Jonah 4: The Heart. God's love, mission and our pain

God's heart for the lost and for us

So Jonah has heard God's call to go to Nineveh.  He has followed his initial reaction to recoil at the very idea of giving an enemy empire the opportunity to turn to God.  Running away from God he has ended up in a fierce storm, and has seen pagan sailors show more of  a heart for God than he had at that point.   He has prayed a prayer of commitment and faith, from the darkest place.  Then he has had a second chance, and has gone to Nineveh and preached – with results that any self-respecting preacher should be thrilled with.  But Jonah isn't thrilled. He is angry. 

So he prays.  It's an interesting prayer: an angry prayer  from a mixed-up and angry heart. But at least he is, in the midst of his darkness, again praying.  God has wide enough shoulders to cope with our angry prayers.   For some of us, if we take nothing else from Jonah 4, we need to hear this.  It's OK – and even necessary – to shout at God, and tell Him what we feel like.

He says to the Lord “I knew it.  It's just typical. I come and preach to this lousy lot of sinners, and what do you do Lord?  You go and send revival.  I knew you’d do it.  You're too soft, Lord, with your your compassion and your covenant love.  I knew you were going to show chesedh (the Hebrew word for Covenant love) to Nineveh....  But I always thought Israel was your covenant people!  I'd rather die than watch Nineveh getting into a covenant with you.”  His heart and his theology were wrong. 

And God challenges him.  The Voice, still and quiet, says “You're angry Jonah.”

“Yes, Lord”

“And you feel you are right to be angry?”  “The purpose” says A J Glaze “was to lead Jonah to reflection so that he could see himself.”  But God doesn't do that by accusing Jonah or pointing the finger.  God could have said,  “Jonah, you disobeyed me once, I have looked after you through all of that, and still you are bitter, and too thick to understand my plan for the nations”.  But he doesn't.  Rather, he gently helps Jonah to see that his heart and theology are wrong.

Image: G Lilly

And just how wrong.  He ends up sitting on the hillside, makes a bivouac out of a few leafy branches,  and watches to see what will become of Nineveh.  He's thinking, “Maybe they haven’t really repented.  Maybe God can see through all the crocodile tears.  They won't keep it up.   Maybe God will judge them after all.”  So he's watching, waiting for an earthquake, a bolt of lightning, a plague of locusts, or an enemy army appearing over the horizon.  And it's hot up the hill; the leaves on his shelter shrivel up and let the sun in.  Jonah is miserable, exhausted from his adventures, his journey, his preaching.  So God causes a plant to grow over his wee hut, to keep the sun from burning Jonah.  That's better, “Thank you Lord!”

Then next morning, just as Jonah is beginning to feel comfortable again, God sends a worm to attack the plant and it dies, as quickly as it has grown up.  The sun gets even hotter and there is an east wind, the sirocco, blowing across the desert, bringing more heat and dust and drying out the air.  Poor old Jonah is even more miserable than before.  Once again, the depression and self-pity come out: “Lord, take away my life,  it's not worth living!”

Then the still, small voice, again:

“You're angry, Jonah.” 

“Yes, Lord.”

“And you feel you are right to be angry?”

“You bet I do.  I feel so angry I wish I was dead!” 
This guy was really messed up!  There is a connexion between our thinking and our feeling.  Psychology talks about negative automatic thoughts (things that just seem to arrive in your head from nowhere) coming from distorted ideas and dysfunctional beliefs.   Jesus says the truth will set you free – and that implies that deception, wrong thinking, can make you a prisoner. 

Image: G Lilly

We can see a connexion between commitment to an ugly, violent and hate-filled belief system, and poor mental health: that has become obvious in the actions of the attackers in Nice, Rouen, and Bavaria in the last two or three weeks.  You can see it in ISIS; you can see it in an entity like Westboro Baptist Church; you can see it in racism and white supremacism – and in the “Black supremacism” of Mugabe's Zimbabwe; we can see it in the intolerance that some on both the left and the right in politics have for anyone who opposes their own extreme views.  If we allow hatred, racism, and a feeling of superiority in, it will make us ill.

Then there is a much more personal level.  Remember that Jonah was already worn down physically by what he had experienced in the past few weeks or months.  He had been at risk of his life and indeed had been prepared to die during the storm (In chapter 1).  He had gone through a physically trying experience in the belly of the fish. He had been on a journey overland from Israel to Nineveh; he had been preaching to people he didn't know or like or relate to.  He was doing something for God that he didn't understand.  Physically and emotionally, things had happened that were tearing him apart. His world-view began to fall apart – because God refused to hate the people Jonah hated.  He began to feel he had been humiliated and made to look like an idiot – after all his prophecy of doom was not going to happen.  As a result, he began to sink into the mire of “Poor little ol' me!”  Life's not worth living.  

He wasn't the first person in the Bible to be there.  Moses got so tired and overwhelmed with the task of looking after the Israelites, that he said to the Lord “You may as well kill me now!” (Numbers 11.  15).  Elijah got burned out through hard work, opposition and  a sense of failure, and said “Take away my life for I am no better than my fathers”.  (1 Kings 19. 4)

So if that is where we are today, feeling “Life's not worth living” we are not alone.  We may need to get someone to help us.  To listen, to tell us we are loved; to help us explore the roots of our struggles; to pray with us.  And there are some things we can begin to do for ourselves: we can begin to challenge our deeply held and unhealthy ideas about ourselves, the people around us and the future.

God is there for Jonah Gently but firmly, God speaks: “You valued your plant, with its big leaves, although you didn't plant it or look after it.  Shouldn't I value Nineveh and its thousands of people?  I planted and looked after them.  I am their Father, too.  And they are so lost...”

And that's the punch-line. Boom-boom. Abruptly, the book comes to an end.  God has a heart for broken people.  He has a heart for broken pagans in Nineveh.  He has a heart for the nations.  In his sovereignty, God had sent the storm, the fish, the plant, the worm, and the burning sirocco: and the point isn't that we should resign ourselves  to wahtever bad stuff comes along as the purposes of God.  The point is that God exercised his sovereignty and used sometimes drastic means, to bring his message and his grace to Nineveh.   Look outside, down these streets.  What is there?  People who don't know their left hand from their right, morally, spiritually, emotionally.  People who are spiritually hungry and thirsty.  People who may be praying even as we are hankering for the simplicities of the past, sleeping to block out the present and despairing for the future.  God loves our Nineveh. And it’s called Rosyth!

Image: G Lilly

And he has a heart for broken Jonah.  The book ends here: but his story goes on: whoever wrote the story of Jonah – if it was not Jonah himself – must have information from Jonah.  So Jonah. was, in time,  able to talk about  his story.  He went on to develop an understanding of Yahweh as the God of all nations; and to grow a heart that reflected that understanding: a heart that cares for the last, the lost and the least; a heart that was secure in having God as his Heavenly Father.  God exercises his power to bring his grace and compassion to the lost, and to bring his healing to his people do that we can be able to bring his grace to the lost.

© Gilmour Lilly 2016