God’s Great Compassion for the Wayward
November 23, 2025
Preached by Ron Smith
Scripture Reading
Jonah 3:10-4:11
3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
If you missed last week’s sermon, you need to go back and listen to it. It was a great sermon. I know that I was challenged and many of you were as well. As Benjamin was preaching I was kind of thinking that it should be the last sermon of this series. We should end the series on a bang.
But here we are. One more sermon in this series on Jonah. It seems a little daunting. Like whatever we do today will be a little bit of a letdown. But I think that in a way, this actually maps on well to the story of Jonah itself. In chapter 1 we see Jonah running away from what the Lord told him to do, trying his best to flee the very presence of the Lord. Then in chapter 2 he has an encounter with God’s mercy that seems to set him straight. So, in chapter 3 he obeys the Lord, goes to Nineveh and preaches the word of God. And they repent. There is revival.
It is what every preacher longs for. It is what every Christian wants to see happen. We want to see Harrisburg come to Jesus. We want to see revival take place and people come to know the Lord.
That’s chapter 3! It’s great. The Lord has reached the hearts of probably the hardest, most cruel and violent people on the face of the planet of that time. And they are crying out to the Lord for salvation.
And yet, that’s not the end of the story. There’s chapter four. Perhaps we expect it to be kind of an epilogue to the story of Jonah. “And Jonah returned to Israel rejoicing that the Lord has done such a great work. He went on to found a school teaching the rest of his days on the surprising mercy of God. The End.”
But that’s not what happens. It’s a whole lot messier and confusing than that. It’s the complete opposite.
In chapter 4 we are letdown. We are shocked at Jonah’s hypocritical reaction to God’s forgiveness to the Assyrians. He is angry. So angry he wants to die.
I believe we are supposed to see his reaction and recognize just how ridiculous it is. How can he react that way? Doesn’t he remember the great fish that swallowed him? How he turned and fled from the Lord, and yet the Lord was loving to him and forgave him, giving him a second chance. God has had such great compassion for Jonah, can he not have compassion on an entire city?
But a strange thing happens as we think about his ridiculousness. The realization hits us that we are actually not that much different than he is.
This chapter invites us to make a comparison between God’s great compassion and Jonah’s limited compassion. What we see is that God’s compassion is rooted in who he is. It is an outworking of his nature. He is merciful, life giving, forgiving. We just don’t understand it at times. We think his compassion is wrong and misguided. It’s not fair.
But the reality is that it is our compassion that is the one that is misguided. We limit our compassion to the people we think deserve it. Just as God’s compassion flows from who he is, so our compassion flows from our hypocritical nature that limits compassion for others while expecting that we be shown full compassion at the drop of a hat.
If we are going to reach out to those around us, we need God’s compassion to be our compassion.
What we will see in this chapter is that God’s compassion exposes our heart in order to heal our heart.
God’s Compassion Exposes Our Heart
Let’s look first at how God’s compassion exposes Jonah’s heart and ours.
We are told in 3:10,
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
And then in 4:1,
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
The contrast could not be any starker right out of the gate. God’s anger is quenched; it’s cooled down. But Jonah’s anger is lit up. He’s hot with anger. He is exceedingly displeased. For Jonah, God’s relenting of the disaster that he has said he would do to Ninevah, was a disaster for him.
And interestingly it is at this point that we finally learn the reason that Jonah fled to Tarshish back in chapter 1. Look at verse 2,
And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
How does that verse strike you? He responded to his knowledge of God with the opposite of what he should have done. Jonah knew God. His knowledge of God was not the problem. He quotes the words that we see repeated all over the Old Testament. Words that were first uttered by God himself as he described himself to Moses. The problem is that Jonah’s knowledge of God was unsettling. It required something of him that he was not willing to do.
I suppose I am no different. As long as who God is, fits into my little view of how the world operates, great. It is wonderful. But when who God is challenges me to give up the things I want to hold on to, it is not so comfortable. As we see for Jonah, it’s troubling.
For example, it’s troubling because Jonah wanted justice to be served. He didn’t think it was fair that God could show mercy to such an undeserving people. The Assyrians had done terrible things to their enemies. They flayed them, they would burn people alive, impaled them on poles (which is an early form of crucifixion by the way, the Romans would go on to perfect).
For Jonah, they needed to be paid back for their crimes against humanity. They needed to get what is coming to them.
