1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O 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 you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
5 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 chapter 4 is a strange and surprising end to this story, so as we near the end of our study of Jonah, it will help to look back briefly on the story so far.
God called Jonah to a mission that would stretch his appreciation for grace to the limit, as he was given the task of preaching in the wicked Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Jonah couldn’t bear the thought, so he boarded a ship and tried to flee to Tarshish, about as far from Nineveh as he could possibly go.
In response, the Lord sent a great storm which threatened to sink the ship, and Jonah, knowing that he was the cause of this judgment, told the sailors to throw him overboard. This is how chapter 1 ended, and it could have been left right there. Had the book of Jonah contained just the one chapter, it would be a classic Biblical example of human sin and God’s judgment.
But God was not finished with Jonah, just as He is not finished with us. Jonah learned that just as he could not flee from God’s presence, he could not flee from God’s grace, as the Lord miraculously provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. It was here where Jonah experienced the grace of God and was granted repentance, and his repentance and renewed faith were expressed in his words in chapter 2 verse 9: “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
Chapter 3 records Jonah’s eventual obedience to God’s commission to preach in Nineveh, which resulted in the greatest revival in history, as the entire city repented and was saved.
We might expect the book of Jonah to end with this triumphant story of God’s grace and glory. It took Jonah three chapters to get to Nineveh, and he did eventually accomplish his mission, so this would seem the perfect note with which to end the story, but it doesn’t end there.
The problem no longer is Nineveh. The problem now, once again, is Jonah.
It is easy for us to roll our eyes in frustration at Jonah, but we must be careful. Someone once said that when we read the Bible, the Bible reads us. Jonah’s story reminds us that no Christians grow consistently, and never miss a beat on their journey of faith and obedience to God. There are many times when our faith is strong, and we feel that we’re making real progress, only to find ourselves back where we started.
Jonah had such a dramatic experience of God’s grace and mercy. He saw it in his own life, and in the miraculous revival in Nineveh. After all this, you’d think that he would be so strong in his faith in God, but things did not work out that way. What happened to Jonah after he left Nineveh proves that we all need continual growth in the grace of God, because our weak faith lets us down so often.
Chapter 4 begins with such a despairing note, particularly when we compare it to the wonderful triumph in the previous chapter. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” (Jonah 4:1)
Jonah’s anger in the original Hebrew text is described literally as “it was evil to Jonah as a great wrong.” He wasn’t just annoyed at what had happened. He was seething and absolutely furious.
As chapter 3 closes, it seemed that Jonah had come so far in his spiritual journey, but now we find him right back where he was at the beginning. God saved Jonah and used him in the most dramatic way to show His grace, but instead of rejoicing that the Ninevites were spared from God’s judgment, Jonah was filled with great anger.
In verse 2 he says, “O 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 you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”
“A gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” is a quotation of Exodus 34:6–7, which is an important expression of God’s character in the Old Testament. It is also quoted in Numbers, Nehemiah, in three of the Psalms and Joel, and the basic principle is referred to throughout the Bible.
Jonah’s bitterness shows that his own repentance was not as genuine as it first seemed. Instead of agreeing that he was wrong for disobeying God, he now reveals that he thinks he was right all along, and this is a serious sin which he fell into.
Many people sin in ignorance of what God is really like. They regard Him as a kind old grandfatherly figure who smiles and winks knowingly at our naughty little deeds. The vast majority of people do not know Him as a perfectly holy God who abhors our sin, and while this does not excuse their sin, we can understand why most non-believers are not overly bothered by their sin. It’s because they have been led to believe that God is not bothered that much by their sin either.
But what makes Jonah’s sin even more grievous is the fact that he knew the truth about God, yet he still chose to rebel against Him.
Jonah resented God’s mercy for sinners. Gordon Keddie wrote, “The Lord might be rejoicing in the presence of the angels over sinners come to repentance, but Jonah was seething with discontent and bitter revulsion.”
