When Mercy Seems Wrong

Welcome to the Rheem Sound Church of God podcast.

Wherever you're listening from, we hope you are blessed by

today's message. Let's stand together for God's

Word. I am going to read you a

scripture from the book of Jonah.

There's a message I've never preached before and I I'll tell

you about it as it unfold. But we've got to read the first

chapter, or rather the third chapter in the book of Jonah,

which is short, and then the first verse from the 4th

chapter. As many of you know, the Bible

was not written in chapters and verses.

That was done later so we could find things that we look for.

But as I was reading the Scripture, I went from chapter 3

to 4 and that first verse stood out.

I'll explain. Jonah 31.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I

give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the

Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large

city. It took three days to go through

it. Jonah began by going a day's

journey into the city, proclaiming 40 more days and

Nineveh will be overthrown. The Ninevites believed God, a

fast was proclaimed, and all of them, all of them, from the

greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

Let me just stop to say this is one of the most amazing

evangelistic campaigns you'll ever hear anything about.

This man went in and preached a message of destruction coming

and the whole city. Turn to fasting and prayer and

you'll see even the king. When Jake Jonas 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. This is the proclamation he

issued in Nineveh. This is the king by the decree

of the king and his nobles. Do not let people or animals,

herds or flocks taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink,

but let people and animals be covered with sackcloth.

I wonder what that look like. Let everyone call urgently.

Call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways

and their violence. Who knows, God may yet relent

and with compassion turn from His fierce anger so that we will

not perish. When God saw what they did and

how they turn from their evil ways, He relented and did not

bring on them the destruction He had threatened in that amazing

chapter 10 verse one. But to Jonah this seemed very

wrong and he became angry. I want to preach today on this

thought. When mercy seems wrong, let's

pray. Father, we thank you for mercy.

We thank you for grace that brings us together today.

We thank you for the word of the Lord.

And I pray God, you will anoint this frail vessel with the Holy

Spirit to bring forth the Word of God in such a way that it

speaks to every heart, to every life in this building, and to

anyone who is watching or will be watching in the future, this

word. I pray that in the name of Jesus

Christ, Amen and Amen, you may be seated.

Let me read that verse again, Chapter 4, verse one.

But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong and he became angry.

I don't know, a few weeks ago, exactly 2-3 weeks ago, whatever,

I was reading my Bible. I wasn't studying for a sermon,

but I was reading in the book of Jonah and I read this third

chapter as I just read to you. I've read it.

In fact, let me encourage you, if you haven't read the book of

Jonah. Now you may be on a Bible

reading plan and I don't want to upset that, but if you get a

chance, read that small book. It's very easy reading.

All of the chapters are short. I read it again this morning,

but when I got to this 4th chapter it stunned me.

I wasn't looking for at this point a message, but this really

spoke to me that the prophet of God, and we'll call him the

reluctant prophet. I think most of you familiar

probably with the story of Jonah, but if not, let me take

you back and just give you a little history here.

Because in chapter 1 it says that God spoke to his prophet

and told him to get up from where he was and go to the city

of Nineveh and deliver a message to them.

Jonah did not want to do it. John.

Jonah rebelled against God and instead of getting on a ship to

go to Nineveh, he went down to Joppa and got on a boat going to

Tarsus. The Bible said he wanted to get

away from the Lord. How many know that's pretty

impossible, But he wanted to get away from God.

So he said I'm going to go the other way.

And so he goes the other way. And while he's on that boat, he

goes down into the head of the boat, he goes down to the

bottom, and he goes to sleep. And God sends a great storm out

on the sea. And all of the men on the ship

are all perplexed. They're looking like they're

going to be destroyed. They're throwing cargo

overboard. But they do.

There had been some conversation already with Jonah, so they knew

that he was running from God. But they went down the cap of

the ship and went down to the bottom and said, hey, why are

you sleeping? Get up and call on your God.

Because all of the men on that boat were calling on their gods.

So maybe if you call on your God, he would do something.

And Jonah got up. But Jonah was rebelling against

God, and the storm didn't stop. And so the men said, what can we

do? How can we get this storm to

stop? But Jonah said, it's my fault,

throw me overboard and the storm will cease.

And so the men said, we don't want to do that.

And they kept trying to row, get that boat to land.

They couldn't do it. And so finally they just prayed

to God and said, please don't hold us against us, but we're

going to do it. And they throw Jonah overboard.

You know the story as he goes down in the water.

