Category: On Scripture

What do you get angry about?

Is it after hearing the news of the day and all that is going on in our world? Is it while driving and you must let other road users know about it? Is it when your footy team loses or circumstance or other people?

Jonah has just watched the entire city of Ninevah repent. As a result God relents from the judgements he planned and Jonah is so angry about it.

You’d think he’d be pleased, wouldn’t you? It’s a successful ministry in my book, a whole city turning away from evil and toward God! Yet, Jonah is angry. Very angry.

In Jonah 4:1-2, we read:

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.’

This book is full of irony, and here is a great example of it again. Jonah wasn’t running away from God the first time because he was worried he would fail, he was running away because of his fear of success! He knew God was merciful, but he did not want Ninevah to receive that mercy.

Jonah goes and sits outside the city and again God provides for him, this time in the form of a plant. It gives shade to Jonah and he is well pleased. God then provides a worm and the plant withers and Jonah’s ridiculous response is again anger, so much so that he wants to die all over a plant!

So, God asks him a question to try and get some sense into him. God asks,

“Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” says Jonah. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

God’s response to Jonah is gentle but it cuts to the heart of the irony and what’s going on here. Jonah cared about the plant, which he neither planted or looked after, which appeared and then disappeared. Should God not care then for a city of 120,000 people!?

We aren’t told Jonah’s response. Perhaps he didn’t have an answer. The book ends here and there is no resolution to the question. What we’re left with is that question hanging, which is addressed to us just as much as it is to Jonah.

Are we genuinely concerned for the people God is concerned for? Or are we more invested in our own comfort, our own shade, than in the mercy God extends to others?

The anger we hold reveals what we value. Jonah’s anger revealed his heart shaped by nationalistic pride than divine compassion.

The question for us is whether our hearts look more like God’s or more like Jonah’s.

I unpack this question further in The Scandal of Grace.

For Reflection:

1.     What does your anger tend to reveal about what you truly value? Is there a place where your priorities need to align more closely with God’s?

2.     Is there a group of people that you find it difficult to want God’s mercy for? What might it look like to bring that before Him?

“Can I have another go?” is an often-used phrase in our house when we’re playing games. Whether it’s darts, chess, or a card game, this phrase is used in hope by one of our kids after they’ve realised they could’ve made a better decision. They want a second chance at it.

Jonah gets a second chance, which we read of in Jonah 3:1-2,

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.’

Notice it was not, “Jonah got himself together.” Nor was it, “Jonah decided it was time.” But it was for the second time, “…then word of the Lord came to Jonah.” God speaks again. God initiates again. The mission Jonah ran from the first time is offered again. There is no change to the mission. It’s the same city, the same message, and the same calling. And this time Jonah goes.

Jonah walks into Ninevah and delivers the message that the Lord has given him. It’s only eight words long, “Forty more days and Ninevah will be overthrown.” That’s it. The entire sermon. No explanation. No illustration. No application. It is quite an amazing scene.

The result of this message is that the city repents. The king gets off his throne and sits in dust. There is a decree issued for humans and animals to fast and cry out to God. The message of the Lord has had an impact on the city.

And God relents.

In contrast to Israel, God’s own people, here is a pagan city who turn toward Him. God’s own people continue to rebel and refuse to repent are outdone by the Ninevites.

This passage reminds us that God is the God of second chances. There’s a second chance for Jonah, for Ninevah, and for us. The call God gives to us in our lives doesn’t expire the moment we fail to answer it. He calls again and again and again, offering us a second chance at life, love, and hope.

It also challenges our expectation of who can be transformed through responding to the message of God. Ninevah was the last city anyone would expect to repent, but God is always at work in the places our human minds have given up on.

The gift of the second chance is for us!

For Reflection:

1.     Is there an area of your own life where you need to receive God’s second chance? Are you open to accepting God’s invitation into what you may have been avoiding?

2.     Is there a person or situation you have mentally written off? How does the repentance of Nineveh challenge that assumption?

I suspect most of us know what it’s like to pray when we’re in a panic.

That crisis moment when we receive a phone call with bad news, the family member requiring urgent help, the conflict and crisis at work. In these moments prayer comes quickly and easily. We reach for God because we know we can’t reach for anything else.

Jonah is in one of these moments, praying on the inside of a big fish, like clutching for a wall in the dark.

In Jonah 2:1-2, we read:

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.”

What follows is a poem, a psalm, a prayer of help and hope.

Jonah uses the language of the Psalms to describe being cast into the deep. He even talks of the literal currents swirling and the seaweed wrapped around his head. It might not be the valley of the shadow of death, but it’s certain the belly of the shadow of darkness. He’s as low as a person can go.

And it is in this event that God hears.

Notice that Jonah’s prayer is not confession. Nor is it total repentance. He doesn’t say, “I’m sorry I ran”. He doesn’t repent of the disobedience to the call of God. He thanks God for saving his life, but there is still some deep work of the heart to come.

When we need rescuing it’s easy to call on God. It’s hard to come to Him when things are calm, settled, and stable; when there’s no crisis to drive us to our knees.

In v9 we read the heart of the chapter: “Salvation comes from the LORD.” 

This is a declaration of faith. Jonah is aware of where his rescue comes from. The question is whether he will allow that same salvation to transform his heart that first ran away from the Lord.

Prayer, in any moment, is a good place to start. But God wants more than crisis prayers. He wants ongoing conversation, connection, and worship. He loves for us to come to Him, to daily turn to Him in all things. Are we honest enough of where we are and how we are react to be open to God’s work in us?

In the end the Lord sets Jonah’s feet back on solid ground, which He also does for us when we call on Him.

For Reflection:

1.     Do you tend to pray more in crisis than in calm? What might it look like to foster a more consistent conversation with God?

2.     Is there something in your heart that you have not yet brought honestly before God?