Furious With God

Father, we know that no one is good enough to warrant going to heaven.

That as the Creed said, in a sense, whatever righteousness we have comes from Jesus, not from ourselves.

And to fulfill your good and perfect will is to put our faith and trust in Jesus, not as a work,

but as a fulfillment of the leading of your Holy Spirit and the desire of your heart,

that we might trust Jesus and him alone as our Savior and Lord.

Father, we ask that you would pour out the Holy Spirit upon us today,

that you would bring your word and touch our hearts,

that we might be disciples of Jesus who are gripped by the gospel, learning to live for your glory.

And this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Please be seated.

So quite a few years ago, it's not one of my kids who are at church today,

but quite a few years ago, one of my children was in the car with my mom and dad,

and they were on the Queensway, and somebody cut my dad off, and my dad said,

what an idiot.

And my son, because it was a son, he piped in, I think he was like eight years old or something at the time,

my son piped in with just the innocence of a child and said, yeah, that guy's a jerk.

And then he continued, there's lots of jerks on the road.

My dad says that all the time.

As we're on the Queensway, he's always talking about all the jerks on the road.

Just complete level innocence.

And I, of course, just, my parents came and told me about it afterwards,

and I just wanted to cringe.

I didn't realize that I said I had an anger problem on the road.

That's a problem that other people have, not me.

But obviously, my children heard differently, and in a sense, it not condemned me.

It really challenged me about how I drove.

Today, we're going to talk about anger, amongst other things, but we're going to talk about anger.

And one of the things about anger is that often people like myself,

who have bouts of anger or maybe even constant low-level anger,

we don't recognize it in ourselves, but we think we see it in others.

It's often a sin or a fault, as I said, that we don't acknowledge ourselves as having,

but we think other people have.

One of the things, and that's actually one of the reasons why,

for old Christians, when they were coming up with ways to try to understand how to live a moral life,

they came up with this idea of the seven deadly sins.

And this is going to be a bit of a surprise to some of you if you are a guest,

but in the list of the seven deadly sins, lust was there,

but lust is the least deadly of the seven deadly sins.

And part of that, of course, is that,

I mean, I've told this story before.

I used to visit a man in a hospital who was 100 years old,

and we got talking about it someday or another,

and he just told me when you hit 100, lust isn't much of an issue in your life anymore,

not compared to when you were a 16-year-old male.

So that's one of the reasons it's a bit of a less deadly sin than some of the others,

because just with your body getting old and tired,

it just becomes a little bit less of an issue.

And the other thing about it is that often people know when they're filled with lust.

But just as one of the things that makes cancer so deadly is not only will it kill you,

but there's many forms of cancer that you don't know you have it

until it's too late to do anything about it.

So it is that anger and pride,

which in fact are the two most deadly of the seven deadly sins, pride and anger,

anger is a deadly sin because it will do great damage to our lives,

but at the same time we often don't recognize that we actually have an anger problem ourselves,

or anger-driven.

So today we're going to look at a famous story about anger in the Bible.

It was read earlier to us by Deborah.

If you don't have a copy of a Bible to look, there'll be a text up on the screen.

But it's always good to bring your own Bible to church

and be able to make little notes on it as we go through and talk about this text.

So we're going to be looking at Jonah chapter 4,

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

and we're going to be looking at,

and for some reason I also have it open to Micah,

we'll turn to Jonah, Jonah chapter 4, just these four verses.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

And if you're curious about why we're doing this,

one of the things we do at Church of the Messiah is we preach through books of the Bible,

we're preaching through Jonah.

And a good way to understand the book of Jonah

is to compare it to watching a good BBC series on Netflix or Crave

or whatever it is that you happen to subscribe to.

And in a really good BBC series,

what you'll do is it tells you one story,

but it tells you one story by telling maybe four or six or eight or ten stories,

whatever the number is.

In this particular case, there's four separate stories.

Think of them as episodes.

And each episode is a story,

but when you talk all four of them together,

it tells you a very different, like it's nuanced.

And we're not going to look at all of episode 4 today.

We're going to break episode 4 into two parts.

We're just going to look at the first part of episode 4, so to speak,

4A, and then next week we'll look at 4B.

