Jonah - I Need God's Heart

We're going to be talking with Jonah 4 today.

We're picking up the story right after what Kelly preached on last week, jonah 3, where all of Nineveh repents.

It was an amazing thing.

And we have this beautiful chapter 4 where Jonah responds so perfectly.

That's called sarcasm, by the way.

Let's pick up the story in verse 1 of Jonah, chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry and he prayed 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 were 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.

Drama queen.

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

Jonah went out of the city and sat on 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.

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

So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

But when the dawn came up the next day, god appointed a worm that attacked the plant and so that it withered.

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.

And 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.

And should not?

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

Father, we are so grateful for your word.

And, father, one of the things we've come to understand as we walk and as we read your word, that your word is a mirror to our souls.

And, father, as we read this chapter and as we begin to dig into this word that was preserved in Jonah 4.

Father, I pray that we would have a heart to hear and that we would have the courage to look in the mirror that scripture provides us to see how we might need to change our hearts to fall in line with your heart.

So, father, I just pray that all of our hearts would be open for that and our minds would be open, and I just pray this in Jesus' powerful name, amen.

Well, we're nearing the end of our series on Jonah and you might say well, scott, you're covering the last chapter.

Well, there's one other mention of Jonah in the New Testament and Tyler's gonna to be talking about that next week at Easter.

I'm looking really forward to that.

But we've come to the last chapter and we're finally going to hear the real reason why Jonah bugged out and took off and tried to find the fastest boat he could for Tarshish.

We're going to find out the fastest boat he could for Tarshish.

We're going to find out.

And this morning, what I want to do is share two very important truths from this final chapter in Jonah that I believe all of us can learn as we carry the gospel, like Jonah was supposed to carry the gospel to a broken world.

So in case you haven't been here before, or maybe you've missed one or two of these.

So, in case you haven't been here before, or maybe you've missed one or two of these, let's just do a real quick rehearsal.

So Jonah 1.

Jonah, of course, a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel.

God tells him which God tells prophets to do stuff all the time.

He said go to Nineveh and tell them that unless they repent, I'm going to destroy them.

He says no, and of course, mark did such a great job.

Jonah said no.

God said whoa, you know, if you recall that.

And he took off, got a boat and he went the exact opposite direction.

God, of course, sends a storm, because I don't know, if you know, if God wants you to do something, good luck trying not to do it.

God sends a storm.

The sailors are freaking out.

They try everything, they pray to every God they know about and they finally figure it out.

It's the guy that's sleeping downstairs.

They bring him up.

He says yeah, it's me.

Toss me overboard, I want to die anyways me.

Toss me overboard, I want to die anyways.

Well, they throw him overboard.

Big fish comes along, swallows Jonah.

For three days Jonah's in the belly of the fish and somehow he finds religion.

He spit out on the shore and now he begrudgingly goes to Nineveh and he preaches to Nineveh One of the shortest messages, five Hebrew words, and all of Nineveh repents, all of Nineveh repents.

How wonderful is this?

This is great.

This is wonderful.

This pagan city king, all the way down to the animals, are in sackcloth and ashes and repenting.

And now we read Jonah's response to that and it's a little shocking, because you would think he'd be happy, but he was the exact opposite.

So let's pick up in verse one three.

We'll read this again and kind of unpack this.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry and he prayed 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 my 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's better for me to die than to live.

You know, wow, I mean, if you knew nothing about the Bible, nothing about God, and you read this section and you came to this.

You would literally just go.

What?

This is?

A prophet of God.

He's preaching a message of repent, turn back to God.

And they do Well, turn to God.

They didn't know this.

God right, they repent and then he says kill me.

And by the way, just so you know, the Hebrew here that's used is very strong.

I mean he literally there's a connotation that he was burning with a murderous rage, murderous rage.

He was totally out of control and you can tell by the way.

He's talking to the Almighty God.

And, it's interesting, his true motives are starting to come out for why he didn't obey God in the first place.

Because he says is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?

So we know when God first came to him and said go to Nineveh, preach this message.

Now we know why he didn't.

In fact, he told God at that time I don't want to go because I know you're probably going to have mercy on them, they're probably going to repent.

He literally said that and then left.

We don't know that until now which I think is by design, by the way we didn't know that.

But now he's laying it out totally in front and it's interesting that he reminds God.

You remember what I told you, like God couldn't remember, right that he reminds God.

