Joshua Kehler: Jonah 4.
Kind of finishing out.
We may have one more As a group we've been going through the book of Jonah.
And this is just an incredible story.
A narrative of the gospel.
And Let's pick up in verse one.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly.
And he was angry.
And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is this not 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 gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast
love and relenting from disaster.
Therefore now, Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better
for me to die than to live.
And the Lord said, Do you do well to be angry?
Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and
made a booth for himself there.
He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city.
Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that
it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.
But when the dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that
attacked the plant So that it withered.
When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the
sun beat down on the head of Jonah, so that he was faint.
And he asked that he might die, and said, Is it better for me to die than to live?
But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?
And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry.
Angry enough to die.
And the Lord said, You pity the plant.
For which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being
in a night and perished in a night.
And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more
than a hundred twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from
their left, and also much cattle.
This is the word of the Lord.
So I titled this, and I usually don't read titles, but this morning
it's called A Very Uncomfortable God, or A Most Uncomfortable God.
Robert Cappin, in his book Between Noon and Three, he writes, If we are
to ever fully enter into the glorious liberty as the children of God, we
are going to have to spend more time thinking about freedom than we do.
The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom.
It has spent so much time inculcating us in the fear of making mistakes.
That it has made us like ill taught piano students.
We play our pieces, but we never really hear them because our main concern is
not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us into trouble.
The church, having put itself in loco parentis, or in the place of
the parent, has been so afraid we will lose sight of the need to do
right that it has made us care more.
About than about who Jesus is.
And who is Jesus?
The one who is full of grace and truth.
Gethard Ferdy, in his book, Justification, A Matter of Life and Death, toward the end
of his book, he asks this question after talking about everything that we have
in Christ, because what Jesus has done.
And this is the sum of his book.
It's so good.
He says, in light of the gospel, in light of what God has done for
you, what are you going to do now that you don't have to do anything?
What?
You can't say that!
What about this and, what about that?
You've gotta put this regulation on it or that or qualify that kind of statement.
But St.
Augustine, he said something centuries earlier, he said,
Love God and do what you please.
Why?
Because freedom is so amazing in the Christian life that you're actually free.
You're actually free.
To love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Like, that's St.
Augustine.
Yeah.
Yes.
Love God and do what you please.
Because if the first one is taken care of, that's, you're going to please God.
but we so often are like, Wait, if you, if we're free here it's it's Romans, right?
Where it says, wait a minute, you're talking about grace.
Are you saying, we should sin so that grace might abound?
And Paul says, in essence, in the Greek, he says, if you ask that
question, you don't understand it.
grace is so amazing, you're not going to want anything else.
Grace is amazing.
It is like mind blowing.
It is.
It is something otherworldly.
we kind of get mercy.
We kind of get love.
But grace is this otherworldly thing that just makes no sense to us.
It's a contradiction, almost.
I love this definition by Paul Zoll.
He says, grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return.
Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you.
Grace is being loved when you're unlovable.
The cliché definition of grace is unconditional love,
but it's a right cliché.
Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved.
It has everything and only to do with the lover, Jesus.
Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights.
And measurements has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so
called gifts, whatever they may be.
It reflects the decision on part of the giver, the one who loves in relation
to the receiver, the one who is loved.
It negates any qualifications the receiver may possibly hold.
Grace is one way love.
It's amazing.
In fact, grace, in other words, doesn't make demands, it just gives.
And from our vantage point, It always gives to the wrong person.
I mean us, we get it, right?
But not them.
They're too far gone.
No, they've blown it.
From our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person.
We see this over and over in the Gospels.
Jesus is always giving to the wrong people.
Prostitutes, tax collectors, half breeds.
The most extravagant sinners of Jesus day receive His most compassionate welcome.
Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head.
It refuses to play it safe and lay it up.
Grace is recklessly generous, uncomfortably promiscuous.
It doesn't use sticks, carrots, or time cards.
It doesn't keep score.
One other thing I read this week was that true Christian maturity
is not getting better, but the humility to admit that you're not.
We have that, that picture, maybe you guys have seen it, Footprints.
And if you haven't, God bless you.
I think we had it growing up, I cried when I read it, as a kid.
But I think it leaves something out.
The idea is that this man has a dream and, he's looking at his
whole life, and there's two sets of footprints through the good times.
But when the times are bad and the times are rough, there's only one
set of footprints, and he's God, why is there only one set of footprints?
