Focus: Take It Or Leave It!

Text: Jonah 4:2

"And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."

God IS GRACIOUS…

God IS MERCIFUL…

God IS SLOW to anger…

God IS GREATLY KIND.

Take it or leave it, that is what God is, and bad for anyone who doesn't like God for what or who He is! He says to us through Malachi, "I am the LORD, and I change not." God cannot be bribed to change. God cannot be cajoled into being what He is not or be made to act out of character.

Nobody has the power to tell God who to bless or who to curse. No man or nation on earth has monopoly on God or His knowledge. He says in His word, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." God does not require human legislation to be kind to anyone. 

What God decides, He does. He is neither forced, coerced, nor manipulated to look the other way while the world burns to ashes.

Jonah ran away from God because he didn't want God to be God. What Jonah wanted was for God to make Nineveh pay for their crimes. He felt that Nineveh was not deserving of any pity or pardon, but as the psalmist inquired, "If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" (Ps.130:3).

Let us let God be God! He cannot afford to be capricious, but gracious. Grace runs in His DNA. Grace is God's gift to all mankind.

Paul writes to Titus, and says, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Tit.2:11). No man or tribe is exempted from partaking in the grace of God. Grace is not something we attain to; it is something we obtain, that is, from God Himself.

I love the last part of our text. It says, "And repentest thee of the evil." God changes His mind to punish us. Indeed God polishes us; He does not punish us. The Scripture talks about God chastising those He loves, but the truth of the matter is that the Greek word for 'chastise' means 'to train.' The word in the Greek is paideuō, and it has to do with the training, disciplining, or education of a child. 

God's dealing with us is designed to train, educate and discipline us for the purpose of becoming better children and wonderful sons.

God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and there is nothing we can do about it. There is nothing we can do to make God change. So take it or leave it, God must be God. He is gracious.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter