Jonah | Pity Party

Have you ever been angry when God didn’t do things your way?

In this message from Jonah 4, Nick Hughes examines the surprising ending of Jonah’s story. After witnessing one of the greatest spiritual awakenings in history, Jonah finds himself frustrated by God’s mercy and struggling with his own heart. This message challenges us to examine our attitudes, align our hearts with God’s compassion, and celebrate the grace that He extends to others. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to God’s work around us is the condition of our own hearts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the preaching ministry of Nick Hughes. Thank you for listening. Today's message was recorded live at Mountain Chapel Methodist Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. We pray this message encourages you and draws you closer to Jesus Christ. Now, here's Pastor Nick Hughes.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

You remember when David Letterman hosted the late show on CBS? One of the things he would always do was he would have a top ten list. One night he had one that he called Top Ten Signs. It's going to be a bad day. I won't give you all of his signs, but here are a few. You know it's going to be a bad day when you call suicide prevention and they put you on hold. Your twin brother forgets your birthday. Your birthday cake collapses under the weight of the candles. You're driving behind a group of hell's angels on the interstate, and suddenly your horn sticks. And the number one sign you're having a bad day, you wake up to discover your waterbed broke, and then you remember you don't have a waterbed. We all have bad days. And in our text this morning, the prophet Jonah is having a really bad day. The problem is it's for a terrible reason. In fact, if I'm honest, I wish the book of Jonah ended with the third chapter. If you're just now joining us, or maybe you haven't been in a while, or this is your first day with us, we've been in a four-week series on the book of Jonah, and each week we've been looking at a different chapter in Jonah's story. If you're not familiar with the story, let me just give you a brief recap of it. In the first chapter, Jonah's a minor prophet, not because his message is minor, but because the book is short. In the first chapter, Jonah receives a word from the Lord, go to Nineveh and preach to the people there. Now Nineveh was east. Jonah goes west, headed toward Tarshus, which was in modern day Spain. He has no desire to go to where modern day Iraq is. He goes toward Spain. And there God sent an opposing wind while he's in the belly of a ship, and then he ends up in the belly of a giant fish, and he is in deep trouble, and he learns the hard way. You can run from God, but you can't outrun God. And then in the second chapter, in the belly of that giant fish, he discovers that no matter how far you run from God, you can always turn back to God and call on God. And there God graciously delivers him from the belly of that fish and spits him up. And then in the third chapter, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time. Go to Nineveh. And this time he does what he should have done the first time. He hears and he heeds the word of God, and he goes to Nineveh to proclaim a simple message. Forty days and the city will be destroyed. Not the most positive message, but the message God wanted them to hear. And something remarkable happens. From the king down, the whole city repents. They humble themselves in sackcloth and ashes, and revival breaks out in that city. They repented, and God relented. The city was spared. It sounds like a perfect ending to the story, doesn't it? But the book doesn't end there. It reminds me of a little girl who came home and she was so excited to tell her mom about the story her teacher had read her that day, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And when she got to the part of the story where the prince kisses Snow White and she awakens, the little girl said to her mom, And you know what happened next? And the mom said, Yes, they lived happily ever after. And the little girl says, No, they got married. Well, I wish Jonah had a happy ending, but instead it ends with a pity party. While the people of Nineveh are repenting and turning to God, Jonah is outside the city. He is waiting to watch it burn. He is looking for God's judgment, but instead God shows mercy. And Jonah throws a pity party. Somebody once said that we can learn lessons in life three ways. We can learn by education, we can learn by our own experience, or we can learn by example. It's wise to learn from our own experience, but it's less costly to learn from other people's experience. And today, Jonah invites us into his experience to learn what not to do when things don't go the way you want. So here he is, he's sitting under a withered vine. But that vine isn't the only thing rotten in the story. Jonah's attitude is rotten. It happens to all of us. Things don't go our way. Someone we don't like gets blessed. Our plans fall apart. And before long, we're throwing our own little pity party. Maybe you can relate to Jonah today. Maybe you could write a book and you could call it Why Do Good Things Happen to People I Don't Like? Maybe that's what you're experiencing today. Jonah wasn't just having a bad day, though. He had a rotten attitude. And our real danger in life is if we aren't careful, we can have a bad attitude. So how do we check our own attitude today through the lens of Jonah? What lessons can we learn from him? What signs in our life might appear that we need an attitude adjustment? Maybe you're like me and you grew up with a mother who would say, son, you need an attitude adjustment, and maybe that's where you're at today. There are a few signs you may need an attitude adjustment, and that I might need one today. First of all, we need an attitude adjustment when we stop seeing people the way God sees them. Jonah 4, 1 tells us, but Jonah was greatly displeased. He became angry. Well, what made the man so angry? The answer is the last verse of chapter 3. The people of Nineveh repented, and instead of destroying them, God showed mercy. And Jonah is furious. He's sitting there going, God, I knew this was going to happen. Have you ever been upset because something didn't go the way you wanted or the way you planned? Maybe for Auburn fans, it's when Alabama wins. Maybe for Alabama fans, it's when Auburn wins. I don't know. But Jonah was angry because God showed mercy to Nineveh, who was the archenemy of Israel. This was a pagan city, a violent city, a city that despised the Jewish people, and in Jonah's mind, they didn't deserve mercy. The truth is, Jonah no longer saw them as people. He only saw them as his enemies. Great sociologist Tony Campolo once said that we practice social injustice when we start seeing people as less than human or as anything but fellow human beings. And that is exactly the place