We may know God, but be resistive to his will for our lives.
When you preach, you make certain assumptions about your audience. Are they churched or unchurched? Are they receptive or resistant? Are they sincere or just going through the motions? Are they awake or sleeping with their eyes open?
When I first started preaching I made the assumption that most people just don't know God. They don't know his character, his mighty acts of redemption, his wrath against sin, or his unlimited mercy and grace for whoever believes and repents. So I made it my goal to teach and inform.
But maybe that's the wrong assumption. Maybe we know exactly who God is, and maybe we already know God's will, but hate certain aspects of his will. Maybe we know exactly what God's character consists of, but hate the implications that his character holds for our lives every day.
In
Hosea 4:6 (NIV) God says,
"...my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." This can certainly be true. But the rest of the verse is just as true.
Hosea 4:6 (NIV) continues,
"Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children." Often our problem is outright rejecting what we know about God, blatantly ignoring his laws, and running from his will for our lives.
Consider John 3:19 (NIV) which says, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." Or consider Jesus' words in John 7:7 (NIV). "The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil."
Would we rather run from God's will than embrace it?
Maybe we hate what is good. Maybe we hate what is redemptive. Maybe we're not quite the lovers of God that we pretend to be. Maybe God's character, his grace, his love, his mercy, and his plan of redemption is so utterly glorious and majestic and awe-striking and holy and good, we'd rather run from it than embrace it.
This is the essence of story of Jonah, a prophet of Israel, whose story we find in Old Testament book named
Jonah. In
Jonah 1:2 (NIV) God's character demands something of Jonah that he just wasn't ready to accept. God tells Jonah,
"Go to the great city of Ninevah and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."
Do you ever find yourself in a similar circumstance? Has God shown you his character, his purpose, and his perfect will, then asks something of you that you're not ready to accept? This is the essence of discipleship. It's that we'd act according to God's character, instead of according to our own character.
Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian empire.
Now I always learned in Sunday school that Jonah refused to go to Ninevah because he feared the Ninevites. Why? Because Ninevah was the capital, and stood at the very heart of the Assyrian empire! The Assyrians were easily one of the most barbaric empires this world has ever known. When Assyria conquered a people, they'd torture and kill their captives. Sometimes they'd impale their victims, thrusting their bodies unto sharpened stakes. Sometimes they'd skin their victims alive, letting them bleed to death. Sometimes they'd burn people alive and stack their skulls in large piles to intimidate others. They were barbaric. They thought nothing of dismembering people's bodies or slicing open a pregnant woman's belly. The Ninevites were terrorists, but even more, they were hated and reviled.
And in
Jonah 1:2 God is asking Jonah to go and preach against their wickedness. We don't know much about Jonah or about his family. Was his family brutalized by the Assyrians? Did Jonah witness the atrocities? Did he ever endure the horrifying screams of a loved one caught in the clutches of this merciless people? We don't know.
What we do know is that when God's character demanded of Jonah to go and preach against their wickedness, Jonah hopped on a boat destined for Tarshish. He fled to a destination as far away from Ninevah as he could possible sail. Look at a map. There is Ninevah, and way over there on the opposite side is Tarshish! Jonah hated the thought of having anything whatsoever to do with the Assyrians' possible redemption.
Jonah traveled as far away from Ninevah as possible.
You know what happens.
Jonah 1:4-5 (NIV) says,
"Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship."
Meanwhile Jonah was below deck, sleeping. In
Jonah 1:6 (NIV),
"The captain went to him and said, 'How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.' "
Back on deck, the sailors begin to cast lots to find out who was responsible for the calamity, and the lot fell on Jonah. So the sailors began to question him, and Jonah tells them also about his God in
Jonah 1:9 (NIV),
"I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."
But the sailors ask,
"What have you done? What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?" And when Jonah explains,"It's my fault. Throw me into the sea", the men throw him into the sea and suddenly the raging sea grows calm! See
Jonah 1:10-15 (NIV).
