The Prodigal Prophet Encounters God’s Lavish Mercy: The Minor Prophets - The Village Chapel

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Well, as Kim said, we are continuing on in our summer study this morning, our summer study of the minor prophets, and we're calling the series The God of Our Salvation.

And this morning, we're going to finish up the book of Jonah.

Last week, Pastor Jim taught us through the first two chapters, and he called it the wideness in God's mercy.

And I am calling our study today the prodigal prophet encounters God's lavish mercy, because those two things are going to run into each other in these two chapters.

We're going to witness what happens when this prodigal prophet, who we saw run away last week in the first couple of chapters, and then he ended up repenting in the belly of this giant fish.

He receives a word from the Lord again regarding Nineveh to go preach to the Ninevehes.

And we'll see in chapter three how he reluctantly, with gritted teeth, delivers this word to this people group that he despises and wishes, frankly, that God would destroy instead of save.

I'll go preach to him, but I don't want you to save him.

How do the Ninevites respond to this word?

How does God respond to the Ninevehes?

How does Jonah respond to all of it?

In chapter 4, Jonah's going to question God regarding his lavish mercy.

And then God's going to question Jonah regarding his posture towards those he considers his repugnant others.

And in one of the more curious endings to any of the books of the Bible, the narrative just ends with God asking Jonah a couple of questions that remain unanswered.

There's no clean ending to this book.

So instead we're left, we're left leaning in, kind of standing on tiptoe with an ear turned to hear how Jonah answers God, but he never does.

And I rather think that's exactly how Jonah and the Holy Spirit intended it, because as we're left listening in for an answer, it creates a space where God can get our attention, and we realize God might be asking us these questions in our own lives.

How do we relate and respond towards those we regard as other?

How do we treat people who are deeply different than us?

How would God have us treat those who we classify as them and not us?

In the ESB study Bible, in the introduction to the book of Jonah, there is this summary of the purpose of the book, and I think this just says it so well.

The primary purpose of the book of Jonah is to engage readers in theological reflection on the compassionate character of God and in self-reflection on the degree to which their own character reflects this compassion to the end that they become vehicles of this compassion in the world that God has made and so deeply cares about.

I'm going to read that one more time.

The primary purpose of the book of Jonah is to engage readers in theological reflection on the compassionate character of God and then in self-reflection on the degree to which their own character reflects this compassion to the end that they become vehicles of this compassion in the world that God has made and so deeply cares about.

What a nice way of stating God's desire for the way we treat others, calling us to be vehicles of compassion.

My prayer for us as we study these two chapters today is that we reflect on these next two questions and we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in ways to love others well.

And I'm praying that we would really be reflecting and thinking about this.

Do we have a group or groups of people that to us are repugnant others?

And if so, what is our posture towards those people?

So keep that in mind, would you?

Because many, many of us have people in our lives who are radically different than us.

How do we treat them?

I lived uh in a little tiny town in southwestern New Mexico until I was eight, and when we moved south to El Paso, Texas, which is where I grew up.

In this little town, I don't know, maybe 2,2500 people, there was a set of railroad tracks that ran right through the town.

And literally all of the white residents lived on one side of the tracks.

And all of all of the non-white residents, anybody with any pigment in their skin, mostly Hispanics and some Native Americans, but anybody that was non-white lived literally on what we call the other side of the tracks, the wrong side of the tracks.

My parents, they were not overtly prejudiced, and I can't remember a single time that either one of them ever spoke about someone of another ethnicity or nationality.

They never spoke of anybody in derogatory terms.

But what I do remember about that episode of life was having this definite sense of other, of this other group of people that lived on the other side of the tracks.

And I didn't realize that till I was in my 20s, just realizing, oh, that that was a thing.

My reason for telling this story is that I think most of us have some group or groups of people that somehow we regard as other.

And I just have to say that it's how we view and regard those that we think of as other.

That is extremely important to God.

And it reflects on how the love of Christ dwells within us.

And frankly, that's where we're going to be camping out today.

Well, here's a look at the cast of characters in these next two chapters.

We're done with the fish story at this point.

I think Jim alluded to that last week.

The fish is gone.

We have Yahweh who makes his presence known in this chapter.

We have Jonah, hopefully, having had some kind of a shower after getting burped up on the beach.

If you think the fish smells bad on the outside, that's all I can say.

And then the residents of Nineveh, 120,000 people, enemies of the Jews, and then some extras to these scenes, these chapters.

