Have You A Hard Heart To The Sinner?

Jonah Sermon 5 – Have You A Hard Heart To The Sinner?

You can watch the video of this sermon here. 

Introduction

So, we finally come to our final chapter of Jonah. Last week we looked at how much God had great compassion and great care for the people of Nineveh, the Assyrians. We saw how much he pitied them, how much he cared about warning them. In fact, we noted that if you really care for someone, if you really have compassion for someone then you will warn them if you seen danger clearly coming. You will not be able to help yourself.

This is because love is not just a feeling, it is a motivating force. If you truly have love for someone or something, it will motivate you to act on their or its behalf. Love is a driving force. Love is sometimes, even often, seen in what you say, but it is more often seen in what you do on behalf of the one you love. All these people saying they love their non-Christian friend or just their friends in general and seeing destructive behaviours and not seeking to warn them are not being loving, they are being selfish. They care more about approval than doing the right thing, the actual loving thing.  

Jonah did not care about the Ninevehites, but God did, and God wanted him to. So, although Jonah’s ministry was a success, God is not done with Jonah, and he is not done with working in us through this little book. Jonah chapter 4 gives us some insight into the heart of this man of God, and what was wrong with it, and it is something which can settle into all of our hearts if we are not careful and on guard. Jonah’s heart is hard, and because of this, he is in serious error. This is true of anyone whose heart is hard. The making of a man or woman of God is not just how strongly we proclaim the word of God, though this is important, it is how accurately we reflect God’s own heart, so let’s see what God has to say about this today, and asks ourselves this question: have we hard hearts towards the sinner?

Jonah’s Disappointment (Jonah 4:1-4) – Last week we mentioned what the reaction of the angels is to one sinner turning to God in repentance. When one sinner repents the angels are filled with joy. Jesus tells us in Luke 15:7, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” If you were to preach at a revival meeting and a 120 people came forward, how excited would you be? Very. If 1200 people came forward, you would believe that the hand of the Lord God was on you in a mighty way. If 12,000 people came forward, you are now speaking about Billy Graham style numbers when he preached in football stadiums. If 120,000 people came forward for repentance and salvation after your message for repentance, you would be celebrated as the greatest man of God in a generation. You’d be tempted to pride, not because of any other reason than to think how amazing this would be, what an event. How did Jonah feel? Well, he tells us,

“1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

Jonah is angry at God.

Have you ever been angry at God? I have. Most of us have at some time in our lives, and in our mind when we are angry at God it is always for good reasons. Jonah here is very angry at God, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” So why was he angry?

Because God did not do what he considered to be right,

“2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah shows us with this statement that he understood the Scriptures and God himself better than most Christians, and most other people as well.

Many people have the wrong view of the Old Testament. They try to distinguish between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. I actually heard an atheist youtuber make this distinction just this week. People like this, and this includes a lot of Christians, see the God of the Old Testament as the wrathful and vengeful God, and the God of the New Testament as the meek and humble and compassionate God. This view makes two errors:

-        It incorrectly states that there are different God’s between the Testaments. There are not. There is one God of the Bible, our God, 3 in 1.

-        It incorrectly states that God does not display wrath in the New Testament or grace and mercy in the Old Testament. But you will find mercy and grace on pretty much every page of the Bible including the Old Testament.

What Jonah’s says here comes straight from God’s description of himself in Exodus 34:6-7,

“6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Jonah’s problem here is not that he does not understand God and his word, he absolutely does. He just does not agree with how God is applying it. You could show him 20 verses saying that God is merciful towards the sinner, and he would not care, he knows this, but it is irrelevant.

Why is it irrelevant? Because you can’t let the wicked people of Nineveh be forgiven. The Assyrians must be punished. This is clearly Jonah’s view.

