Well, good morning. Happy Father’s Day to myself and everyone else.

Yeah, it’s just like I get a specially nice dinner. Not that dinners aren’t always nice that my wife makes, but they’re specially nice.

She requested a dessert, one of my favorite desserts, so I just made something up and she’s going to make it. Some kind of strawberry pie. She was like, great, it’s going to take four hours to make that. So I was like, sorry, but she’s doing it. It’s a lot of love.

It’s good to be back with you here this morning. Jesse and I were out of town last week at the lake. Just having some fun with the kids. That was a good time. I know we’ve got a lot of people traveling this morning, which is kind of how summer is. But it’s good to be with you and to be in the Word with you. If you would, turn with me to Jonah chapter 4.

I’d like for us to look at this short but very important story in the Old Testament about the prophet Jonah.

Jonah chapter 4. I’m just going to read the whole chapter for us here. Jonah chapter 4, it says, But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

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. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry?

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. And he sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. 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. To save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind. 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. But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, Yes. Yes, I do well to be angry. Angry enough to die. 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. 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? So it’s a very popular story. Kind of hear the big fish tail, Jonah, who swaddled by the whale. But I want us to kind of look at the end of all that.

Jonah is, though he is a prophet of God, and he knows God, and he’s got direct messages from God, and given messages to God’s people, he’s finding out the whole heart of who God is.

And friends, I think a lot of times we’re guilty of shaping God into be who we want Him to be. But God says, I’m going to be who I am. And Jonah’s getting a full panoramic view here of the whole heart of God, and he doesn’t like it very much at all. And friends, I think we have to consider the same question for us. Do we know, do we love, do we possess truly the heart of God, God as He is in these pages? It is convenient to make God who we want Him to be. Which is another way of saying we’re making ourselves our own God. If God who I want God to be, He’s essentially my genie that’s going to set my life up the way that I want it to be. But Jonah’s hitting a brick wall because he’s being confronted with the reality of a God that doesn’t change, a God that works for His own glory in His own way. So I want us to ponder that question as we consider the very end of this story in the book of Jonah. Do we possess the heart of God?

Look back at verse 1, it says, It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? This is what I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that You’re a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry? So Jonah, it says, is exceedingly angry. He is exceedingly in disapproval of what God’s done. You could actually translate it, he saw what God was doing to be an exceedingly great evil.

So it’s usually a dead giveaway. You’re holding the wrong position if you think what God’s doing is exceedingly evil. He probably should have taken that as a hint, but he didn’t. Jonah is livid because God has shown mercy. He showed mercy to his enemies, to the Ninevites. And the Ninevites were Assyrians. The Ninevites were a godless people, so they served pagan gods. They were a nasty, vile people. They were a rising military threat. They were constantly berating Israel. So there’s really no good reason, either in a socioeconomic sense for Jonah to like them, nor is there a good reason in terms of spirituality and religion for him or his people to be like them. But any of the Israelites to really like or care about the Ninevites, they are, as true as it can be said, their enemies. That’s who these Ninevites are.

So Jonah prays. But this isn’t the humble, repentant prayer that Jonah prayed when he was in the belly of the well for a disobeying. This is more like Jonah giving God a piece of his mind. He really just wants to tell God what he thinks, and so he’s very belligerent. He says, I knew. I knew that this is what was going to happen. He said, you drug me. He didn’t say it, but it’s my commentary. You drug me across the Middle East. And why did he do that? To love his enemies. To make Jonah preach a message of compassion and mercy that, no, it was not deserved. So Jonah feels justified. Why would you do this to the enemy of your people, to your enemy God? He says, isn’t this what I said when I was in my country? Jonah says, this is what I said when I was in my country. Way back when. So Jonah, though, and I want you to see this, he’s claiming a moral high ground he actually doesn’t have when he’s talking about his country. If you look at 2 Kings 14, I want you to see this. It says, In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria. And he reigned forty-one years. And Jeroboam did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebu Hamath, as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who is from Gathifer. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord said that he would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. So here’s what’s happening. Jeroboam, Jeroboam’s king of Israel, and he has done evil as his father did evil. So God’s law that came to the promised land, hey, it’s going to go well with you if you obey me. If you don’t obey me, it’s not going to go well with you. That was basically what God said when he came into the land. Jeroboam is saying, I don’t care. I’m going to do it my way. I’m going to be evil. And so goes the king, so goes the people. The people of Israel are living wicked. They’re sacrificing in the high places. They’re doing what all the other nations are doing. So there is no moral high ground for Israel or Jonah. Like, we’re these pious people. Boy, we love God. We’re serving God. We’re doing everything right. And here are the Ninevites over here. It’s not true. The Ninevites and the Israel, they’re the same. They have the same disregard. They’re living in, and we’ll say it in the plainest sense of the term, they’re living in a spiritual apostasy.

