Selfish Anger Smothered in Grace / Canada Day Wknd

Join us as we conclude our series, Jonah - God's Grace For the Undeserving. This week's sermon is entitled: Selfish Anger Smothered in Grace - Jonah 4

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

You know, when we began our series in Jonah a few weeks ago, we talked about those grace shock moments of life when we confess our sin to someone or we confess our sin to God, maybe fearing the worst, but only to be met with extraordinary grace and extraordinary forgiveness. And Jonah 4 leaves us with that sense of grace shock, with this vivid picture of Yahweh's gracious character towards Jonah. And which is interesting because Jonah isn't shocked. Jonah understands and knows that that is his character, but he's also not shocked in the sense that it doesn't have the ripple effect that we would expect to see in a passage like this. The story literally leaves us on a cliffhanger. This question that God asks at the end of the passage. You know, I think it's important for us too, as we reflect on this short book and understanding that it's all about the gracious character of God. As we've seen God's compassion through this book, we've seen his patience with Jonah, we should be reminded of God's compassion and patience with each and every single one of us. The sin that you're struggling with here this morning, the anger, the bitterness, the selfishness, the pride, the gossip, the impurity. Our holy God is gracious and merciful and wants to shock you with his grace. He wants to shock you and I with his compassion and his mercy. And we sang about that this morning. So we're going to consider three important full uh reflections of this interaction that we see between God and Jonah in chapter four as the book comes to a close. We're going to consider, uh, we're going to look at rejoice and remember and reflect. Rejoice, remember, and reflect. First one, rejoice, the compassionate character of God is generous. Rejoice because the compassionate character of God is generous. And we really see this reflected in verses 1 through 4. You know what's interesting about chapter 4 is that it takes this hard turn away from the celebration that should have been there at the end of chapter 3. If you think about it, chapter 3 should have resulted in Jonah praising the Lord. I mean, what prophet doesn't want this? Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh, preaches his message. The people respond, they turn to God, God relents from his anger towards the people. I mean, that's the whole point of having a prophet in Israel. And Jonah gets this amazing response. Revival breaks out. 120,000 people turn to God. Sackcloth, ashes, all these things. I mean, there should be some of rejoicing. There really should have been, if you think about it, uh Jonah 3, verse 11, where Jonah heads back home rejoicing and praising the Lord. That's not what happens. We get Jonah 4, verse 1. But we need to understand, too, there was this glimmer of hope for Jonah. Maybe for himself, for himself in the sense that maybe after he had seen the power of God at work, he would then have a different perspective and he would turn from his bigotry. He would turn from his selfishness. But this is not what happens. Chapter 4, verse 1. Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. What should have been celebration was anger and fury. Greatly displeased and became furious. Now, three times we see the same word used here in the Hebrew. It is Ra, which is uh which is rendered in the CSB here as greatly displeased. It can also be rendered as burning anger. We talked about burning anger last week with Yahweh's anger towards sin, that his nostrils are flaring. We see that in chapter three, that that word for burning anger, but it's also can be rendered as the word evil. Raha, evil. So in this short verse, we have this word come up three times. Jonah was Raha, greatly displeased, and he became furious, Raha, but also in the Hebrew it's it's there a third time. There's there's an emphasis that's going on here. You see, this is uh another play on words, as Jonah's likely the one who wrote the book, as the author, and he uh and he uses this word not only here, but if you look at chapter 3, verse 8, we talked about this last week. Furthermore, chapter 3, verse 8, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his Raha evil ways and from his Raha wrongdoing. So it's interesting that here it's connected to sin, and over here Jonah's feeling and experiencing the same Raha, the evil that God saved the Ninevites from. This is important. You know, because another way that you could translate the verse more literally would be, and it was evil to Jonah, an evil great, and it burned to him. Jonah was angry. He was angry with evil. His anger was evil, and it was directed to Yahweh, to the God who is so compassionate, so full of grace and mercy. You see, this was much different than Yahweh's anger towards sin, as we talked about in Jonah 3.8. This anger was unjustifiably evil that Jonah experienced. It was a retaliation against the people. It was a retaliation against God. He was angry and it was not good. You know, as people, we are naturally bent towards retaliation. I just spent some time in the preschool room downstairs. And I mean, sure, with time and maturity are we we get better as we grow in life. But really, I mean, do you know what we really get better at sometimes? Is we get