THE RIGHT CONCERN
Jonah 4
S: God’s compassion
Th: My Life as God’s Light
Pr: GOD IS PASSIONATE FOR ALL PEOPLE
?: How? How is it revealed?
KW: Stages
TS: We will find in Jonah 4, four stages which reveal God’s passion for all people.
The _____ stage which reveals God’s passion for all people is…
I. COMPASSION (1-4)
II. CLASS (5-8)
III. CONNECTION (9-10)
IV. CONCERN (11)
RMBC 8/05/01 AM
INTRODUCTION:
1. Have you ever really not been “on the same page” as someone?
ILL #226 (washing machine)
A new resident was walking down a street and noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. When the newcomer volunteered to help, the homeowner was overjoyed, and the two men together began to work and struggle with the bulky appli-ance. After several minutes of fruitless effort the two stopped and just stared at each other in frustration. They looked as if they were on the verge of total exhaustion. Finally, when they had caught their breath, the first man said to the homeowner: "We’ll never get this washing machine in there!" To which the homeowner replied: "In? I’m trying to move it out of here!"
Well, that was a definite communication breakdown.
The truth is…
2. We only get things done when we are in agreement.
We have to be on the same page.
We need to be either going in or going out.
I have also found in my experience that it is good to be “on the same page” with God.
TRANSITION:
But…
1. Have you ever been upset with God’s leading?
ILL Personal (Kearny)
Before we ended up in our former church in Souderton, Pennsylvania, we actively pursued a church in northern New Jersey.
Actually, it was the other way around.
For months, a little church in Kearny, NJ that overlooks both Newark and Jersey City asked us to candidate.
While flattered that they would consider us, I was literally scared about the situation.
This was clearly an inner city ministry and that was a culture I did not have much in common with experience-wise.
Yet, we felt that God was nudging us toward there, and reluctantly, we agreed to candi-date.
Constantly, during the whole situation, my prayer was that if this was the place the Lord wanted us to be that He would give us the desire to live and minister there.
And to our surprise, that very thing happened.
We found ourselves, even in the midst of apprehension, with a desire to go.
We grew to love the people there and began to look forward to going there.
The candidating weekend took place, and it went well.
We had a great time.
But the next Sunday, the church body voted "no" to our coming.
I couldn’t believe it.
And for a week, I was on the edge of hurt and anger with God.
I couldn’t understand why He would lead us so, even give us the desire to be there, and then say "no."
It didn’t make sense.
It didn’t even seem consistent.
Why would God do this to us?
In our continuing study of Jonah, we must recognize the context of our study.
For…
2. Context: Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh.
In fact, it would have been just perfect for Jonah if the Ninevites that he tried to run away from were all struck dead by God.
It would just be perfect if God would wreak vengeance on those tormenters of Israel, for they have treated Jonah’s people cruelly.
The Ninevites had slaughtered the Israelites.
He wanted payback.
And that is what he preached “Forty more days and Nineveh is toast!”
Notice his message was negative and with no good news.
He knows God is angry with them, and he wants them to receive their just desserts.
That Jonah is angry, goes without saying...but the Ninevites responded to God, they believed God and repented with all seriousness with prayer, fasting, sackcloth and dust.
When God saw what they did, that they had turned from their evil ways, God had compassion and did not destroy them.
Mercy triumphed over judgment!
The awesome grace of God was beautifully displayed.
So God was no longer angry with Nineveh; but someone else in the story remained angry—Jonah.
Here he is…the one who knows personally the grace of God.
He had just been rescued from his own grave (the belly of a great fish) and even proclaimed "salvation comes from the Lord," yet he couldn’t really stomach what he confessed.
But before we go any further, let’s get a good understanding of the situation here.
3. The story about Jonah is not about Jonah.
We might think this is a story about Jonah and the whale…
…or about Jonah’s rebellion;
…or about Nineveh’s repentance.
The story about Jonah is not about any of those things.
The story of Jonah is about the very heart of God.
And here is what we learn…
4. GOD IS PASSIONATE FOR ALL PEOPLE.
God possesses a passion for all that do not know Him.
God has a passion for all the people of the world, even those that are wicked and reject Him.
This is what we find in this narrative.
So…
5. We will find in the narrative of Jonah 4 four stages which reveal God’s passion for all people.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first stage which reveals God’s passion for all people is COMPASSION (1-4)
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”
You know…
1. Anger can be so unreasonable.
It has been said: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
Anger always fails us.
And this is certainly true for Jonah.
He has gone AWOL again—not absent without leave—but angry without love.
Jonah’s reaction to the repentance of Nineveh is different than what we might have expected.
