Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is the one most often credited with helping us understand the way that we perceive people compared to how we perceive ourselves. He says that we have a tendency to judge ourselves by our intentions, while we judge others by their behaviors. or their actions. So, two people could do exactly the same thing, and we would have a different view if it was somebody else compared to us.
I’m guessing you’ve related to this before. That friend of yours who skipped out on the workouts or exercise this week? Shocker, they’re just lazy, right? But you? Well, you didn’t get to yours because you are so busy. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now, and so you just couldn’t squeeze a workout in. They’re lazy. You’re busy.
On the road, the other driver who cut somebody off is just a jerk. They think they’re the only one on the road. They don’t care about anybody else. You, on the other hand, well, that person in the lane next to you was going too fast anyway, and you’re in a rush. You’ve really got to be somewhere.
It can get even more extreme than that sometimes, can’t it? Two people have gone outside of the marriage, being unfaithful. The other person, well, he’s just kind of a sleaze. He’s been searching purposefully for someone on the side. He’s been looking for a relationship outside of the marriage. I did it, though, because I was neglected. I didn’t receive the affection that I needed, and so my spouse forced me to go elsewhere. It wasn’t like I was looking for it.
See how we tend to view the same action differently based on the filter of how we see ourselves, our intentions versus others’ actions or behaviors? Maybe that realization gives us a little clarity, a little understanding, and maybe a little sympathy to somebody like Jonah and his aversion to the Ninevites.
Everything that’s wrong with this account is captured in the first two verses – the closing verse of chapter 3 and the opening verse of 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” (Jonah 3:10-4:1). God did his God thing, the thing we absolutely love about him and the thing that drew us to him and to faith in him… and in Jonah’s mind, it was not how the story should have played out.
Maybe it will make more sense to us if we do a quick recap of how we got to this point. God sent his prophet, Jonah, to Nineveh to call it to repentance. And of course, Jonah obliged. Just kidding. No, he didn’t. In fact, he couldn’t have gone more directly in the opposite direction than he did – all the way to Tarshish, nowhere near Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.
God is willing to do some pretty drastic things to grab our attention, like heave someone off a boat to be swallowed by a fish. Even after being vomited back to shore, Jonah was anything but gung-ho to go to Nineveh, but he reluctantly did. He wandered around Nineveh, warning its residents with the message God had committed him to: they had forty days to shape up, or God was going to see that they’d regret it in the worst way. Good news: the people of Nineveh repented!
But, Jonah didn’t think it was good news at all. See, Nineveh fell into the “them” category. Even though Assyria had not yet risen to the height of its power in Jonah’s day, and they had not yet attacked the Northern Kingdom, their reputation preceded them. They had monuments and displays that celebrated their renowned cruelty and violence. And, it may also have been possible that Jonah knew his Scriptures well enough to know that the Lord had already prophesied that they would be the nation to do just that. So Jonah eventually, albeit reluctantly, did what God sent him to do. But he didn’t like the results. Not at all.
Check that. Jonah was actually saying much more than that; he was saying God got it all wrong. “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’” (4:2). Imagine that – Jonah trying to pull an “I told you so, God!” But it’s not your typical “I told you so,” the kind we usually reserve for when everything has gone horribly wrong in a situation, just as we warned beforehand it would if such and such happened.
No, in this case, everything God desired to happen happened just as God desired it to. And everything that God desired to happen happened just as Jonah should have desired it to happen. Only Jonah didn’t share God’s desire for the same outcome. When it came to the Ninevites, Jonah wanted the version of God who engulfed Pharaoh’s army with the Red Sea. But what he got instead was the version of God who parted the Red Sea to rescue people he didn’t think deserved to be rescued.
Can you imagine a missionary today venting and pouting as Jonah did? “Lord, you sent me to this place to preach to this people. I did just that, and now they’re all turning to you in faith and coming to salvation. How could you, Lord??? I knew you were going to do this! It’s who you are – always gracious and compassionate! What’s wrong with you?!?” It’s such a ridiculous take that you’d assume it was a Babylon Bee satire post or something like that, but never in a million years would that be the actual response of a real, boots-on-the-ground missionary.
With the exception of Jonah. And just how bad was this outcome in Jonah’s mind? Worth dying over. “Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live” (v.3).
Think about that! How bad does something have to be for someone to say they’re better off dead??? When we consider the frequency of tragic cases of depression and suicide, they leave us wrestling with hurt and frustration over not really knowing the internal struggles that were weighing on the person. We don’t have answers. We can’t get answers because that person is no longer around. It’s gut-wrenching, not only because it’s too late and we can’t do anything to help the person after the fact, but also because we’ll never know the full extent of what they were going through. But Jonah’s conclusion that he’d be better off dead wasn’t because of anything bad at all, but the greatest good that could ever happen: lost and condemned sinners became found and redeemed saints!
Consider Jonah’s polar opposite: the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was sent to his own people to call them to repentance. He was faithful in carrying out his calling, yet it didn’t yield the results he longed for: for his own people to repent and return to God. He’s often referred to as the weeping prophet because of his laments to God about his fellow Israelites not heeding his call to repentance.
