October 8, 2017 Jonah 4:5-11
Pentecost 19
God is used to being accused of unfairness, especially when it comes to his dealings with sin and evil:
Why do some people suffer so much and others literally get away with murder?
Why does God allow a lone gunman to go on a shooting spree at a concert in Las Vegas when he could have stopped it?
Why does a couple who wants children remain childless while many who don’t want children have one after another?
Why does one child get a terrible disease while other children remain healthy all their lives?
The list is endless.
Unbelievers use such things to justify their unbelief. “I won’t believe in a God like that.” Christians struggle with those things, too, but we commend them all to God and know that he has a reason for everything he does. But often – more often than we care to admit - Christians are guilty of accusing God of unfairness in another way: when it comes to his mercy. We see it in none other than one of God’s own prophets.
Jonah was a prophet to the ten tribes of Israel north of Jerusalem
- They were proud of their standing as God’s chosen people
- God had blessed them with a good economy, rich land, and strong borders
- But throughout their history they had turned away from Godto idolatry
- So God sent prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, and Jonah to call them to repentance
- He weakened their borders and threatened to use their northern enemies in judgment
- One of those enemies he specifically named was the rising world power of Assyria.
Jonah could not believe his ears when God told him to pack his bags and head 600 miles north to deliver a message to their worst enemies
- “I’m Israel’s prophet! What business do I have going to Assyria? That’s treason!”
- “The Assyrians are bloody, violent, ruthless! They have no use for God – in fact, they taunt him!”
- “There’s only one reason why God would send his prophet there. It’s the same reason he sends me to my own people. God wants to call them to repentance so he can have mercy on them. And that’s just not fair.”
- Instead of heading north, Jonah went south to Joppa, boarded a ship, and sailed west.
Have you ever felt that way about sharing Jesus with someone you’d rather not associate with?
- Someone who isn’t in your income bracket or who lives outside your quiet, well-kept neighborhood?
- Someone who wears their sin on their shirtsleeves?
- Someone you wouldn’t want to be seen with or sit with you on Sunday morning?
Like the detestable tax collector Jesus called to be one of his disciples
Like the disgusting prostitute who sat at Jesus’ feet washing them with her tears
Like the shameful woman he sat next to at a well, a woman who’d failed at marriage 6 times and now had a live-in boyfriend and whom he invited to be forgiven
Like the rebellious prodigal son in his story who came home to his father’s loving arms
Like the despised criminal whom Jesus welcomed into his heavenly home
Like every single sinner who moves the holy angels of heaven to shout for joy when he or she repents
God could have used another prophet, but he wanted Jonah to go. His self-righteous child had a lesson to learn
- God brings him back east in another vessel: in the belly of a great fish
- Jonah heads north and delivers God’s message of impending judgment
- And God’s message does just what Jonah feared: the entire city of ½ million repents!
- Jonah is furious with God’s mercy! God is so unfair!
- He goes to a hill outside the city, builds a little shelter in the scorching summer heat, and waits to see if God will still judge them after all
Have you ever felt that way about someone who came to faith in Jesus after a careless life of sin:
- “It won’t last. Soon they’ll fall right back into their old ways. They won’t stay faithful like I am. God will lower the boom on them after all.”
- instead of praying for them, watching out for them, accepting them, encouraging them?
To be fair, God should have given up on Jonah and destroyed him on the spot
- How dare he accuse God of doing wrong!
- How dare he think he was better than the Ninevites!
- How dare he not rejoice over the miraculous power of God’s Word!
Instead, Jonah experienced the unfairness of God’s mercy, too
- God made a shade plant grow up overnight to shelter him from the sun. Jonah was happy.
- Then he send a worm destroy to it, then sent a scorching wind to make him miserable. Jonah wanted to die.
- Jonah only cared about the plant because there was something in it for him.
- God cared about the people because he loved them and wanted to save them from their sins
- He cared about the children who didn’t understand anything about him yet, and even the cattle!
- He cared about his grumpy, self-righteous, self-pitying prophet, too.
Is it any less fair that God cares about you and me?
- That he keeps coming to us day by day, calling us to repent of our self-righteousness, our self-pity, our self-serving attitudes?
- That he always, always, always forgives us completelybecause Jesus paid the price for our sins?
- That he continues to pick us up from our pains and sorrow with his promises in the midst of our complaining?
- That he keeps assuring us of our future home in heaven as he prepares us for his return to judge the world?
- Aren’t you glad that God is so unfair?