7. A God Without Grudges

What a strange story to have in the Bible, right? Jonah is a story that shows us that the Bible cannot be just a book about how to live. Unless Jonah is simply here to show us how not to live. Because so far he seems to do everything wrong.

Tempted to feel sorry for Jonah by this point.

Today, however, we see that he finally does something right. When God calls him this time around to go to Nineveh, instead of running, Jonah gets up and goes. This is a real turning point in the book – and even though he now obeys, we’re tempted to feel sorry for Jonah. Some of us may be wondering: “who does God think that he is?” Poor Jonah. So he didn’t want to go preach to his mortal enemies… some of the most brutal and wicked people in human history? Give him a break, God. Apparently God gets what he wants. He will make your life a living hell until you give in and do what he wants.

If you’re thinking that way about the story, let me just point something out. This whole story is actually about Jonah - it’s about God’s relentless pursuit of Him and his desire be near to Jonah. God desperately wants to allow Jonah to experience more of who He is. He wants Jonah to understand better who He is and what He’s about. God is after Jonah’s heart. Project Nineveh is clearly not God’s primary objective - or he would have given up on Jonah and figured out another way or called someone else to go. Nineveh was simply the way God was going to teach Jonah what He wanted Him to learn.

And we should feel very comforted that Jonah is in the Bible because it’s a story of God’s patience and persistence with Jonah. If God is willing to put this amount of love and care into Jonah, then maybe he would show the same kind of love and care to me. How does God respond to our failures?

We should feel very comforted that Jonah is in the Bible because it’s a story of God’s patience and persistence with Jonah. If God is willing to put this amount of love and care into Jonah, then maybe he would show the same kind of love and care to me.

Today’s episode begins with Jonah right back where he started. The language and structure of these verses is almost identical to the first couple verses in the story back in chapter 1. Jonah is literally back at the beginning of the story - with God calling him once again to “Arise and go to Nineveh.” We’re going to get into the story of Nineveh next time… today I want to spend some time reflecting upon what the story thus far teaches us about God’s character - specifically how God deals with our failures. We’ll look at just 2 things this morning: 1) How the world deals with failure; and 2) How God deals with failure.

1. How the world deals with failure

So Jonah is now back on dry land. The horrifying ordeal of the storm and the fish is over. Now what would Jonah be saying at this point? What is he feeling, and thinking, and planning, now that he’s back in the land of the living? He tried to run from his Lord and Master - a course of action so wrong that God stopped him by sending the most intense storm the prophet had ever experienced. I think Jonah would be feeling like a complete failure - that he’s now worthy of being treated like a second-class member of God’s people.

I imagine Jonah sitting on this beach much like the disciples in John chapter 20, after the crucifixion of Jesus… after they had all run from him and betrayed him and then watched him beaten and killed. An event that would have been extremely traumatic after all they had witnessed and learned from Jesus. What were they to do now? How would they pick up the pieces of their lives and move on? How could their Lord ever forgive them.

Now what would Jonah be saying at this point? What is he feeling, and thinking, and planning, now that he’s back in the land of the living?

Jonah may have been feeling the same way. Little did he know… little did those disciples know, that their failure was all part of God’s plan to equip and grow them. It’s likely that when Jonah’s feet touched dry land once again, that he was prepared to head back to Israel, tail between his legs, expecting to hang up his role as God’s prophet. He had failed… and failed in such a way that ought to disqualify him from ministry as God’s prophet. This was the OT prophetic equivalent of a pastor committing adultery.

Jonah expected God to respond to his failure the way that people do. When people fail, it causes disappointment and frustration… which leads to grudges and resentments. The truth is that so many of our relationships—at work, in our family, with our friends and neighbors—eventually sour and spoil because of the grudges we hold. “You owe me” we think… OR “you’ve let me down” OR “you’ve hurt me” — “so now I’m done with you!”

Most of the time, we can’t help many of the grudges we feel. It’s part of our broken humanity. When other people fail us or let us down, we can’t help trust them less. We can’t help but ask less of them. We can’t help but see them in light of their failures. We can’t forget how they’ve failed… we might be able to forgive, but we can’t forget and that colors how we interact with them from that point on. In biblical language, we can’t help but count their sins against them.

It’s even possible for us to hold grudges against ourselves - this is called regret. Regret occurs when we experience the consequences of something we did in the past. I’m sure Jonah has some regret. I’m sure that if you asked him right now if he could go back to before he ran from God if he would do things differently, that he would. So much money wasted - on the fare for the boat… on the sailors cargo that had to be thrown overboard. Not to mention the physical and emotional energy of the sailors he had wasted. The fear he had caused. The time he had wasted. He had ruined his reputation as a prophet of the Lord. So much loss as a result of his decision to run.

If Jonah knew then what he knows now, I’m sure Jonah would take it back… do things differently. If he would have just obeyed the first time. What about you? What resentments do you have? Do you wish you would have apologized and tried to reconcile that relationship all those years ago? Rather than letting years of bitterness and isolation build up?

