Jonah by Dr. R.T. Kendall June 16/2023

 Are you here this morning and you have been running from God?  Could I be talking to somebody like that?  Well, maybe not in the explicit way like Jonah.  Perhaps you are not aware of what you are doing.  Are there sins you have been nurturing that nobody knows about but you?  The word of the Lord has come to you and has said one thing and you have been doing another.  You are running; you are in retreat and you think nobody knows about it.  Let me remind you that if you are running from God you are doing something that cannot be done. 

Very well, then, Jonah's retreat brought him more noticeably into this realm of common grace.  But God manifested special love and mercy by sending the wind.  This wind we may call the chastening of the Lord.  God's chastening maybe defined as His simultaneous wrath and mercy.  Now, Habakkuk the p0rophet prayed: 'O Lord, revive they work in the midst of the years, in wrath remember mercy.'  How can this be?  You may be angry with them and yet love them at the same time.  I could never understand that as a small boy when my father would take off his belt and look at me and say: 'Son, I'm doing this because I love you.'  It made no sense to me.  I saw no love in his eyes; he looked angry.  But I know now that is what it was.  I am thankful for every spanking I ever got from him.  And that is what God's chastening is.  It is simultaneous wrath and mercy, but while that wrath is being poured out we are not aware that it is His mercy.  It is only when we look back that we can appreciate what God has done and we can be thankful for every time He had to chasten us.