You remember what I told you Like God couldn't remember, right?

I mean, jonah is literally telling God that his Jonah's worst case scenario came true, that 120,000 people and their cows repented.

That was his worst case scenario.

I mean what's going on here.

And, by the way, the ironic part of what he says is that he actually identifies very correctly part of God's nature, doesn't he?

Because he says this, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abound in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

Now, before you give Jonah too much credit, those weren't his words.

He was actually quoting something that the Lord revealed directly to Moses in Exodus 34.

So the scenario is a couple of chapters before Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai guess what happens?

He's up there too long, according to the Israelites.

They get a golden calf.

They're worshiping that.

Moses comes down, there goes the tablets, you know all that stuff.

And now we're in chapter 34.

Moses is back up on the mountain and now God is coming down to the mountain to reveal it says to really reveal himself to Moses, but it's interesting in verse 6, what he says.

This is the Lord saying this directly to Moses.

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Verse 7, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving.

We're going to stop.

We're going to stop because that's where Jonah stopped.

Jonah said this part of you, god, I don't like.

I don't like it.

I like the other part, but this is the part I don't like, because look how God continues to reveal himself to Moses.

He says but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation?

God is giving Moses this beautiful, very comprehensive view of who he is A God abounding in mercy and gracious and steadfast love.

And all you have to do is read Exodus and you realize he has steadfast love to a people that didn't deserve it, to you and I, of course.

But Jonah only saw that as a problem.

He saw that as a problem.

Jonah was literally saying to God that he was extremely upset and angry to the point of death because God showed that merciful and gracious part of him to the Ninevites.

Because the Ninevites, of course, were pagan.

They weren't the Israelites.

And when God first told him to go to Nineveh, he had that sinking suspicion in the back of his head You're going to do something merciful fishing in the back of his head.

You're going to do something merciful, aren't you?

I'm out of here.

And he took off.

I mean, jonah wanted God to do what Jonah wanted done to the Ninevites.

He was saying, in essence, my judgment is better than your judgment, god.

How else can you pull that?

What else can you pull out of there?

That's what he's saying.

I'm angry to death that these people have repented.

Therefore, kill me.

I would rather die than to see this city, this pagan city, repent.

Wow, wow, here's Jonah, this very human, flawed and obviously an emotional rollercoaster.

Jonah, he's exceedingly happy, he's exceedingly glad.

He's all over the place right.

He thinks that his judgment on Nineveh was the right one and God's was wrong.

It's almost ridiculous.

It's like he was saying, god, I really wanted you to burn these people and I wanted to sit there and watch it.

I mean, let's really get down to the heart of it.

He wanted to see them destroyed.

My first point from this passage is that Jesus is the ultimate judge over all of his creation, and it's a role we shouldn't try to take away from him, because that's what Jonah was doing.

Jonah was saying no, no, no, no, no.

You made a decision, but it was wrong.

And since I can't change your mind, just kill me.

I mean, that's how strongly he felt about it.

And, by the way, let's just be honest, there are reasons Jonah had this belief and this slant towards the Ninevites.

They were Assyria, right, obviously they were Assyrians and, as we've had pointed out in other messages, they were asyrians and, as we've had pointed out in other messages, they were a violent people and they were cruel and they were powerful and he, coming from Israel, was very concerned that they were going to come into his backyard and in fact, 60 years later they did.

By the way, after Jonah, roughly 60 years later, the Assyrians did come in.

But what's really interesting about this is so he's afraid.

We understand that he's afraid, but I think there might have been something in the back of his mind knowing that there was an impending judgment coming against Israel.

Obviously, he would have known some of what was said before and prophesied before, but he saw the condition of the kingdom, the northern kingdom of Israel, which, by the way, jeroboam II was the king at the time of Jonah, and that's a guy you don't want tattooed on your arm.

I mean, this guy was bad.

He was one of the worst kings of Israel and so he probably had this thing in his mind.

God might be using these guys to do this, but regardless, jonah allowed those feelings he had about Assyria go too far.

He let them go too far.

He let them go too far.

Jonah's attitude towards sinful people, by the way, is not uncommon in the scriptures by other people who love the Lord, and it's interesting.

As I was putting this together, I immediately thought of James and John, the sons of thunder.

Luke 9, jesus is heading slowly, making his way back to Jerusalem, and in verse 51, the story goes like this when the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

And then 52, it says and he sent messengers ahead of him who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him.

