Jonah's Anger

We meet a reluctant prophet, don't we? Jonah. And God says to Jonah, get up and go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it. He was to warn them that God had seen the city's wickedness and that God would not tolerate it anymore. But we see that Jonah is convinced that Nineveh deserves all that's coming its way.

And he knows who God is and what His character is, and he says, no, I can't do it. And we see him ignoring. In fact, not really ignoring, directly opposing God, and we see him heading indirectly the opposite direction of Nineveh, escaping God's eyes or escaping God's presence, so to speak. But God yanks him back through the sending of a great and powerful and terrifying storm that rocks the boat that he's in, and we see his terrifying ordeal with a great fish. And in that moment, Jonah, who prepares himself for the repercussions of his rebellion against God, inside the fish prays to God and repents and asks God to be his salvation.

And we see God in an amazing act of redemption plucking Jonah from this watery grave and giving him a second chance. After this, the fish vomits Jonah back onto dry ground and God repeats His instruction to Jonah in chapter three, verse one. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. In verse three of chapter three, Jonah's response is nothing less than what we'd expect after the ordeal he had been through. After he cleans off the seaweed and the fish vomit, he gets up and he obeys the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.

And he preaches there, and we see that the message is received in an astounding way. People believe in God and repent from their evil ways, and God has compassion on them. Now, that's what we've been dealing with up to this point, and it would be really, really nice if it just finished and said, and everyone lived happily ever after. But it doesn't. And I love God's word for that because it's full of integrity.

It doesn't sugarcoat anything. It shows the story, warts and all, and we see a very upset little prophet in Jonah chapter four. So let's read about this upset little prophet as we open to Jonah chapter four and we begin reading from verse one. After Jonah had compassion on Nineveh, we read, but Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, oh Lord, is this not what I had said when I was still at home?

That is why I was so quick to flee 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. Now, oh Lord, take away my life for it is better for me to die than to live. But the Lord replied, have you any right to be angry?

Jonah went 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. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered.

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. But God said to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry about the vine? I do, he said. I am angry enough to die.

But the Lord said, you have been concerned about this vine though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and it died overnight. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city? And that's where the story ends.

A man shared the story of his experience at a supermarket, and perhaps you can relate to this story. He only went in very quickly to buy a few items on his list. But the express aisle was packed with people, annoyingly with more than eight items. The only other checkout that was open at that time was occupied by a woman with two children dangling from the cart and enough groceries to feed the 5,000. Now at this point, the man could feel the temperature rising inside of him.

Why couldn't they just open a few more cash registers? And so being in a rush, he opted for the self-checkout. Now he was a smart man. Surely he could master this technology. Press start, scan the item, place it in the bag.

Scan the next item, place it in the bag. And things were going along very smoothly until he tried scanning his carton of eggs. He dragged it across the pad and nothing. He tilted and turned it and dragged it across, but to no avail. In his desperation, he looked for assistance but saw no one coming.

And again, his frustration levels began to steadily rise. After several more punches at the help button and a few more swipes at the bar, he took the eggs, placed them in the bag, paid for the remaining items and walked out. He walked out of the supermarket angry and with a dozen eggs to compensate for his mental anguish. As the man shared the story sometime later, he maintained his right to be angry and his right to those eggs. Now perhaps you can relate to this.

I've struggled with those self-checkout things as well. I don't know if they actually make checkout a lot quicker. But we like to be angry sometimes, don't we? To have a little righteous anger that gets the blood pumping, fires us up a bit, gives us something to talk about. Hey.

We say even Jesus got angry. Right? But do we realise that what we get angry about often tells us what our value system is, what we deeply value. When we get angry at being treated unfairly, it shows that we value justice. When we get angry at someone's feelings being hurt, it shows that we value emotions and feelings.

For the man at the checkout, his value was his time, wasn't it? And every one of us has a value system, a system of ideas, of opinions, of habits, of relationships that we hold dear to ourselves. And the story in Jonah chapter four is a story of how values get played out. In particular, it shows Jonah and the contest with his opposing value to the value of God. As we follow the story, we know that there are two main characters.

Right? Jonah and God. Now there's a worm involved as well, but he just plays a cameo role, so we'll ignore him. We become increasingly aware as we read the story of the two opposing values between Jonah and God. Now you will notice in this story that Jonah exhibits at least two criteria by which he demonstrates his value system.

