Last week we started our Summer Sermon Series by looking at the least read books of the Bible which are the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. This morning we are going to look at the most read of the least read books — the Book of Jonah. I think the reason Jonah is the most well known minor prophet is for one reason and one reason alone — faithful children’s teachers in the church throughout the decades. I am extremely grateful for those who faithfully taught me and my kids throughout the years and I’m thankful for all those who continue to pour into the next generation. However, the story of Jonah is more than just a children’s story. In it we see a man who is struggling with something that many of us struggle with as well. It all begins with a command from God to go to Nineveh and announce my judgment. Nineveh was a wicked place, in the Book of Nahum it is described as a city full of lies, full of plunder, full of cruelty, full of idolatry, and full of sorcery. The righteous judgment of God was going to fall against the evil in Nineveh. Jonah was His chosen messenger to proclaim this message. Jonah had a mission from God but instead of immediate obedience, he immediately got up and went in the opposite direction. We usually think it’s unthinkable that someone who had been given a mission from God would not recognize the importance of that calling and instead run from it. Everyone who follows Jesus has a mission to make disciples and go and be witnesses in this lost world telling what Jesus has done for you. However, many times we find ourselves running in the opposite direction from our calling, but that’s another sermon for another day. Jonah ran and ended up on a boat headed for Tarshish. We are then told of a violent storm that comes and threatens to destroy the ship. Jonah knows his running from God caused it and tells the sailors on the ship to throw him overboard. They did and the storm stopped. The sailors made a sacrifice to the God of Jonah right there and vowed to serve Him alone, but despite Jonah's disobedience, God wasn’t done with Jonah yet. This is when God does what the Book of Jonah is more known for. He sends a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah stays there in the fish for three days and three nights. In the belly of the fish Jonah cried out to God and God heard which caused the fish to spit him out onto the beach. God then told Him again to go and this time Jonah listened and went. He went to Nineveh, a city that was the economic capital of the Assyrian Empire. Jonah goes and shares a very short prophecy 8 words in English, “Forty Days from now Nineveh will be destroyed” and from those few words came one of the greatest movements of repentance that we see in the Old Testament. It starts with the King and flows down from there — everyone repenting, turning from evil, and seeking the mercy of God. God responds to their repentance by showing the mercy that they were desperately seeking. That is how the story ends in chapter 3. That was all that Scripture had to say about Jonah, it would be a wonderful story of how God used a fish to first change the heart of a prophet in order to change the heart of a nation. God didn’t end it there. He gave us chapter 4, so if you have your Bibles turn with me to that very last chapter of Jonah as we see that the book of Jonah is much more than just a fish story.
Jonah’s Heart Revealed- Jonah 4:1-5
This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.” The Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry about this?” Then Jonah went out to the east side of the city and made a shelter to sit under as he waited to see what would happen to the city.
Chapter 4 starts with Jonah being consumed but this time it wasn’t a great fish. He is consumed by great anger. The heart of Jonah was on full display from verse 1 and it was not pretty. The language used to communicate Jonah’s displeasure at God was very harsh when you look at it in the original Hebrew. Jonah saw what God did and considered it evil. The evil that was present caused him to be furiously angry at God. Then in the Hebrew it is implied that there is a period of time that passes between verse 1 and verse 2. We don’t know how long, but this fact helps us to understand that Jonah’s response after verse 1 was not just an irrational outburst made in the moment. His anger and response had been throughout and had been stewed over. What happened next is actually to the credit of Jonah. Instead of going and griping and complaining to others he took his complaints to God. Many times when we have complaints we do not take them first to God to see how He would have us deal with them according to His Word. Instead we complain to others and our concerns (no matter how legitimate we think they are) turn to gossip. We need