When God is Too Gracious audio
How strong is your sense of Justice? Do you get hot under the collar when you see someone behaving badly, doing things that hurt others? When you read about gangs running around with knives and machetes doing house invasions do you wish someone would do something about it? When you hear about the rorts being foisted on the government’s big build program, are you outraged? Do you blow your horn when someone cuts in front of you in peak hour traffic? Do you smile in satisfaction when you see someone pulled over for speeding?
What about when someone is found guilty of a major crime and is let off with just a minor sentence? The proverbial slap on the wrist with a wet lettuce? It sounds all wrong doesn’t it? Those who live by the sword are supposed to die by the sword, aren’t they?
Of course the problem with that strong sense of justice, that I imagine most of us have, is that it’s all too easy to look at other people’s behaviour without thinking about the hidden biases that we may have, the blind spots of various sorts that distort the way we see things.
That was one of Jonah’s problems. Jonah knew what he was about. He knew what it meant to be a Prophet of God. He knew that the message he brought came directly from the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land, as he told the sailors during the storm.
And if you think of the prophets like Joel that we were looking at a few weeks ago, that message was often one of warning: warnings about the nation’s faithfulness to God, warnings about the way they treated the poor and powerless, warnings about drifting into paganism; but always with the promise that if the people responded God would relent and bring blessings to them once again.
Jonah knew that God’s word was living and active like a two-edged sword. But that presented him with a dilemma. He knew, if he preached God’s message to the people of Nineveh, that they might respond and be saved. That’s why he tried to go as far away in the opposite direction as he could get. And as we saw last week it’s exactly what happened. They may have been pagans but when they heard this message from the God of Israel for some reason they believed it! They repented! Even the king covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And what happened? God relented. So that was a good thing wasn’t it?
Well, not according to Jonah. Jonah is not happy! See what he says to God in the middle of this tantrum that begins chapter 4? “I knew this would happen. I tried to go as far away from Nineveh as I could, but no, you just had to send that great fish to spit me out on the beach just down the road from Nineveh. And now look what’s happened!”
How did he know that, if these people repented when they were warned of the judgement to come, God would change his mind and show them mercy? Because that’s what had happened time and time again with his own people. They’d disobeyed God, had felt God’s anger, they’d repented and God in his mercy had forgiven them. Just read through the book of Judges and you’ll see the pattern at work even in those early days.
But Joshua also knew it because he knew his Scriptures. What he says there in v2 is how God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 34: “The LORD passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin …” (Exo 34:6-7 NRSV) So Jonah knew that God would use his words to bring repentance to these people. That was the only reason for sending him - and he wasn’t happy about it. In fact he goes off in a huff and sits out on a hill top to waits and see if maybe the city might still be destroyed.
So why do you think Jonah was so upset? As God says to him a bit later, why isn’t he pleased that all these lives have been saved? Well, let’s face it, the Assyrians were arch enemies of God’s people. They’d harassed them regularly over the years so Jonah no doubt had hoped that God would finally bring down the judgement on them that they so richly deserved. He was hoping God would “blast them back into the stone age”, I think is the current expression?
You know, unfortunately there are elements in the Christian Church today who think along the same lines; who think that those sinful people out there deserve the punishment they’ll receive in the life to come; and at the same time pride themselves in being part of God’s own righteous people.
Here’s where that problem of blind spots comes in.
What they miss, and what Jonah has forgotten, is that they and he – and we - are only where we are by the grace and mercy of God.
In fact if you think about what was happening in Israel and Judah at this particular time you’ll realise how unfair Jonah’s judgement is. This story is set in the same period in which prophets like Amos and Hosea and Joel were preaching to Israel and Judah, warning them of God’s judgement. And what was the response there, back home? General indifference! Unlike the people of Nineveh, the people of Israel and Judah did little to change their behaviour. They were so sure of their identity as the people of God that they took no notice of the warnings they were given. Instead of repenting in sackcloth and ashes, they carried on with their unrighteous lifestyles; they continued their flawed religious practices, their exploitation of the poor and powerless, while the warnings of the prophets became stronger and stronger, until eventually God’s judgement fell on them, the way he’d said it would.
Just as an aside I wonder whether you’ve ever thought about why this particular book of prophecy was included in the Jewish canon. If you think about it, it’s quite subversive of the Jewish particularism that sees them as God’s own people, isn’t it? God, sending a prophet to Nineveh to save them from judgement? It’s no wonder that Jonah was perplexed. Yet here it is. Put here by God as a warning about presuming they’re safe because they’re part of God’s special people; of presuming that they know the will of God, just because he’s revealed himself to them.
But it’s equally a warning for us. Christians are just as prone to blind spots and hidden biases as Jonah was. Do you remember the account in Acts 10 of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, being told to send to Joppa so Peter could come and tell him about Jesus? And how does God prepare Peter for their coming? He gives him a nightmare, three times, of a great sheet full of animals and reptiles and birds coming down and God telling him to get up, kill and eat, to which Peter says, horrified: “No way! I never eat unclean food.” And to that God replies, “Don’t call anything impure that God has made clean.” And so eventually Peter goes and witnesses the first Gentile Christians joining the church. But even that graphic warning didn’t quite fix his blind spot did it? A few years later Peter had gone up to help Paul with the church in Tarsus and a group of elders from the Jerusalem church came to visit. When they got there, Paul tells us in Galatians 2, Peter stopped sitting with the Gentiles during their worship gatherings because he didn’t want to be criticised by the Jewish elders. You see there was a strong group of Jewish Christians who had accepted that Gentiles had been converted but still saw them as equal but different, not quite up to the standards they knew from their scriptures. So what did Paul do? He confronted Peter, telling him he wasn’t acting in a way that was consistent with the Gospel. Paul goes on in Gal 2 & 3 to explain why that was so. Essentially his argument is that if we’re saved we’re all now “in Christ”, we’ve all “clothed ourselves in Christ” and if that’s the case then we can’t hold any distinctions in the way we see people who are worshipping Christ with us. Blind spots are not acceptable. All we should see is Christ in that other person. His summary statement at the end of a long argument is this: “28There is no longer Jew or Greek’ then he adds the other 2 basic societal divisions of his time, “there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’ That seems to be a warning some evangelicals still need to hear in the 21st century don’t you think?
