Character of God

When Jonah's warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from

his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with

sackcloth, and sat down in the dust.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil

ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction

that he had threatened. But to Jonah the seemed very

wrong and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord.

Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?

That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to

Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious

and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.

A God who relents from sending calamity.

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die

than to live. But the Lord replied, Is it

right for you to be angry? Jonah had gone out and sat down

at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter,

sat in the shade, and waited to see what would happen to the

city. Then the Lord God provided a

leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his

head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about

the plant. But at dawn the next day God

provided a worm which chewed the plants so it withered.

When the sun rose, God provided a scorching E wind and the sun

blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.

He wanted to die and said it would be better for me to die

than to live. But God said to Jonah, is it

right for you to be angry about the plant?

It is, He said. And I'm so angry that I wish I

were dead. But the Lord said, you have been

concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or

make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died

overnight. And should I not have concern

for the great city of Nineveh? Thank you, Rowan.

Good morning. If you haven't read Jonah

yourself, you probably haven't heard the bits and pieces about

worms and plants. And a prophet who wants to die

doesn't kind of feature in in the kiddies story, you know,

doesn't come up in Sunday school.

But it is the portion that we're going to look at actually, I

want to anchor this morning in chapter 4, verse one.

But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong.

To Jonah, this seemed very wrong.

We we're going to have a bit of a run up until we deal with this

thing that's going on in Jonah's heart because it's important

that you see what is happening in God's heart, What's happening

in Jonah's heart, what's happening in the heart of the

Ninevites. And then you'll begin to see

what's happening in your own heart.

We allow the Spirit of God to do some ministry this morning, but

to start off to to set the scene, I want to show you

something that's going on in the heart of God that might offend

you. And that is from verse one and

two, as we've heard it read at the beginning of almost every

sermon we've done on Jonah. The word of the Lord came to

Jonah, son of Amitai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach

against it because its wickedness has come up before

me. There's two things I want to

draw your attention to in those two verses.

The 1st is this, if you, I don't know if you have it in your

Bible, but my Bible says the word of the Lord and that Lord

is in caps. Lord is all in capital letters.

I don't know if you have the same.

The reason for that is because that word Lord is a translation

of letters, not a word. The letters are YHWH, sort of

this holy abbreviated version of Yahweh.

And so the scribes who had transcribed the scriptures, when

they got to the name Yahweh, it is the highest name of God.

And so they treated it with with such reverence that they

wouldn't even say the name or write the name.

It's not like you know he who shall not be named.

It's the one who is so holy that even these filthy lips don't

dare mention the name. And so that's, that's what it's

saying there. But here's something that's

fascinating about that name. It's not just the highest,

greatest name of God. See, you could have written

there the word of Adonai or El El Yon God Most High came to me.

But he says Yahweh because Jonah knew the heart of God, and so he

used the heart of God to represent what is going on.

And that name Yahweh is the covenant name of God.

So a God by the name of Gerhoff and Rod says the name Yahweh was

committed in trust to Israel, alone among the nations.

In it alone lay the guarantee of his nearness, the covenant

making God, and in it alone lay the guarantee of his readiness

to help. And Jonah's going.

This seems wrong to me. You can help me, you can help

Israel, you can help three CR. But my ex-husband, don't you

dare. My boss, the man who raped me, I

hear that. I know I said to you, Are you

ready for the heart of God to offend you?

So that's the first thing, the will of the Lord came to Jonah.

And the second thing that says go and preach against the city.

A little tip, something that we learned in Bible college, if you

open Scripture and you open, maybe you're studying Jonah and

you've got the ESV or the Message or the New Living

Translation, you'll notice that this preach against it is

translated differently. So I think the New Living

Translation says, you know, tell them about my pending judgement

or something like that. The ESV says call out against

them. I'm reading from the NRV and it

says preach against it. Whenever you see that disparity,

you got to know that there's something happening with the the

phraseology, the imagery that is portrayed in Hebrew that's not

quite translated perfectly into English.

