Jonah: God Gets His Way

Read Jonah 4:1-11

My Translation:
And it was evil towards Jonah; (so) great was the evil of it that burned within him. Unto Yahweh Jonah said, “Ah now Lord, was this not my word when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled to Tarshish because I know you God are gracious and compassionate as well as great in lovingkindness; you relent from (sending) evil. Therefore O Lord take, I pray thee, my life from me; for my death is better than my living.”

(v. 4) And Yahweh said, “Is your burning (anger) agreeable to you?”

So Jonah went out of the city towards the east and he dwelt there and made for himself a booth and he sat under it so that he would see what would happen to the city.

(v. 6) And the Lord God assigned a plant and he made it from upon Jonah to be a shadow for his head to deliver him from his distress. And Jonah rejoiced a great gladness concerning the plant. Then the next day God appointed a worm with the ascending of the dawn and it smote the plant so that it withered. (v. 8) And it happened that as the sun was rising God assigned the hot east wind and the sun smote upon Jonah’s head so that he fainted.” Then he asked for his life saying, “better is the death of me than the living of me.”

(V. 9) So God said unto Jonah, “Do you do well to burn (with anger) because of the plant?” And Jonah said, “I do well to Burn (with anger) even unto death.”

Then the Lord said, “You look with compassion upon the plant, which you neither toiled for nor did you cause to grow. It was the son of the night and it died the son of the night. And I (should) not look with compassion upon Nineveh, the great city, which being 120 000 men who do not know their right hand from their left hand and much cattle?” (The Chase Literal Version)

Wow! Let me just say that this is not a recommended pattern for how to talk to God.

What was Jonah so angry about that he would talk to God that way?

Let’s back up a bit and put this into its context. Let me just give you some background about the book of Jonah:

The book of Jonah is the great missionary book of the Old Testament. His name means ‘dove’ or ‘pigeon’; he is the son of Ammitai. Jonah prophesied in the northern kingdom around the same time or just before Amos in around 760 BC. According to tradition, Jonah was the son of the widow whom Elijah had raised from the dead. It is not certain whether Jonah himself is the author, or whether it was written by a later writer some time after the events had occurred. But Jesus himself validates the inspiration of this book by referring to Jonah as analogous to his death.
Jonah was commanded in 1:2 to get up and go to Nineveh to cry out against them for their wickedness and sin. Indeed, the sin of these Assyrians was great. Nineveh was built by Nimrod, the great grandson of Noah and the first powerful king on earth (human kings are always antitypes of the king of kings); the city was the greatest city in the ancient world. The name Ninevah contains the name of their Goddess Ninah, and the sign of the city was a fish inside of an enclosure.

The people were renowned for their cruelty and many of Jonah’s countrymen had been the recipient of that cruelty. The Assyrians kept some of the best records of the ancient world and their annals are meticulous in detailing the forms of torture they poured out on their enemies; things such as pouring boiling tar on them, skinning them while they were alive; or else they would cut off women’s breasts and tear off other people’s lips. Their form of crucifixion made Roman crucifixion look humane: they would mount the victim at the top of a huge poll and let him slowly impale himself over a period of days.

Jonah had likely witnessed the aftermath or heard first hand accounts of some these horrors.

Apparently, upon hearing this, Jonah took it upon himself to correct the Lord; he later recalls in 4:2 what he said, “was this not what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I fled to Tarshish; for I know that you are gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and rich in love.” It reminds of Peter’s rebuke of Jesus after Jesus predicted his death; But Jonah, like Peter after him, was mindful more of the things of man than of God.
Macarthur comments,
Jonah was sent to Nineveh in part to shame Israel by the fact that a pagan city repented at the preaching of a stranger, whereas Israel would not repent though preached to by many prophets. He was soon to learn that God’s love and mercy extends to all of His creatures (4:2,10,11), not just His covenant people….[1]

So Jonah split in the other direction and hired a cargo ship sailing from Tarshish to Spain. And here’s where the story gets really wild. In fact, we see more of the wrath of God against sin in Jonah’s rebellion than we will ever see in Nineveh (except maybe when he destroys the plant). The text says that the Lord hurled a great wind to the sea and the ship was about to break up. But the pagan mariners were more commendable than Jonah; while he was sleeping down below, they were searching themselves to see what sin had brought upon them the anger of God.

Eventually Jonah is awakened and he confessed to the mariners that His God is the cause for all the trouble: “I am a Hebrew and I fear the Yahweh the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land” (1:9) telling them to “pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm. For I know that this tempest is because of me” (v. 12).