God had prepared a giant fish or a whale, whatever you want to

call Jesus. And in the King James Version

news estimate, said whale, we won't argue about that.

It was a whale of a fish, let's put it that way.

But God prepared this thing and it swallowed up Jonah.

And so Jonah's in the whale's belly for three days and three

nights and he's calling out on God and God delivers him and

sets him free. Has the whale spit him out on

the ground? And that's we pick up chapter 3

when the word of the Lord came again.

Are you ready to do this now? And Jonah said, yes, I'll do it.

And he went to the city of Nineveh and the Bible said it

was a great city of three days journey.

And so he goes into the first day's journey and he and he

calls out to the people and he gives them a very short message.

In 40 days this city is going to be overthrown.

And the people took heart to it and to begin to call on God.

And God heard their prayer. In fact, by the way, let me get

back to the boat. Jonah is having great success in

ministry, even though he's rebelling.

God's blessing him anyway and people are getting saved.

But he doesn't like it. And, and, and it says to Jonah,

it seemed very wrong. Jonah was in a struggle with God

over who he was showing mercy to, didn't like what God was

doing. Now, you see, Nineveh was a

major city. It was an Assyrian city, and it

was a city of all kinds of violence, all kinds of sin.

They were definitely enemies of Israel.

And the last thing that Jonah really wanted to see was that

place spared. He'd have been glad if it would

have been destroyed. We can kind of understand a

little bit about how Jonah felt because these people were such

enemies of God. They were notorious murderers

and they did everything they could possibly do against God in

the ways of God. And you can kind of understand

the prophetic anointing rising up in him and him saying in 40

days you're going down and kind of enjoying that.

And he Santa struggle with God. And this is amazing to me.

I, I, I went, the more I read it and I kept reading it.

I've been reading it just about every day, I guess, since I've

just been going back reading his story.

And I, he's in an argument with God and God is talking to him

and he's talking back to God and he's telling God, I think what

you're doing is wrong. And Jonah's not just angry with

the people of Nineveh. He's now angry with God.

Listen to what he says. In Jonah 4/2 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 the Tarshish.

I knew. I knew that you're a gracious

and compassionate God. You're slow to anger and

abounding in love. A God who relents from sending

calamity. He is angry with God because God

is merciful, because God is gracious, because God is loving,

because God is forgiving. And he's angry with God about

that. The very things that saved

Jonah, he didn't want those other people to get saved by.

Somehow Jonah thought that he was more righteous than those

people and he was more deserving of salvation than they were.

And I want to just tell you that Jonah was as undeserving of

God's salvation as anybody in the town of Nineveh was.

And I want you to know that it's no different for us.

Any and all of us are in the same boat.

If you don't mind me using that the same boat.

If it wasn't for the mercy and the grace and the compassion of

God, listen, we have no more right to salvation than the

worst Sinner that ever lived. And if you don't understand

that, you've cheapened grace. And it's not to be cheapened

because it is truly Amazing Grace.

How sweet that sound. We played a game back here for

team night. I think that's all we did.

We played games and ate ice cream.

That was a nice team night. You missed that one.

You missed something. But we sat at tables and Pastor

Joel and I really weren't in a group, but we got drafted in and

each, each ministry team, children's ministry, worship

team, ministry greeters, all of those, we were all sitting at

different tables and, and we played a number of games, but

one of them we played was would you rather?

I'd never played it before, but let me give you examples.

If you don't know. One of the questions was, would

you rather memorize 100 verses or deeply study 10 verses?

And so you were to discuss that at your table and then have a

representative from your table stand up and give your answer

And why? Another question was, would you

rather spend 100 years building an ark or 40 days in the

wilderness? Think about that.

What would you rather do? Would you rather have 100 years

to build an ark or 40 days in the wilderness?

One of the questions was this. Would you rather be in the

lion's den or in the belly of the whale?

The worship team that did not win the contest, the children's

ministry won the whole thing. All the smart people are in

children's ministry. We know that, right?

But the worship team got this one and got it good.

Caroline Medina, who's not here today, she stood up and she

said, I would rather, we would rather be, we'd rather be in a

lion's den because of our obedience than to be in a

whale's belly because of our disobedience.

Always choose obedience over disobedience.

But I want you to understand that it took the same for all of

us. It took the same suffering,

bleeding Savior to save us as it did for anyone in the world.

If you had been or I had been the only person that Jesus had

to die for. If, if, if put yourself there,

don't put me there, put you there.

