Jonah 4: A Question of Compassion

A Question of Compassion

This morning we finish up Jonah, so please turn with me to chapter 4. One of the things we’ve seen in this study is that Jonah is a book full of surprising twists and turns, beginning with God calling Jonah to hand deliver a message of judgment to a pagan city (prophets were often called to speak oracles against pagan nations, but never to deliver them in person – surprising!), and Jonah’s response of trying to flee God (unheard of for a prophet of God to disobey and try to outrun God!), and then Jonah being swallowed up by a large fish and surviving three days and nights in its stomach. And then after getting vomited on the shore Jonah preaches what is probably the shortest sermon on record, offering no hope to the wicked and pagan city of Nineveh, and – surprise! – the entire city turns to God in repentance and fasting en masse. These events are surprising to the point of unbelievable. But that’s the point: The surprising – even shocking – events in the book of Jonah call our attention to a surprising – even shocking – truth about God. In a way that is unlike any other book in the Bible, Jonah displays the radical mercy and missionary heart of God to an extreme that would be stunning to the original Jewish readers of this book. The purpose of Jonah isn’t to get us trying to figure out whether someone could really survive three days and nights in the belly of a whale (miracle), the purpose is to foreshadow the heart and mission of Jesus in ways that are meant to surprise and even shock us.

Today as we come to the end; I want us to look at 3 more surprises this book holds in store for us.

1) Jonah’s surprising anger
2) God’s surprising response
3) The surprising lesson contained in a surprising ending

Jonah's surprising anger (read vv. 1-3)

For the first time we see why Jonah ran away when God called him to go to Nineveh. Maybe we thought it was fear of going to a violent and wicked city with a word of judgment from God. That would have been my reason for running! But here we see it wasn't fear of failure that drove Jonah to flee. It was fear of success! Jonah is exceedingly (or greatly – there's that word again, gadol) displeased and he prays a prayer that is brutally honest and very revealing about the kind of man Jonah is.

Jonah wants judgment to fall on Nineveh. He wants the wickedness of the city to be punished by calamity. And he admits that he knew that God was the kind of God who would show mercy to the Ninevites if they repented. That's why Jonah didn't want to go in the first place. It wasn't that he minded giving them a message of judgment, it was that they might repent and receive mercy.

Jonah was angry at God, not because of some mistaken perception about God, but because of a true perception of God. Bitterly he tells God he knew God might spare the city (vs 3) for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Jonah is quoting from Exodus 34 when Moses asked God to show him His glory and God answers by saying He would pass by Moses and allow him to see His goodness and hear His name proclaimed. Then He put Moses in the crevice of a rock and passed by, and as He passed by, Moses heard these words:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. So when Jonah says he just knew God would have mercy on Nineveh because He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster, he's throwing God's own description of Himself back at God to condemn Him.

To Jonah these qualities are only good when they are directed at Israel, God's chosen people. When God chooses to display His gracious character toward unsavory, uncircumcised, un-chosen pagans like the Ninevites, well, then these qualities (in Jonah's eyes) are not good. He is not only angry with God, he doesn't like who God is. It's a hopeless place for a prophet to be, and mindful of that, he goes on to pray, therefore now O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

Jonah is angry with God, disappointed with God's character, and would rather die than see the results of God's compassion.

Loving judgment, hating mercy

Jonah reminds us a lot of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. He was fine with his younger son being estranged from their father. He was fine with him being distant and living wildly and ungodly. He was fine with him starving and maybe even being murdered by the wicked company he was keeping. But he wasn't fine with him coming to his senses and repenting and the father inviting him back into the fold with love and compassion.

There is a kind of religious mindset that loves judgment and hates mercy. Only those whose hearts are filled with self-righteousness can hold that mindset cause they don't think they need mercy. At least not much, not an extravagant amount of mercy. Jonah forgot the mercy he needed and received in the storm and the belly of the whale. The Pharisees didn't think they needed much mercy (because they thought they were righteous) and so they hated seeing Jesus extending mercy to prostitutes and tax collectors and other assorted sinners.

We often think of mercy as a beautiful thing – and it is - but mercy is most beautiful to those who think they need mercy. To those who don't think they need mercy, it can be an undesirable thing. Let me give you an illustration:

Let's say I challenge Jeff to an arm wrestling contest. And as he's got my arm 2 inches from touching the table I cry out, “are you ready to beg for mercy?” At that moment, an offer of mercy won’t be beautiful to Jeff. His eyes won’t fill with tears at my extension of mercy. Why? Cause he doesn't need mercy. It would be offensive to him, not beautiful.

The Pharisees didn't realize how desperately they needed mercy, so they didn't find mercy beautiful when it was extended to others. All they saw was sinners NOT getting the judgment they deserved. Jonah didn't find mercy beautiful when it was extended to an undeserving and sinful city because he didn't realize that he was also a wicked sinner in need of an ocean of mercy.

