JONAH: Is it Right for You to be Angry?
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
I was thinking about, back many years ago when I was in middle school, I enjoyed making those mixtapes. You know, kind of your favorite song, and maybe you wanted to impress a girl, so you made a mixtape for her, right? And I remember it was either Saturdays or Sundays—I can’t remember—it was the Top 20, and it was all of the top 20 songs that was playing in the U.S., and so I had to grab my pillow and kind of lay in front of the hi-fi system. And so I had my blank tape in it, and then I remember you had to press down the play and the record and the pause button. I don’t know, some of you might have no idea what I’m talking about now if you’re young. But in any case, that was the setup. And then you had to time it just right when the DJ was gonna play that song, right? And then you would take the pause off, and they would play that song, and then kind of the timing of it just before he speaks again, you kind of have to pause, and sometimes you had to rewind a little bit to just find that spot so that you can have that perfect song, and so that it’s a mix, right?
It is not like today where you have a playlist and you can just kind of pick your favorite songs. And, you know, on my cell phone, I have several playlists with some of my favorite songs and different genres. And even last Christmas, Venessa bought me a turntable—just a great gift. And I remember just, again, growing up with my parents, we had vinyls, and they had these, like—I don’t know how many of those little bags, or kind of cases, with the 45s in it, right? And I always enjoyed scanning through it, and you had to just keep it right because otherwise all of them would slip out of their protective cases, right?
But again, with the vinyls and the LPs, you kind of have to sit and you have to listen to the whole song. There’s not a remote that you can just press and say, “Skip.” It is like, you’re kind of committed to the whole album. We played one song, or we played an album last night, and I was about one song in, and I was like, “Yeah, tonight I just can’t do that one,” and I changed it. It just didn’t speak to me in that moment, right? And so just totally different. But you have to be committed to the whole thing.
In the same way, I’m sharing that with you today—in a sense, if I had my way, if I had a playlist of the Book of Jonah, I would have just added chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3. And I would have skipped chapter 4. I personally—although it’s beautiful, and I think this is the heart of the book, of all of the chapters—I did not enjoy it. Okay? Because again, it was—the Lord just took this passage throughout this week as I was reading it several times and just kind of pondering it, and I was amazed at how many times I could relate (not in a good way) with Jonah. And again, I would’ve said, “Man, let’s just stay on chapter 3. Let’s not do chapter 4.”
Recap of Previous Chapters
So before we read chapter 4, let’s just—if you have your Bible ready and open, go to Jonah and just look at chapter 1. And we see there in verse 1, it says:
The word of the Lord came to Jonah.
So the Lord is speaking to Jonah, and God is calling him with a message to go and speak to the Assyrians, right, in Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom. And so we just see that Jonah says “No,” and he is running in the opposite direction. It’s like, “Lord, I’m not doing it. I don’t want to do it.” And actually in chapter 1, we don’t know why he’s running. We kind of just—we can come up with some assumptions, “Well, maybe he’s scared because the Assyrians have a reputation of being ferocious and barbaric, right, and some of the things that they did.” And so we could say, “Well, maybe he’s just, he’s scared.” And so in chapter 1, we don’t know, but we see that he’s actually running in the exact opposite direction.
And so he’s on a ship, and there’s a storm, and it could have been easy for him—there’s all this conversation with the sailors, and for Jonah to say, “Hey, just, let’s turn the ship around, and let’s go back. God has called me to this direction, and let’s just turn it around.” And I think that could have solved a lot of the issues. But instead, he is so rebellious. Verse 11, chapter 1 verse 11, he says:
“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied.
So he is willing to die. Instead of just turning the ship around, he’s saying, “I don’t want to go, Lord. I’ll rather die.”
