Embracing the Mission of God - Jonah 4

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This week our pastor Don Filsack brings us a message out of a series entitled Embracing the

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Mission of God, a Study through the Book of Jonah. We're coming to the conclusion of the

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Book of Jonah this week. I'm going to be out for two weeks on vacation, and then we're going to dive back into the

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Book of Acts for a few weeks. So I'm hoping that you've caught some of the major themes of the

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Book of Jonah as we've been going through it. Have you been connecting with that? Has it been speaking to you?

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Have any of you felt conviction from it, or encouragement, or been challenged as you've been encountering

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God's Word? Good. That's certainly the point of coming together and studying God's Word, is that God speaks to us, and that we hear from Him, and that in the process of hearing from Him, from His Word, that we are changed.

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Not that we just go, okay, that's cool, that's good, and then we go about doing the exact same things that we've always done, but that we are open to having

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God change us. So a couple of the major themes that kind of bubble to the surface, that this final text that Jonah chapter 4 addresses, is

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God's relentless mercy towards humanity. That's major theme number one that we're going to be wrapping up this week. That God is a

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God of mercy, and He is merciful, and compassionate, and slow to anger towards His people.

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And then the second thing is, just quite directly, our own stubborn self -centeredness.

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So looking at God, and contrasting God, and His mercy and compassion, with our stubborn self -centeredness.

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And that's the point of the book of Jonah in the end. We're going to see that as we wrap this up in chapter 4.

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But you see, the fact of the matter is, God is compassionate, and we lack compassion.

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God is merciful, and we lack mercy. God is a

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God who sees all people as valuable, but we like to organize people into categories, and build walls, and caricatures, and stereotypes.

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Would you agree with that? That's what we do naturally. But He's a God who sees all people as valuable.

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And so the message, ultimately, that everybody needs forgiveness, it's a song that we sing,

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I mean, there's going to be some lyrics that we sing here in a moment. It's something that we need to hear. Would you agree that you need to be reminded of that?

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Everybody needs forgiveness, starting with us. Right? Everybody needs forgiveness.

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The amazing thing about the book of Jonah, is that it highlights that it is not just the wicked city of Nineveh that needs forgiveness.

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But so does Jonah. So does the prophet. The one who is supposed to be

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God's man in the book. And he needs forgiveness. Even the one who is the spokesman for God there needs forgiveness.

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Maybe we could say, and go so far as to say, especially the prophet of God needs forgiveness.

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Because we're going to see, as we see in the text, it's often those who think that they are God's favorites, that really are just self -inflated and arrogant towards others.

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There's a tendency to think that we're God's favorites, but really it ends up being just our trying to put up a front in front of others.

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So as we come to worship this morning, I want to encourage everybody to rejoice that God has made a way for all.

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Whether we can relate more with Jonah, or we can relate more with Nineveh. And what

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I mean by that is just think about your upbringing. Think about the categories of religion in your life. Where you have been in your history.

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So can you relate more to Jonah? The kind of rigid, rules -based kind of upbringing.

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Think about your parents and how you were raised, and what the church was like where you were raised.

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Were you more like Jonah in a rigid form? Or were you more like Nineveh, where anything goes?

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What was it like in your household? Do you have that picture in your mind? Some of you, your parents bought the booze for your parties, right?

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Others of you, if they found out that you had touched alcohol, they were going to kill you. Right? So what was your upbringing like?

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Where do you relate? Because everybody needs forgiveness, regardless of where you're at on that scale, regardless of how self -righteous you are.

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We all need forgiveness, right? We all need a Savior, a merciful God who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, as the text is going to tell us.

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Let's rejoice as the band comes to lead us, that we serve a

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God who is compassionate and gracious and willing to forgive. I want you to open your

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Bibles. We're going to read this passage before the team comes. Jonah chapter 4, page 659.

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659 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. And again, if you don't own a

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Bible, or if you don't own an English Standard Version of the Bible, which is what I generally preach from, then you can take that one with you.

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It's a free gift from us to you. But 659 in that Bible, Jonah chapter 4. Follow along as I read. And we get a chance to see

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Jonah get all whiny and sassy. But it displeased

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Jonah exceedingly, it being the mercy of God, by the way. It displeased

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Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what

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I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

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Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

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And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.

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He sat under it in the shade till he could see, till he should see what would become of the city.

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Now the Lord God appointed a plan and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.

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So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plan. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.

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When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.

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And he asked that he might die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?