Put, put you, you're #1 you're, you're it.

You're the only person that Jesus is going to die for your

sins. He's you're the only one.

Do you think he would have had to suffer less?

Do you think he would have shed less blood going through less?

No, because we have all sinned and we've all come short of the

glory of God. And we're all on the same boat,

going in the wrong direction if it had not been for the grace of

God. So I want you to realize that

mercy from God is never wrong. Even though Jonah thought it

was. He had some boundaries.

He had set up some boundaries that says outside of this, mercy

doesn't work. I would say to all of us,

including myself, if you have issues with God saving anyone,

you need to ask God to soften your heart concerning anyone

that you find hard to forgive, ask God, does God soften my

heart? Because we are in the same boat,

but it's a tendency to think somehow we're better.

There was opposition to Jesus in Samaria.

They didn't get along, the Samaritans and the Jews.

And the Bible says in Luke 951 at the time, as the time

approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely

set out for Jerusalem and he sent messengers on ahead who

went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him.

But the people there did not welcome him because he was

heading to Jerusalem. They didn't like that they were

Samaritans. We don't have anything to do

with you Jews. When the disciples, James and

John saw this, they asked, Lord, you want us to call down fire

from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked

them. Then he and his disciples went

to another village. These disciples said, we're

going to stand up for you, Lord. These heathen out here don't

deserve to live. Can we just call down fire from

heaven on them right now? I don't know that these men ever

had the power to call down fire from heaven to start with.

But Jesus said you're wrong. Why?

Because the Bible said Jesus didn't come to condemn the

world. He came that through him the

world might be saved. It's already condemned.

Follow what I'm saying. And so sometimes we can become

very protective. And boy, if I had my way, if I

was God for a day, Thank God you're not.

And to be honest, come on, none of us are all that holy.

Did you hear that? I said none of us are all that

holy. I went down to that membership

class today and greeted him. I said, you're not in a perfect

church. It's a good church, but it's not

a perfect church. And as long as I'm here, it

won't be. I take that because I realized

that none of us are really. Come on, look at your neighbors,

say you're really not. But no, don't do that.

They'll be Jesus said in Luke 18-9 to some who were confident

of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else.

Jesus told this parable. 2 men went up to the temple to pray.

1A Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

Pastor Joe, would you come and stand right over there?

Alec, would you come and stand right over there?

I got my Pharisee and my public in here.

Which what? Which you wanted to be the

Pharisee. OK, The Pharisee stood by

himself. Notice that you got to get near

this guy. He stood by himself and and he

prayed this. He actually prayed this.

Now Pastor Joe wouldn't do this, but thank you for going along.

He said, God, I thank you that I am not like other people,

robbers, evil doers, adulterers or even like pointed this guy

over here. That's right, even like this tax

collector. I'm almost ready to say Amen to

that one. But anyway, he said, I fast

twice a week I get to give a tenth of all I get.

But the tax collector stood at a distance, he would not even look

up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God have mercy

on me, a Sinner. Now both of you go home.

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home

justified before God. For all those who exalt

themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will

be exalted. Can you imagine that?

Now I illustrate that, because this is the silliness of it, to

think that we would come to an altar and stand on one side and

look at somebody on the other side and say, I'm glad I'm not

like him. This would have been, you see,

if you just stayed home, you could have turned this off.

You can't turn me off in person. But I want you to think about

this a moment. We've all sinned.

Isaiah 118 says, come now, let us reason together, says the

Lord. Though your sins are like

scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they're red like Crimson, they shall be as wool.

We need once again to get a vision now, the vision of the

blood stained crossed and the suffering of Jesus for me, for

me in this poor frame of mind that Jonah is still upset with

God because God saved people that he didn't think he should

save. Jonah has not given up yet.

He preached a very short message.

There's only what about 9 words or so?

That was his message. This city is going to be

overthrown in 40 days. They believed it.

They repented. Listen to what it says in Jonah

Jonah 4:5

chapter 4, verse 5. Jonah had gone out and sat down

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

sat in its 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. He's just now mad.

This guy's bipolar, I guess. I mean, he was, he was angry.

But there's that now it's a plant in the plant.

Oh, this is nice. I'm sitting under a palm tree.

And he was so happy about it. But at dawn the next day, the

same God that provided the plant provided a worm.

Some of us need a worm. God provided a worm which chewed

the plant so that it withered when the sun rose.

God torching E wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that

he grew thin. He wanted to die and said it

would be better for me to die than to live now.

