When God Shows Mercy to People You Hate|03.22.26|When God Loves Your Enemy pt.5

In 1987, Gordon Wilson was living in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. Now, I don’t know if you know what was going on in Ireland in the late 80s, but that was at the height of the conflict between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British government, while the IRA were resisting and fighting for independence.

Now, Gordon was a follower of Jesus in his 50s who ran a drapery store in town, and he didn’t endorse the IRA. But he attended a town festival in November called Remembrance Day, which is the British version of Memorial Day, where they honor those slain in WWII.

So they have a Remembrance Day parade in the town square, and Gordon and his adult daughter attend together. But what no one realizes is that the IRA had planted bombs all around the town square, set to go off right as the festivities began.

The blast immediately killed 9 people and injured dozens and dozens more, and Gordon and his daughter ended up being trapped under a collapsed wall from one of the buildings.

They held hands and talked to each other while trapped under the rubble, and hours later, the rescue workers finally made it to them. Gordon was still alert and ended up making a full recovery, but his daughter had lost consciousness and died later that night.

There’s more I want to share with you about this story, but I can’t help but put myself in Gordon’s place and imagine the horror and grief from experiencing such a traumatic event and losing someone I dearly loved.

When your life has been forever changed in such a violent way, it’s completely natural to respond with anger and hatred, isn’t it?

Even if the pain we’ve experienced isn’t the loss of life, being wounded by another can greatly affect us.

Maybe you were hurt by someone else’s words, and every time you think of them, the sting of what they said comes back.

Maybe you were abandoned by someone, and that wound continues to affect how you trust others.

Maybe someone cheated you, and you never quite got your confidence back after that. Maybe you have the scars to prove it.

When we’ve been the victim to someone else’s sin, it’s really natural to want God’s judgment to come on them. And that’s where we find Jonah in today’s passage…

[Scripture Ref]

So please open your Bibles to Jonah ch4. And I really want to continue to encourage you to bring your own Bible with you to church, because we want to become deep students of Scripture, and I want you to be able to take notes or highlights and become more and more familiar with your own Bible.

So whether you’re using your own paper Bible, or the black seat-back Bible in front of you, or you Bible app on your phone, open to Jonah ch4. And as you find it, this is our final week in our series on the book of Jonah.

We’ve spent the last month trying to rescue this book from what I call the VeggieTales factor, where our memory of these Bible stories is filtered through children’s media that tends to make them all bland and safe and focus on “being nice” and “having good morals.”

So we’ve been discovering together that this book is NOT just a children’s story, because we’re dealing with these deep themes of religious hypocrisy, disobedience, spiritual apathy and numbness, and the devastating effect it has on us and the people around us, and the ways that God can use paid and suffering in our lives as a “severe mercy” to wake us up.

And through it all, this story is revealing God’s character to us. That’s what Scripture is for! It’s not just full of stories to entertain kids or teach morals, but to reveal who God is, what his character and purposes are, and what he’s doing in the world that we’re invited to join.

So, before we read this final chapter in the book, let’s just recap the story so far:

Jonah is a prophet, a religious messenger for God, who disobeys God’s call and runs from him in the opposite direction. That leads him to hit rock bottom. And that brings ruin on himself and calamity on all these other people around him because of his spiritual apathy.

But God works through his brush with death. It SEEMED like the worst thing that could ever happen to Jonah, but God’s presence and severe mercy make it the BEST thing that’s ever happened to him. And it wakes him up… at least for a moment.

Then he gets a second chance to obey, so he goes to Nineveh to confront their wickedness. So he preaches a 5-word sermon, not even really giving them very much information on Yahweh or how to turn from their wickedness, because he’s probably hoping that they will just end up getting destroyed… but amazingly, the whole city repents and turns to God!

Now, if this was me, I would think this was a highlight of my life as a pastor! Notorious city of sin… One day of preaching… Five words… And the WHOLE CITY transforms. Best sermon ever from the best pastor ever, right?! Most people would be over the moon if they were a part of that!

But Jonah has a different reaction. Let’s read together our passage today, and let’s STAND as we hear God’s word…

[Jonah 4:1-11] (starting in 3:10)

[Jonah 4:1-2a]

Jonah is TICKED. “What? No! This is not what is supposed to happen! These people are awful. They are the sworn enemies of the Jews. They have destroyed and humiliated so many other cultures and empires, and now they are threatening to destroy and kidnap all the people of Israel.”

