Well, being up here tonight really takes me back to my internship here 22, 23 years ago, especially having Pastor Smith here tonight. He wasn't here this morning. He was preaching in Sheboygan, so I really have to watch what I'm saying tonight since he's here with us. We will focus our attention tonight on Jonah chapter 4, but we will read chapters 3 and 4 just to get some of the context. It's really a short book. We could have read it all, but I assume you're generally familiar with chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 is less familiar, and chapter 4 may be the one we talk about the least. So we will focus our attention tonight on that chapter. There's a lot to be said about it, and we certainly will not say everything it can be or should be said about chapter 4, but we'd like to focus our attention on those verses. But let's start by reading from Jonah chapter 3, verse 1, and we'll go all the way through the end of the book. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. And 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. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is this not 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 dwell to be angry? 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 had 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 do 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 perished in a night. 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? May the Lord bless the reading of his word and the preaching of his word, and let's pray to that extent. Our dear Heavenly Father, this is an old, old story of events that happened a long time ago. We ask that you will make them come to life in our imagination and here among us as you speak through me and as you speak to each one of us. Help me, Father, to say only what you want me to say in the way that you want it, so that we can hear your word and so that we can understand what your word means for us today, wherever we are. Speak to us, Heavenly Father, may we truly listen to you and obey your word. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. It is hot. Not the stifling heat of 102 degrees on a muggy summer day in Chicago, but the scorching heat of relentless sun and a burning, dry desert wind." Now Jonah's not used to this kind of heat. He is from the hills of Galilee, from a small village close to Cana and Nazareth, where it hardly ever gets into the 90s. But he's willing to tolerate the weather outside of Nineveh, near modern-day Mosul in Iraq, if only he could witness the city's destruction. It has been a long, tough, amazing journey for Jonah, to say the least. And people in the city have responded unbelievably well to his message. But Jonah can't stand being in that city, because those people are the enemy They are unclean. They are repulsive. And Jonah doesn't want to spend a moment longer in that city than he has to. So he builds a shelter for himself outside of the city with whatever he can scrounge together, which apparently wasn't much because he is elated when God makes a plant with large leaves grow over his little shelter and shade him from the sun. But when God appoints a very hungry worm the next day to attack that plant, Jonah becomes so angry that he could die. Jonah is ready to die over a plant, while God is deeply concerned with the lives of 120,000 people in the city and with the lives of their cattle. And so in Jonah chapter 4, as in the whole book, the author, probably Jonah himself, contrasts God's great compassion with Jonah's self-righteousness and bigotry. And therefore we will also look tonight at God's compassion, Jonah's complete lack thereof, And God's call for us, for you and me, to pass His great love on to other people. So the main idea we'll focus our attention on tonight is this. God's relentless compassion moves us, stubbornly self-righteous people, to surprise our worst enemies with love. God's relentless compassion moves us, stubbornly self-righteous people, to surprise our worst enemies with love. We will look at three main points of application. In the first place, be amazed by God's incredible compassion. Be amazed by God's incredible compassion. Jonah, contrary to what some people say, is not a fairy tale. The Bible represents it to us as true history that describes some experiences of Jonah, a prophet who is mentioned in 2 Kings 14, chapter 25. Jesus Christ also recalls Jonah in the whale and in the city of Nineveh, as we read in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The book of Jonah refers to several well-known locations in the ancient world. In particular, it speaks of the great city of Nineveh and of the empire of the Assyrians. In order better to understand God's actions and motives in the book, one needs to know more about the historical context of his words to Jonah. So these events take place in the first half of the 8th century before the birth of Christ. And of course, we're counting backwards before Christ. So we're looking at the 770s, 780s before Christ, somewhere around that time. At this time, Assyria is the most important political force in the Middle East. Other important states at this time include Egypt, Phrygia, Syria, Judah and Israel, and these two have already split by this point. The Babylonians are still gaining ground. Of course, they're the next empire coming up in the 7th and 6th centuries. And the Greeks are busy forming a foundation of what will become an empire in the distant future. Rome, at this point, is only being founded. But the Assyrians have already shown everyone