At a conference I attended a while back, I mentioned in passing to someone that I do not believe that God punished people for their sin. The person I was talking to looked at me like I had lost my mind.

“If God doesn’t punish people for their sin,” he said, “then God is just an enabler, letting people get away with their sin.” The man thought I was going to back peddle from my position, but I didn’t. The truth is that I do believe God is a divine enabler. He is the biggest enabler the universe has ever seen.

It’s a challenging idea, I know, but it is what we are seeing here in Jonah, which somewhat explains Jonah’s frustration with God. Stick around and we’ll see more as we study Jonah 4:8 today.

When the sun rose, God prepared a harsh, east wind and the sun attacked Jonah’s head and he became faint and begged with all his life to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.”

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