Anger is a signal emotion helping us to assess our needs and enlightening us to our true spiritual condition. Anger can be a warning light alerting us to God’s invitation to a grander perspective, and to live and treat others under our experienced reality of God’s steadfast love, compassion, and mercy.

When we hear the Word of God, like the Ninevites did, we must believe, repent of sin, and trust in the mercy and steadfast love of God.

The backdrop of the book of Jonah is about The LORD’s steadfast love, his compassion and mercy. Psalm 33:5, 59:17, Psalm 86:5, 103:8, Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Joel 2:13

Main Point:
Is the LORD the righteous ruler of the universe, or are you? Does the LORD have the corner of the market on compassion, justice, and mercy or do you? Are you and your thoughts the standard of righteousness or is the LORD? Are you following Him with your life?

When a person turns their faith in God and his Kingdom into a self-centered belief system rather than God-centered devotion, discontentment is the result. Discontentment with how God is working makes repentance nearly impossible. yet God in His compassion continues to pursue both pagans and prophets.

Jonah refuses to deliver a message of truth and compassion, as God commands of him because he is angry at the LORD’s workings. Jonah’s attitude and disobedience put him in conflict with God, and he therefore becomes a man or ironic inconsistencies.

Jonah is commissioned by God to warn Nineveh of impending judgment. Yet, Jonah flees from this task. The satire and irony are meant to criticize the tendency of God’s people who have experienced His grace yet lack the concern and willingness to obey God’s truth and compassion with others. To experience the grace of God and not be willing to convey his compassion is a tragedy that Christians must identify and avoid.

Ephesians 5:15-21 emphasizes the importance of living a life of wisdom and purpose, especially in a world that opposes God and allures us to its ways. Paul writes his letter to the Ephesian church, to provide a framework for living as a part of the world, YET separate from it as a citizen of God’s Kingdom possessing Gospel values.

God works in the world in surprising ways to bring about revolutionary hope. This revolutionary hope allows us to exist in this broken world with lives that joyfully hold forth Christ as King.

Once again in today’s account we see the two parallel truths in Luke’s Gospel; TRUTH and JOY. For Mary and Elizabeth, the reality of what God is doing is progressively becoming more palpable to them and it erupts into joy, faith-filled obedience, and Hope for God’s deliverance.