SUMBER KRISTEN: KOTBAH BAHASA INGGRIS
melayani jemaat dan hamba Tuhan
melayani jemaat dan hamba Tuhan
At the end of our study in Jonah 3 there was an incredible revival
in process in the Assyrian city of Nineveh. This revival was a
result of Jonah's obedience to God when he preached God's impending
judgment on that wicked city. "He cried, 'Yet forty days,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' And the people of Nineveh believed
in God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the
greatest of them to the least of them." God's message of
judgment against evil is always good news. His purpose in confronting
sin is for people to repent so that they can be restored to relationship
with him.
It is said of God in chapter 3 that, at least from a human perspective,
he changed his mind. But we saw clearly that God in his justice
always desires to eradicate sin and never changes his mind about
that. He will do it if need be by destroying sinners who refuse
to give up their sin; he hates sin and its consequences that much.
But in his compassion he would always prefer to forgive a sinner
who turns away from sin and to him for forgiveness. At the heart
of Jonah's message of judgment is God's desire to bring repentance
and restoration. In chapter 3 verse 10 that is exactly what God
did. "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their
evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would
do to them; and he did not do it."
Try to put yourself in Jonah's place as he surveys this incredible
response to the word of the Lord. The Ninevites hear the good
news wrapped up in the bad news of judgment, and the entire city
repents of its evil ways; all the people put on sackcloth, sit
in ashes, and fast because they believe God. How would you feel
if you were, say, leading a Bible study and everyone in the study
responded in a mass movement to the good news of the Scriptures
and turned their lives over to Christ? Wouldn't you be excited?
Let's look at Jonah's response...
A STUBBORN MAN
(Jonah 4:1-4)
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
It can't be understated; these are the strongest possible words.
What Jonah has suspected all along--the reason he disobeyed God's
call to go to Nineveh in chapter 1--actually comes to pass. We
saw Jonah run away from God at his first call, run back to God
in prayer when he was sinking to his death in the depths of the
ocean, and run with God in obedience proclaiming the message to
Nineveh. Now in chapter 4 we will see him run way out ahead of
God as he tries to usurp God's position of sovereign authority
and questions God's mercy and forgiveness toward the Ninevites.
You may wish that the story had ended with chapter 3, but chapter
4 continues to unfold God's tough love for Jonah. God continues
to dialogue with Jonah and work on his behalf because he cares
so much about him. God isn't satisfied with mere compliance, which
is what he got from Jonah in chapter 3 when he preached judgment.
What God wants is for Jonah to learn to value what God values.
Jonah's heart has not changed since his original call in chapter
1.
What we are going to find out is that Jonah is just as guilty
of idolatry as the pagans he satirized back in chapter 2 verse
8 when he said in prayer:
"Those who pay regard to worthless idols
forsake their true loyalty."
Jonah's idol is Jonah. He is more committed to his own concepts
of God and how God should act than he is to God himself. All of
his protestations of love for the Lord and for his nation in his
prayer in chapter 2 were like a projection of his love for himself.
He is still clinging to his prejudice that God is the exclusive
possession of Israel; that God is his own personal God. Jonah
has developed a theological system in which he has locked God
into a box to which he has the key, and he isn't going to let
God out. Jonah's theology has become an expression of his stubborn
will. His hard heart says, "This is what I believe about
God, and even God himself isn't going to change it." That
is one of the dangers, by the way, of air-tight theological systems
in which we have carefully and neatly fitted everything together.
The problem with systematic theology is that it can lock God in
so tightly that it omits his freedom to be the sovereign Lord
of the universe.
In chapter 2 we saw that this attitude put Jonah into mortal danger.
He called out to God for help, and God rescued him. At that time
the prophet confessed his need, and he said almost exactly all
the right words in his psalm in chapter 2. But he never really
repented of his sin, for now he continues to object to God's extending
his mercy to Gentiles. Never in the first three chapters did Jonah
ever say, "I'm wrong and you're right. You're God; you can
do anything you please and forgive whomever you wish. Please forgive
my narrowness, rigidity, and judgmentalism."