Doesn’t something in you resonate with Jonah in this? I think we live in a culture that values “justice.” Justice according to our own standard. We want to see people paid back for the wrong they do. There is even a whole genre of videos on YouTube – Instant Karma. People do something wrong and then they immediately get paid back. Or think about the recent news concerning the radical Muslims in Nigeria. For years they have tormented Christians. But now there is a light being shown on what they are doing. There has even been talk about even using military force if necessary. And there is something in us that says, “yes! Let’s get ‘em.”
Obviously, justice is important. Our God is a just and holy God. I am not saying that we should never seek justice. My point is merely that we are surrounded by a culture that seeks to get even. That seeks vengeance at all costs. It is a virtue. But there are times that God’s compassion, his mercy and his grace, pushes back on us in this. And we might not think it is fair.
In a general sense we long for people to come to know Jesus. But what about when those people are not nameless people out there, but are people not only that you know, but are people who have hurt you? We could say, I want to see the students at my school know Jesus. Great. Even the bully who makes fun of you? I want to see all my colleagues believe in Jesus. Great. Even the ones who stepped all over you, made you look bad, so that they got the promotion? What about the boss who made your life miserable for seemingly no reason? What about your spouse who cheated on you and left you with nothing? What about… (you fill in the blank)?
God’s compassion is troubling because it challenges our unsatiated desire to get even. And if we dig a little deeper, we see that it is also troubling because God’s compassion reveals our self-righteousness. That way of thinking we are better than everyone else. That we have earned God’s mercy and others just aren’t good enough, they haven’t done enough.
We catch a glimpse of Jonah’s superiority as he tells God why he fled in the first place. Is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? And then back in chapter 1 when the mariners began to question him about his identity, he led with “I am a Hebrew.” Jonah thought that the Israelites were better than the Ninevites. God is gracious and merciful, but to Hebrews, to people like him. To people who look and sound like him. Not to others.
But God doesn’t agree. So, Jonah says,
Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Then we’re told that he heads out of the city and sits down to wait to see what God will do. Just maybe, his weak protest was enough to get God to follow through with the punishment.
Jonah is absolutely blind to his own heart. He thinks he is better than them. They are beyond help. And he stubbornly refuses to accept God’s decision. Of course, none of this makes sense in light of the whole story. Did he forget so quickly what he learned in the belly of the fish? Does he really think he is that superior?
Yet, we struggle with this too, don’t we? Self-righteousness traps us like a spider web you inadvertently walk through. It just sticks to us. No matter how much you think you get off, there’s always more. We subtly think we are better than others. We are more deserving than others. That they haven’t done enough to earn grace. They are simply not good enough.
We forget that we too are sinners in need of a savior. Instead of compassion for those around us, we judge. We aren’t loving. We are not patient. We don’t share the gospel of grace, because in some ways we still hold on to a form of works-based salvation. They have not done good enough to be saved, like I have. This is especially true if we are talking about people who make us feel uncomfortable. People who don’t fit our mold. People who are not our people.
Where I see self-righteousness in my own life is with Jehovah Witnesses. I get so angry at them. They twist Scripture. The trap people in their deceit and lies. Which is not necessarily a wrong kind of anger. Does that anger push us towards self-righteous indignation or towards the compassion of God. When I see the JWs I either avoid them or just go in with guns a blazing to show them how wrong they are. Zero compassion. They don’t deserve my time.
Or what about the way we treat the homeless. Do we avoid them? Do we think there is any hope for them? If homeless people started coming to our church every Sunday, what would you think?
What about people of different socio-economic status than us; people with different skin colors; people who struggle to speak English? Do we have compassion for them? God does.
God’s great compassion exposes our limited compassion. It exposes our self-righteous hearts. What we need is for God’s compassion to heal our wayward heart. Let’s look at God’s compassion.
God’s Compassion Heals Our Heart
We once again see God’s compassion for Jonah. Despite Jonah’s hardness of heart, God seeks him out and shows him mercy. We see this in the way he addresses Jonah. He doesn’t bring down hell fire and brimstone. He doesn’t utter threats. He simply asks him questions – do you do well to be angry?
And in a practical way, we see God’s mercy to Jonah by appointing a plant to grow so that it might be a shade to save him from his discomfort. And that made Jonah happy. He was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Notice the contrast that this sets up. He was exceedingly displeased because the Ninevites were recipients of God’s grace. And now, hypocritically, he was exceedingly glad because he was the recipient of God’s grace.
