We Have Compassion

This morning we're in Jonah.

And I want to bet that many of you have heard the story of Jonah.

And here's probably how it's gone, right?

If you spent any time in like Sunday school or some kind of Bible study or something like that, you've heard Jonah in the sense that Jonah was sent to this city called Nineveh.

And then they do a lot of work at just painting this picture of how bad and wicked Nineveh was.

And then kind of the story goes: he was scared, so he ran away, but this giant fish came and swallowed him, spit him back out.

Finally he went to Nineveh.

God did cool things, right?

If that's the version of Jonah you've heard, I just want to tell you, you've had a really poor exegetical Sunday school teacher.

No, you really have, but that flopped.

That did better in the 9 a.m.

I feel like sometimes they're funnier than you.

But uh nonetheless, uh that's not the thrust of Jonah.

That's actually not the heart of the story of Jonah.

And I hope that this morning we are able to look at what Jonah was actually responding to and why it's important for us today.

I think that there's something critical that happens in the story of Jonah.

And it's that God asks him a question.

And he asks this question twice with inside the whole story.

And it's framed like this What right do you have to be angry?

What right do you have to be angry?

God poses this soul analysis to Jonah twice in the story.

I would say that our cultural climate that we find ourselves in is very emotive currently.

And that we are probably conditioned and postured to be more angry than not.

We're positioned and postured to be angry at society, to be angry at our leaders, to be angry at what's happening within culture, right?

We're positioned strategically to be angry.

And I want to ask the question to us that God poses to Jonah what right do you have, do I have to be angry?

Let's look at the text to understand why this question is so critical to our story today.

As we enter into chapter 4, verse 5 of the story of Jonah, I think that we could summarize this in this way.

Verse 5, Jonah is looking for pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

Jonah is looking for pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

How did we get here in the text?

Let's talk about the story of Jonah.

Jonah was commissioned by God to declare a message that he had for the people of Nineveh.

And we see this right at the beginning of the story of Jonah in chapter 1, verse 2.

Uh he says this.

God speaks to Jonah and says, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

Now, I don't want to dismiss the reality that Nineveh was a very evil and wicked city.

It very much was.

Nineveh was the capital of the empire of Assyria.

And Assyria had forced into subjection through their cruelty, through their conquering both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.

And so when we understand the person of Jonah and his relationship to Nineveh or his relationship to Assyria as a whole, it would be one that would spark and foster and cultivate anger and hatred and disgust because he's seen what they've done to his people.

He's experienced their cruel subjection.

Nineveh was also the capital of where they worshiped the Assyrian goddess Ishtar.

So Ishtar was an Assyrian goddess who was the goddess of war and sex.

And what typically happens inside of a city, especially of ancient culture, is that the goddess or god that is in the center of that city, there's a cult that starts to form and shape around it, and that cult produces culture.

Whenever we look at through Old Testament history and we look at uh ancient history, we have to understand cults create culture.

And so Nahem was a prophet that had experience with Nineveh and its cult people.

And he writes this poetic description of what Nineveh was like as a people group.

And we see this in Nahim chapter 3, verse 1 and 4.

This is going to give us a window view into the culture of Nineveh.

He says this woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder, no end to the prey, the crack of the whip and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot, horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end, they stumble over the bodies, and all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms.

I think it suffices to say that Nineveh was a wicked and evil city.

That was the capital, the epicenter of a wicked and evil empire.

After God commissions Jonah, Jonah flees and he tries to escape the presence of God, which is just, you know, funny and of itself as we understand things now and God and our relationship to us.

But he tries to flee to a city called Tarshish.

And in this fleeing, he boards a boat, and God causes a storm to come into the waters, and the sailors, the crew of that boat, become terrified and they try to find out why this storm might have come.

There must be something on the boat that's caused this peril to take place.

And so they find Jonah in the bottom of the boat sleeping.

They kind of say, Hey, we think this might be your fault.

He's like, Yeah, it is my fault.

If you throw me overboard, God will spare you, right?

And they're kind of reluctant at first, but then finally they agree, let's toss this dude overboard, and then maybe we'll be saved.

So that's what they did.

They just chucked Jonah over the side.

God appoints this great fish to swallow Jonah.

He's in the belly of this great fish for three days and three nights.

And then finally, God commands the fish to spit him out or to vomit him out onto dry land.

And then God does something to Jonah.

He commissions him again to go to Nineveh and declare the message of the Lord.

