God's care...
The book, recounting a story of a barely known prophet of yesteryear, was written in a time where the Israelites had become exclusive and nationalistic. Foreigners were seen as unclean and unacceptable.
Jonah's hard heart is on display throughout the book:
- When God sends him to Nineveh, Jonah heads in the opposite direction: to a place called Tarshish (Which means "Where God is not").
- When the storm comes and the sailors are praying, Jonah is sleeping below decks in depressive denial.
- When he reveals himself as a "prophet of the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land" the sailors believe, but Jonah fatalistically asks to be thrown into the sea.
- His prayer in the belly of the fish appears very pious, but the rest of his actions imply that this was not a prayer from the heart. The fish vomits him up on the land as though it can't stand the hypocrisy anymore!
- I imagine a gastric-juice-bleached Jonah preaching in Nineveh, finally in his element: pronouncing doom and destruction on the city. But the city does something that Jerusalem never did - it repents and God shows mercy.
- Jonah waits in the desert for the promised destruction. He's pouting: more upset about his reputation than about God's mercy for the Ninevites who have repented.
- When God grows a vine overnight in the desert to give him shade and then takes it away, Jonah loses it: "I am angry enough to die!"
- He's been patient with Jonah, treating the pouting prophet with tenderness and going to great lengths to soften his hard heart.
- He is concerned for the people of Nineveh who don't know their right from their left. We hear the same thing at the cross: "Father forgive them - they don't know what they are doing."
- God cares even about the animals: the rest of creation impacted by human brokenness.
The bottom line of the book is that God cares: He cares for Jonah, for heathen sailors, for the people of Nineveh and for their animals. He has a heart for the world and He will always surprise us with the depths of His mercy and love.
The book ends abruptly. We get a breath-taking picture of God's heart and we are left with Jonah's heart-state undecided. We don't know if Jonah "got it"...
Read verse 11 softly and slowly.
This is God's heart...
Many of us are upset about Covid19 and especially the effects of poverty and hunger. In my sermon on Sunday I suggested that we are in a "Loaves and Fishes Season" - We're all going to need to bring what we can to this crisis to make a difference.
In some ways our lockdown was our desert testing time... how are our hearts after our creature comforts (like Jonah's vine) were impacted? Are our hearts more like Jonah's or God's?
| But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" (Jonah4:10-11) |
