"We Are A Lot Like Jonah – Running Ahead of God"

Jonah 4: 1 – 11

Chapter four opens with Jonah having his own personal pity party. Remember Jonah hated the Ninevites and Jonah wanted God to destroy the Ninevites.

If God had destroyed the city, Jonah would have gone home a happy man. But Jonah stayed around hoping that God would destroy Nineveh at the end of the 40-day period.

Jonah was feeling very sorry for himself because the Ninevites had responded to God’s message. They had repented of their sins and they asked for God’s forgiveness.

In verses 2 – 4 we have Jonah’s second prayer. Jonah’s prayer begins with an, "I told you so statement." Jonah basically says, "God I knew if you had any excuse to forgive these heathens you would."

Notice the self-centeredness in Jonah’s prayer. His prayer contains the words "I", "My" and "Me" six times in these two short verses. Now mentally contrast this with The Lord’s Prayer. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we do not say "Me", "My", and "I" one single time. …. But rather we show our concern for our fellow man by saying "Our" and "US".

The good part of Jonah’s prayer is that Jonah complained to God in prayer instead of just complaining. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a good prayer, but at least Jonah was still talking to God. Sadly many times when people are faced with hurt and disappointment they quit talking to God completely. That is sad because God is the best one to help us though difficult times. If we are willing to really listen, God will help us work through those tough times.

But in spite of the fact that Jonah was talking with God Jonah had a serious problem. Jonah was mad and his anger was directed toward God. We see God is big enough to handle Jonah anger because God is loving and merciful. God took Jonah’s anger in stride and God tried to help Jonah by getting Jonah to see things from His eternal perspective.

After Jonah finished preaching, Jonah went up on a hill overlooking Nineveh and built himself a little shelter to give him some relief from the hot sun while he waiting for what he hoped would be the fireworks of Nineveh being destroyed.

It is interesting that the shelter Jonah built was not effective in providing relief from the hot sun. There is an important lesson to be learned here. God permits us to erect our self-made defensive strategies in an attempt to ease our inner pain. However these self-made efforts belong to a temporary world system that will fail. True peace and comfort that lasts only come from God.

Again we see the abiding love mercy and grace of God demonstrated. God does not leave us alone. God comes to us even if we don’t invite Him and even if we wish He would stay away.

Our God is a God of second chances and God uses events to get us to come to our senses, to protect us from the predicaments that we get ourselves into and …. to protect us from the perils of our independent ways.

It is interesting to note that all Jonah had to do to ease the pain of the scorching sun was simply get up and go somewhere else. No one forced him to sit on that hillside. It was Jonah’s hatred for the Ninevites and his desire to see God destroy them that kept him there.

In verse 6 we read that Jonah was extremely happy when God caused a large vine to grow up and provide him with some shade. Ironically, the only time we are told that Jonah was happy is when he was sitting in the shade under this vine.

Next we see Jonah got very angry when God caused a worm to eat the vine and the vine withered the next day. For Jonah, all this must have seemed like a cruel joke.

We have to wonder how a person like Jonah could experience God’s love and God’s protection so many times in his life and then at other times to be so totally depressed? How could Jonah, of all people, forget God’s mercy so quickly? But sadly we are all a lot like Jonah.

Interestingly, God never addressed the root cause of Jonah’s dysfunction. God never probed Jonah’s memory bank to see what would surface. Instead, God took issue with Jonah’s behavior. You see it is not our circumstances that are the problem; it is our negative reactions to the circumstances that are displeasing to God.

It’s very easy for us to see that Jonah’s problem was Jonah’s selfishness and his hatred. Jonah was too focused on himself. Jonah was obsessed with his personal comfort. Jonah totally lost his perspective. Jonah was more concerned with a minor physical thing rather than of the spiritual welfare of the Ninevites. Jonah acted like he was in the right and God was wrong. Jonah was arguing with God.

But again we see God patiently tried to get Jonah to see that Jonah was focused on the wrong things. God does this in verse 11 by pointing out to Jonah that Jonah was more concerned about his own comfort than about the welfare of 120,000 innocent children in Nineveh who were two or three years old.

God was trying to get Jonah to see things from an eternal perspective. The conversion of the Assyrians was much more important than the preservation of a vine for the personal comfort of one individual! Sadly we, too, are like Jonah. Many times we care more about our personal comfort than we do about the spiritual welfare of our fellowman. We say we are too busy to get involved? We rationalize that they will not want to talk about being saved from Hell. We are afraid of what others might say or think about us? You see when we do this we are trying to tell God who to save and who needs to go to Hell?

This 4^th chapter in the book of Jonah teaches us that it is time for us to quit thinking so much about what we want and … about our personal comfort.

It is time for us to focus more on the spiritual needs of those outside the church that God has called us to reach.

The Book of Jonah concludes with the repeated appeal of God trying to get Jonah to look at his self-centeredness, his anger, and his hatred. We do not know if Jonah ever responded to God’s appeal. The Bible doesn’t tell us. It is my belief that the Bible does not answer that question because God is trying to get each one of us to look at ourselves. God wants us to do a self analysis because we all are a lot like Jonah. God wants us to change our natural sinful and self-centered characteristics to be in line with God’s Holy and inclusive characteristics.

Please look at your bulletin insert with me. In the 4^th chapter of Jonah we see the emotions Jonah displayed. We also see the characteristics of God. There is quite a contrast.

The Bible warns us over and over that sins like anger, bitterness, and selfishness will rob us of God’s peace, comfort, love, and joy in our life.

As Christians our number one goal is to be like Jesus - to think like Jesus, to talk like Jesus, and to act like Jesus. However, we are a lot like Jonah. There is only one way for us to overcome for our sinful self-centered nature and achieve our goal of being Christ like and that is to turn to God, admit our shortcomings, and ask Him to change us.

The secret to experiencing the abundant life that God planned for us and wants us to experience is to: Acknowledge God’s sovereignty, respond to His love, obey His commandments, focus on the spiritual rather than the physical, and allow God to use us. Remember God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary job for Him. AMEN

Jonah 4: 1 – 11

Jonah’s Behavior	God’s Characteristics
Displeased (4:1)	Gracious (4:2)
Angry (4:1 & 4:9)	Compassionate (4:2)
Self-righteous (4:2)	Slow to anger (4:2)
Selfish (4:3)	Abounding in love (4:2)
Self-pity (4:3 & 4:8)	Relents from sending calamity (4:2)
Depressed (4;3, 4:8, 4:11)	Powerful (4:6 & 4:7)
Happy (4:6)	Caring and merciful (4:6)
Self-centered (4:8)	Patient (4: 6 -11)
	Concerned (4:11)

Questions To Ponder During The Coming Week

• Are we in the habit of telling God, "I told you so"?

• Is our life focused on physical matters or spiritual matters?

• Is our life centered on ephemeral matters or eternal matters?

• Are we more concerned about our personal comfort than we are about people’s spiritual welfare?

• Do we select whom we think God should save and who should be destroyed?