Israel is on a long pathway downward into captivity. And ironic enough, it will be the Assyrians, once they’ve gone so far and sinned so much, God throws them into exile under the Assyrians for their unrepentance. So Jonah is kind of out of his mind in making this argument to God. Jonah is a blind man to who he is. He’s a blind man to his own nation. But it doesn’t matter. He says, I just want you to kill me. God, I want you to kill me. I’d rather not live in a world where you’re going to conduct yourself like that. It’s basically, it’s basically what he said.

So friends, Jonah’s heart’s in a foul place. And I think we have to look in the mirror and ask the same question as ours. We are far from possessing the heart of God if we don’t want to live in a world where our enemies receive blessings.

Nobody likes being wronged. Nobody. We can’t stand being wronged, can we? I think that’s as natural to sinful man as breathing. Whether it’s getting financially, ripped off, or somebody says something about you, says something to you, somebody hurts somebody you care about. We just have a really easy time coming up with adversaries in life. It just doesn’t take a lot of energy to have enemies, to harbor ill will, to have a strong distaste for people who cross us or rub us the wrong way. We are all really good at it. If you need encouragement this morning, hey, you’re really good at making enemies. It’s just part and parcel of being, of being a sinful person. And I think it’s a universal feature. It has to be. Because pride is a universal feature of fallen human man. We once were outward looking people. We were looking at the face of God. We were loving that God, living life that God’s way, loving people that God’s way. But we put a handheld mirror in the way and started looking at ourselves instead. Say, hey, there’s the person I’m going to live for. So it becomes about me, like my feelings. I got my rights. Like there’s really good reasons why I’m better than you. You hurt me. And now I’m going to get, you know, vengeance. Like I earned this. I deserve this. I’m looking out for number one. I’m looking out for me and mine. We’re quick to attack and defend ourselves. But friends, here’s what we have to remember. As difficult as it is when we are wronged and we have enemies, that way of operating is the world’s way of operating. That’s the world’s standard.

But friends, here’s what we have to remember. We are God’s people. Amen. And God’s people, as difficult and as painful as it may be for us in the flesh, we must operate in the way of our God if we are to follow Jesus. Paul says this in Romans chapter 5. And this envelops the heart of God. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for His friends. Christ died for good people. No, it says Christ bled and died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God looked down on our sinful, wicked humanity. Our natural lives, thoughts, actions pit us against God as His enemies. We don’t like God. We don’t naturally, we’re not inclined to befriend God. But here’s God’s way. God’s way is not to say, alright, yours is coming to you. God’s way is not to quickly execute justice on us. It’s not God’s way to come out with guns full blazing. It’s not God’s way to repay evil with evil. Paul tells us what God’s way is. And I read this in my own personal reading this past week. And it jumped off the pages at me like it never had before. It’s one of those texts you read a thousand times and you see something and it’s like, that just hit me, you know, it hit me. In 1 Corinthians 13, just these two words describing what love is. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient and love is kind.

Love is patient and love is kind.

And the Apostle John says that God is love. So we could say then Jesus is patient and Jesus is kind. Jesus doesn’t envy or boast. Jesus isn’t arrogant and rude. Jesus doesn’t insist on His own way. It’s not irritable. I can be irritable. Or resentful. You know what resent is? It means I’m keeping a long list of everything everyone’s ever done against me. And boy, I got the list. And I’m going to hold it over their head and I’m going to use it like a big anvil when it’s convenient for me. But Paul says God is not like that to us at all. He’s not like that to us when we were on our journey to Christ. And He’s certainly not like that after we’ve come to Christ. God is patient and kind.

