God compassionately pursues humanity in order to offer them an opportunity to return to relationship with Him...

This week we have been looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom. As a prophet, Jonah was God’s spokesperson who was used by God to see and to proclaim His message to His people.

However, instead of responding to God’s command to proclaim His message to the resident of the city of Ninevah with obedience, you choose to head for Tarshish. Jonah basically said “Where is the farthest place that I can go to get away from God”. The Lord responded to Jonah’s plan to run from God by bringing a great storm that started to destroy the ship.

After trying to save the ship by rowing back to land, they realize that the storm is only getting worse. Reluctantly, the sailors threw Jonah overboard, which calmed the sea. As the storm miraculously disappeared, the sailors responded to the sudden stoppage of the devastating storm by recognizing and worshipping the Lord as the one true God.

God supernaturally provided a fish capable of swallowing Jonah, where he reluctantly vowed to keep his promise to God and obey his call to do His will.  The Ninevites, upon hearing the message of condemnation from Jonah the prophet, recognized their wickedness and repented. Now, as a prophet of God, you would think that Jonah would have been totally fired up about seeing an entire nation come to repentance. Jonah was fired up alright, but not in the same way as I mean, which we see in Jonah 4:1-3:

But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. "Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life."

What is so interesting is that the word angry here, in the language that this was originally written in, literally means to be hot. You see, Jonah was fired up alright; he was fired up with anger over God displaying compassion. Jonah wanted justice, Jonah did not want God to extend grace and mercy to the Ninevites. But why is Jonah so angry?

To understand why Jonah was so angry, we must first understand who the Assyrians, who were the people that lived in Ninevah, were. The Assyrians were the bitter enemies of the Jewish people. Jewish people considered the Assyrians to be barbaric and subhuman. Part of this would be attributed to how Assyrians dealt with their enemies in war, which the Jewish nation had experienced. A historian wrote the following when describing how the Assyrians treated those who they captured:

“The usual procedure after capturing a hostile city was to burn it, and then to mutilate all the grown male prisoners by cutting off their hands and ears and putting out their eyes; after which they were piled in a great heap to perish in torture from the sun, flies, their wounds and suffocation. The other members of the community would be burned alive”.

You see, Jonah wanted to God of Holy wrath, not the God of compassionate love. Jonah quickly forgot God’s mercy upon him after he had selfishly and rebelliously disobeyed God’s first command to go to Tarshish. Maybe you can relate to some people that we might feel the same way about. You see, we often want justice dispensed when wronged, not grace and compassion.

Maybe its justice against the terrorists. Or maybe its justice against the coworker who steals from the office, or your lunch from the refrigerator. Maybe its justice against the neighbor who abuses himself and others around him. Jonah, in his anger, responded by making a shelter outside the city, hoping that God would still destroy the enemies of the Jewish people. For Jonah, it was time for an object lesson from God. Let’s look at it together at what happens next, in verse 4-11:

The LORD said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?" Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. So the LORD God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life." Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" And he said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to death." Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"

Now to fully understand what God is saying to Jonah here, we first need to understand what God means when He asks “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"

This question, if communicated in the language we use in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: “Should I not have compassion on the 120,000 children who are so young that they do not even know the difference between their right and left hand, never mind right and wrong?” 

We are never told how Jonah answered that question. The letter never tells us whether or not Jonah learned the lesson and had a change of heart. The book of Jonah ends with Jonah unrelenting in his desire for justice and not mercy toward the Assyrians.

However, it is here, when God speaks, that we discover a timeless truth about the nature and character of God and God’s activity in history. And that timeless truth is this: God compassionately pursues humanity in order to offer them an opportunity to return to relationship with Him.

You see, the point of the book of Jonah is not about the fish; the point of the book of Jonah is the plant. The story of the book of Jonah is about the story of a God who a God of grace, mercy, and compassion that is slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness, desiring all to come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires all to have the eternal relationship with Him they were created for, including the terrorist across the planet from you, the coworker in the cubicle next to you, your neighbor next door to you, the classmate that sits next to you, and the person you look at in the mirror every morning.

So here is a question to consider: If you were to find yourself in this event from history, who would you be?

Would you find yourself as Jonah? Self-righteously demanding the God of wrath, not the God of compassion? Would you find yourself as Jonah, running from the opportunity to be used by God to bring mercy and grace upon others because you desire to sit in judgment and dispense justice and not mercy?

Or would you find yourself as a resident of Ninevah? Would you find yourself in a place where you have become aware of your selfishness and rebellion that has hurt God and others and desire to turn from that rebellion and to God?

You see, both Jonah and the Ninevites needed to turn from what was pushing them from God back to God? Both desperately needed the compassion, mercy and grace of God. So the question is how are you going to respond to God’s pursuit of you? Because, God compassionately pursues humanity in order to offer them an opportunity to return to relationship with Him.

The only question is how are you going to respond to Jesus compassionate pursuit of you?