Loving What God Loves

Jonah 4:1-11

     I’ve been told that one of Hollywood’s fads over the past decade or so is to leave movies “open-ended”, i.e., to leave conflicts between characters in the movie unresolved and questions raised in the movie unanswered.

     So, this week, I’ve done what I often do: I’ve been asking church people to tell me about movies, books and shows that don’t tie up all the loose ends.  And I’ve been told about a lot of them: 

• The recent Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens that ends with the heroine Rey on an island about to deliver Master Luke’s light saber back to him. But, it leaves us with countless unanswered questions.
• Almost all the recent Marvel superhero movies that put a trailer in after the credits.  It’s usually funny or odd, and makes you wonder what they're talking about or how the new problem will be fixed.  But, always, it makes you look forward to the next movie!

     And, as many of you told me, older movies did the same, mentioning movies like Casablanca that ends without letting us have any idea about what will happen with Rick and Ilsa after they leave Morocco.  Others talked with me about Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz.

    Today, as we come to the end of Jonah, we discover there are a lot of questions unanswered, especially about Jonah himself.  What are we to do with a story when the title character’s last words are “I’m so angry, I wish I were dead!”  And God’s last words to him are, “And also many animals”?  It seems so unsatisfying, doesn’t it? It’s confusing.  Why didn’t it end with Jonah 3:10, “When God saw how the Ninevites turned from their wicked ways, he did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.”  Now, that would be a happy ending!

     But, let me tell you today that God’s Word has the story end this way to proclaim to you and me a powerful message.  It’s one that we don’t know whether Jonah ever was willing to accept.  And, I think that human beings have been so much like Jonah throughout history that God inspired this story to be written in this way to shock us – to shake us up in such a way that we might be changed by it.

How Bad Is This Ending with Jonah?

     I think the best way for me to start is to help you see how bad Jonah was at the end.  I’ve heard preachers try to soften the story.  I’m not going to do that.  Let me show you a few things about him that you might miss:

1. Jonah’s Sermon (3:4) Forty days and Nineveh will be overturned.

     I talked about this briefly last week.  Notice again that Jonah’s sermon only says that God will overturn these evil Ninevites. This is indeed what Jonah hoped for, i.e., that Nineveh would be destroyed.  But, do you see that Jonah said nothing about the fact that it’s in God’s nature to forgive sins and to show mercy?  And, these Ninevites would not have known anything about God’s character.  In fact, not knowing anything about God, the Ninevite king could only tell his people in 3:9, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

     In 4:2, of course, it’s clear that Jonah knew full well that God loves to show mercy. But Jonah didn’t want these people to receive mercy!  He only wanted them to be destroyed!

2. Jonah’s Revised Quotation (4:1-2) You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.

     As many Old Testament writers did, in v.2 Jonah quoted Exodus 34:6-7, the foundational passage in the Bible in which God tells Moses what he is like.  In that text, God emphasized that he always has been, is and always will be both just and merciful.  In his sermon, Jonah had only preached about God’s justice.  But, in his complaint in 4:2, Jonah only speaks of God’s compassion.  The point is that Jonah thinks God is only being true to one part of his character when he is patient with Nineveh, i.e., the side of mercy. By doing so, Jonah is really saying, “God, with what you’re doing to Nineveh, you are merciful but you are not just!”

     I think we can appreciate how hard this was for Jonah to grasp.  He didn’t know how God could be merciful to the evil Ninevites and still be just.  We who follow Jesus do know how this can be – or, we should know.  This topic is what we spoke about for weeks in our series from Romans 5-8.  God has shown how he can be both just and punish evil as well as merciful and declare sinful people right with him, i.e., Jesus bore the punishment for our sins on the cross and thereby makes right all who are in Christ by faith.  But, Jonah’s complaint is a vicious one, blatantly accusing God of a lack of integrity.

3. Jonah’s Ultimatum (4:3-5) Jonah prayed, “Lord, take away my life…”  Then Jonah sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter… and waited to see what would happen to the city.