Do you wish you would have never taken that 1st drink or that hit or that toke? Do you wish you would have never seen those very first images? Or that you would have resisted the temptation to look a second or a third or a fourth time? How much time and money have been wasted on our addictions? How many relationships lost? How much hurt have we caused?

How much time and money have you wasted on that addiction

Your future self will always tell your present self to obey the first time around. Because our failures lead to grudges which leads to broken relationships and hurt. It leads to isolation and alienation. It leads to all kinds of resentments. Failure leads to lost opportunities. It can often disqualify us from doing what we want to do with our lives.

This is what’s happening right now in the NFL. At what point do you disqualify someone from playing a game for a living? I’m sure that Ray Rice would go back to that Atlantic City elevator and do things differently. He’s now out of the l

Imagine, then, what could be more stunning to him—or more humbling—than to be so promptly recommissioned with his earlier assignment? And what could possibly be more gracious of God than to offer to him this second chance? Jonah certainly didn’t deserve it.

But Jonah gets one. It’s as if nothing has changed since God first called him to Nineveh. It’s as if the holy and righteous God is choosing to forget Jonah’s sin of disobedience and has hurled that sin into the depths of the sea as Jonah comes out of it.

(grudges & resentments)

2. How God deals with failure

Through this second commissioning of Jonah, we see two things here about how God deals with failure… two aspects of God’s amazing grace...

1. First of all, God didn’t lower his expectations of Jonah…

He doesn’t lower the bar for him or lighten the load. He doesn’t say, “okay, I realize I gave you a pretty tall order that first time around, and it was a bit out of reach for you, so let me make this second mission a little easier for you.”

God doesn’t budge. He doesn’t negotiate with Jonah. God doesn’t bend to make our lives temporarily better when larger, longer-term issues are at stake. If you want to live for things that bring only temporary comfort and happiness, there’s plenty to choose from—plenty of ships sailing for Tarshish. Only God can take you beyond that—if you want to go beyond what you could ever become on your own.

God’s grace isn’t seen in lessening his demands or commands; he always has and always will demand perfect obedience. His grace is experienced when we come to realize that his perfect demands for each of us has already been met by Jesus Christ. He lived the perfectly obedient life we couldn’t and died the death that we should have died.

Some have accused the God of the OT as being different than the God of the NT. Maybe you’ve thought this before or think this way… that the God of the OT is a God of Law and Justice, and the God of the NT is a God of love and mercy. The Bible, however, says that God cannot change. It is the same God between the OT and the NT, but the difference is that Jesus Christ - God incarnate - came and perfectly obeyed the Laws of the OT.

In the NT, God doesn’t lower the standards of His Law so that we can fulfill it. Instead he comes and fulfills the Law so that sinners can be free from it. Christianity is the only faith system - the only religion in the world - where God both makes the demands and meets them.

God doesn’t lower the standards of His Law so that we can fulfill it.

You see, for Jonah, it was only through Nineveh that God could teach this judgment obsessed prophet about the greatness of his mercy. He loves Jonah too much to let him escape or avoid this lesson. What is it for you?

2. But secondly - God does not hold grudges!

Sometimes we can learn a lot from what the Bible doesn’t say. Even though the story doesn’t tell us that Jonah ever confessed his wrongdoings or tells God that he’s sorry, God extends to Jonah once again his call and mission. He doesn’t disqualify him from ministry or his role as a prophet. He continues to speak to Jonah! But when he speaks, he doesn’t remind Jonah of his past failings! His words carry no rebuke. Nor is there any sense here that God is thinking: “I know I’m going to regret this. I don’t think I can trust this guy.”

With Jonah, God shows us that he doesn’t deal with us the way other people do. We can’t help but hold grudges. We can’t help but count other people’s sins against them.

Jonah’s story is a picture of the gospel—the good news that God doesn’t count our sins against us. That’s why the Apostle Paul could write in that “God… through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Did you catch that? How is God reconciling the world to himself? By not counting our sins against us. Notice it doesn’t say that he doesn’t simply not count our sins… he doesn’t count them against us. So who does he count them against?

Paul goes on…

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:18–19 ESV

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Instead - he counts it against Christ Jesus:

Do you see it? Here we see the stark difference between the way the world operates from the way God operates through Jesus Christ. The world has no posture of grace when we fail. Everyone and everything in this world that you might give yourself to or entrust your heart to will eventually hold grudges against you, at some level, in some way. Your sins will be counted against you. And we can’t help it. It’s simply the way the world works which is why the Bible instructs us to keep short accounts with one another.

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

But the gospel gives us something remarkably different. Through the gospel God counts your sins - past, present, and future - against Jesus Christ, not against you. He offers us his acceptance and love and relationship based not on what we do or don’t do… not on what we might be able to do for him in the future, but on what Christ has already done. It’s an acceptance that can neither be gained by our achievements nor forfeited by our failures. Nothing in this world can promise you such total acceptance and favor—nothing!

That’s what God was trying to teach Jonah. We’ll see in the next few weeks that it would take a bit more for Jonah to learn it. What about you? Do you believe it?

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