And so I went and took a look at one of the concordances and

Strong says, yeah. Note this word, Korah has a wide

variety of applications. And here are some of the nuances

to this word. Remember, we're looking at the

heart of God. Korah is to preach again, so

speak judgement, but it is also to invite, to be called, to be

chosen, to cry out to me the covenant making God, and to call

for my help. So God is not just saying to

Jonah, go to Nineveh, tell them he call Madam 10-9.

He's not saying go and stand in the midst of the Ninevites and

let them know there's a God who wants to make a covenant with

him and forgive them and deliver them from the pending judgment.

And what does Jonah say? But to Jonah this seemed very

wrong. And he became angry.

Actually, he stormed off, went off to Tarshish.

And then you have the storm and the whale and he gets vomited

out. And then he when he does sort of

turn a little bit, he gives a real half hearted sermon to to

Nineveh. It was so short you could have

just tweeted it and he could have stayed at home and really

spared himself the trouble. And then they repent.

No. To Jonah, this seemed very

wrong. Don't you just hate that about

God? Don't you hate?

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God.

I hate that about you. Slow to anger.

Abounding in love. Drives me nuts.

A God who relents from calamity. To Jonah, this seemed very

wrong. To you, this seems very wrong.

Slow to anger, but you know what he did to me?

You know what she said about me? You know he stole all my glory

and my clients and got the promotion.

It's a heart of God and a defended Jonah.

And if we're really honest, it offends us too.

So what's up? What's what's going on here?

Why is Jonah so offended? Why are we so offended?

To understand this, I want to look at two aspects of of the

dark recesses of our heart and of Jonah's heart, and we're

going to link these three together.

Here's the first thing that was up Dan Carlin.

If you're a historian, if you like to go down rabbit holes as

I do, Dan Carlin has got a series called Hardcore History,

looks at all those very dark issues of of humanity's past.

And in one of the episodes, he actually talks about Nineveh,

and it's fascinating. So Nineveh, if you don't know

it, was the capital city of Assyria, the empire of Assyria.

So this was one of the very first empires that had lasted

for something like 2000 years, the Assyrian Empire.

And Nineveh was its capital. It's where the king set.

As we just heard, it was where the king repented.

But the thing about Nineveh and the thing about the Assyrians,

they were unmatched in power and brutality.

If you were here last week, you would have heard car share but a

little bit of the the dark interior decorating of the the

Assyrians flaying people, skinning them alive.

They would brutally, brutally destroy their enemies.

Dan Colin actually says they invented terrorism.

Now, I thought that was just hyperbole, but I mentioned it to

Eugene and Eugene did a little bit of digging and he said, do

you know that Nineveh, the ruins of Nineveh, lie right in the

seedbed of ISIS? So we're not just talking about

a bunch of people who are power hungry and have no boundaries,

not a bunch of Barbarians. There was a spirit behind there

that Nineveh is right where ISIS have based themselves.

And the the map that he showed me was like these little

tendrils that go throughout where Assyria used to be across

the Engineer E They were brutal. They were wicked.

Dan actually says that they would do the kind of damage and

nuclear bomb would do to a city or to the enemies, but they

would do it by hand. But the thing about the

Assyrians, the the most wicked thing about the Assyrians is not

only that they took their time, but what they wanted to do was

they wanted to work out judgement and punishment and

brutality that would leave generational scars.

So what they would do is they would go and here's a city

that's is resisting us. They're not only going and and

execute and bludgeon to death and torture pregnant women and

men and children, then not only burn their crops and tear down

their villages, but they would they would flatten everything.

They wouldn't leave another stone on top of one another.

They would take that rubble and they would spread it into the

the fields as well as sowing weeds.

Weeds, not weed. OK, now we got some people from

Boxberg and Benoni here, weeds and scatter salt so that if

there were any survivors anywhere, there was no way they

would be able to survive. They could not come and live in

that place anymore. There's one account where they

actually diverted a river. Now just think how long it

takes, you know, when you're on holiday, all your volleys down

in in Durban and you buy the lagoon and you want to get the

lagoon to sort of come to the see how much effort that is.

Now imagine how many years it would possibly take to diver to

river. So it would go straight through

the middle, middle of that village or that city so that

there would be nothing left to say.

