Mad At God (Part 2)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio, with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

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Exodus 34, Moses has been tucked by God in the cleft of the rock, and the goodness of God and his attributes pass by God.

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I wonder if there was a pie chart describing God in the Old Testament, what would each of the eight pieces of pie look like?

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Exodus 34, verse 6, then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the

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Lord, the Lord God. God, slice one, compassionate. Slice two, gracious.

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Slice three, slow to anger. Slice four, abounding in loving kindness. Slice five, abounding in truth.

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Verse 7, slice 6, who keeps loving kindness for thousands. Slice 7, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

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And of course, we know the Old Testament God is the New Testament God, because God doesn't change. And there is judgment, verse 8, there is a slice that says, he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

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Back to Jonah, please. I knew it all along. I know who you are,

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I know that creed from the Psalms, from Exodus, and I knew you were going to do it. I could see it coming.

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You ever play basketball? And if you're going to pass the ball, you don't look at the guy you're passing to, because the defender will steal it.

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It's called telegraphing the pass. You don't want to telegraph the pass, because everyone knows where that ball's going.

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And so when you have Pete Maravich, for instance, and he wants to pass the ball over here, he doesn't look there to pass, he looks to the side, and with the all -time famous wrist pass, type it up on YouTube, Pete Maravich wrist pass.

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I know you all have to love Pete Maravich around here, why? He played for the Celtics when he was older and decrepit, you know, but he still did.

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Or if you have to think of another passer, a better passer maybe, Magic Johnson, you don't look toward the person.

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You look one way and pass it another way. And Jonah is saying, I could tell you telegraphed the pass.

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I knew it was a bounce pass, and it was a slam dunk that you would save these people. I don't want them saved.

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Can't stand it. I knew it all along. I'm going to just take the orthodox creed and formula of graciousness and mercy and long -suffering and compassion and throw it in the face of God.

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I don't like who you are and what you've done. And how unlike Jonah are these slices of the pie.

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Look at the first one found in chapter 4, verse 2. You're a gracious God.

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What's grace mean? God favors people that don't deserve it. And we know, of course, that that grace comes through and only through the person and work of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice for sinners, the atonement for sinners, the risen

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Savior. People don't deserve grace. They don't merit it. They can't earn it. There's nothing they can do to get it.

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But God has benevolence towards the undeserving. That's what grace is. I know you can't have any claim upon me,

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God says, you Ninevites, but I can give you grace if I'd like because I'm a gracious God.

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How unlike Jonah. Jonah was the exact opposite. He wasn't gracious. He wanted to receive mercy but didn't want anybody else to receive mercy.

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That's the second one. Merciful are translated in some Bibles compassionate.

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It means tender affection. It means a mom who has a son in the hospital having seizures and that mom, out of pity and compassion, wants to help, wants to intercede, wants to solve the problem, wants to do something about it.

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That's the word compassion. Pity. Doesn't sound like Jonah to me.

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By the way, grace and mercy are only used of God in the Bible. These are words exclusively used of God.

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Grace and mercy in Hebrew. I mean, can you think about it?

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Grace and mercy means that God would just as soon forgive as He would damn. I'd just as soon be kind and merciful and forgive sins as I would to send them to an everlasting hell.

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Number three, do you notice the text? Slow to anger. How patient is

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God? How longsuffering is God? Slow to anger. When did Jonah sin?

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How often did Jonah sin? When did the Ninevites sin? How often did the Ninevites sin? Yet God is not up there saying, yeah,

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I can't wait to punish people. Abounding in steadfast love.

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That's the fourth thing, the covenant love of God with loyalty, unfailing love, unbounding love, unlike Jonah, unlike the

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Ninevites, unlike me, unlike you. And then the God who relents.

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Relenting from disaster. How unlike Jonah is that?

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Jonah wants the disaster. He's hankering for the disaster. He can just taste it.

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God, you conform to my theology or else I'm not going to be happy.

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Mad at God for who He is. You know, I thought about that this week and, you know, our society, they love the love of God.

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They love it that God is love. And it's true. First John 4, God is love. But you know what they don't like?

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They don't like the definition of this love because it's a sovereign love. The world wants a love of a sentimental grandmother or a sentimental grandfather versus the sovereign love of God.

