The Grace Of God

Nineveh Repents: God Relents of the Disaster 1:37

“Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”

— Jonah 3:10 (NKJV)

Now, as I said a few minutes ago, when chapter three ended, it ended on one of the highest notes that any chapter ever has in the whole of scripture. This one wayward, reluctant prophet who didn't even want to go to the city he went to, who went to a city that didn't want him to be there, preached one sermon, five words long in Hebrew, eight words long in English.

It had the greatest effect of any sermon ever preached in terms of the number who responded. That should be the high note of just about any chapter in scripture, and it should have been the high note in the apex of Jonah's own life. And yet the response of the Ninevites to these words was not the response that Jonah wanted.

And so he grew angry. From the king on down, we saw last week, the people in Nineveh, the people who you would think would be like the least likely candidates, A, for grace, and B, to respond to that grace, did exactly that. They responded from the king on down. Not just a few scrubs on the periphery of the city.

From the king on down, the guy who took off his robe, he put on sackcloth, wore ashes, the people followed suit. They acknowledged what they'd done was wrong. They acknowledged they were sinners before God. And they fell before that God and asked for His mercy.

They said, who knows? If we change our ways, maybe God will be merciful. Now, what do you think happened next? Well, we know what happened next because chapter 3 concluded with these words.

It said this. It said, when God saw how the Ninevites responded and how they turned from their evil ways, God relented of the disaster that He was to bring upon them, and He did not do it.

Joy in Heaven Over One Sinner Who Repents 3:22

“There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”

— Luke 15:7 (NKJV)

By any stretch of the imagination, this is incredibly good news. By any stretch of the imagination, this is something to be excited about. Over 100,000 people, at least, over 100,000 people have been spared from God's wrath. Over 100,000 people have repented of their sins, asked for forgiveness.

I tell you now, I would trade my life for that outcome. Jonah turned his back on her. In Luke 15, Jesus said this. He said, you know what?

There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 who need no repentance. Over one sinner, there's more joy in heaven than over 100 who don't need any repentance. Well, this wasn't just one. This was 100,000 plus at least, probably far more. what a day, what a party there must have been in heaven on this day.

Jonah's Anger: A Conflict of Two Wills 4:12

And yet Jonah saw it not. Yet Jonah had the exact opposite reaction of what all of heaven was doing at this moment. To Jonah this was nothing good. To Jonah this was no miracle.

This isn't a miracle in the least. This was a miscarriage of justice. To Jonah this was not a miracle, it was a miscarriage of justice. God, it is not right what You have done.

He doesn't merely assert that he didn't like what God did. He said, this is not right. I am right to be angry about an action You have taken. Dear Jonah, there is a God.

You are not Him. Let's see how that plays out in the verses to come. Let's reread verses 1 through 4 and then work our way through the balance.

Jonah's Prayer: The Character of a Gracious God 5:03

“For I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.”

— Jonah 4:2 (NKJV)

Verse 1. But this displeased Jonah exceedingly. What displeased him? The repentance of the people and the fact that God withheld His wrath.

So this displeased Jonah exceedingly. The text actually implies that Jonah saw this as a great evil. It displeased Jonah exceedingly. He became angry.

And so he prayed to the Lord. And he said, Oh, Lord, wasn't this what I told You You would do? Oh, Lord, was this not what I said when I was still in my country? That's why I fled previously to Tarshish, because I know You're gracious.

I know You're merciful. I know You're slow to anger, abundant in love and kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me. It's better for me to die than to live.

God's Right to Be Angry, Yet He Shows Grace 5:51

Then the Lord said, is it right for you to be angry? You know, of all the people in the book of Jonah, the only one who's ever depicted as angry is Jonah. With that said, if anyone had a right to be angry, it was God. Clearly, God had a right to be angry at the Ninevites.

The Ninevites, in a world filled with pagan people, in a world filled with wickedness, in some way that we can't even calibrate, in chapter 1, verse 2, God said this, the wickedness of this one city, the wickedness of this city is unique in such a way that it is more wicked than all the other cities, which are plenty wicked and of themselves.

We see in chapter one that He has every reason to be angry. At none of us? God had reasons to be angry at these people. They were terrible, terrible people.

Beyond that, He could have been angry at the sailors who went with Jonah, chapter one, because when the storm came up on the waters, what did they do? Well, they began to prayed to all their own fake false gods. We see that they prayed all sorts of different things asking for help. God could have been angry at them.

