furious with God.
Today we finish our journey through the book of Jonah. Just to recap, we learned that God gave Jonah an assignment. . . go to the land of Nineveh, enemies of the Israelites and tell them that God seeks to forgive them. But Jonah doesn’t like the Ninevites, so he runs the other way. He gets on a boat which encounters a God ordained storm. The sailors panic and finally Jonah admits the storm is on account of him, and he tells the sailors to throw him overboard. After they do, the sea becomes calm, and these pagan sailors begin to worship God. God sends a big fish to gobble up Jonah, saving his life and then this fish spits Jonah out onto dry land. Finally, Jonah is convinced that he better follow what God wants and goes to this wicked and violent city and proclaims ‘God will destroy your city in 40 days if you don’t repent.’ Everyone, including the king prayed for forgiveness and sought to turn from their wicked and violent ways.
Jonah chapter 3 ends with God stating that He will not bring destruction upon the land, because the people have repented. That is where our story begins today. Notice how chapter 4 begins — Jonah is REALLY, REALLY ANGRY!! "Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry!" In Hebrew, to be ‘greatly displeased’ is another way to say you are angry, but it also means to do evil or be wicked. The word to be angry literally means to be incensed, to have zealous anger and it refers to the fire or heat of anger just after it has been ignited.
What am I getting at? Jonah was fuming. He was literally . . . hot under the collar. You know how it is when you really get angry. When those first moments of anger come upon you. When, if you would stop for a moment, you notice that your blood pressure is up, your face is red and your voice has been raised about 100 decibels. Notice who Jonah is angry at. He is not angry at the Ninevites for repenting. He is angry at God.
In fact Jonah tells God, I knew when you gave me this assignment you would not destroy these people. Jonah basically quotes Moses from Exodus 34:6-7, when Moses implored God not to destroy the people of Israel after they made and worshiped the golden calf. Moses said:
"The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin."
Jonah reminds God that God is filled with grace, love and goodness, not wanting anyone to perish. Jonah knew God is slow to anger, overflowing in love and faithfulness. . . AND that is exactly why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. He knew God would forgive. And amazingly, this prophet of God, didn’t want people to repent.
Try to put yourself in Jonah’s place as he surveys this incredible response to the word of the Lord. The Ninevites hear the good news wrapped up in the bad news of judgment, and the entire city repents of its evil ways because they believe God. How would you feel if you were leading a Bible study and everyone in the study turned their lives over to Christ? Wouldn’t you be excited? Not Jonah.
We should experience joy when we witness people turning their lives over to God. It would be like someone wishing the miners in Pennsylvania died in the mine. We find thoughts like that to be reprehensible. But it is still occurring around the world. Last week when "Hamas" the Palestinian terrorist organization took credit for the bomb at Hebrew University, I saw people dancing and celebrating the destruction of life. It was the same after the terrorist attack on September 11, people in Arab countries were celebrating. In some ways, Jonah might not have been outwardly celebrating, but he would not have been very disappointed at the destruction of Nineveh.
So what does Jonah do? He tells God he would rather die, than see the people of Nineveh turn their lives over to God. Do you hear what this prophet of God wanted? It sounds absolutely ludicrous. Yet, when we have such hatred, prejudice and bitterness toward a group of people, we too, will ultimately come to hope for only bad things to happen to them.
So, God looks at Jonah and asks him, "Is it right for you to be angry?" Jonah had no right to be angry. The same God who brought salvation to the Ninevites, was the same God who saved the life of Jonah. Jonah doesn’t even answer God, instead he builds a little shelter, and sits down under it, watching the city. He’s going to wait for 40 days and see if the people are really serious about repentance or are just giving lip service to God. Jonah is hoping the Ninevites will blow it and return to their wickedness, which will prove him right and God wrong. Think of how prejudiced he is toward the Ninevites: "You can never trust the word of a Ninevite. Once a Ninevite, always a Ninevite. God, you’re being too hasty in this blanket forgiveness, give them a little time, they’ll hang themselves." He has a ringside seat above the city so he can watch the fire and brimstone. He knows he is right and God is wrong.
I confess that I would have given up on Jonah long before this. But look at God’s next move in Part of the amazement is that God just doesn’t give up on Jonah. That is something for us to hold onto, no matter how objectionable we become, no matter how much we attempt to disobey God, God will never ever abandon us.