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And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the

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Lord said, You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

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And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120 ,000 persons, who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?

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Let's pray. The book of Jonah, really, as we dive into this passage, it could have ended last week, and we would have got significant life lessons from it, and it would have been pretty sweet, and you kind of could look at chapter 4 and kind of wonder and scratch your head why it's here.

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As a matter of fact, when I was talking with Dave, and we were planning for the service, when I read through the book of Jonah, I always get chapter 1, great, chapter 2, great, chapter 3, great.

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What in the world is chapter 4? There's a plant and a worm and things getting eaten, and what?

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Scorching east wind? What's going on in chapter 4? What's that about? So if we were to put in perspective what we've heard so far in the book of Jonah, and for those of you that haven't been here for the whole series, just to kind of catch you up,

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God called this guy Jonah to preach to Nineveh. Nineveh was a violent and evil organization in this little enemy city of Israel where Jonah was from, and he's called to pick up his stuff and go to Nineveh and proclaim judgment on them.

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But Jonah instead ran from God. So God pursued him. There was that whole stomach of a fish dealio that probably everybody's familiar with, and then

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God gave him a second chance. He called him again and said, go to Nineveh. Jonah obeys the second time.

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Nineveh repents of their evil. And God shows mercy. And he relents from destroying them.

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You see how that could be the end of the story? See how things are? It feels kind of like a pretty good story.

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All the loose ends are sewn up. You know, Jonah called to task. Check. Jonah completed his mission.

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Check. Nineveh transformed, changed, repentant. Check. God demonstrates mercy.

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Check. All the components of a great story all rolled up in there. That's why we have chapter 4 here.

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And chapter 4 exists. If you're ever reading a passage of Scripture and you're like, I don't quite get it. Ask yourself this question and this will start to tease the reason that it's there.

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Why is it there? Ask that question. What is it there to communicate? Why is it here?

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And I would propose to you that Jonah 4 exists to drive home the two primary themes of God's great mercy and Jonah's great lack of mercy.

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That we are basically getting an opportunity to look at a case study, a contrast between two characters, main characters in the story.

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Jonah on the one hand who completely and utterly lacks mercy and God who is a God of compassion and mercy.

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And the stage is set so that God shines greater in light of Jonah's ignorant lack of mercy.

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Verse 1 begins with Jonah's response to the repentance of Nineveh. If you look at verse 1 it says, but it displeased it.

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Whenever you see something and you don't know what that pronoun is, what is it? You've got to go back in context and figure it out.

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And it's the repenting, the turning of Nineveh and the relenting of God from the disaster that he said he was going to do.

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So it was exceedingly, it displeased Jonah exceedingly. He was utterly angry.

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This is gratuitous, hardcore anger that we see in the text. As a matter of fact, I think it would be more accurate.

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And if that just shocked you when I just said that, then you get the force of what the text is supposed to be saying to us.

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I don't say that to be edgy. I say that to be academic. Like literally, that is an academic statement about what

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Jonah is going through at this time. And in this state of utter anger,

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I mean he is hacked off and he offers a pretty funny prayer in context.

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So you look at this. And it's funny from the outside, but man, if you're in there and you're going through this and you're

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Jonah, I mean this isn't funny. But in this prayer, he's going to tell us for the first time in the entire book why he was running.

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Did you catch that? I've told you a couple of times because I know how the story ends, but we haven't heard yet.

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Why was he even running in the first place? If you were to just sit down with Jonah for the first time, you've never read it before.

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And most of us are tainted because we heard it in Sunday school or you heard it as a child or something. But if you were to sit down from beginning to end and just read it for the very first time, you don't know why he's running.

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Until this verse, until this passage right here. And he says why he's running. He ultimately says,

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God, when I was back in Israel, I knew this was going to happen. When you called me and you told me to go to Nineveh, I already knew the end of the story.

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Because I know you. Because I know you, God. And I know what you're like. And by the way, read between the lines.

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I know you and I don't like you, God. You're supposed to read that in here. I know you and I don't like you because here's what

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I know of you, God. You're a gracious God. You're merciful. You're slow to anger. You're abounding in steadfast love.

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You relent from disaster. What? Are those bad things?

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Are those things worthy of being angry at God about? Something strange here.

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Anybody want to kind of say maybe Jonah's a little messed up? A little bit twisted in his priorities?

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Maybe just a little bit like us? Oh. He's ticked.

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He's ticked because God is merciful? Think about that. Sometimes I think people can be too critical of biblical characters.

