The Angry Shade-Lover and the Cattle-Saving God

Jonah 4:1-11

Main Idea: Jonah’s angry despair over the Lord’s mercy toward the Ninevites reveals the merciful character of God in salvation toward both Jonah and the Ninevites.

1. I. Anger: Righteous and Unrighteous
2. II. Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Think Life with God Is Not Worth Living (4:1-4).
   1. A. Jonah expected consistency from God.
   2. B. Jonah had problems with the character of God.
   3. C. Jonah was angry with the freedom of God to be God.
3. III. Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Hope for the Judgment of God on Others That You Would Not Want for Yourself (4:5-8).
4. IV. Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Miss Opportunities to Be Merciful the Way God Is Merciful (4:9-11).
   1. A. Jonah and the plant’s care and authority
   2. B. Jonah and the plant’s limited existence
   3. C. Jonah and the plant’s support of God’s love for Nineveh

Anger: Righteous and Unrighteous

Anger. It is the emotion you feel when your expectation of justice is not met.

It is what you feel when a child does not follow through on the instruction you gave before you left the house, or when that child does not demonstrate the respect you feel you should be afforded as a parent. Anger is what stirs in you when you see a news report about a serial pedophile being identified by adult victims for crimes he committed years ago and then escaping justice through a legal loophole. Anger is what grips you when you have tired of repeating yourself to your spouse about the need for more respect, greater sensitivity, more frequent sex, more attention, less attention given to the mother-in-law, tighter discipline of the children, or more time in the schedule to breathe.

Anger also is what can overcome you when you receive the poor work evaluation you have earned, yet you feel that you do not deserve it. It is the emotion you experience when your expectation of justice is not met. It is an emotion of great concern within, not a simple emotion of passing things. When you feel anger, you have great concern.

Anger: it fuels almost everything ugly, from cursing, to envy, to vengeance, to isolation; from domestic violence to domestic terrorism; from leaving church membership the wrong way to creating cults that allow you to express your angst with the powers that be.

Both the hatred characteristic of racist supremacist groups and the protests over the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown shootings are fueled by anger. As one comment recorded by a journalist during the protests of the police-shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, notes, “The durable anger in Ferguson is fueled by the enigma of the officer’s identity and the perceived possibility that, should the department fail to bring charges against him, his name may never be known” (Cobb, “What I Saw”). In other words, the riots and protests, whether peaceful, violent, civil, or uncivil, were fueled by a sense of mistreatment or injustice. Anger is an emotional response to a sense of failed justice or missing righteousness.

Anger is powerful, and at some point it grabs each of us in its clutches. Righteous anger can be a good power when under control, such as when our Lord cleansed the temple because it was not right for people to make a marketplace out of the temple courts (Matt 21:12-13; John 2:14-17).

Unrighteous anger, however, is dangerous. Sadly, for numerous reasons, many people struggle with feelings of unrighteous anger. They live with a gnawing sense of injustice within their daily routines, or they experience it as part of a haunting past and/or ongoing mistreatment.

Jonah’s expectation of justice was not met. As we often experience, he has come to a time when the circumstances of his life—circumstances orchestrated by God—have made him angry with God. For Jonah, God has not met his expectations of justice. The feeling conjured by his missing expectation of justice will rule Jonah, clouding his thoughts about God, the Ninevites, and himself. Yet Jonah will soon learn that his unrighteous anger put him at odds with God’s mercy.

Through Jonah’s interactions with the Lord, we can learn to submit our anger to God so that we can put serious emotional energy into what pleases God. As Jonah sits under the shade of his plant, he teaches us three things about being ruled by unrighteous anger.

Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Think Life with God Is Not Worth Living

Jonah 4:1-4

“But Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.” Maybe you can imagine what this feels like. If he could stomp, he would; if he could bang his fist, he would. He can yell at God, and he does: “Isn’t this what I said when I was in my country? I knew You were going to do this! I knew this would happen if I obeyed You! I knew I couldn’t trust You to make things turn out my way! I knew You weren’t right!” This is depravity at its finest. The creature is accusing the Creator of sin and injustice rather than looking within and saying, “God is always right; my anger must mean that something is wrong with me.”

Baldwin writes, “[Jonah’s] reaction stops us in our tracks. The very strong expression indicates that Jonah’s anger welled up from the depths of his being, like that of a child throwing a temper tantrum. Such anger is totally irrational, and yet it must have an explanation” (“Jonah,” 583).