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Why do you love the Ninevites? Well, the sovereign love of God is uninfluenced. Listen to Arthur Pink.

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I don't just think of the Ninevites. I think of the believers here. There is nothing at all in the objects of His love to call

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His love into exercise. Nothing in us to attract or prompt His love.

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When we love people, it's because there's something in them that makes us want to love them. But the love of God is free, spontaneous, and uncaused.

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Pink says the only reason God loves anyone, even you, is found in His own sovereign will.

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Deuteronomy 7, the Lord did not set His love on Israel nor choose them because they were more in number, but they were the fewest.

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But because the Lord loved you. Why does God love? Because He wants to love. It's a sovereign love.

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That's why it's so amazing. We're dead in trespasses and sins. What's in us that's lovable?

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What's in us that's worthy? What's in Nineveh? What's in Jonah? We love true or false because He first loved us.

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Before we had any love for God, before we moved a nanometer, which I don't even know what a nanometer is.

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A millimeter is what I was after. God loved us. God's love is sovereign.

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Obliged to no one. He didn't have to love the Ninevites, but He did because God's character is gracious.

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Ephesians 1, according to the good pleasure of His will. Not the Ninevites' will.

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Not Jonah's will. Not my will. Not your will. Ephesians 2, God being rich in mercy because of His great love with which

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He loved us. Mercy I can get. He's pitiful. He's showing pity, rather, towards us.

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He's certainly not pitiful. He's showing pity to us. He's showing pity to the pitiful. But love,

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John Brine said, not John de Brine, but John Brine, no tongue can fully express the infinitude of God's love or any mind can comprehend it.

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The love of God seeking the welfare of its object. Verse 3, therefore.

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He's mad. He prays. What do you do when a bunch of people get saved? You get mad and you, no.

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But Jonah, therefore now, Jonah 4, 3, oh

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Lord, please take my life from me. It's better for me to die than to live. If you would have killed them all and sent them to hell,

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I would have been happy. But you saved them. I want to die. Sounds like Elijah to some degree.

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It is enough now, oh Lord, take my life for it's, I'm not better than my father's.

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Despair. The writer wants you to say God has love. God has kindness. God has graciousness.

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And Jonah doesn't. It's black and white. You can just see it. God loves and Jonah just has selfish desires.

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He prayed earlier in chapter 2, verse 2. Do you notice? I called out of my distress to the

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Lord and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice and now I want to die.

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Here's what he's saying. Over my dead body, I don't want to live.

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I can't accept it that you've been kind to people and forgiven them. Sinclair Ferguson, the scholar, calls this attitude, the attitude,

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I'm not going to play with you anymore kind of attitude. In his book, he calls it three things, fascinatingly.

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This is spiritual, infantile regression. And you can just hear the feet stop.

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Now, if you were God, how would you respond? You saved Jonah. You saved the Ninevites. Then you forgave

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Jonah even as a prophet. Prophets have been killed for less. How would you respond if you were

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God? Well, Luther said, if I were the Lord God, and these vile people were as disobedient as they are now,

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I would knock the world into pieces. If I were God, I'd knock Jonah's teeth out.

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And then God, with a question in verse 4, is merciful.

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He doesn't wipe him out. He begins to teach him. He begins to take him to school.

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Theology 101. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry?

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NAS, do you have good reason to be angry? You're a rebel. Do you have a cause or don't you?

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Lots of times, God uses questions to help us see who we are. And it's good to ask your kids questions as well, especially when they're younger.

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And it's out of help. It's out of love. It's out of concern. Adam and Eve, where are you? Who told you that you were naked?

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Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat? To Cain, where is your brother

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Abel? What have you done? To Saul, what have you done? To David, why did you despise the

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Word of the Lord by doing what is evil? To Judas, are you betraying the

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Son of Man with a kiss? To Saul, who would then be Paul, why do you persecute me?

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Do you have any right to be angry? Jonah was mad. He was mad at sovereign love.

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Do you have any right to be angry? So here's where I want to go and then end.

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For our culture, listen. Have you ever met anybody in your life who was mad that God saved somebody?

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I've never, I mean, maybe I don't get out much, but I've never met anyone who's mad at God for saving people.

