Michael Ramsden on Jonah 4: 1-11, "The heart of God"

all right I'm going to pray for Michael Lord we pray that you the compassionate and the Great Lord that you would be here in this room talking to us and we're angry when we're not understanding anything you're doing you're saying let us understand you open our heart to your message this morning so that we can take another glimpse at you so I pray that you would bless Michael with your Holy Spirit so that I Keane that he can preach to us have a word for our heart pray in your name thank you well thank you it's lovely to be with you this final time as I was preparing this message this morning I was reminded of a story of a pastor who was leaving his church and it was the last Sunday many people were coming to give a testimony of thank you for all the work he had done at the end the worship leader came to the front of the church he said Jesus brought our pastor to us and now Jesus is taking him away let us all stand and sing that wonderful hymn what a friend we have in Jesus and I'm praying that you won't be feeling like that by the time we could get to the end I've enjoyed being here and it's been my privilege to be looking at this passage of Jonah with you and today we come back to the big central question where we started on the first day it's one of the most perhaps amongst one of the most frequently asked questions I hear today as I travel around the world and it's this you Christians say that your God is loving and kind and yet in the Bible we read a lot about judgment and how is that possible why doesn't God just accept everybody everything why is it that we find judgment there too now that question has a lot of components to it and let me just say a few introductory thing before we just look at the text of chapter four in detail first of all this one of the narratives that goes with this is something goes something like this the god of the Old Testament specializes in war Roth and vengeance the god of the New Testament specializes in love mercy and kindness it's almost like at the end of the Old Testament God gathered all of his Archangels together for a little conference to do a PR makeover and he said to the Archangels and remember there's only one named Archangel Michael a so he says to the Archangels do you have any advice for me I'm not sure the whole war thing is working for me in the way I hoped and one of the angels as well what about love that message that could work much better and God is there okay we'll give that a try so the argument is there are two gods in here the god of the Old Testament and then the God of the new now this objection can be answered through the technical process known as reading because if you read the Old Testaments you will read about God's love and judgment and if you read the New Testament you will read about God's love and judgment he is the same God in both as a matter of fact Jonah's problem with the God of the Old Testament as we saw in that sketch just now as we heard in the reading earlier is that God is too kind too merciful too gracious too compassionate Jonah's problem with the God of the Old Testament is he just loves forgiving too much so this idea that you have one type of God in the Old Testament and a different kind of God in the new we just need to read it he is the same God now the other issue we have when we read about God's judgment and when we hear about Jonah preaching a message of judgment is that we often confuse judgment and revenge now I don't know how many of you watch James Bond movies don't be ashamed of your hand if you watch James Bond movies shame on you I only watch those movies for reasons of cultural research and analysis I'm forced to watch them it's part of my job I can remember watching the premiere of Goldeneye now that movie the way it ends is James Bond and the bad guy are fighting in a giant radar there was a lake and the lake disappears to reveal a huge concrete bowl and there are metal wires running over the middle of it and suspended 200 meters above the middle of the bowl is a huge antenna metal antenna and the antenna is controlling the satellite in space which is now going to be used as a weapon and so James Bond and the bad guy are fighting now what do you want to happen at the end of a James Bond movie do you want the bad person to be caught put on trial and then sent to prison be honest no what do you want to happen to them right someone said it you want them to die how do you want them to die do you want them to be running away from James Bond they tread on their shoelace they fall and a bus hits them no you want them to die slowly and painfully so James Bond is fighting the bad guy and James Bond is about to die but of course he doesn't die he is immortal and then there was the big reversal and now James Bond is clearly in the position of strength the bad guy is hanging on by his fingertips and James Bond is thinking do I save him because he's an English gentleman he's meant to favor the bad guy let's go and now you have lots of camera angles you have a wide camera angle you see the body falling slowly all the way to the bottom you have a camera from the ground looking up to the sky you see the body coming down to you're getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it gets closer you have another camera from the antenna the metal antenna looking down and you can see him falling away as he goes down you have the wide camera angle are you screaming all the way down you see the ground rushing up to his face you see him falling away from the metal antenna and then BAM he lands on his head from 200 meters now unlike Glenn Harrison who were speaking yesterday I am NOT medically trained I have a suspicion that if you fall 200 meters and you land on concrete on your head you are dead is he dead No he opens his eyes just in time to see the giant metal antennae released through a huge explosion above his head and now the big metal spike starts coming down