Jonah seems to be angry for three reasons.

Jonah Expected Consistency from God

He expected consistency, and he expected it to take a certain form. In Jonah’s mind God should have judged the enemy with wrath, not mercy, because that is what Jonah thinks God is like and what he thinks God should do to other sinners. Jonah is angry because God has given mercy to repentant sinners in Nineveh rather than following through with the destruction Jonah preached. Jonah’s own false expectations contribute to his anger.

Jonah Had Problems with the Character of God

Jonah quotes to God that great statement about God’s self-identity that is repeated in various forms nine times in the Old Testament: “Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin” (Exod 34:6-7; see also Num 14:18; 2 Chr 30:9; Neh 9:17; Pss 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8; and Joel 2:13). Baldwin comments,

This was a creed with a difference, because it was God-given and because it was given in a time of acute danger, when the nation of Israel, deeply involved in idolatry at the moment when the Lord was revealing his will to Moses, might have been wiped out (Exod 32:10). It was therefore part of Israel’s history, preciously guarded because it was important for an ongoing relationship between Israel and the Lord. How then could these marvelous attributes of Israel’s God be shared with a city like Nineveh? (“Jonah,” 583)

Jonah is disappointed with God’s character. “Jonah sees the deferment of judgment on Nineveh as a weakness on God’s part and disapproves strongly of sharing the Lord’s compassion with the unlovely” (Baldwin, “Jonah,” 583–84). Jonah is angry with the fourfold kindness of God’s nature.

Jonah has a problem with God showing grace—with God being One who gives His favor to people. Yet as Timmer recognizes, “God’s grace per se is not onerous to Jonah: he simply hates grace shown to those he thinks don’t deserve it, especially non-Israelites” (A Gracious and Compassionate God, 122).

Jonah takes issue with God being merciful—One who cares for people tenderly and compassionately, as a mother would care for a child (the Hebrew concept behind the words). That God would be One who would look down at evil and violent people—at His enemies, no less!—and lean over them the way a good mother leans over a baby’s crib, tenderly holding and caressing that baby, is an issue for Jonah. On God’s mercy, John Feinberg notes:

There is a significant difference between grace and mercy. Both involve unmerited favor, but the difference is that whereas grace may be given to those who are miserable and desperately in need of help, it may also be given to those who have no particular need. On the other hand, mercy is given specifically to those whose condition is miserable and one of great need. . . . With respect to our need to pay for sins and be forgiven, the human race is in great need. What God did for us in Christ on Calvary is an act of great mercy. (No One Like Him, 159)

Jonah despairs of God being slow to anger. Jonah chides God for being extremely patient, not meting out deserved judgment immediately on sinners, but giving undeserving persons chance after chance to turn away from sin and destruction and turn toward God and His holiness. Does Jonah really want our God to be quick to anger?

Jonah has angst with God abounding in faithful, covenant-keeping love in spite of the action of His rebellious people. The Hebrew term here is chesed. The complexity and depth of this divine attribute is seen in its various English translations: “faithful love” (HCSB), “steadfast love” (ESV), “kindness” (KJV), “lovingkindness” (NASB), and “love” (NIV). Concepts of love, faithfulness, and kindness are bound together in “rich” abundance. Bruckner proposes the “unrelenting love” of God is the best translation of the term, “which is God’s covenant commitment to his people. With this unrelenting love he binds himself to his promises to them.” Brucker further suggests, “The nearest equivalent word in the New Testament is agape¯, translated ‘unconditional love’” (Bruckner, Jonah, 111). Jonah grieves over God directing His love toward Nineveh.

Knowing Jonah’s situation and attitude, one might understand his anguish with the Lord’s ways. It would be characteristic of God to be merciful to His covenant people. But God now directs His covenant-keeping love at people outside of the covenant—wicked, Israel-hating people—and in effect has brought them under the covenant of mercy!

Jonah Was Angry with the Freedom of God to Be God

This problem derives from the first two. Proverbs 19:3 says, “A man’s own foolishness leads him astray, yet his heart rages against the Lord.” This is what has happened to Jonah. Jonah’s wrong thoughts and wrong hopes made his situation as it was. But his heart was raging against God. As Pastor William L. Banks observes, “Jonah’s rebellion at the first was the result of his mistaken and willful zeal, his anger at this stage was caused by frustration of his own will” (Jonah, 106).

