“I knew that you are a gracious…God…”

If it weren’t so tragic it would be hilarious.  To study him would make a classic case study on double-mindedness.  But he reminds us so much of ourselves — God’s own people.  It shows up in the end of the book named after him.  The book ends with a question but supplies no answer.  The lack of an answer surely confirms his authorship.  He simply does not want to admit the truth.  God says, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  But 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?” (4:10-11).  Thus Jonah concludes his book, still battling himself, still in denial of the facts, still fighting with God.

Jonah was a prophet, not your average easy profession or vocation.  While farmers, shepherds and craftsmen were common, prophets were comparatively rare in Israel.  God would hand-select certain ones to convey his message to the people and their kings.  Most would begin with a local prophecy (ex., 2 King 14:25).  Later messages usually were about repentance, turning back to God, and frequently accompanied by warnings.  Occasionally a prophet would bring a message of deliverance, especially when the people returned to the Lord.  But God’s command to Jonah was simply unthinkable, unreasonable and unbelievable.

Go to Nineveh?  Nineveh?  You can’t be serious!  This must be some kind of bad joke.  But God doesn’t joke when people’s lives are on the line.  And that described the inhabitants of Nineveh, possibly the largest city in the ancient Middle East.  God knew their hearts; Jonah didn’t.  Jonah knew their track record.  Nineveh’s kings read like a who’s who of Chicagoland mobsters:  Pul, Tiglath-Pilesser, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal and Sargon.  And what they did to Israel over the decades would have driven any Israelite patriot insane.  They were known for their love of gore and pain — of their victims, that is.  What they did to their prisoners would fill a book of the most horrible atrocities imaginable.  They were specialists in cruelty.  They were Israel’s worst nightmare.

Jonah knew this, as did every other Israelite.  What Jonah also knew was God, his will, and perhaps most importantly, his character.  “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (4:2b-3).  So what could a God like this want in sending a prophet to Nineveh, Assyria’s capital, even though “its wickedness has come up before [him]” (1:2)?  God had said to “preach against it,” but he is, after all “gracious and compassionate,” even to the world’s worst sinners like the Ninevites.  So instead of heading northeast toward the pagan capital, he heads due west, fleeing from the Lord.  And we all know what happened next.

Jonah gets real “spiritual” in a hurry in the fish’s belly, but it doesn’t last.  After preaching the message, the Ninevites repent, starting the first day (3:4), from the king on down (3:6).  So desperate were they that they made the animals join the fast.   Jonah meanwhile sat outside the city “to see what would happen” to it (4:5) — secretly hoping for judgment — at the end of forty days.  But God was true to his nature.  He was gracious and “did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (3:10).

So here’s the picture: God’s messenger — not the epitome of virtue — wanted grace for himself from God’s temporary judgment in the fish (Ch. 2) and the blazing sun (4:8), but not an eternal reprieve for other sinners who lived in Nineveh.  God did show grace to him, and thus was consistent toward the Ninevites…and us!  And as incredible as it seems, Jonah drank up God’s grace and yet remained a bitter, angry and inconsolable believer — selfish, short-sighted, immature, heartless and double-minded.  With 120,000 small children at stake (4:11), plus the city’s other occupants, he should be named with Assyria’s mobsters.  Yet he never acknowledges his pride and alleged superiority.  In a word, it is pathetic.

God’s grace is for all of us who struggle or don’t know we struggle with such things.  God’s grace is for those who need to be saved from themselves.  Is God’s grace just a message to you, or a movement in your heart and life?  Do you not only bring, but also bear, the fresh air of God’s grace to those around you?