to him you have the wide-angle picture with the body and the spike ah you hear him crying you have the view from the metal antennae going down the head the body's getting bigger and bigger you hear the man screaming you have a picture from the man's eyes looking up you can see it coming straight towards and he's screaming the whole time then you have the wide-angle and the big metal antennae from the middle of the radar goes through his mouth and pins him into the floor and the audience stood up and started they loved it we very often cry for justice but what we're looking for is revenge and we must never confuse these two there is a big difference between our cry for revenge and God's sense of justice they're not the same now lastly however we have a slightly more philosophical point which is but surely there's this contradiction nonetheless between love and judgement in God now here we need to think about love a little bit more carefully I don't know if any of you have read Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice and have you read that any of you seen the BBC six-part adaptation yeah if you've seen that you will notice how much I look like mr. Darcy that is not funny if if you have not seen this TV series you are most probably male and single now this book Pride and Prejudice is one of the most endearing love stories in the English language if being made into multiple films in multiple languages multiple series ison still a best-seller hundreds of years after it was written it tells the love story between a brilliant and slightly complicated woman Elizabeth and a rather proud aloof mr. Darcy and Darcy falls in love with Elizabeth but he doesn't realize it now there's a moment in the book where mr. Darcy comes to call on Elizabeth and he is shown into the living room where she is and as he steps in he sees her there all alone all of her family have gone and so he apologizes because as a man he cannot be alone in a room with a woman to whom he is not betrothed to be married and I would like to say as the father of two daughters I believe that is the only biblical moral that all people should live by so he apologizes and he says I had no idea you were unaccompanied if I had known I would not have called and he turns and he starts to walk out of the room and as he's about to leave the door he stops he turns around he walks back in he looks at her and he says it will not do my feelings will not be repressed you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you now gentlemen listen carefully that line is a winner [Applause] however he goes on to say that he loves her even though it goes against his will even though it goes against his reason even though it goes against his own better character and she rejects his love being a man he can't understand why so he says I may inquire how you so easily dismiss me and she looks at him and says you told me that you loved me even though it goes against your will even though it goes against reason even though it goes against your own better character in other words she is saying you told me that you loved me against all better judgment you see true love doesn't exist in the absence of judgment true love exists in the presence of it most of us are desperate to know intimacy in our life we're desperate we go around projecting an image of ourselves to other people hoping they will like us and love us the problem with this is that people fall in love with the image and not the reality which is why you can be very rich very powerful very famous or even very beautiful and still terribly lonely because people only fall in love with the image they never get to know the real you I can more or less guarantee no matter how popular you are if no one knows the real you no one knows your weaknesses your shortcomings your failings the dark side to your character if no one knows you like that you're terribly alone however if there are a few people who know the real you they know your failings they know your weaknesses they know that dark side to you and yet they still like you and they still love you those are the most meaningful relationships you have and when anything bad happens and more importantly when anything good happens they are the first person you want to tell do you know a love like that there is a very famous philosophical treatise that was written addressing this problem a few years ago by a group of philosophers called the black-eyed peas and I would like to quote some of their philosophy to you this morning here's what they say people killing people dying children hurt you hear them cryin can you practice what you preach would you turn the other cheek father father father help us send us some guidance from above because people have me questioning where is the love now you know why there are no English rap artists but he continues I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder as I get older people get colder most of us only care about money making selfishness got us followin the wrong direction wrong information always shown by the media negative images are the main criteria but but in their song they say negative images is the main criteria but I corrected the grammar is not right their kids want to act like they see in the cinema whatever happened to the values of humanity whatever happened to fairness and equality instead of spreading love with spreading animosity lack of understanding leading lives away from unity but here's the key part the truth is kept secret it swept under a rug if you have never known truth then you have never known love and they're absolutely right the truth is kept secret it swept under a rug if you have never known truth then you have never known love true love doesn't exist in the absence of judgment true love exists in the presence of it that's precisely the way in which God loves us God sees us exactly as we are he sees our failings he sees our shortcomings he sees our weaknesses he sees the dark side