Our Scripture reading for today as we continue on in our study
in the book of Jonah. We pick up the story at the end
of chapter 3, turning our corner towards the conclusion in
chapter 4, starting from chapter 3, verse 10.
This is God's word for us today. When God saw what they did, how
they turn from their evil way, God relented of the disaster
that He had said He would do to them.
And he did not do it. But it displeased Jonah
exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and
said, Oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my
country? That is why I made haste to flee
to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting
from disaster. Therefore now, oh Lord, please
take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to
live. And the Lord said, Do you do
well to be angry? This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God you may be seated.
My wife Kimberly and I sort of have this theory about people
that you can kind of put us into two broad categories,
particularly as it pertains to how we might wrestle through the
differences in life. In our marriage, we actually
have one person who's a bit of a overreactor in conflict, who
tends to kind of dig in and want to kind of really get to the
point of the issue. And we have another who prefers
a more subtle way around things, who prefers things to just sort
of be resolved on their own, maybe kind of dancing around the
issues. I'll maybe let you imagine which
of those 2 are my wife and I. But what happens is the
withdrawal kind of as the as the attacker goes in, they actually
want to tend to withdraw more. And that can tend to make the
kind of the more aggressive person kind of like actually I
want to get at it more and more and more.
And it makes the withdrawal happen more.
And there's this kind of tends to be a disconnect until someone
eventually stops the crazy cycle in that dance, as we like to
call it. I sort of think that as we think
about the missions conference last week in the book of Haggai,
the main issue there was apathy. And if you didn't get a chance
to be here, I encourage you to go back and listen to the
messages because it was so encouraging to have Jaunty
encourage us as a church. How do we think about this idea
of apathy when it comes to the mission of God?
But we're kind of back in the book of Jonah.
So to kind of Orient us that we sort of have the the overreactor
on the Jonas side and this idea of his anger towards the Lord at
this idea of repentance. Apathy is a total lack of
movements and emotion when a proper emotional response is
called for. Anger when misplaced is an
overused emotion, one that sort of calls to question the
validity of the situation. Often because we feel there's
injustice involved. We are just after the word had
repented of what he would do to to Nineveh.
The people of Nineveh, they repented.
That which Jonah feared would happen has happened.
The Assyrian nation, this brutal king that was known for utter
corruption, desolation of the places they would conquer, they
repented. They had a soft heart, even
talks about the animals in the lands and their repentance in
chapter 3, total repentance. Jonah has also remember he has
repented as well. At least we'll kind of dig into
that a little bit more. But he was in judgement, right?
He was in the belly of the fish. He was gone down deep as his
repentance talked about and the ward saved him.
The fish vomited hit up as a sign of him coming out from the
deep. But here we have Jonah, angry
again at the mercy, grace and justice of our missional God.
But let's not forget, Jonah has repented.
He's a a chosen sermon of the king.
So I really do believe continually God is calling us to
see ourselves as Jonah's. In the story, we are Jonah,
Jonah as the angry puppet he prophet.
He shows us his anger through this movement of kind of an
incomplete repentance that we're going to look through and kind
of three different movements. He was hurled into the mission
of God by the Lord. He unwantedly picks up this
mantle, and now he's angry, and he's processing this anger
through his head as he contemplates theology through
his heart, as he processes his own feelings of injustice.
And the Lord is pushing him to express himself through his
hands. And I, I point this picture
because I believe a wholehearted repentance involves the head
goes down into the heart and it comes out in our hands.
So as we see ourselves as Jonah, may we kind of contemplate these
three moment moments, these three movements and see
ourselves and where we need to repent from in our thoughts, in
our hearts and in our actions. So the head Jonah is really kind
of putting into question theology proper the character of
God himself, but it actually reveals the lack of
understanding of his his own understanding of the word of
God. Just repeat kind of these verses
over us again. So we can see the contrast when
God saw this is verse chapter 3, verse 10, when God saw what they
did, how they turn from their evil way repentance.
God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to
them. He did not do it very quickly.
We see the contrast, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly.
Other translations saying instead of displeased Jonah
exceedingly. It was very evil thing to Jonah.
The thing itself was evil to Jonah, as other translations put
it. And I'll go on from the
Scripture. And he prayed to the Lord and
said, Oh Lord, is not what this what I said when I was yet in my
country? That is why I made haste to flee
to Tarshish, for I knew that you, you are a gracious God and
merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and
relenting from disaster. Those who know their Bibles well
know where this citation comes from.