Jonah would rather die than go to Nineveh. Later we will see that he would rather die then see God’s wrath restrained. But as his body slowly descended to the bottom of the ocean God prepares a miraculous means of preserving Jonah’s life even in anticipation of Jonah’s repentance and willingness to obey the Lord.
Jonah, we are told, was in the belly of a great fish for 3 days and 3 nights (which is the amount of time ancient people believed it took to really die and what Jesus was referring to when he said he would be in the grave for three days and three nights). We read Jonah speaking to God in a different tone as it appears that he has come to himself and he repents. Read 2:1-9.

And Jonah prayed to the Lord His God from the bowels of the fish. And he said, “I called from my distress unto Yahweh, and he answered me. From the belly of Sheol I really cried and you heard my voice. For you hurled me into the deap; in the heart of the sea the flood surrounded me; all of your calamities and your billows passed over me. So I said, “though I was cast out from your sight, surely I will look once again on your holy temple.” The flood surrounded me as far as my life; the abyss surrounds me with reads (so that) they were binding upon my head. To the bottom of the sea I descended; it was like (prison) bars on me forever; but you caused my life to ascend from the pit Oh God of me. When my life was fainting, I remembered my God and prayed towards your holy temple. They who keep empty idols forsake goodness. But with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed, I will do- Salvation is Yahweh!” (CLT).

Jonah threw himself on the mercy of God (the very thing he despises in God’s dealing with Nineveh), knowing that he is a sinner and deserving of the punishment He is receiving; even unto death. But God accepted Jonah’s repentance and caused the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land. And we come full circle to where we found Jonah in the first place: Read 3:1-10.

And so we come to the place where we found Jonah: belligerent and angry at God because Jonah knew that God would spare the hated Ninevites just as he had spared Jonah; but he heads out of the city in hopes of watching the fireworks just in case.
But the only fireworks will be upon his own head. The sun smote upon Jonah’s head and a scorching east wind blew upon him.

Application: We learn three things from Jonah that we can apply in our own lives:

1) God is a missionary God. His concern is not for a special nation, but for the nations. And God’s passion to display His glory to the nations is intensified this side of Pentecost because the cross has torn down the wall that divides nations and Jesus has commissioned… no commanded his church to take the gospel to all nations. We are all Jonah’s.

The question is will we obey or will we run in the other direction? One of the most wonderful opportunities we have at this time in history and here in Surrey that is that we don’t have to leave our homes and our people to be missionaries; God is bringing them to us. We can immerse ourselves in a foreign culture and language and live among people who are nothing like ourselves as if we were in their own country of origin. This is a remarkable opportunity.

2) The second thing we learn is that God’s sovereignty encircles our free will so that His will is never contingent upon our freedom. God will never say, “I did not know he would do that.” We may exercise our freedom to rebel against God and go in the other direction of his leading; but, as Roger Waters says, “What God wants, God Gets; God help us all.” Even our rebellion accomplishes the will of God.
We may think we can go in the other direction of what God has decreed; but even than, we still end up where he wants us.

3) We see in Jonah our own selfishness when we claim the grace and mercy of God for ourselves, but the justice and wrath of God for our enemies. When it comes to grace we are most generous in applying it to our own worst sins and we are most sparing in applying it to the smallest transgressions of others. Shouldn’t this be the other way around? Shouldn’t we strive for obedience and purity and grieve the smallest sin in ourselves with tremendous humility knowing that God’s grace is not cheap and at the same time, give the utmost grace to others who hurt us?

We withhold forgiveness from people and write them out of our lives and they don’t even know they’ve harmed us. Sometimes we hate them and wish evil upon for doing things that we would likely have done too if we were in the same situation. Sometimes I think our unforgiveness is more about jealousy than it about any sense of having been wronged.

True evidence of Christian maturity is not writing off relationships and walking away from commitments to God; it’s following through with commitments in spite of how we may be wringed and loving people who have hurt us and forgiving them and continuing in our relationships with them- sometimes without them ever even knowing that we were offended by them. Not in a phony way, but in a truly forgiving and humble way.



Conclusion

The book end rather abruptly. In the New Testament, the book of Acts ends in a similar way- it just ends, like it drops off the edge of a cliff. I believe this is intentional because what matters to the author is not so much, what did Jonah do next, but ‘what are you going to do?’

The question God asks Jonah is the question Jonah would ask you, “Are you doing well to do what you are doing?”


NOTES
[1]MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed.) (Jon 1:1). Nashville: Word Pub.