We would expect Jonah to be leaping with joy, full of thanksgiving.
Instead, we find he has the worst blue funk conceivable.
He, clearly, is not interested in Nineveh’s repentance.
As far as he is concerned, there are some things that cannot be forgiven.
A people that mutilate bodies, burn children, and offers heads as trophies deserve God’s fiercest judgment.
So…
2. Jonah complains about God’s perfect character (cf. Exodus 34:6-7).
Jonah’s rationale border on the ludicrous.
His rationale simply goes like this, “I knew it! This is why I ran away. I was afraid they would repent and you would have mercy. They don’t deserve it!”
Jonah knows it because of God’s self-description in Exodus with Moses:
“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
So Jonah tries to justify Himself.
He realizes that God is not going to make them toast as he has proclaimed, and as far as he is concerned, the Ninevites deserve to be toast.
His ironic argument is that he, Jonah, is the consistent one.
The problem is that…
3. Jonah wants to lock God into his own theological box.
He wants to control God into his belief system, but this is a technique that has never worked.
ILL Ingersoll
When Robert G. Ingersoll was delivering his lectures against Christ and the Bible, his oratorical ability usually assured him of a large crowd. One night after an inflammatory speech in which he severely attacked man’s faith in God, he dramatically took out his watch and said, "I’ll give God a chance to prove that He exists and is almighty. I challenge Him to strike me dead within 5 minutes!" First there was silence, then people became uneasy. Some left the hall, unable to take the nervous strain of the occasion, and one woman fainted. At the end of the allotted time, the atheist exclaimed derisively, "See! There is no God. I am still very much alive!" After the lecture a young fellow said to a Christian lady, "Well, Ingersoll certainly proved something tonight!" Her reply was memorable. "Yes he did," she said. "He proved God isn’t taking orders from atheists tonight."
How true!
God is not taking orders from anyone, even Jonah.
And this frustrates Jonah to the point that he asks for death.
If God is not going to do what he feels that the Ninevites deserve, he might as well die.
Though Jonah deserves it, there is no thundering rebuke.
There is just a gentle, thoughtful question, “Have you any right to be angry?”
This brings us to…
II. The second stage which reveals God’s passion for all people is the CLASS (5-8)
Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
While…
1. Nineveh prays for deliverance; Jonah hopes for destruction.
Jonah goes outside the city, builds a private retreat and becomes a spectator.
Now, this is not what He was called to do, but I believe his thinking went like this: “Once a Ninevite, always a Ninevite…God you’re being too hasty in this blanket forgiveness. Just give them a little time and they’ll hang themselves. You’ll see…”
Jonah knows these people.
Their true selves will eventually show through and God will see he was right all along.
Instead…
2. God goes to incredible lengths to communicate to Jonah.
God provides an additional shelter to Jonah’s.
It is a kind of vine with broad leaves and it is a comfort for Jonah.
For the first time in this narrative, Jonah is happy.
He is absolutely delighted.
He is perfectly happy to be the beneficiary of God’s concern.
It is a wonderful relief!
But just as soon as God provides the vine, he also provides a worm that destroys the plant.
Then the sirocco of the desert comes, a blasting wind out of the east with 110 degree temperatures.
Jonah is scorched and dehydrated.
And once again Jonah is angry…and ready to die.
Which brings us to…
III. The third stage which reveals God’s passion for all people is the CONNECTION (9-10)
But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?” “I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.” But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.”
1. If anybody has a right to be angry, it is God!
This is where Jonah is confused.
He has no right to be angry.
But if anyone has a right, it is God…
ILL Notebook: Patience (Abraham)
According to a tradi-tional Hebrew sto-ry, Abraham was sitting outside his tent one evening when he saw an old man, weary from age and journey, coming to-ward him. Abraham rushed out, greeted him, and then invited him into his tent. There he washed the old man’s feet and gave him food and drink. The old man immediately began eating without saying any prayer or blessing, so Abraham asked him, "Don’t you worship God?"
The old traveler replied, "I worship fire only and reverence no other god."
When he heard this, Abraham became incensed, grabbed the old man by the shoulders, and threw him out of his tent into the cold night air.
When the old man had departed, God called to his friend Abraham and asked where the stranger was. Abraham replied, "I forced him out because he did not worship you."
God answered, "I have suffered him these eighty years although he dishon-ors me. Could you not en-dure him one night?"
It is God who hates sin, destructive evil, and violence, more than we ever could.
And yet, He exercises patience, providing opportunity for those to repent and seek Him.
This is Jonah’s problem, for he is not seeing the world as God sees it.
And Jonah is not seeing himself as God sees him.