to our camera character to our character yet he loves us that is what makes God's love meaningful he doesn't love us because we are lovely rather his love will ultimately make us beautiful in his sight that's why in 1 John chapter 4 verse 10 it says this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin or Romans 5:8 God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners Christ died for us in verse 10 of chapter 5 of Romans it says when we were God's enemies when we hated him he still loved us this is the love that we read about in Jonah it is not a love in the absence of judgment it is a love in the presence of it and Jonah cannot see this but he himself gives us the clue to understand it but there is a sense that we still haven't yet got to the heart of all of Jonah's anger God asked Jonah the question twice in chapter 4 is it right for you to be angry he starts with the beginning is it right for you to be angry and then John ascends a plant the plant grows over him the plant dies now again interestingly we see parallels in the Hebrew it literally says God anointed a plant God anointed a worm to eat the plants Kate the plant died it's the same thing when he says God anointed the fish he sent it he anointed the storm he's trying to speak to Jonah and after the plant dies God says a second time is it right for you to be angry about the plant and Jonah says it is right I am so angry I could die now Jonah is not angry because he is a militant vegetarian but he is very angry because justice as far as he is concerned has failed in Jonah chapter 1 it says that nineveh's exceedingly great wickedness rose up to heaven and in Jonah chapter 4 verse 1 it says and Jonah's seedings Lee great anger rose up to heaven as a matter of fact the word translated wickedness and the word translated anger are the same they can mean the same they have but in Chapter one it definitely means they are wicked they are evil but in Chapter four instead of the word being used once it's used twice it's the anger of exceedingly great anger rose up before God and Jonah is looking at it and he is angry the Assyrians who have done all these terrible things have not been punished now we can all respond to this imagine the following scenario with me imagine you were invited here by a friend they said come to this conference it will be interesting there's someone speaking every morning you will like it you are angry with them because they lied to you it's not interesting let's suppose you drove here a thousand kilometres to come to this conference and after the last session today you go to your car and you're about to put the key in your car and someone has vandalized it someone has come with another key and they've walked up and down the side of your car how would you feel now would you not feel angry we do not like even look up to heaven and say God is this a joke don't even know if I believe in you I come here to listen to someone bore me about you and now this is what happens imagine you're looking at heaven and as you look up you see a camera a security camera it's pointing straight at your car so you come into the conference centre you find one of the volunteers you say are the security cameras working they say yes they say are they being recorded they say yes you say could I have a recording they give it to you so now you take the little memory stick you plug it into your tablet or your phone or whatever you press play you see the video and not only do you see vandalize your car you recognize them they're from your own city they came to this conference they never liked you from the moment they met you they have always made your life difficult they're walking through the car park and they stop they look around they take out the key they go up and down the side of the car they put the key in the pocket and they walk away singing now how do you feel well a little bit better imagine that you go out and you buy a nice cake with strawberries I like strawberries and chocolate and at lunchtime you go to them and just as they're finishing lunch you say I have brought you a piece of cake and you give it to them and you give them a cup of coffee and they say oh thank you and they're about to eat the cake and you go Oh first of all I have a short video I would like you to watch with me now how are you feeling pretty good right this is Greece imagine you're the person who did the vandalism you think you got away with it and now this idiot is giving you Kitty and cake and you're about to bite into that delicious cake when outcomes their phone and now in colour with sound you see what happens now how do you feel have you ever noticed when we get caught doing something wrong we so often feel angry about it we're angry that we were caught when we are caught doing something wrong we so often feel angry the way you respond emotionally to the idea of judgment tells you which side of the law you are on if you have suffered huge injustice you cry out for a good judgement you cry out for justice you want it to come and you're disappointed if it doesn't but if you are guilty and now all of a sudden justice and judgment comes very often we respond with pride and with anger if I were to tell you this morning that God will judge you and as a result you felt angry what does that tell you about what side of the law you stand on in regards to God it is very interesting the innocent have nothing to fear from judgment it is only the guilty who have something to fear ultimately and we are all guilty we have all done things wrong if you are saturated esepcially you must get married now now Jonah right now is angry it's a self-righteous anger he believed he is right and God is wrong and justice has failed and now he's angry with God where is the justice that makes this right now when we cry for justice we expect three things to happen we nee expect three things to happen to the guilty first of all there needs to be retribution the person who is guilty should