Have you abandoned me?
it seems like in all the hard times, there's only one set.
Where have you gone?
And he says, Oh, son, no.
I haven't abandoned you.
Those are the times I carried you.
And you're like, Yes!
That's amazing, and it is amazing, but the truer thing is that from day
one, there's one set of footprints.
From day one, God is carrying you.
In fact, the real mark in the sand, usually, for me in my story,
is like a ditch that's been dug where he's dragged me, into grace.
Drag marks, not footprints.
Guys, it's so freeing.
Brennan Manning, he said, until you believe that God will never
stop loving you if you never change, you'll never change.
Because that's understanding grace.
That's if it's God's going to love you, but you've got
to do this, that's not grace.
Grace is just full and complete generosity and gift to the person.
And so, that idea that as Christians, when we grow, we do
not just get stronger and stronger.
We realize that we're weaker and weaker, and that we need more of God.
That is true maturity.
That we need more dependence.
That we need more humility.
That we need less self reliance, less trusting in ourselves,
and more trusting in Him.
But here's the thing.
Grace is a gift, pure and simple.
We might insist on trying to pay, but the balance has been
settled, and our money's no good.
Of course, even if we're able to accept one way love when it comes our way,
we have trouble when it reaches other people, especially those who have
done us wrong and have wounded us.
Grace offends our sense of justice by being both implausible and unfair.
We are uncomfortable because grace turns the tables on us.
And that's what we're going to see in the story of Jonah right here.
He's deeply offended.
He literally says in his prayer, I knew you were gracious!
And he's angry and he wants to die.
Because God shows mercy to his enemy.
And so, Robert Cappin, he says Here's a prayer for the grace averse heart.
A heart that doesn't like grace.
Restore to us, preacher, the comfort of merit and demerit.
Prove for us that there is at least something we can do.
That we are still, at whatever dim recess of our nature, the
masters of our relationship.
us.
Tell us prophet that in spite all of our nights of losing, there will yet
be one redeeming card on our very own to fill the inside straight we have so
longed and so earnestly tried to draw to.
But whatever you do not preach grace.
We insist on being reckoned with.
Give us something, anything, but spare us the indignity of
this indiscriminate acceptance.
And as much as like you were like, no one would pray that.
Many a church builds its congregation and its people on what you do, and
less about what God has done for you.
Everything you do flows out of the fruit of what Jesus has done.
Your identity is not your past.
It's not what you've done.
It's not what you're going to do.
It's not on your performance.
Your identity is so secure and invincible because it's completely based on
what Jesus has done for you, on who Jesus is, who Jesus says you are.
And he says you're a beloved son and that can, you'll never be plucked
out of the sand, that can never go away, that is never diminished.
That's your identity.
That survives anything.
It survives any relationship, it survives any heartbreak, it
survives any relational pain.
Who Jesus says you are.
But, there's something in us.
Calvin, I think, said that it's like in us where, self righteousness is
the most basic of human qualities.
it's our default.
It's what we go to.
We need to prove ourselves.
We need to tell, show people that we're better.
We need to show people the counterfeit.
We need to show people that we're this and we're this.
So today we're going to look at The Stonewall, The Shady Plant,
and The Mysterious Author.
The Mysterious Author.
Ah, it's so good.
The Stonewall.
Verse one to four.
Let's look at verse one.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.
Jonah chapter 4 is one of the most unexpected and overlooked final
chapters of any book of the Bible.
Most people have heard the story of Jonah.
You've seen it in VeggieTales what's the story of Jonah?
It's about Jonah getting swallowed by a big fish.
That's it.
That's not the point of the story, right?
There's so much more to the story, and there's so much more than just the fish.
They think it's his being swallowed and his release from the fish.
A smaller number of people will say he gets recommissioned, and he goes and he
preaches successfully to Nineveh, and they repent, and that's the end of the story.
That's not the end of the story.
Chapter 4 is like the most important part of the book.
So it displeased Jonah, and he was angry.
So just a little bit, since some of you haven't been with us on this
journey, I want to talk a little bit about Jonah and who he was.
Jonah appears one other time in the Old Testament, and it's in 2
Kings chapter 14, verse 23 to 27.
And we find out there that Jonah is to go to Rehoboam II, or maybe it's Jeroboam II.
And he was a wicked king even more wicked than his father.
And so he's to go, commissioned by God as a prophet, one who speaks for God.
The message, God gives him a message.
