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Message Notes: Jonah Week 5 – God’s Compassionate Love

Jonah

Week 5: God's Compassionate Love
Pastor Svea Merry               October 27, 2024


If we haven’t met yet, I’m Svea Merry and I have the privilege of serving here as our spiritual formation pastor. I’m thrilled to get to continue our series through the book of Jonah this morning. The section we’re going to see today in the beginning of chapter 4 is my favorite part of the book because it does some incredible character development in Jonah and lets us in on his thinking in a way we haven’t yet gotten to see. He’s going to wrestle miserably with God, and it’s very upside-down. He’s miserable and angry at God because God is good and made him successful. Poor Jonah, right?

Have you ever been at the end of your rope because God was simply being too good? Yeah, that’s not typically when sends me into dark places either. But here’s one of the reasons I love today’s section of Jonah so much. One of the things that Jonah says to God as he’s wrestling with God, in his upside-down way, is my favorite description of God anywhere in the Bible. And it’s this:

You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, and abounding in love.

The reason this connects with me so deeply is that this description is also found in a psalm that is a huge source of comfort and encouragement and it’s one that I love to share with people when they’re trying to figure out how to turn to God in their struggles. It’s a psalm I rest in when I feel desperately sad or hurt by someone. And if you’re working through something in your life right now, I offer this in hope that it could be helpful to you too.

Let me share selected verses of this Psalm, Psalm 86, so you can see some of its beauty here first before we see Jonah’s spin on it.

You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord,
for I put my trust in you.

When I am in distress, I call to you,
because you answer me.
13 For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
15 … you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Isn’t that wonderful? I encourage you to read the whole thing this week in your Scripture practice. The way I find help in this is to read a line or verse at a time and to talk to God about all it brings to mind. Sometimes I copy out the verses that feel especially relevant and keep them with me as helpful reminders throughout the day. Sometimes I use a verse as a breath prayer where you silently say the first half of a verse as you breathe in and the second half as you breathe out and do that over and over. If those ideas give you something to try that benefits you, great! That’s a free extra this morning.

Psalm 86 is filled with great reminders about God’s compassionate love, which is going to be the theme we explore in Jonah today. Nowhere do we see that more clearly than in this verse:

You, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

I have found that believing this at a heart level melts anger, heals hurts, and banishes fears.

But here’s the irony. These same encouraging truths that I’ve just shown you in Psalm 86 are going to come up, sometimes word for word, in Jonah today. And what we can find to be filled with encouragement and comfort, Jonah is going to use to justify his anger at God. Curious how that’s possible?

Grab a Bible and turn to Jonah chapter 4. If you’re still becoming familiar with the Bible, you’ll find it towards the end of the Old Testament in a series of short books, nestled between Obadiah and Micah. As you’re finding it, let me refresh your memory or bring you up to speed on where we are in this story.

In chapter 1, God directed Jonah, who was an experienced prophet, to go to the Assyrian capitol of Ninevah and preach a warning message to them that their wickedness was going to result in their destruction. Jonah wanted nothing to do with this and in an effort to run away from God, he got on a boat and sailed away in the opposite direction. God sent a storm and Jonah recognized he wasn’t going to get to where he wanted to go and told the sailors to throw him overboard and let him die. But God didn’t want him to die and, in chapter 2, instead saved him through the mouth of a big fish where Jonah has a change of course but maybe not really a change of heart, revealed by a lovely-sounding prayer but one devoid of repentance and with some lingering prejudice, as we’ll see today. He’s ejected onto the shore and, in chapter 3, walks into Ninevah where he simply says,

40 more days and Ninevah will be overthrown,

and in what’s probably the most amazing miracle in this book, the fiercest, most evil people in biblical history at the time hear and receive his message and from the king all the way to the livestock, express remorse for their condition and hope in God’s mercy. The evil but repentant king decrees,

Let everyone 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.”

And then the good news, literally a foreshadowing of the gospel, God did respond with grace and compassion for them. Chapter 3 ends:

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.”

