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The Persistence of Grace-Jonah 3:1-5

By Larry Kirk | April 24, 2007

In the closing minutes of class at the seminary, we discussed whether one could ever say that God was judging a nation or a city when catastrophe strikes. The previous Sunday, Hurricane Katrina had hit New Orleans; the following Sunday was September 11. Some students seemed confident that these things are God’s judgments; others were just as convinced that you cannot know that. We ran out of time before we ended the discussion.

I went online and found that discussion about judgment isn’t limited to Christians. Some environmentalists said Katrina was judgment, not from God but from the planet. It was “a message from the earth letting humanity know of the earth’s pain. . . . A natural judgment for our conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels to power our Hummers.”

Well, anyone can indulge in speculation. For Christians the only trustworthy foundation for our faith is revelation. And, while God’s revelation in Scripture answers the most important questions, it doesn’t answer every question. We live by promises not explanations. We live a life of faith in which we must trust God with a lot of things that we do not fully understand and about which cannot be dogmatic. The Bible itself tells us He moves and works in mysterious ways, which are often beyond our comprehension.

Unless God reveals His divine plan to us in greater detail, we can wonder and reflect, but we can’t say we know what His purpose is in any calamity including Katrina. That does not mean that we can’t know anything helpful or relevant about the ways of God or the response to Him required of us. But there are things that we can and should know, and they are important.

We see some of them here in the story of Jonah. If anything stands out in this story it is that everybody is shown persistent grace and everybody is called to sincere repentance.

The story of Jonah is the story of a wicked city and a self-righteous “Christian.” Christ hadn’t yet come, although His coming was promised. But Jonah was believer. He believed in God and Scripture. Nineveh was a city with a reputation for evil. Yet what you see in the story is that God had far more compassion on the city of Nineveh than Jonah had, and God had far more compassion on and patience with Jonah than Jonah deserved. What Jonah shows us is basic for all of life.

God’s Grace Is Persistent

Notice how Jonah 3 begins: “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.’” Why did God send Jonah to Nineveh? The answer is because of His grace and compassion.

In the last chapter of the book, when God shows compassion on Nineveh, Jonah becomes angry and says he knew that was what God intended and that’s why he didn’t want to go. Jonah saw the people of Nineveh as evil, ugly, dangerous, bad people. When God calls him to go to them and warn them of judgment, he understands that it is very likely that God is somehow going to use the warning to change their hearts so that He can show them mercy.

And that is exactly what happens. When God does show them love and mercy, Jonah gets angry. He says, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (4:3.)

Part of the message of Jonah is how out of touch we can be with the heart of God. Jonah wanted to wipe Nineveh off the map, but God wanted Nineveh to experience His grace. The last words in the book are a question from God: “Should I not be concerned about that great city” (4:11).

The Story of Jonah Is About God’s

Persistent Grace Toward a Very Sinful City

The prophet Nahum describes the sins of Nineveh. “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims (Nahum 3:1)! Nahum 3:4 says: “All because of the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft.”

Violence, lust, prostitution, witchcraft. Nineveh was a wild riverside city of the ancient world. It was the “Big Easy” of Assyria. It was built on a great river, the Tigris. Like New Orleans, it had a bad reputation, but God was concerned for the well being of that city, and God wanted to show compassion to its people.

Hurricane Katrina week was supposed to have been a special week. Every Labor Day weekend for the last 33 years has been special to New Orleans. They even had a special website with a letter of welcome from the mayor. It was going to be Southern Decadence XXXIV, also known as Gay Mardi Gras. The official website calls it a celebration of gay life, music, and culture. But Southern Decadence XXXIV has been postponed.

Was New Orleans a sinful city? Yes. No one should deny that. Does that mean that God lost all grace and compassion for that city? No. The book of Jonah tells us that He had concern, compassion, grace, and abounding love for Nineveh. You may be sure that God has concern, compassion, grace, and abounding love for New Orleans. And that’s good news, because that means He has concern, compassion, grace, and abounding love for people like us and cities like ours.

The Persistence of God’s Grace Is Not Speculation; It Is Revelation

A cluster of basic truths is clearly taught in Scripture, all of which touch on the biblical perspective on natural disasters:

God is in control of all that happens. Psalm 89:8 says, “O God, you rule the raging seas.” The disciples said of Jesus, “Even the wind and the waves obey him.” Jesus said not even a sparrow falls apart from God’s will.

God does judge sin, but not all suffering is judgment. The causes of suffering are often complex, and God’s purposes are often beyond our understanding.

God often reveals both His mercy and judgment in the midst of natural calamities.

God’s people are not exempt from the natural calamities that affect all people in a fallen world. Read Romans 8.

God’s people are called to show kindness to those who suffer, without regard to what they deserve. Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, period. When we show kindness, we reflect the persistence of God’s own grace and goodness.

The Grace of a Holy God Is Central to the Bible’s Story

What the Bible tells us is that not just one or two cities deserve judgment but the whole world, the city of mankind, and everyone in it. What is God’s response? Ultimately what He does is that He sends not just a reluctant prophet but His own Son. In John 3:17 the Scripture says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Christ came not just with a call to repentance but with an act of redemption. In our place on the cross, Christ actually suffered the judgment we deserve. The same grace and abounding love that sent Jonah to Nineveh sent Jesus to die and rise again for you and me.