where Jonah is at in our scripture. He says, Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshus. I knew that you were a compassionate God and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. Of all the things to throw a pity party over, that is not the right thing. This verse tells us that God is gracious. God is compassionate. God prefers mercy over judgment. And Jonah understood God's character. He just doesn't like it. In effect, he was saying, I understand why God loves me, but God, how could you love them? And sometimes we do the same thing. We understand why God loves people like us, but we struggle why he would love anybody different from us. But here's the truth this morning God loves the Muslim just as much as he loves the Methodist. God loves the Buddhist just as much as he loves the Baptist, and God loves the pagan just as much as he does the Presbyterian. God's love is not limited to people who look like us, think like us, vote like us, or worship like us. God loves the people on the outside of the church just as much as he does those who are inside of the church, and that means that for those on the outside of the church, they should feel most love by the people on the inside of the church. Our attitude will turn rotten the moment we stop seeing people the way God sees them. Here's another sign that our attitude might be rotten and we need an adjustment. We start thinking only about ourselves. Jonah 4, 5 and 6 says, Jonah went out and he sat down east of the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and he made it grow over Jonah to give a shade for his head, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. The story kind of sounds ridiculous here in this moment, but there's a picture that God is painting for us in the story. So picture it with me. Jonah, he's sitting outside the city, he's throwing his pity party, he's pouting, he's hoping to watch Nineveh go up in smokes. And this is in modern-day Iraq where it can get up to 120 degrees. But once again, God gives Jonah grace. He gives him a little bit of shade, a plant there. Jonah didn't deserve it. What he did deserve was a sunburn. But Jonah never stopped to ask where the plant came from. He was enamored with the gift, not the giver. And then God does something else. He sends a worm. The plant withers, the scorching winds blows, the sun beats down on Jonah's head, and Jonah has a meltdown. He says, It would be better for me to have died than this. Give me a break, Jonah. And God responds, You're so concerned about this vine. You didn't tend it. You didn't make it grow. Someone once said, if you want to know what matters to people, ask three questions. Number one, what makes them laugh? Number two, what makes them angry? And number three, what makes them weep? You can learn a lot about someone by asking those questions. Well, Jonah cared more about this plant than he did those people in Nineveh. He cared more about his own shade than he did the souls of those he was preaching to. He was more interested in his own comfort than he was having compassion towards this city. He had become completely self-centered, and whenever life, whenever life becomes all about us, our attitude will rot from the inside out. You know how St. Augustine the Great Doctor of the Church, you might call him, understood sin? He defined it as the self-turned inward. He would picture it as someone's head bent in on themselves, self-focused. He might call it a selfie if he lived in this year and in this generation. It's when we are so consumed with ourselves that we cannot see the world around us. Our attitude will be absolutely rotten when all we think about is ourselves. And that's all Jonah was thinking about was himself. Let's learn from his example of what not to do. Here's another sign, though, that we might need an attitude adjustment. We lose sight of what matters most. We lose sight of what matters most. Jonah reminds me of a little boy named Peter. Peter had a dog named Patty, and the family loved this dog. Tragically, this little dog was hit by a car and was killed, and the mother wanted to break the news to Peter in a gentle way, so she showed up to school and she checked him out and said, Peter, I have some very bad news for you today. Patty was hit by a car. And Patty is dead. Peter seemed to take it rather calmly, and she was kind of impressed by how mature he was in his response. Then he went home and some time passed. He comes down the stairs and he is sobbing and he is screaming. Patty is dead, Patty is dead. And the mother said, Well, son, I told you that he was dead. And she said, I thought you said Daddy is dead. Like that boy, Jonah lost perspective on what matters most. He was more concerned about losing shade than losing souls. Have you lost sight of what matters most in your life? This book ends in a rather strange way with a question. Should I not be concerned about this great city? Jonah never answers the question because let's be honest, he already knows the answer. What amazes me is what gets us upset sometimes. We go to a restaurant, the food is cold, the service is slow, something floating around in our water, and we're more concerned about all of that than we are with the person who's serving us. But here is the real measure of spiritual maturity. How much of what concerns me concerns God, and how much of what concerns God concerns me? Do you know what God is most concerned about? People. Plain and simple people. Christ came for people. Christ came as a person. Christ came to give his life for people. Christ is in the people business. God is in the people business. And the second greatest commandment is that we love people. And the great commission, the only mission given to the Church of Jesus Christ is to reach people. People matter most to God, and they ought to matter most to us. So one teacher asked her children's Bible class, What's the lesson in the book of Jonah? One little boy raised his hand and he said, People make well sick. Well, that's funny, but it's not the real lesson. The real lesson of Jonah is found in that ending question, tucked away at the very end of the book. And it's found in Jonah's silence. God asks, Should I not be concerned about that great city? Jonah never answers. Because the question isn't just for Jonah. The question is for us today. Should we not also care about this great city, Birmingham? Do we care about what God cares about? Do we love the people that God loves? Do we see the people the way God sees them? Because at the end of the day, the message of Jonah is quite simple.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

People matter to God.com. If you're in the Birmingham, Alabama area, we'd love to welcome you to Mountain Chapel Methodist Church. Join us for worship as we seek to glorify God, love God, and make the love of God known to all people. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new message. Thanks for listening, and God bless.