We see this in Jonah 3, 2.

He says, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

This time Jonah obeys God.

And it says that Nineveh is about three days' journey wide, right?

It's kind of like if you were to walk across the city of Nineveh, it would take you about three days.

It's a huge city.

And he gets about a day into the city and he starts declaring this message of the Lord.

And the Bible actually tells us what this message was in Jonah 3, 4, the back half of it, it was this yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.

This was the message that Jonah was supposed to speak to the people of Nineveh.

And right here is where we enter into the story with our text.

What Jonah did next is he went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.

What was Jonah doing?

He was waiting in eager anticipation for the people of Nineveh to get what they deserve.

So much so that Jonah had removed himself out of the city onto this range to where he could look out over top of it, and he constructs in his own hand this humble theater that he might take pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

But something happens.

As Jonah's waiting for the Lord to do what he said he would do, we see this in Jonah 3, verse 5.

Jonah 3:5

And the people of Nineveh believed God.

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

So the people of Nineveh heard the message of Jonah and they responded.

And they responded in belief, in faith and repentance.

Then God responds to them.

And we see here in Jonah 3 10 how God responds to their faith and repentance.

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

So the people hear the message of Jonah and they respond.

God sees the faith and repentance of the Ninevite people, and he responds.

Jonah observes God's compassion and mercy, and he responds.

And this is the heart of the story of Jonah.

It says in chapter 4, verses 1 through 4, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

And he prayed for to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what 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.

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

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

Framed another way, Jonah, what right do you have to be angry?

You see, we're left here with a holy call to soul evaluation.

Why did Jonah not want to go to Nineveh?

Why did Jonah want to flee from the presence of the Lord to Tarshish?

Because he knew the character of his God.

And he despised and hated the people of Assyria.

And he knew that his God was compassionate, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger, one who would relent of his destruction.

You see, ultimately, Jonah failed to reflect the nature and character of the God who had sent him to declare his message.

You see, God's message was not one of imminent wrath, but a plea with his image bearers to repent of their wicked and evil ways.

God got what he set out for, but Jonah didn't.

He wanted to take pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

If Jonah would have reflected God in the way that he was sent on mission to declare his message, if he would have reflected the very nature and character of the God of which he served, it would have echoed something that we see in Ezekiel chapter 33.

Ezekiel 33 · chapter mention

And God reveals his heart posture toward the wicked of this world.

It says this in Ezekiel 33, verse 11 Say to them, as I live, which is forever, right?

Ezekiel 33:11

That's God, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

Unlike Jonah, God takes no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

And Jonah failed to reflect the heart of his God.

In verses 6 through 9, we see a divine object lesson.

A divine object lesson.

You see, Jonah's not written in succinct chronological order.

He kind of goes back and forth in the story a little bit, especially here at the end.

And so, in some ways, what's happening in our text this morning is God's pulling back on the story of Jonah to help us see into the heart of Jonah as he's waiting for the destruction that never comes.

And while Jonah constructed this humble theater to take pleasure in their despair, God causes this plant to grow up over Jonah in the middle of the night.

And this plant provides shade and comfort to these harsh desert conditions that Jonah finds himself in.

And what was Jonah's response to this?

Bible says that Jonah was exceedingly glad.

He was exceedingly glad.

But then what does God do?

In the same manner that he appointed this plant, this vine to grow up and cut and cover over Jonah, he appoints a worm to destroy the plant.

And the plant withers.

And then comes the morning.

And God caused this scorching heat, this furious wind to come down upon Jonah, and Jonah doesn't find himself in comfort anymore.

Jonah finds himself in the presence of misery.

And God speaks to Jonah.

He says in verse 9, but God said to Jonah, What right do you have to be angry?

Do you do well to be angry for the plant?

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

Angry enough to die.

I don't know about you, but when I first read this in the Bible, I thought of the office and baby Wawa.

I don't know if you've watched The Office enough to see Andy, one of the characters, try out for this talent show.

And they're like, Are you crying?

He's like, Yes, I am crying.

Like that's how I see Jonah responding right now.

God's like, Do you well be angry?

Yeah, I do angry?

Angry enough to die.

He's like a pouting toddler, right?

And so God, though, asked this soul, this same soul evaluation question.

But this time it wasn't in regard to people, to image bearers, to souls.

It was in regards to this comfort, this protection that God had put over him.

What was the point of this divine object lesson?

You see, God has sovereignly caused protection and comfort to grow over Jonah.

