Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] All right, so several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a close family member of mine who's very dear to me, who just became a Christian. So not long ago, he became a Christian. He, like me, was radically saved by Jesus late in life. The Lord snatched him out of many things as he did me.
[00:00:38] I just. I love. I love this particular family member. And so he texts me one day after the floods in Kerrville happened. And he said, man, I am just really, really struggling with this. I don't. I don't get it.
[00:00:53] It's like, I'm not questioning God. I'm not. I'm not, you know, questioning his character. I'm not questioning his. His existence. I just. He's like, I can't stop weeping over this.
[00:01:01] He's got little girls as well. Just unimaginable tragedy happened in the state of Texas, in our state, not long ago. And so he's confessing these things to me. And so he said, hey, do you have time to talk? And I was like, of course, man. So I called him, and we end up in this good conversation where he's just kind of pouring his heart out to me.
[00:01:21] And in that moment, I felt a great temptation to do what I think we are very tempted to do when we're talking to somebody in pain, and that's to want to fix it.
[00:01:32] So I just said, you know, hey, are you familiar with what the Bible says about suffering?
[00:01:38] He's like, no, not really. And so I was like, okay, well, let me try to just. So I try to paint this, like, biblical perspective on suffering and tragedy and death and why it happens according to the Bible and all of these kinds of things. And not that that's a bad thing to do, but as I'm doing this, I come to kind of realize over the course of the conversation that while it's helpful for him to have that framework, it wasn't necessarily what he needed in that moment. It was just for me to be sad with him.
[00:02:03] And so we have this conversation, and I get off the phone, and I'm kind of thinking it back, and this thought strikes me where, you know, I'm just like, man, I think his response is very Jesus, like.
[00:02:18] Like, I think, you know, that's what the Lord Jesus did. We see him do that throughout his time on earth was to weep over sad things.
[00:02:31] And so I was like, man, I think that's a very Jesus like response. He's just weeping with those who weep, which is something Christians are called to do, that we don't honestly do. Very often or very well. I don't do that very well. And so I texted him and I said, hey, man, I just want to encourage you that I think your response looks like Jesus.
[00:02:46] And if I over talked, I'm sorry.
[00:02:48] And anyway, he was very gracious about that. But all of that to say there is something intrinsic within you, friends, whether you're here and you're a Christian or you're not a Christian, by which you desire justice.
[00:03:01] You desire for the wrongs in the world to be made right. You want that, Everybody wants that.
[00:03:07] Whether you're a Christian or not, religious or not, you want things to be right. You look out at the landscape of the world. You look, if you're honest, at the landscape of your own heart and you see a bunch of things that are wrong with things and you want it to be made right again, do you not? We all want this.
[00:03:23] Do you know why you want this?
[00:03:25] You want this because God has given you that desire.
[00:03:29] You want that because there is a God. If there wasn't a God and everything was subjective and everything was random and there was nothing after death and all of those, there was nothing beyond what you and I can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, et cetera. You wouldn't want, you wouldn't care, you wouldn't know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil.
[00:03:46] We know those things because there is a God and because that God has instilled within you and within me a knowledge of those things. You want justice. But here's the problem.
[00:03:56] When justice, when the desire for justice becomes less about the kingdom of God and more about the kingdom of you, it results in unjust anger.
[00:04:08] And that's what we see in the life of Jonah today.
[00:04:12] We see in the example of Jonah, a believer.
[00:04:16] Okay, so take great encouragement in this reality. Jonah is a believer, a follower of God who's very. Who's still deeply flawed.
[00:04:28] So if your perspective of the Christian life is that you're going to receive Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior and he's just going to fix everything and all your problems are going to go away and all your sin is going to go away and all your suffering is going to stop and all of that, then you have a misconception of the Christian life.
[00:04:43] Jonah is a believer in process. He's a messy, messy, messy man.
[00:04:48] Okay? And so Jonah is going to respond in this just absurd way to something absolutely supernatural and amazing that God does. So I just want to walk through the narrative with you and then I want to just. We're just going to ask the Holy Spirit to give us eyes to see where we are in this story. Okay, so let's look at the verse together. Let's. We'll start in verse one of chapter four.
[00:05:17] Verse one says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly.
[00:05:23] Okay, what displeased Jonah? For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Jonah, or maybe those who have forgotten what displeased him, we'll talk about that in just a moment. But a more literal translation of that verse, it displeased Jonah exceedingly, is pretty politically correct compared to what the text Hebrew says. Here's a more literal translation.