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Not a one. Have you ever met anybody? Has anybody? I'm mad that you would save people. I'm mad that your sovereign love went toward these people.

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I'm mad you saved my husband. I'm mad you saved my kids. I'm mad you saved my neighbor. I'm mad you saved these people.

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I'm mad. Have you ever met anybody like that in your life? I never have. People aren't mad today at the sovereign love of God exercised to salvation.

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Here's where they're mad. The opposite side of God's sovereign love, why don't you save other people?

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So let's turn to Romans chapter 9 for some more questions to help us think rightly.

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We would agree. Jonah, don't question God. Jonah, God is to be

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God. Jonah, you're a creature. You're finite. You're sinful. You have no claim on God.

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Jonah, don't be mad at God for Him being God. Don't be mad at God for being gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, or anything else.

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And you know what? Evangelicals today have no problem with the love of God toward believers, toward people to get saved.

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But they are angry and they are arrogantly mad against God for not saving everyone.

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To be more specific, how can God be sovereign on who goes to heaven and who goes to hell?

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That's where the rub is. God's right to do with creatures whatever

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He wants to do to them. So Romans chapter 9, where we just parachute into these three chapters on sovereignty and response.

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Chapter 9 verse 13, Paul appeals to Scripture to talk about God can do whatever

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He wants. His sovereign love is not earned or deserved.

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God has an absolute right as Creator to do whatever He wants. Chapter 9 verse 13, just as it is written and stands written,

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Jacob I loved, this is God speaking, but Esau I hated.

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So I get the love part down. I get the unmerited favor. I get the kindness down. I understand love.

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But what about hate? What is hate? Now some trying to minimize hatred explain it this way.

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It's a Semitic word that means to love less. God loved Jacob the most. He loved

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Esau less. They explain the hated word because they don't want God to hate. So they say it just means to love less.

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And I would say to you if you take that view, you're still in a big problem because the point of the text is

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God sets His love on Jacob and He doesn't set it on Esau. Jacob gets the love and Esau doesn't.

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And if you don't want to call it hate, if you want it to say love less, there's love, salvific love for Jacob, but not

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Esau. What Paul is trying to say is God can do whatever He wants with sinful creatures.

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God is the one who's in charge. Spurgeon said, when a lady was not understanding it, as to Jacob I loved and Esau I hated,

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Mr. Spurgeon, I cannot understand why God would say He hated Esau. And you know the response of Spurgeon, that is not my difficulty, madam.

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My trouble is to understand how God could love Jacob. It did not please

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God to save Esau. It was not God's will to save Esau. God freely chose

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Jacob and not Esau. And the reason wasn't in Esau, it wasn't in His will or His works or His merit, the choice is found in God.

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And you can just see the questions go up. The hands go up. Sometimes when I teach classes, I don't want to answer questions right away because I want to stay on my role of teaching and so sometimes

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I've had students before, they're so tired now they have to just hold their arm up. And I just keep on going.

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And then sometimes they get so tired they do this one, I could never understand it especially as an elderly man. They do this one.

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Just holding the arm up. All these questions because, see, we live in a merit world, we live in a works world, a wages world and breathing the sovereign air of grace, unmerited grace, unmerited grace.

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Questions start going up. Paul says, verse 14, you know people are going to say

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God's unrighteous because Esau didn't get something. What should we say then? He's anticipating that arm that's going up.

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Is there injustice on God's part for saving Jacob and not Esau? By no means.

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God was not unfair to Esau. Some people say this text cannot be in the

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Bible because it's immoral. It's ungodly. It's sinful. And Paul is saying whatever

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God does there's no injustice. If you've got a view of justice that makes God unjust, you better redo your definition.

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God does whatever He wants to do. And what God did with His choice of Jacob and His rejection of Esau wasn't because He looked down the corridors of time and saw

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Jacob and Esau to do either good and or bad things. You know what

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I love about God? Through Paul here, the writer? There's a sovereignty issue.

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How can God be sovereign and man be responsible? And you can almost think when people ask you the question,

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I better back off of that. I better not talk about that so much. It's divisive. I better not really discuss it.

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I better not wear that on my sleeve. I just better kind of tone it down. And Paul does the opposite. He turns it up.