But the people did not receive him because his face was set towards Jerusalem.

And when his disciples, james and John, saw it, they said Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them.

And he turned and he rebuked them.

You know, I've read this scripture many times.

There's something I never caught until the last couple of weeks as I was preparing this.

They didn't say, lord, rain down fire on them.

They didn't say that, lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

They wanted to be the ones.

They wanted to be the ones to rain fire down on this Samaritan village.

Do you see that?

Do you see the heart?

It's the same heart that Jonah had.

It's the same heart that Jonah had.

They wanted to be the ones to burn these people alive.

They wanted to be the judge and the executioner, and they were simply asking Jesus for permission for them to go.

That's what they wanted to do.

What a terrible heart.

Well, I think the application for us today is very simple, because the same mindset that was in Jonah and that was in James and John at the time that Jesus rebuked can easily slip into our hearts as well.

You know, you look at the godlessness of our culture and it literally makes you sick to your stomach.

You know, a couple, three weeks ago, we had the video from the Street Hope, and some of the stats in there were.

Just, they were just terrible to watch and to read.

I was, I remember one time I don't know where it was, but I saw a video of a woman that was in a bar.

She was having a party and all her friends came.

You know what?

She was celebrating Her 10th abortion.

She was celebrating her 10th murder.

I mean, that makes you sick.

The Assyrians made him sick.

The problem was he stepped over a line.

He stepped over a line, and it's easy for us to do the same thing.

We should hate sin passionately.

However, we cannot allow our desire to see justice cause us to step into hate and judgment.

Amen, and it's easy to do.

It's so easy to do.

You know, we should be moved by sin, we should desire the kingdom, we should desire to see people repent and turn their back, but when we go from hating sin to hating people which, by the way, is a very small line sometimes we step into the area that Jonah had stepped into, and it's an extreme case, by the way.

I mean literally.

It's extreme.

We're reading this, but it's so true.

Hate can come into the heart so quickly.

And, by the way, as I was studying this, one of the things hit me, and that is I think Jonah may have gotten mercy and leniency mixed up.

Have you ever thought about that?

So what's leniency?

Well, let's say, for instance, let's say you get pulled over by a police officer and you were going 60 and a 45 or something, and he says you know, I'll tell you what.

I'm just going to give you a warning, I'm going to be lenient with you.

Now, did I deserve a ticket?

Yeah, sure did, but I didn't get one.

He was lenient with me, meaning I will never have to pay for that penalty of what I did because he was lenient.

That's not what God's mercy is, if you think about it.

Leniency is minimizing sin and the elimination of the judgment in sin or for sin, but mercy, on the other hand, does not exclude judgment.

You might say how is that?

Well, the gospel is clear Everybody will be judged, every sin will be judged.

We know that.

Romans 14, verse 10.

Romans 14:10

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or you?

Why do you despise your brother?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Who's he talking?

To Believers in Rome?

Okay, so this is to us Verse 11, for it is written and he quotes the Old Testament, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

And then he goes back to saying so.

Then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Mercy does not mean that there will not be justice.

There will be justice for every sin you've ever committed.

Every sin I've ever committed will be called into account.

You guys realize that.

I think, unfortunately, this is not a message that a lot of churches like to say.

But it's true, we will all be.

Here's the difference when you stand before God and are judged.

Here's the difference.

I don't know how long your scroll of sin is going to be.

It won't be a competition, let me just tell you that.

But in the end the blood of Christ will be applied to yours and those sins will all be forgiven.

But that's justice, because a penalty was paid and it's different from leniency.

And I think sometimes, when we look at this, we look at people like they're getting away with something.

They're getting away with something.

I remember when I was growing up as a kid, I'd come to school on Mondays and you'd hear about all your friends and the parties they did and all that stuff, and I was like man, they're going to pay the price for that.

But they didn't pay the price.

I didn't see them pay the price, but I really wanted to see them pay the price because I wanted to be doing what they did.

I was just sitting there walking, I was obeying because I was supposed to obey, right.

But every sin will be paid.

Well, there'll be a price to pay, whether Christ covers it or not, and that's the difference.

The question I think we have to stand and we have to ask ourselves this question Is that our role?

Is that our job to dole out that justice, or is it God's?

Because here's the problem with when we step into judgment.

That goes too far.

And just so you're clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't judge things, judge sin all day long.

You understand what I'm saying.

