In one of his commentaries, John Calvin calls the psalms, “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul,” because he believed that there was no human emotion that can’t be found within this collection of poetry. And he’s right: themes range the gamut from ecstatic joy to sorrowful remorse to righteous anger. In fact, many of the psalms incorporate several emotions all together at once: lament, repentance, thanksgiving, and praise all in one convenient package.
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This second half of the book of Jonah may not be a proper dispute with God, as there’s not much direct back and forth between Jonah and God, but there’s certainly a struggle of wills on display here. Many people in Scripture push back when God calls them to prophecy or leadership, but Jonah elevates resistance to an art form. At first, he attempts to literally run away from God’s instructions, which famously lands him inside the belly of an enormous fish. Only then, after God delivers Jonah from his predicament by way of fish vomit, does Jonah begrudgingly make his way to Nineveh to proclaim the message that God had given him.
Our sermon series on disputing with God continues this morning with a second story about Moses. Last week, thanks to Moses pushing the boundaries of God’s permissiveness after the golden calf incident, we were able to learn more about God's nature and what it means for us. This week, Moses’ apparently argumentative nature and inability to let things go will teach us more about the relationship between God and God’s people. So let’s jump right in.
For the next seven weeks, we’re going to be digging into some scriptural examples of people disputing with God. From Abraham to Moses to David to Jonah to an unnamed Canaanite woman to Jesus himself, it turns out that we come from a long line of believers who were willing to question and even criticize God. Sometimes, these skeptics are swiftly put in their place (the book of Job comes to mind), but more often, the Lord just…lets it happen. On some occasions, God actually engages in the debate, and there are even times when God winds up changing God’s mind because of it. Plenty of modern Church leaders would be horrified at the thought of questioning religious authority, but the fact is that there’s a whole lot of scriptural precedent for it. So let’s see what we can learn from the complaints of our forebears.