get what they deserve they should get a fine they should be sent to prison they should be punished retribution secondly deterrence we should punish them to discourage other people from doing this otherwise everyone will do it and lastly rehabilitation we want to change their behavior we want to see their behavior cured you need all three of these for justice to truly work but now we live in a world where we like the last to rehabilitation change the offender cure them and deterrence deter others but we don't like the first retribution now this course is a problem imagine that in this campus here the ifvs volunteers say there are one or two people who are bringing their cars here and they're driving around and they're going too fast so from now on if you are driving around on this where all these buildings are you must go no more than five kilometers an hour if you go over five kilometers an hour you will be punished so you're driving your car at six kilometres an hour and someone in a yellow jacket they stop you and they have a radar gun and they pull you over they say you are doing six kilometres an hour then they ask you to put your hand out of the window so you put your hand out of the window and they pull up a shotgun ball and they blow off your hand now is this likely to rehabilitate you will you change your behavior oh yes is it fair is it just is it right let's supposing they catch you doing six kilometres an hour they say which country are you from you say I'm a member of the SMD so they say fine and they build gallows out to by the road and they find ten members of the SMD and they hang them from the gallows and they say with a sign around their neck if you're caught speeding this is what will happen to your friends now let me ask you will this deter other people when you come and you see them hanging there will it make you think I better not speed yes is it fair is it just is it right some of the most totalitarian regimes in history have developed a sense of justice which is only about rehabilitation and only about deterrence and we have totally forgotten retribution it is a terrible thing the writer CS Lewis said it like this he said we demand over deterrence what not if it is just but whether it deters we demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds thus we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will either cure them or deter others we have removed them from the sphere of justice all together God upholds justice it is so important but now we have a problem and this is the problem that Jonah has is at the heart of his cry and it's this you see we talk about justice and we talk about mercy here's the problem whenever you exercise mercy by definition you do it at the expense of justice so justice is you do something wrong you get punished that's justice mercy is you do something wrong you get forgiven that's mercy but when you exercise mercy you always exercise mercy at the expense of justice so if you've done the wrong you love mercy but if you feel you've been wronged you hate mercy it makes you angry this is why Jonah is so angry this is what we can relate to when we see the guilty forgiven and this is a problem for every religion in the world in every religion of the world God exercises mercy at the expense of his justice apart from one and that's in the Christian faith you see Jonah says God you are gracious and compassionate now that word compassion as we have it comes from the ecclesiastical latin that governs the life of the church I can tell how excited you are just hearing that it means two things it means to make a moral judgment about something and to do something you are moved in the depth of your being to do something about it you have compassion in the face of poverty when you make an absolute moral judgment that is wrong and then you are moved in your being to do something about it if you're not moved to do anything about it you don't have compassion you have moralizing you have compassion in the face of racism when you make an absolute moral judgment that is wrong and then you are moved in your being to do something if you don't do anything you don't have compassion you just have moralizing again God is gracious and compassionate he looks at every human heart he sees what is there and he says that is wrong and then he is moved in the depth of his being to do something about it and that is the cross at the cross God comes into this world in the person of Jesus Christ he unites himself and makes himself one with the believer arson becomes his sin he pays the penalty for us he takes the punishment for us for all the things of which we are guilty he takes the punishment literally by becoming one with us he makes himself involved and he fulfills the requirements of justice and having fulfilled the requirements of justice God doesn't exercise his mercy at the expense of his justice God exercises his mercy through his justice and through the cross he extends forgiveness to all people in all places at all time and Jonah should know enough of his Bible to know this the Ninevites are not forgiven and said what you have done doesn't matter for all those who truly repent the penalty had been paid by Jesus Christ add the cross God goes back through history and forward through time he gathers all the sin and he places it on Jesus he takes it into himself and he pays for us and having paid he then offers us forgiveness it's the most incredible and humbling thing because having paid for us he then clothes us in His goodness and his righteousness and he pays for us and so God continues to reason with Jonah Jonah you're concerned about a plant over which you had no power and no control should I not be concerned over this whole city over which I do have influence should I not do something to save it to rescue them should I not be concerned but Jonah is too filled with hate the trouble is you cannot receive forgiveness unless you're willing to admit you've done something