The compassion of God
“And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” (Jonah 4:11)
There are many prophets in the Old Testament, but none more complex than Jonah. And through His disobedient servant God shows us His heart of compassion. God sends a great wind and prepares a great fish, to ensure His wayward servant would save a great city of more than 120,000 people. But Jonah had lost the sense of God’s compassion in his own heart and tried to distance himself from a people who most needed his ministry. And God prepares a plant, and finally a tiny worm, to patiently teach Jonah about His heart of love.
I have found myself during lockdown thinking of the compassion of God. Like Jonah, we can become hardened towards a world that is so far from God. We can forget God’s “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God’s desire to bring people to Himself by opening their hearts to the Lord Jesus has not diminished. God has chosen to convey His Gospel through the witness of His people. Jonah was chosen to be a witness for God. And despite all that he knew about the character of God, he decided to attempt to run away from God’s presence and his own calling. We cannot run away from God.
God intervenes in Jonah’s life in the most powerful way by sending a great wind and causing a storm which endangered the ship and everyone in it. Yet Jonah in all his distance from God was able to sleep soundly through the storm. He had to be woken up to understand the situation and explain what he had done. Jonah was prepared to sacrifice his life for the strangers travelling with him. He showed compassion! It is then that God prepares a great fish and Jonah spends three days and three nights in the deep. It is astonishing that God uses His most disobedient prophet to illustrate the obedience and love of Christ and where that love took Him before He emerged from death in all the power and glory of His resurrection.
So Jonah was called again to go to Nineveh and preach. There was not a people further away from God nor a message so simple. The whole city turned to God in repentance, and God responded with compassion. But Jonah did not rejoice with heaven. Instead, he was angry that God had been so gracious to Nineveh. God acts with the same grace towards His bitter servant. He prepares, not a great wind or great fish but a simple plant, and then amazingly a tiny worm which destroyed the plant. He does this is to reveal in Jonah a pity for something so transient. Then He powerfully asks, “Should I not pity?” Should God not show compassion?
The Lord Jesus uses Jonah, despite all his failings, to illustrate His own death and resurrection and to convict the hearts of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 12:38-41. Jonah is also a warning to us not to lose contact with the heart of God. Jonah described God as “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness” (Jonah 4:2). But Jonah did not feel that grace, mercy and lovingkindness in his own heart toward those who needed it so much.
May God protect us from losing compassion towards those who so desperately need the grace of God that has saved us, and that keeps us. And may He grant us the power and courage to witness to the God of all grace with tender hearts and to join heaven in rejoicing over everyone who comes to the Saviour.