I'm not one of those.

You know opposite.

No, we need to judge and call sin what it is Sin.

Here's the problem.

Have you ever looked at somebody and say that person's incorrigible, that person's gone, they can never repent.

Maybe you won't say that, but maybe you think it.

I have.

There are some people I look at and go man, they crossed a line somewhere, they can never repent.

But I don't know that, because when I say that, when I make that comment and say they can't repent, I have now stepped over into the seat of judgment.

You understand?

That's the difference and that's what I'm saying.

If we start going into that path, we can call sin sin all day long, but when we finally, when we look at people and say, no, you're done, we've now stepped into an area that doesn't belong to us.

And, by the way, we can talk about false conversions too.

It's interesting, you know one of the things some churches that conversions and you watch it and it's just like just come and accept Jesus into your heart and there's no mention of repentance, there's no mention of sin and that part of the gospel which is ignored right, because the gospel we take as a whole there's mercy, there's repentance, there's forgiveness, but we don't like to talk about the judgment part.

That's a big part of it.

So a lot of people will come up oh just gee, I want Jesus to be my Lord and Savior.

They don't talk about forgiveness.

But there's other false conversions as well, and those are the ones where people literally get the hell scared out of them.

That's where it came from.

I'm going to preach up a message of judgment to scare you so bad you're going to come down here and you're going to repent.

Repent, but did you repent?

See, that's a false conversion too.

False conversions can be motivated from both sides in the wrong way.

We don't censor the gospel, brethren.

The gospel is the whole package and we have to be careful that we understand that our responsibility is to pray that people will repent.

Pray that they will repent and guard our hearts from hatred so we don't find ourselves hating people and judging people like Jonah did.

So that's what he was doing.

He had stepped over that line.

Let's pick the story back up in verse five.

Look how God addressed Jonah's attitude and the Lord said do you do well to be angry?

I think this is something we should like put on our mirrors in our bathrooms.

Do you do well to be angry?

It's a question I think we should always ask ourselves.

Do you do well to be angry when something really upsets us?

Because I mean, if you just read what he said to God, it should make you cringe.

I mean, I know God wants us to be open and all that stuff, but I mean there was such blatant disrespect there and we know the Psalms have some pretty open conversations about God too.

But it's interesting.

God's response was not to punish Jonah.

God's response was to teach him.

Aren't you glad that God chooses most of the time to teach us rather than punish us?

Because if you can look in the mirror and say I've never had a bad attitude toward another, then you have something bigger to repent from.

He wanted to teach him.

Verse 5, we'll pick it up.

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

He sat under it in the shade.

Obviously.

It wasn't enough, by the way, until he should see what would become of the city.

By the way, have you ever thought why did he do that?

They all repented.

Why did he go sit outside the city?

I don't know, scripture doesn't tell us, but in my mind I'm like he already said kill me.

I don't like this.

He already made that clear and I'm wondering if he was maybe sitting back going.

No, this isn't going to hold these Ninevites.

This ain't real.

I'm going to wait for the show, because somebody's going to come up against the king and they're going to stop this whole mess and it's going to fall apart.

I don't know if that's what he was thinking.

I just don't understand why he was sitting there.

Maybe he was just ready to die, you know, but he was literally.

He said till he could see what would become of the city.

It's almost like he was waiting to see what was going to really happen, almost like he was waiting to see if it was going to really happen.

Verse 6, now the Lord 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.

You love this guy, right?

But when dawn came up the next day, god appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.

When the sun rose, god appointed a scorching east wind.

Is this not a strange, strange set of events?

Remember God's teaching Jonah something.

And at first blush, when you read this, you go what is God doing?

He's doing something very, very poignant with him.

He supernaturally accelerates the growth of this plant to bring Jonah who, by the way, is a man in open hostility towards him to bring him shade and comfort, and then he sends the worm to cause it to die by the way that should give us all hope that there might be a way to fight kudzu after all.

If you missed Tyler's sermon on this, he said the plant was probably kudzu and it's stuck in my head now you need to show me the Hebrew word for that one.

By the way, of course, if we brought a worm in to kill the kudzu, it would be just like why we brought the kudzu in, right?

It would then kill all the good stuff, whatever.

But he sends a worm and he causes it to die.

And then here's the hot wind blasting on him until he literally is dehydrated and faint.

I'm assuming that's why he was going to faint.

But God said to Jonah do you do well to be angry?