And just if you're not familiar with the story,

what's happened in episode 1, God shows up and speaks to Jonah

and tells Jonah he has to go to Nineveh and proclaim a message.

And Nineveh was the major power of the ancient Near East at that time.

Israel, which is where Jonah was from, was a vassal state.

They'd been conquered by Assyria and had to pay tribute.

And God says to Jonah,

go to Nineveh, the capital, and proclaim this message against him.

And Jonah reacts by saying, I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to get as far away from God as I can

and as far away from Nineveh as I can.

And of course, the rest of episode 1 is what most people think of

when they think of Jonah.

There's a huge storm,

and he ends up that Jonah gets thrown overboard

to stop the storm by the pagan soldiers with Jonah's permission.

And in a sense, episode 1 ends with a cliffhanger.

The storm stops, so the pagans got it right.

And Jonah's sinking into the water.

Episode 2, that's how you want to watch episode 2.

What happens to Jonah?

Episode 2, God appoints a huge aquatic beast

to show up just as Jonah's about to die in the water.

The huge aquatic beast swallows Jonah,

takes him right into the entrails, the intestines.

And chapter 2 is Jonah's, in a sense, reflection and summary

upon what it was like to be in the belly of a great aquatic beast

for that period of time.

And he ends up putting it in the form of a prayer.

And it's really a form of a prayer about how he comes to realize

that the Lord is merciful, slow to anger, filled with compassion,

and that the Lord has delivered him.

And Jonah's filled with gratefulness.

How does episode 2 end?

In a way that humbles Jonah, Jonah is vomited onto the land

by the great aquatic beast.

If you're vomited by a fish, that would be a humbling experience for you.

So, episode 3, what's going to happen next?

Well, in episode 3, we find Jonah actually showing up in Nineveh.

And Jonah goes throughout Nineveh proclaiming,

in 40 days, the Lord is going to overthrow you.

And the word overthrow is the same word that's used about Sodom and Gomorrah,

how they're completely destroyed.

So, Jonah proclaims this message.

And lo and behold, everybody in Nineveh, the capital city, repents.

The king repents.

The nobles repent.

The people repent.

Everybody repents.

And as a result, the Lord sees their repentance,

and he stays his judgment.

Now, here's the question.

We have episode 4.

What on earth could go on in episode 4?

If you think about it, this is the perfect Hollywood movie.

It's the type of Hollywood movie that people like to watch.

Hollywood movie that people like to watch,

it would be as if, from your point of view, it's a J, right?

In a good Hollywood movie, you begin up here.

Some type of crisis happens.

You're all being defeated.

Everything's going.

It looks like it's just going to be disaster and tragedy.

But then, things conclude.

And at the end, you're higher up than when you began.

And in a good Hollywood movie, I just watched Hunter Killer, a not very good movie on Netflix.

How does it end?

Classic American ending of a J story.

Everybody's clapping because the good guys win.

The bad guys die.

High fives, hugs.

Everything's going.

And in a good Hollywood movie, it either ends up that the guy gets the girl,

or the girl gets the guy, and they ride off into the sunset,

or there's applause, or there's both, or there's all of that type of stuff.

Lord of the Rings, it has it all.

The wedding, and of course, the applause and the ceremony.

So you think, Jonah should end with chapter three, but there's episode four,

which we're going to do in two parts.

Why?

Because Jonah is like the movie The Sixth Sense.

And if you haven't seen the movie The Sixth Sense, I'm not going to give you a spoiler.

I did that in another sermon, and a couple of people told me off for it.

What I can tell you is if you watch The Sixth Sense,

something happens in the last three or four minutes of the movie

that makes you reconsider everything that went on in the entire movie.

It completely and utterly blows the whole storyline away.

You have to rethink everything that you saw, and that's what's going to happen in Jonah.

And here is how it begins to happen.

It happens with three questions in terms of what happens to Jonah.

So chapter four, verse one,

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

And just sort of pause.

Very, very good translation.

But what it actually says in the original language is far worse.

They can't actually indicate the full depth of what's being communicated in the original language.

It says displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

What it says is it was a catastrophe to Jonah what had happened.

A great catastrophe.

And it burned him.

The word for anger there is actually that he's so consumed, he's burning with anger at the great catastrophe which has just happened.