They are like the politician who commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of himself but when he saw the painting got very angry and told the artist, “this portrait doesn't do my face justice!” To which the artist calmly replied, “sir, with a face like yours, you don't need justice. You need mercy!”

What Jonah didn't realize, what the Pharisees didn't realize, what Christians sometimes don't realize, is that with hearts like ours, we don't need justice, we need mercy. When we realize how badly we need mercy ourselves, then mercy towards others becomes a beautiful thing too. Jesus said it's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick, and he didn't come for the righteous but for sinners.

Jonah's surprising anger reveals his self-righteous and proudly nationalistic heart.

God's surprising response (vs 4)
God answers Jonah with a simple but intriguing question, do you do well to be angry? One commentator points out that God isn't rebuking Jonah. He wasn't asking what right Jonah had, as a mere man, to criticize God. He was asking Jonah to reexamine his assessment of the situation: are you sure that your evaluation of what's happened here is a correct one?

Let me take a pause here to point out that God's question to Jonah isn't a bad question for us to ask ourselves periodically. When we're struggling with anger, ask the question, do I do well to be angry? Am I sure my assessment of the situation, and how best to respond, is a correct one? Other times that is a good question as well: Do I do well to be proud? Do I do well to be feeling sorry for myself? Do I do well to be critical of others? Do I do well to crave acceptance from others? Do I do well to be indifferent to those around me? Do I do well to be lukewarm towards God?

There's a biblical saying that everyone did what was right in their own eyes – their compass was an internal one and they trusted it to point them to what was right, but their internal compass was leading them in the wrong direction and away from God. The fact is our compasses are all messed up. We really don't know what we don't know. But when we seek God's perspective through His word, we find truth and wisdom to be a light unto our path.

I've been ignoring the fact that my laptop has been unable to pull in important updates since April but finally this week I decided to tackle the problem and I spent hours following threads that offered solutions to the problem – and nothing helped. Finally on Wednesday I contacted Microsoft Answer Desk and a highly trained specialist tackled the problem – for five hours, and then said she had to elevate it to a level 2 technician the next day. So at 10am on Thursday I get a call from Prashanth and he tells me not to worry he will resolve the problem. And he worked on it all day Thursday – until 5pm. And then called me at 9am on Friday. It wasn’t until 4:30pm Friday that it was all resolved. It was a real problem!

We can function when we aren't spending time in God's word. We can function when we aren't praying. At first, it may seem like nothing’s wrong, and we're doing fine. But if we aren't receiving fresh updates from God – fresh manna, fresh experiences of the Holy Spirit, fresh waves of grace, fresh confrontations with truth, then we will start to get spiritually sluggish, blind, our internal files will get corrupted, our compass will become what's right in our own eyes. And the danger is that we may not really be aware of the gradual shift in our hearts away from the Lord and His truth until things in our lives start to crash and we’re left with a big mess and a lot of damage. So before we look at the end of this book, I want us to consider this question: are we having our perspective and assessments of the situations we are in regularly informed by God's perspective?

God asks Jonah a good question. As we will see, Jonah doesn't answer God at this time, but God doesn't stop pursuing Jonah. And so we come to the surprising ending to a surprising book, and find a surprising lesson which is deliberately directed not at Jonah only, but to all of us.

The surprising lesson contained in a surprising ending (vv. 5-11)

Jonah doesn’t answer God’s question but instead leaves the city, builds a shelter, and waits to see what happens to Nineveh. He's hoping against hope that God will change His mind again and take the Ninevites out. But the shelter Jonah made was a makeshift shelter and it wasn't providing much relief from the hot sun, and so verse 6 tells us that God appointed a plant to grow fast enough and large enough to cast a welcome shade over Jonah as he waits to see what happens to Nineveh and the plant saves Jonah from his discomfort. The word for discomfort makes a connection between Jonah and Nineveh because it is the same word that is translated “evil” to describe Nineveh and it’s the same word that is translated “disaster” in chapter 3 when it says that God relented of the disaster (evil) that He was going to bring on it.

So this God-appointed plant springs up and saves Jonah from the evil of a brutal sun beating down on him and in no time Jonah grew to love that plant. He was exceedingly glad – gadol glad – to have that plant over him. But the next morning God appointed a worm to eat the plant and kill it and the leaves that provided Jonah with relief from the discomfort of the sun withered and died. But God's not done: He appoints a scorching hot wind to blow across the land and turns up the thermostat on the sun so that it's beating down on Jonah and Jonah becomes depressed, discouraged, and ready to die. Again he asks God to take his life.

Notice how central God's supernatural hand is in the book of Jonah. God spoke to Jonah in chapter one, hurled a great storm on the boat as Jonah tried to escape, appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah before he drowned, spoke to the fish to have him vomit Jonah up, again spoke to Jonah to bring a prophetic message to Nineveh, appointed the plant to grow up amazingly quickly, and then appointed a worm to kill the plant, and caused a brutally hot wind to blow.