It comes from the book of Exodus, chapter 34, verses 6:00
and 7:00. And I don't know about you, but
even as I read those names and those characters of God, we are
meant. Our anger is meant to subside
with each passing phrase as we think about who God is.
Merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
relenting from disaster. It's meant to take our anger
away. And yet you kind of feel in the
story, it ramps Jonah's anger up with each passing phrase.
But I would say his it reveals his lack of understanding
because what we're seeing here is how Jonah can't comprehend
God's covenantal love for the people of Israel with God's
justice and his hatred for evil. That would have been true for
what the Assyrians had done. Jonah cannot comprehend how
these two things are married together, God in his mercy and
God and his justice. He even starts out this as a
prayer, which we'll get to in a little bit.
The fact that he prayed, but he uses the and it should be in
your English Bibles, the all caps O Lord, that means Yahweh.
So he is using the covenantal word for God, the personal form
to God in his prayer, but he's not getting the person of God
right. Actually, in that very same
Exodus quotation, he just quotes verse 6 from chapter 34, verse 7
immediately after if you were to flip to Exodus real quickly, it
says, but who will not forgive iniquity, visiting the iniquity
of the of the fathers on their children and on the children's
children to the 3rd and the 4th generation.
So in Moses's the the word of God that Moses received, we
receive the love, the compassion, the mercy of God
married with his justice, that he cannot forget sin.
Those two things are together for Moses.
And so we see here I'm in a picture of Jonah in his head.
He is picking out a portion of God's word and using it against
the word. Now to take any sort of
Scripture misrepresentation, to apply it just a verse, maybe in
a vacuum to a particular situation that would be
dangerous in any situation for a human to do, to apply that to a
wisdom situation here as we kind of contemplate what is the will
of the Lord or try to discern what is right or wrong.
But here Jonah is misquoting scripture to the person of God
himself. An ultimate picture of
foolishness. Proverbs 26 verse 12.
Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.
In fact, the justice of God emanates from the person of God
himself. We can only make sense of the
crazy world that we live in now because our morality, our
justice, our what is right emanates from the eternal God of
the universe. We have not made this stuff up.
It comes from the Word of God itself.
And so as Jonah is wrestling with his repentance in his head,
we see the importance of lifting up the Word of God, being strong
in its foundation and being ever humble as we come to it, right?
We're supposed to come to this with humble hearts, expecting it
to shape and to guide and to lead us, not from a place of
trying to win an argument with the Creator of the universe of
it. You were meant to feel the
contrast between God and Jonah in these first verses.
It's stark. It's meant to highlight the
Ward's compassion and this battle of the head.
We're supposed to see how high and lifted up the word is and
how low we are. But his compassion on the
nations. It's incredible, the overall
structure of Jonah, how we have in chapters 1 and chapters 3A,
picture of the gospel going out to the nations.
In chapter 1, it's with the Pagan sailors and in chapter 3
it's with the city of Nineveh, the Assyrians.
And that's kind of sandwiches with between those these prayers
of Jonah, these prayers of what we think are prayers of
repentance. But we're really trying to
examine that today. So I think this contrast is
meant to show us the greatness of God's compassion.
So this the, the tiny bit of compassion that Jonah has and
the greatness of God's compassion.
The Olympics are coming up in, in February, the Winter
Olympics. I love the Olympics, but you
when you kind of watch it for a full week and you see the
athletes competing against other of the the best athletes around
the world, we can start to be really diluted because we see
them just, you know, running around that, that ring or maybe
skating around that ring. That's coming up here soon.
And we can kind of sort of kind of critique these athletes and
say that one's looking kind of slow right now, or why isn't
that one running faster? Because we're seeing the best of
the best compete against each other.
But imagine if they were trying to run a race against me.
You would see their greatness on display.
And that is what we're seeing here.
That is the purpose of this is we're actually supposed to see
the greatness of God's compassion on display.
That is what's supposed to be happening in our heads.
And that thought in our heads is really what's meant to melt our
hearts. So Jonah, in his head, he was
angry. And actually anger, they say
kind of eventually it kind of starts in your head, even though
it kind of expresses itself in fiery emotion, but it starts
with a misplaced belief, a misunderstanding, something that
you thought should be one way, but it is another way.
And so in his heart, Jonah is wrestling with this.
