BLIND SPOTS

Book of Jonah

 

In 1882, a New York City businessman names Joseph Richardson owned a narrow strip of land on Lexington Avenue.  It was 5 feet wide and 104 feet long.

 

Another businessman, Hyman Sarner, owned a normal-sized lot adjacent to Richardson’s narrow one.  Sarner wanted to build apartments that fronted the avenue.  He offered Richardson $1,000.00 for the slender plot.

 

Richardson was deeply offended by the amount and demanded $5,000.00.

Sarner refused.  Richardson called Sarner a tightwad and slammed the door in his face.

 

Sarner assumed the land would remain vacant.  He instructed the architect to design the apartment building with windows overlooking Lexington Avenue.

 

When Richardson saw the finished building, he resolved to block the view.  No one was going to enjoy a free view over his lots.

 

So, 70-year-old Richardson built a house on his narrow lot.  Five feet wide and a hundred and four feet long.  The house had 4 stories with 2 suites on each floor.

 

Upon completion, Richardson and his wife moved into one of the suites.  Only one person at a time could ascend the stairs or pass through the hallway.

 

The largest dining room table in any suite was only 18 inches wide.  The stoves were the very smallest made.

 

A newspaper reporter of some girth once got stuck in the stairwell, and after 2 tenants were unsuccessful in pushing him free, he exited only by stripping down to his undergarments.

 

Richardson’s home was dubbed “The Spite House.”  Richardson spent the last 14 years of his life in that narrow residence that seemed to fit his narrow state of mind.

 

Max Lucado shared that story in one of his books, You’ll Get Through This.

Max concluded the story by writing-“The Spite House was torn down in 1915, which is odd.  I distinctly remember spending a few nights there last year.  And a few weeks there some weeks back.  If memory serves, didn’t I see you squeezing through the hallway?”

 

Max makes the application for us-“Revenge builds a lonely narrow house.  Space enough for one person.  No wonder God insists we “keep a sharp eye out for the weeds of bitter discontent!”

 

Have you ever spent a night or two in The Spite House?  Perhaps you stayed there for a long weekend.  Or, is The Spite House your permanent residence?

 

Bitterness can do that to us.  Bitterness can easily become an emotion that is in our blind spots.  Becoming bitter doesn’t happen overnight.  It is a gradual process.

 

You get offended by something someone says or does to you.  You become angry, which is the natural emotional reaction to being hurt.  If you allow your anger to simmer, you become resentful and ill-feelings set in.  If you allow your resentment to fester long enough, you become bitter.

 

Someone wrote-“Bitterness starts when we cling to anger and resentment.”

 

This morning we’re going to check our blind spots to see if bitterness is lurking in them by looking at the Old Testament character, Jonah.  Jonah rented a room in The Spite House.

 

Do you remember Jonah?  He’s the guy who got swallowed alive by a gigantic fish and lived to tell about it.

 

Jonah was one of God’s prophets to the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  God called upon Jonah to go preach to the city of Nineveh, which was the capitol city of the Assyrian Empire, which corresponds, geographically, to where modern-day Iraq is.

 

God wanted Jonah to go preach to Nineveh and warn them to repent of their wickedness.  But Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh.  So, he ran from God and went in the opposite direction of Nineveh.  He boarded a boat bound for Tarshish, which was 550 miles away from Nineveh.

 

But Jonah soon found out that you can run from God, but you can’t hide from God.  God sent a violent storm on the sea, and Jonah was thrown overboard.  And he was swallowed by his giant fish that God instructed to swallow but not chew.

 

Jonah spent 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of his giant fish.  It is amazing what that will do for your state of mind.  Jonah ended up praying and repenting of his rebellion.  God caused that whale of a fish to spit up Jonah. He went to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s message to them.

 

And the wonderful thing was that the people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness, from the king down to the lowliest peasant.  They turned from their evil ways and turned to the Lord God.  They believed in God.  They prayed.  They worshipped.  And God spared the people of Nineveh.

 

Now, you would think that any preacher would be happy that people responded to the message he preached and were saved. 

 

When I was in high school, I led a friend of mine to Christ.  It was 10 o’clock at night when Darryl accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.  I was so excited that I wanted Darryl to be baptized right then, in the very hour of the night, just like the Philippian Jailer was in the Book of Acts.  So, I drove us over to my pastor’s house and knocked on the door.  I know I got my pastor out of bed.  But I didn’t care.  Darryl had just accepted Jesus and he needed to be baptized.  We went to the church building and my pastor baptized Darryl into Christ that night.

