A sermon based upon Jonah 4:
1-11, NIV
Preached by Dr. Charles J.
Tomlin,
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
January 28st,
2018, Winter Bible Study 2018, 4 of 4
Has anyone ever illegally cut
you off in traffic?
My wife, being the oldest of
seven children, can’t stand it when that happens. She wants to respond by blowing the horn,
rolling down the window, reminding that disrespectful person that they’d better
‘straighten up’. She wants the world to
be a better place, and I do too, but I also have to remind her, that this is
not her younger siblings, or her elementary school class. This could be a person who is already ‘mad’
or angry about something, and they could go crazy if you attempt to confront or
contain them.
So, when someone cuts you
off, or screams at you from behind the wheel, the best thing to do is to ‘turn
the other cheek’ and just drive on.
This is a lesson Nancie Mann, of Sacramento, California learned the hard
way.
Nancie was celebrating
her birthday, May 6th, 2017.
She was going out for Sunday brunch with her husband and her son. Driving home, a pickup truck cut them off
near the Hazel Street off-ramp of Sacramento's Highway 50. "We slammed on our brakes, but didn't
hit him," she remembered. "Then
he slammed on his brakes in front of us, so my husband slammed on his even
harder."
The Sacramento Sheriff's
Department said, "It started what we would consider to be a road rage
incident, where the two of them exchanged both verbal and physical gestures … an
obvious bit of anger between the two."
What the Mann’s didn't know was that the driver of the pickup, Donald
Bell, had a gun.
Things escalated
quickly. Timothy Mann got out of his car
and went to confront Bell even though Nancie Mann and her son both begged him
to stay in the car. Now, with both men
out of their vehicles, Timothy Mann approached Bell, even though the gun was in
plain view, and punched him. Bell shot
Mann in the face at point-blank range, and Mann died almost instantly, despite
his son's efforts to resuscitate him.
"The son couldn't
stand up," said the paramedic on the scene. "He sat down on the curb.
He was beside himself trying to help his father and take care of his mother at
the same time." Meanwhile, Donald Bell's 15-year-old son watched from the
pickup, as paramedics disarmed Bell and sheriff's deputies arrested him for
manslaughter. Was this an act of Self-Defense?
Bell insisted that the
shooting was an accident, and that he was acting in self-defense. He blamed the
victim, Timothy Mann. "He hit me
harder than a mule kick. That's what caused the gun to go off," Bell told a
reporter.
However, two weeks
later, on another Sunday morning, Bell returned to the scene of the crime. He dialed 911 on his mobile phone and identified
himself to the dispatcher.
"My name is Donald
R. Bell. I was involved in that Hazel
incident that happened two weeks ago," he said. "I am going to serve
justice on myself." Bell pulled
his white pickup truck to the pile of rocks that marked the spot where he had
killed Timothy Mann. This time he pointed the gun at his own head, and pulled
the trigger.
Several months later,
reflecting on the event that changed her life forever, Nancie Mann said: “If
only the two drivers had just avoided the confrontation. If only they knew then just how much was at
stake.” http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93070
…HE BECAME ANGRY
(v. 1)
The book of Jonah is also a
story that ends in anger. It is a story
without a happy ending.
After the people of Nineveh
repent, that evil, hated, city makes a drastic U-Turn, calling for a day of
national repentance. Nineveh believes
God. God also ‘repents’ and changes his
mind about the judgement he was going to bring down on Nineveh.
In this final scene, and this
final chapter of the book of Jonah, we find Jonah as the ‘displeased’,
depressed, and angry prophet, having pity party with God, saying, “I told you
so. In spite of the great saving
miracle, Jonah is still the reluctant,
self-righteous, and angry prophet who can’t join the party. “This
is why I tried to go away to Tarshish,” he says. “This
is why I didn’t get with your program.”
In other words, he is saying: “I didn’t want it to end this way. I wanted to watch these people ‘burn’ for
what they had done to us.” However
you approach this story of Jonah, in this prophet, you see ‘red’ from beginning
to the end. Jonah is still angry. He was angry before the story started, and he
is still angry as the story ends.