that they dominate the Middle East. The 8th century belongs to the Assyrians. and they were known for their cruelty. We know this because the Assyrian kings loved to write about their achievements. They were proud of entire planes of destroyed enemies and slaying people, burning cities. The great emperor Shalmaneser III from the 9th century, a little bit before Jonah's time, left us detailed images of the cold-blooded torture of his enemies. If you're interested, you can see that in the British Museum in London, if you ever get over there. The Assyrians loved to depict their own ferociousness. Other ancient civilizations left us images of social life, of people singing and dancing, of beautiful plants and animals. But the Assyrians left us images of their cruel conquests. I will spare you some of the details of their torture. They loved to impale people, severing limbs, decapitate people. But I can say as one example that the Assyrians enjoyed burning their enemies' teenage children alive. Some commentators call them a terrorist state. They were the epitome of cold-hearted cruelty in a savage ancient world. The closest modern equivalent in what they did, perhaps, is the Islamic State. It loves to torture the enemies of people who do not share their views. And so, in this context, the Most High calls on Jonah, God calls on Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of these Assyrians, and preach to them, warning its citizens of the upcoming destruction of their city. Jonah's task is to travel overland a distance of about 600 miles to declare God's condemnation of Nineveh, and implied is thereby calling them to repentance. So God is not one simply to destroy the Assyrians for their horrible cruelty, for killing tens of thousands of people, many of whom innocent women and children. The Judge of the universe does not simply want to punish those proud people for their rebellion against their Creator and their God. He desires their repentance. The Almighty wants to forgive these tyrants of the 8th century. And that may seem strange to us, and it should seem strange to us, because God is just and He punishes what is wrong. It might also seem strange to us in the context of the Old Testament, because we have all read different stories of the Old Testament, when God simply wipes out his enemies through the Israelites, when God severely punishes other nations, and even Israel, for their terrible sins. We may also think that in the Old Testament times, God loves only the Israelites, that he desires only for them to receive his mercy, forgiveness, his fatherly love, and that he really is indifferent to the other nations. But this is a very mistaken idea. Many people divide God into the cruel God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New Testament, and that's completely mistaken. We don't have enough time to talk about this in detail, but I can briefly highlight some examples of God's love for all nations in the Old Testament. Because in Old Testament times, God also desires the repentance of other nations. He doesn't change in the New Testament. He just works differently. And he wants for the Israelites in the Old Testament to actively demonstrate his greatness and love to non-believing people. And so he gives them land that is literally smack dab in the center of the ancient world and its trade route. So all the nations would travel through Israel and see this nation that worships God and see their example and therefore desire to know their God. God wants all nations to see what he does in Israel because all nations are after all created in his image. That's why from the very beginning, all people knew about the one God. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve. We are all Noah's sons and daughters. And these people knew their creator personally. And so God tells Abraham, many generations after Noah, that through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. God sends Joseph, a great grandson of Abraham, to Egypt. where people eventually realized that the God of Israel is stronger than their gods. They were the great civilization. They were the world power of that time. And it's there that God shows that he is stronger. The Old Testament specifically mentions non-Jews, such as Moses' wife, Zipporah, Rahab, and Ruth, who begin to worship the one God. Through Daniel and Babylon and Esther and Persia, even the emperors see the power of God and some of them come to faith in Him. The Israelites were singing the psalms, oftentimes singing the psalms, and in those psalms we read 175 times that all people on earth should know God and worship Him. You think God was trying to give a message to His people? God tells Israel that the temple in Jerusalem must be a place of prayer for all nations. And there is even a separate courtyard in the temple for foreigners, those who have not completely become Jews. And so it should be crystal clear to us that even in the Old Testament, God is not only uncompromisingly holy and just, wisely punishing and destroying evil, that's true, but he's also compassionate, gracious, and loving to people of all nations. He truly cares for people, for their spiritual and physical condition. It does not simply punish all who reject His law, who spurn His parental love. And that is why the Most High calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, so that the cruel Assyrians could also hear about His holiness, His justice, and sincerely repent of their sins and turn away from evil, hoping to receive God's sweet mercy. After all, he says