Well, then we know that the Lord sends a big fish, and he has kind of a cool moment with the Lord. You actually see now—so chapter 1, God spoke to him. Chapter 2, he is praying, he’s speaking to God, and it’s kind of—you think, “Okay, here’s kind of a turnaround moment with Jonah.” So just look at verse 9 in chapter 2. It says:
“But I, with shouts of grateful praise…”
I think we can relate. If you’re in the belly of a big fish and you’re surviving, it’s like, man, there’s gonna be some shouts of grateful praise.
“… will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”
So a beautiful moment in the belly of this big fish.
Then chapter 3, this is the perfect chapter, dream chapter for any preacher. He goes to the city, he preaches like… three verses, right, lines, and the biggest revival that we see. I mean, it is just amazing how every person’s heart is turning, around about 120,000 people. There’s a transformation that happens. Verse 10 actually says in chapter 3:
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.
Right? And so again, this would be perfect. It’s like, “Let’s just stop here. I don’t need anything more. This is the greatest Billy Graham sermon revival that’s happening. This is beautiful. We don’t need chapter 4.”
Chapter 4
And now chapter 4 happens. It’s like, “Ugh, okay, let’s see what the Lord has for us this morning.” So let’s start in verse 1.
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.
That’s like me leaving here today, and we made an altar call, we invited people to Jesus Christ, and there’s hands that went up, and people said, “Man, we’re giving our lives to Jesus Christ,” and I leave here today, and it’s like, “Tsk, what a bummer. What a disappointment. People actually gave their life to Jesus Christ today. I’m never going back to Salem again.” Right? That’s kind of what is happening here.
And it says—and I want you to see this. I want you to feel this, in a sense, where we’re saying, “And he became angry.” Actually, when you go and translate that in the Hebrew, he’s saying, he’s telling God, he says, “This is evil.” Just feel that. Like, what he just experienced, a good thing—he’s praying to God and saying, “God, this is really evil. This—I’m mad.”
Verse 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. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
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. 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. 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.”
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. 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?”
What a great passage, but what a hard passage. And again, like I said, just throughout this week just reading it, I was surprised on how many times I could just relate to Jonah’s feelings and to some of his prayer. And so you have this great chapter, and this is the one and only chapter where you actually are seeing this interaction between Jonah and God. So chapter 1 he’s… you know, God is speaking to him. Chapter 2, he’s praying. Chapter 3, God is speaking to him. And now there is this dialogue and conversation that is happening.
Jonah’s Anger
And so it just says that he is angry at God, and he’s telling God—and now this passage, now for the first time, it is revealing to us why Jonah doesn’t want to go. All right? So this is what he says:
“Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.”
So he’s saying, “This is the reason. This is the reason why I don’t want to go.” And here’s good theology. Listen to his theology here. This is what he knows about God. It says:
“I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”
Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that just beautiful to hear how Jonah is proclaiming this truth, this good, right, biblical theology about who God is? But he says, “Because of that, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to those people and share with them your amazing love, because I know what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna forgive them. You’re gonna save them, and I don’t want to see that happening.” And so he runs in the other direction. But Jonah knows… and here’s the piece that really—part of the truth that challenged me this week (there were several things) is that he knows the truth, he knows who God is, he’s a prophet, God anointed him with a very specific prophetic message, God is using his life, there’s a calling on his life, he knows who God is, he knows that God is full of love and compassion, and yet with even all of that knowledge, somehow it’s not impacting his own heart. It’s all probably some head knowledge, but somehow that truth did not really impact his own heart, and he could not see it for his enemy, for those people, right? It’s like, “Lord, it is good. I like that you’re compassionate, but be compassionate and loving and gracious to me. Lord, I know that you’re good and gracious, but I want you to be good and compassionate and gracious to my family. The people that look exactly like me. But Lord, here you have evil people, and I don’t want you to show your mercy and your grace to those people.” Right?
Relating With Jonah
And so how many times don’t we do that as well? And especially in, again, kind of just our American culture and with politics, it is so easy to constantly look at “those people.”
