The God of Mercy

On February 21st 1952, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming arrived in Ecuador. Later Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, and Nate Saint would also join them. With the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel to remotes groups in the forests. One group they became focused on, the Huaorani people who lived along the Curaray River, along the Amazon. The area itself is dangerous. Large pythons, deadly insects, piranhas and caimans in the water. But this doesn’t even discuss the Huaorani people themselves. They were violent towards their tribal natives. And one day all 5 of these missionaries are killed by this group of people.

Now, if you were one of the wives of these 5 men, your opinion of these people would be something like. “They rejected their message, they deserve to die”. “I’m going back to the US where it is safe”. “I’m so happy that I am saved and they aren’t.” “These people are savages, they could never understand the truth”. But what we know is that Elizabeth Elliott went back to this same group and many from the tribe came to believe in Jesus.

This story reminds us about an uncomfortable truth in our hearts. But more than anything it shows us how God...

God shows His superabundant mercy to all who call on Him.

The book of Jonah shows us how God’s mercy is given to us even when we reject Him and is given to us by revelation.

So what we we mean by mercy? Mercy is often given the definition of un-deserved favor. That there is a punishment, a penalty that you owe that you are not being called to pay for.

-In our story this certainly is revealed in God’s salvation towards those who don’t deserve God’s salvation from condemnation, that deserve His righteous wrath.

-But God’s mercy is also much simpler than that many times. we see the Bible talk about every breath being a gift from God, that when we see the sun rise and it is a reminder that we have be renewed for another day, it is the call Jesus makes in the Lord’s prayer “Give us this day our daily bread” it is a call for God’s mercy toward us.

-I have used the term superabundant. I am using this to describe a mercy that isn’t just a solution to a problem, it isn’t just people not receiving the punishment they deserve, but giving them the opposite of what they deserve. So much so that it seems reckless. We have sun the song “Reckless love” before, that it seems like a waste of resources.

-Or if we think of our story of Elizabeth Elliot. She did not just forgive those who killed her husband, she went and proclaimed the Gospel to them.

-Our problem with this thought is we like things to be perfectly equal, a 1 to 1 ratioo. You get what you give, you care for those who care for you, those who treat you poorly will be treated poorly.

-As much as many of us would not like to admit it, we think like Jonah in our lives. We are okay with God showing some mercy to others but THAT MUCH mercy…God doesn’t know what He is doing!

-But we will see the issue really lies within Jonah’s own heart and not with God’s mercy.

God desires mercy

What we know of Jonah is that he was a prophet. That he was from Gath-hepher and he prophesied during the time of King Jeroboam II. He prophesied that God would expand the borders of Israel and have victory over their enemies. This is the only prophecy we know of Jonah. But now we come to our story today.

The whole book starts by saying “The Word of the Lord came to Jonah”.

-This phrase, “ The Word of the Lord” will show up 7 times in the book.

-Already we see God’s mercy towards Jonah. That He has God’s divine revelation given to Him in a special way.

God tells Him “get up!” a phrase that will be used again.

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh. God calls Nineveh a “great” city. What Chapter 3 will tell us is that this was a “great city to God”.

The cities we may consider “evil” at the epicenter of individualism and greed, a city that we might consider the epitome of the problems of our world...God loves.

Why does God desire to show mercy to Nineveh?

1. Because we are those made in God’s image who He loves. He desires to have a relationship with His people and He will go to great lengths to seek us out.

2. We know, in fact, that God had prepared Nineveh for this time where Jonah would come to them.

-Just like we will see a worm destroy a plant, there is a worm working throughout the world named Satan. This worm dives into our hearts, blinds us to our sin, leads us away from God's law.

-Assyria at this time was at a weak point. It was in sort of a “Golden Age” with many great powers in the world. They had experienced two great famines, there was chaos among the rulers of the nation with revolts constantly happening and internal strife, they were at war with their neighbors. And they had just experienced a solar eclipse, which would have been considered a sign of catastrophic events. So they have been primed for Jonah’s message.

-Often we don’t know what is happening with the person in front of us God has called us to proclaim the Gospel to. We don’t know how God is forming their hearts. We may look at a persons experience and have all sorts of reasons for believing they don’t want to hear the message of the Gospel. We can make assumptions about their worldview, about their response if we were to tell them the Gospel, we can see the things they post on social media. We can see people who are “confidently” enjoying their sin, but fail to recognize often that confidence is just people longing for the Gospel.

But we see that Jonah has an issue with God’s mercy

But specifically, Jonah thinks that God is too frivolous with His mercy.

Although the text doesn’t tell us specifically, there are many reasons Jonah may have not wanted to go to Nineveh.