[00:05:46] More literal translation is, it was evil with great evil.
[00:05:53] In other words, what God had done in the previous verses, Jonah saw as exceedingly evil in his sight.
[00:06:02] Jonah was accusing God of evil because of what God had done. So what was it that led Jonah to this kind of visceral response and belief about God? Well, if you know the story, you know that in the beginning, in chapter one, God calls a prophet named Jonah, whose name means dove, which could be translated as silly or senseless. Jonah kind of typifies that, calls a prophet named Jonah, Jewish prophet, to go and proclaim a message of destruction to his enemies.
[00:06:35] Okay, Jonah is the same prophet that we see in Second Kings, chapter 14 in the Old Testament who is given a call by God to go and preach a message of grace to the people of Israel. So even though the people of Israel were living in idolatry and their king, Jeroboam ii, was an idolatrous, wicked king, God nonetheless, in grace, expanded the territory of Israel through their enemy's territory, the Assyrians.
[00:07:02] And God called Jonah at that time to go and preach this message of grace to remind the people of Israel that even though they had turned from God, God had blessed them in the midst of that. So God comes to that same prophet and he says, hey, you've preached this message of grace to my people.
[00:07:18] Now I want you to take this message and I want you to go preach it to your enemies, the Ninevites. And Jonah's like, not a chance. Not doing that. And so Jonah hikes it the other way. He gets on a boat and he heads to a place called Tarshish. We don't know where Tarshish was and necessarily. But what we do know is that it was in the opposite direction of Nineveh. It was the very opposite of where God called him to go. So he gets on a boat and he heads to Tarshish. He goes down into the boat, symbolizing this descent away from life, which is in God.
[00:07:49] He gets on a boat. He goes down to the inner deck of the boat. And then God sends this great storm upon the sea that's so intense that it threatens to break up the ship that Jonah's on.
[00:07:59] And so the sailors on the boat with Jonah are not believers. They're pagans. And they start crying out to their gods.
[00:08:06] And Jonah comes. Finally, they say, arise, you sleeper. And so Jonah gets up to the top of the deck, and he says, hey, God brought this storm upon the sea because of me, so throw me into the depths of the sea and the storm will cease. And so they pick up Jonah and they throw him into the sea. And sure enough, God stills the storm.
[00:08:26] Jonah begins to sink down into the depths, further from the life of God. And then God, providentially, miraculously, as he is prone to do, provides an unconventional means of salvation for Jonah. And so he sends a fish to swallow up Jonah. Jonah's in the belly of the fish three days, three nights. If that's hard for you to believe, so is the reality that God raised his son, Jesus, from the dead, okay? So welcome to Christianity.
[00:08:52] Swallows up Jonah whole. Jonah's in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And in the belly of the fish, Jonah prays to God, and he prays a prayer of repentance. He says, God, salvation belongs to you. And so God orders the fish to then vomit Jonah up onto dry land. And when Jonah gets out onto dry land, he goes to Nineveh, as he was instructed to do. Jonah goes to Nineveh and he preaches one sermon, and one sermon only, a very short one with no application or no illustrations. He simply says this. In 40 days, your city's going to be overthrown.
[00:09:23] There's not ambient music in the background. There's not a fog machine. There aren't lights. And also nothing that we would attribute to revival today.
[00:09:32] God says, hey, in 40 days, God's going to destroy you. That's all he says. And then he leaves. And do you know what happens? The Holy Spirit of God floods into the hearts of these men, women, and children in this place. This wicked, idolatrous, adulterous, violent place floods into the hearts of these men, women and children, and they repent.
[00:09:55] They cry out to God for mercy.
[00:09:58] Word gets to the king of Nineveh. And the king leaves his throne, and he sits in a ash heap, and he covers himself in sackcloth, and he decrees an order for all people, men, women, Children and animals to not eat or drink anything, but to cry out to God for mercy. Because perhaps in so doing, God would relent from destroying the city and destroying the people of the city. And you know what God does? He relents.
[00:10:26] He bestows favor and mercy and forgiveness and grace upon these undeserving, wicked people. And do you know what Jonah does, friends? He hates it.
[00:10:37] He just absolutely hates it. It says that it was evil in the sight of Jonah for God to do this thing.
[00:10:45] It was wicked.