better at hiding our retaliation. Someone hurts us or says something or does something that angers us, and we slide into this attack mode. We can come up with all kinds of creative ways to retaliate. Passive aggression, silent treatment, avoiding people. For Jonah, the Ninevites did some unforgettable, horrid things. And for him, the things that they did were unforgivable. But Yahweh forgave them. After what the Ninevites had done to the Israelites, it really would have been hard to wish them well and good fortune. But you see, Israelites, Israel's own history, the history of the Israelites, wasn't all sweetness, and it wasn't all happy-ending fairy tales. They also took part in some pretty horrible, terrible, evil things against the will of God. Things that grieved God deeply. Their sin angered God. I mean, just read Judges, read Exodus. Jonah was missing the point. It wasn't about the sin of Nineveh or their detestable history, it was about God's mercy. The book of Jonah is about God's mercy. And in connecting Jonah to Israel's own sin, I mean just think of the golden calf in Exodus 32. Leslie Allen says this as he's reflecting on Jonah and Exodus 32 and the golden calf. He says, he, Jonah, considers it intolerable that Israel's experience of Exodus 32 should be mirrored in Nineveh. He cannot stomach Yahweh's cheapening his mercy by offering it to all. And that's where Jonah's heart and head is at. See, in Jonah's mind, they didn't deserve it. They shouldn't have been granted repentance. They should have just been left in their misery and sin. Destruction should have come down. And so what does he do? Jonah was greatly displeased. He was burning with evil. And so, verse 2, first thing he does, he prays to Yahweh. Please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country? I told you so. That's why I fled toward Charshish in the first place. I knew that you are gracious and a compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, the one who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live. He would rather be dead than to see them receive forgiveness. Or God's grace and compassion. I mean, this is like so selfish, this man. And we know that for ourselves, when we've arrived at a place of forgiveness and grace, we know when we've arrived at that place when we can celebrate the hope for the grace of God in the lives of those whom have wronged us, who would have, who we would have rather retaliated against. And I don't want to sound too simplistic here because sometimes these things are difficult. Forgiveness is a journey. There's long journeys of forgiveness for us in our Christian life, especially if we've been wronged deeply. But you see, the gospel and the character of God gives us hope for the journey of forgiveness, gives us a path forward. Getting to that place is possible because the most impossible thing has happened. God died and he rose from the dead. He became man. Dying for our sins, providing reconciliation, now living inside of us, promising to help and live his life through us. And so the book of Jonah points us to Christ and his ultimate compassion and forgiveness, the mercy of God on display at the cross. The book of Jonah shows us the grace and patience God has for the process, as he did for Jonah. And then verse 4, we see this. Then the Lord asks this question. Love this question. God is so good at asking questions. And here's this question: this probing question for Jonah, maybe a probing question for you and for I. The Lord asked, Yahweh asked, Is it right for you to be angry? Do you really have the right to be as angry as you are, Jonah? Is this really right for you? God's question to Jonah reminds us that it isn't right for Jonah to be angry. It isn't right for us to be angry in such a circumstance. We should be rejoicing at the grace and compassion of God. But we also see this passage, it's not only, not only do we rejoice because the compassionate character of God is generous, as Jonah is learning. But the next thing we see and it prompts us to do is to remember in verses 5 to 7, remember, no one can hide from the character of God. No one can hide from the character of God. Robert Chisel, who's a uh Hebrew scholar, he points out that as the central character to the book, Jonah is interesting. His only traits seem to be prejudice and selfishness, and he's this type of anti-hero whose negative example really serves to teach us an important lesson. One of those lessons is you can't hide from the character of God. Jonah again ignores God's probing. So Yahweh says, Is it right for you to be angry? And what is Jonah? He responds, says, Yes, Yahweh, you're right. No, he doesn't. What does he do? He ignores it. Jonah left. Verse 5. Left the city and found a place east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. So it's almost like he's doing this Sodom and Gomorrah thing, just like sitting there waiting. Maybe God would just strike him down? Hellfire and brimstone. Well, hopefully for Jonah's sake, he wouldn't turn into a pillar of salt. But here's what he's looking. He's looking. He gets up and he goes somewhere, so he can just watch the show. Just watch this take place. This is how far this man's heart was away from the character of God. And then verse 6 says this Then the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, appointed, again, there's God doing his thing, appointing a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble. And