Jonah’s problem is not that he has bad theology, because he doesn’t he understands God and he understand God’s heart for the lost. His issue here is that he is just acting irrationally because he is emotionally triggered. You can tell this by what he did way back in chapter one: he ran from God. This was irrational for many reasons, but especially for this reason, Jonah’s own Psalm shows that he was very familiar with the Psalms of David, he knew the theology of the Psalms, so he would have known that this passage was in the Psalms, Psalm 139:7-12,

“7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

Jonah knew that he could not run from God. He was not a heathen. The pagans believed that their gods had regional powers. A deity might be tied to a tree, or a mountain, or a valley, or a temple of some kind. This is how the pagans thought. Orthodox Bible believing Israelites knew that God was the creator of the whole world. Jonah shows this, when he says, “And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9).

You know what Jonah is saying when he tells them this? That he knows he is not acting rationally. He knows he is being silly. He is effectively saying, “I am trying to run from the God, who cannot be run from.” He’s putting his hand up to confess his foolishness has created this situation for these sailors.

Jonah might have been acting foolish, but he is not a fool, he is just a fallen person like you or I. And we can act all irrationally or strange when we are confronted with a truth that we do not like, one that we may even be disgusted at. Jonah was disgusted at the thought that the Ninevehites might get a chance to repent. He did not want this to happen.

“O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah simply did not want the Ninevehites to be forgiven. Jonah did not want them to have a chance to be saved. But why? There are several likely reasons:

-        Some have argued that the Israelites at this stage of their history were exclusionary in their views about Salvation, they wanted to hog it all for themselves and to keep the message of God’s grace from the pagan Gentiles. This is possible, maybe even partly true, though not the likely reason.

-        Some have argued that Jonah was afraid of what Nineveh could do to Israel, and in fact, would do to Israel, and Jonah wanted them destroyed before they destroyed his own people. This is much more likely, but not the full picture.

-        Both of these positions make out Jonah to be a bit of a bad guy, like he is just barracking for his team, and focusing on the other team’s faults and willing to overlook over his own people’s sin.

-        I think the correct answer is far more simple: Jonah was a good man, a righteous man, and as a prophet of God he knew that the people of Nineveh deserved to be judged, which is indicated by his speaking about God “relenting from disaster”. He was angry, because a guilty people were being set free. He was angry, because his sense of justice was being overridden by the mercy and grace of God.

The Ninevehites really did deserve judgement.

The Ninevehites Were Proud – Nineveh deserved judgement. The reputation of Nineveh was pretty well known in the ancient world. The Assyrians were quick to make it well known. They were led by people who ruled like Mafia bosses, they wanted people to fear even thinking about crossing them. I spoke last week and a few weeks ago about the Assyrians and their carvings, showing all the cruelty and horror they inflicted on their crushed enemies. But one thing I did not note was this: those carvings also show how much pride the Ninevehites took in their cruelty and violence.

Why do we put picture frames, and beloved books, and beautiful paintings around our homes? It fills us with a sense of pride. This can be positive, like being proud of your family. But it can also be negative like “pride of possessions”. The Assyrians were proud of their conquests and their victories. Every empire is. We read in Zephaniah 2:15, “15 This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, “I am, and there is no one else.” What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.”

What does the statement, “I am” mean? The Assyrians thought they were gods. Assyria had become proud of its evil, confident of its victories, empowered in its exaltation of its own glory. They worshipped themselves.

Every empire becomes like this just before it starts to fall and decline. It becomes proud, arrogant, boastful, overconfident. This overconfidence is part of what leads to its fall.

The reason this causes an empire to fall is because pride causes people, leaders and nations, to trust in their own abilities and strengths, as Ezekiel notes about the heart of the Assyrians, Ezekiel 31:10, “10 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because it towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height,…”

I show you this to highlight an important point. Jonah was not wrong in thinking that Nineveh deserved judgement from God. He was not off the mark at all. He was right to have his sense of justice triggered.

