DAVID'S EMAIL BIBLE STUDY:
Whining
A. BACKGROUND
...
Last week we did the first ½ of Jonah. Told by God to bring a message of salvation to the enemy state of Nineveh, Jonah refused, tries to flee from God by boat, God catches him, he’s tossed overboard, swallowed by a big fish. AND repents. Jonah agrees to obey and go to Nineveh. The fish vomits Jonah to dry land.
C. SUMMARY.
Well, Jonah goes to Nineveh and warns the people to change their ways or else. To his chagrin “the Ninevites believed God” (3:5) and repented of their “wickedness” (1:2). Then the King ordered everyone to “call urgently on God, give up their evil ways and their violence” (3:8) in the hope that God would forgive them. To God’s chagrin Jonah gets angry (4:1) and whines against God. So God tries to teach Jonah a lesson. While Jonah was whining and sulking in the hot sun, God caused a vine to grow rapidly “to give shade for his head” but then sent a worm to kill the vine, taking away the shade (4:6-8). Miserable, whining, Jonah wished to die. God tried to draw a parallel: Jonah loved the vine even though he had nothing to do with it. So why can’t God go to every length to save people that God gave life to?
D. KEY POINTS
1.
GOD is like US? I’m more guilty than most of anthropomorphizing God, explaining God in human terms (“put yourself in God’s hands” or “his eye is on the sparrow”, imagining God with hands and eyes like ours). This is often helpful, comforting. But how far should we take it? Jonah hates the Ninevites; wants God to destroy them all; whines when God shows mercy to the hated enemy. Jonah wants God to be like Jonah – hate and punish. No mercy. He actually whines, “I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love” (4:2). Then he says he wants to die. Just because God won’t kill other people.
I listened to a TV preacher recently who was rejoicing in God’s eternal damnation and hellfire of various people, and the congregation was cheering! Imagine their Jonah-like funk if God chooses to be more loving than we (they) give God credit for. God asks Jonah a thinly veiled question: is God supposed to be more like us? Or us more like God? And since we believe that God is fully revealed in Christ, is our Christlikeness more to Christ’s image? Or ours?
2.
Whining. You’ve seen the bar sign, “$5 Fine for Whining”. Whining, sulking, self-pity, none of that is ever attractive. It is passive, myopic, even lazy. It accomplishes zip. Indeed, the book of Jonah leaves us hanging, there’s no resolution. No sense that Jonah ever got out of his funk for not getting his own way. Here’s a guy so caught up in his own hatred, prejudices, and personal theology that he can’t even see that he may be one of the most successful prophets and preachers of all history!! He walks into Nineveh, gives a simple message, and everyone (EVERYONE!) repents, changes, is saved. But Jonah couldn’t, or wouldn’t, grasp the scope of God’s love. We see this in our world. So often a person’s positive opinion of something or someone requires a negative opinion of someone else. Life isn’t a game where there always has to be a loser. Jonah needed somebody to lose. God wants everyone to win.
3.
I call Jonah the most revolutionary book in the Bible. God’s universality (monotheism) and love changed religion forever. My poem “God Speaks to Jonah" tries to capture that. Remember, this is God speaking to Jonah after his big whine.
God Speaks to Jonah
(Jonah)
No boundaries
no limits
get used to it
I'm here, there
everywhere you can think
to be or go
above or below
I am
there.
Get used to it.
Why, you ask?
Why go to Nineveh
you dare to ask!
Because I like them.
Get used to it.
That was your task
your simple, little bit
to tell them I like them
not what they do, perhaps,
like you,
but still they're mine
I like them.
Get used to it.
You sulk?!?
You dare to sulk
to whine, and moan, and groan,
because
they are mine!?
You think
you know
anything?
3 days in the belly taught you nothing?
Resurrected in vomit
I should have left you
there.
To get used to it.
I am.
I love.
Below.
Above.
Here
there.
Everywhere.
Get use to it.