But what's strange is that the message that he's to give Jeroboam
is that God's gonna bless him.
In the face of his brokenness and his sinfulness, Jonah preaches a
message of grace and what happens.
Second Kings 1423 to 27.
So what happens is that Jarbo, the second junior, continues in his sinfulness.
And so here Jonah is, he's a prophet.
He's like, gets his big assignment and he gives the message that God gave him.
And he does not see, like he would expect the other prophets are calling out, woe
to you, coon, woe to you, woe to you.
And they're just like, God's gonna judge and he's gonna, turn you over
and demolish you and Jonah's called to preach a message of grace And he doesn't
see what he expects to see from it.
Jonah is seeing God's gracious message to his own wicked rebellious people and now
he's called to take a message not to his own broken people That's one thing to do
it for your own people, but to his most hated enemies And these guys were bad.
They weren't just like the neighbor who, throws things over your fence.
Or, who plays music too loud on Saturday nights.
These were cruel.
The cruelest people in history up to that moment.
They would take you captive, they would skin people alive, they would bury you up
to your head in the sand, and they would stake your tongue in the ground, and then
they would let the birds pick you apart.
they would make the families, after they killed the patriarch, they
would put the head on a stake, and they'd make the family do
this mock parade through the city.
Horrible.
Cruel.
Cruel to kids, cruel to women, especially cruel to women.
And so, here's this wicked people.
who are the world power at that time, and guess who's just to the west?
It's the northern tribes of Israel.
It's the first ones they run into.
And so Jonah has seen over and over the cruelty and the oppression and the
wickedness and the evil done to the people who he's trying to call back to God.
And so God says, Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh.
I have a message for them.
And what does Jonah do?
He says, No way in H E double hockey.
He says, and in fact, he says he, goes to Joppa and he flees to Tarshish.
He goes the furthest possible known location in the known world
at that time away from Nineveh.
There was, it was just unknown at the rest of the world was unknown.
He literally goes the furthest place away.
And so Jonah goes down into the ship and he's sleeping and he's
like, fine, I got away from this.
I'm away, I'm scot free, but the hound of heaven is set loose on
his case and chases after Jonah and hurls a great storm at him.
And all the language of Jonah, everything's great.
It's a great fish, a great storm, a great ship, a great city.
a great message.
Just over and over there's this language in this book.
and so they come and they're, the sailors are throwing everything off
because they're going to go down and the storm is just getting worse and worse.
Finally, they find Jonah sleeping.
They draw straws and they say, Hey, what's up with you?
Why we keep coming back to that?
You're the problem.
And he's yeah, I am.
God told me to go and I did it.
And instead of saying all we got to do is turn around and head back.
He's like, throw me over the boat.
I don't even want to go back.
Like I'm done.
And so, they try throwing more stuff off, and they're like, fine, Lord,
hold this blood not, on our account.
And they throw him over, and as soon as he hits the water, it's like glass.
And the raging storm is stilled.
Much a foreshadow of what our Jesus would do as he was thrown
into the chaos of God's wrath.
As he went, and as he took the wrath, that storm, the chaos
of judgment, it was stilled.
Like the sailors on that ship and they fell on their knees and they began to
worship Yahweh They were worshiping their pagan gods They were throwing their pagan
gods off, to try to lighten the ship and now they started to worship Yahweh
So Jonah, he's like, okay that worked.
He's like, I'm gonna take one more breath He's going down and all of a
sudden a fish a great fish swallows him.
He's like great, And what's fascinating is Jonah does not repent for three days.
He's in gastric acid juices.
He's fish around him, seaweed wrapped around his head,
his skin's being bleached.
Suffocating to get a breath.
Sharing that, fish's oxygen just to survive and for three days,
he's like, nope, I'm stubborn.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to repent.
And finally that third day, he says, salvation belongs to the Lord.
You get to choose.
He's like, okay.
And he repents and the fish vomits him out and he goes in and still,
yes, he goes in, but he preaches in Hebrew, a five word sermon.
And doesn't tell him anything about Yahweh, doesn't tell him what to do,
doesn't tell, call, he just says, In 40 days, your city's gonna be overthrown.
That's it.
And it, it says that when he goes into this great city,
the city was three days walk.
But he makes it a day.
He doesn't even go the length.
He's like, okay, I'm done, I've done enough.
But word starts to spread and it even goes to the king, and
the king calls for a Fast.