This sense of security made Jonah exceedingly glad, but then it was gone.

Taken from him in the coming of a day.

And this made Jonah so mad that he wanted to die.

And in the remainder of the story, God reveals to us and reveals to Jonah the point.

God reminds him of what really matters.

And so in verse 10 through 11, we see this Jonah's being reminded of what really matters.

The 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.

God tells Jonah, you pitied this plant.

Literally, that language means that you looked upon with compassion.

That's what God's trying to help Jonah understand.

You looked upon with compassion this plant, which you didn't labor for, which you didn't create.

Jonah had no uh workings or dealings in the process of that plant being uh uh uh put the seed put in the ground of it growing up in a healthy state to produce fruit, to provide the covering that it did.

He had nothing to do with that.

That was all the sovereign hand of God, and in the same way, the very sovereign hand of God took it from Jonah also.

And God says, Jonah, why do you look on this plant with compassion?

Should I not pity?

God says, literally, should I not look on compassion, the great city of Nineveh, of which there's a hundred and twenty thousand souls there?

And the story ends.

God's helping Jonah understand and see what really matters, his heart of compassion that he has for his image bearers.

You see, God reveals something critically important about his compassion at the end of this story.

When he's describing the people of Nineveh, God says something.

He says, These people do not know their right hand from their left.

What he's communicating is that these people have no ability for moral discernment.

That's what God's saying to Jonah.

These people are blind in darkness, that they have no ability to discern that the things that they are doing are wicked and evil.

And this is the driving force for the compassion of God to be extended to them.

You and I were in the same state once.

If we've been uh made alive in Christ in the former ways of death, we were blinded in the darkness of our flesh, that what we thought was right was wicked and evil in the sight of God.

We had no ability within ourselves to be able to see or understand our right from our left because we stumbled around in darkness, practicing the wickedness and evil ways of this world.

We were just like the people of Nineveh, and just like them.

God chose in his sovereign will to extend compassion to us.

And what does he do in his compassion?

He opens the eyes of the blind that we might see the radiant glory of Christ.

You see, we have to wrestle with something here.

God showed great compassion to a wicked and evil people who were not capable of clear moral discernment.

And driven by compassion, he didn't just dismiss their evil.

It's not that he swept it under some cosmic rug or turned some divine eye away from it.

No, God confronts wicked and evil people, and he does so with a message.

And so Jonah was going not because God had dismissed all of that, but because God was going to confront it.

But he confronts it through a heart of compassion because he gives them an opportunity to repent, to believe the message of which they hear, and turn from their evil ways.

And in their repentance, God relents.

Jonah desired to condemn what God called for him to show compassion toward.

He ran away from sharing God's message because he feared God would be faithful to his character.

He says, a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Ultimately, Jonah ran because he was afraid that God would be faithful to his character, to a people that he saw as his enemy.

A people who didn't deserve kindness or mercy or goodness.

A people who made him angry.

God was working in the heart of Jonah to remind him of what really matters.

What I think that the Lord is helping us understand this morning as a church body is that gospel mission is driven by compassion.

Gospel mission is driven by compassion.

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to reflect the character of the one whose image we bear.

The God who we serve and whom we have been saved by is a compassionate God.

Psalm 103.8 in the NIV translation, I think this is fitting to the original language, says this about God and his character.

It says the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.

Do you not hear the echoing of what Job said about God and his person and character?

Job, which is the which is known or believed to be the oldest written book that we have in our canon.

It far precedes any of the poetic literature that we have of the Psalms or of the Song of Solomon or so forth.

And here we see the immutable character of God, the unchanging, the unturning character of a compassionate God who makes friends out of enemies.

But I think it's critical for us to define compassion in a biblical context because we can tell.

Take this word, and we can twist it or shape it into something that's perverted and marred according to what it God had really originally intended for us to understand.

Here's a functioning definition of what I would think is biblical compassion: a merciful action to alleviate the suffering of another.

A merciful action to alleviate the suffering of another.

I think that word merciful is critical to our understanding of compassion.

It is us, it is God for us doing something in our benefit and favor that we do not deserve.

We don't relate with one another, we don't act with one another in ways of which the other person has merited some credit, that we might be generous or kind or long-suffering or patient with them.

It is something that they do not deserve, that we get our hands dirty in to try and alleviate the very suffering that they're undergoing.

This is the way God relates to his people and calls us to relate to those around us, to mirror the way, the very nature of who he is.