 

I was excited for Daryl.  But Jonah wasn’t excited when the people of Nineveh repented and believed in God.  In fact, he was downright bitter about it.

 

As we look at the 4th chapter of Jonah we’ll see Jonah’s bitterness on full display.  We’ll see what his bitterness did to him.  We’ll see that…..

 

1.BITTERNESS DOMINATES AND DESTROYS

 

READ JONAH 4:1-5

 

This is the second prayer offered by Jonah.  The first prayer was the one Jonah prayed inside the belly of the gigantic fish.  That prayer was a cry for help and a prayer of gratitude for God’s grace in his life.

 

But this second prayer is a prayer laced with bitterness.  Jonah didn’t think it was right for God to spare the people of Nineveh.  God showed mercy to them, and Jonah was mad at God for doing so.

 

The question is, why was Jonah so resentful towards the Ninevites and bitter because God forgave them?

 

In that day and time, Assyria was the arch nemesis of the nation of Israel.  And the Assyrians were extremely cruel when they attacked and conquered people.  To say that the Assyrians were barbaric is being kind.

 

The prophet Nahum had this to say about the city of Nineveh: a city of blood.  Full of lies.  Full of plunder.  Never without victims.  Piles of dead bodies without number.  People stumbling over corpses.

 

The Assyrians tortured and mutilated their victims before they killed them.  Undoubtedly, Jonah’s people, the people of Israel had suffered inhumane treatment and death at the hands of the Assyrians.

 

That explains why Jonah was so bitter and resentful.  There was no way on God’s green earth that Jonah wanted God to spare the people of Nineveh.  And when he did, Jonah became bitter toward God.

 

We can understand this, can’t we?  When someone hurts us, or someone we love, it is easy to become angry, resentful, and bitter.

 

Jonah told God that he knew that God was a loving and compassionate God.  He knew that if he went and preached to the Ninevites, and they repented, that God would forgive them. He told God that’s why he didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place.

 

Jonah was doctrinally sound.  He believed that God was a loving and forgiving God.  He believed that with his head.  But his heart didn’t want God to love and forgive.  He wanted God to punish and kill the people of Nineveh.

 

Jonah wanted mercy and grace for himself.  But not for Nineveh.  Does that sound like any Christians you know?  Or maybe, at times, the Christian who is staring back at you in the mirror?

 

A pastor by the name of Ben Cremer wrote-“Religious idolatry for us Christians is when we love our beliefs about God and people more than we ever actually love God and people.” (REPEAT QUOTE)

 

Do you ever find yourself like Jonah?  Mentally adhering to the right doctrinal belief that God’s grace is for everyone.  But, on an emotional level, when we’re bitter, we don’t want the people who hurt us to get God’s grace. When we’re bitter, we want the people who hurt us, or who’ve hurt our loved ones to pay, somehow, some way.

 

Bitterness dominates and destroys us.  We see how it affected Jonah.  He wanted to die.  He went off and sat alone, in his bitterness, waiting to see what God would do with the city of Nineveh. 

 

Bitterness is all-consuming.  That’s why Hebrews 12:15 warns us:

 

“See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” -Hebrews 12:15

 

Bitterness is like a poisonous plant.  Once it takes root in our hearts, it takes over our lives.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this.  You’ve been hurt by someone in your past.  As much as you’re trying to leave that in the past, it just stays with you.  The resentment continues to grow and takes over your life.  The bitterness is so toxic that it destroys relationships in your life that you don’t want it to.

 

But not only is your bitterness defiling others, it’s eating away at you.  Someone once said that bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.  Bitterness is a cancer on your soul.  It’s a guaranteed way to be miserable.

 

A 1930s edition of the Chicago Herald Examiner carried the strange story of Harry Havens, who went to bed one day,  and stayed there for 7 years with a blindfold over his eyes.  Why?  He resented something his wife said.

 

Harry was the type of man who actually liked to help around the house.  Hanging pictures.  Doing the dishes and other household chores.  But, one day, his wife scolded him for the way he was performing one his household tasks and he resented it.

 

He was reported to have responded to his wife this way-“All right, if that’s how you feel, I’m going to bed.  I’m going to stay there for the rest of my life.  And I don’t want to see you or anyone else again.”  Which explains the blindfold.

 

Finally, after 7 years, Harry got up out of bed.  When the bed started to feel uncomfortable.

 

If you are bitter, how long are you going to lay on your bed of bitterness?  Isn’t it starting to feel rather uncomfortable?  Isn’t it about time you got up out of that bed and let go of your bitterness?  How?