For me, growing up in South Africa and in the Apartheid Era, a lot of it, kind of just growing up, there was the temptation then to say, “Well, let’s hate on black South African people. They look different.” And so even in churches growing up as a young kid, it was like all, you know, white, and it was black churches in different communities, and, you know, just some of the racism and things that we saw in the Apartheid. And everything screamed, all of culture screamed, that it said, “It is us against them.” And it’s like, “Those people. Those people.”
And again, you can understand that the Assyrians had quite a reputation. You know, Jonah has heard some of the things that they have done, and maybe some families that have been impacted, people that have been killed by the Assyrians, and so you get it. You can understand it when you’re in Jonah’s shoes, like, “Lord, I would rather… I don’t want them to see them be blessed.” How many people in your life that has hurt you where you’ve maybe said, “Lord, I don’t want to see them being blessed. Lord, I want to see thunder and lightning. Zap them, Lord, because they have done this. They have created hurt in my life.” Anybody out there? Can anybody relate? Is it just me? Okay. Thank you for some hands. I appreciate it.
And it’s like, man, this is me. I am, in a sense—I can relate with Jonah.
You know, we see all the stuff with Iran that’s happening. We see all the stuff with the Palestinians, with (back in the day) 9/11, with Muslims, right? It was kind of an immediate thing. When you got on a plane and somebody’s dressed maybe within some of the traditional outfits, and you could relate that they’re maybe Muslim, immediately it’s like, it is “those people.”
And we do it. Sometimes it’s rich, it’s poor, whatever it is.
God’s Love
This morning, I just want you to know part of the good theology here that we can see this morning, and I want you to know this: it says that is that God is gracious, and he is compassionate. When we look at God’s love this morning, I want you to know this, that God’s love never changes even when I am selfish. God’s love doesn’t change, and it’s not depending on how I feel. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and he still loves me even when I’m selfish. He still loved Jonah. He still loved Israel. He still love the Assyrians, even when Jonah is selfish.
I want you to know this morning that God’s love never changes even when I am angry with him. And God is asking Jonah, he’s like, “Is this right for you to be angry?” Now the answer, at least in this context, is “No,” right? And God is gonna show him through the story with this leaf and the worm. And he’s trying to teach him something.
But at least I appreciate Jonah’s honesty. He’s transparent. He’s like, “Lord, this is evil. I am angry. I don’t want to go.” And it is always amazing when you see some of those honest, transparent moments throughout scripture, when people are just like, “Lord, I don’t want to go.” When you just think about Moses, he’s like, “These people are just driving me nuts.” You think about Elijah, all those different prayers. And it’s just—it is honest. And I want you to know that sometimes we deal with stuff, and we face things in this world that can cause a lot of anger. Sometimes towards God.
Toby Mac on Friday night—I so appreciate it, he didn’t go into all of the details with his son’s death, but, you know, I think most people know one of his sons that passed away. And he shared that, I think it was about three weeks before his son died, he said he made the commitment to read through the whole Bible, starting in Genesis. At that point, he said he hasn’t done it. And I think about three weeks in, in that commitment, his son died. And he’s like, “I couldn’t…” He said he couldn’t lift up the Bible. He said it was too hard, and the Lord had to deal with some things in his heart.
And I just want you to know that yes, sometimes we get angry at God. Sometimes just life happens. There’s illness, there’s discouragement, there is brokenness. And it’s okay to be honest, but I just want you to know that God’s love never changes. It is not based on your anger. It is not based on your joy. God’s love is consistent.
And God’s love is patient. I’m so grateful that God’s love is patient, right? I’m sure I’ve been giving him a good run for his money over the years. I’m so grateful that he’s patient, that he’s patient with me.