Certainly, at times, we all
get angry. In many ways, anger can be a
good emotion. Anger shows feelings,
passion, and is a natural, human response to hurts and frustrations. The absence of anger, can mean that you are
repressing, suppressing, or internalizing a feeling or hurt, that can remain
inside of you until it turns in to depression against yourself, or may even
later turn into a sudden act of rage against another. It is not necessarily bad that Jonah is
angry, but since anger can get out of hand, it needs to be dealt with, brought
under control, and in some healthy way, anger needs to be ‘expressed’ rather
than ‘repressed’.
The unique kind of anger
being ‘expressed’ and dealt with in the book of Jonah is specifically, anger
toward God. Just like any relationship
can become complicated in life, this includes our relationship with God. When
you get to the ‘bottom’ of Jonah’s anger, what finally comes out, is not that
Jonah is not simply angry at the Ninevites, nor is he just angry at himself for
running, but Jonah is angry at God. This is the ultimate, often unexpressed, and
greatly repressed anger. This is why Jonah
not says he is angry, but he also looks very depressed.
Once in a seminary class at
The Southern Baptist Seminary in Lousville, Kentucky, when a student spouted
off at the professor’s teaching about how, even in a world of hurt, pain,
suffering and tragedy, that God still loves, the professor allowed the student
to carry on and finish all his negative complaints. After the student finished his tirade, the
professor calmly responded: “Thank you
for your feelings, the true God understands and can accept your anger.” (As
told to me by someone who was a student there).
In regard our own
‘appointments with disappointment’, the Bible appears to say, over and over,
that God can handle, and even invites our anger…. The Bible has several
prophets expressing hurt and anger at God.
Jeremiah cursed God and called him a ‘deceptive,’ babbling ‘brook’,
and a ‘spring’ that goes dry, complaining about all the trouble he was in, all
at God’s expense (Jer. 15:18). The
prophet Habakkuk focused on how violence and injustice went on unanswered by
God’s power and righteousness (Hab. 1:4ff).
The Psalms, a collection of Israel’s ancient songs and prayers, contain
some of the most intimate voices, a ‘mirror into the soul’ (John Calvin),
including the deepest human thoughts of lament, hurt and inward anger.
We clearly the Psalmist’s
inward anger in Psalm 77, where he says: “I
cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at
night I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted.” (Ps.
77:1-2 NIV). And as we all know, the
story of Job, is also a story of ‘bitter’ and ‘heavy’
complaint and anger expressed toward God about how unanswerable pain, suffering and injustice comes, even to the
most righteous (Job 23.2). Of course, every Good Friday, we hear again, Jesus cry of
personal hurt on the cross, “My God, Why
have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 14:34), and in the gospels, Jesus took the time
to ‘make a whip out of cords’ (Jn.
2:15), and that he ‘overturned the
tables of money changers’ (Mk. 11.15) of those who had turned God’s ‘house of prayer for all nations’ into a
‘den of robbers’ (Mk. 11:17). But as Job got angry, we are still told that
he did not sin ‘in what he said’ (1.10),
just as the book Hebrews declares that Jesus is still our ‘high priest’ who ‘did not
sin’ (Heb. 4:15). In all these situations, there were
expressions of anger, but this was not expressions of rage, but it was anger
that was controlled, articulated, and verbalized, but it was anger that was
also expressed without sin.
YOU ARE…GRACIOUS…MERCIFUL (v.2)
Jonah was angry, but we also
read that Jonah’s anger is different.
How was it different? Jonah is
so angry that he prays for the ‘Lord’ to ‘take away’ his life. He says,
‘it is better for him to die than to live.’ Jonah ran.
Jonah sunk in the sea. Jonah was
swallowed up. Jonah pouted when he
preached. Jonah was displeased and his
anger had turned into depression. He is
so angry that it is killing him. But
perhaps the most unexpected, is the explanation of Jonah’s anger. Jonah is not angry because he was thrown
overboard, swallowed by a big fish, or that God caught up with him. And Jonah is not just angry because Nineveh
has repented.
