God's Heart Of Compassion

Jonah 3:10 & Chapter 4

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the Lord, ‘Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’⁴ But the Lord replied, 

‘Is it right for you to be angry?’

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. ⁶ Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. ⁷ But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. ⁸ When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, ‘It would be better for me to die than to live.’

⁹ But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?’

‘It is,’ he said. 

‘And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.’

¹⁰ But the Lord said, ‘You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left – and also many animals?’

This is the Word of the Lord 

Thanks be to God

I have greatly enjoyed ‘reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting’ Jonah’s story. It’s something as a church we been thinking about since Lent, the season of no sweet foods.

But staying with Jonah has been a little like holding onto a lemon sherbet or a mint humbug, or a lime and chocolate one, or a blackcurrant and liquorice … I digress.

We have resisted the temptation to crunch, and chew. The temptation to rush away from the story with quick answers. Instead, we have ruminating on the flavours Jonah has brought.  Yes, there is a big fish. But it also reminded us of a man of God who should have known better, sailors whom we didn’t think would know better, but did, and the lengths someone will go to in order to avoid the call of God. And there is also the very surprising response of a king and his people, donning their sackcloth and ashes.

Tim Keller’s commentary has pointed out some surprising flavours too. He writes very challengingly about the contrast between God’s heart and Jonah’s. And by inference, or prompting of the Holy Spirit,

I have been made to think too, about the state of my own heart; towards God, towards those who like Jonah we see as ‘in’ and those we perhaps see as ‘beyond.’

Seeing the state of one’s own heart, or the heart of a reluctant prophet is perhaps an unwanted flavour.

We might stop and savour the details of why Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah; his preoccupation with his own people, or how God’s compassion to outsiders might challenge Jonah’s faith.

Jonah rightly speaks of God as gracious and compassionate. His dilemma seems to be, that he cannot live easily with the outcome of God being both gracious and compassionate; not least to those whom Jonah sees as unworthy.

God’s inherent nature, if we can describe God in this way, will be expressed and lived out.

In other words, God will be gracious and compassionate because that is who He is.

God is slow to anger, and abounding in love. This Jonah knew. He knew that God would relent, or step back from sending calamity. As the passage closes, God confronts this reluctant and resentful prophet, by way of a plant. I will skip over this, one of my favourite pieces of the Old Testament, because it makes me smile inwardly and uncomfortably at my own preoccupations, often at the cost of the greater call of servanthood and ministry.

For now, we leave the famous narrative, listening to the words of God.  

‘You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left – and also many animals?’

‘Should I not have concern?’

Obviously, it is not our place to tell God what is His own business. Job too had to learn a similar lesson. God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. Reluctant prophets. Sympathetic sailors. Wayward Ninevites. And for us too. God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.

The unexpected flavour of these days might be that we have been given time, like Jonah, to learn again that we serve a God who is both gracious and compassionate.

Perhaps we will learn to recognize God’s goodness and mercy, both to ourselves and also to others beyond.

And perhaps we will be called again to take the Good News of God’s grace in Jesus, to those we might wrongly have seen as beyond God’s heart of compassion. Amen.