Instead…
2. Jonah values a plant, but disdains a whole nation.
He is angry about the death of a plant over which he never had any control.
He is absorbed in a self-centered pettiness while watching a lost nation on a one way track to destruction.
As far as he was concerned, mercy was all right for him to receive, but not for that city.
So while God was into reconciliation, Jonah was into retaliation.
IV. The forth stage which reveals God’s passion for all people is CONCERN (11).
But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?
It is God’s testimony that…
1. The people of Nineveh were in moral bondage (cf. Ephesians 2:1-3).
The description of a people who cannot tell their right hand from their left is an idiomatic expression about a person who doesn’t know the difference between good and evil.
It is God’s description of one’s inability to make moral judgments.
Paul reflects this thinking well in Ephesians:
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
The Ninevites were held captive by supernatural evil.
So though the Ninevites were of little worth to Jonah, they were of enormous worth to God.
God even asks Jonah to have a little compassion on the cattle if that is all he can muster.
So…
2. The story of Jonah ends in the presence of God.
Jonah is not to be our last thought.
The narrative leaves us in the presence of God.
We are face to face with His love and compassion.
The writer reveals God and lays down his pen.
“Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
The book ends with a question that has no written answer.
But…an answer is expected by you and me!
APPLICATION:
Jonah’s lesson about God’s compassion is a humbling lesson.
For…
1. We assume God loves us more than our enemies.
We think to ourselves, “Well, at least we are not as bad as them. God must be really pleased!”
As soon as we fall into that type of thinking, we misunderstand the heart of God.
We don’t see others, or ourselves for that matter, in the way God does.
This certainly was Jonah’s problem.
Jonah did not know God well enough to grieve over sin as God grieves over sin.
He did not know God well enough to rejoice at the repentance of the sinner.
People are in trouble.
They are lost.
ILL Minneapolis poll
A poll done by The Minneapolis Star Tribune a few years ago found that 65% of the people in Minnesota believed in hell. That is a pretty high number. Only 15%, however, said they knew someone who would be a sure bet to go there, and only 3% felt that they themselves deserved to end up in hell. In other words, most folks accept hell as a reality, they just don’t see it as a danger.
But people are in danger.
They are all around you.
Is that your concern, as it is God’s?
2. God wants more than mere obedience, He wants us to value what He values: PEOPLE.
The story of Jonah demonstrates that God isn’t satisfied with mere compliance.
He wants us to understand His character.
He wants us to share His viewpoint.
He wants us to reflect Him.
He wants us to love all people.
Let’s ask ourselves some personal questions…
Are there people we resist loving and caring for because their values, beliefs, or lifestyle contradict ours?
Who are our personal Ninevites, our enemies?
Do they belong to religious cults?
Are they secular humanists?
Are they homosexuals?
Are they people who stand for pro-choice and pro-abortion?
Do they worship Mother Earth?
Are they those who advocate a left-wing social agenda?
Do they embrace New Age spirituality?
And if the Lord said to arise and go to any one of those groups, would it be difficult to obey him?
Do we ever get so committed to our predictions of what some people or groups deserve that we take on the responsibility in thought or action to program their punishment?
It is God’s will to move the believer toward the unbeliever.
This means each one of us!
This is why, back in June, I asked you to commit to being light to the unbelievers God has put in your life.
Many of us put down the first names of people that we acknowledge that God has put into our lives that do not know Jesus.
And we signed our names.
We are going to return the lighthouse into the narthex (hopefully by next week) and post those names as a reminder that God is moving us toward the unbeliever.
He wants us to do the principles of prayer, care and share.
ILL #412
When Henry Ford purchased a large insurance policy, the Detroit news papers blazoned the fact, since the amount was so large and he was so prominent. The story was read by one of Ford’s old friends, who I happened to be in the insurance business. The old friend went to confront Ford to see if the story was true. When Ford assured him that it was, the friend asked him why the policy was not purchased from him, since he was a personal friend and had been in insurance for many years. Ford’s reply was, "You never asked me."
How many of our friends can say to us, "You never asked me," as to our sharing Christ with them?
God’s concern is people.
And He uses you and me to reach them.
Do you share God’s concern?
Do you have a passion for people?
BENEDICTION: Counselors are
Be willing to act on God’s passion…even if you find His calling difficult, perhaps even distasteful; realize that the people that you struggle over are no more and no less God’s concern than you are.
Reflect God’s passion…there are people lost all about us and their rejection of the Creator breaks His heart; it should break ours as well.
Share God’s passion…let God move you toward the unbeliever, and as He does, tell the good news of God’s passion for them.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