God is different and better than us. He shows immeasurable patience. Kindness unexpected. Mercy and grace unthinkable. The world says live to defend yourself. Live to fight for your rights. But God says if you’re going to follow My Son Jesus, you must live to love your enemies.

Jesus hanging on the cross said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

Friend, God looks down on our lowest, lowest state. We were rebels to His cause. He didn’t execute strict justice upon us. He did execute strict justice, but rather on His perfect Son who was pure and had not sinned against Him.

God blessed those who cursed Him. God, Jesus, washed the feet

of us who sinned against Him. Jesus spilled His own blood for us. Jesus took our place. In Jesus, God has loved us. He’s loved His enemies.

And if that is so, and it is, it becomes a very strange thing then when as followers of Jesus, we dare to pit ourselves against it. Like, I’m better than that person. And boy, they own me. And I’m not like them. And God’s going to get them. And you know, I’m bad, but I’m not as bad as them. No, the cross levels us all. It says you’re all equally under sin. You’ve all fallen. It’s all by grace. No one’s standing above anyone else. All I do when that happens is I look at the cross, and I say, Jesus, this wrong that’s been done to me, You’ve already atoned for that. You’ve already paid for that with Your blood. And hanging on the cross, You are a perfect example of what it means to endure wrongsuffering and trust that You are a judge and You’re going to bring about Your justice, Your way, Your timing. We’re free from being our own judge and jury. We’re free to trust the Lord. We’re free to be forgiven. And we’ve been set free to forgive.

And I think Jesus’ parable about the wicked servant couldn’t really come to terms with that. I don’t know if I can explain this any better in illustration. You know that parable where the master brings the servant who owes a ton of money he can’t pay. And so the master says, you know, lock him up and his children so he can pay it. And he begs. No, no. And so the master says, alright, wipe his debts clean. Let him go free. But that same servant goes out and finds a fellow servant who owes him a very little money. And he’s harsh with him. And he throws him in prison. And when that master finds out, he says, you wicked servant, I forgave you, but you couldn’t forgive your fellow brother’s smaller debt. And Jesus says that same way. We’re not going to be forgiven until we recognize we forgive the way that God has forgiven us. It’s how we’re called to live.

I know it’s difficult. And I think talking about this, we all carry different hurts. Some of us carry really deep hurts. And I don’t want to say, oh, Jesus died on the cross, so if you’re upset and mad, that’s your problem. You don’t love Jesus enough. That’s not true. I think there are wounds in this life that will probably never heal for some people. That’s just true. Some people just get hurt, I think, near beyond repair in terms of feeling that and the effects of it. What it does mean is because Jesus spilled His blood, we can forgive and love in the midst of the pain and suffering, knowing that a day will come when all of the suffering and the hurts will be washed away. I think that’s the hope that we have in the suffering, friends. And I would say to you just as well, the local church should be the beacon of where this all-out love is seen most. We’re not going to love our enemies out there and the people who make it difficult to live around them if we’re not doing that as a powerhouse of love in here. And I hate to say it, but it’s just so, in my time in the ministry, it’s unbelievable the reasons why some people leave churches. I’m not saying there are never valid reasons, but the reasons people choose to literally divorce, you know, a body of believers and move on because of their feelings. We just don’t know, which is really weird, isn’t it? Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who’s shown us how to love one another, and we’re all terrible at loving one another. Like, there’s 59 one another’s. Like, love one another, bear with one another, build one another, pray for one another. Like, no, I’m leaving. I’m going to go to a different church until somebody else hurts me and then we’ll go somewhere else after they hurt me. I mean, that’s the modern man’s, you know, method with dealing with hurts. And it’s going to take a radical church to say, you know what? I’m going to dig my heels in here and I’m going to keep the cross in focus and, I mean, if somebody hurts me, I’m going to go to them and we’re going to work that out. We’re going to iron that out and it’s going to be a beautiful picture of the gospel and how God has loved me when I have wronged Him. Friends, we’ve got to fight for one another and be for one another that way. And when we’re that way, we’re set free in the Spirit

to pray and desire good for our enemies.

You know, I don’t think you can really desire heaven if you don’t hope to see your enemies there. Heaven is not for the good people. Heaven is for the bad people. And friend, if you need a mirror, I can show you a bad person real quick. It’s me and it’s you and it’s all of us. Let God be judge. Let’s obey the Lord Jesus Christ and love and forgive.