It’s not that Jonah refused to believe that he was a sinner. He had already confessed this truth to the sailors back in chapter 1. The problem with Jonah was that it seems he simply thought that there were sinners, and then there were sinners. He was in the first category - basically a good and religious person with a few issues he needed to work through - while the Ninevites were in the second group of wicked and totally depraved people who were worthy only of complete destruction.
Many people are exactly like this - quite prepared to hold up their hands and admit they’re not perfect and have a few sin issues in their lives, but they don’t think they deserve to be sent to hell for their sins. But for really evil sinners, people like Adolf Hitler for instance - they definitely deserve the wrath of God and should be sent to hell.
When we fall into this trap, it is so easy to lose sight of the truth that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, and without His grace offered to us through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we all deserve quite rightly to be punished for our sins in a very real place called hell. Because we have sinned against an infinitely holy God, our guilt and our debt to Him is infinite, which is why we desperately need His grace and forgiveness.
The attitude of Jonah is reflected in one of Jesus’ best-known parables. In the parable of the prodigal son, we are given a wonderful picture of the grace of God, as the wayward and wasteful son comes crawling back to his father with his tail between his legs, only to be welcomed with open arms. “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:24) We can all see our own story in the lost son returning to his father.
Most people (quite correctly) love this parable for the way it describes God’s merciful love for lost sinners who come home, but the main point of the parable was to expose the bitterness of the older son. Luke 15 contains three parables - the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, and they need to be read together. To understand the true meaning of these parables, we need to look at who Jesus taught them to. “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’” (Luke 15:1-2)
The main point of the parable of the prodigal son is not the welcome home the younger son received, as wonderful as it was, but the bitterness of his older brother. When we read this parable, we shouldn’t stop at verse 24, because when we do, we miss the whole point of it. “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’” (Luke 15:25-30)
The Pharisees and scribes to whom Jesus told this parable would not have marvelled at the wonderful grace shown by the father to his wayward son. This was not their favourite parable in the slightest. Instead, they would have been furious, because they knew they were the older brother, and we see the same bitterness in Jonah, and in ourselves, if we’re honest.
In Luke 15:7 Jesus said, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” This is the joy of salvation. The forgiveness of sins through the cross of Christ is what magnifies the glory of God, but like the older brother in Jesus’ parable, Jonah thought it best for the Ninevites’ sin to be condemned and judged. It just never occurred to Jonah that it was more glorious for God to provide for their forgiveness through repentance and faith.
A major part of the problem with Jonah was his bitterness at the salvation of the Gentiles. He said in verse 2, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?” Jonah was quite happy for his own people to receive God’s grace, but not the pagan Ninevites. As he said, he knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
However, he believed it was wrong for the Ninevites to be recipients of such grace. In fact, as verse 1 tells us, it displeased him exceedingly and he was angry.
To Jonah, the knowledge of God and His grace and mercy was the exclusive property of Israel. Why should the Gentiles receive the blessings of God that belonged only to Israel?
Another parable of Jesus which reflects this bitter attitude is the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. Some men had been working all day, while others started later, some only just before the end of the day, yet they received the same wages. Those who were hired first were furious. “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” (Matthew 20:12)
The master’s reply was, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” (Matthew 20:13–15)
Jonah did begrudge God’s generosity to Nineveh, wrongly thinking that God was somehow cheating His own people, which led to Jonah’s incredibly ungracious and selfish response to the grace of God.
And so God challenged Jonah as He asked in verse 4, “Do you do well to be angry?” The NIV translation says, “Have you any right to be angry?” The text doesn’t record Jonah’s reply, but his actions imply, “Yes, I do. I have every right to be angry.”
To Jonah, God’s saving the Ninevites lacked justice. He said in verse 3, “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” God’s grace shown to the Ninevites was so offensive to Jonah, that he no longer wanted to live. This is the second of three times that Jonah said something so extreme. In effect, his reaction to the grace of God is, “over my dead body.”
This is how dangerous and how poisonous human pride can be. What was it about Jonah, and what is it about us that we think we know better than God?
In Romans 9 Paul writes about God’s sovereign grace. In Paul’s response to those who object to the grace of God shown to others, he refers to what the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 33. “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’” (Romans 9:14-15)
When God sovereignly chooses to save someone who we might feel is not worthy of salvation, in our sinful nature, we echo Jonah’s objection: “That’s not fair.”