But Jonah’s heart is still hard. God changes strategies. Verses 7-8.
7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. (notice the military term – attack) 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah (or literarily – attacked the head of Jonah) so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
Now instead of mercy, God brings judgement on Jonah. The judgement that Jonah so desperately wanted for the Ninevites, was now beating down on his head. God loved Jonah and wanted him to turn from his self-righteousness. He wanted him to have his compassion. But unfortunately, Jonah just sank deeper into his stubbornness. “It is better for me to die than to live.”
So, God challenges him head on with the absurdity of his compassion compared to God’s own compassion. Vs 9,
But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”
God wanted Jonah to open his eyes and see the silliness of his reaction. But Jonah digs in his heels.
And with that, he walks right into the Lord’s trap. The Lord drops the hammer.
10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
Jonah had done nothing for that plant. He didn’t plant it. He didn’t water it. He didn’t tend it in any way. It was a gift from God. And yet he was angry because it died. He pitied the plant. That is, he was grieved over it. He had compassion for a plant.
In comparison, God had compassion for Nineveh. He has toiled over all of creation, he has formed the nations, established cities, even Nineveh. All things fall under his care. For the fourth time in the letter Nineveh is called that great city. Now we know why. It is teeming with life. It is a city full of people. They don’t have God’s law among them. They are ignorant of how to serve him. God cared for them. And so, with the proclamation of God’s word to them, they repent. The disaster of hundreds of thousands of people perishing is averted. This is great news. Even the animals are spared. God’s compassion is great.
“Jonah, wake up! You need God’s compassion.” Jonah’s compassion for the plant just doesn’t measure up. His values were all out of wack. Why was it so difficult to want others to experience God’s forgiveness?
Jonah needed God’s compassion, not just for Isreal, not just for people who were like him, but for people created and cared for by the God he served. We need that compassion too. We need to know God in such a way that we are moved by what moves him. We desire what he desires. He will strengthen us to do the impossible – to bring the message of forgiveness to people we don’t think deserve it. It doesn’t always make sense. It might not seem fair. But it is what he did for us and what he wants to do for others. Do you believe that? Do you have God’s compassion for the lost? Or has self-righteousness blinded you? Would you rather hold your right to justice instead of seeing broken people come to know Jesus?
We see in the book of Jonah that God’s compassion is great. And it is not limited to one people group who are worthy of it. In a way I think that well known verse from the New Testament is a nice summary. “God so loved the world, that he gave is only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” God loves the world. Even people like the Assyrians. People who are the total opposite of who God is. People who have done horrible things. Things so bad they could think, God would never love someone like me. He could never forgive someone like me.
But the surprise of God’s mercy for the wayward in the book of Jonah is that he forgives the most unforgiveable people. See, salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation is based on what the Lord does for us. Not what we have done. And as the Bible unfolds we see that God’s compassion for the lost is so great, that he sent his son to die for the horrible things you have done so that you don’t have to. To deal with our sins once and for all. Whoever believes in him will have eternal life. You won’t perish. You just need to believe.
But let’s not overlook the surprise of God’s mercy for the wayward in Jonah himself. Even believers need to know that there is hope when we stray from the Lord. When self-righteousness gets the best of us, when we fall back into sins that we left long ago, when we just refuse to do the Lord’s work the Lord’s way, his compassion extends to us. His grace is ever present to pull us back. If you are wandering, let him lead you back to the path. He is pursuing you. His mercy is for you.
Epilogue: I said in the introduction that we almost expect chapter 4 to be an epilogue telling us that Jonah lived happily ever after. But as we have seen we are introduced to a whole other messy problem. So, now we are really left wanting some kind of epilogue. Did Jonah learn his lesson? Did he come to an understanding of God’s compassion? Did he have a change of heart? The bottom line is that we don’t know for sure. We are just simply not told. In fact, the literary design of not answering those questions and instead ending the book with a question, causes us to examine our heart as we see how ridiculous Jonah is. It is a question for Jonah and for us. But who wrote this book? At the very minimum Jonah told someone else about this incredibly embarrassing story who then wrote it down. Jonah looks bad. It is not the type of story you would tell if there were not some kind of repentance. There is hope for the wayward. There is mercy for the wayward.