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In chapter 4 of the book of Jonah...Jonah is having a bad day. A really bad day. And it wasn’t just because of that big fish thing.
Although now that I think about it the guy gets vomited up on a beach; he’s doubtless naked, hairless; his skin bleached white from the stomach acid he’d been swimming around in for three days; he doesn’t know where he is so just to be safe (because for all he knows the fish is just offshore waiting to charge up onto the beach and nab him again if he doesn’t do what God sent him to do) the first thing he does is holler, “Repent!”
You know, the Bible doesn’t mention it, but I’m pretty sure there was a revival right there on that beach. I mean, come on...a naked, pure white hairless dude who comes flying out of a fish’s mouth yelling “repent!” Wouldn’t you repent? (“Yeah, dude, whatever you say...just get some clothes on...or at least grow some eyebrows!”)
Today we are concluding the series, “Responding To God In All The Right Ways,” by looking at the topic, “Hard To Swallow,” or “Responding To God’s Correction...Again.”
As the scene opens here in the beginning of chapter four, Jonah is mad. “Greatly displeased” is how it’s translated. “Hotter than a pistol” is the way my grandfather would’ve put it. Mad at God; mad at the fish; mad at the people in Nineveh. Mad at the world! Just plain mad.
In Hal’s book on Jonah he asks the question, “Have you ever been mad at God?”
To that I would add, have you ever held an offense against God for something that happened, or, perhaps didn’t happen that you thought should’ve happened?
Well, let me go ahead and tell you that I’ve been mad at God before. Fighting mad. But I learned quickly that my arms are too short to box with God.
Here’s this high strung, pouting prophet just boiling mad at God when he really should’ve been on his face thanking God that he didn’t drown in the sea; he didn’t suffocate in the belly of that stinking fish...that he survived and received another chance to serve God.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been the beneficiary of a significant number of “do-overs” in my life. Just like Jonah. Look at verse 1.
1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I 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.
- Basically Jonah is saying, “You know, God, I remember chillin’ at my house—minding my own business, kicking back and enjoying life—then you came along and said you wanted me to go to Nineveh. I tried to tell you then that it was a bad idea, but did you listen? No! And now, look what has happened.
“You couldn’t have found anyone on earth I hate more than these guys! They’re bullies, gang bangers...just plain mean! They’re probably Raiders fans! How can you possibly love people that I hate?”
That’s really the key, isn’t it? How can you possibly love people that I hate? He’s expressing a similar emotion someone who lost a loved one on 9/11 would express toward Osama bin Laden.
And yet, God’s love is so boundless, so unconditional, so limitless in its reach that even people we utterly despise are covered. That’s hard to swallow. At least it was for Jonah. Listen to what he says...
- 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
- Jonah says “If this is what you really want to do...then just kill me now. Take my life because I’d rather die than see this happen!”
Jonah didn’t really want to die—he wanted the Assyrians to die. He was just frustrated.
Have you ever been frustrated because God won’t listen? I mean it’s bad enough that He won’t follow your instructions, and keeps doing what He wants without your approval. To make things worse, He makes you do it with Him. That’s frustrating!
And when He decides to show mercy to someone you think should be dead! That’s hard to swallow.
Jonah had no problem receiving God’s mercy, but when it came to Nineveh having the same opportunity, there was no way! In Jonah’s book, Nineveh should be wiped off the face of the earth and the sooner the better.
So, get this picture in your head: Jonah is furious—pacing back and forth, beet red, and mumbling to himself, and God says...
4 "Have you any right to be angry?"
Have you ever been “reasoning together” with a loved one—perhaps your wife or husband, maybe a girlfriend, boyfriend—and they get a little, well, put out with you? And even though you know they are justified in being put out you go ahead and ask them, in all innocence of course, if they have any right to be angry? It’s like dumping jet fuel on an open fire, isn’t it?
That’s pretty much how Jonah felt after God asked him this question. If he’d been mad before, this sent him into a full-blown meltdown!
So how does Jonah respond to God’s question?
- 5 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.
- Have you ever been so mad you couldn’t even talk? Look at Jonah. He doesn’t even answer the Lord, but marches out of the city, muttering to himself all the way, and builds himself a little shelter.