So Jonah just lets God have it in his prayer. It’s a brutal, honest conversation with God. I imagine his teeth are clenched, and he’s just hot with anger:

“Isn’t this what I said would happen, Yahweh, when I was still back home? This is why I ran to Tarshish!”

[Jonah 4:2b-3]

“Because I KNEW that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Now, these words might sound familiar to you, because they are really famous and occur over a dozen times in the OT. One of the spots we see it is in Exodus 34, which is where God describes HIMSELF with these words.

Because the Israelites had just turned away from God and worshiped the golden calf, and God SHOULD have judged them, but Moses prays and God forgives them. And Moses says, “Who are you, Yahweh?”

And God says, “I am Yahweh, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love.”

See, the only reason the people of Israel even EXIST is because this is what God is like: he is full of grace.

And here we are generations later, and Jonah is throwing those words back in God’s face, “See?! I KNEW you were like this! You LOVE forgiving people who don’t deserve it. And I couldn’t STAND the idea of you forgiving these awful Assyrians. That’s why I ran away from you.”

“So… you know what? Just kill me now. I’d rather be DEAD than live in a world where Nineveh gets forgiveness.”

Now, if you’re thinking that Jonah is acting pretty dramatic and ridiculous, I agree with you. But maybe you also relate to how he’s feeling?

Maybe you know what it’s like to be so hurt by someone that the very idea of them receiving grace and forgiveness just boils your blood…?

Maybe you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks, and that’s still the part that sits uneasy for you: it’s not FAIR for God to forgive people who have done so much wrong…

I said it at the beginning of our series: one of the incredible aspects of the book of Jonah is the irony that it sets up:

God calls a prophet to deliver his message, and along the way…

…the sailors repent and turn to God in prayer.

…the people of Nineveh repent and turn to God in prayer.

…the king of Nineveh repents and turns to God in prayer.

…even the ANIMALS are fasting in repentance!

Meanwhile, Jonah? … he’s just angry, “It’s better for me to die than to live!”

See, this whole time, the Scripture has been asking us: who is actually farther from God? The pagans, or the prophet?

And then we get to this final chapter of the story, and we get to see the real reason that Jonah ran.

It wasn’t fear about being captured and tortured by the vicious Assyrians.

It wasn’t confusion about what exactly God was calling him to.

It was HATRED. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh.

Jonah didn’t doubt God’s power. He resented God’s mercy.

He was a follower of God, a prophet who had delivered God’s messages before… and he was resisting becoming like God in his mercy. Jonah’s heart wasn’t willing to be shaped by God’s heart.

We’ve talked about this already a few times over the last few weeks: Jonah exposes something in us that is pretty uncomfortable to admit… we love God’s grace, when WE receive it.

But we sometimes struggle with God’s grace when OTHERS receive it. Especially others who we would consider enemies. Or people who hurt us. Or people we think should suffer longer before receiving grace. Or people we think are “too far gone.”

[You can receive]

The uncomfortable truth that the book of Jonah is making us realize is that we can receive God’s grace and still resist becoming like him.

We can receive God’s grace, accept his forgiveness, even become a follower of Jesus… and still resist letting him transform our hearts.

Remember Gordon Wilson? Gordon and his adult daughter were trapped under the rubble after the bombs exploded in the town square, and after he was rescued, he described his last conversation with his daughter to the BBC reporter:

QUOTE “She held my hand tightly and she gripped me as hard as she could. She said, ‘Daddy, I love you very much,’ those were her last exact words to me and those were the last words I ever heard her say.”

And to the astonishment of everyone, Gordon went on to add QUOTE

“...but I will bear no ill will. I will bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring her back to life. I will pray tonight, and every night, FOR the men who did this… that God will forgive them.”

Now, just keep listening, because the story gets even more amazing. A year after the Enniskillen bombing, Gordon Wilson held a public event where he invited public representatives of the IRA to come meet with him, and he invited news crews to all show up… and because of his faith in Jesus Christ, he announced that he forgave his daughter’s murderers and he begged the IRA to stop their violence.

After that, he sort of catapulted into the public consciousness, and he ended up becoming a senator and he is still a towering figure in Irish culture today because of his commitment to Jesus, to forgive his enemies.