So do we possess the heart of God? Verse 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. 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. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. 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. But God said to Jonah, Do you well to be angry for the plant? And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

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 it perished in a night. So Jonah is outside of the city. If you want to think about it, God in His mercy and compassion has gone in the city and that’s driven Jonah to go out of the city.

The Ninevites have repented, God’s shown mercy, and Jonah hates it. And he’s hoping maybe somehow God’s going to blow him up. You know, somehow still. This is what he wants to see happen. So he’s going out in the shade and God makes a plant, probably a castor oil plant is what people think it would be. It doesn’t really matter. But it’s this big plant that comes out to give Jonah shade from the heat. And Jonah loves it. He’s thankful for it. He doesn’t want to be hot. And notice that this is the second time God’s taken care of Jonah in his rebellion. First He kept him alive and cared for him while he was in the fish. And now God is kind enough to give him a little shade while he’s being not good.

But it’s said Jonah is exceedingly glad. Where Jonah was exceedingly glad for the plant, he saw the salvation of the Ninevites to be exceeding evil. He’s upside down. And Jonah is obsessed with love, a menial temporal comfort in life. This little bitty plant. This is what Jonah wants now. It’s what he loves. So God appoints a worm to take away the very thing that Jonah is exceedingly glad for. And He turns up the heat, literally sends an east wind on Jonah to take the plant away. And how does Jonah respond?

Kill me. I don’t even want to be alive anymore. You just took away my temporal pleasure. You just took away the little happiness that I had left. Jonah was so grateful for the plant and now his happiness is gone because it’s gone.

God says, should you really feel that way about the plant? Should you really? And it kind of magnifies Jonah’s, but I’m afraid our,

selfishness sometimes in life.

Second thing, we’re far from possessing the heart of God if we don’t want to live in a world where we’re not the center of attention.

And friends I think dangerously we often view God as a means to our ends. It stops being, I exist for the glory of God. I exist to serve God. I exist to become like Christ. I exist to make God known. And I get these ideas about what I want life to look like and things I want to have. And I expect God’s power and actions to line up with my will and my wants. The problem is God is God and God is unchanging. And God is certainly going to do things in your life. He’s going to do things in my life that I don’t want Him to do in my flesh. He’s going to take pleasures away from me. He’s going to take comforts away. He’s going to change my situation around. And when that happens, I lose my bearings because I had my hopes, my joys, my pleasures rooted in those things rather than the God who is constant and unchanging the whole time. So friends when you live like that, like God is a genie to make your life better, you have your best life now, you’re not going to be able to cope with it. Because God is only working and doing that which is going to draw you closer to Himself. He’s not doing that which is going to make you happiest. He is going to do that which makes you happy. He is going to make you holy.

Your holiness is what God is after. God knows in being holy will you be truly happy. You can’t be heavenly happy if you’re full of the earth, full of the world. And God’s going to, sometimes pain and suffering, He’s going to rip it out of us until we’re re-transformed to the image of His Son. And God is our only desire. That’s love. That’s God’s real love for us. No, I’m not going to let you stay there. I’m not going to let you have that. Until we can say, God, whether you give or you take, I’ll bless your name either way. And here’s what all this points to for us to know about ourselves. Our affections so often are pitiful and poor.

Our joy and our satisfaction are rooted in temporary, fragile creations and creatures rather than the eternal God who is eternally satisfying.

We shell out affection for things that change and pass away rather than the unchanging God who deserves all of our affections and praise. We put stock and circumstantial peace in control rather than believing God is in control of every circumstance and He’s working for our greatest and most lasting peace in His Son Jesus.

Misplaced affections, friends. We have misplaced joys in the creation, not the Creator. And it’s why Jonah ran in chapter 1. And it’s why Jonah’s world is following his heart here in chapter 4. His perspective’s broken. Has your perspective ever been broken? His perspective is that he’s here in the center and everybody else including God’s around him and he needs it to be flipped. He needs to put God back in the center

and find his greatest joy and satisfaction in revolving around God. Where God becomes the center of his life, the center of his desires, the center of your life, the center of your desires. C.S. Lewis once wrote in his book God in the Dark, I have an elderly acquaintance of about 80 and this man has lived an unbroken life of selfishness and self-admiration from the earliest years. And is more or less, I regret to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view, it’s difficult, very difficult. As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.