He calls not for just a fast for the nobles, and the important people, and
the rich people, but for the poor, and the peasants, and the working
class, and not even that, the kids, and they're all to wear sackcloth and
ashes, and not only that, for the cattle!
He says put sackcloth and ashes on the animals!
Like, if this is true, we need to get right, and we need to not even have a...
A moment where we're not serious about this, and so, Jonah would have
been happy going if he was sure God was going to obliterate them, but
Jonah was suspicious of God's mercy.
God might actually forgive them, and his scandalous love, he might let them
off, and Jonah can't stomach that.
Jonah didn't run because he was afraid the mission would fail, he
was afraid the mission would succeed.
He cannot trust God to be unmerciful.
What's beautiful is in this five word sermon, he uses the word hapok in Hebrew.
Kind of like hot pocket.
Hapok.
And it just means overturned.
And what's fascinating is in the Old Testament that word generally is
used for like destroying something.
It would be like the Etch A Sketch, you draw something, you spend
hours doing it, and then your brother comes in and he shakes it.
That's the idea.
It destroys what you've created.
He turns it upside down.
For instance, in Lamentations 4.
6, for the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom,
which was overthrown, Hapik, in a moment.
And no hands were rung for her.
And we know Sodom, right?
It was destroyed in a moment.
It was overturned in a moment.
Hosea 11, eight.
How can I give you up?
O efrim.
How can I hand you over Ois Israel?
How can I make you like Admira?
How can I treat you?
Like zeum?
My heart haik within me.
My compassion grows warm and tender.
So all of a sudden there's also another use of the word and
that's to overturn for good.
Where you overturn something for good, like when you till the land
so that the seeds might seep down and that it might bring forth fruit.
There is a bad use of it.
Destroy.
And there's a good use of it where it's overturned for good.
And Jeremiah 31 13, then shall the young women rejoice in the dance and the
young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their morning into joy.
I will happen their morning into joy.
I will comfort them and give them gladness for sorrow.
I'm going to overturn what was painful.
So what's beautiful is Jonah goes in and he sabotages the job.
He like preaches five words and then he's out like two days early.
He doesn't, go before the king.
He's just going to give this message.
He's going to give him as little information.
And he thinks his message is in 40 days, God will overturn.
He's going to shake your etch a sketch.
He's going to destroy your city like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Through Jonah, God is saying in 40 days.
I'm going to turn things over so that you might see my grace and my
forgiveness and my mercy and love.
I'm going to turn over your hardness.
I'm going to turn over and bring repentance and humility
and the whole city repent!
Like that's insane, it's so funny because when we hear on the news about,
some great evil being perpetuated in a country or genocide, we're like yeah.
But we're like, can't believe that God could use a reluctant prophet to bring
a revival to a people in three days.
And it's just this beautiful story and image of God's grace.
So that kind of picks us up to Jonah and where he's at, but it displeased Jonah
exceedingly and he was angry and prayed to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, is this not
what I said when I was yet in my country, that this is why I made haste to flee
to Tarshish for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger,
fast love and relenting from disaster.
Normal things that.
Most people would love about God, right?
Therefore now, Lord, please take my life for me, for it is better
for me to die than to live.
And the Lord said, And here's the point of the whole book of Jonah.
Nineveh really wasn't the mission.
It's a by product.
The whole point of Jonah, and the whole point of the mission, was Jonah himself.
Was saving Jonah.
And saving him from this hard hearted bigotry and hate that he had.
And God patiently over and over is going after Jonah.
I'll send a storm.
I'll send a fish.
I'll send a plant.
I'll send a worm.
and he starts to counsel him.
Jonah, is it right to be angry about this?
Is this good anger?
And Jonah, he stonewalls him.
He doesn't even respond to God right here.
Right when he says, do you do well to be angry, Jonah went out of the
city and sat to the east of the city.
He's like, I'm not even going to talk to you about this.
I knew this was going to happen.
Do artists get angry when a prominent museum accepts
their art for an installation?
As a prophet, he's had the most successful campaign.
All the prophets in Israel didn't have success.
Jeremiah, he's thrown in a pit and he's like, I quit.
He quit.
I'm done.
God, you keep, I talk for you and I end up in a worst place.
And Jonah, he preaches and everybody's like, yeah, we're saved, thank you, right?
And he's like, do musicians get angry when they're given a
standing ovation at Carnegie Hall?
but the will of God and the political fortunes of Israel seem to be diverging.
And here's, as we've studied Jonah, he really likes Israel.