Jonah's problem is that he wants to control God. And what do any
of us do when we can't control circumstances and get our own way?
We get angry. (We may express our anger in a lot of different
ways--perhaps passively.) In the verses that follow are two conversations
between Jonah and his God; and each time Jonah speaks, what he
expresses is petulant anger. And God's responses to Jonah's anger
are amazing. In the middle of the chapter God gives Jonah some
object lessons with a worm and a plant and the sun and the wind
to help him understand his own confused heart. Let's look at Jonah's
first prayer in verse 2. It is a very angry prayer:
And he prayed to the LORD and said, "I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live."
Jonah is just as willfully stubborn now as he was when God
called him back in his hometown of Gath-hepher. His prayer is
a diatribe rather than an expression of honest devotion to the
Lord. He is repeating the words that he has been taught from childhood,
the description of the Lord in Exodus 34:6. The Old Testament
is shot through with this image of God (Psalm 145 is a good example).
But Jonah's awareness of God's nature becomes the basis not for
adoration or submission, but for the audacity to get in God's
face and challenge him.
Jonah understands that God's punishment can be turned aside, that
out of God's hesed, his steadfast love, he will repent
of evil because the Ninevites repented. But there is a strange,
sarcastic twist in the way Jonah repeats the Scriptures back to
the Lord. It is as if Jonah feels that he has been done a great
evil because of God's goodness to the evil Ninevites. Jonah's
anger is caused by his realization that he can't manipulate God;
he can't get God to change his mind and carry out Jonah's will
that those Ninevites ought to be destroyed for their wickedness.
For a willful, controlling person--and here I speak from some
experience; it takes one to know one--there is nothing as frustrating
as not being able to control events or circumstances or people,
especially not being able to control God's direction and activity
and purpose. So in his thinking Jonah runs way out ahead of God,
and he ends up out there all by himself. Then his destructive
anger seems to turn into self-destructive despair, which is the
basis of his request that God take his life. The only thing left
for Jonah to control is whether he lives or dies. And he tries
to exercise this last area of willfulness by pronouncing his own
death sentence and demanding that God carry it out. (Haven't we
heard this before? Back in chapter 1 he was manipulating the Phoenician
sailors in the same way: "It's all my fault; throw me overboard
and the storm will stop.") In his statement, "It is
better for me to die than to live," he is talking to the
God of the universe, the God of life and death. Jonah is still
trying to tell God what is best and what God ought to do about
it.
I don't know what you would feel like if you were in God's place
having to respond to Jonah at this point, but look at God's response
in verse 4:
And the LORD said, "Do you do well to be angry?"
God doesn't respond to anger with anger. There is no thundering
rebuke of Jonah; just a gentle, thoughtful question. Ignoring
Jonah's death wish, he addresses the issue of his anger. He is
calling this suicidal prophet to a self-examination of his willfulness.
Think about it logically: if anybody has a right to be angry with
the Ninevites, it is God, who hates sin, destructive evil, and
violence. And yet he chose to offer them forgiveness. So implied
in God's question is, who is Jonah to be angry when God chose
not to destroy Nineveh? Remember, Jonah knows that it says in
the Pentateuch, "Vengeance is mine, and recompense"
(Deuteronomy 32:35). That is God's call, not Jonah's.
We play God when we continue to be angry at individuals or groups
of people whom God has forgiven, when we take their punishment
into our own hands through a negative attitude, vindictive words,
or even hostile, destructive actions. We are running out ahead
of God in meting out what we think justice demands. God asks us
just as he asked Jonah, "Is that your right?" Divine
logic drives us to only one answer: "No, Lord, it is your
right, not mine. I don't do well to be angry." But look at
how Jonah responds...
A PREJUDICED MAN
(Jonah 4:5)
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city.
