Running Rebel (Part Ten): The Rebuke

Transcript

JROT 27
03/03/2024
Running Rebel (Part Ten): The Rebuke
Jonah 4:6-11
Jesse Randolph

Alright, well, welcome to our final installment of “Running Rebel,” a verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Jonah. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at the last six verses, Jonah 4:6-11, which are going to build upon and complete the narrative that we saw in the first five verses last week in Jonah 4. And jumping right into it, you’ll recall from our study of Jonah 4:1-5 last week that Jonah was “greatly displeased” with God, even angry at God, angry toward God. And he was angry at God we saw from relenting, “relent[ing] concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them,” [Jonah 3:10]. them, of course, meaning the Ninevites. The wicked city of Nineveh and the wicked people inside that city repented. And God relented and that angered Jonah. He was hot about it, that’s the literal meaning of that word “angry” there. Jonah was indignant over it, the fact that the Ninevites have repented, and the fact that God had relented. He was incensed that, as it says in Jonah 3:9, that God would “turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger,” from the Ninevites so that they did “not perish.”

And it was in that state we saw last week of anger and displeasure and indignation toward the Lord. We saw in Jonah 4:2-3 that he “prayed to the Lord.” So, in that state of being hot, the state of hotness bubbling up with anger, he decides to pray -- well, sort of, kind of. You’ll recall that as we worked our way through that so-called prayer, Jonah wasn’t really praying in the sense that we think of prayer. Like praising God for His greatness or even petitioning God to do certain things. Instead, this was a complaint, a complaint actually that God had done what He always does, which is to act consistent with His character. That was Jonah’s complaint. Which is exactly what God did when He spared the wicked, but now repentant, Ninevites. So, that’s what we saw Jonah doing in Jonah 4:2, complaining, when he said, “Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country?” He’s saying here to Yahweh, “I told You so, this is just like You, God, I knew that You would do this, to act the way You are, to be who You are, to act consistent with Your character.” And God’s character, of course, is laid out there in verse 2, He is “gracious and compassionate . . . slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”

My theology professor in seminary, I’ve mentioned him by name a few times. His name is Jim Mook. And he would always tell us students these various different foundational theological truths. But one of them that he always communicated to us, one that I’ll never forget is that God is who He is and God does what He does. God is what He is and God does what He does. Well, Jonah would not have liked Dr. Mook’s answer. In fact, Jonah was upset over this fact. Angry at the fact that God is who He is and that God does what He does. And so angry was Jonah, you’ll recall, that he pled with God, in verse 3, to take his life. He says, “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” This is one of the three times in the book of Jonah that this prophet of Yahweh ignobly sought to short-circuit his own life. Remember, there was that request to the sailors that they throw him overboard. Then there’s this request here in Jonah 4:3 from last week. And there’s going to be another request, like this one, that we’re going to see later this evening, when we get to verse 8.

Well, the Lord didn’t heed Jonah’s request. God did not, in fact, take Jonah’s life. Instead, the Lord asked Jonah a question, you see it there in verse 4, it says, “The Lord said, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry?’” And that question was rhetorical. That question was designed to make a point. The answer was right there baked into it. The answer, of course, was “No, you don’t have reason to be angry, Jonah.” Of course Jonah had no reason to be angry at God. No creature has right to, or reason to, be angry at their Creator. No creature has the right to argue with their Creator. Isaiah 45:9 says it this way, “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker – an earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Well, that’s exactly what Jonah was doing, quarreling with his Maker. A clay, earthenware vessel arguing with the Divine Potter, saying, “What are you doing?” And note the patience God showed Jonah here in the face of such high-handed treason. God didn’t strike him down, God didn’t smite him, God didn’t send down a divine lightning bolt to wipe out His rebellious prophet. No. God replied, rather, by asking Jonah a question. A question which He gave Jonah, in turn, a chance to answer. He gives Jonah an open door, an opportunity to answer His question. But Jonah we saw didn’t take the Lord up on it, Jonah didn’t answer God. Instead, verse 5, it says, he “went out from the city and sat east of it.” Last week, we called this Jonah’s ‘sulking squat.’ And how he went in that location east of the city and he created for himself some form of shaded shelter.

We see that in verse 5, it says, “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, we have here in verse 5 this very Sodom-and-Gomorrah-like picture with Jonah sitting outside the city in this shaded little perch of his, waiting for God to rain down His fiery judgment on this wicked city.

And that catches us up and brings us to our text for this evening, the final six verses of the book of Jonah, Jonah 4:6-11. God’s Word reads “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?’ ”

Though it may not be obvious on that first read of our passage what we’re going to see this evening as we work our way through these verses is that through a series of incidences, occurrences, events, God was rebuking His wayward and disobedient prophet. Which is why I’ve titled this evening’s message “The Rebuke,” as in the divine rebuke that God gave Jonah in this passage. As we’re about to see, this divine rebuke really took place in three distinct movements, or three parts. First, in verses 6-8 we’re going to see how “God Exposed Jonah.” In verse 9 we’re going to see how “God Examined Jonah.” And then verses 10-11 we’re going to see how “God Embarrassed Jonah.”