You know, I was at dinner the other night and someone said, you know, as you get older, I think it gets harder to follow Jesus. I don’t think it gets easier, I think it gets harder. Friends, as we get closer to the finish line, closer to being with God, we can’t loosen up and let go and I’ve put my time in. There’s no time to put in. I’m looking forward to a time when I’m with God and He’s all I desire and I’m perfectly conformed to His Son, Jesus. It’s holiness that God’s after in us, not happiness. Is your life a tool in the hand of God? Is your life spent on your desires and your wants, your dreams? Even if they’re really good ones, I think we can come up with really great stuff. The question always like, God, is this what you want for me, really? Like, is this what you want? Like, this seems good, but God, is this what you want? I want to build a life. I want us to build a church and be a part of a church that’s usable for God’s purposes, God’s kingdom. Not even that. I think sometimes we think of really, God, this would be awesome if I do this for you. I didn’t ask you to do that. I think we can do that. I’m kind of like, what is God’s word saying? Am I praying and seeking God’s face for my actual life? And you know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about this. You know, Jesus says, sell all you have and give it to the poor.

But the person that God’s saying that to, they need to do it, but someone else could sell all they have and give it to the poor. But Jesus didn’t necessarily say, tell them to do it that way. And you’re living up to an ideal standard, not what Jesus said for you to do in your life. So friends, are you listening very particular to, Lord, what does it look like in my life to be faithful? I need to know what you want from me for your glory. And a lot of times, you know, you can’t really progress until you’ve walked backwards. Sometimes we have to go back and deconstruct and say, Lord, here’s my life. Here’s what I really spend my time, my money, my energy on. Here’s what matters to me. Tell me, take away what you don’t like there. Take it away. Reshape, reform me to look like Jesus.

Verse 11,

God says to Jonah, and should I not 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.

And we don’t really get an answer. Like, I wanted to hear Jonah say something back. You know, but here’s the thing at the end of it. It doesn’t matter what Jonah says.

The issue is, what do you say? What do we say? And I don’t, you know, want your church answer. But what do you really say to this question? The next time that you’re slighted and the next time that you’re wronged and the next time you hear a political opinion that makes you want to punch somebody in the face and the next time you get cut off, drive in, right? That’s the worst.

Someone does something to someone you love. All the variety of things that we could think about when you’re hurt. What is your answer to that question? Should God not have?

I think if we take a look at the cross of Jesus Christ, we know God’s answer. Jesus came and He bled and died for God’s enemies.

He desired blessings, not a curse for the enemies of God. Jesus came and did not make Himself. The center of it all in terms of setting up His kingdom. He died to Himself, literally. He submitted Himself to the Father’s will. He lived for the betterment of others. That’s what Jesus did. This is Jesus’ way. And friends, if we’re going to dare follow this Jesus, if we’re going to do it, we must then possess His same heart, which is possessing the heart of God and love God’s way. You can’t just say, love God and love people, unless it implicitly means love God and love people God’s way. Because that’s the only way to truly love.

So what’s your response? What’s your picture of heaven? Is it you and your friends? Or is it you and your friends and your enemies rejoicing in the one perfect Savior

who forgave us all and brought us all in though we didn’t deserve it? Is your prayer for your enemy, let them be blessed and let them have the fullness of Christ? Let’s be a church then that possesses and reveals the heart of God to one another. And then when we’re doing it to one another, we can go out. And show it to the world. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we just thank You so much for Your grace. We thank You for Your unmerited and unexpected kindness that You would show us in Your Son Jesus, love that we don’t deserve.

You have made

our great plight Your problem. And You did everything that needed to be done only Your Son uniquely could do. He did that so that we would be free. So we pray we would just love the Gospel. We would love what the local church is supposed to be about. What being a follower of Jesus is supposed to look like. And it looks like loving Your way. So we just pray You’d convict us where we’re partial. Convict us where

we’re slow to forgive. And let us be tender-hearted. Let us be patient. Let us be kind. Pray that we would love in the Spirit

as You, Father, as You, Jesus, have loved us. So we just pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.