The first call from this text is to be careful to not let self-righteous anger cause you to question God’s will and character.
It was God’s will to save Nineveh, because its His character to love and show mercy, but shockingly, Jonah became angry at the LORD for saving Nineveh from destruction. The anger was Self Righteous… became it came not form God but himself. From within.
Self righteous anger comes about when you get angry toward God or others based on your preference and not His will.
Jonah actually calls what God did evil
A more literal translation of the Hebrew in v. 2 truly expresses what Jonah felt “What God did was evil to Jonah, a great evil, and he became angry.” Why would Jonah see God bringing about repentance in over 100,000 people as evil? It likely came from His ethic and political allegiance to Israel.
Jonah’s self-righteous attitude and hatred turned him against his Creator.
When you find your will at odds with God’s will… you are always wrong. When you place your self righteous preference above everything else… it becomes an idol. Therefore you can get so puffed up… that you think you can judge God.
God could turn that question back on you… Who do you think you are to judge God?
The second thing we see is how Jonah’s self-righteous anger led him to abuse God’s word, by using God’s word against him. He quotes Exodus 34, God’s own statement about his character and Jonah responds with a death wish. We ought to be careful here as well. Anyone who abuses God’s word and twists it is in league with Satan, who used the exact same tactic in Matthew 4 when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.
Like Jonah, we often miss the fact that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. There is no moral or spiritual high ground when everyone bears the stain of sin and the mark of death. At the end of the day, recognizing this level ground leads to joy and gladness. There is no room for self-righteous anger when your heart is filled with gratitude and praise at how God could save sinners like us.
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