Jonah 4:1-4
Amen. Turn in your copy of the
scripture to Jonah chapter four, verses one through four will
be our reading tonight. Next week, we’ll pick up with
chapter five to the end. And then after Jonah, I still
don’t know. We’ll have to have to see what’s
what’s next. But tonight, we want to look
at Jonah’s anger at the Lord’s compassion. So if you’re there
in chapter four, We’ll begin reading at verse one. It says,
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed
to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when
I was yet in my country? This is why I made haste to flee
to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious
God and merciful. You are slow to anger. You’re
abounding in steadfast love, and you relent from disaster.
Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me. For it
is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, do
you do well to be angry. Amen, the word of the living
God. A couple things to think about tonight. First, preachers
aren’t perfect. You’re looking at the intense
inner life of Jonah. Jonah is struggling, and he’s
put his struggle out there. Now, I think Jonah’s kind of,
well, wacky. Most preachers dream of preaching
a sermon and getting a response, a good response, that is, not
a backdoor attack. not a grumble and complain, not
an anonymous note in the mail, those always come. Most preachers
would love to preach in an entire city, repent of their sins. Most preachers would love to
preach a sermon and the entire church get on their knees in
tears. Most preachers would love, but
not Jonah. There’s something here of a inner
turmoil in his life, and we’ll kind of pick through this passage
and expose it. Another thing for us to think
about as we prepare to walk through these couple verses is the principle
that scripture interprets scripture. Most of the time in Old Testament
narratives like this, there are parallels. One section matches
a similar or like section in another part of the book. Well,
chapter four parallels chapter two. If you look at your little
headings, both are prayers of Jonah. And the contrast here
is Jonah’s really, really, really, really thankful and prayerful
in chapter two when it comes to his own hide. But now in his
prayer, he does not understand why God would save an entire
nation who responded to his preaching of the impending disaster of
God’s judgment against them if they do not turn from their sin. One last thing to think of in
this passage, and it brings us back to the subject of repentance
we looked at last week. Remember, repentance is, I was
going this way, and my assistant, navigator in the seat next to
me said it’s the wrong way. So I turned and went the other
way. Right. That’s what happens when we drive
down the road. You’re going north and you need
to be going south. You turn and you go back the right way. Well,
we have to wonder once we see Jonah’s confession here, was
he really sorry? Had he really repented in the
fish? Had he really all of a sudden
become in love with the enemy of God, the enemy of his people,
the Assyrians, and was he really in love and really wanted to
go preach to them? Well, I think the answer is no. He was just doing what he’s told.
So back to the preachers aren’t perfect. I’m sure the other ministers
in the room can attest that there are some times you do not wanna
do your job. You’re like Moses and say, Lord,
why did you give these people to me? take them back, right? That can be sometimes our attitude,
but we go through the motions, you know, we read through our
little prayer book, we kind of get through it and we go home
and say, whew, survived that one. That can be the way it is
and that’s what’s taking place in the life of Jonah here. Let’s think about this passage.
In a couple ways, we’ll look at those couple ways in a minute,
but look at the very beginning. In order to understand the very
beginning, you have to think back on chapter three. Jonah
went and preached. He preached across Nineveh. He
preached through Nineveh. He preached to Nineveh. Yet 40
days and God will come and judge you. He’ll bring disaster. The people believe God. They
called for a pass. They put on sackcloth and ashes.
The news came to the king and he said, everybody stop what
you’re doing, including beast and animals. And we’re going
to, we’re going to fast. We’re going to cry out, call
out mightily to God. We’re going to turn from our
evil ways, from the violence in our hands. Perhaps God may
turn and relent. And it says, verse 10 of chapter
three, when God saw what they did, how they turned from their
evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would
do to them. And he did not do it. So you get to chapter four,
verse one, and it displeased Jonah. How about that? He was unhappy at God’s sovereign
love. Displeased Jonah. Oh, that’s not the end of it.
Jonah was exceedingly displeased and he was angry. Now, We might
could use about a dozen English words to get this sense across. But just think of the concept
here. Jonah is angry at a loving, merciful, kind, and gracious
God. He is hot. He is boiling. And at least we
see in his spiritual journey here, at least he’s not running
to Tarshish. He’s actually coming to God.