And all week I just… different conversations, even last night we were hanging out with the Möllers, and just some conversation, and the Lord even used that, one of the conversation topics to kind of just speak to my heart. It’s like, “Steven, sometimes you’re so judgmental. There’s some stuff in your heart that you got to take care of.” It is easy to just skip over those things. And again, just when we… I want to encourage you. Proverbs 4:23, this is one of my ultimate verses the last three years. It’s been ministering to me so many times. Proverbs 4:23, it says:
Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
And yet you have a moment here where God is saving 120,000 people, but he’s also such a personal God that he’s taking the time to work individually in the life of Jonah and to actually take that time to be patient enough to work some things out to reveal some stuff in Jonah’s heart. And I hope this morning as I had to deal with some of it this week—and I’m sure I will continue to deal with it until Jesus returns—you know, pay attention to those things, those moments in your heart where the Lord wants to do some work. Because none of us are perfect.
And God’s love is relational. It is so beautiful to see this dialogue, this conversation that is happening between Jonah and God. Even in the midst of all of Jonah’s anger, God shows up, and he’s trying to teach him some things. He’s trying to take some time with him to speak into his life.
Just look at it—we looked this morning at good theology of who God is. 1 John chapter 3:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
If you have given your life to Jesus Christ, you are called children of God. Look at this amazing love that he has shared with us.
The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Ephesians chapter 2:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.
Perpetual Reliance on God
And just all week I was just, I was thinking about it. I was like, “Lord, my heart, here’s some.. another area. I need you, I need you, I need you.” Do I ever get to a place where I can say, it’s like, “I have arrived,” and probably not. There’s a sweet tension between living in that righteousness. I know that Jesus died for me; I am declared and made righteous, clean, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and yet I do life with you, and there’s constantly some stuff in my own heart and things that I have to bring to the Lord, and I believe it is to keep us on our knees so that we can constantly just say, “I’m in need of a savior. I haven’t arrived. I am not perfect. There’s always gonna be something, Lord.” And I think it is a good place for us to be to that place. At that place where we can just be humble and deal with pride in our hearts and not to look at other people and other things or groups that doesn’t look and talk, smell like us.
What’s Wrong With Jonah?
Verse 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.
Just look at his heart. He’s not ready to give up.
This year, for the first time we went to Enger Tower to go and watch the fireworks. And so we found a good spot there with hundreds of other people, and it’s like, yeah, just looking down it’s like, “Oh, that’s beautiful.” Great, great spot, right?
And this is what Jonah’s doing. He’s like, “Man, I am ready for some God fireworks to happen.” Even after all of these conversations, all the things that he has experienced, there’s still stuff going on in his heart where he’s saying, “Man, let me just… just maybe, just maybe God will still zap them.”
What’s wrong with Jonah? What’s wrong with my heart after I’ve experienced so much love and so much forgiveness?
Verse 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…
You can highlight that. “Very happy.” Guess what? This is the first time that we read that Jonah is happy. Why is he happy? Well he’s got a good spot; he’s got some shade; he feels good! And this moment is revealing the selfishness and self-centeredness that is happening in Jonah’s life. He’s like, man, it is happy, we see him happy, or at least praising God, when he’s seeing that he’s not dying and he’s in the belly of this big fish, and he shouts, and the next thing revival, and now he’s complaining, and several times he’s like, “Man, I’m just willing to die. This is too much for my heart. I am willing to die.” And then he’s waiting for the fireworks; God is making him comfortable, right? And so he’s speaking to him, and then there’s the worm that eats it up, and now he’s angry again.
I wonder how many times, right, in my own life am I exactly the same? When I’m comfortable, when I am blessed, when things are good in my life, then it’s easy. It’s like, “Lord you are good. You’re gracious.” But boy, the worst comes out in me so many times—my selfishness—when I’m not comfortable, when things aren’t going my way, when God is blessing my enemy.
Look at verse 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.”
They Don’t Know Better
Verse 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?