This shows how little we understand the grace of God. What we need to remember is that no-one deserves to be saved. If anyone is saved at all, it is only because of God’s mercy. The proper response to God’s question to Jonah, what right do you have to be angry, is what Paul writes in Romans 9:20, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”
Jonah threw a tantrum, instead of rejoicing in the salvation of so many lost sinners. He would have done well to learn a lesson from Job, who said in Job 40:14, “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.” Sometimes it is better to say nothing at all, when it comes to trying to understand and especially question the deep mysteries of God.
We need to allow ourselves to sit humbly under the authority of the Word of God. Jonah’s story warns us of the foolishness of putting human wisdom above the mind and heart of God.
Jonah agreed with God’s grace for Israel - he just rejected the grace of God for anyone else.
This then brings into question his earlier repentance, as it seems he effectively renounced it here, but we need to take a closer look at this, because it is important not only for Jonah, but for us too.
Previously, Jonah not only turned to the Lord for salvation, but he followed up by submitting to God’s call, so how are we to understand this dramatic change of heart?
Firstly, Jonah had much to learn about salvation. He did not reject the salvation by grace he received and proclaimed while in the belly of the fish, but he did misunderstand the extent of that grace. The problem was his spiritual pride, and his mistaken belief that only Israel deserved the grace of God. Jonah was angry with God because God was not doing what Jonah wanted Him to do. What Jonah wanted God to do was to reward only Israel with compassion and grace.
This Jonah syndrome, to give it a name, is something we all struggle with. The fact that we are saved does not mean that we are free from our prejudices and bias against other races, cultures and nationalities. If God is for us, He must be against them, is the thinking.
If God is going to bless us, it stands to reason that He will judge our enemies. This twisted understanding of God’s grace leaves us with a real problem when in His sovereignty, He chooses to show mercy to those who hate us, which was exactly Jonah’s problem.
And Jonah’s sin was compounded by not only his thinking, but the problem of his heart. Jonah’s selfish behaviour after the salvation of the Ninevites reveals a deep-seated bitterness against them. Here we have a case of the kind of resentment that spoils so many hearts.
And Christians are not exempt from this. A failure to love other people will always poison our relationship with God. “I knew you would forgive Nineveh,” was Jonah’s objection. Because he hated Nineveh, he fled from the presence of the Lord, and it nearly cost him his life and his eternal soul.
And having witnessed in Nineveh an incredible display of the glory of God’s grace, Jonah’s reaction was not joy, but anger. If God was going to show love to Nineveh, then Jonah did not want God’s love. He preferred death instead. Jonah is an extreme case, but it is so easy for us to head down that that same dangerous path. Again, a failure to love other people will always poison our relationship with God.
This is why the New Testament in particular makes such a point about our forgiveness of one another. Our hearts cannot be right with God unless they are right toward others. God’s question to Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry?” is asked of each of us as well. How can we resent God’s compassion on anyone, including our enemies? Unfortunately, if we are entirely honest, we would have to confess that there are times when we do resent God’s mercy shown to those whom we believe don’t deserve it.
Paul wrote in Colossians 3:12-13, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
He doesn’t say that we are to forgive others when they have deserved it, or when they have sufficiently repented. We forgive out of gratitude for God having forgiven us. We forgive others because we know that we have received a far greater, far more costly forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ.
And of course, the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:14-15 should pierce our hearts. “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
This passage is often misunderstood. Jesus’ point is not that we earn forgiveness by forgiving others, but rather an unforgiving spirit is so alien to God’s grace that it is fundamentally un-Christian to be forgiven by God, while at the same time we hold grudges and withhold forgiveness against others.
Yet another of Jesus’ parables will help us as we try and understand what was going on in Jonah’s heart, and also in ours at times. In Matthew 18 He taught the parable of the unforgiving servant. A servant owed his king a vast sum of money, which he could not repay, so his family was to be sold into slavery. So he went to the king and begged for mercy. In verse 27 Jesus said, “Out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.”