the following famous words about himself to Moses, The Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This morning we saw from Acts chapter 8 that God is the greatest missionary. since he does everything necessary to grant particular people repentance, forgiveness, and eternal love. He is much more passionate about people's salvation than we are. He answers our lawlessness with limitless love. He reacts to our rebellion with redemption. He breaks the curse of sin with costly compassion. God the Father gives his own Son as a ransom to free us, his enemies, from slavery to sin. He sacrifices Jesus Christ so that you and I can escape punishment. Jesus voluntarily lives and bleeds and is resurrected for us to give us life forever. And when Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem, where people would soon, in a few days, reject, falsely accuse, and crucify him, we read that Jesus' heart is filled with compassion, and he weeps because of Jerusalem's future destruction and the death of its citizens. In Jesus Christ, we truly see the heart of God, and it's also the God of the Old Testament. It's only because of God's great compassion that you and I can have any hope, any hope at all of being forgiven, of inheriting eternal life, of experiencing God's fatherly love. It's not because of anything we have done. It's not because of who we are in ourselves. Our own actions can never earn God's favor and grace, because by ourselves we deserve only punishment, even death, for our lack of sincere love for God and for other people. So, brothers and sisters, dear friends, in the first place, be amazed by our holy, just God's incredible compassion. And in the second place, then, recognize and repent of your own self-righteousness. I'm not just saying that to you, I'm saying it to myself as well. Recognize and repent of your own self-righteousness. Jonah is not impressed with God's compassion. As a matter of fact, he hates it. He hates it so much that he wants no part in it. He would rather die than see God's compassion on the Assyrians. When God tells Jonah in chapter 1 to go to Nineveh, Jonah, a Jew, notice, Jonah, a Jew, spends a huge sum of money in order to run the other way. The Jews were not seafarers or sailors. Remember, Noah was not a Jew. Yet Jonah, who probably could not swim, gets on a boat to sail to what we think was the other side of Spain. There's no way on earth that Jonah is going to preach to those Ninevites, to his arch enemy, unless God intervenes. And that's exactly what he does, because our Creator has compassion, not only on the Ninevites, but also on Jonah. He's not going to leave Jonah alone. So God sends a perfect storm and a wide-mouthed whale to change the direction of Jonah's life, figuratively and literally. Once he's in the belly of the whale, Jonah is incredibly relieved, and he thanks God for saving him. But if you notice, if you ever looked carefully at Chapter 2, he never actually repents of not wanting to preach to the Ninevites. He never repents of disobeying God. Yet in Chapter 3, he travels from the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, where the whale spits him out, he travels from there to Nineveh, a distance of about 500 miles. He's doing something right. And having arrived in the beautiful city of Nineveh, Jonah grudgingly or happily, I don't know, announces, 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. And the Assyrians are so overwhelmed with a sense of their own guilt before an almighty God that they all repent in sackcloth and ashes. And even the king, we read himself, calls for a great fast of repentance for both the people and the animals. And so chapter three of the book of Jonah ends with the following words, 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. Now the words evil way of the Ninevites and disaster which God did not do to them have the same root. So people turn away from their evil and God spares them the evil of their destruction. And it's interesting and important to note that we have the same root in chapter 4 verse 1 in the word translated as displeased. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry. So you see what's going on here? God does not bring evil. upon people who turn away from their evil, and in Jonah's eyes, this is evil." So Jonah regards God's mercy as evil. We see his extreme annoyance also in verse 2. He says, and he prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not 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." Jonah quotes the famous Old Testament words describing God's compassion and he throws them back into God's face. Because for Jonah, those words now describe God's evil. In chapter 2, Jonah thanks God from the belly of the whale for saving his soul and his life. Yet now, because of God's compassion on the Ninevites, his enemy, Jonah begs God to take his soul, his life, the same words, from him. Why? Why in chapter two does Jonah rejoice in the mercy of God and here he hates it? Well, it's obvious, right? Chapter two, God reveals his mercy to Jonah. And in chapter three, he is compassionate on the Ninevites. What's going on? Well, Jonah must know that he is a sinful man. He knows that he is guilty before the righteous holy God of Israel. He's a prophet after all. He knows these things. However, as a prejudiced Israelite, Jonah thinks that some other people are much worse than he is. They are not part of the chosen nation. They are heathens. They are the enemy. After all, there are sinners, and then there are sinners. And he's not such a bad person. He