And of course God had plenty of reasons to be angry at Jonah given his disobedience. God says arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. Jonah goes down to Joppa, goes out to Tarshish, goes down to the bottom of the boat, and goes to sleep. God had every right to be angry at Jonah given that Jonah was shirking his prophetic duties and fled to avoid doing them.

However, although God had a right to be angry to all the people, all y'all in this text, although God had a right to be angry to them, instead, what do you see time and time again from God? You see compassion. You see grace. God has a right to be angry at Nineveh, and yet He has grace on Nineveh, and He sends him a prophet to bring them to repentance.

God had a right to be angry at the Phoenician sailors praying to idols of stone and marble, and yet God has grace, saves them from the storm, shows him His true power. God had a right to be angry at Jonah for not doing what he ought to do and for being so hard-hearted towards the people made in God's own image.

And yet God consistently shows Jonah grace from one end of the book to the other. You would have thought that somewhere along the line, that grace and compassion that God was showing everyone in the book would have rubbed off on Jonah. You would have thought by the time you get to chapter four, right, his heart would have softened a bit.

That's not what happens. We see that he's even more angry and more bitter as this chapter unfolds.

Is It Right for You to Be Angry? 8:25

And so God just stops the presses and asks him the most pressing question. Jonah, Jonah, is it right for you to be angry? God is suggesting to Jonah, if he'll just take the hint, that Jonah's anger is unfounded, that it's not appropriate. But Jonah's not going to get that.

He's not going to take this hint, and he's going to say, I'd rather die than live another day with this injustice going on. And the next few verses, he's going to double down on that statement.

The Plant, the Worm, and the East Wind 8:56

Let's look at verses 5 through 8. So Jonah went out of the city, and he sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter, and he sat in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. And Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery.

So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. It was morning dawn the next day. God prepared a worm, and it damaged the plant so that it withered. And it happened that when the sun rose, that God prepared a vehement east wind.

The sun beat on Jonah's head, so he grew faint. And then he wished death for himself and said, It's better for me to die than to live. All right. After leaving Nineveh, what does Jonah do?

Well, we see Jonah goes out of the city. You can just picture him just kicking the dirt off his shoes, wiping his hands. He just goes out of the city, goes up towards the east, sat down in order, scripture says, to see what would become of the city. Now what was he expecting?

What was expecting would happen? Well, honestly, it's hard to know for sure, in part because we don't know how many days had gone by at this point. Was it 40 days, which is the three days? We don't really know.

But from the context it would seem he was holding out some sort of hope that if he just went out on the eastern hills looking down at the city, that something would happen to the city. Maybe he could self-actualize its doom. Maybe he could look upon this city and something would happen, some cataclysm would occur.

Maybe God would finally respond. Maybe God would do what He should have done all along, in Jonah's mind. So he sat there and he watched the city and he waited, waited for something to happen. As a side note, what a weird, conflicted mindset this is.

There But for the Grace of God Go I 10:40

You send a prophet to the city to preach repentance, the people repent, and the guy who preached the sermon sits back and says to himself, I wish it never happened and furthermore, as he looks on the people he had just preached to, he desired not their good as a man of God should, but he desired their pain, their suffering.

Instead of trying to distribute God's grace and salvation and forgiveness to others, he wanted to hoard it to himself or to those that he thought were worthy. As believers, we don't do that, and yet Jonah did. You know, in our own lives, we encounter people that maybe they're not the Ninevites, but you can go to Walmart or Target or down the beach or what have you, and you can walk down an aisle and you can see someone who you see is just as lost as lost can be, acting, talking, dressing in ways that you say, that's just a heathen.

Maybe they say something or do something that really offends you, and your mindset is they deserve what's coming. That's not the right response. The right response is to look at such one and say, there but for the grace of God go I. Apart from God's grace on me, I would be no different than they, justly deserving God's displeasure.

That may not be theology 101, but at least theology 102. It's a very straightforward presentation of the gospel. It's a very straightforward presentation of grace. And yet again Jonah didn't get it.

So he sits down, this prophet sits down to watch the city burn. He sits down again as if to try to bring about an outcome that God had no intention of bringing to pass. And in verse 6 it suggests that Jonah had picked, I guess, a hot day to sit in the sun.

The wind, especially on day two, would come from the eastward plains, not from the west, you know, where the waters were and such, but out from the eastward plains. And so he's sitting there and he's baking and as watching and nothing's happening. Is, well, I gotta do something. And so he made himself a booth, a little tent so to speak, out of, I don't know, twigs and sagebrush and whatever he could find.

