“Good Theology Gone Bad” – FBC Morning Light (12/12/2023)

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Today, we are finishing up the book of Jonah, chapters 3 and 4, and reading in Revelation chapter 9. I want to focus on the first couple of verses of chapter 4 of Jonah.

Now, Jonah is a wonderful story, and we covered the first chapter yesterday, that Jonah ended up in the great fish's belly. This was an act of God's sovereign grace in Jonah's behalf, protecting him, giving him another chance.

The Lord comes back to him in chapter 3, tells him, go to Nineveh like I told you, and preach the message that I gave you. And Jonah does that. He finally obeys, he goes to Nineveh, he preaches the message, and there is a total repentance, revival among all the people, from the top down, from the king down to the people in the city.

A great turning from sin, turning to the Lord, asking the Lord to be merciful to them and spare them. And the Lord does so. He doesn't rain down his judgment and fire upon Nineveh, as he threatened to do, because of their turning to him and their repentance.

Well, one would think, well, this is a wonderful thing. This is great. God has been merciful to people. I've experienced his mercy, what a wonderful thing that God would be merciful to so many other people as well, but that's not what Jonah does.

That's not how he responds. We see in verse 1 of chapter 4 that it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. And in verse 3, he says to the Lord, Oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

How is it that Jonah has become so angry, so filled with displeasure, so distressed that he wants to die, so sullen? What's the matter with him? Is the problem his theology? Actually, no. No, his theology is very good.

Well, he shares his theology in verse 2. He says, Oh Lord, was this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish.

Why?

He said, because I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Now, there's one key point that Jonah forgot in the exercising of God's relenting from doing harm, and that is the very important condition of repentant faith.

But nevertheless, every item that Jonah just cataloged there regarding the character of God is absolutely true. It is theologically accurate. God is a gracious and merciful God. God is one who is slow to anger.

He is abounding in steadfast love and loving kindness, and that word is the Hebrew word hesed. He's abounding in that, and he does relent from doing harm. So there's not a problem with his theology here, and this is often the case.

I have known many people through my years in ministry that have their theology right, and it's not a problem with the theology itself. It's good theology wrongly applied, and it is also a problem of good theology that is forgotten, corresponding or complementing theology that is left off.

So let me give you an example. I firmly believe that God in his sovereign grace has chosen a people for himself from before the foundation of the world. Call that the doctrine of election. Some people get all bent out of shape over that notion that God would choose people to save.

But I can't get away from that. I find that in the Scripture. I think that's good theology. I think it recognizes the sovereignty of God in salvation. It recognizes the grace of God, that salvation is holy of his grace, and so on and so forth.

I think that's good theology. But I know some people who have that good theology but have wrongly applied it to conclude that therefore we don't need to evangelize. We don't need to share the gospel, because after all, God knows who's going to be saved and who isn't.

There's not any difference I'm going to make in all of that. Part A of the theology is true. God does know who's going to be saved, and God does choose people to save. I can't get away from that. You see it all the way from Genesis to Revelation.

However, I also know that God has, in his sovereign plan and purposes, ordained the means by which they're going to come to faith in Christ, and that is through the proclamation of the gospel. God uses the proclaiming of the gospel in his sovereign way to bring people to repentance.

This is the other side of the theological coin, if you will. Jonah has good theology, but he's forgotten about the other side of the coin, that in order for God to relent from doing the harm that he warns that he will bring, it requires a preacher.

It is God's plan to send a preacher to use human instrumentation. Jonah was to be that instrument. This is a situation where Jonah should have been rejoicing that God, in his grace, chose him, used him to bring this message of warning and doom so that these people might repent, they might turn from sin and trust in Christ, trust in God and his plan, and the warning of judgment that he brings.

Jonah forgot all about that, and he didn't want to hear any of that. He only wanted to focus on part A, and that made him mad, because really, deep down, he also forgot about the love of God, the compassion of God, that Jonah, see, wanted to see his enemy destroyed, and he was all for sending a message of doom against his enemy.

But in his good theology, he left a part out, that God is also a God of compassion, he is a God who gives opportunity for repentance, and sends a message of repentance, and uses that message of repentance to bring people to repentance.

Well, let's be careful that we don't misapply good theology, and let's be careful also that in our emphases on certain aspects of theology, we don't leave off other aspects that would be helpful to balance things out.

So Father, I pray, help us with this encouragement today to have a well-rounded, full-orbed theology, and then an appropriate application of that theology. All in this we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

Alright, well listen, you have a wonderful Tuesday, may the Lord bless you, and have a good day.