So let’s start by looking at how “God Exposed Jonah.” This is the first aspect of the divine rebuke which the Lord brought upon his disobedient prophet in verses 6-8. We’ll read that passage again, it says, “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.’ ” Now, right away it’s important to note that something very interesting is happening here at the beginning of verse 6 which is the name or names by which God is identified. Notice that He’s identified here in verse 6 as “the Lord God.” In Hebrew, that’s Yahweh Elohim. It was the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, who appointed this plant to grow up over Jonah. And that’s a very interesting choice of a divine title here, Yahweh Elohim, because typically in the Old Testament those names, Yahweh and Elohim, are used distinctly, separately to describe God, not usually together. What you’ll normally see is ‘Yahweh,’ the actual name of God being used to describe His interactions with His people, the Israelites -- while ‘Elohim’ typically is the more generic word for God which is more typically used in God’s dealings with goyim, meaning Hittites and Perizzites and Ninevites and all the other ‘-ites,’ and people like you and me who are not Israelites.

You can see what I mean by just thumbing through the first three and a half chapters of Jonah, the two words Yahweh and Elohim being used separately. For instance, in chapter 1 most of the references there are to Jonah, an Israelite and his dealings with God and the term there, throughout, is Yahweh. “The word of the Lord,” Yahweh, “came to Jonah,” Jonah 1:1; “Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish,” Jonah 1:2 “from the presence of the Lord,” Yahweh; Jonah 1:17, “The Lord,” Yahweh, “appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.” The same is true in Jonah chapter 2 which is Jonah’s prayer to God, where Jonah says things like this in verse 2, “I called out of my distress to the LORD,” Yahweh, “and He answered me;” or down in verse 6, “You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD,” Yahweh, “my God;” or verse 9, “Salvation is from Yahweh,” verse 9. So in chapters 1 and 2, where this heavy focus is on Jonah and his interactions with God, we see the word “Yahweh” used, capital LORD, that you see in your Bibles.

But then when we get to chapter 3, suddenly we start seeing this more generic term for God, “Elohim,” being used. Like in Jonah 3:5, it says, “the people of Nineveh believed in God,” Elohim; verse 8 it says, “let men call on God,” Elohim; verse 9, “who knows, God,” Elohim, “may turn and relent;” verse 10, “when God,” Elohim, “saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God,” Elohim, “relented.” But then, so far in chapter 4 where the focus has shifted back to Jonah and his interactions with the God of Israel, we again start seeing Yahweh used. “He prayed to the Lord,” verse 2, that’s Yahweh; verse 3, “Therefore now, O Lord,” Yahweh, “please take my life from me;” verse 4 “The Lord,” Yahweh, “said, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry?’ ” So it’s now back to the covenant name of God, the fine name, the given name of God.

That’s at least until our passage, verse 6, where it’s not Yahweh and it’s not Elohim, it’s both, Yahweh Elohim. But why? Why are both names given here? What’s the purpose of the combination of names here? What’s the significance? Well, it’s certainly no mistake, it’s certainly not by accident; there’s no such thing as a mistake or an accident in the divine Word of God. Rather, what’s being showcased here as we’re about to see is that God was going to do to Jonah what Jonah was hoping God would do to Nineveh. Nineveh, which had repented, was going to be treated in this time as an object of God’s favor -- while Jonah, though he was an Israelite, was stubborn and he was wayward, and he was going to face a measure of God’s judgment. This whole section highlights this reversal of roles between Nineveh and Jonah which is why, and we’re going to see this more later, we see both names, Yahweh and Elohim, Yahweh Elohim being used here.

So we see the name given here, Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, highlighting the mixture of roles between Ninevah and Jonah here. And what we see next is that this God, the Lord God, is unquestionably sovereign. Look at the next part of verse 6 where it says that Yahweh Elohim, “appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head.” Now, that verb “appoint” is a word we’ve seen multiple times, we will see multiple times in this short little book. God “appointed” we saw back in Jonah 1:17, a fish, “a great fish to swallow Jonah” whole. Here, we see that God “appointed a plant.” In the next couple of verses we’re going to see that “God appointed a worm” and “appointed a scorching east wind.” Those incidents, when the verb “appoint” is used in addition to other words that are used, like when the Lord “hurled” a wind on the sea or when He brought about interaction between Jonah and the sailors on board the ship or when He brought about repentance and salvation for those pagan sailors or when God brought about salvation for the pagan Ninevites, the whole point that we’re seeing throughout this study of Jonah is God appointing and God causing and God moving and God directing events all over this book.