[00:10:48] See, Jonah understood the grace of God.
[00:10:52] He was fine with that.
[00:10:55] He was fine with the grace of God.
[00:10:58] What he wasn't fine with was the extent of God's grace.
[00:11:03] Does that make sense?
[00:11:06] So I want you to think about this for a moment and really think about it. Okay? I was.
[00:11:11] Dude, when I don't preach for consecutive weeks, even though this is my second week back, I get all, like, antsy and, like, just ready to be here, okay? And as I was thinking about this, I was thinking, I am so not content to get up on a Sunday and just preach a message that you're like, oh, yeah, that was encouraging. And then you forget about it, and we forget about it. Like, we need to be. We need to pray for the Holy Spirit to change our hearts through His Word. Not because of anything I say, but because of His Word.
[00:11:37] So I want you to think about this for a moment.
[00:11:40] The idea of the grace of God is great, but are you okay with the extent of his grace, meaning this?
[00:11:51] Is there anybody or any persons, your life that you would be disturbed if you knew the grace of God extended to them?
[00:12:05] I mean, some of us in the room have experienced actual big T trauma at the hands of other people.
[00:12:15] Sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse.
[00:12:23] Friend, two things. Number one, so sorry for the reality of that suffering.
[00:12:31] Number two, have you considered what you might do or feel if that person were forgiven?
[00:12:41] If God radically changed that person?
[00:12:45] If that person came back and said, I'm a Christian now, I've come to know Jesus. I've come to. I want to repent of my sin. I'm sorry for the things that I've done to you. What might that do in you?
[00:13:00] Maybe it's not a particular person. Maybe it's a people group.
[00:13:06] Maybe on a different side, politically as you are, maybe it's somebody of a particular ethnicity.
[00:13:16] Could be a host of things.
[00:13:19] The prejudices in our hearts are great, and we must not be deceived to think that they're not there.
[00:13:33] Jonah had such hatred in his heart. Such vitriol, such bitterness and contempt toward this particular people group, the Ninevites, that he saw it as evil for them to be forgiven.
[00:13:52] And so the text goes on to say he was angry.
[00:13:56] What does that mean?
[00:13:59] I'm going to read a quote to you from a Puritan named John Downham who wrote a book called the Cure for Unjust Anger. It's a very helpful book. And here's what he says about anger.
[00:14:11] He says anger is an affection in which someone is moved to retaliation in response to a perceived injury or injustice.
[00:14:22] So it's an affection.
[00:14:24] One of the differences between an emotion and an affection is that emotions ebb and flow consistently and affections are moving in a general direction.
[00:14:35] Okay, so anger is an affection, not good or bad, amoral, as we'll talk about just a moment. God gets angry.
[00:14:47] So there is a kind of anger that's just and right and holy and a kind of anger that's unjust and sinful and wicked.
[00:14:55] But it's an affection in which someone is moved to retaliation in response to a perceived injury or injustice.
[00:15:03] And it can be just or unjust. So just anger really quickly. This is not what we're talking about with Jonah, by the way, but so we know just anger is motivated by love of God and love of others.
[00:15:16] That's the primary motivation of just anger. And we see that embodied perfectly in the person of Jesus.
[00:15:23] So when Jesus is flipping tables over in the temple and he's calling out the money changers and he's building a whip of cords and he's, you know, just slinging that thing around and driving people out of the temple, enraged. He's not sinning.
[00:15:37] He's doing that with a zeal for the glory of God.
[00:15:41] He's doing it with a zeal for the injustices that are happening to people who come to worship God at the hands of religious people who come to make money, that's just anger. Just anger is an incredible tool, a necessary tool for you and I, who are Christians, to push back darkness in the world and in our own lives.
[00:16:02] If sin doesn't make you angry, it should.
[00:16:07] The Bible doesn't call Christians to be indifferent or apathetic toward the reality of evil in the world. It should make you angry.
[00:16:14] If it doesn't make you angry, friends, there's something off.
[00:16:19] Prostitution should make you angry, okay? The means by which Satan uses pornography to aid prostitution should make you angry.
[00:16:33] Your sinful anger and mine should make us angry.
[00:16:40] It's one of the ways by which God's given us through the Holy Spirit to fight those things.
[00:16:46] Not to fight other people who do those things, you know what I mean?
[00:16:49] But to fight through proclaiming the gospel to them, calling them to repentance, turning from those things and not participating in them.
