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Colin Smith: What do Jonah and Asaph and the older brother in Jesus' story have in common? They're all hard workers. They're all obedient. They are all marvelous servants fulfilling everything that they have been called to do. They stretch themselves out in serving, just like some of us.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Colin, you pointed out some similarities between these three guys, but there's more similarities between these three guys.

Colin Smith: Yeah, here's the problem. They all ended up being filled with resentment. Or at least, at one stage, that was true of Jonah. At one stage, that was true of Asaph, who was a choir leader, a director of worship. Here are folks who are in ministry and who somehow end up being filled with resentment.

God lays hold of their lives and turns them around. The older brother in Jesus' story is just like that. I'm loyally serving, I'm doing all this work, and father, why don't you reward me and kill the fatted calf for me? The guy's full of resentment. And that's precisely where we don't want to be.

Guest (Male): But yet, that is precisely where some listening today may be. If you do find yourself there, what's the right response to that?

Colin Smith: Well, that's where the story of Jonah is such a marvelous encouragement because Jonah was there and God did not let him go. We keep coming back to that marvelous truth. God touches his heart so that by the end of his life, he's able to write the story that we have in the book of Jonah.

His life testimony, at the end, or rather right in the middle, but the climax of the story is him saying, "Salvation comes from the Lord." What he's saying there is that God laid hold of me as a faithful servant who ended up in resentment, and God brought me through that and he didn't let me go.

Guest (Male): Well, we're going to see that resentment from the story of Jonah today. We're in chapter four, so I hope you'll open your Bible and join us there as we begin the message, "Resent God's Providence in Ruling the World." Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: God has done miracles of grace in Jonah's life. You remember that while Jonah disobeyed God, God sent a storm to bring Jonah back from a life that would have otherwise been wasted in disobedience. Then God marvelously sends a fish to save Jonah's life from drowning.

We've been learning that God wonderfully cares about his servants and that when he sets his love on you, he never lets you go. He has his way of bringing his own children back. Many of us from our hearts are going to be saying, "Thank God for that in my life and in my experience."

Not only has God been at work doing miracles in Jonah's life, but God has been at work doing miracles through Jonah's ministry. He went to Nineveh, and we saw last weekend that going into this major city of an empire that really was known for terror and known for violence and known for torture, Jonah goes in and he proclaims the word of the Lord, and there is this extraordinary response.

The people of Nineveh, of all people, believed God. They turned to God in repentance. They start crying out to God urgently in prayer and they put their hope in the mercy of the living God of the Bible. By any standards, what we saw in Jonah chapter three is an unusual, remarkable, amazing work of God.

Thousands of Assyrian people in that generation in Jonah's time came to faith and repentance. You would think that a man who had been used by God in such an amazing way, miracles in his own life and miracles through his ministry, would be in a position of being full of joy. Yet, what we find here to our surprise is that exactly the opposite is the case.

Chapter four and verse one: "But after these miracles of grace, Jonah was greatly displeased and he became angry." I want you to remember Jonah was a mature believer. I want you to remember he was a prophet of the living God. I want you to remember that he was a full-time missionary, cross-cultural.

You would think that a man like that, mature in faith, a prophetic ministry, an overseas missionary who had been blessed in an unusual way seeing a revival through his work, would just be full of thanksgiving and praise to God. But what we find in Jonah chapter four is that this man is angry, he is frustrated, and he is out of sorts with the God he set out to serve.

I want you to notice, before we get into this, that in the Bible, Jonah was not the only one to go through this experience. Let me give you a couple of examples. In Psalm 73, we have the testimony of a man by the name of Asaph, who has some distinct similarities to Jonah both in his profile and in his experience.

Asaph was the director of music for King David. His ministry, a very high-profile ministry really in the time, was to be the director of worship in the temple of God in the city of Jerusalem. David's time, of course, before the temple, as they anticipated the building of it in the time of Solomon.

In Psalm 73, Asaph tells us about how he went through an experience just like Jonah. Psalm 73 and verse two: "My feet had almost slipped," he said. "I had almost lost my way in terms of the faith personally." Here's why: "I saw the prosperity of the wicked. I looked at the world, and sometimes it seemed to me I could make no sense of how God orders the world."

