Ticking Time-bomb
Jonah 3-4
Text: 4:4 "Have you any right to be angry?" (NIV)
ANGER – who has not known its unleashed fury and witnessed the devastation left in its wake? Like a tornado with no predetermined path, it sucks into its violent vortex absolutely anyone or anything that creeps across its path and completely destroys them. Sometimes the damage is so extensive there are only fragments recognizable of what use to be.
The reasons for anger are as diverse as the destruction it causes. For some, it is an intimidation tactic. Still for others, it is a defense mechanism, learned behavior, or simply the only understood, plausible response to a given situation.
A recent Gallup poll reported that motorists were more worried about road rage (42%) than about drunk driving (35%). - NY Times. There is a compound growth rate of rage by 7% every year.
C. Leslie Charles, author of Why Is Everyone So Cranky? writes about “a fuming, unrelenting, sense of anger, hostility, and alienation that simmers for months, even years, without relief. Eventually, all it takes is a triggering incident, usually minor, for the hostile person to go ballistic. . . . Cell phones, pagers, and high tech devices allow us to be interrupted anywhere, at any time. This constant accessibility, and compulsive use of technology, fragments what little time we do have, adding to our sense of urgency, emergency, and overload.
Thousands upon thousands of us in today’s raging world are ticking time-bombs always on the verge of exploding.
Whatever our experience and exposure to anger, I hope we will have some light shed on its many faceted realities, one of which is the realization that while some anger is wrong other forms of anger are proper. Some forms of anger are God-ordained and actually therapeutic. We need to discern the differences and aim for the ideal.
1. Anger is a powerful emotion
Jacob, the son of the father of nations, Abraham, had been handing out blessings to his sons, until he came to Simeon and Levi. Of them he said O my soul, stay away from them. May I never be a party to their wicked plans. For in their anger they murdered men. (Genesis 49:6, NLT)
Hard to believe? Not really. LANCASTER, Pa. -- Days after being shot in the leg, a 2-year-old Lancaster boy is home again after being released from the hospital Tuesday morning June 4th.
Pedro Melendez was shot last week in what police call a case of road rage.
Police said Jon Eichelman shot the boy after Pedro’s mother, Josephine Arroyo, honked her horn at him at a Taco Bell drive through.
Just as anger is a powerful emotion for evil, it can serve its master for goodness and virtue. This is true because
2.Anger is a predominant characteristic of God in response to sin
1Kings 14:22
Judah did evil in the eyes of the LORD. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than their fathers had done.
God, the pure, perfect, flawless, awesome Master-craftsman Creator displayed anger. The only proper deduction therefore is that all anger is not wrong. What we need to understand is the context in which God unleashed anger. God’s display of anger was always in the face of opposing destructive forces and behavior. It was always about Sin and its evil domination and influence over pure hearts and holy behavior.
This being so, we can properly deduce from this that
3.Anger is a proper characteristic for God’s people
Ephesians 4:26 – The original Greek states it clearly as BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger
There are two realities facing us as it relates to our expressions of anger. First, we must check the motivation and seed of our anger. Anger must never be for selfish gain or self-enhancement. Second, even when anger is properly present, it can become improperly applied due to incorrect motivation. If a parent scolds and punishes a child for playing on the street when told not too, it is for the protection of the child. If the same scolding and punishment is applied because “I told you not to” it has become an issue of selfish gain or self-enhancement even though the expectation to be listened too was fair and acceptable.
One author notes, “Anger in itself is not sin. In fact, because anger in its primary role is a response to injustice and oppression, not to be angry in the presence of oppression is more likely to be sin. How can we care about the victims of oppression and not be angry concerning their oppression? Therefore we need to affirm our anger and not deny it, and to do so without sinning."
Finally, we need to heed the instruction of Ephesians 4:26 that at the end of the day, our anger must be appeased and satisfied. We should not retire at night seething with anger for any reason. It is unhealthy and unhelpful. Unhealthy you say? According to M.D. Redford Williams and Virginia Williams, PH.D, about 20% of the population has levels of hostility that are high enough to endanger their own health.
Go to bed happy and at peace. Fix it before it fixates you. Isn’t it interesting how the word fixates spells FIX – ATE – when we are fixed with rage on something it eats us up inside.
So, the answer to all of this unhealthy, inappropriate anger is to decide to allow only that anger that is godly, that is appropriate and helpful to my health and well being and takes steps to intentionally avoid the unhealthy, dangerous forms of anger. So, how do I know when anger is not from God and is an evil response?
A. When it is driven by selfish motivations
Now we move to our test subject of the day – JONAH! Jonah is definitely not a man after God’s own heart. He jump-starts the first lesson on selfishly motivated anger.
4:1…
“Greatly displeased…angry” is described as “he was very hot, greatly perplexed and excited.” Jonah was livid!
Did he have a right to be this angry? To quote pastor and theologian Dr. Dr. Ralph Thompson, “Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. Her armies had conquered much of the world and were pushing ever closer to the borders of Israel.” God was sending Jonah to deliver a hopeful message to a people who were stripping other nations of hope and security. Who can understand the mind of God?
This angry outburst came as the result of delivering God’s message of judgment in chapter 3:4. What really made Jonah a ticking time-bomb was the people’s repentance and acceptance of the judgement. While there could have been anger because his prophecy made him look like a fool, in my studies I could only feel that Jonah probably took pleasure in delivering it! There was no pleasure however in the people’s repentance. He wanted the dynamite of judgment to blow them out of existence.
