Jonah Chapter 3

Reach Pt. 4

      Jonah 4:1-4 “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?’”

                 

What is it going take to reach out with forgiveness and love, as discussed in the last article, instead of revenge or retreat?

Read this carefully, Forgiveness is when you get rid of the anger and bitterness before you deal with the wrong doer instead of getting rid of the anger and bitterness by dealing with the wrong doer. Read that again. Let me quickly explain why you need to overcome bitterness and resentment. Do you understand that you are playing into the Devil’s trap when you allow yourself to lose your temper to the point of cussing someone out, fighting them, locking yourself in your room, or getting bitter? If you do not first forgive the wrongdoer, you cannot respond with love.

But here’s the tricky thing. Forgiveness doesn’t feel right. Forgiveness feels more like you are letting somebody off the hook. Like, “I know you lied to me, but lying is OK.” We all feel like we need to bring justice. But forgiveness says, “You know what, I’m guilty too. And I deserve justice too. But I was forgiven by Jesus, therefore I will forgive you too.” Vengeance is the Lord’s and we need to trust that He can deal with the punishment a lot better than we can.

Once forgiveness is dealt with in your heart, you can reach out with love to destroy evil. Here’s how:

First, you need to make sure you deal with the attitude of superiority. Verse four is God’s award-winning response to Jonah’s judgmental pouting. God puts his finger on Jonah’s whole issue and with one question obliterates any reason for his religious and rebellious attitude. He said, “Do you do well to be angry?” Doesn’t seem that extraordinary, right? Were you a little let down at God’s life-changing response? What He is really asking is, “Jonah, what gives you the right to be angry? Who do you think you are?”

You know, we will never have a family bond in Calvary Baptist Church if we can’t trust each other. And we can never trust each other if there is judgment amongst us. And we can never get rid of the judgment if we have an attitude of superiority. Let me ask you, how can we extend anything BUT grace to the evil world after grace has saved us from evil? How could we ever think we are any better when we never earned our own righteousness in the first place?

We’re all dorks. We’re all sinners. None of us deserve God’s salvation. So basically, here’s what the Bible is really saying: Get over yourself. You’re not better than anybody else.

Secondly, to bring about the destruction of evil in your life, you need to keep looking at Jesus. Remember back when Jonah was in the belly of the fish and he was contemplating the Temple where blood was shed? He remembered it wasn’t the guilty who shed his blood but rather it was the blood of innocent animals being shed to cover the sins of the guilty. But somewhere in the middle of getting digested in the fish’s belly and preaching revival at Nineveh he had forgotten that. Apparently, Jesus’ blood was enough for HIS salvation, but not for the Ninevites salvation.

When I say we must keep our eyes on Jesus, I mean we need to remember that our identity is in Jesus Christ and what He did. Never about what we have done. Who we are and what we are is only because of the gospel of Jesus Christ alone. He reached out to us first. Again, the only hope we have of ruining evil is to reach out with the forgiveness and love that Jesus first reached us with!

I once read this moving story from South Africa. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, he came into power at the end of a long string of vicious wars, battles, and violence. So there were major efforts made at stopping the violence that had plagued the country for so long. One such attempt was the forming of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ where people came before the commission to confess to torturing and murdering others. It was horrific as so many people told terrible stories in graphic detail. The horrors of the crimes make one particular story especially moving.

Two people who came before the commission were Mrs. Calata and her daughter. See, Mrs. Calata's husband had been an advocate for black South Africans in rural communities. Because of his work, he'd been arrested, detained, and tortured by the police many times. But one day he simply disappeared and his wife and daughter had no idea what had happened to him. Until, soon after his disappearance, on the front page of the newspaper, Mrs. Calata saw a photograph of her husband's car on fire. That was how she had learned her husband had been killed. She cried so loudly during the hearing at the Commission as she described the autopsy's report about his horrific torture that the Commission had to be dismissed for a while.

When they reconvened, Mrs. Calata's daughter testified. Years had gone by, and she was now a young lady. She pleaded with the commission to discover who had killed her father. But she wasn’t crying out because she wanted vengeance or justice. What she said astounded the hearers, "We want to forgive, but we don't know whom to forgive."

Eventually members of the police confessed to the crime. Rather than continue the endless cycle of hatred, Mrs. Calata and her daughter reached out with forgiveness to the men who tortured and killed their husband and father. And that is how these two amazing ladies ruined the evil in their lives.

Right now, you can radically change our attitude toward those who have hurt you. Right now, you can make the decision to stop trying to get revenge or retreat and start reaching out with forgiveness and love. You can do this if you keep looking to Jesus who loved and forgave you first..