Jonah 4:9-11

John 4:9

Notice:

I. The sinfulness of absorbing passion. Its sinfulness is illustrated: (1) By Jonah's contempt of life. Nineveh was not to be destroyed as he had prophesied, and his pride was wounded, and he says: "Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live." A man's worth may be measured by the reverence he has for his life. It is well for Christians to be aware of the real impiety that lurks under a longing for death, and weariness of the life which, day by day, God is bestowing on us here. (2) The sinfulness of absorbing passion is seen again in that it works insincerity. Even after Jonah has recognised that God is sparing the city, he still affects to believe that it will be overthrown. (3) The selfishness of an absorbing passion is illustrated in Jonah's contempt of the men of Nineveh. He will not share in their repentance; he will not encourage their hope that God may yet turn away His fierce anger, nor join them in their gratitude that God has spared them. He shuts himself up alone to brood over his anger. All passion tends to arrogance. Self-absorption means scorn of our fellows. A single passion may arrogate to itself the whole sphere of life, constitute itself the be-all and end-all of existence.

II. God's cure for absorbing passion. God seeks to restore the prophet by awakening love in his heart; awakening his interest, and making him tender over the gourd. There is something wonderful in life, even though it be the life of a common weed. Such things speak to us, however faintly we may understand them, of an awful power that forms and an ever-watchful care that tends them; they are "fearfully and wonderfully made." The tenderness that was in Jonah, poor as it was, mingled with selfishness as it was, was yet, in its dim and partial way, an emblem of the tenderness of God for every creature He has made.

A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch,p. 89.