He really likes his country.
He's really for his country.
And he can't reconcile that God would allow Israel's enemy repentance.
One would have to choose.
And Jonah leaves no doubt as to which of these two concerns
are more important for him.
God's glory and His forgiveness and His mercy and His grace, or
Israel's security and future safety.
Of course, anyone who cared for his own country would have been
anxious about Assyria's survival, about Nineveh's survival.
It was a terrorist state.
Jonah, however, did not turn to God with anxiety, trusting in
Him as so many in the Psalms.
had done and written about their enemies, taking it to the Lord and wrestling
with the Lord in that, if he had to choose between the security of Israel
and loyalty to God while he was ready to push God away, that is not just
concern and love for one's country, that's a kind of deification of it.
When country becomes more important than God and His mercy.
And he's no, I'm not gonna go there.
That's the line.
That's where I...
Stop.
When Christian believers, when we, when me, care more for our own interests and
security than for the good and salvation of other races and ethnicities and other
countries, we end up becoming like Jonah.
And remember we said that on Yom Kippur, Jonah is read by Jewish people, and
at the end they all say, I am Jonah.
Because it's a mirror.
Jonah is a mirror number one, our tendency to...
Love God's grace for ourselves, but hold our hands out to anybody and
everybody, and especially our enemies.
And to say, they don't get the mercy, they don't deserve the mercy that I deserve.
Once we start saying deserve and stuff like that, we've lost the plot.
We've lost the whole plot.
And number two, to remember, and this is what a rabbi said, that God chases
us and won't let us stay that way.
And will pursue us night and day with storm and creation and animals and
plants and all of nature at his disposal.
He'll throw at us to rescue us and set us free from that kind of idolatry.
So God quietly rebukes Jonah with a question.
Is it good for you to burn with such anger?
See, it's such a good question.
Anger isn't wrong.
If you love something and it's threatened or harmed, anger is a
appropriate and proper response.
But such anger, inordinate anger, self righteous anger and fear,
is a sign that the thing Jonah loves is a counterfeit god.
Anything, even a good thing, that we make the ultimate thing, becomes
a counterfeit god in our life.
And as a terrible master, I struggle with it with family, right?
I want to be the dad.
I want to, Oh, I want to, I want to be the best dad.
I want to be loved.
But if I make my kids, my source of happiness, then I rise and I
fall on their emotions, their days, what they say, what they don't say.
And all of a sudden I've made them the source of my happiness, the
source of my security, the source of my comfort and my approval.
for my identity in this life.
It's okay to want that, but if that is my ultimate and that's what I live
for, that becomes a counterfeit God and it's a terrible master and it will
leave you broken because you will always fall short of those counterfeit gods.
You can never serve them well enough, good enough, hard enough.
The only God who will not destroy you is Yahweh, is God himself, because
he's for you and not against you.
Because he's for your freedom and your joy and his glory.
So Jonah Stonewall's god.
He's just like, I'm done.
I don't want to talk about it.
What's fascinating is Jonah does not go, like you would, back on the ship.
And maybe, I wouldn't get back in the sea if I was Jonah.
I'd find a land route even if it took me, to the upper part of Asia or whatever.
I'm just like, I am not going back into the sea.
I will travel for two years, on a donkey.
But Jonah doesn't look for public transportation.
He doesn't, rent a donkey.
He posts up outside the city because he's like, maybe it's fake repentance.
Maybe, as the whole city's mourning and crying out, he's
like, okay, this is a little much, sackcloth and all this and that.
He hears the animals bleat, he's like, okay, performative art.
We've all done that, so he's like, maybe, God's gonna see through, like I do.
I see through.
They're all fakes.
They're gonna be back to their old ways, just like that.
I'm gonna post up out here, and I'm gonna wait, and man, I'm gonna
watch it burn with a front row seat.
Amazingly, God keeps coming after him.
Verse 6 to 11, now the Lord God appointed a plant.
And made it come up over Jonah that he might have shade over his head
to save him from his discomfort.
I heard that somebody used this to say weed is good.
A plant, a shady plant that saves people from his discomfort.
We, not allowed to use the Bible that way.
That's not what it's talking about.
It's probably a castor oil plant, comes up in a night.
Funny though.
That's hilarious.
It's amazing what we'll do.
Now the Lord God appointed a plant, made it come up over Jonah that
he might have shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.
So it's the first time Jonah's excited about something in the whole book.