Well, here in verse 6, we see that “God appointed a plant.” Now, the Hebrew word that we see there for plant, is “qi-qay-oan,” it almost sounds Spanish, qi-qay-oan. It’s actually a one-of-a-kind Hebrew term. It’s a hapax legomenon which is a heady, theological way of saying it only shows up once in the Bible, it shows up nowhere else in Scripture. In fact, we don’t even have a cross-reference to that word being used in extra-biblical Hebrew literature. That word, qi-qay-oan, appears here, and only here. So what’s it referring to? What type of plant are we talking about? Some have said it was a castor oil plant, a plant which was common in this part of the world. A plant that could grow up quickly in the hot desert air, up to twelve feet, in fact. A plant that shoots out large leaves, the very type of leaves that would have provided Jonah the type of shade that’s being described here. Some have said it’s a type of gourd plant. The last time I used the word gourd I pronounced it ‘gourd’ and I got an earful for that. I guess it’s ‘gourd,’ [pronounces the word differently]. Some say it’s a gourd plant. It could be a castor oil plant, a gourd-growing plant, we really don’t know. Just like we really don’t know the genus or the species of the “great fish” that swallowed Jonah was.

What I really find incredible, though, and get this, is just how entrenched people have become in their positions over this issue, whether it was a castor oil plant or a gourd. That people have really divided, believe it or not, over this topic. There’s a story out there about Jerome, the early fourth-century church father and Bible translator who got into this well-publicized dispute with another church father, Augustine, over this topic, was it a castor oil plant or a gourd. There’s another dispute that’s recorded also involving Jerome. Jerome’s the guy that put the Bible in Latin for the first time. It’s called the Latin Vulgate, a fourth century Latin translation of the Bible. And when he translated this word for plant, qi-qay-oan, as castor oil plant in the Latin translation, those who took the other translation, the other position, that it’s a gourd, they didn’t like that. And there’s a story about this riot breaking out in the city of Carthage in North Africa over this topic. Could you imagine being so hung up here tonight on botanical precision that you’re willing to get into a fight in the parking lot over whether this was a castor oil plant or a gourd? But we really have records of that happening in church history. Let’s just say that would take a certain amount of dedication to get hung up on that point.

See the reality is that either type of plant, a castor oil plant or a gourd-growing plant, could have provided sufficient shelter to shade Jonah from the sun’s harsh rays in this part of the world. What type of plant this was, in other words, isn’t really the point of this text. More important is the function this plant was serving, namely, giving shade to Jonah and even more important is the verb that’s underlying this verse, the fact that it is God appointing this plant. That’s the main idea, that’s the main focus of this text, that “God appointed” this plant. As you have heard me say over and over in our study of Jonah (and you’re probably so sick of it you’re ready for Jonah to be over now) this book, the book of Jonah, is not about Jonah, it’s not about sailors, it’s not about sea captains, it’s not about a fish, and here, it’s not about a plant. This book is about God and God’s sovereign outworking of His purposes and plans, which here, involved Him appointing a plant so that it “grew up over Jonah.” And what we see recorded here is just that fact, that a plant, whether a castor oil plant, a gourd-growing plant, or some other type of plant or vine, it did indeed grow up over Jonah.

As we keep on reading here in verse 6 we see the plant’s purpose, it was “to be a shade over his head,” it says. “It grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head.” Now, let’s rewind for a moment here. We saw back in verse 5 that Jonah built this shady little outpost, or this hut, east of Nineveh. But apparently it wasn’t all that well-built and its shade coverage wasn’t sufficient, because God here saw fit to supply Jonah with additional shade. Now think about this for a moment. Jonah has just finished expressing his utter displeasure toward God, his anger toward God. He’s complained his way through this so-called prayer to God. He’s ignored the question that God posed to him in chapter 4 verse 4. And not only that, he’s abandoned the very mission that God gave him to go to Nineveh. He’s already checked out and taken off.

And what does God do, in response? God shows him mercy, He provides Jonah with shade. He appoints this plant to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over Jonah’s head, though he didn’t deserve it. This wayward prophet, this disobedient prophet, this whiny prophet, this rebellious prophet was now starting to feel the temperature of his skin cool down. And he was probably starting to feel his heart rate slow down just a little bit. He was probably now starting to feel the beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead starting to dry up just a little bit. And in the midst of this otherwise overwhelming and oppressive heat Jonah was even starting to feel a measure of comfort. And why? Because of the mercy of God. File that thought away, the mercy of God, just for a moment.

As we read on in verse 6 we’re given these additional details about the shade that God provided when He appointed this plant to grow over Jonah. Note what it says, it says the shade was provided “to deliver him from his discomfort.” Now, this is fascinating. That word there, “discomfort,” is the same word that’s translated as “calamity” in the last verse of chapter 3, God spared the Ninevites of their calamity, meaning their ultimate spiritual and eternal destruction that they would have faced had they not repented. And here, in Jonah 4:6, God spared Jonah of his discomfort, his panting in the heat, the clothes sticking to his body, the beads of sweat forming on his brow. The fact that the same word is used in these two different settings, that tells us something. It tells us that the Lord was preparing Jonah, He was preparing to teach Jonah this important lesson in the middle of this rebuke.