This time?

He says for the plant.

And he said, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die this guy.

He would be turned in to any authority as a suicide case.

This guy wanted to die.

He was so angry.

But it's interesting when you pull this apart and say why was he this way?

Why was he so angry about this whole thing?

Well, I think it's pretty clear what he's doing.

He's setting Jonah up for a lesson and everything he just did was like an object lesson to Jonah.

Remember, the book of Jonah is about Jonah.

It's about a servant of God who wasn't serving and wasn't obeying God and God's training and teaching of him to show him this right.

Yes, there's subplots of what happened with Nineveh and everything else, but this is the focus.

And the Lord said he's lowering the boom now, in verse 10 to 11.

And 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, and should not.

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

God, in his infinite wisdom, now hits Jonah with the truth about Jonah's heart.

You see, the whole plant thing and the wind and the worm and all that was to show Jonah his heart through Jonah's response to those things.

See, jonah pitied the plant.

Why did Jonah pity the plant?

Because it served his purposes.

You see that the plant was providing him shade and he liked that.

In fact, it said he was exceedingly glad.

Everything he does is a hundred thousand percent man.

He's exceedingly glad.

Oh, I love this.

He was just like all over this thing.

And then, of course, when the plant died, back but God was showing him, said you, you were so in love with this plant because it was giving you something.

And when it died you were mad and you wanted to die again.

Right?

But God contrasts that heart with his heart for Nineveh.

And look what he says he said.

Well, we read what he said.

He literally is offering mercy to 120,000 people who can give him nothing, nothing.

No, they can turn to him and they can repent and they can worship him.

Yes, but he's not getting anything back in the way Jonah was.

And that's really important Because, as he's comparing Jonah's selfish motives to his motives, he's helping Jonah.

See, your heart's wrong, your heart's broken.

And, by the way, the phrase those who do not know their right hand from their left you know there's no other phrase in the Bible that exactly says this same thing, but there's lots of references to the right hand and to the left.

In Ecclesiastes 10.2, it says a wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but the fool's heart to the left.

Now we could start making political jokes about this, but let's just focus on what it's talking about.

So, the right hand and the left hand is often used to compare that Not knowing and then knowing and wisdom.

And most biblical scholars will tell you that probably what God was saying here was these people.

They don't know right from wrong with regards to in the light of God's laws.

They didn't know God's law, they didn't know who Yahweh was and he's saying I haven't had a chance to teach them who he was.

By the way, if you thought it was odd, here's Jonah.

Of course it's not odd, knowing his heart.

Here's Jonah he pre.

It's not odd, knowing his heart.

Here's Jonah he preaches his five Hebrew word sermon.

Everybody starts to repent and he leaves.

Was this not a perfect time to say let me tell you who Yahweh is, let me teach you the law of God?

He didn't do any of that.

He just bugs out, he just takes off.

You know it was terrible, he just totally missed it.

So what can we learn from this?

Well, the second lesson from Jonah 4 is that we must have the heart of God when it comes to our view of the lost world.

Jonah was all about judgment, all about judgment.

There was no mercy or grace or any part of that.

He was all about judgment.

He saw nothing worth redeeming in the people of Nineveh, nothing.

He did not share God's heart for the people of Nineveh and, by the way, that should lead us to ask the question about what is God's heart for the lost?

From perspective of today, what's God's heart for the lost?

Well, I like to look at Jesus, because Jesus, I think, epitomized, of course, the Father's heart.

And if you look through the life of Jesus, it's interesting.

You see Jesus talking about love and mercy and you see him talking about judgment, the whole gospel, right.

Everything.

He was not about just one side or the other.

Jesus was the Son of God and we know from Scripture that the judgment that is on everybody ultimately falls in his hand.

He will be the judge of all.

Right, luke 9 is really interesting because today is Palm Sunday, right, and this scripture Luke 9, talks about Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem.

But it's really interesting.

You pick up the story in verse 41,.

Something really significant happens here, verse 41 of Luke 19,.

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it saying Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitations.

There's judgment there, right?

But it said he wept.

I don't think.

I think it's pretty clear.

I don't think he was crying and mad or angry.

I think what he was saying is his heart.

He knew what these people were going to go through and, by the way, when Jerusalem fell, there were some terrible things that happened.

He knew what was going to happen to those people and it tore his heart up.

He didn't say this in a vindictive way.

