God's Mercy

Today's sermon. Next Sunday brings to a completion the series on Jonah which can also be found at DMC Resources.

Jonah 3:10-4:2                         God’s Mercy

Introduction

When one thinks of Jonah fleeing from his assignment to preach in Nineveh, the assumption is quickly made that Jonah was afraid of Nineveh. We feel for Jonah. After all, who among us would relish the call to walk into the capital city of North Korea and proclaim judgment against it? Our text this morning reveals the real motive behind Jonah’s flight.

Text

¹⁰ 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.

The king of Nineveh’s efforts worked. He had ordered rituals of contrition and wide-spread repentance throughout the population for the very purpose of averting God’s judgment. “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” Lo, and behold, God did turn from his anger and spared the city.

It is at this point that a question is raised, namely, does God change his mind? The Hebrew term

“relented” is the same as for “repented.” Does God actually repent? To be honest, I don’t find this to be an issue considering the context of the passage. The presumption is that God never had intention or desire for Nineveh to repent, but Jonah ran away precisely because he suspected God intended to display mercy.

But why pronounce doom when mercy is intended? Why not have Jonah proclaim that judgment would come only if the people did not repent? Any veteran parent can explain. If you want your kids to settle down and behave, tell them you’ve had enough and pronounce their doom. They quickly stop their misbehavior, and you are now in the position to be benevolent and spare them. The kids think they changed the parent’s mind, but you know better.

What then is Jonah’s response to God’s benevolence?

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.

Don’t you love this? Of all the responses to expect toward a city repenting; of all the motivations to expect for Jonah’s effort to get out of coming to Nineveh in the first place, this response of Jonah would never have come to our mind. Jonah is angry. He is not angry at the Ninevites; he is angry at God. He is angry at God for what? For being gracious and merciful! This is better than the fish story. Let’s see if we can figure out Jonah.

To understand Jonah, we need to understand what Nineveh represented. It likely was at that time the capital of Assyria. Nineveh represented Assyria, just as Washington represents America, so that what is said of Nineveh is the same as speaking of Assyria.

Assyria was the dominant power throughout much of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. Jonah comes along during the beginning of the eighth century. This is how he knows Assyria – a northern power ever threatening the stability of his country and even collecting tribute. He knows Assyria to be a ruthless power. Perhaps he even foresees that this power will destroy his beloved nation of Israel. Can you understand now Jonah’s displeasure at seeing his God relent from destroying the nation that will show no mercy to his own nation?

The only other assignment we know that was given to Jonah is in 2 Kings 14:25. There we read that the king of Israel, Jeroboam II, was able to restore Israel’s boundaries, according to the word of the Lord as spoken by Jonah. That’s the kind of prophesying work that Jonah liked. It is a much better assignment than being sent to Nineveh. Yes, he was sent to pronounce judgment, but he knew the Lord God, and he had what proved to be just cause to suspect God to use him to show mercy.

What was it that Jonah knew? He knew the scriptures.

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 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 (Exodus 34:5-7).

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Psalm 86:15).

Jonah knew that the Lord is a holy God. He knew that the Lord is righteous and demands justice. But he also knew that the Lord is merciful, and it was that mercy Jonah could not trust.

But isn’t mercy the very quality of God that Jonah as an Israelite ought to have prized? After all, it was that very mercy that gave the people hope of not being destroyed. That is true, but he and the people of Israel understand God’s mercy to be connected to his covenant promises.

Here is the real issue. It is not that Nineveh is particularly evil (though it was wicked). Rather, the issue is that Nineveh was outside the covenant that God had made with his chosen nation Israel. Yes, by all means may God be merciful, but such mercy is for his own people.

Psalm 103 praises God for the mercy reserved for his people:

The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all who are oppressed.
⁷ He made known his ways to Moses,
    his acts to the people of Israel.
⁸ The Lord is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
⁹ He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger forever.
¹⁰ He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.

When God spoke of himself as being merciful and gracious in the Exodus passage, he was declaring who he was to his new covenant nation. The Lord is merciful and gracious to his people. He does not deal with his people according to their sins. It is his covenant nation that is oppressed. Therefore, he will exercise judgment against those who are outside of the Israel and who oppress his people. Nineveh is the exemplar of an oppressor which needs to be destroyed.

And let’s be honest, Jonah would be thinking. However sincere the Ninevites might think they were in their repentance, real repentance would include giving up their ambition to conquer nations. And they would forsake their gods and worship the one true Lord God. There is no indication that they changed their religion. No, Nineveh deserved destruction from every perspective – as an oppressing nation, as a nation outside the Lord’s covenant, as a nation that would not forsake its ways.

Nahum, who came after Jonah, expressed Jonah’s mind very well in his prophesy regarding Nineveh.

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!  (2:8-10)

⁶ I will throw filth at you
    and treat you with contempt
    and make you a spectacle.
⁷ And all who look at you will shrink from you and say,
“Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?”
    Where shall I seek comforters for you? (3:6-7)

That is what Nineveh deserves because she is a violent, ruthless city, and because she will bring Israel to her own destruction in 722 B.C.

So, why, God? Why show mercy to a pagan nation outside of your covenant? Why show mercy to a nation that without mercy will bring destruction to your own people?