We have no right to try and self-determine who God might be compassionate toward.

We have the obedient responsibility to live as though God might demonstrate his compassion to all people.

And I think if we're honest with ourselves, like we can think, you can probably think of two or three people right now that you just have this posture toward, there's no way that they're ever going to be saved.

There's no way that they could ever experience the freedom of the gospel of Jesus.

They're too hard-hearted, they're too hard-headed, they're too wicked, they're too evil.

They become my enemy.

They've hurt me and harmed me in certain ways, and I don't want to see them get saved.

We could probably discover those faces and names, those image bearers, those very souls.

But who are we to be angry?

What right do we have to be angry when God showed compassion to us?

I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon.

In context, it's not fitting perfectly with what we're talking about this morning, but he's talking about uh his responsibility as a messenger of the gospel of Jesus.

That he's not set out to condemn or to pick or choose or to determine in his own strength and nature who might receive the gospel of Jesus, but he has a responsibility to declare or herald a message.

And he says this he says, if God would have painted a yellow stripe on the backs of the elect, I would go around lifting shirts.

But since he didn't, I must preach whosoever will, and when whatsoever believes, I know that he is one of the elect.

What is Spurgeon doing here?

In a way, he's placing himself in this posture of humility that he has one responsibility: not to dictate who would or wouldn't receive the gospel of Jesus, but to preach it to all creation and let God do the work.

Let God be the one who determines who he will be compassionate toward.

Let God be the one who determines of who he will show mercy.

This is the heart of the gospel.

Because we have been shown compassion.

We work to see that very compassion rescue, alleviate the suffering of others.

We have been rescued.

And we ought to live in a way that we bring that same rescue to others.

You see, it was only the compassion of God that allowed you to be a receiver of the gospel of Jesus.

There was nothing in you that made you more worthy, that made you better than another person, that gave you some credit to your soul to where you would actually receive this gospel.

There was nothing in you that wanted to receive it, but God's compassion allowed you to receive it with faith.

And in that, the Spirit empowers us to repent of our former wicked and evil ways.

It is the very heart of our gospel reality that drives us to be on gospel mission.

But many of us we struggle with this in so many different ways.

And I think one of the primary ways that we struggle with this, we see very evident in our culture is that we extend worldly compassion, not gospel compassion.

I believe the world is working itself tirelessly to try and extend compassion to the people around them.

But I think, and I want to submit to you this morning that they are failing miserably to do so.

That their sense of compassion offers no real alleviation to the person's suffering.

Instead, the way that they act in compassion seeks to affirm people in their current state, and it actually abandons them to the very suffering that they endure.

Even in the instances that it actually works toward the alleviation of some physical suffering, it falls infinitely short as it's unable to be alleviate mankind of the suffering and oppression of their sin.

Yes, the scriptures call us to be merciful and act with compassion in real and tangible ways.

Jesus, in his teaching to his disciples, he talks about the way that we're supposed to clothe the naked and feed the hungry.

We're supposed to visit the sick, and even as they come before him on the day of judgment and say, Well, when did we ever serve you or feed you or clothe you?

And he says, When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me also.

And so, yes, should the church go out into culture with these physical acts of mercy?

Absolutely, but it should not go into culture without its message also, because the distinctive reality of the church is that we express compassion through both mercy and message.

How dare we go out into culture with just a loaf of bread in our hand when we fail to proclaim the bread of life from our mouth?

We don't just alleviate temporary suffering, we give them a message to where they never hunger or thirst again.

Without the message of the gospel, the church fails to truly demonstrate God's compassion to the world.

Some of us, some of us, if we're really honest with ourselves, we would rather extend condemnation than compassion.

We would rather extend condemnation than compassion.

I want to say that I believe we are the most at war with one another in culture than we have been in over a century.

Over the last few years, a thick black line has been drawn down society that creates this grave separation of people.

And we have been conditioned and postured to look across the aisle and see the other, not as an image bearer, not as a soul, not as one that we should extend compassion to, but as an enemy that deserves the very peril of their destruction that's coming for them.

And we delight in that.

We take pleasure in that.

Man, if we're honest with ourselves, we're being more discipled by culture than we are the gospel.

No matter what cultural topic we engage with, we can be confident to discover animosity and division.

Whether it's medical issues, race issues, social issues, political, educational, go down the list.

We fail to look across the aisle and see an image bearer.

Instead, we just see an enemy.

An enemy who doesn't deserve anything but to be condemned and destroyed.