Now, before we read on to chapter 4, this is where we expect Jonah, the prophet of God, who’s just gotten to participate in bringing about the most extreme expression of repentance and restoration to many, many thousands of lives, erupt in worship for God’s goodness and how that is clearly good news for everyone, even the Ninevites.

But that’s not what happened. As we begin in chapter 4, look at Jonah’s reaction:

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

The NIV translation I just read even kind of tones it down. A direct Hebrew translation could read, “To Jonah, this was a great evil, and there was heat-anger in him.”

He’s not just angry, he has heat-anger. You know what I’m talking about. His face is flushed, his blood is boiling. He’s basically Pixar’s inspiration for this guy:

Why is he so angry? Doesn’t anger at a whole city being saved, many, many thousands of lives, through the message you delivered seem like an odd response, at best, from someone who is a prophet of God? Well, as we’ll see over the next few minutes, he may have had some reasons that are understandable even if uncharitable.

But first, let’s keep reading:

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.”

This is an interesting new piece of information in the story. Jonah is now claiming that he’d expected all along that God would show compassion to the wicked Ninevites and that that’s the reason he ran away in the first place.

I love it when stories supply details about someone’s backstory or motivations later that brings new light to what we saw of them in the beginning. In chapter 1, we only were told that Jonah was running away from the Lord. Now he’s claiming that he was running because he anticipated that God would be compassionate towards his enemies rather than destroy them. And he was not ok with that.

To Jonah, God showing mercy to the Ninevites was absolutely unacceptable. It became a deal breaker that as well soon see, nearly broke him. And wait ‘til you see what Jonah says he knew God that made him expect He was going to be merciful.

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Jonah knows the same description of God in Psalm 86 that brings so much comfort and encouragement to me. But he’s saying that because he knows that God is good, he expected that God, in His nature, would be gracious and compassionate to people, even people as wicked as the Ninevites.

And he didn’t want God to be patient instead of impulsively angry. He didn’t want God to love them, and certainly didn’t want God to relent from sending calamity, he wanted punishment for them. Jonah’s theology—theology being simply what we believe about God and His ways—depended on the predictability of the wicked being punished and did not leave room for God to respond with mercy or compassion to people that he didn’t think deserved it.

And I think it’s worth stopping here to consider this. What would cause Jonah to not only not want God to be good to other people, but to burn with anger at God for it?

Can I ask a harder question? What might cause you to be angry at God if He was graciously compassionate towards someone who has wronged you?

Are there people that you would rather not receive any mercy or compassion from God? I’m not necessarily talking about a group or category of people such as the way that Jonah felt about the Ninevites, although, it could be understandable if you have Ukrainian dear ones in your life and would struggle to see God blessing their Russian attackers, or something along those lines. But I’m asking you to consider this on a more individual level. Maybe even down to the level that we tend to let ourselves off the hook for.

Can we be real? Don’t we all have some people in our life that, maybe we’d never admit it out loud, but when we hear something went wrong for them, you kind of smirk a little to yourself? Or when they’re praised, you kind of throw shade, even if you do it super-subtly.

Maybe what we do isn’t the same as Jonah, but that little bitter root that was in him lives in us too.

As you hold that thought, let’s consider further what Jonah says he knows here about God.

There’s even more irony in Jonah saying this particular phrase than just its connection that I showed you with Psalm 86. If you’re not super-familiar with the Old Testament, it’s helpful to know that this description of God appears over and over in the Old Testament. Jonah would have also known that it was the first way that God ever described Himself to anyone. This was first spoken by God to Moses back in Exodus 34 in a time when Moses found himself wrestling in anger because of the actions of rebellious people.

Hearing Jonah use this phrase against God would have packed a punch for the original audience. Using this to justify his rage reveals how much he is in stark contrast to Moses who first heard this and loved God because of it. Moses heard this and appealed to God’s mercy on behalf of his rebellious people. Jonah resents God’s mercy to rebellious people. Moses was filled with encouragement because of God’s compassion. Jonah is filled with bitterness for God’s compassion.