Remember the great catastrophe is that the people of Nineveh listened to his preaching, repented,

called out to the Lord for mercy, to God for mercy, and God stayed his judgment against them.

And to Jonah, this is a huge catastrophe.

And it's such a huge catastrophe that he's completely and utterly burned up with anger.

So, well, why is he so filled with anger?

Well, that's what verse two begins to tell us about.

And look at verse two.

So Jonah prayed to the Lord and said,

Oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

That's in chapter one.

That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.

Chapter one.

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

That's the different ways that that word disaster could be translated.

So why is he angry?

He's angry that Nineveh was spared.

He's angry that Nineveh was spared.

And all of a sudden, and his great anger shows how much he hated Nineveh.

You see, one of the reasons why anger is considered a bad thing by almost everybody in Canada

is that anger is a very, very, very quick road to hatred.

And not only is anger a very quick road to hatred, anger is a very effective way to maintain and deepen hatred.

And that's amongst other reasons why it's generally viewed as being a bad thing, even in our culture today, that anger is a bad thing.

We're going to talk more about it in a moment.

But all of a sudden, you realize, one moment.

So, in fact, sometimes if you hear people talk about the story of Jonah,

they'll describe that the reason that Jonah left and didn't want to go to Nineveh was because he was afraid.

Because Nineveh would sort of be like going to Tehran and telling the leaders to repent or something like that.

It would be going to the capital of North Korea and telling the leader to repent.

And people will often use those analogies.

But that's not actually what the text says.

He didn't want to...

The reason he ran away from the thing wasn't because he was afraid,

but because he was worried that God would listen, that they would repent and God would listen,

and they wouldn't all die.

Jonah wanted them to all die.

He wanted God to kill them.

And whoa!

Well, that changes your reading of the first thing.

Like, do the pagans there, who were all, like, sort of trying to be nice to Jonah in that first story,

do they realize how much he hates pagans?

They don't.

And then in chapter 2, where all of a sudden God saves Jonah,

now you go to yourself,

why on earth did God save a guy who's so filled with hate?

And then you go to chapter 3,

and then you think to yourself,

why is it that God used a guy who's so filled with hate so successfully?

Like, if you're a guy like me,

and I, you know, I have some anger issues,

but I, you know, generally I try to fight against him,

I don't have that success.

So, God, why is it that Jonah has this success,

and he's filled with hatred,

and I'm trying to do a good job,

and I don't have anything even remotely close to his success?

Like, what on earth is going on with the whole story?

You see, all of a sudden, it's like the sixth sense.

It changes the way you look at all the earlier stories,

when you see that Jonah

actually did not want to go to Nineveh,

because he was worried

that if he went and did what he was supposed to do,

that God wouldn't kill them all.

And then some of you might think,

some of you have heard me,

if you've been here before,

I like saying that in conversations,

when it can come up with a non-Christian,

I like to tell them that I don't believe in the God of Canadians.

I don't believe the same God that most Canadians believe in.

I believe in a different God altogether,

and then I go and try to describe the difference between the gods.

For many Canadians,

if it's not a deistic God or an impersonal force,

they worry that the God is like bloodthirsty.

I've shared this with you before,

that the God they're afraid of exists,

and they don't want to believe,

is a God who likes to have people die.

He likes to kill people.

He's bloodthirsty.

And I tell them,

the God that I believe exists,

that's revealed by Jesus,

isn't a God that likes to kill people,

but a God who died for people.

The complete opposite.

So maybe that's what's going on here with Jonah.

But no, that's not what's going on with Jonah.

Jonah has a very, very, very, very good

Orthodox Old Testament, New Testament view of God.

Look again at what he says in verse 2.

How does he describe God?

I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love

and relenting from disaster.

Like that's bang on.

And it's really puzzling.

If you go back later on and you read Exodus 34,

the same words are used to describe God.

But these very descriptions of God,

that he is gracious, merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,

that's the entire basis of the writer's hope.

Because the nation of Israel,

after they had been delivered out of bondage

and slavery into Egypt,

and they're on the way,

and even though they've done all these terrible things,

they refuse to obey God,

and they create idols.

And the writer, it's Moses, is saying,

the whole reason I have any hope

is because you are gracious, merciful,

slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,

and relent from disaster.