     What Jonah is doing here is challenging God.  Jonah believed that God was the God of Israel and Judah – not of the Assyrians.  So, there is a lot of ethnic prejudice in Jonah’s actions. He thought that the reason he and his people were God’s chosen people was because of their superiority over others – a point that God never accepts throughout Scripture.  Anybody in the family of God is there by grace – not by personal merit. 

     Added to that, Nineveh was the center of the worship of the Goddess Ishtar.  Ishtar was the goddess of desire, sex and power.  What happened in the temple dedicated to her was vile.  So, Jonah must have wondered, “What would a holy God have to do with such immoral people?”   

     With all that in mind, what we see in 4:3 is Jonah giving God an ultimatum: “Make your choice, God.  Either destroy Nineveh or destroy me!”  And, Jonah seemed to believe that God would give in to this demand.  After all, God had covenanted to love Israel – not Assyria!  What Jonah wanted in v. 3 was not to be killed.  Jonah wanted God to reverse his decision to spare Nineveh. So, Jonah gave his ultimatum and then went to the east of the city, built a shabby hut, and sat to watch what God would do.

4. Jonah’s Self-centeredness (4:6-10) The LORD said, “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people …and also many animals?”

     Some say that Jonah was a classic narcissist -- seeing himself at the center of anything that is important in the world.  That may be true.  He saw himself as wiser than God.  And, he saw himself as being more important than over 120,000 people – and all their animals too!

     So, while Jonah was sitting in the hot sun waiting for God to submit to his demands, he found his hut wasn’t providing much shelter.  But then, God in his mercy appoints a leafy plant to provide shade and Jonah is overjoyed!  (4:6b is emphatic about how thrilled Jonah was with the plant.)  Jonah probably thought God was making up with him and showed it by giving in to his demands and providing this plant.  But, on the next day, God sent a worm to destroy the plant -- followed by a hot wind.  The result?   Jonah mourned the loss of that plant and again was ready to die.  We hear no more from Jonah in the story after v. 8.

     Of course, the last word in the story belongs to God – as it always does.  God was God when the story began and is God at the end too.  Let me put God’s words to Jonah in vv. 9-10 into my own words:

     “Ok Jonah, let me get this straight, you pity this plant, which was simply a gift to you that you did not earn or create.  You only knew that plant for one day.  Still, you mourn the plant -- and only because of what it did for you! And yet, Jonah, you are angry with me for caring about a whole city more than 120,000 human beings.  These are all people I have created in my image -- people I have watched over and longed for all these years?  Jonah, if you feel compassion for that one little plant, should I not feel compassion for these people who are the work of my hands? And, Jonah, these people who are not as fortunate as you.  They have not had my Word and my Laws.  They do not know whether to turn to the left or to the right.  Yet, with what little they had, they have repented.  Jonah, you care about a plant.  Shouldn’t I care about these people – yes, and even their cattle?” 

THE END!

     So, what happened to Jonah?  Do you want to know?  I wish I could tell you because I also want to know.  But, I don’t know what Jonah did.  Did he go to the grave angry with God and embittered with hate-filled self-righteousness?  The Bible doesn’t tell us.  So, I don’t know.

     So, what do I know when I finish reading Jonah? 

• I know that, at the end, God is still God and he will always act in keeping with who he is.
• I know that, if Jonah would turn to God in repentance and faith… well, we all know what God would do if Jonah were to do that, don’t we?  God would forgive his sins and show him mercy.  That’s what God would do because he is a God who loves mercy. 

     But, we don’t know what Jonah did. One clear point in Jonah is how out-of-step Jonah was with God.  He didn’t think the way God thinks.  He didn’t see the way God sees.  He didn’t value what God values.  Do you?

     In my view, Jonah ends this way so that we will ask ourselves whether we see anything like Jonah inside ourselves.  As followers of Jesus, we understand how costly justice is, for the wages required for our sin had to be paid.  Jesus bore in his body on the cross the punishment for our sins.  And, we really understand mercy.  The sinless one, Jesus, died for the sinful, us.  It is by grace that we are saved – not by our works.

     So, knowing all that, if we will live out the ways of God, valuing both justice and mercy like God does, what will we do?  I’m sure it would change every part of our lives.  But now, let me suggest two things: 

#1: God loves people – so go to where people are and take God’s message to them. 

