The more I meditate upon the Word of God, the more I am persuaded that finding the love of God in a church or in a Christian is not as common as one might think.
Of course there is always a certain degree of love to be found. But the love that God really wants and will bless in a person’s life is the holy, divine love that God Himself brings forth, in a true worshiper.
In the case of the prophet Jonah, we see that this man had a wonderful sense of law and order, but he was entirely without love.
The book of Jonah, though short, clearly describes Jonah’s character and his relationship to God and to other people.
Jonah 1:1–4. The word of the Lord came to Jonah (a tender plant) the son of Amittai (my truth) saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh (capital of the ancient kingdom of Assyria) the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.
We see that Jonah was a very godly man. He said, … “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” Jonah 1:9. He was courageous and self-sacrificing; for when it was revealed that he was the cause of these poor sailors being in danger of shipwreck and drowning, he said, “Just throw me overboard” (Jonah 1:12). He was also a prayerful man; while he was in the whale he really sought God!
In spite of these commendable attributes, Jonah was self-willed. When God told him to go one direction, he went the other. He was bigoted and selfish. Later, when his prophecy ended up not coming to pass because God had mercy upon Nineveh, he was very upset about it (Jonah 4:1–3).
He was more concerned with his own reputation as a prophet than he was with God showing mercy. He may have been obedient, but only after he had been chastised almost to the point of death.
Jonah was vehemently opposed to God’s will. He was undependable. He was unsympathetic toward the heathen. He had a hot temper and was given to violent words.
He had no compassion for the one hundred and twenty thousand men, women and children in Nineveh; he would just as soon have seen God kill them all.
He was even more concerned with his own comfort than he was with the multitude’s lives (Jonah 4:6–11). His prejudices and sense of patriotism were very narrow.
Jonah may have been a prophet of God who knew the voice of God, but we are faced with the fact that Jonah was a prophet without love.
Jonah had a sense of right and wrong, but he had no concept of real mercy. He knew that God was merciful; in fact, that was the accusation he made against God. When Nineveh had not been destroyed within forty days, he said, “I knew that You were a merciful God and that You would repent of the evil You had purposed to do to them!” Jonah started out wanting justice for the city of Nineveh; but before he was through, God taught him something about mercy and grace.
Notice how God dealt with Jonah. Jonah was told to go and preach to Nineveh and warn them about their wickedness, but he fled the other way. He went down to Joppa and paid the fare on a boat to Tarshish.
Any person who runs from God is required to pay the fare, as Jonah found out. When he fled in the opposite direction from Nineveh, God stopped him. The sailors threw him overboard, and God prepared a big fish that swallowed him. Then Jonah began to pray (Jonah 1:15–2:1).
Up to this point, Jonah had been strictly a legalist, calling upon God for justice. He did not want Nineveh to repent and be converted. He knew that if they did not hear the Word of the Lord, God in His righteousness would destroy them in forty days (Jonah 3:4).
Nineveh was a very wicked city; so if Jonah could just keep himself away from them and not deliver to them the truth, they would die.
In this respect he could be compared to a messenger who is asked to deliver a pardon from the governor to a prisoner who is to be executed the following morning. Suppose the messenger feels that the prisoner is guilty and should be hanged. All he has to do is delay delivering the pardon until noon, and the prisoner will be dead.
Jonah was calling for God to show justice. But when he ended up in a fish, he was the one who was receiving justice. When you start using your crooked little yardstick upon other people, be careful that God does not do the same thing with you.
When you start judging people harshly, beware that God does not judge you harshly.
With the kind Thou dost show Thyself kind; with the blameless Thou dost show Thyself blameless. Psalm 18:25.
“For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Matthew 6:14–15.
“For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it shall be measured to you.” Matthew 7:2.
A man should be very careful the minute he begins to demand, “I want justice!” He will get it, and he will not like it.
God was trying to show Jonah what was down deep in his heart. While he was calling for justice and judgment against the ungodliness of Nineveh, he himself was put into a place where he had to call upon the Lord for mercy. And God began to bring mercy to him (Jonah 2:10; 3:10).
The book of Jonah refers three times to Jonah’s fleeing from the presence of the Lord (Jonah 1:3, 10). He did not want to be there in the midst of the blessing and the presence of the Lord.
People often do that in their rebellion and disobedience. One of the saddest stories in the gospels describes that dark night when Jesus dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas. The Word says, “And he went out, and it was night” (John 13:30). Oh, the darkness that exists for a man who betrays the Lord and goes out from His presence!
