Jonah 3:10-4:11
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Is It Right for You to Be Angry?
“Is it right for you to be angry?” It was a reasonable question. Jonah was the one being unreasonable. Of all the prophets God had ever sent, Jonah might have seen the single greatest, numerical success in the shortest amount of time in all of human history. More than 120,000 people – possibly as many as half a million people – were spared, not only a brutal earthly death but also an irreversible eternal death, and this in the matter of what could have been as few as 3 days. Of all the emotions Jonah should feel in this moment, joy and satisfaction and relief come to mind. But that’s not what we see.
When God saw what [the Ninevites] did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.[1]
Jonah stomped out east of the city and set up camp under a castor oil plant and pouted.
You may know the first part of Jonah’s story. It’s a favourite Sunday School lesson. Whenever publishers print a children’s Bible you can almost guarantee it will include the story of Jonah and the big fish. Who doesn’t want to hear about a man thrown overboard to save his crew, who was quickly swallowed up by a giant fish, survived three days in its belly underwater, all the while - unbeknownst to Jonah – it was transporting him across the breadth of the Mediterranean Sea back to where God had always wanted him to be?
What most children’s Bibles gloss over, however, is the reason Jonah ran away from the Lord in the first place, and the reason we find him throwing a temper tantrum here.
The Word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”[2]
God had a mission for Jonah: walk into the capital city of Israel’s sworn enemy and tell the people – who have an international reputation of violence and savagery – that they’re going to hell. Would you want that mission? I wouldn’t either. When you learn what the Assyrians were like and that the people of Nineveh were at the heart of it all, you can hardly blame Jonah for being reluctant.
And then, when you learn some of the other prophecies that Jonah would have been well aware of, you begin to understand his temper tantrum a little bit more too. This is what God said to evil King Ahaz after Ahaz continually rejected the Lord:
“The Lord will bring on you and your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah – he will bring the king of Assyria.”[3]
The Assyrians were violent and bloodthirsty. They were Israel’s sworn enemy. God had prophesied that they would destroy Israel. And not only had God told Jonah to go to their capital city – at risk of his life – to tell them to repent, but God blessed Jonah’s message. The Ninevites would be spared! And now Jonah’s Israel would have to continue to live in fear of that looming threat for another hundred years.
Jonah’s behaviour is appalling when you first read it. He faults God for being gracious and compassionate. He even asked God to kill him because he doesn’t want to live in a world where the Ninevites survive.
But as bad as that all sounds, it doesn’t take a whole lot of context to begin to understand where Jonah is coming from. And, if you ask me, that’s even more terrifying than the prospect of being thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. Because the greater danger for us than murder or martyrdom is begrudging God his grace and coming up with ways to make it make sense.
I’m not suggesting that you’re in the habit of setting up your lawn chair outside of your neighbour’s house waiting for God to drop fire and brimstone on them because they play their music too loudly. But, have you ever been hurt by someone? How did that make you feel? What do you think about that person now? If you saw them walking down the street would you cross over to the other side just to avoid them?
I get it. I’ve been there too. But if my blood pressure rises at the sight of their face or the mention of their name, then my perspective is clouded by a heart of hatred or fear. Then all of my thoughts have turned inward at whatever impact a potential interaction would mean for me, and I’m not thinking at all about what would be best for them. Then I make myself the god of my own little world.
And again, contextualizing emotions is so dangerous, because what I’m often doing is one of two things: either I am making the assumption that I am entitled to feel however I feel (that no one else gets to decide whether my emotions are right or wrong; I have the right to be angry or upset or disappointed), or I am coming up with excuses for why I think my emotions are justified, e.g. I start tallying up all the things that they did to me that make my reaction reasonable, while at the same time bean counting my own good deeds and beaming at them with such satisfaction that I completely ignore the heap of evil I’ve committed, all the many things I’ve done to make other people, or God, angry at me.
And that’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it? I can get so focused on what I feel is fair and right – and all the ways I’ve been wronged, or all the things I’m owed – that I forget about how much I owe God, how often I’ve wronged him, how many legitimate reasons he has to be angry with me.
