AP

Jonah 3:10-4:3  When God saw what [the Ninevites] did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.  But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.  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. Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 

My sinful heart equips me very well for rationalising sinful actions that flow from it!

It is fairly clear that the underlying reason Jonah tried to flee west to Tarshish when the LORD had instructed him to go east to “the great city of Nineveh” was that he was too gutless to “preach [judgement] against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” (1:2) – in fact, he had confessed as much to the sailors in the storm-stricken boat: “They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.” (1:10)  But now he was left with egg on his face.  The LORD had eventually manoeuvred him into obedience and had given him the courage to proclaim in the city, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned” (3:4).  He was perhaps starting to feel a bit virtuous as he thought about God’s raining well-deserved judgement on these wicked people – but then the opposite happened: “The Ninevites believed God.  They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. …  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.” (3:5, 10)

This was a massive problem for poor Jonah who had grown up in an ‘honour-shame’ culture.  It meant his losing face big time!  He tried to put a different slant on his initial cowardice by making out that it was his sense of God’s ‘grace and compassion’ that had prompted him to flee in the first place!

There is an important lesson here for me.  Jonah himself had been forgiven and re-instated.  Every Christian is a forgiven, re-instated sinner – forgiven of sin so horrendous that it nailed Jesus to a cross, and re-instated as a child in the Father’s family blessed with all the inheritance of heaven.  With this in mind, no matter how much ‘righteous anger’ I might feel towards those who are actively opposing God’s rightful rule and undermining his revealed truth in my world, I should long for, pray for, and work hard towards, their hearts being softened so that they turn in repentance rather than their being condemned and punished.

When Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign!  But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:39-41), I think he was drawing their attention to the coming sign of his Resurrection.

But, perhaps in the light of Jonah 4, there was also contained within it the strong warning against self-righteous Pharisaical Judgementalism.  I find more comfort and peace in knowing that I am a ‘sinner-saved-by-grace-alone’ than in hoping I’m not too ‘sinful’ a sinner!

– Bruce Christian