Not even six months ago, I had yet another person warn me that I “believe in fairytales,” saying something to the effect, “Do you really think a grown man was swallowed by a whale and, after sleeping three days inside its belly, was vomited up alive onto the shore?!”

I thought, “If only you knew how much more there is to Jonah’s story than just that, as big as that was, you might have a glimpse of appreciating it.”

Here’s how my pastor, Richard Jordan, tells a side of Jonah that Bible-mockers will likely never examine for its richness in revealing human nature:

“If you were to use the number of people converted under one man’s ministry as the measure of greatness then, without a doubt, the greatest preacher of the Bible is Jonah.

“It’s estimated that over 1 million Ninevites were converted under Jonah’s ministry; they repented as a result of his preaching and God spared them

“In Matthew 12, the Lord Jesus Christ, in referring to Himself as Israel’s prophet, priest and king, even says ‘a greater than Jonas is here.’ Jonah is an important man in the purpose and plan of God and yet there he is out on a hillside—bitter, resentful, pitying himself, muttering and complaining against God.

“The salvation of over 1 million heathen, God-hating Gentiles ought to thrill anybody and yet Jonah turned it into a depressing, miserable experience. Instead of being elated at the way God had used him to bring salvation to so many undeserving souls, Jonah became strangely depressed. Actually, he became enraged!

“You read in Jonah 4 that it ‘displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
[2] And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
[3] Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.’

“He’s saying, “I just knew it, Lord! I mean, I knew that if I went down there and preached to the people they’d repent. . . That’s the reason I ran to start with! I knew better than you did.’

“He’s mad; he’s angry. He’s sore displeased and then he gets resentful, and pretty soon he’s saying, ‘Just kill me, will you?! Rub me out! It’s better for me not to live than to see this stuff going on!’

“Do you get the idea he didn’t like those Ninevites. He’d been praying, ‘Lord, smite ’em for me!’ And he had a right to feel that, by the way. The Ninevites hated Israel. Nineveh had many times persecuted Israel mercilessly and had done dastardly things to them.

“Jonah was a political statesman in Israel, so you could understand the politics of the thing and the personal feelings he had. But instead of rejoicing as a child of Abraham in being given the opportunity to go out and see these nations submit themselves to the God of Abraham, he got resentful.

“Now, if you’re a psychologist you’d look at chapter 4 and try to probe for some deep-seated emotional problem in the life of Jonah to account for his distressed state.

“Maybe you’d say, ‘Well, it’s understandable; it’s just the natural emotional letdown following this great preaching tour he went on for 40 days.’ Or maybe you’d say, ‘His momma didn’t properly potty-train him as a boy.’

“The fact is, Jonah was ‘displeased exceedingly,’ and he was very angry, and that’s the problem. In verse 5 you see he’s now gone off to pout. It says, ‘So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.’

“That’s that loneliness, the seclusion, the complaining, the muttering that comes along with the brooding. Instead of Jonah responding in faith, he responds in bitterness and it torments him.

“In verse 6 and following is a weird thing; watch how the Lord fixes him. He’s going to try and teach Jonah a lesson here: “And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
[7] But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
[8] And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
[9] And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
[10] Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
[11] And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”

“Do you see how Jonah was ‘exceedingly glad of the gourd,’ but then God prepared a worm and ‘a vehement east wind’ and there Jonah goes again, saying, ‘It is better for me to die than to live’?

“God said to Jonah, ‘Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?’ and Jonah said, ‘I do well to be angry even unto death,’ meaning, ‘Yes, I do! I got a right to be mad and I’m gonna be mad! I’m offended! I’m mad! I’ve been hurt!’

“That’s self-pity and he’s hanging on to it, claiming a light for it, arguing his case against God that he’s got a right to be mad—a right to be depressed, a right to feel sorry for himself. No wonder the guy’s in the slew of despond.

“If Jonah had trusted God for the outcome instead of demanding his own way—instead of his self-pity short-circuiting his potential for rejoicing so that he withdrew into the anguish of seclusion, muttering to himself and complaining against God—and had a thankful heart, rejoicing in what God was doing, well there could have been not only a great spiritual revival in Nineveh, but he would have never gone into this (downward spiral).

“I look at that and I think, ‘There’s all those Gentiles down in Nineveh praising God for deliverance from the Judgment, and there’s the prophet of God who brought them the message sitting out there under the hill, all mad because they’re happy in the Lord!’ That’s what depression does!”