"It seemed to me sometimes that God was kinder to his enemies than he is to his own friends. So I began to ask this question: What has been the point in me keeping my own heart pure?" Here's a man who's pouring himself into ministry, and at some point down the years, he says, "What's the point of living like this? The wicked prosper, so why have I kept my heart pure?"

He said, "My foot almost slipped. I nearly lost it at that point because I was thrown into this internal struggle in which, as a mature believer in service for God, I found a struggle going on within me I could scarcely comprehend."

Let me give you another example that comes from a story that the Lord Jesus told, perhaps his best-known story of all: the story of the prodigal son. You remember the story? Luke chapter 15: the younger brother goes to a far country and wastes his inheritance on riotous living. But then the older brother stayed at home.

What did he do? He worked. He served the father. He works hard day in, day out in the father's service. Then the young son comes home. When that happens, the father forgives him and he welcomes the younger son back into the family home.

Jesus says, in Luke chapter 15 and verse 28, at this point the elder brother became angry. Notice the word. He said, "All these years I have been slaving for you." That's what he said to the father. "I have never disobeyed your orders." It's rather like Asaph, you see. "I've kept my heart pure. I've walked the road that you called me to walk and serve on."

The older brother is not angry with the younger brother. The older brother is angry with the father. That is where Jonah was in Jonah chapter four. Now, here's an interesting question. What do Jonah and Asaph and the older brother in Jesus' story have in common? There's a distinct similarity in their profile.

They're all hard workers. They're all obedient. They are all marvelous servants fulfilling everything that they have been called to do. They stretch themselves out in serving, just like some of us do. I'm deducing this application from that profile: those who give themselves most fully to serving God can find themselves at some point in their lives frustrated and even angry with the God they serve.

There is a great mystery here that I don't suppose any of us will fully understand this side of heaven. How is it that I can experience God's grace in my own life, I can experience God's grace in my ministry, and still find that I struggle with the God that I love? How is it possible to be in the middle of a great work of God and yet not find joy in it?

What Jonah is showing us in chapter four, and this is very important, is that one of the primary ways in which a mature believer can avoid a God-centered life is that you serve God, you really do, and then you end up resenting the very God that you serve.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "Resent God's Providence." It's part of a larger series in the book of Jonah called "How to Avoid a God-Centered Life."

If you miss any broadcast in the series, listen online at openthebible.org or through the Open the Bible app. But whether you listen on the radio, online, or through the app, it's all made possible because of your financial generosity. Thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry.

As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a book that Pastor Colin has picked out. It's called *Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure*, written by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Pastor Colin has said that this is his go-to book in times of discouragement. He's now on his third copy, so well-used and so well-loved that the first two have fallen apart.

We'd love to send you a copy of this book, *Spiritual Depression*, as our way of saying thank you for financially supporting Open the Bible this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365. Again, the website is openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: What Jonah is showing us in chapter four, and this is very important, is that one of the primary ways in which a mature believer can avoid a God-centered life is that you serve God, you really do, and then you end up resenting the very God that you serve.

If you have sacrificed much for the cause of Jesus Christ in your life, you are likely to experience this trial. Therefore, you need to know how to deal with it, which is surely the reason that Jonah chapter four is given to us.

I want us to see, first, how this resentment towards God grew within Jonah's life, and then how wonderfully God dealt with Jonah to deliver him from it. Let's jump in then to verse two, and let's begin by observing something that Jonah did exactly right. It says there that he prayed to the Lord.

Do you notice the contrast? In chapter one, Jonah is unhappy with God, and so he runs from the Lord. In chapter four, Jonah is still unhappy with God, but now he prays to the Lord. That's progress. But I want you to notice that Jonah's prayer is a complaint against God. It's not just a complaint about what God does; it really is a complaint about who God is.

"O Lord, is this not what I said while I was still at home? This is why I was so quick to flee from Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."

Now, these words, he's really quoting what was a very famous phrase among God's people. It came from Exodus chapter 34 and verses six and seven, where we have for the first time this great statement about God's character. He's gracious, he is compassionate, he is slow to anger, he is abounding in love.

