Wisdom 30 Spiritude, an Answer to Jonah

[HKHaugan]

Wisdom 30 Spiritude, an Answer to Jonah 

What’s this? Jonah not happy? Now he is “greatly displeased and angry (4:1).” What could he possibly be angry about? He did exactly what the Lord wanted. He preached repentance to the Ninevites and they responded. What was the root of his anger? First, Jonah was a Hebrew and therefore a born and sworn enemy of Assyria. Second, being a Hebrew, he felt superior as a member of God’s chosen people and given a prophetic role. Third, his expectation of God was that compassion is first to the Hebrew and not to the unclean gentiles. How could God possibly have compassion on such an enemy? The way I see it he fully expected that Nineveh would not repent, and he would watch the Lord God destroy them.

 Listen to what Jonah prays, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!”

 The Lord replies with a question, “Have you any right to be angry?” In a pouting mood Jonah builds a shelter east of the city to watch what will happen to it. It’s not unlike an argument you might have with someone who has made you angry and the only resolution is to withdraw. Get your ‘Linus blanket’, take your ball and go home to sit in a corner with thumb in mouth and sulk.

 But the Lord has another point to make so He plants a vine to give Jonah shade to ease his discomfort, like we might give an ice cream cone to a pouty child to get him through the moment. That made Jonah happy but the Lord’s purpose for the vine was to teach Jonah a lesson. So, He sends a worm at dawn to eat away and wither the vine. Then He sent a scorching wind as the sun beat on Jonah until he was faint. Again angry, Jonah said that it would be better if he died than go on.

 Then the Lord asks him if he has a right to be angry about the vine. Jonah tells Him he does, and he still wishes he were dead. Then the Lord delivers His zinger, “Look here Jonah, who are you to be angry about the vine? You didn’t make it grow or take care of it. It sprang up overnight and then died overnight. The same thing about Nineveh, a city with a hundred and twenty thousand people, that’s people Jonah. They don’t know their right hand from their left and a whole mess of cattle as well. Shouldn’t I be concerned about such a city? (My translation of Jonah 4:10-11).”

 This last chapter is all about attitude. We have to ask what and who shapes out attitudes? There are basically three influences that shape attitude, our family, our culture and our personal sin. A lot of our family background is laced with parental attitudes both good and bad. Parents can’t help the fear they have for their children. It’s always there. There are all degrees of protectiveness involved. We pass that on from generation to generation. Then there are the social influences of friends, the kind of children that associate with our children, the possible things that could happen which places an increasing burden on parents of young children. Parents are individuals many of whom have no real stable upbringing due to their parents’ insecurities as well as their own.

 It all goes back to the aloneness factor and the way husbands and wives who are also mothers and fathers react to each other in those roles. No one ever gets it right, yet some are more right than others. Since every person, child and adult, is unique and different, the need for outside direction you can trust is an absolute necessity.

 Jonah is a case in point. He obviously was raised in a very tight ethnic and religious environment. So much so that he became angry when his ethnic expectations were not fulfilled. So, one of the real lessons we get from Jonah is the problem of living with false expectations not only of people but of God. Secondly, there is a need for all of us to see God as He wants to be seen. Jonah knew He was a God of grace and compassion, but he didn’t like to see those qualities practiced on people who were not like him. This is a problem among denominational people who allow a judgmental spirit to see one another through those kinds of eyes. It stretches also into how we tend to separate ourselves from others on the basis of how moral we are as opposed to those who we determine are not as moral as we are. Then too, there is the social standing based on class and wealth, the cars we drive, the neighborhoods we live in, our clothing styles and appearances, schools we attended, degrees we have and the regional biases we use to determine relational worthiness.

 Jonah’s anger was open and abusive. Rooted in his false concepts and expectations he felt his will was more important than God’s will. He saw his belief system as a basis for judgment and condemnation. When that becomes our attitude then we open ourselves to spirits not of God. Attituded not founded in God become demonic entry points for spirits that takes God’s place. Religion can breed self-righteous attitudes.

Jonah prepares us for understanding Jesus and His Cross. He had to bear the hostility of the Jonah-like attitudes that make us vulnerable to evil spirits that invade every generation. It is no surprise when Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees wanting Him to give them a sign that He is the Messiah. Sign-seeking is a ungodly attitude. Here’s what He replies, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” Jonah’s attitude opened him up to dark spiritual infestation and left him as lonely as he was in the belly of the fish.

 ‘How soon we forget’ is a theme from Jonah. He prays an incredible prayer of recognition for deliverance and then forgets it when God fulfills His promise to the Ninevites. He uses stereotypical attitudes to defend himself. He gets angry as though anger is justification for self-righteousness. He blames God for not doing what God should have done. He places himself above God just as Cain did when he murdered Abel. Jonah’s’ story is every generation’s story. Once you walk the road of self-pity, anger, blame and fear the great fish of aloneness swallows you whole. It is an attitudinal precipice where every moment is an attempt to play a balancing act. What you discover is attitudes are the stomping ground for evil spirits to reinforce one’s self with false superiority. It is the slippery slope of self-deceit that is unforgiving and terminal.

 And Jonah is the warning sign for one more unmatchable truth---religion will never replace relationship. Religion is the vine planted in a night and withers in the light of dawn. A relationship with God only grows into eternity. So, the Jonah story is a story of a compassionate God concerned with the welfare of 120,000 individual images of Himself as opposed to religion which sees people merely as defined by their blood line, tribe and nation; members wed to a belief system that can change with the cultural tides.

 That is --- Jonah is one more prophetic message setting the stage for the coming of Jesus who will do just that, restore our personal relationship with our Heavenly Father through Jesus in the power of His Holy Spirit. Jesus accepted living in the confines of human personality in a human body and the world, from family, friend and government, rejected and killed Him. He was killed for being who He was, God the Son, Messiah, Savior, Lord and giver of the Holy Spirit who brings the Lord God into our hearts personally. What Jesus did was to replace attitude with Spiritude, Holy Spiritude. Spiritude cleans the house, our personal temple, and takes residence through faith in Jesus.