Jonah 04: Let's Go to Work

Mercy that disrupts our comfort is hard to celebrate. When Nineveh repented and God relented, Jonah didn’t throw a party—he threw a fit. We unpack why a prophet who experienced rescue himself struggled to accept rescue for his enemies, and how a leafy plant, a hungry worm, and a scorching wind became God’s masterclass on compassion, priorities, and calling.

We walk through the tension between justice and mercy, and why reframing “bad people” as “people in spiritual darkness” shifts us from outrage to mission. That shift doesn’t excuse harm or erase wise boundaries; it locates our work: carrying light to those who can’t yet see. Along the way, we tackle envy—why someone else’s fast growth can provoke our slow resentment—and we learn to recognize grace as abundance, not competition. The conversation grounds these big themes in relatable moments and practical steps: noticing where we prize personal shade over human souls, choosing presence over distance, and praying for courage to enter places that unsettle us because that’s where the harvest is.

If you’ve ever wondered why God’s kindness to “them” bothered you more than it should, Jonah 4 will read you as much as you read it. We end with a simple question that lingers long after the episode: should God not care for that great city—and will we join Him in that care? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs fresh eyes for hard people, and leave a review to help others find the show.

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Series Setup
• 1:12 Jonah’s Journey Recapped
• 3:11 Nineveh Repents And Jonah’s Anger
• 4:20 The Plant, The Worm, The Wind
• 6:02 Divine Mic Drop: People Over Comfort
• 8:10 From Enemies To The Spiritually Blind
• 10:20 Boundaries, Brokenness, And Calling
• 11:45 Prayer And Final Encouragement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Jonah chapter four in the finale, and we're going to call this Let's Get to Work. Let's get to work. I don't know if you've ever done this before, but have you ever been in the place where you were so happy that God had really moved in someone's life? But if you were honest, you're a little bit jealous. Because it feels like that God was moving them along a whole lot faster than you. You've been faithful for years, and God's doing more in their life in like a weekend. You know what I mean? Well, if you've ever felt that way, you're going to have a little bit of an understanding to a little bit of what Jonah is going through here today. Except his is for very different reasons. And we'll get into all that in just a second. But if you have your Bibles, you have your popcorn, have your coffee, you're ready to go. Make sure you open them up to Jonah. And while you're doing that, also make sure you take just a moment to like, share, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and the podcast. Make sure you put us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. It's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job there. And you can find all of that information at the Biblebreakdown.com. Well, if you've been joining us over the past few days, we've been talking about the beauty of salvation in the book of Jonah. And all throughout this book, there are just amazing moments where God is just showing his salvation to so many people, not the least of which is Jonah. And you imagine Jonah years later writing about his experience of getting to Nineveh. Because if you think about it, Jonah is an Israelite. And the Ninevites, you know, from Assyria, they hate one another. And so you wonder, okay, years later, if he's living in Nineveh, let's say, and some people are asking him, man, how'd you get here? Like, like we're better and all, but we still don't like each other. And eventually, by the way, spoiler alert, Assyria takes over Israel, you know, years down the road when all this kind of goes south again. But they're like, How did you even get here? And so you imagine at one point Jonah tells the story so much that eventually he writes it down. And so one of the things that makes the book of Jonah so very unique is it's one of the few prophetic books that focus more on the story of Jonah, not just the message of Jonah. And it's just the idea of salvation over and over throughout this book that is just so very powerful. And so in chapter one, we saw how Jonah got thrown over the side of a boat and eaten by a fish. Chapter two, he prays and asks God for forgiveness. And he said, You, you are my only salvation, and I will fulfill my vow to you. In other words, you give me another chance, I'm gonna do it right. And then God has the fish spit him up onto the land, throw him up on the land. Chapter three, yesterday, was all about how he goes in and he just tells them, Don't go and die in 40 days. But everybody, including the animals, the cows and everybody, dressed up in burlap and repented. And then the Bible said that God changed his mind and he forgave them. And you would think that would be like celebration time. Yay! Look, look at what God did. But instead, Jonah had a very different plan. So look at this with me, Jonah chapter 4, verse 1. And let's see if we can kind of identify with Jonah a little bit here. Here we go. Verse 1 says this This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord and said, Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you're a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry, filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord. I'd rather be dead than alive if I per if what I predicted will not happen. In other words, remember, he predicted that all of Nineveh would be destroyed. He said, Just kill me if you're not going to kill them. I mean, that is a bitter bird right there. Verse three, just kill me now, O Lord. I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen. That's bitterness. All right, verse four. Then the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry about this? Then Jonah, I just didn't want to talk to God anymore, so then Jonah went out to the east side of the city and made a shelter to sit under as he waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God arranged for a leafy plant to grow there, and it soon spread its broad leaves over Jonah's head, shading him from the sun. This eased his discomfort, and Jonah was very grateful for the plant. But God also arranged for a worm. The next morning at dawn the worm ate through the stem of the plant so that it withered away. And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah, and the sun beat him down on his head until he grew faint and wished to die. Death is certainly better than living like this, he exclaimed. Then Jonah said, or God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died? Well yes, Jonah retorted, even angry enough to die. Then the Lord said, You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. And it came quickly and it died quickly. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Remember they they fasting too, right? Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? Wow. That's called a divine mic drop moment. So let me explain to you what just happened because we're done. That was the end of the chapter. Jonah gets really mad that God was good and that God forgave his enemies. And so he's like, I just want to die. If they're not gonna die, that's terrible. And so he goes to the outside of the city and God has a plant grow up that shelters him, and then that plant dies, and he feels pity that that plant died. And God is like, so you can feel bad for a plant, but I'm not supposed to feel bad for a hundred and twenty thousand people that are in darkness? Think about that for a minute, Jonah, and he realizes people are so much more important than his comfort and his desires. And what I love about this is imagine years later, Jonah is writing this story down and he's recalling all of this stuff, and he gets to that point and it hits him. Now maybe, I don't know, we're gonna use our imagination, it doesn't say this, but maybe 20 years later, he's writing this down, and he writes down when God said, Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city of a hundred and twenty thousand people living in spiritual darkness? And that's the moment it hit him. These are not evil people, they're in spiritual darkness. They are acting according to the rules of darkness, they're not acting according to the goodness of God, they don't know God yet. That's why God sent Jonah. So it's almost as though that's the moment when he got it. I am not here trying to ra wage war against evil people. I am here sharing the goodness of God again with broken people that only God could save. And so he finally got it, and he got up and he went to work. And I'm telling you, that made all the difference is when he started to see that these were not broken, or these were not bad people, these were broken people that needed the light. And it changed everything. And can I tell you, so many times in life that's what happens. We spend so much of our life looking at people for all of their bad qualities. We see people who are who look different than us, act different than us, have different cultures than us, all these different things. And and maybe sometimes some of the criticism is earned, some of it most of the time it's not. But we see them and we see them as bad, and we see them as dangerous, we see them as difficult. We want to isolate from them and we figure out, God, why in the world would you bless them? Why would you do that in their life? You know, he's like, I'm I'm so angry that God, you would forgive them. But then God turns it and he's going, What do what if they're not bad? What if they're not evil? What if they're in spiritual darkness? They're blind. They they don't know any better. It reminds me of when I was um, I was in my early 20s, I was watching this blind guy. He'd come to church and he was having to, he was being really rough on everything. And we'd we paid a lot of money for these, these uh, it was pews in this church, and he is just smacking the mess out of these, you know, these chairs, uh, these pews rather with his cane. And when you first you hear it and you don't see it, you're like, hey man, paid a lot of money for these things. Then you turn and look and go, oh, he's not bad. He's not trying to, you know, you know, destroy our property. He's he he can't see. He's he's groping around in darkness looking for someone to help him. And so instead of looking and going, Man, you need to figure that out. Instead, our job was to go and help him to his seat. How can we help you? You're not bad. You're you can't see. You you need someone to show you where to go. And Jonah sees, these people that I have thought for so long were my enemy, are not my enemy, they're just dark, spiritually dark. They need the light. I have been honored with the opportunity to share the light of God with them that their spiritual darkness can go away and now they can have spiritual light. What would it look like in our lives if we were to stop looking at people as good and bad, but rather as broken and as healed. And realize sometimes people are so broken that we can't help them. But God can. Sometimes we have to put proper boundaries in place so that the broken people who only know how to live according to the rules of brokenness can be can be in a place where they can be protected. So it doesn't make them bad, it makes them broken. I don't think God can help them. That's the beauty of Jonah. Yes, he was swallowed by a fish. Yes. You know, he went and he preached all this. But the beauty is the salvation that God shows. God is no respecter of persons. He can save all of us. And he wants to. And the beautiful thing is, it's just like God used Jonah, God wants to use all of us to be the one to bring the light of his salvation, the beauty of a salvation to everyone. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that in this world, intentionally or not, it seems as though we're always drawn to isolation. We're always drawn to our our own circles, our own places, and drawn away from one another. But God, you send us into harvest fields. You send us into places that don't always feel the most comfortable because that's where the harvest is. It's in those moments. I pray, God, that you will give us the courage to step into every opportunity and to celebrate the chance to live for you. I'm thankful for you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Anyway, what God's Word says in Jonah 2, verse 9, he says, Salvation belongs to the Lord. I love you. I hope you have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow for the next part of the Bible Breakdown Podcast.