Whenever we are angry and it is not righteous anger—righteous anger being anger when justice truthfully is not met—our anger really is directed at God for being God. God does not have to change one’s parents, child, or spouse immediately because He is slow to anger. God does not have to judge thieves, cheats, liars, or cruel people harshly because God is merciful and gracious. The Lord, since He rules over all, is free not to move on the heart of someone to show us favor, grant forgiveness, or offer an apology on our timetable. God is not in debt to us to do anything (cf. Rom 11:33-36). The Lord cannot be tamed on the leash of our expectations.

Even so, Jonah should know from the experiences with the call to go and the storm that he cannot control God even by his disobedience because God will always be God: He always will be in absolute control of all things, working all things after the counsel of His own will, and that for our good! Yet God’s own children have a problem with God’s sovereign freedom. When things do not turn out as we desire them to, we then find ourselves, in truth, angry with the will of God for our lives. It is then that we, like Jonah, run the gamut of feelings from a simple pity party, “Woe is me,” to depression, where we don’t even feel like getting up most days; from there we slide to despondency, where we check out mentally and emotionally from a relationship; and then to despair, where we can’t see anything good at all. Finally, if we do not recognize the downward emotional cycle, we can land at Jonah’s death wish because we can see no way to make life fair: “God, it would be better if I were dead.”

The truth is that Jonah, and we, really do not want God to be anything other than God. If the Maker of the seas were otherwise, Jonah would have been fish food. If the Lord failed to be as merciful to us as He is to our enemies, we all would perish and wouldn’t have an angry prayer to scream at Him. The divine freedom that gives one child overprotective parents is the same mercy that gives any of us parents at all. The mercy that keeps one marriage from immorality is the same mercy that is patient when your spouse needs great improvement in your eyes. That patience that gives you a house at all is the same patience that will alleviate your financial problems when God is ready for them to be liquidated.

Therefore, believers must seek after God as He is revealed in truth in the Scriptures. Attitudes despairing of the Lord’s mysterious, sovereign freedom behind His grace, mercy, patience, and covenant faithfulness must humbly return to the cross and to the empty tomb in order to gain a perspective that is cleansed by the blood of Christ and invigorated by resurrection power. Let God be God and hear His words: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Hope for the Judgment of God on Others That You Would Not Want for Yourself

Jonah 4:5-8

Jonah leaves the city and builds a shelter of branches to make a shady spot as he hopes for life to go differently. Seemingly, he has made himself a front-row seat with peanuts, nachos, and beer while he waits for God to change His mind again and rain down fire on Nineveh. He is so mad that while building the booth he does not think about the booth as a reminder of the shelters the Israelites lived in after God delivered them out of Egypt and dropped them into the promised land. All he can do is pout.

John Piper’s insights on anger and bitterness seem apropos for this moment of the story:

What gives so much force to the impulse of anger in such cases is the overwhelming sense that the offender does not deserve forgiveness. That is, the grievance is so deep and so justifiable that not only does self-righteousness strengthen our indignation, but so does a legitimate sense of moral outrage. It’s the deep sense of legitimacy that gives our bitterness its unbending compulsion. We feel that a great crime would be committed if the magnitude of the evil we’ve experienced were just dropped and we let bygones be bygones. We are torn: our moral sense says this evil cannot be ignored, and the Word of God says we must forgive. (Future Grace, 265)

God has something for Jonah’s pouting. It is hot where Jonah sits—hot enough that the makeshift booth cannot provide enough shade. So the Lord appoints a plant with large leaves to grow up over Jonah to give him more shade—in one day’s time no less (which itself is mercy). The story reveals that the Lord gives this provision to save him from his discomfort, or literally, to “rescue” him from his “evil.”

When the passage speaks of the Lord appointing (or providing) the vine, worm, and scorching wind, it is referring to the providence of God—God’s works that are “completely holy, wise and powerful, preserving and governing every creature and every action,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism states (Meade, Training Hearts, 40). Just as the Lord appointed the storm and the fish in Jonah 1—because He absolutely controls the winds, waves, and storms, and all animals—so now He decrees that a plant will grow in a short day to shade Jonah. In the Hebrew a play on ambiguous terms is created in which God appoints the plant to rescue Jonah from his evil heart and not just to shade him from the sun. Jonah likes the shade of the plant. He is rejoicing greatly in the shade appointed by God.

