Yesterday, Christy and I flew home from New York.
We were there with Sam and Rachel at a ministry conference that we get to go to every year, that is so good for each of us.
It's wonderful and kind of refuels us in terms of hearing the gospel, not being in charge of anything, just sitting.
And so we were flying home from a couple days of learning.
We get on the plane and Christy starts watching her movie, and I'm listening to music, and so I listen to music about the whole way, and I'm sort of contemplating this Jonah passage for this morning.
Finally, the plane lands at taxis, we park there at the gate.
Immediately, you know, when it parks, everybody who's along the aisle, including me, we you know immediately hop up and try to stake a little standing room.
And so I'm I get up, I'm standing, got my little space, and two rows in front of me.
This guy stands up, he's about 65 years old, very preppy, probably Upper East Side, coming down to visit his daughter, who is apparently probably trying to get as far away from him and his wife as possible.
Uh very expensive blazer silk scarf around his neck, which I guess that expensive blazer was a little too hot, so he took off that precious little silk scarf and he carefully folded it very well and handed it to his wife, who was equally decked out with her silk scarf, you know, because it's so hot in Atlanta.
I mean, cold in Atlanta, you know, so all that, and the lady behind him, he's sort of standing like the lady behind him, sort of bumps him, not like with any menace or pert, just like deboarding the plane type of stuff that all of humanity goes through.
And she bumps a cup, every time she bumps, she says, you know, she says, I'm so sorry, she's a very sweet lady.
And every time he does not even acknowledge her, and he sort of rolls his eye, looks at his wife, like, can you believe you know our private plane is broken down and we're, you know, had to book this ticket the last minute.
I mean, every time just rolling, and I just knew, I man, I knew this guy was horrible.
I mean, I could just tell he was, I I hated this guy.
I'm standing there, I'm just like, I hate you.
And then he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out a travel-sized crest toothpaste, and he takes the lid off and he puts it to his lips, and he squeezes just a little bit into his mouth, and he puts the top back on and puts it back in his pocket.
And I thought, either that is the most awesome thing I've ever seen in my life.
He did it so elegantly.
I'm like, maybe that was awesome.
Then I'm like, no, I really do hate you.
That actually made me hate you more.
There's close.
It's like close to awesome.
No, I I hate you even more.
Now he had not stolen from me.
He had not said anything to me.
He had not hurt me or anybody I loved.
He he had not flown planes into buildings and in my country.
And still I was that quick, right, to make judgment on him, to dehumanize him.
And maybe I only hated him because I saw a lot of myself in him, right?
And maybe that's too deep for us to break out this morning.
That's for me to do with a counselor later.
But it's very possible.
Very possible.
Because the crest toothpaste thing, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be doing that.
Because I thought I did think it was awesome.
I'll admit I thought it was awesome.
And I I did help the grandma who was, I think, from Italy or Malta or something.
I did help her because I'm not like him.
But also while I'm helping her, I'm sort of hoping he sees me help her because he should be like he should be like me.
And isn't it all that interesting, right?
Like how quick we all draw lines and put one guy or lady or person as the enemy, and we want nothing to do.
Like, I'm not interested in helping him.
I'll help the grandma from Malta, but I don't want to help him.
I don't want to help him at all.
I I hate him in his little crest toothpaste.
Hate everything about him.
We all know the feeling of having an enemy, whether it's silly, right?
Quick and silly, or whether it's a lot deeper, and maybe it's the liberals.
Or maybe it's the conservatives.
Or maybe it's that race.
The one for whatever reason you grew up hearing whatever about them.
Or maybe that person of that other religion, maybe the people who live over there, wherever their is.
Or that person who did that thing.
Your enemy can be your neighbor.
Your enemy could be a friend.
Like it used to be a friend.
It could be a family member.
Who you once loved.
We all know hate.
Right?
And we also know Jesus' seemingly impossible words.
Love your enemy.
And so we're looking at this book Jonah for the next nine weeks.
Jonah lives about 800 years before Jesus, 8th century BC.
He lived near a town near Nazareth.
He was clearly a prophet of respect.
He was well known.
Maybe you know the story from VBS and the flain old pictures and all that, stuck to the, you know, the graph, all that.
Maybe you know all that.
We're gonna break it apart for nine weeks.
Let's reread Jonah 1 and 2.
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
A few points to guide us.
Point number one is this the first word is God's holy word of what we should do or be.
This is the first word.
We see this in two places in this passage.
Their evil.
Complete moral clarity.
It is not up for debate.
God has declared this.
There is right and wrong, and they are wrong.
They are morally wrong.
It is very clear, it is not subjective, it is declared by God.
Moral clarity, right and wrong, God's holy word.
We see it in the second place in the same couple verses because Jonah hears this call.
Arise and go to Nineveh.
So we see the holy word of morality, and we also see the holy word of calling.
Honor God, be holy.
Love your enemy.
Point number two is this.
Our natural response to what is right is not always right.
Now that's a really gracious way to just say we are sinners, right?
That sometimes we know how we should feel or think or the motives we should have or the behavior we should have, and we just don't care.
Arise and go to Nineveh?
That's Jonah's enemy.
That's his people's enemy.
I mean, go to them, like go to Janet and Accounting.
Do you know Janet and Accounting?
Janet in accounting is petty.
And she is, she talks about everybody's back.
She's passive aggressive.
She makes little comments about everybody's lunch.
She makes comments about how much she worked out in the morning and did you work out and makes you feel bad.
Like she is horrible.
She's a horror.
She takes a little crest toothpaste out of her pocket, squirts it in her mouth.
We hate her, right?
Like go to when she's sick, you don't want to take her a meal, right?
You want to punch her in the ear, stab her in the eye with a butterfinger.
