A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, 19 Sept 2010
Use a plank and a level to demonstrate how we put siding on our house.
§ If not aligned properly, won’t keep out the weather properly and will look bad.
§ What might be wrong about the alignment? What snags might there be?
§ Using measuring tape and level to align properly.
q As human beings, we have an innate desire to be properly aligned withsomeone who can define rality and life for us and offer security.
q We constantly try to measure ourselves by some standard to see if we’re o.k.
q The standard of other peoples character and achievement leaves us either smug or despairing.
q So we use rubber yardsticks
q Jonah, however, recognized that God’s standard is scripture.
4:2 וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל אֶל יְהוָה וַיֹּאמַר אָנָּה יְהוָה הֲלוֹא זֶה דְבָרִי עַד הֱיוֹתִי עַל אַדְמָתִי עַל כֵּן קִדַּמְתִּי לִבְרֹחַ תַּרְשִׁישָׁה כִּי יָדַעְתִּי כִּי אַתָּה אֵל חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב חֶסֶד וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה.
2 So he prayed to Jehovah, and said, “Oh please, Jehovah, wasn’t this my saying while I was still on my turf? Because of this I went ahead to abscond to Tarshish: for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger, and full of kindness, and you are made sorry over the evil.
The phrase which Jonah uses to enumerate God’s character comes straight out of the Pentateuch:
q Ex 34:6-7 NASB Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
q Num 14:17-18 NASB "But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, 'The LORD is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.'
Jonah had “said” this creed many times throughout his life in Israel. (The Hebrew preposition here is the one for “on” and the object has to do with dirt or land.) But, although Jonah knew the words of this tremendous passage from Exodus, he hadn’t really internalized its truth. He still felt that somehow he had EARNED his favor with God by virtue of his Jewishness, and since the Ninevites had hardly done anything, he believed it would be unjust for God to FREELY show His grace to Nineveh. If, however, we embrace the truth that all of God’s grace is unmerited favor, it can fill us with gratitude that God has shown us any grace at all, undeserving as we are, and thus we can be joyful to see Him show that same undeserved grace to others. (Fernando)
Ethnocentric hoarding of God’s mercy has dogged God’s people all along:
q It is the spirit of the elder brother who was angry that his younger [prodigal] brother had returned home alive to enjoy the father’s favor and forgiveness...
q It is the very spirit of the Pharisees who condemned Jesus for the mercy He manifested to sinners, publicans, and harlots.” (Farrar)
q In Indonesia, native Muslims have assaulted and raided Chinese immigrants simply because they are Chinese or Christian.
q I’ve seen Korean Christians struggle to forgive Japanese Christians because of the horrible things the Japanese did to the Koreans in the past.
q In Africa, there seems to always be some war somewhere between tribal groups.
q In Eastern Europe, wars have broken out between Muslims and Christians in our lifetime.
q And in the United States, we have had our own problems:
o with anti-Japanese sentiment after the first two World Wars,
o anti-Russian sentiment during the “Cold War,”
o tensions between Northerners & Southerners which have persisted since mid-1800’s,
o and mutual hatred between some whites and some blacks
o looking beyond ethnic tensions, I’m sure all of us have experienced some form of tension between the poor and the rich.
o Lately we’ve been having clashes in our locale between so-called gays and straits . I’ve heard both sides condemn the other to hell, unwilling to conceive of God’s grace being available to those on the other side of the issue.
o We might feel justified in hating those who have oppressed us or our friends and family, but we have got to let it go! We must not begrudge God’s love to them!
So how do we line up with God’s character? Let us start by meditating on God’s character as He has revealed it to us in the Bible. What are these character traits of God which caused Jonah to get so mad and run away?
· A GRACIOUS GOD: Freely giving undeserved blessing. This mercy is not universal (not shown to all people), but is based on His own choice (“I will show mercy upon whom I will show mercy” Ex. 33:19). It would be one thing if this were just a man who was gracious/merciful, but this is God, and for God, the ruler and judge of the universe to show mercy, it is AWESOME! However, this wasn’t pleasing to Jonah, for Jonah wanted justice shown to Nineveh rather than grace.
· & COMPASSIONATE: God has mercy on people, not punishing them when they deserve to be punished. God is moved by the sorry state that people are in and has compassion on us, wanting to help us in our misery and sin. What a glorious thing to have a God who is not indifferent, like the god of the Hindus or the Muslims, but a God who is tenderhearted toward us! All the same, Jonah wished God would just harden His heart and wipe out all those Ninevites in cold blood.