But that’s not our God. Jonah hated him for this at the time, but our God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity,[4] even if Jonah didn’t realize that that’s exactly what God was being to him.
Forget the Ninevites, how evil was Jonah being – actively desiring the death and damnation of hundreds of thousands of people? But how did God respond? With a question: “Is it right for you to be angry?”[5] He didn’t come at him guns a-blazing. He came with gentleness and patience. And when Jonah couldn’t provide a worthy answer, God provided a vine and a worm to teach Jonah a lesson. If he could get so invested – if his emotional well-being and desire to live depended on this weed that sprang up overnight – then shouldn’t God care about the souls of all the thousands of people he had created and tended and nourished for years and years?
Of course he should! And the proof was in the way he was treating Jonah. Jonah was a sinner. He didn’t just make a mistake. He made decision and he doubled down on it after multiple opportunities to repent. And yet, God was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love to Jonah. He didn’t write Jonah off; he answered his prayers. He didn’t strike Jonah down; he patiently and persistently called him to repentance.
And the same word that worked wonders among thousands of Ninevites worked on Jonah’s heart too. Do you know how I know? Because Jonah tells us. He doesn’t come right out and say, “And Jonah came to his senses and repented and asked God for forgiveness and became best friends with the Ninevites from that time on and forever.” But he wrote this book, for you to read. He was brutally honest about his abject failure, so that you could learn from his mistake. He finally stopped answering God with his own excuses and explanations, so that you could be left with nothing but God’s grace, because that’s what you need most.
We’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all carried that hurt in our heart. We’ve let it bear fruit in our lives – whether we’re actively desiring the downfall of our enemies, or if we’ve allowed it to sabotage our satisfaction or rob us of joy.
But God doesn’t come to you guns a-blazing either. He lives up to his name. He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. He is patient and persistent with you, giving you opportunity after opportunity to open your eyes to the sinful state of your heart and repent, knowing that there is forgiveness in the Lord.
We see it in Nineveh. They heard the word and believed. They repented and God relented. They received the mercy and grace God was so eager to provide through Jonah. And while the man sent to preach this word to you today has never been swallowed by a fish, you have something better.
“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”[6]
Jesus compares himself to Jonah. There are the obvious similarities in the amount of time that each spent in the fish and in the earth, but it’s what happened next that made all the difference. After the fish spat Jonah out on dry ground, he proclaimed a message of mercy for the salvation of thousands who believed. After Jesus rose from the dead, he declared his victory complete, and your sins forgiven because he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love to you.
And that changes everything. When I know that even my trauma-induced animosity toward someone who hurt me is forgiven in Jesus, I am relieved of the burden of guilt I so often try to supress. I know holding a grudge is wrong, but I’ve rehearsed so many ways to make it feel right that I’ve begun to believe it… until Jesus’ forgiveness washes it away entirely. Then I can let it go and not fiercely defend my emotions, but confess them and receive forgiveness for them.
When you see the world through God’s eyes and how much everyone needs his love, you learn a new appreciation for the fact that God’s grace isn’t just for Christians who’ve made mistakes; it’s for sinners who worship the desires of their flesh; it’s for sinners whose consciences have long since stopped complaining about their sinful behaviour; it’s for sinners like you and me and the people that have done unspeakable evil to us.
God’s grace was equally for the Ninevites as it was for Jonah. God’s grace is equally for the ignorantly evil as it is for those of us who should know better. God’s forgiveness is for you, secured by Jesus’ sacrifice of death so you could live.
Is it right for you to be angry? Of course not. Because God’s not. He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he is concerned about the great cities and the small ones, about the obvious sinners and the secretly self-righteous. He loved you enough to send his Son to save you to spend three days in the belly of the earth to save you.
So don’t be angry or arrogant. Rejoice with the angels in heaven that God relents from sending calamity on everyone who repents of their sin, including you. Amen.
[1] Jonah 3:10-4:1
[2] Jonah 1:1,2
[3] Isaiah 7:17
[4] Jonah 4:2
[5] Jonah 4:4
[6] Matthew 12:40