He's like, Yes!
A plant!
I have shade!
But when the dawn came up the next day, So God appointed a
plant, and God appointed a worm.
And it all, there's this beautiful, like narratively, It's so
beautiful how this book's written.
It all hinges.
Everything's been great.
It's been great.
A great city.
A great fish.
A great storm.
A great boat.
A great ship.
A great message.
Like, over and over.
A great king.
A great repentance.
And now it's a small worm.
Because we're all supposed to go, Okay, this is like a main point of the story.
As you would read it.
When dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked
the plant so that it withered.
When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down
on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
And he asked that he might die and said, It is better for me to die than live.
But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant?
And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry enough to die.
And the Lord said, You pity the plant for which you did not labor.
Nor did you make grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a
night, and should I not pity Nineveh, the great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand
from their left, and also much cattle.
The wrath of God had earlier come upon Jonah in that lethal storm, and he had
survived only because of the mercy of God.
He too, and he knew it, he repents in the belly in chapter three,
deserved judgment, and received mercy, or chapter two, and received
mercy instead, and been glad for it.
Now, all that is forgotten.
Jonah is like the ungrateful servant who, having been forgiven,
refuses to forgive others.
You see it.
Remember that story in Matthew 18?
That's such a gnarly story.
There's a servant who's in charge of the king's accounts, some of them, in an area.
And he's short something like, 20 billion.
It just, he's like, okay.
He's like, I've wasted it all.
It's gone.
I can't even recoup it.
I've just...
And the king's okay, then I'm going to throw you, and you and your family and you
guys can work it off in debtor's prison for the next 10, 000 years is the idea.
It's like, it's going to take you forever, like to pay this debt.
Oh, interesting.
It's going to take you forever to pay this debt if you take it upon yourself.
So he casts himself at the mercy of the king.
And the king says, okay, forgive you.
Now that something interesting in that story is the king has to absorb the debt
because it was a debt that was incurred.
Swoop it under the count.
He doesn't print more money.
He has to absorb that money has been blown that he takes on that debt himself.
So, the servant's like skipping.
He's like, can't believe how forgiven he is, but then he encounters a
fellow servant who owes him 250.
And he says, pay me everything you have and pay it right now.
I need it right now.
And the servant says, can you have mercy?
He says the same thing.
And he says, he grabs him by the throat and he like throws him against the wall
and then he throws him into prison.
And so the king hears about it and he's like, yeah, I guess he didn't
understand this whole process.
And Jesus says, unforgiveness is like that.
And if we have been forgiven so much, it's shown so much mercy.
Not just a little bit or even the things we remember.
You know what's gonna blow us away in eternity?
Is when he shows us the books that he had been wiped away.
the things we weren't even aware of.
Their sins of commission, the things we knew.
That we were doing wrong, but there's sins of omission, the things we're
supposed to do right, and we didn't do it!
there's so...
The debt is so big for all who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We can never pay the debt, except for all eternity spent paying it off.
10, 000 years, 20, 000 years.
And so we cast ourselves on his mercy, and he forgives us.
And so he says, I didn't forgive you because you're
such a good servant with money.
Like, oh, what a great investment, it'll work out in the king is good.
He forgave him because he's just good.
That's it.
And so Jonah had forgotten.
And we so easily forget, so quickly, the mercy and the cost, that it cost
God himself, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the uncaused
cause, the creator of the heavens and the earth, who sustains everything right
now, in the universe by the word of his power, who has angels night and day.
shielding themselves with angelic wings because he's so holy.
The radiance of his glory is so strong, they can't look on him.
But when a little of his holiness, the light of glory, flips through their wings,
they say, holy, like in a whole new way.
Like they've lived a million years, and they've spent a, a majesty.
And God himself wrapped himself in human flesh and blood for you and me.
That's amazing!
That's mercy!
That's grace!
But he doesn't just wipe the slate clean!
Grace says that he also gives everything that belongs to him!
That's the inheritance!
the father's like, Son, you get all things, you get the universe!
And he's like, let's share it!
He makes you royalty, he calls you sons and daughters, he, he has the audacity
to say you're his treasured possession.
You're his prize.
What?
I'm dust.
I'm a rebel.
I'm stiff necked.
No, you're my prize.
You're my special treasure.
that's.
Crazy!
He gives us everything!
can't get over it.
But Jonah returns to the same angry opposition to God
that he had at the outset.