Go read the book of Lamentations,

a very, very wonderful book.

And if you read at the very heart of Lamentations,

in chapter 3,

for the first 20 verses,

it's our memory verse this week,

it's 21 to 23 in Lamentations 3.

It's a great verse to memorize.

And all these things that the person has done wrong,

and the nation has gone wrong,

and then it comes,

the whole basis of my hope

is that

you are a gracious God,

and merciful,

slow to anger,

and abounding in steadfast love,

and relent from disaster.

But this

is why Jonah

Jonah

is angry at God

and hates him.

In fact,

you know,

there's something

which is going to be really interesting

that happens in the next verse.

Just remember,

this text of Scripture

was probably written

around the year 755 B.C.

755,

758 B.C.

So 20,

almost 2,800 years ago.

One of the interesting things about it

is this text

in the story

brings out something

that modern psychology

discovered in quotation marks,

which is the connection

between depression and anger.

Look what happens in verse 3.

So,

Jonah's burning with anger.

Whether he recognizes it or not,

we don't know.

But verse 3,

Therefore now, O Lord,

please take my life from me,

for it is better for me

to die than to live.

That's a perfect description

of depression.

I just want to,

depressed,

I just want to fall asleep

and not wake up.

Many people commit suicide.

They want to die.

They'd rather die than live.

It's a very powerful description

of depression

in this text

written in 755 B.C.

So how does,

how does the Lord respond?

Verse 4,

And the Lord said,

now,

this is very interesting.

It's a good translation.

You know,

one of the things

when you're going

from one language to another,

I know there's people here,

lots of people here

who know multiple languages,

and you know the experience

of trying to translate

from one language to another.

Two summers ago,

I was in Angola,

and I got,

I had this great honor.

I was on the edge

of the Kalahari Desert,

and I got to preach

at a mission statement

to a semi-nomadic tribe

that was just beginning

to hear the gospel,

and I got to preach to them,

and it was a great honor.

When I spoke,

I really had to work on it.

I really tried to pray

about how to make

cultural connections with them,

and I, you know,

how could I do that?

I didn't know them very,

at all,

and I had to preach

simply from the Bible,

and every time I said

a few words,

it would be translated

in Portuguese,

and it would be translated

into the tribal language,

because many of them

spoke Portuguese,

and one of the things

I wanted to do

at the beginning

was just to try

to describe

how different I was

from them,

and I'd looked up

how much snow

we had in Ottawa

the year before,

and so I said to them

that where I come from

last winter,

we had three meters

of snow,

and they translated

into Portuguese,

and then all of a sudden,

there was a five-minute

discussion amongst them,

because, of course,

they had no word

for snow,

and they were trying

to think of what word

they could give for snow,

and they ended up

coming up with ice,

which just made

the whole room look,

how could there be

three meters of ice

that lands on him?

I mean,

it was, anyway,

but so when you translate,

there's some issues.

This is a perfect,

but in the original Hebrew,

it's very powerful.

There's two senses

in the original Hebrew

when it says here,

do you well to be angry?

The one is,

is in a sense,

the Lord asks,

in Hebrew,

it's just three words,

actually,

and what he says is,

is it right for you

to be angry?

Great question.

Is it right that you're

so angry

that I stayed judgment

on this city,

that I didn't do

Sodom and Gomorrah

on this city?

Is it right for you

to be that?

And the other thing is,

it's actually

a searching question.

I remember being really,

really being angry,

short-tempered,

not realizing I was angry

and short-tempered,

and the person I was with

said,

they knew me very well.

They said,

George,

you're grumpy,

angry,

and short-tempered.

We've got to get you

something to eat

because they knew

that if I had something to eat,

I'd be a little bit

less grumpy and angry,

which was true.

I didn't recognize

I was feeling grumpy

and angry.

They did,

and so the other thing,

so the first thing

that God says,

in a sense,

with the Hebrew,

has this wonderful

double sense.

Is it right for you

to be so angry?

And the other thing is,

do you realize

how thoroughly,

deeply,

completely angry

you are?

Do you realize it?

That's the two senses

of this great,

these three words

in history.

