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This week we see a new level in Jonah's folly, and we would do well to learn what we can from this passage. To date we have seen Jonah's commission to call the people of Nineveh to repentance, his attempt to run away from God and his humility in recognising God's grace. We then saw God's grace manifest in that He called Jonah a second time. This time Jonah carried out the task God had set aside for him and the Ninevites repented. Here comes Jonah's response:

'But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and a relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”'

Folly

The key message behind this passage must be a warning against folly. Jonah does what God commands (a good thing), sees the fruit as given by God (again, a good thing), yet responds by turning to God and almost saying 'I told you so!' (a bad thing). This folly comes from a single root, one which we all have a tendency to fall into. We foolish Christians know that we are in a relationship with God and know that prayer makes a difference, and so we pray and ask God to work in our lives. By His grace He so often does, but because of His grace we are often tempted to therefore draw the conclusion that God is somehow a big piñata in the sky, and that prayer is the stick. If we pray enough He will bless us. If we have enough faith we can do anything we want.

This has been pushed to extremes in some cases where we hear some of the world's most popular preachers telling us that God does not want us to be sick, or poor, or have any disability. Now I do not profess to have the big answer as to why God does not always give success to everyone who asks, but I do know that Jesus had the perfect relationship with the Father yet was poor, homeless, and 'had no form or majesty that we should desire him' (Isaiah 53:2). So God doesn't want us to be like Jesus? No. We are certainly not called to be selfish and foolish like Jonah shows us here. We are called to be humble, resognising that God is always in charge and in control. Even when God does things we do not like we must acknowledge that God is good and in control.

Irony

My favourite part about the comedy sketch show which is Jonah's experience is the incredible irony that is here. Only a couple of chapters ago we saw Jonah thanking God for His grace, His mercy, His love, His protection, His forgiveness and all things good, yet here we see Jonah becoming angry at God for the exact same aspects of His character. We share in Jonah's tendency here, or at least I certainly know I do. We look at truths about God and about our lives and are grateful, yet when we see those same truths outworked in the lives of others we can become jealous, bitter and, yes, angry at God.

God may bless us with a musical ability, with which we can lead God's people in worship of His holy name; we are grateful. We then see another who has been given a similar gift, yet God is blessing them more; we become bitter, jealous, resentful - we may even begin to hope for failure in their ministry. This is a sin, and we must repent of it! More than that, we must rejoice in others' success. If another has a similar, yet more successful, ministry to us then we must recognise that we are all fallen sinners and in desperate need of God's forgiveness. Although we are ill-deserving of anything God's grace falls upon us time and again, and we should rejoice in that for us, and for others.

A true understanding of grace

This is the underlying theme of Jonah, in case you have missed it in the last few weeks. God's grace is bigger than our ideas, bigger than our nations, bigger than our mindset can ever possibly be; He gives grace to whom He will, and it is not only undeserved, but proactively ill-deserved; we actually deserve the exact opposite of grace yet receive unprecedented forgiveness. Jonah's understanding of grace fell short. He could understand that despite his failings God could still forgive his sin; just look at the content of his previous prayer! What he could not understand was that God's grace could also fall on heathen sinners such as those in Nineveh; this is where a true understanding of grace is required.

We must be able to look at the worst of the worst sinners, and see that God's grace forgives even them. Perpetrators of genocide across the globe have historically come to Christ every so often; we must look at their horrific sins of mass murder, rape, thievery, and all extremes of all sorts of sin, yet still come to the same conclusion that they have the same right to grace that we do: none. God's grace covers a multitude of sins, and it is in grasping this truth that true Christian life is born. A friend of mine expressed his understanding like this:

We all own Ferraris, and have been told to keep them clean. The problem is that the Ferrari owners club is at the end of a dirt road, so naturally by the end of the track, no matter how careful you drive, there are flecks of dirt on it. Of course, at times you might be stupid and do a wheel spin, causing more dirt, perhaps someone throws something at your Ferrari messing it up, or perhaps someone is so foolish that they take a bucket of mud and pour it over their own car. We reach the end of the track and are all refused entry to the owners club and have to send our cars to the scrapyard, except that some guy called Jesus can build Ferraris in the owners club and offers them to us free of charge. No matter whate state your car is in you can accept this free gift from Jesus; all you have to do is believe!

Let's not be foolish like Jonah. Let's thank God, moved by His wonderful grace, love and mercy.

"'Winging It" from Stan Smith

Love You to Death