“Then God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?’ And he said, ‘It is right for me to be angry, even to death!’”
Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
God asked Jonah a further penetrating question: “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” There is an analogy between Nineveh and the plant. Jonah loved his plant (air conditioner), but he did not love Nineveh. Jonah needed to learn God’s values about things rather than to operate on the premises of his own values.
And he said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!”
This time Jonah answered God’s question: “I am justified in my anger about losing that plant to a worm. I deserve the comfort of my air conditioning system! It is enough for me to die!” Here was a man with extremely distorted values. The only thing he cared about was his air conditioning system. Jonah was totally given over to materialism.
PRINCIPLE:
Unrestrained materialism distorts fellowship with God.
APPLICATION:
Ungoverned materialistic values are brutish to God’s system of things. We want what we want, and we could care less about God’s system of values: “God, I do not want you fooling with my life. I don’t want you to run my life. I would rather be dead than have you do that. I care about things and not what you care about.”