Again I want you to highlight that, because that’s a key passage. What God is saying to him is this: “They don’t know better. They don’t know better. Are you okay with a hundred and twenty thousand people to die because they don’t know better?” There’s a lot of people dying in our world, right, and doing dumb stuff because they just don’t know better. They don’t know. The Spirit of God is not living inside of them. They’re not reading the Word of God, and so it is on us to go and share, to love, to pray, to minister, and to show them the way, to reveal to them God’s love and God’s mercy in their lives.
Reflection Points
Just some reflection points for us this morning, and then I’ll wrap up.
Reflection number one: Jonah expressed his anger openly, and God engages with him rather than rebuking him outright. Depending on your theology and your background, it is so easy to think that God is a God of wrath; when you mess up, he’s out to zap you. And we just, we see this God of love, and instead of God just rebuking him, God is patient with him. God is patient with us this morning. No matter your background this morning, the things that you have done, God loves you. He cares deeply for you.
Reflection number two: Jonah’s anger and disappointment show that even prophets can fail and misunderstand God’s heart. Yet, God uses these moments to teach us and redirect us, showing that failure is not the end but a part of our journey. In the natural, you and I will never be perfect until we’re face to face with Jesus Christ. Dean shared such a true principle this morning in our prayer time. He said, you know, we’re kind of like a music instrument, a guitar. You constantly… it will stay in tune a little bit, but then you have to tweak it. You got to get it in tune again after you’ve played it several times. The same thing with us, right? It is the constant tuning. There’s something in us that constantly wants to go in the opposite direction of where God is calling us. We will not be perfect.
I was so encouraged just again by reading Galatians chapter 2, verse 11.
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy…
Listen to this:
… even Barnabas was led astray.
And so you have the story here where Paul is calling out some Christians, leaders, Barnabas, because they have been hanging out with the gentiles, and they knew that there was some of the—like James and some of those religious leaders from Jerusalem was coming, and suddenly they were withdrawing, not sitting with the gentiles, because they were worried about what the religious people were gonna think. And it says because of their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was going in the wrong direction.
Man, it’s constant tuning in our lives, constantly going on our knees and saying, “Jesus, I need you. I’m a sinner. I am redeemed, and thank you for your love,” but every day—there’s not a moment in our lives where we can say, “I have arrived.” And we got to be gracious with one another.
Last reflection: Jonah 4 challenges us to embrace God’s mission of mercy and reconciliation, even when it leads us to a place or people we’d rather avoid. God’s call often pushes us beyond our comfort zones. Are you willing to go? Are you willing to go your neighbor? Are you willing to go to those people that have hurt you? God’s love and God’s call will do that in our lives.
This week, just over and over I became just again just so aware, it’s like—I don’t have a lot of outward sins, right? But it’s like, man, the stuff that’s in my heart—the anger, the judgmentalness, the think you’re better than somebody else, the looking down—none of those things needs to be part of the believer’s heart. And that’s my stuff. You have your stuff this morning.
God Loves You
And through it all this morning, I just want you to know that you are loved. We—first of all, we serve a God that loves you. He doesn’t want to condemn you. He wants to heal you; he wants to restore you, and that’s great. But don’t ever… or, be aware that you never get to that place to think, “Oh if I just have all of the right theology… It is just about head information.” Jonah had all the head information. He had all the right theology, but his heart was far away. The Lord was still dealing with some stuff in his life.
I’ve shared with you many many times, I don’t desire for us to be the biggest church in Duluth, but I want us to be the healthiest church. And I want you to be whole, and I want you to pay attention—in the midst of all of the busyness and craziness that is happening—to pay attention to say, “Lord, where are you working in my life, in my heart? Where are some areas that I can invite you into my heart? Where are some areas where I need to just repent and experience your love and your grace?” And don’t get sucked into all of the hatred and some of the messages that’s out there. God calls us to love. God wants to use us to speak to a broken world. And when you see a messy world and you get angry, don’t get angry, but I want you to realize so much of what you’re seeing is because people don’t know their left from their right, and you and I get to share and speak into that. Amen?
