God of Love, God of Judgement. Is God Schizophrenic?

REFLECTION QUOTES

“Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.”

“Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”

~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French thinker

“There is a feeling that we lack something important. I have had many discussions with American students who had this feeling…They felt they lacked something in life. Not necessarily the church…[T]he need for something spiritual goes beyond our consumerist society. I think it’s widespread all over the world. So I don’t expect, as many people did in the 18th century and beyond, that religion will vanish. I don’t believe it will vanish.”

~ Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009), Polish-born philosopher,
historian and humanist scholar

“God’s vengeance did not fall on the sinners, but on the only sinless one, the Son of God, who stood in the place of sinners, Jesus Christ bore the vengeance of God…That was the end of all false thoughts about the love of a God who does not take sin very seriously. God hates and judges [his enemies] in the only righteous one, the one who prays for forgiveness for God’s enemies. Only in the cross of Jesus Christ is the love of God to be found.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), pastor-theologian,
executed in a concentration camp for his opposition to the Nazis

“The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God puts himself where we deserved to be.”

~John Stott (1921-2011), famed theologian and rector of All Souls Church in London

“Let us wonder; grace and justice
Join and point to mercy’s store;
When through grace in Christ our trust is,
Justice smiles and asks no more.”

~John Newton (1725-1807), Anglican pastor

SERMON PASSAGE

Jonah 4:1-4 (NIV)

1But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

4 But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”