Yeah. You know, in the bend of that

river. Well, there used to be an

amazing town there. Pretoria used to be there

generational scars. They wanted to leave death and

destruction in their wake. And God says Jonah, would you go

and tell them I want to forgive them.

It's funny. All of a sudden there's a little

bit more compassion in Jonah. You know, you pretty uptights

and self-righteous and saying, Lord Jonah, I would have gone.

But what if I told you that in 721 BC that same king who sat in

the dust in chapter 3 rallied the Assyrians and they swept

down upon Israel and unleashed hell.

Everything that I've told you about the Assyrians happened to

the people of God maybe 20 years after the book of John was

written. Now, it's not just a case of

this is who they are. God knows this is what they're

about to do. And they had a particular

cruelty that they meted out to the Israelites, see, because the

Israelites were very precious about their heritage.

So what they did was they slaughtered the men, they took

the women home as slaves, they impregnated them, and then they

kicked them out. And that's where we get the

Samaritans from a generation upon generation upon generation

that was sent home to be rejected and despised and

exploited and oppressed. Such is the wickedness.

But God says, not only do I know who you are, three CR, not only

do I know what you've been up to Pretoria, I know what you're

going to do. And still he says to you and I,

I want to bring my forgiveness. I want to make covenant with

you. I want to cleanse you and

forgive you. But to Jonah, this seemed very

wrong. My Bible, actually, the heading

in chapter 4 says Jonah's anger at the Lord's compassion.

You know, in 2006, a God by the name of Charlie Roberts armed

himself and went into an Amish community.

I don't know if you remember the story.

You know, I think Little House on the Prairie, when it comes to

a school room, classroom kind of set up.

He stormed in there, too graphic to give details other than the

fact that he locked the door and executed at point blank.

You have 25 children in the classroom before he pulled the

gun on himself. And of course, the media

descended on it in droves. Thousands upon thousands of

media outlets were carrying the story and they had the funeral

for these children and the Amish gathered and they had their

funeral. And then to the Globe's

amazement and the media's shock and horror, they left their

funeral and went to Charlie's funeral and grieved with his

widow and his three children and forgave and loved on and

actually created a fund to look after the family and to get the

children through school and get a degree until they had work

they constantly cared for. 10 years later, I was reading an

article. There was still a tight knit

community with Charlie Roberts wife and children.

The world did not know what to do.

There's such power when we forgive, it's because when you

forgive you, you are joining with the very nature and

character of God. And that power is far greater

than the power of the Ninevites and the Assyrians, far greater

than Charlie Roberts, so much so that within hours, the narrative

changed. It went from this horror.

And how could he and, you know, bring the death sentence back or

whatever the case, it changed to 2 1/2 thousand outlets talking

about the Amish forgiveness. And if memory serves correct,

one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell, got saved

because of their forgiveness. He was sitting doing research

for a book. It could.

What do you do with this? He was completely undone because

see, the grates of the wound, the greater the forgiveness and

the greater display of the nature and the grace and the

glory and the character of God to a world that never otherwise

would see it. But to Jonah, this seemed very

wrong. Don't you forgive Charlie?

You remember it. You remind the world, you sit at

that dinner table and you tell them how bad you were fathered.

You sit at that dinner table and you commiserate it.

You're a shocking boss. And you know I haven't had a

raise. And you know what he's.

And who does she think she is? You think that this is very

wrong. I think that this is very wrong.

You can deny it, but it growls in our hearts because I'm Jonah.

Another thing that's going on in the heart of Jonah.

We need Psalm 23 to unpack this and I'm just going to feel like

a little hard left here. Just bear with me.

Psalm 23 was a song that had been written about 200 years

before Jonah came on the scene. It was a song that he would have

been familiar with just as we are.

You know, it's the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want he leads me beside still waters lays me down

in green pastures, though I walk through the valley of the shadow

of death or shall fear no evil. That's PS Psalm 23.

Back in those days, they would, and even today they'd included

in their Shabbat ceremony. So he would have been familiar

with this and he would also been familiar with one of the verses

that we're not so familiar with. And that is why we have a table

there. You prepare a table before me in

the presence of my enemies. OK, Why the table?