Think about that a moment. He was in a whale's belly

praying to live. Now he's outside in the hot sun

saying I want to die. He could have died in the

whale's belly. This guy is all over the place.

And here's one wonderful thing about that because you may be

and I may be all over the place about some of this.

It's OK because God can help us get it right.

God did not disown him and say that's not my profit anymore.

Even though he was messed up, he was still his man.

He just needed to get some things straightened out, some

priorities straightened out, and so he wanted to die.

He said be better for me to die than live.

But God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about

the plant? It is.

He's still talking to God. It is.

I'm so angry. I wish I were dead in the belly

of the fish. I want to live now.

I want to die. 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 in which there are more than

120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their

left? And also many animals.

God is saying to Jonah, you've got your priorities all messed

up. You worried about a plant.

You didn't do anything to make it grow, and you didn't do

anything to me. It just came up because I let it

come up and it went down because I let it go down.

And you have more compassion for a plant than you do for a whole

city that needs the Lord. How true that is, folks.

We're going to pray in just a few minutes and we're going to

pray for our nation. Rededicate 250 is taking place

in Washington DC even as I speak.

And it'll be on all day. And you can, you can go to,

there's a number of sites on YouTube that are live streaming

it and there's speakers there like Jensen Franklin and Samuel

Rodriguez and Robert Jeffries in First Baptist in Dallas.

And, and, and it's a, it's a call to a nation to go to

prayer, to repent, etcetera, etcetera.

Is it going to be worship? And Chris Tomlin, I think is

doing a concert this evening or whatever.

But anyway, we're not there. We're here, but we're going to

pray for our nation as well. But God said, you missed

something, Jonah. You know the things of God, but

there's people in this city, they they can't even tell

they're rare from their left. They have no discernment.

Is that not the world we live in?

People have no discernment. It just anything.

You just go along with any trend, anything on social media,

we just jump into it, just do it.

Whatever. We need to pray for people to

come to Christ. I'm telling you now, I'm not

here to turn people to the Democrat Party, turn people to

the Republican Party. I'm here to turn people to

Christ. That's what we need is we need

the Lord Jesus Christ. And we get that right, then we

get politics right as well. But we need to get right with

God. So what I want us to pray for

today is souls to be saved for people who are not able to

discern the right hand from their left, who cannot

understand that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, cannot

understand that an unborn child is a life.

Not a choice. Folks, people are messed up in

their thinking. But what about us in the church?

You know, we also need to be people of forgiving one another.

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 31, Paul said get rid of all

Ephesians 4:31

bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with

every form of malice. Now he's talking to the church.

Be kind and compassionate one to another, forgiving each other in

the church, forgiving each other just as Christ or just as in

Christ. God forgave you.

I read a story. I want to read this before I

close today. Maybe some of you heard it.

Author is unknown as far as I could tell.

But it's a story about two friends who were walking through

the desert and it was very hot, arid and they were suffering

greatly. And during some point on that

journey they had an argument and one friend slapped the other one

in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt

but without saying anything rode in the sand.

Today my best friend slapped me in the face.

They kept on walking. Later they come came upon an

Oasis where they decided to go in and take a bath, but the one

who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started

drowning. But the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone.

Today my best friend saved my life.

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend slapped

him and then later saved him. After I hurt you, he said, I

don't understand. After I hurt you, you wrote in

the sand and now you write on a stone.

Why? The other friend replied, When

someone hurts you or hurts us, we should write it down in sand,

where winds of forgiveness can erase it away.

But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it

in stone where no wind can ever erase it.

Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits

in stone. They say it takes a minute to

find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to

love them, but then an entire life to forget them.

Do not value the things you have in your life, the value who you

have in your life. That will help us folks.

The hurts, right? Them in the sand.

And sometimes it does take a while for the winds, right?

We're human beings and I, I would simply say to you, if you

make something right with someone, you ask someone to

forgive them, give them time to process.

Don't get in their face and say, I apologize, you got to forgive

me. You're going to hell.

You didn't apologize. It may take them a while to

process. Now, I'm not talking about a

lifetime, but we have to understand that, and this is

what I feel like, this is exactly what Jonah is facing.