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Because God's nature is at stake. Look at verse 15. He says to Moses, this is

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Scripture, if you have a problem with the sovereignty of God unto salvation or damnation, you need to run from your emotions, run from the world, run from charts and graphs and go to Scripture.

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What does Scripture say? I always remember James Boyce at Bible Study Fellowship teacher training, when people's hands would go up and say, well, what about this?

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What about free will? What about this? He said, teachers, you are to say to the students, please put your finger under Romans 9 verse 15 and say, the

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Bible says, I have mercy on whom I have mercy, whether it's

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Ninevites or Jonah or Jacob or us, and I will have compassion on whom

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I have compassion. No defense, no apology, no rationale. Scripture.

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What does Scripture say? Is anybody wronged if God doesn't give grace?

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Is anybody wronged if God judges sin? Who deserves salvation?

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Aren't you glad, by the way, the text does not say, I will have mercy on none, but I'll have mercy on whoever

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I will. I am what I am and I'll do what I'll do. Sovereign grace.

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Yes, but why doesn't God give salvation to everyone? He ought to. He should.

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You know, language like that destroys grace. Language of ought and must,

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God must save people destroys grace. Verse 16, So then it depends not on human will, when it comes to salvation, truth has inferences, or exertion, but salvation depends on God.

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The answer of who's saved and who isn't is found not in people, but in God, thankfully, who has mercy.

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Who has mercy. For the Scripture says, verse 17,

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For this very purpose I have raised you up, Pharaoh, that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

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So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever

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He wills. Individual language, not language of nations. And it does you no good to say, well,

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He's talking about nations with Jacob and Esau. Nations are filled with people.

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That exacerbates the problem. If it's not individual salvation, national salvation is even more problematic because nations are filled with tons of people.

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But the language here, whomever, do you see it in verse 18? Singular. Problem in our society today is not

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I can't believe you save people. Our problem is I can't believe you damn people. But at least

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I'm not accountable of God's sovereign. Verse 19, Really? You will say to me then,

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If all the destiny of all the people in the world are in the hands of God alone, how can I be accountable? Why does

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He still find fault? Who can resist His will? We can't resist His will. How can we be to blame?

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Verse 20, Now God has the questions. Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

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Will that or will what is molded say to the molder, Why have you made me like this?

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Because if we talk like that, we can hear an echo of ourselves in the prophet Jonah. I told you that was going to happen.

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Some questions we aren't to know. Some questions we can never criticize. And the answer here to quote

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James Boyce because we'll quote him so you don't think I'm the rude one. The answer to the question in Romans chapter 9, verse 20,

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Why have you made me like this? The response is from God it's none of your business. You have no right to act.

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You have no right to ask. It's right in God's eyes. Verse 21,

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Has the potter no right over the clay? To make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use, another for dishonorable use?

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No robot language there. No automaton language there but clay, potter.

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So what about you? Do you think God has rights over everything and every person that He is sovereign over it all?

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And if you ever have that feeling where you want to get mad at God or change the word of God to fit your sentiment or emotions or get some loved one into heaven who is deceased or whatever it might be, you say to yourself whatever the scripture says and I'm going to use

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Jonah as an example as an illustration of the heart of the problem is the heart of the prophet. And the problem would be my heart problem as well.

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God saves gloriously, wonderfully, graciously and if He doesn't save people then my response should not be

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God how could you? My response should be but I'm thankful you saved me. I'm thankful you saved me.

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My other, only other response is just like Jonah chapter 4. It displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.

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I mean can you just imagine for a second what you've earned what

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I've earned I have the heart of a Ninevite but worse and God has given me salvation.

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He's given me forgiveness. He's given me grace and if God has given me those things my response when an unbeliever doesn't respond should never be to God.

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God how could you damn them? It should be God there for the grace of God there but for the grace of God go

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I and you save me to him be the glory salvation belongs to the Lord.

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No wonder Jonah is called the John 3 .16 of the Old Testament. Luther is on his deathbed and he said what

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Spartan saying can be compared with this wonderful brevity of John 3 .16

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it is a Bible unto itself and then in his dying moments he repeated the words over three times

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I'll repeat it just once or I'll say it just once for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that those believing in him should not perish but have what everlasting life.

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Amen. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston Massachusetts.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.