Why the enemies? Well, we're dealing with Jonah

and his enemies. Now.

There were two views on this verse five of Psalm 23.

The first one, the traditional view, well, it's a lot of the

fact that just like we've seen here with the Ninevites and the

Assyrians, the Israelites were surrounded by enemies.

They often had them on their doorstep, wanting to lay siege

to the city. And so the traditional view of

this verse was, well, Lord, here's your promise, You prepare

a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

So smite them. Smash his teeth in, burn him to

the ground. Actually in the prey that I

prayed when I was a young man was Lord, would you stop his

heart? Because you've prepared a table

before me in the presence of my enemies.

So this is the picture that Jonah had and what I have had.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You know it's like your 20 year school reunion.

Oh, what does it you do? I've been blessed with a

glorious life as my God has prepared a table before me in

the presence of my enemies. I know you said no when I asked

you to the matrix dance, but can I show you my abs?

Shame. Who's driving the Uno Fiat?

OK, so this is the view that Jonah had.

This is the traditional view, and it's the view that creeps

into our hearts because to Jonah it seemed very wrong that the

Lord would prepare a table before me, not for me, but

before me in the presence of my enemies.

To you and I, it seems very wrong that the Lord would

prepare a table before me because we need to do a little

bit of a Bible study around this concept.

So it was before me. It's not, you know, you reserved

a table. And so the waitress says there's

your table and it's before you. It comes with an invitation.

There's a seat at the table there, and there's a seat at the

table there. One of them is seating the King

of kings and the Lord of Lords who sits at the table.

And he said, will you come and she'll Han with me?

Because not just there, it doesn't say you prepare a meal

before me. It says you prepare a table

before me. And in the Bible this she'll

Han, this table always and well, rather predominantly represented

reconciliation. So God is saying here in Psalm

23, I'm your Lord and I'm your shepherd.

Yes, I make you lie down in Greek pastors.

Yes, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

but also I'm Yahweh and I want to redeem and restore and

forgive and renew. And that is going to require

some shul harm, some time at the table.

See, if you go through Scripture, actually you see it

all over the place. So you see it in First Samuel

20. This is in David's time when

David was writing this, you see Jonathan, it says that he was

grieved at how shameful his dad was treating David.

Now in our day and age, we would write and so Jonathan stormed

off and slammed the door. But in this his day and age, you

will write. He stood up from the table.

We we can't sure harm father. I'm I'm grieved at how you're

treating David or we read in second Samuel Chapter 9.

2 Samuel 9 · chapter mention

It talks about how David now becomes king.

And so of course, what does the king do?

He obliterates the predecessor's family and any remnants there

because they always get to be in their bonnet and think they can

take the the crown back. And So what does David do?

He calls Mephibosheth, the only living descendant of Saul, and

he seats him at his table. And he says, you will always

eat, you will always show harm at my table.

There will always be reconciliation, even though Saul

wanted to kill me. This is the picture.

Or you go to Luke 7, Jesus is reclining at the table and the

woman with the alabaster jars is a sinful woman, which is

essentially a woman of the night, breaks it, alabaster jar

pours it on his feet. And what does Jesus say today?

Your sins are forgiven. Shul Han reconciliation in Acts

246 says every day they would meet in the houses together and

they would break bread with glad and sincere hearts.

Now that's kind of strange. Yeah, I'll say you break bread

with peanut butter and jam or you break bread with, you know,

wine and olive oil. But glad and sincere hearts.

They use this word because sincere there the literal

translation means without rocks, we're not throwing stones.

We'd having a short time. We are making sure that there's

nothing between you and I, that I don't have to walk into three

CR and see she's at the coffee counter.

I guess I'm going to have the free stuff and you walk across

because you have shell hard, no rocks.

Or on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he sat down on one end

of that table and he said tomorrow I will create the

ultimate shell hard. Tomorrow my body, like that

bread will be broken and my blood like that wine will be

poured out so that there will be no stones between us, There will

be no gap, there will be no animosity so that I can make

covenant with you. But to Jonah that seemed very

wrong. Me.