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Sometimes we're a little too loose with them. Jonah gets off the hook a little too much sometimes, I think.

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You see, there's that whole whale thing that grabs our attention and sometimes we don't think deeply. But you see, what we're dealing with here is a prophet, a man of God, Jonah, who understood

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God correctly and he didn't like him. He doesn't like what God is going to do here.

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Jonah knew correct things about God. He had correct theology. He had a right understanding of the amazing glories of the almighty

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God and he ran from him. You hearing what I'm saying? We can do the same.

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But I think it would be valuable for us to unpack a little bit of Jonah's accurate theology here. Because this is good.

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He's on bedrock here. He's building a solid foundation of theology. Who is God? So he makes some statements about him.

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He says, God is gracious. Another way to just state that in common vernacular, God is willing to cut people some slack.

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Do you think of God that way? Do we think of God as a God who's willing to cut us some slack?

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This is best seen in what a common theology, one of the terms of theology is common grace.

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That concept that he allows good things to happen to wicked and evil people. Okay? Have any of you ever experienced some good things in life?

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Did you deserve those good things in life? No, it's just a gift from God. It's his outpouring of common grace.

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You see, the answer to the question, why is there evil in the world? And why is there good in the world? Are both kind of similar answers.

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So why is there evil in the world? If we've got a gracious God, well, it's because he's gracious. Because you see, we broke the world.

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So that's the simple answer, right? Why is there evil in the world? We broke it. Humanity broke the world. Oh no, what am

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I going to do? You ever break a vase and your parents, and you're kind of trying to hide the pieces? You can't hide the pieces from God, right?

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Giving people time to repent. And that's why we live in a broken, fallen world, where there's still sin, and there's still evil, and there's bad things.

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If God were not gracious, we would die when we sin. Any of you glad that you don't die when you sin?

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That God doesn't just snuff you out the moment that you sin? We wouldn't be here. One sin, you're done.

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Yeah, not so good. But then you ask yourself, why is there good in the world? Because God is gracious in giving us moments of goodness, even in this fallen creation.

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My wife and I are on our way out to Maine. Actually, we leave this afternoon, and hoping to enjoy some of the good creation.

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There's sunrises and sunsets, and the beauty of the ocean, and hoping to see some moose, and maybe a couple of whales when we go out whale watching.

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We're looking forward to this. We're excited about getting a chance to kind of see God's good creation, and there's moments of joy and blessing in this life that's undeserved.

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Just God's grace. He is a gracious God. How did

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God's graciousness apply? To Nineveh? He gave them time to repent, and then he accepted their repentance.

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The second thing that the text tells us, that Jonah tells us, in his anger that he spews out that is actually a good truth about God, is that God is merciful.

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Another translation of that word, translators kind of have their favorite English word of what they want to do with that. Some say merciful, some say compassionate.

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Same exact Hebrew word can be translated either way. But regardless of how you translate it, that Hebrew word is a mothering kind of word

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It is a tender compassion. Soft and tender care for someone who is utterly dependent upon you.

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Can you picture that in your mind? A mother caring for her baby. Compassionate.

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That is our God. Do you picture God compassionate that way? Tender care for those who are dependent upon him.

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The third thing that he says is God is slow to anger. I want to state that that is despite what many people think.

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Would you agree with that? Many people see God as an angry, wrathful, vengeful

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God. Does he have wrath? Yes. But God is slow to anger.

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He will display his wrath. But think about it from this perspective. If he came back today to execute judgment on the world, how long has he endured the human race?

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The sinful human race? How long has he endured with us and put up with our shenanigans? How long?

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I did. I said the word shenanigans. Our crud. Whatever. He has endured with us for centuries.

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He is not looking for a quick chance to smoke us. Anybody who thinks that God is quick to anger and some of us in this room might harbor that sense that God is just over our shoulder looking for us to fail so he can just light us up.

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If you are there, we need to realign our view of God with what he openly declares to be true about himself.

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Does God have a tipping point where his patience gives way and eventually he moves into a mode of discipline towards us?

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Is there a tipping point for that? Yes. But his wrath is applied only after his patience is exhausted.

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Fourth, God is abounding in love. See, God is the source of what the Hebrew language,

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I haven't thrown out, I've been really careful to not throw a lot of Greek and Hebrew at you, but this is a

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Hebrew word that I think is valuable for you to become familiar with. It is hesed.