No, Jonah is angry because of
the kind of God, Jonah has discovered God to be. Jonah is angry because he ‘knows’ and ‘knew’
all along who God is: “…You are a
gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who
relents from sending calamity. (Jon. 4:2 NIV). Jonah is angry because God is not what he
wants God to be. Jonah’s God, and that
means Israel’s God, is not who they want God to be. This God is a God is ‘gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.’ This is a God who loves, forgives, and
redeems, even the very people they love to hate.
Let’s just face it, Jonah has
a problem with God’s grace. He has a
problem with a God who loves sinners, as much as, God loves God’s own chosen
people. Jonah wants to keep God all to
himself. And this is where this story
comes down, and the problem continues into the New Testament, as people
complain that Jesus is a ‘man who welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ The book of Jonah raises the problem God’s
people often have with God’s love: DOES
GOD REALLY LOVE ALL PEOPLE? IS GOD READY
TO SAVE ANYBODY? Does God love sinners,
wicked, or just plain ole bad people, as much as God loves good, righteous, or
Christian people? Does God’s love
include people who aren’t like me, or you?
And if God loves them, can I, should I, must I, love like God loves. What we know from book of Jonah, is that even
before Nineveh repented, Jonah did not like them. That did not change, even after they are said
to have ‘believed God’. Belief didn’t matter, because they weren’t
‘one of us’. Since they had once been
evil, unbelieving people, they were always bad people, whether they believed or
not.
I’ve told you the story
before about what happened, when a little, small, unseen, practically unknown
Baptist church in Sydney, Australia, posted a little, small note on their
church bulletin board, saying “Jesus Loves Osama”. At the time, Australian soldiers where
fighting alongside of America soldiers, risking and sometimes losing their
lives to hunt, find, and kill the notorious muslin known as Osama Bin
Laden. As people passed by that sign,
they were shocked. They wondered, “How
could a church think or say something like this?” Critics of the sign started writing letters
to the newspaper, and to the church too, demanding that the sign be taken
down. That little sign, with one line,
caused quite a stir in that large city.
Finally, the Prime Minister of Australia at that time, John Howard, had
to get involved in order to keep peace.
People were hated Osama so badly, they were ready force the church to
close down. The Prime Minister wrote to
the pastor and the church saying, "I
understand the Christian motivation of the Baptist church," Howard
told reporters. "But I hope they
will understand that a lot of Australians, including many Australian
Christians, will think that the prayer priority of the church on this occasion could
have been elsewhere." The Anglican
Archbishop, Peter Jensen, also got involved, saying that the church was
obviously trying to illustrate Christian teaching that God loves everybody, no
matter how evil their sins, but still, he found the sign "a bit
misleading" and potentially offensive.
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/02/01/australian-church-jesus-loves-osama-message-draws-criticism.html).
Who knows whether the church
meant that as a publicity stunt, which obviously worked, or whether they were,
as they said, ‘just sharing the gospel’. It is always, and will always remain a
question, and it is a question that goes all the way back to Jonah, and remains
with us today: Who does, who can, who will God love, forgive, save, or redeem? There are people who want to say that God
can and will eventually save everybody (universalism), and there are those who
say that God will only save those who jump through the hoops of Christian
requirements, Jewish requirements, Muslim requirements or some other specific religious
point of view. I remember the question
way back in Baptist Training Union, as we argued about: Who will be saved, Who can be saved, and who
won’t be saved, and who will God forgive, and do you have to believe in Jesus
to be saved or can you, just like the book of Jonah said the Ninevites
did. Can you simply repent and ‘believe God’, however you understand
God? Is that enough to spare you from
the coming judgment?
Of course, in our day, the
question is much less about which religion is ‘right’, but the question has
become, does it really matter? The
fasting growing religious group in America today are the “Nones”, those people
who say that religion is too dangerous, too backward; a part of our religious
past, but not an important part of our secular future. In other words, since we really can’t answer
all these religious questions, with anything except our on personal opinions,
then the religious opinion is just that, an opinion. So, these folks say, we need to stop being
opinionated, and we need to become more involved in doing things, social
things, that make our world a better place to live. It is these ‘deeds of kindness’ that are the
only things that really matter. Church
does matter, faith doesn’t matter, God doesn’t really matter.