Now this is where the story gets very interesting: one of the later presidents of Ireland, Mary McAleese, talks about the legacy that Gordon Wilson left, and she puts it this way:

“Gordon’s words shamed us all and caught us so off guard. They sounded so different from what we expected and what we had all become used to. They brought a stillness with them and they carried a sense of the transcendent into a place that had become so ugly we could hardly bear to watch.”

But Gordon had his detractors. And unbelievably, he even received bags of hate mail. “How dare you forgive?” the people demanded. “What kind of father are you who can forgive your daughter’s killers?”

It was as if Gordon had spoken those words of forgiveness for the first time in human history. As if Christ had never uttered the words, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

One out-spoken critic, who was himself a Christian, said this of Gordon Wilson, “surely the poor man must have been in shock.” As if offering love and forgiveness and grace is a sign of mental weakness, instead of spiritual strength.

It’s so ironic, because people name their daughters Grace. And we sing songs about grace. And we think “grace” is a beautiful thing. But there is a scandalous side to grace, when the WIDENESS of God’s mercy begins to include people we hate.

When it begins to include people that we despise or who have wronged us or that we think don’t deserve it. That’s when grace is actually pretty disturbing.

This is what Jonah ch4 is about. And now, Jonah doesn’t seem so crazy. He’s depicted as ridiculous, yes, but the motivations that are behind Jonah’s CRITIQUE of God’s grace are the same that motivated Gordon’s detractors. “How DARE you forgive… them?!”

[Jonah 4:4-5]

Thankfully, God isn’t done with Jonah yet. He starts talking to him like a therapist or a very patient parent: “is it right for you to be angry?”

“Let’s talk about it, Jonah. I can hear that you are very upset, but let’s take a breath and get some perspective. Do you think your anger is legitimate?”

But Jonah doesn’t answer. Instead, he storms out of the city and sets up a shelter to wait and see what will happen.

What does he think is going to happen? …he’s HOPING fire from heaven is going to come and destroy this rotten city, right?

We talked last week about his message that he gave to Nineveh, “40 days more and Nineveh shall be overturned!” And we looked at that word, “overturned,” because it can either mean to be up-ended, or flipped upside down, as in destroyed.

But it could also mean being “turned around,” as in repentance.

But Jonah KNEW that God was a God of second chances and forgiveness, and so he gives this one-sentence message, and *I think* he actually intentionally left it vague. Because, he doesn’t mention Yahweh at all, and he doesn’t mention any of the wickedness that Nineveh was doing that God sent him there to preach against.

It’s as if Jonah is giving a vague message so that the people of Nineveh wouldn’t know who to pray to or what to stop in order to avert the disaster.

Right? He doesn’t say “Yahweh gives this warning…” because then they might pray to Yahweh. And he doesn’t say, “THESE are the things Yahweh wants you to stop…” because then they might actually stop.

Nope, just “40 more days, and Nineveh will be overturned.” And then he storms out of the city and waits for a meteor strike or something to decimate the city. And he builds a shelter because he wants to sit and wait for the full 40 days to really make sure it happens.

Sure, the people of Nineveh SEEMED to repent. Sure, they stopped their violence and turned to God with prayer and fasting… but maybe they’ll turn back.

God relented from the calamity he was going to bring on them… but surely he’s not so naive to think that these people have actually CHANGED!

Yeah, NO! God changed his mind because he saw how they turned from their violence and repented… but he’ll TOTALLY change his mind back once they go back to their old ways…

[Jonah 4:6-8]

And so God gives this little visual metaphor for Jonah and brings this leafy plant that miraculously sprouts up overnight. And so Jonah is SUPER happy about the shade. (actually, it’s worth noting that this is the only time in the whole book that Jonah is happy)

But then, God provides this little worm the next day that comes and chews on the plant so that it withers. And then God provides a hot wind, and the sun beats down on Jonah’s head and he’s just this… whiny mess. “Please just let me die!”

[Jonah 4:9]

And God, the patient parent that he is, asks Jonah the same question again, “Is it right for you to be angry?” And Jonah is like, “You BET it is! Angry enough to die!”

(and for anyone who has raised a preteen… wow. I’m sorry if this brings back memories of the mood swings and the scoffing and the moaning and the complaining…)

[Jonah 4:10]

And finally God points out the hypocrisy and pettiness of what Jonah is concerned about: because Jonah cares about this bush that he didn’t plant, he didn’t tend, and he didn’t grow it or anything.

