Destroy 120,000 People, but Save the Plant!!

The lesson to be learned from the story of Jonah is found when comparing:

1. Jonah’s anger for Nineveh being spared with Jonah’s anger with the plant perishing.
2. God’s question to Jonah concerning his anger for Nineveh’s salvation (“Do you do well to
   be angry?”) with God’s question to Jonah concerning his anger for the plant perishing
   (Do you do well to be angry for the plant?”)
3. Jonah’s consideration that death was better than life when he realized Nineveh had
   been spared with Jonah’s thinking that it was better to die than to live when he
   realized the plant had perished.
4. The Lord’s “concern” for 120,000 people plus all the animals in “the great city of Nineveh”
   with Jonah’s “concern” for a single “this plant."

Jonah became concerned for a plant and emotional with “pity” when it died, yet:

1. Jonah did not design plans for it
2. Jonah did not plant seeds for it
3. Jonah did not water it
4. Jonah did not cause it to grow
5. The plant grew up quickly overnight
6. The plant existed for less than 24 hours
7. The plant was only a plant

Yet, Jonah was so invested and interested in the plant that he responded emotionally to the
fact that it perished when invaded by a worm. Realize that even before the plant grew, Jonah
had already built himself a shelter to provide himself shade in the scorching sun. The loss of the shade from the plant was not the loss of Jonah’s shelter and its shade! Jonah was “concerned”
about the plant and Jonah took “pity” on the plant. When the plant perished Jonah became just
as angry and emotional as when God spared 120,000 people and their animals from invasion
by a foreign army. Jonah was concerned about a single plant and a single worm instead of being concerned about God’s 120,000 people and invading militaries of the nations. Jonah had lost
touch with reality and was more interested in his theological agenda and his own trivial interests
than with the people he was sent to warn. Warning people and turning them to the Truth was
the very reason God sent prophets in the first place.

Why does God mention the animals in the last line of the book of Jonah? Maybe because even
the animals were more important and more valuable than Jonah's dead plant.

“There is but one God the Father of whom are all things and we in him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are
all things and we by him.”
- Sir Isaac Newton