In running away from God, Jonah was running away from God’s demand that he love Nineveh. He was not going to love those men of Nineveh or preach to them. You must see this truth: as a prophet of God, he was literally running away from the duty of loving.
Second, he became isolated and imprisoned (Jonah 1:4–17). Psychologists are concerned about the great problems of man’s loneliness and separateness, and so they manufacture terms such as “togetherness.” That is why many churches have ecumenical councils; in their present need, people are trying to get together and create unity.
At no time has mankind sensed its loneliness more than in this present day. What creates this situation? It is because the love of many is growing cold (Matthew 24:12). There is an inability to love.
People are running away from the necessity of loving one another. Refusal to love will do for them what it did for Jonah.
Jonah said, “No! I am not going to love the people of Nineveh! I am going to run the other way.” But God met him, and he found himself isolated and imprisoned, down in the belly of the fish that God had prepared.
The problem that many will have in a walk with God is trying to move into the love that God is bringing forth.
When you sin against the love and try to run away from it, you may be the cause of a near catastrophe. When people are in rebellion and lack the positive side of love, several negative things will come forth in their lives.
Jonah moved in rebellion and disobedience, first in fleeing from the presence of the Lord, then in his anger and disappointment when God did not kill off the people of Nineveh.
He moved in anger and despondency when God deprived him of his comfort. All the negative qualities—rebellion, disobedience, anger, disappointment, despondency—flared up in his life, because he did not have the positive quality of love.
A church needs the love of God. We do not dare run from the divine call to love. We dare not be like Jonah, asleep in the boat when the world is wondering, “Which way shall we turn? What are we going to do?”
We cannot sit smugly and say, “Well, praise the Lord! I am not going to witness to anyone. I am not going to speak. I do not need to care about the rest of the world.”
Christians who are in rebellion, asleep to their duty and without love, are the cause of a near catastrophe in the world, because God has to judge and deal with their lack of love.
There is no greater discipline than to say, “I am going to move in the love of God.” The love of God is not just a sentiment or an emotion. It is based upon the will, rather than upon the soulish part of a person. Our wills and spirits are entirely involved.
You do not decide that you love someone because he or she is particularly good-looking or friendly, but because God speaks to your heart to love.
Whether or not the person is always doing the will of God, whether or not he or she is critical of you, is not going to affect the love that God puts in your heart for that one.
Set your will and determine that because God wants you to love, you are going to love. Open your heart for a flow of love to come through you. Focus that love, not on one or two individuals or a particular group, but upon the whole Body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jonah refused to do that. He said, “I love my people at Jerusalem, but I will not love the people at Nineveh, because I know how mean and wicked they are. Let God kill them!”
When Jonah refused to love and began to flee from the situation, he found himself the cause of a near tragedy. And you will do the same thing if you are like Jonah. The only way Satan will be able to get into a church will be through those who are rebellious against the divine love.
With every gift and every ministry that God can bring forth in a church, it still will not be what He wants it to be unless there is an overflow of genuine love that flows out to the people.
You may have prophetic gifts, be able to talk with God, hear His voice and know His will, but so did Jonah. There must be a greater motivation than the drive to move in divine gifts.
The love of God is the motivator that causes men and women to go forth and to labor unselfishly. The church in which only the gifts of the Holy Spirit are found may be open for individuals to be ambitious.
But when love comes, the gifts and the ministries begin to flow through vessels who are not concerned with their place, their importance, or their exaltation. Their only desire is to see the will of God really accomplished.
Jonah had a wonderful sense of knowing the voice of God and what ought to be; but because he had no love, he found himself isolated in prison.
There is no shackle, no bondage, no isolation as great as finding yourself under the hand of God. You may be sitting right beside your brother or sister, and yet you may feel that you are “in the belly of a whale.”
You may feel that you love God with all your heart, yet you are not able to open your heart to love your brother and your sister. You may be in the midst of the ministry of the Body and wonderful teaching, yet feel isolated and a million miles away from the tender flow of blessing. The blessing does not reach you, because you are not opening your heart to love.
But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 12:31–13:8a.
Love puts strength in the church and gives significance to the gifts and the ministries. Where there is the gift of prophecy, there is an exhibition of divine utterance. Where there is a working of a miracle or the healing of the sick, there is an exhibition of divine power. The discerning of a demon by the gift of the discerning of spirits is an exhibition of divine wisdom and knowledge. But another side of God’s character must be revealed in every one of those gifts, and that is His love and His outreach. We must not see His power or His wisdom as cold attributes, unrelated to His love.
