“Jonah: The Pouting Prophet”
Jonah 4:1-11
David P. Nolte
A man of petulant disposition demanded two eggs for breakfast one morning. His wife meekly asked, “How would you like them cooked?” He testily replied, “Fry one sunny-side-up and scramble the other!” In due time the eggs were prepared and presented to “his majesty.” As he glowered at the plate, his wife asked what was wrong. He snarled, “You messed up as usual. You scrambled the wrong egg!” Some people will pout and sulk at the least provocation. Jonah, after an eminently successful evangelism crusade in Nineveh, became the Pouting Prophet. Why did he do that? God had been so gracious to him; and to Nineveh; the sun should have been shining in his life and instead he was in the shadow of a sulk.
The repentant king of Nineveh said, in chapter 3, “‘Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.’ When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.” Jonah 3:9-10 (NASB).
“But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, ‘Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. ‘Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.’ The LORD said, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry?’ Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. So the LORD God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, ‘Death is better to me than life.’ Then God said to Jonah, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?’ And he said, ‘I have good reason to be angry, even to death.’ Then the LORD said, ‘You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. ‘Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?’” Jonah 4:1-11 (NASB).
Consider the Pouting Prophet:
I. HE POUTED BECAUSE NINEVEH WAS SAVED:
A. Though his preaching seemed to be more a pronouncement of doom than an offer of salvation, the Ninevites got saved! The city repented. They turned from their wicked and sinful ways.
B. Imagine any city getting right with God because you hollered at them that in 40 days they would be destroyed! “You’re gonna be destroyed! “You’re gonna be destroyed! You’re gonna be destroyed! Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah!” But they repented and were saved! If America would likewise repent:
1. Can you see taverns shutting down; porno shops being converted to art stores; drugs no longer being sold by slinky stinkers?
2. Can you see all the cults being deserted like the sinking ships they are?
3. Can you see that? And if it happened, how would you react? Betcha you wouldn’t pout or sulk!
C. Jonah did! Jonah was indignant! “‘Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. ‘Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.”
1. “Now look what You’ve done! You forgave them! I told You this would happen! Now I’m mad enough to die!”
2. He preferred death for himself rather than life for his enemies!
3. How unlike God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son!
4. How unlike Jesus who willingly gave His life to save sinners.
D. Why? Why was Jonah angry that God spared Nineveh? Perhaps there were 4 underlying reasons:
1. Loss of Jewish national security. These bozo’s were arch enemies. Jonah wanted his enemies out of commission. Who doesn’t want the I.S.I.S. squished like a bug?
2. Loss of Jewish national esteem. If these guys repented and were spared, it would seem that they were as important to God as were the Jews.
3. Loss of personal self esteem. He had predicted doom in 40 days; if it didn’t happen they might mock at him.
4. His sense of justice was offended. They didn’t deserve mercy; they didn’t merit grace! They deserved to be destroyed and to die the death of a dog.
E. He is like a group of women who came to the preacher to complain about a woman who had been baptized. She had been an immoral woman. They said, “If she’s in, we are out!” The official “cat committee” said, “We don’t want that kind of woman in our church!” The pastor said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about having her in your church. Jesus already has her in His!”
So, like that supercilious set of self-righteous pseudo-saints, Jonah pouted because Nineveh got saved!
II. HE POUTED BECAUSE HE DIDN’T GET HIS OWN WAY:
A. He had been thwarted at every turn.
1. Bothered by a call when he was perfectly happy doing what he was doing.
2. Caught in a storm at sea; dumped into the drink; devoured by a denizen of the deep; vomited up onto a beach.
3. And now, to top it off, adding insult to injury, God shows kindness to this bunch of jerks in Nineveh.
B. We might call Jonah the “Burger King Prophet” because he wanted it his way. On to Tarshish and out with Nineveh!
1. Jonah wanted them blasted into hell.
2. His plan was, “Burn, baby, burn!” and God dashed his plan.
C. We all have had, and sill have, cherished plans thwarted, hopes dashed, dreams come to naught. How do we react?
1. Negatively? Pout, shout, throw a tantrum? Feel sorry for us and angry at them? Nothing will darken your day more than that!
2. Positively? “God knows best and He’s leading every step of the way!” As my granddaughter Alisha often says when things don’t work out, “God has a bigger picture in mind.” Nothing will lighten your load more than that kind of faith.
D. Listen to Jonah snapping out:
1. “Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” He prematurely desired death because God graciously granted life!
2. God asked, “Do you have good reason to be angry?’ and Jonah replied, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” The NLT puts it this way: “Yes,” Jonah retorted, “even angry enough to die!”
E. He is like The man who prayed for something and didn’t get it. What he did get was angry at God. In his pouting, sulking voice he shouted, “Lord, if this is the way You are going to act, I won’t let You serve me anymore!”
Well, Jonah wanted his own way and when thwarted, he pouted!
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III. HE POUTED BECAUSE OF A FAULTY VALUE SYSTEM:
A. He valued the vine more than he valued his fellow man.
1. The KJV says that Jonah had “pity” on the vine. That’s what the Hebrew word here means: “pity or compassion!”
2. Can you figure it? He had pity for a vine and none for Nineveh?!?
B. Note:
1. Jonah wanted his vine spared, but “Go ahead, God, and put the hammer down on those sinners in Nineveh!”
2. Then the LORD said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” Jonah 4:10-11 (NASB).
C. Jonah was madder than a wet hen when the vine was destroyed and Nineveh was not! That’s displaced affection; that’s a faulty value system.
D. It’s awfully easy to put the wrong stress on the wrong things. Here are some results of a faulty value system:
1. People love things and use people.
2. People value the temporal over the eternal.
3. People esteem the outward appearance rather than the inward reality.
4. People love money more than they love God.
5. People want the approval of their fellow man more than they want God’s approval.
6. People are more concerned with their creature comforts than they are with their character.
7. People are more interested in ease than evangelism.
8. People want to be happy more than they want to be good.
9. People grasp and cling to what they cannot keep more than what they should never lose.
E. Some years ago, a man climbed up the face of one of the large department store buildings in Los Angeles. Thousands gathered to watch him perform this seemingly impossible feat. Slowly and carefully he made his way upward, now clinging to a jutting brick, again to a cornice. Up and up he went. At last he was near the top. He was seen to feel to right and left and above his head for something firm enough to support his weight. And soon he seemed to spy what looked like a gray bit of stone or discolored brick protruding from the smooth wall. He reached for it and grasped it. But before the horrified eyes of the spectators, the man fell to the ground and was killed. In his dead hand was found a spider’s web! He had mistaken it for a stone. So those who grasp things that don’t really matter and let go of things that will last for eternity. They are sure to fall.
So what happened to Jonah? I have no idea what happened to him after this episode. That’s really not the question, anyway. The question is, “What happens right now, in your life?”
Are you willing to show the same mercy to others you want God to show to you? Are you willing to truly submit your own self-guided life to His ways and will? Are you willing to shift your priorities to put people and God first in your life? Are you willing to live by the moto, “Love God; Love people!”?
Jesus Christ has a job for you to do. Are you willing to do it? If you don’t do it, someone else will get the call and the blessing.
Someone once said, “Let the Lord have your life, He can do more with it than you can.”
“Only one life, ‘twill soon be past.
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
How true that is.
Let Him have your life and He’ll give you a life more abundant and fulfilled than you can imagine.
Let Him have your life here and He’ll assure you of life eternal hereafter. Sing and pray our hymn this morning, “Have thine own way, Lord!” Sing it, pray it, mean it, and live by it.