The next day, however, things do not go the way Jonah likes. For the same providence of God that brought the shade now brings a “very hungry caterpillar,” so to speak, to tear up the plant, taking away the shade. That is followed by Providence sending a scorching wind to bring Jonah to a place of heatstroke. Broken, and again despairing of life, now Jonah starts that “I wish I were dead” mantra again (4:8).

When Providence determined to give him shade, Jonah was happy. When Providence determines to give him a time of fainting, Jonah balks. Jonah likes mercy. But Jonah does not like seeing how precarious and desperate life is without it—what he would feel if he received what he wishes for Nineveh. On this, James M. Boice said of Jonah,

Jonah should have perished miserably inside the great fish. He had renounced God. It would have been only proper if God had renounced him. Yet God had showed him great mercy, first in bringing him to repentance and then in saving him and recommissioning him to preach in Nineveh. Jonah had certainly experienced mercy at the hand of God. But there was a long journey across the desert, and man’s memory is short. Jonah had forgotten God’s mercy and was therefore ill-prepared to appreciate it when God showed the same mercy to others. (Minor Prophets, 206)

Instead of hoping for the destruction of someone else, we need to think of how much we like mercy and how impoverished we would be without it. We love that God has given us a job or kept us during periods of unemployment. We rejoice in the Lord watching over our children and grandchildren or keeping our minds at peace when a child tragically leaves this world. We are glad that our Savior has seen us through major health issues or given us grace to live with them while still enjoying life.

Think now, instead, of what your life experience would be if the Lord had not appointed open doors for good jobs, or appointed angels to watch over your children (Matt 18:10; Heb 1:14), or appointed medical care and praying people into your life. We would be crippled, debilitated, balled up in a corner with grief, living like beggars.

Recently a man who had greatly harmed me lost his wife by a tragic death. Upon hearing the news, I immediately experienced the temptation to say, “He is getting what he deserves.” Yet in a moment of grace, the Spirit of God led me to praying for this brother in the Lord rather than gloating at his pain. I thought, I would not want my wife to die in that manner; neither would I want others rejoicing while I grieved losing her. I would want mercy, and I have experienced great mercy in Christ’s atoning work on behalf of my sins. Therefore I wished for the Lord to pour out that same great mercy on my offender. To do otherwise would be a shortsighted and selfish denial of my own need for the Lord’s mercy.

Unrighteous Anger Can Make You Miss Opportunities to Be Merciful the Way God Is Merciful

Jonah 4:9-11

Still seething, Jonah feels justified when the Lord asks about his right to be angry over the vine: “It’s right. I’m angry enough to die!” Literally, he “was inflamed” (Bruckner, Jonah, 109). As Bruckner surmises, “Jonah’s anger is a reflection of Yahweh’s anger (3:9) over Nineveh’s wickedness. But Jonah’s anger also stands in contrast to Yahweh’s, for he does not believe that their evil should be forgiven” (ibid.). For the first time Jonah admits his anger to the Lord (ibid., 116).

Jonah is concerned about a plant. The Lord is concerned about sinners in Nineveh. Jonah desires mercy on something temporal and nonhuman: “God, please save the plant!” God determines to give mercy to wretched, evil people.

Typically, people, even believers, tend to express more passion over the crash of a hard drive than over the souls of people who are in jeopardy of the wrath of God. When someone ponders, “Why did my cell phone screen have to crack today?” he really is asking, “Lord, why weren’t You merciful to my cell phone today?” With similar paroxysms of emotion in other disruptions of life we scream, “Lord, I need my car!” “I cannot afford a new oven!” “Why did You let me ruin my suit today?” “I need this job!” “Lord, I do not want to lose my house!”

As we grow in anger over the loss of such transitory items, we drain emotional energy that should be fueling an urgent concern for people who have not experienced Christ’s forgiveness. Being self-absorbed in worldly concerns, we can lose sight of the Lord’s mandate to reach the lost with the good news of the death and resurrection of Christ. Former missionary and seminary president J. Robertson McQuilkin posits,

A world, no matter how lost, will not move me to action while I am mired in self-love. On the other hand, once I am freed to make choices on the basis of compassion for others, the need of lost men and women does indeed become compelling. And what more compelling need is there than billions of people who today face a Christless eternity . . . ? The terrifying lostness that envelopes most in this world, pressing them with inexorable acceleration toward the blackness of hell—if this does not move us to action, what will? (The Great Omission, 20–21)

The Lord’s questioning of Jonah intends to reveal the self-centeredness, worldliness, and lack of love within Jonah—his shallowness, as well as the paucity of his understanding of the majesty of God.