First of all, he shows it through his emotions, how he reacts emotionally. And secondly, we see his value system through his actions, what he does about it. Firstly, notice Jonah's strong emotions. The first verse that we read is, but Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. This was not some sort of fleeting emotion.

This wasn't simply just a little bit of an annoyance. It was hot consuming anger at God. The Hebrew literally states that Jonah became evil in his heart. He was, I'm not gonna say the word, ticked off. Jonah was burning with anger.

Now one of the challenges of this passage, however, is to figure out what he was annoyed with. What he was annoyed with. Was it the travel that he had to do through the dusty Middle East? Was it that he had to mingle with filthy Gentiles who worshipped idols? Was it because he was simply grumpy from being covered in fish vomit?

Well, of course, it was none of those. The anger Jonah had is to do with the character of God. Jonah was angry with who God is. Jonah preached to the Ninevites that there was hell to pay, but they repented. Now this wasn't the problem, in fact.

It wasn't that which was getting up Jonah's nose. Jonah was happy to go and wait and see what happened, but the Lord responded with compassion. How dare He? How dare He? Jonah was angry at God for being compassionate.

Jonah says this himself in verse two, that he became angry because God is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who relents from sending calamity. Now to us, this sounds really strange, doesn't it? How can you be angry at God because He's a loving God? And at this point, you might wonder why the book of Jonah is even in the Bible.

His emotions and his reactions towards a God of love are absolutely crazy. Who here would dare to think of being angry at God for His love? No one. But before we answer too quickly, think about this carefully. For Jonah, the love of God meant that he had to go to Nineveh, 1,200 miles away, away from his own people.

God's love actually asked something of Jonah. It's fair enough when God's love costs something to God like the death of His son. As amazing and as lovely as that is, but when God's love requires something of us, well, then things start getting a little less warm and fuzzy. For Jonah, the compassion of God meant that his position of privilege with God was to be shared with other people. In other words, God's love for Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, the enemies of Israel, God's love for them meant that Jonah had to get off his ivory tower.

It meant that he couldn't simply bask in the special place and special relationship that he had with God as God's chosen people, Israel. It meant that he simply couldn't bask in the presence of God on a beautiful Sunday morning with a nice service or that great worship time with a Hillsong CD in your car, it meant that he had to get dusty, that he had to get sticky, that he had to get sunburnt and dehydrated. God's love meant that he had to become uncomfortable. The Israelites celebrated their relationship with God and the law or the Torah. They were proud.

They were thankful for all the promises that God had made to them. But all of these things had been delivered into their laps by grace. They had deserved nothing. In this world, Israel had become God's chosen people, but being God's chosen people meant more than they thought it did. Being a chosen people meant that they were servants and examples, living examples of God's grace.

When God called Israel to be His people in the book of Exodus, He gave them a very special command. Listen to this. In Exodus 19:6, God said, although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The whole earth is mine, but you will be a kingdom of priests. As priests, like all priests must do, they were to be intercessors between God and the nations.

God and people. They had to stand in the gap and be messengers of God's grace to all the nations around them, but they never got that far. They either fell in love and married into the nations and lost their relationship with God, or they completely isolated themselves from the nations and ignored them. They were never a nation of priests, but the love of God demanded that they share that privilege as a holy nation with the nations. And so Jonah became angry at that.

And in the New Testament, we see this as well. It's not simply just in that situation. In the New Testament, Jesus talks about the prodigal son, doesn't He? And how the older brother is annoyed with the younger brother who has left and rebelled against the father and comes back. And the older brother who seems righteous and seems obedient is angry that he must share his inheritance now with this brother.

Where is my party? Where is my feast? We also see it with the Pharisees in the New Testament when they come to understand that Jesus was telling them that they had no special position of privilege because of their pride, because of their righteousness. And so they were even willing to kill in order to maintain this value, to maintain their special position. Now, would you become angry at God because He is a loving God?

We would say, no way. But God's love has consequences for us. God's love means that we may have to go out of our way to tell others that they are sinning and need to repent. Out of our way. We may have to tell people that they can only be saved through Jesus Christ.