IS IT RIGHT?
Now, when we hear this kind
of talk, and people start to say, or live, like church, faith, or God doesn’t really
matter, we are finally getting to the heart of the matter. This is where Jonah’s problem finally comes
and makes its final point. It is the
same point a lot of people are making when they have no love left for
strangers, for foreigners, for outsiders, or for people who need God’s
love. This point comes out, as Jonah
sits under the gourd plant, which at first provides wonderful, cool, shade, but
then, quickly withers during the heat of the day.
When the wind blows even
hotter, and with the sun beaming down directly on him, Jonah almost faints, and
wishes to die, once more. His anger has
still not subsided. Finally, God comes
to Jonah and says: “Jonah you are angry about the gourd plant, which perished, but what
about that city of people?” In other
words, Jonah you care about the things that matter for Jonah, but what about
the things that matter to God? Even now,
after everything that has happened, in the belly of the fish, or in the great
city of Nineveh, Jonah’s reluctance to love, has still not changed. The
story ends with God raising a question about God’s love: “And
should I not be concerned (KJV, spare) for the great city of Nineveh, in which
there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their
right hand from their left---and also many animals? (4:11).
Don’t you wonder why the
story ends with the word ‘animals’? Is
this God’s final appeal to a cold heart, that doesn’t love people, but might
show love to an innocent animal? Maybe. But the real problem here is not simply God loving
people or animals, but Jonah’s real problem is about God himself. Jonah has forgotten who is God!
The book of Jonah is not only
about the question of whether or not God loves, who God loves, or should God
love. No, the real problem is that Jonah
will not allow God to be God? Two times,
in this ending to the story, the question is put directly to Jonah: “Is it
right for you to be angry?” (v. 4, 9). In other words, in a way that is similar to
how the book of Job ends (Job 38ff), what Jonah is being asked is the ‘God
question?’ Jonah, do you even have a
right as a human, or even as a prophet, to play God, to question God, or to be
angry because you think you know more than God does? How can you be angry, Jonah, if the only God
there is who can be God, is the God who is also love? Why would you dare imagine God
otherwise?
But of course people do
imagine God otherwise. Many preachers,
churches, and religions spend a lot more energy trying to be clear about what
God hates, who God hates, and who is outside and excluded from God’s love, than
they spend talking about the gospel of love that includes everyone. It is God and God alone, who has the right to
decide the fate of sinners, or anyone. Why
would we, who believe the gospel, ever want to dare play God, or try to imagine
people being outside of God’s love, when the Bible comes gives us a redeeming
message of the true God who dreams of ‘everyone’
and ‘everything’ being finally and
fully ‘reconciled’ in Jesus Christ
(Col. 1:20). As Paul also told the
Romans, explaining the riddle of Israel’s disobedience: ‘God
has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all’
(Rom. 11:32).
Now, don’t misunderstand me
to say God saves without the need of repentance and true faith. This is not what the book of Jonah says. The question is not whether or not repentance
and faith is required, for this was required for Nineveh, as repentance and
faith is for us too. Jesus himself said, ‘the
men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn
it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than
Jonah is here” (Matt. 12:41). Jesus’
point is that we all need repentance and faith, but we must allow God to be God
who alone can decide what kind of faith in Jesus is required. And
while, we can never say that ‘all people will be saved’, we should and
must wish all peoples to be saved, preaching
like Peter did, saying God is ‘not
wanting anyone to perish, but everyone
to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9).
We must want and work toward everyone coming to know the same forgiving,
redeeming love that has saved us, even while we were ‘still sinners’ (Rom. 5:8), and even while they are still sinners
too! We should do this because, as Jesus
said: “Something greater than Jonah is
here”. And this something is the
full revelation of God’s love in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Do we have a ‘right’ to think or say anything
else other than, hey, look straight into the cross, at the outstretched arms of
God on that cross, and know, this is how much God loves us all? Amen.
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