Can you understand Jonah now? Can you understand why this assignment was so distasteful to him? And note that Jonah did not preach repentance. He only preached doom. He was not calling the city to do anything to appease the Lord. All of that was the king’s idea, not his. No doubt he was hoping that the idea would not occur to such pagans. Indeed, this was one preacher who did not want his own message to be taken to heart. And can you blame him, now that you understand to whom he preached?

Lessons

I suppose it is at this time that I should take Jonah to task for being so hard-hearted and angry with God, but the Lord will have his little talk with Jonah in the next text. What I want right now is for us to understand and to feel how troubling the mercy of God can really be. For if we do not have such understanding, we will take too lightly the mercy we are to possess and the mercy that has been shown to us.

1. Are we willing to be merciful like our Father?

1. Are we willing to be merciful like our Father? Before we are quick to say “yes,” consider what mercy entails. It entails loving our enemies.

That is what Jesus taught in Luke 6:32-36:

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. ³⁵ But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. ³⁶ Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Who are these enemies? You might say that you have no enemies, meaning no one whom you regard as an enemy. What Jesus means is anyone who mistreats you, as he described in the verses before this text:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹ To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. ³⁰ Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back (vv. 27-30).

Can you not recall even now having been mistreated by someone who has never apologized and is likely to do the same again? Jesus says to be merciful. Turn the other cheek, but not only turn one’s cheek, do good to the abuser. That is what is asked of anyone who wants to be a child of God, “for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” This is the burden that Jonah bore and is the same for us.

2. Do we understand that we are the Ninevites?

Do you understand that we are the Ninevites? We Gentiles were not part of the covenant people. Listen to the Apostle Paul’s description of us:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— ¹² remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:11-13).

As Gentiles, we were not covenant people. We did not possess the heritage of Israel. Do you know what was the first controversy in the Christian church? It was over the idea that Gentiles could be included. Even the apostles needed the vision of Peter to understand that God’s saving mercy extended to nonJews. And it would take the efforts of the former Pharisee Paul to convince the church leaders that Gentiles did not have to first take on the Jewish traditions to be accepted in the church.

And yet God showed us and our Gentile forbearers mercy – saving mercy. So much so that we with our Jewish believing brothers and sisters are identified together. Peter, who needed his vision to accept Gentiles, would write years later to Gentiles:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).

Paul would continue to write in Ephesians: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 14).

How then can we not be merciful to our enemies when God has shown us such mercy?

3. Our assurance of God’s mercy

So far the lesson has been – if God is so merciful, and especially since God has shown us such mercy, we too ought to be merciful to those who mistreat us. If you are like me, you sigh at the burden. I have enough trouble being merciful to people who have done me no wrong, much less to those who have ill-treated me. How can I expect God to continue to be merciful toward me?

Paul addresses this concern in Romans 5:6-11:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— ⁸ but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. ¹¹ More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Here is Paul’s point. If God would show such sacrificial love toward us while we were in a state of being his enemies, how much more can we rest in his love now that he has brought us into a state of reconciliation?

We tend to reverse the argument. We think, now that we know the love shown to us through Christ’s death on the cross, how can God continue to love us when we still act like sinners? We say, “I agree that God has been extraordinarily merciful toward me. All the more I am convicted of my lack of the same merciful spirit. Isn’t there a limit to what I can then expect from God? He will not be mocked.”

No, God will not be mocked, but such an argument ignores two premises. The first is that Christ’s work on the cross produced a change of status for us. Before Christ, we were outside the covenant of God’s nation. As Paul explains in Ephesians 2:19: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” We are citizens now of God’s covenant nation. We are members now of God’s household. We are no longer outsiders, nor are we under a time period of probation. We are justified. We have been reconciled to our heavenly Father.

So, though we do still sin, we are regarded differently than if we were outside the covenant. God’s love now rests on the steadfast love of his covenant promise. It now rests on his being our Father and our King. Like the psalmists, we now appeal to God being merciful and gracious to the people of his covenant. Like the prodigal son who never stopped regarding his father as his father, and who knew that if he returned he would receive mercy, so our God never stops being our Father. So our Father never gives up showing us mercy.

So, there is a change of status by Christ’s work; there is also a change of heart. Romans 2:29 teaches us that being a Jew (i.e. a member of God’s covenant) is not a matter of external circumcision, but rather, “circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.”

Consider Hebrews 8:10, quoting from Jeremiah 31:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Hebrews 8:10).

The point is that we were not merely adopted into God’s family or made citizens of his nation by God’s merciful feelings. Rather, a change was made in us so that we are made acceptable to be adopted. That is the work of the Holy Spirit who has regenerated us and who serves as a seal that we belong to God. Do we still sin? Yes, of course. But we are no longer in a state of sin. We have been justified in Christ by grace through faith and are now being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

The sanctification that the Holy Spirit began in us continues and will continue until we are received into the presence of the Lord. Yes, it can be discouraging to observe how little we have progressed, but even our observation is obscured by our sinful flesh. The Holy Spirit is doing greater work than we think. We are growing in ways we do not necessarily see, one reason being that the Spirit is doing such an excellent job at making us more keenly aware of our sins that we never noticed before. And so we can receive the words for ourselves that Paul wrote to the Philippians: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (1:6).

Truly our God is a gracious and merciful God.