Jonah clearly knew these truths about God in his head, but I wonder if he really knew them in his heart. And that’s a danger for all of us, isn’t it? There’s a lot that we can know about God at a head level that we haven’t yet internalized all the way to our core.

It takes something to know God here, doesn’t it? The Holy Spirit works with each of us individually in this, but I think common to most of us who know God’s goodness at a heart level are the opportunities we’ve had to see God reveal Himself to be gracious and slow to anger with us as we’ve turned back to Him in humility over and over. Or we’ve felt His compassion expressed to us through answered prayers or through love and care shown to us by His people. It comes through years of seeing God prove Himself faithful to us time and again, not in spite of the difficulty of life, but often through it, that moves our belief that God is good from our head to our heart.

It's not that different from a good marriage, right? Years of walking together faithfully through life’s ups and downs deepens the knowledge of love to a level that is far richer than on our wedding day. Years of walking with the Lord faithfully through ups and downs deepens our heart knowledge of Him too.

But just as trials and self-focus can threaten a marriage, they can become a wedge between us and God also, particularly if we convince ourselves that He is not acting fairly towards us as Jonah had.

I think one of the ways that Jonah went sideways and failed to really know the goodness of God at a heart level is because of his lack of humility.

Do you remember his prayer from the belly of the fish in chapter 2? It actually has some striking similarities to Psalm 86, the Psalm we began with, but there are some key differences that reveal a red flag in Jonah’s heart.

First, see two of the similarities:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.

----------

When I am in distress, I call to you,
because you answer me
.

and

From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.

----------

13 For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead
.

I think it’s reasonable to think that Jonah knew this psalm well. But then as Jonah’s prayer continues, it diverges in a drastic way. Pay attention to who is the star of Jonah’s prayer:

“When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
“Those who cling to worthless idols
turn away from God’s love for them.
But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

Did you catch all the “I’s” here? This diverges quite a bit from Psalm 86 which is much humbler and more focused on the Lord. It continues:

You, Lord, are forgiving and good,
abounding in love to all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, Lord;
listen to my cry for mercy
.
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show your strength in behalf of your servant
;

Do you see how much more focused this Psalm is on the strength and mercy given by the Lord?

Jonah’s divergence away from humility in his prayer reveals a subtle, but significant bend in his heart.

JUSTICE

Now, all that said, was Jonah wrong for being upset that God didn’t follow through on His warning to overthrow such a wicked group of people who had tormented Jonah’s people in unspeakable ways?

I think we can appreciate Jonah’s longing for justice and understand his anger at that being seemingly thwarted. To varying degrees, we’ve all been wronged by people before, and healthy human function depends on the stability of innocent people being protected and guilty people being punished.

Jonah isn’t wrong for wanting justice for his people. Remember, Jonah and his fellow Israelites despised the Ninevites for very valid reasons. They were horrifically violent people who tortured their enemies in unspeakable ways.

Justice is a very good thing! We maintain order in our society because of the justice system. It would create anarchy and mayhem if laws were not enforced predictably, and I shudder to think if the most violent and destructive criminals among us were shown unwise mercy and allowed to roam where our children play.

And God wants us to call on Him for justice. When we are hurt, when we are betrayed, when we are maligned, when we are accused unfairly, we are to rely on our Father God to be our defender and our strength. The Bible tells us over and over to cry out to our Lord as the one who sees all and to trust Him to act on our behalf.

It’s not that we shouldn’t desire justice. We should! It is good when the offender is stopped, when the tormentor is caught, and the terrorist enjoys no impunity. Justice is good for the afflicted. And God is a fair judge who can be trusted.

But the problem is that, as imperfect humans, we often confuse justice with revenge. There’s a subtle but profound difference between a righteous satisfaction of justice and the smug satisfaction of seeing someone who wronged us get what they had coming. And if we’re not careful about this, we can easily slip into the trap that shrouded Jonah’s heart, making us unable to celebrate if God chooses to extend grace and compassion to those who have wronged us.