I mean, you don't want to be kind.
She's horrible.
Jonah has this enemy that's actually hurt his people, people he knew.
This is a racial enemy.
This is a political enemy.
This is a religious enemy.
I mean, we could we cover the categories.
I mean, those are the big ones.
And they are known to be absolutely brutal, these people.
Second Kings tells us these people, when they invaded Israel, they would capture people.
They would just steal people from their homes and from their families.
They would starve cities, they starved cities until the people were so hungry that they surrendered.
They were known to cut off the legs of the people they captured, both legs, one arm, shake the hand of the man dying in mockery as he bled to death.
They beheaded people, put the head on a pole, and then made their loved ones carry the pole around the town.
They tied ropes to people and stretched them and skinned them alive and hung the skins up in the cities.
Go to them.
Jonah didn't want to go.
Jonah didn't want to go preach to them.
Because what if those people, that person I hate?
What if he or she actually repented?
What if God showed them mercy?
Jonah didn't want their repentance.
Jonah didn't want them to have redemption.
Jonah wanted them to pay for their sins.
He didn't want to pay for his sin, but he wanted them to pay for their sin.
So he runs.
Now to hate, you must run the other way from God.
You have to run away from God's ethic and call to hate.
And it turns out hating and running is incredibly destructive, more destructive, and also exhausting.
Here's what Paul says, 1 Corinthians, an interesting passage.
1 Corinthians 2, 14 through 16.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him.
And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things, that means to examine all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
So you're free.
Verse 16, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ.
About two years ago, somewhere around there, we went to Epcot to mainly ride the frozen ride.
We have little girls.
By the mid-afternoon, like we're exhausted, we're tired, everybody's tired.
So we go into one of those 3D movies, right?
You've been to a 3D movie, you get the glasses when you walk in, you put the glasses on, you sit down, the movie starts, everything's clear, it's crisp, it's in focus, it has depth, it's coming out at you.
And we all we all do it, right?
Like you raise the glasses up, put them down, raise them up, put them down.
And every time you take them off, everything's jumbled.
I said it's out of it's out of focus.
None of it sort of like makes sense.
You you simply have to have the glasses.
This is sort of what Paul's saying.
The natural person, the self without the Spirit of God, because that self is fragile and defensive and sinful, that self will not perceive and understand rightly.
Gifted to have the Holy Spirit in them and have the mind of Christ to perceive and understand things differently.
That even loving your enemy would not be something that's easy, but possible.
So the first word is the law, the second word becomes grace.
Because the spiritual person that Paul's talking about, this spiritual person begins in the security of God's being God's beloved in grace, the grace of Jesus for you.
And because you're secure in God, not using enemies as to justify yourself, that's what I was doing on the plane.
If that preppy from the Upper East Side and his precious little silk scarf and his little toothpaste, if I if I could hate him and he's horrible, look at me.
Look how righteous I am.
Makes me feel pretty good.
But if we're secure in God and in God alone and not using enemies to justify ourselves or our positions or opinions, then we're free to judge as to examine.
And we're also not bound by anybody's judgment.
This is the mind of Christ.
This is the way of thinking and living in the world we should have.
Point number three: the second word is grace.
We see the story.
God pursues his children even while we run.
I could say it this way.
Jonah, the book of Jonah teaches us God is free as God to pursue his children even while we are not always pursuing him.
Margaret Wise Brown's author, she wrote a children's book called The Runaway Bunny.
Anybody know the runaway bunny?
Little bunnies.
Little bunny decides he's gonna run away from his mama.
I'm gonna run away.
I'm running away.
And she replies, if you run away, I will run after you, for you are my little bunny.
If you run after me, I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.
Mother never hesitates.
If you become a fish, I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.
And it goes on and on and on.
The little bunny becomes a bird or a sailboat, and the mother becomes a tree or the wind and so on, always finding her little bunny.
Jonah 1, verse 3.
But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, really making the point here, going to Tarshish the wrong way.
Away from the presence of the Lord.
Verse 4.
But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.
I don't understand all the storms in life.
I wouldn't be able to explain them to you or your storms.
I won't pretend to.
The world is actually even full of conflict for you to create or be a part of, in which you can dehumanize people and hate them.
But the Lord.
But the Lord sent a storm.
I was headed the wrong way.
I was way gone.
I was rebellious.
I was hurt.
I was arrogant.
I was in the gutter I was in the head.
No change.
By the Lord.
Last point.
Point number four.
We are agents of God's grace and mercy to the world.
Because we are already objects of God's grace and mercy.
Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12 that he is the greater Jonah.
That's what he said.
This is Jesus' way to say the Jonah story points to the greater story that Jesus is playing out, because Jesus is our righteousness even while we run.
Jesus God manifests, God manifested into the world.
Is God running after us while we run from Him?
While we hold anger or resentment or bitterness or hate.
Even then God is pursuing us and loving us and forgiving us and absolving us.
As to change the heart, as to change the will.
As to change our lives.
My brothers and sisters, by the death and resurrection of Jesus, you have absolution of all of your running and are gifted the mind and the righteousness of Jesus.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for your grace and mercy to us, which we need because we do have people in our lives, perhaps groups of people that we've demonized.
Perhaps they've hurt us.
Perhaps they're evil.
But perhaps not.
But either way, it is our issue to deal with our bitterness, our resentment, our hate, our dislike, our disdain, our loathing.
And for all of this, this is not the heart and the mind of Jesus that loved his enemies.
And for this we repent.
And we thank you for your grace that runs after us.
While we hate, you run after us, you absolve us and declare us righteous.
God, would you create in us hearts that can examine the world and at the same time love and be agents of God's grace and mercy.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.