So,

let's try to bring

this whole text

home to us,

to you and me,

now that we sort of

understand the story.

So,

here,

I'm going to do

a simple test

because,

remember I said

how one of the problems

with anger

is that we tend

to think of all

the other people

that it applies to.

So,

imagine,

now you guys

have to figure out

which category

you're in,

okay?

You're driving

home today

and whatever it is,

Apple News

or whatever it is,

but somehow,

you're driving

with somebody,

they get a tweet

and they tell you

what's going on

and they tell you

of some terrible,

stupid,

evil decision

that Donald Trump

made

or Doug Ford

just to be Canadian

and they tell you,

did you hear

the terrible,

Doug,

Trump just did this.

Can you believe it?

Or,

the rest of you,

it's Trudeau.

You're driving home

and they just get

some news announcement

of this terrible,

terrible,

terrible thing

that Trudeau just did.

Now,

that's not the test.

The test is tomorrow

in the afternoon,

there's a news item

to say,

we apologize

for that last newscast.

It didn't happen.

Now,

here's the test.

How do you respond?

Do you say,

oh,

thank goodness

Trump didn't do that.

Thank goodness

he's not as bad

as it sounded.

I'm so relieved.

Or,

you say,

thank goodness

Trudeau didn't do that.

I mean,

he's our prime minister.

I'm glad he didn't do

something like that.

I'm so relieved

that he's not as bad

as I thought he was.

Is that how you respond?

Or,

do you not believe

the news report?

Do you want to hang on

to how bad they were?

If you do not respond

with relief,

you have an anger problem.

You and I

have an anger problem.

Because our anger

at these people

wants us,

we rejoice

that they're bad

and we don't want

to let it go.

we have an anger problem.

Our culture

is very conflicted

about anger.

It's a very,

very common thing

if you go into psychology.

They'll talk about

negative emotions

and positive emotions

and anger

is almost always

a negative emotion.

We

have a very,

we have a great problem

about it

because

we want,

if not for ourselves,

if we think

we have an anger problem

or if we have a,

we're married to somebody

who has an anger problem

or a kid has an anger problem

and our boss

has an anger problem

or a co-worker

has an anger problem,

we want them

to go through

some type of therapy

or some counseling,

maybe take up

Buddhist meditation

or something like that

where they can

get rid of their anger,

it can be taken away.

We have a problem

obviously in our culture

which is being talked

about a lot

but we don't know

what to do about it

that it seems

as if our culture

with all of the social media

that in fact

we get into little tribes

and echo chambers

and it furthers anger.

We have a problem

as I maybe

have just shared with you

in terms of not recognizing

we have problems

with anger

as we describe

our opponents

as being anger driven.

The problem

with the Trump people

is that they're all

filled with anger.

The problem

with the social justice warriors

is they're all

filled with anger.

The problem

with the conservatives

is they're all angry.

The problem

with the liberals

is they're angry

and we see it

as other people

but not ourselves

but we're very,

very confused about it.

So just to get us

thinking back to the text

I want to say something.

The day

they discover

a therapy

or a meditation technique

or a drug

that removes

all anger

from human beings

will be the day

that tyrants

throw a party

and dance a jig.

The day

that somebody

invents a drug

or a therapy

or meditation technique

to take away

all anger

from human beings

will be the day

that tyrants

and oppressors

throw a party

and dance a jig.

If you could

help the first point,

Andrew,

we'll go through

these relatively quickly.

It is good

that the Lord

is slow to anger.

It means

that justice matters.

That's why I said

that if there was

something that could

take away

all anger

from human beings,

tyrants and oppressors

would love it

because we would have

lost our ability

to be concerned

about justice.

It is good

that the Lord

is slow to anger.

It means

that justice

matters.

Many Canadians

complain

that the Christian God

is angry,

an angry God.

Actually,

he's a slow

to anger God

and the slow

to anger

is very,

very,

very important.

The emotion

of anger

is connected,

intimately connected

to our experience

of right and wrong.

It's intimately

connected

to our experience

of right and wrong.

If we had

no anger

at all,

it would mean

that we never

thought that we

came across

things in this world

which are just

wrong.

A case in India,

they all got

convicted of a group

of men that raped

an eight-year-old girl.

If you don't think

that's wrong,

you have a problem.