The only problem was Jonah couldn’t see past the end of his nose, he wasn’t able to see past his own anger, he wasn’t able to correct his own spiritual blindness. He wasn’t able to pick up in his anger on the parallels between the Ninevites who had repented and himself who had not. Quite the contrary actually. See, actually with the bit of shade now covering him and cooling him off and cooling him down, Jonah was blissfully unaware of what the Lord was doing here and what the Lord was teaching. Look at the end of verse 6, it says, “And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant.” This is the only time that we see Jonah described in this book as being happy, glad. And not only happy, he’s described as what? Being “extremely happy.” Of all the moments that we would expect expect Jonah, a prophet of God, a spokesperson for God, a messenger of God, a mouthpiece for God, to be happy, let alone extremely happy would have been when? When Nineveh repented. That was Jonah’s whole job, that was Jonah’s whole purpose, to proclaim that message, and then to see the fruit of that message when those people repented, when they took his message to heart and turned from their sin and turned to God.

Jonah wasn’t happy with Nineveh’s repentance, though. No. Last week we saw the exact opposite, Jonah expressing the exact opposite of feelings of happiness over Nineveh’s repentance. Look at verse 1 of chapter 4, he was angry when Nineveh repented, he was angry when God relented. What made Jonah happy though, was not that Nineveh had been spared from judgment. What made Jonah happy, “extremely happy,” was his own comfort. His mood was entirely transformed by a sliver of shade, he was, as it says here, “extremely happy about the plant.” In Hebrew, the way that sentence reads is “Jonah rejoiced over the plant with great joy.” Jonah rejoiced over the plant with great joy. That ought to sound familiar to us because it runs in parallel to what we saw last week in Jonah 4:1 where it says “it greatly displeased Jonah.” In Hebrew that says, “This displeased Jonah with great displeasure.” So, to make sure you’re tracking with what I’m saying here, the Ninevites’ repentance and escape from judgment displeased Jonah with great displeasure, but now the shade that he’s experiencing under this divinely appointed plant caused Jonah to rejoice with great rejoicing. In other words, while Jonah enjoyed being the recipient of God’s mercy he wasn’t okay with God being merciful to others, namely, the Ninevites.

Well, Jonah’s giddiness, his extreme happiness over this plant was to be short-lived. Look what it says next in verse 7, it says, “But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.” In the early chapters of this book God intervenes with a storm and a great fish. Here though, God sovereignly intervenes with a plant and now a worm. This is the next stage in God’s object lesson to and His rebuke of Jonah, the appointment of a worm here in verse 7. It’s the same verb “appointed” that we saw used earlier to describe the appointing of the great fish and it’s the same verb that we see that describes the appointing of the plant that grew over Jonah to give him shade.

And while the plant was God showing His mercy to Jonah, the worm here represents God’s judgment on Jonah. Which is consistent, the use of a worm to describe judgment, with what we see elsewhere in the Old Testament. For instance, in Deuteronomy 28:36 it says, “The Lord will bring you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone. You shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where the Lord drives you. You shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it. You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them,” speaking of Israel’s future judgment for apostasy, speaking of the worm being an instrument of God’s judgment. That’s what Yahweh here is communicating to Jonah by sending the worm, this is part of this broader divine rebuke. What Yahweh is communicating to Jonah was that in this instance, God’s judgment was going to override His mercy. Meaning, Jonah was going to experience the very thing he himself had wished on Nineveh, namely, God’s withdrawal of His mercy and His bringing down His firm hammer of justice.

And note the aggressive way the judgment on Jonah here was brought about. The text tells us that the worm “attacked the plant.” The worm wasn’t merely nibbling at the plant. The worm was making quick work of the plant and the result, you see there at the end of verse 7, is that it “withered.” In other words, just as soon as the plant had sprung up and provided shade for Jonah, it was gone. And who brought this all about? God. Just as God appointed the plant to grow up over Jonah, God appointed the worm to bring that plant down. Both events happened precisely when and how God determined they would. God is the One who gives life and God is the One who brings life to an end. That is certainly true of human life and but it’s true of all aspects of God’s creation, animal life and plant life alike. The withering of this plant then was brought about by this worm, but it was all ultimately brought by God as the Lord’s rebuke of His disobedient prophet was ongoing.

Now, as we turn to verse 8 we get to the heart here of Jonah’s exposure. Look at verse 8, it says, “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.’” Now, those words at the very beginning there, it says, “when the sun came up” they literally are in Hebrew, “as the sun climbed higher.” “As the sun climbed higher,” meaning this is describing that moment in a day where the sun is at the top of the sky, the peak of the sky. This is talking about high noon here. The sun is climbing higher in the sky. The temperatures were getting higher. Jonah’s getting hotter. In other words, God had taken away the plant and the shade at the very moment Jonah most needed it. God was hitting Jonah here where it hurt, and now Jonah found himself cooking without shade under the noonday sun.