But Jonah? Yes, Jonah was also lamenting…for the worst reason imaginable. Not his fellow countrymen, but foreigners, had heeded his call to repentance and came to call on the true God. Salvation was theirs! They had been won through the work of Jonah! How different Jeremiah and Jonah were! Jeremiah lamented that his own people didn’t repent; Jonah lamented that foreigners did!
I don’t know who might qualify as your “Ninevites” today, but you do. It may not necessarily be a certain nationality or type of people; maybe it’s an individual. An abusive parent you had growing up. A classmate or coworker who publicly embarrassed you. A dear friend who stabbed you in the back online. An awful neighbor. A rotten ex. Regardless of who is on the other end that we’re convinced is not deserving of God’s grace, do we see on our end who we’re starting to look like? When we categorize any other human being as not being worthy of grace, are we aware of what’s really going on?
Do we not realize that when we play the role of arbiter and dispenser of God’s justice and grace, when we determine someone else is undeserving of God’s grace and forgiveness, we’re making it about us? You are, you know. Without even thinking about it, when you determine someone else is unworthy of grace and forgiveness, what is the standard by which you’re measuring them? It’s yourself. There is no other standard when we judge, other than ourselves.
So when we say, “that person doesn’t deserve it” or “I can’t wait to see them get the punishment they deserve,” your sense of justice is based on yourself. Without consciously thinking it, you are concluding, “I would never do anything like that, but they did, and grace isn’t for people like that.” Suddenly, Jonah’s behavior doesn’t look so shocking; rather, it looks… familiar. Like mine. When that’s the case, maybe we need the kind of attention-grabbing reminder that God gave Jonah.
God closed out the narrative of Jonah with a powerful visual aid to jar Jonah back to his senses. “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” (v.5). Apparently, Jonah was still holding out hope that Nineveh might end up as a Sodom & Gomorrah sequel. Maybe it wasn’t too late for God to give them the punishment Jonah felt they had coming. As he watched outside the city, he endured the scorching sun and heat, so he threw together a makeshift shelter to provide shade. God graciously provided a vine to grow up his shelter to provide added relief, which Jonah greatly appreciated.
Then, just as quickly as it had crept up, it withered and died. “But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant 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. He wanted to die, and said, ‘It would be better for me to die than to live.’ 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’” (v.7-9). So distraught was Jonah about the vine dying that he himself desired to die.
God called him out, reminding Jonah that he was distraught over a vine that he had absolutely nothing to do with growing or dying. He only cared about it because it selfishly provided him with shade. Outside of that, he had invested nothing at all in that plant, so God’s point was that he had nothing to lose.
God’s point about a plant was even more impactful when applied to the people of Nineveh. God cared about them. Any prosperity they enjoyed was because of God’s providence. Any child born to Ninevite parents was God’s work. The whole hustle and bustle of the city, its life and breath, its successes and failures – all of it happened on God’s watch. So, if Jonah was so passionate about a plant he had no part in planting, how much more should God be passionate about people whose very existence he had monitored and blessed from start to finish? How could he not care deeply about their souls?
What does it say about us that the Amazon notification that our order was delivered gets us more excited than the visitor at church? Do we find greater joy in the success of tending a growing garden with healthy plants than in the news of God blessing the efforts of our foreign missionary efforts? Do we still find ourselves spying on that new member with the shady or questionable past, waiting to say “I told you so” when it turns out it was too good to be true that grace was really able to work on someone like that? Congrats! It turns out Jonah was in good company: ours.
Thank God, brothers and sisters. For, unlike Jonah, who ran away from the cross God called him to bear, Jesus ran directly toward it. Rather, we rejoice in something – rather, someone – else. Jonah ran the other direction to avoid bearing the cross that God gave him to minister to the Ninevites. You and I have a Savior, Jesus, who ran to the cross.
He not only carried his own cross for a time, but was suspended on it, crucified on that very cross. Jonah was in the belly of a whale for 3 days. Your Savior, Jesus, was willing to die, dead in the grave for 3 days, and then to rise victoriously, so that he could, without reservation, guarantee to everyone gathered here, and everybody who has ever set foot in this world, that you are forgiven. He has paid for all of your sins in full.
We don’t need a Jonah to serve as a bad example for us not to follow. Neither do we need Jesus to serve merely as an example to follow, to be more like him. What we need is a Jesus who’s our Savior and Substitute. And brothers and sisters in Christ, that is exactly what we have. And that grace that Jonah lamented being extended to the Ninevites has been and is extended to you as well – and to all people, including “them,” whoever that might be for you.
It’s said that the mother of one of Napoleon’s soldiers came to him, pleading for mercy on behalf of her son. Apparently, he had fallen asleep during his watch – an offense that was punishable by death. So she begged Napoleon to spare her son’s life. He explained to her that he couldn’t do that, because there would be no justice if her son was not punished for his offense. So she reminded him that she wasn’t asking for justice for her son, but mercy.
Dear friends, that is what every one of us has in Jesus Christ: mercy. God, in his great love, has chosen not to give any of us the punishment that we deserve. Instead, he replaces it with his undeserved grace – grace that assures us of where we stand with him no matter our past, no matter our future; grace that assures us that we are forgiven in full. I pray we rejoice that this grace, today and every day, is not just grace for us, but grace for them, too.