What is Required?
What is Required?
Jordan Alturas / General
A Prophet in Process / Jonah 4:1–11
What is Required?
What is required of a follower of Christ? What is God after? What does He want from us?
I would like for you to be thinking about these questions as we study God’s word today.
Jonah 4:1–11 HCSB
But Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord: “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to become angry, rich in faithful love, and One who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
The Lord asked, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up to provide shade over Jonah’s head to ease his discomfort. Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered.
As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down so much on Jonah’s head that he almost fainted, and he wanted to die. He said, “It’s better for me to die than to live.”
Then God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It is right. I’m angry enough to die!”
So the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?”
Previous to the events of this chapter God had gone to great lengths to bring Jonah from Israel to Nineveh for the purpose of preaching God’s word to a wicked people in order to bring about revival, turning one of the most wicked cities of their time to one of the greatest revivals of all time.
God had called one of His prophets who normally brought messages of grace and repentance to His own people to the enemies of His own people. Though God is gracious and compassionate like all of us at one time or another Jonah was not, Jonah hated the idea of his enemies receiving grace so he ran from God’s mission and from God’s very presence. However as Jonah ran instead of merely choosing someone else God pursued Jonah via a storm which He hurled at the object of Jonah’s disobedience. Then He guided the random casting of the lot’s by the sailors to reveal Jonah was the cause of their situation. After offering himself to be hurled into the sea God sent a large fish to rescue Jonah from drowning while giving him a miraculous timeout and opportunity to reflect on the events of his disobedience.
Finally Jonah obeyed and went to Nineveh and preached the message, and the whole city repented. They didn’t merely confess they were sinful, they took action, they publicly expressed heartfelt mourning over their wickedness, without promise of restoration. They acted in faith hoping God would grant them mercy, and He did. Nineveh is a great example of us! Like Nineveh we were wicked by nature, born sinful and do not deserve mercy. Like Nineveh God saw our wickedness and knew that we did not know any better.
The one thing that could change us and Nineveh was receiving the message of the Gospel. God didn’t create this world or humanity the way we are. He created everything perfect. There was harmony between us and God, and between all of creation and humanity. But in an act of disobedience humanity chose to grasp for what was not allowed based on a lie about what may be obtained. This story lays in Genesis 3. After disobeying all of creation was cursed by the separation of the presence of God and the home He had made. The fruit of the forbidden tree did not make humanity wise it made us prideful and selfish, and this is the source of all wickedness and strife. But in the midst of God revealing the consequences of Adam and Eve’s faithless act God also promised though they broke the relationship He would fix it. He would send a seed of the woman to crush the head of the snake. God confronted their wickedness with a message revealing their fault while offering hope of mercy and redemption. Like Nineveh we also require a message in order to respond, being transformed from wicked with a trajectory towards destruction to repentant and redeemed with a trajectory towards sanctification. Like it says in Romans
Romans 10:14–15 HCSB
But how can they call on Him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautifulare the feet of thosewho announce the gospel of good things!
So the message is the vehicle by which God’s power moves and frees the hearts of the enslaved, moving them from ignorance of God’s intentions to repentance for the purpose of bringing sinners to intimate relationship with their saviour. This relationship is made possible by the sacrifice of our saviour Jesus. At the time of Jonah their faith was that a saviour was coming who would redeem them, and by grace of place on this side of redemptive history we can look back and see that our saviour has come and He has crushed the head of the snake, paying the debt for our sin and defeating the greatest power of sin, death, by resurrecting three days later. He gave proof of this resurrection over the course of 40 days to over 500 people then He ascended to heaven and ten days later He sent His Holy Spirit to empower us for ministry, as well as give us victory over the power of sin in our lives. And this is the point I want to focus on today.
God’s purpose in redeeming us to relationship with Him was not just about ensuring our eternal position but about the process of restoring our heart to resemble His while we are still living in the now and not yet. The main focus, the main message of the book of Jonah is not Nineveh, is not just the restoration of relationship and the moment of a sinner receiving truth and their eternal trajectory being changed. If that were the case this book would have ended in chapter three. Rather the main focus is on the heart of the prophet, the process of a believer and follower continuing to be transformed.
Consider the text of Romans 8
Romans 8:28–30 HCSB
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
We see this process throughout the book of Jonah. All things includes running away, storms, certain death, and dark acidic salvation, even at times vomit. But God is at work in all things, present at all times, even during those times we are actively pushing him away and angry with Him. The question then is what is he after? What does He require? For the answer to this question let us look at the word of God through the prophet Micah.
Micah 6:8 NIV
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
There are three main points presented here as what Yahweh requires: Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.
