The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my mind and heart in Jonah 4:4,
"But the Lord replied, 'Have you any right to be angry?'"
This question of the Lord for Jonah comes due to Jonah's anger at God's grace and compassion. Jonah tells the Lord the reason he fled from him was, "I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." Jonah 4:2b. God had asked Jonah to go to wicked people of Nineveh and warn of his impending judgment. The Ninevites repented and, "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened." Jonah 3:10. This was what Jonah did not want to see. He desired to see God's judgment of Nineveh.
You would think we might cherish God's grace and compassion as the greatest of all things to discover in this life. At times, however, anger and even hostility gets expressed at the grace of God. I have heard, on occasion, "I don't want anything to do with a god who would forgive so-and-so (usually a mass murderer or someone who has committed some reprehensible crime). Sometimes it is seen in the form of hostility over some perceived point of theology having to do with whether someone can lose their salvation if they commit some sin or other.
Other times I have sensed that a disdain for "easy believe-ism" might accompany a feeling, "if I have made sacrifices in this life and denied myself certain things, I struggle with the thought that God will give someone else who hasn't what he gives me. This is the thought Jesus singled out when he told the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In that story the vineyard owner paid workers he hired at the end of the day the same amount the workers who started at the beginning of the day agreed to work for. That story concludes with the vineyard owner saying to those who worked the whole day, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous." Matthew 20:1-16.
It is interesting to note when Jonah was in the belly of the fish he called out to God to deliver him, "In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry." And, yet, it is this very grace of God that responded to Jonah's cry for help from his predicament that he resents the Lord extending to the Ninevites when they were in theirs.
When it comes to knowing God on the one hand, and yet struggling with conflicting and confusing perspectives with the things of God, I suspect I might be quite a bit like Jonah. I'd like to think I have a clear and undistorted perspective of the things of God, yet the truth is, I'm a lot like Jonah. Certainly the grace and compassion of God is something I know of, and yet, so vast, so transcending, it is difficult for me to wrap my mind around. I'm sure there is so much I need to learn of God's incredible love and the nature of his expressions of grace and compassion. Perhaps much of what can be known of this aspect of God is reserved for those who's insight into the things of God set them apart from the rest of us. I am reminded of Paul's thoughts on this in his prayer for the Ephesians, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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