But God cares about the 120,000 people that HE CREATED in his image.

Jonah cares about the personal comfort he gets from this TEMPORARY shade.

God cares about the ETERNAL mercy he wants to deliver.

Jonah is grieving the loss of a plant, but God grieves the loss of a city.

[Jonah 4:11]

And so the book of Jonah ends with God’s third and final question: “Should I not care about Nineveh?” And there’s no recorded response from Jonah.

The book ends with a question and we never hear Jonah’s answer because the story was never really about Jonah, was it?

The question is asked, and silence just hangs there, forcing the READER to answer the question. Jonah doesn’t answer God, so WE have to.

“Should I not care about Nineveh…?”

This story was never really about Jonah. It was about YOU. It was about me. It was about how we often hold on to hatred, even in the face of God’s mercy.

This story is about the fact that you can receive God’s grace… and still resist becoming like him.

[blank]

There’s a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn that hits on the deeper problem that Jonah can’t see, “The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”

Because we like to think in black and white, in terms of good and evil, and we like to reduce people down to their actions. So when someone has hurt us by lying to us, eventually we just think of them as the Liar.

When someone has been involved with awful, evil things… pretty soon we just think of them as “evil.”

And we’d prefer it if God would just round up all the evil in the world, separate our all the evil people in the world, and just get RID of them! Then the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?!

But the line between good and evil runs right THROUGH every human heart, and to get rid of evil would mean getting rid of each of us.

Scripture says as much when it reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Psalm 53 declares that “there is no one who is righteous, not even one.”

But we like to reduce people to the action they took to wrong us, and then we paint ourselves as the opposite of them, because “they wrongs me, and I’m NOTHING like them…”

That’s how you end up with Jonah ch4 where he’s just so blind to the fact that there is good and evil inside HIM. He can’t just think that everyone ELSE is the problem all the time!

So what God is trying to do is what Jesus did all the time, which was to deconstruct the entire idea of “enemy,” because we’ve got to see how we are ALL contributors to the brokenness in the world.

Sure, there are some people who are screwed up in different ways or who have added waaaay more brokenness, but we are all enemies to the righteous path of God. And that’s why we need the cross…

Because if there is one place in the entire universe where the downward spiral of humans hurting each other and casting blame finally stops… it stops at the cross.

The apostle Paul reminds us in Romans ch5 that ALL of us have received God love even without deserving it, because “while we were still sinners… Christ died for us.”

As Billy Graham said, “The ground is LEVEL at the foot of the cross.” Every human being receives grace and mercy because of Jesus, and I don’t get to stand there and say, “Thank you Jesus for forgiving me, but wait, THEM?! Not them!”

The whole point of the gospel is that God’s grace is wider than we want it to be, and that’s good news because his grace is wide enough to extend to US, even when we were far from him, even when we are hiding in darkness, even when we are digging in our heels with stubborn unforgiveness in our hearts… God’s grace and forgiveness is still reaching out for us.

Because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

So Jonah ends with a question, and that question is directed at us: “will we receive grace only? Or will we become the kind of people who extend it?”

God has brought Jonah in contact with the people of Nineveh, and I don’t think it was a chance encounter. It looks more like a divine opportunity for Jonah to be transformed by the grace of God.

[Ask God]

And I wonder if that changes how you see some people in your life? Because there are probably people in your life that you struggle to forgive. There are probably people in your life that you struggle to show grace to. There are probably people in your life that you feel like “my life would be way better if I had never met them.”

But God is able to bring life out of death, and light out of darkness… and maybe, just maybe, God is able to work through THAT person as a divine opportunity for YOU to grow and mature in your experience of God’s grace… not just in receiving it, but in actually beginning to let it flow through you.

So this week, ask God to reveal one person you struggle to extend mercy toward… and surrender that resentment. Give it back to God. Ask him to help you forgive them. Ask him to help you let go of the bitterness you’ve been holding onto.

Because forgiveness doesn’t undo the harm they caused you… but your unforgiveness and resentment does delay the healing God wants to bring in YOU.

So ask God to help you surrender that resentment. Let him remove that weight off your life. Let him pour his grace into your heart. Because he cares about the great and small alike. And he cares for you.

Isn’t that good news?