It wasn’t only the sun that posed a problem though. Next, we are told of another divine appointment reading on in verse 8, it says that “when the sun came up,” “when the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind.” So now we have the wind. We have the sun up in the sky. Now we have the scorching east wind coming through. This is the second time in this book we know that God used a great wind to get Jonah’s attention. The first was back in Jonah 1:4 where it says, “The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea” causing the storm on the sea that we saw early on. But here in Jonah 4:8 this is describing a specific type of wind. This was a hot, scorching wind blowing off the Arabian Desert from the east called a sirocco. It was a crippling wind. In other translations it’s rendered a cutting wind which is likely actually a better translation since the root of this word here, “scorching,” is actually to plow or to cut. But the point is this was a divinely appointed wind, a wind that was sharp, and biting, and cutting. I probably wouldn’t even have really even have known the import of this passage until we moved here to this state to understand what a sharp, biting, cutting wind is. But here, the wind that’s being described caused the temperatures to rise dramatically. This would have been a wind that caused the humidity to drop quickly. This was a wind which blew around all sorts of fine particles of dust.

This was a wind that was so powerful in its effects that it’s described as causing the mirage symptoms out there in the desert, that sense of unreality and exhaustion and bizarre behavior. In fact, this wind was so strong and disorienting that even up until more recent years in certain Muslim countries in this part of the world, there are records of old laws which reduced the punishment for crimes committed while this wind was blowing. Guilty by way of sirocco or something like that because the wind was so disorienting and so profound in the way it impacted how people thought and acted that it could actually be a mitigating measure to reduce a sentence. So here in Jonah, this was no ordinary wind, this was a strong desert wind. And even more significantly this was a divinely-sent wind, a wind sent by God to wear down Jonah in his stubbornness. This is all part of His rebuke of this disobedient prophet.

Well, next, in verse 8 we’re given more information about the effects of the noonday sun on Jonah. It says, “the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint.” So the sunrays are pictured here as assaulting Jonah’s head from this cloudless sky and the word there for “beat down” is the same word that’s used to describe the worm’s attack on the plant. Just as the worm had attacked the plant so were the sunrays attacking Jonah’s head. The blazing sun was attacking Jonah’s head now that there was no shade available and the result we see there is that Jonah “became faint.” Which is likely referring to the fact that he was experiencing some form of divinely initiated sunstroke. A condition that was bringing him to his knees physically and pushing him to the very limits mentally. He was fading fast. The plot is thickening here as the very thing Jonah was hoping would happen to the Ninevites, hoping that they would be the ones attacked by God and they would be the ones facing judgment from God -- it’s now happening to Jonah instead, as God is now using His divine powers over His own creation, things like the plant, and the worm, and the wind, and the sun to teach Jonah a lesson, to rebuke him.

And with it all Jonah had had enough. Toward the end of verse 8 we’re told that Jonah “begged with all his soul to die.” That in Hebrew literally says, “He asked himself to die.” Meaning he’s all internal now, this is inner monologue now that’s being described here. Jonah has moved from talking to God to now talking to himself. He’s turning inward. He’s choosing isolation over reconciliation to God. And as he did so, note the dark direction he turned yet again. What he’s saying to himself here is that being on the receiving end of God’s judgment was just too much for him. He wanted to die. He desired death. And he desired death at this point not because the Ninevites had been spared, that was his reasoning back in Jonah 4:3. Rather, here in verse 8 he’s now seeking death to escape the judgment of God.

And then Jonah built on his internalized death wish with these words at the end of verse 8 there, where he says, “Death is better to me than life.” Which is identical to what he said up in verse 3 outwardly to God. So, facing God’s withdrawal of His mercy and facing God’s judgment and now feeling the attacks of the sun’s rays on his now-exposed head, this was all an overwhelming thought for Jonah. This was all too much for Jonah. So blinded was Jonah by his own self-centeredness that from his own vantage point everything was going wrong for him and he simply couldn’t stand it anymore. Even though he was wishing for a far greater calamity to happen to Nineveh then was happening to him in this moment, he was ready to tap out. He’s ready to be done with this life all because a plant had withered, the wind was blowing, and the sun was now beating on his head. Perpetually the victim, Jonah simply couldn’t take it anymore. No longer “extremely happy,” he now sought to die. And think about this, this temper tantrum that he’s throwing is all over a plant that a day earlier didn’t even exist!