Jonah 1:16 (NIV) says, "At this, the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him." It's a remarkable story about how the God of Israel spared these foreigners from death. God had an unimaginable plan for the redemption of these unsuspecting sailors. It makes you wonder who exactly God wants to redeem. Does he want to redeem a band of superstitious sailors? Does God want to redeem the Ninevites?
Jonah prays to God for deliverance.
As the story goes, a large fish (obviously a whale) devours Jonah. For three days and three nights, Jonah survives inside the belly of this whale until he prays to God for deliverance.
Jonah 2:10 describes how God commands the fish, and it vomits Jonah up on dry land! Not even a whale can stomach a bad preacher.
Having been freshly vomited, God again commands Jonah in
Jonah 3:2 (NIV),
"Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you." Jonah obeys God, goes to the city, and warns them of God's wrath. For three days he travels throughout the city, preaching. And then Jonah's worst fear became a reality.
Jonah 3:5 (NIV) says,
"The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth." Jonah 3:6 tells how even the king of Ninevah repented and put on sackcloth. In
Jonah 3:8 the king issues a decree that the people should give up their evil ways and their violence in order that,
"...God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish." See
Jonah 3:9 (NIV).
Ironically, Jonah saw it coming. And he saw this coming too. In Jonah 3:10 (NIV) we read, "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened." Pretty exciting stuff! Not to Jonah.
Sometimes we hate the same things that bring the greatest pleasure to God.
Imagine the most evil and vile people on the face of earth repenting and being spared God's wrath! Imagine your worse enemies experiencing the mercy and grace of God. This is what I mean when I say that sometimes we hate the same things that bring the greatest pleasure to God.
I think of
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NIV) which says,
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Hallelujah, right? Praise God, right?
But what if you were the one who was victimized by the person now receiving God's mercy? What if it's the immoral person who stole your virginity that's now receiving the grace? What if it's the ex who committed adultery against you, who wrecked your dream and your family? What if it's the one who ruined your marriage? What if it's the homosexual offender who took advantage of you when you were vulnerable and confused? What if it was the thief who stole your wedding ring and valuables? What if it's the greedy swindler who has gotten rich at your expense? What if it's the drunkard who came home each night. only to abuse you and beat you? What if it's the person who has slandered and bullied you for your whole life? What if it's the one who murdered your loved ones? Praise God, right?
Jonah was overcome with toxic anger.
In
Jonah 4:1-3 (NIV) we're told,
"Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, 'O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee 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, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.' "
Jonah wasn't afraid of dying. He'd gladly die so long as God would rain fire and brimstone down on his enemies. He'd rather die than let go of the anger and utter rage that he felt.
What do we do when we'd rather die than embrace God's redemptive plan for all men, including our enemies? Jonah knew God's character, and he hated the thought of what God desired for his enemies. And so in
Jonah 4 he heads out of the city, builds a shelter, and sits in the shade waiting to see what God would do. So what did God do?
God caused a vine to grow up, to bring shade and comfort to Jonah in the desert. Did Jonah deserve the vine? No. But God showed grace to Jonah anyway. But then the next day God provided a worm to chew up Jonah's vine, so that the vine withered. God also provided a scorching east wind, and caused the sun to blaze on Jonah's head. As Jonah begins to faint because of dehydration and heat exhaustion, he becomes angry that God's taken away his shady vine!
But then in
Jonah 4:9 (NIV) God asks him,
" 'Do you have any right to be angry about the vine?' 'I do', he said. 'I am angry enough to die.' " Isn't it ironic that Jonah is so angry he'd rather die? But what does
John 3:16 (NIV) say?
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son..."
Notice what God says in
Jonah 4:10-11 (NIV),
"You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"
The famous poet Robert Frost said, "After Jonah, you could never trust God not to be merciful again." The same is true of Christ. After Christ's death on the cross, we could never trust God not to be merciful again. He commands us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, and to forgive as we have been forgiven. This morning God calls us to put on the character of Christ. He calls us to act according to his character, not ours.