· SLOW TO ANGER: This phrase in Hebrew is literally “long of nostrils.” In Hebrew, anger is associated with the flaring of the nostrils. Well, it takes a long time for God to flare His nostrils, as it were. He is patient, long-suffering, and not in a hurry to damn us for sins which would justly make Him angry.
· FULL OF KINDNESS: This word, “Chesed” has to do with benevolence – the way God showers blessings and kindness upon us. He doesn’t do this so much because we’re worthy of His kindness, but rather because He’s a nice person! He loves us, and therefore He does good things for us!
·
SORRY OVER THE EVIL: The parallel in Ex. 34 and Num 14 is “forgiving sin
and iniquity.” He makes provision to appease His own justice through the blood
of the lamb.
There is a definite article “the” here which seems to indicate a particular
evil. Used in 3:10, describing God abandoning his threat to overturn Nineveh,
so it’s likely that the definite article is pointing back to this particular
instance of God turning back His wrath from Nineveh.
¨ God calls us to be like Him, and compassion is part of God’s character. We see that in Jonah 4:2. We also see that it is the character of Christ:
Some say that the God of the New Testament is different from the God of the Old Testament, but here is proof in black and white that mercy and grace have always been God’s modus operandi – even in the Old Testament!
¨ Praise God for his attributes: grace, compassion, patience, kindness
6 וַיְמַן יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים קִיקָיוֹן וַיַּעַל מֵעַל לְיוֹנָה לִהְיוֹת צֵל עַל רֹאשׁוֹ לְהַצִּיל לוֹ מֵרָעָתוֹ וַיִּשְׂמַח יוֹנָה עַל הַקִּיקָיוֹן שִׂמְחָה גְדוֹלָה.
6 So Jehovah-God appointed a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to relieve him from his misery. And Jonah rejoiced over the plant with great rejoicing.
Jehovah God is still the one in control of all things. Just as He “appointed” the fish in 1:17, so He “appointed” this plant for a specific purpose: to shade Jonah.
The verb describing the growth of the plant could either be Hiphil (causative) or Qal (simple action).
The Hebrew text actually uses four prepositions describing the plant: “up,” “from,” “over,” and “to” Jonah. Perhaps this indicates a lot of spreading growth and leaves shading Jonah all over, as the LB indicates. Additionally, the fact that the plant grew up in one night is considered a miracle (Hail.).
What boggles my mind is the grace and mercy God shows to Jonah through this. God did the right thing to spare Nineveh from destruction, yet God recognized the misery that resulted to Jonah – even though Jonah was in the wrong – and God takes steps to comfort Jonah. What a gracious God to seek to allay even an imaginary injury such as Jonah felt! He was actually kind-of going along with Jonah, meeting him where he was – Jonah built a shady shelter, so God added to the shade with a plant. I think of the times I see my children doing something which is really just frivolous play and yet I join with them, just to be with them and deepen my relationship with them. Just last Sunday, I helped my boys find strips of bark to cover the roof of a little fort they were building. The bark will all blow off in the next storm, but my boys thought it was the coolest thing to “dry in” their fort! When I act like this, I am following in the footsteps of our God who stoops to join us in silly things just to make us happy and build relationship with us. What a wonderful God we have!
¨ God is sovereign even over the botanical world. Even the plants do His will.
¨ We should praise God that He cares so much for us that He does little things just to be nice to us, such as making the plant grow up to shade Jonah.
7 וַיְמַן הָאֱלֹהִים תּוֹלַעַת בַּעֲלוֹת הַשַּׁחַר לַמָּחֳרָת וַתַּךְ אֶת הַקִּיקָיוֹן וַיִּיבָשׁ.
7 Then God appointed a worm at the rising of the dawn the next day, and she attacked the plant and it withered.
Just as God ordained the fish and the plant, so He also ordained a worm. This was apparently a species of worm used to make a red dye for cloth, called the Tolat Shar’i (see picture). But Jonah wasn’t dying cloth, he was probably just sleeping. In the early hours of the morning (lit. “in the rising of the blackness to the morrow”) that worm chewed up the plant, and when Jonah woke up, the plant was already drying up.