[00:17:00] So just anger is a good and godly thing, not what we're talking about with our friend and brother Jonah.
[00:17:06] Jonah's anger is not just his anger is.
[00:17:11] His anger is unjust.
[00:17:13] This is how unjust anger can be defined according to Downham. He says unjust anger is, is a wrongful or unreasonable desire for revenge stirred up in us by unjust causes.
[00:17:28] A wrongful or unreasonable desire for revenge stirred in us, stirred up in us by unjust causes.
[00:17:40] So in other words, if love of God and love of others and God's kingdom motivates just anger, then what motivates unjust anger primarily, and this is where I want to camp with Jonah, is self love, self love. All right, here's the thing.
[00:17:59] Does the Bible call Christians to hate themselves?
[00:18:03] No.
[00:18:07] What the Bible does call us to, what God does call us to in His Word is self denial.
[00:18:13] That is not the same thing as self hatred.
[00:18:17] You are made in the image of God. You have intrinsic dignity, worth and value as an image bearer of God. And so we are not talking about hating yourself, but the danger, friends. And I think that the cultural waters by which you and I swim isn't so much self hatred as it is self love, self actualization, expressive individualism. Just be what you feel, do what you feel. Don't let anybody tell you your desires are bad.
[00:18:49] Your desires aren't bad. Your desires are part of who you are. Follow those desires, fulfill your dreams, be who you are, and if anybody stands in the way, call them a bigot and a hater.
[00:19:00] That's the cultural water by which we live.
[00:19:05] That's self love. And self love, friends, leads to pride.
[00:19:11] And this illusion that will keep you and I from experiencing the goodness and grace of God and love of others.
[00:19:17] Self love will lead to pride, which leads to the illusion of your own goodness.
[00:19:26] The illusion of, of your own goodness. It's when you look in the mirror and I look in the mirror, what we conclude is like, I'm pretty good.
[00:19:44] Not just like I look pretty good, I am pretty good. Like I'm not as bad as that person, not as bad as those people.
[00:19:53] It's the illusion of, of your own goodness. Jonah was pretty convinced, pretty convicted of his own righteousness.
[00:20:07] He's a child of God.
[00:20:09] He's chosen, he's adopted, he's called on this great mission.
[00:20:15] Ninevites, murderers, rapists, idolaters, heathens, hedonists.
[00:20:25] Surely I'm better than them.
[00:20:29] And this self love not only led Jonah to hate them, but it led him away from God.
[00:20:38] So what does he do in that place? Verses 2 and 3 says that he prays. Let's look at Jonah's prayer. That. That seems positive so far. He didn't march back into Nineveh and start yelling at him to not repent or you know, etc. He prays. So what does Jonah pray? Look at verse two.
[00:20:56] He prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?
[00:21:02] 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.
[00:21:15] Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
[00:21:23] That is extreme despair.
[00:21:29] Here's in essence what Jonah. What Jonah's doing. He's explaining to God why he ran away in the first place. He's saying, God, I ran away from you, and I ran away from this calling you've placed on my life, because I know who you are.
[00:21:43] I know that you are. And then he begins to quote Exodus 34 and Joel chapter 2.
[00:21:52] I know that this is who you are.
[00:21:56] Gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The very thing that should have led to Jonah's rejoicing ended up being his stumbling block.
[00:22:08] The character of God, I love, and I want you to love it too, that God has revealed himself. Isn't that you ever just like, stop and think about that?
[00:22:24] As Francis Schaeffer said many years ago, that God is there and he is not silent.
[00:22:32] He went through a crisis of faith and his adult life and really questioning the existence of God and all these kinds of things. And toward the latter end of his life, he's like, hey, he's there.
[00:22:43] And he's not silent.
[00:22:46] He's made himself known.
[00:22:48] How did he do that?
[00:22:51] He's done it through his word.
[00:22:54] He did it to Moses through a burning bush after Moses had killed a guy that crazy. And he reveals himself out of the burning bush and he says, hey, this is who I am. I have a name, by the way. My name is Yahweh.
[00:23:12] And this is what I'm like.
[00:23:15] Names weren't just ambiguous and random in those days. Names meant something. They communicated who the person was.
[00:23:23] God says, I'm not just. I'm not a. I'm not a distant deity.
[00:23:29] I'm not an amoral being.
[00:23:32] I am love.
[00:23:37] I am truth. I am the embodiment of grace.
