Faith | Hope | Love

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..

Jonah

Chapter 3: Reach

Pt. 3 The Responses to Evil

           

Jonah 3:9-10 “‘Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.’ When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.”

Allow me to clarify something right up front. There’s only one proper way to respond to the evil in your own life: Repent! We’ve already discussed that in chapter two, so we don’t need to repeat ourselves. But in case you’re still reading, and you haven’t had that time with God when you confessed your sin, and turned from it to God, please do that right now. You won’t be able to deal with the evil in other people’s lives until you deal with your own.

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for what’s next. Jonah helps us to see the evil in this world and contrast it to how the Lord responds to it. Here’s the question that is naturally posed; How do I deal with wickedness that offends me? This is personal. We’re not talking about solving the problem of evil in the whole entire world, but rather responding to the evil that directly offends us. And I see only three possible responses.

1^st. You can choose revenge – This is where you pummel the wrong doer. You are determined to hurt the person that hurt you. You believe very much in the “eye for an eye” philosophy of life. And most likely you believe, although nobody would admit it, that is how you should behave toward others but not so much how others should behave toward you, right? I don’t recommend this response. It doesn’t end well for anybody.

2^nd. You can choose retreat – This is when, out of passivity, you just let it go but not in the healthy way. This is when you cannot get past it so you do nothing about it. Outwardly you seem to be fine but inwardly you are bitter and hurt. You go to your room and scream into your pillow. Maybe you pop in the head phones and zone out from the world. Perhaps your medication is a little more serious and damaging. This is more about running away than dealing with the evil.

Neither of these two options are better than the other, because you are responding to the hurt in unhealthy ways. Some people think, “Well I’m not hurting anybody if I bottle up.” But revenge and retreat are BOTH wrong, and do no good for you OR the wrongdoer.

Here’s the last option. This is the one we all need to aim for.  

3^rd. You can choose to reach out – This is the forgiveness that God gives to the people of Nineveh and what he is trying to give Jonah. He is reaching out to them, not to exclude, but to include. This is not reaching out with a fist like revenge. This is not reaching out with a shove like retreat. This is reaching out with an open hand to offer forgiveness and love.

In the book, The Secret Garden, Colin is a cruel, spoiled, arrogant boy who makes the lives of his servants and nurses miserable. At first, you despise him in the book. But as you read on you realize this boy is really just afraid. Because all of his life he’s been told he wasn’t going to live long. That he would get a disease like his father and die. So he chooses to confine himself to his bed and order his servants and nurses around.

Until one day he meets his cousin, Mary. Of course, she doesn’t like him at first because of his demanding, selfish personality. He really was an evil little boy. But instead of getting some revenge on him or choosing to retreat from him, she begins to reach out to him. She talks to him about the beautiful things she had seen in the Secret Garden. She describes the adventures she had with the neighbor boy. She begins to encourage him to come outside with her and to see it all for himself. And through it all, she is really showing him that he is actually healthy and he isn’t going to die.

So as she reaches out to him with a love that he had never received before, he begins to soften. He stops throwing his tantrums and starts thinking about others. The evil in him was ruined when Mary reached out with forgiveness and love. The only way you will ever ruin evil in the world is by reaching out with forgiveness and love. That is the one response to evil that God has commanded.

If we fail to do this, if we choose to exact revenge or run away in retreat, we just become a part of the cycle of evil in the world. We are adding to the sinfulness of our own world, but God has called us to destroy the evil; to help bring forgiveness, love, and repentance to those around us.

That’s a lot easier said than done. Right now you might encouraged and thinking, “Yeah! I’m going to change the world with love!” And it all seems clear to you, right now. But tomorrow, when the bullies come around again, or the family member starts acting selfish again, or that coworker makes up another lie about you, this usually isn’t the first thing in our minds because it’s not natural. You’re going to have to work at this. It will require a good amount of effort. Are you up for it? I believe you are. I really do believe you can ruin evil in your world and bring forgiveness and salvation to those around you. Next month, I’ll show you exactly how this works.

      Jonah 2:4 “Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight;

yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’”

We are given a rare glimpse into the life of someone that is going through the process of spiritual transformation. Jonah knew that saving grace and living grace was entirely of the Lord. He experienced this grace and learned very quickly what it really means; Grace is an undeserved gift from an unobligated giver. Basically, something that nobody deserves or could ever earn. Well then, if grace is a gift, what’s the gift that Jesus gave us? Simply this, His life.

So let’s explain verse four. He looks at the temple because he knows that the answer to his problem is in there. To us 21st Century Americans, that doesn’t mean much. But there is something bewildering about it that we’ve got to understand. What he remembers about the Temple is that sin is taken seriously, there must be a punishment, so blood is shed as a consequence of sin. But it’s not the sinner’s blood.