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It is God's covenant love, his steadfast, enduring love. The Hebrew word is hesed.

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It's a covenant type of love that I could think of that would reflect a hesed kind of love is a 75 year wedding anniversary.

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Now I actually question whether to even put that down. Do people have 75 year wedding anniversaries? Do the math?

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Does that really happen? So I actually did some research and I looked online and I got emotional reading some of these stories about 75 year wedding anniversaries.

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It's amazing. A type of love, how many of you know that if you've been married 75 years, it hasn't all been a bed of roses.

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Do you know what I'm saying? It's that kind of steadfast, rooted love that says, I'm committed to you regardless of what happens in life.

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You're going to go through some dark times in 75 years, right? For richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, all of those things.

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And it's all rolled up in this committed kind of love. And it was just like, wow, to just read stories and quotes and some people are just saying a lot of love and a little bit of luck and some of those kinds of things and stuff.

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But just to hear the quotes from these people, 75 year wedding anniversary. And yet that kind of,

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I mean that's the best that we can imagine in regards to a longevity of love. And that pales in comparison to coming under His covenant love.

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And by the way, the only way in under that covenant love is through Jesus Christ. That is the way that God has provided for us to come under that banner of His protection, of His forgiveness, of His love,

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His chesed. And Jonah identifies that God is abounding in chesed.

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Abounding in steadfast, committed love. And then lastly, God is a

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God who loves to relent of disaster. He loves wrath and particularly loves it when humans repent.

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Again, He's not eager to apply His discipline to us, but He is looking for excuses like repentance to avert

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His wrath. You get that? He's looking for opportunities. He's looking for us to repent.

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He's eager for us to repent that He might turn His wrath away. I guess best have evidence by the cross, right?

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That He would go to such extremes to relent of His discipline and provide a way out to come from under that.

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All of these observations about God are found in so many passages in Scripture that they're things that I would call foundational doctrines of theology.

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Jonah got them right. He understood God. And again, he understood them, understood these character traits and he did not like them.

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Do you believe God to be these things? Really think about that.

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And then ask yourself this, are they true of you? Because we're called to be Christ -like, to be like God.

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If you take them and turn them toward yourself for a moment, I think we begin to see what made Jonah angry in these because Jonah ultimately wanted

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God to be more like him and God was not like Jonah.

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So turn them to yourself for a second and I think we'll see some of the things that made Jonah angry about God.

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Are you compassionate? Tenderly caring for those who are dependent upon you?

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Are you slow to anger? Abounding in love?

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Relenting from devastating others? How many of you know that there are times in our lives where we hold other people in our hands?

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We have control over them. Either they've wronged us and they're coming to us for repentance and now we can crush them.

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Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you ever experienced that? Because they were at your mercy?

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You've been there? Nobody else has been there, just me? A couple of you had the opportunity to do that but you know where you're there and you're are you eager to relent from devastating others?

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Now as we go through and we think through that list surely you have a couple of those. Hopefully you have a couple of those that maybe is your specialty like you're like oh that's in my wheelhouse

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I can handle that. But even then are you consistently applying that over the course of all interactions with humans?

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None of these we get consistent. None of these are really in our wheelhouse.

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None of them we hit out of the park every time consistently but God is consistent in these things.

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You see Jonah wanted God more like him. I am glad that God is not more like me.

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Are you glad that God is not more like you? I know I'm glad that he's not like me. Now I want to point out that I don't think

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Jonah had in mind necessarily an anger that God was merciful as long as the mercy was applied to him. You see how there's a nuance in there?

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He wanted the mercy for himself. He's like oh that's okay God if you're that way just don't be that way towards others just towards me.

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So Jonah asked God to take his life. Jonah is in a pitiful state in chapter 4.

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He doesn't want to serve a God who will not judge sinners like the Ninevites. And this is where we get to cut Jonah some slack.

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So this is where a lot of commentaries, a lot of people are going to cut him some slack and I think it's justified to give him a little wiggle room because of who we are.

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You've got to cast judgment that wicked Jonah oh boy he's just evil.

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Look at ourselves for a second. Put yourself in perspective. The Ninevites were wicked. They were violent.

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They were aggressors. This isn't like God showing mercy to Michigan State fans if you're a

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Michigan fan at least I hope you're not that hardcore if you are boy we need to have a talk.

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Put this perspective in your mind. What do you need to do to reach?