And that's where this angry prayer comes from.
I love that we actually see in here that it's a prayer.
And so it's kind of where you're seeing the contradiction, the
contradiction of Jonah on display.
His repentance was not quite full or wasn't complete in
chapter 2, but he still goes to the Lord.
That shows me what a picture of mercy for us as God's people.
God has chosen us. He is soft in our hearts, even
in our anger, even in our confusion, even in our missed
place responses to go to Him in prayer.
And ultimately, God responds to Jonah.
So there is a covenantal relationship there in which
Jonah's heart as it's raging, it can't break it, not because of
anything that Jonah has done, because of the faithfulness of
Yahweh, the covenant keeper. So even as we wrestle with where
we might be on this journey of anger and where is our
repentance in all this, we can always go to God and prayer.
If God is softening your heart to it, go to him.
Go to him in freedom that you even need to submit some of
these thoughts, some of these misplaced understanding of his
word at his feet and just say Yahweh, my covenant keeper.
And I think even as we see the response of the Lord, there's a
gentleness to it. There's a sense in which you
even see kind of apparent who's parenting an angry child who
doesn't understand why they're angry, and the parent is trying
to just gently point them towards the right response of
their hearts. If we have to learn something
from Jonah's hearts, I think what we actually see there is
that he has misplaced a love of Israel to be superior over his
love for God. There's sort of an anxiety,
right? There's an anxiety for Jonah
about if God were to forgive this terrible nation, what then
is supposed to happen to us? Remember, they were, they were,
they were battling each other for territory and there was a
terrible outcome if Assyria were to take over that place.
Jonah is anxious about what it meant for the Shalom of God's
covenant people, but he put that anxiety before his trust in the
Lord. This, this can be really touchy,
what I'm about ready to say. And so I ask for your patience
with me as we think through this.
And I think even what we did at the beginning of the service and
honouring our veterans, we're trying to say that love of
country is not a bad thing. I actually think God's Word
points us to love our country and to seek for its flourishing,
for its protection, for its security.
Those are good things. But if that love of country, if
that security is ever placed over the Lord, we've misplaced
our loves. Love of God is always meant to
be superior to love of country. And I think that's actually
what's at the heart of God's question to Jonah.
Do you do well to be angry? Angry over the right things,
yes. But angry over a misplaced order
of loves? No.
Jonah has quickly forgotten that he has gone down to the depths.
And he said with his words that he repented, that he was
acknowledging the words salvation.
It's interesting. I was quickly brought back to my
time in Italy. And they have been building
their third metro line for about 35 years.
And you might chuckle. Could you think of Italians that
like to take their breaks? They like to take the whole
month of August off for vacation, living that beautiful
life? You might.
Well, that's kind of makes sense then why it would take 35 years.
But that's actually not the reason why.
Whenever they start digging for this third line, it was the one
that was kind of going through the center of the city where all
of the old stuff was. And so you have to dig and they
would keep finding more stuff. So they had to call in the
special archaeologist to make sure they didn't damage any of
the stuff, and they actually realized they had to keep
digging deeper. That comes to mind because I
think that is what happens when we get to this place of
realizing our anger is revealing that our loves are out of order,
that to keep digging deeper to the depths of God's love for us.
I was also reminded of a really amazing story from this past
week at the missions conference. You might not know this, but one
of our church's members is a missionary serving in a country
that I can't say the name of right now, translating the Bible
into a new language. And she was sharing with me
about the progress of that Bible translation.
And they actually start with the book of Jonah for their Bible
translation because of the narrative structure.
It's fairly simple. And they're they're going from
an oral language to a written language.
And so they start with the book of Jonah.
But in this particular country and in this particular village,
they are very far away from any ocean.
The deepest water that they have is, she said it's kind of like a
little stream that might go this deep.
And so as she was working with the people that try to translate
them with these concepts of a deep, deep repentance, they had,
they had no idea. They had to start using more
abstract concept concepts to get them to understand the deepness
of an ocean. And that was helpful for me
because I, I think we take for granted that we have these
different images from the Bible and can understand them in their
full metaphorical sense and how it's meant to show us the deep
compassion and deep love of our God towards us.
As we think about our own anger and what it reveals about
misplaced orders of love, how willing are we to go deeper with
the Lord in our hearts? Are we willing to admit that we
have put something security, sense of self, comfort, control,
love of those things over our love for God?