wrong if you don't think you've done anything wrong you don't need forgiveness that's why true love exists in the presence of judgment and that's what makes it so meaningful it's why we as Christians love to sing about it a couple of years ago I was preaching in a country which is currently filled with all kinds of violence and I got a phone call from a friend of mine who had joined this group it's very militant group and to learn their holy book with them and he actually memorized the entire book and there's also a commentary that goes along with this book and he'd memorize a lot of that too which is very difficult to do he was the best student so they made him top of the class and when he graduated he told all of them oh by the way I'm a Christian at this point there was a debate do we kill him or not now there was a visiting scholar from a different country who said we can't kill him he has memorized this book he knows it better than me so he said to them I will come back with a friend and I my friend and I will speak and we will tell you about why Jesus had to die on the cross so we can be forgiven and he's telling me this story and I'm in England and I said to him on the telephone who is going to go with you to speak to these suicide bombers and he said you are my friend so then he said I have a I have some friends they are policemen they will come with their guns and they will protect you while you're speaking I said to him we're speaking to a room filled with suicide bombers machine guns aren't going to help anyway after a few months we decided to go we took one policeman with us when we were inside he stayed in the car with his gun so no one could put a bomb in the car that seemed like a good idea we drove an hour and a half outside of the main city and as we we came to this one entrance and we knocked on there's a big metal gates and they opened the metal gates and as we came in there were sandbags and men with ak-47 machine guns and a hundred meters away they had body targets you know with the circles and the people I looked at my friend I said is this an open-air preach they want me to do and then when they found out who we are they like oh no no wrong entrance wrong entrance go around the front so we drove another half a kilometer at the front it was like a school so we now come into the school and we sit down and there are about 50 people in a tiny room absolutely tiny you can barely move and as we begin to explain what makes forgiveness possible God exercises his forgiveness by fulfilling the just punishment we deserve and having fulfilled it offers us mercy instead people started crying the organisers got very angry several people in that room became Christians and as we left the person translating for me was on the phone for two hours we got back to where I was staying he said they are very angry I'm gonna go back and see them I said is this a good idea he said yes the next day I was speaking at another meeting I said to him how did it go he says they really hate you I said that's good to know he says they are very upset that people became Christians I said I can understand that he said I've invited them to hear you tonight I said are you crazy now what I would like to say is I felt brave and strong instead I seem to remember lots of Tears and when I walked into the room I calculated how many exits there were and how far it would take me to get to each one these guests came into the room and as they came in everybody knew who they were and the room went quiet I was speaking on a stage maybe this wide and they were all fat around tables because they had dinner and to my far right was one all these people sat in a circle one of them while I was speaking was looking at me with such hatred in his eyes you could almost touch it it was so distracting that I actually had to turn and preach like this so I couldn't see them does that make sense because every time I looked at him it was like this solid wall of hatred just coming towards me when I got to the end there were stairs on this side and that side so I thought to walk this side to go away and I just felt God stopped me so I turned around and I walked the other way down the stairs to him and he stood up to meet me and I said to him I'm so happy to see you here and was immediately convicted for lying he took one step closer to me and said listening to this gospel is like watching flowers grow in a barren field and then he put his arms around me and just wept God is able to reach out to the hardest and the most difficult and he doesn't stop he assures everyone everywhere of judgment either we will be judged for what we have done wrong or if we receive His forgiveness he will be judged for what we have done wrong but either way justice is upheld but his grace is extended to everyone everywhere and we can all know it and we can all receive it can I pray for you again father we've dealt with some very big topics these four days Lord you know how much we wrestle with some of these things and we see how your own servant Jonah wrestles with this and with you Lord we thank you that throughout all of this you continue to talk to him and thank you know that this book ends with you pleading with Jonah to change his heart and mind and see what you're doing father we also know that if we get what we deserve none of us would be here but it's only because of what you have done for us that we can know forgiveness and we pray that we receive that forgiveness from you from you new today may we know it in our hearts and lives and will you help us to forgive as we have been forgiven and may your light and your hope be seen in us and it's in Christ's Holy Name we pray amen thank you very much for having me you will now have some wonderful notices to tell you what to do next thank you

Channel: IFES Europe

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Id: LfnJ5l4485M

Length: 42min 16sec (2536 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017