Passage: Jonah 4:5-11
The Big Idea
God is breathtakingly patient, with Nineveh and with Jonah. Using a plant, a worm and a hot wind, God gently shows Jonah his own heart and invites him to love people the way God does. Then the book ends with a question aimed at us.
Measuring Patience
A boy keeps poking his dad with a ruler. Finally the dad asks, “What are you doing?” The boy says, “Measuring your patience.”
An old Hebrew story tells of Abraham welcoming a weary traveler into his tent, washing his feet and feeding him. When the man ate without a blessing, Abraham asked if he worshiped God. “I worship fire only,” the man said. Abraham threw him out into the cold night. Then God asked Abraham where the stranger was. “I forced him out because he did not worship You.” God answered, “I have suffered him these eighty years although he dishonors Me. Could you not endure him one night?”
Read: Jonah 4:4-11
God is patient with His prophet
God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry?” God wants to counsel His prophet, but Jonah isn’t ready. And God waits.
Here is the irony: Jonah is angry at God for being patient with Nineveh, without realizing God is being just as patient with him. God is not in a hurry. He will sit with us in silence when we are angry. He will listen. And at the right moment He will speak truth, grace and love. That is His character.
The shelter and the plant
Jonah goes outside the city, builds a shelter and waits to see if God will lose His patience with Nineveh (while keeping it with Jonah, of course).
God does not destroy Nineveh. That’s patience. And God grows a plant over Jonah’s head for shade. That’s grace. Jonah is very happy about the plant. He has no problem receiving God’s blessings.
The worm and the wind
The next morning God prepares a worm that kills the plant, then a scorching east wind. Jonah grows faint and again asks to die.
God is setting the table for a conversation. Since Jonah won’t look inside, God shows him his heart with an object lesson. It’s always worth asking, “Is God trying to teach me something?”
The question that catches him
God asks whether it is right for Jonah to be angry about the plant. Jonah answers that it is, angry enough to die (Jonah 4:9).
Jonah walks face-first into the lesson.
God points out that Jonah has had pity on a plant he did not labor over or make grow, which came up in a night and died in a night. Shouldn’t God have pity on Nineveh, a great city with more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many animals besides (Jonah 4:10-11)?
In other words: “Jonah, you are grieving over a plant. A plant you didn’t plant, that a cute little worm destroyed. I love people. More than you can imagine. And I am inviting you to love them with Me.”
The Heart of God
If you are hurting because you lost a plant, imagine God’s heart over lost people.
Through Hosea, God cries out over His wayward people: how could He ever give them up? His heart churns within Him, and His compassion is stirred (Hosea 11:8).
When you love something, you open yourself to being hurt. God loves deeply and hurts deeply. We try to avoid pain by loving only safe things, things we think we can’t lose. But people are what God loves most, and He calls us to love them too. Pain is not the enemy. Pain can become a path to deeper fellowship with Him.
Look at Jesus. He wept over Jerusalem while they were planning His death. He prayed for those who crucified Him. He saw people as confused, lost and unable to save themselves, sheep who did not know their right hand from their left. He came as the patient Physician to heal the blind. (Maybe that’s why they’re called patients.)
How Can God Be Both?
God never excuses evil, and yet He shows real mercy. How can He judge sin and forgive sin at the same time?
The answer, like every answer we need, is found in Jesus.
- If God were only judge, we would all be lost.
- If God were only mercy, with no justice, evil would spread until everything was ruined.
At the cross, sin was fully judged and mercy was fully given. That is where we see how good God really is.
The Cliffhanger
The book ends without telling us what Jonah did. Did he learn his lesson? We don’t know.
That is on purpose. The author wants you to finish the story. We get to the last verse and realize the arrow of God’s Word is aimed at us. We are Jonah.
- Will you receive God’s goodness and show it to this world?
- Will you walk in humility and trust Him?
- Will you patiently love people who hurt you, or shrink back into a shell of Jonah-like self-protection?
Grace Takeaway
It all comes back to how you connect with the cross. The more you see God’s patience with you, the more patient you become with others. Write your own ending, not by trying harder to love, but by resting in how much you are loved.