Jonah was ungodly, prideful, self-centered and angry which led the Lord, as He continued in His rebuke of this rebel, to ask him a question. A question which was designed to teach Jonah something. Indeed, to rebuke him about the inconsistency of his own position vis-a-vis the plant versus how God viewed the Ninevites. So we’ve see how God exposed Jonah, that was verses 6-8. As we turn to verse 9 we are going to see how God examined Jonah. Look at verse 9, it says, “Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?’ ” Now God asked Jonah the same question back in verse 4. And we saw last time that what He’s really saying here is do you have the right to be angry? Here it’s about the plant. This is a question with purpose, this is a question with an aim, this is a question with an obvious answer.

What God was showing Jonah as He rebuked him with this question was that Jonah’s complaints were foolish and irrational. See, underlying God’s question here were the realities that no one in the first place had ever compelled Jonah to sit out in the sun to begin with. He’s the one who ran away and set himself east of the city, sitting out there in the sun. This was a problem that was entirely of Jonah’s making, so why should he be angry? And why should he be angry to the point of making suicidal grumbling, this state of exaggerated despair. And not only that, but by focusing this question on the subject of the plant God was about, what God was about to cause Jonah to do was condemn himself for being selfish with his own words here in response. See, if Jonah were to answer this question affirmatively, meaning if Jonah were to say, “Yes, I do have a right to be angry,” what it would do is show his own concerns for his own physical comfort were greater than his concerns for the spiritual condition and the spiritual state of the Ninevites. And if he were to answer, “yes” it would prove Jonah to be truly self-involved and self-centered and selfish.

And that’s exactly what Jonah did. Jonah fell right into the trap. Now, before we get into his response to God’s question I do want to note that the last time God asked Jonah this question, in verse 4, Jonah didn’t answer the question. Jonah just walked a way and went east of the city and set up his shady little booth. But this time in verse 9 he answers. Look at the answer in verse 9 and it says, “And he said, ‘I have good reason to be angry, even to death.’” In other words, Jonah doubled down by saying here “I have good reason to be angry,” he was insisting in the strongest terms possible that this plant was important to him, it was meaningful to him, it was significant to him. It delighted him, he delighted in the plant. He loved the shade that the plant provided and now that the plant was dead, Jonah was furious, Jonah was angry. He didn’t want to see the plant destroyed. To Jonah, it was horribly wrong that this plant would be struck
down.

Well, checkmate, Jonah had played right into God’s hand. Because wasn’t Jonah’s logic related to this plant and wanting to see the plant spared and live the very same logic that God employed when He spared Nineveh and allowed its inhabitants to live? The Ninevites, notwithstanding their rampant sin in their past, notwithstanding their spiritual incompetence, they had heard Jonah’s preaching and they had responded to that preaching. They had repented and God had relented. And God, we know from 2 Peter 3:9 who does not wish that any would perish but that all would come to repentance, acted rightly. He acted consistent with His character in showing mercy to Nineveh, in sparing this once-wicked city. And Jonah, who wanted his plant to live, had no reason now to complain about any of it. Because God is who He is, and God does what He does.

But Jonah couldn’t see it. He was still angry over the wilting of the plant. He was still angry over his lack of shade and his discomfort he felt in the heat of the sun. And he was so angry that he even wanted to die. He says, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” That could also be translated “I’m so angry I could die” or “I’m so mad I could die.” And what Jonah’s reply here highlights is this increasingly petty and ridiculous outlook of a truly self-centered man, a self-focused person. See, the most unhappy people you’ll find in the world and sadly, in the church, are self-centered people, people like Jonah. They constantly complain, they are never satisfied, they are unable to experience joy, they provide little joy to others. They ascribe little to no glory to God. And what’s the cause of it all? A skewed, misaligned notion of what it means to worship God. To the self-centered person the chief object of their affections is not God who is supremely satisfying. Rather the chief object of their affections is themselves and we’re always disappointing because when we worship ourselves the reality is the object of our worship, us, is always going to let us down. That was Jonah, self-centered, consumed by this little nothing of a plant, angry enough to die because his precious plant had withered, unable to see how his desire to see the plant live was parallel to Yahweh’s desire to see the Ninevites live and unable to see how he really had no grounds for complaining or arguing or being angry against God.
Well, as we read on we see that God continued in His rebuke of Jonah in verses 10 and 11. In verses 6 through 8, we saw how God exposed Jonah. In verse 9, which we just covered, we saw how God examined Jonah. Next, in verses 10 and 11, we’re going to see how God embarrassed Jonah. And by embarrassed I mean this: how God here shed more light on how silly Jonah’s obsession was with this plant in light of the bigger picture, the work of salvation that God had accomplished in Nineveh. Now God begins this next section of His rebuke of Jonah with this discussion of the plant in verse 10. It says, “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.” So, note the stark contrast that’s being highlighted here. Jonah’s angry toward God but he shows compassion toward a plant. It doesn’t matter if this was a castor oil plant or a gourd-growing plant. This was a sad indictment of Jonah’s skewed perspective. Well,