And as I said earlier, even worse yet, we find pleasure in their destruction.

We've lost all sense of compassion.

It's being taken from our very souls because we're armed to the teeth with condemnation.

How can we allow such ungodly reality to shape the very culture of God's church, of Christ's body?

You and I, who were enemies of God, who rebellious against his lordship and ruling reign, but God.

You and I, whose hands are stained with the blood of his son, but God.

But God.

But God what?

Showed compassion to the very people who deserved the destruction of his wrath being poured out on them, but God.

So the question stands, what right do we have to be angry?

Are we called to condemn?

Are we called to be compassionate?

Are we called to double down on the suffering that society is enduring?

Are we called to bring acts of mercy to alleviate them from it?

Are we called to be faithful to his mission?

Or are we called to try and be God and take his place and determine who has the right to experience his grace and who doesn't?

Our story is but God who is rich in mercy, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger, relents of his destruction.

You're sitting in this seat this morning because a compassionate God who had every right to destroy you chose to extend mercy.

That's good news.

And our gospel hope this morning, church, is this that God has caused a vine to grow to cover us.

Think of the sovereignty of God that before the earth was even formed or its foundations constructed, he had put into place that a seed would go into the ground and grow up into this dog tree that would be formed and constructed into a torturing device, a crucifix by which our Savior would be nailed to, that we might be covered by his blood.

Jesus, the true vine, comes up because God, the compassionate one, sought to cover us.

When our feeble, humble construction of shelter was insufficient, when we tried to cover ourselves in our own good works and personal deeds, God saw it ultimately insufficient.

And so he brings up the cross.

And the good news of the cross is there's no worm that can destroy its root, but it is eternally found in Christ alone.

Paul helps us understand how compassionate God is to us.

In Romans 5, verse 8, he says this, but God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Let's read that a different way.

But God shows his love for us, and that while we were enemies against him, while we were rebellious against him, when we wanted nothing to do with him, when we hated and reviled him, when we were found in our wicked and evil state, Christ died for us.

Should that not be our driving force to be on gospel mission, that we show compassion to others because we have been receivers of the compassion of our King?

So my hope for us as we look at how our church is going to be shaped and the culture is going to be established here at Sacred Mission is that we would show compassion to others as our God has shown to us.

That we would show compassion to others as our God has shown to us.

My hope as we mature, I did the math.

We're actually only three years old, like three physical years.

I counted our like launch as year one, but you don't do that with babies.

They're not, you know, but anyway, I digress.

So we're literally like only three years old.

I pray that as we get older and mature, I pray that these seats are filled with people who we once called our enemy, who we once looked across the aisle in disdain and disgust, and who we once delighted and found pleasure in their destruction.

Because if we're doing gospel mission right, we're we're these seats are going to be filled with people who have very different political ideas than we do, cultural ideas than we do, people who pursued the anthem of this culture and destroyed their marriages, people who pursued the anthem of this culture and destroyed their own children, people who are sitting in our seats, who are trying to recover from medical procedures and surgeries that still bear the scars that they couldn't grasp with the reality of who God made them, and now they're trying to understand rightly, people who didn't vote Republican the way we did, people who don't see eye to eye with the way that we understand education and family and all these things should take root, that they're still trying to stumble through their understanding of not what conservative ideology lays out for us, but what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like as we live inside of it.

And guess what that's gonna take?

It's gonna take us sitting in uncomfortable seats where we have to be long-suffering and patient as they try to understand and have their mind renewed and their hearts transformed so that they can understand God desires them to flourish, that all of their blessing and pleasure and delight is found in conformity to Him and His ways.

God forbid, seven, eight years from now, we're still just a predominantly homogeneous church that all think the same way about cultural issues, and we haven't gone to be compassionate.

We're still just yelling across the aisle, waiting for them to meet the very destruction that we hope they face.

Church, we have to be broken for the very people we despise.

We have to be a people who walk in compassion.

I believe that God wants these seats filled with people who need the healing balm of the gospel applied to them in ways that we have never encountered or seen or imagined before.

And that's gonna take work and effort.

You're gonna be uncomfortable.

You're gonna be sitting next to some dude or woman, I don't know what my language, and you're gonna be, man, I think you're just gonna be really uncomfortable.

And I'm excited about that.

Because that's not fun.

But it helps us grow, it helps us mature, it helps us to be the church that Christ wants us to be.

I believe that wholeheartedly.