[00:23:41] God says I am gracious.
[00:23:45] The word gracious just means that God is compassionate and that he shows favor to undeserving sinners.
[00:23:54] Gracious means that he hears the cries of the brokenhearted and draws near to the brokenhearted. That's what it means, that God is gracious.
[00:24:03] It says, God's merciful.
[00:24:06] This means that he greets with love and shows sympathy.
[00:24:13] God is slow to anger.
[00:24:16] He's longsuffering in our weaknesses and failures. Isn't that good news?
[00:24:23] He has a long wick that he's patient.
[00:24:31] He's abounding in steadfast love. This just means that God's love for his people never, ever, ever changes.
[00:24:41] Never changes. When I was going through residency to plant Redemption Hill many years ago, I talked with a pastor friend of mine who was doing a personality assessment with me. So I had to do this personality assessment, and he had to call several of my previous employers and pastors and friends and et cetera. And he said, well, it concluded a few things, but one thing in particular. You hate change.
[00:25:05] And I was like, yeah, I'm not a fan of that.
[00:25:08] And he said, all right, let me give you some advice. And it's proven true.
[00:25:13] Says there are two constants in life.
[00:25:16] Jesus and change.
[00:25:19] That's it.
[00:25:21] Two constants to bank your life on. Things will change.
[00:25:26] Your health will change, your finances will change, your geography will change. Maybe your family might change, your kids will change, your.
[00:25:39] Your physical appearance will change.
[00:25:43] All these things will change. It is guaranteed.
[00:25:47] But Jesus won't.
[00:25:50] He'll never change.
[00:25:54] He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His love is steadfast. And the psalmist says his steadfast love is. Is better than life.
[00:26:06] Do you believe that his steadfast love is better than not getting cancer?
[00:26:16] His steadfast love is better than a promotion.
[00:26:21] His steadfast love is better than your kids and mine becoming Christians.
[00:26:28] His steadfast love is a better fit.
[00:26:33] This is true of who God is. He's revealed himself through his word. But most profoundly, he's revealed himself through the person of his son.
[00:26:46] Hebrews 1, 1 and 2.
[00:26:51] Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by His Son, who. Whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. Jesus. When you look and I look at the person of Jesus Christ, we see God.
[00:27:12] Everything that we need to know about God is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Jonah and Jonah's story is a small story wrapped up in a much larger one.
[00:27:27] Jonah, in many ways points us to the better prophet, Jesus.
[00:27:33] Jonah despises God's grace for sinners, so much so that it makes him angry enough to die.
[00:27:40] Jonah despises God's grace for sinners. Jesus is the embodiment of God's grace towards sinners.
[00:27:48] Jonah wants to die because his enemies have been forgiven. Jesus does die for the salvation of his enemies, but us.
[00:27:57] And on the third day, rises from.
[00:28:00] From the grave.
[00:28:02] This is who God is.
[00:28:04] He's compassionate, he's merciful, he's slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love.
[00:28:11] And because he is those things, his grace extends to even the most heinous sinners, like the Ninevites.
[00:28:19] And so, in light of God's good character and grace, Jonah says, I really, really, really want one thing. I want you to kill me because I can't live and stand to see these people forgiven. And here's how God responds. God could say a lot of things.
[00:28:34] Probably wouldn't have been hard for God to say, okay, and just take care of Jonah.
[00:28:39] But this is how God responds with a simple question that I just want to leave us with today.
[00:28:45] Do you do well to be angry?
[00:28:49] Do you do well to be angry?
[00:28:53] Not the first time God asks this question to one of his children or one of his.
[00:29:00] One of his creation. You can't say his child, necessarily, of God. Different theological discussion.
[00:29:07] God asks Cain the same question, doesn't he, Cain, do you do well to be angry?
[00:29:14] Because sin is crouching at your door and its desire is for you.
[00:29:22] Do you do well to be.
[00:29:25] To be angry? A few quick things before I promise you I will close.
[00:29:33] Unjust anger is so serious a sin. And I say this as one who struggles deeply with it. And I've said this before many times.
[00:29:42] Unjust anger is so serious a sin that Galatians says it is a work of the flesh by which those who continue to walk in it and do not repent will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:30:01] Unjust anger is so serious a sin that Jesus says in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount that it is the moral equivalent to murder.
[00:30:11] He says, you know you're not supposed to kill.