Jonah built a little shelter out of twigs and stones that provides very minimal shade. So God appoints a plant to grow that gives lots of shade from the sun. But the purpose of the shade tree is much more than just physical comfort. Jonah was "absolutely delighted" over the shade plant. This is the only time in the entire book that Jonah is happy about anything, and it has to do with his personal comfort. There is an amazing irony here. He is delighted with the shade, but he has no compassion toward Nineveh despite this evidence of God’s compassion for his own discomfort and his own wickedness. Since Jonah is unwilling to look past his own pleasure and comfort, the Lord sends a worm to destroy the plant and deprive Jonah of his shade.
Then comes the heat. It was probably 110 or 120 degrees blasting out of the eastern desert and dehydrating him. The shade is gone and the sun beats down intensely. Jonah is faint from the sun, experiencing heat stroke.
And now comes Jonah’s second conversation with God, which concludes the story. Again Jonah asked that he might be allowed to die. And again God answers Jonah asking, ‘if Jonah thinks it is appropriate for him to be angry that the plant died?
God wanted Jonah to understand how wrong it was for him to be angry about God’s intervention to save the city. The death of the plant symbolizes the removal of God’s mercy from Jonah, just as God might have chosen to remove his mercy from Nineveh if he had followed Jonah’s desires. Jonah is very thankful for the plant, and he should have been thankful for God’s kindness to Nineveh. However, Jonah is very angry when the plant dies, yet he would have been delighted if Nineveh had been destroyed. God is trying to show Jonah how confused his thinking is, valuing a plant but having contempt towards people.
Jonah’s answer to God is scary. He tells God, "I am angry enough to die." His answer is frightening. . . He isn’t willing to live with the God who can give grace to or take grace away from whomever he sovereignly chooses. There is an ambivalence in Jonah’s heart that we have seen throughout the whole book. He can’t stand the thought of God’s grace being extended to the Ninevites; and yet he knows he can’t live without that grace himself. He finally understands that he can’t have it both ways, God’s speaking judgment to the Ninevites but grace and mercy to him and to the Jewish nation. Since Jonah can’t convince God that his kindness to people who repent is wrong, he wants to die.
In his demand to die he is angrily blaming the God from whom he wants to escape into death. Running away didn’t work, and now he wants separation from this God of mercy, whom he has come to abhor. He is angry because he can’t control whom God will show mercy to.
The book of Jonah ends very abruptly, without that crucial repentance from this unwilling prophet. What do you think happened to Jonah? I’m convinced Jonah is the author of this book, that he wrote it purposefully to contrast his own constricted heart with God’s open heart of love for the world.
One of Michelangelo’s paintings on one of the walls in the Sistine Chapel is called "The Prophets and Apostles." He tried to capture the faces of all the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. Art critics say that out of all the faces Michelangelo painted, none had a more radiant countenance than Jonah. Michelangelo was convinced that Jonah saw his sin and repented. Michelangelo believed Jonah became a communicator of grace to his own nation through his book and through his preaching as a prophet of God.
As we conclude our study of Jonah, let me ask you to ask the Lord to apply this book very personally to your own heart through the Spirit. I want to ask you to respond to some questions before the Lord. This book forces us to see our own power struggles with God. What has God called us to do that puts us into a contest of wills with Him? What challenges to obedience in our inner spiritual transformation have set us running away? Where are we right now — in a Tarshish of escape or in a Nineveh of obedience? And what about the hard inner core of ego that has never been given over to God’s control? Was our conversion a radical transformation from self-centered willfulness, or was it an effort to recruit God to help us accomplish our goals? Have the painful and difficult experiences of life broken the inner shell of proud individualism, or are we essentially the same people we always were? After the crises are past, are we any more flexible or any more willing to discern and do God’s will?
Are there people we resist loving and caring for because their values, beliefs, or lifestyle contradicts ours?
If the Lord said to arise and go to any one of those groups, would it be difficult to obey him? Do we ever get so committed to our predictions of what some people or groups deserve that we take on the responsibility in thought or action to program their punishment? Are there vestiges of Jonah’s power struggle in us? For what do we need God’s mercy, grace, and pity? And who in our lives needs God’s merciful pity through us? Bishop Stephen Neal wrote: "The only reason for being a Christian is the ever-growing conviction that the Christian faith is true." This happens when we meet Christ personally; when we experience his grace, his mercy, his pity. That is when our power base changes from our will to his will for us. The hard inner core of self-control is surrendered to his control. When we invite him to live in us we experience the power of his indwelling Spirit, and we can be free at last from our use of manipulative human power to evade his call. Our Lord Jesus not only shows us our Nineveh, but he gives us a continual flow of grace to share with the Ninevites. And this Jesus who is greater than Jonah will never leave us alone.