-First, we know that Nineveh was known for their wicked deeds against their enemies. Skinning people alive, putting heads on poles as fear tactics.

-Jonah also knew that the renewed strength of Nineveh would lead to Israel’s downfall. Especially significant because he had prophesied already that Israel’s borders would expand! It would be a mixture of embarrassment, frustration, anger.

-All this on top of knowing that his own people had not been following God, that Israel was very affluent at the time and had not been repenting of their own sin. So what does that say if Nineveh is willing to repent while Israel is not?

So how does Jonah respond? He rejects God

We reject God’s mercy

He leaves God’s promised land, Israel, which is a significant thing in itself for an Israelite.

And seems to not just buy a ticket on a boat, but most likely the whole boat. Which means he sold his home and his possessions in order to go 2000 miles west of where he was supposed to go, someone in Spain most likely.

-When I went to college I was 1200 miles away from home, and my mom could barely stand it even when it a 3 hour flight. But at that time we are talking about months.

-Now, Jonah knows that he can’t physically get away from God, after He would have known Psalm 139:7–9 “Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits,”

But his actions are a statement of rebellion against God’s sovereign plan. Choosing his own way when he knows what God’s way is but in physical terms.

As we read this we surely have some questions in our mind? Did Jonah ever pause, because he gave the money for his trip did he consider “maybe I shouldn’t be doing this” Or was he just so hot that didn’t let his anger cool for even a moment?

-Whatever the case of his inward thinking, surely all of us have found ourselves in a battle with God for one reason or another.

-His anger is that of the favored sibling who is being told “No” for the first time

So Jonah flees and he takes a boat, and during their travels they find themselves in the middle of a great storm.

-The language in this storm is very clear where this storm comes from.

Jonah doesn’t call to God even as the language of God TO Jonah is repeated.

-The captain tells him “Get up! Call to your God”

-Jonah is being given all these signs of his disobedience, of what choice he should really be making but instead he chooses to ignore them.

Jonah tells the men to throw him overboard

And we see Jonah’s downward trajectory continue. God told Jonah to “get up”. Yet v. 3 says Jonah “went down” to Joppa, and “went down into” the boat with them to Tarshish, and v. 5 says he “had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel” and into a “deep sleep” and now Jonah goes “down” to the “depths of the sea” in 2:3 (again, the fish listens to God). This downward trend goes all the way to Jonah 2:6 that tells us he “sank to the foundations of the mountains” where he believed God had shut the gates of hell of him.

Much of his prayer sounds like the Psalms, this is so because Jonah knows the Psalms, he has memorized most if not all of the Psalms. It is in his heart.

The poem has 4 parts.

-V. 2 is the introduction, identifying Jonah’s fear of complete separation from God (even as he has chosen his path away from God’s presence)

-V 3-6 we see his crisis. That God has rejected him, that he has been “banished”, “engulfed” and “surrounded”, there is no escape from the situation he has put himself in. Jonah see’s no way out

-But then at the end of v. 6 we see, at Jonah’s lowest point where his “life was fading away” at the very bottom, that God rescues him and “raises his life”. Jonah “remembered” God” and prayed to God. He points to the idols that can’t save, who “abandon faithful love”. Jonah still see’s God as the only true God

Sometimes it is those who seem closest to God who reject God

So if you feel like you have been missing the point, like you know the truth but you are just on this downward spiral, rejecting what you KNOW God has called you to do. Know that there is no depths that God can’t bring you back from just as God raised Christ from the dead.

-I had an old camp director who used to say “something you have to hit rock bottom to recognize that God is the rock AT the bottom”

But it isn’t just Jonah that rejects God. The sailors and the people of Nineveh have also rejected God. Romans 1:19-20 tells us, that “God is evident among them” through “his invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world…as a result, people are without excuse”.

See the issue that Jonah was having is the same issue Jesus will bring up with the Pharisees. Even though they knew the truth, even though they knew the Scriptures and the prophesies, they had rejected God and they needed a sign in order to believe.

-Do you remember the words Jesus says on the cross? “Forgive them father for they know not what they do?” It is Jesus saying, “even though they have rejected me, let your mercy still be shown on them through my sacrifice.”

-Jonah is swallowed because of his rejection of God. Jesus is in the tomb for 3 days because of God’s people rejecting Him.

-And we see that Jonah is offered “new life”, v. 2 starts with the same statement that God makes at the beginning of chapter 1. He has been offered a second chapter after his “resurrection”

-One main issue people have with the book of Jonah is that Jonah is swallowed by a fish and if such a miracle could happen. First of all, what is striking in the book is that the fish is only referenced in 3 verses in the whole book as if barely worth mentioning.

