Jonah 4Do You Do Well to Be Angry? | What Jonah Teaches Us About Anger at God
God asked Jonah the same question twice: "Do you do well to be angry?" The first time, Jonah didn't answer. The second time, he said yes.
Transcript
Jonah was angry. Angry enough to tell God, "Let me die." Why? Well, because God showed mercy to Nineveh. Nineveh was not just a random place to Jonah or a random people. The Ninevites were his enemies. They were known for their violence and their cruelty. And Jonah thought they don't deserve God's forgiveness. Jonah wanted his version of justice. And God wanted opportunity to display his mercy.
So God asked him, "Do you do well to be angry?" And God didn't just rebuke Jonah. He gave him an object lesson. He reminded Jonah that Nineveh was filled with 120,000 people who didn't know their left hand from their right hand. Jonah saw wicked people who deserved judgment. And God saw people who needed mercy. And what's always been wild to me about this story is days before Jonah was the one running from God in open disobedient rebellion doing the exact opposite of what God had commanded Jonah.
And God saved Jonah anyway. The same mercy that Jonah wouldn't extend to Nineveh was the same mercy that Jonah had just received. And if you're a believer, that's not just Jonah's story, but that's your story, too. We were all running from God at one point and then he saved us. And that's where this stops being just Jonah's problem and becomes ours too. Because our anger comes from a very real place.
We see something wrong and we say inside things shouldn't be this way. And how we feel isn't necessarily wrong. But the danger is when we move from wanting justice to believing we are the ones that must deliver it. Not sinning with our anger means trusting that God sees what we cannot see. It means believing his judgments are better than ours. It means believing that his timing is better than ours, that his judgments are better than ours, and his justice is better than anything we could accomplish with our own hands.
And that's a hard prayer to pray when you're angry, to simply say, "Lord, I trust you. Help me to not become the judge when you're already the judge." Do you do well to be angry? That's not just a question for Jonah. It's a question that God still asks every one of us.
Transcript from YouTube's automatic captions, lightly tidied. Watch the full video on YouTube.
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