My guess is he was planning to sit back and watch what happened. After all God said he’d give Nineveh a 40 day grace period before unleashing his wrath, so Jonah is thinking, “Okay, 3 days in the fish, factor in a little travel time, that leaves close to a month for God to come to His senses. I’m gonna’ stick around and see if He’ll throw down a little fire...or a lot...hopefully a lot.”
Well, fire didn’t fall on Nineveh, but things certainly started heating up around Jonah!
Now, based on my scientific calculations, the average daytime temperature in that part of the world (i.e. Iraq) is roughly equivalent to around 1000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Can’t you just see Jonah sitting out there in the sun, boiling on the outside from the heat...boiling on the inside over his offense at God. Skin blistering...casting blistering comments toward the city...toward God. He was hot! Nineveh may not have been burning...but Jonah was!
Like me, right about now some of you may be wondering what would’ve happened to Jonah if he had stayed in the city? Are you kidding? The king would have welcomed him as an honored guest—the man responsible for turning the Lord’s anger away from Nineveh.
The people would have showered him with love; food, drink, shade...all his. But his anger is so great—his offense at God for sparing these people is so great he sits there, day after day hoping that Nineveh will be kindling for the fires of hell, because any other outcome is just too hard to swallow.
We all have people that we don’t like. There may even be people in your life you dislike so intently that you don’t even want to witness to them. And so, like Jonah, we sit around waiting for God to grind their bones into powder. I mean isn’t that what God does to the enemies of His people?
This is Jonah’s struggle;
- How can God love people I hate?
- How can He show grace to people I can’t?
- How can He forgive people that I won’t?
6 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.
- Hal tells us in his book that this plant was most likely a Castor Bean plant, which can grow to a height of twelve feet very quickly. In this case...overnight.
Here is the only time in this whole story where we see Jonah happy about anything.
- He wasn’t happy when God commissioned him to preach to Nineveh.
- He wasn’t happy when the sailors were converted in ch 1.
- He was far from thrilled when a pagan city turned to God.
- But, the Bible says Jonah is “very happy” that God is finally doing something for him. Things were really starting to look up. Right? Wrong! God was actually preparing to teach Jonah a lesson.
Has God ever taught you a lesson? Have you ever forgotten it? Neither will Jonah.
- 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine 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."
- God sends a worm that destroys the plant that had made Jonah so happy, and He also sends a hot wind. I live in Las Vegas, and in the summer it is not uncommon to have daytime temperatures in excess of 120 degrees coupled with winds of 25-30 mph. We call it the “blow dryer effect.”
It’s about a thousand degrees outside and Jonah starts to pass out from heat and dehydration. If his situation was hard to swallow, now he can’t swallow anything because his throat is too dry.
I remember a song by Geoff Benward called “Redeemer” that was popular in the early nineties. The last line of the chorus says, “At the end of yourself you will find the Redeemer.”
That’s exactly what we see happening here to Jonah. God is chipping away at Jonah’s bitterness and rebellion, and little by little he is coming to the end of himself.
- 9 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."
- That’s probably not that bad of an idea, Jo. In fact, some of us could stand to do some dying.
- Dying to selfishness.
- Dying to pride.
- Dying to our right to be offended at God.
- What is God really asking here? I believe He is saying, “All right, Jonah. Let’s put our cards on the table. Who makes vines...you? No, I make them grow. How do they grow...by your power? No...that would be me. How can you be angry about things I create?
“And those people over there in Nineveh you hate so much...who made them? Was it you? And if you didn’t create them, what gives you the right to be angry about me saving what I have created?”
An Agnostic friend of mine once said to me, “I’m not sure if there’s a God; and if there is, I’m not sure I like Him.” I know a lot of people who are angry at God, but it’s a foolish hostility.
I grew up being taught that it was all right to be angry with God, that it was somehow more of an “honest” approach in my relationship with Him. I no longer believe this. The truth is we do not have a right to be angry with God. We do not have a right to take up an offense against Him.
Louie Giglio wrote a fantastic book a couple of years back called, “I am NOT, but I know I AM.” The whole point of the book is that the Bible is about the story of God. Everything in the universe that is seen or unseen is all about God and about His story–about honoring him because he alone is holy and he alone is worthy.