[00:30:14] But I say, even if you've thought an angry thought in your Heart toward your brother or sister. You have committed murder in your heart.
[00:30:28] That levels all of us in the room, doesn't it?
[00:30:33] None of us in the room passed that test.
[00:30:38] And so praise be to God that Jesus says Also in Matthew 5, I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it.
[00:30:46] Who never experienced unjust, sinful anger? Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who died on the cross in place of people who give themselves over time and time and time again to unjust anger.
[00:31:01] Jesus rose from the grave on the third day, conquering sin on behalf of his people, conquering death on behalf of his people, that in him, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, you and I might repent and walk in newness of life, the newness of life that has already been purchased for you and for me. You, your fight against unjust anger. And mine, number one, is empowered by the Holy Spirit. Number two, you're not fighting on your own. God is on your side and on mine.
[00:31:39] So I just want to wrap it all up with a couple of statements and an invitation. So all of this just amazingly points us to the story of the prodigal Son In Luke, chapter 15, when the younger brother goes off, away from the father, he commits heinous sin, and then he comes to himself, he repents, and he comes back, and the Father picks up his robe and he runs out to meet the younger brother, and he wraps him up in his arms and he forgives him, and he puts a ring on his finger and a robe on his back. And he throws a big party for the younger brother who comes back. And the brother that we often forget about is the older one, isn't it?
[00:32:19] All this takes place and says that a servant comes to the older brother and he says, hey, your brother's returned. Your brother's come home.
[00:32:26] And all this music that you hear in the background and the celebration and the joy, that's for your younger brother who's come home. And the older brother, what does he do? He gets angry.
[00:32:37] Says father, I never left you.
[00:32:39] I never turned my back on you. I did what you told me to do. And this is how you repay me, by forgiving him.
[00:32:47] And what does the Father say to him?
[00:32:50] Says, son, all that's mine is yours.
[00:32:59] It is easy when we've walked with Jesus for some time, to begin to live with the same sort of perspective that could very well have led to Jonah's demise.
[00:33:12] Illusion of your own goodness.
[00:33:16] And so if you're here this morning and you are more like the younger brother in the story of Luke 15. You've run away. You're far from God. You're rebelling against God. You're living in rebellion and sin and unbelief and all those things. You're more like the Ninevites. If that's you this morning, then you need to be reminded of God's example of grace. To the Ninevites.
[00:33:44] God is eager to relent from disaster toward anyone who turns from sin and trusts in His Son.
[00:33:54] Not a single one of you, not a single one of us is too far gone for the grace of God to redeem and to cover and to forgive and to transform and to cleanse. This is the good news of the Gospel. It's available to everybody, every single person.
[00:34:14] You're like, golly, but I've, like, I've been so wicked. I get it.
[00:34:21] Like, is Jesus going to take me back? Is he going to forgive me? Is he going to like, what a wonderful God. We have to give us a story like this to remind us that the answer to that question is yes.
[00:34:35] He always receives those who come to him brokenhearted. He draws near to the humble grace is available for you. And then some of us in the room are more like Jonah because of self love and self righteousness.
[00:34:49] Honestly, we're living in anger.
[00:34:53] Many of us are just giving ourselves over to anger toward the people that God has called us to love and to reflect his image too.
[00:35:06] Friends, let the Father's words to the older Son be a comfort to you today.
[00:35:10] Think back at who you were apart from Christ if you can.
[00:35:15] Or think about where you would be apart from Christ if Jesus were not sustaining me and holding me and keeping me close to Him.
[00:35:26] I wouldn't be a Christian and neither would you.
[00:35:31] I'd make a wreck of my family.
[00:35:33] I'd make a wreck of my life. I'd make a wreck of my ministry. That's who I am on my own and that's who you are.
[00:35:42] And instead of that leading you to discouragement, let it lead you into the arms of Jesus that you might be reminded once again that you and I are just like the Ninevites.
[00:35:54] What we need is the grace of God. And God has given it fully in the person, in the life, death and resurrection of His Son.
[00:36:02] What is the cure for unjust anger? It's worship.
[00:36:07] That's the cure for unjust anger. It's worship. It's being reminded of what Christ has done for you, who you are in him because of his grace, his steadfast love toward you. His compassion, his mercy, his slowness to anger toward you. How he's displayed that perfectly and fully at the cross of Jesus and with arms lifted. Worship. That's how you combat unjust anger. Let's pray.
[00:36:50] Sa Sam.