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So I'm going to ask you to go to Chicago for this one because you've got to get over to Chicago and I'm going to ask you because there's a ring of sex traffickers over in Chicago and I'm not asking you to minister to the people that are victims

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I'm asking you to minister to the aggressors and in that process

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I'm going to ask you to call down God's judgment. I'm going to ask you to call my judgment down on them. God I don't want to go.

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How many are signing up for that? Anybody signing up for that? Now where are you going? Like Spain, Portugal?

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You're going as far away as you can get from Chicago? Anybody else feeling like getting on a boat for Tarshish? You're getting a little perspective on where Jonah's coming from in this passage?

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All of a sudden he looks a little bit nicer and a little bit like you're getting where he's going. So then you go through the whale or whatever.

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You finally say okay God you're in charge I'll go do what you want me to do. Heading over to Chicago.

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You get there and they repent and turn and God says okay you're all right.

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I'll be gracious to you. How are you feeling? Anybody struggling with that?

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Anybody all of a sudden like where Jonah is in the passage? Anybody like kind of step down off the top tier of the ladder and kind of like okay

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I guess we're maybe on the same level now with Jonah? It's a hard thing isn't it?

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You see Jonah is angry because he perceives a significant injustice has been done.

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You see where Jonah is coming from? Where according to human justice God has a different scale than us?

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God asked Jonah a probing question. Do you do well to be angry? Do you justify it in your anger?

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How's that working for you Jonah? How's the anger working out? Jonah does not reply. He's so spitting angry.

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Instead Jonah heads out east of the city. What he does next is just kind of humorous in itself. Heads out east of the city.

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They're going to be let go. So he builds himself a small inadequate lean -to.

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I say inadequate because we're going to see that there still needs to be a plant that comes up over him to shade him from the sun.

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But he builds this lean -to. He sits down in the minimal shade to see what might happen to the city. God's already told him what's going to happen to the city but he wants to see just in case.

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What is Jonah out there east of the city waiting for? Destruction.

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He's not hoping to see the mercy of God displayed. He's not out there looking for a fireworks display.

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He's not out there looking for a celebration of the city, waiting to hear the city cheer because they're not destroyed. Jonah's sitting up on the hill in his lawn chair hoping to catch a glimpse of carnage and the destruction of 120 ,000 minibites.

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Do you get what he's hoping for here? Can you feel what he's hoping for here?

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He's a little twisted in his desire, would you say? He's just a little twisted. God has already pledged his mercy.

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He's already said he's going to relent from disaster but Jonah is just hoping beyond hope that maybe God will relent from that and maybe even some of the cattle get destroyed.

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He's sitting out there in his lawn chair hoping for this. You getting that picture? That's what he wants.

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Did you know that our human sense of justice is not always fueled by godliness?

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It is not always fueled by godliness. How many of you ever think, boy if I have a just thought maybe that comes from God because God is just.

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And we want to judge where God wants to forgive. Can you imagine a situation or a scenario like that in your life?

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If you ever had to forgive somebody that you didn't think deserved it, that's where the rubber meets the road.

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And that is hard. That is so utterly difficult. It takes a supernatural work of God in your life to forgive like that.

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Right? Jonah is not getting it. We can become so out of touch with what we are and what we deserve and who

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God is that we can actually believe that we deserve better than others. That we look at our sins as good and their sins as bad.

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Or at least our sins aren't as bad as theirs, right? That's what God is trying to teach Jonah here at the end of this book.

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Jonah has ultimately grown into a sense or degenerated into a sense of divine entitlement.

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God owes him. He says, I deserve good things from God but others deserve punishment. So God, ironically, is going to provide him a good thing to illustrate.

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He's going to make a plant grow. It says in the text that God appointed a plant. Now we've seen God appoint several things throughout the book of Jonah.

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That's kind of a theme of God appointing things. He appointed a strong wind to blow a storm up on the

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Mediterranean. He appointed a great fish. Now we're going to see him appoint three things in chapter 4. He's going to appoint a plant, a worm, and an east wind.

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And I want to point out that God graciously provides a plant. Applying that grace, he provides a plant for Jonah.

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Just like the fish, we cannot determine with any kind of accuracy what kind of plant it was. People banter back and forth about what it is.

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But just like the fish, remember there were only two things that really mattered about it anyways that we really needed to know. Number one is that God sent it and number two it was for Jonah's benefit.

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So Jonah is saved from the discomfort of a scorching desert heat. And he moves from exceeding anger to exceeding gladness.

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Any of you relate to that on an emotional human level? Like moving from just being like spitting angry to like pretty good.