There's a bunch of cattle, livestock that's mentioned, a random plant that God causes to grow up, and a pest, a worm of some kind that God brings in to the narrative to eat on the plant.

Well, let's let's pray, church, and then get started in on this text.

Got lots lots to cover and lots to talk about here.

God, we come to you this morning, knowing that we have not made ourselves.

We cannot keep ourselves, we could never save ourselves.

Knowing that we turn to you, our Maker, our Keeper, our Savior.

God, I pray that you would speak to us through your Holy Spirit this morning.

Open our eyes to what you would want us to hear out of these two chapters of Jonah.

We ask all of this in your son's name.

Amen.

Well, so here we here we go.

Chapter 3, verse 1 and 2 of Jonah.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

Almost exactly the same message we heard at the beginning of chapter one.

And can't we not immediately marvel at the fact that God in his mercy and his patience is allowing Jonah a second chance to get this right?

God had a word that he really wanted to speak to the Ninevites, and he really wanted Jonah to deliver that word.

And how grateful Jonah hopefully was that God gave him a second chance.

Verse 3, so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.

Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey.

Remember, there was no mass transit system in those days, no Uber, no cabs, no subways.

So a city of 120,000 and all of the surrounding villages, you can see why it might have taken three days to get from one side of the city to the other.

And Jonah just goes in one day's journey before he starts preaching.

So back to back to verse 4, he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believed God.

They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least.

And this word that Jonas preaches is fascinating to me.

I mean, he's definitely no Charles Spurgeon or Billy Graham or Billy Sunday.

His sermon, it was eight words long in English, five words long in Hebrew, and he probably didn't even speak Hebrew.

He probably spoke Akkadian, which was the general language of both the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.

Jonah doesn't mention the Lord.

He doesn't mention Yahweh.

He doesn't mention the words repent and believe.

He doesn't try to convert the Ninevehes.

He doesn't say, if you don't repent, this disaster is going to come upon you.

No, he's basically one of the guys standing on the street corner with a sandwich board saying, the end is near.

That's about all he says.

And look at the response.

Frankly, this is further proof that we're not really necessary for God to get his message across, isn't it?

Hate to say it, but it's the truth.

The weight of this sermon is truly on the word of God because all Jonah says is, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

That's it.

That's all we know.

And one of the best responses ever to a sermon by a pagan nation, no less, and the people of Nineveh believed God.

Slam dunk.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Let's keep reading at verse 6.

So the word, word of the Lord, reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything, let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.

Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who knows?

God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.

The response works its way all the way up the ladder to the king of Nineveh.

He realizes the truth of the message, and he realizes the need for haste, right?

He calls for this nationwide fast.

And I love this in verse 9 the phrase, who knows?

God may turn and relent and turn from his first anger so that we may not perish.

Gosh.

This pagan king and these pagan people, they have a pretty good handle on God's sovereignty, don't they?

They're not presuming anything.

They are praying, they're weeping, they're mourning, they're fasting, they're repenting, and they have no idea if God is in fact going to hear their prayer and relent or not.

They're trusting in God's sovereignty.

Something we talked about in our sermon prep meeting this week is that, gosh, the sailors in chapter one, not the sailors, the king, the Ninevites, these people were not believers.

They don't have their theology right in the slightest.

And that matters not to God because they come with repentant hearts.

That's all they bring.

That's all they know.

As Tim Keller says, you know, when you come to the cross, all you need is need.

That's all we need to come to Jesus.

We don't have to have all the right answers.

We don't have to have things worked out in our heads, we just come to Jesus.

And then look at God's gracious response.

Verse 10.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Amazing.

Amazing.

God saw their repentance and he relented of what he was going to do.

And look at this quote from Dale Ralph Davis.

This is from his commentary on 2 Kings, but it's so appropriate for this.

Yahweh's hard word may not be his last word, but rather a call to prayer for new mercies.

Sometimes what sounds like a final degree, decree, is a subtle invitation.

And I'd like to say this was not so subtle of an invitation here, but it is an invitation.

Continuing on in chapter four, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.

For I knew, oh, I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Wow.

Well, at least we can say that Jonah isn't holding back his feelings from God, is he?

And I find this amusing.

Jonah is so angry at God.

I knew you were a gracious God.

Jonah is quoting from Exodus chapter 34, where the Lord hides Moses in the cleft of the rock and passes before him, and it tells about his character.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

That's what this quote is from.

