And the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?” (4:10-11)
What we care about says a lot about us. When I was in seminary, a chapel speaker once said that you can look at your bank account and your time and find out what is most important to you. Where you spend your money and where you spend your time is what you really love. Jonah was a prophet of God and most of us know the story of how he ran from God because God sent him where he didn’t want to go. God sent a storm, Jonah was tossed overboard and then God sent a big fish to swallow him and rescue him from drowning. In the belly of the fish, he learned his lesson and ended up going where God sent him and seeing great success as the entire city repented.
Yet, Jonah was annoyed by their repentance and he was angry that the plant that God sent to shade him was then taken away by the very same God. The problem wasn’t just that he cared more about himself or the plant than he did other people. The problem was that Jonah didn’t have his priorities straight; he didn’t care about the things that God cared about. There is nothing wrong with hobbies or possessions are other neutral blessings that God puts in our life—but when we care more about those things and spend more time on those things than we do reaching people then we have a problem. All around us are people who are spiritually dead and “can’t distinguish between their right and left,” yet we are consumed with everything else except getting the gospel to those lost around us.
Perhaps, like Jonah, our problem is that we don’t care about the things that God cares about. Jonah was obsessed with a plant (which he didn’t do anything to cultivate) and he was angry when God took it away. Yet, he had no compassion towards people created by God and lost in sin in Nineveh. The plant was given by God and taken away by God to Jonah’s great consternation. The people were created by God and could have been taken away in judgment by God, but Jonah is obsessing over a plant. By God’s grace, He still intervened through a less than enthusiastic prophet and He brought the city to repentance. Some of us are so obsessed with the day to day cares of life that we don’t even get as far as “Nineveh.” Instead, we are stuck in our homes, arguing about the latest controversy, focusing on ourselves, and complaining when God takes away “our plant” to get our attention. What calamity does God need to bring into our lives before we see the needs around us and begin caring about the ones that God cares about?
