PENTECOST 18
October 16/17, 2011
Seminarian Nathan Buchner
Text: Jonah 4:5-11

There are times in this life that are worth dreading. No one ever wants to fire workers at a job. No one wants to tell the bad news of an injury or even a death. We may not want to do things like this, but they still need to get done. My friends, serving God is not one of those instances that we should dread. The problem is that you and I are still stubborn sinners, and we at times we fail to see the fantastic opportunity before us. You see, serving God is a gracious gift, not a chore. In our stubbornness, God remains concerned. And in the end, God even uses us to reach other stubborn sinners.
In order to understand our section of Jonah, it is first necessary to understand what happened to him before. The story of Jonah started with God commanding Jonah to preach to Nineveh. But, in his stubbornness, Jonah decided not to do what God was commanding. Instead of making his way to Nineveh, which is close to present Iraq, he decided that he would sail straight to Tarshish, which is around Portugal or Spain! But, as he was doing this, a huge storm popped up. Because of this, Jonah had to confess his sin to the others on the boat, and suggested that they throw him into the sea. Then the storm stopped, and Jonah was swallowed up by a great fish. The thing is though, that this fish did not see Jonah as fish food. Instead, God used this fish for three days and nights to carry Jonah to dry land. Once this happened, Jonah went to Nineveh and preached repentance. Finally, the people turned to God and believed.
Although it would be a “happily ever after” ending for the story to stop here, it does not. Jonah actually faced a much more miserable ending in his book. Once Jonah noticed that the people had repented and turned to God, he said to the LORD, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Nowhere in the rest of Scripture is the fact that God is slow to anger and abounding in love considered a bad thing. Only here in Jonah is it this way. After having talked with God, Jonah is so upset that he leaves the city to which he had just preached.
Now, if you’re thinking that this reaction seems odd for a man who just had the single greatest missionary experience of all time, you wouldn’t be alone. I mean, God used Jonah, a stubborn sinner and, through him, converted an entire city! The normal action after this would be to go and live it up with the brothers and sisters. But this wasn’t what Jonah did.
Jonah instead left Nineveh behind. He did this because he saw God’s gift of gospel ministry as a chore. Eventually, he sat down to the east of the Nineveh, and waited to see if the city would be destroyed. Again, Jonah went directly against God’s wishes, just as he did when he sailed the opposite way of Nineveh.
Now, if I were God, I would’ve probably ended Jonah right there. But look at God and his concern, “Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine.” He remained patient and provided. God’s first provision was a vine which gave Jonah comfort and shade. And for the first time, Jonah was happy.
But, his happiness was short lived. For, God had something bigger in mind for Jonah. This time when God provided, Jonah experienced discomfort, “But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint.”
Without the vine, Jonah was completely susceptible to the elements. He faced brutal winds and heat, and then grew faint. And because of his pain and his stubborn nature, Jonah again said, “It would be better for me to die than live.”
And, once again, God steps in. Here God appears to be like a father listening patiently to his son expressing his feelings. He allowed Jonah to speak, but only to lead him to see that he was wrong in this matter. Even with all of God’s patience, all Jonah could muster was that he had the right to be angry. In fact, Jonah said, “I am angry enough to die.”
If we take a look at the rest of the book, we can get at the heart of Jonah’s anger. In reality, Jonah never wanted to preach to the Ninevites because he felt they didn’t deserve the Gospel because of their actions. These people weren’t like the Jews. No, these were the barbarians that tortured their captives, who showed off their savage deeds by hanging mutilated corpses on their city walls. And the Jews never did this. In reality, the Jews seemed quite tame compared to those Ninevites. The problem though is that the hearts of Jonah and the Jews were just as evil as the hearts of the Ninevites.
However, you and I continue to make the same mistake Jonah made. We judge ourselves and others based off of actions, not hearts. And once we do this, we may be lead to think that God’s grace doesn’t have to stretch so far for us. We let ourselves believe that we’re really not that bad. The problem is that we are judging only actions, not hearts. And when we do this, we think others are below us because of their evil deeds.
It doesn’t take much self-inspection to know that we really have nothing to be proud of. Our hearts are just as black as Jonah’s, and we must confess, like Paul, that we are the chief of sinners. Then once we do this, we must confess that we are no better than the Ninevites or Jonah.
But yet, God remains concerned. He sees your condition and how black your hearts are. And then he responds with his love. Yes my friends, the Lord who was concerned with Jonah is the same Lord who was concerned with the Israelites from our Gospel lesson. We saw how those Israelites who were hired first complained when they were getting paid. They felt they had done more, and for this deserved more. They didn’t understand that the work they were doing was a gift from the generous landowner, not a chore. Just as that landowner, who in reality is God, had the right to be generous with the workers, so he had the right to be concerned about the Ninevites, and even has the right to remain concerned for us. For, it was because of his grace that he shows this concern. Grace that led this very Lord Jesus to the cross to pay for all of their sins, and also for all of yours.
So, my friends, know this. God has granted us the full measure of his love. He does this because of his patience and his concern for stubborn sinners.
In our own lives, we are constantly reminded of his patience. In fact, he is so patient, that he uses us to reach other stubborn sinners. And, as we go about this work which he has given us, we know that serving God is a gracious gift, not a chore.
The reason that it is not a chore is because of the love we know we have in God. God, in verse 11, puts on his full spectacle of love when he says, “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?”
The point that God is making here is that if Jonah was concerned with his vine, although he did not make it, why shouldn’t God be concerned about animals and especially people? Now there are a number of ways to take the phrase 120,000 who can’t tell their left hand from their right. The first way is to say that this phrase is referring to children who are so young they don’t know their left hand from their right. Now if the youngest children make up 10% of the population, this would mean the overall population of Nineveh is 1,200,000 people! The second way would be take this expression as a figure of speech. Since the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, they were completely lost. In their spiritual darkness, they wouldn’t have even been able to distinguish their spiritual left hand from their right. If the phrase is taken this way, there would have been 120,000 people in the city. Think about this then: 120,000 people is more than a quarter of the WELS! Either way you take this phrase, this is a lot of people that we’re dealing with here.
And just like that, the book ends with a question. If you’re thinking to yourself that it seems to end abruptly, you’re not alone. Many have wondered, “Well what happened to Jonah?” Did he ever realize the opportunity that God had given him? Did he ever see that God gave him the gracious gift of reaching other stubborn sinners? But in all honesty, we don’t know. The only thing we do know is that Jonah ended up writing this book, thus he could have turned back to God and this would then be his confession. However, this is not the point. The book is about God in his love, trying to show Jonah the awesome opportunity he had: that he was the one called on to preach repentance to an entire city!
In the end, we reach a glorious truth. Just as God used Jonah to preach, so he uses us to reach other stubborn sinners. Jonah, in his book, never seemed to learn this awesome truth. But you and I can see Jonah, and learn from his mistakes. We can learn that being God’s spokespeople is a gracious gift, not a chore.
There are times in this life that are worthy of dreading. But thanks be to God, that preaching his word should not be one of those chores that we go about grudgingly. This is true because God has shown his concern for us, people who were as lost as those Ninevites. We have seen how far his love has stretched for us, and we want to tell others of this great love also. For us, serving God is a gracious gift, not a chore.