Start right now and purpose in your heart to flow in the love of God. Do not judge a brother or a sister. Even when God in His mercy shows you something that is wrong in the church or in an individual, it must not be an occasion to judge, but to intercede with compassion and love.
Where there are personality clashes, do not withdraw from those for whom you have a distaste, and cling only to those to whom you are drawn and with whom you feel a similarity in your personality. Open your heart to each member of the Body and avoid cliques and divisions. Strive for unity.
For forty days, Nineveh repented with sackcloth. Therefore, God repented of the evil, and Nineveh did not perish.
So as Jonah sat pouting, God caused a gourd plant to grow. In one night it came forth, and it helped Jonah because he was sitting in its shade. Then the Lord prepared a worm (just as He had prepared the fish and the gourd) which came and smote the gourd. At dawn, it withered and died. As the sun came up, a hot east wind began to blow right off the desert sands. Jonah fainted from the heat of the sun and prayed that he might die.
Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry.…” Jonah 4:9.
God said to Jonah, in effect, “Let’s have a little lesson here. You felt pity for a gourd for which you never labored. It was just a comfort and blessing that I gave you, but you were very upset when it was gone. Don’t you think that I should have pity on one hundred and twenty thousand people in Nineveh who do not know their right hand from their left?” Jonah was not thinking of them!
What causes a prophet to act in that manner? Why should he want to die just because some comfort is taken away from him and his life becomes a little difficult? And what about the one hundred and twenty thousand people? He would let them all die in their sin.
He was saying, in effect, “Make it like Sodom and Gomorrah! Rain fire on them and let them die! I don’t care! The only thing I am concerned about is my comfort and my reputation as a prophet. What are people going to think about me now? My prophecy didn’t come to pass.”
When you are without love, you are completely self-centered. You are more concerned about your comfort, your reputation, and every other self-interest than you are about God’s will and His love reaching out to those who need it.
It should not make much difference whether you are comfortable or not comfortable. There is something more important than comfort. What did the prophet Elijah wear? Just a leather girdle—not the latest style in clothing (2 Kings 1:8).
Where were John the Baptist’s priestly robes? His mother was of the daughters of Aaron, and his father was of the holy Levitical order (Luke 1:5).
Shouldn’t he at least have had a rich purple ephod to wear, to show that he was of the priestly order? (Exodus 28:6.) Instead, he was clothed with camel’s hair (Mark 1:6).
There comes a time when you have to be more concerned about the love of God reaching out through you than you are about your own comfort.
You may not realize it, but it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). When you come to the house of God and the subject of giving and loving is discussed, you may get the idea that you will end up a poor person if you do everything the church asks you to do.
No! You will end up rich! A man or woman who gives is reaching the highest potency their life is capable of. There is no greater evidence that a person is alive than seeing the outflow of their life in giving.
A man who is rich in material blessings, but so filled with fear that he can never give a dollar to anyone, is poor indeed. He is all tied up in his poverty.
The man who gives is blessed. He is alive from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He is part of the new creation, for he reaches out and he blesses.
If a husband is unable to create life in his wife’s womb, we say that there is an impotency. The same thing is true where there is no love and no giving.
You have to be able to love and to give with a potency that creates love and life in those to whom you give.
Many a mother says, “Oh, I love my children,” and out of a sense of duty she labors and sacrifices. She washes and irons their clothes and keeps the house clean, and everyone says, “My, she’s showing love.” She is not showing love if she is doing all that out of a sense of duty.
If there is not love in it, the children feel insecure and ill, and they do not know why. But let that mother, along with her labors, impart love. Then there is potency in what she is doing. By her giving and her blessing, she creates within her children the capacity to love. Real love is not sterile; it creates and enables us to love others, and then they love us in return.
God did the same thing for us. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). There is potency in God’s love! It is alive! It is powerful!
When God turns loose His love in us, it creates something in us. We come alive and we begin to love, too. When we love our brothers and sisters and we give to them unselfishly, not thinking of ourselves, we are like God; we come into a partnership with God.
Never say, “Well, I will love my brother if he loves me.” How far short of divine love that is! When an individual does not love you, begin to shine your love toward them and create in them the capacity to love.
Say, “I love; therefore I am loved.” Many of the things that are wrong with people are a result of their waiting for what they feel is owed to them. They want people to love them, not realizing that if they would open their hearts to God’s love, they could send it forth. You create in others the love to love you in return.
You do not want to be a Jonah who refuses to love and finds himself isolated and imprisoned. Realize that God is not only asking for your service. He is saying, “I want you to love.”