You will find these four repeated again and again throughout the Scriptures. God's people would regularly have repeated this as part of their praise. It's the sort of thing we could do as we gather together in worship. Why do we praise God? Because he's gracious, he's compassionate, he's slow to anger, and he's abounding in love.

What Jonah does is he turns that back towards God and he makes it his complaint. Here's why: "God, you are too slow in dealing with evil." See, this is Jonah's struggle. The people of Nineveh were evil, wicked.

Jonah was quite sure that within a short time this city would return to evil ways, even if they had stopped and repented as a result of God's grace and his ministry. Jonah was sure of this, and Jonah was right. We saw last week, didn't we, that history shows within a generation, Nineveh, as the generation that had turned to God gave way to a new generation that had not experienced the revival, Nineveh turned within a generation or so to evil ways.

The generation that repented was now replaced by a generation that returned to the old violence, the old torture. That generation did what? They invaded the northern kingdom of Israel, where ten tribes were situated, and they devastated them with extraordinary brutality.

Jonah saw that coming. The book of Nahum, that we've referred to a couple of times just a few pages on from Jonah, it was written after the time of Jonah, and it lays out the excruciating evil to which Nineveh returned. All of which could have been avoided if only God had done what he first said and blitzed Nineveh in the time of Jonah.

Have you never wondered about God's strange providence in the way he orders the world? How much suffering could this world have been spared if God had wiped out Hitler or Stalin or bin Laden when they were young? Yet he let them live. Why? Because he's gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love.

You see, that's Jonah's problem. That's his complaint. When Jonah thought about how God rules the world and how he allows wickedness and is so slow to bring devastating judgment that he could bring, it made Jonah angry. If you haven't struggled over that question, you haven't looked very much at what's going on in the world. Why does God rule the world in the way that he does?

Now, let's try and probe a little bit deeper, try and get into what's going on in Jonah's heart here. What's actually happening? What has caused Jonah to be thrown into this great struggle? What is actually happening in his heart? I want you to notice, and this is a very important principle, how Jonah undermines his own repentance.

It's right there in verse two. Notice his statement: "This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish." Now, I want to suggest to you, it's important to see this clearly, that this is a marvelous example of undermining your own repentance.

Remember the story. Jonah had disobeyed God. There was no doubt that he sinned when he got on the boat to go to Tarshish because God had told him to go to Nineveh; he goes off in the opposite direction. He disobeys God, and God sends a storm to bring him back. God is merciful to him. God then sends the fish, and the fish saves his life. Jonah has repented of his disobedience, and God forgave him.

He goes on into ministry, and God blesses him. But now what's happening in chapter four? Ah, Jonah's going backwards. Now he wants to raise the very sin for which he has been forgiven, that is the sin of going to Tarshish, and he now wants to explain why he did the very thing for which he had previously repented.

He feels now, as he looks back on it, that there was some justification for what he did, some defense that could be offered. "Lord, the more I think about it, there were actually some very good reasons why I went to flee to Tarshish." You know what? As soon as you start explaining why it was that you sinned, you undermine your own repentance.

Repentance says, "I did this. It was wrong. I take responsibility and I trust myself to the mercy of God for my forgiveness." But self-justification says, "Well now, you need to understand why it was that I did this." The truth is that within every human soul, there is a continuing battle that goes on between repentance on the one hand and self-justification on the other hand.

So even after you repent of a particular sin in your life, you may find yourself down the track thinking differently about it. It will occur to you to think like this: "Actually, you know, I was very repentant, but the more I think about it, there's another side to this story. There are some explanations. There is some defense to be offered for what I did. Look at the pressures I was under. Look at the difficulties I was facing at the time. Look at the lack of support that I had. It's easy to understand why I fell. In fact, the more that I think about it, it would have been amazing if I did not fall."

And now suddenly you've undermined all your own repentance. It happens. Does this sound familiar? A man has an affair, he repents, he takes responsibility, he says he's sorry. But a few weeks later, what happens? His tone changes. He begins to explain why it happened. And his explanation undermines his repentance. It turns out, actually, it was someone else's fault.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper, but remember you said..." Just undermined your repentance. No point in saying sorry. Now, there is a subtle change that's going on in Jonah right here that is of devastating spiritual proportions.