Jesus experienced both sadness for the coming judgment on the people of Jerusalem, while still embracing the reality of that judgment.

Okay, he was embracing it.

That was his heart, that was the Lord's heart for Nineveh and that is what our heart for the lost should be.

You know, do we experience a warped sense of happiness when we see sinful people punished?

That's a tough question to ask and I think, if we're honest, sometimes we.

Do you ever watch those videos they call instant karma.

Oh, I want to watch that one.

Yeah, guys, break checking that guy.

I was a cop.

Give him a big ticket, throw him in the pit.

That's what we like.

We love instant karma.

We love to see justice done.

I understand that.

But do we take pleasure in that?

I mean real pleasure to see people get punished?

If you do, the question is, where's your heart?

And how can you jive that with what it says in Ezekiel about God himself?

Ezekiel 33, verse 11,.

Ezekiel 33:11

This is the Lord responding, through Ezekiel, to the people of Israel as they began to be convicted of their sin and realizing the impending disaster that was about to hit on them.

He says this in verse 11.

This is the Lord saying say to them as I live, 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, and why will you die, o house of Israel?

He's saying turn back, repent.

I don't get any pleasure in the fact that you're going to be destroyed.

How can you jive that in your heart if you're like no, no, no, no, they're going to get what they deserve.

You see, here's something I've come to understand, and you guys have heard me talk about this before.

I grew up in a church that was legalistic.

Grant was in the same church.

He can vouch for this.

We loved to wield the rod of judgment and we loved to tell people about it.

When you pick up the rod of judgment, it's so hard not to start hating people.

Now, when I say, pick up the wheel, the rod of judgment, I'm not saying acknowledge the fact that sin will be punished, and we have a responsibility many times to say what you're doing is wrong, that's sin.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying when your heart starts turning to the point where you are looking at people and say you, you are the one that's going to get what you've got, coming and your hatred, the hatred starts building in your heart.

You see, jonah wanted, he hated so bad he wanted to die.

He said I would rather die than see these people I hate.

Come back to the Lord.

That's warped folks.

The heart of Jesus, by the way, did not preclude judgment and I don't want to overstate this.

But I want to be really clear.

Jesus talked about judgment all over the place.

You know, if you think about that, the scripture in Matthew 25, where he's talking to those people who they were thrown into hell, you know, tossed into hellfire, and they're like why, why are you sending us there?

And he says he will answer them.

I tell you the truth when you refuse to help the least of my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me and they will go away into eternal punishment.

But the righteous will go to eternal life.

Jesus never backed away from the fact that there's a reality of judgment.

Neither should we.

We cannot soften the gospel to try to make it palatable to people.

But if that's what you lead with, if that's what you're going to lead with meaning we're going to focus on punishment, then you have to ask yourself where's your heart?

Because Jesus didn't lead with that, he rarely led with that.

In order to show this same love, we must ask God to give us his heart for the lost.

We need to ask that he grants us this mercy, that we can reflect the love of God.

And, by the way, romans 2, 3 through 5, I think, says it really beautiful.

Do you suppose, o man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourselves, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance Verse 5, but because of your hard and impotent hearts, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

We see God's judgment is going to be revealed in the end, but we also see God's kindness reflected in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

We see both they can coexist together, but we can't step over that line where now we want to be the one to yield that.

And again I'm going to emphasize this again.

I'm not saying we should censor the gospel and not share the part of the gospel that says there is a penalty for sin, that says there is a penalty for sin.

I'm saying the gospel message is not so much about condemnation as it is redemption.

Don't twist those words.

By the way, you understand what I'm saying.

It's about all of it.

But you look at the Apostle Paul when you see the gospel shared.

It's about mercy and grace.

Read Ephesians, just read it.

It's just beautiful.

One of the most beautiful books that talk about that.

So listen.

To conclude, you know, jonah gives us a pretty transparent view into one of God's servants.

Aren't you glad you weren't one of the servants in the Old Testament, because almost all of them.

They're just laid bare for everybody to see, but the lessons are pretty clear.

We need to first examine ourselves to see if we've allowed hate to enter our view of sinners, and we need to leave the ultimate judging to Jesus Christ.

And secondly, we need to ask God to give us the same heart he had towards the lost, praying for their repentance and rejoicing when those who were once evil like us repented and turned to God.

Now I'm going to end with a very personal story In my subdivision.