You know, as a side note, in the midst of July in south Mississippi, if you try to cover yourself with twigs and sagebrush, is that going to keep you cool? No, not in the least. Well, it wouldn't keep you cool here either, outside Nineveh. And verse 6 says that everything was miserable.

The heat was miserable. The wind was miserable. The sun was miserable. Jonah was miserable.

Now, let me ask you a question, a thinking question here. So Jonah's sitting up there, right? He's sitting up there and he's baking. He's got his twigs and his shrubs trying to cover himself to keep himself a little bit cool.

Was there any source, as Jonah looked around him, was there any source of escape from the heat? What do you think? Well, I got one. Nineveh.

God didn't tell him to go up in the hillside. There was nothing stopping Jonah from going back into Nineveh and sitting down with those who repented and being the man of God he was called to be and teaching them about Jehovah. He didn't have to sit up there and bake all by himself.

He could have gone right back into the city and taught and shared and been cool, or at least cooler than he otherwise would. And yet he says no. The minute he's done preaching he gets out of dodge. He's a mercenary in his approach to God. He leaves the city and do his own thing.

And he sat up there on the hillside on the off chance that God would change His mind once again and bring in the angelic artillery to finish off the Ninevites. So he waits, and he watches, and he waits some more, and nothing happens. It's not entirely true, though. Something does happen, we see in verse 6.

We see that in the midst of all this heat, in the midst of his suffering, in the midst of all his sin, God yet prepares a plant that comes up over Jonah. In his moment of need, God provided shade for the prophet's head. And we see in verse 6 that Jonah was very grateful for that.

He had a lot of sin issues, but he was right about this. He was grateful. He was grateful because this came from the hand of God. He was grateful.

At least for this day, he'd be protected from the sun's scorching rays. Now, with that said, what do you think Jonah would do if God took the plant away? Well, we're going to find out here. In verse 7, we don't have to wait very long because the next morning, the next morning, God withers the plant, brings it a worm, kills the plant, and He allows, God allows Jonah to be exposed to the sun's raging heat.

He even brings up what's called a Sirocco, an east wind that comes in and really starts baking things. And in verse 8, we read that Jonah just longs for death. Now, up until that point, Jonah's fate on the hillsides was contingent on one thing. As he sat there on the first day, his ability to survive the first day was contingent on one thing, on the covering of the plant between him and the sun's rays that otherwise would have baked him, on the intercession, so to speak, of the plant between him that would have otherwise just cooked him where he sat.

Apart from that intercession on page 2, Jonah knew he was doomed. Apart from some sort of covering that protected him from being cooked to death where he sat, Jonah was doomed.

The Sun as God's Wrath: The Need for a Covering 15:51

Now, as you can probably guess, there is a gospel-themed object lesson in this. Let's pretend for the moment that this scorching, fiery sun represents God's wrath against sin. Let's pretend that the sun's burning rays typifies God's anger, the brightness and fury of His anger against man's sinfulness. If the sun represents God's wrath, then doesn't Jonah, as a sinner, need some sort of covering?

Well, yes. And if that covering were to be removed, would he be doomed? Well, yes, if Jonah was not to be covered from the wrath of God due to his sins, how in the world could he hope to survive it? The short answer is that he couldn't.

Neither could you or I. Every last man, woman, and child in this room, every last man, woman, and child in the world will one day face the brightness of a thousand suns directed towards us and the sins that cover us. And if we were to face the brightness of that fury, the brightness of those rays from the throne of God Himself and the one who sits there, we would surely burn.

We would surely die.

The Plant Typifies Christ: Intercession and Atonement 17:02

But the good news of the gospel is this, that we have a covering, that we have shade, so to speak, from that outcome, that we have intercession, not through some plant, but through the personal work of Jesus. On the great day that is yet to come, you and I will be protected and preserved because we are covered in the atoning blood of the Lamb.

The Lamb who has paid the penalty due to our sins. On the day when God's judgment is poured out upon the nations, if you were trying to stand before Him on that day yet to come, if you were trying to stand before Him, apart from any covering, apart from any shade, apart from any intercession, if you were trying to stand before God on the day yet to come, clad only in your self-styled righteousness, on that great day, when the wrath of God is unleashed upon sin, you will melt before Him like a wax figurine in front of a blast furnace.

You need cover. You need shade. You need intercession. And that's what we have through Christ.

With that in mind, what do you think the plant typifies in Jonah 4? It typifies Christ. It typifies Christ. There's an object lesson here for Jonah if he were to receive it.