The passage tells us after this in verse two, and he prayed to
the Lord. He approaches God about his issue. But can’t you imagine,
he’s been sitting 40 days, or whatever the time has been, 40
days yet God will bring disaster, but he’s been sitting saying
day one, check. Day two, check. He can’t wait
to day 39. And we don’t see this in the
life of Abraham with Sodom and Gomorrah, do we? Abraham hoped
that God would spare Sodom just for the sake of five or 10 righteous
men. We don’t see it in the lives
and examples of other men and servants of Almighty God, but
here he is sitting and he is rejoicing. He cannot wait for
hellfire, brimstone, and judgment to fall on the people of Nineveh,
but it doesn’t come. And it displeased Jonah exceedingly. I want you to think about the
irony. If you look at the word evil in chapter four, just the
few verses we’ve read, and then you go back and look at evil
in his preaching, he preaches against evil. The evil people
repented, and now it’s an evil to him, that this evil has been
repented of and stopped. Isn’t that backwards? Isn’t that
a wacky way of thinking, the tables, have turned.” Well, what’s
his prayer? His prayer is basically this,
see, Lord, I was right. That’s another step in humility.
He’s displeased, he’s angry, and now he says, oh, Lord, is
this not what I said when I was yet in my country? Who are we
to teach God? This is justification on the
part of Jonah. This is why I made haste to Tarshish. This is why I went, because I
knew that you’re a gracious God. I knew that you’re merciful.
I knew that you’re slow to anger. I knew that you’re abounding
in steadfast love. I know that you relent from disaster, because
this has been your character all along. Moses wrote of it. The psalmist have written of
it. And he says, therefore, now,
O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to
die than to live. I wonder if he really thought
about that. because God had him sinking to the depths of the
sea. He had him being entangled by the seaweed. He had him at
the roots or the, the foots of the mountains and the bottom
of the sea. He had more seawater in him than,
any man should ever taste. And now he says, Lord, take my
life from me. This is not the only example. We remember Elijah,
after he hoped for a revival in Israel, he won against the
Baals. And he goes off into the wilderness
and says, well, there’s no great revival, Lord, just kill me. Again, you fellows, there’s at
least three of us in the room here are preachers. We leave
church some Sundays and think, did anybody here a word I had
to say. We’ve given it all, our emotions,
our intellect, our week’s work, and we think, Lord, just shoot
me. If nobody is going to listen, why all the work? And you know,
sometimes, and I think this is a good example here in the life
of Jonah, sometimes the people don’t need to hear the sermon,
but the preacher does. And that’s very true in the life
of Jonah here. He needs to hear his own message. He’s missing all the points.
Well, I want us to think about three issues in Jonah’s life
that pop up. Don’t worry, we won’t be here
forever. These will be three quick things. The first thing we see that’s
rather interesting in this passage, Jonah’s upset about salvation.
How often do we pray for our loved ones to come to the Lord?
How often do we pray that maybe the city of Burlington would
come to the Lord? How often do we pray that people at our church,
when the word of God is read and preached, will get convinced
and converted from sin to salvation? How often do we pray that missionaries
who go on the foreign field will have success and that men and
women and boys and girls in foreign lands will come to faith in Jesus
and rest in Him alone for their salvation and worship Him in
this life and the life that is to come? How often do we pray
for that yet Here’s Jonah angry, angry that it took place, angry
that the character of God, which he so knows and loves, came to pass in the life and
ministry of his own day. He’s angry at salvation. He’s angry that God would save
people. It’s just backwards. He’s also
angry that God would include outsiders. He says, my country. You know, we’re Americans,
right? You know what jingoism is? Jingoism
is, you know, we love America. We sing about it. We stick the
sticker on our car. You know, we love to relive the
Reagan days or the whatever. We love the Fourth of July. You
know, you go to Williams High School and they have the Navy
band come and they play all the patriotic hymns. We get tears
in our eyes when they read that. Little poem by Johnny Cash about
the flag. We love our country. And we get
mad when others seek exile here, or seek freedom here. I think it was just more than
100 years ago, my family, at least a part of them, came over
from Ireland. And we watched the news. And there’s issues with open
borders and all the rest. But this is a great country to
live in, a great country to seek freedom in. And many of us come
from families that maybe in the not so distant future did that,
but we can become very nationalistic if we’re not careful. And that’s
what Jonah was being. Those Assyrians could never have
our God. Those Gentiles could never have
our faith. And we say that of the family
next door sometimes. Well, they’ll never be Christians.