And yet, if you'll look on this next slide, Jonah didn't quite include all of the attributes here because the Lord says in Exodus 33, 19, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I shall show mercy.

Jonah's missing the point here.

The Ninevites understood the sovereignty of God.

Jonah's missing the point.

God chooses whom he will have mercy on and whom he will be gracious to.

And in all fairness, Jonah's asking a question that many of us ask: how can God be both merciful?

How can he be merciful and forgiving to a people who are just plain evil, who've done such violent things?

In other words, how can God be both merciful and just?

It's a fair question.

And it's an important question that drives us to try and understand the heart of God.

Here's another question along those same lines in our trying to understand how justice and mercy fit together.

Who decides who is right and who's wrong?

Who decides who are the good people and who are the bad people?

Because we're so quick in our culture to lump people into one or the other categories.

Only God can truly be the judge, and yet we still find ourselves tribalizing, setting up camp with people like us, and lobbying truth grenades at people, the others in the other camp.

Verse 3.

Let's continue on.

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

And the Lord said, Do you well to be, do you do well to be angry?

Jonah is so melodramatic.

It is better for me to die than to live, right?

And God is so uh measured in his his response.

Bro, is it a good thing for you to be so angry about this?

Well, look at what happens next.

Verse 5: Jonah went out of the city, sat to the east of the city, and made a booth for himself there.

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

Basically, Joseph's going out, going up a hill, setting up camp, getting his little camping chair out, setting his Yeti cooler down.

He's got his little hat with the little double koozies and straws, and he's just waiting for God to bring the hammer down on the Ninevites.

Right?

I'm just here to see God smite them.

See them Ninevehite gets what's coming to them.

That seems to be all he's living for now.

His entire goal in life has now become watching those Ninevites get what's coming to them.

Moving on to verse six.

So, verse six now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.

So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

He was exceedingly glad.

Exceedingly angry about the mercy shown to the Ninevites, but now he's exceedingly happy about this plant that gives him shade.

Jonah's getting a little kind of a little entitled here, I think.

So verse 7, but when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.

And 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.

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?

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

Wow.

Oh, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah.

So well, we get another good look at God's sovereignty here.

Four times in this book, we see this word appointed.

God appointed the great fish.

He appointed the plant, the worm, and the scorching east wind.

And you'd think that Jonah might have gotten the word, gotten the message when God appointed the great fish, but he certainly hasn't yet.

And all of this is taking place while Jonah is still waiting for God to smite the Ninevehes.

And in his mercy, God appoints the plant to grow and give Jonah shade, but then he sends the worm to attack the plant, which withers and dies, and then he sends this scorching east wind.

All of this to direct Jonah.

And now that the plant is gone, the sun is hot, the desert wind's blowing, Mr.

Melodramatics says it again.

And God calls him on it.

He challenges Jonah, questioning his anger, again asking the question Do you do well to be so angry for this plant?

God is trying to get Jonah to put things in perspective, and Jonah won't have any of it.

Well, here we come to the last two verses and to these, to this ending, these questions.

And the Lord said, Okay, 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.

And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, meaning they're in spiritual darkness, and also much cattle?

Here we get to the heart of the matter, I think.

God is pointing out that Jonah had this compassion on this plant just because it suited his purpose, and then contrasting that with the compassion that God has on the Ninevehites and even their livestock.

What a big contrast.

Well, as with any good narrative or any really good story, I don't know, sometimes when I watch a movie, if the writing's really well done and the characters, the acting's really great, you find yourself the next day wondering, what's Fred doing today?

And then you realize, oh, it's just a story.

He's going to Kroger because his name's George.

But we do find ourselves asking this, right?

There's those questions from God, and then we go, and then what happened?

What did Jonah do?

And we don't know the answer.

But the fact that Jonah left the manuscript unfinished is meaningful.

I think it naturally leads us to reflect on our own lives and relationships.

So, what might we take away from this passage this morning in this summer day in Nashville, Tennessee, where there's no Ninevites around?

Here's a few thoughts that stuck out to me while studying this week.

And this first question is for all of us to ask ourselves, are we sitting in the seat of Jonah, or are we following in the footsteps of Jesus?

What's the pattern of our life regarding others?

How did Jonah respond to those whom God had called him to preach?

Here's what Jonah did.

He sat outside the city hoping for God's judgment to fall.

He reluctantly preached the word of God and then he left the city.

You know, he could have actually, he could have gone back and continued preaching over and over again.