Jonah turns his back and walks away from God. He doesn't even
answer God's direct question, but his defiant attitude and actions
indicate his reply. (Notice that he doesn't kill himself either,
by the way.) He leaves the city, builds a little shelter, and
sits down under it, peering out over the city. My conviction is
that he is hoping that the Ninevites will blow it and return to
their wickedness, which will prove him right and God wrong. Think
of how prejudiced he is toward the Ninevites: "You can never
trust the word of a Ninevite. Once a Ninevite, always a Ninevite.
God, you're being too hasty in this blanket forgiveness. Just
give them a little time, they'll hang themselves." He has
a ringside seat above the city from which to watch the fire and
brimstone. He still knows he is right and God is wrong.
There is an amazing contrast between this prophet perched above
the city sulking in his little shelter and the king of Nineveh.
Let's look back at chapter 3 verse 6: "The tidings reached
the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his
robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes."
Jonah is totally unrepentant. Yet here is the wicked king getting
down off his throne, sitting on the floor in ashes of humility
before the Lord, covering himself with sackcloth, and mourning
over his own sinfulness. These two men in leadership are sitting
in two very different places with two very different perspectives
on what God is doing.
GOD'S OBJECT LESSON
(Jonah 4:6-8a)
I confess that I would have given up on Jonah long before this.
But look at God's next move in verses 6-8a:
And the LORD God appointed a plant, and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm which attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a sultry east wind [a sirocco], and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he was faint....
This is amazing to me. God persists in his hesed, his
steadfast love, for Jonah in spite of Jonah's angry silence and
defiant withdrawal to the rim rock above the city. God won't give
up on him. Just as he appointed the great fish, he appoints a
plant to grow for a special purpose, and then a worm and a sultry
east wind. As I suggested earlier, God is turning all the forces
of nature to use them for Jonah's salvation, moving heaven and
earth because he loves this man so much.
Jonah has built himself a little shelter out of twigs and stones
that provides very minimal shade. So God appoints a plant to grow
that gives lots of shade from the sun. But the purpose of the
shade tree is much more than just physical comfort. The phrase
in Hebrew is a beautiful play on words that can be understood
in two ways. The verb to save can be translated "to shade."
And the word discomfort can be translated "evil" or
"wickedness" or "trouble." The word is used
that way in chapter 1 to talk about the evil or trouble that had
come on the ship because of someone's sin and in chapter 2 to
describe the Ninevites' wickedness. The words can be used interchangeably
so that you have two different ideas at the same time in that
little phrase. Literally, God sends the plant to shade him from
his discomfort, referring to the sun; and to deliver him from
his wickedness, referring to Jonah's unjustified anger. Remember,
Jonah, as the author, chose the words to describe God's action,
so he created the double meaning. This kind gift of the shade
plant is not only to keep Jonah out of the sun but to remind him
of God's grace and goodness, which he doesn't deserve at all.
The second half of verse 6 tells us that Jonah was "absolutely
delighted" over the shade plant. This is the only time in
the entire book that Jonah is happy about anything, and it has
to do with his personal comfort. There is an amazing irony here.
He is delighted with the shade, but he is still no more compassionate
toward Nineveh despite this evidence of God's compassion for his
own discomfort and his own wickedness. Since Jonah is unwilling
to connect God's grace to him with God's grace to Nineveh, the
Lord sends a worm to destroy the plant and deprive Jonah of his
shade.
Then comes the sirocco of probably 110 or 120 degrees blasting
out of the eastern desert and dehydrating him. The shade is gone
now and the sun beats down intensely. In another word play, the
Hebrew word for anger is synonymous with heat; we talk about being
hot under the collar. It is as if God is saying, "Okay, if
you're going to persist in your angry rebellion against me, I'll
make it really hot for you so you can get the point." So
Jonah is faint from the sun, experiencing heat stroke.
A CONFUSED MAN
(Jonah 4:8b-9a)
And now comes Jonah's second conversation with God, which concludes
the story. Verses 8b-9:
...and he asked that he might die, and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?"