Theologian Philip Cary, writing about this in his commentary on the book of Jonah continues with this thought, saying,

“The great danger is that instead of rejoicing at the vindication of the afflicted, we self-righteously [take] pity only on ourselves and not on others, so that in our imagination the Lord becomes a weapon in our campaign to destroy our enemies, an instrument for our own vengefulness rather than the judge of the whole earth.”

This is where Jonah got it wrong. A desire for justice is a good thing. But Jonah’s theology did not allow for God to exhibit justice that was compassionately restorative rather than vindictively destructive. Consider this with me, though, even when God is extending extravagant mercy and grace, it doesn’t mean He isn’t still acting justly.

God will deal with all evil. God will deal with all evil. And He might do this by taking out the evildoer. But isn’t it even more glorious when He deals with evil by redeeming it for good? By bringing the evil heart to repentance, he is not only defeating the forces of evil, but God’s restorative grace accomplishes more, not less, than justice.

Jonah wouldn’t accept that. God is far more gracious and compassionate than Jonah’s theology would allow Him to be and this causes a big problem for Jonah. Watch as he sinks to a very dark place in verse 3:

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

So lost in darkness that God would do something that infuriates him so much, he doesn’t even want to live to see it. This is not the first time in this book that Jonah has expressed a desire to die. And, spoiler alert, this isn’t even the last.

Jonah has tried out two different dysfunctional ways of fighting God, two ways that I’ll gently point out that most of us still try out today when we’re struggling with God: running from Him and trying to control Him.

In chapter 1 he tried to run away from God and when that didn’t work, he gave up and wanted to die. Now, he wants to control God and when that doesn’t work is in essence saying, “Over my dead body will I watch you be gracious to my enemies.”

Jonah’s heart problem has turned his world darker than inside the belly of that fish, and he would rather die than live on in a world where God is merciful to his enemies. And in his darkness, he can’t see just how much mercy he’s been given.

In Jonah’s darkness, God does something amazing. He simply asks a question. In response to Jonah’s exclamation that it would be better for him to die than to live, God ignores the comment and just asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” I think other translations get at the sentiment of what God is saying even better. The ESV says: “Do you do well to be angry?” and the NASB’s “Do you have good reason to be angry?”

I don’t think God’s getting defensive here, like “What gives you the right to be angry?!” He’s patiently seeking to help Jonah see and own his heart problem. Even more, He’s being the merciful and compassionate God for Jonah that Jonah resented He was for the Ninevites. He’s replying as a wise and gracious Father saying, “how’s this anger working for you, son?”

The question is left hanging in the air unanswered.

And the brilliance in that leads us to wonder, Can Jonah do what Nineveh has already done: believe God, celebrate His goodness, and live? Letting the question hang should also lead us to wonder about ourselves.

Do you remember the summary we’ve had of this book all along? Jonah is the story of a QUESTIONABLE prophet who QUESTIONED God, written so that we will QUESTION ourselves.

The author has been brilliantly driving us towards a question as we’ve traveled through Jonah. It’s almost as if he’s been scientifically setting up a most elegant case study for us to consider, and I think a question he’s posing to us now is:

Who can receive God’s compassion?

If you don’t feel ready to answer that for yourself yet, what have we seen so far in this book?

Remember our first characters, besides Jonah? The sailors in chapter 1? They were terrified in the storm that God had sent to stop Jonah. And when Jonah told them to throw him in the sea they placed a higher value on Jonah’s life than he for himself and were reluctant to do it. They cried out to God saying, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life.” And when the storm calmed, it says, “the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.”

It sure looks to me that they turned towards God and pleaded with him for compassion which they received.

Then we have the Ninevites. Now they were clearly wicked. They were indescribably violent perpetrators of evil crimes against humanity. However, when faced with their reckoning, did they turn away from or to the Lord? The king pretty clearly turned towards God saying, “Let everyone 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.”