But he preached the word and he left, went up waiting for God's judgment to fall, and he was angry that the Ninevites didn't receive God's wrath.

Contrast that with Jesus.

Jonah goes outside the city to wait for God's judgment to fall.

Jesus sat outside the city weeping over Jerusalem in lament.

Jonah couldn't get out of the city fast enough, reluctantly preaches and leaves.

Jesus goes into the city of Jerusalem, knowing full well what lies ahead of him.

Jonah was angry that the Ninevites didn't receive God's wrath.

Jesus laid down his life so that we would never have to receive God's wrath.

What a difference.

Jesus is definitely the greater Jonah, the prophet whom we can fully trust because he was willing to lay his life down for those to whom he was preaching.

D.A.

Carson says it like this if you want to see what judgment looks like, go to the cross.

If you want to see what love looks like, go to the cross.

Jonah wants a God of his own making, a God who simply smites the bad people and blesses and rewards the good people.

Jesus shows us how God holds justice and mercy together at the same time.

Perfect love and perfect justice, living together in unity, not intention.

The Bible shows us a God who comes and bears his own penalty because of his great mercy.

This God substitutes himself for us and suffers for us so that we may go free.

That is a God you can trust.

That's how God holds perfect love and perfect justice together in unity.

John Stott describes it like this: the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us.

Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be.

God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone.

God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.

That's that contrast.

Because he's willingly substituted himself for us.

I think this passage gives us a pretty good insight into how Jesus views us and how we could view others.

This second takeaway is that God sees beyond the sin.

God sees beyond our sin to the person behind the sin.

While we look at others and only see their behavior, their lifestyle, or their tribe, Jesus looks beyond all that to the actual person, to the image bearer created in love.

What do we see when we look at someone whom we classify as the other?

I mean, that certainly is what Jonah was doing in this passage, right?

When we categorize people as other, we focus on the ways that they are different than we are.

We collapse and reduce them to these characteristics until they're dehumanized.

And once we do that, once they're dehumanized, we can say, oh, you know how they are.

They always say this, they always do that.

And one of the more typical ways we do this, we classify a group of people with that article the in front of them.

Right?

The Republicans, the Democrats, the left, the right, the capitalists, the socialists, the communists, the whites, the blacks, the immigrants, the illegals.

When we call somebody they or them or the and dehumanize them, it allows us to not engage with them.

We can shun them and hold them at arm's length.

Here's what the Lord has to say about that.

In his marvelous book on the 23rd Psalm, David Gibson says this.

No, his enemies are those who cannot bear the fact that he eats with people who have done bad things.

People like me and you.

And I love that.

That was a lot of the criticism Jesus got in his ministry, wasn't it?

Because he was eating with the wrong sort of people, the people that lived on the other side of the tracks.

Not only does God see beyond our sin, he often calls us to love outside of our comfort zone.

That's the next thing that I think we can take away from this.

Much earlier in my life, not doing it these days, I used to run marathons, and uh I ran the Chicago marathon a couple of times.

And I want to find the right way to say this.

There's a certain point in the marathon.

You know, most races like this, they have aid stations set up every couple of miles where you can get water or banana or something like that.

And there's this one section of Chicago that's kind of like Greenwich Village, right?

And so you come around the corner, and obviously these people are living a different lifestyle.

And I just remember the first time that I ran the marathon, here I come around this corner and I come up the table to get a drink of water, and obvious, obvious people that are pursuing a different lifestyle than I thought was right.

And to be honest, the the first time that I came to that table, I was um, I don't know how to explain it.

I was offended.

I kind of recoiled and and was thinking, there's no way I'm letting a person like you serve me.

And I gotta tell you, in in the next year before I ran that race again, man, God convicted me.

How could I respond that way to someone who's an image bearer of God just because I classify them as other?

I just the next year when I ran the race again, I willingly, willingly, gratefully allowed them to serve me.

God's gonna call us out of our comfort zone.

You know, as believers, we're we're not called just to build up the body of Christ, which we are called to do.

That's part of our calling for all of us, not just on church staff.

It's important, but we're also called to love our neighbors who don't look like us, who don't believe like us, because that's how they're going to encounter the gospel.

Tim Keller in his book The Prodigal Prophet, which is about the book of Jonah, says God cares how we believers relate to and treat people who are deeply different than us.

It's easy to like and love people who look like us, talk like us, think like us, vote like us, but that's not how Jesus instructed us to live.

In the Sermon on the Mount, remember, he says, you've heard it said, you'll shall love your love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

Because if you love only those who love you, what reward do you have?