It's very,

very interesting

that in Eastern

religion,

and it's actually

not a very good

thing in our culture.

This isn't just

dissing them,

but in Eastern cultures

at the end of the day

in the overarching

mythology of whether

it's Hinduism

or Buddhism

is this belief

that everything

ultimately

will become one.

The governing metaphor

is the drop of water

returns to the ocean

and when the drop

of water

returns to the ocean,

the drop of water

ceases to exist.

There's just the ocean

and within that,

there's ultimately

no real right or wrong.

And so,

attempts to do

meditation

or other things

to try to calm

our feelings of anger

on one level,

there's obviously

some things in there

that are good,

but the problem

is it's often

connected with

losing a sense

of right and wrong.

So,

I mean,

the fact of the matter

is that,

and this is beyond this,

we'll talk about this

a little bit next week

because anger's

going to return

at the last part

of Jonah 4.

I mean,

the problem with anger

is that our sense

of right and wrong

is wrong

and we get angry

too much,

we get angry

too little,

we get angry

too easy,

we get angry

about the wrong things,

we get angry

too quickly,

we can't get out

of anger.

There's a whole range

of reasons

by which anger

is wrong,

but God can't

remove our sense

of anger

without removing

our sense

of right and wrong.

And so,

the gospel

is going to try

to reorder

and heal

our sense

of right and wrong

as well as give

this other

very powerful

insight

about what it is

that can maintain

a sense

of right and wrong

but not have us

be so anger driven.

If you could put up

the second point,

that would be

very good.

Notice the key

slow to anger

which is very key

in the whole text.

You can have justice

without mercy

but you cannot

have mercy

without justice.

You can have justice

without mercy.

You just can.

And at the end

of the day,

we can't complain

that something

was unjust.

You know,

you did the crime

and you're going

to pay the penalty

and that's just

the way it is.

You did the crime,

you pay the penalty.

But mercy

is also connected

to a sense

of right and wrong.

You see,

what's at heart

of mercy?

There's obviously

sometimes mercy

can just be

shown towards

misfortune,

but primarily,

mercy is shown

when something

wrong has been

done to you

and you know

that it's wrong

and you want

to temper

your response

of justice

with a sense

of mercy

and compassion

for the other person.

See,

that's why

slow to anger

is so important.

It's giving this hint

and if you go back

and look at verse 2 again

when it describes

the Lord

that he's a gracious

God and merciful,

slow to anger

and abounding

in steadfast love,

is that when you

have the steadfast love,

when you have mercy,

when you have grace,

it doesn't mean

that you no longer

see things that are

right and wrong,

but you realize

that reacting

to something

which is wrong,

there's another response

other than just justice.

There is a response

that involves mercy

and the more

that mercy

and compassion

become important

to you,

it means,

if it's real mercy

and real compassion,

it means that

it will slow down,

it will temper

your response

of anger

at the injustice.

If you could put up

the third slide,

to offer mercy

is to offer

to personally

bear a cost.

To offer mercy

is to offer

to personally

bear a cost.

And that's very,

very hard

for all human beings

but increasingly hard

for our culture

which is so confused

about anger

and confused

about even the way

to move forward.

Back,

my first five kids

I had two boys,

a girl,

two boys

and my boys

were boys

and if they were,

if we had three of them

sitting at the back seat

of the van,

at some point in time

one of the boys

would do this

or do this

or move over

into the other person's space

and the other boy

would do this

or do this

and before you know it

you have lots of elbows

and stuff like that.

And there's other times

when you give them a push,

push, push, push,

punch, punch,

whatever,

you get the picture.

So one of the things

I would say to my kids

all the time

is I said,

we have a choice.

Do we want to live

in a house

where we're punching

each other

and calling each other names

or do we want to live

in a house

where there's some sense

of peace?

And the only way

there's going to be

any sense of peace

is if one of you

doesn't retaliate.

If one of you

lets the other one win.

Otherwise there's no peace.

Somebody has to be the one

who'll just say,

okay,

you hit me nine times,

I hit you eight,

you win.

And if there's nobody

willing to pay that cost,

then it just keeps going

and it escalates.