They also turned towards God and received His compassionate mercy.

The only character in this story who is turning away from God’s love is Jonah.

But here’s the amazing thing. Jonah, too, is shown multiple expressions of mercy, and is also patiently loved with God’s compassionate love. God is modeling His love for Jonah in a way that should correct his theology if he would open his eyes to it. The question remains, will Jonah get it? Come back next week to see this continue to play out as we finish this amazing story.

I think the author wants us to realize that the answer to the question he’s been driving us to ask: Who can receive God’s compassion?

Is that everyone can!

  • God showed compassion for the sailors
  • God showed compassion for the Ninevites
  • God showed compassion for Jonah

And God’s compassion remains available to you and to me and for the people we love and yes, also for the people we struggle to love.

So, as we wrap up, what do we do with this? What are some next steps to take in our spiritual growth?

Well, let me highlight 3 things I think we can learn from observing where Jonah went sideways:

  • Stop running from or trying to control God
  • Desire justice, not revenge
  • Grow in humility

Let’s look quickly at each of these in turn. First, stop running from or trying to control God

Jonah begins the book trying to run from God. What do we think we will accomplish in trying to run from a God who is everywhere? All it does is draw on God’s patience with us and exhausts us. Are there things that you believe God is calling you too that you’ve been avoiding? Turn to Him and talk to Him about it and ask Him for His compassionate help.

And after Jonah can’t run anymore, he sits in anger at God because he refuses to accept what God has done. Have you been upset with God because He’s not acting the way you want Him too? Are you finding that the harder you to try to control Him, the less things work? Let God be God. Turn to Him and talk to Him about it and ask Him for His compassionate help.

Secondly, desire justice, not revenge. We have all been wronged in various ways. And I don’t at all want to minimize how you’ve suffered. But as your sister who has also suffered, believe me when I say that revenge is not the way of Jesus. Jesus’s way is better because revenge never leads to our emotional or spiritual health. Letting go of wanting revenge doesn’t mean we become a doormat or ongoing victim to someone who has wounded us. Cry out to the Lord and ask Him to intervene for true justice. Turn to Him and talk to Him about it and ask Him for His compassionate help.

Finally, grow in humility. Jonah’s lack of humility blinded him to the many ways that God was compassionate towards him. He was given second chances after running away in rebellion. His life was saved when he tried to end it in the sea. His call was preserved as he followed through on his message to Ninevah. God’s grace enveloped him as he raged at God for being good to the wrong people. God’s compassion held him when he couldn’t see any of it and again expressed wanting to die.

Think of how differently Jonah might have been if he’d had the humility to see the Lord’s consistently merciful hand on his shoulder. Let’s seek to grow in humility so we don’t miss all the ways that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love towards us. As we do, we’ll not only deepen a healthy relationship with God, but we’ll also gain capacity to want His goodness for others too in a way that Jonah couldn’t understand. Turn to Him and talk to Him about it and ask Him for His compassionate help.

I want to leave you with this thought: Jesus, the Son of God, like Jonah, was also given an assignment to bring a message to a place filled with evil. God’s own Son left behind his home, and without running away from or fighting his mission, he walked in our evil, violent world. He proclaimed that to continue living in this way would result in our destruction, but that all of us who turn to God through him, all of us who call upon the name of Jesus and ask to be saved through his compassionate mercy, will be rescued from destruction. We are given new life and will have an eternity to discover the depths of God’s abounding love for us. And through the merciful justice that Jesus accomplishes for us, unlike Jonah, he never grumbles about it being too good for us who don’t deserve it. No, Jesus rejoices over every person who turns to him and welcomes us as brothers and sisters in the Kingdom of God. In every way, Jesus is the better Jonah.

If you have not yet received salvation through Jesus I plead with you to stop running from God and turn to Him today so that you too can experience His glorious compassionate love. And if you already are His, let the joy of your salvation carry you, today and everyday forward, into ever deeper knowledge of God’s compassionate love for you and the whole world.