Love of God

It has been a long week but I believe that it has been a good week and we are going to finish strong tonight in Jonah 4. When I was younger, I remember reading the book of Jonah and chapters 1-3 made perfect sense to me. Yes, there is an element of supernatural in the book but God does supernatural things so a man surviving in a fish and a whole city repenting made some sense to me but then I got to chapter 4. For whatever reason, chapter 4 made less sense to me than the rest of the book because on the surface, it ends on a cliffhanger and not a very positive sounding one either. You’ve seen movies before that end on cliffhangers and what cliffhangers do, is they typically set up and hype the audience up for the next movie or next episode. Some of the great cliffhangers in movie history are like Empire Strikes Back or Avengers: Infinity War, Back to the Future, I thought the new Spider-man Across the Spider-verse had an awesome cliffhanger. But then you have some movies and shows where the cliffhanger just leaves the ending ambiguous and there is no follow up. Instead, it leaves the audience guessing what will happen next and with very few answers. This is movies like Inception or the Thing or American Psycho. The movie ends and you have more questions than what you came in with. Jonah ends sort of like that. There is a definitive ending to the book but we get to the end of verse 11 and we say, “how can it end like that? What does that mean?” But no matter how you cut the cookie, this story still ends as a story of unfailing love, amazing grace, and unimaginable forgiveness. We’ll look at 3 things tonight: Jonah’s anger, God’s love, and how man should respond to God’s grace. Let’s pray and then we will read Jonah 4

Jonah 4 ESV

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O 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, O 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?” Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

Jonah’s Anger

Doesn’t verse 1 take you off guard based off of what we read last night? We see one of the greatest revivals in all of human history, one of the greatest missionary movements to ever grace the earth, and when we get to verse 1 of chapter 4, the man who brought the message for this great movement is angry. Jonah is so angry that when you read verse 1 in the original Hebrew language, we read that Jonah burned with anger. It was like a great fire that was lit in his heart and you know how hard it is to stop being angry once you become angry. This is no slight anger in the heart of the prophet, he is in a total rage. The verse actually implies in Hebrew that Jonah was so displeased that he thought all of what had happened to have been a great and tremendous evil. Why was Jonah so unhappy about this? He prays to the Lord and gives an answer which may or may not have been how he was truly feeling by saying that he knew that God was going to do this because the very character of God was to relent from disaster. On the surface, verse 2 sounds like a shout of praise but really, it is full of questioning from a doubting prophet. What Jonah is really saying is: God, this isn’t fair. He is saying, God you are so righteous, so holy, so merciful but how is it that you are going to forgive these people that I think are too wicked to deserve it. Jonah is saying, “If this is how the world is going to be treated, I don’t want to be a part of it.” In verse 4, God responds to Jonah’s complaint by asking him, “Do you do well to be angry?” It’s as if He is asking, “Jonah, is this the right way to respond to my love and mercy?” Jonah’s complaint is fairly similar to another prophet, the prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk was a prophet right before the fall of Jerusalem and he sees the wickedness of Babylon and he complains to the Lord about and he is very bold with how he is feeling and he says in Habakkuk 1:2-4

Habakkuk 1:2–4 ESV

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.