-Second of all, Jesus shows us that the same reason that one would not believe this happened to Jonah would be the same reason they would not believe in His resurrection. A rejection of God’s miraculous work of salvation.

The ironic part is that, just like Jonah...

God reveals Himself to us by His mercy

V. 9 ends with Jonah’s praise, his thanksgiving for God’s salvation.

Like the prodigal son Jonah returns to the Lord. Salvation is offered to him. Even after Jonah had gone as far away from God as possible, even as He rejected the command God had given to him, God still offers mercy towards Jonah.

-Now many question whether Jonah’s “repentance” is true repentance. We don’t know this answer, as we also see later we don’t know the answer as the book ends.

-But we do get to a critical question, that salvation belongs to the Lord and that His mercy is offered to us even when we have clearly rejected him.

We will see when Jesus brings up the story of Jonah that the Pharisees rejection of Jesus is clearly evident but what Jesus says is that mercy will still be given through this sign, that after three days He will rise again and offer new life to those who have rejected them.

Matthew 12:38–40 “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” He answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation demands a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”

See the issue that Jonah was having is the same issue Jesus will bring up with the Pharisees. Even though they knew the truth, even though they knew the Scriptures and the prophesies, they had rejected God and they needed a sign in order to believe.

This book reveals to us a greater theme then what the original readers would have understood. That God desired to deliver Gentiles, those outside of belief in God, and bring them into His plan of salvation. And God does so through revelation.

We first see this with the sailors.

-Jonah tells them that he “worships” the Lord, which literally means “to fear”. But the ironic statement is his lack of fear.

-While 3 times we see the text reference the sailors fear and that they do “fear the Lord” and offer sacrifices to Him”. There may even be the indication that they throw their idols into the sea as well. Either way, they show a recognition of God’s power and a need to turn from their ways.

-Just like we don’t really know the status of Jonah’s salvation in the book, neither do we the sailors. But the point is that God has offered mercy to them through revelation. That once they have knowledge of the God of salvation and once they have seen His divine works they turn from their ways and give Him their obedience.

But then we see the way that God reveals Himself to the Ninevites.

-It says “the Word of the Lord came to Jonah” this “Word” is God’s revelation to the people.

-John 1 tells us that “the Word IS God” and that Jesus is the Word made flesh.

So the Word is what God tells Jonah to “preach” to the Ninevites.

But the question we must ask is how do we respond when God has revealed His mercy to us?

Those who confess and turn to Him receive God’s mercy

There is a phrase repeated both by the sailors and then later by the Ninevites, that God would “consider them” and “may turn and relent”.

-Their stance towards God is that they are undeserving of God’s mercy, rather than believing that they are “owed” mercy.

-This serves a purpose to Israel and to the church, what our stance SHOULD be towards God’s mercy. That we are not owed anything, we don’t deserve salvation.

But we are given even more details into this confession in the story of Nineveh.

We see this is true through Jonah’s message. If you notice, it is all of 5 words long and there isn’t a call to repentance. Like Jonah is purposefully wanting them to not respond. But there is one little tidbit here, the word for “destroy” can also mean “turn”. So it can either man “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!” or “In forty days Nineveh will turn!” We obviously know what meaning Jonah wanted for this message, but the ambiguity was just enough for the people to respond.

The people of Nineveh take 3 actions.

Believe

An inward belief

This is a statement that what they heard they consider to be true

Proclaim a fast

An outward confession

Dress in sackcloth

An act of humility towards God

This is a rejection of earthly comforts and pleasures and showing God you desire Him instead

In fact this spread so far that the king himself hears the news and repents.

-One that would have considered himself a god humbles himself before THE God.

-They go to any length, even having the animals fast with them

-The king says they are to “turn” from their “Evil ways and wrongdoing.” They remove all their wicked cruelties once God has revealed to them the truth. Once they learn how broken their culture is they go before the Lord and they give everything to Him, they pray before Him.

You know, if you lived 200 years ago and you went to a doctor, they might take what we consider now barbaric actions in order to “heal” or “cure” you. Put leeches on your skin to remove the poison or sickness. They might cut of a limb for a common infection. They might even use something like mercury, which we now know is poisonous, in order to cure a disease.

-How odd would it be, with the information we have now, if we went back to these types of treatments? It would be crazy. If we found a group of people still using these treatments we would go through significant effort to tell them that this doesn’t work and there is a better way to cure it!

-That is how God’s revelation of Himself is to us. Once we learn the truth, why would we ever go back?

Some look at what happens in Nineveh and ask “Did this really happen? Did an entire city repent of their sins?”