And for some of us non-confrontational types, and you know who you are, that's really hard. It may mean that you have to run the risk of some hurt feelings. On the flip side, for others, God's love means that they have to share their positions of privilege and of holiness with those whose lives are messy and sinful. We might be the comfortable ones, and we might be too comfortable to let them know that we don't agree with their lifestyles. But God's love draws us off our ivory towers and into their messy lives.

And we have to sit with them, and we have to eat with them. Like Jonah that was drawn into the city of Nineveh, that den of iniquity, that place of immorality. God's love may have consequences for us. And the question is, what do we value? Do we value being liked, being seen as harmonious and non-judgmental?

Or perhaps do we value being right? Being untainted? Being holy? How much do we value our time? How much do we value our money or our comfort?

These are really important honest questions that we must ask ourselves and it's okay to admit to having these values. We all have them. We value our time. Therefore, we make it count. We're good employees because we don't waste our time.

But of course, the blind side or the downside is that we have a blind spot and we will value our time over others. So, actually, we realise that you and I too, like Jonah, may get angry at God because He is a compassionate and gracious God. And that love may have impact on our values directly. The second way in this passage that we see Jonah demonstrating his values is by his actions. So not only does he get angry, but now he goes and does something to really cement what he believes.

He goes outside the city to the east of it, builds a little shelter, and sits in it to see God's judgment hopefully come down. Hopefully, you know, in that forty days that they were given to repent, maybe they turn back. Maybe they do something evil again. And as the passage goes, he builds himself a shelter, and to add to that shelter, the Lord caused a vigorous young vine to sprout up overnight and to give some extra shade. Now, scholars aren't exactly sure what sort of vine this is, but given the area, the geography, it was perhaps a castor oil plant or a cucumber vine.

Either way, it would have had a nice little bit of shade to it. Needless to say, Jonah is delighted, beautiful. It's as close to air conditioning as you're gonna get in that time. And he felt secure sitting there in his shelter waiting to watch the fireworks show as God smites Nineveh. In other words, Jonah has returned to his ivory tower.

But God sends a worm to cut down the vine. The vine withers, the shade is gone, and so is Jonah's comfort. Listen again to Jonah's response. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind. The sun blazed on Jonah's head and he grew faint.

He wanted to die and said, it would be better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry about the vine? I do, he said, and I'm angry enough to die. I love that sentence. It makes me smile every time I read it.

Talk about melodramatic. This was a tantrum that even Paris Hilton would have been proud of. Jonah valued his comfort so much that he was willing to die for it. Again, this was a message not for Jonah alone, but for the nation of Israel. Israel was comfortable with the comfort and security that they had with God.

But they valued it so much that they would devalue others who might impinge upon their comfort. And the consequence was that they focused on their comfort and in their practice disregarded those who were not part of the community. In a real sense, God's love caused Jonah's discomfort. And the challenge is how important is your comfort at church and in life? Is it so important, or is it so important that it concerns you more for the lost people than for your own comfort?

Are we content to simply let lost people walk into our church and walk out again, or will God's love move us to reach out of our comfort zones? I want us to be known as that church that really cares for visitors. If you don't meet them today, meet them next week. And if there are any new visitors, I don't think I see any new faces. Yeah.

I hope that they don't feel uncomfortable by me singling them out. But like I said, this passage is a passage that challenges us to care about what we value and in particular valuing our comfort. And it contrasts very clearly what Jonah was concerned about and what God is concerned about. This is how the Lord responds to Jonah being angry. The Lord said to him, Jonah, you've been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow.

It sprang up overnight and it also died overnight. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city? I don't know if you picked up on it, but it's interesting that God mentions cattle, isn't it? But it is so humbling to know why.

Fascinatingly, archaeological evidence shows us that for the Assyrians, they had a strong link, a strong bond to their animals. And in their idolatry, in their idol worship, they would actually bring their animals and their pets to worship their idols with them. Now imagine bringing your little fox terrier to church. But we see this in Jonah chapter three, don't we? When the king makes an edict to the entire city of Nineveh that every man and woman and child must put on sackcloth and repent before God.

He also says every animal should put on sackcloth and repent before God. Literally, everyone repented when that happened. Imagine putting clothes on all the cattle and on all the sheep even down to your pet budgie. But now, this is how wonderful God is. God had compassion on the livestock, on the pets that He knew was so important to the Assyrians.