And Jonah is facing this matter of, but these are enemies of

God. These are people that have done

these terrible things. How many know that none of us

would be here today if it wasn't for the forgiveness of God for

us and our failures. Our sins are wrong, so we have

to understand that and we have to be patient with one another

and love one another. Brothers and sisters, I have

more than once had to apologize even here, not just in this

pulpit, because I knew something I did, I failed and something I,

and I'm thankful for forgiveness that people grant and I want to

be the same kind of person. How many want to be that kind of

person? A man You want to be that kind

of person. Every time we look at the blood

stained cross, it reminds us of the price Christ paid for us.

And if he could forgive me for what you don't know that I've

done and he could forgive you for what I don't know that

you've done, how many know that we can forgive one another?

Amen. Interestingly enough, Jesus took

this story in the New Testament and said this in Matthew 1241.

The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on

Judgment Day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at

the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah

is here, but you refuse to repent.

Think about that. Jonah, the reluctant prophet,

with all his flaws, brought a message of destruction, and the

people said we got to get right with God.

Jesus said someone's greater than that here.

Who is that? Jesus, of course.

And he's still here today to forgive us our sins, to cleanse

us from all unrighteousness. Now I have a kind of a sad

ending to the message because it is true that it did spare that

city, but about 100 years later or so it was destroyed because

they didn't stay where they needed to stay with God.

Another prophet came along by the name of Nahum, and if you

read his book, a prophetic word was given and Nineveh was

eventually destroyed, but at least it had maybe 100 years of

freedom and peace because they repented.

But as often happens over time, we forget.

And I think as we pray today, this is where I find our nation.

We may be forgetting something that we need to remember.

And even though God has spared us and blessed us, we may, I'm

not saying we may, we have, I'm not talking about you.

But as again, as I mentioned earlier, so many people in our

country right now can't deserve left from right their hands,

what's right, what's wrong this particular date today.

And I don't have any personal thing to do with Rededicate 250.

I think it's a great idea and I trust that that's what will

happen. But I do want you to know that

this date is not just a date 250 years ago.

What's today's date? Somebody tell me you can't get

your left right now. You sound like me.

I don't know what day of the week is.

It's May 17th, 250 years ago today.

Today, the Second Continental Congress declared a day of

humiliation, fasting and prayer across 13 colonies.

Congress asked Americans to seek God's forgiveness, protect the

Continental Army, and grant wisdom to civil leaders as the

nation move toward independence. The official congressional

resolution was drafted by William Livingston and printed

for public distribution. It laid out specific intentions

for the nation's spiritual and civic life.

First of all, repentance. A call to confess and bewail our

manifold sins, and transgressions to seek divine

pardon. Military Protection.

A plea for the Lord of Hosts, the God of armies, to animate

officers and soldiers with fortitude and crown the

continental arms with success. Guidance for leaders A request

to bless civil rulers, inspire an ardent love of country, and

provide wisdom to establish America's rights on a permanent

basis. Peace and prosperity The

ultimate goal for a spirit of patriotism and pure religion,

leading to the restoration of peace and liberty that happened

250 years ago today. The day was widely observed,

with colonies like Massachusetts printing and distributing copies

of the proclamation to every religious assembly, every

church. You can explore the full

historical text yourself at the Library of Congress exhibit on

Congress and the Confederation, or you can read it on the US

House of Representatives History blog.

And I got it like you did. I had googled it 250 years ago

today. There was a call for repentance

to get right with God. Nineveh had the same kind of

call and they answered the call, but 100 years later or so,

they've gone away from that. I'm afraid we've gone far away

from 250 years ago. So we what?

What do we need to do here? We need to pray for souls to be

saved. That's what we need to pray for.

People need Jesus. It's it's fine and you should

pray for your government, but the real situation that we need

people to find Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

If that happens, if there's a revival that would sweep this

nation into the Kingdom of God and souls will get right with

God, this whole nation will be blessed beyond measure.

Amen. We're in war.

We've got we've got inflation, we've got all kinds of issues

going on right now in this country we're in.

We're in need folks, but we're need we're in need of Jesus.

Man is not our answer. Christ is Amen.

The good news is God sent a word to a city said you're going to

be destroyed. He said you've got 40 days, it's

over. But because of their heart

turning to God, he said, I back away from that.

I'll let you live. Can God do that for a nation?

Could he, Could he? You say, well, does that mean

God changes his mind? No, he already had it built in.

It was built in all along. God has always said, if my

people which are called by my name will humble themselves and

pray and seek my face turn from their wicked ways, I'll hear

from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.

So it's a matter of me not worrying about everybody in

Washington right now, but me getting me right with God and

you getting you right with God. And I'm not saying you aren't,

but taking that to heart. Thanks for joining us today.

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