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Anybody ever be able to do that in the course of a day? Or vice versa? Things are going really good and then boom, one thing hits and you're down.

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It's like Jonah had a rough day at work but came home to find that the broken air conditioner had been fixed and he's good and he was glad.

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The provision of the plant was miraculous. It grows overnight. Again, just trying to figure that out. It's a miracle.

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We're probably not going to get our mind around what kind of plant this was or try to find the one that grows the fastest and call it that.

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I don't know. But we know that it's a miracle. It comes up overnight and then in the morning

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God's going to appoint something else. He appoints a worm. Now what kind of worm? We don't know but just like the whale we know two things.

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Just like the plant we know two things. The worm came from God and the worm is for Jonah's benefit.

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You know it's not going to feel like the worm is for Jonah's benefit. He's not going to take it that way but it is.

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It's part of the lesson that he needs to learn. God also sends, it says in the text, a wind, a scorching east wind and then the sun beats down on him and it's like Jonah's getting ready to have a heat stroke and he again asks

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God to just let him die. He's miserable. He's not just miserable he's angry.

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He's focused on his own comfort and I think it's fair to just call Jonah a big hot mess of emotions.

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Have any of you ever been there yourself? Okay that's where Jonah is. And so God asks him again.

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It's almost like God is pushing his butt and just pushing him to the brink. He says, do you do well to be angry about the plant?

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How's that working for you? Do you think it's reasonable? Is your anger justified?

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Jonah lashes out and this is kind of like a sassy, whiny statement. I just can't picture how he says this other than just like, eh, eh.

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Do any of your kids do that to you? Do you ever do that yourself? Yes, I do well to be angry.

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Angry enough to die. Like what a pitiful statement.

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Jonah attempts. Do you hear what he's trying to do? Do you see what he's trying to accomplish here? He's trying to convince the

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God of the universe that he is justified in his anger. Yes, I'm justified.

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Yes, I do well to be angry. Thank you for asking. I think that we can tell

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God why we're angry. I think that's acceptable. I think that's understandable. I think that's reasonable and that's actually good practice.

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You find yourself in a situation where you're just spitting angry. Talk to God about it. Let him know, hey, I'm ticked. I'm angry and this is why.

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And here's what's going on. But if you were pressed with the question, do you do well to be angry? I think that's going to put things in perspective for you.

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It should. That question, do you do well to be angry, should drive us to consider the utter folly and uselessness of human anger.

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Has that worked for you? Any of you ever get angry from time to time? No. OK, good, good.

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Well, I'll just skip this next section or I'll just preach it to myself because the reality is I can get angry.

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OK, and I'm not saying that in a generic sense. I'm saying that that's a struggle for me. I'm saying that as your pastor,

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I struggle. I can have a short temper. Me, Don Felsick. You can ask my wife, but I can tell you honestly that my anger has never, ever produced anything beneficial in my life.

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There has never been anything positive that has ever come out of my anger. Period.

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Nothing. Nil. Vilch. Nada. Nothing ever good has come out of my wrath or my anger.

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Those of you who struggle with anger, can you identify with that? Can you say amen to that?

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There is nothing good that comes out of our anger. So the

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God who is slow to anger is looking down on his prophet, asking him, so how is that whole hot -headedness thing working out for you?

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It's meant to jar us into contemplating the pettiness of our own wrath and anger. It's just petty.

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So to this angry, stubborn little man, God delivers the point. In verses 10 and 11, he says to Jonah, you had pity on the plant that you did absolutely nothing to produce.

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It was short -lived and you loved it. But you, Jonah, don't think

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I should have pity on a whole city full of 120 ,000 people. And not just people, but people who don't know their left hand from their right.

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Now that's not talking about ignorance like they couldn't memorize left and right or something like that.

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It's not talking about their ignorance, it's talking about their morality. It's a moral statement in Hebrew. You don't even have pity on those who morally don't have what you have.

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As a Jew, you have the law. They don't even have a law to follow to understand. They haven't been given my Ten Commandments.

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They don't even know me and yet you can't even have pity on them. And he throws tax on the cattle because this has been kind of an animal.

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There's been a lot of animals in the story. I want to mention them too. The word pity is really important here.

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You don't see it in the text. Pity is just kind of one of those words that can be kind of a positive or negative in our culture.

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It's a little bit nuanced and different and kind of hard to define. But the Hebrew word is very specific.