But it’s also worth spending a couple more minutes thinking about blind spots in our general community life. I think we have a lot of those at various levels in our community. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of comments recently about immigrants coming in and spoiling our standard of living; you’ve probably heard some people over the past few years blaming the poor for not working hard enough to get themselves out of poverty. We appear to have become much more racist as a nation over the past decade or so, forgetting that all of us, apart from those with indigenous roots, come from immigrant stock. But how often do we stop and question these sorts of attitudes?
One of Jonah’s mistakes was to forget where his own people had come from. He thought there was something inherently special about the people of Israel which was why God had blessed them; that particularism I just mentioned. But it was actually the other way around wasn’t it? They didn’t even exist before God called Abram to follow him. The blessing they were under was purely to do with the grace of God. God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh was no different from the grace and mercy he’d shown to Jonah’s people. It was no different from the grace and mercy God shows to us over and over again.
We mustn’t think that we’ve got it made or that we don’t have the same need to repent that the people of Nineveh had. That’s why we pray a prayer of repentance each week when we meet together.
But we also need to be encouraged as we see just how powerful the gospel can be when it’s proclaimed fearlessly. We’re meant to see how people who don’t know God, who have no interest in him, may nevertheless be open to hearing God speak to them.
I wonder do you believe that or does it sound too far-fetched for our current world? Do you believe what we read in Joel 2 a few weeks ago: “32Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32) Do you believe what Paul writes in Romans 1? (Rom 1:16 NRSV) "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith …". Do you believe that the gospel is the power of God for salvation?
Well Jonah knew that as we just saw. He just hadn’t really understood the full implications of this gospel.
So God acts out a parable to teach Jonah another lesson. Jonah goes up a hill outside Nineveh in the hope that God will still send fire and brimstone on the city. He’s acting a bit like the child who says they’re going to hold their breath until you do what they want.
It’s hot so God makes a tree grow up miraculously to shade Jonah, and Jonah begins to feel a bit happier. But the next day God sends a grub which eats into the tree and kills it, so Jonah is left out in the heat of the sun again. And now Jonah is really mad. He’s so angry in fact that he wishes he could die.
And what does God do? He says, “Why are you angry about this bush? You didn’t plant it, or water it. It wasn’t even there 2 days ago. Yet you’re upset now that I’ve let it die? Can you see how you’ve got your priorities all wrong? Here you are, sitting on this hill, waiting to see if I’ll destroy all those people, 120,000 of them, and you’re upset about a mere tree! Get real! What’s of more value: one little bush or 120,000 people who are lost and blind?”
Just as an aside, you could ask the same of countries today who are more interested in their territorial ambitions than in the lives of the people who die from their bombs and missiles.
But more importantly, what does it say to us who’ve heard the gospel and are even now enjoying at least some of the benefits of being part of God’s kingdom? Do we care that people are under God’s wrath? Do we believe that part of the gospel? You see, that passage in Romans 1 continues with an exposition of the gospel, and it’s very much like the message that Jonah had to proclaim. God is unhappy with people who reject his rule over their lives but he’s a God of mercy who longs for people to turn to him and accept the forgiveness that Jesus has won on the cross.
Do you believe that those who fail to recognise God as their Lord will miss out on the promise of life with him after death? Or is that too hard a message? Does it not fit with an image of a loving God? Does it not fit with our laissez faire culture where anything goes if it feels right; where we’re the arbiters of what’s right or wrong?
There’s no question that God is a God of love. That’s shown clearly in this story of Jonah. It was God’s love that sent Jonah to warn the Assyrians of God’s judgment, even if Jonah wasn’t feeling it. We have to assume if Jonah hadn’t gone, then the Assyrians would have been destroyed along with their city, just as Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians when God’s people failed to change their ways. So no, God’s love isn’t shown in removing the need for righteousness. God’s love is shown in providing the way of escape; in providing the means whereby even though we’re sinners, and under God’s judgement, we can be made righteous, through the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
There’s a sense in which we’re now given the same task as Jonah. Paul tells us we’re ambassadors for Christ,: we’re the ones God has entrusted with his message of salvation. We don’t need to worry whether someone is acceptable to God, or even how they might respond to us if we talk about our faith. Leave that part to God to worry about. All we have to do is to let people know that God wants them to come into his kingdom.
I began by asking you what your sense of justice, of fairness was like. I also raised the question of whether we have blind spots, not unlike Jonah, when we express that desire for justice. The message of this passage, I think, is twofold: First, God doesn’t desire the death of sinners but rather that they turn from their rebellion and live; secondly God sends his messengers out to share that warning with those who don’t know him. If we’re to be truly fair to those around us we need to share this warning, this good news, with them, to present God’s invitation to join us in following him, in this earthly community of God’s love and grace.
