The Prayer of Jonah (Part 3-B)

Praying Through the Bible #103

TEXT: Jonah 4:1-5

In our last message, we saw in point one that Jonah obeyed God, but His heart was not right about the mission. When Jonah saw that the people of Ninevah had repented, the Bible tells us "it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." The Hebrew text tells us that Jonah "got hot." Imagine a minister today who preaches for people to get rid of the sin in their lives, but when people start coming down to the altar to confess and repent of their sins, he sulks and gets mad. That is what Jonah did. Even though he delivered God's words to the people of Ninevah, he did not share God's heart about the matter. 

2. Jonah obeyed God, but his heart was not right and he thought he knew better than God. When Jonah realizes that God is not going to destroy the city of Ninevah, this is what he says to God: "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." 
 
When we look at Jonah's unwillingness to share the message that brought salvation to an entire city, we cannot help but think of the church today. We sit in our comfortable pews or our familiar Christian ghettos and look at the outside world with our arms crossed and our noses turned up. We don't want to share the gospel with people who are different than us, who come from the other side of the tracks, or who don't have the same political or social views as us. For whatever reason -- racism, classism, etc. -- we don't see them as worthy of the Gospel or Heaven.