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It literally means move to tears. Like Jonah was spitting angry and moved to tears over the loss of this plant.

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But what's interesting to note is that by implication, God is moved to tears over Nineveh.

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Do you hear me? God pities Nineveh. Wow. Moved to tears.

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Do you believe in a God that is moved to tears by sinners?

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What do you think? And this is where we leave

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Jerusalem. This is where we leave Jonah. Jonah is not in a good place at the end of this book. He's angry.

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He's desiring death. He's lacking pity for others. But in this context, here at the end, is where we meet our

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God. Here in this text. In contrast to Jonah, our

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God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, merciful, relenting of disaster.

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That is our God. So do you see why chapter four is important?

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To bring this all to a culminating point of contrasting Jonah with God.

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The one who is quick to anger versus the one who is slow to anger. It's finally in this last chapter that we see the contrast between the mercy of God and the angry justice of man.

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God is not like us. Anybody glad for that? God is not like us.

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His ways are higher. But this highlights the importance of God's word in aligning our thoughts about who

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God is. Because so often, if we're honest with ourselves, our God begins to look a lot like us.

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Do you agree with that? He begins to think like us and talk like us and love the things that we love and hate the things that we hate.

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And that's why it's so important that we come here because this is where we meet God. And it should challenge us.

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If you open God's word and you're not challenged to think about God differently, then you're not studying it well. We need to get in here to find out who

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God is and who he's revealed. And it's going to have an impact on us. It's going to change us.

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It's going to challenge our thoughts about God. Don't bring what you think to the text, listen to it, read it, study it to know who he is.

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And we'll be changed because we've encountered it. So there's two primary applications from the conclusion to the book of Jonah.

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The first thing I want to ask of all of us is to align yourself with the character of God.

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Align yourself with the character of God. If you're taking notes, write that down. The only way we can do this is through a radical overhaul in our lives.

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Think about this. If we want to align ourselves with the character of God, the character of God was revealed in some of these statements.

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He's compassionate, he's gracious. So the question is how can we grow in compassion? How can we grow in graciousness?

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How do we slow down our anger? You see, and the fact of the matter is

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Satan wants to whisper lies in your ear right now, right here in recast. And he wants to tell you, well you can do this.

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Okay, what Pastor Don is asking you for is to just try harder, to do better, to stop being angry so much or to just be more gracious and kind to others.

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You see, he wants you to hear me as nothing more than a hyped up motivational speaker telling you take control of your future and do a better job.

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And that is not what I'm saying. So my job is to slice through the deception right now and tell you that you cannot do what

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I'm asking you to do. You cannot produce godliness in your own life. How's that for motivation?

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I'm asking you to do something you can't do and you're like, Don, that's not fair. What are we going to do about this then?

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I'm asking you to change your life, but I'm telling you you can't change your life. Well, technically you can't.

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You see, because until we realize our need for a new heart and a new mind, we will be satisfied with being religious people.

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And when I talk about religion, I'm talking about your outside. I'm talking about making yourself look good for others.

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And we'll be satisfied with that as long as we don't shoot for a new heart and a new mind and ask for God to change us.

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Religion won't change us. It just covers the darkness and the anger and the hot messes inside, right?

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You ever tried that before? Any of you ever tried that? Just try to put on the smiley face after you've been arguing with your wife on the way to church and then,

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I've been there, arguing on the way and it's like, Oh, we're pulling in the driveway, smiles everybody, it's time for church.

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Let's do some church. And that's what you're doing.

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You're doing church at that point, right? Where's the heart in this? Asking for God to change us.

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You see, we need a Savior to transform us. And the good news is that God has provided a

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Savior to come down and change us with love, compassion and forgiveness. And His name is

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Jesus. So I want to encourage all of you, don't be satisfied with a one -time prayer asking

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God to save you. Does God save you at a point? Can there come a point in your life where you transfer allegiance, at one point you're an enemy of God and you say,

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I recognize and I want to come under the umbrella of Jesus Christ? Absolutely. But I want to encourage all of you to keep asking

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God to keep saving you. It's a process in your life that God is, you know, that one -time prayer and asking

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God to come into your life and transform you and change you and to forgive you, that's an awesome thing. But that is just the start of a lifelong journey with God of asking

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Him. I am in no less need of a Savior today than I was when I prayed when I was eight years old to ask

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Jesus to save me. I still need a Savior. Would you guys agree you still need a

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Savior? And Jesus Christ is His name and keep turning to Him and keep asking Him. Say, God, don't let go of me.