The Ninevehites were proud, they were arrogant, they were violent. Jonah would have known their evil, he would have known their pride, their lust for war and violence. He was not some long haired hippy progressive preacher who thought everyone was equal and the Ninevehites were just misunderstood but passionate people.

Jonah was a righteous man of God, who knew his Scriptures well, and knew the guilt of the Ninevehites well too. Though he could not have known Nahum, Jonah in some way probably wished he had a message like Nahum’s. Let’s see what Nahum said.   

Jonah Wished He Was Nahum – By saying Jonah wished he was Nahum, I do not mean that he literally wished he was this different prophet, just that I think he wished that he could preach what Nahum preached, look at this, Nahum 1:1-5,

“1 An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh. 2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. 3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. 4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers; Bashan and Carmel wither; the bloom of Lebanon withers. 5 The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it.”

Wow what a passage.

My Bible titles this part, God’s Wrath Against Nineveh. I remember I once asked a youth group Bible study if they knew God could feel this way, they were like all wide eyed and said, “No.” But this is the classic “OId Testament” God that many other people think of.

Nahum gets to preach the fire and brimstone. He is starting off in full wrath and presenting God as a fierce warrior who is angry at his enemies, ready to strike them and come down with the hammer of judgement. As he makes clear.

Nineveh is going to cop it: Nahum 2:8-12 –

“8 Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away. “Halt! Halt!” they cry, but none turns back. 9 Plunder the silver, plunder the gold! There is no end of the treasure or of the wealth of all precious things. 10 Desolate! Desolation and ruin! Hearts melt and knees tremble; anguish is in all loins; all faces grow pale! 11 Where is the lions' den, the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and lioness went, where his cubs were, with none to disturb? 12 The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses; he filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh. 13 Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.”

Just this week I watched one of my favourite old movies again, The Ghost and The Darkness, which is based on the true story of two man eating lions who attack people who are trying to build a bridge. Have you ever seen lions attack? I have not in real life and I know the movie dramatizes it, but it has to be a terrifying experience to be attacked by a lion. It’s a great movie, even more so for being based on a true story.

Nahum compares the Assyrian warriors to lions in how they tore at their prey, “The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses.” He even refers to the images of violence in their palaces, “he filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh.” They did this in part literally through loot and trophies and metaphorically with paintings and carvings.

And God is going to destroy them because of this: “13 Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.”

It is clear in Jonah’s response to God, that he wished he got to preach a message like Nahum. A message filled with God’s wrath and justice against the sinful nation of Assyria, filled with warnings of destruction and predictions of disaster. And what is fascinating is in a sense he did get to do this. Jonah’s message is very simple: Nineveh you are about to be overtaken, Jonah 3:4, “Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

We see Jonah’s message as a doom and gloom message, but it’s also an offer from God, and the Ninevehites saw that. And it is clear that Jonah saw an offering of grace in it too, because Nineveh was overthrown. His prophecy came true. It was not overthrown in the sense of destroyed it was overthrown in the sense that the people turned their worlds upside down, or really ride side up, and trusted in God.

Nahum got to decree the destruction of Nineveh, this is what Jonah wanted. He wanted to say, Nahum 3:1, “3 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey!”

I can relate to Jonah, can’t you? When you see the wicked prospering in their evil. When you see wicked rulers not only getting away with oppression but getting praised for it. When you see corruption being lifted up and those who call out the corruption being attacked. When you see those who crush other people’s lives, who attack the innocent, who lie, cheat and steal, getting richly rewarded, not just getting away with it, but being celebrated by the masses. It makes you angry. It makes you want to preach like Nahum.

Jonah was probably a better man than most of us, or all of us here. I have to admit, I probably would have felt just as he felt. It is likely many of you would have to. How could you not?

I have a strong sense of justice, what is right, what is equitable, what is just. Many of you here do to. That sense of justice has been seriously aggrieved by evil done in our nation over the last few years. Some of you may have personal grievances, or other issues with injustice in our land.