Cynics often scoff at the book of Jonah, and even Christian scholars wrestle with the unbelievable events recorded in the book. But the point of the book isn’t to say this stuff happens all the time, it’s meant to be unbelievably miraculous because God is revealing something unbelievably massive about Himself and the payload for that revelation is in these final verses. God confronts Jonah – and us – with a final question.

Once again God asks him the question, do you do well to be angry for the plant? Jonah says, yeah, I do well to be angry – angry enough to die. Jonah still feels hardened in his self-righteous anger. Let's read, one more time, verses 10-11.

God presses on Jonah's out of proportion compassion for a plant that he had nothing to do with. He didn't plant it, he didn’t tend it. He just enjoyed it. Jonah is like a spoiled kid, wrapped up entirely in what he wants and ready to die when he doesn’t get what he wants. He feels compassion for the plant because it provided him with comfort, and he feels no compassion for Nineveh because they offend his nationalistic sensibilities of what’s right and what’s wrong.

So God asks a question. It’s the question that ends the book. It’s never answered by Jonah, is left echoing in our minds – a question that each one of us is left to answer. It’s a question of compassion:

And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?

Nineveh is a wicked city. That is true. And God will and must judge the wicked. He sees their wickedness, but He also sees their deep ignorance. They are blind and foolish. It’s the same heart displayed in Jesus when he said from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” There is real sin and it must be judged, but there is real stupidity too, and God has compassion on their ignorance. They are precious souls that God had everything to do with – He created them. And their souls aren’t just here and gone again in a day, but eternal in nature. This question reveals that God’s heart is filled with compassion for the wicked and pagan nations just as His heart is filled with compassion for His chosen people. He really is a gracious God, merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – and not just to Israel, but to pagan, wicked cities. Not just to Christians, but to hardened, non-Christians.

Jonah’s religion had hardened into a smug, self-righteous judmentalism instead of a compassionate and merciful outreach to those who are far from God. God’s question asks Jonah to compare his heart to God’s. His question asks us to compare our hearts to God’s too. It’s an open question that leaves us to write our own ending: will we view forgiveness the way God does, or will we limit our compassion to people and things that we are close to and judgment for the people we don’t relate to or agree with?

It’s a question of compassion – do we love and forgive and have pity on precious human souls like God does? And this question of compassion is compounded by that unexpectedly odd last sentence - and also much cattle? I’ve always felt like that’s a strange way to end the book. What’s up with that? Who cares about cows?

It is no throwaway line – God is revealing more of His heart to Jonah. He does care about cows. And dogs. And cats. And animals. They are not made in His image like man. Their lives aren’t sacred as human life is, but they aren’t worthless in His sight either. David writes in Psalm 36:6, Man and beast you save, O Lord. In the book of Job one of the ways God reveals His power and sovereign care over this world is by describing His care over animals – lions and ravens and goats and calves and donkeys and oxen and ostriches and horses and eagles. Jesus taught us that our heavenly Father feeds the sparrow and sees when one falls from a tree. He used a parable of a lost sheep and asked which of them, having a hundred sheep, if he were to lose one, wouldn’t go looking for that one lost sheep? God cares about animals. But God’s heart is not uncaring toward animals. Proverbs 12:10 says

"A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel" (Proverbs 12:10 NIV)

God gave us dominion over animals, and it’s not wrong to hunt or eat steak. But God does not look lightly on the man who is cruel to animals – it reveals a cruel and uncompassionate heart. God is a compassionate God, and that compassion extends even to animals. But God’s burden here isn’t to have us all go hug a cow today. It’s a question of compassion. Do we imitate His heart of compassion? Will we love people even when we aren’t like them? Even when they seem so indifferent to spiritual things? Even when they have different political views, or views on how church should look, or what morality or truth looks like. We don’t have to agree with them. We should feel care and compassion for them. When someone hurts or offends us, will we pull up a chair in order to watch judgment fall on them, or pray for them and have compassion on them?

It’s a question that makes me feel uncomfortable because I’m a lot like Jonah. I’m selfish and often more bothered by some inconvenience or discomfort introduced into my life than the very real suffering of others not close to me. Maybe you can relate. May we remember, with hearts like ours, we don’t need justice, we need mercy.

When the saving love of God, poured out like a flood at Calvary, Jesus died, not for friends, not for like-minded comrades, but for his enemies. When that love is poured out by the Holy Spirit into our hearts we should overflow in a love and compassion that knows no bounds. God hasn’t called His church to be smug and self-righteous, but to reflect His love and compassion for a lost and dying world. And that goes for those who are especially lost and far from God. It’s a question of compassion. May it echo in our hearts as we leave this place today. There are people that God is sending us to this week. Will we go? Will we speak? Or will we run?

It’s a question of compassion. Let’s pray.