Habakkuk says to the Lord, “God, I keep calling for help but it seems like you don’t hear me. Look at all this violence in the world, look at all of this injustice that is going on, where are you? How can you let this happen? Justice isn’t going out and the righteous are being totally overwhelmed by the wicked!” What is the Lord’s response to this? Habakkuk 1:5-6 ““Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own.” The response to the cruelty and wickedness of the world is continued cruelty and continued wickedness. More violence and more oppression. God says to Habakkuk, l am raising up the most blood thirsty people the world has ever seen and they are going to conquer and no one is going to be able to stop them. This sounds insane, Habakkuk doesn’t understand this at all! Then in Habakkuk 1:12 we read one of the most bold and daring statements ever uttered by a prophet towards God. Perhaps the most bold statement ever addressed to the Lord by a believer. Habakkuk 1:12 says, “Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.” Are you not from everlasting? What does this mean? What Habakkuk is really saying is, “God, I thought you were infinite. I thought you were all wise, is this not who you are?” This is a daring thing to bring before the Lord. Habakkuk is questioning God and His motives but notice too that he never questions His holiness. Habakkuk is wrestling faithfully as he challenges God. While he is questioning God, he never begins to question the existence of God. He stands hopeful that God will help him to make sense of all of this. Habakkuk says in Habakkuk 2:1 “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.” Then the Lord answers in Habakkuk 2:2-4 “And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.” What the Lord says to Habakkuk is, “I’m still in control and everything is progressing exactly how it is supposed to. Even evil and wickedness itself will not hinder my plan. Justice will come, justice will rain down on all and what you must do as the righteous is live by faith and trust that I know what I am doing.” And this is enough for Habakkuk. He may not understand all of the why but he knows the Who that controls it. God moves in mysterious ways but they are only mysterious to us. There are many times where He will do things on the surface that don’t make sense to us and even if we could understand it, we wouldn’t believe it! God’s ways are not our ways. What we see partially, God sees totally. Jonah saw one element and he was so caught up in that one thing that it blinded him from everything else that was important. He saw a wicked nation that deserved judgement and he wondered, “God how can they possibly deserve anything other than wrath and judgement?” And yes they did deserve judgement but what Jonah was missing was that so did he. He was no more deserving of God’s grace than Nineveh and he should have recognized that! But fleshly thinking often gets in the way of Heavenly dwelling. Matthew Henry wrote, “Do I well to be angry at the mercy of God to repenting sinners? That was Jonah’s crime. Do we do well to be angry at that which is so much for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom among men- to be angry at that which angels rejoice in and for which abundant thanksgivings will be rendered to God? We do ill to be angry at that grace which we ourselves need and are undone without.” What the Lord is intending for Jonah to realize is that Jonah’s complaint really doesn’t have much to do with the Lord at all but it is directed to Jonah’s own heart. You can know the truth, experience the truth, and yet still respond in negative ways. Who knew grace more than Jonah? Yet who in this story showed less grace than Jonah? Look how easy it was for Jonah to lose sight of the main thing. His greatest love was not the Lord at this moment. He knew the pain the Assyrians had caused and would cause and he loved the nation of Israel far more than the Lord. This doesn’t mean that Jonah wasn’t a true believer or didn’t love the Lord but like many of us, his priorities were in the wrong place. Again we see the need to search our own hearts. Is the main thing the main thing for you? What love is your greatest love? One commentator said that one of the purposes of the cliffhanger of Jonah is that it forces the audience to ask the very same questions of priority and righteousness that Jonah is asked. Is it right for us to be angry? Is it right for us to respond towards God’s grace and mercy in such a way? Really, what are we going to do with what God has done for us? Will we be like Jonah or will we respond differently? How would we answer the Lord’s question of verses 4, 9, and 11? What we see in this chapter is that man’s priorities are often wrong and we so greatly neglect loving our neighbor. Even the things that we do, we should ask ourselves if we are doing them out of a love for God and a love for our neighbor.

God’s Love

The next thing we will look at is God’s love. One thing that amazes me in this chapter is that despite all the character questioning that Jonah does, despite his tantrum and anger, God never responds to Him in anger but He comes to him like a loving parent embracing the misunderstanding of an upset child. The Lord never gives to Jonah what Jonah might deserve. Jonah leaves the city and he hopes that maybe the Lord is just waiting for him to leave before he pours out judgement on Nineveh. He might be thinking about Lot in the book of Genesis of how the Lord waited for Lot to leave Sodom and Gomorrah before the cities were destroyed but that doesn’t happen. As Jonah is sitting in the heat of the desert, he becomes uncomfortable but God in His mercy appoints a plant to give Jonah some shade and comfort. God never stops loving Jonah. At the end of verse 6 we read, “So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.” That’s important to note because he is thankful for the plant but does not seem to be thankful to the One that provided it. Overnight, God appoints a worm that eats the plant and the next day, Jonah becomes so faint and so hot that he once again asks that he would die. God asks Jonah really the same question that was asked in verse 4 only this time it involves the plant. He says, “Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant.” Jonah responds, “Absolutely! I have every right to be angry, I’m so angry that I could die!” Then God brings in the end of the argument and says, “you love and pity the plant that you didn’t have anything to do with. You loved something that was here today and gone tomorrow. But I love and have compassion towards the people that are still made in my image.” God wants Jonah and all of us to realize that He willingly moves in love and compassion towards us. He is not obligated to show love to anyone but He willingly does! Tim Keller wrote, “How could God be attached to us? How could God say, ‘What happens to Nineveh affects me. It moves me. It grieves me’? It means he voluntarily attaches his heart.” God is saying if that is how I feel towards them, how do you think you should feel towards them? God’s love is direct. God loves us so much that He is willing to come down to our level and we see this in Christ. He is sympathetic to our spiritual blindness. One of my favorite moments in the Gospel of John is when Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus and He weeps. I always thought that this was strange because surely Jesus knew exactly what He was about to do. In just a few moments, Lazarus would come out of the tomb alive so why would Jesus weep? It was because He is perfect and it is because He loves us and He is so interconnected to us in our pain and suffering that He is willing to meet us in our pain and suffering. In fact, He becomes one with us because of suffering! He saw the impact that death had on His people and it moved Him. We do not serve a God that is indifferent towards us. God loves us simply because He is God. Not because there is anything worthy of love inside of us but because He is abounding in steadfast love. Paul says in Ephesians 1:4-5 “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” God chose us not because of something amazing and astounding inside of us but simply because He loved us! Ian Hamilton wrote, “God’s love is the fountainhead of the Gospel. God’s Son did not come into the world to persuade the Father to love us or to win His love for us; He came as a gift of the Father’s love to us. Sinners are saved because God is pleased to save them.” The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen could ever tell. When the love of God has truly comes to you and you experiencing the great love that is saving faith, it comes to you as you are but it doesn’t leave you as you are. So, what do we do then to the love that God has shown us? How are we to respond to His grace? Are we to be like Jonah or do we respond differently?