 

2.FREEDOM FROM BITTERNESS IS FOUND ONLY THROUGH FORGIVENESS

 

READ JONAH 4:6-11

 

God used this plant to try and teach Jonah a lesson in compassion and forgiveness.  Jonah was concerned about the plant.  He had more compassion for the plant than he had for the people of Nineveh.

 

God told Jonah- “Since you are concerned over this plant, shouldn’t I have compassion for these people and forgive them?”  And the subtle message to Jonah was that he should too!

 

Now this is where you want to turn the page to chapter 5.  Where Jonah repents of his bitter attitude and rejoices over the salvation of the Ninevites.

 

But there is no chapter 5.  Did Jonah ever come around?  We’re not told.  As far as we know Jonah died an angry, bitter, and lonely man.  That’s what bitterness can do to you.

 

The story of Jonah seems incomplete and unsatisfactory.  We’re left with a cliffhanger of an ending. 

 

Perhaps we’re deliberately left hanging because the response is up to us to make the decision on how our story will end.  Chapter 5 of Jonah is the chapter that is being written in each of our lives.

 

 Will we remain bitter, or will we forgive? Freedom from bitterness is found ONLY through forgiveness, according to Ephesians 4:31-32:

 

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” -Ephesians 4:31-32

 

God acknowledges that we may become bitter at times.  And that we may struggle with bitterness.  But he also wants us to forgive so that we can be released from the tyranny of resentment and bitterness.

 

Corrie Ten Boom was that saintly woman of God who, along with her sister, Betsie, was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbrück during WWII.  Corrie told about how she and her sister were brutalized by the Nazi jailers. Betsie died there.

After her release, Corrie became an evangelist, traveling around and preaching about Jesus.  She wrote about preaching in Munich, Germany in 1947. 

 

After one of her messages, a man came forward to talk to her.  Instantly she recognized him.  He was one of the guards at Ravensbrück.  Here’s what Miss Ten Boom wrote about that moment and that encounter:

 

“I saw him, a balding, heavyset man in a grey overcoat, brown felt hat clutched between his hands.  People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken the message that God forgives.  It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land.  And I gave them my favorite mental picture. That when we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest ocean, and they’re gone forever.

 

“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe that I, this person from a concentration camp, would come with this message of God’s grace.  There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947.  People stood up in silence, and in silence collected their wraps, and in silence left the room.

 

“That’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others.  One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next in my mind I saw him in a blue uniform and a cap with its skull and crossbones.

 

“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message!  How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’

 

“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand.  He would not remember me, of course, how could he remember me, one prisoner among those thousands of women?

 

“But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt.  I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. 

 

“He went on: ‘You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk.  I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me. ‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian.  I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well.  Will you forgive me?’

 

“I stood there, I whose sins had again and again been forgiven, and yet I could not forgive.  Betsie had died in that place.  Could he erase her slow terrible death simply by asking?

 

“It could not have been many seconds that that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

 

“For I had to do it, I knew that.  The message that God forgives has a prior condition:  that we forgive those who have injured us.  ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive you yours.’

 

“I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but I knew it as a daily experience.  Since the end of the war, I had gone home in Holland, and I had developed a home for victims of Nazi brutality. 

 

“Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what their physical scars.  But those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids.  It was as simple and as horrible as that.

 

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.  But forgiveness is not an emotion, I knew that too.  Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

 

“Help!’ I prayed silently.  ‘I can lift my hand.  I can do that much.  God, you supply the feeling.’ And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me.  And as I did, an incredible thing took place.  The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang through our joined hands.  And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

 

‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’  For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, and the former prisoner.  I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then.”

 

I wish that would have been how the story of Jonah ended. A story of bitterness and anger giving way to forgiveness.

 

But the real question is your story.  How will your story end?  When we get hurt, we can be blinded by bitterness.  And there is a part of you that wants to hang on to that resentment.  And you think, that by forgiving your offender, that you’re minimizing what was done to you.

 

But that is not the case.  You need to forgive.  Not for the one who has hurt you.  You need to forgive for you, so that you won’t continually be hurt by your bitterness.

 

Because of Jesus, we have been forgiven for so much.  We’ve received his grace in abundance, time and time again, for every sin.  How can we withhold grace from others?

 

As we sing our commitment song this morning, let’s commit to forgiving whomever we each may need to forgive in this moment.  And then forgive them 70 times 7.  Continue to forgive them as often as you need to, to rid your heart and your soul from bitterness.

 

And this morning if you need to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, we invite you to walk forward as we stand and sing.

 

 

 

 

Contact Us

Lebanon Christian Church

409 Yorktown Road

 

Newport News (Lee Hall), VA 23603

 

Phone: 757 887-5536

 

  

CCS #8003



 

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