One of the wonderful things

about South Africa

when Nelson Mandela

became the head

of that country

was that Nelson Mandela

understood the power

and importance

of mercy

and forgiveness.

And he knew

that unless

there were people

who were willing

to just say

we are not going

to pursue justice

to the end.

Doesn't mean

we're not saying

what they did

was right,

but unless there's mercy

there will be no peace

in our society.

He was a very,

very great statesman,

still viewed

as a great statesman,

probably one of the

greatest statesmen

of the 20th century.

And he understood

the importance

of mercy.

But you understand,

and he himself

was a living embodiment

of it,

he wasn't just

some ivory tower rich guy

who'd never had

anything wrong done

to him,

and goes off

and shows mercy

to people who,

well,

these people hurt

this group,

I'm going to show you mercy.

This people hurt

that group,

I'm going to show you mercy.

That's not mercy.

That's cheap grace.

That's telling everybody

else to suck it up.

Nelson Mandela

spent time in jail.

He was oppressed.

He knew what it was like

to be oppressed.

He knew what injustice

was like.

And unless you are

willing to pay

the cost

of showing mercy,

which is going to involve

something like forgiveness,

well,

it's not mercy.

Now,

just,

here's a bit

of a shocking thing.

So,

the story of Jonah,

in some ways,

it posits

a bit of a

riddle.

see,

the fact of the matter

is,

is that many of us,

if we went back in time,

we would probably

side with Jonah.

Because Jonah

was right

on one level,

that what the Lord

did

to Nineveh

wasn't just.

Because Nineveh

was terrible.

They were a terrible,

oppressive people.

I think I shared

with you last week

or the week before,

22 years,

23 years

after this,

when Nineveh's

gotten over

their repentance

and gone back

to their old ways,

they literally,

literally

practiced genocide.

And in

722 BC,

the Assyrians

invaded

Israel,

the northern kingdom

of Israel,

and they carried

all the people

away.

Those 10 tribes

of Israel

have been lost

forever from history.

they literally

practiced genocide.

And so the text

has a bit of a riddle,

and it has a bit

of a riddle

that only the gospel,

only the rest

of the revelation

of the Bible

can actually start

to help us

to understand.

Just one thing

is that what Jonah

didn't know

is that the Lord,

he's slow to anchor,

but he's still

concerned with justice.

He stayed

the judgment

on Assyria,

but eventually

when they returned

to their evil ways,

the judgment

upon them

for their horrendous

acts of genocide

and violence

were in fact judged

by him,

and Assyria

would later on

disappear from history.

But

what's going on

in Jonah's heart?

Well,

if you could put up

the next point,

Andrew,

that would be

very helpful.

your enmity

to the Lord

is always present.

See,

one of the problems

with anger,

one of the many

problems with anger,

is that not only

does it make

a very,

very quick road

to hatred,

and as I use

my example

about whether

you heard tomorrow

that Trump

and or Trudeau

were not as bad

as the news reports,

and we don't want

to let go

of our hatred

and anger

and desire

for them

to be humiliated,

and we don't want

to let go of that,

and it reveals

we have an anger

problem,

is that not only

does anger

quickly take us

to hatred,

but it deepens

hatred,

it nurtures

hatred,

it gives oxygen

to hatred,

but the other

thing that it does

is it creates

within you

a sense of

God-like,

God-like

virtue

and towering

over others.

That's what

anger always does.

You feel

God-like,

and you

like it.

I like it.

The Bible

describes

that every

human being

is at enmity

with God.

In Genesis

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3,

when we chose

that we didn't

like the idea

that God

was God

and we were

not,

and we wanted

to be just

like him,

and that's

the beginning,

it's the

ur-sin,

the root

of all sin

is a desire

to no longer

love God

or trust God

or want to be

in submission

to God

or just

allow God

to be God.

We want to be

just like God,

in fact,

maybe even better,

and so we resent

his authority,

we resent the fact

that he is the creator,

we resent the fact

that he is infant

and we are finite,

we resent the fact

that we live in time

and he does not

live in time,

we resent these things,

and it is such a

common thing

of our experience

that we often

don't even realize

that we have this

as a low-level

condition in our lives.

It's exactly like gravity.

None of us experience

gravity right now

or we don't feel

like gravity exists,

yet it's just so common

to us that we no longer

think about it.