is a prophet. He is obeying God's law. At least he's trying to do it. Yes, he recently disobeyed the direct command of the Most High, but that was a unique, exceptional situation. So why wouldn't God have mercy on him? How can God not forgive a man as good and faithful as Jonah? Compared to other sinners, he's quite good. Our family loves large cities. at least many of them, this summer we had the opportunity to visit two beautiful large cities. We visited Manhattan, New York, and also Chicago. And when you walk around the cities, there are some amazing buildings, and some buildings are exceptionally tall, and other buildings are not much taller than buildings you would get in downtown Wheaton. You can see buildings like the One World Trade Center and the Sears Willis Tower, and then you see other buildings that you forget right away. Yet when you fly over such cities in an airplane, as we will do on Tuesday, the difference between the buildings doesn't seem so large anymore when you're far up in the sky. Similarly, when God looks down on this world, the difference between us and our sinful neighbors or pagan neighbors, whoever they are, the difference between us is not all that big. Yes, we are all different. We're not all equally kind, or impatient, or rude. But judged against God's perfect standard of goodness, His law, we're all failures. Nobody's building is tall enough. I can easily look at the example of someone like Osama Bin Laden, and I can judge that man as a murderer. And yet, Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, that my anger is a form of murder. When I lose my temper, then I am getting in the same murky lake of murder that Osama bin Laden was swimming in. Yes, he was swimming on the deep end, but I am most certainly getting dirty and wet. Before a holy God, both of us desperately need repentance and forgiveness. I suppose we are intellectually all aware of this truth. We know that we are, by ourselves, just as lost as other people. However, do we really feel it in our hearts? Do we compare our actions, ourselves, with others around us? Do we also divide the world into good and bad, black and white? Do we look around ourselves on street level in the city condemning others like good Pharisees? Do we compare ourselves to our neighbors, to the people at work? We are members of an OPC church. We read the Bible. We pray to God. We believe His truth. We try to do good. And these other people, oh boy, we don't know what's going to happen to them. Because there are always drug addicts. There are the prostitutes, the alcoholics, people who cheat on their taxes, liberal Democrats, politicians. These are the dirty, the bad people. Thank God we're not like them. Or do we compare ourselves and our actions to God's absolute perfect standard? You remember what Jesus said, right? Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's the standard. So, brothers and sisters, dear friends, recognize and repent of your own self-righteousness. We all wrestle with this. Every person on earth desperately needs God's forgiveness. Every person on earth needs His compassion, His grace, which we can never deserve. And God has chosen to share that mercy with other people through us, as we said this morning, and even with our enemies. And so in the third place, Surprise your worst enemies with love. Surprise your worst enemies with love, with unconditional love. Jonah hated the Assyrians. He was self-righteous and prejudiced. He was a Jewish nationalist. He knew he was superior because he's Jewish. He believed that his nation was better than others because he was a Jew. Jonah believed that he was better than all other people, and that's why he was sitting on a hill baking in the sun outside of Nineveh, because he was waiting for the great show, the fire from heaven, a repeat of Sodom and Gomorrah. How about you? Whom do you hate? Perhaps hate is too strong a word for good Christian people. Well, who's your enemy? maybe you don't have any enemies. Who are you prejudiced against? Do you have prejudices? I grew up as a racist. Growing up in South Africa, I was prejudiced against black people. I thought that I was better than they are just by virtue of the fact that I have white skin and they have black skin. I'm not proud of that, but that's a fact. In Ukraine today, many people are prejudiced against Russians. This prejudice is encouraged on radio, TV, and social media, even by teachers in schools. Now, some Russian people under Putin's leadership have done a lot of bad things in Ukraine, but is that a reason to hate Russians? We all love to divide people into groups and put ourselves in the better group. Right? How about in the U.S. today? There still is a lot of racial prejudice in this country. Because it comes naturally to sinful human beings. It's easy to be prejudiced against different groups of immigrants, for example. Mexicans, people from Central America, Polish or South Africans, whoever. We naturally judge those who hold political, social, or religious views different from ours. It's easy to point fingers. And it's very easy to build walls. Now, I'm not talking about walls along our southern border. I'm not getting into that issue at all. It's very easy to build walls around our communities, our schools, our churches, and our homes. Believe me, I grew up in a country with social walls all over the place. But God doesn't call his church and his people to build walls. He calls us to build bridges, to connect. He doesn't want us to sit and bake in the sun in self-righteousness outside