Reading through the Bible in one Year: 1 Kings 5-9, Psalm 66-68

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters,

I did both studies for Saturday and Sunday together today.  I ran the Fontana Day's Half Marathon yesterday.  It threw the study a little behind, sorry about that.  Thanks for your prayers concerning the race, I did very well.  My time from last year improved overall by ten minutes, I finished the race in 1:43:31, which translates into 7.54 minute miles.  I placed 18 in my age bracket, much better than 40th last year.  All in all it was a fun time, an enjoyable race, and had an opportunity to fellowship with other believers during the race. After the race yesterday, my mind bonked, couldn't get it to work, then slept for three hours, off to work and back in the study today, on with the study!

Jonah 4:1-11 (NASB95)
¹ But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. ² 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. ³ “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” ⁴ The Lord said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?” ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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. ⁷ But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. ⁸ 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.” ⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ “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?”^[1]

One note to begin with, look closely at Jonah's attitude.  Johan was forced in a way to comply with God's will, but he still wanted to be in control.  Jonah did not want Nineveh to repent and turn to the Lord.  Look at the use of the word "I" in verse 2, Jonah is very angry, he saw the results of carrying the message when God gave him the mission before he traveled to Nineveh.  Jonah did not like the Ninevites and did not wish to see them repent and come to the Lord.  There is two possibilities that I see in this verse, first it could be that God showed him before-hand what the results of his preaching would be.  Or it could be that Jonah understood the nature of God enough to understand that by his traveling with the message, God was giving the Ninevites a second chance. 

Exodus 34:6 (NASB95)
⁶ Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;

Numbers 14:18 (NASB95)
¹⁸ ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’

Nehemiah 9:17 (NASB95)
¹⁷ “They refused to listen, And did not remember Your wondrous deeds which You had performed among them; So they became stubborn and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God of forgiveness, Gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness; And You did not forsake them.

Psalm 86:5 (NASB95)
⁵ For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, And abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon You.

Psalm 86:15 (NASB95)
¹⁵ But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.

Joel 2:13 (NASB95)
¹³ And rend your heart and not your garments.” Now return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil. ^[2]

Look in verse two for a moment at the nature of God.  Jonah understood that God was giving them a second chance, he understood that the mission that God had sent him on was not to condemn but to deliver. 

Before we are too hard on Jonah, let's place ourselves in his shoes.  Did you consider who these Ninevites were?  They certainly weren't Jews, so they did not fit into his theology in regard to needing salvation.  Another reason that Jonah may have hated then was because they were the enemy!  Nineveh was one of the Assyrian cities, and it was prophesied that the Assyrians would soon captivate Israel.  Jonah, Amos and Hosea lived in the same era, as prophets of the truth, they did not want to see the filthy Assyrians to enjoy some of the riches of God's grace.  Jonah had decided that these people were not worth saving, and possibly not able to be saved.

The conversation between Jonah and God is somewhat comical when you look at it.  God gives Jonah an object lesson that is tremendous.  The question that is posed in verse 4 is based upon what Jonah said about God in verse two.  If what Jonah had said about God was true, then why was Jonah angry?  Wasn't God acting according to His nature?  Jonah had attempted suicide in the ocean by telling the sailors to throw him overboard.  God saved him from drowning.  Now Jonah requests that God take his life, since he wasn't getting his way. 

Perhaps that is one of the deciding factors in the Ninevites lives.  Jonah came into town irritated about having to deliver a message that he didn't want to tell.  He delivered the message, then really placed the fear of God in the people's hearts.  He found a place where he could watch God destroy the city.  By taking this position, it would have verified that his message was true, and he was waiting for the result of his prophecy.  When God chose Jonah to deliver the message, He knew how Jonah would respond.  We know from the last chapter that the entire city repented.

Jonah built a temporary booth to shade himself from the sun so that he could watch the show.  God aided him by allowing a plant to grow which added to his shade and his comfort.  Jonah was "extremely happy" about the plant.  He may have thought that God was verifying his wishes for judgment on Nineveh because God was providing him with shade.   However, the plant was destroyed by a worm the next morning, God added to Jonah's discomfort by causing a scorching wind to blow causing Jonah great discomfort.  Jonah once again becomes angry with God because the plant had died.  He tells God again that he wants to die.  Jonah wasn't getting his way. 

God compares the plant with Nineveh, first, Jonah did not do anything to get the plant, it was a freebee.  The plant was given by God as a gift, and taken away just as quickly.  Jonah liked the plant because it made him comfortable, the plant provided him with shade, in Jonah's mind it was all about Jonah.  He was selfish to the core, he didn't want to do anything that did not benefit himself.  It was not about God in Jonah's mind, it was about himself. 

Consider for a moment the size of the city, there were 120,000 who did not know the difference between their right and left hands.  That would place them at the preschool age.  Using that figure the estimated population could be somewhere around 600,000.  God is compassionate toward all people of all races.  Jonah was stuck on the idea that God was only a God of the Jews.  He failed to realize that God created every single person that was in that city, He nurtured them, provided animals for them and desired that they repent from their wickedness. 

The book of Jonah leaves us hanging, we don't know what happened next.  Perhaps that is to cause us to think and to consider the story.  Jonah survived long enough to write the book so he didn't get his wish to die.  Jonah also found out that God had spared the city from judgment.  I wonder if Jonah traveled back to Israel to tell them that God was a compassionate God and that it was time to repent, turn from their wickedness and return to the Lord as the Ninevites had done.  Or perhaps Jonah learned his lesson, finally recognized his selfishness and went into the city to minister to the people.  We don't know what happened to Jonah, we do know that he wrote and honestly recorded his attitudes and his actions for us to ponder and to think about.

What do we do in the same situation that Jonah was in?  Are there people that God has sent us to speak to that we consider too low, too poor, or of the wrong race or social rank for us to speak with?  Jonah was a study in the selfishness of God's people, and our self-important attitudes which are focused upon ourselves and not upon God.  The message of the Book of Jonah which comes through clear is that it is all about God, His plan for His kingdom, and not about our comforts or our biases in life.  God will deliver His people from sin, He will discipline His believers when they turn from Him, He will perfect us until we go to meet Him.  It is all about God.  Israel at the time had had their great building programs in their churches, they had constructed great temples and shrines where they worshiped God in the false religion that they had created through the work of their hands.  Israel at that time had lost focus on God and was intently focused upon themselves.  God sent the Assyrians shortly afterward in order to take them into captivity and start the discipline process with that nation.  Today our churches and our religions have become remarkably like that Jews of Jonah's time.  We are locked into our building programs, our social programs, and our recovery programs.  We have forgotten about God, sure He is spoken about in our messages, He has the token cross hanging upon the walls in our churches and some of our homes, but when we go home from church, He is placed upon the shelf until the next week or the next Bible study.  We call Him Lord, and never speak to Him in prayer, we call Him our God, and ignore Him between services.  We have missed the message of Jonah, it is all about God, nothing else. 

I am going to close here, I am shocked by the words that have hit the page, but more shocked because of their truth.  Brothers and Sisters, we can change our churches, it starts with us, let's make a commitment between ourselves that we will live our lives for God, 24/7.

Father, as we consider the facade that many believers live in, remove the blinders from our eyes so that we can see our own selfishness and our own self serving attitudes.  Remind us, and show us how to live our lives according to Your will.

In Him,

Joe Turner.