It is clear from God's response to Jonah that his request to
die comes from anger over the loss of the plant. He repeats his
earlier death wish. Now, the gift of the plant was God's way of
helping Jonah answer his earlier question, "Do you do well
to be angry?" The plant symbolized to this prophet God's
mercy on Nineveh. And God wanted Jonah to understand how wrong
it was for him to be angry about God's intervention to save the
city. The death of the plant symbolizes the removal of God's mercy
from Jonah, just as God might have chosen to remove his mercy
from Nineveh if he had followed Jonah's desires. Jonah is very
thankful for the plant, and he should have been thankful for God's
kindness to Nineveh. However, he is very angry when the plant
dies, yet he would have been delighted if the mercy of God had
been denied to Nineveh and they had died. God is trying to show
Jonah how confused his thinking is, valuing a plant but disdaining
a whole nation of people.
God asks the question again, "Do you do well to be angry?"
He is putting Jonah on the spot, trying to back him into a corner
to deal with his rebellion. Look at Jonah's answer in the middle
of verse 9:
And he said, "I do well to be angry, angry enough to die."
His answer shows something frightening: He isn't willing to
live with the God who can give grace to or take grace away from
whomever he sovereignly chooses, Jew or Gentile. There is an ambivalence
in Jonah's heart that we have seen throughout the whole book.
He can't stand the thought of God's extending his grace to the
Ninevites; and yet he knows that he can't live without that grace
himself. He finally understands that he can't have it both ways,
God's speaking judgment to the Ninevites but grace and mercy to
him and to the Jewish nation. Since Jonah can't convince God that
his kindness to people who repent is wrong, he wants to die. Jonah
is saying, "I'm going to win the final round in this power
struggle. There is no way that you're going to beat me in this
one, Lord." Back in chapter 1 Jonah would rather have died
than obey what God said. Here it's very different--Jonah would
rather die than admit that he is wrong. The root of his rebellion
is idolatrous pride.
When I was a youth pastor in Los Angeles a number of years ago
I was in a ministry with a woman who, in deep grief, came into
our church for counseling. After years of marital conflict, her
husband committed suicide, and in his suicide note he said that
he had killed himself because of how she had treated him through
all their years of marriage. So this woman was left to live with
not only the grief of his death but the guilt she was having to
carry because of the blame he imposed on her. What a way to win
a battle for control! Her husband was saying, "If I can't
control you in life, then I will control you in death."
That is the statement Jonah is making to God. In his demand to
die he is angrily blaming the God from whom he wants to escape
into death. Running away to Tarshish hadn't worked, and so now
he wants separation from this God of mercy whom he has come to
abhor. He abhors God because he can't control to whom God will
show his mercy.
GOD'S PITY
(4:10-11)
It moves me deeply that even though Jonah is willing to give up
on God, God can't deny his own nature of mercy, longsuffering,
and patience. He won't give up on Jonah. Look at God's final word
in verses 10-11. God contrasts his own heart of mercy for the
world with Jonah's cold, hard, pitiless heart:
And the LORD said, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?"
Jonah's pity on the plant is a projection of his own self-pity.
Yet if he thought he had a right to this pity for himself, didn't
God have a right to pity Nineveh?
There is a beautiful phrase in verse 11: "a hundred and twenty
thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left."
Interpreters in the nineteenth century thought that referred to
a hundred and twenty thousand babies. But recent excavations and
studies of population census listings have shown that the city
would then have had to be three-quarters of a million people.
There is no way it could have been that large. Recent studies
in Semitic languages suggest that this is an idiomatic expression
for the lack of knowledge or the moral innocence of an infant,
child, or person who doesn't know the difference between good
and evil. The expression refers to an inability to make moral
judgments. That is how God views the wicked, evil, idolatrous
citizenry of Nineveh. They are in the dark, blindly flailing around.
They can't tell their right hand from their left, good from bad,
right from wrong. They are in bondage.
This is the same perspective the apostle Paul has in Ephesians
2:1-3 when he talks about the population of the world without
Christ. He reminds us as believers, "And you he made alive,
when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you
once walked, following the course of this world, following the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work
in the sons of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in
the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind,
and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
The Ninevites were children of wrath. They were held captive by
supernatural evil.