This is where we tend to get confused. Sin is delusional in its power to the point that we become convinced that the “story” is about us.
Like Jonah, we tend to script our lives to get God into OUR story. But what if we stop trying to squeeze God into our story and we instead surrender ourselves to His story to be used in any way He desires?
I know what you’re thinking...that’s really hard to swallow.
Don’t you get the idea that God is saying to Jonah, “From the time you were a child you have known my word...and yet you won’t follow it. But these Assyrians? They may be some of the most violent, cruel and brutal people who have ever walked my planet, but when they heard my word, they turned away from their sin and obeyed. You can sit there in your self-righteous anger as long as you want, but it won’t change the fact that I love them, and it won’t change the fact that you only love yourself.”
There is an amazing book written by Paul Young that is sweeping the country called The Shack. In one scene God is leading the main character on a journey of discovery. He follows a tunnel deep within a mountain where he comes upon a large cavern.
He can’t see very well, so he moves carefully forward and suddenly he comes upon a chair...a comfortable wooden chair in the middle of...nothing. He decides to sit in the chair and immediately sees an ebony desk of considerable size just a short distance away. Behind the desk sits a woman dressed in a long flowing robe, kind of like a judge.
She says, “Do you realize why you are here?”
To which the man replies, “I have no idea.”
Rising from her seat she motions for him to take her place behind the desk and says, “You are here for judgment.”
Terrified that judgment is coming against him, he stammers, “But what if I do better with the rest of my life? What if I repent? What if...”
The woman smiles and says, “You are not on trial here.”
“So who is?” he says after a few moments.
“God...and the human race. And you’re the judge.”
“I don’t have any ability to judge.”
“Oh, that’s not true, for you have judged many throughout your life. You have judged the actions and motivations of others. You have judged the color of skin. You have judged history and relationships. You have even judged the value of a person’s life by the quality of your concept of beauty. By all accounts you are well-practiced. And, you have judged God for not acting in a manner that suits you.”
When I first read this, it pierced me to the heart for I too am well-practiced in my judgment. And I turn it on God all the time. I am hoping you will see that this is the core issue with Jonah. He has judged God for not doing the right thing with the Assyrians and now carries an offense.
- 10 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 died overnight.
- “Jonah,” God says, “you seem to care deeply about a plant, but you don’t give one thought for the people of Nineveh.”
God is pointing out that Jonah’s anger is directly tied in to his selfishness and self-centeredness.
Sadly, we are every bit as rebellious as Jonah and just as disobedient—defiant. We are just as immature. We love ourselves more than we love others.
- 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
- Biblical historians speculate that the city could’ve had as many as 600,000 residents of whom 120,000 were children, and God said, “How about it, Jonah. Are these children worthy of my pity? I mean forget about those bloodthirsty and cruel men. Forget about the women too. But the kids? What about the kids, Jonah? And the cows...what about the cows? Should I be concerned about the cows too?”
And there is where the story ends, leaving Jonah right where his bitterness—his offense against God—led him. It’s a place we all wind up if we insist on carrying that offense. Because often God’s “correction” consists of leaving us right where our bitterness has led us.
CONCLUSION
I’ve heard many sermons on the book of Jonah over my lifetime, and it seems that quite often the central thrust was always an attempt on the pastor’s part to convince the listener that a “big fish” could, indeed, swallow a man whole, and that having been thusly swallowed, live in the fish’s belly and walk away after being vomited up.
But could there be another point? A far deeper point?
Could it be that God wants to “swallow” us whole? To swallow our bitterness, our pride, our hurts...our great offense to the extent that we would rather see His kingdom come than have our own agenda realized? To be more concerned for seeing a lost and perverse generation come to Christ than for our own pleasure, leisure and comfort?
Hard to swallow? Sometimes we are.
PRAYER
AFTER PRAYER
In C. S. Lewis' book, The Silver Chair, a selfish little girl named Jill asks the great lion Aslan—the story's Christ figure—if he eats girls. Aslan responds, "I have swallowed boys and girls, men and women, kings and kingdoms." The question is not, "Did a whale swallow Jonah?" It's, "Did God?"
And here's an even more interesting question: Has he swallowed you?
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