Jonah 3 Unexpected Grace

Jonah’s had quite a journey, running west instead of heading east, encountering a great storm and ending up inside the belly of a fish for three days. Just in case you wonder if this is really possible, the Smithsonian website mentions that “Sperm whales sometimes swallow squid whole, so it could definitely manage a human. In fact, there’s a story of a sailor being swallowed by a sperm whale off the Falkland Islands in the early 1900s.” But Jonah’s story is not about the fish, it’s actually about people who have been so violent and evil that the cries of their victims rose to heaven and now the Lord is about to punish them, which is why he sends Jonah to let them know that they’re going to be destroyed in 40 days.

This is the first unexpected sign of grace, as the Lord doesn’t give up on Jonah, but offers him another opportunity to do what the Lord’s called him to do. Jonah doesn’t deserve the Lord’s grace, after-all he deliberately turns his back on God and rejects God, but God is persistent in both his call and his grace. So finally, after discovering that he can’t run away from the Lord, Jonah obeys the word of the Lord and heads to Nineveh. Grace is a big theme in the Bible and we see it time and again in Jesus’ life. There’s the Samaritan woman he meets at a well. She’s an outsider because of her life history and style, but Jesus treats her like a person and she responds by becoming his first evangelist, sharing his grace with everyone else in her village and many become followers of Jesus. Then there’s the woman caught in adultery; the men of the city are ready to stone her for her lifestyle, but Jesus shows her grace and protects her. When everyone leaves, he lifts her up and calls her to sin no more while showing grace, acceptance and forgiveness.

The thing about grace is that it’s powerful and can soften the hardest hearts, but at the same time, we can accept grace and still remain stubborn hard unchanged people. J.I. Packer writes, “God’s grace becomes wonderous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself.” It’s only when we realize just what Jesus gave up for us by going to the cross and taking our sin on himself, that we begin to experience the wonder of God’s forgiveness and grace and are transformed. This is the beginning of gratitude shaping us and our lives so that we also become streams of grace flowing out into our communities and the people in our lives.

Jonah makes his way to Nineveh, a great city that takes three days to go through. Jonah heads into the city a day’s journey and preaches his message, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” I may be guessing here, but knowing how much Jonah hates Nineveh, I’m thinking Jonah is enjoying preaching this message of doom to Israel’s enemies. Yet, as we’ll see next week, Jonah also knows that God is also a gracious and compassionate God and there is always a chance that things might not turn out the way he wants.

Then the unexpected happens, pagan Nineveh, violent Nineveh’s king hears the warning and actually takes it seriously, coming down off his throne, putting on itchy rough sackcloth as a sign of repentance, and sits humbly in the dust, making himself small before God. “This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” Now remember that this story is being told to the Israelites, God’s people who have walked away from him over and over again, people whom God is getting ready to send into exile because they won’t obey his laws, and now they hear that their greatest enemy repents and listens to the Jewish God. This is meant to be a slap in the face to the Jews to wake up and repent and come back to God.

Nineveh’s only hope is that God will show mercy and grace to them. This is our only hope as well. Maybe we haven’t killed anyone, or oppressed anyone to the point where they cry out in desperation to God, but we all sin each and every day and there’s no way we can make things right with God. We depend on God’s grace found in Jesus who came to take our sin on himself and pay the price for our disobedience on the cross and rose from the grace after defeating death itself, all so that we can experience new life, and that we might show the world who Jesus is through our words and lives.

God is seeking change, seeking justice in Nineveh, for the people to change their violent and unjust ways. God desires societies and cultures to promote justice and righteousness. We are called to create communities where women and men, youth and children are able to flourish and discover their gifts and then be encouraged to use these gifts to help make the community a better stronger place for everyone. Time and again, God sends prophets to call his people to take care of the orphans, the widows, the foreigner among them, to protect the helpless and to be generous and gracious to them.

God’s not looking for us to say the right words or do the correct rituals in order to be saved, he’s calling us to the right kind of life and heart, as Isaiah 58:6–7 reminds us, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

In our profession of faith classes, we watched a series of videos called For the Life of the World. These videos explored difference aspects of life and made us think about what living out our faith today looks like. Our faith is not a gift given to us to simply get us into heaven, our faith is given to us so that we can be a gift to the world, that we can bring harmony into all the areas of life, a harmony that sings with God’s voice into all corners of our world, shaping our world so it looks like Jesus’ prayer, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

The people of Nineveh join their king in repenting and turning from their evil ways. The question then becomes, how is God going to respond? “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” God shows Israel’s enemy unexpected grace and mercy. This is a grace offered to you, to everyone who believes in Jesus, who trusts in him alone for their salvation and who desire to live in obedience to Jesus, willing to be transformed by Jesus through his grace. I’ve worked with many people who believe that Jesus can’t forgiven them because their past was so messed, their sin was way much too horrible to ever be forgiven. They believe this because of the guilt they feel and they can’t forgive themselves, but God looks at us through his son Jesus who makes us right with God, who takes our sin on himself so we can experience new life again. This is grace, unexpected grace.

This is a grace that Jonah can’t understand and doesn’t want to see, a grace that seems too much to offer the enemies of God’s people. It’s a grace that is simply pure gift, pure God.