God continues here by pointing out that Jonah had no control over the plant’s growth or the plant’s withering. It says, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow.” Jonah had no claim over the plant, Jonah had no right to the plant. Jonah’s experience with the plant was completely gratuitous, he was a recipient of divine grace. This plant was God’s gift to Jonah, this gift which shaded the prophet. It wasn’t Jonah’s plant, it wasn’t Jonah’s instrument, it was all God. Not only that though, this plant was fleeting in its existence, it was temporal, it was of relatively little value. It says here next in verse 10, it “came up overnight and it perished overnight.” And the set-up here, the contrast, is that while Jonah had no part in bringing this plant to fruition, in causing this plant to grow, God had created the Ninevites and the Ninevites, unlike the plant, were not fleeting in their existence. These were divine image-bearers who had eternal souls. So what God is showing Jonah here then is that his affections are distorted. He cared more for a plant than for human lives. He cared more for his comforts than for these human souls in Nineveh. So, in response to the answer that Jonah had given Him back in verse 9, God was saying here to Jonah in verse 10, actually you have no right to be angry.

Here’s how one commentator, Donald Baker is his name, describes this scene. He’s sort of paraphrasing what God is saying here back to Jonah in verse 10. He says, “Let’s analyze this anger of yours, Jonah… It represents your concern over your beloved plant -- but what did it really mean to you? Your attachment to it couldn’t be very deep, for it was here one day and gone the next. Your concern was dictated by self-interest, not by genuine love. You never had the devotion of a gardener. If you feel as bad as you do, what would you expect a gardener to feel like, who tended a plant and watched it grow only to see it wither and die? This,” this is God speaking here, sort of paraphrased, “this is how I feel about Nineveh, only much more so. All those people, all those animals -- I made them; I have cherished them all these years. Nineveh has cost Me no end of effort, and it means the world to Me. Your pain is nothing compared to mine when I contemplate their destruction.” So, while Jonah had thought God was wrong in sparing the Ninevites, God here exposes Jonah as being the one whose thinking was actually wrong. In contrast with this insignificant plant, Nineveh was significant, really significant and far greater. God’s love for the people of Nineveh whom He had created far exceeded in importance Jonah’s own warped concerns for getting shade from a plant.

God’s rebuke though continues on in the final verse of the book, verse 11, where God asked Jonah “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?” You see the contrast here? In verse 10, it was “You had compassion,” as in, you had compassion, Jonah, you cared about a plant, a “plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight.” But here in verse 11 God says now, “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh?” And this is really God’s main point here as He argued with Jonah from the lesser to the greater. Jonah had loved a plant which a day earlier, again, hadn’t even existed, a plant for which he exerted no effort, a plant he didn’t bring about, a plant that perished quickly. This was the object of Jonah’s compassion, this all disintegrated, wilted, withered plant.

Now compare that to the object of Yahweh’s compassion, Nineveh. This great city filled with individuals who have been made in the image and the likeness of God. Individuals who have eternal souls which will go on to live forever. Could there be any doubt as to which was more important? Could there be any doubt as to which deserved the most compassion? Jonah’s concern was a plant, and putting a finer point on it, Jonah’s concern was really shade. Jonah’s concern was creaturely comfort. Jonah’s concern was doing what was best for Jonah. He was an incredibly selfish individual. God’s concern, by contrast, was a people, people who needed His grace, people who needed His mercy. And people who had acknowledged this, by the way, when they repented of their wickedness. So the answer here to who was is in the right is easy, it’s obvious. It’s God. Which, of course, is the easy theological answer. Asher [the pastor’s preschooler] would know the answer to that one every time we ask him that. God’s always right.

Well, though He certainly didn’t need to justify Himself, God concludes His argument here. Concludes His rebuke of Jonah with a handful here, you see them in verse 11, of statistics about the population of Nineveh, the great city. It says here, namely, we see that there are “120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left.” Now who are those 120,000 persons, the people that don’t know their right hand from their left? Now a number of different views have been offered over the years. Some have taken that statistic to be referring to the inability of certain persons in Nineveh to be able to distinguish between various forms of religion. So, some of them were monotheists and some were polytheists and these 120,000 it says, they spiritualize it to say this is about people who couldn’t distinguish from different religious groups, the monotheists from the polytheists. Others have taken that 120,000 figure to refer to just the overall helplessness and the general pitiful state of the entirety of the city of Nineveh. So, they would say the 120,000 is the actual population of Nineveh and they are all just spiritually wayward and astray. Some would say that this would refer to children. So, this would be 120,000 children, persons who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left. That’s the view I hold by the way. I take this to be reference to children. This is, I believe, not a reference to people who can’t distinguish their right hand from their left hand in a spiritual or moral sense, but rather in a literal and physical sense. People who would look at their two hands and not know which is left and which is right, which would largely be in this context, children, meaning with 120,000 young children specifically in this city, the population of Nineveh, some estimates have put it at 600,000 or more. Meaning it really was, going back to the way it’s described four different times in this book, a “great city,” a well-populated city, a large city.