4:2…
Jonah attempted to justify his earlier disobedience and running with a statement that speared to be sound reasoning at first glance. It was a statement that recognized certain realities about God’s Personhood. However, as we look closer at this verse, with the help of James Montgomery Boice we see a deeper, diabolical evil surfacing from Jonah’s heart. Boice refers to this verse as Jonah’s attempt “to turn God against God. Or to put the same thing in other language, he tried to quote God’s word back to Him in his warped desire so that he, Jonah, was right and that God was wrong.
Boice continues: “At no point is the diabolical nature of his rebellion more evident than here. In seeking to justify himself and prove God wrong by Scripture, Jonah took a place as Satan’s progeny [offspring].” This comment was made with a reference to Satan using Scripture in his temptations of Jesus and we find Jonah doing the same thing in this instance, likely remembering Exodus 34:6-7 as given to Moses. In these verses Moses writes the message God spoken to him as God passed in front of him: 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.”
Using the Scriptures to justify our preferences and will is unthinkable and the gravest of sins. The only purpose the Scriptures should ultimately serve on our behalf is to use it to see our misbehaviour {sin} for what it is and be brought to repentance and confession eventually leading us higher up the highway of holiness toward heaven. Any attempt to use Scripture to embroider our own self-image, pleasure or promotion, is one of the gravest forms of hypocrisy for which we will give account on Judgement Day. No wonder the apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy, in 2 Timothy 2:15, Do your best to present yourself to God as an approved worker who has nothing to be ashamed of, handling the word of truth with precision.
4:3…
“It is better for me” – What Jonah did not capture in this whole experience is that he was not the hub of the universe! God did not create all of life to satisfy the wishes of one lone Israelite or even his nation for that matter! There were actually thousands, yes millions of people created with the same tender love and care as Jonah. God set his redemptive plan in motion for these as well as Jonah and Israel for whom Jonah was blindly patriotic at the risk of being annihilated.
What other ways can I recognize unhealthy, dangerous forms of anger that are not from God and is an evil response to a given situation?
B. When it is void of spiritual motivations
4:4-5…
When God asked Jonah a question, Jonah walked away and withdrew from the city and built a shelter. Do you get the message of what it means to be a ticking time-bomb? It is spiritual suicide, apart from God’s persistent mercy, to thumb our noses at God because we’re not happy with his plan and choices.
Ticking time-bombs pull away from God and start their own churches, have their own fellowships within the church, or decide not to attend church until the leadership changes. This is not a reference to those God-ordained, revolutionary necessities. Thanks to the likes of men like Martin Luther in the 16th century we enjoy the freedom of the gospel. Luther fought against papal abuses and more importantly stood for the gospel, especially the justification by faith – that Christ’s own righteousness is imputed to those who believe and on this ground alone, we are accepted by God.
Thanks to William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army, we have the privilege of extending the gospel to whosoever. Since that was not his reality as a Methodist in the 19th century he pulled out of it but his move was purely spiritual, never personal. No, the ticking time-bombs of which I speak have an unbelievable notion that the church is being disrupted and destroyed and the faith is being compromised so they’ll preserve it with their own clichés and societies for the time-being. What they don’t realise is that their behaviour is a statement to God and that statement is saying God doesn’t know what he’s doing. If our action is not purely, absolutely motivated for spiritual reasons, we need to re-evaluate why we are where we find ourselves.
4:6 – Very happy about the vine
For the very first time, Jonah is happy about something. He was not happy about God’s commission to go to Nineveh. He was not happy about the storm and being thrown overboard. He was not happy about the great fish that swallowed him and decided not to keep its dinner down! He was not happy about the second commission to continue to Nineveh. He was not happy about the 120,000 plus people and animals that God wanted to spare.
So, why was he suddenly happy? Jonah was suddenly happy because God decided to do something for Jonah. Even his happiness is flawed and the result of sin.
How often is the root of our happiness based on experiences and life situations that are about feeding us? Jonah’s happiness was about Jonah, personally motivated, selfishly motivated, centered in having his own way.
You apply the lesson.
4:7-11 - the withered gourd (gord) (similar to a palm tree but lower to the ground)
God illustrates something for Jonah. As corruption and sin ate away at the nation Israel like a worm eating the gourd, the same was true of Nineveh. If Jonah cared so much about a tree, how could he not see God’s care and love for his people – Assyrian or Israelite – American or Canadian – African or Asian?
Someone wrote of Jonah that he was “more concerned about the gourd of his own comfort than the salvation of the heathen city. Such are certain signs of a staggering faith. Faith in God is the death-blow to all this miserable self interest.”
▪ A final note about verses 4 & 9. God moved from “do you have a right to be angry” (v4) to “do you have a right to be angry about the vine?” (v9)Jonah reflected anger at the Sovereign of the universe and all of life to anger about pettiness. For sure he truly was “angry enough to die.” v9
WRAP
▪Anger is a powerful emotion that can honor God or give us bad health
▪Anger should always be unselfishly motivated with never a thought about our own gain or loss
▪When we are about to be angry we need to ask WHY first.
▪Anger can lead us into hypocrisy and we can become a disgrace to God
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HULME, William E. Managing Stress in Ministry, page 93
EERDMANS. Handfuls on Purpose. Series X, page 53
THOMPSON, Dr. W. Ralph. The Wesleyan Commentary, page 666
BOICE, JAMES MONTGOMERY. The Minor Prophets: An expositional commentary, page 245
EERDMANS. Handfuls on Purpose, Series X, page 59