God shows us that all those lost people in that great and wicked city mattered to Him. Much more than a vine that simply came up overnight and died overnight. This was a city full of souls with histories and stories and backgrounds and families. Lost people matter to God because they aren't a vine. They're people.

They're human beings with purpose. And we might be comfortable even with our theologies of predestination and who's in and who's out. But lost people, friends, matter to God. We don't know who's in and who's out. God knows, but the lost do matter.

And that's all that the book of Jonah is about. It's about the missionary God, not the missionary prophet. And if we share God's values, they, these lost people, ought to matter to us too. Jonah was willing to die rather than to share the privilege with others. Jonah was willing to die rather than lose his valued shady comfort.

And it sounds ludicrous, but God's word challenges us this morning. How comfortable are we? We don't retire from Christianity. Doesn't matter what age we are, we don't retire from it. How comfortable are we?

God values lost people. People who do not know Him, who do not know their right hand from their left, and we know who they are. We see them. Turn on the news, and these people have no idea. But God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.

If God was concerned about a city of 120,000 people and their animals, what would He not do for the billions of human souls spanning across the entire human history? What would He not do for them? And we know He wouldn't send a fallen prophet again. He would send His son Jesus Christ. And that is why God Himself came to die on the cross, bearing the punishment and the holy rejection that was intended for them and for us.

He turned those lost people in Nineveh into God-fearing people, and He's done the same, friends, for you and for me. Do you think that Nineveh was happy that God spared them? Absolutely. Are we happy that God has spared us? There's no doubt.

Are we happy to lose our comfort so that God may save others? Lost people matter to God. We might call it God's core value. And unlike Jonah who was willing to die for his core value of comfort when his vine withered, God did die for His core value. God demonstrated that His core value cuts right to His heart and He was willing to give up everything.

If lost people matter so much to God, is it not right that lost people ought to be our highest value? And that should be reflected in our worship, how we worship. It should be reflected in how we make decisions as a church, in our expenditures, in our time, in our lives. Friends, we serve a missionary God who hasn't changed from that time, but we also rejoice because we realise that God was a missionary to us. He was a missionary to us first, and He loves us with a relentless, all-consuming passion that will not give up.

And He has never and will never give up on that mission. How great is His faithfulness? How magnificent is His love? Let's pray. God, great is Your faithfulness, and we do not know what wondrous grace we have received.

The tremendous extent of Your love, Lord, is impossible for us to grasp even a fraction of. We cannot imagine what we have been spared from. We cannot imagine the lostness that we could find ourselves in without You. But Lord, what we do know is that what we have committed unto You will be protected and cared for and nurtured in us. And, Father, I pray that we may be challenged by this word that we may grow because of the book of Jonah.

And we thank You, Lord, for Your honesty and for the integrity of this word. We thank You that we can see ourselves so clearly, that we are challenged and we are convicted by this. God, thank You that You are gracious and compassionate. You are slow to anger and abounding in love because that means that our shortcomings and our weaknesses will be looked after. And then if we, this morning, say sorry, if we, this morning, repent, and we try, Lord, with Your empowering spirit to change how we do things, Father, that You will give us that, that You will forgive, and that You will renew and redeem.

Father, we pray for our city. We pray for those people who do not know their right hand from their left. Lord, and they are all around us. And they make decisions that hurt themselves, that hurt others, Lord, and disappoint You terribly. Lord, give us hearts that are moved by that.

Lord, create a burning desire in us to not be comfortable, to not take holidays from You, to not take breaks from You, to not sit in our air con or our shady comfort while the world is perishing, Father, while our colleagues and our family and our friends go about their daily lives without You, and we are okay with it. Thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness to this church. Thank You, Lord, that we are already part of that mission. Thank You for the people that have already, through our ministry, come to know You, and thank You for the radical work that You are doing in their lives. Thank You that You are empowering us already to do that.

And we just ask, Lord, that You will continue to do that. Use us, Lord. Use us powerfully to be a change in our community, in our friendship circles, in our family. We thank You that You have not forsaken us or left us, that You have given us Your spirit to do this, and that You will guide us for that is Your promise to us. And Lord, we appeal to that promise this morning. In Jesus' name. Amen.