In the wee hours of the morning, the worm attacked the plant, then the sun rose and Jonah really felt the heat! Not only is the sun beating down on his head, he is also feeling this east wind. Now whether the wind is “cutting/vehement” (KJV, NKJV) or “quiet/sultry” (ASV, Hail., Son., K&D) I don’t know – according to BDB, the word, oddly enough, can be translated both ways. I don’t see where the modern translations got the idea of “scorching” from this word except from the context that this east wind was probably “the sirocco, a wind of oppressive heat and dust, aggravating the discomfort of a hot summer’s day” (Son.). Whatever this wind was, Jonah recognized that God had ordained it , just as He had ordained the fish, the plant, and the worm. “Normally when a sirocco comes, people run for shelter,” says Fernando, “but Jonah’s shelter is gone. The only place he could go was back to Nineveh – but he was not about to return there!” This made Jonah want to die!
Jonah could have gotten mad at the worm (I can just imagine him yelling, “You stupid worm!” and squishing it between his fingers and the red juice squirting out of the poor bug.) But God sent the worm to destroy this shade plant to teach Jonah a lesson.
9 וַיֹּאמֶר
אֱלֹהִים
אֶל יוֹנָה
הַהֵיטֵב
חָרָה לְךָ
עַל
הַקִּיקָיוֹן
וַיֹּאמֶר
הֵיטֵב חָרָה
לִי עַד
מָוֶת.
9 Then God said to Jonah, “Does it make things right for you to be angry about the plant?” …
This is virtually a repeat of verse four. Perhaps in a similar way to which Jesus asked Peter the same question multiple times (“Do you love me?”) to get Peter to repent for denying his Lord, so God is asking Jonah the same question (“Does it make things right for you to be angry?”) in hopes that Jonah will catch himself and straighten out his attitude.
¨ We must repent for any way in which we have been like Jonah, avoiding being an instrument of God’s mercy toward others.
4:10 וַיֹּאמֶר
יְהוָה
אַתָּה
חַסְתָּ עַל
הַקִּיקָיוֹן
אֲשֶׁר
לֹא
עָמַלְתָּ
בּוֹ
וְלֹא
גִדַּלְתּוֹ
שֶׁבִּן
לַיְלָה
הָיָה וּבִן
לַיְלָה אָבָד.
10 So Jehovah said, “You have been compassionate over the plant, with which you did not labour, nor did you make it grow, which was a product of a night, and in a night it perished.
4:11 וַאֲנִי לֹא
אָחוּס עַל
נִינְוֵה
הָעִיר
הַגְּדוֹלָה
אֲשֶׁר יֶשׁ
בָּהּ
הַרְבֵּה
מִשְׁתֵּים
עֶשְׂרֵה
רִבּוֹ
אָדָם אֲשֶׁר
לֹא
יָדַע בֵּין
יְמִינוֹ לִשְׂמֹאלוֹ
וּבְהֵמָה
רַבָּה.
11 And I, should I not be compassionate over Nineveh, the great city when there exist in her more than one hundred twenty thousand humans who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many cattle.
Jonah has proved that he is capable of having compassion because he has gotten so extremely excited and then so extremely angry over the growth and subsequent death of the plant. God’s object lesson is now ready to be unpacked: “If you were so sympathetic about the plant,” asks God, “should you not also be sympathetic about much more important things such as animals and people?”
This verse is the punch-line - the main point - of the whole book of Jonah. God is justified in having compassion for the people of Nineveh!
The comparison/contrast between this verse in the previous verse is striking.
q The “YOU” (speaking of Jonah) which begins God’s quote in v.10 is emphatic, contrasting with the emphatic “I” (speaking of God) which starts v. 11.
q The main verb in both verses is the same, too: “have compassion/pity.”
q The object of that compassion is also contrasted with two relative adjective clauses describing the plant in verse 10 - the object of Jonah’s greatest compassion, and two relative adjective clauses in v.11 describing Nineveh - the object of God’s compassion.
q Stated this way, we see the absolute ludicrousness of Jonah’s misplaced compassion over the plant when he should have aligned himself with God and had compassion on Nineveh.
Thomas Carlisle’s poem, “You Jonah”
And Jonah Stalked to his shaded seat
and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking.
And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around to His way of loving.
Come around and align yourself with God,
§ Using the Standard of God’s word,
§ Clearing out the Snag of begrudging grace to others
§ and applying God’s threefold Solution of :
1. Reflecting on Him who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin,”
2. Rejoicing in His sovereign mercy to us,
3. Repenting - Confessing our selfishness and Growing in alignment through obedience to His lordship.