Who Matters to God?
Dr. Larry Thorson*
Jonah 3:10-4:1-11
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from
their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had
threatened.
1 But to Jonah this seemed
very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "Isn't this what
I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by
fleeing 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. 3 Now,
LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
4 But the
LORD replied, "Is it right for you to be angry?"
Today’s New
International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Hmm, sounds likes
somebody has anger issues and they’re taking them out on God. But it’s not like God has gone out and gotten
drunk and smashed the family car. It
sounds like God did something good in response to the people of
Obviously Jonah doesn’t
see it that way. Jonah was okay when grace
was being given to him when he was in the belly of that big fish looking death
in the face. Oh yea, God’s grace was
good then but now it's going to those evil types in Nineveh and suddenly Jonah
is not okay with God giving out grace. So now Jonah is actually ticked off. Now
Jonah says, "This is very wrong."
At the start of the book when we read the initial
message God sent to Jonah “"Go to the great city Nineveh and preach against
it, because its wickedness has come up before me..." we think God's big problem
in this book is, "What is God going to do about such a gross, sinful place
like
But that turns out not to be God's big problem
after all. 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?" That was God's big problem then and that’s God’s big problem now. Have I gone to meddling in anyone’s life here
yet?
So that was quite a prayer Jonah prayed. It had some sting to it. It was a far cry from his first prayer in the
book. The first time he doesn’t pray
until he's desperate in the belly of the fish, and it looks like he's going to
die. "Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh God,
help me. Let me live. Forgive my disobedience." You know what happens; God
hears him and gives him grace. The fish
spits him out.
Then the Ninevites also prayed a prayer of
repentance and demonstrated that they turned from their wicked ways. God also gave them grace and they weren’t
destroyed.
But when Jonah prayed a second time in the book in
the passage we read earlier his tone had changed. "Isn't
this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to
forestall by fleeing 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. 3 Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to
die than to live."
Unbelievable prayer. The first time he prays Jonah's
going to die and he prays, "God, let me live." The second time he
prays he's in the middle of this amazing triumph of life and prays, "God,
let me die." At this point, he doesn't really want to die. This is like an
adolescent. "God, I want my own way, and I want it to be the destruction
of the Ninevites."
You can almost imagine Jonah praying "Give me
a break. You've got to be kidding. Grace to
But you would think he'd be thrilled at the people
repenting. This is the greatest spiritual achievement of his ministry. It is a
whole great city of
Ann Lamott says, "You can tell you have made
God in your image when it turns out He hates all the same people you do." But
God is so patient with Jonah. When Jonah goes on this tirade and impugns God's
character, all God says in return is, "Is it right for you to be
angry?"
God looks at Jonah and listens to his anger. Then God gives him this little parable, and
he asks him a simple 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. 6 Then the LORD God provided a gourd and made it grow up over Jonah to
give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about
the gourd. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the
gourd 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."
10
But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this gourd, though you
did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11
And should I not have concern for the great city Nineveh, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand
from their left—and also many animals?"
In other words God says "Jonah, you're
concerned about your little shade. You're concerned about
Now what's Jonah going to say? I hope he says,
"Oh God, I've been such a fool, I've been so smug and so superior and
resentful. God I'm sorry, would you forgive me and make me a vessel of grace.
Give me a tender heart like Yours. Help me
get
it right." Or…will he just hold onto his arrogance, his self-justified,
self-righteous stupid pride?
But we never find out. The story just ends with
Jonah sitting there to let us think about it. It's a funny thing, Jonah
received grace when he hit bottom. Now he's offended by grace when it goes to somebody
else. Jonah has this superior, judgmental, unloving heart and God has a harder
time saving Jonah than He does saving
It's a funny thing. When Jesus came, the people
that Jesus had the hardest time with were not the people that everybody considered
the big sinners…not the prostitutes, not the tax collectors, not the people
that you'd obviously associate with a place like Nineveh. The people Jesus had
the hardest time with were people who considered themselves the spiritually
mature. They had these superior, judgmental, unloving hearts. It's a funny
thing.
A well known researcher by the name of George
Barna has done a lot of research around faith issues of our day, and quite
consistently
has found that the main traits people outside the Church associate with those
of us who are Christians are superior, judgmental, unloving hearts and
attitudes. Maybe they're all wrong. Maybe that's just kind of a cop out to
avoid dealing with their own sin, but maybe I have some Jonah in me because I can
put people into categories that let me dismiss them so fast.
This morning as we come to the table of our Lord
maybe there’s someone in your life that you’ve had a superior, judgmental,
unloving heart and attitude toward. It’s
easy to do especially when someone is not very nice to you. I’ve done it in thought, word and deed to
people. But Christ died, died a painful
death for that person, as mean and ugly as they are. Our attitude toward them will keep us from fully
seeing God’s gift of grace to us as a gift and not an entitlement.
Would you bow your head and close your eyes for a
few moments. With your eyes closed I
want you to intentionally picture that person or those people you have
condemned with your gossip in the last week.
I want you to picture that person or persons whose integrity your words
have damaged.
Next I want you to picture a happy scene with you
in it. Can you do that? Do you see yourself smiling again?
Next I want you to picture Jesus hanging on the
big, ugly cross. In the quietness before
this table of our Lord, answer this one question: who matters to God?
*Sermon adapted from a sermon
preached by John Ortberg on