However, he was in no mood for an object lesson. When God caused the plant to wither over Jonah's head, all Jonah could see was his own suffering. He didn't learn any lessons at all. So how does he respond to the loss of the plant?

What does he say to God? Well, let's look at verse 9 to find out.

Jonah Doubles Down: Superimposing His Will Over God's 18:26

Then Jonah said to God, remember, God's teaching Jonah through this. God does the one thing, and then He changes it up the next day in order to teach Jonah something about grace and repentance and intercession and the like. So then in verse 9, God says to Jonah, as Jonah's sitting there suffering, God says, all right, is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

Is it right? Now, what's Jonah going to say? Is Jonah going to say, you know what, God, I've thought about it. You're right.

It's not appropriate. I'm sorry. Is that what he's going to say? Well, no. In verse 9, he says this.

He says, yes, it's right for me to be angry, even to death. That's like doubling down on your statement. Yes, God, it is right for me to be angry. He's superimposing his view of what's right over God's view.

And he says, yes, it's right. Of course it's right. Even unto death. Again, I want you to notice, God didn't ask Jonah if it was understandable that he was angry.

God didn't ask if Jonah's anger was understandable. I think we can all understand an overheated guy being frustrated and talking loud here. I think we can understand that, but that's not what God said. God didn't say, is this understandable that you're upset as you're baking in the sun?

He says, is it right that you're angry about the plant? There's theological implications here when God says to a man, is it right for you to be angry about something I have done? Not understandable, but is it right? Jonah didn't take the time to think through the theological considerations there.

He just says, yes, yes, thousand times yes, it's right for me to be angry. You did something, God, that was wrong. You did something. First, it was the Ninevites.

Dear heavens, you shouldn't have gone done that. You sent me there to give grace to these people who don't deserve it. These enemies are Your people. These enemies are Your own throne.

Yes, I deserve to be angry about that. Yeah, it's right and appropriate for me to be angry. In that moment, Jonah's forgetting theology 101. There is a God.

You're not Him. Jonah was superimposing his view of right. He was making a righteous judgment and saying, my view of what's right is above yours. How often do we do that?

How often does something come into our life that we don't like? And we question God or doubt God or get angry at God. It's one thing to have something come in your life that you don't like and you just sit down and cry about it. All the prophets did that.

It's one thing to be frustrated and hurt by it because we don't understand it. God comes alongside us and holds us in those times. He understands our emotions. He truly does.

It's one thing to be frustrated and hurt by things that we don't like. It's an entirely different thing to tell God, You were wrong. You blew it. You made the wrong call.

In verse 9, Jonah is suggesting something, and this is the second time he did it. God drew this response out of him more than once. This isn't just he used the wrong word one time. He did it multiple times.

In verse 9, Jonah claimed that his response to what God did was morally, ethically, spiritually appropriate given the circumstances. Jonah was asserting his own righteous judgment. To Jonah, God had erred, first with Nineveh and then with the plant, and that had legitimatized his anger. Jonah felt valid, legitimatized and doing what he was doing, and that's why he repeatedly said, yes, it is right.

Not just understandable, but right. Now this was an implicit challenge to the authority of God, and it would have been somewhat understandable if the only fire and brimstone that fell near Nineveh that day fell on Jonah. It would have been understandable. The Ninevites said and did all the right things upon hearing the word of God.

Jonah has God talk directly to him, directly to him, and Jonah's response is meh. It would have been understandable if he was smited right then and there. But again, that's not what God does. As he did from chapter 1 to chapter 2 to chapter 3 to chapter 4, God gives grace upon grace upon grace.

All right, let's look ahead here at our remaining verses, verses 10 and 11.

Should I Not Pity Nineveh? Misplaced Priorities 22:23

“And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”

— Jonah 4:11 (NKJV)

Verse 10. But the Lord said, You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left.

What's God saying in these verses? Well, in essence, God is reminding Jonah that the prophet had shed more tears and was far more concerned over some material thing, just a plant. He's reminding Jonah, Jonah, you are more bent out of shape about the fate of this plant then you are all those people.

Jonah, you had pity on a plant. Dear heavens, don't you think I should have pity on a city of over 120,000 people that don't know the right hand from their left? Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. God is so gentle, trying to show him, trying to shake him by the lapel to see, Jonah, you got this all wrong.

Your priorities are all messed up. Jonah expended more emotions on the plant than he did on all those people who are made in the image of God. Sinners in danger of hellfire. Eternal hellfire.

And yet he had more concern over the loss of this one plant. You know, all these years later, from our comfy comfy chairs, it's easy for us to just say, shame, Jonah. Shame. Wow, Jonah, how could you be so callous?

