- Introduction
A. Last week we spoke about Jonah’s audacious God. This week America experienced a number of God’s audacious actions:
1. Sports leagues shut down
2. March madness cancelled
3. Disney World closed
4. Broadway brought to a standstill
5. Conferences cancelled
B. This week we’ll be talking about another aspect of God’s audacity: the audacity of His grace.
C. Jonah 1:3–3:2 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. 4 But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” 7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. 11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. 17 And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. 1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. 7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!” 10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. 1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
II. A story about grace
A. The great news of this story is how the God of the Bible is a God of audacious grace and astonishing mercy.
1. It is hard to think of an example of more astonishing grace than that of forgiving the Ninevites.
2. The Ninevites who were not only a pagan, idolatrous people, they were a cruel and ruthless people. And yet God extends to them His gracious salvation.
3. God has mercy even on those who rebel against Him.
4. It is so shocking, so audacious that it begs us ask why. And the only answer the Bible gives us is that God saves His enemies in order to display His grace.
a. We can see this in the example of Saul of Tarsus, the church’s greatest human enemy. In 1Tim. 1:16 he tells us, “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
b. But it’s us too. “While we were [His] enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son...” – Romans 5:10.
5. God showed real love, real mercy to very lost, very wicked people. This is the kind of God He is.
6. And of course He can do this only through Christ – our righteousness and substitute.
7. How ready He is to forgive those who humble themselves — in spite of all they've done!
B. But this story is not just a story about the grace of God to forgive Ninevites. It is also about the grace of God to rescue rebellious prophets. (For even prophets are sinners!)
1. Jonah, God’s prophet, had flagrantly defied the Lord. And yet God rescued him from the water.
2. And this story is not just a story about the grace of God to rescue prophets from the waters of life. It is also about the grace of God to rescue rebellious prophets from their own idolatries.
3. For even after Jonah finally obeyed and proclaimed God’s message in Nineveh, and the Ninevites repented and God forgave them, Jonah had another bout with bad attitude.
4. He was uncompassionate and resentful and snarly.
a. He was a recipient of God’s mercy and yet he was unable to show mercy to others.
b. He was unable to see the dirty Ninevites in the same way he saw himself.
c. He accepted God’s undeserved favor for himself and for his people, but was angry when God showed the same undeserved favor for people he didn’t like.
5. And yet, God was still patient with him and worked with him instead of casting him aside. He was gracious over and over again.
6. There is great encouragement in the story of Jonah — not just for the enemies of God but for us believers. It is astounding how patient God is with His children!
a. For God keeps after us, even when we run the other way. And even when our attitude stinks, He keeps working with us.
b. Even when we think He should cast us aside, and even we deserve to be cast aside, God keeps pursuing us in His grace.
III. But there’s another very different way this story is about grace. It’s about the scandal of grace.
A. At this point in the story, we haven’t really been told why Jonah was so unwilling to proclaim God’s message in Nineveh. Jonah 4:1–3 makes it pretty clear:
1. But it [God’s relenting from judging Nineveh] displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
2. You see, Jonah could tell what God had in mind when God commanded him to proclaim judgment to Nineveh. He knew that God was going to forgive them. How did he know?
a. You see, whenever God sends a warning of judgment it is a message of mercy. When God judges without mercy, He doesn’t send a message ahead of time.
b. Why now the warning in the case of Nineveh? It must be because God has repentance in mind.
c. That’s why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place. He didn’t want God to forgive the Assyrians.
B. But why didn’t Jonah want God to forgive the Assyrians?
1. I don’t think this question is too difficult to answer. The NT gives us similar examples:
a. The older brother of the prodigal son (Luke 15), who resented his father for forgiving his brother. That was a matter of pride, of a lack of compassion, of looking down on others.
b. And there’s actually a NT story very similar to the story of Jonah. It’s about a Jewish prophet who was told by God to go to a Gentile people and proclaim His truth, but this prophet was very reluctant to do so. He said, "No, Lord!" But eventually God got the prophet to deliver the message, and the Gentile hearers were dramatically converted. Then after they were converted, this prophet had another lapse, reverting back to his earlier attitude, favoring his own people, the Jews, and abandoning the converted Gentiles. It’s the story of Peter & Cornelius in Acts 10, along with Gal.2:11-14.
2. You see, Jonah, Peter and the older brother of the prodigal son have something in common. In a sense they didn’t like being saved by grace because that implied that they were no better than anyone else. They preferred a gospel of human success and divine approval.
3. Part of human nature seems to be the desire to think of ourselves as better than others, and grace undermines that.
a. As a Jew, Jonah was very alert to the idols and immoralities of the Gentiles, their worldliness, immorality, rule-breaking, rejecting authority.
b. But he was fairly oblivious to his own sins, like the sin of self-righteousness, like a sense of superiority, lack of compassion, looking down on others, racism, authoritarianism, pharisaism: all sins which involve a lack of appreciation for God’s grace.
C. The story of Jonah is instructive about the way God deals with this tendency. When one of His children, forgetting about the fact that he is loved only by grace, begins to think of himself as better than others, God will often put that person in a situation where God knows he/she will disobey.
1. This is how He shows proud people who they really are, and how much they need God’s grace.
2. We all struggle with sin. We all struggle with idols. God knows our sin. But often we don’t — “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer.17:9).
3. God knows just how to expose it, though. He knows how to put us in just the right situation to bring it to the surface.
a. You see, stress and temptation don’t make us sin, they bring out the sin which is already in our hearts. Hardships don’t cause our sin but they expose our sin.
b. God does this so that we will see our sin, because only when we see it can we repent of it — and cry out to Him for His help in escaping it.
c. This is why it’s so important that we pay attention to the things which cause us to react with fear, anger, worry, impatience, envy, pride, rebelliousness, disobedience etc. These are indicators of idolatry.
d. Jonah’s reaction to God’s grace exposed the sin in his heart: the sense of superiority, the cold-heartedness and utter lack of compassion toward the Ninevites. God could have left Jonah in his sin, thinking that he was doing pretty good. But God loved Jonah too much for that. He gave Jonah an assignment designed to expose and confront the idolatry of his heart.
4. The very thing we long for — a smooth and pleasant life — is so often the very worst thing for us.
a. We are often at our worst when everything is floating along fine. We are so prone to think, “I am rich. I have prospered. There is nothing that I need.” and be blind to the fact that we are wretched, pitiable, blind, poverty-stricken and naked (Rev.3:17).
b. We have no sense of desperation, no sense of how needy we are, no sense of how our only hope is in running to Christ.
c. When we feel at home in our earthly place, we just want to snuggle up with the pleasantness of life. We are not driven to Christ, our true home.
D. Do we expect God to be the champion of our idols and of our worldly happiness? No, no, no! God is our friend, but He is not the friend of our idols. He will be the champion of our worship, but not of our idols. He is in the business of removing idols from the throne of our hearts.
1. The last thing we want to do is reach out to our enemy, or lose our job, or give up our child, or face a scary storm, or be chased by enemy chariots, or be mocked and belittled, or have a deadly disease sweep across the world.
2. But these things are so good for us! They wake us up to our need; they shake us from our earthly comfort; they remind us how fragile we are; they make it clear where our true home is; they expose our idols.
3. This is why James 1:2-4 tells us to “Count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds, for we know that the testing of our faith produces” good things in us and leads us to maturity in our faith.
4. Jonah didn’t count it all joy. And that proved that Jonah was still very much in need of God’s work in his life through trials.
5. So, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” 1Peter 4:12–14