of the city, getting frustrated about big-leaved plants and little worms, and waiting for the city's well-deserved destruction. Our Savior wants us to get dirty inside of the city, getting to know the people, caring for their felt needs and their spiritual needs, as Jesus was doing time and time again, surprising them with unconditional love, speaking truth into their lives in the context of a real relationship. Jonah had 120,000 repenting Ninevites that needed to learn more about their creator and compassionate God. He needed to be starting Bible studies. He needed to be teaching these people so they can learn about this great, wonderful God. What on earth is Jonah doing outside of the city? God wants our homes to be open. He wants us to learn how to speak to our Muslim or our LGBTQ neighbors who proudly fly the rainbow flag. He wants to see them in our homes and for us to be in theirs. Not building walls, but building bridges. God wants our churches to be open. Our Sunday morning worship services and evening worship services are first and foremost for God's people to gather together and worship Him as His church. But do we take into account those people who are not from a church background? How would a totally unchurched person experience our Sunday worship services? Would such a person coming into our services even understand what on earth we're talking about? Believe me, I'm not throwing stones here. I'm not accusing you in any way. I love this church. I'm talking, first of all, to myself. These are things that we need to be thinking about all the time. Are we involved in our neighborhood here in Wheaton or in Lviv, Ukraine? Are we open to our communities? Are we against the city? Or are we for the city? Are we inside? or outside? Are we building walls or building bridges? We can sit outside the city and be really pure and righteous and also be really irrelevant. Now, some of you might be thinking, but we're supposed to be in this world, but not of this world, right? Well, exactly. We're supposed to be in this world. We're supposed to be remarkably different, very different. We're supposed to be salt and light in a decaying and dark world, but not hiding outside of the city or behind walls. It's a crucial attitude that should affect everything we think of and do as God's people, as His church. Charles Spurgeon, always good for a quote, said, you shall not find on the roll of history that for a length of time any Christian community has flourished after it has become negligent of the outside world. This is a huge challenge for me and for you. Thankfully, we are not alone. Because God's amazing compassion and mercy overcome all of our self-righteous prejudices and our hatred. And so surprise your worst enemies with love. Do it with God's Spirit working through you. And not just your enemies, but all people. The Bible is full of great examples of faith. People like Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, Samuel, David, Daniel, Esther. None of them is perfect, but they're great examples. They're inspirations to us. Jonah, however, is not. But I'm so glad that Jonah's story is in the Bible because I can relate to Jonah. I am also pig-headed, self-centered, prejudiced, and stubborn. I am also sometimes much more concerned with my own petty comfort than with the salvation of other people. Jonah's example is not an excuse for me to be this way, but it encourages me to know that if God could work through self-righteous Jonah, then he can work through me as well. There is hope for me. There is hope for each of us to be an effective instrument in God's almighty loving hands. Because God's relentless compassion moves us, stubbornly self-righteous people, to surprise our worst enemies with love. And may He do that through us by means of His Spirit in Wheaton, Chicago, and in Ukraine. Let us pray together. Our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a gracious God, a compassionate God, and we only benefit because of it. We thank you that you have shown your grace to us. We don't know why you have chosen us. Heavenly Father, we know that we are not worthy. Help that truth to keep sinking deeper into our hearts, that we are not worthy. It's not because of anything we have done or not because of who we are. It's because of you and your mercy and your grace that you chose us to be your children, loved forever. We pray, Lord, that we will never look down on other people, never judge other people thinking that we are better. We pray, Lord, that we will look at other people with compassion. We pray that you will love them through us, that your Holy Spirit will work more compassion in our hearts and love for other people so that our hearts will bleed for them, so that we will want to serve them. so that we will want to get to know them. We'll want to find out what their needs are. So we'll want to love them in concrete ways and so that we will want to speak your truth into their lives. That we will want to come alongside them and help them. We pray that our churches, our homes, our hearts will be open. Help us, Heavenly Father, not to separate ourselves off, not to build walls. Help us always to be open to the hurts, the needs that are around us. Help us, Heavenly Father, to grow strong in our faith together so that we can also reach others. May you bless this church and our church in Lviv and your churches across the world. so that people will be amazed by the compassion, the love, the truth, the beauty that come through your church. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.