Jonah is unable to think of the Ninevites this way, though. He
sees them as the enemy, fully deserving of the worst that God
can do to them. He is so engrossed in his self-pity that he has
no pity to spare. And as the story comes to a close we see that
Jonah needs God's mercy as much as or more than the Ninevites
do. Jonah says he knows about God's mercy or pity in verse 2.
Yet this prophet wants none of God's mercy if it means that he
has to express it personally to the Gentiles. But the pity that
Nineveh needs from God, Jonah needs even more because of his own
pitilessness, judgmentalism, and petulant anger. He doesn't realize
that he too is being judged by God, and the result is self-righteous
anger. If Jonah could accept God's sovereign right to show pity
on whomever he chose and would repent of his efforts to control
God, this prophet could also receive the mercy, grace, and love
of God that he so desperately needs.
A REPENTANT MAN
The book of Jonah ends very abruptly, without that crucial repentance
from this unwilling prophet. What do you think happened to Jonah?
I'm convinced that Jonah is the author of this book, that he wrote
it purposefully to contrast his own constricted heart with God's
open heart of love for the world. I'm convinced because of the
insight revealed in the way he told the story that he finally
did come to understand the heart of God.
When Mike Johnson was a pastor here he had a book on Vatican art
with a number of photos of Michelangelo's paintings. On one of
the walls in the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo has a painting called
The Prophets and Apostles. He has tried to capture the
faces of all the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament
apostles. The art critics said in the text of the book that out
of all the faces Michelangelo painted, none had a more radiant
countenance than Jonah. Michelangelo was convinced that Jonah
did accept God's merciful pity. Jonah became a communicator of
grace to his own nation through his book and probably through
his preaching as a prophet of God.
In conclusion, let me ask you to ask the Lord to apply this book
very personally to your own heart through the Spirit. I heard
somebody make the comment after the first week or two of our study,
"I wish so-and-so had been here to hear that." We have
to laugh because that's how we all are, isn't it? But who really
needs to hear this? We do, of course.
I want to ask you to respond to some questions before the Lord.
This book forces us to see our own power struggles with God. What
has God called us to do that puts us into a contest of wills with
him? What challenges to obedience in our inner spiritual transformation
have set us running away? Where are we right now--in a Tarshish
of escape or in a Nineveh of obedience? And what about the hard
inner core of ego that has never been given over to God's control?
Was our conversion a radical transformation from self-centered
willfulness, or was it an effort to recruit God to help us accomplish
our goals? Have the painful and difficult experiences of life
broken the inner shell of proud individualism, or are we essentially
the same people we always were? After the crises are past, are
we any more flexible or any more willing to discern and do God's
will?
Are there people we resist loving and caring for because their
values, beliefs, or lifestyle contradicts ours? Who are our personal
Ninevites, our enemies? Do they belong to religious cults? Are
they secular humanists? Are they homosexuals? Are they people
who stand for pro-choice and pro-abortion? Do they worship Mother
Earth? Are they those who advocate a left-wing social agenda?
Do they embrace New Age spirituality?
If the Lord said to arise and go to any one of those groups, would
it be difficult to obey him? Do we ever get so committed to our
predictions of what some people or groups deserve that we take
on the responsibility in thought or action to program their punishment?
Are there vestiges of Jonah's power struggle in us? For what do
we need God's mercy, grace, and pity? And who in our lives needs
God's merciful pity through us? Bishop Stephen Neal wrote: "The
only reason for being a Christian is the ever-growing conviction
that the Christian faith is true." This happens when we meet
Christ personally; when we experience his grace, his mercy, his
pity. That is when our power base changes from our will to his
will for us. The hard inner core of self-control is surrendered
to his control. When we invite him to live in us we experience
the power of his indwelling Spirit, and we can be free at last
from our use of manipulative human power to evade his call. Our
Lord Jesus not only shows us our Nineveh, but he gives us a continual
flow of grace to share with the Ninevites. And this Jesus who
is greater than Jonah will never leave us alone.
Catalog No. 4345
Jonah 4:1-11
Fourth Message
Doug Goins
May 9, 1993
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