Bitterness
The third consequence of bitterness is found in the next couple of verses:
Jonah 4:6-8 “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. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. 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.”
This consequence is evident to everyone but the infected: pettiness. I have yet to meet a bitter person that isn’t petty. I have been in church my whole life, but I have only seen one church split that was over doctrine. I was recently told that doctrine divides not among churches. No, it is the color of the carpet, the decorations in the bathroom, the plants in the entryway… the list goes on and on and all boils down to one thing, pettiness. Every preacher could give you a number of examples of the petty things people have done to others in the church because of bitterness.
Bitter people do things out of spite. Here sits Jonah, the recipient of God’s mercy, both spiritually and now physically. He is sheltered in his bitterness by a gourd. How thankful he is for the gourd. And yet as God shows a picture of what bitterness really is to Jonah, a worm that eats at your insides until you die, he gets angry at God again.
Bitter people frequently get angry at those who try to help them out of the pit they are in. I am justified to feel this way, they say. If you would have suffered what I did you would feel the same way. Can you hear Jonah crying for the gourd, that petty little thing that was given to help him see his folly?
It was unsettling to God to hear him cry over a gourd and at the same time wish death upon hundreds of thousands of people. My own pettiness was manifest in the fact that I decided to warn the object of my bitterness in a letter of the impending doom of God upon him. After God showed me my wickedness, I couldn’t believe that I would do such a wicked thing. If you and I received the just reward for our sins, God would strike us down right this minute. Yet we have a compassionate, longsuffering God. He was with me, in bringing me through His word to a place of forgiveness.
