Yesterday we saw how Jonah obeyed God (even if he did not have the purest of hearts) and God used his act of obedience to reach the great city of Nineveh.
The point of the story is people of Nineveh are overwhelmed by an awareness of their sin. It's not because Jonah gave this eloquent sermon. It's just God. It's just the Spirit of God falling on people. Their hearts are broken, "Oh, God, we've been so far off track. We've been so wrong." They repent the best they know how...the best they know how.
God looks at this poor miserable people... We're told later on, when God talks about Nineveh, that this is a people who do not know their right from their left. That's a way of talking about people who do not know right from wrong, a people who are totally morally lost. God, being God, is filled with compassion when He sees the Ninevites repent.
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. - Jonah 3:10
He has mercy on them and gives them His grace. He says, "I forgive." They have turned away from their violence and their aggression and their sin, and they are repenting. They are receiving grace. Now the story could end happily ever after, except for one tiny little problem (can you guess what it is?) - Jonah.
Jonah looks at all this... Now, you would think he'd be thrilled. This is the greatest spiritual achievement of his ministry. It is a whole great city of Assyrians, and they are brought to God through his preaching, and his wasn't even preaching wasn’t even any good; because when God moves it's not about human effort. He has never been used by God like this.
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. - Jonah 4:1
Jonah can't take it. He thinks, “This cannot happen! This should not happen!” He looks at Nineveh repenting and being forgiven by God, and he says, "This is terrible, this isn’t right!" The Hebrew text actually implies that Jonah saw it as “evil”. Think about this for a moment, what is great to God, Nineveh being forgiven and receiving grace...appears evil to Jonah.
Jonah was okay when grace was being given to him, but now it's going to Nineveh. Now Jonah is not okay. Now Jonah is really mad. Ann Lamott writes, "You can tell you have made God in your image when it turns out He hates all the same people you do."
I imagine Jonah thinking to himself -”C’mon God, You said You were going to blast them, and I took you at Your Word. I told them, 'Forty days, Nineveh and it's Sodom and Gomorrah time...you’re all gonna get it! Now it's not going to happen? God, I'm going to look like a fool. What’s worse is I'm going to go back to Israel, Your people, and it's going to look to Your people like I like the Ninevites. I don't like the Ninevites, God. I thought You didn't like them either.”
At the start of the book...to any Israelite reading it...to you and me, we think God's big problem in this book is, "What are you going to do about Nineveh?" That is sin city. Those people are degraded and vile. We think God's big problem is, "What are you going to do about Nineveh, about those evil people over there?”
That's not God's big problem. God's big problem is, What am I going to do about Jonah? What am I going to do about the man of God with a smug, superior, resentful heart? What am I going to do about my own children who lack compassion and grace? That's God's big problem. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be one of God’s big problems.
Jeff Frazier
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