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?
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