How could you be so hard-hearted? However, we need to be careful. See, for many of us, it's possible. For many of us, it's possible.

We too have spent more time lamenting the loss of material things in our own lives than we've ever spent crying over the condemnation of our neighbors. When something that provides our material comfort is removed from us, let me just ask you, does it make you more emotional and consternated than if someone down the street dies and goes to hell?

If we were to lose even a, I don't know, a tenth, a tenth of our salary or our possessions overnight, would we lament that loss to a greater degree than we mourn over the loss of our neighbors? If we lose even a small portion of that which it provides for us, some portion of our material wealth or material goods or possessions, if we were to lose some small portion of that, would we grieve that loss more than the potential eternal loss of our neighbor to condemnation.

I ask this not to judge, but to nudge. Jonah certainly needed nudging here. As fallen men and women, our priorities are often misplaced. Jonah's were.

This is a prophet. This is a man of God. This guy's got a book in the Bible named after him. If it could happen to him, it can happen to us.

Our priorities can go topsy-turvy. We can get more focused on things and material wealth and possessions and such to the point that if it's taken away like the plant, we can lament its loss more than we care about the people who are dying, going to hell to our left and to our right.

With that said, God's eyes, if they're on the sparrow, then they're on the Ninevite. If they're on the sparrow, then they're on your neighbor. If they're on the sparrow, then they're on you. Furthermore, God's not insensitive to the mandates of His own judgment, which the Ninevites were in danger of paying.

God is not insensitive to what it means for sinners to die and go to hell, which is why He sent His son to rescue and to redeem, to save a large portion of these individuals. And God reminds Jonah of his own mission, his own mandate, the mission that His son would come to pursue in verse 11 when he says this, Jonah, shouldn't I pity Nineveh?

Should I not pity Nineveh? These are people made in My own image. Should I not pity Nineveh? This great city, this expansive city, The text suggests 120,000 who don't know the right hand from their left.

That might be just a reference to kids, children, infants who don't know it. If that's the case, then this is a huge city. If that's the case, then the estimates are over 600,000 people. And God says, shouldn't I pity them?

That great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their left and their right hand. There was a lot of people in Nineveh, no matter how you count them, that were lost and going to hell. And God, while we're yet sinners, God, out of His love for those who are enemies of His throne, God, out of His love for those who rejected His laws and commandments and were pursuing their own will and wants and desires, God desired to pursue them, to save them.

And He sent Jonah to be a means by which this was accomplished. Later, He would send His son.

While We Were Yet Sinners: Grace Unearned Yet Given 27:08

This morning, as we look to wrap up, let me offer this observation in closing. There was a time in your life and mine when we were in the exact same boat as the Ninevites. We might not have done the exact same things that they did, but our hearts were just as dead. We were just as spiritually flatlining as those in this case.

We were in the same boat. There was a time in our lives where we didn't have the spiritual discernment to judge between our right and our left hand, so to speak. There was a time. And the only thing that has changed since that time is that God has shown His grace to you.

God has shown His grace to we who did not deserve it. And what an exciting thing that God doesn't wait until we've earned that grace. If He did, it wouldn't be grace. Remember how Jonah chapter 1 verse 2 starts?

God looks down and talks about Nineveh as that wicked city. They didn't earn anything. They didn't merit grace. They didn't deserve grace.

They weren't looking for grace. They were going the exact opposite direction. And yet God pursued them. And God gave them grace.

And He sent them His word. And He sent them a prophet. God doesn't wait until you clean up your lives. And get right with God before He offers His mercy.

Instead, as we'll see in a few moments, while we're yet sinners. While we're yet sinners. While we're enemies of the cross and the throne, Christ died for us. That's what grace is.

Unearned yet given. Unmerited yet poured out. It was by grace that anyone in Nineveh had hope for the future. It was by grace that you and I have any hope for the future.

And if that's true, if it's by grace that Jonah had any hope to pen this chapter later on, write it, and go on to live a better, more sanctified life. If there was any chance that was going to happen, it was going to be only by grace. If that is true, then how dare he, how dare we withhold that grace from anyone else?

In effect, that's the question that closes chapter 4. In effect, that's the question that closes this whole book. How would Jonah ultimately answer it? We don't know.

Because the book ends there. But what we can answer is this. How will you and I respond? How will you and I respond to our divine calling and appointment to serve as His ambassadors into a fallen kingdom to bring His gospel to those who are in dire need of it?

This day, how will we respond? Let's pray for the grace to respond well.