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Keep me, hold me, keep changing me, keep transforming me, keep conforming me to the character of God, to compassion, to mercy, to relenting.

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So aligning yourself with the character of God. I don't believe we can lose the new life that God has given us as His children, so don't hear me saying that.

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But I do believe that we can live beneath our means as followers of Jesus Christ, because we just don't ask

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Him to align us to the character of God. So would you ask Him this week to align you more with His will, to align you more with His character?

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Without His transforming work, we're just playing religion and that's a waste of time. And I'd be the first one to invite you to just give that up.

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I invite you to go to church to check a list and like I just come because that's where I'm supposed to be on Sunday morning.

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That's not it. You need something else. You need a heart change. I get up and I read my

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Bible every day and I do this and I do this and I do this. Why? Are you in love with God? Is it because He's changed you and He's given you this love, this hunger, this desire to be with Him?

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Or is it just a duty? It's like pulling teeth.

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The second thing. So aligning yourself with the character of God is something that's dependent upon just throwing yourself and humbling yourself at His mercy.

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Not something that you're just making yourself look good on the outside but it's something that you ask Him for. Constantly come before Him and plead with Him and beg

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Him to transform you and to change you and to rub off those rough edges and help defeat the habits that are negative in you.

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But once you're kind of aligning yourself with His character and again it's not like you're ever going to arrive.

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It's going to be an ongoing lifelong thing but if you're on that road of aligning with His character and asking

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Him then the second thing comes in. Aligning yourself with the mission of God. You see

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God is expanding His kingdom of compassion, grace and steadfast love. He's expanding that. He's growing that.

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And to be like God is to be an ambassador of His kingdom and that means being on the lookout for those in need of forgiveness.

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Being on the lookout for those in need of His grace. Ask yourself this. Think about people in your life.

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Who is unlovable? God loves them and we should too. Who wants to heal them?

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And we should too. Who are cast far off on the fringes of society?

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God wants to bring them close into His community and we should too. Who is wicked and sinful?

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Us. Us. So let's align ourselves with the character of God by begging

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Him to draw us near to Himself that we might walk with Him and look more like Him.

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Let's align ourselves with the mission of God. Reaching out as His ambassadors to a world that's in desperate need of His grace and His compassion.

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We're going to take time this morning to remember that grace, compassion, love, steadfast love, the relenting of God that was so clearly demonstrated at the cross of Christ.

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He willingly came. He was God in flesh. Jesus chose this task.

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To suffer in our place so that the wrath of the Father toward our sin could be diverted to Him.

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That the wrath that was channeling towards us and funneling towards us has been diverted. The path of the divine retribution of God, the channel was moved off of us.

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It's heading towards us. There was a day of destruction and praise God that He diverted that to His Son.

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And Jesus took that unwillingly. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for our sake

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He, that is the Father God, made Him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin.

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He was perfect without spot or blemish and yet He became sin for us. Our sin.

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So that in Him, Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God. That righteousness might be accredited to our account and our sin washed away.

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Does that excite any of you? A couple of you.

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Jonah was merciless. And he's a picture of us. Jesus, the crucified, is the

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Son of God who is compassionate towards sinners. Even wicked sinners like those

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Ninevites. If you've asked Jesus to save you so that you can be included under the umbrella of His compassion and grace,

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I encourage you to come to the table and remember the sacrifice that brought you forgiveness. If you've not asked

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Jesus to forgive you, I encourage you to sit back and take in this song as David comes to play.

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But I also want you to just consider for a moment what would stop you from throwing yourself at the mercy of God today.

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Let's pray. Father, I praise

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You for Your character and even just the challenge that this text was for me this week and thinking through just faulty notions that you are slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, compassionate, merciful, relenting from disaster.

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That You are not eager to crush any of us. But Father, that You are willing to use the tools that are necessary to grab our attention.

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And so Father, I ask that if there are any here who need to think differently of You, Father, I know that all of us need an overhaul in our likeness towards You, that we are not like You and we need to have filled up those areas where we are lacking.

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But then Father, if there are any here who haven't begun that relationship with You, Father, would You please work in their hearts for conviction, for encouragement that today would be a great day to make a decision for You.

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Father, as we come to communion and we remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are all level.

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We are all on the same level together at the foot of the cross. We are all in need of a

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Savior and all in need of forgiveness. I praise You that a way has been made through the blood of Jesus Christ that He took the wrath for us.