     Look at how the Bible talks about the megacity of Nineveh in Jonah 3:3c – “Nineveh was a great metropolis belonging to God.  That what it says literally.  It means that the people of this city were made by God.  All that was in the city belonged to God.  Basically, this is a main reason for God’s interest in Nineveh, i.e., Nineveh belonged to him.  So, the people of that city were a part of the world that God loves – in spite of their sin.

     So, God sent Jonah to where the people are, i.e., to the big city -- to the center of power, entertainment and influence.  God loves the city – because so many people made in his image and for whom his Son died live in cities.  Read the Book of Acts and you’ll see it: The church started in a city, in Jerusalem.  God’s missionary enterprise started in a city, the great city of Antioch in Acts 11.  In their missionary activity, Paul and his associates went from city from city to preach the Gospel.  From the city, the work of God moved forward. 

     In the book of Jonah, God opened the door for Jonah to go to 10s of thousands of people, maybe as many as 600,000, in the megacity of Nineveh.  That’s almost always how God has furthered his work in the world. And, let’s accept this challenge to us at LAC:  God has placed us in a great city, the greater Los Angeles area, the entertainment center of the world.  How can we bring the gospel to our city?  We should be praying about that.

     And, in our own day, God is moving cities of people out of their home areas and their places of safety, out of countries that have been resistant to the message about Jesus.  We are witnessing the largest migration of people in the history of the world in our day.  I think we are now experiencing the greatest opportunity for the furtherance of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our world that I have seen in my lifetime as refugees are being forced by the millions to leave their homes. Jonah calls us to ask: Does God love those people?  Is he calling to us as he called to Jonah? “Arise, people of LAC.  Go to that great city of people who are wandering and don’t know anything about me.  Go and tell them.  Either go or make it possible for others to go.  I am ready to do a great work among them.  I am ready to use you.”

#2. God loves mercy – so if you are a mercy-receiver, then love being a mercy-giver.

     Jonah expected God to be merciful to him, but threw a fit when God wanted to show mercy to others. Jonah would have been more than happy to go to Nineveh if he knew he would have gotten to witness God’s wrath coming upon them.

     Why was he so negative about these people?  Was it because the governments and militaries of the Assyrians had been so brutal? That’s certainly a big part of it.  But, did he really think that this entire people group had already done so much bad that the only just verdict for them all was annihilation?  And was he so blind to his own stubbornness and pride – and that of his own people?

     When you read Jonah, you should ask yourself, “Do I ever lump whole people groups into the “unworthy of God’s mercy” category as Jonah did the Ninevites?”  Do you think about any people group, “I don’t want any of your kind around here!”?  I hear a lot of talk like that in our world now.  That cannot be the way of Christ.

     Or, was Jonah so harsh toward them because their religion was so immoral?  The sexual immorality of those who worshipped Ishtar at the temple in Nineveh was as bad as anything you might find in our world. I wonder whether, like Jonah, there are people that we as churchgoers avoid intentionally because of their ways of life.  But, God sent Jonah to such people.  God was ready to be merciful to such people. God has always called his people to enter with courage and humility into people’s lives to call people to turn to God -- including telling them of the mercy of God that is greater than any kinds of sin.

     I think there is a reason Jonah ends the way it does.  We read it and react negatively at the callousness of Jonah.  But, then, we should stop and ask, “Do I see anything in myself that is more like Jonah than like God?”  That’s the point of the story, isn’t it?  God is both just and merciful – and Jonah was neither.  He didn’t like God’s justice on himself – only God’s mercy.  He didn’t like God’s mercy for Nineveh – only God’s justice.

     I see the book of Jonah calling us to the same thing that is in Micah 6:8. That’s the great verse calling us to have our lives imitate the ways of God. God is just – we should act with justice.  God loves mercy.  We should love mercy.  So, now you know that God is able and willing to save the Ninevites – and, yes, even Jonah. 

     And, you know that you and I are witnesses to our generation that God loves the world so much that he sent his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

     I’ll now ask Pastor Scott White to come up and challenge us with one way that this message might play out through our lives.