This time, however, God does not send a towering storm, but instead
begins to counsel Jonah gently.
What's beautiful is that like us, He sees Jonah's excited about something.
And though Jonah's excited, and God even calls it out, Oh, you
had compassion on this plant.
so he had to shave for his head.
But God's like, I can work with that.
I can work with that.
Like, the littlest glimpses of our turning, our shuva, our
returning home, but just the glance back, I can work with that.
It's not Jonah going back and teaching a class in Nineveh and like,
okay, I'm gonna, it's the slightest bit that God hopes on for me.
This is unlike all I've been doing.
So.
Even though God declared a stay of execution, Jonah still wants to see
what would happen in the city, meaning he still had hopes that God would not
spare Nineveh for a long period of time.
What John Calvin calls his greatest sin, namely, that he was very inhuman
in his attitude toward Nineveh.
Which is just, bruh, brutal.
Just very that's the greatest sin of Joe.
He's just being inhuman.
He's treating those people...
Like they're less than human.
He, it, he's caricaturing an entire group of people.
They're not complex human beings who gestated in their mother's womb for
nine months and were born and had highs and lows and had a parent who
maybe didn't like a whole story that they're fearfully and wonderfully made.
They're just evil, bad people.
And it's a sin, it's the sin of Jonah, as Calvin points out, that we can
caricature whole groups of people and just say, Those people bad, us people good.
And you have to talk like that when say, a caveman, because that's what you're doing.
All of a sudden, people made in the image of God are not complex.
with a story that God is desperately pursuing and who also went to the
cross for and bled for and wants to write their name in his book of
life, but they're just out there.
They're a group.
They're this.
And we have to see people as complex individuals.
Most scholars point out that those who don't know their right hand
from their left are probably kids.
So Jesus sees this whole city of kids.
Some scholars say, but it might be people who also just, they've
grown up in this culture.
And they haven't had anybody coming and showing up and
saying, Hey, there's another way.
There's another way of life.
And so there, there's an ignorance to sin.
It creates a delusional feeling.
Remember Jesus saying, Father, they're torturing and killing me.
They're denying and betraying me.
But none of them, not even the Pharisees, really completely
understand what they're doing.
Father, forgive them.
They know not what they do.
There's so much compassion in God.
Like, he's being killed.
And he's like, they don't really understand.
Forgive them.
What grace We can only look and wonder at such a heart.
He doesn't say they're not guilty of wrongdoing.
They are.
That is why they need forgiveness.
Yet Jesus is also remembering that they're confused, somewhat clueless,
and not really able to recognize the horror of what they're doing.
Here is a perfect heart, perfect and generous love, not
excusing, not harshly condemning.
He is the weeping God of Jonah 4 in human form.
He's the greater Jonah.
Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been.
Yet, of course, he is infinitely more than that.
Jesus did not merely weep for us, he died for us.
Jonah went outside the city hoping to witness its condemnation.
But Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross
to accomplish his salvation.
Here, God says he is grieving over Nineveh, which means he is letting
the evil of the city weigh on him, twist him, like, to turn him over.
In some mysterious sense, he is suffering because of its sin.
When God came into the world in Jesus and went to the cross, however, he
didn't experience only emotional Pain, but every kind of pain unimaginable
dimensions, the agonizing physical pain of the crucifixion included torture,
slow suffocation and excruciating death.
But even beyond that, when Jesus hung on the cross, he underwent the infinite
and most unfathomable pain of all.
Separation from God and all the eternal alienations, the wages of sin.
He did it all for us out of his unimaginable compassion.
Jesus is the greater Jonah.
Where Jonah failed, Jesus didn't, right?
And Jesus even says, Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the
whale, so will the Son of Man be, right?
As he went into the tomb to conquer sin and death and to rise in victory for us.
He came for us.
He did it for us.
It's so amazing.
So let me just close with The mysterious author.
We...
I kind of feel when you read chapter four that there's a page missing.
Why would the story end so abruptly?
There's no conclusion, there's no Here's the point.
There's no the chief in demand, you know kind of summary like even
in Ecclesiastes There is just, the narrative just goes silent.
One commentator, like many others, suggests the book forces us to
contemplate our personal responsibility.
It remains unfinished in order that we may provide our own conclusion.
For you are Jonah.
I am Jonah.
It is as if God shoots this arrow of a question at Jonah, disappears, and
we realize the arrow is aimed at us, and we all will say, how will I answer?