to take our cares and complaints to God first no matter the circumstance and seek how His Word has instructed us to deal with them — then follow through in obedience. However, despite this one good move by Jonah, his prayer to God is extremely telling of what was going on in his heart. He tells God that the reason he ran the first time was because he knew what God would do if they repented. Then he says in anger that “I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.” To quote the Golden Girls, “You say that like it’s a bad thing”. It was God who originally said this very line back in the book of Exodus as He passed in front of Moses. He used this to reveal who He was to Moses and to the nation of Israel. Moses uses this same phrase when Israel rebels in the Book of Numbers as well. We even use these verses to describe God to people today and everytime we do it’s always in the most positive of lights, but not when Jonah used it. Remember he saw this act of mercy as evil. Many people have tried to explain exactly why Jonah responded this way. The only thing we know for sure is that his heart and the heart of God were not aligned. In his anger he cries out that it would be better to die than these people come to repentance and experience mercy. This was the same man who had been obedient to God to bring His message, but something was wrong. His obedience seemed hollow and missing something and that type of obedience can be a danger. I think of it like something we were probably all guilty of in our younger days. Does anyone remember going into a department store and seeing all the bedding on display and it looked so comfortable that you just had to try it? So when your Mom wasn’t looking you decided to jump onto the bed and realized quickly that was a mistake because it wasn’t a really short comfortable mattress under all those covers and pillows, but it was a rock hard, solid wooden box. That is what is happening here, on the surface it looked like Jonah learned his lesson and followed in obedience, but when you pulled back those covers what was underneath was hard and dangerous. Obedience is just confirming your behavior to a standard and Jonah had that, but what Jonah lacked was submission. He knew God but he didn’t really trust God. Yes, his behavior was conformed to God, but not his heart, everything he had done had come from a shallow and superficial place and it did not flow from a place of love and faith in God and what God was going to do. God then asked him to consider if he was right to be angry about this. God was asking him to be honest with himself. However, Jonah refused to truly look at his heart and just went away to see what would happen once the 40 days were over. Jeremiah and Jesus both looked over Jerusalem and wept for it. Paul looked over Athens and was greatly distressed, but Jonah sat in his anger and bitterness and waited to be vindicated or be even more angry because God showed His mercy. There is a lot here in these first 5 verses that we could be challenged with, but I want to focus on the source of our own obedience to God. Is your obedience to God superficial, forced, or just automatic or does it come from the heart, from a deep and relational knowledge of God’s goodness and love for us? Obedience without love is legalism; obedience from love is worship. God requires that our obedience comes from our heart as an act of worship. Paul says in Ephesians 6:6 that we must do the will of God from the heart and Jesus Himself said in Matthew 15:8 quoting from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”. When we ask ourselves about the source of our obedience, our first response is going to be yes of course I’m submitted to God’s will in my life and everything flows from that, but we need to be honest with and about ourselves and examine our obedience and submission to Him, just as God challenged Jonah to do to make sure our obedience does not lack total submission to God and His will. However, the Lord doesn’t just look on the outward things; He looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7) and weighs the motives (1 Corinthians 4:5).
Jonah’s True Desires Revealed - Jonah 4:6-9
And the Lord God arranged for a leafy plant to grow there, and soon it spread its broad leaves over Jonah’s head, shading him from the sun. This eased his discomfort, and Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But God also arranged for a worm! The next morning at dawn the worm ate through the stem of the plant so that it withered away. And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah. The sun beat down on his head until he grew faint and wished to die. “Death is certainly better than living like this!” he exclaimed. Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?” “Yes,” Jonah retorted, “even angry enough to die!”