First, Jonah has no real relationship with the plant, not in care or authority. He did not provide it nutrients, water, soil, or pruning. His only care is what the plant offers him and not what he could offer the plant.

Second, the plant for which Jonah shows concern had a limited existence. In a flash the plant arose, and in the blink of an eye it was no more. The amount of zeal Jonah expresses toward the vine is greatly disproportionate to its length of life. Based on the extreme actions Jonah desires, one might think Jonah experienced the death of a child or spouse, or loss of his life savings, the family’s five-generations-old farm, or his position with a firm he had served for three decades.

Third, Jonah’s love for the plant argues in favor of God’s love for Nineveh. The Lord has a real relationship with the people of Nineveh as the Creator. He has concern for those “who cannot distinguish between their right and their left” (4:11). The Ninevites are “ignorant of God in their culture of violence” (Bruckner, Jonah, 109) yet responsible morally for their actions.^[13]The gracious and merciful God responds to them as Savior, showing mercy even to their cattle. “Even if Jonah does not care about the people, perhaps, God suggests, he may have some compassion for their cattle,” says Alexander (“Jonah,” 131).

The Lord’s concern for the people of the great city of Nineveh is deep. His “care” is a term indicating He has tears in His eyes for Nineveh (Estelle, Salvation through Judgment and Mercy, 133). Jonah’s tribalism, anger, and hope for Nineveh’s destruction would attempt to rob the Savior of weeping for people whom He seeks to save. Like Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It, who describes God’s freedom to choose to appoint for mercy whom He wills as a river, Jonah’s actions say, “I am haunted by these waters” (Maclean, River, 104). However, in order to have a heart for the world, including for one’s enemies, even as the Lord does in Christ (Rom 5:6-11), one must accept the freedom of the Lord to show mercy on people as wicked as ancient Nineveh. As Calvin writes,

Therefore, since God claims to himself the right of governing the world, a right unknown to us, let it be our law of modesty and soberness to acquiesce in his supreme authority regarding his will as our only rule of justice, and the most perfect cause of all things, . . . that universal overruling Providence from which nothing flows that is not right, though the reasons thereof may be concealed. (Institutes, 1.17.2)

Reflect and Discuss

1. What are some things over which you have been extremely angry only later to find out you were wrong about injustice being committed toward you? What was driving your original perspective on the situation? What later information helped you to think differently?
2. When have you been angry with the Lord about unfulfilled dreams or missed expectations? What was your original hope that went unfulfilled? Why was that expectation so significant to you at that period of your life?
3. When have you failed to express righteous anger—moral outrage or a cry for justice—over an occupational, familial, communal, or church issue, realizing in hindsight you should have made your voice known? Why is it sometimes difficult to express righteous anger when there has been a social miscue but easy to express unrighteous anger over mild discomforts? What truths about Christ do we need to embrace in order to grow in rightly expressing anger?
4. Name a recent experience in which you rejoiced in the Lord’s grace, mercy, or patience toward you. Why did you need such grace, mercy, or patience? How did you feel about the Lord when you had this experience?
5. Almost every sovereign country has another nation of people that identifies itself as enemies. Think of an enemy of your home country. What are your feelings toward the people of that nation as a whole? How do you feel about a member of that nation moving next door to you, marrying your child, or becoming an elected official in your municipality? What does Jonah teach you about how you might view tolerance toward such nations and peoples as a follower of Christ?
6. What has been your response to people within your congregation who have experienced long-term despair or maybe even suicidal thoughts? What sort of practical, faithful, compassionate acts might turn them from their despair? What acts from Christian friends have been most helpful to your moments of greatest despair?
7. Consider the following verses in Jonah: 1:17; 4:6,7,8. These verses reveal the Lord “appointed” an event four times. What attributes of God do such events reveal? In what realms of the created order does God reveal these attributes in Jonah?
8. Consider again Jonah 4:6,7,8. Is it normal for the Lord to appoint events and causes of natural “evil,” such as the hurling of the violent wind (1:4), the scorching wind, and devouring of the plant? How should one view events of natural evil within the will of the Creator? (See also Job 5:9-10; 28:26; Isa 45:7; 50:2; Nah 1:3-5; Mark 4:39-41.)