MPC, 27th July 2003.Jonah 4 - "A Welcoming Place?"
Maurie Cropper MPC, 27th July 2003.
Back when I was a student minister at theological college I was asked by the minister of the church I went to, if I'd like to go with him and visit a guy he knew in Long Bay jail. I'd never been to Long Bay jail, in fact the only jail I'd ever been in before were no longer occupied by prisoners. Jails like the old one at South west Rocks on New South Wales north coast. Or the historic jails at Richmond and Port Arthur in Tasmania. So not bothering to ask too many questions, off I went.
Long Bay is a huge jail with enormous thick stone walls. We were checked out by security. Eventually we were shown through to an outside meeting area, with tables and bench seats, where we met up with the guy we came to visit. We had about an hour to catch up with the guy in jail, who was a Christian. He mentioned that he had started a bible study group with other prisoners. Just then one of them who'd just recently become a Christian was walking past. So we were introduced to this new Christian. We shook hands and chatted for a time, and after he left I asked: "What's Michael in for?" "Oh, ..he murdered two people" ...came the reply.
I was blown away. Not the response I expected. It left me a little perplexed. Did that mean a double-murderer is going to be with me in heaven? Could I cope with the fact that a saved Michael was going to be in heaven? And after he served his time in jail could I cope with welcoming him into my church family? Could you?
From our reading today we are confronted with Jonah, a very perplexed prophet of God. Perplexed and angry. Someone even suggested, a perverse prophet! Bitter and twisted because he doesn't agree with God or like how God has reacted to the repentant Ninevites! What has displeased Jonah is that the Ninevites are now in God's favour and in his family. In his family! When as far as he can see it and understand it, they ought to be out! Down and out, outside of God's family, OUT, OUT, OUT!
In Jonah's mind God has done a U-turn, and he doesn't understand it, nor can he accept it.
And he's angry!
In fact everyone except Jonah has done a U-turn. I know the NIV bible uses the word "turn" only once, but listen to how the NASB puts the last couple of verses in chapter 3, reading from verse 7.
And the King of Nineveh issued a proclamation and it said: "In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Don't let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and let men call on God earnestly that each may TURN from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may TURN and relent and withdraw his burning anger so that we shall not perish? When God saw their deeds and that they TURNED from from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared he would bring upon them. And he did not do it.
God had his anger TURNED towards them.
They TURNED to God.
Then God TURNED.
And then Jonah TURNED on God.
Everyone's TURNING. And everyone's TURNING for the right reason, except Jonah!
In Jonah's angry, crazed mind, he cannot understand why God has turned; why God has changed his mind. And while God is now pleased with the Ninevites, in verse one of this fourth chapter we're told that Jonah is thoroughly displeased with God.
"But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry".
And now in verse 2 all is revealed to why Jonah fled to Tarshish in the first place and why he is now so angry with God.
Jonah prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That's why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."
And Jonah's knowledge of the nature of God has its roots in the covenant that God gave his people at the time of the Exodus. The words of verse 2 are very famous words in the Old Testament, now being quoted here in chapter 4. They are first mentioned to in Exodus 34:6.
Jonah's anger could be termed covenant anger. But what first looks like righteous anger is looking more self-righteous as time goes on.
Jonah's quotation of the passage in Exodus, is a result of him observing correctly that God's love was a love covenanted to one original group of people. Since the time of Creation they were the original recipients of God's glory.
Looking at the context of Exodus 34, the people of Israel had not long been saved by God from the grasp of their enemies the Egyptians. But while their leader Moses was away talking to God, they decided to build an alter in the shape of golden calf. God is angry and sends Moses off so that God can get on with the business of destroying those who built the calf.
But Moses pleads with God. Reading from Exodus 32:11 "But Moses sought the favour of the Lord his God. "O Lord , he said, why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?"
Moses pleads with God to TURN from his anger, and in verse 14 we read: "Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."
So Moses heads back to the people and in front of them smashes the two stones with God's words written on them, sorts out the mess and then after another appearance with God on the mountain returns to the people with the new stones, and with God in the form of a cloud – who passes between Moses and the people and says from the cloud: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin."
These words and this picture of the covenant promises and covenant relationship between God and his people would have been vividly etched in Jonah's mind!
This covenant love of God had only ever been revealed to Israel. Not every Tom, Dick or Ninevite! All Jonah could do was to ask himself: What was God doing? Is God out of his mind?
What's happening to the distinctiveness of Israel's relationship with God? How could God share his sovereign, intimate nature to outsiders? And what was God doing sharing it not only with outsiders, but outsiders who were the hated enemies of God's covenant people. This was all wrong!!
It's at this point that Jonah has a crisis of a new revelation, of how and to whom God would grant His Grace.
In fact it begs the question: "Does God change?
And the answer is No and Yes.
We read in James 1:17 that "every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." And we are told in Hebrews [13:8] that the second person of the Godhead, and I quote: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever." And in Malachi 3:6 where God is again addressing the wickedness of his people Israel, he says: "I the Lord do not change."
So why in answer to the question "Does God change?" can we say Yes?
When facing two options, such as will I destroy or not destroy, God's focus can change from one to the other. BUT, ..but in all such changes God stays the same! God allows change to take place, but he's always the same. His nature never changes.
We must be mindful to always measure God from within the Bible, and by His Nature.