I love my subdivision, I love where I live, but a year and a half ago a young teenage boy started riding his electric scooter around my subdivision Not a problem, right?

Well, he had a Bluetooth speaker on there and that Bluetooth speaker was blasting rap music and I remember the first time it happened.

I was in my backyard working and I blasting rap music and he would.

I remember the first time it happened, I was in my backyard working and I heard this music.

It was getting louder and then it got quieter and I thought is Jessica listening to rap music or something?

I'd be like what's, what is this sound?

And I realized there's this kid coming through and it was.

At first I was like huh, that's interesting.

But it happened again and again and again.

And I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of rap, especially some of the lyrics that were coming off that little scooter, our Facebook page in our subdivision.

Somebody finally called this out and people started commenting and some of the comments were very unkind.

He got the moniker Scooter Boy.

Everybody started calling him Scooter Boy and Scooter Boy really started to irritate me Because, after all, why should I have to listen to his music?

I even thought about getting on my Goldwing and turning on Merle Haggart and going by his house a few times.

Yes, I actually thought about that.

Never did it.

Couldn't get my radio to work.

No, it's.

But I got more and more irritated.

There were some people that said he almost got, I almost hit him over here and man, he's going to get hit.

But other people were calling him a thug, a problem kid, all this stuff.

One day I was working in the front.

I had both garage doors open, I was doing some woodworking stuff and he kept doing his loops and after the fourth loop I would give him the stare down.

And so I'm like I'm done with this and I walked into the front.

I walked into the street and I was waiting for him to do his lap.

He came around the corner, saw me and he turned and he just went around.

He never came back, which made me happy, of course.

He never came back, which made me happy, of course.

That sounds funny, but Scooter Boy hadn't been out in a couple weeks and I happened to be on our Facebook page and I saw someone said he and his mother moved out of the basement where they were living.

See, I knew he lived in this big, big, beautiful house and I assumed Scooter Boy was a spoiled brat from parents who didn't know what the heck they were doing and had no sense to raise their kid better.

Scooter Boy was fatherless.

He was fatherless and you know what he was the worm that caused my, my plant to die, and I was angry.

And then I realized this kid was fatherless, he and his mother.

Who knows how many places they had to go to live.

I don't know his full story.

All I know is this there was a fatherless young man walking going around this neighborhood and I didn't reach out to him.

And I didn't reach out.

In fact, I intimidated him and you guys.

As I was preparing this message, by the way, I found out that he and his mother had moved out literally this past week.

And as I was preparing this message, the Lord just slayed me.

You missed it, scott.

You missed it.

That's why I'm having you preach on Jonah 4, because you missed it.

God's teaching me and maybe he's teaching you.

Is there a scooter boy in your life?

Is there somebody in your life that you've judged without knowing any part of it?

You've judged their behavior, you've judged what they've done, you've condemned them in whatever way you want to say condemned.

I'm not saying you condemned them to hell, but you said they're not worth the trouble.

Will it cause me to get on my knees and repent?

Will it cause me to get on my knees and repent?

And if there's a scooter boy in your life, or if you found yourself looking and thinking about people as incorrigible and as never able to be repentant, then maybe you have a little bit of Jonah in you as well, because I think, if we're really honest, we all have a little bit of Jonah inside of us that needs to be taken out and that can be taken out in a lot of ways.

But I can tell you, one of the most beautiful ways is to spend time realizing how much God's done for you.

Has anybody ever written you off?

I've known people that I've written off before that came back to the Lord and I just it's a humbling thing.

Please stand for me, stand with me.

We're going to have a prayer team up here and if you want a prayer, we can pray for you.

Pray for each other.

Let's go before the Lord.

Father, we are a flawed people.

You identified that you don't call the powerful and the great of the world, you call the weak.

And, father, it's when we look at mirrors of Scripture like this one we realize just how weak we are.

Father, I repent again for missing that opportunity to share the love of Christ with a young man that needed it.

And, father, I pray that, as you work in the hearts of everyone here, that you would teach them, like you taught Jonah, like you're teaching me, to have the heart that you have for the lost, to hate sin but not hate people, to never write people off, to realize that we don't take pleasure when we see people earn their just rewards, that it should turn us back to you and make us realize how great the sacrifice your son was for us.

Father, search our hearts, help us as we take the gospel message to this world, our communities, our neighborhoods.

Help us to show your love for them all.

And we pray this together, as a congregation, and we pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, and all God's people said amen.