January 22, 2015 | Kindness Moves Us

Kindness moves the soul

Jonah is a book of brilliant irony, filled with staggering surprises. One of the biggest shocks is how God’s kindness brings Jonah to repentance. Reading about this rebellious, pompous fool sparks two immediate responses in my heart: 1. Jonah is uncomfortably similar to me in many ways. 2. Were I the Lord, I would zap the guy into the next county when he disobeyed me like that.

Yet God’s response is one of boundless kindness. Of course, the Lord brings serious consequences to His rebellious prophet; yet the storms, stress, and sea-creatures merely serve as a dark velvet background to show off the brilliant jewel of God’s grace. The text bears this out in macro and micro ways. One of the little statements is found in the word choice in verse 8 where the text uses the Hebrew term סֶד hesed. Jonah relates how those who tie themselves to empty idols forsake all chance for hesed, for faithful love.

Hesed is a most marvelous and important Hebrew word. It means covenant love that will not be broken. Hesed – especially from God – is the longing of every heart. Most of human activity is a desperate desire to find security and significance. Only God’s hesed provides perfectly for that desire. Jonah is reminding himself and all of us that hesed is found only in the one true God. And that’s what causes Jonah to give thanks – even while trapped in the belly of Sheol.

Ever-new truth for each generation

Over 200 years ago, the great preacher and hymn writer Robert Robinson nailed the idea in the poem we call “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” This verse springs straight out of Jonah’s own poetry in chapter 2:

O to grace how great a debtor

daily I’m constrained to be!

Let thy goodness, like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

prone to leave the God I love;

here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

seal it for thy courts above.

Back in the 20^th century, Stuart Briscoe summarized the process with this pithy insight:

“It is the kindness, the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. Even Jonah, crusty old rascal of a prophet that he was, recognized this. In him we see a delightful picture of God’s kindness taking hold of a person’s life.”

– Stuart Briscoe, Hearing God’s Voice Above the Noise

And just last week, a member of our church’s pulpit team wrote me a great note on this:

“I am struck by the parallels between Jonah’s literal experience and Christians’ spiritual experience. We were dead in our sins because we denied the knowledge of God, but God graciously brought us to repentance and belief and made us alive in Christ.” – David Wade