Not only was this city well-populated though with humans, people, image-bearers, there were many animals there, too. Domesticated animals who would be equally wiped out if God were to judge this city. You see the last few words there in verse 11 where it says there were, “as well as many animals.” And, by the way, the point here is not that God loves animals as much as people, (sorry, PETA), that argument doesn’t fly. Only humans are made in God’s image. The point here is that God had concern, this is the main idea here, He had concern for all of Nineveh as He weighed whether to bring judgment on this once wicked city. The Lord, in other words, was giving thought and attention to the scope of all the destruction that would ensue, not just people, but animals, if judgment were to fall on this city. And then this is setting up a contrast because Jonah in opposition to God had a much narrower perspective. Jonah we’ve seen over and over now was only concerned about a plant. And not just a plant, and not really the plant ultimately, but shade, and to not just shade, but comfort. Jonah was all about Jonah. Jonah cared only about himself.

Now, we can’t leave our study of this book without noting that the curtain just drops so suddenly here, the credits roll so oddly here, this book doesn’t end with this satisfying resolution. There’s no indication of Jonah here, anywhere, saying something like, “You know what, God, I was wrong. Now you know what, God, you’re right. I was being foolish, and I was being impatient, and I was being selfish. I had no reason, God, to be so angry over this plant. And You, God, had every reason to show compassion to Nineveh. In fact, I’m going to go head back over to Ninevah and tell them all about You and even more about You so they can be raised and trained up in Your ways.” That’s not how it ends. Rather the book ends uneasily, discordantly, jarringly, with a question mark, and I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean that literally. The last thing we see in our copies of the book of Jonah is a question mark. And I have no doubt that’s by design as God moved the human author of this book, who I do believe to be Jonah himself writing this later, to leave us hanging with that question.

So that we would come away from our reading of this book and our interaction with this book asking ourselves a series of questions like: was God not right here? And was not Jonah here wrong? Is God not sovereign and well within His rights to always do whatever it is He pleases? Is man not wicked and sinful in his heart? Do we not cause calamity not only to ourselves, but to others when we run away from God? Should we not care more for souls than we care about worldly comforts that we might otherwise crave? Is not God merciful? And not only that, but all-wise and all-knowing in His distribution of His mercy? And doesn’t He know better than us as to how He imparts mercy and shows mercy to others? And shouldn’t we rejoice when God chooses to show mercy to others? And how can we, who are the recipients of God’s mercy be anything other than merciful to others? No. There is no Jonah chapter 4, verse 12. Meaning, all these questions are questions that we’ll need to carry out the door as we leave here this evening and grapple with and wrestle with through prayer and study of the Word and edifying conversations with fellow mature believers.

But thankfully, sitting on this side of the cross we are able to do that and to go through that study and go through those times of prayer with the 27 additional books of New Testament revelation that we are privileged to hold, which reveal to us further insights about the mind of God and the character of God and the purposes of God. And we are able to do so with the Spirit of God who lives in us, who illumines for us what God’s Word reveals and who supplies for us insights into the wisdom that’s given to us in the Word. And last, we are able to do so not with the example of the prophet Jonah to look to as the one we ultimately look to, but instead, with the example of the One who, Matthew 12:41, is “greater than Jonah” the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man who lived a perfect life and who died a sacrificial death so that we, who once were “running rebels” just like Jonah, might be restored to God. Thank the Lord that He chased us down. Now may we unlike Jonah go on living godly and upright lives for His glory and for the sake of His name.

Let’s pray. God, I thank You for this chance we have had over these past many weeks, really months, to study the book of Jonah. It’s one that’s caricatured, it’s one that is misunderstood, it’s one where the purposes You had in providing this book are misconstrued and focus is given to the fish or the plant or even to the man, but what we see throughout this book is You demonstrating Your sovereignty, Your perfect sovereignty in the life of this rebellious prophet and how You worked it all out, ultimately to highlight how You view sin and how You view idolatry and how You view any aspect of worship that places creaturely comfort over the pure worship of You.

God, I pray that we would take away from this series and these lessons in Jonah a true heart’s desire to put You first in everything we do, to seek Your will as we study Your Word, to show mercy to others as we have been shown mercy, and ultimately to die to self, put off sin and to walk in uprightness and holiness and godliness. God, that only comes to the person who has put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, so we who are believers in Christ, again, I say thank You. Thank You for the death of Your Son, His atoning death, His perfect sacrifice, and for the eternal hope it secures. And God if there’s anyone here this evening I pray that they would hear these words, that to be made right with You means to put their faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to be made right with You, the living God. There’s no other way to have one’s sin forgiven but to put one’s faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. May that be a truth that resonates with us. May we live in light of that truth for the rest of this week and the rest of our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.