I would never want them in my church. But that’s what Jonah
is doing here. He’s saying in the beginning
of his prayer, oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet
in my country? Kind of ironic because you fled
my country when you fled the presence of the Lord and went
to Tarshish on a ship with foreigners to a place where God was not
And there were many pagans, many evil things. So he’s upset about
salvation. He’s upset that God would bring
in the Gentiles. He’s also upset at God’s sovereignty. Take my life from me. It’s better
for me to live than die. And God says, do you do well
to be angry? That’s a thump on the head by
God, isn’t it? That’s a bit like Job. You know, we, we read a couple
chapters of Job and think, well, this is going to be interesting.
And then we read 30 some chapters of Job and say, would he just
shut up and learn his lesson? That’s kind of what we say. And
then we read the last couple of chapters of Job and say, oh
boy, he’s done it. God is going to thump him on
the head. There’s just going to be this constant divine brow
beating. Where were you, Job, when I put the stars in the heavens?
Where were you when I made Pleiades and Orion? Where were you when
I made the earth, the sea, and all the inhabitants of it. And
so Jonah here is upset with God’s sovereignty. A couple answers
to each of these. First of all, he’s upset with
God’s sovereignty. Well, think about Romans 9, 10,
and 11 when the Apostle Paul is defending God’s right to choose
and to pass over. And he says, who are you, old
man? to judge the sovereign one, has not the potter the right
to do with the clay? Well, think about God’s gracious
kindness towards those who come to faith and don’t deserve it. You think of the prodigal son.
Father, give me what’s coming to me. He takes it, he goes to
a foreign land, He spins it recklessly. He comes to his senses when he’s
out of food and when his body is literally rotting apart from
all the partying and other things he gets into. And he says, I’ll
go back home. At least I can be a servant there.
And so he goes back home. He rehearses his speech. He doesn’t
even get to give a speech and his father runs to meet him.
He gives him a hug. He puts a ring on his finger,
sandals on his feet, a robe around his body. He kills the fattened
calf and says, tonight we celebrate because this my son was lost
and is now found and we say, oh, what a great sweet story.
Well, that’s just the beginning. The brother, the older brother
hears the celebration and he comes near and says to a servant,
he comes home finally to his father and says, what’s this?
I’ve always done what was right, right? I never disobeyed you.
I kept all 10 commandments. And his father says, come and
celebrate. Your brother was lost and now has found, but his brother
would not come. And that’s Jonah here. won’t
come to the celebration. He won’t go to church in Nineveh
and give praise to God who reigns above and saves sinners because
he is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast
love, and he relents from disaster when people change. Well, what
about his grumbling at salvation? I think of Jesus in the Gospels
when A man with a withered hand on a Sabbath comes to Jesus in
his teaching and Jesus looks at the withered hand and the
Pharisees, knowing what Jesus is about to do, they say, teacher,
is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? And in order to show
them that it is lawful, he heals the man’s hand and they want
to kill him. We need to check our attitudes
over salvation. over inclusion into the family
of faith, over God’s sovereignty. We think we know better. We think
we know wiser. We would build a better church
than God would. And we end up like Jonah, displeased,
exceedingly angry, and saying, look, Lord, I was right all along.
If you’d just done it my way, I’d be happy. I want you to notice
one last thing, how selfish Jonah is. If you look in verse two
in his prayer. How many times do you see the
word I, I, I, me, me, me, my, my, my? It’s there. And when we get angry at God,
when we get brutish towards God, we get very self-centered. What should Jonah’s attitude
been? What should his prayer have been?
Oh Lord, I cannot believe. the success of the preaching
of your word. I can’t believe that you would
use me in this place to do this thing, and this is what took
place. God, be praised. Jesus, be glorified. Holy Spirit, be adored for all
your mighty work and salvation. But it’s better for me to die
than live. Please take my life from me. What’s our attitude? Is it one
of thanksgiving? Thank you, Lord, that you’ve
saved me. and that you’ve saved others? Or do we have in our,
maybe not from our lips, but at least in our minds, these
petty, small outbursts of being displeased towards God, that
he is sovereign and he saves sinners and even brings in the
strangers. Pray with me. Our God, we pray
that you would help us to learn from Jonah how not to do it. how not to have a rotten attitude,
a hard heart, a tough spirit towards your great work. We pray,
Lord, that you would give us a heart that beats for sinners
and that when your word is read and prayed and preached and proclaimed,
that sinners would truly repent and come to faith in you. And
that as there is joy in the heavenly places over the coming to faith
of even a little one, there would be great joy in our congregation,
in our midst, when sinners get saved. We ask this in the name
of Christ our Lord. Amen.