Yes, absolutely. My family, praise Jesus, you and

your rats. But to Jonah this seemed very

wrong. And to you, do you need to

forgive someone? Or better yet, who don't you

believe deserves forgiveness? Who do you say to Jonah?

To Stephen? This seems very wrong.

Maybe your spouse on the back of last Sunday.

Maybe they pulled up a chair at the table and said, Babes,

something I need to tell you. Who don't you think deserves

forgiveness? Maybe an ex and he's still not

paying. Who do you need to forgive?

Maybe it's a parent. If you had to describe your dad

in one word, what would that word be?

Absent Mickey. Disappointments.

Cruel. Who do you need to forgive?

Stepmom. Maybe she stole your dad's heart

from you. Stepdad is functional but absent

in laws. All of us in laws.

Who don't you think deserves forgiveness?

Grandparents, I mean they said and did something that no

grandparents should ever do, crossed a line.

How do you feel about your son or your daughter?

Is there someone you need to forgive?

Or a brother, or a brother, or a brother, sister, family?

Who's it that you avoid when it's Mother's Day or Christmas?

Maybe it's a business partner. Maybe it's a boss.

Maybe it's a colleague who single handedly destroyed your

career. Who do you not think deserves

forgiveness? Maybe it's a trusted friend who

wounded and betrayed you. Maybe the person you don't think

deserves to be forgiven as you yourself.

Forgiveness is an event. Reconciliation is a process.

For some of us here, we need to forgive, but we actually need

reconciliation to complete the process of forgiveness.

I know what this is like when, when my dad and I were at our,

at our worst, I remember one of my mates had a bit of an

intervention here, you know, one of those, hey, listen, can we,

can we chat? And just before you know it,

there's like a room full of people in bed.

This thing will be the end of you.

And it was true. And it was clear as they,

everyone could see it. And so, you know, we shared, I

vented, I forgave, I prayed. And then he handed me the phone.

I said, what's your dad's number?

So for some of us, some of us, not necessarily all of us, some

of us need to not only forgive but also need to reconcile, need

to sit at that table. It might take a Peck of salt to

restore, to repent, to forgive. What I'm not saying, please

don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you go to that

person at the coffee counter and say I forgive you.

Please, we are not children. If you're so self-centered and

so selfish that it became an issue, they might not even know.

Then you sit at the table with yourself and God on the other

side and say Father, I've been holding on to poison and I want

to forgive them. It begins with repentance.

OK, but maybe you need to do that.

Maybe you need to sit at the table.

One, one thing you do need to do is you do need to work out this

reconciliation in community. So glad if we starting life

groups again. Put that as question number one.

Who do you need to forgive? Who don't you think deserves

forgiveness? How can we journey with you and

you get counsel? Maybe some of it it is just too

toxic for you to wade in on that and you need to do work in your

own heart. But today, I want to invite you

to the table. I want to ask you, is there

someone you need to forgive? Someone that you, even that

person that abandoned you or raped you?

There's power in forgiveness. There's power that the city

needs. Land with us.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how it is that we got to get our

hands on this tiny little story? I mean, think about it.

Who was there when Jonah was screaming at God?

Who was there to say to Jonah this seemed very wrong?

Who witnessed the the worm and the vine and the heat of the

day? Jonah.

Only Jonah. How did we get to find out about

Jonah? There's only one explanation.

He sat at the table. He came face to face with the

Ninevites and the Assyrians and this wickedness that he saw with

his own eyes and the dark, deep wickedness and resentment and

unforgiveness that he had to see with his heavenly eyes.

And he sat at that table and he wrote down so that you and I

would see who he truly was and who he truly needed.

And the crazy thing is, in spite of the fact that the Assyrians

did generational damage, they're gone and forgotten.

But the forgiveness is still reaching and touching and

challenging and changing lives thousands of years later.

That is the power that the city needs.

That is the power that this community needs because the

Bible says where brothers dwell together in unity, a command of

blessing. But it begins by taking a seat

at that table, a moment of Shohan.

And I want to invite you to that today.