First, we know they did because Jesus tells us this in Matthew 12:41 “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s preaching; and look—something greater than Jonah is here.”

Second, consider for a second if our church, our community responded to God in the same way that Nineveh does.

We confessed in the streets our belief in Jesus, we fasted as a church, we humbled ourselves before God and cried out to Him and we confessed our sins before one another and turned from our sins.

If we have an issue with our nation and the way that people are living their lives our first response should be as a church “let us go before the Lord and confess our sins to God”

This should also bring us to ask the question, what if we revealed God’s mercy to others in our own lives?

We are called to show God’s mercy to others

Are we going to be those bring others to experience God’s mercy or to hoard God’s mercy for ourselves?

As we move to chapter 4 we see that Jonah is “displeased”, or could even be translated “it was evil” to him that Nineveh was saved. As God “relents” from His anger, Jonah becomes angry.

Jonah goes on a ran in v. 2-3 where he refers back to himself 9 times. It is all about him.

Jonah’s frustration even comes from a common refrain in Scripture, that God is “gracious and compassionate…slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster” but for Jonah this is a reason to make him want to die (an ironic statement considering God had saved Jonah and Jonah rejoiced)

-Jonah see’s God’s mercy as a character flaw. He is TOO compassionate, TOO patient, TOO faithful.

-Jonah had tied God’s character too closely to the political success of Israel and this had shaped in him a bad theology. He has mis-applied priorities, seeking the wrong kind of treasure.

So God asks Jonah a question “is it right for you to be angry?”

-As Jonah contemplates this question he settles in the east awaiting Nineveh’s destruction. So God gives Jonah a plant, and for the first time Jonah is full of excitement. Probably because he thought this plant was a sign that God was going to actually destroy Nineveh. Little did he know it was a lesson for him.

-The next day the plant is destroyed by a worm. Out of all the talk of destruction throughout the book this is the first time something is actually destroyed. It becomes even more scorching and Jonah “wants to die”

God asks Jonah if he is “Right to be angry about the plant?” Jonah responds “yes!”

-As Jonah stubbornly waits for Nineveh's destruction God shows the absurdity of Jonah's own stance towards this situation. Not just absurd but totality hypocritical towards God's own mercy towards him.

-Jonah isn't thinking rationally, essentially saying "If this is the type of God you are than I don't want to live at all"

-Jonah shows how we can find ourselves in utter contrast to God because of our hard hearts.

But God masterfully tears apart Jonah’s heart issue.

-God shows how Jonah desires mercy towards a plant that is not even one made in God's image while having hatred towards Nineveh. But even if he doesn't care for the people, does he not care for the cattle? That are worth more than this plant?

When we are faced with questioning God's character maybe we should consider the inconsistency in our own thought.

-But "Jonah neither wished to live under the governance of free grace, nor was he prepared to live under a government without grace"

-Jonah continues in his arrogance rather than confess his sins and repent as Nineveh had done.

-He robbed himself of the privilege and joy of being used by God to see the salvation of these sinful people.

-We can also miss God's work in our world because of our own self-centeredness. Being angry at God saving those we consider wicked rather than rejoicing and being a part of God's work of salvation.

We should ask ourselves “why do I deserve God’s mercy but others don’t?”

We can become so numb to the truth that we believe that we deserve something better than the unbelieving world.

Rather than wondering “what happened with Jonah?” We should ask ourselves “what will happen with me? What choice will I make?”

We can ask this in light of the day of ascension.

Notice what God says in Jonah 4:11. They are a confused people, an entire city. Rather than looking on them with contempt Jonah should look on them with compassion. We as the church would bring more people to the Gospel if we looked at other people not as hindrances to the Gospel but as those who NEED the Gospel. To look at a world that is confused about identity and purpose and not scoff at their ignorance but with mercy. That like God we say "should we not have pity on the millions who don't know their right hand from their left?" What God means by this is that they are confused by even the basics of the truth. That even the simple truths of God's law do not make sense to them.

-God had set up Nineveh to hear and respond to the Gospel. God works, He prepares His plan for each neighborhood, city, county, state, country. He doesn't ignore any of them.

We as believers, who have experienced the mercy of God, should be encouraged to be God’s messengers of the Gospel, because for us not to be willing is to forget just how great His mercy has been.

We have to ask ourselves, as read in one place. “Are we going to choose gourds or souls?” Or maybe “a new car or people” “giving myself a little more or giving to another in need?” Are we, rather than looking at others saying “they are incompetent, they have made their own bed of sin or of poverty, they are wicked and couldn’t possibly be saved” instead say “what mercy has God given to me, shouldn’t I show the same to others?