If you understand the Bible how can you not feel like Jonah and think: that sinner needs to be punished, that evil doer needs to feel the wrath of God, that wicked person needs to judged!!!? How can you not feel this way at times?

The truth is, in many ways Jonah feels like the tragic hero in this story…except for one thing. He had forgotten how much compassion God has for his creation. So, God has to teach him again.

But What About The Plant? (vv.5-11) – What God does here is quite interesting. God gives Jonah the simplest thing to care about, and let’s see what happens,

“5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

God appoints a plant for Jonah to be his shelter, then he appoints a worm to kill the plant, then God appoints a scorching east wind and the hot sun to beat down on Jonah. God brings this all on Jonah to teach him a lesson and what is that lesson?

Well, we see that Jonah get’s attached to the plant, and then strangely has compassion for the plant, “9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”…”. This might seem strange, but this is what we human beings are like. People get attached to all kinds of things; their car, their pets, some people treat their pets just like kids, they call them fur babies and buy them the choicest foods, people get attached to places and all sorts of stuff.

This attachment is in human nature. Some people take it too far of course, but most people have it to some degree or another. This tendency to care for lesser order beings, animals and plants is in our nature. It is in our nature for a good reason, because it is in God’s nature too. Think about it. We are far more separated from God in worthiness, than a dog is to us. Or to put it another way, a dog is far closer to us in similarity, than we are to God. He is so far above us. But he cares, anyway.

God’s lesson for Jonah here is very simple:

“…10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

Jonah is devastated that God would wipe out the plant, but he does not have the same care for the Ninevehites. His hypocrisy here might seem strange, but it is very human. We humans are good at being inconsistent, it is almost a human specialty, it is what makes us unpredictable and unique.

Jonah’s reaction is very easy to understand, when you recognize that he is stubbornly seeking to remain angry at God, for not doing what he felt was just. In his view God judged the Ninevehites too lightly, and the plant to harshly. He believed God was not doing the right and just thing.

Jonah intellectually understood the grace and mercy of God, but it had not truly sunk into his own heart, to give him the same forgiveness for the sinner that God had. But the truth is, that if God gave people always what they deserved, then Jonah, the pagan mariners and the Ninevehites would have all been equally wiped out.

God’s final statement to Jonah is so important, because it helps us finish where we need to be. You see, we never find out Jonah’s response, whether he actually softened his heart and humbled himself fully before God. We never get a definite answer. But we don’t need it, because Jonah’s response is not important. God’s answer to him is what is important. “11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” In other words, God’s answer is: “And should I not pity the poor lost sinner?”

“Who do not know their right hand from their left” – don’t gloss over this statement, because I think it is the whole point of the book of Nineveh. God cares for the lost sinner for this simple reason: they often do know not what they do.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they are not responsible. Because they are. What I am saying is this: the don’t know any other way. Often the sinner is trapped in the consequences of their bad decisions and sin, and they don’t know how to get out of this. This is why we should feel pity for them. Because we are the light of the world, and we are the ones who can show them the ultimate light of the world, Jesus.

Application – So how do we apply this?

-        Firstly, ask yourself this, are you willing to even share the message of salvation with your enemies?

-        Secondly, how would you respond if the worst people you could think of repented? Would you celebrate their change of heart or mourn like Jonah?

-        Thirdly, do you pity those who do not know their right hand from their left, or do you simply shun them?

-        Fourthly, do you truly understand just how powerful the grace of God is, and just how new a person it can make of the redeemed sinner?

Conclusion - Jonah had a hard heart towards the sinner. I think he must have eventually come around, because he was such a mighty man of God. But this just shows us that no matter who the person is, we can sometimes fall into bad ways of thinking about sin, the sinner and the mercy of God. Pray that when we do, God warns us, like he does Jonah, so that we never face the danger of misunderstanding the grace of God. Let’s pray.