However, not long after that, the forgiven servant went to another servant who owed him a much smaller amount than he had previously owed the king, but when the man begged for forgiveness, he refused and had the man put into prison.
News of this reached the king, who called him back and rebuked him for his own lack of mercy, and threw him into prison. Jesus concluded the parable in verse 35 by saying, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Jonah, because of his hatred of the Ninevites, now had a serious problem, and was in a really dark place once more. Verse 5 reveals just how far from grace he had fallen. “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.” Still fuming, Jonah distanced himself from the very people God had saved through his preaching, and sat and watched, his anger increasing as he hoped their repentance would not last and that they would be destroyed by God, just as they deserved.
Whenever we feel the poison of the Jonah syndrome rearing its ugly head in our hearts, we should run to the Lord, confessing our anger and seeking His grace once more.
We are coming to the end of our journey through the book of Jonah, and while there are certainly some very low points, we still see evidence of his growth in grace. There is a huge difference between Jonah in chapter 4 and in chapter 1. When he first was called to preach in Nineveh, Jonah responded by fleeing from the presence of the Lord. But now, for all his bitterness over Nineveh’s repentance, Jonah responded by turning to the Lord. Verse 2 says, “He prayed to the Lord.” This was not what we see in Jonah at the beginning of his story, and this is important.
Hugh Martin wrote, “Agitated and alarmed, he fled from the Lord. Agitated and alarmed now again, he flees to the Lord. He does not seek a refuge from God. He seeks refuge in God.” This is a good lesson for us.
God understands anger far better than we do. It is one of the emotions He has given us. Of course, more often than not, our anger (whether justified or not) spirals out of control, doing even more damage.
If we’re angry with God, we should at least be honest enough to go to Him and confess our anger to Him, and allow Him to teach us and rebuke us where necessary as we humble ourselves before Him and submit to His authority over us.
We know how painful and harmful silent treatment can be in our relationships with others, especially with those we love the most, so how much more spiritual damage do we do to ourselves when we refuse to go to the Lord to express our frustration and anger, choosing to run away to our own Tarshish instead?
You might remember that we looked at the example of Asaph when we began our study on Jonah. Asaph, in Psalm 73 had the right perspective. He confessed that he envied the wicked. He wrote in verses 2 and 3, “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Asaph though, recognised the danger, so what did he do to prevent himself from making the same mistake Jonah was to make later on? He turned to God.
He wrote in verses 16-17, “When I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God.”
The best defence we have against the Jonah syndrome is to go to the Lord, confessing our bitterness and anger, and seeking His grace.
Next week we conclude our journey through Jonah, and as we will see, we don’t really know how things worked out for him in the end, but what we do know is that just like each of us, Jonah was in the hands of the God of grace, learning most of his lessons the hard way.
The challenge to us today is this: How do we feel about God’s mercy for those who have wronged us? Do we resent God’s grace for them, or do we rejoice when God shows them mercy, remembering the mercy He has shown us?
How do we react when God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers the way we think He should? Do we pull away from God in anger, or do we draw near to Him, even in our anger and confusion? The second option is far wiser, but we need to know that like Jonah, we might be in for some hard divine lessons.
Jonah teaches us that God is never the problem. He is always the answer, and once we learn that lesson, He will help us to grow in grace.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Jonah 4:1-5
What does the anger of Jonah teach us about our own prejudices towards others?
Compare the attitude of Jonah to the older brother, the labourers in the vineyard and the unforgiving servant in three of Jesus’ parables (see Luke 15:25-30, Matthew 20:12-15 and Matthew 18:28-35).
As much as we’d prefer not to admit it, we can see our own selfish attitudes in these parables.
Bearing this in mind, what can we do to take to heart the messages of Colossians 3:12-13 and Matthew 6:14-15?
Anger, although a God-given emotion, can often worsen situations we find ourselves in.
What are your struggles in this area?
Is it okay to be angry with God?
How have you experienced this, and what did you learn about yourself and God?
Today’s Hymns:
Great is Thy faithfulness
His name is wonderful
Take my life and let it be
Only a Holy God