This is perhaps the most life-changing truth taught in the astonishing true story of Jonah. See, God cannot overlook or dismiss sin. He never has and He never will. But He does not deal with it according to the justice system we have in mind, where he punishes sinners until they’ve paid in full. He chooses to forgive the sinner by punishing his innocent Son.

But wait, there is an amazing parallel here that we won’t see at first, so we’ve got to dig in a little more to understand this. Like we said earlier, Jonah is a picture of us, but he is also a picture of Jesus. See, God sent Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, just like Jesus was sent by God to bring repentance to the world. Nineveh was deserving of the wrath of God, just like the world. But neither the world nor Nineveh have received the punishment they deserve. God sent his wrath on Jonah through the storm, just like He sent His wrath on Jesus on the cross. And Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, just like Jesus spent three days in the grave.

When they both came back, they brought revival through repentance to Nineveh and the world. Jonah suffered for Nineveh’s salvation and Jesus suffered for ours. So when Jonah looked toward the temple, he was thinking about the sacrifices that had been made for him, and the ultimate sacrifice that would be made for us. He was looking to Jesus. The one who gave His life. The one who deserves our obedient love.

Jonah shows us that Jesus dying on the cross in our place is the greatest gift we would ever receive. And once Jonah became emotionally available to God’s grace, he understood the process of receiving that grace through faith.

So grace is a gift offered by Jesus that we can only receive with faith. What then is faith? Faith is a dependence, a trust, in anything at all. I have faith that a grandé white mocha latte with a pump of peppermint will quench my desire for deliciousness. I also have faith that Jesus dying on the cross is enough to pay for my sins and provide forgiveness and redemption for me.

Jonah’s looking toward the Temple helps us to understand the process by which God works in our hearts to bring about spiritual change. Grace is God offering the gift of eternal life. Faith is us receiving that gift by putting our trust in Jesus and His death and resurrection.

That’s the process. That’s how we first experience repentance, and how we always will thereafter. We call this The Gospel.

Jonah 2:9 “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

           

There’s a simple truth about repentance written all throughout Scripture that tends to get treated like a secret. I mean, God wrote it in a book and it’s been published throughout the entire world, so it’s really no secret. But it’s often treated like one. Some people don’t like to talk about it because they say it’s too personal, or they’re too embarrassed, or that they don’t completely understand it themselves. But we’re going to unwrap this ‘secret’ to repentance and lay it out on the table for all to see so we can experience a spiritual breakthrough.

Jonah announces while in the fish’s belly that salvation is of the Lord. This is both a confession and an acknowledgement of a lesson learned and it’s really quite astounding. In fact, the entire theme of the Bible can be summed up in that statement, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

See, there are different people in the world and they have different beliefs about salvation. There are the Rebellious People, who defiantly say, “I do not need salvation.” Next are the Religious people, who stubbornly say “Salvation is of me.” Then there are the Repentant people, who humbly say, “Salvation is of the Lord”

Until you come to the realization that salvation belongs to the Lord, you cannot and will not experience spiritual breakthrough. That is true for people just coming into a relationship with Christ today for the first time, but it is also true for people that have already started a relationship with Jesus but desire a deeper spiritual breakthrough. And, by the way, everybody falls into one of these two categories: those in need of salvation today, and those in need of a spiritual breakthrough.

Both types of people cannot come to the realization that salvation belongs to the Lord on their own, however. It first requires God extending an invitation to them. He says, “Come and know me.” That is called grace. We can only respond to the invitation and start a relationship with Him. That is called faith.

So the first type of people accept God’s grace by faith. Let’s call that saving faith. The second type who have already accepted God’s grace continue in their faith. That’s called living faith.

So are you ready for the secret? Here it is in one sentence:

Grace is not just the way you have your first encounter with God, but how you have every encounter with God.

Accepting God’s grace through faith is how you are going to have a spiritual breakthrough. If you depend on your works to make you better, if you depend on your knowledge to get you closer to God, if you depend on your talent to do great things, you won’t make it. We have only one thing to depend on and that’s God’s grace.

But that’s just it. So many of us so many times rely on ourselves for our spirituality. “If I just read my Bible more I would be more spiritual.” But we have to have a change of mind; a change of dependence. And that’s exactly what repentance is. The word ‘repent’ literally means “to change one’s mind.” The question then is, “What do I need to change my mind about?” In this case, to have a spiritual breakthrough, we have to change our mind about who we depend on.