As God asks us, with where we live.
With where we work, with the people that we're around.
Should I not be compassionate?
Should I not be forgiving?
Should I not be merciful?
Should I not care that there are people who don't know me?
Should I not care that the city I live in, Stockton, I love it and hate it?
It's horrible, but it's beautiful, and it's brokenness.
people need God's rescue there.
I've worked in Santa Barbara, we've lived in Ventura, I hated working
in Santa Barbara, because there's a bunch of people who were convinced
that they didn't need God's rescue.
But guess what?
They do!
And Stockton does.
And I do every day.
I need God's mercy.
growing in Christ, is realizing, Oh, I need God's rescue
every moment of every day.
I need to live on his everlasting arms.
People say, Oh, Christianity is a crutch.
No, it's the whole hospital.
It's the whole thing.
I need God to carry me.
So, here's what I love.
Most scholars say that Jonah wrote Jonah.
That might seem obvious, because it's named Jonah, but that's not always
the case in the books of the Bible.
But if that's true, or even if somebody else authored it, if you're going to write
an autobiography about your life, Are you gonna write this story about yourself?
Are you gonna write how you blew it and failed in every way imaginable?
How hard hearted you were, how you ran from God.
Is that the story you want preserved for thousands of years?
The only way that would be the story you want told, if you're authoring it,
is because he actually got God's grace.
That
he got it!
That he realizes that the gospel is not for winners, it's for losers!
That it's for him.
That it's for the arrogant and the proud and the bigoted.
That it rescues and it changes us.
And he can say and tell his story in such a way that look at how I blew it.
And yet God kept coming after me.
And he didn't stop.
And he won't stop in your life.
He won't give up on you.
He'll tear heaven and earth.
He'll use all of nature to peel back every bit of scale, every
bit of harness, every bit of rock that's been formed over your heart.
He'll break it up, and he'll keep pursuing you because he loves
you, and he wants your freedom.
He is after your joy.
He's after your freedom, and Job is like, telling the story!
What a beautiful thing!
And so he leaves the end open because, what are you gonna do, guys?
I know what I did, I know where I was, I know how bad off I was, and
yet God plucked me out and He rescued me, and He wants to rescue you.
How will we respond to His grace?
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return.
Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you.
Grace is being loved when you're unlovable.
Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved, it has
everything and only to do with the lover.
Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do
with weights or measurements.
It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so called gifts.
It reflects the decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in
relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, and negates any qualifications
the receiver may personally hold.
Grace is one way love.
So anyways, what are we going to do, and I pray that we become a channel
of that, like Jonah, where we can realistically tell our stories.
We're the broken, right?
Fellow beggars showing other beggars where to buy bread.
like, C Brown, and so man, what do we do?
We tell our stories.
People aren't helped by our perfection.
They're not helped by our...
Because guess what?
We kind of photoshopped those.
I photoshopped my story all the time.
I, let's get rid of that wrinkle.
Let's, do that.
And airbrush it, People weren't helped by this, but they're helped by this.
It's the realistic story that I wrote.
In need of a savior, and he's a good savior.
And he rescues me every day, and he hasn't stopped.
And every time I've failed, every time I've fallen short, every time I've
given up on him, he has not quit on me.
And he'll never stop and he keeps pursuing me because he's after my
joy, his glory, and my freedom.
Because whom the sun sets free is free indeed.
And he wants us to dance in our freedom.
He wants us to celebrate in our freedom.
He wants us to experience what freedom really is.
So what are you gonna do?
Now that you don't have to do anything.
That's the story, right?
Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for...
the story of Jonah.
Man.
So amazing.
Thank you for the mirror that he is,
To us.
So Lord, we just remember you now as we've talked about.
Where grace was free to us, Lord, we remember now in communion
that it was costly to you.
It's not cheap, but it was God himself sacrificing for us.
You were broken.
So that we might be made whole.
We thank you for that.
We thank you for your pursuit of rebels.
We love you Jesus, but man, that pales in comparison to how
much you love us this morning.
So we receive that love right now.
And Lord, if there's any of us right now where we're just like,
that sounds too good to be true, then you're understanding grace.
But Lord, we believe help our unbelief.
We
want to receive all that you have.
Lord, we pray like Paul prayed in Ephesians.
Give us power to comprehend the height, the depth, the width, and the
breadth of the love of God, our Lord.
Strengthen us to receive your love right now, for us.
We thank you in Jesus name.
Amen.