And the Bible describes

that Jonah

and every human being,

you and me,

that we have a problem

with enmity against God.

And we are people

who always need

God's mercy.

I am not better

than anybody else.

I am one

who is completely

and utterly dependent

upon the mercy of God.

If you could put up

this almost last slide,

Andrew.

On the cross,

Jesus bore the full cost

of the Lord's mercy to you.

Remember I said,

all mercy always involves

bearing a personal cost.

If you forgive the person

who ripped you off

when you bought your vehicle,

if you show mercy to them,

it means you're going to have

to absorb some of the lost money.

Maybe not all of it,

but some of it.

There's a cost to be borne.

If you don't get the vengeance

which you desire,

you have to give up something

when you do that.

You have to give up

your right for vengeance,

your desire for vengeance.

You have to bear

the personal cost.

And you do it

because at the end of the day,

mercy is so worth it.

Forgiveness is so worth it.

But there's a cost

to be borne.

And it helps us

to understand why it is

that Jesus had to die

on the cross.

Why it is

that in Matthew

and in Luke,

Jesus is described

as the true

and greater Jonah.

He is the true

and greater Jonah

not only because

he didn't just spend

three days

in a great aquatic beast.

He spent three days

in death

and in hell.

He's a true

and greater Jonah

not only because

he can speak

the words of God

but he is the word of God

and he speaks

the very, very true

words of God

in everything that he does.

And he's the true

and greater Jonah

because in fact

what he does

with his life

is to make real

to us

a mercy

that every single

human being needs

because we are

at enmity with God.

And he takes that

when we understand

that there is a price

to be paid

to show mercy

and if God

is to show mercy

to us

he has to absorb

the cost of that

and the cost

of him showing mercy

to you and me

is what we see

when we see Jesus

dying on the cross.

It is the cost

of mercy

to you

and to me.

If you could put up

the final point

which is just a prayer

I'm going to invite

you all to stand.

Every week

in the mailing

I do a blog

I do a growing

in grace

and I also try

to put the scripture

text to a prayer

and today

if you look at this

you'll see both

part of Jonah chapter 2

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

but you'll also

see James

as well

which is a reflection

upon Jonah

I mean Jonah chapter 4

Jonah 4:2

verse 2

and I put both

of those together

in the form of a prayer.

You see it's

it says we're gripped

with the gospel

as we come to understand

that I experience

enmity towards God

and enmity towards other

in my life

without realizing it

in the same way

I experience gravity

without often thinking about it

when I begin to understand

that my whole

and only standing

before the Lord

is because

at great cost

to himself

he showed mercy

to me

as that story

begins to grip me

that it's not

as if God

gave me a pass

because I'm Canadian

or because

I'm nice

or because I'm me

but he

he didn't forsake justice

but he responded

in the justice

that I'm deserved

in a different way

he responded

with mercy

in such a way

that justice

was still maintained

by paying

the cost

of mercy

and the cost

of the punishment

in his own person

as that story

grips me

it helps me

to understand

why I need

to grow

in mercy

and compassion

without losing

a sense of right

and wrong

to temper

the anger

of my life

that it will not

consume me

or take me over

and I've tried

to put it

in the words

of this prayer

so if the Lord

has touched your heart

if you would pray

this with me

if you don't pray it

that's fine

it's up to you

but let's pray

this prayer together

Lord

you are full

of grace

and mercy

slow to anger

and abounding

in steadfast love

you take no delight

in the death

of a sinner

but desire

that we turn

from our wrongdoing

and live

please bring

the good news

of who Jesus is

and what he did

for me

deep into my heart

so that I will be

slow to speak

slow to anger

and quick to listen

in Jesus' name

Amen

Father

pour out the Holy Spirit

upon us

that we might be

gripped by the gospel

and so gripped

by the gospel

that we learn

the importance

of mercy

and compassion

and without losing

a sense of right

and wrong

healing our sense

of right and wrong

that we would look

at the world

with compassion

and the importance

to show mercy

and to be described

as a person

of mercy

deliver us from the lie

help us to love

the truth

and be filled

with mercy

and we ask this

in the name of Jesus

Amen

God bless you

Amen

amen

thank you

thank siz