When I was teen, my friend showed me what it means to be dependent on the wrong thing. We had gone to spend the weekend at his grandparents’ cabin with his family. One day we were exploring down by the river, and we found this giant branch sticking out over the water about three stories high. So my friend says, “Hey! Let’s make a rope swing!” So he goes and gets a dog leash, he climbs the branch, ties the leash up, but realizes it’s too thin to hold on to. So he does the logical thing and grabs a log and ties it to the other end. Then he says, “Ok, who’s first!?” And the rest of us are like, “Bro, you made it, you have to do the first swing!”

So he climbs up a little and sits on a lower branch for a while trying to work up the courage. And in one awful moment he jumps off the tree trunk and puts all of his weight on this homemade rope swing, depending on it to hold him. But as it tightens, the log rolled, and he slipped. And fell. I’m pretty sure my heart stopped as I watched him plummet to what I felt strongly was his death. He fell about two stories down into about one foot of water with huge rocks underneath. I’m thinking, “Oh my soul! I just witnessed the death of my best friend!” For about two seconds, that felt like two hours, he’s underneath the water, then he bounces up and says, “Well, that didn’t work!” He was lucky to walk away with a small scratch on his knee. Needless to say, nobody else depended on the dog leash rope swing.

If you and I are going to move to a new level of spiritual breakthrough we must change our mind about who we depend on. Are you depending on your own goodness and effort for a spiritual breakthrough? Or are you ready to depend on God’s grace to give you a breakthrough? You’ll be launched to new heights with barely enough time to hang on when you let go and let God.

But how does Jesus give us His grace? I mean, what in the world is grace anyway? Next month, I’ll answer the question; What is the process by which Jesus gives us His grace?

RUN

Pt. 5 The Cure for Running

           

Jonah 1:15-17 “So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. ¹⁶Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

¹⁷And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

At first, if you’re like me, your thought is of the terrible consequences. “God punishes those who run from Him!” After all, He created a storm and a giant, awful fish to eat Jonah. But here is the amazing truth, and you have to get this.

The storm wasn’t just Jonah’s punishment, it was really Jonah’s salvation. Hear me out. The storm was raging and Jonah accepted the fact that this was God’s wrath being sent to him. So he decided that there was no more running. He stopped running, he turned and faced God and the storm, and he dove into the waves of his consequences. But just below the storm (the wrath of God) lay a fish prepared by God (salvation). It was when Jonah had no other choice that he plunged himself, by faith, into the wrath of God fully expecting death, that he actually experienced the Lord’s salvation.

Now here’s the deal, God hasn’t really changed. The way He dealt with Jonah is how He is still dealing with us. I mean not with a big fish, of course, but the same principles. We run from God, and His wrath is sent towards us. But instead of us receiving the wrath when we stop running, we receive grace and forgiveness. Isn’t that the story of the cross? God’s wrath is poured out on the world. But Jesus steps in and takes the wrath upon Himself, so all that’s left for us is salvation. In the end, what we believe to be an ocean of God’s wrath turns out to be an ocean of forgiveness and acceptance.

Jesus taking God’s wrath was the most extreme act of love the world has ever seen. It has provided us an escape. But the escape is only through Jesus; by putting our trust in Him and what He did for us. We dive into Jesus, who took the wrath of God, and we receive salvation. And not just salvation from God’s wrath, but salvation from our own rebellion as well. The cure for your running always has been and always will be Jesus’ love. So stop running. When you turn and face the consequences of your sin, you will escape the punishment. You will embrace His love and you will live.

About two years ago I went to the funeral of a man I don’t know. The grandpa of two sisters in our student ministry was honored and remembered at this funeral. As I sat in the service, they had several family members and friends stand up to talk about Robert. It was made apparent from the very beginning that Robert was a good man. He loved God, he loved his family, and he loved his friends. As I looked around the auditorium I was impressed to see how many people came to remember Robert. He had lived a life that was impactful. He served in the church, he served in the city, he served in his family, and his life influenced many people, and they had all come to the funeral to honor his memory.

But as the service went on, the Pastor said something that struck me. He said, “We’re not here to make Robert out to look like he was perfect, because he had his flaws.” These girls’ Papaw had times in his own life when he ran from God. But here’s the thing that made him such a good man. In those times that he ran from God, it wasn’t long before he would stop, turn to face Jesus, and make the courageous decision to dive into the ocean of God’s wrath only to find it to be an ocean of His love.

I know you’re not perfect. But Jesus’s grace says you don’t need to be. His grace simply says, “Stop running. I lived perfectly FOR you. I took the wrath FOR you.” So let me ask you a question; When your time has come, and the funeral is yours, will people remember you as a good man or woman who loved God and loved people? I know you’ve already sinned, you’ve already messed up, and maybe your reputation right now is pretty lousy. But listen; that can change. You can be remembered as a man or woman who glorified Jesus if you stop running from God, face the consequences, and live in grace. If you want that, your only hope is in Jesus Christ.