But to cry out, O Yahweh, and to hear the Lord's voice, do you do
well to be angry? So that was the head, the heart
in the hands. So repentance, it involves
eventual action. Yes, we need to change our
thinking. Yes, we need to pray to God to
change our hearts. And yes, we need to respond with
change. Action can be dangerous to do
those in the wrong order. The wrong order gets us to
legalism. But the right order is the
complete sense of what does it mean to repent, to follow the
Lord. So while we have the kind of
repentance moments from Jonah in chapter 2, there's a clue here
in the text that this prodigal prophet running away from the
call of God has not fully repented of his ways.
We can see it as we looked at the heart as head at his heart,
but it follows in the actions. It's a sensitive topic because
he actually is saying that he'd rather die.
He'd rather die in asking the Lord to allow him to die than
confront the compassion of his God on his perceived enemies.
And the clue is that Jonah's repentance was not sufficient is
that this is naturally not the first time that Jonah has asked
for his life to be taken. Do you remember the first time
since chapter 1 with the sailors on the boats, he actually calls
for them to throw him into the ocean, that his life would be
taken first. Verse 12 from chapter one.
Pick me up, hurl me into the sea.
Then the sea will quiet down for you.
For I know it is because of me that this great Tempest has come
upon you. And so that's my clue that Jonah
hasn't fully repented yet. And I think as we go through the
rest of chapter 4, that will become increasingly obvious to
all of us. Instead of embracing God's
radical compassion for the other, he is asking for his life
to end first to a bunch of Pagan sailors who would eventually
repent in the face of this action, and now directly to God.
The compassion of the Word here, though, is that God's compassion
first to Jonah and his calling, then to Pagan sailors and
calling them to repentance, then to Jonah again in the belly of
the fish, then to the king of the most brutal, murderous
nation on the planet. This point even to the animals
of the Assyrians, even in the midst of Jonah's anger, God's
compassion is again on Jonah. He hears the rant, even the rant
against him, misusing his character against him and
responds with the soft question. As I think about our word,
Jesus's compassion on the anger of the that he saw on his day.
I was thinking of Matthew 23, the seven woes on the scribes
and the Pharisees. Let me read just a little bit of
this text over you today as you think about even the word Jesus
and how He confronted anger. This is from Matthew 23, verses
2 to 4. The scribes and the Pharisees
sit on Moses's seat. These are the word, Jesus's
words. And they do so and observe
whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.
So it's a warning over them, for they preach, but they do not
practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard
to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they
themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
Their hands do not move. Verse 9.
And call no man your Father on earth, for you have one Father
who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors.
You have one instructor, the Christ.
The greatest among you shall be your servant.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.
Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
We'll go down to verse 37 and that chat that same chapter,
Matthew 23. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city
that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.
How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen
gathers her brood under her wings?
And you were not willing see your house has left you
desolate. For I tell you, you will not see
me again until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of
the Lord. You see, Jesus meets the
Pharisees anger with a righteous anger and anger that he has that
he will ultimately willingly take on himself, not just for
the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, but the for the hypocrisy of the
nations. Jesus will take this on himself,
not to make anyone political nation great, but to unite all
nations under him for the sake of his glory.
Jonah was an angry prophet praying that his heavenly king
would bring a Kingdom that ultimately conflicted with God's
love and his justice. Jesus was the far greater
prophet who was angry with the false prophets of his time,
acting as the King who would unite God's love and justice
when he took his place on the cross.
Brothers and sisters, let us pray to this better prophet.
Oh Jesus, we thank you for the picture of your anger rightly
placed, that the order of our loves are made right in the
unity of your mercy and justice on the cross.
Thank you as the nation's rage, King Jesus, that you are King
over all the nations and that your plan for salvation brings
about the peace, the peace of the nations, that as they are
united in your salvation, King Jesus, in eternity.
And thank you that as we wait for that coming when you will
unite all nations and yourself, that you have given us the gift
of your Holy Spirit. You have given us the promise of
our sanctification. That as we wrestle with our own
anger and the ordering of our loves, that you are here with us
as our Yahweh, wrestling with us and who as a loving Father
disciplines his children, You're in a loving conversation with
us. Thank you God, that your
kindness is what leads us to repentance.
Help us to examine that well now and our confession and applying
the Word as we go to the table as brothers and sisters in
Christ, in Jesus name I pray, Amen.