Jonah 4

Bringing the sermon home:

The message of the first three chapters can be summarized by Jonah’s exultation from within the fish, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”, for while our disobedience deserves death, God’s patience is meant to lead to repentance, and all who turn to God will be delivered rather than destroyed.

For those who have been delivered from the death we deserve, chapter 4 challenges us with this question: Is something preventing you from genuinely desiring for others to be shown the same mercy you have been shown? Do you show more concern for your personal comforts than for the spiritual condition of those around you?

Seeing from the experience of Jonah that God’s painful-yet-loving discipline is meant to reorder our disordered hearts, may we be diligent to regularly mediate upon the mercy shown to us in Christ, so that God may fill our hearts with the same compassion He has shown to us.

My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. (Prov 3:11-12)