He saw himself earlier as a sinner in need of the mercy of God, a sinner who finds his hope in God. But now he's seeing himself as a man who can offer an explanation for the wrong in his life to God. All the difference in the world between these two things.

Do you see it happening right here in Jonah chapter four and verse two? "O Lord, is not this what I said while I was still at home? This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish." What is he saying? "I went to Tarshish and I know it was wrong. But actually, God, it's your fault. Because if you judged the wicked like you should be doing, there wouldn't have been a problem. But I know that you're the God who relents from sending calamity, and that is why I went so quickly to Tarshish."

Now, notice the pattern. When you feel that you can offer an explanation for your sin against God, you undermine your own repentance. You go back even on where perhaps you were once before. And here's the tragedy of it: if you go down that path, it will not be long before you are angry with God.

Guest (Male): What a powerful thought for us to wrap up our time together with. When a man or a woman begins to undermine their own repentance, it won't be long before they're angry with God. A great reminder that we need to keep short accounts and not undermine our repentance.

Well, today's message is called "Resent God's Providence," part of a larger series on the book of Jonah called "How to Avoid a God-Centered Life." If you miss any of the broadcasts in our series, come and listen online at openthebible.org, or you can listen through the Open the Bible app, which you'll find at your app store.

You know, Colin, I really do find it interesting, as you bring out in the message today, that often it is the more spiritually mature person who does struggle with this issue of resentment.

Colin Smith: This whole issue of spiritual maturity is really quite deceptive. You get these kind of scales of discipleship. Are you a level one or two or three or four kind of level disciple? And it's all defined as to whether you do certain things and what's in place in your life.

Where was Peter when he confessed that Jesus is the Christ? Presumably in a very good place. And one minute later, he says, "Don't go to the cross," and Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." So where is Peter on the chart now? The idea that I'm at a certain place in terms of spiritual maturity is really simplistic.

It avoids the reality that there are layers in the life of every believer, and that whatever God is doing in and through us, there are some surprises that can come to the surface in strange ways. Jonah chapter four is the clearest example of this. The man's just been used to bring revival to a city through the preaching of the word of God, and now he is in the middle of an argument with God. Well, that's the kind of complexity of a so-called mature believer, and he's in the middle of the battle.

Guest (Male): Well, that's a great point you bring out there. I think most of us, if we had seen God pour out his grace in the way that Jonah did with the city of Nineveh, you would think that would lead to worship and to praising God for his grace. But as we're going to explore even a little bit deeper next time, sometimes God's grace leads people to anger.

Colin Smith: That's right. "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated." Now, the Bible says that several times. What's your reaction to that?

Guest (Male): That makes you think that God is angry with Esau.

Colin Smith: Yeah. Either that's going to lead me to a place of worship or it's going to lead me to a place of saying, "What right does God have to do that?" And suddenly I find, hey, I've got my own agenda as to what I'm telling God he can and cannot do. Well, we're going to get into that a little bit next time.

Guest (Male): Well, I hope you'll join us for that. By the way, if you ever miss one of these broadcasts, you can always come and listen at our website, openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can listen through the Open the Bible app, or you can order a copy of this series on CD when you come to openthebible.org or call 1-877-OPEN-365. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.

This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: A single conversation can change your life, and that happened to me at a conference many years ago. Over lunch, I sat next to a pioneer missionary. He told me the story of how he had made contact with an unreached tribal group in northern Thailand, how the tribal chief had invited him to make his home there, how he built his own home, and then learned the tribal language and began to serve these people. It was jaw-dropping stuff.

At one point in the conversation, I asked him, "Where do you begin in explaining the gospel to people who don't even know who God is?" And he said, "We tell them the Bible story."

Now, I'm convinced that we need to learn from the approach of pioneer missionaries in reaching lost people today. And that's why I wrote *Fly Through the Bible*. *Fly Through the Bible* is short, simple, and shareable. It's a place where someone in your life can begin.

So who is there in your life who needs to know the God of the Bible and might be willing to open the Bible with you if you asked them? For more information, visit openthebible.org/fly. That's openthebible.org/fly.