Jonah 4:1-3 - Homiletics

Repining at God's mercy.

A more mixed character than Jonah's it would not be easy to imagine. God's treatment of him, God's language to him, prove that he was regarded as a servant, as a prophet, of the Lord. His own prayers and thanksgivings indicated a nature in happy fellowship with the Eternal. Yet how lacking in human charity, in true submissiveness, in unselfishness! True to nature, the portrait is one very suggestive to the thoughtful reader, who is anxious to escape self and to serve God.

I. THE CAUSE OF REPINING .

1 . Jonah's fear was realized.

2 . Jonah's plans were defeated.

3 . Jonah's self-importance was wounded.

His sin lay here—he thought little or nothing of the Ninevites, much or altogether of himself. So devoted was he to his own dignity, so filled with a sense of the importance of men's estimate of himself, that he had no pity, no thought, for those to whom he was commissioned. The real explanation is here hinted of much of the repining, murmuring, discontent, which prevail among those professedly religious. Men would complain less frequently and bitterly, did they think less of themselves and more of their fellow men, were they more ready to forget themselves in desiring and seeking the welfare of others.

II. THE FRUIT OF REPINING .

1 . Anger and displeasure.

2 . Vexation and dejection.

Moses and Elijah, before Jonah, had asked that life might be taken away. Ardent souls, when disappointed, are prone to despondency. But it is one thing to despond because labour is unsuccessful; another thing to despond because men are saved. Because Nineveh was spared, Jonah fain would die. Had Nineveh perished, he would have been willing to live.

III. THE SIN OF REPINING . This appears from the fact, so plainly stated by Jonah himself, that the Divine forbearance and mercy were made the ground of dissatisfaction and complaint. If men murmur at the exercise of God's most gracious attributes, they can have no clearer proof of their want of sympathy with what is best, and no plainer indication of the urgent duty of repentance and humiliation.