As heartbreaking as the human suffering from Katrina was, what you and I would face without Christ is worse–an eternity immersed in the agony and the spiritual anarchy of hopeless inner darkness, cut off from any connection with the God for whom our heart was made. The Bible calls it hell and offers us rescue from it through faith in Christ. And God’s grace is so big that we are offered not just rescue but complete redemption and renewal. God’s heart, God’s home, God’s provision, God’s presence are all given, by grace, through faith in Christ. Don’t let anything keep you from coming to Christ. Make Him your Savior. And if He is your Savior, look at the grace that He gives you. Look at the rescue that He brings you and the love that He shows you. Let it sink in.

What is the response that God wants from us? That’s right here in Jonah 3 also.

God’s Grace Calls Us to Repentance

“On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned. The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth”

(Jonah 3:4-5).

Repentance Involves Both Faith and Humility Toward God

Notice verse 5. “The Ninevites believed God.” They heard the voice of God in the message of Jonah, so when they believed Jonah’s message, they were believing God!

They declared a fast, an act of humility, and they put on sackcloth. Sackcloth was made from goat’s hair. It was worn by slaves. In putting on sackcloth, you were humbling yourself before God and submitting yourself to Him.

That’s the response we all need to bring to God. It doesn’t matter what you have suffered, or lost, or done, or failed to do. It doesn’t matter if you are a looter, a mayor, a coastguard helicopter pilot, a national guardsman, or a single mom in a temporary shelter.

The call to repentance is not harsh, because repentance is not a punishment; it’s a healing. It’s not bondage; it is the only true liberation. God, who is full of grace, compassion, and abounding love, is the one who calls us to return to Him with all our hearts.

Repentance Is Not Just for Sinful Ninevites

but Also for Self-righteous Jonahs

That’s part of the story. Against the backdrop of the sinful city stands the self-righteous prophet. He also needs repentance.

Jonah 3 begins: “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.’” These words are almost exactly parallel to the opening words of the book. We are supposed to notice that and realize that God is telling Jonah he needs to start over again. The one who thinks he is better than the people of Nineveh needs to consider that he disobeyed God. He didn’t do what God told him to do. He was self-righteous and self-centered.

There is persistent grace for Jonah. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” God doesn’t give us just one chance. God doesn’t come to Jonah and say, “I’m going to save your life, but I’ll never use you again. You’ll never hear My voice again. Good-bye.” No, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” That also is the persistence of His grace. You see the same principle in the lives of Abraham, Moses, Peter, and others.

God calls you to do something, and you reject His calling, turn a deaf ear, head off on a course of willful disobedience, and He pursues you, disciplines you, sends a storm. When you think you are dying, you cry out for His help, He lifts you up, and then He says He still wants you to join Him in the work He is doing in the world. He still wants you as His servant. He gives second chances and third chances and more. His grace is that persistent with both sinful cities and self-righteous, self-willed servants.

But as with the sinful city, so also with the self-willed servant. Persistent grace calls for sincere repentance. Jonah had been through a lot, a storm at sea, nearly drowned, swallowed by a great fish. The fish vomited him up on the shore. And God says, “Jonah, that was entertaining. Now, start over.”

God doesn’t say, “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you just rest up for a while? He says, “Get up. Wipe off that fish phlegm. Go to Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Verse 3 says, “Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.”

I’m concerned there may be some good-hearted person who hasn’t listened carefully and will say, “I get it, you’re saying Jonah went to Nineveh and so I should go to New Orleans.” That’s not it. What I’m saying is that all of us should do what God tell us to do in His Word and by His Spirit, whatever that is. Is there something God is calling you to do that you are resisting? Is it possible, that like Jonah, you see the sins of others but you miss the resistance to God that rules your own heart?

It seems this story also warns that a time will come when the opportunity for repentance ends. Jonah was told to say, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” Hebrew scholars say “overturned” has a double meaning. Forty more days and, one way or another, Nineveh is going to be turned over. It’s either going to be turned upside down through repentance of the heart or through the judgment of God.

Maybe you’ve got forty days. I’m not trying to be manipulative, but think about it. Maybe you’ve got forty days, forty weeks, months, years? I don’t know. But there comes a time when your heart is hardened or the season of grace is gone or the kids are grown up or the marriage is over. Or you’ve died. It is too late one way or another. Maybe these were your forty minutes. I don’t know. But I do know that as I come to the Lord’s Supper at the end of our service, I want to say to God, “Lord, search me and know me and show me anywhere and everywhere I need to repent. Give me the grace to respond in glad obedience to Your word to me today.”

I invite you, in Christ’s name, to do the same.

I want to acknowledge that through out this series of messages I drew freely from several sources. First the book, Salvation Through Judgment And Mercy: The Gospel According to Jonah (Gospel According to the Old Testament) by Bryan D. Estelle (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing) This is one installment of the very helpful series The Gospel According To the Old Testament D.A. Carson says that “one of the most urgent needs of the church is to grasp how the many parts of the Bible fit together to make one story-line that culminates in Jesus Christ…(and) this series of books goes a long way to meeting that need”. Sinclair Ferguson was quoted as saying “at last a series on the Old Testament designed to provide reliable exposition, biblical theology, and a focus on Christ”. O Palmer Robertson’s little book on Jonah, Jonah: A Study In Compassion, published by Banner of Truth, also proved especially helpful. While preaching this series I also listened to sermons on Jonah by Dr. Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll. Their sermons often suggested helpful ideas which were adapted to fit my approach and my congregation’s needs. Both of their sermon series are available through their web sites at www.redeemer.com and www.marshill.org respectively.

Topics: Jonah |

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