Anger is not a primary emotion. It's a secondary emotion and it’s always caused by a deeper issue. Just like smoke, in and of itself is not the source of a problem, but it points us to the fact that there is another bigger problem. That’s exactly what God starts showing us here with Jonah. We saw his anger and what he says is the reason for his anger, but God is getting ready to show us the source of that anger. He does so by sending a plant to grow and to provide shade to Jonah while he sits in his bitterness. Jonah’s response to this plant is very interesting because we are told that Jonah (for the first time and only time in the entire book) was grateful. He wasn’t grateful when God called him. He wasn’t grateful when he was saved at sea. He wasn’t grateful when God recommissioned him. He wasn’t grateful when God used him in a mighty way to see many in Nineveh repent, and he wasn’t grateful when God showed His amazing grace and mercy to the Ninevites. Here he sat in anger in the shade, and he was finally grateful. It’s in this gratitude that we start to see more of Jonah’s heart and his motivation. He was only grateful when his comfort increased and his personal situation improved. The core of Jonah's problem was selfishness, only looking out for what he would get out of it even in the service of God. His heart was focused upon himself alone and when we understand this, his anger is starting to make sense. Jonah was angry that God loved his enemy. You see, the Assyrians were becoming notorious for everything they had done and would be the ones who eventually conquered the North Kingdom about 40 years after Jonah was gone. These people were Jonah and his country's enemies. Jonah could not understand how God could love them. Israel was God’s chosen people. It wasn’t right for God to love anyone else. However he does, that is never more evident than at the cross on Calvary. For God so loved the world, the Jews and the Gentiles alike, that Jesus came and died for both. Jonah wanted to contain the grace of God, but you cannot contain the grace of God. When you surrender all you are and are faithful to God’s mission and watch the grace of God do amazing things because that’s what God does. That’s not what Jonah wanted. God called another creature to meet with Jonah, this time it wasn’t a large fish but a small worm. God used this worm to remove Jonah’s comfort and as God knew would happen his anger grew because his desires were all self-centered. God addressed him again asking if he was right to be angry and Jonah answered this time and his answer was evidence that he had not surrendered to God. He didn’t care what God did as long as he had what he wanted. That’s not submission. True submission is the intentional, joyful yielding of your will to be conformed to God’s will. This is not passive. It's active in all parts of your life because each and every day you have to present yourself as a living sacrifice. Trusting in His character and releasing your rights, your desires, and control of your life into the hands of the Almighty. Is it difficult? Yes, living sacrifices always try to crawl off the altar, but we have to remain intentional and deliberate about it in all that we do as we follow Jesus daily. Jonah had an encounter with God, but his response showed his heart and what his greatest motivation was. Now it was God’s time to reveal His heart — the heart that Jonah needed.
God’s Heart Revealed - Jonah 4:10-11
Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”
God bluntly addresses Jonah’s problem by pointing out that the plant really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of God’s plan. Jonah cared more for an inconsequential plant than he did for 120,000 lost people. Yes, these people were wicked. God said that they were living in spiritual darkness, meaning these people were ignorant. They didn’t know any other way of life. God loved these people and responded when they repented. It seems that not only could Jonah have brought the message from God. If his heart was in the right place and his will aligned with God's, he could have been instrumental in discipling them as well. However, Jonah was too concerned about himself to worry about what God was doing around him. Then God asked him a third question, “Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a large city?” Jonah answered God’s first question with his body language, by walking away and watching. Jonah answered God’s second question verbally by crying out in anger that he should just die, but God didn’t give him a chance to answer the third time, nor are we told how he would answer. God left this ambiguous on purpose and it is the end of Jonah’s story. We know the answer to the question, of course God should and would have compassion on a great city and beyond that city. The cross shows us that. God can show mercy to whomever He wants and show compassion to anyone whom He wants and shows that He chooses to offer it to the world through Jesus Christ. God loves those that we struggle with. Jesus died to forgive those who we struggle to forgive. We can't let ourselves get caught like Jonah — being obedient on the outside, but never having truly surrendered to the will of God on the inside.
I have a love/hate relationship with stories that end ambiguously. On one hand I like that the author leaves room for us to imagine what tomorrow looks like in the story, but on the other hand I like closure to stories, especially ones I get invested in. The Truman Show was like this. Yes, the show came to an end, but the story wasn’t over yet. There was still more story to tell. Jonah is very much like this for we aren’t told what happens. We would love to think everything ended wonderfully with Jonah coming to repentance and totally submitting himself to the will of God. However, this is the real world and things very rarely work out like they do in the movies. We might not know the end of Jonah’s story, but we can think about the end of ours. How do we want our story to end? Do we want to end up angry that our will is not being done in life and sit and dwell in bitterness, or do we want to end our story God’s way? To do that, it all starts with a small but painful step of surrendering and letting go of the things you are holding so tight to in life. Trust God with them and then take the next right step in obedience motivated by love in the One who is perfect in all of His ways. Jonah thought his greatest mission field was Nineveh when it should have been first his own heart. Don’t make the same mistake he did.