Act Justly
Let’s start with acting justly. I was talking with a friend this week about this verse and this first point was one that took the longest to explain. Some translations say do justice, others act justly. So his question was does this mean uphold justice or is it a matter of our personal obedience to justice. Whenever a text is unclear or tough to interpret I look for context and for other parts of scripture that speak into the same idea. So let us also consider Isaiah 56:1
Isaiah 56:1 HCSB
This is what the Lord says:
Preserve justice and do what is right,
for My salvation is coming soon,
and My righteousness will be revealed.
The answer seems to be.... Yes. Yes the act of justice we should be concerned with is both individual as well as corporate. We should be personally struggling to do what is right, obeying God’s instruction and maintaining holiness as an individual and we should be preserving righteousness around us as well.
This was Jonahs mission to Nineveh. Jonah was called to obey God in going and called to present Nineveh with justice for the sake of preserving it. Like Jonah we are called to be righteous and to preserve righteousness. How? Through the spreading of Gods word, evangelism. Like I said earlier it is through the receiving of God’s word that non believers can be changed to believers, and it is also through God’s word that believers can continue the transformation process of being made to resemble Jesus in character.
2 Timothy 3:16–17 HCSB
All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
If we truly love Jesus and desire to obey Him, we must read His word daily in an act of submission and for the purpose of growing to love Him more. This is how we fight to act justly.
Love Mercy
Loving mercy is easy on a personal level but a struggle when it comes to those who are hard to care for. When God says love mercy it’s not just the mercy you receive but the mercy God extends to everyone, Gods teaching to Jonah was desire mercy for all. Nineveh was wicked because they didn't know their left hand from their right, but all Jonah saw was their wickedness. He saw their past and their present but was not concerned with their potential. In fact as we saw in the beginning in chapter 4 Jonah hated the idea of mercy for his enemies. That is something we can identify with.
When someone personally harms us or our loved ones, we jump right to justice. We want them to receive what they deserve. And at times that we may forgive someone or rather decide to be merciful we tend to opt for a forget it kind of mentality. We either say don’t worry about it, or let the act go un noted. But this is not truly merciful either. The goal of mercy as we see it in the Bible is the restoration of relationship. So here we see the link of justice and mercy.
God does not just say never mind don’t worry about sin, I’ll just forgive them and let it go. God presents justice, He speaks out what has been wrong, what has broke the relationship so that the offender can know and respond. Then in the case the offender repents, changes direction from a lifestyle of opposition to God to realigning their allegiance to God, then God acts in mercy. The relationship has been restored, thats the goal. And what God is saying here is that not only should we obey, but we should love mercy, we should love and appreciate our own personal mercy. This recognizes we have required mercy as believers, and will continue to require mercy as we walk with God. We should also love seeing others receive mercy. The perfect example of this is Jesus dyeing on the cross, as he was actively being crucified He prayed on behalf of sinners saying Father forgive them, they know not what they do! He loved mercy so much He left heaven and came to earth in human flesh and suffered life itself on this broken planet knowing and desiring to one day offer up His life for ours. God Himself loves mercy thus He requires that same love of those He empowers to offer it.
Walk Humbly with Yahweh
The final point for today is that we are called to live a life of submission to Gods will and mission. We are to walk humbly with our God. We need to humbly follow His call in our lives and persevere in our faith. As we saw in chapter four of Jonah, he was not yet walking humbly, so God was actively humbling him. Jonah was still struggling with pride.
In verse two Jonah revealed He had ran from God because he disagreed with the outcome that God was after. Then he asked God to kill him because he would rather die than see his enemies receive mercy. Then he left the city and camped out hoping God would relent on His mercy towards Nineveh. Then God decided to give Jonah a visual aid via a plant. God gave Jonah comfort through the shade of this plant, then sent a worm to attack the plant and take away his comfort, followed by a hot wind to add to his discomfort. At this point again Jonah desires to die rather than be uncomfortable. Then God makes his point.
Jonah 4:10–11 HCSB
So the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?”
Jonah your more concerned with your own comfort than the souls of the people who live in this city. This truth also is often our problem today. We are often more concerned with our own comfort than the task of sharing the gospel with out friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors. Anyone who does not have a personal relationship with Jesus is heading towards eternity in torment, that should concern us! God has called us to share the message of hope through which He brings people to relationship, we find this in Matthew 28:19-20 and we call it the great commission. He has also given us the great promise in Matthew 16:19 that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His church. Our response is merely to humbly obey and be used to transform the lives of those around us. This act of humble obedience will also result in our greatest joy and fulfillment.
Bottom line, what is it that God requires of us? What is He after? What does He want from us?
Simply put He wants our heart. To expound while still keeping the answer succinct: Saving faith is more than intellectual acknowledgement that God exists and the Bible is true, saving faith reveals a relationship with God from which affection drives our actions of obedience in intimacy with our savior.
Page 1. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:53 PM September 2, 2017.