And what's God's nature that now stands before Jonah? Nothing less than as it says in verse 2 of chapter 4 " ...a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."
It's God's nature to have and show mercy.
So when the God of the bible shows mercy, to whom He pleases... He's being consistent with His own nature.
While the Ninevites have been a nasty cruel bunch, and have looked like being blown away... now, in their willingness to repent before God... He saves them.
So if God can change his focus, why doesn't Jonah change his?
You'd expect a prophet of God to be over the moon if what he'd been asked to do came off. Happy that God's name was now glorified by people who once hated God. But not Jonah.
And the irony isn't lost is it? I mean, prophets are supposed to get angry at other people. Not at the one who sent them. Prophets like Amos and Micah didn't hold back on rebuking everyone from the King down. When God's people didn't heed God's message, God's prophet got angry. They're supposed to be angry at the disobedience of others who don't live as God wants them to live. In that way, even Jesus showed his anger to others.
But not our Jonah. He gets angry when others respond positively to the message of God.
He's so ropeable with God!
Through gritted teeth he 3 times delivers an angry response to God. Telling God in v.9 "I'm angry enough to die!"
He doesn't want God to be true to Himself.
He doesn't want God to forgive people when they humble themselves and repent.
He's perverse!
He rejoices about being provided with shade; about being saved from the burning hot sun... but he in no way rejoices over the deliverance of others! He's perverse! He's the very opposite to God.
He's ungracious, unloving, lacks compassion, quick to get angry, and longs for a calamity to befall the Ninevites.
He's an angry nutter! Concerned for himself and his kind, but not for anyone else. Even the plant gets a guernsey from Jonah. But as for anyone from outside joining God's team, becoming part of God's family... no way!
Just recently I was with someone who was so angry about certain issues happening around them that they proclaimed they wanted to die. I don't believe that's in fact what they wanted to happen, but they were so angry they were hyperventilating, and thrashing all over the place, and storming up and down... to the point where they were completely irrational.
The description of Jonah here is a bit like that. Totally over the top.
So in a direct challenge to his thinking, the LORD addresses Jonah and asks him twice, once in verse 4 and again in verse 9: Have you any right to be angry? Has he any valid grounds of objecting to God showing mercy to whom He pleases?
The answer is obviously that Jonah or anyone else has no right to challenge God on how or to whom he extends his mercy.
At the end of chapter four we're not told Jonah's final response to God, or even if he did respond. What matters is how we, knowing this story, respond to God. Do we grasp the greatness of God's love? Are we eager that others enjoy it?
So where does Jonah 4 connect with us?
Let me suggest a couple of connections.
Firstly, God's compassion shames us, and secondly, his freedom inspires us.
And because of this we ought to be concerned for God's world with great compassion and with great confidence. But there's a risk, a danger, and it's this.
We might become like Jonah, disgruntled and angry with God because things have become personally uncomfortable.
Let me illustrate this by turning with me to the story of the Prodigal Son or the Lost Son. You can find it in Luke 15:11-32.
This parable is the last of three stories that Jesus tells about things once lost but now found. The lost sheep and the lost coin being the other two.
It's important to note that the crowd of listeners is made up publicans, managers or owners of boarding houses and maybe drinking places, and others that Jesus refers to as sinners. Also there are Pharisees and teachers of the law, who we're told in 15:1-3... muttered to themselves that "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
Jesus spoke these parables of a good shepherd seeking his lost sheep; of a distressed woman seeking her lost coin; and of a deserted father receiving back his wayward child, to vindicate his welcoming of of sinners. Not only that, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law would have understood that the good shepherd, the distressed woman and the deserted father all represent God, and now they make the connection God's actions in seeking the lost, is one-and- the-same with Jesus' actions in welcoming the company of sinners!
One noted preacher from the past, Benjamin Warfield, put it this way: "In the first two parables, those of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus was directly justifying his receiving of sinners and eating with them, because it is the lost who require his attention. He came to seek and save the lost." Warfield then goes on to say: That the rejoicing "... in heaven over one sinner that repents rather than the ninety nine righteous persons who don't need to repent" ...is the "dominant message" of these three parables.
Rejoicing in heaven every time someone repents and is saved.
And it's in the third parable about the lost son, that the contrast is drawn between the joy and celebration over the return of one repentant person and the mean-spirited, envying, older brother.
And in hearing the story, the Pharisees and teachers of the law are now confronted with the mirror image of their own hardened hearts.
The irony is of course, that they themselves are in the same category as the sinners they despised. The same sinners that Jesus was now welcoming.
And like the two brothers in the story, the Pharisees and teachers of the law needed to return home to their lost estate, to God's house. They needed to have their crusty, hardened, and jealous hearts, probed until they too recognised their need to repent and to turn to God.
The main point that Jonah and the Pharisees and we have to learn is, that when we're all... in equal need of salvation, there's no place for complaining about the goodness of God towards others.
Jonah had no right, not even as a prophet of God and in his special relationship under the covenant... to complain to God about who should or should not be in God's Kingdom.
Neither did the Pharisees, and neither do we!
It's God's nature to want to save. It's in His sovereign power to save and to welcome anyone he chooses. Be it the King of Nineveh, publicans and sinners of all kinds, even Michael the double-murderer who's probably still in Long Bay jail. Even us!
It's for us all to accept that it's God's Grace that we all have depended on.
And our response now is to rejoice over every single person who repents, and to welcome them into our midst.