Obedient Feet, Rebellious Heart

Jonah 4:10-11 – “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.”

The book of Jonah is such a strange little book. It is all about the adventures of a man who has God working in his life, but Jonah is so messed up that you almost wonder why God puts up with him.

Everybody recognizes Jonah as a prophet of God, but as soon as God gives him an important assignment, he runs in the opposite direction as fast as he can. Rather than getting rid of this disobedient and rebellious prophet, God hurls a storm at the ship Jonah is on, so fierce that everyone aboard knows they are about to die. When the sailors discover that Jonah is the reason for their life-threatening predicament, they actually try to save his life, but their efforts are unsuccessful. Jonah finally convinces them that they will all perish unless they throw him overboard. So, after asking God to forgive them, they toss Jonah into the sea. Immediately, the storm stops, leaving the awed sailors staring at a suddenly calm sea and Jonah’s head bobbing in the water below them. Before anyone can ask, “Should we throw him a line?” a huge fish breaks the surface and swallows Jonah.

The sailors’ response was probably screams of terror and falling on the deck in fear of God. We know they worshiped God, offered sacrifices, and made vows to Him in response to this horrible event. They probably concluded that a person should never rebel against God or try to run away from Him because He will kill you. End of story! There wasn’t even enough left to make a small book in the Bible. If this had been the end, Jonah’s story should have been relegated to some obscure chapter in the last part of II Chronicles.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. It wasn’t the end of Jonah, and it certainly wasn’t the end of his selfish, bitter attitudes. The remarkable mercy and grace of God are all over this little book.

Jonah spends three disgusting days and nights in the belly of a fish doing some serious soul-searching while the sea creature heads back east. When Jonah finally reaches a place of submission to God, the fish barfs him onto the shore. And as soon as Jonah gets back on his feet, God does something else remarkable. He calls Jonah again and gives him a second chance to go preach to Nineveh.

The only good thing you can say about Jonah is that he isn’t stupid. He knows he can’t run from God, so he obeys this time. But he goes with a terrible attitude. He marches into the middle of this great city and starts crying out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

That’s it! No call to repent. No offer of hope. No mention of God’s mercy or the possibility of deliverance. Just destruction!

Remarkably, the entire city repents, and God relents from the destruction He was going to bring upon them.

All of you readers who have ever been on a mission trip would probably have been ecstatic if the entire city you were working in turned to God. But not Jonah! He was furious! He hated the Assyrians and wanted every one of them dead. In chapter 4, verses 1-3, Jonah tells us that the reason he ran from God in the first place was that he knew God was gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He didn’t want God showing any of that mercy to the Assyrians.

Think about that for a moment. Jonah knew God’s character. He knew about God’s mercy, grace, patience, and love. He had personally experienced those things when God rescued him from the sea. Yet he was furious when God extended that same mercy to people Jonah hated.

Isn’t that a disturbing picture of the human heart? We are often delighted when God shows mercy to us, but we can become downright angry when He shows mercy to someone we believe doesn’t deserve it. We want forgiveness for our failures but justice for everyone else’s. We want God to be patient with our weaknesses but have little patience with the weaknesses of others. We celebrate His grace when we need it and question His goodness when someone else receives it.

In this story, God is working with a crew of pagan sailors, 120,000 wicked Ninevites, and one bitter, resentful Jewish prophet. God demonstrates amazing patience, mercy, compassion, and love toward ALL of them. And Jonah, the man who supposedly knows God best, seems to understand Him the least.

That ought to make us stop and think.

God’s question to Jonah is still hanging in the air, and I believe it is meant to confront every one of us.

Do we really want what God wants, or do we simply want God to bless what we want?

Are we willing to celebrate when He shows mercy to someone who has hurt us, offended us, or even deeply wronged us? Can we love the people God loves, even when we don’t think they deserve it?

It is easy to condemn Jonah for his bitterness, arrogance, and stubbornness. But before we do, we need to take an honest look in the mirror. How many of us have hearts that are just as hard? How many of us want God’s forgiveness for ourselves but struggle to extend forgiveness to others? How many of us are willing to obey God as long as He doesn’t ask us to love someone we would rather hate?

God isn’t looking for people who simply go through the motions of obedience. He wants people whose hearts reflect His heart. He wants us to see people as He sees them, love people as He loves them, and care about what He cares about. That kind of transformation doesn’t happen until we stop defending our attitudes and start surrendering them to Him.

Here is the challenge: Stop asking God to change the people you don’t like and start asking Him to change the heart you bring to Him. Stop putting limits on His mercy, stop holding on to your bitterness, and stop deciding who is worthy of His love.

You may be willing to go to Nineveh, but are you willing to love Nineveh?

Life becomes easier, more blessed, and more purposeful when we humble ourselves before God and make Him Lord. But making Him Lord means surrendering everything—not just our actions, but our attitudes; not just our plans, but our prejudices; not just our sins, but our stubborn refusal to love as He loves.

Don’t settle for being a Jonah who obeys God with his feet while resisting Him with his heart. Let God change you from the inside out. After all, the greatest miracle in the book of Jonah may not be that God rescued a rebellious prophet or spared a wicked city. It may be the miracle of changing a hard heart into one that beats with His own.