How Do We Respond to Grace?

I know that for many of us, we read the story of Jonah and wonder how Jonah could get it so wrong in the end. We think, “Jonah, God showed you such amazing grace, how could you fail to show it to others?” But really, aren’t we all guilty of the same crimes as Jonah? Aren’t there people in our lives that we look at and think, “He doesn’t deserve mercy. He doesn’t deserve love. He doesn’t deserve grace.”? We look at someone like Vladimir Putin and is our first thought not, “He doesn’t deserve grace. He deserves to die.”? But who are you that you deserve such grace? What have you done to earn God’s love and favor? Have you not sinned? Have you not ran from God? Is your sin less responsible for the death of Christ than anyone else? Our prayer should not be that someone like Vladimir Putin or Kim-Jung-Un would be assassinated, our prayer should be that these men that God has allowed to be in leadership would come to a saving faith in Christ. These men don’t need a bullet, they need a Bible and someone to teach it to them. You are no more deserving of God’s grace than anyone else. You have not earned grace and if you did earn it, it isn’t grace. You might be thinking now, “That’s not fair! Surely I’m better than this or that person.” But do you do well to be angry? Do you have the right to demand answers from God? Or should you be thankful that God would be merciful to you a sinner? I know that I deserve nothing but condemnation but for whatever reason, God chose to love me and He chose to save me. Not because of anything good in me, but because He is God. Has the love of God so stirred your soul that you feel compelled to show that love to others. We should look at every single person on this planet as someone who could be the recipient of God’s love. We should look at every single person on this planet as someone who is spiritually blind that needs to see. Lost people act lost because they are lost. J.I. Packer wrote, “Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.” When the love of God awakens inside of you, our great desire should be to return love to Him and show that love to others. So, now like Jonah we are confronted with ourselves. We have seen God’s love, we have experienced God’s love and now we must ask, “What will I do with it? What will I do about the state of the world?”

The Purpose of the Cliffhanger

In closing, I want to look at the purpose of the cliffhanger of this little book. The purpose of this cliffhanger I believe is that we would stop and meditate what we would do in this situation. That we would stop and meditate on the grace and mercy that God has shown to us and ask if we are living the life that He has saved us for. It forces us to address our priorities. It forces us to think of who our neighbor is. I think that it also forces us to admit that we are often just like Jonah. Maybe good intentioned but highly distracted. We are fearful and human. We are all in need of God’s saving grace and we all need to wake up. Have you woken up? Have you fled from God and are you still running? Let tonight, let this week, serve as the storm that tosses you into the sea so that you may awaken to God’s goodness. May the Lord Jesus Christ consume you from the inside out so that you may experience true forgiveness, true mercy, true salvation. So, Jonah ends with a question. It ends with a call to reflection. But what happened to Jonah? Did he ever get it? Did he ever come to really understand and grasp what God was doing? I think he did and the reason that I think that he did is because we have the book of Jonah to begin with. Who wrote this book? One would think that it had to have been Jonah. Why? Because who else would know what had happened? Who else would have known what Jonah prayed in Jonah 2? Who else would have known the events of Jonah 4 but Jonah? Charles Spurgeon said, “We are all foolish at times, and it should be remembered that although Jonah was foolish and wrong in certain respects, there is this redeeming trait in his character- we might never have known the story of his folly if he had not written it himself. It shows what a truehearted man the prophet was, that he unveiled his real character in this book. Here is a man, inspired of God to write his own biography, and he tells us of this sad piece of folly- and does not attempt in the least degree to mitigate the evil of it.” The only person that would be fine with showing the world what a fool he was is a person that has found security solely in God. Jonah must have told this story to others and he would come to be content with recognizing that he wasn’t the star. He made mistakes but he served a God that has never made one. Jonah realized that he was flawed and sinful but he finally realized that he was more loved and accepted by God than he could have ever hoped. That’s the story of Jonah. But what’s your story? We can all relate in someway to this story so where do you come in? I hope that this week has been beneficial to you and I trust that the Lord has used it in some way to draw you closer to Him and I would love to hear how He has done that. Let’s worship, let’s reflect on what God has done this week, what He has done throughout our entire lives, and let’s look ahead eagerly to what He is going to do in the future. Let’s pray.