Because even the tax collectors do that.

Friends, it's easy work to love those who look like us and think like us, that are part of our camp, our tribe.

But it's also worth remembering that we were once, from God's perspective, we were once enemies of the cross, we were once the other.

We were far off, but that didn't stop God from pursuing us.

Paul says this in Ephesians, but now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near.

Friends, we are called to love those who are not like us.

And the last little point I'd like to remind us of this morning is that God sovereignly appoints events and encounters.

We saw that in this book, right?

How God sovereignly appointed the storm in chapter one, how he appointed that great fish, and then later on he appointed a plant, a worm, a wind, all to get Jonah's attention and to direct him to do the work to which God was calling him.

That same God divinely and sovereignly appoints events and encounters in our lives as well.

As the famous theologian Dr.

Seuss said, oh, the places you'll go.

We can trust, we can trust how God is directing the events and encounters in our lives because we can trust him.

This next slide in Genesis chapter 18, Abraham is pleading with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and he expresses faith in God's character when he asks this question: Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

Friends, we can trust God's hand in our lives because we trust his character, and we can trust why he leads the way he does.

We read this verse just a few weeks ago in 2 Peter chapter 3.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

This gives us an inside look at God's desire towards all of us, even when we were an other to him, an enemy of the cross, even when we are far off.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Let's look at this slide again from the beginning with these two questions.

Can we ask ourselves these questions again?

Do we have others in our life, a repugnant other?

What is our posture towards a repugnant other?

Do we have people whose world worldviews, lifestyles, and behavior are so different from and antithetical to our viewpoints that we can't imagine them responding to God's grace and mercy?

Are there people in our lives that if we are deeply and painfully honest with ourselves, we might even go so far as to think they don't deserve forgiveness or grace or mercy?

I mean, is that our posture towards them?

I'm sorry, but I don't think you deserve Christ.

Or even more honest, do we maybe think, man, I hope they don't find Jesus?

Because then I have to welcome them as a brother or sister, and I just can't bring myself to do it because of X, because of the way they believe, the way they vote, the way they look, the way they live their lives.

Or, or are we able to let down our guard to engage with this other person, to even go so far as to imagine what it might like to be like them, to let go of our viewpoints long enough to see past the lifestyle, see whatever, see past whatever it is that's different about them, see beyond the sin, see the person who behind the sin is an image bearer of God and love them first, right where they are, and build a bridge to that person, build a relationship with that person, knowing that if that bridge is there, that relationship is there, maybe at some point they're gonna consider the gospel, maybe at some point they're gonna consider who this Jesus really is, and then there's that bridge there, that we can meet them on this bridge, and we can walk back across with them, knowing that God is full of boundless love for them and for us.

We need the Lord to change our hearts from contempt to compassion.

I've got just a couple of slides left for us.

Corey Tinboom, for those of you who don't know her, she grew up in World War II.

Her family was a Dutch Christian family, and they hid Jews from the Nazis.

They were eventually caught, and she and her sister, at the very least, went to a concentration camp.

Corey was released, but her sister died in the concentration camp.

And Corey says this there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.

God's grace is greater than our friends.

No matter how deep our sin goes, God's grace goes deeper still.

There's no end.

That's why we have to look past the lifestyle, the behavior, sin to the person behind it.

Actually, including ourselves when we look in the mirror and all we see is brokenness and behavior there.

We still have to look past that.

God's grace goes deeper than our sin.

And we've got one last slide from Philip Yancey.

One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as those evil people or those poor people who need our help, nor must we search for signs of love worthiness.

Grace teaches us that God loves us because of who God is, not because of who we are.

So, my last question for us to our repugnant others, who undoubtedly we're gonna run into some this week.

When we meet up with them, are we going to be Jonah to them or are we going to be Jesus to them?

Amen, church, let's pray.

God, we all have people that we feel kinship with.

We all have people that we feel animosity towards.

And yet we come to you knowing that your desire is that none should perish, that all should reach repentance.

And we look at Revelation chapter 7, where every tribe and tongue and nation and people group are all standing before the Lamb, worshiping him.

Revelation 7 · chapter mention

God, you have pursued each and every one of us while we were yet an other to you, while we were yet far off.

I pray that you would mend us and mold us and shape us and help us become pliable and see where your sovereign hand takes us and love the person across the table from us with the love of Jesus.

And we can only do that by your Holy Spirit.

And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.