Jonah was greatly displeately, sorry, greatly pleased with the plant. Yahweh's forgiveness. Now he's greatly pleased with this plant. Wow, his priorities are just a little out of whack. I mean, didn't he learn from this the last time that there's nowhere that you could go that's away from God's reach? No sin that can be hidden. No attitude hidden. Yahweh knows it all. But Yahweh once more, in his divine grace, his slowness to anger, as Jonah rightfully points out, his compassionate character, his graciousness. He once more acts specially on behalf of the prophet. We see him first doing this with the arrival of the storm and the fish in chapter one, then the fish vomiting Jonah up in chapter two. The Lord's moving and providentially working by providing this temporal comfort of the plant here for this shade from the hot sun. I mean, it's interesting. Jonah is in a temper tantrum, leaves, sits down, the sun's hot, and God gives him shade. We serve a great God. Gives him shade. Jonah was greatly pleased, exceedingly rejoices, the text says. And the text actually, in the in the Hebrew, it emphasizes his joy over this plant. He's like happy and giddy about this about this plant. Which is a completely misplaced reaction. I mean, where was this rejoicing? Where was this happiness at the scene of repentance with the Nineveh? You see, the thing is, is he loved the plant more than he did the people? What about you and I? What are we loving more than our city, more than our community? More than the people. Is it our schedules? Is it our comfort? Is it our plants? Jonah wasn't just having a bad day, but he was fighting against the Lord from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. And as we've talked about, God's care and compassion also involves his pursuit of us in our struggle and in our own rebellion, his pursuit with discipline and his pursuit with correction. And as much of this thought brings fear and conviction before a holy and just God, it also brings comfort to know that God pursues us. Comfort in knowing that God knows the deepest, darkest parts of our life, and yet he still seeks to meet us with grace and compassion. And even though God knew all of this about Jonah, I mean, just think about the Ninevites. They hear the message, they respond, they repent, and they're just like captivated by the grace and the goodness of God, right? They're not thinking about Jonah. They're not thinking about, oh, I wonder where that prophet's heart is at. But God is, and God cares. And as much of we think about this, we should be comforted that even though God knew this about Jonah, he still reached out to him with grace and compassion in hopes that Jonah's attitude would change. And I would suspect that Jonah's attitude does change eventually. The text doesn't tell us, but I think it does. Probably Jonah was the author again. We don't know. Evidence seems to suggest that perhaps he was the author of this book. So that could show us that eventually the Lord worked in his heart in that way, and Jonah responded. But then verse 7, so Jonah's just like pleased with this plant. He's excited, he's overjoyed, he's giddy, and then what happens? When dawn came the next day, God appointed the worm that attacked the plant, and it withered. There he is again. God supernaturally acting. He kills Jonah's selfish, sad, happy moment when he appoints this worm to kill this plant. And then we move from remembering to reflecting now, uh, now into reflecting in uh the last part of the verses of this uh of this chapter, verses eight to eleven. We now reflect what what what really matters? And this is the question we should ask ourselves. What really matters? Verses 8 to 11. Probe these. What what what what really matters in life? And here's always a good question for us to ask. We've been asking this question as a church, as we've been praying about God's plan for us as a church. But does what matters to God matter to you and to I? It's possible to be a prophet and not care about the same things God cares about. It's possible to be serving in ministry, to be a church, and not care about the same things that God cares about. And so we need to ask ourselves this question. It's so important. Does what matters to God matter to you and I? Verses 8 to 9, as the sun was rising, so the plant got attacked, it withered, and as the sun was rising, it started to heat up a little bit. It was heating. And so God, what does he do? He heats it up even more. As the sun was rising, verse 8, God appointed a scorching east wind. Gives him the plant, gives him the worm. Now he turns up the heat. The sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted. Have you ever been to that point? I remember uh in high school, uh I volunteered with our local fire department, and this is back in the day where they gave you all of your own bunker gear and you went to the accident scenes and you went to the fires and you knew where the tools were and you got to participate in training sessions. I don't know if you can do that anymore, but um this is this is the way it was back then. So I I remember it came like June time and it was hot, and the amount of calls that we were getting, people just outside gardening, just passing out uh in their in their gardens. I mean, we've we've maybe felt like that before. Maybe you've had that experience where it's so hot you feel like you can faint, but like this was this was hot. Jonah was out um under the sun, almost faints, and and what what is his thought? Well, he just he wanted to die, the text says. He just wanted to die. He was suffering so much in his mind that he wanted to die. And he said, It's better for me to die than to live. It's better for me to die than to live. And then what happens in verse nine? Um, then God asked Jonah another question. Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? Jonah's response, yes, it's right. I'm angry enough to die. You know, verse nine happens, and you think, man, he's Yahweh's talking to a child. Jonah was so selfishly angry, he would have rather been dead than to see the Ninevehite saved. He would have rather died for a plant than for a people. But God continues to show his grace and his patience as God does. Even when we are selfish, even when we're angry, even when we're misguided in our priorities. Verse 10 happens, and the Lord said, Jonah, you cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals. That's how the book ends. Paul House remarks this in his comments on the book. This he says the final scene captures the essence of the entire Bible or of the canon's description of God's nature. The same God he creates, he calls, God reveals, God judges, and God forgives. God has the last word in this narrative, and that's the point. He gets the last word. We don't. And his last word is this rhetorical question that he asked that emphasizes his gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, kind, relenting from disaster character. It emphasizes how he responds to undeserving sinners, which summarizes really the main purpose of Jonah, and on a larger scale, the main purpose of the Bible. Timothy Keller in Center Church says this How can you look at so many lost people and not find compassion in your heart? God has compassion on all he has made, but of all the things he has made, human beings have pride of place in his heart because they were made in his image. So it's here again that we see the heart of God and his priority in seeking and saving the lost. The heart and priority that Jesus would hold in Luke 19, 10, as it says, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, Jesus becomes a better Jonah. Does what matters to God matter to you and I? When we look at our city, when we look at our culture, when we look at our world, do you look waiting for their destruction, weeping over your dead plant? Or do we look at our city, at our neighbors, at our culture, at our world with compassion, weeping over their eternity? Culture is not the enemy. Our city is not the enemy. Sin is the enemy. And the compassionate heart of God through the gospel is the only cure. And it's also at this point that we're drawn to worship and rejoice as we reflect on the fact that Yahweh pursues us out of love and mercy, that there is no sin that could take us too far out of the reach of God's grace and mercy. As he pursues us, he pursues us with loving correction that brings us humbly to him, submitting ourselves to his grace and his kindness. What really matters to you? Is what matters most to God matter to you or to me? Is his grace, mercy, and compassion on our hearts and our minds? Or is it bitterness? Is it anger? Is it fear? Perhaps you're here this morning and you're struggling to embrace God's grace and compassion for yourself. To embrace it for your own sin. I mean, you may be here this morning. You identify closely with the with the evil and the wickedness of the Ninevites, unable to comprehend that God would God would save you. Well, he does. He sent Jesus to save you. He sent his son out of love and grace to save you. Jesus is calling you to his compassion, to his grace, his forgiveness, his yoke is easy, his burden is light. Come and see that his grace is sufficient. Repent and he will relent. Perhaps like Jonah, you're struggling with bitterness, anger, maybe retaliation. Is it right that we should feel this way? Is it right that we should be angry? Rejoice, remember, and reflect. God graciously wants us, helps us in the struggle, and he wants us to embrace his grace and his help in the struggle. As he battles for our hearts by his grace and his mercy. Let's pray. And as we've already prayed in the service, there are many, many struggles represented in this room, and even those who aren't able to be with us this morning. The needs are great, but I want to encourage you. Our God is greater. The struggle seems overwhelming, but our God is greater. Gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful want love, one who relents from sending disaster, our God is greater. Father, I pray this morning that we would be overwhelmed with the shock of your grace and your compassion. That those here this morning that are just so ashamed of their sin and their struggle. That they would live in steps of forgiveness here this morning, knowing that you forgive them. I pray for those, Lord, this morning that have not trusted Jesus to save them. Maybe they're like the Ninevehites. They still need to repent. Father, we pray that they would. That they would see Jesus Christ, his beauty, his glory, and his sacrifice on the cross by being raised from the dead, dying on the cross, rising from the dead, defeating death and hell. Lord, we pray that these things would become their hope as well. We thank you for being a God who is compassionate and merciful to us. Rejoice in your goodness. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.